Monday, July 22, 2019

Constructing fictional worlds while leaving room for other people's imagination and creativity



When it comes to creative writing details are important. Specific character traits of a novel's protagonist or a detailed description of a landscape are what paint a picture in the mind of the reader.

Every world builder knows that the more details you add to your fictional world the more real it seems to become. And for many much of the fun comes from fleshing out their creation with characters, cultures and histories. If the premise of the world is interesting enough then other people will dive in to that world and enjoy learning about all those details. So why not just give people what they want?

For me there can be too much of a good thing and just because people want something does not necessarily mean you should give it to them. If you leave a blank space on a map it will spark people's imagination and they'll ask you questions about it. But you have to resist giving them definite answers. It's much better to gift them that empty space and allow them to come up with their own answers.

Every blank space (geographically, historically, culturally) that the world builder fills in restricts the area that people feel comfortable applying their own creativity to. In my opinion if a world builder wants other people to feel comfortable playing in and contributing to that world they need to strike a balance between providing outlines and hooks that will spark the imagination and blank spaces where that can actually happen.

This is one of the reasons why I think detailed worlds like Tékumel and Glorantha haven't become as popular for gaming as they could be. The core ideas are intriguing for a lot of people but as they start learning more about them they realise there exist tomes worth of official history, culture and religion.

Now it's well known that the creators of these worlds, M.A.R. Barker and Greg Stafford, encouraged people to get involved and come up with their own variations of these settings. To not feel bogged down or restricted by a perceived canon. And yet people still feel an unease, as if they can't get involved unless they "do it the right way". There's also the perception that those settings are too alien or are based on history that people don't know enough about compared to what they think they know about Medieval Europe. But I think that's given undue importance.

With this project I'm trying to strike a balance. Providing enough outlines and ideas to point people in a direction that is different enough from the standard fantasy-medieval-world for things to be novel while giving them the confidence and permission to play around in it.

This applies to myself as well. I'm not interested in creating a timeline that spans thousands of years, detailing the exact history of city states, kingdoms and empires. Nor do I want to write up the entire cosmology, mythology and religions of each tribe that exists. I don't want to box myself in with a canon.

For me enough detail is something like: "The societies in this world are similar those of the Mediterranean Bronze Age. The people follow religions that are polytheistic and animistic communicate these through an oral tradition as well as in writing (but remember only a small percentage of the population is literate). They have an interest in the stars and the motions of the planets. A small percentage of the population are priests and shamans and they have a high status in society. Some religions employ consciousness altering practices such as fasting, chanting, meditating and taking hallucinogenic substances". For me that's enough to make clear this is not a world of monotheistic religions or a setting with clear good and evil. If that's what you want, be my guest. But if you want me to help you outline a different kind of sandbox, well there it is.

That's why I've created what I call the Middle Period in this setting. It's a sandbox time within a sandbox setting that allows for a variety of cultures, technology levels and geo-political situations to exist next to each other. This period of time stretches tens of thousands of years which is more than enough for such a patchwork to develop. In reality whole empires were created and destroyed within the span of one to two hundred years.

Contrast this with many fantasy worlds in which every other kingdom seems to have a detailed unbroken history going back millennia with little room to manoeuvre. Again, we all know that we can do whatever we want using our imagination when we're being creative and playing games. But there's something about knowing that somewhere the details have already been worked out and written down and for whatever reason that knowledge seems to inhibit people.

Saturday, July 20, 2019

How to start a Bronze Age: Metal Resources in Sundaland

It was the promise of gold that first brought the traders of my people to these lands. It was said that it was as common as the sand on the beaches and that even the people of the lowliest cast possessed golden artefacts to adorn their fingers, necks and ears. While that was an exaggeration, gold is still valued and prized amongst the wealthy and powerful, it is certainly more abundant here than anywhere else. 
The people of Sundaland are in want of tin, since the earth here does not yield much of it. Luckily that is something we can supply and the trade in one for the other is thus mutually beneficial. There are some tin mines in the central areas of this land but access and control of them are often contested and even the cause of wars. 
You might ask, why is tin deemed worthy of a trade for gold and something to shed blood for? Well it is necessary for the creation of bronze with which to fashion both the strongest plow and the sharpest spear.  
- An Account of Sundaland by Alom Takal 
Knowing how various natural resources are distributed in an area can give insight into how local economies developed and can provide a background for geo-political tensions. Just think about the importance of oil and other natural resources for what has happened over the past 100 years. In previous times it was much the same, however metals were what was sought after.

Access to better metals meant you could create better tools and weapons. It's not my intention to work out a detailed resource economy but to provide inspiration and ideas for why for example a certain city is located somewhere or why one city state wishes to attack the other. These are great hooks for stories and adventures.

Ancient people were aware of seven different metals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metals_of_antiquity

Gold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold
Silver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver
Copper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper
Tin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterite
Lead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead
Iron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron
Mercury: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury

I imagine this setting as having a Bronze Age level of technology. While iron was known by ancient people it has a much higher melting point than the other metals and requires a more complicated procedure to forge and work with. Iron objects are very rare and usually produced by more advanced societies. Meteoric iron was also used, but again it requires advanced technology to forge.

Gold and silver are found natively meaning that once mined they are immediately ready to use. The others have to be processed first. Gold is relatively abundant in the area and stimulated traded with India and China in later times. Panning was a common according to this in depth article: Gold in early South East Asia. As far as I know Bronze Age societies didn't use currency but relied on trading goods or were run as so called Palace Economies (the central authority collected and redistributed resources as needed) but perhaps a relative abundance of gold could allow for the invention and use of currency. Edit: Recently I've read research that indicates currencies were indeed used in the Bronze Age although not always in the form of coins.

Bronze was very important since it allowed the creation of stronger tools and weapons. Bronze is an alloy consisting of roughy 88% copper and 12% tin. In fact some Bronze Age societies of the Eastern Mediterranean would trade batches of copper and tin ingots in a ratio of 9 to 1.

Copper is roughly 20 times as common as tin so the latter was the more valuable resource. The ancient Egyptians, Hittites etc. relied on tin from Afghanistan and some scholars liken it to oil in terms of its scarcity and importance to their civilisations. Wikipedia: Tin sources and trade in ancient times

In the map below I've labelled areas where metal ores are found using various public resources (I've included the highly valuable Jade as well as Obsidian). I've taken liberty to add in two extra sources of copper to ensure enough abundance for a Bronze Age similar to what occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean from roughly 3300 to 1200 BC. These are located in what is now South Vietnam and West Borneo.



The main tin deposits are in what is now Malaysia and central Sundaland (click to enlarge). Whomever has control of sources of tin controls who can create bronze in the entire subcontinent. There are tin deposits in what is now Burma and Northern Thailand but they won't be easily accessible as those areas are highlands and covered in dense forests, it might be that they haven't even yet been discovered. Perhaps, as told in stories of Alom Takal, there was trade of tin from what is now Afghanistan, through India and across the Bay of Bengal?

Remember that this map only shows a fraction of the river systems and that most of the landscape is covered in various types of forests and jungles. Natural resources might be abundant but that doesn't mean they are easy to access.



Friday, July 19, 2019

Sundaland Geographical Map

Here's my latest map of Sundaland (click it for a closeup view). As you can see I've opted for the inland sea and drawn only a couple of the main rivers because the area contains hundreds.

The overall geography might be a similar mixture as what you still see in South East Asia today (although the overall temperature was probably slightly cooler), forests and jungles but also grasslands and even an open savanna in the south. Also there are deep swamps in the centre of the subcontinent.

For the sources I used to create this map go here: Ecosystems of Sundaland