Worlds of Design: Breaking the Fantasy Mold

Fantasy worlds tend to remind us of medieval Europe in culture, rulership, even geography. Why?

Map courtesy of Lew Pulsipher​

A Long Tradition​

Tabletop role-playing games have a long traditional of European medieval fantasy, starting with Dungeons & Dragons. While there were occasional nods to other cultures (the monk class being one example, with monsters from other non-European cultures appearing in the Fiend Folio), by and large the “default” has been a Eurocentric view.

It’s worth looking into why this is and what to do about it. Mind, this article is not advocating one culture over another. My purpose is not to argue against using a certain culture, but to make designers and game masters aware of their influences and suggest alternatives if they're interested in branching out.

Why Is it Popular?​

Familiarity of the setting can give players context that helps them understand how the world works. Players (think they) know what Viking-like northern raiders are like, what southern lands are like, and so forth. Many players won’t care that the world derives from a European view. But it's helpful to define what Eurocentrism is. Sciencedirect.com notes there are several definitions, and provides a few of them as:

...an attitude, conceptual apparatus, or set of empirical beliefs that frame Europe as the primary engine and architect of world history, the bearer of universal values and reason, and the pinnacle and therefore model of progress and development.

Early Dungeons & Dragons is heavily Eurocentric, and many of the more experienced players and GMs learned RPGs from D&D and early fantasy literature. After all, the most famous fantasy world, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, is recognizably Eurocentric in culture and even conformation. The ocean is to the west, raids (Angmar, dragons) come from the north, technology is medieval, etc. “Tolkien-centric” is also Eurocentric (see my previous article on this, “Escaping Tolkien”).

There’s a lot more to Eurocentrism than just geography. Technology level, feudalism and nobility, strong religious influence, are all part of the package. Even forms of magic.

Branching Out​

There are plenty of alternatives to Eurocentrism. One of the earliest examples was created by linguist M. A. R. Barker. Empire of the Petal Throne was one of the first RPGs after D&D, and borrowed many mechanics from the D&D rules. But the setting was exotic, far from medieval fantasy or Tolkien, closer to east Asia. The novels that he wrote about the world reminded the reader of the differences (e.g., Prince of Skulls and Lords of Tsamra).

TSR later followed suit, exploring some of these in their settings, such as Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, and many others. Notably missing from many of these efforts were creators representing the cultures that inspired these settings; as tabletop gaming has expanded globally, we’re thankfully seeing more and more creators sharing their cultures and perspectives.

If you want to expand your fantasy campaign beyond European influences, there's plenty to choose from.

Exploring New Lands​

An important first step is to learn about other cultures, and real-world history can serve as inspiration. Please note that this is a surface level review of entire swaths of human history; these one paragraph summaries are not meant to be comprehensive.

• Japan has had a single Emperor for more than a millennium. But for much of that time the Emperor did not actually rule, rather a hereditary military dictator called the Shogun was the ruler. Occasionally an Emperor would rebel and a war ensued (the emperor losing). The families that controlled the shogunate succession changed at least twice. Finally, in the 19th century, an emperor prevailed and the Shogunate disappeared. I can’t think of any analog to this, in the long term, in the rest of the world.
• Medieval China was often quite secular. There was reverence of ancestors which might amount to worship, but Confucian philosophy was dominant, and there are no gods in Confucianism. Nor are there gods in original Buddhism, the other spiritual guide in medieval China.
• There are also pre-medieval European cultures to consider. If we go back to the Republic of the Roman Empire, personal patronage was very important. Each client had a relationship with a patron, generally someone from a higher strata of society. The client might refer to the patron as often as every day to see what that patron needed and wanted. And the patron looked after those in his care. “The relationship was hierarchical, but obligations were mutual.”
• There are now many other options in fantasy and sci-fi literature as well, including afrofuturism and indigenous futurism.

We are now blessed with many cultural alternatives written by gamers from all over the world. I encourage you to do your own research if any of these cultures spark your interest.

Think about how any one of these cultures would make a difference in a fantasy (or science fiction) world. Science fiction world settings are much less likely to be Eurocentric, just as science fiction in general is often not reflective of the contemporary world.

