Thursday 27 May 2021

Of Krynn and Urth: Shared vs Singular Settings

Comments on recent entries suggest that there is a need to clear something up about fantasy settings.

Look at the following spectrum:


Urth <------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>Krynn


Any fantasy setting can be placed somewhere on that spectrum. Across one dimension it serves, of course, as a proxy for quality. Urth is a powerfully rich, unique and dense setting and the books Gene Wolfe set there are wonderful. Krynn is derivative and the Dragonlance books are not very good. 

But that is not the dimension that interests me. What I'd like to emphasise instead is that Urth is a very singular setting - unique, indeed, to the brain of Gene Wolfe and probably unreplicable (except in weak, uninteresting pastiche) by anybody else. Krynn, on the other hand, is a shared one. Yes, I suppose Maragaret Weis and Tracy Hickman came up with it. But it is founded on conventions that anybody who has read a fantasy book will recognise and which are, to a large extent, common property to fantasy fans. (And this is indeed why so many people have contributed to the Dragonlance series' over the decades without really changing the books' mood or character appreciably; Volume 51 of Kender, Gully Dwarves and Trolls is basically the same thing as Dragons of Autumn Twilight - different varieties of cheddar cheese.)

When it comes to novels, I want everything clustered to the left hand side of that spectrum. This is probably also true of those RPG settings which I know I will never play.

But when it comes to actual gaming, it is important that settings lean towards the right. Not all the way, by any means. But at least part of the way there. This is because RPGs and novels are fundamentally different things. Reading a novel is all about becoming involved in the singularity of the author's vision - or, at best, co-creating that vision in one's own mind and imagination. There, distinctiveness is what really matters, and singular settings are therefore best.

Playing an RPG, though, is about running a successful game. It's not chess, football or boxing, but ultimately it is still about communal fun. Sitting down at the table, the players are not simply engaging in exploring the DM's beautiful and unique creative product, but actively contributing. This requires them to have a certain footing on the same ground - to be deploying certain assets of shared property. The setting they are inhabiting does not have to be as derivative and bland as Krynn, but it has to take at least certain assumptions for granted in order for there to be long-term success. 

Tekumel is perhaps the classic example of an edge case. It is a unique setting, for sure, but it perhaps has enough of the shared furniture of D&D - the quest for gold and XP, the basic system, the core conceit of exploration/dungeoneering/questing - to make it gameable. With Yoon-Suin I suppose I was aiming for something slightly to the right of that. 

Another reason for preferring game settings to be on the shared end of the spectrum (rather than the singular) is simply that what happens in a game tends to do extreme violence - literal and figurative - to the setting, and the DM's tolerance for that happening if his game is set in an environment like Gene Wolfe's Urth is probably much lower than if it is set in a place like Krynn. In this respect, a setting like Krynn, the Forgotten Realms, and so on is a bit like an ABBA song - even if Piers Brosnan is singing a cover version in a crappy movie, it still kind of works on its own terms because those melodies are almost part of our cultural heritage at this point. But nobody wants to hear him singing Captain Beefheart. 

32 comments:

  1. Aren't you comparing apples & oranges? The Book of the New Sun is a literary work born from one man's vision. Krynn or the Forgotten Realms, as settings, are not primarily pieces of literature, they're sets of campaign books and modules specifically designed for games, packed with fantasy clichés that can be traced back to the first proper fantasy novel to gain a wide audience (LOTR) and which were canonized in the first (and biggest) fantasy RPG. In the beginning there was the gaming product (or at least the concept for it), and then the novels. Everything else follows from there, in combination with the intellectual laziness and passive consumerism that have come to characterize "geek" pop culture.

    There's no reason to assume a campaign setting based on Urth or Viriconium isn't viable. While the stories have more depth than those awful Dragonlance novels, the worlds themselves are far from incomprehensible or unfamiliar. Both reference the European dark & middle ages in ways that are familiar to anyone with a western cultural background. There are taverns and guilds and knights and such. Neither do the novels themselves have to stand in the way. We're talking settings "based on", "influenced by" or "derived from", the difference between playing in Middle Earth as described by Tolkien and playing in a world that has dragons and orcs and wizards that suspiciously remind one of LOTR or The Hobbit, along with other stuff.

    I'm also unconvinced by the ABBA as cultural heritage argument. I like ABBA, mostly because I don't hear it very often, but bog standard zero degree D&D bores me to tears. It was alright when I was in my early teens and this stuff was fresh, indeed as new to me as Urth & Viriconium were back then, but it has long fallen out of favor. Something I periodically rediscover when I play in such a game. If it's fun it's because of the company. It's never really interesting or gripping and it certainly doesn't engage me enough to want to play in such a campaign.

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    1. I think maybe you're excluding the middle a bit. I didn't say everything had to be as bland as Krynn. Just that game settings are better located more toward the middle than the left on that spectrum.

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    2. Hmmm... I think your spectrum isn't a spectrum at all. Urth and Krynn are not the same sort of thing. Urth is a literary universe existing in a series of novels, krynn is a commercially designed game setting. They're not even aimed at the same audience.

