Earth-like worlds in fantasy games

[Wysardry]

I am in the early stages of planning a single player CRPG aimed at less casual CRPG and PnP RPG players, and have reached somewhat of an impasse with the other members of the team at a crucial point. I am therefore seeking the opinions of those here (and at a traditional RPG community).

The basic premise of the story is that a few thousand Celtic settlers from the British Isles fled to a new world to escape the Roman legions, and have now been living there for several centuries. This world is inhabited by creatures from mythology, and magic is real.

I would like to make the planet itself as much like Earth as possible, maybe so alike that it is Earth in another reality or timeline. This would allow us to use factual reference documents, thereby saving a lot of time and effort, which could be spent on the more unusual elements.

Others want a more "fantastic" environment.

I would appreciate a little help and advice on what the pros and cons of each option might be.

 

[Fez]

Elves with big tits and skimpy dresses would go down a treat.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Elaborate on what "fantastic" means and what they are proposing, then we can get down to business.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I guess the real question is "why?"

I would like to make the planet itself as much like Earth as possible, maybe so alike that it is Earth in another reality or timeline. This would allow us to use factual reference documents, thereby saving a lot of time and effort, which could be spent on the more unusual elements.

Why? It's not a historical RPG, the Celtic settlers escaped to a new world, featuring "mythological creatures" and magic. There aren't many relevant documents you can use that would help you in this situation, so what's the point? How does magic fit into another Earth scenario?

Others want a more "fantastic" environment.

Why? To justify magic and creatures or to move away from the familiar or what?

 

[Vival]

That actually sounds very similar to the story of Albion in which celts escaped to a distant planet.[/url]

 

[Wysardry]

In general, they are arguing that fantasy should not be based upon the reality of this world. The most extreme suggestion was to have a flat world, but that was subsequently stated to be merely an example.

We're not really dealing with specifics at this point, as we're trying to work our way through Patricia Wrede's Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions, so it basically boils down to a choice between an "Alternate Earth" or "Not Earth at All".

 

[Fez]

Perhaps he is dreaming of a Lionheart with Celtic tribes?

 

[Mefi]

Elaborate on what you mean by Celtic... the great diaspora of England's Celtic tribes was due to Saxon, Angle and Scots invasions. (The sad thing is I'm a lecturer in the linguistic history of Welsh and English IRL). Definitely go for more Brythonic influence rather than trot out all the Irish cliches which seem to predominate any discussion of 'Celtic'.

I'd go for more fantasy than alternate reality because if you are going for an alternate reality that works it takes even longer to get right than if you are creating a world from scratch. Going fantasy also allows you to pick and choose the bits of Celtic history which fit into your world without having to figure out the butterfly effect of the changes you make to a real world scenario.

If you go alternate reality, are a few thousand Celtic immigrants really going to change history? (Have a look at what happened when tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of Celts moved over to Brittany in the C5th - C7th. They still got walked over by the larger neighbouring kingdoms. The only thing they retained was a hybrid form of their language)

edit: Albion is teh game

 

[Wysardry]

Why? It's not a historical RPG, the Celtic settlers escaped to a new world, featuring "mythological creatures" and magic. There aren't many relevant documents you can use that would help you in this situation, so what's the point? How does magic fit into another Earth scenario?

I was thinking more along the lines of duplicating the physical features of Earth, such as the planet size, number of suns and moons, gravity strength, tides, ratio of water to land etc. so that we can look up facts and figures rather than calculating almost everything and hoping we don't make any mistakes.

I see magic as being controlled by an additional set of physical laws that we on modern day Earth have either forgotten or not discovered yet.

Why? To justify magic and creatures or to move away from the familiar or what?

One is adamant that there is no magic on Earth, and another doesn't want it to be "too sci-fi".

That actually sounds very similar to the story of Albion in which celts escaped to a distant planet.

Really? I have that game somewhere, but didn't play it for very long due to being distracted by Daggerfall. I shall have to dig it out and see if I can get it to run.

Perhaps he is dreaming of a Lionheart with Celtic tribes?

It is more like the Deverry novels by Katharine Kerr, although I hadn't read any of them when I first came up with the idea.

Elaborate on what you mean by Celtic... the great diaspora of England's Celtic tribes was due to Saxon, Angle and Scots invasions. (The sad thing is I'm a lecturer in the linguistic history of Welsh and English IRL). Definitely go for more Brythonic influence rather than trot out all the Irish cliches which seem to predominate any discussion of 'Celtic'.

