Episode 59: Power, Paranoia & Fear!

How a world can change in the time between blog posts. In this case, I am talking about the real world! I'm not going to spend time debating the arguments for or against the current world's situation, but just comment that all injured parties are in my prayers and to say that I find it very sad that in today's age and society that people are still so affected by power, paranoia and fear. In a fantasy world, it's a core aspect of a story for stereo-typical characters, but in the real world ... and in our modern times? It's a crying shame to the human race that we have still not learned to play nice with our neighbours, and respect boundaries and ideologies, even if we do not agree with them. So, with a heavy heart regarding the current atrocities being carried out in the name of ... indefensible arguments, I will try to remain positive and blog about such aspects in relation to my fantasy campaign ...

Conflict

There is no doubt that part of what makes a fantasy game exciting for many is the conflict. When it comes to writing a story, much of what drives the pace of a book involves conflict of one type or another. This is something I learned very early in my campaign writing, but at the same time, I also learned that "conflict" does not always have to end in combat. This is something I have noticed some of the more thoughtful writers have tried to include in their works. i.e. An option to resolve a conflict by a peaceful or agreed solution. However, let us now look at what is usually involved to bring about conflict that ends in combat in the first place ...

1) Power

The direct cause is normally a force or power that desires to make an impact on its surroundings. Ultimately, the "power" normally manifests within or takes control of a creature or being through which it desires to make its influence felt. In the Althéa Campaign, there is only one main source of power, but misunderstanding of that power causes the races to develop a paranoia.

2) Paranoia

History of my campaign tells us that as the races grew, they ventured into regions of land occupied by others and encountered one another. Who were these others? Look at what they do! See what they can do! It's clear they are different! Do they think and say things about us, like we might do about them? What if they think less of us? What if they do not like us? What if they want to hurt us? Such differences between the races and cultures lead to the third and final problem of fear.

3) Fear

Not everyone of the various races looked upon these cultural differences as potential problems. In fact, most would learn to celebrate the differences, or in the worst case, agree to differ and, instead, cultivate those things they had in common. But then there were others that could not accept the differences, or believed, in their ever deepening paranoia, that these other races were a threat to all that they believed about the power to which they held. This happened in every race, and it was those with most paranoia and fear of losing the power that their own culture had brought them that would be the first to bring about war ... the result of power corrupted by fear.

Conflict In Action

The Althéa Campaign has quite a rich history and background, but this is also information that sits more in the background during gameplay, as such detail is not normally the focus of the player's interest when playing a game. For most of us, all we want to know is who is the "bad guy" and what needs to be done. For most, we may pay lip service trying to prevent a conflict turning into combat (especially if we are low on HPs), but, if the bad guy won't listen, we then resort to the combat that the game supports.

In this sense, combat is purely a means to an end to reach the end of a game and feel satisfaction for completing yet another adventure. However, how many games do you remember how and why the conflict came about? For many players, this may not even be a consideration, and may even be considered "boring" and assigned to the same dust-building books assigned to real life history.

My point is that "real" conflict, especially that which results in combat is the result of a much deeper fundamental point of life ... and power. Conflict can be both "helpful" and "challenging" if it can be resolved amicably, but can end in dreadful destructive results if one party involved in the conflict fails to understand that any power they possess must be used for "good" rather than "evil". And loss of control that results in combat is normally a result of fearing a loss of such power, not only in their station, but ultimately also in the loss of their own life, where they have no power at all!

In the Althéa Campaign, I aim to give every conflict that results in combat an understanding that this is the case: a fear of its own existence of some kind. From a creature that simply attacks to protect itself from a perceived threat to its safety, or sees the PCs as a source of food by which to extend its life; to power driven overlords and undead that have lost all perspective of life for others, who only desire to extend their own existence by any means possible!

Thankfully, for Althéa, such evil beings are few and far between ... and there are heroes that will pick up the gauntlet and do all they can to help preserve a fair share of life for everyone. The red line, however, is that these heroes must not lose perspective and indiscriminately destroy life themselves to justify their actions. Unless the laws that govern such power are not observed, then any man "can pass from life to death". The real difficulty is understanding what these laws are, and what ... or who it is that made them. That is the fundamental part of the story of The Scroll.

Other News

Conversations, cutscenes and journal updates ... all being updated as I make progress. I did have one very frustrating moment when I spent more time than I needed to when trying to write a cutscene. Everything in my code and experience said a certain action I wrote to take place should work fine, but it simply was not, no matter how I altered it. In the end, the problem turned out to be a corrupted creature object! Once I had deleted that and replaced it, the original scripts I wrote worked fine. Let that be a lesson to everyone: Consider the associated object!

Finally, just to say that The Scroll (Module 1) v1.50E has finally been uploaded. In fact, it had another upload today, but no version change because the three points it addressed were minimal issues. i.e. Unlikely to affect most players, and even then may not be noticed. (See the download page for more info.)

Death - The Final Conflict!