A sitko by any other name would smell as sweet

There's a fine line to be walked when creating a fantasy game when it comes to the languages involved. On the one hand you want to use enough in the background to make it really seem like the people in The Land of Make Believe aren't just speaking English with a goofy-ass faux-Elizabethan accent, but on the other hand it's easy to go overboard and make it so omnipresent and onerous that it's difficult to communicate anything.

Case in point: Kroviy, the land of the fantasy game I'm making. I've mentioned before that Kroviy is inspired by both Arthurian and Slavic themes, and for me one of the key components of the Arthurian mythos is that Arthur and his men are fighting to preserve the fading Romanitas of the fallen Roman Empire -- that is, ideas that were brought from the outside and found to be good and worth preserving, even in the face of adversity. I have than dynamic in this game too: the Kroviyans were a bunch of barbarians prior to their conquest by the Thegan Empire, and then the Empire fell they had been civilized and wanted to keep what was best from their former masters. The tension and conflict between native Kroviyan culture (including language) and Thegan culture (again including language) is going to be one of the central themes of the game.

As one could pretty much guess, the Kroviyan language is strongly based on Slavic tongues (particularly Polish, since it uses the Roman alphabet and is easier to read than Russian, and I found a kickass online translator here), and what comes with that is all the things one would expect from Polish: letters in unfamiliar combinations, tongue-twisting consonants, that sort of thing. For the tongue brought by the imperials I selected not Latin, but rather the the Greek of the Byzantines -- I did this for two reasons: one, the Byzantine culture is intimately tied to the Slavic and it made it easier to adapt a lot of other linguistic things, especially names, and two, the Byzantine and names are sufficiently obscure to most gamers to sound "alien."

And here's where it gets tricky. I have both Slavic and Greek-inspired names floating around and I want to use them to give Kroviy a definite sense of place and culture, but how much is TOO much? Noble horsemen won't be called "knights," they'll be called "rycerz" and the former ruler of the land will be Krol Holleb rather than King Holleb, that much is clear. But the politics of the land is dominated by great houses/clans -- is it better to call them Houses to keep it familiar, or to call them Hala (a Polish word for House) to get the flavor? Is it better to call the lowest subinfeudinated unit a manor or a dwor? Where do I draw the line? Where does it cross from being immersive to irritating? My sense is that really common words should just be English -- I don't think I want to be in the position of correcting people by saying, "You're not crossing a bridge, you're crossing a pomost" or "No those aren't peasants, they're wloscianin." I mean I don't want to LEARN Polish or expect my players to.

So, where's the line? Anyone have any thoughts?

And let this be a lesson to me: just because I write it doesn't mean anyone gives a damn.

Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Make Irritable

Religion in RPGs is a sticky topic. On the one hand you don't want to alienate anyone by insulting any beliefs they actually have, but on the other hand you need to make it vibrant, interesting, and detailed enough to be as compelling a part of the campaign world as it has been in the real world. OK, you don't need to do that, but it really does help to make the world seem like a living, breathing place instead of just another fantasy world where PCs run around killing orcs and stealing copper pieces.

This is especially true in a faux-Arthurian setting like mine, as in both Arthurian legend and Arthurian reality (so far as can be reconstructed) religion was a major motivating force. I can't really imagine Galahad, Lancelot, Percival and the rest divorced from Christian motivations and strictures -- it's a central part of who they are and what they do. Likewise when one looks at the historical period where any real Arthur must have flourished, you see a massive revival of Celtic paganism and the rolling back of Christianity all across formerly Roman Britain, a fact that must have played a huge role in whatever the real Arthur did. These are both really interesting dynamics that I'd like to capture, as is the idea of the barbarians bringing in their own religion. So, how best to do that?

The part of it that I thought would be the most challenging -- the "pagan" religion of the native people of the area where the game takes place, turned out to be the easiest. I've mentioned before how I want to be informed by a Slavic sensibility in a lot of this game, and as it turns out the religion of the pagan Slavs was both fascinating in its own right and full of a lot of really interesting elements that could make for good gaming. Take this discussion from Wikipedia on the nature and relationship between the two main deities, Perun and Veles:

Ivanov and Toporov reconstructed the ancient myth involving the two major gods of the Proto-Slavic pantheon, Perun and Veles. The two of them stand in opposition in almost every way. Perun is a heavenly god of thunder and lightning, fiery and dry, who rules the living world from his citadel high above, located on the top of the highest branch of the World Tree. Veles is a chthonic god associated with waters, earthly and wet, lord of the underworld, who rules the realm of the dead from down in the roots of the World Tree. Perun is a giver of rain to farmers, god of war and weapons, invoked by fighters. Veles is a god of cattle, protector of shepherds, associated with magic and commerce.

