What would a fantasy campaign based on your local traditions and folklore be like?

[Yora]

Today I've read an article about the UK based division TSR had in the 80s, which asked the rhetoric question what D&D modules would have been like if written by people from France, Germany, or Japan, based on their local traditions and folklore? And I think that's actually a really good question. One more than worthy to discuss and share our thoughts.

Though I am German, I'm from the very northern regions where our culture is a lot more similar to Denmark or Netherlands than what is commonly regarded as "proper" German. But even so, when I think of "German fantasy" adventures, the first thing I think of, even though it's totally cliched, is lots of dark forests. Forget Goethe and Schiller. Brother Grinm's Fairy Tales is the true German national epic. :smallamused:
So yeah, fantasy Germany would pretty "points of light", with small cozy and sleepy towns surrounded by a seemingly endless expanse of forests and hills. In addition to the small towns and farming villages, you'd of course also have some very big castles where the kings and dukes are living. These would be very much like you expect them from France or England. However, kingdoms and duchies are almost always very small. (Though in real life they were smaller than other foreign kingdoms, but this is fantasy Germany, so even a kingdom can consist of just one castle and a handful of towns.) And EVERYTHING is better with princesses! Can't ever have too many princesses. There are also lots of small keeps and castles, mostly in terrible disrepair. Some abandoned, but many the lairs of bandits. Orcs and ogres would also fit perfectly well. Perhaps also the occasional hill giant or two. During the day it is relatively safe near roads and towns, but nobody ever wants to be caught outside after sunset.
In addition to bandits, possibly the greatest danger comes from fey. No little pixies, but plenty of nymphs and dryads. Except that these are almost always Chaotic Neutral and can be extremely cruel and vengeful and might steal children and drown people for no apparent reason. Gnomes would also be common, but very shy and reclusive and highly distrustful of strangers. Not evil or malicious, but they could be a threat if they feel they act in self defense. They live in burrows under the tree, either in large families or alone. They know many secrets and hidden treasures, but would not share them lightly. And of course witches. I don't know about other countries, but I think here witches are perhaps more abundant than anywhere else. There are the cackling crones and the elegant middle-aged ladies, but both types live secluded and alone in the forest and are virtually never Good. Some might be willing to make a deal that will cost the hero very dearly, but they would be more likely to try to kill you. And perhaps eat you. With witches you get the real deal, with big bubbling cauldrons and flying broomsticks. Good sorceresses do exist, but they are noble ladies who don't live in some hovel or crumbling tower. Might even secretly be the queen. If you want to go really hardcore, magic could even be entirely restricted to women. Human men don't do magic. (Though giants and gnomes might.)
Going back to much more ancient traditions, bodies of water are always exceptionally treacherous. Big rivers and lakes of any size are usually the home of dangerous spirits. Often beautiful nymphs, but who knows what might lie hidden in the bottomless depths below their surfaces? Dungeon crawling would work pretty well, but that would most usually mean the lair of a single very dangerous creature like a giant or a dragon, instead of a warren full of little critters. The heroes have to descend below the Earth (again, the domain of supernatural beings) and navigate a claustrophobic maze before they find the monsters lair. Monsters would be very talky and there should always be more of a first impression that going immediately for the battle. Undead would be very rare, though.
Folk hero type PCs would be quite common. Though you could play a knight and squire team, a typical "adventuring party" would be the sons of farmers and craftsmen, and perhaps the occasional daughter too. They are almost never wealthy and previleged or have much of fancy weapons and armor, but rely mostly on their wit. If in any way possible, the PCs should have a family back home to which they can return after they completed their adventuring career, sharing stories of the places they have been and the treasures they have found.

A campaign based on the German coasts would be a very different deal, though. A lot more similar to what you would expect of fantasy vikings. Weather and the Sea would play a major role, with the sea itself being ragarded as a powerful and terrible pagan god. The sea is a very important source of food and trade, but it's destructive power is legendary. The fastest way to get killed on a ship is to not respect the Sea. Then it will destroy you. Your ship will simply never be seen again. Or worse, it will be seen again, but as a ghost ship that appears only in storms. There is lots of ritual associated with the sea. Praying and sacrificing before going to sea. When waiting for sailors to return from their journey. When a storm is approaching, when dikes are build, and so on and on and on. The Sea is a terrible and angry god. If it wants to it can swallow entire islands and cities in a single night of storm without a trace. That also means lots of sea monsters. And our good pals, the river spirits. There would not be so much dark and dangerous woods, but misty heath and dark and dangerous swamps. Swamps are evil. They might look somewhat similar to what you get in Florida or Luisiana on a clear summer day, but most of the time they are just cold, dank, and utterly misserable. Nothing but rot and decay. Oh, and here undead are plenty. Especially in the swamps where the dead don't rot for hundreds or even thousands of years. Or they are undead sailors who come to the beaches at night.
Overall, I would make it somewhat Lovecraftian. Massachusetts is really just the western counterpart to the German and Danish coast on the opposite side of the Atlantic. With a somewhat more modern flavor, you could have plenty of stories about ships returning from far away lands, bringing strange and mysterious cargo.
Instead of highwaymen, you have pirates. Both with ships and beach pirates. Messing with signal lights to make ships run aground and loot them can work amazingly well. Only downside is that anyone who comes hunting these pirates has a pretty good idea where to start the search.

