I. Dear Reader
There’s a concept in fantasy worldbuilding called the ‘iceberg’. The idea is that the most skillful novels show you the tip of the iceberg and evoke the feeling of the rest. There probably isn’t a deep encyclopaedic history written down somewhere but through a skillful deployment of key details, you can create the feeling of depth.
The makers of Elden Ring pull this off expertly. They paint a variety of interesting details around some big tentpole truths about the world and then let the human desire to form patterns do the rest.
Here are the key ingredients of their recipe as I see it
1. A broadly painted history of the world from the earliest days to the present
2. Key locations that represent those broad eras of the world’s history
3. A reason for the players to engage with those locations and their history
Basically, I believe I have a rough and ready way to build a world on those same principles that should feel deep in the same way that Elden Ring does.
Step One: Historical Eras In Broad Strokes
Elden Ring has broad historical eras. The earliest era seems to be a time of dragons and giants. Then, comes the time of humans (and alt-humans). Eventually, we get the current era of the Golden Order, an empire, religion and metaphysical worldview wrapped into one.
You could already have a sense of this for your setting. But if you’re starting from a blank page, I’d just brainstorm two or three fantastical creatures and two or three empires or societies. These choices create genre expectations so for heroic fantasy, you might go dragons. For something darker, you might go vampires.
For this example, let’s go dragons, rakshasa/demons, a human empire, and then a bunch of federated city-states. If you’ve not done it already, arrange them in order. So the idea here is that the earliest state was dragons and the current state of the world is the federated cities.
Step Two: Layer History Onto A Map
Think of your map as the canvas on which you’re going to litter the remains of the historical eras. Start with the oldest era and add something to the map that survives from that time. Do the same for every successive era, roughly doubling the number of points as you go into the next era. Answer the questions that emerge as you go.
For the dragons, let’s add two things to the map. The first two ideas that come to mind are a giant dragon fossil, just the bones, bleached clean, and a huge unhatched dragon egg that has turned to stone.
Next, we move to the rakshasas or demons. The obvious question that comes to mind is what’s the relationship between the dragons and the demons. The easiest answer is that the demons used to worship the dragons and then eventually overthrew them. Let’s add four locations to the map (double).
Off the top of my head, a temple to the dragons built by the rakshasas, the great rakshasa city, a memorial to their defeat of the dragons, and something that represents why they died out – maybe a cursed battlefield from a destructive civil war between them.
I’ll put the memorial next to the bones of the giant dragon. I’ll say the dragon egg is in the temple. And the cursed battlefield will just look like a roiling sandstorm where nothing grows.
Now we move to the empire. Let’s give it a name that will help identify it – the Cobalt Throne so that we can use the colour blue to reference it. This could be anything – maybe a peacock feather motif, whatever. We need 8 points of interest. For me, these would be some grand blue roads, 3 or 4 cities, an observatory on a mountain, maybe a dam. And let’s say their capital city is built on top of the demon city, because that would be cool.
Finally, the federated city-states. My idea here is that the empire dissolved and now all the cities just exist separately, constantly politicking with each other, mostly non-violently. We would ideally do 16 for these. Which sounds like a lot but it’s also everything else on the map. The cities from the empire are changed – maybe some expanded, maybe one or two have whole sections that have been destroyed and then abandoned. Throw in a bunch of trade stops on the roads and rivers, a few small villages that still refer to the empire sometimes, farm lands, mines, etc and we’re somewhere there. Maybe there’s a whole series of outposts near the cursed battlefield because there’s magic in the ground that’s worth extracting.
Step Three: History Comes Alive
The last part is coming up with stuff in the world that is happening right now that will encourage exploration and engagement with the world. Elden Ring’s version of this is that to become Elden Lord, you need to kill god and that means accumulating power first – so you explore to get more powerful. I think it works great for that game but tabletop allows you to do way, way more. Maybe someone wants to bring back the empire and that means hatching the stone dragon egg with the help of one of the last demons left around. Maybe that’s already happened. Maybe someone is marching on a city with the first dragon seen in a thousand years. Okay, I realize this has just become A Song of Ice and Fire but is that a bad thing. If I replace the dragons with giant worms, I can fix that and bring some Dune in. Basically, decisions cascade down in an interesting way.
For a good discussion of this, check out a classic episode of Daydreaming about Dragons where Judd talks about how to make history matter in play.
Also if OSR-heads have a better version of this technique, I’m all ears. Seems like stuff they’ve been talking about.
Yours layered on a map,
Thomas
II. Media of the Week
- Quinns from Shut Up and Shut Down is reducing his time spent reviewing boardgames and is going to be making videos about RPGs over at Quinn Quest. The first video is about fantasy game, Wildsea. (If you want to know more, this AMA on reddit answers a lot of questions you might have. I have one question: When is Quinns going to come on the Yes Indie’d podcast?)
- LegalKimchi also made a video on MAR Barker, the author of Tekumel who was revealed to be basically, a nazi.
- Please consider joining 100+ other patrons and support the newsletter on patreon to help keep me going.
- If you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it in the end of the month round-up.
III. Links of the Week
- If you aren’t in the loop about February as the crowdfunding bonanza known as ZineMonth, Dicebreaker explains it all.
- On Polygon, Em Friedman talks about some notable actual plays to look forward to in 2024.
- It seems like tabletop (including boardgames) crowdfunding on Kickstarter has fallen for the second year in a row.
- On Age of Ravens, a work-in-progress procedure for customizing your own city when doing a session zero of Blades in the Dark.
- On Lich Van Winkle’s blog, a long post about the fiddly meaning of the word “story” when it comes to RPGs.
IV. Small Ads
All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.
- Carve your own fate with Runecairn Wardensaga Remastered, a refreshed and updated version of 2-player Norse fantasy Soulslike TTRPG Runecairn. Live now on Kickstarter!
- I Got A Knife is a pulp crime ttrpg for 2 or more players. Navigate the seedy underground and investigate a murder most foul with your brains and brawn.
- The Magus & The Oracle coming to Kickstarter on Feb 1! A solo RPG about anguished wizards seeking arcane mastery— plus a companion deck of system-agnostic inspiration cards, by momatoes.
- Tacticians of Ahm, tactical roleplaying in a digital fantasy world inspired by Into the Breach and Fire Emblem, is itchfunding! Get the core rulebook today and future updates for free!
- Try SANCTUM, a no-prep, all-verbal storytelling about dungeons designed for bonfire circles, car rides, and second bottles of wine.
This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.
- Good Society, the popular Jane Austen-inspired RPG is in a bundle with all of the expansions and additional content.
Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!
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