Hacking Out of the Abyss: An Overview

I currently run three D&D groups. One is a 4^th Edition group going through Reavers of Harkenwold, one is a 5^th Edition group playing in Talon's Height (my Haughty Fantasy campaign setting, see elsewhere on this blog), and the last is a 5^th Edition group which has just started Out of the Abyss. There's a partial crossover between the 4e group and the Out of the Abyss group. These are all quite different campaigns with different feels, different strengths, different weaknesses. Technically, we've not started OotA yet; I've run three of the four solo prologue sessions, as well as the actual “session 1” which trapdoored the players into the Out of the Abyss campaign. They were captured by the Drow; this wasn't a foregone conclusion, though I suspected the players would be insufficiently cautious in a world/setting which is dangerous. (One of the OotA players has plenty of first-person CRPG experience, the other three are 4e veterans – neither Skryim nor 4e are particularly dangerous worlds.)

Let's talk about developing and running this campaign. OotA players, look away now.

Why Out of the Abyss?

Out of the Abyss is a really fun campaign book. In it, the PCs begin as prisoners of Drow (dark elf) slavers, must escape, and then travel the Underdark (the strange fantastical underground world of D&D), discovering slowly that the Demon Lords have escaped the Abyss and are causing havoc. It's up to the PCs to stop them!

The characters start in a fascinating situation, without gear and imprisoned by very dangerous enemies. They quickly gather a strange cast of NPC companions, who they are likely to travel through a variety of strange locations with. Those locations are great, particularly in the first half – a Myconid village infiltrated by the Demon Lady of Fungus, a Duergar city with a bunch of mad subplots and which offers a genuinely new (to me) look at Duergar society, a Kuo-Toa settlement with religious factions, and so forth. Players get to make interesting decisions between factions. Madness creeps at the edge of everything, with the Demon Lords unleashed on the Underdark.

I was genuinely excited when I started flicking through a store copy of this book. I felt my imagination expand. I thought the idea of putting players in an utterly strange and hostile environment, without the sort of adventuring infrastructure they are used to, was a great concept and sounded like enormous fun. It suits 5e's shift to a more traditional model of a dangerous world. Thematically, it is a clever mashup of traditional High Fantasy/D&D tropes (destructive Demon Lords, complex civilizations, etc) and the weirder side of the genre (the bizarre cast of NPC companions is the best example).

I knew I wanted to run this, and soon.

Why Hack Out of the Abyss?

It's hardly perfect, however. It requires an enormous amount of prep; it cannot, I think, be run as a great adventure straight from the book, though probably sections of it work alone (the actual escape from the Drow outpost, Velkynvelve, should more or less work on its own, though it does lazily suggest relying on a deus ex machina to give the players a chance to escape).

That's not my only issue, however. A disorganised book requires DM prep. But the setting and story aren't perfect. To begin with, the second half of the book is a lot less vivid than the first, at both a story and a setting level. Some of the locales are well-done (well, Gravenhollow is), but a lot of ground is covered with very little flavourful detail. The story becomes a lot more impressionistic, with some cool moments (Maze Engine, players playing as the Demon Lords fighting each other), but little else of supreme value.

More relevantly at the start of the campaign (who knows if we'll ever get halfway through the adventure as written!), the Underdark is a weird mix of fantastic environs and frustratingly generic setting-filler. Even the random encounter tables have that feel – oh, here's a travelling Orog mystic seeking to understand the madness encroaching the Underdark, here's an insane giant stuck in a tunnel, so far so good... here's some random Orc raiders. Haughty Fantasy doesn't require using literally the same tropes everywhere – indeed, part of the Talon's Height manifesto is having the players engage with familiar tropes (albeit refreshed) initially but increasingly engaging with a fantasy world they are not entirely expert with.

There are also some clunky or non-existent rules. Do I have to track combat actions and stats for the dozens of NPCs who might travel with the party? That's obviously impracticable. Tracking rations and foraging? Rules are very vague. The actual physical environment of the Underdark is barely described – are we talking semi-realistic cave systems, a bunch of gigantic caverns linked by linear road-like passages, or what?