How would you do campaign and adventures based on your local culture and history?

[Flickerdart]

Two dwarves sit in a small wooden hut, drinking vodka. A third dwarf opens the door, "Hello brothers, I am back from standing in line at the weapon store, but there is no weapons today." The dwarves curse loudly, which startles the vampire that was hiding on the roof. He falls down and breaks his neck; his body is covered by the snow and never found.

[(Un)Inspired]

Last Action Hero was basically a fantasy movie based on local folklore for my area.

[Prof.Smythe]

Being British I suppose it would go something like this:
take Arthurian lore add a bunch or love for a couple of European nations (Vikings/Romans), season liberally with a hatred for some neighbouring nation that is only separated by a small channel of water and remember that the most insulting phrase that can be uttered to anyone in the land starts with the words 'with all due respect...'

Then turn it up to 11 by deciding on if you want to include Steampunk or not.

[GorinichSerpant]

I can give two different answers based on my current physical location and my heritage.

Starting with heritage, Russia it would probably be somewhat similar to what Yora said about Germany. Off the top of my head I can think of several differences. One is the idea of the bagatere (this isn't the correct English translation) who are badass warriors that fight monsters and ruffians. At least one of them has super strength and badassery when he is in contact with mother Russia. Talking animals will be a fairly common occurrence. The amount of terribleness is spread somewhat more evenly between the evil beings and humans. There aren't as many princess or abandoned as in Yora's Fantasy Germany. And the aesthetic would be way different.

I am currently living in Colorado which is in the United States of America, so fantasy setting based on would look a lot like the Crossroads setting on this forum.

[BootStrapTommy]

Last Action Hero was basically a fantasy movie based on local folklore for my area. 'Merica. Go big or go home, right?

I've always thought traditional fantasy campaign settings were more or less the amalgamation of European sources, rather than specifically based on any one section of the continent. But I've always preferred the more Germanic, Slavic, and Nordic flavors. Because dark forests, cool steppes, and cold seas. Oh and jarls, dukes, housecarls, hussars, and princesses.

[Kol Korran]

A very interesting question... I live in Israel, but even beside the conflict inherent, Israel is a fairly new immigrant country, (Historically speaking), and has populations from many places: The Jewish populations came from Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Ex-U.S.S.R, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Ethiopia, Maroco, The USA, and maybe some other places I'm forgetting. Beside that there re Christians, Muslims (Mostly coming from the varied Arabian countries, but not just), and other minor populations of the Druze, and more...

I'll try to speak of the cultures I know more of.

Jewish culture and folklore would be influenced by the bible stories, but also from the many stories made in the Jewish exile. These have very few fantastical elements such as monsters, magic or supernatural beings. (The Golem is aa very rare exception). Mostly the Jewish Folklore deals with moral dilemmas, and both practical day to day puzzles and spiritual conundrums. As such, Jewish "fantasy game" will deal mostly with outwitting your adversary, solving complex social situations, and mostly seeking "to do what is wise/ right". Heavy emphasis on thinking things through, and values of caution, humility and such. Heroics are... generally frowned upon as silly.

If you draw more from biblical lore than the exile stories, the emphasis will be on sort of small kingdoms/ tribes, with kings and priests having great power. Many small wars, much politics, with nice dishes of sex, meyham, murder and the like. Here and there a few exceptional figures stand as more "fantastical", usually to a unique characteristic such as smarts, strength and so on, but all in all- still very human, and base.

Refugee culture: I volunteer a lot with refugees coming from Eritrea and Sudan. They mix the monotheistic affects with African affects. There is a great emphasis on spirits- spirits of places, spirits of times, and spirits of emotion, who can affect people to do things they didn't mean to. Also a greet emphasis on the power of nature and it's manifestations. The concept of a "Journey" plays a pivotal role in many stories, where the protagonist needs to take a long perilous journey to their goal, needing to overcome many trials on the way.

To degree this is true with Ethiopian culture, only to lesser extent. Ethiopian culture has an intriguing mix of African beliefs and Jewish beliefs, but I know little of those.

[veti]

In Maori culture, family is everything. The folklore is chock-full of sibling rivalry, jealousy and trickery designed to non-violently spite one's rivals and assert a dominant place in the family pecking order.

As a game, I'd imagine it would be centred on the home and whanau, surrounded by (mostly natural) dangers and pressures, with opportunities for players to earn mana by proving themselves. Whether they prove themselves to be strong, powerful, cunning, hardworking, wise, or otherwise useful, is up to them - really, the metric by which you're judged is how much benefit you provide to the whanau (and at what cost, if relevant). "Leaving your whanau" would be basically unheard-of, but if you insist on doing it, you'd be reduced to zero mana until you could persuade someone else to take you in, whereupon you could start working up again from 1st level.

