Slight delay due to chores and game-mastering, but here’s the final part of holiday worldbuilding. Now, the last poll came out clearly in favour of Goblin Aristocracy with strong showings for Undead Healing Clerics and Gadget-using Thieves Guild. Thanks for everyone who participated in the polls.

This last poll was meant to determine the narrative of the setting and that means delving a bit into the background of the fantasy setting. The polls determined it’s peaceful and prosperous now, but that wasn’t always the case. Almost a hundred years ago, a massive fantasy war turned into a revolution, when the oppressed and decimated masses finally had enough of their corrupt aristocracies and ended the war and most of the illustrious noble bloodlines. The goblins were never at the forefronts of either oppression or war-mongering. Their role in the web of courts and alliances was mostly that of messengers, low-level diplomats, informal spies and liaisons with the guilds. While goblins tend to get carried away and confabulate a bit, they – especially their petty nobility – have a clear code of honour to answer truthfully whenever they are asked something formally. Most goblins pay at least lip service to that code, but the spies that exist naturally don’t follow it, unless it suits them.

Their mostly honest dealings – especially when compared to the haughty elven and bloody-minded dwarven aristocracy – meant they were well-placed when the revolutionary leaders decided they needed a network of trusted couriers and heralds to bring their splintered councils and farms together. Although the aristocracy was officially abolished, most goblin noble houses were allowed to retain their ancestral halls and warrens and even helped with extending them to a real relay network that enabled them to quickly transport messages, letters and small parcels. With the vast distances involved in travel between the different self-administering communities, goblin couriers became – over the course of decades – sought-after impartial arbitrators. This led to considerable power for the couriers, who – cautioned by the example of their former peers – decided to codify what a courier could and could not do. Sometimes this code interferes with their somewhat impulsive nature and often it forbids seemingly easy solutions, but most of the time it has helped with balancing out the imperfections of the localised communal government.

The holding of Heatherfarne that got transported underneath Cork’s (fictitious) Sandy Hill Street is a pretty standard aristocratic abode – by goblin standards. It started out in grey mists of time as a series of caves that were probably not of natural origin, but still enthusiastically used by a band of goblin raiders who preyed on elven trade after being forcefully ousted from their village to make space for another fancy necropolis that wouldn’t be used for another hundred years. Over the centuries the elven empire expanded and absorbed former enemies like the goblin raiders as retainers and eventually petty nobility, to whom all the annoying burdens of rulership could be delegated. The public-facing areas of Heatherfarne saw some heavy reworking into (cramped and skewed) imitations of elven rulership, while the actual living and storage quarters were massively expanded to the edges of the workable rock. The public side got a quick make-over after the revolution to remove the throne and other aristocratic features, but otherwise the warren – as it increasingly became called – stayed much the same, although population numbers increased quite a bit. This means the warren – while certainly no dungeon in the traditional sense – is kind of hazardous to navigate for outsiders. Every room and cavern not used for living quarters is stuffed full of supplies, tools, knick-knacks and mementos in sometimes hilariously precarious configurations.

The warren is mainly populated by goblins and some hobgoblins, but with an odd sprinkling of house-guests and retainers of other species. Both the Knocker and Glaistig might be useful, even though they’ve been written with GURPS Dungeon Fantasy in mind. The goblins could use the stats from the Yrth setting as is with the most exotic trait being really good night vision. For the hobgoblins it would be better to just use the same template and change the attributes to ST +2. You can find the template in GURPS Banestorm, p. 192 and GURPS Fantasy Folk – Goblins and Hobgoblins, p. 13. Otherwise just come up with something that emphasises smarts and quick reactions over strength for the goblins and a bit the other way around for the hobgoblins. Just don’t use Dungeon Fantasy templates for them, these lean heavily into the standard stereotypes. Goblins aren’t bad at using magic, but they are not one of the inherently magical species. In an “aristocratic” warren of at around a hundred people (kids, grannies and all), there should be at least two or three individuals who know some magic or even a lot – a couple more may know a spell or two, but be unable to cast outside of high-mana zones. To make things easier metaphysics-wise, I’d go the Banestorm route and rule that spell-casting priests are just religiously-trained mages. Otherwise you’d have to worry whether traditional clerics still get spells granted from their deity and what that means for the setting. This seems more clear-cut. There might, of course, still be some martially-minded folks in this, but they would be more on the level of caravan guards or enthusiastic hobby fencers since this is a peaceful world. Likewise you wouldn’t find any professional thieves in this warren, but folks good at sneaking around and hiding things might certainly be options for PCs.

