The Dark Age Debate Page
From RPGwiki
Let's not dismiss the man completely. A lot of the blame has to lie with the lack of creativity in those that followed him. Rather than just producing clones of Middle Earth they could have tried something new, but nooo...
As far as the Babylon 5 connection, mentioned below, goes its main influence on me was in the way the programme was planned. Rather than have the 'Star Trek reset button' where at the end of every episode things have returned to the way they were before the show's creator opted to have a five year plan. Though many episodes would be entirely self contained there would be an underlying narrative that would drive the story forward so that the universe at the end of five years would be very different from the one at the end. That also allowed him to drop storylines into the first season that would not reach fruition until two, three or four years later. It required a lot more sticking with than Star Trek (Miss an episode, who cares? Everything's still the same...) as it often made veering changes in a single episode (Whoa! They're at war? I knew they didn't like each other but...) and best of all showed a wonderful callousness in killing off members of the ensemble cast.
So how does this connect to the Dark Age campaign?
Well, basically because I started the campaign with a five-season plan. I have a good idea where the main plotline of the campaign is going (at least all the parts the party can't prevent from happening) although I'm leaving myself oodles of wiggle room to play with. We're currently still in Season One (This Sceptred Isle) which is where I decided to concentrate on introducing some of your chief allies (Arthur, Myrddin) and adversaries (Gorfyddyd, Cerdic, Aelle). The main plotline is only tangentially impacting on the course of the stories, although that will increase as we head towards (what I call in my head) Season Two.
Hmm, this talk of my campaign as if it's a TV show reminds me of a conversation I had with Craig a while back. We were discussing the different styles of my campaign and Ed's. I made the comparison that I felt my game was more like a TV show and Ed's was more like a novel. In Ed's campaign we tend to have longer storylines spread out over several meet-ups/chapters, with the breaks tending to come at dramatic points like the ends of chapters. With my game I try and have a beginning, a middle and an end to each meet-up's game, like an episode in a show, even if I have lots of lingering plotlines that run into the next game/episode, leading up to a season finale.
Anyway, that's this week's "How I Made My Campaign" feature. Next week, the role of Asterix the Gaul and other historical fictions...
Alex
Tolkein's got a lot to answer for, if you ask me.
Andy
One of Andy's comments on the Q&A page recently got me thinking and I thought it might be interesting to explain a little bit about why the Dark Age campaign came about. One thing I've always disliked about standard fantasy worlds is the ghettoisation; you know, elves live with elves in the woods, orcs live with orcs in the caves, dwarfs live with dwarfs in the mountains and so on. Whenever some place is described as being cosmopolitan and open to all it usually means its the equivalent of New York and is mostly human with other races having small communities there. One of the things I wanted to achieve in the Dark Age campaign was to break that stereotype and have a world where all the races mixed as one and where culture wasn't defined by race. For example, in most fantasy worlds an orc's best friend is most likely to be another orc and he hates all humans. In the Dark Age world if one orc and the human are British and the other orc is a Saxon then the British orc and the human would be more likely to be friends, regardless of the orcs being the same species.
This also breaks one of the really big beefs I have with most fantasy worlds; morality based on race and geography. This kind of goes back to Professor Tolkein I'm afraid, with his general rule that anybody from the north and the west is good and anyone from the south and the east is bad. All his elves are good and all his orcs are bad. Most fantasy worlds tend to follow that kind of lead. That's another rule I wanted to break. In terms of race, geography and morality I suspect my world is a lot closer to Terry Pratchett's Discworld than to Middle Earth. Pratchett commonly includes heroes and villains for all his races be they human, dwarf, troll, vampire or zombie. Likewise you find all shades of good and evil all over the world. Hopefully you'll find similar behaviour all over the Dark Age world.
Finally the choice to set it on Earth came about from noticing certain trends in fantasy. Cultures are often based on others from the real world (the Warhammer world and the original D&D game world are prime examples of culture thieves) and when I was thinking about designing a world to put all the above ideas in I was trying to work out what sort of cultures to put in, which gods to create and so on, when I realised I could save myself a lot of time by just using Earth and planting all my fantasy bits in a real world setting.
So it all comes down to dissatisfaction at regular fantasy worlds and saving time. And a campaign world was born.
There are other things behind it (the sci-fi show Babylon 5 was a prime instigator) but more on that another time.
Alex
It's actually pronounced Agg-rick-ull-er, and he's named after a Roman emperor. Hmm, it might be worth putting up some hints on how to pronounce some of the more Welsh names. Good suggestion guys...
Alex
Hmmm, the tanic after taste...
Andy
Actually, it sounds like one of those 12p cola bottles we used to poison each other with back in the day...
Craig
I noticed Agricola. Does he have a sister, Cherrycola?
Andy
OK, I've junked the old debate which nobody seemed interested in and we can now run this page like the Taladas debate page (newest entry goes at the top). Oh, and there is now some content on the rather unwieldy cast of NPCs my campaign has run up rather quickly on the Characters Page. If anyone can remember anyone I've missed let me know.
Oh bugger, I've just remembered one. Myrddin's bodyguard Pellana. OK, any I've missed except him.
(wanders off muttering under his breath like a slightly less hairy Muttley...)
Alex.
