Historical Fidelity and Building Interesting Settings

For those that don't know me personally: I am a huge history/sociology buff. I majored in the latter during college, and I am (ostensibly) working on going back to get a master's in the former. 

I think there's a lot that can be learned from history. One maxim that I use frequently when describing why I love history: 'People have always been people.'. Looking at past human cultures can teach us much about the variances in our culture today. It can reveal implicit biases and prejudices that go back hundreds or thousands of years, and furthermore: give us a launchpad into imagining different worlds. 

Inkwarren is pretty heavily inspired by the folklore and culture of the British Isles during the Late Middle Ages. There's a couple reasons for this: it is the culture and history that I (Matt Shay) descend from, it is the basal inspiration behind many of the things that inspired Inkwarren itself, and despite medieval Europe being at the forefront of the majority of fantasy works, it's an era that many don't understand personally. I'm interested in what this society looked like, and what it would look like if it came from frogs and squirrels and sparrows instead of people (with a little bit of authorial liberty in there too). 

The majority of fantasy settings in major tabletop roleplaying games use a sort of setting I call 'Ren Faire Fantasy'. It has the loose trappings of a medieval/Renaissance Europe-- violins and plate armor exist in a world that sometimes has gunpowder and sometimes doesn't. The society itself largely reflects modern sensibilities: religion is a Percy Jackson-like monolatristic model (where the world is polytheistic but each worshipper picks a patron deity to pray to), the nobility melds with today's bourgeoisie and police forces exist in the form of city watches or town guards. This sort of setting is very, very fun, as it lets the player immediately make connections between what they know and what their character knows, without having to explain why some things are different. That's why you'll find it in every heavy hitter in the role-playing sphere: D&D, Pathfinder, Daggerheart, Draw Steel, and even smaller darlings like Grimwild use this model of setting. It is the most classic brand of setting available, and an easy one to market-- don't you want to play in the world you imagine at the Renaissance Festival?

However: I think history can be digestible. I'm not writing in this article about historical accuracy-- Inkwarren is not, in any sense, a historical fantasy setting. I think we can aim for a sort of historical fidelity-- using the societies of the past and today to create settings that feel like real, living, breathing cultures like the ones in our world. We can create settings that players can understand, settings that feel disparate from the world we live in, but that we can still connect with and explore as someone that lives there. I don't think the problem with Ren Faire fantasy is its lack of historical inspiration-- I just think it could be way more interesting with what it does with the history it's inspired by. 

How can we use history to create living, breathing, societies? Let's take a look at a couple of things:

1. Base and Superstructure. The Marxist framework for understanding how division of labor ripples into other pillars of society. By identifying the base of our culture's division of labor, we can form a superstructure around it to create systems of rule, repression, and class divide. 
2. Religion. Religion is a complicated phenomena in human interaction. The view that religion was mostly ancient people interpreting physical phenomena that they didn't understand is, I think, very limited. Religion is many things: it is a tool of control, a method of interaction, a repository for culture and history, as well as being a tool of understanding. Especially for medieval fantasy, understanding religion and how it works into a setting will be life or death for the setting's verisimilitude. 
3. Social Change. Don't write a fifty page bible of your setting's history-- if you don't burn out, your players will not read it. We're playing games here. We can create convincing histories by identifying three major moments of social change in our setting's history, and working through what has come from them. 

Remember these three rules as you design:

1. People are Not Stupid. Fantastical beliefs about the world, sciences that didn't work, or draconian social mores are not the product of an 'unintelligent' populace. Refrain from the impulse to play into tropes about historical peasantry: for the large part, people bathed, knew basic scientific truths about the world that we know today, and valued themselves and their community. This leads into rule two.
2. Examine Your Biases. This is an extension of rule #1. You did not learn an unbiased view of history. Accounts of marginalized and indigenous cultures were often written by their colonizers (especially so if they relied on an oral history). Tropes like human sacrifice, primality in culture and behavior, and brutality in regards to life or ritual are harmful and inaccurate to the actual cultures they were prescribed to. Be cognizant of this, and examine your biases where you can. 
3. In Everything, Be Material. People make decisions based on their material conditions. Things never 'just happen'. A bandit doesn't just rob people because he wants to be a bandit: he might be a cast-off mercenary from a war that's long ended, or an impoverished local preying on rich travelers, or someone abandoned that exerts their power on the world around them to reclaim that power within themselves. You'll not only avoid some of the worst impulses of fantasy world design with this, but also create more interesting dilemmas for your players to engage with. 
   

Base & Superstructure

Base & superstructure is a Marxist framework for understanding how labor relations shape a society. In short:

• The base is the fundamental divisions of labor that the society is organized around.
• The superstructure is the classes and surrounding annals of culture, organization, and oppression that arise from this relationship. 

