The Foot of Blue Mountain

Appendix M: Thoughtful Inspirations

We're all doing worldbuilding here, at least some sort of minimal viable product to get our games off the ground. Some people (myself included) tend to worldbuild very little beyond what is immediately gameable in the scenario or adventure laid our. Other people devote years of their lives to their worldbuilding projects, working on generators, tables, almanacs, conlangs, the whole shebang.

The "Appendix N" process of collating your inspirations into a list is helpful in this context and beyond it in more traditional mediums like visual art or writing fiction. Where I think a lot of people in tabletop games go wrong, in contrast to the collation process in the aforementioned other mediums, is neglecting to consider the thematic purposes of the aesthetics that they borrow from.

Howard's Conan the Barbarian series is individualistic and proud; Conan is a Great Man who enacts his will on the lesser world through violence. What is Howard trying to say by using these aesthetics?

Including characters like Conan is, like it or not, engaging with the ideas Howard wrote into his books. You can do this intentionally, to play with the assumptions made by the aesthetics, see Elric of Melnibone, but oftentimes the instinct for tabletop players is to steal the aesthetic without considering the thematics of what they're taking from. Fantasy and Speculative Fiction writ large suffer from this problem; it's why, among other reasons, there has historically been a lot of bad fantasy novels riffing on Tolkien, and not nearly as many Tolkiens.

In my blogpost Vancian Casting is Good, Actually I talk about how borrowing the aesthetics of something (in that case, the magic "system" in Dying Earth) without considering the context it was written in or its purpose can lead to wonky expectations and experiences at the table. This same idea can apply to any element of your worldbuilding at any level.

For most people, I can clearly illustrate what I'm talking about with a political example. Consider the Great Philosopher King Carl, who has ruled the world for 1000 years. He is perfectly moral and has never made a mistake. He rules peacefully and his subjects are happy to be ruled by him; they never dissent or cause trouble because all are treated fairly under his rule.

There are a lot of thematic assumptions I'm making there when I'm talking about Carl, not only about his character, but about the nature of the political structure that he operates within. Do people actually live in peace under feudalism when they have a benevolent ruler? Carl's author seems to think so, and Carl is the embodiment of that idea in a fantasy world. The question "How do people act when their leaders are philosopher kings?" is answered by Carl and how the world reacts to him.

The naive tabletop gamer sees Carl and thinks he is stupid. "No one would act like that! And besides, men in medieval times wouldn't even live that long!" He decides to write The Evil Sycophant Monarch Lrac into his game, who has reigned for 1000 years due to evil sorcery and is evil personified. Lrac lives to cause suffering, and all who live under him are terrified into submission. If only a brave hero would slay Lrac and take his place, ruling justly on his vacated throne. The naive tabletop gamer has inverted the aesthetic of the Philosopher King without addressing the ramifications of the question or stance that Carl represented in his original context.

The thing I want to stress here before I get to my point is that the above is totally fine. It's fun to play in aesthetics without considering what they're saying, and tabletop games are supposed to be fun before they're anything else. But by thinking deeper about the ideas, stories, and themes in fantasy, I think we end up coming up with more interesting settings that we wouldn't arrive at otherwise.

The elite tabletop gamer sees Carl and understands the position he and his kingdom represent. "People are happy living under a king so long as he is perfectly just." There's a problem with this, though, in that most people are incapable of being perfectly just (even if we have a notion of what it might look like to be perfectly just in the first place!) So the elite tabletop gamer writes Ralc, The King Enshrouded. Ralc is perfectly just, rules his kingdom well, and is in most respects identical to Carl. There's one sticking point, though: Ralc isn't real. Each night, all the lords who swore fealty to Ralc gather in a grand hall and vote on what Ralc will do the next day. If there are any ties, or a majority isn't reached on any particular issue, Ralc's choice is drawn from a large hat. Each morning, as Ralc, secretly the tallest servant in the royal palace draped in a purple sheet, gives his proclamations, all the lords react as though Ralc has been just and perfectly wise this whole time.

The statement made by Carl ("People are okay with being ruled by a king so long as he is perfectly just.") is explored here by a deconstruction of the king's function. The "king" in the elite tabletop gamer's world is a single voice whom most people see as perfectly just and wise, just like Carl. Where Ralc differs from Carl is in the aesthetics of this idea. Ralc's decisions are just, but he isn't a single entity. How would people react to this revelation? What do the lords think justice is, their collective choices and the random selection from the hat? Ralc is basically saying "So long as someone appears to be a philosopher king, people are okay with letting them rule." How might people react if they found out Ralc was actually a lord's parliament? That's up to the elite tabletop gamer, who invariably will make these sorts of political statements on his own as he develops the world and what is happening within it. In terms of gameable campaign pitches based on this idea, there are a ton. One game might be playing as lords in Ralc's parliament, trying to jockey for power and influence in the Legislative body and use Ralc's authority for your own personal gain while trying to ensure that he doesn't seem too unjust in his dealings. Another game might be playing as servants or mercenaries who discover the truth behind Ralc and plot a coup or a heist to show the people Ralc's true nature. Compare these ideas with basically every piece of media you've read that has a Dark Lord like Lrac. Which ones are more unique?

This isn't just for politics, either (although politics is probably the easiest example to grok.) The same sort of dialogue of ideas exists all over thoughtful fantasy and science fiction. By clueing into this dialogue when we collate fiction for our Appendix Ns, we can respond and interact with those ideas in a way that ultimately enriches the uniqueness and creativity of our world.

And finally, because every screed needs a recommended reading section, here's a few entries from my Appendix N for my claim in the Antarctic Hexcrawl Jam alongside a little blurb about why I'm interested in it.