All my – all your – games should be personalised and made situationally more relevant. Some of this is accomplished at a plot level, whether it's by adding factions or using PC backgrounds to create side stories or important NPCs. Another part of this is to do with enriching the setting – no published adventure exists that won't benefit from you adding monsters or cities or obstacles to it that you enjoy. Finally, as this is a game and it has game-ish - “ludic” - elements, rules improvements are an entirely proper part of you running the game. On this basis, I've turned to two resources – Veins of the Earth, the Underdark book for the Basic D&D hack Lamentations of the Flame Princess; and the Companion System, available at the DM's Guild.

Using the Companion System and Veins of the Earth

The Companion System (CS) is how I will be dealing with the myriad NPCs who may end up accompanying the party in their attempt to escape the Underdark. It's not a productive use of either my time or players' to administer potentially a dozen or more full statcards for NPCs, and that'd be a great way to make combats very long. CS provides a simple solution to this – each NPC, or group of similar NPCs, has a card with a very simple selection of information. They each have a generic ability that can be used by the player holding the card, and they also have abilities that become available if they are Loyal to the party or have been Inspired by a conversation with a PC (which encourages roleplaying!). They also have a number of Injuries they can take before being knocked out/killed – these Injuries are related to things like area effect damage and the PC they are attached to being seriously harmed. There is a full set of Companion cards available for Out of the Abyss, so this will be how players utilise the NPCs in combat and, where relevant, outside of it.

Where the CS is a “bolt-on” addressing one specific area of rules clunk, my use of Veins of the Earth is going to be a bit more thoroughgoing. VotE has two big take-aways: some amazing “monsters” and monster types, and some clever mechanical devices to make the Underdark feel more claustrophobic, more dangerous, more real and more fantastic at the same time.

Monster-wise, I'll be using (with some modifications): Alkalion, the Archeans and their Atomic Bees, Castilian Caddis Larvae, possibly the Civilopede (which veers a little farther to the wacky side than I am mostly aiming for), the Cromagnogolem, Fossil Vampires, the Knotsmen, Mantis Shrimp, Olms, the Oneirocetacean, Psychomycosis Megaspores, a Silichominid, maybe the Tachyon Troll, a Trilobite-Knight, and Ultraviolet Butterflies. Additionally, I'm adding Deep Janeen elementals and using some of the material from the Derro and Dvargir sections of the “civilised species” section. The colour in those monster names alone might be enough to convince you of their value!

I'll be using some of the above as additional civilised Underdark races. The players may come across Archean and Olm settlements (the Archeans of the Nucleid Apiary obviously tend Atomic Bees), and the Deep Janeen are power players in the setting (though one influential one, the Timeless Lumitor of All Knowledge, uses a Psychomycosis Megaspore as his steward, little knowing that the Megaspore has been subverted by the Demon Lady of Fungus, Zuggtmoy). There is a mysterious Trilobite Knight in the deep, who may be impressed enough by their virtue to join them and aid them in all extremities. Knotsmen slink between Underdark settlements, seeking their fleeing children so they might sell the souls of the young to save their own. They might even meet a Silichominid explorer – these silicon-based creatures from the fire at the heart of the earth have to wear pressure suits lest they explode, and are endlessly, innocently curious about the strange “world above” they have reached!

Other additions will be less...amenable to the player characters.

If you're wondering what on earth any of these are, the book (as PDF or hardcopy) is well worth it.

Rules-wise, I'll be using the following systems: Encumbrance, Lamp Initiative, Light-as-Currency, and possibly some version of the Climbing rules. The Encumbrance rules discard weight limits, and instead move to an item slot system based on the total of the Modifiers of 5 of the 6 Abilities (excluding Charisma). Being smart or having common sense might give you an idea of how to store your spare blanket roll efficiently. This is great. Lamp Initiative emphasizes the all-encompassing darkness – the only people who roll Initiative are those with light-sources; allies within the pool of light can use that Initiative value. Everyone else drops to the bottom of the Initiative order. Light-as-Currency posits that 1 hour of light = 1 silver piece; that is to say, oil which will last 10 hours is worth 1 gold piece. This is both immersive and sensible. Light is probably in many ways more fungible in the Underdark than money! It is also semi-rare. Lastly, there are difficulty rules for Climbing, including lowering difficulties by spending time preparing, which will probably sometimes be relevant – climbing complex chimneys, for instance.

