Fantasy Deities and the Elements

 I've been working on my own pantheon as I'm sure many many world builders do. I wanted mine to be unique, but with so many people creating their own worlds these days I doubt I've truly come up with something wholly original. I didn't really want the typical fantasy pantheon of deities for each alignment, but I knew that there needs to be some semblance of it for players to recognize when choosing a deity for their alignment. 

I've played with two ideas in particular: godbeasts and elementals as deities. In 5E I had a rule in my settings that any creature that had the Gargantuan size was unique among its kind and so powerful that it was a deity that clerics and paladins could tap into even if the creature wasn't aware. I also liked the idea of the phoenix, zaratan, and other elder elementals as deities. Both seemed to fit together or on their own in my games, but I don't run games in D&D 5E anymore. I moved to Old-School Essentials.

In OSE the alignment is simply: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. There are powerful creatures to serve as godbeasts and large elementals to be elemental deities, but with this being my new main game system I wanted to develop the idea even further.

So, what I've come up with is that lawful, neutral, and chaotic creature groups worship aspects of the elements as deities in their own ways. I will provide an example of a religion from each of the alignments below.

Aerithas, the Sentinel of Air: Aerithas is the embodiment of order and wisdom, revered by followers of the Lawful alignment who seek truth and justice. As the Sentinel of Air, Aerithas represents the clarity of thought and the pursuit of knowledge. Worshippers of Aerithas often build soaring temples atop mountains or within tranquil valleys, where they meditate on the currents of the wind to gain insight and guidance.

Ignis, the Catalyst of Fire: Ignis is the unpredictable catalyst of change and transformation, revered by adherents of the Neutral alignment who embrace the chaos of creation and destruction. As the Catalyst of Fire, Ignis embodies the untamed flames of passion and innovation. Temples dedicated to Ignis are often found in bustling marketplaces or amidst the ruins of civilizations, where followers gather to harness the transformative power of fire and forge their own destinies.

Ragnar, the Ravager of Earth: Ragnar is the relentless ravager of destruction and renewal, revered by those who embrace the Chaotic alignment's principles of upheaval and change. As the Ravager of Earth, Ragnar embodies the unstoppable force of nature and the inevitability of decay. Temples dedicated to Ragnar are found amidst crumbling ruins or within chasms of desolation, where followers revel in the chaos of destruction and seek to reshape the world in their own image.

What I focused on when making these religions is how the alignments will effect how each religion conducts itself. Lawful creatures are going to have a more organized and structured religion with ceremonies, rituals, and other practices that have repetition and consistency. Neutral creatures that aren't worshipping some creature as a deity, for example Lizard Men worshipping a T-Rex, will have their own approach to the religions that is more of a journey they balance with their own lives. Chaotic creatures are going to have completely different approaches to these religions from each other and will likely fight about it. This is to reflect how chaotic they are. Why would a chaotic creature take part in a structured and orderly religion? I'm sure there are many ways, but to me it seems like an anarchist working for a government agency.

So I've got this very solid set of twelve religions divided among three categories. The godbeasts have found a place among the more primitive groups of the world, and I'm further in my development of my first module.

The three spheres of philosophy that the alignment system is divided across are represented by the Sun, Moon, and the world. Lawful is also seen as the light and attributed to the sun the world orbits around. The changing phases of the moon is representative of the chaotic alignment in how it is in constant flux and change. The Neutral alignment is the world in that it is a balance of light, darkness, elements, life, and death. 

As for the elemental planes themselves I think that having a world to explore makes the multiverse seem like it was made for exploration and adventure first, which is normally fine for an adventure game, but I don't want to go to another universe to see another city and more monsters to fight. For now I have it that the elemental planes are simply that, infinite planes of one element. The elemental plane of water isn't a vase ocean teeming with life, it's a lightless infinite plane of water. The elemental plane of earth is earth, there's no cave system, you can just go underground in the material plane to explore caves. The elemental planes are where elementals exist and they manifest physical form in the material plane when energy is transferred from one plane to the next.

So what does this mean for followers of the religion? What hope is there in an afterlife? Followers of the religion will have their energy and soul transferred to the plane where they become one with the plane. They lose their memories and identity, but their soul still exists and can transfer back to the material plane when summoned as an elemental. If the elemental is slain in the material plane the soul is reincarnated on the plane and the cycle starts again.

My plan with this religion is not to make the world more like the Avatar the Last Airbender where everyone is focused on the elements. The society will still be typical fantasy for now, but I like the fantasy world not being dominated by one singular concept. The main thing is I'm satisfied with how my settings religion and afterlife are and can work on other ideas to further make it more unique.

