Antagonist forces in A Wilder World.
Aug. 9th, 2013 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI'm going to put most of this behind a cut, because on these longer posts, the cross-posts can be a bit much. So click the link if you want to read.
My original plan for A Wilder World was "no assumed world setting", just a set of rules and chargen content supporting generic fantasy tropes. In the four(!) years since I started working on the first version of it, I've come to realize that what I thought of as "generic fantasy tropes" contain multiple assumptions about the setting, that it's better to be deliberate about my choices than just mindlessly re-tread things, and that no matter how interesting my character creation system is or how engaging the gameplay might be, my worldbuilding can be a selling point.
So even though I'm mostly focused on the rules right now, I'm still giving thought to the world, and how those "generic fantasy tropes" fit into it, and why.
One of the things is that if you're going to have dangerous adventures and battles and things, there has to be an enemy... this simple truth is responsible for a lot of the worst implications of fantasy stories. I'm staying away from any "legion of mooks" type people in the game. There are no orcs, and My Goblins Are Different.
So who is there for player characters to fight?
UNIQUE MONSTERS
One of the things about D&D is that a lot of the monsters were probably meant to be one-offs... but once the creators had written down their stats for use in their own campaign, why not publish them for use in others?
And if you've got this book full of cool things like displacer beasts and beholders and gelatinous cubes... well, why not use them?
But if you think about a fantasy show, a lot of the times the Monster of the Week is something unique and specific to the locale for the Adventure of the Week. So a good portion of the "bestiary" of AWW is actually going to be a templates with customization guides, and advice on how to tie them in to a story.
One of the virtues of a unique, story-based monster is that defeating it might not be enough. For instance, defeating a haunting entity might just cause it to discorporate for the night, not actually lay it to rest. Driving off an unkillable giant beast won't solve the problem of why it's coming around. Not every local monster has to be unkillable, but if there is an underlying reason, solving it might be easier or better (if the monster serves a positive purpose, normally) than killing it.
BANDITS
People who want to kill you and take your stuff. I really want to emphasize this as a frequent enemy type. This helps emphasize a couple of things. First, that going out on the road and killing people to take their stuff is kind of a jerkbutt thing to do. Second, bandits will usually be native to the area they're operating in, so they're not an Evil Other that you can feel good about killing because they're different. But at the same time... they're trying to kill you and take your stuff, which means you can fight them and still be heroic.
Of course, being driven to crime isn't the same thing as being evil, and not all would-be robbers try to kill their victims. So there's also room for nuanced stories, where the bandits are just people with a problem (displaced from their home, deeply in debt, whatever) and they don't know what else to do.
But if they're out for blood... hey, there's a ready made enemy.
INFERNALS
There is a trope in fantasy gaming of using "devils" and "demons" to refer to two nigh-identical factions of extradimensional beings, sometimes with devils being slightly more prone to temptation and trickery and demons being slightly more prone to debauchery and destruction.
I'm not fond of this trope, because it's one of the things that can be confusing for outsiders, and also because I think it robs a lot of power from the notion of The Devil with a capital The.
In AWW, there are still devils, plural, but they are greater beings, analogous to gods. They claim to be gods, and there are conflicting stories of their origins. The version that they champion is something like the subtext of the Greek Titanomachy: devils were they original gods, but their first creations--the celestials, the current "gods"--rebelled against them, usurping their rightful position and casting them down. The version that the celestials tell is that they created the devils to be first among their servants, but they were too proud and tried to usurp their positions. In their infinite mercy, the celestials spared them destruction but cast them down instead.
Devils are plural but not numerous. Demons, on the other hand, are legion. The devils were cast down into a barren realm, but they populated it with its own ecosystem. So there are demonic beasts on par with animals, demonic plant/fungus things, and demons that can think and speak. Collectively, the devils and demons are called "infernals".
Whatever the truth of The First War (as it's called) is, the devils resent the celestials and the celestials despise the devils, but the prize they're fighting over--the world and its mortal inhabitants--is between their two realms, and they can't strike at each other without risking damage to the prize. So it's mostly a cold war, with a lot of plotting and maneuvering on both sides.
Or as the celestials put it, their mortal servants must be ever vigilant against the scheming of the devils and their demons.
THE ARETIAN LEGIONS
The Empire of Aret is, in the default world setting, "the empire" referred to generically in the character creation rules. Whether they're an evil empire or not depends a lot on your point of view, but adventurers who are in good standing with them or even citizens of the empire can very easily find themselves at odds with the empire's soldiers or bureaucrats, or with a corrupt or interfering regional governor.