I'll also add one or two of my own house rules, which apply more generally in my games. In 5e terms, the Wilderness is still significantly less threatening than in, say, 2e (and even 2e had the “cast spells at rest” fudge); guaranteed complete healing and the relatively low chance of a night-time random encounter under most systems means that even serious fights can be “slept off”. Emphasizing the importance of (more-or-less) “safe” lodgings, and their relative rarity, is key in any wilderness-focussed game, especially one in the strange and inhospitable Underdark. On that basis, I will be using the following house rule: PCs have “Sleep Hitdice” equalling their ordinary HD. They roll these at the end of a Long Rest. The result is the HP regained on that rest (which may or may bring them to full health). Healing spells and standard HD can also be used to top this up, though that then uses them (Spell Slot, HD) for the day, as per normal.

Anyway, hopefully this has offered some insight into “hacking” a published adventure. I'll post more as the campaign develops, with reflections on how I have run things, and on the use of new locations and monsters.

A Brief Introduction to Talon's Height

A Brief Introduction to Talon's Height –

A Campaign Setting for 1st-5^th Level Adventurers

Talon's Height is an ongoing project, both in play and in writing, by myself with sturdy assistance from my friend Nathan. It's an attempt at developing a low-level sandbox/hexcrawl with a Haughty Fantasy feel. I'll offer a brief overview of the locations below, but first, let's get some headline items out there.

Beginner-Friendly

If this ever emerges from its cocoon as a complete product, I want it to be a beginner-friendly setting. If anyone should need an alternative Starter Set for DnD 5^th Edition (for which this is statted), I would hope that they would be able to basically run Talon's Height “out of the box”. I'll need to work out what this means – especially striking a balance between cramming too much direction in and leaving newbies to flail – but one aspect of this being a Haughty Fantasy setting is that it should not only be approachable for players, but also those willing to run the game. One thing this will require is a reasonable introduction to some of the more complex elements of the setting – such as faction play, setting development, or stronghold-building. These aren't meaningfully covered in (say) the 5^th Edition's Dungeon Master's Guide. If I want to help new DMs run a wider, deeper game than they might otherwise, I'll need to provide the help.

Haughty Fantasy

Talon's Height was conceived in three non-linear stages. First (and initially), it was conceived as a “normal high fantasy” trapdoor to start my players in during our Out of the Abyss campaign. They would spend a bit of 1^st Level time ambling about and experiencing normal fantasy (and fantasy RPG) tropes, and then have those thoroughly upset as they were captured by the Drow (or – if they should escape them – as they followed them down to their base). Second, when required at short notice to run a variable-length game at the games store at which I work, I took out the Talon's Height material and began expanding it in relation to reason the third – making a High Fantasy setting that would be familiar-yet-new.

That was the beginning of my thoughts about Haughty Fantasy. I wanted to run a setting that wasn't entirely unfamiliar to new players, and which gave them an enjoyable chance to experience the old tropes, but I also wanted to put new spins on some of that material. This led to some very serious thinking about the nature of the genre, and then, in a matter of days, some 40,000 words of setting material. Talon's Height, then, is my (limited, failing) attempt at a Haughty Fantasy setting – see my previous post for a definition of that.

Factions, Theme, Plot

A major element of the Talon's Height setting are the factions, whose desires operate at crosspurposes and who will interact with the adventurers. When left to their own devices, the factions fight, and extend their reach and power so far as they are able. They will fight each other as well as any awkward heroes. A major theme of the factions is that they are all concerned with order – or, at least, control. They represent different views of law – how law originates, what it is valuable for, and how it is exercised.

The leaders of the factions are: Lady Jana Truesight (Lawful Good, local ruler, great-granddaughter of the founding Lord of Talon's Height, looking to defend her own); Moritz Torrynton (Lawful Evil, leader of the Torrynton Compact of devil-supplicants, who seek wealth and more stability than Jana is offering); Osswald Dehazar (Neutral Evil, a bitter man whose family have left him to stew, who is turning to necromancy to assert control over those who would defy him in life); Targyn (Lawful Evil/Neutral, leader of the Dragon's Tooth Kobolds, who seek to build a stable Kobold civilisation independent of dragons); the Prince Most Magnificent of Shimmering Smoke (Lawful Evil, an efreeti prince who is breaking the bonds on his magical prison and seeks “justice” against those who slighted him); and Nimthur (Lawful Evil, a blue dragon who has concluded his glory and intelligence entitle him to rulership of the region).