[aspekt]

Appalachia:

Redneck goblinoids brewing potions in stills hidden throughout the various coves taking potshots at one another but always ready to drop their disagreements and gang up on an outsider.

[Maglubiyet]

Appalachia:Redneck goblinoids brewing potions in stills hidden throughout the various coves taking potshots at one another but always ready to drop their disagreements and gang up on an outsider.

INBRED redneck goblinoids...

[(Un)Inspired]

'Merica. Go big or go home, right?


I was thinking more along the lines of LA and the fact that it's about movies and movie tropes which are our folklore, but sure, 'Merica works too.

[Gnome Alone]

Appalachia:

Redneck goblinoids brewing potions in stills hidden throughout the various coves taking potshots at one another but always ready to drop their disagreements and gang up on an outsider.

You had me at "redneck goblinoids."

I would so play that.

[LokiRagnarok]

Some additions to Russia: If you go back far enough (say, 800 AE or so), you have got a full pantheon ready for the taking. Rarely are the gods helpful, though, except maybe the god of war (I don't know a lot about the Slavic pantheon, though). They are more like representations of the forces of nature, and you pray and/or sacrifice to them to avoid their wrath.

You also get such fascinating things as mermaids (rusalka). They are undead young unmarried women who have taken their lifes by drowning themselves. They will seek to lure and drown the wayward traveller with their viles.

You also get the Baba Yaga - the witch of the Russian forests. She lives in a wooden hut. The hut has giant chicken feet and almost invariably is convinced by the hero to turn around "with its back to the forest and with its face to the hero", instead of the hero just walking around it.
Once you meet Baba Yaga herself, she may be nice to you, give you bath, food, and shelter, and maybe some advice useful for whatever quest you are on, but will usually try to eat you later in the night.
Baba Yaga is also known for flying around in a mortar, wielding a pestle, which you must admit is more comfortable than a broomstick.

You also get some one-use magic items which look mundane at first; for example, a comb which summons a forest when thrown onto the earth, a towel which summons a river, and stuff like that.

Not only do animals speak, but also some household items, like doors, gates, kitchen implements etc.

A difference in quest psychology: You usually wouldn't have a king which implores you to go on a quest with the promise of reward. Instead, the deal is usually "you go do this or off with your head". But once the hero has fulfilled his quest, he usually gets "the princess' hand in marriage and half the kingdom", and goes on to later succeed the king "and rule wisely and peacefully with his loving wive, and they die on the same day". (Russian fairy tales believe that there is no joy in living longer than your significant other. Thus, the happiest ending is to die with them).

[Chromat]

Ahh, yes here in south Slavic tribes we have powerful Slavic gods, mostly representations of nature. Fae is not small and scheming but fae maiden ( Vila ) is as likely to wear a chain-mail and wield morning-star and join heroes in battle with its sisters as it is to trick them. Also some giants and giantess (divka), some dragons ( very rare and legendary). There are stories of some legendary exploits of heroes and a lot borders on magical. Bodies of water have usually cruel spirits.

On the coast it would be piracy and legendary exploits against enemies at sea (piracy against Venice). Free independent cities with its ships and contacts. yeah, very swashbuckling. Lot's of small islands and places to hide the loot.

I already used some of our lore in my games, but it seems to me not nearly enough.

[Eldan]

I'm not even familiar with that many Swiss legends. They all seem to boil down to "and then the devil was seen on that mountain/bridge and did something terrible". Occasionally, we have dwarves showing up. They are small, stealthy old men who live underground. There's fairies, who, as far as I can tell, are exclusively female. Very rarely giants. A dragon or two. Various stories on catholic saints, of course.

I'm not too familiar with anything really old, i.e. pre-Christianization. Probably variations on the normal Germanic folklore. I'll do some research.

The only probably genuinely old folk song I know is about a girl attempting a love potion on her beloved, which goes horribly wrong and then everyone dies.

This seems a pretty nice page. (http://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/schweiz/allgemein/sagen_allgemein.html)$

I like the story of how Switzerland was founded. Two brothers left Sweden with five thousand people of their tribe and made their way south towards Rome. They fought everyone and won against everyone on their way, until they got to the Alps and no one was there to fight anymore, so they decided to stay.

Or Struthan Winkelried, slayer of dragons. He was exiled from his old village for murder, so he tried to slay a dragon to gain enough favour to be allowed to return. To slay the dragon, he stuck a thorn bush on his lance and when the dragon attacked him, it was so fierce and furious that it tried to bite his lance, swallowed the thorn bush and choked on it. But when Struthan tried to pull out his lance, the dragon's blood spilled on him and he was killed.

We really have a lot of "everyone dies" legends.


Anyway, the setting itself. Very Germanic, but with more mountains. Sure, most Swiss lived and still live in the low-lands, where they can see the mountains, not in them. But the mountains feature very strongly in legends. The thing about mountains is that they are almost universally evil. And haunted. There's a lot of legends coming down to "if you go to that mountain in winter/when it's stormy/badly prepared, it will kill you". There's usually ghosts or the devil added.
The mountains are important, though. A lot of Swiss farmers were semi-nomadic, moving up to lonely mountain huts in the summer with their cattle, then back down to larger villages in the Winter. Which means that the best time of the year, the Summer, is spent in small family units away from civilization, such as it is in farming villages. There's plenty of stories of mountain farmers doing terrible things to each other because they were alone too long.

