Making Myths
My process for creating new settings for Guiding Fate usually starts by thinking up interesting magics to add to a world. I tend to mentally file these aspects under the category “lore” as in Guiding Fate‘s Character Azimuths. It helps me reign in all of my stray ideas trying to run loose. I find starting with the “larger” questions of how a world operates provides context for successively smaller twists to the question such as how a society would work in such a reality, how people might organize themselves or entertain themselves. Or what a person in that world would find of value.
(The following include Amazon Associate links to some of the books I mention. Feel free to check them out to get inspired for your own setting!)
I had been reading Griffin Claws and Flying Snakes, and while doing so, kept turning around the thought of how history becomes distorted and changed as it passes down the ages. Slowly whittled from a complex interconnected series of events to simple if fantastic narratives. How the bones of mammoths and elephants become the remains of dragons, griffins or other fantastic creatures. The more complicated reality, the existence of bones of unknown origin, translates into assumptions about what produced them, a lizard, but like a really big one.
It reminded me of the ancient doctrine of signatures. It was believed that the shape of the plant described what it was useful for. For instance Lungwort was used for coughing and respiratory problems. While the doctrine of signatures was not useful for predicting the utility of plants, it could serve as a mnemonic device to pass down the information gained over centuries as to different herb’s utilities.
Both instances demonstrate the tendency of humans to lose the complicated context of knowledge and whittle things down to narratives, human focused chucks of information. The tension between these two elements inspired the magic in Myths of Memories. The lore of that world has an underlying tension between preserving Mementos to learn the skills and knowledge they provide and expending them to power mythic abilities. This tension of civilizations preserving their history versus creating myths drives most of the plot conflicts in the setting.
In addition to this conflict of narrative against history, I wanted to work in the feelings of adventitious archeology and romantic exploration. Not only does the theme of hunting for treasures work into a tabletop rpg nicely and provide players and GMs with ready tropes to use to create a game, it adds another facet to the conflicts of history. More specifically who owns the past. In Myths of Memory the power of Mementos extends to whomever can lay hands on the artifact and that tends to reflect our reality as well, where the claim of the prizes of history can fall to those who seize them first. This conflict is expanded upon in the book Finders Keepers, which explores the varied interests and conflicting motivations when uncovering relics. Should they be left in their natural state, possibly allowed to degrade but preserving the context in which they existed? Should remote artifacts go to whomever comes across them? After all, if hard to find relics might live out their existence completely unseen by humans again, would it be better for them to fall into the care of someone who could present them back to the world? These warring interests guide the larger social organizations with nation states in the world of Myths of Memories conflicting on who owns certain Mementos and competing for their collection.
Beyond even the scope of nations deciding ownership of history, there is another competing bit of lore in the form of Tephra. As the world and its mysteries took shape, I sensed I needed to add an element. The conflict between the power of Mementos and Myths established the central conflict, but I felt there needed to be a third axis which could disrupt the predictable pendulum swing between the two. At first the volcanic or fiery theme of Tephra with its power to create rocket-like effects might seem out of place. However, I felt the various rocket technologies and lore it enabled played into the adventurous history hunting aspect of the setting. Additionally, it made me think of another book I had read, When They Severed Earth from Sky, which dealt directly with the transmission of information into myths. Specifically, one of its focuses was on how volcanic activity tended to be transmitted through myths and legends about great destructions and cataclysms. Couple society’s tendency to pass information about volcanoes through myths with volcano’s tendency to preserve history in dramatic ways, such as the eternally encased sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and I was inspired to include this third mystic pillar in the world of Myths.
Hopefully these few bits and pieces provide some insight into the thoughts behind Myths of Memories and its creation. My truest desire in providing them is to inspire others in the creation of their own settings. Guiding Fate has often served as a design process for me to create interesting and fantastic worlds with its iterative process, slowly building layer upon layer of the different Fateful Approaches to achieve different Fatalistic outcomes. And with its use of Azimuths to focus my attention on balancing setting between personal choices and decisions people in the world have to make, societal concerns and organizations, lore which defines the actions people can perform and secrets they know, and ideals which reminds me to tie my setting together with a larger purpose or goal for it. I hope the various processes of Guiding Fate can assist you as well.
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