All six of these represent tried and true tropes of Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy roleplaying in general. There is a power-hungry dragon, an imprisoned evil, a mad necromancer, and all the rest of it. But my intention is to – one – liven those up via the interaction between them and the players, and – two – slightly twist some of them. The Kobold, who many or most adventurers will seek to kill, is a once-in-a-thousand-years figure, a force of personality able to resist draconic influence, and a leader genuinely seeking to build something worthwhile. The Necromancer can, with difficulty, be talked back from the brink. The Torrynton Compact have a point that the Lordship is hardly stable as it is. And all of these factions, not just Lady Jana, can be negotiated with – Nimthur will hire adventurers to aid him against other factions, Dehazar will engage them to bring him parts for experiments, and so forth.

The way in which the different “plots” of the factions advance – in the system I have outlined – is via a rough link to the level of the characters. When characters level up (which I recommend via milestoning), each faction has a plot event, which the DM can trigger when appropriate (or behind the scenes if players never get near the relevant area). If a faction has been removed from play, then its event doesn't occur. The final stage of these various plots is the “Plot Advance Finale”, which is a special event – think a “raid” in World of Warcraft terms. Some of these are combat-focussed, some are not.

Strongholds, Hirelings, Romances, Friendships

Talon's Height is a place that can be settled and that can be affected by player actions – not just via their adventuring deeds but by their social actions. Talon's Height is a setting where adventurers can build strongholds, hire mercenaries and gain followers, make friends and fall in love. These are not just roleplaying opportunities, but many have real mechanical effects (outlined in the future). There are romantic story-threads between NPCs in the settings, as well as as many opportunities for PCs to find love as the DM likes. Friends of the characters spend their free time with them and will aid them. Though Talon's Height can be played by groups of tragic loners or by murderhobos, it is also a place that is worth settling. The tortured hero is a fascinating trope, but not inherently a Haughty Fantasy one. The idea of building something from nothing is, however. Adventurers in Talon's Height can do that.

Toolboxes, Not Hammers

Most “problems” in the setting have multiple potential solutions. Very few require combat. You can ally with the bad guys, or you can subvert or limit their plots indirectly. You can help people in different ways, and many quests have optimally non-violent solutions – depending on the aims of the adventurers, of course. The world of Talon's Height is not full of nails to be smashed. It can reward many approaches.

The Five “Regions” of the Lordship of Talon's Height

These descriptions offer a brief overview of the region's key locations and plot highlights, with some sense of local themes and how a DM can use the area – though I won't give you every secret here.

The Long Moor (5 Keyed Locations, 62 Random Encounters):

The northernmost region of the Lordship of Talon's Height is now largely out of touch with the Lordship proper. There is one large human settlement in the midst of this tinmining country, where the moors are intermittently riven by deep ravines. Recently, the Mists which have historically swamped the ravines have risen, covering the Moor itself. The town has been nearly cut off from its neighbours, including the monks of the Abbey of the White Silence, who provide it with much of its food. The monks have been slain by the beasts in the Mists, which means the seal on the magical prison-dungeon underneath the Abbey is degrading. That is pleasing and helpful for its inhabitant – the wicked efreet, the Prince Most Magnificent of Shimmering Smoke, who with his court of elementals is now beginning to influence the world outside.

The town itself is riven by rivalry between two families, the two families most instrumental in the foundation of the village. Their rivalry is somehow connected to the rise of the Mists, but its root and possible solutions are hard to discover at best. There is a Drow – accused of murder – in the town prison awaiting trial by the Lord Abbot (who isn't coming), whilst strange travelling merchants have been trapped here by the Mists. Blame is being thrown around at the drop of a hat, and it will only take a spark to cause an explosion.

Meanwhile, in the north-west of the Moor is the entrance to the great Underdark City of Glimmerdwell, ruled by a council of Deep Janeen (from Veins of the Earth), powerful elemental lords, who live in labyrinthine compounds and dwell on architecture as much as they do on their interminable politics. Here Shield Dwarves and Duergar live in uneasy peace together, kept civil by the power of the Deep Janeen and rewarded by the mineral wealth of the surrounding area and the renowned Crystal Market. Gnomes are also a significant part of the population – with Svirfneblin in the deep and Rock Gnomes running the surface outpost. Glimmerdwell has not heard from its surface neighbours in some time due to the Mists.