Yora should appreciate this one. (http://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/schweiz/allgemein/friesenweg.html) Switzerland is haunted by the ghosts of Friesian armies.

Edit: so many on there I didn't know. Emperor Charles judging snakes and toads. That's great.

[Joe the Rat]

'Merica. Go big or go home, right?

I've always thought traditional fantasy campaign settings were more or less the amalgamation of European sources, rather than specifically based on any one section of the continent.Welcome to the American Midwest. A big ol' stew pot of the descendants of immigrant farmers from all over Europe, keeping unique culture and traditions, while mixing in a helping of whatever the neighbors were cooking.
Which is why the EGG9001 Standard Fantasy Setting is a mix of regional tales, boiled in a suit of anachronistic full plate and served with rye bread. (That last one is a pun)

I'm from the part of the country smack dab in the middle, which is part of the West. The "not mother goose and grimm imports" part of our folklore takes the form of Tall Tales. Larger than Life frontier and cowboy stuff (because that's where we started). From "Just-So" tales of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan, to the more Tragic Hero types of Casey Jones (The other one. No, the one with the train.) and John Henry. Add a helping of Native American tales and folklore, plus a few embellished historical figures, and some rather "what the fudge" local tales (Windwagon Smith?), and that's the traditions. If you were to play it, It'd look something like a less punchy, dustier version of Exalted with six-guns and cattle drives. Big Heroes doing Big Things, but with some Big Exploitable or Tragic Flaws that end with them dead, or broken, or sucked up by a twister.

[BWR]

Already done. (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10604.phtml)

[Xerlith]

Poland here, so... Just play the Witcher series, I guess. :smallbiggrin:

[Jay R]

The closest I ever came to doing this was a game of original D&D in the 1970s, set in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico. The natives fit into the wilderness, while the Europeans tried to conquer it. Why those specific mountains? Because I'd spent two years as a Philmont Ranger and really knew the land - the hills, the trails, the mines, the history.

But it was less fitting a specific culture and folklore than trying to explain D&D's melange of monsters from many cultures, and an attempt to give a reason for some of the weird rules.

The world was identical to ours in all respects until 1066, when the light from the Crab Nebula supernova arrived, bringing with it raw manna - the stuff of magic. Originally, this had no effect, since nobody knew how to shape it. But little kids started seeing the bogeymen of their nurses' stories - goblins, kobolds, orcs, etc. They existed because all the children believed they did.

Imagine a world in which people's worst nightmares could become real. It soon descended into chaos, filled with monsters from every story from every culture.

But in a few places, there were little islands of sanity. If the lord, or priest, had a strong enough will, and enough determination, and could sway the minds of their followers, then a certain degree of order persisted in their lands.

Hence, Law was mostly good, and Chaos was mostly bad. (This was before the nine-way alignment system.]

Over time, these people started to die off - but their influence remained. The essence of the great Warriors joined together into a great subconscious archetype of the Fighting Man. (Yes, that was the term in the books then.) Eventually, any Fighter who grew powerful was forced into the form of this archetype.

Similarly, the archetypes of Cleric, Wizard, Paladin, and Thief grew. As a person gained more experience, they could align themselves more fully with the archetypes, but only in certain quantum levels, which became experience levels as we know them.

As Europe collapsed under the weight of the nightmares, many of these great leaders sailed west in search of new land. The American Indians, whose culture leaned more toward living within nature rather than conquering it, had been much less affected. The only real changes were that woodland Indians became more in tune with the woods, and this was the start of the elves. Dwarves grew out of mining communities that had been sheltered from the chaos by living in their mines.

Since the original Heroes were human, non-humans could not attune themselves to the archetypes past a certain point. Hence, racial limits on levels. The exception was the Thief archetype, made of those who didn't really fit into human society.

The scientific method does not work when an experimenter's beliefs change the results of the experiment, so the technological level never developed beyond the Middle Ages.

That's the gist of it. It was much more carefully worked out, and explained everything in the rules I could find a way to fit.

I used as much local history and folklore as I could. Lucien Maxwell was Lord Maxwell, Kit Carson was a Ranger, Henri Lambert ran the local inn, and Charlie Kennedy was living at Palo Flechado pass. Urracca mesa had eerie blue lights. The mines at Baldy Town were a dwarven community. Elizabethtown was a literal ghost town.

[Ashtagon]

King Arthur meets Arabian Nights?

[Illogictree]

I idly tossed around basing a setting (or part thereof) based on early French Canada. This would be another 'points-of-light' style setting, obviously - small villages and work camps scattered throughout the forbidding forests and mountains, connected only by the voyageurs who canoe up and down the waterways. The forests are impassable and full of fearsome critters and enigmatic natives. (Or alternatively, you could play natives who have to deal with the eerie spirits of the woods and the enigmatic invaders from over the sea)

On the other end of the country, things would be similar until you hit the Gold Rush, which would be interesting in and of itself... And then there's the building of the Canadian National Railway...

