t he s ettinG W orksheet
On the next page, you can find our setting worksheet. As we said before, our example settings aren’t complete set-tings. Instead, we intend for them to be frameworks you can use to build your own settings for your own games.
The worksheet has places to record the principle information about your setting—both the descriptive details and the setting-specific game mechanics. You can photocopy it or get a copy from our website.
The worksheet should be enough for you to get started and serves as a good reference for your players.
A word of warning, though. As you continue working on developing your setting, you may find that you need to upgrade this worksheet for a notebook!
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antasy138
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teaMpunk148
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eirdw
ar158
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odernd
ay164
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CienCef
iCtion170
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paCeo
pera179
OVERVIEW:
SETTING SPECIFIC SKILLS WHAT TROPES/THEMES ABOUT TECHNOLOGY, HUMAN NATURE, MORALITY, OR REALITY ARE YOU INCLUDING?
WHAT TROPES/THEMES ARE YOU EXCLUDING?
WHAT TROPES/THEMES ARE YOU SUBVERTING?
GENRE/SETTING TROPES AND THEMES
FACTIONS & ORGANIZATIONS WHAT ARE THE MAJOR FACTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS IN THE SETTING, AND WHAT ARE THEIR OBJECTIVES?
1.
2.
3.
4.
MOVERS & SHAKERS WHO ARE THE MAJOR PERSONALITIES IN THE SETTING, AND WHAT ARE THEIR OBJECTIVES?
1.
2.
3.
4.
World:
TONE:
BASE SETTING/GENRE:
SETTING
MAJOR SPECIES TYPES
NAME DESCRIPTION
TECHNOLOGY LEVEL
CHAPTER 1: FANTASY
M
agic, monsters, heroic warriors, and evil over-lords—fantasy has all the makings of a good adventure. There’s a reason it’s the basis for so many games and central to the roots of roleplaying.Despite being instantly recognizable and familiar, fantasy is an incredibly varied genre, with numerous subdivisions. However you decide to style your fantasy game, Genesys’s customizability makes it perfect for tailoring to the game you want.
t ropes
S
ince you are read-ing an RPG rule-book, we’re going to bet you’re familiar with the tropes of the fantasy genre. But whether you’re a sword and sorcery aficionado or your experience comes from popular films or video games, a quick refresher never hurts. Often, the tropes of a setting or genre sinkinto our minds, but we don’t always think about them on a conscious level. Actively considering the common aspects of fantasy and how you want to integrate them into your campaign is a worthwhile exercise that’s bound to pay off. Not only will you be prepared should some-one ask you to describe your campaign, but awareness of
these tropes helps you determine what makes your campaign unique.
Really, though, don’t be too unique; one of the advantages of a fan-tasy setting is its familiarity for so many players, even those who have never played an RPG before. Without delving into the details of your campaign setting, simply recognizing it as a medieval-type fantasy world (which is the assumption we’re going with) should allow most players to jump right in with minimal briefing.
That said, here we’ve tried to encapsulate some of the common tropes we believe help define a fantasy setting.
Still, we understand if you want to skip to the new char-acter options and review this later. They’re on page 142.
m aGic
It’s quite possible that magic is the defining characteris-tic of a fantasy setting. Even when they aren’t on Earth, fantasy settings often approximate a historical period, whether a medieval or far future one. Still, some fan-tasy settings might be on a world with few recogniz-able technological or cultural ties to real-life history.
Regardless, the constant among these radically varied fantasy settings is magic, whatever name it goes by. The addition of magic turns science fiction into science fan-tasy, and historical fiction into historical fantasy.
Magic is a broad, nebulous term, yet most people have a pretty good idea of what you mean as soon as it’s mentioned. Even if you can’t define magic, you know
it when you see it. Fundamentally, magic is a force that breaks what we think of as the natural rules of the uni-verse. It may be wielded by wizards or occur on its own.
