Of Dice and Men

Written by Shawn Sines on 12/30/2008 for

Its that time of year again.. the infernal family gathering ritual based on pagan beliefs co-opted by the mainstream religion.. you know.. the Winter’s Night Festival. What? You’ve never heard of Winter’s Night? Well maybe you don’t live on a planet called Brekton and maybe you don’t worship The One.. but I bet there is something similar in your world. I’ve heard tell of this whole Christmas thing is pretty popular on a number of planes of existence.

This week Of Dice and Men catches a bit of the holiday spirit so I thought I’d talk a bit about world building in RPGs. World Building is an activity that helps make your role playing campaign feel more “real”, more “authentic” in a sense and this article will talk about one of my favorite tricks to flesh out my fantastic worlds.. something so many of us take for granted it seems.. the concept of holidays.

Speaking just for a bit on the concepts of your typical fantasy adventure games – like say Dungeons & Dragons. Often our settings highlight characters who traipse through a world filled with gods and monsters, angels and devils flinging lightning bolts from their hands or waving magic swords of pig sticking +4 around at the Orc warlord. The adventuring clerics and priests worship holy or unholy powers and practice practical examples of faith every day.. but one of the things I’ve often found missing in the worlds I’ve inhabited in my fantasy lives are holidays.

I could spend some time talking about the real-world origins of holidays – both national/federal and religious but that would be far too much detail with any real gain, so instead lets just talk about the concept of fantasy worlds. The feudal system that serves as a vague basis of most fantasy games even included a system of holidays for the fiefdom and peasants, days when the average man or woman toiling in the fields were given a break for reasons of national pride, royal celebrations or godly obeisance.

Since we steal the best romantic parts of this time in history liberally doesn’t it make sense to do the same in our fantasy worlds? I mean while the typical adventuring company is filled with colorful characters wielding unusual power and authority they still interact with the everyday folks all around them and when better to throw your players a little reality bone than by introducing the concept of a holiday themed adventure into the mix?

Creating a holiday is pretty simple if you consider that we have a number of concepts that we can easily steal from our everyday world and then magic up a bit for our games. Fall harvest festival, the birthday of a saint/champion/god, celestial events, etc.

Making these events significant in the lives of adventurers is also something fairly easy to do. The party returns from the dank lair of the Dark Lord Gothmog to find that the vendors of the town are unavailable to buy their acquired loot because today is “Toot’s Day” when all the vendors journey to a nearby lake for a big party and split their profits under supervision of the clerics of the god of money laundering. Examples like this can spice up a pretty simple game and add a little flair and surrealism at times to a game that could easily devolve into “go to cave, kill monster, take loot, sell loot, rinse.. repeat”.

Holidays can also be a catalyst for an adventure, a celestial event that changes the world for a certain time. Giving players a bonus, adding a mystical impact and a sense of urgency to a game also helps to propel the plot quite often. If the blessing of the goddess of verdant forests will last only so long as the festival of the spring solstice the players will think twice before spending three days laid up in a cave chilling while they wait for the orcs beyond their warren leave to hunt nearby game – namely festival guests and spirits of spring that enable the fertile growing season. Should they say risk their lives under the blessing they are granted a limited mechanical bonus, or heal from wounds more quickly.. if they wait too long not only are there real consequences in the deaths of the revelers and ruination of the fertility of the planted crops for the year, but they lose the supernatural bonus granted by the goddess.

Use these opportunities to mix up your game a bit. It also offers great opportunity to encourage role-playing and development of NPCs and locations you or your players find interesting. Holidays plot hooks are excellent tools in the storytelling arsenal and it’d be a crime to overlook the impact of just one or two opportunities to use them.