incorporating fairy tales

[hengest]

I want to develop some idea for including fairy tales in some form.  Maybe recognizable to players, but not kitschy.  

"Playing" them is not going to work.  

Tolkien's interpreter Tom Shippey has a bit somewhere about the fragments of the older poetic tradition, fragments that seemed to hold accounts of humans venturing into the world of the monsters, rather than random monsters invading the human world.  

Perhaps there could be an area on the map, a loosely defined area, where narratives work differently or repeat themselves.  Not quite like a skipping record, but places where certain narratives are "central" in a way they aren't elsewhere.  

These places might be closer to the "source" than others.  

Regular world: what you expect

Fairy tale borderlands: time runs a little differently, the sun sets and rises twice a day or once a week, whole towns are focused the central action of some folktale or another, although the residents are still human (they eat and grow food, etc.).

Even closer to the source: narrative as we know it becomes difficult to sustain.  Family relationships become unclear.  Time does not seem to pass.  Everything seems meaningful but beyond language.  

[The Perilous Dreamer]

This is good, it is something solid (no joke intended) to work with. It seems to me that someone posted something a broken lands in the middle of a country where portals sometimes opened and people or monsters crossed both ways between worlds.

[hengest]

Imagine a central point on the map. This is the center of Meaning. Everything is known there, but nothing can be expressed.

As you move away from the center, true knowledge becomes more obscured and what we know as Time and Narrative step in to take its place.

So if the center (origin) is 0 and numbers increase as we move out from it, we have positive integers to denote "rings" of the world.

0 - Meaning
1 - Deep Myth / Dreamless Sleep
2 - Fairy Tales
3 - fantasy RPG flavor
4 - real medieval world (credulity high, real magic low)
5 - Newton's time ("the last of the magicians")
6 - spreadsheets, smartphones, high-information and very low wisdom

But that's on a perfect plane. Suppose that the ground itself is suffused with these various "personalities" and over geologically significant time becomes bent, carved, pushed.

You could deform the concentric rings in ways that would give you a "topographical" map of meaning and magic that could be the first step in a new setting. You could end up with islands of "fairy tale" in an RPG-dominant area. Or other combinations.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 25, 2021 14:27:30 GMT -5 hengest said:

Imagine a central point on the map. This is the center of Meaning. Everything is known there, but nothing can be expressed.

As you move away from the center, true knowledge becomes more obscured and what we know as Time and Narrative step in to take its place.

So if the center (origin) is 0 and numbers increase as we move out from it, we have positive integers to denote "rings" of the world.

0 - Meaning
1 - Deep Myth / Dreamless Sleep
2 - Fairy Tales
3 - fantasy RPG flavor
4 - real medieval world (credulity high, real magic low)
5 - Newton's time ("the last of the magicians")
6 - spreadsheets, smartphones, high-information and very low wisdom

But that's on a perfect plane. Suppose that the ground itself is suffused with these various "personalities" and over geologically significant time becomes bent, carved, pushed.

You could deform the concentric rings in ways that would give you a "topographical" map of meaning and magic that could be the first step in a new setting. You could end up with islands of "fairy tale" in an RPG-dominant area. Or other combinations.

Wow, that is an incredible idea.

[hengest]

Following up on this: the nearer the Source the land is, the more powerful but less controllable magic is.  That is, power is there for the taking, but the effects wrought with it are very quickly channeled into the dominant theme or myth of that area.  It is difficult to "go against the flow."  One can reach out and "grab" power at any moment, but is relatively quickly swept along in the current.

The further from the Source the land is, the less powerful but more controllable magic is.  That is, exactly what you want can be accomplished, but only at a limited level of power.  To continue the analogy of grabbing hold of a torrent of water -- here, you can more easily control and use the water for some limited purpose, but you cannot use or be carried along by such tremendous power.

For a practical look at the same information, consider the spectrum from the Source (0) to a potentially infinite, but let's practically cap it at 6, distance from it.

We already know that RPGs of this type fall in the mid-range: there is strong power available, but godlike powers are extremely rare.  Such power as can be gotten, however, is usually fairly well under the user's control.  The "context" does not dominate the use of that power.

Suppose that for somewhat normal (gameable, imaginable) purposes, we can imagine part of the spectrum to one side of the RPG area (roughly 3) and part of the spectrum to the other side.  

0 - Meaning
1 - Deep Myth / Dreamless Sleep
2 - Fairy Tales
3 - fantasy RPG flavor
4 - real medieval world (credulity high, real magic low)
5 - Newton's time ("the last of the magicians")
6 - spreadsheets, smartphones, high-information and very low wisdom

A region with a lower number (2.5) would have significantly higher power levels, but events, particularly those connected with the "meaning" of the region, would be that much harder to resist using magical or other means.
A region with a higher number (3.5) would have lower power levels, but relatively good freedom to use them.  Easier to use those lower power levels to effect events meaningfully.  