Magic allows humans to create fire from nothing, heal fatal wounds in moments, read the thoughts of others, control the elements, and accomplish pretty much any-thing else you might think of.
m onsters
Monsters, in the literal sense—goblins, trolls, ghouls, gorgons, dragons, and so on—are a staple of fantasy.
Entire books have been written on the subject of fan-tasy monsters, often for the express purpose of includ-ing them in fantasy games for PCs to fight! While you might be able to run a fantasy game without the PCs ever slaying a monster, the lack of dangerous creatures would be one of the defining characteristics of such a game. Often, fighting monsters is a primary objective of heroes in fantasy stories, whether to protect a vil-lage, claim a bounty, or simply get at the treasure the monster’s guarding.
We’ve included profiles for a few monsters on page 146, but you’re certain to need more. Fortunately, the rules for creating NPCs, on page 202, apply to fantas-tical creatures of all types. Often, all it takes to make a monster stand out is the addition of a single special rule, or even just an interesting quality, to its attacks.
Of course, monsters in the figurative sense are also common in fantasy, but we cover that under the Good and Evil trope.
Q uests
Some games define a quest as, well, pretty much any-thing your character tries to accomplish. While we have no issue with this nomenclature, traditionally speaking, a quest is something a bit more than fetch-ing a potion for an NPC who can’t be bothered to leave their house.
What we’re talking about is a quest in the original sense: a journey, probably long and at the very least dan-gerous, to achieve an important goal. With any quest worthy of the name, lives—and often entire civilizations or worlds—hang in the balance. The consequences for failure might not entail simple destruction, but enslave-ment at the hands of some evil entity or force. Likely, the quest focuses on a particular object that must be found, brought to a specific place, destroyed, or some combination of the above. Any of this sounding famil-iar? That object is called a MacGuffin.
t he m ac G uffin
A MacGuffin is (quite literally, you could say) a plot device. It’s an object that serves the primary, if not sole, purpose of getting the protagonists engaged with the plot and, likely, of keeping it moving. Really, a MacGuf-fin can be a great tool for GMs to use in any game, but it’s particularly relevant for the fantasy quest. Player charac-ters might or might not be able to actually use a MacGuf-fin, and they might not ever even lay eyes on it. Perhaps the most famous MacGuffin is the Holy Grail of Arthu-rian legend—the quest for which leads to all number of, honestly, quite unrelated adventures. Regardless of the form it takes, a MacGuffin gets the PCs embroiled in the events that really constitute the adventure. The MacGuf-fin may lose significance, fade into the background, turn out not to exist, or even get successfully resolved. What’s important is that it gets the protagonists caught up with events and non-player characters compelling enough to keep the heroes involved regardless.
G ooD anD e vil
Good and evil are distinct, black-and-white concepts.
More than mere ideas, good and evil are very real forces in a traditional fantasy setting. Although heroes may engage in some vices, and probably have weaknesses of character, they are ultimately good, and oppose the suffering of innocents at every turn. On the other end of the spectrum, villains tend to be power hungry and unambiguously evil; they may delight in causing mis-ery for its own sake while concocting grandiose plans to conquer or simply destroy. Fantasy worlds are shaped by the actions of great heroes and villains. Entire king-doms, continents, or planets may be threatened by evil forces, and saved by the heroes who vanquish them.
f amiliar h istorical e lements
Most fantasy settings resemble the real world at a roughly identifiable point in history. Perhaps the most common influence, and what comes to mind first for many people when they think of fantasy, is western Europe in the medieval era. You can see this influence in weapons and armor, architecture, religious practices, social hierarchy and titles, and other facets of many fantasy settings. Of course, there are plentiful works of fantasy that resemble other regions or periods of his-tory just as strongly. Many of the more developed fan-tasy worlds also include many nations and regions that strongly resemble actual historical cultures.
This familiarity can actually be pretty helpful in a campaign. Although unique and intricately defined
fictional cultures can be fascinating, in the interest of helping players to jump in and keep the game moving, it’s perfectly okay to admit that, yes, the inhabitants of the Northern Isles of Hjorn are basically Vikings. You can always get into the details that set them apart later.