Your Map, You World​

The graphic above is my campaign map. I don’t think I consciously avoided comparisons with European geography when I made the map for my very long-running campaign, but that didn’t prevent me from having many European references. But I also borrowed from science fiction/fantasy as well (the Half-Horse, the 8 Arrowed Sign of Chaos, etc.).

By the way, there is a virtue to not making an overall map for a campaign setting, instead just providing wilderness to explore. Which is what I did at first (see my article, “Here Be Monsters”). Maps are constraints, as fantasy author Glen Cook once said:

With the Black Company I took advice from Fritz Leiber who was my mentor and who said “Don’t draw a map because if you draw a map, as soon as you start drawing the map, you start narrowing your possibilities”. As long as you don’t have a map you don’t have to conform to certain things. I have a vague map inside my head and I’ve seen many maps on the internet of what people thought the Black Company world might be like. They’re not too far off, but they’re not close either. It’s north and south with a pond in the middle.

...but I also see maps (and worlds) as an invitation to the players to go beyond the European-inspired places they know.

Your Turn: What cultures influence your fantasy and sci-fi campaigns?

 

[Tonguez]

my first homebrew I did a Great Britain analogue called "Cruithne" and based it on a mix of Dal Riata, Hen Ogledd, the Ulster Cycle and The Book of Invasions of Erenn.

I then moved to the continent and became fascinated with eastern europe rather than western - so Slavic, Baltic and Albanian inspired. Karameikos was helpful here, as it did give some cultural flavour whilst maintaining the DnD tropes.

With Al-Qadim covered I moved south and did research on African myth, with a focus on the Sahel Kingdoms, Ethiopia and such. I also took the idea of Ancient Opar as an African empire on the shores of an inland sea. The Sahel kingdoms are an amazing region to inspire gameplay and feature vast cities, castles and even mounted fighters in armour.

Another homebrew was directly based on legendary Polynesia with the dynastic intrigues of the Tongan thassalocracy in the western islands and the exploration and settlement and rise of the Oro cult in the Eastern Islands.

My latest is Alt-history 17th/18th Century Europe with fey and horror themes. Timeline is roughly 1640 to 1800 and mainly focussed in the Dutch Republic and central Europe (the afore mentioned Baltic and Slavic myths played a part too)

 

[Jd Smith1]

Empire of the Petal Throne is one of the earliest RPGs, and it was, and still is, not in the traditional fantasy mold.

 

[doctorhook]

Returning frequently to the places of inspo (for your setting) is illuminating. Our understandings about "Vikings" just on findings from archaeology for example, is more comprehensive even in the last ten years!

This is a good point about discoveries. Often we fall into the trap of imagining that we know 95% or 99% of the details of these historical cultures “Because it 2025, we’ve got museums, it’s all been discovered, right?” Turns out there’s lots that we still don’t know, and many things we haven’t even realized we don’t know.

My favourite example is Meso-America, especially the Mayans (and many other cultures in the same region). Only since laser-radar mapping was invented and applied to archaeology have we realized that there are LOADS (thousands? tens of thousands?) of unexplored ruins all throughout the jungles. They’re hidden under dense forest and buried under centuries of dead forest matter and forgotten by the people who live around them; over centuries, the forest and time swallow up a pyramid and turn it into a hill. But the ruin is still there, untouched! And when you realize how much is still out there to be explored, you have to conclude that there must be sooo much we don’t even know about these peoples yet, even though the people never really left. The Mayans are still there, but the history is forgotten and the ruins buried.

I think the metaphor needs a little more to it than simply eurocentricism.

D&D is more "western-centric." There is a distinct absence of European medievalisms. Notions of towns and taverns on 'borders' more closely resemble towns of the Old West (absent trains and six guns), for example.

Stretch it even further and, look at how table-top RPGs are expressed into computer and console games, often based on a history of computer RPGs which themselves were derived from D&D. Cumulatively, we have "D&Dism" overshadowing both tabletop and computer RPGs.