I too think the Irish myths are eboming a little overdone and was actually thinking of including myths mainly from Wales and Cornwall, with perhaps a few from other Celtic regions. The same applies to the people that migrate.

You wouldn't happen to know the Brythonic equivalent of the Goidelic word "Immram" or "Immrama" (which means something like "fantastic voyage(s)"), would you?

I'd go for more fantasy than alternate reality because if you are going for an alternate reality that works it takes even longer to get right than if you are creating a world from scratch. Going fantasy also allows you to pick and choose the bits of Celtic history which fit into your world without having to figure out the butterfly effect of the changes you make to a real world scenario.

The butterfly effect is the very thing which makes me want to avoid changing the physical aspects of the world.

If you go alternate reality, are a few thousand Celtic immigrants really going to change history?

They would if there were no other humans on the other world.

 

[Mefi]

You wouldn't happen to know the Brythonic equivalent of the Goidelic word "Immram" or "Immrama" (which means something like "fantastic voyage(s)"), would you?

Do you mean ectrae or immram? Echtrae is a pagan voyage to the otherworld (with the nuance of an adventure), Immram is a Christian voyage using a rowboat (with the nuance the hero is a saint going out to convert the natives).

The genres in Irish are ectrai and immrama btw.

There are no direct co-relations in Welsh literature for these genres. Welsh poetry of the time was concerned with the wars against the Saxons and prose was 'hanes' (history) or 'cainc' (mythological tales of heroes).

I'll do a bit of reading to see if I can find an acceptable translation (mori is the best I can do off the top of my head). There might be something usable in the first book of the mabinogion.

 

[Wysardry]

Do you mean ectrae or immram? Echtrae is a pagan voyage to the otherworld (with the nuance of an adventure), Immram is a Christian voyage using a rowboat (with the nuance the hero is a saint going out to convert the natives).

The meaning for ectrae definitely sounds much more suitable.

I was looking for a short name for the campaign setting and stumbled across the term (with an incorrect translation it seems), and thought a word meaning "journey(s)/voyage(s)/adventure(s)/quest(s) to/within an otherworld" would be ideal.

There are no direct co-relations in Welsh literature for these genres. Welsh poetry of the time was concerned with the wars against the Saxons and prose was 'hanes' (history) or 'cainc' (mythological tales of heroes).

I know there are Welsh tales/verses describing journeys to Annwn/Annwyn and various otherworlds, but haven't seen them referred to by anything other than their titles ("The Spoils of Annwyn" is one).

I'll do a bit of reading to see if I can find an acceptable translation (mori is the best I can do off the top of my head). There might be something usable in the first book of the mabinogion.

Thank you. The few reference books I own do not contain many tales or poems in their original languages, and those that are included are incomplete. I have a copy of the Mabinogion, but it is the Dover Thrift edition and only contains the translated text with very few notes.

 

[Mefi]

The best I can do using GPC is 'ymchwiliad' which is a 'quest' with the nuance of exploration.
Will check some more when I'm back in my office after Bank Holiday.

Sadly Welsh is not ideal for all you Saes to get your tongues around :wink:

The journeys in the mabionogi aren't actually like those in the Irish epics. They happen by accident or as normal interaction between the mortal world and the otherworld.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

That actually sounds very similar to the story of Albion in which celts escaped to a distant planet.[/url]

Albion kicked ass.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I was thinking more along the lines of duplicating the physical features of Earth, such as the planet size, number of suns and moons, gravity strength, tides, ratio of water to land etc. so that we can look up facts and figures rather than calculating almost everything and hoping we don't make any mistakes.

Why and how is that important? Just trying to understand the game concept assuming it's somehow related to the setting/story/gameplay. If it's not, I don't think that anyone would care about dry "facts and figures"

I saw that fantasy worldbuilding stuff, but it sounds too pretentious and mostly useless. Include only what's relevant to the story. If the story doesn't care whether people "evolved or migrated from somewhere/when else", then players shouldn't/wouldn't care about that either. Same applies to "How many people are there in this country? How does this compare with world population? What is considered a small town/large town/city in terms of number of people?" and a bunch of other retarded questions. Tell players that it's a small town and let then figure out on their own how many people live there. Shady Sands was a small town. Whether it had 15 people or 100 people is irrelevant. My 2 cents.