Mushroom Forests in our Fantasy Worlds

When I showed my players the hex map I had created for our Old-School Essentials campaign, they poured over it and asked about different hexes and discussed visiting them. The mushroom forest I had placed had caught one players eye. They set out to explore the strange forest, but died to a gnoll before they got there. In Morrowind, Minecraft, and Kenshi there are giant mushrooms growing in the world and creates a strange alien landscape to explore. I personally love unusual and weird places like a mushroom forest, a black sand beach, or a salt desert. These can be memorable to your players if properly portrayed.

A mushroom forest has obvious significant differences from a typical forest, but one could argue that there are many kinds of forests that each have their own unique differences. Well yes, but Forest is an umbrella term for all of its subtypes. A jungle is one subtype of forest and when you hear forest vs jungle you think of two very different things. Now, I'm rambling about forests because when a fantasy story mentions "forest" I'm not thinking jungle or mushroom forest because we as players and referees have a general idea of what a forest is: a group of oak, pine, maple, and similar trees we see around us where we live but aren't sure of the name that covers a large area.

When I went to rural Arkansas to visit my grandparents when I was a young a vast forest was at the edge of their property. There was no fencing or barrier to separate us from the forest and it was dark between the trees. That memory has stayed with me after all these years, massive and ancient trees towering over me and barely any sunlight getting through to the forest floor. There was a windless stillness about it that made me scared to wander in. That's just a forest that adventurers stroll into while on their way to the dungeon. Now let's consider a mushroom forest.

What we need is a plausible reason that will make sense in our players heads if they ever find out why there is a mushroom forest in this part of your game world instead of a regular forest. Because this is for a fantasy setting and not hypothetical scenarios for a science textbook we won't be delving into hard science and split hairs on what mushrooms can and can't grow on. A long time ago there were tree-like mushrooms but not the large versions of the small mushrooms we see today, they looked more cylindrical. So, a mushroom is a spore producing and fruiting body of a fungus that develops from the fungus consuming nonliving organic matter. 

 What would cause a massive forest of tree sized mushrooms to grow? We can just say because the idea of a mushroom forest is cool and this is fantasy, but I find it more fun to have an actual explanation. There'd need to be a vast amount of nonliving organic matter such as rotting vegetation, animal droppings, or dead organisms that could sustain a mushroom forest for a long time. So with this in mind, I think that a mushroom forest is a short-lived phenomenon, there is a magical source feeding the fungi, or there is a steady supply of organic matter being brought into the forest to renew its supply.

Let's go with the first possibility, a short-lived phenomenon. Something caused a large amount of non-living organic matter to suddenly appear in the area. There are mushrooms in our world like the Ghoul mushrooms that grow on dead animals. What if there is a battle on the scale of the one fought at Pelennor Fields in the Lord of the Rings? Tens of thousands of casualties from humanoids to colossal behemoths now decaying along with the trees of the forest that was demolished in the fighting? Let's add that there were burial mounds under the forest that were destroyed as rotting corpses were animated and joined the battle. Now there's a large amount of nonliving organic matter for fungi to feed on and produce our mushroom forest.

The second possibility is a magical source. This is the simplest and provides the potential for tying in whatever macguffin you have in your campaign. This can include divine reasons such as a god just really wanted a mushroom forest in this area. You could even tie it in with the first possibility and have that the mushroom forest is feeding on the remains of a dead god. You can adjust how magical the mushroom are from just large mushrooms to unique types and properties in each mushroom. This would fit with, "There's a mushroom forest because I like the idea." If you don't like digging into the why, this option is probably best.

The third possibility is a source of food for the fungi is regularly renewed in this region. This could be a type of creature that migrates into the area, poops everywhere, and leaves. It could also be an infection of a spore like the fungus that takes over ants and brings the infected to the forest to be consumed. This would need to be a large number of infected to sustain the forest, but a migration of beasts might be more plausible. 

So these are three possibilities as to why there is a mushroom forest and most certainly not the only ones. I'm sure you can come up with twenty other reasons, but the main focus is that YOU understand why the forest is there. Now that we've got our explanation of what causes a mushroom forest to exist I'm going to work on my own mushroom forest and in the next post we will explore it.

The Moon Towers of the Mushroom Forest

 

I'm working on my first adventure I want to publish for Old-School Essentials. The focus of it is a mini sandbox region with several towers for the players to explore. I was initially going with the region being a valley with the towers scattered throughout it, but now I'm thinking of setting it in a mushroom forest. I like the potential name of it as well, The Moon Towers of the Mushroom Forest. Imagine exploring through the spore haze of the forest, watching for danger and coming across a clearing where a tower glowing with moonlight. While you can only see these towers at night, they are each solid enough to interact with during a specific phase of the moon. This would make eight towers in all and give the players something to explore every night.