So maybe "vanilla" D&D is itself around 3.3.  A value of .5 in either direction is a significant difference.  In one direction, greater powers are drawn more to the "flow" of events, stories, the local narrative-tending-towards-myth.  In the other direction, lesser powers are more meaningfully responsible to the will of the user.

People from one region may end up in another.  A strong personality from a lower-number region (a 2.8 person in a 3.3) would carry relatively high native power that would be quite effective in the more "malleable" high-number area.  Such people, where the power differential is really significant, might become the Merlin of their adopted land, or a figure of similar power.  They might have great (magical or other) power and the ability to use it in their adopted land, but may lean towards trying to see and go with the "flow" of things, as is appropriate in their native land.  This quality may be perceived as wisdom.  

In the other direction (a 3.8 person in a 3.3) would have relatively low personal power (magical or other) but relatively high "manipulativeness," in a neutral sense.  Such a person might look neurotic and anxious in our eyes, as they are inclined to a degree of circumstance-manipulating behavior that is much more difficult in their present location.  They want to do what cannot be done, or is much harder than they expect.  Such people might end up as professional agitators in times of political strife or "early adopters" of new governmental systems, as they intuit that getting in on the ground floor of a new structure may allow them some ability to control events as they wish.  Surrounded by relatively greater power than they possess themselves, their efforts are turned to survival and ensconcing oneself in some relatively safe position.

As suggested above, magic might be only one expression of the differences between areas.  More thoughts on this to come.

[hengest]

Additional note on people:

-those who move up in number (by moving from one place to another) are locuses of power, but are (relatively) disinclined to use it or unable to see how it might be used.

-those who move down in number are relatively empty spaces in terms of power, but are high on desire to effect change.

Two transplants, say from 2.8 and 3.8, working together in a 3.3, might make a very potent team.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 26, 2021 0:27:13 GMT -5 hengest said:

So maybe "vanilla" D&D is itself around 3.3.  A value of .5 in either direction is a significant difference.  In one direction, greater powers are drawn more to the "flow" of events, stories, the local narrative-tending-towards-myth.  In the other direction, lesser powers are more meaningfully responsible to the will of the user.

People from one region may end up in another.  A strong personality from a lower-number region (a 2.8 person in a 3.3) would carry relatively high native power that would be quite effective in the more "malleable" high-number area.  Such people, where the power differential is really significant, might become the Merlin of their adopted land, or a figure of similar power.  They might have great (magical or other) power and the ability to use it in their adopted land, but may lean towards trying to see and go with the "flow" of things, as is appropriate in their native land.  This quality may be perceived as wisdom.  

This whole thing is a wonderful piece of writing and the best articulation I think I have seen. 

The above is the part that I personally find the most interesting is the potential Merlin. Evil mages and Evil clerics are always trying to access more power and are not careful about how they go about it. Where Lawful mages and Clerics also seek more power, but are careful and ethical in their endeavors.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 26, 2021 0:32:35 GMT -5 hengest said:

Additional note on people:

-those who move up in number (by moving from one place to another) are locuses of power, but are (relatively) disinclined to use it or unable to see how it might be used.

-those who move down in number are relatively empty spaces in terms of power, but are high on desire to effect change.

Two transplants, say from 2.8 and 3.8, working together in a 3.3, might make a very potent team.

Besides the applicability to D&D, you have also just laid the foundation for a magic system that under grids a series of novels.

[hengest]

Notes:

1) I picture the Source as well away from the practical center of the map. Plus the geological distortions that have squished, eroded, and pushed the land here and there make it not at all obvious at a local level what's where and why.  

2) In doing any extended design around this idea, one would have to be careful to keep the abstractions abstract and not let them leak into the world itself, and also not to be too pleased with the "magic levels" or "different realms" aspect of the thing.  Otherwise it would turn into a trivial device.  

3) Likely this information would be known only to the DM, maybe dimly guessed at by a high-level wizard (if there even is one).

4) The basic idea does suggest a structure that could underlie a magic system, origins of empire, local reasons for xenophobia (or xenophilia), star-crossed lovers, a million things that blur the line between legend and reality.  

5) Following up on star-crossed lovers (and I'm thinking here for local legends and ancient motivations, not so much gameplay, but why not), the obvious question to me is "what happens to traditional courtship stories when the parties are from different whole numbers." (Too different, and they can't even interact, but somewhat different)

1. Man is alien to locals, is lower in number
2. Man is alien to locals, is higher in number
3. Woman is alien to locals, is higher in number
4. Woman is alien to locals, is lower in number

Each of these will bear some thought, but simply as a first step or placeholder, possible mappings:

