Adventures in Amateur Game Design, part 6: Setting

A quick sketch I did of Great Fjord on whiteboard. More will be told of this place later.

I know I haven't blogged or said anything about this game in a while. That's partly because I hit something of a wall. Up until know, I haven't talked about setting or story. Mostly, that's because I've had no idea of what to do for the story or setting. The only thing that I really knew that I wanted to do was magic+vikings. It wasn't until this past week that I had an idea of what I could do.

Reading The Magician King I was struck by something. It takes place in a magical land called Fillory. To the north of Fillory is Loria, which is often the aggressor against Fillory. Not much is ever said about Loria, it's merely mentioned. There was one tidbit that caught my attention. Loria is very briefly described as 'proto-Viking.' I've decided that I want my game to be set there.

After that, it's become a matter of what Loria would be like. The world of Fillory has magic, magical landscapes, mysterious places, animal people, talking animals, dwarves, and of course humans. Fillory (which is also used to refer to the entire world) doesn't have geographical relationships with temperature, so despite Loria being to the north, it isn't necessarily colder.

Since there isn't much to draw on, this gives me great flexibility in how I pattern and create the world. I want a variety of climates so that I can explore what the proto-viking Lorians would adapt their culture to their setting. Clearly, they would need to have a large amount of seafaring. There are two things that I really want. First, a massively tall fjord, with vertical sides and incredible length. The other is a volcanic mountain whose peak floats in the air above it.

I'll be figuring out and unveiling more about Great Fjord in time.

The Magician King thoughts.

I just finished reading Lev Grossman's The Magician King, and it was absolutely wonderful. I can't praise how good this book was. Magic, quests, pop-culture humor, mythology, paganism, snarky humor, and two grand tales.

The book is divided into two complementary parts. One of which is the main conflict and story, the other provides the amazing backstory to one of the characters, Julia, and all the struggles she went through that brought her to how we found her at the end of The Magicians. The stories switch off, chapter by chapter, reaching their conclusions as simultaneously as possible.

What I found most interesting about this structure is that that both stories play out differently to a reader. The mains story plays out like your typical story. It has it's beginning and leads to some unknown end. Julia's story, however, has a foreknown ending. We already know the consequences of what happened to Julia, we just don't know what actually happened to her.

Just as having Julia's story enhances what happens in the main quest, having the main quest enhances Julia's story. I always found myself trying to read between the lines, taking what I knew from one story and applying it to the other. I used what I knew from the main quest to guess at what would happen with Julia, and using what happens to Julia to enhance my understanding of the main quest. The two stories are inseparable, and each would be weaker without the other.

As always, I heartily encourage anyone who is my friend or enjoys fantasy to read these books.