The towers will each have a puzzle, deadly traps, and a variety of creatures within. Original I know, what dungeon isn't like this and sure a multilevel dungeon upwards instead of underground isn't as fresh, but my focus is to make a fun adventure, not reinvent the wheel. I do think having a trap that magically dumps the players onto the moon would be fun. Maybe it's not as deadly as if you were suddenly magically teleported to our moon and could even open up the party to additional adventure. I might even make a moon adventure to go with this as the adventure develops.

The mushroom forest idea came from when I made a hex map for my OSE group and one tile I placed was a mushroom forest. My players were intrigued by this one tile and had planned to go visit it, but were wiped out by a chad gnoll that had nothing but great rolls throughout the encounter. Since then I've been working on the mushroom forest.

I've been reading through several different adventures for OSE people made and In the Shadow of Tower Silver Axe is one of my favorites. I like the book's layout, dungeons fitting on one page with map and details for each room. Each location is on one to two pages. There isn't a ton of lore dumped on every page, that's done at the beginning with just the information the Referee needs. When I make this adventure my goal is to keep the layout as simple so it's easy to use.

Along with the eight towers the players can explore at night there needs to be things the players can do during the day. So I'll be detailing each location in the forest from adventure to natural to settlement and I'll detail each of the towers with maps as I make them.

With the towers being dungeons players will have limited time for which to explore them. In terms of dungeon exploration time they'll have between eight to nine hours before the towers fade away in the sunlight. If the players are in the towers they'll fall to the ground from whatever floor they are on and take falling damage. That's roughly forty-eight to fifty-four turns before the towers vanish for the day. Each phase of the moon lasts for about one to seven days giving players a few days to explore a tower. The New Moon and Full Moon towers will have the fewest days, so I think they should be deadlier and have more rewards for exploring them. I'll be working on unique magical items and spells the players can get from defeating the boss of each tower. 

The region will need a settlement as a homebase for the players to get equipment, retainers, services, and quests to help motivate exploration. I'll make a few factions the players can interact with and a growing problem the threatens the region. That's all I have for now,  but I'll be posting updates as I progress.

D&D and Me

 

My parents went through the Satanic Panic so my brothers and I weren't allowed to play Dungeons & Dragons, but the concepts of roleplay, being a hero, and fighting monsters found its way to me over the years in what little I heard or saw of D&D. This is why tabletop games and especially Dungeons & Dragons will be my forbidden fruit I cannot get enough of. The endless possibilities of adventures and exciting moments was firmly implanted in my mind. 

After years of begging to try D&D and being told, "no, it's demonic," something happened...I grew up. I had my own car, my own job, and more importantly my own money. So my best friend and I drove to our local gaming store and bought the 4th Edition D&D Starter Set. The store owner could tell we were at the beginning of our journey into tabletop gaming and was genuinely enthusiastic and excited for us. Even now I feel emotional thinking about it because that guy could have just not cared and made a sale and gone back to reading.

His enthusiasm was my first impression of the tabletop community and is a true testament to the passion and love for the hobby that I see not just in the OSR community, but the entire tabletop gaming hobby. We may fight with each other over a range of areas, but one trait we all have in common is our love of the game. That moment when you did the impossible and cheered with your party and shocked the dungeon master. So we buy the starter set and get back to my friend's car. I can barely contain my excitement as this was something I had wanted to do since I was ten years old. The moment had finally come, I had my own copy of D&D! 

We got it back home and carefully opened the box. We didn't want to damage anything or get any pieces of whatever was in there mixed up and ruin anything. There were pre-made character sheets, some dice, a booklet of the rules, battle maps, and starter adventures. We didn't understand what any of it was, but the ambiguity and the mystery made me more excited.

After reading through the rules, discussing what we could extrapolate from them, and pouring over the maps and other art I came to a conclusion that I have held to this very day...There's nothing satanic about this at all It's just a game! It's very complex and detailed, but still a game. I could see how people could let it take over their lives like too much of anything can, but that wasn't any fault of the game or its developers.

So we began rounding up people to play with us. My brother was mad that we had depraved ourselves by sinking to the lows of being losers. At the time D&D players were portrayed as such in shows like The Simpsons, so I didn't have a way to argue with him. I told him that if playing D&D made me a loser then that's fine. Continuing our search we got my other brother and two other best friends to play so we had a party of four and a DM.