For stories set outside the empire's boundaries, antagonism is even more natural, as the player characters will be seen by any wandering scouts or legions they encounter as barbarians at best, and are likely to be accused of banditry if they're heavily armed and carrying spoils.
Whichever side of the line player characters fall on, the ever-present tension between the Empire and local governments within and just beyond its boundary makes a ready source of conflict to use as adventure hooks.
For example, a legion encampment is attacked in the night. The commander blames it on locals, who've been unhappy with its presence for some stupid superstitious reason. The locals blame it on one of those unique local monsters, which they tried to warn the commander about. Maybe there is a monster. Maybe some young partisans are using the legend of the monster as cover for their attacks on the camp. Maybe both things are true. Whatever the case is, diffusing the conflict before the legion feels forced to crackdown and solving the problem is enough of a goal for a whole adventure.
THE COLONIES
The Colonies are my working name for a group of ant folk who practice a form of alchemical bioengineering. They don't have the classic sci-fi/telepathy "hive mind", but something resembling the hive organization of social insects. Each Colony consists of a number of different castes, which have distinct morphological differences. Only a small percentage of these are actually intelligent; the majority are Workers or Warriors that are essentially biological golems programmed and controlled through chemicals. If you encountered a group of Colonists in the wilderness, it would be a group of Workers or Warriors under the control of one or more handlers, who would regard them as extensions of themselves. In the absence of a handler, Workers become docile and begin ambling back to their base... Warriors become mindlessly belligerent, attacking anything that presents itself and doesn't smell like home.
The controlling intelligence behind a Colony ("controlling intelligence" being the preferred description, "queen" not being a concept they cleave to) generally views the whole of the hive in these terms... even the intelligent handlers and the nurses who engineer each successive generation are ultimately just appendages of the controlling intelligence. This doesn't mean they don't have self-awareness or consciousness, but the controlling intelligence views these things as an irrelevant side effect of the brain functions needed for them to perform their tasks.
The typical (or perhaps stereotypical) Colony is expansionist and xenophobic. Even the inhabitants of other Colonies are too other, and if encountered, they must be destroyed. However, each Colony actually has a different group outlook shaped by the controlling intelligence. Much like in the real world there are instances of large ant colonies that "make peace" with their neighbors and establish stable boundaries between themselves, it's possible for controlling intelligence to realize the advantages of diplomacy and trade or simply to develop other interests beyond expansion.
I mentioned that Colonies are bioengineers of a sort, which means that no only do different Colonies have different outlooks, but there can be vast differences in how they appear. By altering the alchemical mixtures that the young are nurtured on, the nurses can induce a variety of different adaptations for when they mature. Up in the snowy north, there are white shaggy ant people, and there are armor-plated ant folk in the deserts whose carapaces reflect heat, retain moisture, and keep stinging sand at bay. Some Colonies create giant "crawler" workers with an enlarged upper carapace with a hollow space that can be filled with soldiers or other, smaller workers.
In addition to their bioalchemy, Colonies are generally ahead of the curve when it comes to metallurgy and engineering. A Colony hive employs specially adapted workers to power things like pulley systems for lifts or mine carts and keep the air circulating, which is an important concern... Colonists' breathing mechanisms are not as efficient as lungs, and bad air can quickly incapacitate them.
An antagonistic Colony makes for a good enemy because they provide a naturally scalable threat level. The players could encounter ordinary workers, then soldiers, then special soldiers created specifically to fight them, culminating in taking on the specialized guardians of the controlling intelligence. The "Big Bad" can also scale in a similar way, as a cunning handler could be a recurring villain until overcome or swayed to turn against the controlling intelligence.
The presumptive campaign setting of AWW is the same part of the world that Aret is in, which is an area that's free of Colonies. This is actually an element of the empire's success... they've only recently started encountering them in the course of their own outward expansion, leading to the idea of "invasions of ant people" being regarded as a myth or distant threat in many parts of the empire's zone of influence.
THE FORCES OF UNMAKING
The forces of unmaking are the closest thing to pure evil in the AWW cosmos, in that they are completely inimical to life and existence. They come in two basic flavors: anti-life and anti-creation.