I... would have to do a LOT more research into this sort of stuff before actually putting together a setting, actually. I only remember what I learned from my high school Social Studies classes.

[CowardlyPaladin]

Does anybody know if there are any movies about local spirits/folklore tradition. Or video games? Off the top of my head there is the work of Studio Ghibli (in particular SPirited Away and Totoro), Pan's Labyrinth, and the movie Stalker

[Yora]

On spirits, I recommend Mushishi, an anime series of only loosely connected stories of a spirit master who helps people fixing their local spirit infestations. Very artsy, very mystical.

Oh, and of course Okami for PS2/PS3. Wonderful game that is stuffed up to the brim with Japanese monsters, legends, and deities.

[Ashtagon]

Does anybody know if there are any movies about local spirits/folklore tradition. Or video games? Off the top of my head there is the work of Studio Ghibli (in particular SPirited Away and Totoro), Pan's Labyrinth, and the movie Stalker

Just about every movie about Aladdin, King Arthur, The Thief of Baghdad, the Xena/Hercules series, the Merlin series, Clash of the Titans, the Monkey series, Beowulf, plus about half the entire Bollywood output ever.

There may be a few more. I didn't google it for you.

"local folklore" is a fairly broad criterion.

[Valameer]

It would be a western-style game. There would be settlers, indigenous peoples, ghosts, untamed wilderness, a sea of prairies, racial issues, isolation from civilized society, and a brand new railroad. It would all culminate in the armed rebellion of those who did not sign a treaty but who were ignored by the Government (which is based far to the east).

I'm not sure if that is very interesting, but we don't have a whole lot of juicy folklore to play around with where I'm from.

[Blackhawk748]

Well being from Wisconsin, it would probably look a lot like German fantasy, just different trees (until you go up north) and more marsh. I mean when the original settlers got here the joke was there where so many tress you couldnt fall over. Now theres still a lot of trees, just split up by a lot of farmland. Oh and Marshes, cant forget Marshes. As for the local fantasy wildlife? Well we have the Beast of Bray Road (basically a werewolf) more ghosts than i can shake a stick at, "Outsiders" (we have so many UFO sightings its normal around here), and a fairly crazy assortment of local beasties. Oh and a few lake monsters.

If i where to fantasy it, Id say it would probably be points of light too. Mainly because some Native American spirits are just nasty, that and walking around in a cedar swamp at night is just plain stupid and if you get eaten by a bear, well you had it coming. (Just a note, there arent any bears around where i live anymore, but there used to be a lot.)

[mephnick]

Actually, a gritty supernatural ttrpg set in the fur trade era of British Columbia could be pretty sweet. It could have yetis and cool First Nations spirits!

European traders and settlers with black powder technology coming into a mystical world they can't possibly understand.

Might work best as Call of Cthulhu though.

[TheThan]

Appalachia:

Redneck goblinoids brewing potions in stills hidden throughout the various coves taking potshots at one another but always ready to drop their disagreements and gang up on an outsider.

Please do some research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore_of_the_United_States)

No seriously, American folklore and history is chocked full of really cool stuff. But it’s not taught to children very much anymore. Instead of kids imaginations being filled with stories of Paul Bunyan, Pecos bill, Br'er Rabbit, and even real life characters like buffalo bill, Annie Oakley, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday. It’s being crammed with Harry Potter and a ton of anime stories.

While there’s nothing wrong with anime, or books like the Harry Potter series, it saddens me to see these legends fade away because people stop telling those tall tales.

@ joe the rat,
It’s nice to come across someone that knows something about American Folklore.

[Flickerdart]

While there’s nothing wrong with anime, or books like the Harry Potter series, it saddens me to see these legends fade away because people stop telling those tall tales.
Eh, give it a few years, Hollywood will get bored of comic book movie reboots and go find some other source material to ruin.

[veti]

Eh, give it a few years, Hollywood will get bored of comic book movie reboots and go find some other source material to ruin.

Yeah, careful what you wish for. Many times I've felt personally violated by what Hollywood has done to my country's stories. It's worst when they claim to be based on a true story (Titanic, The Patriot, Braveheart), but some versions of Robin Hood are almost as offensive.

[TheThan]

Eh, give it a few years, Hollywood will get bored of comic book movie reboots and go find some other source material to ruin.

It has nothing to do with Hollywood. It has everything to do with people simply not telling these stories to their children. Parents used to tell these tall tails to their kids. It's folklore its all about legends and fairy tails and tall tales. It's about bigger than life characters doing bigger than life things. Somewhere along the lines people stopped telling these stories, their kids never learn them, then their kids never learn them and soon those tales are lost to time as nobody knows them, not even the old timers. it's tragic really.

[Jay R]

As a modern American, I have to assume that any game of Champions, Mutants and Masterminds, or TOON is based on my native folklore. There are the stories we tell each other. Any game set in the old west, or any swashbuckling game is also mostly about the Hollywood stories.

