I came late to the
Morrowind and Skyrim party (though Daggerfall, which bored me to
tears, was some where back in my past). Truth be told both games ate
up inordinate amounts of my blog writing time and energy as is my
addictive wont.
One positive
take-home I received from playing both games, Morrowind in
particular, is how unobtrusively the game designers worked in layers
and layers of setting depth by scattering
hundreds of in-game books
to be read at the player's leisure—or not. Here is a book that
details the site-specific account (and gameably useful) of a long-past archaeological expedition, there one dealing with the intricate
cosmology of the demon-like Daedra, and another purely some fictional
in-setting story.
See I love this.
I
am a notoriously impatient player of crpgs with their invariable
info-dumps—far more even then my customary tabletop “five minutes
and I am out” intolerance—abruptly clicking over and over again
through cut scenes and NPCs monologues. But that kind of impatience
is at odds with my love of worldbuilding and leisurely exploration
of the layers of a setting's mysteries—and of course successfully
playing the game.
Others have explored the games' successes with creating an expanded world beyond
the bounding of each game's sandbox. I am way more interested in how
the technique might be useful to my own sandbox campaign where the
players seem to want to explore this stuff at varying levels and with
their own hand on the throttle.
So far it has
seemed to work very well on both ends. The players approach me
individually during downtime, hiring a sage or doing direct research
in a temple library, and ask specific sets of questions about ranges
of background they want to explore to achieve party and individual
goals. I get a
chance to put my cracked, 3 am thoughts about the Hill Cantons to
paper. Win, win.
But why describe
when I can show. Here are a couple recent examples.
Five
Shades of Azure
[Bundled up this week with the usual curt dispatch papers from the
Decade King's courier is a gift: a rat-gnawed, leather-bound
manuscript penned 518 years ago by a Kežmaroki march-officer,
Balazas. A short note from Prince Vdelko tersely reads “of obvious
interest.”]
Contrary to the prejudices of the
Rock [High Kežmarok] our Pahr subjects here on the Shore are not
quite the uncouth louts they are made out to be in polite society. To
the contrary, I have had many a pleasing—if such a word can be used
when suffering the pains of court exile—moment here at Vygrot in
their hearty bearded company laughing at their colorful tall tales,
seeing the blush of the red-cheeked village maidens in their white
linen and floral bodices...[long, racy and embarrassingly clumsy
digression].
Month Five, the Longest Patrol
I can
understand the nervousness of the men as I pass in quick inspection,
the local reputation of the Ruševin is one of utter fear—when it's
not being studiously avoided with a stubbornly-cultivated ignorance.
To be sure the hollow bones of the dull malachite walls and jutting,
skewed spires sprawl oppressively along the crest of Bojan's Peak and
the saddlebacked ridge behind.
But my station now affords no
question and orders remain orders to those in service. Mounted, me on
my charger, the wardens on their shaggy steppe ponies, the patrol
takes the switch-backed, broken ruin of a road up from the valley
floor. Passing through the curtain of tall, black pines, an eerie
stillness and a strange buzzing sensation descends over us,
hushing the coarse jokes and gossip. The outriders find their way
hemmed in by the treeline and gladly regain the quiet comfort of the
main column.
Closing in on the western slope we can now make
out features of the ruins. Rubble fields and a few free-standing
walls seem to rule on this side, giving way to a wide boulevard which
stretches north-south from the hulking mass of the gatehouse and the
gleaming mass of the outer walls. That central avenue threads its way
up to a large enclosed structure—its proportions even from this far
distance huge in dimensions.
What giants or demons must have
raised such an edifice and for what purpose? Not a single window
pierces its massive, long-running walls and the only egress seems to
be enormous stone portals that look several stories tall.
With
a shudder we are glad to leave this site [sic] behind as the trail
turns north to the snow-clad peaks. Even combat with the fire-dwarves
that haunt those heights seems welcome to spending time contemplating
the horrors that must lurk in such a place...
Lost Vlko and Romuilak the Lupine
[The monograph as
commissioned by He Whose Howls Echo Among the Ages, His Fecundity,
Tazrun, the Illuminious and Mighty Seneschal of All the Southlands.]
For a people who had their origin in
the horse-stunk nomad hordes of the Sea of Grass the Pahr people have
been remarkably at home in the scrubby hills, rounded peaks, high
valleys and crags of Zem. While many of the hill clans have long
since been domesticated into the (slightly) more sedate lives of
Overkingdom cantons, tales of the “lost kingdoms”, Old Pahr petty
mountain kingdoms that dropped from the historical record centuries
ago--and into the popular imagination of this day.
One such tale that looms large in the
so-called Southern Cycle, that great collection of folk ballads and
tall tales of how the Pahr came to migrate, conquer and be conquered
in the post-Hyperborean era, is that of Vlko and its hirsute,
half-wild founder, Romuilak the Lupine. Many a man of science would
like to believe that Vlko still exists, nestled high in the Cerny
mountains, with a people prospering by the simple, bellicose virtues
of the Old Pahr hidden and secure from modernity.
“Wild Child” and Twin stories are
common amongst all the peoples of the Overkingdom and often mix the
heroic and divine. Romuilak's story begins along archetypical lines,
an unknown, yet presumed lordly father and harassed mother abandon
two twins. Where upon Romuliak is raised by a pack of bog-wolves
(known to be great nurturers) and his brother (whose name is lost in
time) by an occular bat.
Growing to adulthood, the two are
reunited, go on great adventures and gain possession of three mighty
items of great magic: the Bear-Cloak of Molak, the Shaggus Staff of
Oldest Lhoma and the Cyclo-Crown of Hming the Arched. With these
mighty items and a swelling army of druzhina, amazons, reverse
centaurs and war-ocelots they sack and raise Xol, the last great
Hyperborean successor city-state.
Anger issues satiated, the twin
warlords then began to construct a great city, Vlko, on the summits
of the two massive, rubble piles of Xol's wreckage. Shortly
thereafter a routine sibling spat over who was allowed to sit on the
right side of the mead-hall table spilled over into tragic violence
and Romuilak slew his twin with a single, greasy blow of a pork chop.
The aggrieved and heart-broken Romuilak
swore to make war no more, closed the borders and devoted his
remaining years to making Vlko a shining petty-kingdom on the hill...
Though a few Prydain-influenced NPCs,
subtly and not-so subtly-veiled, have crept into the home campaign
(all hail Lord Gurgi, Master of Tables and the Hambone), I have been
jonesing for an avenue to play around in the setting.