Anti-life are comparable to "negative energy beings" in D&D, inlcuding both undead creatures and spirits or beings that spring fron anti-life itself. The undead aren't just people who were dead and now aren't, they're animated by a cold spark of anti-life. They have the function of removing life from the universe. Not just killing, but removing life. Ever wonder why zombies don't poop? The energy and sustenance that undead take from the living, in whatever form, is removed from the cycle of life, and nothing living can grow from their bodies. (This is also why undead don't naturally decay past the point where they become undead.)
Anti-creation is represented by destructors. Destructors are similar to D&D demons, particularly the 4th edition interpretation of them as corrupted elemental beings who want to tear creation down. Destructors aren't corrupted from anything, though. In their pure, unadulterated state, they seek only to destroy. The rare ones who have formed thoughts and desires not relating to destruction (like, "Let's not destroy anything too quickly, I'm having fun." or "Let's maybe not destroy this particular sphere just yet, I have a lot of stuff there.") are arguably the corrupted ones.
The primal forces of anti-creation and anti-life are strongly aligned with each other, and both have the same goal of ultimately snuffing out the spark of the universe... not to replace it with anything, but because the existence of a living universe of life and energy is antithetical to them.
The forces of unmaking are basically a more nihilistic version of Lovecraftian horrors in a more optimistic universe. It's not that the universe is a cold, uncaring, and unfathomable place. The universe is awesome, but there's something behind and beneath the universe that is cold, uncaring, and unfathomable and hates having a noisy neighbor.
Not every appearance of an undead or destructor signals an actual direct plot by the forces of unmaking. Minor destructors are called forth using rituals by wizards who either think they can control them (sometimes, they succeed) or because they have a plan that doesn't require controlling them. Undeath can result from a number of different conditions, and some types of undead basically have their own anti-life ecology going on. The existence of vampires in the world advances the anti-life agenda in incremental ways, but that doesn't mean that every vampire walking around is dedicated to the snuffing out of life. Undead were created as parasitic predators, but like many parasites, over time they've achieved a level of stasis that allows them to exist without wiping out the prey population entirely.
A more recent and more virulent undead phenomenon reported in some quarters of the world, the so-called apocalypse plagues, may be a response to this by the active entities in the anti-life forces. Luckily, the legions of hungry dead created by these plagues tend to be short-lived, as they quickly exhaust the resources of an area and lack the mobility or intelligence to locate another food source... though the consequences of stragglers reaching a major population area is significant, and there's always the disquieting thought that these small, isolated outbreaks may only be test runs.
My original plan for A Wilder World was "no assumed world setting", just a set of rules and chargen content supporting generic fantasy tropes. In the four(!) years since I started working on the first version of it, I've come to realize that what I thought of as "generic fantasy tropes" contain multiple assumptions about the setting, that it's better to be deliberate about my choices than just mindlessly re-tread things, and that no matter how interesting my character creation system is or how engaging the gameplay might be, my worldbuilding can be a selling point.
So even though I'm mostly focused on the rules right now, I'm still giving thought to the world, and how those "generic fantasy tropes" fit into it, and why.
One of the things is that if you're going to have dangerous adventures and battles and things, there has to be an enemy... this simple truth is responsible for a lot of the worst implications of fantasy stories. I'm staying away from any "legion of mooks" type people in the game. There are no orcs, and My Goblins Are Different.
So who is there for player characters to fight?
UNIQUE MONSTERS
One of the things about D&D is that a lot of the monsters were probably meant to be one-offs... but once the creators had written down their stats for use in their own campaign, why not publish them for use in others?
And if you've got this book full of cool things like displacer beasts and beholders and gelatinous cubes... well, why not use them?
But if you think about a fantasy show, a lot of the times the Monster of the Week is something unique and specific to the locale for the Adventure of the Week. So a good portion of the "bestiary" of AWW is actually going to be a templates with customization guides, and advice on how to tie them in to a story.
One of the virtues of a unique, story-based monster is that defeating it might not be enough. For instance, defeating a haunting entity might just cause it to discorporate for the night, not actually lay it to rest. Driving off an unkillable giant beast won't solve the problem of why it's coming around. Not every local monster has to be unkillable, but if there is an underlying reason, solving it might be easier or better (if the monster serves a positive purpose, normally) than killing it.
BANDITS
People who want to kill you and take your stuff. I really want to emphasize this as a frequent enemy type. This helps emphasize a couple of things. First, that going out on the road and killing people to take their stuff is kind of a jerkbutt thing to do. Second, bandits will usually be native to the area they're operating in, so they're not an Evil Other that you can feel good about killing because they're different. But at the same time... they're trying to kill you and take your stuff, which means you can fight them and still be heroic.
