On Roots
"The roots of those mountains must be roots indeed; there must be great secrets buried there which have not been discovered since the beginning."
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
"Tell me where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished?"
-Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
The map of Elcea is, to me, as familiar as the map of our world. The lands, as well as the peoples, their cultures, and their history, have grown and evolved over the last twenty-four years. Though I've long maintained that I discovered this world, rather than invented it, the fact remains that the roots of Elcea go deep into my subconscious mind. What strange influences fed those roots, and on what odd nourishments has Elcea grown?
As a campaign setting, Elcea is, at least on the surface, a pretty standard medieval setting, based on Western European culture and history. This is partly because it was what I was familiar with when I got started; published sourcebooks for oriental, middle eastern, and other settings didn't start to come along until several years after my campaign began. As the campaign has developed I have detailed cultures based on other influences, such as Tacindalloc, with its Aztec flavor, or Akam-Osar, loosely based on Mongol culture. The heart of the campaign, though, remains solidly rooted in the mainstream. The biggest reason for this is that most of Elcea's major influences are also rooted in that tradition, and their siren song calls me back whenever I stray too far from them.
Any discussion about influences on the Elcea campaign has to begin with J.R.R. Tolkien. Indeed, any discussion about influences on fantasy in general and D&D in particular has to take The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as its starting point. Gary Gygax, in the "Inspirational and Educational Reading" appendix to the 1st edition DMG, lists Tolkien as a "minor" influence, which I always thought was a little disingenuous, to say the least. Perhaps the fact that TSR had recently settled a lawsuit filed by the Tolkien estate asserting copyright violations had something to do with it, but I think it is more likely that Gygax was simply thinking too narrowly. True, there aren't a lot of specific spells, creatures, or magic items derived straight from Lord of the Rings (though there are some), but the entire idea of the game is steeped in Tolkien's concept of fantasy. Elves and dwarves have appeared in literature since there was literature, but it is Tolkien's vision of them that the game embraces. Halflings, of course, are his invention (just don't call them hobbits!). And where would the game be without orcs and goblins and the other humanoid races, which are taken almost whole cloth from Tolkien's portrayal of them?
Lord of the Rings remains my favorite book of all time. I have not imitated it in any direct way in building Elcea, but from it I have derived my entire idea of what "high fantasy" should be. The heroic quest, set against an epic backdrop of fully realized cultures, lands, languages, and history, provides a blueprint that I and hundreds of other writers and game masters have tried to realize in our own visions.
Dungeons & Dragons, however, is not always about high fantasy in a direct way. Most campaigns, and mine is no exception, usually follow the path of "low" fantasy or, as it is more commonly called, "swords and sorcery". Many of my ideas, concepts, and adventures are directly and indirectly influenced by two writers of this type of fantasy. Both of them were as much pioneers in this area as J.R.R. Tolkien was in the area of High Fantasy, and their influence on Elcea is much more direct.
The first of the two is Fritz Leiber. During the 30's and 40's (about the same time that Tolkien was writing) he created a series of stories involving two characters, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. For those that may not have read these stories, a little background information is probably in order. These stories are set in the world of Nehwon (spell it backwards), and in particular in the city of Lankhmar. Fafhrd is a barbarian from the frozen north, a huge man, and the Grey Mouser is a slender, agile swordsmen from the city. Both of them are rogues, though good-hearted at the core. In D&D terms both would be fighter\thieves of impressively high level. During their adventures they sought, found, and subsequently lost many fabulous treasures.
I read these stories while in junior high school, and their influence on me was profound. Newhon, with its ancient mysteries, mazy cities, treacherous wizards, fierce monsters, and long-lost treasures with deadly guardians, crackled around in my brain for years. When I encountered D&D for the first time this electricity found a lightning rod. Elcea is quite different from Nehwon, but the feelings of adventure and mystery that both evoke in me is the same.
A few years after I discovered Leiber I encountered Robert Howard, whose Conan stories are another foundation stone of modern fantasy. Forget the movie here: Howard's original stories are what swords and sorcery is all about. As with Fafhrd and the Mouser, Conan encounters evil wizards and dark gods, fabulous treasures and heroic companions, and some really creepy monsters. The only reason that I rate Howard's influence as less than Leiber's is that I encountered him later; I didn't read a lot of his stuff until Elcea was already partly created.
A side note here, speaking now as an English Lit major. If you haven't read Howard, don't dismiss him based on the movies or on any of the other baggage Conan has acquired over the decades. Howard was very fond of the idea of the "noble savage", now long out of vogue, and his ideas about race are decades out of date, but his writing is still vigorous and strong. He wrote with a spare, descriptive energy that give his stories a vivid impact that very few, if any, modern writers of fantasy can match. Ignore most of the Conan stuff that has been written since then (though Robert Jordan's Conan stuff comes the closest to the original) and find the original stories, if you can.