In our current, post-industrial society, the fundamental division of labor is between proletariat (those who do not control their means of production and must sell their labor to survive) and the bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production and purchase the labor of the proletariat to sustain it). 

In a pre-capitalist society, these divisions of labor are different. A feudal system has the lower class (peasantry) work their means of production and supply their surplus labor to the ruling class. This is our base-- we can write it like this:

"The peasantry produces material goods through labor, and surplus labor is extracted by the ruling classes."

I say 'classes' here for a reason: the Late Middle Ages has a couple of distinct classes that have arisen from this base. I use four for most of Inkwarren's setting: peasantry, merchants, the Faith, and nobility, with 'outlaws' making up the fifth ur-class. Let's examine each of them:

• Peasantry. Peasants labor over the means of production to produce surplus goods for the ruling classes. Most peasantry work in agriculture: farms, domesticated animals, and the like. Some peasantry work as 'journeymen' (trainees) for more specialized laborers, falling under the merchant class. 
• Merchants. An emergent class between peasantry and nobility. At this time of history, coin is emerging as a standardization of transactions between classes-- we start seeing 'markets for exchange' for the first time in history. The true members of the merchant class are 'masters' or 'guild leaders' that oversee and control the labor of several journeymen (apprentices). They still give the surplus of their profit to the Faith and nobility in the form of tithes and taxes. Merchants will eventually absorb into the nobility and create the bourgeoisie of today.
• The Faith. Where merchants are an emerging class, the Faith is a decaying one. While still powerful during this period, the Faith used to be all-encompassing. It is still ubiquitous today, with athiestic movements being all but nonexistent. The Faith extracts surplus profit from the peasantry and merchants in the form of tithes. 
• The Nobility. The true ruling class of this period. Nobles own plots of land and extract surplus labor (taxes) from the peasants of that land. More powerful nobles have the ability to arbitrate law, impose sentences, or punish peasants that work their lands, or to extract more than surplus from them if they so will it. 
• Outlaws. The ur-class. Outlaws are comparable to Marx's description of the 'lumpenproletariat'-- they are members of the underclass that are wholly outside of the base and therefor unable to participate in the interactions of the superstructure. Outlaws are criminals, foreigners, exiles, or indigenous populations that lie outside of the setting's base and superstructure. 

Perfect. We have our base, and we have the workings of a superstructure. 

Creating Your Own

Create your own base and superstructure by going through these questions. 

1. The Base. How does the society orient itself around labor? Who works, and who rules? Are goods sold in markets for profit, or used in more subsistent structures? Is it a more equal or more unequal relationship?
2. The Superstructure. What classes emerge from this division of labor? What classes break these rules? How does the ruling class establish its legitimacy, and what in-between classes might arise?

Example: Inkwarren's Base and Superstructure

Base. In the Crowne of Inkwarren, the lands of the world are divided amongst family lines of nobilities-- called 'clans' or 'houses'. These family lines vary in power, but each controls a plot of land and extracts surplus value from the woodlanders who work it. 

Superstructure. There are five statures that a woodlander might fall into:

• Outlaws have been banished from, or perhaps were never a part of, Warrenish society. They do not work a trade and therefor cannot gain coin, and hold none of the privileges of the higher classes. They must seek other ways to survive-- which may include further treasonous acts. 
• Smallfolk are the largest stature in Inkwarren, and the weakest. Smallfolk all work in service to a houseborn family, and give that family the surplus of their labor in the form of a tax. They tithe another portion to the Abbey of Sant. 
• Tradesfolk. The tradesfolk are an emerging stature in Inkwarren-- trained laborers, most of whom belong to a guild. The highest of tradesfolk are the masters-- great artisans who are attended by one or more apprentices, the lowest of tradesfolk who arise from the smallfolk to train under guilded masters.
• The Faithful. The Abbey of Sant is the premier religion of the Crowne of Inkwarren, ruling it in centuries past. Now, the Abbey is a center of community, medicine, and learning for the smallfolk. Woodlanders receive treatment for their ailments, entertainment in the form of mummery and storytelling, and learning in the Santwrit (their holy book) and other matters of the world in exchange for tithes (small percentages) of their labor output. 
• The Houseborn. The houseborn are the highest ruling class of Inkwarren: those ancient families that rule large swathes of land and everyone that lives on it. Houseborn range in power: from the great House of Fane that rules this land, to smaller vassal houses that collect taxes from a precious few farms on their land. 

Religion

Religion is one of the major constants between almost every human society in history. In medieval life, religion was ubiquitous. Our counts of atheistic medieval movements are almost nonexistent-- those that we did know of were factions like the Cathars that simply had different ideas about how divinity works. (As a forewarning before the rest of this article: while I grew up deeply involved with Christianity, I am an atheist. I always strive to be objective with how I speak about religion, but if my tone is overly sterile I apologize.)

