The
entire Lost Lands campaign is usually described as “Dark Medieval," and this is a bit about what that means. To me, at least. If you're a fan of what I'm talking about in this post, you should definitely go and check out the Kickstarter, which is running now (until Nov 15, 2015).
What do people mean when they talk about “Dark Medieval” as a way of describing
the Borderland Provinces, or the Lost Lands, or Necromancer Games books? At a surface glance, the world looks fairly traditional: there
are elves, there are halflings, there are wizards … what’s the big deal? How is
that “dark?”
Basically, Frog God Games offers a “film noir” version of escapist fantasy, in contrast to Tolkien’s
epic and folkloric approach to the same genre. Our adventures tend to have lots
of horrific elements underlying the apparent reality, which is why you’ll often
see us saying, “All is not as it seems” when we’re talking about the Lands.
Where the Forgotten Realms have a strong tendency toward high fantasy and
heroism, our world is a bit … well … ickier.
One
of the strong themes of the campaign is that beneath the civilized veneer of
things, there is actually a seething mass of rot, evil, heresy, and
supernatural threat. Again, “all is not as it seems.” The Borderland Provinces
campaign book, as a supplement, has more focus on the actual veneer than an
adventure book. What does the “normal” world look like when I’m not in one of
these dungeons? So there is a lot of material about culture, history, trade,
and government that would be a bit boring if it weren’t for the fact that it’s
written in a way to best drive the game master’s creativity about what kinds of
adventures arise from that context. And of course, it also reveals a lot of
information about what’s beneath that veneer, a peek into the aforementioned
seething mass of rot, evil, heresy, and supernatural threat.
The
Adventures in the Borderland Provinces book, of course, is all about the dark
underbelly and nothing about the veneer. I'll have more to say about that book later.
If
you’re interested in the sort of fiction driving this “dark medieval” world of
ours, we can point to a few influential sources for those who are curious.
The
first of these is undoubtedly Clark Ashton Smith. Smith's stories are broken up
into five “worlds:” Averoigne, Hyperborea, Mars, Poseidonis, and Zothique. In
particular, our adventures are comparable to the stories from the Averoigne
cycle. Many of these stories are available online, in particular at the
Eldritchdark site, which unfortunately uses white text on a dark background,
making it a bit hard to read. However, as an introduction to Averoigne, you may
want to take a look at one of the archetypal Averoigne stories, the “Colossus of Ylourgne.”
Another
“film noir” fantasy author is Jack Vance. In particular, the Lyonesse books and
the Dying Earth books are good examples of noir fantasy. The Lyonesse books are
a strong influence on Matt’s Borderlands. Vance takes what appears to be a
fairly light-hearted fairy tale world, but spins an extraordinarily dark view
of its inhabitants. For Vance, the underlying horror isn’t the supernatural
underpinning of the cosmic world, as it is for Clark Ashton Smith. For Vance,
the underlying horror of a world is the people who inhabit it. If you haven’t
read the Lyonesse books, be warned that many people find the entire first half
of the first book to be tedious. After that, the pace picks up to an almost
breakneck level, though. The books are Suldrun’s Garden, The Green Pearl, and
Madouc.
For
starters, to learn more, check out the Wikipedia entry for the Lyonesse Trilogy
There
are some great examples of noir fantasy from a later period, and one of the
greatest is Glen Cook’s Black Company series of novels. All of these are
excellent, although there are rather a lot of them. The first three are
generally called The Books of the North: The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and
The White Rose. Cook’s fantasy world is very bleak and quite terrifying, seen
from the perspective of some people who are seriously out of their league and
watching their options dwindle away rapidly.
