But the central feature of The Lord of the Rings is far from normal or banal - at its core it rests on positive answers to three questions which other novelists, prior to Tolkien, would rarely if ever have even thought to ask, namely:
1. Is it necessary to save the world?
2. Is it possible to?
3. Is it desirable?
In Tolkien's story, that is, the world is threatened, but it can be saved, however improbably, and it is worth saving.
These are by no means the obvious answers to those questions, particularly when the questions are not being examined through a filter of Christianity, and ever since Tolkien was writing the major figures of the genre have been rowing back from them. To most genre writers today, save-the-world plots are a bit passe - it either isn't necessary to save the world to begin with (A Song of Ice and Fire; The Scar), is impossible (Lyonesse; Viriconium), or would not be particularly desirable in the first place (Stone Dance of the Chamleon). There are big exceptions, naturally, Gene Wolfe's work being very obviously and explicitly in the Tolkienian tradition, but overall the shift has been towards a much more secularised understanding of the role of humanity in the ongoing existence and justification of The World.
While this has no doubt opened the genre up to more creative applications - nobody would want endless Terry Brooks or Tad Williams retreads, as charming as they can be - the result can sometimes be a rejection of the concept of salvation as such. There is a strong antiheroic strand in modern fantasy writing (and particularly modern fantasy gaming) which rejects the very notion that there may indeed be things beyond the self that are worth saving from some threat - be they a nation, a place, a family, or even a single soul. In OSR gaming in particular the emphasis is almost exclusively on the mere survival or glorification of the individual often set against a backdrop of a decaying reality which is itself irredeemable or moribund. (This has even got itself a label: the aesthetics of ruin.) This is enjoyable, but thin; it does not speak to the drive within the human heart to be redeemed, or to redeem others.
I would like to find a way to combine the Old School emphasis on emergent narrative with the Tolkienian answers to the three questions posited above. I would like to design a game that is about redemption, or salvation, but that does so in a way that avoids railroading and predetermined narrative or plot. And I would like to do it in such a way that it makes use of the insights developed in the laboratory of OSR gaming. I have written various posts on this theme in the last couple of years, and have now collected them under the label of the Paladin Project. This can be considered a statement, or manifesto: expect more concrete details in the coming months.
It seems to me that salvation on a -small- scale is one of the points of the domain game, when we accept that there is some sort of evil in the wilderness and the characters can quite literally push it back?
ReplyDeleteI thought there had also been multiple flavours of campaign advice that encouraged building your region (sandbox) with existential threats - what always appealed to me was the "two different threat" formula, where one is known and one unknown at the start, one is mundane the other magical, or some other sets of dualities.
Thanks for the label, that should provide some reading tomorrow, since tonight is game night.
No doubt people have thought about this, and I did some posts about it myself a few years ago (these are included under the Paladin Project label) but never I think in a way that emphasises that the PCs are 'the goodies'.
DeleteVery interested in seeing how this develops.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteIsn't the main background element across the entire series of "A Song of Ice and Fire" the imminent catastrophic doom approaching from the uncharted North? The "world" may not be at stake (Essos will probably survive), but Westeros stands to be devastated if the Others breach the Wall. Many of the plot threads (Stannis and Melisandre, Daenerys's dragons) revolve around this existential threat and how it will be dealt with.
ReplyDeleteThat was my comment on reading this too. There is a real high fantasy fate of the world backdrop to to the whole thing (Azor Azai, the Prince That Was Promised, etc).
DeleteBut isn't that all undercut by the fact that it is cyclical? Winter and summer come and go and people just have to cope with it? I should make clear - I haven't watched the TV series. I am judging entirely by the books.
DeleteSince I am a one trick pony - I will whisper that the genre you are looking for is not in fact epic fantasy but . . . hrmm . . . ahhh . . . cyberpunk. 1. Is it necessary to save the world? No. Absolutely not. Maybe? Yesyoubet! The strongest affirmative, from the lips of a convert. 2. Is it possible to do so? Unclear. But God loves a trier. 3. Is it desirable? We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing! Not a hard no, then? Further . . . I posit LotR is in fact cyberpunk. Frodo and Sam engaged in industrial espionage.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I look very much to your continued insights on this topic. I wondered to myself if your "the World of TSRan" post would be labeled Project Paladin.
LotR as cyberpunk is a good idea for a blog post...
DeleteI've largely taken it that the OSR embrace of the 'aesthetics of ruin' derived at least in part from the possibilities it offered: the varieties of assorted actions and opponents (no one unifying state), the different challenges-cum-oppotrunites, the freedom of not having King Arthur ready to ride over the hill with his knights and set all aright. Redemption here might be possible, but isn't an obvious course of action.
ReplyDeleteRuin isn't the only way to do this; I think the size, age and fecundity of Silverberg's Majipoor works to further this.