One last writer worthy of mention as an influence is H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft virtually invented the modern horror genre, and his vision of reality as a thin patch over gulfs of limitless cosmic horror has soaked into Elcea. Only rarely do I allow this to bleed overtly into the campaign (though it has happened, hasn't it, Rathbone?), but that presence is always there, lurking in the background. After all, there's that horrible fortress in the depths of the Greybole Forest, and the unspeakable creature that lies at the roots of the caverns beneath it, and there is that obscenely ancient temple below the Trollstep Hills, where many adventurers went mad, and there have been other occurrences as well.
Interestingly, while there have been many more modern writers of fantasy whose works I have read and enjoyed, very few of them have had any effect on Elcea at all. David Eddings, whose "Belgariad" and "Mallorean" series have given me some interesting ideas about nationality and politics in my campaign setting, is an exception. Stephen Brust's Vlad Taltos novels, which feature the most interesting depiction of thieves and assassins in a fantasy setting that I've ever read, is another.
When it comes to stealing plots and ideas, however, I'm more eclectic. Most of my outright thefts have come, interestingly enough, from fields other than fantasy. One adventure early in the campaign came from the Andre Norton science fiction novel The Time Traders. The battle of Orc's Drift, a Heroes of Telemarch adventure, was inspired by the movie "Zulu". A more recent example was the Mostelle Bloodhawk, a Bloodhawks adventure based on Dashiell Hammet's classic mystery novel The Maltese Falcon. This adventure was lifted so completely from the plot of the novel (and movie) that if any of the players had been really familiar with the plot they would have not only known exactly what was going on, but what was going to happen next. I worried about that, but felt pretty confident that none of the players were as big a fan of the hard boiled private-eye genre as I am. There have been a lot of other examples, taken from all different kinds of books and movies. I will say, though, that such direct lifting of a plot idea is the exception rather than the rule - I've run a lot of adventures, and most of them have come from my own diseased imagination.
When I do borrow an element of an adventure, or even a whole adventure, I usually make enough changes to camouflage the theft at least a little. Not always, though. Kim, for one, spotted the fact that the Bloodhawk's initial meeting with Ozub came right out of the movie "Labyrinth". There may be other equally blatant instances that I can't even recall right now. It would be interesting to hear some of the player's speculations and guesses about such instances, though.
There are other, less direct influences on the campaign as well. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is one such influence. The spirit of the Indiana Jones movies is what I think the spirit of D&D adventuring should be. Other stuff comes in little bits and pieces; I have read a lot of history, a lot of mythology, and a lot of books and poetry, and bits and pieces from all of this end up caught in some kind of filter in my brain, along with elements from film and television - everything from the TV show "The Prisoner" to Shelley's poem Ozymandius.
I like to think that all of these diverse elements combine and form something unique and original. Certainly Elcea stands out to me as its own creation, with its own feel and flavor. I hope it feels that way to the players as well.
Elcea also serves as sort of a giant Rorschach blot of my own mind. My own beliefs and ideas have found expression in the campaign in many ways, and these form the framework for all the external influences I have been talking about. Some of these "Phillian" influences aren't subtle at all; in both Xenthus and the Notar Republic, for example, sexual equality is an ingrained part of the culture, and I have never permitted assassins as player characters.
There are more subtle ways that my beliefs affect the campaign, as well. Inevitably, the values held by the core societies of the campaign (Elcea and the Notar Republic) tend to reflect my personal values. I think I'm a good enough world-builder to create societies that do not tend to mirror my own beliefs, and these can be found in the campaign, but the areas where the adventurers spend most of their time are somewhat cloudy windows into my own soul. In this regard Elcea is rather like a humungous version of a player character. It reflects my own idealizations, as well as giving me a chance to express some of the darker areas of my personality.
There is one more important influence that has shaped Elcea. It is one of the most important factors that has shaped the campaign, and one of the most difficult to quantify. This influence is that of the players. The game is by its very nature interactive, and I have written in previous columns about how, as time has gone on, I have yielded more and more control over events to the players. Players help shape not only the plots, however, but the campaign world itself. As I develop new things, I am guided by what has worked with the players in the past. If the players seem to like something, or respond strongly to it, then that sort of thing is much more likely to occur again as I develop new material. Things that leave the players bored and restless are not likely to get another trial.
These are some of the influences and things that have nourished the roots of Elcea, and that have shaped it as it has grown. There's a lot that goes into a campaign: lands and peoples, plots and adventures, NPCs and monsters. As I work on all of these things Elcea continues to grow, and things both bright and dark creep out of the corners of my mind to take shape in my notebooks. As players adventure through Elcea they are in a sense adventuring through my mind. How's that for a scary thought?
Do you have any comments, questions, or responses to this article? Send them in! I'd like to hear them, and if there are enough interesting ones I'll add them to this page.
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