As GMs, it can sometimes feel really hard to come up with an idea for your campaigns that hasn’t been done to death. Dragons? Check. Demons? Been there. Outerplanar entities? Beat it up, got the t-shirt. Civil war? Eh. Boooooring. And all your players have read Tolkien, and seen The Avengers, now, so you can’t even rip off lesser-known pop culture stuff, because everyone knows it, right? Let’s try looking out of our comfort zone. We have readers all over the world, but for the purpose of this discussion, I’ll assume most of our readership has a mostly-Western upbringing (which means people outside of this demographic have an edge already!). If you look up the mythic stories of cultures relatively far from yours, you’ll find all sorts of Soap Opera Fantasy goodness. Finding a “for dummies” guide may help you pick up the basics and work out some ideas around that. 15 minutes on Wikipedia has given me these (and my apologies if I’ve misinterpreted or missed the point of something) : * The Ramayana is an Indian epic (seriously epic, like 24,000 VERSES long) about the journeys of Prince Rama to rescue his wife from Ravana, the Demon King. * Journey To The West has been turned into a pile of stuff, including the recent New Zealand version of Monkey Magic. It features a monk journeying across the Silk Road (about 7,000 miles, or 11,000km) on foot, with ghosts and other spirits, demons, the famous Flaming Mountains, and more. * Russia’s folk tales often feature a ”player insert character” (who doesn’t have a lot of character themselves, but can be preeettyy much anyone) battling Koschei the Deathless, a Lich who hid away his heart so no one could kill him. He captures a firebird, marries a warrior princess, gains a talking horse, and wins a throne. * Zulu mythology has a monstrous, hunchbacked goddess named Usiququmadevu, who eats children, and a chief who hunts her down to get his kids back. If that can’t inspire you, then I just give up! There are as many more as there have ever been nations on Earth, so finding reference isn’t too hard. It’s important to be appreciative, not appropriating, when taking legends from other cultures. For you, it’s a story, for other people it’s their history. So, as much as you might hate seeing a poorly-pirated Bible rip-off adventure, pay homage to the original and be a fan of the culture. If someone gets what you’re angling at, then great, you’ve done your job well! Let them ‘lean into it’ and enjoy the experience! (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 15 June 2018) Categories All Comments are closed.
|
AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
May 2022
Categories
All
|