There are also two significant dungeon ruins: one is the home a Goblin tribe who are being forced out by others monsters; the other is the ruin of a Hill Giant King's Steading with factions of monsters ruling different sections. Aboveground, fearless of the Mists, is an exiled prince from a nomadic tribe, waiting for the moment to return to reclaim his own.

The Brightwood (12 Keyed Locations, 20 Random Encounters):

South of the Long Moor lie the hills and woods of the Brightwood. This is a “monster forest” rife with tree-dwelling bandits, witches of the wood (some friendly, some not), sentient beaverfolk, a myconid village, a few hardy foresters, and the bases of two of the major factions – Nimthur's Lair and the Dragon's Tooth, home of Targyn's nascent Kobold civilisation. Adventurers will be sent here to gather ingredients for merchants and wizards, to clear out monsters, and to meet powerful potential allies.

The Dragon's Tooth, home of the local independent Kobolds, is a small low-level dungeon (8 rooms plus outlying patrols) inspired a little by “Tucker's Kobolds” with a variety of tricks and traps. However, it is also – upon investigation, whether through slaughter or diplomacy – obviously not just a typical monster dungeon. The Kobolds are beginning to farm and keep goats, and their King, Targyn, is a remarkable individual who has somehow defied Nimthur's call to join him. Not all of his lieutenants feel the same way.

The High Lake is inhabited by the Weaverfolk, who trade both with the people of the Long Moor and the Dragon's Tooth. They are sentient beaverfolk who have built a great dam over the years. If this dam was released, the released waters would partially flood Nimthur's Lair.

Nimthur's Lair, then – a great sandstone quarry in former ages, now the home of a Blue Dragon who intends to rule the area. Nimthur has gathered various peoples to aid him, directly ruling over Kobolds, Lizardfolk, and Goblin refugees from the Long Moor, and assisted by allied Duergar. This will be a fairly significant dungeon with verticality and a complex environment.

Talon's Height (17 Keyed Locations, 12 Random Encounters):

The seat of the Lordship, built by Lady Jana's great-grandfather after the Spellplague. Still only really a large village, but it feels bustling from its location at the junction of the Trade Road and King's Road, and from local farmers coming in to trade. In the centre of its Market Square is the Silver Spear, the great marble tower inhabited by Lady Jana, a powerful wizard and the local ruler. She is talented but over-strained by the many problems facing her people.

There are a couple of low-level encounters in Talon's Height, which if conquered offer long-term possibilities to the players. Slaying the Giant Rats in the biggest inn's basement – controlled by a horrid Ratking in a cavern beneath – will give the players long-term free accommodation. The Xvarts who have taken over the Shrine of Sehanine, a couple of miles from town, are an obstacle in the way of the players gaining a potential Temple Stronghold.

There is also a second major player based in the town – Moritz Torrynton, leader of the Torrynton Compact. He has gathered together envious and greedy people from round the Lordship and made them his junior partners in a powerful deal. They have made a contract with a Barbed Devil, who is assisting them with the gathering of wealth and magical power, but requires from them the disruption of the Lawful Good rule of the area. Adventurers will likely need a combination of investigation and combat to defeat Torrynton, whose own long-term goal is to rule the Lordship. They might, of course, be hired by him instead.

Puddleton (7 Keyed Locations, 10 Random Encounters):

The second-largest settlement in the Lordship, governed by Alderman Jedba Reedbottom on behalf of Lady Jana. There is giant alligator living in the underground river who is causing trouble. More significantly, Osswald Dehazar – whose wife is away on a “long holiday” with her family and whose son works at a University far away and does not visit home – lives here. In his bitterness at his family turning away from him, he has chosen to gain control over people – via necromancy. People are easier to control when dead. He might, perhaps, be turned back from this dark and deadly path.

Cabbage Country (10 Keyed Locations, 20 Random Encounters):

At first glance, boring fields of corn and cabbage. At a closer look, a strange and often dark place. Agents of the Torrynton Compact, Nimthur, and the Prince Most Magnificent are at work here, but that is by no means the most dangerous thing here, nor the strangest.

A civilised settlement of Faeries lives in a gigantic hollow acorn, whilst an Earth Genasi kibbutz has been built beside a river. A mad Eladrin druid lives in a great termite mound on friendly terms with the inhabitants. In one village, the Autumn Equinox festival is infused with strange magic, turning revellers into vegetable-headed folk for the duration and casting them in strange stories.