Of course, being driven to crime isn't the same thing as being evil, and not all would-be robbers try to kill their victims. So there's also room for nuanced stories, where the bandits are just people with a problem (displaced from their home, deeply in debt, whatever) and they don't know what else to do.
But if they're out for blood... hey, there's a ready made enemy.
INFERNALS
There is a trope in fantasy gaming of using "devils" and "demons" to refer to two nigh-identical factions of extradimensional beings, sometimes with devils being slightly more prone to temptation and trickery and demons being slightly more prone to debauchery and destruction.
I'm not fond of this trope, because it's one of the things that can be confusing for outsiders, and also because I think it robs a lot of power from the notion of The Devil with a capital The.
In AWW, there are still devils, plural, but they are greater beings, analogous to gods. They claim to be gods, and there are conflicting stories of their origins. The version that they champion is something like the subtext of the Greek Titanomachy: devils were they original gods, but their first creations--the celestials, the current "gods"--rebelled against them, usurping their rightful position and casting them down. The version that the celestials tell is that they created the devils to be first among their servants, but they were too proud and tried to usurp their positions. In their infinite mercy, the celestials spared them destruction but cast them down instead.
Devils are plural but not numerous. Demons, on the other hand, are legion. The devils were cast down into a barren realm, but they populated it with its own ecosystem. So there are demonic beasts on par with animals, demonic plant/fungus things, and demons that can think and speak. Collectively, the devils and demons are called "infernals".
Whatever the truth of The First War (as it's called) is, the devils resent the celestials and the celestials despise the devils, but the prize they're fighting over--the world and its mortal inhabitants--is between their two realms, and they can't strike at each other without risking damage to the prize. So it's mostly a cold war, with a lot of plotting and maneuvering on both sides.
Or as the celestials put it, their mortal servants must be ever vigilant against the scheming of the devils and their demons.
THE ARETIAN LEGIONS
The Empire of Aret is, in the default world setting, "the empire" referred to generically in the character creation rules. Whether they're an evil empire or not depends a lot on your point of view, but adventurers who are in good standing with them or even citizens of the empire can very easily find themselves at odds with the empire's soldiers or bureaucrats, or with a corrupt or interfering regional governor.
For stories set outside the empire's boundaries, antagonism is even more natural, as the player characters will be seen by any wandering scouts or legions they encounter as barbarians at best, and are likely to be accused of banditry if they're heavily armed and carrying spoils.
Whichever side of the line player characters fall on, the ever-present tension between the Empire and local governments within and just beyond its boundary makes a ready source of conflict to use as adventure hooks.
For example, a legion encampment is attacked in the night. The commander blames it on locals, who've been unhappy with its presence for some stupid superstitious reason. The locals blame it on one of those unique local monsters, which they tried to warn the commander about. Maybe there is a monster. Maybe some young partisans are using the legend of the monster as cover for their attacks on the camp. Maybe both things are true. Whatever the case is, diffusing the conflict before the legion feels forced to crackdown and solving the problem is enough of a goal for a whole adventure.
THE COLONIES
The Colonies are my working name for a group of ant folk who practice a form of alchemical bioengineering. They don't have the classic sci-fi/telepathy "hive mind", but something resembling the hive organization of social insects. Each Colony consists of a number of different castes, which have distinct morphological differences. Only a small percentage of these are actually intelligent; the majority are Workers or Warriors that are essentially biological golems programmed and controlled through chemicals. If you encountered a group of Colonists in the wilderness, it would be a group of Workers or Warriors under the control of one or more handlers, who would regard them as extensions of themselves. In the absence of a handler, Workers become docile and begin ambling back to their base... Warriors become mindlessly belligerent, attacking anything that presents itself and doesn't smell like home.
The controlling intelligence behind a Colony ("controlling intelligence" being the preferred description, "queen" not being a concept they cleave to) generally views the whole of the hive in these terms... even the intelligent handlers and the nurses who engineer each successive generation are ultimately just appendages of the controlling intelligence. This doesn't mean they don't have self-awareness or consciousness, but the controlling intelligence views these things as an irrelevant side effect of the brain functions needed for them to perform their tasks.
The typical (or perhaps stereotypical) Colony is expansionist and xenophobic. Even the inhabitants of other Colonies are too other, and if encountered, they must be destroyed. However, each Colony actually has a different group outlook shaped by the controlling intelligence. Much like in the real world there are instances of large ant colonies that "make peace" with their neighbors and establish stable boundaries between themselves, it's possible for controlling intelligence to realize the advantages of diplomacy and trade or simply to develop other interests beyond expansion.
