Worlds of Design: Breaking the Fantasy Mold

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

campmapCD14 with substitutes 911.jpg

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?
 

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Lewis Pulsipher

Lewis Pulsipher

Dragon, White Dwarf, Fiend Folio

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My Fantasy Hero gameworld had several cultures derived by thinking about their location and its effects...
but I also had a bunch that were vaguely European. One that was Anime Samurai. One that was a culture of 1' long bees, flying by TK.
One that was essentially modeled after bonobos, but with language.
One inspired by the Gliders of Elf Quest...
 


Map courtesy of Lew Pulsipher
Given the number of references on that thing, I'm docking you points for having Essex and Wessex but not Chessex, Land of the Dice-Lords. Should probably be situated near the eight-pointed Chaos symbol, they were among the first people to stick that thing on every bit of merch they could.

"Here Be Phraints" is cute, but my favorite is the stealthy nod to Lace & Steel. The Empire of the Dominator is out of date, really needs to be annotated as "Dominator Lady" instead.
I need to know more about the Debatable Lands.
Ask someone from Scotland or England, but maybe not people from both at once if you want the debate to remain civil.
 
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I’d love to do a D&D-esque fantasy adventure campaign in a setting inspired by ancient South American civilizations (eg Inca, Maya, Aztec etc).

To the extent that typical fantasy worlds are inspired by European nations, I mean.

Could be really cool.
 

I have three campaign worlds.

One is quite old, with the roots back in the early '90s. It's got a lot of influence from authors like Michael Moorcock, Katharine Kerr, and Brian Daley. A big theme is the general porosity of the planes, which give a nice justification for the pseudo-RW cultures (they were founded by people from our world from different times). I've definitely pushed together many real world earth contexts, so there's a pseudo-Netherlands very like the 80 Years' War, pseudo-Spanish/Italian, but there's been other areas... pseudo-Arabian, pseudo-Chinese, pseudo-Constantinople, etc. Often these are developed based on books I read or where the PCs indicate they want to go. I don't pretend to be perfectly accurate (I mean, should I be?) but do try to be respectful in that I don't make one clearly wonderful or terrible or only a pastiche of stereotypes. The world's human tech level is more Renaissance/Early Modern rather than medieval. It's been extended over time to have fantasy elements that are untethered from real world contexts. For example, I developed the Astral Plane a good bit and featured a good bit of action in Pesh, where the battle of Law and Chaos occurred.

The other two are much newer. In both I decided to absolutely embrace the European aspects but with a lot of twists that violate standard fantasy tropes.

One is basically "the world Strahd left behind when he went to Barovia" so the dominant state is the Holy Empire of Valentia. It's strongly informed by the conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th Centuries. The backplot of the world is that it was actually devastated by Elder Evils like Zargon and is slowly sliding into Ravenloft; Strahd just went there first.

The other is a 19th Century European world complete with colonialism and other troubled aspects of our world. This one really violates standard fantasy tropes---halflings are the dominant species, including having pseudo-Prussian and pseudo-French nations, with the dwarves being pseudo-Italian, etc. This world is one that's more steam/clock/arcane-punk with a good bit of modernish technology such as Maxim guns and airships; right now there's only up to 5th level arcane spells (because artificers can only cast up to 5th level) and there are almost no divine casters but there are lots of arcane "devices". There are two campaigns running in it, one based on the Desert of Desolation classic modules with some updating and the other set in London with lots of Jack the Ripper type action.
 


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

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

I guess because of the eurocentric nature of the industry.

My first fantasy game, Tales of Distant Lands, is heavily influenced by A Wizard of Earthsea and I'm very explicit that it's an archipelago in a wider world, that everyone you meet will be brown skinned and there's no sharp noses. The look and feel to me is South-East Asian.

My second fantasy game, Xiangguo, is an asian-horror-fantasy inspired by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kingdom and Mr Vampire. The main nation is a China/Joseon-alike. Their borders are western Indian-inspired nomad warlords, northern Mongol-inspired warlords and eastern Japanese inspired pirates. There's not a "white" face among them.

I'm deliberately eschewing the common european appearance, the appearance of dwarves, elves, orcs and suchlike, and even the operation of magic. I want something different in the world.
 

Almost all maps I see are set in the Northern Hemisphere, either explicitly or by assumption. Cold lands are on top, hot lands are on the bottom, unless the map is big enough to straddle the equator.

For fantasy worlds we can maybe forgive a little. In TODL we have cold lands at the top and bottom
 

I’m completely burned out on the medieval fantasy genre because it is so oversaturated and stagnant. I only touch post-industrial settings, but unfortunately those are a crapshoot.
 

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