I recall a good blog post from long ago that argued “D&D is NOT medieval”. (If you search for that, you’ll surely find it.) IIRC the whole thesis was that D&D is pseudo-medieval, the
adventures are usually set in American-style frontier towns with European medieval-ish tropes and technology applied. In particular, there’s no feudalism (or only the facade of feudalism), and there’s no medieval mindset or worldview. Certainly (like someone else wrote) D&D was written mostly by modern Americans, and mostly for modern Americans.

 

[Fifinjir]

Currently working on a Caucasus Mountain themed region, inspired by Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. From what I’m finding out, any Georgia-esque country wouldn’t be too unfamiliar, but there’s a lot more digging in I have to do.

Stuff it could have so far:

• giants and intelligent, but still dangerous, ogres, some of which live in the underworld.
• Night spirits that attack travelers.
• fortified mountain monasteries.
• Demon blacksmith-sorcerers.
• “Delegated” divine hierarchy with a most high god and lesser divines between him and humanity.
• hag-like witches.

 

[overgeeked]

This is a good point about discoveries. Often we fall into the trap of imagining that we know 95% or 99% of the details of these historical cultures “Because it 2025, we’ve got museums, it’s all been discovered, right?” Turns out there’s lots that we still don’t know, and many things we haven’t even realized we don’t know.

My favourite example is Meso-America, especially the Mayans (and many other cultures in the same region). Only since laser-radar mapping was invented and applied to archaeology have we realized that there are LOADS (thousands? tens of thousands?) of unexplored ruins all throughout the jungles. They’re hidden under dense forest and buried under centuries of dead forest matter and forgotten by the people who live around them; over centuries, the forest and time swallow up a pyramid and turn it into a hill. But the ruin is still there, untouched! And when you realize how much is still out there to be explored, you have to conclude that there must be sooo much we don’t even know about these peoples yet, even though the people never really left. The Mayans are still there, but the history is forgotten and the ruins buried.

That’s whitewashing history more than a little bit. The history wasn’t forgotten. It’s not a set of misplaced keys. It was actively destroyed by Spanish colonizers. The cultures, histories, languages, and peoples were intentionally wiped out. Genocide is too weak a word. Religion suppressed and eradicated. European language and religion forced on the indigenous population. Those who would not convert were murdered. Even those who did were brutalized, murdered, tortured, and enslaved. Wealth and resources stolen and shipped off to Europe to pay for Spain’s debts. Writing and history and culture were burned. And yes, there were some survivors and some remain to this day. There have been some great advances in the last few decades in the study of pre-Columbian Latin America. It’s all really exciting and I can’t wait to learn about it all. But in no sense was their history merely forgotten.

 

[doctorhook]

That’s whitewashing history more than a little bit. The history wasn’t forgotten. It’s not a set of misplaced keys. It was actively destroyed by Spanish colonizers. The cultures, histories, languages, and peoples were intentionally wiped out. Genocide is too weak a word. Religion suppressed and eradicated. European language and religion forced on the indigenous population. Those who would not convert were murdered. Even those who did were brutalized, murdered, tortured, and enslaved. Wealth and resources stolen and shipped off to Europe to pay for Spain’s debts. Writing and history and culture were burned. And yes, there were some survivors and some remain to this day. There have been some great advances in the last few decades in the study of pre-Columbian Latin America. It’s all really exciting and I can’t wait to learn about it all. But in no sense was their history merely forgotten.

Totally valid comment. It wasn’t at all my intention to diminish the brutality and erasure these people suffered at the hands of conquistadors and settlers. My point was merely that there’s a huge amount of lost ruins (and presumably cultural artifacts) that are now being rediscovered and which have been buried in the jungle so long that apparently no one still remembered they were there. That’s the sense I meant “forgotten”.

 

[MGibster]

I think the reason early D&D used Euro-centric middle ages for the settings was the early customer base was primarily United States Americans. To US Americans, middle ages Europe IS largely fantasy. It has things like Kings, Queens and the whole royal entourage complete with castles and such.

Bingo. D&D was produced by Americans for an American audience. In the 1970s, TSR was happy to sell to foreign markets when they could, they had a nice deal with Games Workshop to distribute D&D, but I think D&D continues to be produced for and by Americans. And since most of us currently living in the United States have ancestors that came from elsewhere, Greek myths, Arthurian legends, Beowulf, and The Canterbury Tales are all part of our literary tradition as well. It should come to no surprise that we draw on those influences.

