More on Shrines

Worldbuilding with relics

After last week’s post on relic magic in Knave 2e, I realized that providing an example for using the shrine system as setting development could use a more extended example. Remember, shrines in Knave are mapped to the three tiers of settlement: villages, towns, and cities. Villages have a single shrine, towns have d6 shrines, and cities have every kind of shrine. This creates a world we can all recognize, in which small settlements are culturally homogeneous, with larger settlements acting as meeting places between cultures.

The concept is solid, as far as it goes, but it’s abstract until we apply it to a campaign. Now, as I have said before, I run Knave in the Greyhawk setting. This is mostly because I really like the setting’s history, as fleshed out in the original 1980 folio. One of the best parts of that book is the migration path map (p.6), showing the movements of the largest ethnic groups of the setting. In Greyhawk, there are four such groups: the Suel, the Baklunish, the Oeridians, and the Flannae. Not only does it provide great inspiration for the sources of conflict between these groups, it also gives you a cultural map of the continent.

This is perfect for establishing the kinds of shrines present in each area. My party is journeying to the Duchy of Urnst at the moment, and a quick look at the migration map tells me that the primary ethnic make-up of Urnst is Suel. Therefore, any villages the party passes through in the duchy will have shrines to the Suloise pantheon. Now, there’s plenty of Suel gods to reference in the later development of the Greyhawk setting, but the 1980 folio leaves the topic of religion almost completely alone. I’m welcome to to develop Suel religion as I like.

We may assume that cities in Urnst have ethnic enclaves with representative shrines, but what about towns? Again, the migration map gives us some help here. If towns in Urnst have small pockets of other cultures, they are most probably Oeridian or Flan, the possibilities of a Baklunish enclave are fairly remote, but perhaps there are some shrines to non-human patrons of some sort. The setting assumes the presence of nature spirits of all sorts.

So when it comes to rolling that d6 to determine the number of shrines in a particular town, I can set up a kind of probability based on the migration map and some common sense. If I roll a 1 on the d6, the town is fully Suloise. If I roll a 2, there are some Oeridian shrines present. A three tells me there are also Flan shrines and a 4 or 5 will reveal perhaps a hidden monster cult or two. If I role a 6, there’s a small Baklunish enclave here, which I now have to explain. Who said world building doesn’t involve improv?

As I begin to develop adventure sites in Urnst for my game, I can connect them to the towns and villages by means of the relics found in those sites. Many will probably be Suloise relics, but a Flan relic might require a journey of several days to find a suitable shrine.

Now, as we all know, only the GM really cares about the setting. But one of my constant refrains on this blog is that rules are setting. Tying relic magic to location presents choices and challenges for players through geography. Do we want to go back to the dungeon or do we want to make the overland trek to a nearby town in the hopes that we can get that relic we just found imbued? What mission will we be sent on? Do we want to do that or do we want to get back into the dungeon? What will have changed there by the time we get back? Those are all interesting questions that provide player-driven gameplay.

But they also make places. Isolated villages. Towns concealing a dragon cult. Cities teeming with peoples from other lands. The rules put them there, and the players will seek them out because they have a reason to do so. Rather than background nobody cares about, setting history drives gameplay. You get to have your lore cake, and the players can eat it, too.