It was a rough start, we constantly stopped to look up rules and many times we got the damage wrong. We actually beat a dragon nearly to death and were high fiving and cheering when my friend the DM points out that no the dragon was not only nowhere near death, but has been dealing enough damage to kill one of us every turn. That's when we all realized how powerful and terrifying dragons could be. It is that awe and respect that makes me treat them the way I do now in any game I encounter them in. Despite that first session it didn't ruin D&D for us. We knew that it was rough because we were new and with time and experience we would have more fun.

A few weeks later I made friends with a co-worker who played D&D with his wife and friends at his house every Saturday. He invited me to come and that Saturday was when I joined my first D&D campaign. I showed up with my character sheet thinking it was probably stupid to bring it as everyone likely had stronger and better characters or that mine was the wrong version.

They welcomed me in and the dungeon master introduced himself. He asked to see my sheet and said, "Cleric? Awesome! I'll help you get situated, but let me know when you want to make your own character." They were friendly, welcoming, and I was part of their group as soon as I got there. This cemented my impression of the tabletop community as a passionate, friendly, and inclusive group of people. Every Saturday I went to D&D and we explored the homebrew world the DM had made. I eventually made my own character and got to really use my imagination for the backstory and roleplay.

I went back to that gaming store to get a set of my own dice. The store owner and his wife were there and showed me the sets of dice in all their colors and variety. They were so excited and we swapped D&D stories. Other customers joined in and shared their stories. I picked my first set of dice and the owner bought them for me. I was so surprised and very thankful. It pains me that the gaming store and my first set of dice are gone now, but I still have the memories.

Eventually I got the chance to DM for that group when we had too many players show up and the DM could tell I was curious about that side of the game. I loved being a DM more than being a player as I had so many ideas for quests, NPCs, locations, and more. I wasn't a great DM at first, I made the usual mistakes, but tried my best to learn from them.

When 5th Edition came out my brother and a friend of mine were doing a small podcast together and I had told him about 5th Edition and that he should try it instead of hating it. He relented and played in my first 5th Edition campaign. It was a nautical campaign and while it was rough he had fun and realized how wrong he was about D&D being for losers. My brother is a very talented DM now and has just finished a five year campaign with our group.

We played on roll20.net and I have thousands of hours playing and running games there. The community is just as great as the offline tabletop community, but more diverse and eccentric. I played with Russians, Australians, Germans, and many, many Americans. I got to a point where I was playing D&D every weekday after work with one shots and random players each day. Then...I got burned out.

I tried bending and changing parts of 5th Edition to try new things, but it wasn't as malleable as I had wanted it to be. Questions on Reddit got frequent answers such as, "5E isn't really made for that, you should look at other systems." The idea was impossible in my head, abandon 5th Edition for some other game? What about all the years I spent learning D&D? So I kept trying to make 5th Edition work how I wanted it and every attempt was unsatisfying. 

One day, I was browsing Youtube looking up strange and unique settings for D&D when a video came up that was what I was looking for. The channel was called QuestingBeast and it had a variety of settings. I watched the video and all of them were so unique that I was intrigued. It was like discovering D&D all over again. I subscribed to his channel and began watching his videos. The algorithm caught on to what I was looking at and more OSR content came up as suggested videos.

I had found it. Everything I wanted to do with 5th Edition was being done by people in the OSR community. I was so excited, but had to figure out which of the many systems was I going to play? Necrotic Gnome had first made those brightly colored books for Old-School Essentials and QuestingBeast had a review on them. I had also seen a list of systems on DrivethruRPG's OSR section and looked each of them up.

I ended up with trying Lamentations of the Flame Princess for my first OSR system. I liked the horror aspect and the people on the discord and those that worked for LotFP were mostly friendly. I say mostly because I met Zak on the LotFP discord and he wasn't all that nice to me, but the community manager was sweet and welcoming. I played LotFP with an offline group for a long time trying out every weird module and adventure that came out. 

More systems, adventures, and content for the OSR came out and was reviewed by QuestingBeast who continued to show me the diverse and unique world of the OSR. I played Old School Essentials, Troika!, Mothership, Forbidden Lands, Vaesen, Mork Borg, Ultraviolet Grasslands, Electric Bastionland, Into the Odd, and more. The OSR community is as passionate and welcoming as the rest of the tabletop community. I love the OSR and I can't thank QuestingBeast enough for the work he's done reviewing and showing the OSR. 

I feel I have rambled enough, but this is my first post and wanted to share with you how I got into tabletop gaming and why I love it. This is a great hobby and everyone should be able to enjoy it. Tabletop gaming is a social hobby and people will remember how you made them feel. To this day I remember the kind, friendly, and passion those people showed to me. Thank you for reading my blog and happy gaming!