Shores of Night

Welcome to the fourth part of the World-Building series! Today we'll discuss mixing and matching elements to make your setting more interesting, compelling, and fun! In the last piece, I talked about wanting to make my setting compelling because it felt real and didn’t ruin that atmosphere. That doesn't mean you can't slip some other elements into your creation, but you should look at the tone and make things fit into the big picture. For example, you could include water wheels in a more Medieval setting, as long as you find a way to justify it, despite those being invented quite a bit later in our history. There are already novels that meld fantasy and detective fiction together, to the point where the wizard private investigator is a bit cliché no matter how good the stories are.  None of which explains how to do it and make it work. In this piece, we'll look at potential ways to mix and match and what you can do to make these work.    1) Know your Genres: Genres ...

 One of the most exciting aspects of the Werewolf: the Apocalypse cosmology is the Umbra, or spirit world. Separated from the polluted physical world by the Gauntlet, a wall of sorts that arose once the Wyrm became corrupted, the Umbra is the soul of Gaia. It's a place of mystery, wonder, and horror for the Werewolves (or Garou, to use their own name for themselves). It also provides a link to the Tribes' ancestors and to various realms that allow Storytellers and players to explore aspects of the game in more depth. As such, I'd argue it's a vital part of the game and without it Werewolf wouldn't be as interesting or as relevant to the world today.  The Triat Before I go any further, I feel I need to discuss the Triat. This consists of three spirits, each of represents part of creation and destruction. The Wyld, a whirling chaos, is primal and creates energy. The Weaver, usually seen as a huge spider, shapes that energy into material things. The Wyrm destroys them,...

Welcome to the third past of the World-Building series!  Today we'll be looking at the second point of the original five I outlined here . This is the Exploration stage, a mixture of writing, reading, and other creative work to help you make choices that support your creation. As before I'll be using my Solomon's Shadow setting as an example, because I'm actually exploring the idea at the moment.  1) Connect the Dots: How my discovery process starts, is writing down as many things I can think of related to the concept. It's of mind mapping, I suppose, which allows me to expand and deepen the ideas and see if they've got enough substance for me to use in creating stories or RPG plots. The important thing is not to think about what you're writing down too much - just let the words flow out and try to capture everything. Ignore the false distinctions of genre and even if you meant to create something in a specific area at this stage. This process will help yo...

 Gifts are an important part of Werewolf: the Apocalypse , and are basically the way that the Garou get their powers. They represent the spiritual strength the werewolves bring to bear in their endless war against the Wyrm. As such they're part of the Garou's link with Gaia and nature and to the spirits of the Umbra. This embeds the link to the spirit world deeply into the game, because without it the werewolves would be shorn of their magic. The themes of the game would also be seriously affected, but let's not get into that.  Today I want to look at the best Gifts and Rites for starting Rank 1 characters (or Cliaths if you want to use the nomenclature in the game), even though that's highly subjective. I always think part of a Storyteller's job is to make sure his players feel useful and can affect the course of the game. If you want to write a novel, go do that. Nonetheless, there are always a few options that can help the game get off on the right paw and these ...

 Let's dive into world-building a bit more. Last week we talked about my five rules  for getting started and today we'll dive into the first of them, "Start With An Idea" and expand on it. I'll continue using the demon haunted New York (now provisionally called "Solomon's Shadow") to illustrate examples, to try and provide context for what I'm saying. This is just how I do it, you probably have a different process, and all of us work differently.  Let's dive in, shall we?  1) Consume All Media: While it's tempting to think that ideas will just turn up, our brains don't work like that. Everything we make comes from somewhere and is either a reaction against or toward the things that inspired us.  Inspiration comes from what you consume.  Photo by  Ben White  on  Unsplash You can find inspiration within any piece of art, be it a story, a piece of sculpture, or a painting. Hell, grab a lyric from a song and play with it if it appeals (J...

 The third plank of a Werewolf the Apocalypse character's identity is Breed which have themes to aid in storytelling. The game offers three choices in this regard: Homid - those werewolves (or Garou) who are born as humans and grow up in human society. They start off as the least spiritually attuned Breed, having only one point of Gnosis (which is one of the game's stats and is used to power some magic powers). Their theme is technology and human society. Metis - who are born into the world of the Garou from the forbidden love between two werewolves and have both an advantage in knowing the ways of the Garou from birth, but are also shamed because of their parentage and because they are deformed. Their theme is rooted in body horror and being outcasts for no other reason than existing. They begin the game with three Gnosis. Lupus - born as wolves, these characters discovered they were more than animals, they start chronicles with a disadvantage because they're metaphoric...

World-building is one of the most creative and rewarding aspects of storytelling, allowing writers and gamers to craft spaces that bring their ideas to life. In this post, I’ll share my approach to world-building, using examples from my own projects, and outline five essential rules to guide your creative process.  For instance, I'm currently exploring the possibility of writing some Dark Fantasy stories about a demon-haunted New York. I know I want to have a speakeasy run by Lucifer, allowing me to use the literal Devil as a barman (and perhaps as the person who listens to my characters when they've had a bad day). I think the two elements - Prohibition in the USA pushing drinking culture underground and the way that it's not just organised crime that uses that for its own purposes - create something that could potentially be quite potent. I'll use this setting to illustrate the points I make below, so you can see what I mean.  Before we go any further, I want to stres...