      Anyway, I don't see how blandness helps in making a setting attractive for real gaming. There are other more important factors that determine if it works out in practice or not. Presentation for example, or players affinity and personal preferences. As it is, worlds inspired by Urth or Viriconium might require a bit more work on behalf of the GM (especially if you want to use visuals or miniatures) because there is less readily available gaming material, but once you get things going there's no reason why it wouldn't be an engaging campaign just because it doesn't look like the low rent bastard child of Tolkien & Harry Potter.

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    3. So I said that unless something looks like "the low rent bastard child of Tolkien & Harry Potter" it can't be an engaging campaign? Whatever post you read, it wasn't the one I wrote.

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    4. What you seem to see as self-evident, comfortable and even necessary familiarity isn't so to everyone. For scifi readers at the time, and possibly still, worlds like Viriconium or Urth wouldn't have seemed that bizarre or unfamiliar at all, these are not the first or only dark future settings offering a neo-medieval landscape littered with the technological miracle relics from the past.

      Maybe you just chose bad examples and we're not that far apart, or maybe I misunderstand you. But if you're saying there's a kind of universal baseline closer to Krynn than to Urth that needs to be respected in order to have a decent chance of having a successful game (as in long term engaging & fun), then I haven't seen any strong arguments for this yet.

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    5. OK, you are able to have long-term, engaging and fun campaigns in settings that are closer to the Urth side of things. Good for you and I hope you continue.

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  2. This dichotomy really resonated with me.

    A setting on the Krynn side of the spectrum is a lot easier for a player to jump into. Not only are the generic elements familiar, the also fit together loosely. There's not a cohesive "correct" way to represent someone from Krynn's culture.

    Even as someone who's read and loved the Book of the New Sun, I'd be pretty intimidated to play a character in that world (or even Tekumel). I don't think I have enough of the intricacies of that very particular culture in my head to do it credit.

    The kit bash of loosely fit elements is a more comfortable world to join as a player.

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    1. Definitely. I think Krynn and worlds like it are a bit too samey for me now, but a little exoticism and difference goes a long way. You can also do a lot with dragons, orcs, elves and goblins by tweaking them a bit to make them different and interesting but still recognisable.

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    2. I'm inclined to think just the opposite. Worlds like Krynn are described in such detail in all sorts of official publications that there most definitely is a "correct" version. They migh have started as a sort of kitbash, but the end product isn't loose and open to interpretation and remixing at all. This is especially true for Krynn, the most over-determined, railroady campaign ever designed for D&D.

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    3. Sure, but we're talking here about worlds like Krynn as settings, not running the official campaign as written. But I'm not sure where the aggressiveness is coming from, here. If you can run campaigns set in Urth, Viriconium and the like, and make it really engaging for your players, great - good for you. In my experience there is a sweet spot somewhere more in the middle of the spectrum.

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    4. It's strong opinion, not aggressiveness. I just disagree completely with you on this and I'm not sugarcoating it by pretending I think you have a solid argument. You seem to have a hard time with that.

      Also, english isn't my native language so I might be tone deaf.

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    5. Yes, I have a hard time with people picking arguments in blog comments - I'm long past the point at which I can be bothered with that. You clearly have different experiences and a different gaming group which allows you to run the kind of games you want in the kind of settings you are describing. Good for you and I hope you continue in that vein.

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    6. I thought blogs are all about debate and discussion and interaction with the audiene, but ok, maybe not for you :-)

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    7. Yes, but I've been doing this for 13 years now, and I've learned to recognise the difference between debate/discussion and "somebody is wrong on the internet" scenarios.

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  3. I've been lately reading and enjoying Martha Wells' Murderbot stories (sci-fi). By your standard these take place in a shared/derivative setting (darkly corporate a la Aliens), but IMO Wells uses that to her advantage by telling interesting new stories against a commonly understood baseline - the stories have an efficient, compact feel because of it. You argue about how this works well for a gaming setting; I just want to point out that, in the right hands, it works equally well for stories.

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    1. Yes, for sure! I mean, A Song of Ice and Fire is a pretty good example of that.

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  4. The people born on Urth don't know much of anything about how special their world is, it is the only one most will ever know, and is much more like Mediaeval Europe or Ancient Rome than unlike them. Playing in that setting was approached by Fading Suns which is arguably in far earlier times, but still has the limelost and weary sense, and yet there are plenty of things to do, factions to cross, and mysterious aliens to encounter.

    Krynn, from what I understand, is close enough to generic fantasy that its Scientological underpinnings don't show through, not that they would inhibit great action and excitement even if they were more clearly in focus.

    The axis serves to illustrate [mystery] --- [drama]. Mystery must be discovered,a which can lead to drama, but Drama is a known value, it is the thing that is happening, the thing that must be stopped, the thing that dooms one and uplifts another. Every page of Shadow of the Torturer is like listening to a world-wise traveller recount his experiences, like a Marco Polo, while the two of you smoke opium in a karavansary. Dragonlance is more like a fun fantasy comic book one looses oneself in between chores, although it certainly could be much more to some, and even less to others, YMMV.

