History and Fantasy

 When designing Tirenia, I knew I wanted it to have a different feel to your standard fantasy RPG campaign. In many of them, all characters are exceptional, magical beings. This is a wonderful, empowering thing, and something that I wanted to keep. What I wanted to change was how magical the world around them was. If magic is commonplace, commodified, and readily accessible, is magic really magical? Citizens of a standard D&D world might not be surprised to see a monster in a zoo or circus, while historically Florence went crazy when they got a giraffe! There's famous essays out there which you can search up about how even Gandalf, one of the greatest wizards in fantasy fiction, only needs to be about 5th level, and he's regarded with awe by everyone around him.

It's the intention of Tirenia to be more strongly inspired by history than a typical game, with magic that's rarer but more powerful when it shows up. Keeping the game at low levels lets the players feel more grounded; they are heroic individuals, but they can still be hurt. Their powers feel mighty compared to the world around them, who by-and-large lack those powers, making them movers and shakers even from first level. I think of the genre as being 'historic urban fantasy' – there's a lot of contrasts that can be made thematically with Rivers of London or The Dresden Files.

That said, we did decide that we wanted the world to be more fantastical than our world, which is everyone's point of comparison. The two main 'commonplace fantasy' elements that we decided to include were the animal-headed people and the regional city effects. Cinocefali, or dog-headed people, are a staple of medieval travel writing; anthropomorphic animals are a staple of the fantasy genre. As we've made a lot of the other traditional fantasy races much rarer, we decided to play up animal people instead! Meanwhile, we decided that each city would have an environmental effect that was the result of the dragons living there. The dragons may be hidden, but their rule is thus unavoidable. So the city of the blue dragons now has a permanent electric storm; the water in the canals of the red dragons' city is boiling hot and steaming, and so on.

The use of history is also meant to ground the game in realism, to make the fantastical elements stand out more clearly. Thinking about the economics and day-to-day lives of our characters, and everyone else in the world, heightens immersion. Who are their family? What food are they eating? What are their religious habits? This is inspired by the games like Runequest where characters take part in the regular rituals and activities of their tribe, which accentuates the exceptional activities. One thing that I've discovered in all my reading is that history is a wonderful source of inspiration – one of my campaigns was based on the actual belief that Venice was so sinful, it would fall into the sea like a modern-day Sodom or Gomorrah! But even smaller things like the sumptuary laws or the importance of the salt trade are wonderful background colour and grist for adventures.

Many people are leery of hearing that a game is more historical, and for good reason. Fifteenth century Italy was not great for women, people of colour, LGBTQIA, the disabled, and the poor. I know some people get nervous at the prospect of a 'more historical' game, because it can be used as an excuse for prejudice. I deliberately made the Christ-analogue figure female in order to remove sexism from the table, and have made sure to include LGBTQIA characters throughout my campaigns. It's easy to look at history and find examples of exceptional individuals from all these categories - Catherine Sforza, Leo Africanus, Benedetta Carlini, or Michelangelo Buonarroti, for instamce. Like all things, the extent to which you're historical or ahistorical is best discussed with your players, to make them happy, but 'historical accuracy' should never be an excuse for hate.

Image: 'Dog-Headed People of the Nicobar Islands.' From the Itinerarium of Odoric of Pordenone, c. 1410.


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