But there are darker things still. A deranged fertility cult worships Orcus, immolating sacrifices on the Winter Solstice. Visitors, however, will think this a lovely and friendly village, and be encouraged to stay as long as they like. That is not the limit of Orcus' power here; the real source of his influence is a sealed Fane underneath a ruined Gatehouse, which might prove an excellent Keep Stronghold, but which has dungeons beneath hiding a Drow Outpost, the Fane to Orcus, and passages to the Underdark and an underground water system.

Fin

That's it for now. What do you think? Next Talon's Height post, I'll put up the DM's Hexmap with a Mapkey giving an overview of all of the keyed locations.

Retrieving High Fantasy; or, the Haughty Fantasy Project

What is High Fantasy?

High fantasy is a type of fantasy setting. It is not, in tabletop RPG terms (and that is what I will be discussing here), a playstyle or type of campaign; rather, it relates to the sorts of fictional sources the setting draws heavily upon. “Sword and sorcery fantasy”, as a setting, is often a low-magic, baffling, dangerous world. What little magic there is is often in the hands of tyrannical rulers or madmen. It may be that amazing technology rots away in the background of a crumbled civilization (and here we most obviously cross over with “weird fantasy”). Typical touchstones for sword and sorcery fantasy are the Dying Earth novels of Jack Vance or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales. In D&D, Athas – the world of Dark Sun – is the archetypal “sword and sorcery” setting. So what is high fantasy? What does it draw upon?

Most obviously, it draws upon J.R.R. Tolkien (though, so far as the sad fall of civilisation and loss of knowledge goes, he influences modern sword and sorcery too – perhaps more than some would realize). From Tolkien we get the savage orcs and goblins, the noble, wise, and tragic elves, the mail-armoured dwarven craftsmen, the world-shaping magical items. The idea that there are wise elders and ancient evils and high matters all going on in the background comes from Tolkien. The film trilogy by Peter Jackson cannot be discounted in the re-dissemination of this theme.

The second chief source for high fantasy is Dungeons & Dragons itself. Our modern aesthetic of the high fantastical world is heavily shaped by the concept of bands of monsters in their lairs, brave adventurers setting out to right wrongs, and the rest. Significantly, the monsters of the high fantastic world – often tribal, generally greedy, sometimes comical – are the result of the Gygaxian robbery of mythological dictionaries as much as or more than they are the creation of Tolkien.

The third place to look is the vast array of bastard offspring of these two sources in wider fantasy media. In book terms, we could look at Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, or Stephen King's Dark Tower, or Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant Chronicles. More recently, Brandon Sanderson broadly speaking writes high fantasy novels. In other media, Star Wars (the Western + Tolkienian magic + fantastic space), the Warhammer universe (the first great high fantasy product after D&D), and World of Warcraft are good exemplars. Not all of these are perfect fits for the “genre definition” I'm about to give (the Dark Tower particularly is as Vancean as it is Tolkienian), but they are a good basis.

High Fantasy is often “high magic” - magic users are common and have potential access to incredible power – though not always definitively. The world is inhabited by monsters drawing on the iconic Tolkien-Gygax tradition. Gods are real and engaged in the world. There are functional civilisations (which often are a pastiche of medieval Europe), though they may be in dire need of help. The fantastic is, broadly speaking, normal at least to adventurers (the Hobbits and Covenant and the Ka-Tet start as newcomers but become old hands in time) – its relative normality does not mean it is any safer to villagers, nor that villagers understand what it is. People believe in heroes, and sometimes their belief is rewarded.

In terms of D&D settings, the two most famous ones – Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms – are High Fantasy. Wizards teleport across continents, gods live on an accessible plane in palaces, cowardly-but-cruel goblins ravage the land in service of a greedy chromatic dragon. Orders of paladins swear oaths of service against chaos. One can see “Law vs Chaos”, the great D&D dichotomy, quite clearly laid out in these settings. Other “high fantasy” D&D settings include Mystara, Dragonlance, Birthright, and to a degree even Eberron (which is a really a sort of hybrid)

What is the Problem with High Fantasy? Should it be Saved?

The criticism goes like this: the old tropes are stale, static, dead. No-one is excited by goblins anymore, who at any rate only exist to be killed by low-level chumps who are only slightly less incompetent than the moronic goblins who started a fight at poor odds. The old magic of the genre has gone, and must be refreshed.