One is adamant that there is no magic on Earth, and another doesn't want it to be "too sci-fi".

Well, my advice is don't focus too much on details like that as it would kill your project faster than anything else. When in doubts, let players figure things out if they care. When I read "a few thousand Celtic settlers from the British Isles fled to a new world to escape the Roman legions" that was enough to imagine some world. Whether this world is a real Earth, alternative Earth, some other planet in a galaxy far, far away hardly matters for it's not what the story is all about.

 

[Wysardry]

Why and how is that important? Just trying to understand the game concept assuming it's somehow related to the setting/story/gameplay. If it's not, I don't think that anyone would care about dry "facts and figures"

The size of the planet would affect the strength of gravity, gravity affects the weight to mass ratio of materials, which would affect how much the player can carry and the effective range of missile weapons. The number of suns and moons would affect temperature and the tides which would affect food sources and travel.

Players might not care about such facts and figures, but they would notice the effects if they were drastically different from those of Earth. The human or computer GM needs to have access to such information in any case.

I saw that fantasy worldbuilding stuff, but it sounds too pretentious and mostly useless. Include only what's relevant to the story. If the story doesn't care whether people "evolved or migrated from somewhere/when else", then players shouldn't/wouldn't care about that either.

Again, the player might not care, but the GM will need to know, especially the computer version as it would be less proficient at dynamically inventing material.

Well, my advice is don't focus too much on details like that as it would kill your project faster than anything else. When in doubts, let players figure things out if they care.

In an internally consistent world, almost every aspect is dependent on at least one other. We have tried the "bottom up" approach (start with small things and work outwards), but kept running into dead ends when trying to decide about feature x as it depended on feature y which depended on feature z, neither of which had been decided yet either (and the same problem occured if we switched to concentrating on either of them).

We are therefore now trying the "top down" approach (start with big decisions and gradually add more detail).

 

[Stark]

The size of the planet would affect the strength of gravity, gravity affects the weight to mass ratio of materials, which would affect how much the player can carry and the effective range of missile weapons. The number of suns and moons would affect temperature and the tides which would affect food sources and travel.

Players might not care about such facts and figures, but they would notice the effects if they were drastically different from those of Earth. The human or computer GM needs to have access to such information in any case.

i would say food resources and travel consideration comes in during play testing/balance. i do not see why it should be constrained by the world you decide. think of it this way, after spending weeks trying to smooth out all these tiny details you end up finding the game is just not balanced due to some quirky mechanics dictated by your world design. you would be totally screwed then.

i agree with VD's advice. try spending time on gameplay instead instead of arguing over details that have very little returns. the physics/logic of a game may not be consistent internally but ultimately all that matters is gameplay.

 

[Claw]

Use Earth as a rough guideline, but don't worry too much about details. I am in favour of earth because I think if you try to make a complete fantasy world, you're more likely to screw it up somehow than even with a bad copy of the real world. Also, I believe the less familiar it appears, the more likely players may be to question it.

I can't tell you where to draw the line, it's a matter of feeling. You can easily get away with vast inaccuracies.
The only unbelieveable fantasy world I can think of right away is Discworld, with the constant flow of water over the rim, but it isn't supposed to be taken seriously anyway.

Do you have any example of an inaccuracy that might break the illusion of your fantasy world?

 

[Xoanon]

If you are looking for inspiration, you could try and track down the Age of Misrule and Dark Age novels by Mark Chadbourn. They are fantasy books based heavily on Celtic mythology. They are set in modern day Britain and Otherworld though, not some alternative Earth (the world enters a new Dark Age when the ancient Celtic Gods, the Tuatha De Danaan and Fomorii, are released from exile)

 

[Wysardry]

i would say food resources and travel consideration comes in during play testing/balance. i do not see why it should be constrained by the world you decide. think of it this way, after spending weeks trying to smooth out all these tiny details you end up finding the game is just not balanced due to some quirky mechanics dictated by your world design. you would be totally screwed then.

Food resources and how far a person can travel in a day would affect the size of the population and how far apart settlements are, so it's helpful to know details like that before starting on a map or placing buildings in the game.

i agree with VD's advice. try spending time on gameplay instead instead of arguing over details that have very little returns. the physics/logic of a game may not be consistent internally but ultimately all that matters is gameplay.