I could make the same case for any game based in Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragon Lance, or Dark Sun, also. Not when they first came out, of course, but now these are the stories my people have been telling.

[dps]

Please do some research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore_of_the_United_States)

No seriously, American folklore and history is chocked full of really cool stuff. But it’s not taught to children very much anymore. Instead of kids imaginations being filled with stories of Paul Bunyan, Pecos bill, Br'er Rabbit, and even real life characters like buffalo bill, Annie Oakley, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday. It’s being crammed with Harry Potter and a ton of anime stories.

While there’s nothing wrong with anime, or books like the Harry Potter series, it saddens me to see these legends fade away because people stop telling those tall tales.

@ joe the rat,
It’s nice to come across someone that knows something about American Folklore.

He specified Appalachia, not America in general.

And, speaking as a West Virginian, I have to say that he's really not far off. Sure, we do have some pretty cool folklore and cultural traditions, but I don't know how most of them would translate into an RPG. Would you really want to play an RPG about coal mining?

Anyhow, here's a few examples of West Virginia folklore.

The Hatfields and McCoys Feud: Really happened, but popular retelling tend to add a lot of fictional elements.

The Mothman Prophecies: Might be a decent RPG setting in there.

The Flatwoods Monster/Alien: Fairly generic alien "sighting", only distinguished from a hundred other tales by the physical appearance of the alien being more frightening than most.

The Legend of John Henry: A pretty cool story, but I don't see any RPG potential in it at all.

[Flickerdart]

Would you really want to play an RPG about coal mining?
Take dwarves, replace gold with coal, adjust dosage of steampunk to taste. A lot of nasties live underground, and that's if the tunnels don't collapse on ya because a foreman held a grudge after the time you kidnapped his daughter to use as bait for the drow insurgents.

[Jay R]

No seriously, American folklore and history is chocked full of really cool stuff. But it’s not taught to children very much anymore.

I know a fair amount about it. But the stories that people told in this country before my grandfather got here aren't automatically "my" history and folklore, just because they were once told where I live now.

"My" folklore could be any of the following:
1. Swedish stories of trolls, tomtes, St. Lucia and others,
2. a melting pot of all cultures brought here, including Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed, but also King Arthur, the Three Musketeers, Baba Yaga, and countless others, or
3. modern Texas folklore, including Pecos Bill, the Alamo, the Yellow Rose of Texas, Judge Roy Bean, Ma Ferguson, Bonnie & Clyde, Audie Murphy, Doak Walker, J. R. Ewing, Cordell Walker, etc.
4. modern comics, TV shows, and movies. These are the stories we actually tell.

[Terraoblivion]

Denmark would be above all be dull, to be honest. After the 11th century Denmark became a tidy, thoroughly tamed country of farmers concerned with farmlife. We have trolls...And even they are mostly just farmers, just nasty, unpleasant, ugly ones. Our only other native mythological being are nisser, which are basically helpful, but temperamental farm spirits. There are some other less common ones, like the gam which shows up in medieval texts but without description, the hell horse which eats corpses at cemeteries and not really anything else and the klabauderman who appears before sailors who are going to drown...And doesn't do anything. And except for out west which the rest of the country doesn't even think about enough to ignore, the land is all nice, pleasant, fertile farmland.

If I were to guess, I'd say that it would probably mix the oppressive landlords of the renaissance and enlightenment with the feuding nobles of the middle ages. Foreign invasions and military adventurism on the part of the king are also likely threats. So it'd overwhelmingly be about civilized, but rural concerns with labor relations and war being the primary threat and the only supernatural thing really lurking anywhere being witches who represent a direct attack on that civilization itself. So I guess low fantasy and small scale would be the way to go, with anything resembling adventuring being virtually impossible because there was nowhere to go and you weren't allowed to leave your lands anyway.

You could do viking stuff, of course, but that's really a completely different culture, identity and mostly based on Icelandic stuff. Even then, what we do know about Danish viking stuff is that it's mostly about farmers, feuding nobles, foreign invasions and kings engaging in military adventurism. Really, Denmark is just a monumentally dull place and bizarrely lacking in the supernatural.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

No seriously, American folklore and history is chocked full of really cool stuff.

Oh, I am aware (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?229431-American-Mythology-Setting-(Help-is-welcome!)). This was a lot of fun to work on.

For my own culture...um.

Southern California. I guess a lot of Western tropes, though less than the Midwest and the New Mexican area. A lot of native mythology, including the ever-popular Coyote stuff. Lot of ghost stories. I guess a lot of Noir and Hollywood stuff. San Bernardino's kinda boring in the myth department.

But if we were drawing on our parents and grandparents I'd throw in a lot of Basque and Irish folklore, which is cool.

[Jay R]

Denmark would be above all be dull, to be honest.

Not at all. We're basing this on tradition and folklore, so all of Hans Christian Andersen is in the mix.

Besides, since D&D has a quasi-medieval feel, Gesta Danorum would be the core of the universe, which provides all the mythology and medieval wars and heroes and blood you would require. As I recall, some English hack took the story of Prince Amleth out of it, and made a story which isn't entirely dull.

