Creating a Believable History for Your Role-Playing Game World

This article is not a comprehensive guide to creating a fictional history. Instead, it presents a series of conclusions that social scientists believe are true about the nature of history. In other words, why history happens.If you want your fictional history to seem like a real and compelling history, it has to be a history driven by motives.

Origin of the World: Most societies throughout the world and history do not separate the origins of the natural world from the origins of the human world. Every society views itself as the normal, natural way for humans to live, and origin stories reflect this view.

A highly religious society is going to have a highly religious-centered origin story, filled with higher powers that deliberately create the natural and human worlds for specific reasons and set down the social values viewed as most important.

A highly secular society may either be indifferent about "where it all came from," assuming things have just always been as they are (perhaps in your fictional world this is true), or they may be searching for the truth about where the world came from.

Origin stories also usually set up the basic social order that the modern society still follows, and both the creation of the natural world and the creation of the social world tend to reflect a society's over-arching social order and power structure. A society where men have all the power, for example, will assume that men invented everything and that the natural world was created by either masculine higher powers or through traditionally masculine activities - hunting, war, sex, competition, and physical labor. The opposite type of society might have origin stories that include traditionally feminine activities - giving birth, teaching, bargaining, some form of artistic activity or dreaming.

On Non-Human Races: Biologically speaking, it is more common for there to be more than one variation on a species alive at any one time. The fact that there is currently only one variety of human in our world, for example, is a rare exception.

Social Institutions, Groups, and Player Character Factions: 
Role playing games usually include certain factions or groups that players must choose to be affiliated with, from character classes to clans, tribes or nations of origin. If you want to make these factions believable in your world, they cannot exist in a historical vacuum. They have to have come from somewhere.

The First Law of Change: In the real world, every larger social entity - government, religion, clans, aristocratic families, corporations, etc - experiences some change over time. There is no such thing as the "changeless, immutable holy order that has lasted for thousands of years." That may be what they believe, but if this so-called unchanging order were to hop in a time machine, they'd be surprised by how they looked in the beginning.  

The Second Law of Change: Society changes only when something prompts it to change. Not necessarily a crisis, but Earth's history teaches us that any major social change inevitably generates a point of crisis before society fully adapts to the change. Major catalysts for change include:

• War: World War 2 and women's liberation in the United States
• Religion/Philosophy/Ideology: The invasion of Jerusalem alternatively by Christians and Muslims during the Middle Ages
• Environmental or Climate Change: The changes wrought in Europe by the Dark Ages and the Black Death
• Deliberate Invention or Innovation: Thomas Edison and the electric light
• Accidental Invention or Innovation: The practices associated with most modern Western holidays, from Christmas trees to Jack O' Lanterns.

The Third Law of Change: Every society has some form of chronic internal conflict. Over time, these conflicts tend to grow more powerful until society changes to adapt to them or to remove the conflict.

The Fourth Law of Change: Groups of people only adopt an idea, practice, or piece of technology if it meets a need better than what they already have available. The major needs are:

• Survival: Food, water, medicine, shelter, companionship
• Sex: Access to potential or specific partners, being seen as more desirable/sexy/beautiful
• Status: Something that is believed will improve one's social standing within a group, make one famous, make one powerful
• Profit: Something is seen as a business opportunity, a chance to become rich, a chance to break out of poverty.
• Social Justice: Something is adopted because it gives a chance to change social systems to better suit a specific group within a larger social order (ex: empowering a minority group).

Origin of Antagonists: The "bad guys" need a logic and a motive for their actions. Very few real-world historical villains were truly fully insane. This logic and motive will seem perfectly acceptable or at least normal to the villain, if only in their own mind. This is the only way a villain would be able to convert others to follow, short of raw coercion. If you decide to have an arch villain of some kind, you should have some very good reason why such a both very powerful and very dangerous entity has been allowed to remain. Why hasn't someone done something about them already?

Origin of Powers: Most role-playing games include supernatural or extraordinary powers, abilities, or technology.
Definition: "Supernatural," "extraordinary," or "special" all describe something vastly unique and outside what is normal in a given group or world. If your game takes place in a world of psychics, then being a psychic is NOT a supernatural power. Any more than being a musical prodigy is.