A cosmic battle fought between two of them echoes the ancient Indo-European myth of a fight between a storm god and a dragon. Attacking with his lightning bolts from sky, Perun pursues his serpentine enemy Veles who slithers down over earth. Veles taunts Perun and flees, transforming himself into various animals, hiding behind trees, houses, or people. In the end, he is killed by Perun, or he flees into the water, into the underworld. This is basically the same thing; by killing Veles, Perun does not actually destroy him, but simply returns him to his place in the world of the dead. Thus the order of the world, disrupted by Veles's mischief, is established once again by Perun. The idea that storms and thunder are actually a divine battle between the supreme god and his arch-enemy was extremely important to Slavs, and continued to thrive long after Perun and Veles were replaced by God and Devil. A lightning bolt striking down a tree or burning down a peasant's house was always explained through the belief of a raging heavenly deity bashing down on his earthly, underworldly, enemy.

The enmity of the two gods was explained by Veles' theft of Perun's cattle, or by Perun's theft of Veles' cattle (since Veles was the god of cattle, the matter of ownership here is not clear). The motif of stealing divine cattle is also a common one in Indo-European mythology; the cattle in fact may be understood simply as a metaphor for heavenly water or rain. Thus, Veles steals rain water from Perun, or Perun steals water for rain from Veles (again, since Veles is associated with waters, and Perun with sky and clouds, it is unclear to whom rain should belong). An additional reason for this enmity may be wife-theft. From folklore accounts it seems that the Sun was sometimes considered to be Perun's wife (an odd idea, as all Slavic sun-gods, like Hors and Dazbog, are male). However, since the Sun, in the mythic view of the world, dies every evening, as it descends beyond the horizon and into the underworld where it spends the night, this was understood by Slavs as Veles' theft of Perun's wife (but again, the rebirth of the Sun in the morning could also be understood as Perun's theft of Veles' wife).

This couldn't be more appropriate to an RPG setting in general, and I get dozens of ideas just reading those couple of paragraphs. But more than that, it's both familiar enough to be easily grasped and different enough from the more common Western European/Celtic/Greco-Roman myths that I find it really fascinating and evocative. The rest of the Slavic pantheon is full of these sorts of dualities as well, and it all bears that faintly familiar stamp that makes it at once accessible and alien.

So the solution presented itself: I'd just basically lift the Slavic pantheon and a lot of their religious elements, tweak them a tad, and pop them in nearly wholesale. The thing I thought would be terribly hard was, in the end, easy as pie.

The other religion -- the Christianity analogue -- turned out to be a different story, but that's a topic for a later time.

And let this be a lesson to me: just because I write it doesn't mean anyone gives a damn.

Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)

Dear Penthouse Forum,

I never thought I'd be writing you...

The thing is, I never did think I'd be writing a blog. I never really thought I was interesting enough to justify it. And, truth of the matter is I still don't, but I was encourage by Mark Wiand to journal my thoughts and efforts as I create a new fantasy game and it seemed like a good idea at the time. But then I was high on crack at that point and by the time I came off my buzz it was too late to stop, and here we are.

So, my first post. I know that eventually I will blog on plenty of other topics but for the moment let's confine ourselves to gaming, and specifically the creation of this new game. It's a fantasy RPG run in the Hero (Champions) system, for starters, and I intend to do something unique (for me) with it -- I intend to run it both as a face to face and a PBEM game. This is somewhat in the nature of an experiment for me, to see how the two campaigns wind up different.

The inspiration for this game comes mostly from the Arthurian legends, and specifically the idea that when Arthur dies, so dies the dream that Camelot represented. All the ideals, all the sophistication, all the nobility and honor that Arthur represents falls to pieces when he's not there to hold everything together, and that's the end of the old tales. But of course it's not the end of the story -- people live on, trying to make sense of what happened. Some will try to preserve the glory in the face of a wave of barbarians and bandits that comes in the ensuing chaos, but the fact is that most folks are either not in a position to do anything but survive or else not of the inclination to retrain their baser impulses when the hand that guided them lies still. And so civilization is wiped out in most places, survives in a bastardized form in others, and is maintained (or attempts are made to maintain it) in one or two spots. What do the PCs do in that setting? What do they prioritize and what do they let slide?

The fact is that maintaining high morals and codes of honor is a hell of a challenge when the world is falling apart. The PCs will find themselves in one small corner of the old kingdom, sandwiched between two groups of violent barbarians and the kingdom of the usurper who cause the death of the old king in the first place. Their leaders are determined to maintain as much of the old glory as possible, but what's possible? Their resources are extremely limited, they're few in number, they face ruthless opposition and every day that they remain inactive more is lost. Everywhere they look there's a crisis -- so what do they address first? And more importantly how far will they go to do what they need to do? Will they compromise the codes of honor that they hold so dear to achieve good and necessary ends -- and if they do, what toll will that take on them?

Couple that with the fact that I'm divorcing this from the traditional Arthurian English setting, and even from the traditional Western European fantasy setting -- my cultural model is going to be medieval Poland with a lot of other very early Slavic influences -- and the differences created by the variance of cultural expectations should be a lot of fun to explore. I do hope my players take that aspect and run with it because it's that aspect that's going to make this game unique, at least for me and what I've run.

So there's the rough overview. In my next posts I'll be addressing some issues specific to the game like the setting, the culture, and the challenges of running the same game for two different groups and in two very different ways.

And let this be a lesson to me: just because I write it doesn't mean anyone gives a damn.