The game world is at least as important as gameplay, particularly as many players enjoy exploring more than any other activity.

Have you never looked around a village in a CRPG and found that almost every house has at least one person in, and many dozens of additional people wandering around the streets? Didn't you wonder where they were supposed to live or sleep?

That sort of inconsistency is the result of poor planning and/or the attitude "nobody will notice that as it's just a game", which does nothing to encourage the player to willingly suspend their disbelief.

Use Earth as a rough guideline, but don't worry too much about details.

By using Earth as a guideline, we wouldn't need to specify as many details as we could look many of them up as needed.

I am in favour of earth because I think if you try to make a complete fantasy world, you're more likely to screw it up somehow than even with a bad copy of the real world. Also, I believe the less familiar it appears, the more likely players may be to question it.

I was thinking along those lines too.

Do you have any example of an inaccuracy that might break the illusion of your fantasy world?

A number of games have the problem I mentioned above (too many people for the number of buildings). The Might and Magic series suffers from this, and a number of other problems such as issues with scale and map accuracy. They also have different types of terrain and climate too close together.

If you are looking for inspiration, you could try and track down the Age of Misrule and Dark Age novels by Mark Chadbourn.

Thanks. I'll keep an eye open for them.

 

[Stark]

Food resources and how far a person can travel in a day would affect the size of the population and how far apart settlements are, so it's helpful to know details like that before starting on a map or placing buildings in the game.

i mean this in the most unoffensive way: you guys are either phD geniuses who can figure out the causal relation between gravity/atmosphere density to population sparceness/weight a person can carry/food/distance travelled, or you guys are totally focusing on the wrong stuff to make a game fun.

i do not believe people have actually figured out the causal relations between the stuff you're mentioning/tossing in mind. the real world's physics are way way more complicated. i am guessing you guys would base your judgement on pure guesswork. if it is all guesswork, you might as well base the attributes (weight carry/population sparceness/distance travelled) on game balance/fun factor as oppose to some lofty goals of basing it on causal relations that you think is correct, but not necessarily true to another person/gamer.

The game world is at least as important as gameplay, particularly as many players enjoy exploring more than any other activity.
That sort of inconsistency is the result of poor planning and/or the attitude "nobody will notice that as it's just a game", which does nothing to encourage the player to willingly suspend their disbelief.

there's the effort vs return scale thingy to consider. for a gamer suspension of disbelief do not come from appreciation for weight to carry/population spareness/food abundance consistency (assuming people even notice such details and more importantly, agree with it). there're alot more elements that can break a gamer's suspension of disbelief and it's simply more worthwhile to look into those.

the only instance where i think such considerations are important, is, if such considerations affect the gameplay in a major way. for example jumping puzzles in a low gravity planet, and so on, where the physics invovled affect the gameplay intimately. otherwise, basing it on real world is most certainly a safer/easier bet.

 

[ArcturusXIV]

We need DInOSauRS!!!

 

[Fez]

I think you are wasting your time thinking about things that will not matter to your game.

 

[Vykromond]

I completely disagree; I think if you're willing to divest the time into considering these things, so much the better. Maybe you don't need them, but I think it's fantastic that you have them. Of course, if you end up going with Earth conditions to the letter all of this thinking goes out the window, more or less. The only way I would agree with what VD/Stark/Fez are saying here is in the sense that you have to be careful about making sure that worldbuilding doesn't get in the way of the core elements of your game. I definitely wouldn't say that you're wasting your time, though.

 

[dirk]

why dont you use your friggen imagination and just make discworld with no romans already jeez

 

[Vault Dweller]

The only way I would agree with what VD/Stark/Fez are saying here is in the sense that you have to be careful about making sure that worldbuilding doesn't get in the way of the core elements of your game. I definitely wouldn't say that you're wasting your time, though.

Specify. How are planet size, gravity, water ratio, temperature, tides, etc important to gameplay? If it IS a water world or a frozen world then it's a part of the setting and story (i.e. the story and gameplay are designed FOR such elements, not around them). If the gameworld is average, then such things are absolutely, positively irrelevant.

Referring to Wisardry's comments, carry weight should be determined by many factors (convinience, avg distance to/from closet store, items variety and ratio, etc), but not by gravity pull. The range of the missile weapons should be determined by combat mechanics and screen size, not by realistic factors. Etc.