(More notes here https://worldbuildingandwoolgathering.blogspot.com/2017/09/majipoor-and-osr-aesthetics-of-ruin.html; another inverted ruin here: https://worldbuildingandwoolgathering.blogspot.com/2020/01/fields-of-light.html)
Another obvious contrast is the presence of Adventurer as a tightly controlled career (or, perhaps, calling) in more recent works. This works best if the work is lightly comic, to my mind, or attempting some sort of comment on fantasy conventions.
Of course, the Single Class Paladin option at least tamps down on the temptation to veer towards some of the above. And perhaps dodges some of the problems discussed here: https://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2015/07/arthurian-problems.html
I have never read a single word of the Majipoor books although I know of them, of course. Certainly I think size, age and fecundity are good things in a fantasy setting and contribute to its gameability. See also: Tekumel. And, in its own way, Faerun.
DeleteIt's worth mentioning that some participants in the War of the Ring joined up to preserve their own lands, and not for the benefit of Gondor. This motif appears in secular stories (it's a scifi and superhero staple) where the integral symbiosis of the world implies serious repercussions should the baddies win, even for quite secluded cultures. Saving the world, then, may mean little more than saving your own skin.
ReplyDeleteWhether it is possible or not is perhaps not as interesting a question as *What will it take to save the world?* Perhaps it is possible, but unlikely. Perhaps it is possible, but at great cost. *Impossible* leaves just one outcome, which puts all the narrative weight on "the long defeat."
I'm very, very interested in this Project Paladin you speak of. I, too, am creating a game and it appears we have some similar goals, though likely some quite different ones as well.
Thanks - yes, this is a good point and a useful distinction to be drawn. The point about the Lord of the Rings is that Frodo (and Sam) are specifically acting to save the world and not their own skins (because they are presuming they will die). I would like to try to put a wedge in that gap, where saving one's skin and saving the world become separate concerns.
DeleteI feel like this piece has the genre's general direction of travel somewhat backwards. Surely it is the Conans, the Cugels and the Grey Mousers - the amoral rovers chiefly out for themselves - who have become the endangered species, and not the Frodos of this (or any other) world? In the 21st century, fantasy's emphasis on "things beyond the self that are worth saving from some threat" is if anything stronger than it was in the days of high pulp: Harry Potter lays down his life for his friends, Mieville's protagonists fight to save their city and keep the flame of revolution alive, and today's bookshelves are groaning with romantasy heroines who must risk everything to redeem their Cursed-but-Sexy love interests (even Viriconium - which, given that it finished in 1984, is pushing the definition of modern fantasy - has a very literal world-saving plot in A Storm of Wings). One is of course free to claim that these forms of salvation and redemption are less fundamentally satisfying than the overtly Catholic versions of Tolkien and Wolfe, but that is a different argument to claiming that the genre has largely stopped caring about anything beyond its protagonists' material self-interest. And if the OSR is individualistic, that is precisely because it is self-consciously "old school" and swimming against the tide, by rejecting the emergence of story-driven games with metaplots about saving the land from cosmic evil in favour of D&D's original focus on robbing tombs for fun and personal profit.
ReplyDeleteThere may be something to this, although I would push back on Viriconium - the world-saving plot is very much a Dying Earth one, similar to Lyonesse, in that it's all pointless anyway. (I always took this to be M. John Harrison's purpose in telling that story.)
DeleteThere's also deeper implications about how generally the two main extremes of western political mindset have slowly become so jaded about the current world that deep down they both agree the current world is so vile that it doesn't deserve saving but for fundamentally different reasons and different monsters to blame.
ReplyDeleteHard to not think this subconciously affect fantasy too. We know the world suck, is trapped in cycles of bullshit and every ruler of this world is a monster and amorality defines it. Its just each side defines this evil and moral decay differently yet both ultimately agree: burn it all down, nothing is worth saving. Hard to not consider this something deeply rooted in modern psyches reflecting upon 'elfgame' too, innit?
This is quite astute, I think.
DeleteBut, in a game, a vile world is most conducive to PCs being the goodies. You can sandbox a game full of evil barons and vampire counts and the players can fight against it however they choose; if the world is doing well then the DM has to proactively introduce the bad elements, which is just not how this game functions best. That way lies predetermined narrative setups.
DeleteI would push back against this for reasons which Zak S actually laid out long ago, when it was not frowned upon to link to his blog. The straight sandbox works fine if the players are rogues because rogues are self-motivated. A sandbox campaign in which the PCs are heroes doesn't quite work without special design features because it presumes they are just going out into the wilderness searching for baddies to beat up or maidens to rescue. This is an unsatisfying and quantum-ogrish type of campaign setup - there needs to be a way to systematise threat, so that the evil barons and vampire counts don't just sit there passively and wait for the PCs to come along and fight them. I would have to write a full post about this, though.