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    1. "Krynn, from what I understand, is close enough to generic fantasy that its Scientological underpinnings don't show through, not that they would inhibit great action and excitement even if they were more clearly in focus."

      Scientological? Hickman is a Mormon, I think. I've not heard of any links between either Dragonlance author and Scientology.

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    2. I too am very curious about the Scientological underpinnings.

      I dipped in and out of Fading Suns but had totally forgotten it existed. I'll have to dig it out when I'm next in the loft...

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    3. Are you folks familiar with the lore of the CoS religion? The reptilians and so forth?

      The Wachowskis are CoS, and this is from their Jupiter Ascending movie,

      https://youtu.be/YPZDXp9MDeE

      Do you agree that these look very much like the draconics from Dragonlance? How about the lances themselves, they are brittle and really more of a focus for the amazing power of the wielder, like a, Clear, in CoS terminology.

      The Colour Magic of the Wizard orders is also present after a fashion in the colour-ladder technique of CoS which has Clear as its peak; the colours are clearly used in After Earth (another CoS film), where each challenge has a colour theme.

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    4. I'm not sure if that's all just coincidence?

      Weis & Hickman's 'Death Gate Cycle' seemed also to have pseudo-religious themes behind it. But I think that can be attributed more to Hickman's Mormonism than anything else?

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  5. I think equating systems with setting undermines the point you are trying to make somewhat. I completely agree that wholly original settings have a high barrier of entry and part of the success of D&D is that so much of its DNA comes from a vast body of mythology and fantasy that is, to a large degree, exists the collective subconscious.

    Rules are a seperate Axis I think. Tekumel would not become more accessible if it was suddenly a B/X campaign setting. The point is that its fictional building blocks are almost entirely new. It appeals to a more hardcore crowd, one looking to immerse themselves in an entirely alien milieu, and perhaps to feel the challenge of a world where they don't know any of the rules.

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    1. I don't know - I have a feeling Tekumel actually would be more accessible in a B/X format.

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    2. Original Tekumel is different, it is true, but barring different ability scores and the implementation of a rudimentary proficiency system, the difference surely is not insurmountable. Warrior, Mage, Priest. If it were created today it would be OSR. Perhaps I underestimate the power of a familiar format to render something alien intelligible.



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    3. I think without a doubt that using a familiar ruleset does a lot of the hard yards with an unusual/exotic setting.

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  6. I ran face-first into this problem when I tried my hand at RPG design. Before getting very far at all, I realized that crafting a unique, "special snowflake" setting full of mysteries to be discovered is inherently in tension with player agency. If your setting doesn't adhere to known tropes and conventions, the whole game becomes an exercise in GM exposition and mother-may-I.

    Player: "I'm in the Mysterious Underworld, huh? Okay, I look for a bar."

    GM: "There are no bars here. Everyone is an amnesiac ghost."

    Player: "So, they don't eat or drink?"

    GM: "Well you see, lost souls subsist on the memories of the living. So they blah blah blah special snowflake setting exposition."

    Player: "Okay, whatever, just tell us where to go and what to do in your little playset."

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    1. Ouch. But yeah, I think we've all had experiences like that.

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    2. Mmm. I think that, generally speaking, the setting is about 80%-90% for the DMs. The small % that the PCs care about is how the setting interacts with the game system.

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    3. I've definitely learned that lesson the hard way too...

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  7. Nitpick: as someone who read far far FAR too many Dragonlance stories in middle school the various volumes of short stories written by random people were significantly worse than the main series. Considering how bad the main series is that's really saying something.

    Often things on the right side of the spectrum are good for RPGs, often the best settings are things that use old stuff but manages to arrange it in such as way that it both seems fresh but at the same time really easy to get since all of the building blocks are familiar. The original Star Wars movie nails this HARD for example since it seemed fresh but it's made out of Westerns, Nazis, fairy tales, etc. etc. so it's really easy to get.

    But I think the bigger issue isn't so much how unfamiliar the setting is but rather how much stuff the PCs know that I don't know. If the PCs know a huge ream of stuff about daily live that I don't know at all I'm going to struggle. But if my PC is some kind of outsider that doesn't know fuck-all but is thrust into a strange situation that's easier to get since learning stuff is what both me and my PC are doing. So the secret to running settings on the left side of the spectrum is by using outsider PCs.

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    1. Haha, yes, I read quite a few of the short stories as well (and the entire follow-up series which was all about 'how the gang got together', whose name I have blessedly forgotten). It's embarrassing to admit that I loved the Dragonlance books when I was about 13 or 14. Thought I did re-read the 'Legends' series a few years ago and thought it was terrible, but still entertaining.

      You are right about the 'outsider PCs' thing, and the original Tekumel recommended that approach.

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  8. "The quest for gold and XP" - I feel seen 😅

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