1. "Out-of-towner," lone figure, amazingly attractive, perhaps aloof without meaning to be.  Can change the narrative without really meaning to, drawing all eyes to himself, but is expected to act on his own, almost paralyzing others by his unexpectedly mythical aura.  (Could be more like type 4 if the distance in number is great, see below)
2. The sneak, perhaps attractive for novelty, internally agitated, scheming.  His nature (relative to locals) makes him a failed interloper.  He has difficulty penetrating the relatively tough local narratives.  His knowings are too fine and just slip through the cracks.  
3. The travelling carny woman who stumbles into a valley out of time.  Brigadoon with the sexes reversed.  The shape of the relationship is not obvious here.  Like 2, her skills are too fine to have much grip on their own, but unlike 2, she is less interested in twisting a narrative to serve her.  She is more sufficient unto herself.  Perhaps more interested in drawing on the local power (taking a fairy child away with her) than in altering the landscape.
4. Although it takes place in her territory, so she is the local, Galadriel's relationship to the Fellowship is basically of this type.  Unapproachable fairy queen.  There, the difference is so great that she draws all eyes to herself (see 1) and inspires them to action of their own.  Apart from Lothlorien, an extreme example of this type is a vision of a female saint.  In terms of this concept for this thread, such would be interpreted as brief encounters between a 1.5 woman (a saint) and a 4.5 to 6 man (or woman, really).  Conscious contact at that distance will only be possible for exceptional individuals or in exceptional circumstances.  The words spoken by such a person are hard to interpret across such a gap, but they have the ring of truth and may be seen to be true of more than one situation.  

Similar mappings could be attempted for the various kinds of interaction across regions: military / political leaders, charismatic religious figures, magicians and scientists.

[hengest]

(Somewhat in keeping with the original purpose of the thread, which I hope to get back to, representations of type 4 in song are not uncommon. 'Let It Be' ("When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me"), 'Scarlet Begonias'. In the latter, the hint of "sacred geometry" in the first line (as pointed out to me by the commentary here) links to amateur notions about 4-space and polytopes in many dimensions, which I want to think about a bit more here)...

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 26, 2021 18:02:01 GMT -5 hengest said:

Notes:

1) I

Wow, IMO this really does lend itself to the underpinnings of a fantasy novel. Not sure that I can see how it would work in game, but really interested in seeing what you come up with. I think this is about as unique a take as I have seen. Is there any fiction that you have read that is inspiring parts of this? Or just the non-fiction things that are noted below?

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 26, 2021 18:30:49 GMT -5 hengest said:

(Somewhat in keeping with the original purpose of the thread, which I hope to get back to, representations of type 4 in song are not uncommon. 'Let It Be' ("When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me"), 'Scarlet Begonias'. In the latter, the hint of "sacred geometry" in the first line (as pointed out to me by the commentary here) links to amateur notions about 4-space and polytopes in many dimensions, which I want to think about a bit more here)...

Songs can be a great inspiration and your other links are things that fascinate me, although once you go past a certain point the math exceeds my grasp.

[mao]

Feb 27, 2021 11:55:44 GMT -5 hengest said:

The Perilous Dreamer

Yes, it does make sense. I have wanted to read more about your dragons. I have been thinking about these in a somewhat different direction (I think), but I do see how the system proposed here fits yours, as well.

And the math is all over my head from the start but I do love the idea of the higher dimensions.

love me some dimensions

[mao]

Feb 24, 2021 21:56:31 GMT -5 hengest said:

I want to develop some idea for including fairy tales in some form.  Maybe recognizable to players, but not kitschy.  

"Playing" them is not going to work.  

Tolkien's interpreter Tom Shippey has a bit somewhere about the fragments of the older poetic tradition, fragments that seemed to hold accounts of humans venturing into the world of the monsters, rather than random monsters invading the human world.  

Perhaps there could be an area on the map, a loosely defined area, where narratives work differently or repeat themselves.  Not quite like a skipping record, but places where certain narratives are "central" in a way they aren't elsewhere.  

These places might be closer to the "source" than others.  

Regular world: what you expect

Fairy tale borderlands: time runs a little differently, the sun sets and rises twice a day or once a week, whole towns are focused the central action of some folktale or another, although the residents are still human (they eat and grow food, etc.).

Even closer to the source: narrative as we know it becomes difficult to sustain.  Family relationships become unclear.  Time does not seem to pass.  Everything seems meaningful but beyond language.  

love this, exalt

[mao]

I am eventually go to do with fey but so far no concrete ideas

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 27, 2021 15:28:54 GMT -5 mao said:

I am eventually go to do with fey but so far no concrete ideas

They will come in their time, you cannot force ideas.

[mao]

yup

[hengest]

Discussion of dragons for EB/Fairy Tales moved here.  Further posts to come on this sub.

[hengest]

Note to self: I have been mistakenly thinking of this as the basis for world design and feeling like that is too big a project (while I'm also really interested in trying it). But I was wrong. While it's suggestive of features for a whole world, as a game aid, this is as modular as you like and can be slotted into just about any medieval fantasy setting or even any other RPG. I did not see at first how flexible and granular this could be.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Mar 2, 2021 22:05:28 GMT -5 hengest said:

Note to self: I have been mistakenly thinking of this as the basis for world design and feeling like that is too big a project (while I'm also really interested in trying it). But I was wrong. While it's suggestive of features for a whole world, as a game aid, this is as modular as you like and can be slotted into just about any medieval fantasy setting or even any other RPG. I did not see at first how flexible and granular this could be.

Quite! Have an Exalt!