Again: this is not because people in the Middle Ages were stupid. People did not cling so hard to the Church and the thought of God because they did not understand the world around them. The church was the center of the peasant community-- it was one of the only major public gathering places, a community center for entertainment and learning, and for most of the peasantry, the only place to find medicine. Trained physicians (belonging to the merchant class) were few and far between, and they charged a comparable rate for their services. 

Also important to note here before I get into anything actionable: religion is not an objective term with a single meaning. It is a modern term, and not how people of past eras regarded their epistemology for the universe. I use the term religion here to mean 'a system of belief based upon the divine, spiritual, or mystical', and will discuss the term based on that assumption. 

Never mind answering the question of what is religion-- how does it form? How do we write one to be convincing?

Let's put together some assumptions:

1. Religion is Part of the Superstructure. Religion is part of the superstructure that we created before. In many examples, the priesthood is a remnant of a former ruling class, from an early time where the division of labor existed between citizenry (working) and clergy (ruling). Our first rule (choose whether yours will embody or break this): the Faith used to be in power, if it isn't still. 
2. The Divine Melds to the Mortal. Our perceptions of the divine often change based on how our society functions. Urban/metropolitan societies where many people exist alongside strangers they don't know often develop 'moral gods' that watch their actions and look and behave like people. Subsistent/nomadic societies based around smaller family groups often worship deities that act more like forces of nature. Our second rule is more broad: the Faith looks like the society that worships it. 
3. Religion Answers Questions. Alright, this is still a component of religion. It's just not the only component. A religion will answer questions and fill in the gaps of the known world. If it doesn't make statements on causal claims like the origin or death of the world, it will answer more philosophical claims: how do you be a good person? What's the purpose of life? What happens when you die? Here's our third rule: the Faith answers questions we don't know the answer to. 
4. Religion is Culture. The community gathers and feeds the needy at a holy place. Their special days are based on the Faith, intermixed with a few days based on major historical events. Many clergies will offer medicinal services without cost, and other events-- plays, feasts, weddings, funerals -- are hosted at the temple. The priesthood provides funerary services, and are available for advice or interpretation of the holy book if needed. Our fourth and final rule: the Faith acts as a cultural glue for the society. 

We have a basic, probably contradictory understanding for how religion works, basing our assumptions on medieval Christianity. If you seek something more unique to this setting, break one or all of these rules. Imagine a religious structure different from the one stated here!

Creating Your Own

To come up with your setting's religion, let's answer some questions. 

1. When was your religion born? How does it say it came into play? Do your setting's histories remember a time before the religion? If it can be remembered, what was the prophet of the religion like? How did it become what it is today?
2. How does your religion reflect your society? Does it worship personal, moralistic gods that judge the actions of the woodlanders? Only one god? Are gods forces of nature to be feared? If they have individual domains, what do they govern? Why are these domains important to your society?
3. What questions does it answer? Does it explain weather, age, or similar phenomena through mythology? What does it say about the origin of the world? Does it predict when the world will end? What happens after its followers die? What's the purpose of life?
4. How is your religion reflected in the setting's culture? What common practices have origins in the faith? What holy days do followers observe? Is there a gathering place, or a priesthood? What roles do priests fulfill? Is there a holy book? What cultural values find their origin in the faith?

Example: The Abbey of Sant

Inkwarren's premier religion is the Abbey of Sant, also simply called the Abbey or the Faith by its adherents. It is based around the writings of a holy text called the Santwrit. 

• When was your religion born? According to the Santwrit, its writings are the summary writings of the Four First Saints-- the Saint of Coins, Cups, Swords, and Wands, each with a shard of the primordial Den Mother upon her death. The coming of the Abbey to Inkwarren, if it was recorded, was lost with the destruction of the Folk of Yesterday-- but there are woodlanders who follow older gods that profess they have held the faith of their ancestors far longer than the Abbey has sung its tales.
• How does your religion reflect your society? The Saints are four pseudo-deities: woodlanders immortalized because of the import of their deeds in this world. Through following the examples of the Saints, woodlanders too can hope to achieve Sainthood and join them in What Comes After. The Abbey values stories and histories, and encourages woodlanders to build their own saga amongst their neighbors. Woodlanders pray to the Four Saints for different gifts: Coins for luck, Cups for health, Swords for strength, and Wands for wisdom, or any number of lesser saints for their patronage.
• What questions does it answer? The Santwrit professes that the world was born from the cleaved corpse of the Den Mother, after Her progeny the Child slew her in a vengeful rage. Woodlanders were born from Her tears, and the strange world of Yon was born of the Child's former home, and cleaved from his Mother's body. The Santwrit does not speak much of what comes after: woodlanders who have lived lives of virtue will join the Saints, and those unlucky few who lived forgotten or immoral will fade into nothing. It professes that the Wide World will come to an end when the Child reaches from Yon and burns the last of his mother's remains. 
• How is your religion reflected in the setting's culture? Woodlanders believe in three unforgivable sins: denying someone their last words, breaking an oath spoken aloud, and sorcery. There is a holy day for each Saint, each in a different season: for example, the Day of Swords is celebrated mid-autumn and forbids violence or bloodshed of any kind from sunrise to sunset. Gathering places are called Abbeys, attended by a striated priesthood: Abbots lead congregations and interpret the Santwrit, Harpers are itinerant priests that travel to settlements without an abbey of their own, Midwives learn the secrets of medicine and humors to care for those that come into their care, and Penitents atone for a great sin by embalming the dead and singing the final death song upon their passing: the drune. Priests never carry a blade-- it is forbidden. 