Of course, we’ve already covered many of the unique elements that make a fantasy setting in other tropes. The addition of magic, monsters, and absolute and tangible forces of good and evil turn a seemingly historical set-ting into a fantasy setset-ting. Fantasy setset-tings’ resemblance to the real world varies; some are little more than medi-eval Europe with the map relabeled and the creatures and magic from folklore assumed to be true. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a fantasy world might have technology from disparate periods of Earth’s his-tory, magically powered spaceships, and anthropomor-phic animals instead of humans and elves.
k eeps anD D unGeons
Exploring and battling through castles, subterranean ruins, and crypts is a hallmark of fantasy, particularly when it comes to RPGs. Heroes may descend into ancient and forgotten passages, or defend the battle-ments of a castle against the forces of evil. Keeps, ruins, dungeons, and the like are often an important factor in quests—a MacGuffin might be located deep in an ancient catacomb—and, of course, are often home to all sorts of nasty monsters, vicious traps, and ancient treasures.
Dungeons provide an excellent location for adven-tures far from civilization (whether physically or the-matically) and even the relatively understood dangers of nature. Dungeons are confining, even claustropho-bic—characters encountering deadly monsters in the wilds may have many avenues of escape, a luxury not often found in dungeons. This provides for a harrowing adventure with unknown dangers behind every door and limited avenues for retreat or rest. In this way, dun-geons are ideal for challenging characters and forcing them to rely on their own abilities and ingenuity.
D ifferent s tyles of f antasy
While the previous tropes find their way into nearly all fantasy settings, the extent to which they do so varies.
One way to make a fantasy setting feel different and unique is to upend one of the familiar tropes in some way. For instance, perhaps in your setting, magic of all kinds is outlawed. Or, at the other extreme, perhaps
“monsters” of all intelligent sorts commingle in cities, with individual creatures just as free to choose good or evil as any human—sure, some mummies are evil, but this one just wants to run their tavern in peace!
Aside from such twists, there are already distinct styles of fantasy largely defined by their own tropes.
Narrowing in on a particular style can help you decide how to craft your own setting, and just makes it easier to communicate the setting to players. Some of the best-known and most recognizable styles of fantasy include high fantasy, sword and sorcery, low fantasy, and contemporary fantasy. Even within a particular style or genre of fantasy, there is plenty of room for different tones. Sword and sorcery, for instance, is well known for oscillating between adventure and horror.
In high, or epic, fantasy, magic is evident in the world, if not exactly common, and mighty heroes battle power-ful villains and fearsome monsters. High fantasy features all the tropes we’ve already described. Our Runebound setting, for example, very much represents high fantasy.
The bulk of the information in this chapter addresses the high fantasy subgenre, but we’ll give you a quick view of the other subgenres we mentioned. In each over-view, we’ll discuss how you might tailor the information in the rest of this chapter to the subgenre being discussed.
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WorDanDs
orcerySword and sorcery is an enduring style originating in the pulp fiction magazines of the early to mid-twentieth century. Sword and sorcery stories heavily feature the dungeons and castles trope and familiar historical ele-ments, even while they lack many of the fantastical elements that distinguish high fantasy. Sword and sor-cery stories focus on human protagonists, and if other humanoid species do exist, they are likely rare, mysteri-ous, and strange or downright evil. Magic, too, is rare in sword and sorcery worlds, and likely the province of evil individuals. That’s not to say magic is rare in sword and sorcery stories, only that within the context of the fictional world, it’s a remarkable presence.
Without their own access to magical power, sword and sorcery heroes tend to rely on their swordsmanship and wits to overcome challenges. We use “heroes” loosely, here—while sword and sorcery stories might feature clear depictions of evil, particularly in association with decadent sorcerers and their ilk, the protagonists are often of questionable morals. Still, when contrasted with villains who make human sacrifices to unspeakable gods in exchange for power, they look pretty heroic.