The mentioned Code of Honour would be rather restrictive, but not universal. Paying lip service to a Code of Honour is merely a quirk. The actual codes would be Goblin’s Code of Honour: When pressed to answer a question reply truthfully if you can or say you cannot answer if loyalties or urgent need prevent you. (Note: That this technically prevents the character from lying to a murderer looking for their victim, though they can always disregard the CoH in such cases if they forego character point rewards for the adventure and are willing to potentially acquire a negative reputation). Always keep your word. [-10 points].  Goblin Courier’s Code of Honour: Same as above, but add: Make sure your messages and parcels get to their addressees. Do not abuse your position – especially do nothing to enrich yourself or your community when asked to arbitrate. Do not let personal feelings get in the way of arbitration. Do not over-rule local governing bodies. [-15 points].

The inhabitants of Heatherfarne will be quite dismayed initially to find their main entrance blocked and the first encounter with some strangely-clad humans might be very tense. The dynamics of the campaign, however, would centre on how to productively channel the goblins’ urge to build networks and help disparate communities (here different milieus in the city) without scaring the humans off or landing in some government lab. The Irish setting makes this a little easier since doing anything nefarious to them under government auspices would certainly bring the English in with force, so there’s a lot of incentive to keep things under wraps or at least just informally aligned with local governance, which would suit the goblins just fine. Also cue hilarious misunderstandings about the nature of the new arrivals. The goblins might be mistaken for leprechauns or – even better hard-drinking clurichauns – and pressured to reveal their most-coveted secret, making beer out of heather…

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The latest poll was a clear vote for IT / construction crew trying to restore internet access to a building. For me that’s a good indication for an urban adventure. Let’s go to Ireland’s second city for that: Cork, which has the added benefit that I’ve been there twice already. It’s a little hilly and not as flat as Dublin and has a pretty interesting countryside and wider environs – not a bad spot to site an adventure.

I’d imagine repairing the internet connection is very important for most businesses, but that’s kind of boring. We had no votes for the university option, so that’s out too. Sticking with what I know, I’d say the crew is trying to repair a big hostel’s internet connection that went down right with the rest of the neighbourhood’s. Stick it on the north side of the Lee not too far off from the centre and you can either pick a spot or make up your own neighbourhood. In order to not get side-tracked by excessive Google Earth surfing (GM’s tip, use that instead of Google Maps to get a 3D view of the environment you’re looking at, CTRL+drag is your friend), I’m making my own. The rather steep Sandy Hill Street complete with the blocky McCormick House Hostel, grey St. Bridget’s Church, Singhs’ Newsagents & Grocery and Crime, Romance and Cooking, a tiny bookshop owned by a little old lady. Since its two side-streets are cul-de sacs Sandy Hill forms more of an enclosed environment than usual, but except for pensioners and small kids folks spend most of their time somewhere else in town.

The construction workers have a workshop/storage building that’s a bit farther out, but live on Sandy Hill. One IT person is  from the same general area in Cork, the other is an immigrant who who moved into the Singhs’ spare room. The hostel cleaner and general handyperson has a small one-bedroom flat above the bookshop and the hostel’s owner sleeps on the premises.

What would be a good way to contrast and compare these? The generic fae creatures from a brugh under the hill can be fun if you play them a bit against expectations. These faeries would be of the house and garden variety (brownies, knockers, glaistig) and  mostly mortal if somewhat magical and need to make ends meet, struggle to keep fit, use make-up to cover up their acne and battle customers who are never happy with their faerie garments – a very working class experience. If instead we go for classical undead in an underground temple, we can also add a twist, namely these being good (if still light-averse) undead that don’t want you to shuffle off your mortal coil and instead offer healing magic – healers who can’t get sick are not to be sneezed at (and GURPS does make healing spells prerequisites for the cooler parts of necromancy). For something a bit more traditional we could look at an overcrowded goblin burrow, but instead of being dungeon cannon fodder these goblins are the nobility or at least an upper class that just never got around to building extensions to their caverns. Another option would be a band of power-hungry (in the magical sense) magic-users that have squatted in an underground grotto known for its magical resonance only to be transported, grotto and all, to another world. And for the last one (my Mastodon only has five poll options), we could have a look at one of the more legally dubious communities: a multi-ethnic thieves guild with a penchant for clever gadgets. Those should get on well with the IT crew – or not. Here’s the poll.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.