Social Change

History can be defined by periods of social change. Social change is the transfer of power from one class to another. Wars, revolutions, religious enlightenments: all of these can shape your setting. We are not going to write a long history here: sum up the history of your setting with three instances of social change that are still shaping the world today. 

Moments of social change are used to illustrate the ever-shifting nature of society. Your society's base and superstructure are likely not how they have always been-- faults in the system, hunger pangs of the working class, and inequalities in division of labor will eventually lead to an upheaval. 

History moves in waves. It has peaks where the progressive force of change wins, and valleys where the forces of reaction crush it. Consider this when you build these moments: sandwich a progressive change with two reactionary ones, or vice versa. Progressive changes trend towards equality: smashing class barriers, allowing mobility, or weakening the power of the ruling class. Reactionary changes trend towards inequality: victories of the ruling class allow them to tighten their grip, misfortune prevents the working class from organizing, or a new base presents itself without abolishing the inequalities of the old one. 

Consider also the age of these changes: if all happened within the lifetime of the setting, your characters would be entering into an era filled with chaos and strife. More than likely, some of these happened lifetimes ago: but you can still feel their effects in the world today. Here's my advice: place one event within a lifetime, one several lifetimes ago, and one too many years ago to count. 

Creating Your Own

To create a moment of social change, let's consider the following:

1. The Transfer of Power. Who was power transferred from, and who was it taken from? Was this a progressive, or a reactionary transfer? Was the transfer physically violent, or rely on methods that did not use bloodshed (note: this can still mean violence)?
2. When Did It Happen? A lifetime ago, and the eldest of folk can still remember it. Many lifetimes ago, passed down through story? Or did it happen in times immemorial, and all that we have now is myth and folklore?
3. How Are the Effects Felt? Where are the ripples felt in your setting? What is different in the world since it happened? Is there ever any hope of going back? 

Example: Inkwarren's History

Inkwarren's history is defined by three major instances of social changes. 

1. The End of Yesterday. Many lifetimes ago, the civilization whose ruins now dot Cairnadal's face disappeared. They left no histories and no survivors-- all that is left of them now are ruins built from mossy stones and relics of a time immemorial. Inkwarren's history before this point was lost-- entire cultures, religions, and histories vanished into darkness. Scholars call this the End of Yesterday, and study of the civilization-- now called the Folk of Yesterday, pervades Warrenish scholastics.
2. The War of the Willows. Several lifetimes ago, the kings of northern Cairnadal (now called Inkwarren) united their armies to push their age-old enemy, the people of Wyld-Ma, away from their borders. Together, the armies pushed the Wyldmari back to the very edges of the great lake of Eashym, and have occupied the land they took ever since. The borderlands between the descendants of this conflict are called the Marches of Pryd, and many believe that the Wyldmari will one day venture to take it back. 
3. The Torchbearer's Rebellion. A lifetime ago, a mere twelve autumns, several houses of the disparate kingdoms of north Cairnadal rose up in rebellion against their kings, under the leadership of House Mourne. Together, this alliance overthrew and ended the lines of each of the kingdoms of Welkinbranch, the Root Roads, Pryd, and Cradlewick, and took control of the kingdom. They took an old name for the north of Cairnadal, from when folk called it 'the Inkwarren', for their new kingdom. Now, the Crowne of Inkwarren rules all of northern Cairnadal, joined in Cairnadal by only one other kingdom-- Wyld-Ma, of the marshy shores in the far south.

Closing Thoughts

With these steps, we've created a working society for our playspace. We know how the society is structured, some details about the culture, and the broad strokes of its history. We have enough to begin preparing our first session. 

In the next post, I'll prepare a session of Inkwarren! Join me then!

Thanks for reading! :)