I mentioned that Colonies are bioengineers of a sort, which means that no only do different Colonies have different outlooks, but there can be vast differences in how they appear. By altering the alchemical mixtures that the young are nurtured on, the nurses can induce a variety of different adaptations for when they mature. Up in the snowy north, there are white shaggy ant people, and there are armor-plated ant folk in the deserts whose carapaces reflect heat, retain moisture, and keep stinging sand at bay. Some Colonies create giant "crawler" workers with an enlarged upper carapace with a hollow space that can be filled with soldiers or other, smaller workers.
In addition to their bioalchemy, Colonies are generally ahead of the curve when it comes to metallurgy and engineering. A Colony hive employs specially adapted workers to power things like pulley systems for lifts or mine carts and keep the air circulating, which is an important concern... Colonists' breathing mechanisms are not as efficient as lungs, and bad air can quickly incapacitate them.
An antagonistic Colony makes for a good enemy because they provide a naturally scalable threat level. The players could encounter ordinary workers, then soldiers, then special soldiers created specifically to fight them, culminating in taking on the specialized guardians of the controlling intelligence. The "Big Bad" can also scale in a similar way, as a cunning handler could be a recurring villain until overcome or swayed to turn against the controlling intelligence.
The presumptive campaign setting of AWW is the same part of the world that Aret is in, which is an area that's free of Colonies. This is actually an element of the empire's success... they've only recently started encountering them in the course of their own outward expansion, leading to the idea of "invasions of ant people" being regarded as a myth or distant threat in many parts of the empire's zone of influence.
THE FORCES OF UNMAKING
The forces of unmaking are the closest thing to pure evil in the AWW cosmos, in that they are completely inimical to life and existence. They come in two basic flavors: anti-life and anti-creation.
Anti-life are comparable to "negative energy beings" in D&D, inlcuding both undead creatures and spirits or beings that spring fron anti-life itself. The undead aren't just people who were dead and now aren't, they're animated by a cold spark of anti-life. They have the function of removing life from the universe. Not just killing, but removing life. Ever wonder why zombies don't poop? The energy and sustenance that undead take from the living, in whatever form, is removed from the cycle of life, and nothing living can grow from their bodies. (This is also why undead don't naturally decay past the point where they become undead.)
Anti-creation is represented by destructors. Destructors are similar to D&D demons, particularly the 4th edition interpretation of them as corrupted elemental beings who want to tear creation down. Destructors aren't corrupted from anything, though. In their pure, unadulterated state, they seek only to destroy. The rare ones who have formed thoughts and desires not relating to destruction (like, "Let's not destroy anything too quickly, I'm having fun." or "Let's maybe not destroy this particular sphere just yet, I have a lot of stuff there.") are arguably the corrupted ones.
The primal forces of anti-creation and anti-life are strongly aligned with each other, and both have the same goal of ultimately snuffing out the spark of the universe... not to replace it with anything, but because the existence of a living universe of life and energy is antithetical to them.
The forces of unmaking are basically a more nihilistic version of Lovecraftian horrors in a more optimistic universe. It's not that the universe is a cold, uncaring, and unfathomable place. The universe is awesome, but there's something behind and beneath the universe that is cold, uncaring, and unfathomable and hates having a noisy neighbor.
Not every appearance of an undead or destructor signals an actual direct plot by the forces of unmaking. Minor destructors are called forth using rituals by wizards who either think they can control them (sometimes, they succeed) or because they have a plan that doesn't require controlling them. Undeath can result from a number of different conditions, and some types of undead basically have their own anti-life ecology going on. The existence of vampires in the world advances the anti-life agenda in incremental ways, but that doesn't mean that every vampire walking around is dedicated to the snuffing out of life. Undead were created as parasitic predators, but like many parasites, over time they've achieved a level of stasis that allows them to exist without wiping out the prey population entirely.
A more recent and more virulent undead phenomenon reported in some quarters of the world, the so-called apocalypse plagues, may be a response to this by the active entities in the anti-life forces. Luckily, the legions of hungry dead created by these plagues tend to be short-lived, as they quickly exhaust the resources of an area and lack the mobility or intelligence to locate another food source... though the consequences of stragglers reaching a major population area is significant, and there's always the disquieting thought that these small, isolated outbreaks may only be test runs.