A few votes did come in for the latest polls (I guess using hashtags instead of relying on steady interest from the earlier polls would have been better) and we’re doing Ireland and dungeons from a peaceful / nice fantasy world. That’s an… interesting combination I wouldn’t have picked myself, but that’s part of why one does these guided worldbuildings after all. (I’ll save Quebéc for another rainy day.)

Since the fantasy world is peaceful, the inhabitants have probably not stacked up on a lot of nasty / offensive spells, which is a something to keep in mind when picking a dungeon later on. What it means for magic in general is that I can easily use GURPS Magic (mostly as is) for the magic system. It does have some weird interactions with modern weaponry, but this will be a feature, not a bug. Since we don’t have to worry about them planning the conquest of the countryside, I’ll set the mana levels (area where magic works more or less reliably) rather generously. Everything inside the dungeon and a good-sized area around the entrance (couple of streets in an urban area, two or three kilometres out in the country) are normal mana with some low mana a bit further out – maybe some of the old mystical places in the area have been triggered to produce their own mana by the dungeon’s appearance.

Since things are peaceful and prosperous in fantasyland, the dungeon dwellers are unlikely to hide from an apocalypse, war or other big catastrophe. So the reason they’re underground is either cultural / biological (underground species and the like), social / commercial (biggest city in the area, a lucrative mine) or mystical / religious (place of power or burial site or maybe temple to cthonic deity). They could also be youngsters going exploring, but I’m thinking that will be better reserved for the human side of things – not quite sure yet.

As for the world at large, I’m not sure yet whether the dungeons are coming in all over the globe, but for this stage it doesn’t really need to be settled. I assume dungeons will slip in rather quietly with only subtle signs and portents (and heavily camouflaged or out of the way entrances). All the initial interactions could be quite low-key.

For the next poll, I’m asking who the dungeon denizens make first contact with. That could be the aforementioned youngsters with nothing to do (or too much of a penchant for mischief), a team of wastewater specialists from Irish Water (dungeons and sewers mix well) or the inhabitants of a remote farm. A mixed crew of IT and construction workers looking for the reason their web connection went poof would be another funny option as would be a university interfaith group stumbling over dungeon magic by accident (though it seems these are even more limited than in the UK).

The nature of the dungeon itself will be decided in the next part.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.

During the Christmas season we often like to do some RPG worldbuilding. This time we let the mastodon hive-mind decide and even if it was technically a tie we settled on the above topic due to perceived interest in the comments. Victorian ET Investigators might be in the running again next year, as might be Fantasy World on a Bishop Ring / Banks Orbital.

At first I thought Fantasy Dungeons Meet the Real World would be more about real-world folks exploring dungeons that had suddenly appeared, but someone mentioned it being a popular reverse isekai trope and I think it might be interesting to focus on the dungeon perspective in the first place. How do we do that? Time for another poll? Not quite – first I’d like to set out a couple of constraints to the topic.

Most importantly, I want to focus on relationships and communities. Yes, you can do a “fun” romp of dungeon denizens terrorising the countryside or slaughtering low-lives who want to kill them and take their stuff, but that’s not the kind of game I want to tell (and neither do my players). I’m more interested in semi-comedic stuff about cultural / dimensional misunderstandings and weird physical interactions. I’d like to have a good helping of narrative realism (as opposed to bean-counting realism) in my roleplaying, but that comes second place after making the game fun. An extra portion of surrealism will be added to taste.

Not sure where on Earth to set it yet and not sure what to focus on fantasy-world-wise, but I’m thinking there are some neat options for both:

Germany for kafkaesque bureaucracy and dungeons hidden in weird locations, Quebéc for surreal dungeon-cooking and a mix of remote wilderness and city dungeons, Ireland for a faerie twist and mythical dungeons, the Baltic states for pagan roots and a nervous eye towards Russia, Egypt for a good long look at the ethics of plundering ancient treasures and two very different landscapes for dungeons.

The fantasy world could be undergoing an apocalypse of some kind (dungeons are good shelter against some of those), it could be beginning its own age of exploration (maybe sending ancient underground places of power to other dimensions  or using some sort of gate technology), it could also be in a peaceful state (at least compared to us) and has to improvise to defend its dimensionally unmoored homes / grave sites from those violent humans or they could be just here to trade (after having miscalculated rather severely).

All of these could conceivably change the physics side of the equation, so I’m going to wait for the poll results before I settle on how magic and other supernatural powers work. Same goes for technology in the dungeon and possible real-world correspondences.

Where we need a lot in the way of a game engine, I’m going to use my default option GURPS, but I’m also reading Robin D. Laws’ Hillfolk RPG and might incorporate bits and pieces as I go along.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.