[Yuki Akuma]

The most common enemies would be ghosts and faeries. All 'spellcasters' would either be royalty, living saints or witches. If you go back further, there'll probably be far more faeries and miracle workers, and probably vikings.

In the 'viking' era, foreigners would often have their own religions and magical traditions with different but still valid (for them) rules. We probably wouldn't care much.

[Terraoblivion]

He's not tradition. He's a writer with a unified body of work, same as anybody else. It's also still basically about the same thing as the actual traditional stories.

[Thrudd]

I'm currently in the pacific northwest of USA. Technically, if you want to find anything close to fantasy in local American traditions, you need to go back to Native American lore, maybe the earliest days of European explorers and settlers at the latest. There would be animal and nature spirits, shamanistic medicine men. The spirit world would be an important place. Evil spirits/demons sometimes cause trouble. Wendigos, Sasquatch, thunderbird, vengeful or helpful ancestor spirits. Maybe something a little like "American Gods", where the Europeans bring their own gods and myths with them, so we get little pockets where a German kobold inhabits a lake, or celtic myths, elves or fairies living in the forest near a settlement. Maybe we learn that these beings were always there, but the natives just call them by different names or see them differently than the Europeans.

Adventures would be about warriors going on quests to appease the spirits or hunt down a monster to save the tribe/village. Fighting raiders from aggressive tribes. Following a medicine man into the spirit world or underworld to seek knowledge and having to protect him from dangerous spirits. Meeting the people from across the sea, and encountering the strange spirits they have brought with them in the spirit world near their settlements.
Or playing the part of the settlers, learning about the new land from the natives and encountering the spirits and creatures and spirit/underworld for the first time. Choosing to help them and learn their ways, or fight them and take their stuff (hopefully not). go adventuring and exploring, find gold and valuable animal furs and new foods to trade back at the settlement. hunt animals and fight off wendigos and skin changers and aggressive hunter tribes. Found your own fort or town eventually.

The traditions of my ethnic heritage would be mostly French Canadian/Québécois, which would fit with the above hunter/trapper from a small settlement exploring a world of strange spirits and learning about the native culture.

I could follow my heritage back to Norman France and England, and go back farther to the time of Franks and Goths and Celts in post Roman dark ages. I'm 1/4 Italian, too, Naples/southern Italian. So mix in the Roman influence as well, and a little Greek influence inherited in their culture. It would be a campaign covering Western Europe and the British isles, where the gods and myths of all my ancestors exist side by side, probably in conflict. Gaul is a melting pot of ancient celts, franks and goths and decaying Roman culture. Scary tribes from the east sometimes invade (Huns and their type). For a fantasy world, leave out Christianity or reduce it's influence to being just one more religion among many, with priests and priestesses that follow and draw power from all manner of gods and spirits. Take your pick of the myths and creatures from any/all of these cultures, many of which are similar anyway.

One adventure might take the characters north to the isles, where they encounter Picts and sidhe/fey. Another would take them south to ruins near Rome or to cavern complexes near Naples, where an oracle speaks for an Ancient Greek/Roman God and they face an Ancient monster or shades from the land of the dead. They might fight for a proto-Charlemagne type figure, and be like Paladins driving back the dark creatures of myth that resist the light of unification that your good King would bring to the various tribes.
This time period and location are full of fantasy possibilities if you are willing to be even a little bit anachronistic.

[Jay R]

He's not tradition. He's a writer with a unified body of work, same as anybody else. It's also still basically about the same thing as the actual traditional stories.

So is Homer, but the Iliad and the Oddyssey certainly form part of the tradition of Greece.
So is Malory, but the Morte D'Arthur certainly forms part of the tradition of England.
So is Dumas, but The Three Musketeers certainly forms part of the tradition of France.

My point is that any land's history provides exciting background for a game, no matter how prosaic it seems today.

[Imagine telling a bunch of New Yorkers you have a game planned based on Manhattan Island, and then having them bartering for wilderness land with beads.]

[Terraoblivion]

Actually, I would call neither the body of work of Dumas or that of Victor Hugo part of French tradition. Arthurian legend is older, larger and more sprawling than Mallory, as well as being common to all of Europe and not just an English thing, and we don't even know if Homer existed, but we do know that he was drawing on wider aspects of ancient Greek mythological cycles. People like Hans Christian Anderson, Dumas or Victor Hugo don't, they're post-romanticism authors creating new works that obviously existed within preexisting genres, but weren't retellings of existing myths nor were later retold in the same way. Similarly, I wouldn't call vampires a part of British folklore and tradition because of Bram Stoker.