But even in the early days there were influences outside of medieval Europe. AD&D had Oriental Adventures in 1985, Kara-Tur in 1988, Al-Qadim in 1992 and a series of green historical books that included Rome and Greece. There have been other games over the years including Bushido in 1979, Legend of the Five Rings in 1997, Testament in 2003 (I think), and RuneQuest came out in 1979.

None of these games ever got close to the success of D&D of course. But then measuring your success against D&D is like measuring a singer's success against Madonna. The long and the short of it is I think the farther you go outside of a bog standard Eurocentric fantasy setting the more difficult it is to find players who are engaged by the material. It takes a little work to get into a setting like L5R than it does most D&D settings.

And let's face it, these days you run into criticism if you base a game off a culture you have no connection to through your ancestry or being a part of it. For the Coyote and Crow FAQ, they felt the need to add a little blurb that it was okay to play the game even if you weren't indigenous.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Bingo. D&D was produced by Americans for an American audience. In the 1970s, TSR was happy to sell to foreign markets when they could, they had a nice deal with Games Workshop to distribute D&D, but I think D&D continues to be produced for and by Americans. And since most of us currently living in the United States have ancestors that came from elsewhere, Greek myths, Arthurian legends, Beowulf, and The Canterbury Tales are all part of our literary tradition as well. It should come to no surprise that we draw on those influences.

But even in the early days there were influences outside of medieval Europe. AD&D had Oriental Adventures in 1985, Kara-Tur in 1988, Al-Qadim in 1992 and a series of green historical books that included Rome and Greece. There have been other games over the years including Bushido in 1979, Legend of the Five Rings in 1997, Testament in 2003 (I think), and RuneQuest came out in 1979.

None of these games ever got close to the success of D&D of course. But then measuring your success against D&D is like measuring a singer's success against Madonna. The long and the short of it is I think the farther you go outside of a bog standard Eurocentric fantasy setting the more difficult it is to find players who are engaged by the material. It takes a little work to get into a setting like L5R than it does most D&D settings.

And let's face it, these days you run into criticism if you base a game off a culture you have no connection to through your ancestry or being a part of it. For the Coyote and Crow FAQ, they felt the need to add a little blurb that it was okay to play the game even if you weren't indigenous.

No one has once criticized me for choosing to make an "Arabian Nights"-styled D&D game. I have exclusively encountered optimistic support, curious questions, and positive responses. When I set about doing this, I asked for help, and got easily a dozen people all contributing useful information and ideas, reading material suggestions, and sociocultural notes/reminders to keep on hand while engaging with the world. Their contributions were invaluable.

The idea that multiculturalist campaigns automatically draw the Cultural Appropriation Police is simply false. Now, if you do this sort of thing and make it as a product to sell to others, you are naturally going to get more incisive examination because there's actual money on the line, but even then there is far more positivity than negativity. You just have to express yourself respectfully, do your research diligently, and genuinely listen when people tell you you've gone astray.

 

[lynnfredricks]

I recall a good blog post from long ago that argued “D&D is NOT medieval”. (If you search for that, you’ll surely find it.) IIRC the whole thesis was that D&D is pseudo-medieval, the adventures are usually set in American-style frontier towns with European medieval-ish tropes and technology applied. In particular, there’s no feudalism (or only the facade of feudalism), and there’s no medieval mindset or worldview. Certainly (like someone else wrote) D&D was written mostly by modern Americans, and mostly for modern Americans.

Probably I have read it. It was much discussed several years ago. But yes, I agree. It also makes me think about the handful of old articles and the DMG 1e talking about crossing AD&D with Boot Hill.

Also, I think it also is a reason why when Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing first appeared, it made kind of a big splash. American players of D&D were getting a glimpse of a Western fantasy RPG setting that was a bit more European.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Also, I think it also is a reason why when Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing first appeared, it made kind of a big splash. American players of D&D were getting a glimpse of a Western fantasy RPG setting that was a bit more European.

The art, the tone, magazine support, and the tie-in to the minis game certainly did not hurt, either. Especially in a pre-Net release.