DeleteI love this and the quadrant (from the previous post). For myself, in my Dreamland: Fairytale Portal Fantasy game, I decided early on that since Lovecraft thought of the universe as an endless repeating cycle (this being before Big Bang Theory), the Dreamland universe would be one that couldn't really be 'ended' or 'saved': it's just too big and beyond human grasp, even for super-powerful dreamers. (And also, because I think 'preventing the end of the world' has become a fantasy cliche.) So I try to avoid writing adventures or plots that hinge on 'the end of the world', although the end of the 'world' on a LOCAL level, like the end of a kingdom or city or of everyone you know, is very possible. ;) The world itself is too big and is controlled by impersonal forces, you have to find your own meaning and protect & nurture (or dream up) the things that are important to you... - Jason Bradley Thompson
ReplyDeleteYes, saving the world is in any case very anti-Lovecraftian! :)
DeleteI've been immersed in Mythic Bastionland lately and there is a distinctive bit in the setup that sets it apart from Chris McDowall's other games, Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland: you play as knights with a three-point oath to seek the myths, honor the seers, and protect the realm. To me, it's not your typical OSR sandbox for that reason.
ReplyDeletePlaying as knights has a few of those elements you listed, especially the notion that the players aren't in it to save their skins and are told by their oath to save the world when push comes to shove.
Knights are also cool, so there's that benefit.
I don't have Mythic Bastionland but I like the concept.
DeleteI feel that you want to be or are so used to being counter-culture so are not able to see that actually what you are talking about is the mainstream.
ReplyDelete"There is a strong antiheroic strand in modern fantasy writing"
How would you know, you who does not consume modern media according to your own blog?
Probably the biggest fantasy series being published right now, The Stormlight Archives, is about saving the world and ideas and themes about salvation you want being written by a Mormon. I'm not recommending them, I personally got bored of it.
The last big fantasy series was Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones.
"it either isn't necessary to save the world to begin with (A Song of Ice and Fire; The Scar)"
From the very first chapter of book 1 of A Song of Ice and Fire it is clear that the Seven Kingdoms are facing an existential threat in the form of the White Walkers. All of Jon Snow's POV chapters are focused on this threat. People not on the wall are largely ignorant of the threat but it is there and how can a band of people considered so disposable that they are sent to the worst place on earth where they then lay down their lives to protect the very people who sent them there, who will never thank them, not a salvation story?
This is a good pushback.
DeleteBrandon Sanderson strikes me as the exception that proves the rule here (and presumably it's no accident that his work - which is incredibly banal from what I've read - is so popular precisely because it feels counter-cultural). The point is not that there is no fiction being produced anywhere in which people are anything other than self-interested. It is that there is little fiction that links the fate of humanity to the fate of the world.
A Song of Ice and Fire is an important illustration, and I think there's a misunderstanding here. Yes, there is a threat to the Seven Kingdoms at the start of the books and there is no doubt there are some heroic characters in them. But the point is that the fate of the world is not linked to the coming of winter. Winter is cyclical - it is just something that happens. The fate of a contingently existing part of the world might rest on it, but life will go on if the white walkers arrive. We're not talking about finality. To my eye although the tone is very different this puts GRRM very firmly in a sort of Eddisonian mould - a lot of stuff will happen and some of it will be bad, and some good, but in the end it doesn't particularly matter.
ASoIaF never seems concerned if the white walkers win or not. And humanity is content to die out of hatred of other humans or itself. No one's really fighting for a better world, but for control of it.
DeleteFine, but the fate of the world is not intrinsically linked to the One Ring either. Tolkien is careful to specify that "they cannot conquer forever"; if Sauron wins, he will plunge part of Arda into a dark age, but he can't defy Eru indefinitely, any more than the Shire can be preserved indefinitely ("others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more").
DeleteMore generally, I think the apparent differences are magnified by cosmetic factors; modern fantasy is often more cynical in affect than older works (at least about certain things, such as traditional power structures; you could argue that Tolkien was just as cynical in his own way about modernity), but I find that when you scratch the surface of most seemingly grimdark, nihilistic works, they still show a strong faith in the need for characters to transform the world for the better. Protagonists can be snarky Han Solos for a bit, but they almost always have to blow up the Death Star eventually.
The main reason the aesthetics of ruin are so tightly linked to the OSR is that GP = XP is such a celebrated rule in that it's such a great way of encouraging interesting emergent behavior (sneaking around and being greedy in interesting ways instead of mindlessly hacking everything apart).
ReplyDeleteIn a D&D context, I just haven't seen a good alternative to GP = XP and I've TRIED to think of good alternatives, I'd love to have an XP system that rewards fame instead of GO but every system I think up seems too much based on DM fiat or doesn't reward entertaining behavior in the same way (XP for monsters killed rewards much more boring play for example).
I suppose you could crib off Indie advancement systems like Blades in the Dark, but they just don't feel like D&D.
For good Tolkien D&D you need a good alternative to GP = XP above all.