Welcome to the campaign diary of what’s been codenamed Fantasy Avengers. A campaign idea of superheroes in a fantasy setting has percolated within my brain for aeons. I occasionally pretend I’m going to run it, which no doubt gets eye rolls at best or engenders much disappointment at worst when I never get around to it.
This campaign diary will work through how the campaign gets to the table and then, with hope and a prayer, morph into actual play reports.
The featured image is Shattrath City in World of Warcraft.
Where does the shit go?
So, this is how my brain works. I’ll see a fantasy city with ridiculously high ‘skyscrapers’, and I’ll ask myself dumb questions like if this city has skyscrapers rising into the sky, where does the shit go? Do they have sewers and plumbing through all these buildings? How did they build them so high?
I’m half joking, but also not.
You see, I don’t care where the shit goes. What I care about is someone else might. Specifically, people playing the game and slowly chipping at the credibility, which cheapens the narrative. I’ll do this even though the regular gaming group members wouldn’t care and would go with the wonder of it rather than worrying where the shit goes.
I know it all doesn’t work if you look too closely, so I seek permission for it to work. I do this by finding examples in other media that connect with me. This is so I can get a consistent visual in my mind and start working on some of the hows of their existence. I’m not seeking to make them genuinely possible but to add ‘just enough foundation of explanation’ so they can be a consistent and meaningful part of the setting rather than just existing because they’re cool.
I’ll also admit I’m doing it so no one goes what the hell? This is stupid! This mental hangup used to be crippling; at least it’s now a managed affliction. While I recognise them as hangups, it would take a robust argument to persuade me it doesn’t also result in a better outcome after doing just enough work.
This post represents some of that work across three different influences.
Exandria Unlimited: Calamity
Here is a bold statement for you. The actual play series Exandria Unlimited: Calamity is the single, best actual play series available. How it is constructed and unfolds, with everyone contributing to an unfolding narrative, is an enthralling thing to behold. I’d go even further, putting aside the acting skills, which we mere mortals don’t possess; it represents the pinnacle of my goal to run campaigns like glorious, at the moment script reads, but played out in a game.
Exandria Unlimited: Calamity also has two other things going for it. It has floating cities, and it probably was the starting gun for this journey, even though the result will be nothing like it. The idea of several cities representing the imperial core, which can float around Creation and dock with their outer districts, comes directly from Exandria Unlimited: Calamity. I’m even going to steal that when a flying city returns after months or years on a tour of Creation, it’s a cause for a grand celebration across the city as it becomes whole once again.
Whether such a celebration will feature in the campaign or be a background holiday, like how you might lay out some religious observations, I don’t know. It’s a perfect moment for nefarious forces to engineer a disaster.
The City of Sharn
A fantasy New York.
I can’t remember how I re-engaged with the city of Sharn in the Eberron setting because I am writing this way after the thought happened. I remember that statement: a fantasy New York. It is a fantasy city of ludicrously high buildings, floating districts and lower levels that rarely see the whole light of day.
It does occur to me that another way of describing this is a fantasy Coruscant. Especially if you have this city cover a large island instead of a planet. We do keep drifting back to Star Wars and space opera. I’m going to have to address that specifically as these posts progress.
Sharn tests me because it throws something extraordinary at my feet and says, “accept the existence of that, swine?” And, yes, you quickly search the internet, and you can easily find 1001 posts about how Sharn makes no sense or people trying to meticulously explain how it is possible with all sorts of weird explanations.
I need to be comfortable with things like Sharn’s existence. I’m sure the core imperial capital will be a city of spires, a fantasy metropolis and an island-sized Coruscant.
Draenei Architecture in Warcraft
So, here is a trick I use, which I’m not saying is unique to me. If you can’t be arsed to put copious amounts of explanation into how things in your world work consistent imagery can do a lot of the work for you. This is because it communicates consistency, and quite often, that is what you want, not a profound, super detailed explanation.
Despite Creation having things that work like technological artefacts analogous to inventions from different periods of our history or even our future, you don’t want them to look and feel like our real-world versions. You can have skyscrapers, trains and flying transports, but they’re not our versions of these things. They have to keep a mythical, fantastical and arcane aesthetic.
That brings me to the Draenai in World of Warcraft. I love the aesthetic of the Draenai technology, specifically how it uses light, a specific colour and crystals to create a consistent look. You can see how this approach could be used across different types of settings because the visual notes it uses are timeless rather than analogous to some Earth period.
I am going to steal it.
You can see how this could give the core Imperial City a sense of being like Coruscant or Bladerunner without being like it at all. It has edifices arising into the sky with crystals hanging on like limpets that cast a purple glow across the skyline or shoot up into the sky. Characters can have nighttime conversations on platforms high in the sky cast in a purple glow. Similarly, all airships could have an elemental ring, similar to how Star Wars has hyperspace rings that drive the vessel through the air. The trains have elemental nodes that drive the train along a series of nodes in the ground that are its ‘tracks’ and leave a trail of ‘lightning’.
How does it work? Who cares. The point is it’s consistent, and there is enough consistency to interact with it as if it has some real explanation. There is enough consistency to layer it across time into the descriptions of things so the setting is reinforced.
That is the level of detail I prefer.
And, Finally…
It’s fascinating how everyone’s preparation for a campaign is different. Some people set out cultures and geography and even go as far as what people eat. I tend to go for visuals and relationships so they can be consistently described and interacted with sensibly.
You have to accept it makes no sense. As soon as you are running a fantasy, you’re always dealing with various degrees of bollocks. It’s just people settle at a different place on the line.
The whole approach to visuals of the artefacts has me again thinking whether the fantasy in Fantasy Avengers is an actual fantasy in anything but the broadest sense. We’ll come back to that.