Before our first live-stream even hit, I was getting questions about the world that we were going to be playing in. So I thought I’d answer at least a few of those questions.
(Above image: by Kenichiro Tomiyasu)
First off, let’s be clear… no spoilers. I love the idea of mystery and exploration and I hate spoilers. There’s a very special feeling you get when you experience something for the first time and I feel that sense of surprise is easily ruined when you know what’s coming. I don’t want to take that away from anyone so we’ll just go over the basic inspiration for the world I’ve built.
Essalund is born…
In spite of all my time in front of the camera or sitting in front of a computer editing videos, my first calling is writing. Years ago I wrote and directed a original series call CELL. It was one of the best experiences of my life and it was really well received at the time. We were nominated for a ton of online awards and that experience led me to develop other stories and scripts. Ultimately the goal is to use The Weirdlings brand as a platform where we can make these scripted series come to life. But that’s in the future. For now, there’s Essalund.
One of the stories that I wrote actually started as a novella called The Veil and turned into a pilot script with 4 or 5 additional episodes. Right around that time, we had a break-in at our house and the hard-drive with all of those stories was stolen. This was back before Google Drive was my co-pilot and all of those scripts were sadly lost to the ether. So even though I lost all the work and the story bible that I had written, that world full of urban fantasy and political intrigue kept rolling around in the back of my brain, waiting for a chance to pop back out.
When we started talking about doing a live-version of The Heroes of Awesome and giving Brandon a chance to be a player on air, I immediately remembered bits and pieces of The Veil and dragged them back into the light. I didn’t necessarily want to bring all of the urban fantasy aspects into this new adventure. So I took out some of the more traditional fantasy aspects of The Veil mythos and adapted them to fit in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
I admit I’m a little bummed that we’re missing out on bits of technology making an appearance in Essalund, but don’t rule it out yet. Ever since I read the Sword of Shannara Trilogy as a kid, I’ve loved the idea of magic and technology living in the same world. I might not be able to give it all up that easily. Who am I kidding. There’s bound to be pieces of it hidden around the realm, if they can find it.
As far as rules and worlds go, being a relatively new player and a first time DM, I don’t have a huge background in the lore of the worlds of DragonLance or Forgotten Realms. So I created a new land that doesn’t directly lean on deep knowledge of the histories of those worlds. I also wanted to let the players be exactly who they wanted to be. So that’s why we see a completely new land with a Kagonesti Elf hanging out with a Dragonborn. This is a world where the different realms slam into each other in a creative mosh pit of lore. Maybe we can build our own legends and our own history around the Dominion. Who knows.
Building the story…
Bringing these fantasy elements of The Veil into Essalund and establishing a unique world to play in was a great start, but that’s when I realized that I really only had bits about the social structure that the people of Essalund lived in. The story itself was still missing. The next step was figuring out what on earth was happening that could possibly motivate a rag tag group of adventurers and turn them into paragons of virtue.
I started with a small encounter and then asked myself, “Why?” What made these bad guys do this thing in the first place. What was their motivation? For those of you who have been watching “A War in Scarlet” with The Heroes of Awesome, you may know that I have a problem with stereotypical J-horror stories. The idea that evil exists just to be evil has never made sense to me. Everything has a goal and evil has never seemed like a reasonable end goal to me. What does pure evil get you?
Whether it’s survival or love or that super rare Amiibo, every action should be taken to achieve something and evil for the sake of evil just seems illogical. Villains are always the heroes of their own stories, if they’re good villains.
Once I had a basic set of motivations for our first encounter with bad guys, I took it out another level and asked what made them make that choice. For example, a thief may steal a gem from a noble because he needs to buy food for his family. But what about the person who paid the thief to steal that gem? Maybe it’s a vendetta against the noble. Maybe it’s a family heirloom lost years ago in a night of gambling.
Layer by layer, I built up stories about the motivations behind these NPCs. But I didn’t stop with the bad guys in our adventure. There are always people who work against the forces of darkness and I wanted to make sure those forces had a voice in the story as well. So for every occasion I tried to find a counter-point and build a story about the forces of good that were arraying against the evil in this world.
Before I realized it, I had 100 pages of adventure written before our characters even get to level 3. Is it overkill? Definitely. It’s also an amazing way to let my creativity run in ways it hasn’t been able to in ages. That alone has made the journey so far worth it.
It’s about the characters…
Even with all of this elaborate storytelling and building of worlds, if the players don’t care then it won’t matter. They could just choose to lie out in the pasture and stare at cows all day unless there’s a reason to do anything. That’s always a challenge because our characters really can choose to do anything they way. They may ignore an adventure hook and simply wander off in the opposite direction. So how do I keep them engaged in what’s happening in the world?
In order to keep them engaged, I have to make them an integral part of the events surrounding them. Their stories have to play a part in the intrigue of Essalund, whether they know it or not.
What’s their story?
The first thing I did was ask the players to tell me about their characters, and I was not disappointed. They all created pages upon pages of backstory for each character, explaining where they came from and how they got on that ship taking them to Essalund.
To me this is one of the most important parts of the entire process. Seeing just how invested each and every one of the players was in their characters made the world seem even more real. This type of adventure is tailor made for role-playing and seeing just how much they’re embracing that aspect of the game makes everything so much more exciting and fun.
I was lucky that we were able to get this weeks in advance of our first live-stream and I took elements of each character and weaved them into the fabric of what’s happening in Essalund. By doing that, every decision they make ties them in tighter with the story world. If a character has a goal to find someone who murdered their brother, if they don’t go after the bandit in the tavern, they might never find out who killed them. Likewise, leaving those bandits alone could empower them to add the rest of the family to their roster.
So, hunt down the bandit and confront the people who ordered their death or ignore the bandit and receive word that your entire family was slaughtered while you hung out at the tavern drinking mead and eating oysters. It’s your choice.
Which leads me to my next point…
A Living World
The idea of a living world with consequences for your decisions has been something I’ve loved in gaming since I first played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. I live off of RPGs from Bioware and others like DragonAge and Mass Effect where your choices make huge changes in the game you play and the endings your experience. One of my goals has been to try and replicate that feel in the adventures in the Dominion of Essalund.
This became a lot easier once I had two or more factions all working towards their own goals in The Dominion. Every action the party takes helps one side or the other, and they might now always know which side. But even inaction is a choice that they make. If they choose not to fight the bandits, they get closer to their goals since there’s no one there to oppose them. So our heroes can eat picnics in the pasture, but the local village may very well be burned down by the time they get back. Or maybe just turned into a portal into another dimension unleashing untold horrors upon the world. One or the other.
By having two factions always working in the background, it makes every decision the characters make important and challenges everything they do. There’s no escaping their fate no matter how hard they try. I hope that keeps them engaged in the story world like it does me, because I’m having a lot of fun wondering how things are going to turn out.
So these are just some basics about how the framework of Essalund was built. There’s so much more I could talk about in terms of what’s happening in the world, but then that would spoil things for you and our players. So for now you’ll have to just watch and wait.
As we continue on the adventure I might pop back in with more information about the world and if you have any questions, leave them in the comments or hit me up on twitter.