There’s a strong element of action-adventure in sword and sorcery, which helps differentiate it from low fantasy, which tends to feature more mundane con-flicts. From a rules perspective, it’s simple to convert the material in this chapter to sword and sorcery. Don’t give players access to all the new character options, and think carefully before letting them take magic skills.
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oWf
antasyLow fantasy worlds are characterized by moral grey areas and a grittier, more authentically medieval feel.
True, low fantasy may skew close to sword and sorcery in this regard, but sword and sorcery settings typi-cally feature more of the fantasy humanoids and magic familiar to high fantasy. Whereas high fantasy stories often feature epic quests and huge stakes, low fantasy tends to focus on more personal conflicts.
Like sword and sorcery, low fantasy has no assumption that protagonists are “heroes” in any moral sense, and it’s likely the PCs are looking out for their own interests above anything else. Low fantasy also frequently focuses on polit-ical intrigue and conspiracy. Like other characters, nobility and rulers are rarely good or evil, simply selfish and power hungry. Characters in these settings tend to have more
“realistic” levels of ability. If you’re running a low fantasy game, you may want to award XP at a slower rate.
c
ontemporaryf
antasyContemporary fantasy, sometimes known as urban fantasy, is perhaps the most different of all. Rather than a medieval-like world of limited technology or a purely fictional setting, contemporary fantasy takes place on Earth as we know it today—just with magic and mon-sters. Running a contemporary fantasy game requires the most deviation from the material presented in this chapter, although really, that just means taking the equipment and some other setting information from the modern day setting, described on page 164 and mixing it up with the magic rules from page 210, along with monsters like those on page 146 and possibly the non-human fantasy species character options on page 142. Whether these fantasy peoples and magic users coexist openly with humans or dwell in a hidden realm of magic invisible to everyday folk is up to you.
e xaMple s etting : r unebound
F
antasy Flight Games’ own Runebound setting is a classic example of a high fantasy world. One rea-son it is a good setting for a wide number of board and miniatures games, from Descent to Runebound to Runewars, is because it includes many of the recog-nizable fantasy tropes, making it easily accessible to players. At the same time, it has a rich and deep lore that new games and expansions continually add to.The Runebound setting is based on the world of Mennara, with most of the action set on the continent of Terrinoth. This region alone presents plenty of vari-ety for adventures in terms of environments, cultures, and creatures. The civilized regions of the continent—
and there is plenty of dangerous wilderness between—
are primarily the domains of the Daqan Baronies and the Free Cities. The Aymhelin, the forested domain of the Latari Elves to the south, is a vast woodland, and the hidden city of Lithelin is a shining pinnacle of civi-lization hidden in the trees. Nevertheless, the forest is certainly no safe place for outsiders.
Threats of all kinds lurk in the darker places of Ter-rinoth, from the desolate and haunted Mistlands to the forgotten ruins scattered across the continent, some dating from before the First Darkness. To the east are the desolate and deadly plains of the Ru, but the evil of the Uthuk Y’llan has not been witnessed in centuries, and is surely nothing to worry about…
Yes, a great evil threatens Terrinoth, but the world of Runebound is not an overly dark setting. Beauty and wonder abound, and the alliances of humans, Elves, and Dwarves have vanquished evil in the past. Perhaps the defining event of Terrinoth’s history was the cre-ation of the Orb of the Sky following the First Dark-ness, that time when the three races united to repel and destroy the demon-tainted Uthuk Y’llan. This victory was only possible thanks to the unifying efforts of Tim-morran Lokander, the greatest wizard to ever live. In creating the Orb, an object formed of pure magic, Tim-morran hoped his gifts could outlive him and continue to serve the civilized peoples of Terrinoth.
Tragically, the legendary general and Timmorran’s close friend Waiqar Sumarion attempted to seize the Orb for his own power. Before his death at Waiqar’s hands, Timmorran shattered the Orb and ensured the thousands of resulting shards would be hidden across the land. Waiqar swore that he would gather the shards
for himself, and he was granted undeath by dark forces in order to pursue his dark aims for eternity.
for himself, and he was granted undeath by dark forces in order to pursue his dark aims for eternity.