World Building in Crescendo

 

There is not one fantasy RPG that’s not inspired, at least in part, by Tolkien. Tolkien’s love of language and history created the closest thing to a perfect fantasy I know of. While Crescendo’s mechanics are built for the more psychological fantasy of Wolfe, Le Guin, and Gaiman there is one spot in the design that is unabashedly Tolkien: world building. As good as the authors above are at world building Tolkien’s exhaustive approach, properly handled, is better for RPGs, as it is explicit, while being slowly doled out over time. 

But first, a quick caveat: I know Le Guin and Wolfe have done their own world building for the Earthsea Cycle and the Solar Cycle. I’ve read some of it and it is so good!!! What they have written I’ve greatly enjoyed. But Tolkien is the master here, and I hardly think it a controversial statement to make.

Why do I prefer Tolkien’s world building for RPGs? Why do I think it the gold standard? What makes it stand out? Tolkien saw characters as instances of their culture; part of what makes Fellowship of the Ring work is because the characters and their cultures are so well realized that it becomes a true joy to see all these peoples bump against each other. Everyone is so well explicitly in his culture you just… find yourself at home. Tolkien also used lore as character work: you learn a lot about Aragorn by his recitation of the Lay of Beren and Luthien.  You learn that Aragorn views himself as a part of this story, that he values it, and that he's going to extend it. Aragorn barely says a thing about himself but you just learned everything about him you really need to.

This isn’t to say that Wolfe and Le Guin don’t have a great grasp on their cultures and how they instantiate into the story. On the contrary, I’d argue Wolfe is the master of implied world building. He’s got the stories totally dialed in and you can feel it. It wasn’t until my second read through of Bookof the New Sun that I realized it wasn’t Severian I disliked, but the brutish and frankly nasty culture he’s in. And Severian was trying to fight against not just his culture but the place he had in it, with all his might. Severian was actually a very noble person, dealt the shittiest of hands. That’s an amazing moment to come to.

But you know where that doesn’t work? RPGs.

RPGs are a cooperative venture. you can’t have just one person know the lore in and out, because if that’s the case then no one else is able to just intuitively riff off it. Everyone has to know it. And that means explicitly shared world knowledge. I mean, technically you could just have players be that much on the same page… but I’m not designing for good players to intuit, I’m designing so that if you’ve had a bad day you could play, or if it doesn’t come naturally to you at all you could figure it out. 

So then what? You just give them some lore to read so people know what to do? While Crescendo does this that only goes so far: you can’t have a huge freaking Bible for people to read because they’re not going to read it. People always take the path of least resistance and that’s especially true of world building. You can try and talk them into it, but there’s only so much they’ll be willing to do. So, this is where you have to put in the caveat: actually building lore for a game is going to require greater buy-in than is normally expected. It takes work. You have to care. If someone isn't willing to care then you not only can't make them but you probably shouldn't expect them to, and probably shouldn't play with them. That may sound harsh, but it's not fair to people who do not want to do this intensive type of world building to expect it of them! Crescendo is meant for two to four people, GM included. It's not a casual game. You're meant to intensely play in this one world, for a long time.

There are three forms of world building in Crescendo: solo lore, poetry, and missed session journaling. Solo lore allows all the players (GM included!) to play out short sessions of solo play with heroes of bygone ages. Players will create simplified characters and use their journals as prompts for playing out a single episode in the life of this past hero. Players not only get XP for making these stories and getting them into their journals but other players get XP for copying that story into their journals as well. These little bits of context go a long way, allowing players to get into the groove as time goes on.

Poetry is always a session taken before each scenario of Crescendo. Using the prompts, players will generate a myth about one of the immortals of the setting. There isn't a lot of up-front knowledge about these immortals, so players will learn about these immortals as they are making up stories about them. Poetry can also be done during a session to cure mental conditions; if you weave in the events that gave you the mental condition in the first place into poem it actually heals the condition. So by worldbuilding characters are healed, which feels great!

Missed session journaling allows people who have to miss a session not only explain where their character was, but what they were up to during that time, with some XP given for journaling out their experiences. This gives players some control (as well as a small bit of XP) over the story. The results have been outstanding; people who missed didn't feel like they'd missed out too badly, and everyone else was surprised by an addition to the lore.

These two journaling mechanics also influence the Black Swan and all the dice mechanics. Each Black Swan references your journal, and each Black Swan is then written into all the journals at the table. Opening up more opportunities to put things into your journal increases the scope of the story. It's been my experience that Black Swans generate more and more thematically appropriate prompts for the GM. Without demanding thematic coherency, Crescendo helps you construct it by having certain player actions always be put in the journal. Players usually don't change what they care about in a given character, and so this begins to create a series of callbacks that echoes acrost the campaign, generating new Black Swans and changing the story.

Solo lore, myth building, and missed session journaling allow lore to be made up over time, with the players creating the setting and its context as they go. This lets people build up the world and its feel slowly, adding depth as they wish. But, once they start to get the context, players will organically feel  more a part of the world they have made. You can then start to relax into this different place, to feel ownership without interference or waiting for permission. It takes more work to do, but the rewards are just so awesome that I know I'm happy with the results. Worlds made in Crescendo feel alive in a way I've never really encountered in RPGs before. And that is insanely cool.