In most games, powers have formal systems of groups and sometimes formal institutions to back them, such as a wizard's school or a super hero team. Everyone in the world refers to these powers the same way, groups them along the same lines, and recognizes others who share special powers by looking for certain markers - symbols, costumes, etc. This is called standardization. Here is why it happens:

The more complex a society becomes, the more specialized knowledge gets. In order for an individual to become fully trained in a specialized body of knowledge, they usually have to be isolated in some way in order to focus time and thought on learning and practice. Also, everyday language quickly becomes inadequate for talking about a specialized body of knowledge between specialists. Hence why every role-playing game has a specialized jargon that is used in-character.

I love to run non-standard versions of games. It gives me a chance to personalize an established setting to better reflect the kinds of stories I like to tell with my players. But on a more practical level, it really broadens the spectrum of games I find myself interested in trying out. I'll confess right now that I never met a RPG I fully liked as-presented. Usually there's some small aspect of it that I wish were different, and the beauty of being the game master is, of course, you can change anything you want to suit your needs. After almost a decade of running games, I've noticed there are five general ways I tweak a game in order to make it more interesting. I invite you to try using one of these techniques as a way to experiment with a game you might otherwise not run.

From least amount of work prior to starting a campaign to most, they are:

1. Emphasize Elements You Like: Read through whatever the core book of the game or campaign setting is and note all the phrases and ideas that grab you the most. If you're into lists like I am, you may even want to prioritize yours once you're done so you know what the top handful of ideas are. Then design your campaign in order to explore those elements and ideas in-depth.

Example: In the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons, magic is caught up in something called the Weave. This is the most interesting aspect of the setting for me, so if I were to run a Forgotten Realms game, I would most likely make it a spellcaster-focused campaign in order to explore the history and ramifications of the Weave. Where did it come from? How many different ways can you use it? How would the rise of Renaissance-like ideas about science and technology impact it?

2. Play With the Mythos: "Mythos" refers to the game's story backbone - the big picture history of the game world, all the assumptions about how the game world came to be the way it is and where it's going. By adjusting specific "facts" within the game mythos, you can come up with an entirely different form of the game that's still recognizable.

Example: In Mage: The Awakening, the mythos states that mages can use magic because their souls are "awakened" to the true nature of reality as something supernatural and that they all inheret the legacy of the ancient fallen civilization of Atlantis. As a variant, I decided that, instead, mages could use magic because they are the descendants of humans crossed with dragons, and that it was the trace of dragon blood that "awakened" a mage. Atlantis was the place where dragons once ruled, until they were overthrown, causing Atlantis to fall. This had ramifications for who the various Orders were and what the different Paths represented. The Exarchs became the Old Wyrms - the surviving dragons seeking to reestablish dominion over the world, and the Oracles that established the various Watchtowers existed to thwart their plans.

3. Play in a Mirror Universe: A classic trope of science fiction is one that lands the heroes in a mirror universe where everything is the moral opposite of their own. All the "bad guys" are the "good guys" and vice versa. Sometimes it makes for a more interesting game to switch the "good" and "bad" sides in the game and trying to justify it with an altered game mythos.

Example: What if, in the Star Wars universe, the Sith were the good minority within a corrupt Jedi order? What if the Dark Side of the Force was aligned with freedom and self-determination through the expression of passion and aggression, pitted against another side that was more interested in a kind of galactic fascism in which were trying to turn everyone into the docile, accepting followers of a corrupt elite?

4. Play In a Different Period: Every game world mirrors some slice of human history. Some times it's fun and exciting to set a standard game in a non-standard time period. A word of caution - make sure the historical backdrop is just a backdrop. It's there for flavor. If you start to worry about historical accuracy, then the setting becomes the star of the show, not the players.

Example: Think of Pathfinder set in the Wild West, or Call of Cthulhu set in Middle Ages Europe.

5. Tweak the Rules: This is the trickiest to pull off. But sometimes you love a game but hate the game's core rules, or at least some aspect of them. If you feel experienced enough, tweak the rules with a big house rule that you make clear to your players before the campaign starts. If not, it might be best to just borrow from a set of core rules you DO like.

Example: Adjust the core die mechanic for GURPS so it works more like the d10 pool system of World of Darkness. Both are point-buy systems, but if you feel the d10 system is more elegant, why not use it instead?

Music For Fantasy Games

Tired of playing the Lord of the Rings music to death as a fantasy game soundtrack? Here are some older and more obscure movie soundtracks that work well as background for fantasy adventure:

Willow: Remember this classic fantasy film from the 1980's? The soaring vocals and menacing horns join up with a rousing heroic theme and even a little Hobbit-like village music to make for a whole range of great music material to plunder.

