Friday, June 20, 2025

Blank Page to First Scene 2: World Building 1, Paradise


World Building with the Mythic RPG is both extremely easy and rather challenging. It is easy because, with the loose idea of what you want, and the Fate chart, you can ask simple yes/no questions and start filling in the details. It is challenging because it can and will subvert your expectations quickly, which can lead to a game that wasn't what you had in mind. When an actual GM does this to his players, and he sees it isn't quite working out they can intelligently course correct, getting back on track. Mythic RPG, for all it is a wonderful system, isn't a thinking one. We bring the thinking to it. Thus, it is better to nail down anything you want to be concrete as soon as it comes to mind and NOT to leave it all up to Mythic.

There are two starting places we need the Hub, a district of Paradise, and Shadow, the term that Paradisians call everywhere else. I want to start in media res. So, I will be jumping straight into action, so I don't need a lot of details on Paradise yet, and because exploring is the purpose of travel for Saul, I don't want to go over board with the starting location either.

If you were to follow this link Setting Creation Elements, you would find that Mythic Magazine has provided us with a plethora of tools for creating setting and parts there of, but lets first look at the suggestions from Mythic RPG.

Chapter 9, World Creation (starting on pg. 85) gives us gives us a number of tools for emergent world building, and we will put those to good use in the near future, but starting with the Hub we are going to nail down some details before we let randomness take the wheel.

Mythic Magazine 38, pg. 3 gives us the article  “Solo Setting & World Creation System” (This can be found in Compilation 7). This has several tools useful for us (bonus points for us as it mentions that this or a variation of it will be used in Setting Creation in MRPG2). First off, there are lists of  Adventure Genre to roll randomly or at least consider for inspirational purposes. I like Hybrid Fantastic Sc-fi. That gives us a broad base for our local district in Paradise. Next, and just as important, not just for this setting but for the campaign at large, is Adventure Tone. Epic and Strange match our needs, but I am going to add Whimsical as well, to remind myself that this is more of a light hearted game for fun than a dash to rescue the multiverse. The penultimate tool at hand is Context. Here we are going to lay down ground rules for play in Paradise.

"Context is what informs our expectations. Context
is everything we know about our adventure world,
from the genre and setting to important past
events and our Player Characters themselves." MM Vol. 38, pg.8

So, to describe the context of the campaign, and Paradise specifically I think "Madcap Genre-bending Multidimensional Adventure!" pretty much covers both the city of Paradise (or at least the hundred or so miles we are likely to explore) and gives us a good idea of the types of adventures and scenes to come.

Along with context we can set Context Rules.

"A Context Rule is adventure Context
that you elevate to a game rule. Treat it
like a mechanical element of your RPG
or adventure, like any other rule. It’s
an instruction you can refer to when
interpreting Mythic prompts and events." MM Vol. 38, pg. 10

Context Rules for Paradise and Beyond
  1. In Paradise there is no death, and very little want. If a character from Paradise dies in a Shadow the reappear in Paradise, though worse for the wear (and possible naked).
  2. If a setback can be interpreted in a humorous way in Paradise it is. Most Shadows will have more serious consequences.
  3. As Paradise holds an aspect of anything in creation, nothing is out of place there, though somethings maybe pretty weird nonetheless.
  4. Paradise is a safe haven (like a home base in a West Marches style campaign) which isn't to say adventure can't happen there, but if you put your loot in a bank or stow it with a powerful friend it will still be there when you get back. 
  5. You can reach any time or world from Paradise, as it has it cast its Shadows all over creation, it is harder to get back to than to exit from (excepting through dying of course, but that tends to be unpleasant).
The last tool in “Solo Setting & World Creation System” is a history generator. As Paradise has always existed and (theoretically) always will this would be a bit daunting, even for one neighborhood, so lets just give it one go for a brief local immediate history.  You will find the grid for generating histories in MM 38, pg. 9. (As I don't own the compilations I can't narrow it down for you there, sorry). For, those who haven't picked up this gem of a magazine yet I will briefly explain. There is a 5 by 3 grid of boxes, with interconnections by way of random d10 rolls taking you to other boxes. 1-2 may lead down to a box while the next box may have 3-4 lead right. That isn't too important right now. I am just going to run through it quickly and give you the narrative outcome.

Start>Attack Depletion>Deposit Freedom>Indulge Elements>Deny Attention>End

When Saul first came to the more or less abandoned Transcorp industrial district of Paradise it was a pretty much a slum. It was a corner that reminded him largely of the old fossil factory towns on old Earth which had been totally abandoned as soon as there was a way out, but people did live here, natives that were pretty dang close to looking like humans, and so while desolate it looked a lot like home. 

Saul had already been doing some dimension hopping for a while and in his wild rush from Domain to Domain he hadn't spent a lot of the loot. So, he arranged for a few cheap fabricators from a richer district (and by doing a few favors) and flexed a bit of his "magical" muscles and started cleaning the place up and arranging the tools the locals would need to refurbish the neighborhood. There were some clashes with various gang types, and one mob syndicate, but honestly it wasn't like the place was churning out the cheddar, so a deal was cut that it would remain something of a safe haven for people who wouldn't hassle the locals, on the condition that the locals wouldn't ask too many questions. That and bit of the vig was expected should the place turn a profit. And with that they let it go. 

To make sure that it didn't draw too much in the way of speculators and gentrification, it outer edges were left pretty rough, though the inside became a homey safe haven for locals, your more good natured banditos, and weirdos from across paradise and beyond. Saul really pushed for it to be named Saulsburg, as it was his idea, but it ended up being name Haven, about the least interesting name they could come up with. 

With the next installment we will drop Saul into some hot water, and then generate an opening scene

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