1977's animated Hobbit movie was probably my next big introduction to the lands of make-believe. This charming tale began my life long love of the works of J.R.R. Tolkein and Middle Earth.
Growing up, I always enjoyed fairy-tales and stories of ancient mythology and King Arthur. Disney films fed this love—with the very awesome Sleeping Beauty standing out most in my memory.
In the early 80's, right around the time I got my D&D basic set, I saw Ralph Bakshi's movie 'Wizards' for the first time. And wow, did it blow me away. Oh sure, some of it was just plain hippy/druggy weird (and even stupid), but the concepts of magic and technology—fantasy and sci-fi thrown together—opened up all new possibilities in my mind.
Through all of the above influences, I was developing conceptions of what a Fantasy gaming world should be like—or rather, what I would like out of one. And then I got the D&D Expert set—and with it the Isle of Dread module that contained a map and very brief descriptions of the 'Known World'. Both the map and the types of countries represented on it became ingrained into my consciousness. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos. The Republic of Darokin. Alfheim. Rockhome. I loved them all—even if at the time I had no idea what a 'Duchy' was.
My first few abortive attempts at creating my own world were all 'strangely reminiscent' of the Known World (though I would almost always throw in the four Kingdoms from the Dark Tower boardgame—Arislon, Brynthia, Durnin and Zenon). None of these worlds ever really took off, however—probably because I was only 12 or 13 years old at the time and had no idea of what I was doing. These projects also got sidelined because of my exposure to other gaming worlds—most notably the World of Greyhawk—which I loved then and still love now. In fact, during high-school, Greyhawk was the world of choice for my campaign—rather than the emerging 'Forgotten Realms' (which I have never been able to get into).
In 1987, the first of the Gazeteer books came out for the Basic RPG—the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. And once again, I was in love with the Known World (which later became known as Mystara). In fact, 'GAZ1' still stands as one of my favorite gaming sourcebooks of all time. To me, it is a perfect mixture of exposition and vagueness. It presents a highly detailed setting, filled with both interesting locales and personages. But it also provides dozens of adventure hooks and sketches of places and things for you to develop for yourself. It also began to offer an actual history for a setting—something I had greatly enjoyed about the Greyhawk setting and something I had always been lacking in my own attempts at world building.
Still, the Known/World Mystara setting was by no means perfect. First of all, it was too compact. Cramped even. It didn't have the kind of expanse I wanted to see in a world. But more importantly to me and my growing knowledge of history, cultures and geography, a lot of it just plain didn't make sense. An Arabic-Culture desert realm... sandwiched between a Byzantine Empire to the South and Viking kingdoms to the North? Native American style tribes living in the borderlands between an Italic-style Republic and a Persian/Iranian style theocracy? Gah.
What I really DID like were the cultural nods to real world medieval and primitive cultures—much as Robert E. Howard used stand-ins for various real-world cultures in his Conan stories. I find these to be both interesting and useful in instantly establishing a mood for a particular place or people. Players can more quickly identify with a 'Slavic' setting like Karameikos—with its names and cultural stereotypes lending themselves handily to tales of thick forests, vampires and werewolves. Or at least /I/ respond more quickly to them.
Evidently, I wasn't the only one to do so—as I found out while perusing the Warhammer RPG and its 'Old World' that was very much reminiscent of Western Europe. The Ravenloft setting was likewise very identifiable with its slavic, french and british style realms. While I realize this may not appeal to everyone, it really does to me. And, intriguingly, the 'Dangerous Journeys' game by Gygax (which I dabbled with in the early 90's) was very solidly based in a Fantasy version of Earth—aptly named Aerth.
I continued to tinker with my own fantasy gaming world, even as the focus of my gaming switched solidly to Star Wars (where it remains today). My computer has literally hundreds of sketches and files of my various attempts at making a gaming world. I kept bouncing back and forth between altering Mystara to a more European mold (and moving the 'out of place' countries into more realistic places) and altering Europe to a more mystara-ish mold. But things never felt right to me either way—especially with the Demi-Human realms for Elves, Dwarves and Halflings.
It wasn't until about a year and a half ago that I finally hit upon something that seemed to balance all my concerns—to finally feel 'right'. It began with a map, but expanded into fictional histories of the planet and its various peoples and realms. I had reached this stage with other worlds prior to this, but usually found some stumbling block that finally made me abandon the project. Not so with this one. So... fingers crossed, it seems I may actually have a winner.
I will go into this fantasy world in more detail in future posts. But in short, I settled upon a world almost identical to Earth in its land masses. In fact, the only major changes thus far have been in Europe—which I had to expand in order to accomodate my mish-mash of realms taken from various sources. What I have now includes elements of real-world nations, heavily influenced by Mystara and with bits of Warhammer's Old World and Tolkein's Middle earth thrown in. Sounds like a mess, doesn't it? But for me, it works—and I hope to show that in future posts. Stay tuned!
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