Krull: Another 80's fantasy flick with an underrated soundtrack. Again, you have the whole range from charging, heroic battle themes to wonderfully campy mystery and danger themes.

Conan: The Barbarian: This soundtrack has probably the greatest variety of music of all. You have Conan's charging drum-driven theme, of course, but you also have pieces that sound more like courtly ballroom scores. Don't dismiss one song if not to your liking, the mood of each track is different.

Dragonheart: Movies like "Eragon" and "How to Tame Your Dragon" have pushed this movie out of the limelight. But for those of your players who, like me, are taken back to their boyhood by the stirring, tender themes raised in this soundtrack, it will work well as a kind of 'homeland theme' in your game. There are also more upbeat, almost playful pieces that would work well for sneaking and roguish scenes.

Immediate Music: This is a whole series of "free music", produced specifically to be cut and spliced for use as emotional cues in short sequences. It's very high quality stuff that isn't tied to any specific movie or story, so it's perfect for use in games. Check out their website for more info.

Xena: Music from the Xena television series is evocative of an older, more tribal time. If you're heading into an area in your game that's more barbaric or wild, then slipping a few pieces from Xena in will certainly convey a sense of the wild barbarian hordes.

The Dark Crystal: The music from this movie is just hauntingly beautiful. It works especially well for scenes that involve magic, high mystery and mysticism. There's also a great little Medieval jig number you can use for festivals and taverns.

First Knight: This soundtrack's two major strengths are heroic fanfare and great romantic fantasy melodies. Include a piece from this soundtrack as a 'victory march' at the end of a successful adventure.

Red Sonja: Another of Schwarzenegger's fantasy flicks. It sounds at times almost troubedourish, and works surprisingly well for more aristocratic or high society type adventures and scenes.

Hook: Pirates, daring escapes, roguish escapades and faerie magic are all great examples of how the music from this film can be used in a game. It's a much lighter soundtrack, not so heavy on the bombast and fanfare.

Advice When Running an Intrigue RPG

If you've ever considered running an RPG based on intrigue rather than combat, here are some points to keep in mind.

What is an intrigue game? "Intrigue" refers to any genre of game you plan to run where the dangers, challenges and plots are all socially-based rather than action-based. Certainly, there will still be some fighting or at least backstabbing in the dark of night. But intrigue RPGs are all about politics and the lure of power mixed with the danger of murder and the scent of a good old-fashioned mystery.

To run a good intrigue game, I suggest these five pieces of advice:

1. Chart Your Tangled Web: As the one running the game, you know all the plot twists and dirty secrets. For myself, I find that having an actual map that details the relationships between PCs and NPCs helps me to keep the whole political landscape clear and consistant from session to session.

2. Focus on Character Desires: Goals may shift from session to session the way strategies in a chess game shift. But what each character - player or non-player - wants should ideally remain the same. As long as you stay clear and focused on what NPCs want overall, you can generally do a good job of adapting their goals to changing situations.

3. Use Memorable Characters: Intrigue games are character-focused morso than action games. Distinctive NPCs with distinctive names will help players remember and tell them apart, and will help you do the same.

4. Give Clues Socially: Most clues to any given mystery, situation, or NPC's true motives should be given through social game play, with a scattering of investigative work. But intrigue games are really about that fatal slip of the tongue that tips off an enemy moreso than about hunting down fingerprints. Weave hints and clues into NPC-to-PC conversations or into overheard NPC-to-NPC conversations that you've scripted out. If you do it right, you give your PCs that proverbial trail of breadcrumbs they can follow deeper into the game's plot.

5. No Red Herrings: Intrigue games are hard enough to keep track of without PCs constantly worrying about their clues checking out. I don't mean you can't have your NPCs lie. Far from it. But giving the PCs what seem to be important information only to have them find out they really didn't need to know it can get very frustrating. So be nice, and have any major clues you slip in be the truth of the matter.

6. Pay Attention During Player-to-Player Discussions: Chances are, they'll come up with some sort of theory about what's really going on, and it's not uncommon for some plot twist or hypothesis they come up with being better than what you'd planned. So why not run with their suggestions? They'll never know they're actually the ones creating the plot of their own game.

If you want more detailed advice on running this type of game, I recommend the World of Darkness - Vampire: The Requiem supplement Damnation City. Specifically, pgs. 208-225. Their advice is largely plot-based, not systems based, so you can modify it to fit any game system you're using.