Hey Game Fans, we’re back with another article in our Plot Traps series. Today we’re going to take a look at Myths and Legends and how they can help you shape your world. We’ve got a buddy who runs a channel on Youtube called Terminally Nerdy who posted a video about this topic which you can find here. One of the most important ideas he reminded me of is that you can make your myths and legends as big or as small as you need them to be, and they can work in just about any Genre of gaming (or storytelling for that matter). Be sure to check out the video, (and like, subscribe and favorite stuff, if you found it as helpful as we did), and we’re going to dig into some thoughts and ideas about what you can do with Myths and Legends in your game.
Mythic Stories & Epic Legends
Myths and Legends, at their core, are stories of things that happened in the past. They are in many ways, a decayed remnant of the historical events that happened. These stories are often shaped by the people who tell the stories or wrote them down, but over time the stories change as the the tellers add or remove things, or the person writing the story down changes the words to fit the way language changes over time. Because of these changes, we get a broad idea of what happened in that distant era, but we don’t actually know the facts of things.
In our modern world, we know the Legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table and have stories about their brave deeds and heroic exploits. Now it’s entirely possible that those are loosely based on real people who did neat things in that time, but we don’t know, enough time has passed that the living memory of that time is gone, and those historical events are now stories.
In world of Greyhawk, there are dozens of mythic stories and legends that fill that world. The war between the Bakluni and the Suloise, the Circle of 8, the many dangerous things that lay beneath Castle Greyhawk itself, and even Lord Robilar’s exploits into the Temple of Elemental Evil are all stories of things and places of legendary events or mythic events. These are stories of some of the things that helped to shape the world of Greyhawk, and some are more modern than others (the war between the Bakluni and the Suloise is an ancient historical event), but all are storied links to the past of that world.
My own world of Lakeport has a lot of these Myths and Legends, because i chose a time scale that worked very well for helping them grow. The driving conflict that created the modern world of Lakeport is 10,000 years in its past, and even the most long lived of sages doesn’t remember the facts of what happened. The world is shaped by these legendary forces, but they have mostly disappeared into antiquity. The gods are strangely silent about this point in history, but there are landmarks and remnants all over the world. Ancient sites of power, shattered fortifications and other signs that great forces affected the world. There are also the ancient redwoods of the Great Forest (with their colonies of plant people who live in the canopy and grow strange plants on the leaves of those trees), the thousands of miles of waterways with lanes carved in them so traffic can flow up and down the rivers, and even more strange wonders that shape Lakeport and give it its character.
They can also be much smaller in scope and scale. Every little town in America has stories about houses where weird things happen and scary places that children shouldn’t be in. These cautionary tales and folklore are just as powerful as the epic stories that tell us about the foundation of the world and the big things that move through it. These stories can be extremely important for helping you build your starting location when you put your campaign together, because these are the things that young adventurers are likely to go looking for.
Kernels of Truth
Most of these myths and legends have at least some basis in fact. This is especially true for the myths and legends you’re putting together for your campaign or world. People love to tell stories about the things they’ve seen, and if you ask 100 different people to tell you what happened about a specific event they saw, you’ll likely get 100 different, but similar answers. People emphasize the things that impressed them when they retell a story, and if you listen to all of those stories, you’ll get an approximation of what happened. The details are sketchy, but the overall story is there. Now apply the passage of time to this and numerous retellings of those stories and you can see how myths and legends change.
The Devil’s in the Details
Because most myths and legends speak of things that have passed out of living memory, the details get confused, the order of events gets mixed up, and the names are changed to either punish the innocent or protect the guilty. When you start digging into the myths and legends that shape the world you’re building or the adventure you’re writing, think about how this could have happened, and how it changes what you’re working on. Is that legendary hero actually a hero? Did the defenders of the holy wall arrive just in time to stop the Orcish horde from getting to the town? What actually happened is an interesting question to ask about any narrative and you can have an awful lot of fun digging into these stories.
A Thousand Stories
Every culture/place/area has its own stories and versions of how things came to be. Cultures that share an area can have very different myths and legends about their past, and this can lead to some fascinating ideas for creating adventures and world building. Imagine a situation where two neighboring kingdoms have been fighting for generations because of a legendary dispute between their ruling families. Both sides tell their version of the legend, which paints their rival as the darkest of villains while they remain innocent in the entire affair. What actually happened? Who’s responsible for the problem? Unraveling these secrets can lead to a host of adventures and even entire campaigns.
Example #1
So let’s take a look at a world creation Myth. This is the one for my Campaign Setting of Lakeport, and it’s told from the perspective of the ancient Fey Gods. Lakeport was not actually created by the Fey, but was found floating in the energies that coalesce around the Planes of Existence. They were the first to find this bundle of protoplasmic reality and shaped it to their liking. They created vast forests, high mountains, and deep places in the world for their own amusement. Into this lifeless world, they scattered their essence, creating a multitude of lesser fey creatures and ideas to fill the world. Where the Fey walked, they created life in their image.
Example #2
This one’s a lot smaller in scale, but can be used to springboard an adventure or two: North of here, along the Whitescar River, is a ruin of a town that was built two hundred years ago. They say that strange lights flicker among the buildings at night, and a dark cloud hangs over the town during the day. They say it was destroyed by the Cult of the Black Ocean and they still haunt the ruins to this day.
Conclusions for Today
Myths and Legends can create interesting world building set pieces. The legendary battleground where the ancient kings of men destroyed the undead hordes, the legendary waterfall where the spirits of water taught humans the secrets of agriculture, or the legendary vault of the Deep, where the treasure of a thousand worlds is hidden are all amazing set pieces areas you can build adventures or campaigns around. By that same token you can create smaller scale stories that are built on Myths of similar potency. Who exactly stole the Royal crest and where has it been hidden for the last 200 years? Why has the Abbey of the Black Heart gone silent? Mysteries abound when you dig into Mythic stories, and those mysteries can translate into very real adventure ideas. See what Myths and Legends you can build for your projects, and we’ll see you all next time. Game On, Game Fans.
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