![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Return to Barsaive.
Jan. 16th, 2023 01:26 pmI've written about Earthdawn before, as one of the great examples of what I called FASA Syndrome - great settings, mediocre rules. But in this case, FASA also managed to fumble the setting in my opinion. It all goes back to how some worldbuilders can't stand an empty space on the map. They have this need to fill every space and detail everything.
This brings me back to my concept of The Edge in settings. Adventures can only take place on the Edge. The Edge is a setting where civilization is either absent, an active threat, or simply unaware of the campaign setting because civilizations impose order. With my eyes, I have seen the oldest fragment of a legal code we know of, The Code of Ur-Nammu. It is from Mesopotamia and is written on tablets in the Sumerian language c. 2100–2050 BCE. Civilizations also make safe areas and expand those safe areas. This includes wars and genocides, of course, but also destroying predatory animals, taming rivers, improving communications and roads, patrolling those roads, and so on.
Edges are by nature unstable. The classic Wild West era lasted about 40-50 years. There was a period of about twenty years in China where things like pulp adventures would thrive. Both of these eras ended with the spread of effective law enforcement for good or bad, and social disapproval of typical "adventurer" activities. I think the longest edge I can think of in a nominally civilized area would be France during the Hundred Years' War when bands of unemployed knights rampaged around looting and blackmailing cities.
The point is that an Edge requires some absence of oversight. This brings me back to Barsaive. The default setting for Earthdawn and roughly in the same area as Ukraine. Let's review the main conceptual theme of the game.
Magic is cyclical. At the low end, magic ceases to work. The problem comes at the peak of the sine wave. when our world starts to reach that level, barriers drop and things known as Horrors can enter our world. Immensely powerful, amoral, and hungry for new victims. Cenobites meet Lovecraftian nightmares. But as the world began reaching this level a few centuries ago, a great wizard or team of wizards learned how to build a magical barrier to the Horrors. String physical defenses would be needed as well. All across the civilized world, men and dwarves began digging Kaers, deep fortified cities. There are real examples of these you can tour in Turkey.
Stores were stocked, subterranean farms started, and everyone was safely inside, the great gates of the Kaers were sealed with iron and magic across Barsaive. Well, not everyone. The immortal Obsidimen melted into their Life Stones to sleep, and the T'skrang made Kaers in deep lakes and hibernated. Many elves worked a great ritual to leave the Earth, while the few who refused paid a great price for their survival. No one knows where the Windlings hid. Then the Horrors came.
The siege lasted centuries. Every Kaer faced attacks that ranged from the brutal force of an angry god beating on the gates to subtle attempts to poison the minds of Kaerfolk. When the attacks finally ceased, when the Sorceror-Kings determined it was safe, the gates were opened. . .
. . .and the world was changed.
This is where the game should start, a recently opened Kaer that has established its first villages outside the gates and is ready to start sending out scouting parties. How has the world changed? Where are the other survivors? What Kaers failed, and why? Are there any signs of Horrors remaining? Do our old maps mean anything? Go forth and find out!
That would have been a great game. Instead, FASA gave us not only a Barsaive that was already up and running, with trade and flying ships, and all that, there was a pseudo-Mycenean empire already on the march! The Edge was already gone!
If I were to run this, I'd rewind to the one known dot on an unreliable map. A game of exploration, diplomacy, horror, and mysteries. Most Kaers would have failed, leaving much of Barsaive a howling wilderness. Ruined Kaers make great Places of Mystery; yeah, Kizen fell, but why does it look like the gates were breached from the inside?
You can do so much with this setting, build something lasting, and never really lose the Edge needed for a great campaign. One thing I'd add. If you've ever seen the 1981 Heavy Metal movie, you'll recall that in the final segment, Taarna, The evil Loc-Nar smashes into a mountain, creating a wave of mud that overwhelms a near-by village and turns them into monstrous humanoid mutants. There's the second phase of the campaign, learning of this growing army of "changed men" who capture entire villages and march them off to an unknown fate.
This brings me back to my concept of The Edge in settings. Adventures can only take place on the Edge. The Edge is a setting where civilization is either absent, an active threat, or simply unaware of the campaign setting because civilizations impose order. With my eyes, I have seen the oldest fragment of a legal code we know of, The Code of Ur-Nammu. It is from Mesopotamia and is written on tablets in the Sumerian language c. 2100–2050 BCE. Civilizations also make safe areas and expand those safe areas. This includes wars and genocides, of course, but also destroying predatory animals, taming rivers, improving communications and roads, patrolling those roads, and so on.
Edges are by nature unstable. The classic Wild West era lasted about 40-50 years. There was a period of about twenty years in China where things like pulp adventures would thrive. Both of these eras ended with the spread of effective law enforcement for good or bad, and social disapproval of typical "adventurer" activities. I think the longest edge I can think of in a nominally civilized area would be France during the Hundred Years' War when bands of unemployed knights rampaged around looting and blackmailing cities.
The point is that an Edge requires some absence of oversight. This brings me back to Barsaive. The default setting for Earthdawn and roughly in the same area as Ukraine. Let's review the main conceptual theme of the game.
Magic is cyclical. At the low end, magic ceases to work. The problem comes at the peak of the sine wave. when our world starts to reach that level, barriers drop and things known as Horrors can enter our world. Immensely powerful, amoral, and hungry for new victims. Cenobites meet Lovecraftian nightmares. But as the world began reaching this level a few centuries ago, a great wizard or team of wizards learned how to build a magical barrier to the Horrors. String physical defenses would be needed as well. All across the civilized world, men and dwarves began digging Kaers, deep fortified cities. There are real examples of these you can tour in Turkey.
Stores were stocked, subterranean farms started, and everyone was safely inside, the great gates of the Kaers were sealed with iron and magic across Barsaive. Well, not everyone. The immortal Obsidimen melted into their Life Stones to sleep, and the T'skrang made Kaers in deep lakes and hibernated. Many elves worked a great ritual to leave the Earth, while the few who refused paid a great price for their survival. No one knows where the Windlings hid. Then the Horrors came.
The siege lasted centuries. Every Kaer faced attacks that ranged from the brutal force of an angry god beating on the gates to subtle attempts to poison the minds of Kaerfolk. When the attacks finally ceased, when the Sorceror-Kings determined it was safe, the gates were opened. . .
. . .and the world was changed.
This is where the game should start, a recently opened Kaer that has established its first villages outside the gates and is ready to start sending out scouting parties. How has the world changed? Where are the other survivors? What Kaers failed, and why? Are there any signs of Horrors remaining? Do our old maps mean anything? Go forth and find out!
That would have been a great game. Instead, FASA gave us not only a Barsaive that was already up and running, with trade and flying ships, and all that, there was a pseudo-Mycenean empire already on the march! The Edge was already gone!
If I were to run this, I'd rewind to the one known dot on an unreliable map. A game of exploration, diplomacy, horror, and mysteries. Most Kaers would have failed, leaving much of Barsaive a howling wilderness. Ruined Kaers make great Places of Mystery; yeah, Kizen fell, but why does it look like the gates were breached from the inside?
You can do so much with this setting, build something lasting, and never really lose the Edge needed for a great campaign. One thing I'd add. If you've ever seen the 1981 Heavy Metal movie, you'll recall that in the final segment, Taarna, The evil Loc-Nar smashes into a mountain, creating a wave of mud that overwhelms a near-by village and turns them into monstrous humanoid mutants. There's the second phase of the campaign, learning of this growing army of "changed men" who capture entire villages and march them off to an unknown fate.