There is something to be said for this. We are at the point where rats in basements are a running gag in video game RPGs, and goblins are understood to be low-level enemies waiting to be butchered. It is also undoubtedly true that a local lord giving you a quest with the summary “Goblins have begun marauding against outlying villages” or a farmer complaining about wolf problems gives one little sense of wonder – of fantasy.

We can see – broadly – two lines of response to this problem: genre exploration and retrocloning. The former camp looks to other subgenres of fantasy to refresh the experience, the latter looks to recapture what made D&D specifically so good (for some players) back in the beginning.

Subgenre Exploration: Amongst computer RPGs, Dragon Age and Pillars of Eternity touch on dark fantasy, and invent entire worlds and ecosystems brimming and brooding to go with them. Dark Souls looks to fantasy horror, and turns it to 11+schlock. (Part of the popularity of the Games of Thrones TV series, on a related note, is I think to do with its sword & sorcery feel – it's part of what people mean by “gritty.) In tabletop RPGs, Blue Rose rests on romantic fantasy, Starfinder science fantasy. Of course, the creators of these games are not necessarily thinking “hey, how can I refresh the experience of a game like D&D?”, but they all obviously live in a tradition far more strongly influenced by the D&D lineage than by – say – World of Darkness, Shadowrun, or Call of Cthulhu. Materially, they do not offer new spins on any of those other traditions. They allow a player to enjoy a game like D&D, with sword-wielding or spell-slinging protagonists exploring dungeons and fighting monsters.

Retrocloning: For some players and DMs, what they enjoyed about D&D can't be found in the dense tomes of the last few editions. Slim rules, simple character sheets, and a world of weird possibility. Walk in any direction and find something strange that could kill you or could be convinced to give you a bizarre alchemical reagent. B2 Keep on the Borderlands is archetypal here. Often, in this mode, life is cheap and adventurers die regularly. Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Labyrinth Lord are two obvious B/X D&D hacks to offer as examples here, as is the thriving “OSR” (Old School Revival or Renaissance) blogosphere. There is subgenre exploration here – often of weird fantasy – but it most often interacts with a desire to recapture the experience of 1981 D&D.

Back to high fantasy. There are excellent and exciting alternatives to it, filling a vacuum left by the staleness of high fantasy. Why worry about the dead, one might ask, when we have better things to be getting on with. But is high fantasy finished? Can it be saved? Should it be saved? Before answering that, we should untangle two separate issues, and question one myth.

First: The clichés of high fantasy storyline are not in fact the same thing as the elements of high fantasy worlds. Lumpen questgivers mumbling lines in CRPGs to get you to go and do something doesn't serve the world well, but it also doesn't invalidate the monsters or plot elements involved – nor do dull, flat, lazy dungeon designs in a module. Another stale tale of a young farmboy saving the world doesn't make functional city-states threatened by encroaching supernatural danger uninteresting.

Second: “It wasn't really like that in 1981.” It is simply not the case that everyone who enjoyed D&D in 1981 enjoyed low-combat, explicitly weird settings – it's not even true, I'd wager, of all those who enjoyed Moldvay B/X D&D. Tactical miniature combat was how D&D started, and it seems to have been perfectly common as a form of play during the era of the Basic boxes and 1^st Edition AD&D. Many of those who found their games weird but wonderful were enjoying their brother's weird descriptions and the social atmosphere in the basement as much as the inherent freshness of goblins. Of course, I don't doubt that many of the retrocloners are well aware that their picture of “OD&D” is semi-fictive, and I'm not seeking to patronize them. My point is really that their work is often better than both OD&D itself and in fact their brother or dad or roomie's campaign. They may have rediscovered part of what they enjoyed, but they have simultaneously made a new and separate thing, and not salvaged every gem.

There definitely have been recent, or relatively recent, attempts to refresh High Fantasy proper. Numenera by Monte Cook is science fantasy set in a medieval-seeming setting, whilst Pillars of Eternity is a dark fantasy with hints of high fantasy clarity. I can't get so many images from Morrowind out of my head – finding strange Dwemer ruins, a race I barely understood and could never meet except through their artefacts; great mushroom forests; factions with ambivalent morality – and it was still, definitively, high fantasy.

