Here’s a post talking a bit about the past (or lack thereof) of my Jewelsea setting. What came before and why don’t people know what it is?
interesting because this really isn’t far off from IRL history, just a slight exaggeration. its hard for MODERN PEOPLE to frame their heads around living in a world with so many unknowns about things we take for granted.
I like this bit, “As the study of history has become a more regimented discipline, scholars have begun to wonder why the memory of this old empire is completely gone from every known culture.” Infers the world is in a sort of Early Modern period, but that a sorta Medieval conception of the world is reality. Like Galileo peering thru his telescope and confirming the existence of the crystal spheres of Ptolemy.
That’s definitely an element of what I was playing on. Another big part of it is that I want to leave things open for future players to shape their own beliefs in a sort of anti-canon style, but I also love worldbuilding. I decided the best way to achieve this was to leave a few big blanks in the setting - namely what exactly happened during the old empire, whether and which any of the various religious or supernatural beliefs are true, and how precisely things that we as modern people might describe as magic work.
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I think that is the key to the whole worldbuilding exercise in RPGs-- making sure your work doesn’t burden the play experience.
ambiguity is such a great tool for this. leaves elbow room for play at the table to go in the direction the players want it to go, but also room for the DM to guide that, and backfill around it. it also makes it easier to do the work of worldbuilding and concentrate on the game-able bits, and not get stuck on who was the ruler of what country 300 years prior (false-wikipedia-worldbuilding).
and ALSO it allows for an immersive sense of exploration.
I dunno, its just better (says the man who’s fantasy worldbuilding project is called “The Enormous Vagueness”)
As a general rule, I think it helps to keep events outside of living memory vague. Even in societies that do rigorously preserve historical records, the average person likely doesn’t have access to them. If a player shows interest or if a scenario hinges upon it, that’s when we can start drilling down to explore this stuff in a little more detail.
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And that’s why I hate elves. Damn 800 years of living memory. Can you imagine the History Channel in a world with elves?
“The mystery of the Maya: What happened to make this ancient civilization disappear, 700 years ago?”
“Uh, what if we just ask Bob the Elf? He was there…”
Another great reason to have a humans-only setting!
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my solution to this problem is that my elves have normal memories for about a human lifespan, then their memory becomes increasingly unreliable, tainted by grief and nostalgia. unreliable narrators of history, they recall events purely by vibes, and as for specifics, if facts don’t vibe well, they don’t believe their own history books that they wrote themselves 400 years prior.
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That’s pretty similar to what I did in another setting - elves were ageless, but their declarative memories could not reach back more than two or three decades. They kept their memories externally, in diaries and logs. That said, I don’t feel the need to stick to the vernacular fantasy species in every setting, so they’re not present in the Jewelsea.
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Oh yeah, my #1 “solution” for elves is to not use them. Nor orcs, nor dwarves, nor hobbits.
I’ve been trying to work them into my setting, by combining “Baby boomers on Facebook” (a specific aunt of mine) with
this source:
and this source:
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