There are also definitely things worth saving in the genre. Is it bad for players to enjoy recognizing monsters? Are tropes inherently bad things unless utterly subverted? I don't think so. I think it's okay for players to want to travel to Great Trading City, capital of the Empire of Generica. I think intelligent dragons, greedy or power-hungry, mocking foolish heroes who enter their lairs, are a great foe. When you're introducing new players to the hobby, you could do worse than having a clichéd five-room dungeon delve of Just Another Farmer-Kidnapping Cult. Familiarity has purpose, and we enjoy tradition because we live inside it and are children of it.

So what I might do a little of here – via setting writing and theory discussion – is try to reclaim Generica for DMs and players. Let's call it, until we get a better phrase, Haughty Fantasy.

Excursus: Setting vs Playstyle

Setting does not equate to playstyle. Playstyle includes a lot of things – the interests of the players, the social atmosphere of the game, wider story ideas the DM might have – but it is not the case that “sword and sorcery” as a setting equates to “adventurers are dangerous, amoral thieves, out to rob everyone and live like princes” nor “adventurers are ants upon the dying flesh of a world which dwarfs their comprehension”. Indeed, Dark Sun (mentioned above) is a setting whose first adventure involves a (canonically successful!) rebellion against an evil Sorcerer-King, led by mostly heroic characters. This is heroic or perhaps epic fantasy, thematically. Equally, a “high fantasy” setting may seem to equate to game about great quests or heroic deeds, but why ought it? The roots of the sub-genre are broad, and Greyhawk was hardly a heroic fantasy campaign in its earliest days.

The Principles of Haughty Fantasy

The World is Familiar

Players will recognize many elements of the world of Haughty Fantasy if they have some grounding in the broad fantasy tradition. There will be (may be?) thrills of recognition as they realize they are fighting their first ever Goblin, or when they meet a grumpy Dwarven smith. The Haughty Fantasy world exists in continuity with the Forgotten Realms, Warhammer's Old World, and Middle Earth.

The World is Strange

Despite the familiar touchstones, the Haughty Fantasy world is also strange and will surprise players. Some of this comes from simple DMing techniques which layer a little mystery onto proceedings – questgivers don't tell adventurers “please go and kill 8 Goblins”, they report on the savage yellow men who have taken up residence in the ruined gatehouse and are stealing cattle. Some of it, however, will come from more surprising elements of the world (surprising to someone whose context is Peter Jackson and World of Warcraft), which cohere with high fantasy tropes but are distinct from them. In the ruined gatehouse the adventurers find a talking sword whose only other magical property is the ability to identify other magical weapons. They also find wall paintings, heavily damaged, of humanoid beaverpeople who apparently live at the lake nearby.

The World is Magical

Magic is real and powerful in the world of Haughty Fantasy, and is not solely in the hands of the wicked. It is not ubiquitous outside of the great metropoli – in rural areas most peasants might know OF the druid of the wood, but they haven't met him. Lucky market towns might have a Cleric, but most such places will just have a priest or healer-woman who might, in extremis, be able to produce a Healing Potion they bought from a passing trader. Of course, in a large city, there will be guilds of wizards, magic elevators, and powerful High Priests casting Raise Dead on (likely-paying) adventurers. The world being magical does mean that magic should feel magical, not de rigeur – though there is more magic in most Haughty Fantasy worlds than in Tolkien's work, there should still be a sense of grandeur and mystery to the magic.

The World is Unpredictable

Though the world is magical, and there is apparently great capacity for control over it, it is also unpredictable. This works in all sorts of ways – “monsters” have desires and beliefs that seems adequate to them, and may sometimes be reasoned with; magic does not always work as you expect, and can be a master as well as a servant; dungeons and wilderness are dangerous places with surprises aplenty even for the apparently powerful (sure, you have 40HP, but a rockslide whilst you're sleeping could still do for you). At one level this is again just good DM technique – the world should be interactive, interesting, full of possibility rather than overprescribed linearity. However, it is also intentionally a beat those running Haughty Fantasy games ought to hit – a contrast to the flying carpets and apparently casual healing of fatal diseases.

Conclusion

I intend to use this blog to post some some examples of Haughty Fantasy settings and adventures, as well as write essays on RPGs and worldbuilding. I'll probably have two concurrent “series” of Haughty Fantasy world material – the campaign sandbox of Talon's Height, my “generic Haughty Fantasy” setting, and my hack of the adventure book Out of the Abyss (from Wizards of the Coast) utilising the OSR product Veins of the Earth (by Patrick Stuart). If you're playing in either of those, don't read those posts!