And I'm a historian. From Denmark. I do in fact know Danish history and it's extremely prosaic throughout recorded history. It is a bit of a rural backwater, but one that was thoroughly settled and cultivated before we even started writing down stuff here with the last bits of wilderness being eliminated in the early middle ages. Strictly speaking Danish has more wilderness now than in the middle ages and it's still the country in Europe with least, with several biologists going so far as to say there is literally none. The entire culture here is centered on farm life and agriculture, to the point that everybody is freaking out because urbanization has gone far enough that we can no longer pretend to be a nation of farmers. There have traditionally been no scary ethnic others, no dark forests, no savage oceans, no mines with collapses, no mountains. Nothing. Nor have there been great cultural innovations or cultural conflicts that weren't borrowed from the rest of Europe and the viking heritage is far enough away as to be completely disconnected. The country has also been weak enough to not really have much of a heritage of colonialism or conquest because since the middle ages basically every war has gone horribly for the Danish crown and the Danish state. And our national traditions are, well, very hobbitish. Full of cultural myopia, self-satisfaction, dislike for the flamboyant and the dangerous and focused on home and hearth, but not surrounded by threatening nature.

Really, fantasy based on Danish traditions would be the Shire, but without a big showdown between good and evil happening just outside.

[Yora]

We don't need to create the ultimate and official national fairy tale here. The main interest is how you would see generic fantasy settings that have been given some local flavor and color.

[Maglubiyet]

There was this cloud giant ranger with his +5 battle axe and his animal companion, a blue dire ox...

[aspekt]

He specified Appalachia, not America in general.

And, speaking as a West Virginian, I have to say that he's really not far off. Sure, we do have some pretty cool folklore and cultural traditions, but I don't know how most of them would translate into an RPG. Would you really want to play an RPG about coal mining?

Anyhow, here's a few examples of West Virginia folklore.

The Hatfields and McCoys Feud: Really happened, but popular retelling tend to add a lot of fictional elements.

The Mothman Prophecies: Might be a decent RPG setting in there.

The Flatwoods Monster/Alien: Fairly generic alien "sighting", only distinguished from a hundred other tales by the physical appearance of the alien being more frightening than most.

The Legend of John Henry: A pretty cool story, but I don't see any RPG potential in it at all.

Exactly. It was intended as a humorous remark about my home.

There are plenty of great things you could use for an rpg in Appalachia. Heck WhiteWolf even used it for a setting for Changeling and Werewolf titled, Rage Across Appalachia.

While not centered there Orson Scott Card's 'Alvin Maker' series touches on it and could lead to a more D&D styled version of the game Colonial Gothic.

The Federal Works Project during the depression recorded folks in the hollows so isolated they were speaking dialects of Elizabethan English. What if they were Fey folk just having fun or covering up their true nature.

Then there are always the olive skinned Melungeon folk who's origin and dialects are still fiercely debated last I heard.

Now alot of the very southernmost part of Appalachia is Karst geomorphology. Basically limestone riddled so thoroughly with caves and caverns locals joke you can drop in a sinkhole on the mountain and come out in the city 45mins away.

Plenty of folks I've known still plant by the moon and stars, though they're hesitant to admit it. Just a few years ago on one of those planting nights I was headed home late and saw a farmer on his tractor in the field with a planter attached and floodlights of some kind on the top.

And there are plenty of cursed spirits and ghosts all throughout these hills and hollers.

Even unexplained aboriginal sites. One has been here and abandoned long before settlers even arrived. The story goes that the tribe that lived there had fallen under the sway of what the other tribes saw as dark magic. Eventually in order to stop this dark magic the other tribes rose up and destroyed this tribe and it's "fort".

So ya there's lots of things here in Appalachia that could make for TRPG adventures.

P.S. I still think redneck goblins moonshining potions is a cool idea.

[Zale]

Let's see.

The first thing on folkore from my area was a story about a man being kidnapped by mosquitoes.

[Jay R]

P.S. I still think redneck goblins moonshining potions is a cool idea.

I love it. I may do this, and even have the Orcfields and the McKobolds.

[(Un)Inspired]

Would you really want to play an RPG about coal mining?


Oh God! I want to play an Eest Birginian (that's my phones autocorrect for West Viginian but it totally sounds like a cool fantasy nationality so I'm gonna leave it in) coal miner. I'd even LARP it. I'd LARP it hard.

[BootStrapTommy]

You could do viking stuff, of course, but that's really a completely different culture, identity and mostly based on Icelandic stuff. Even then, what we do know about Danish viking stuff is that it's mostly about farmers, feuding nobles, foreign invasions and kings engaging in military adventurism. Really, Denmark is just a monumentally dull place and bizarrely lacking in the supernatural. Worth noting you Danes could skip off the Angles and Saxons, who were originally your southern neighbors.

Hroðgar is King of the Danes, meaning that half of the Anglo-Saxon's greatest epic, Beowulf, actually takes place in Denmark.

[Milo v3]

The campaign setting would be filled with fire everywhere, a continent sized prismatic snake creator deity, sentient animals, and giant spiders.... so many giant spiders.

[Terraoblivion]

Worth noting you Danes could skip off the Angles and Saxons, who were originally your southern neighbors.

Hroðgar is King of the Danes, meaning that half of the Anglo-Saxon's greatest epic, Beowulf, actually takes place in Denmark.

I know. But it's an English story, it's not actually known from continental European sources. And in any case, viking folklore is not really that of modern Denmark.

[Kami2awa]

The Isle of Albion, where ancient standing stones unlock strange powers, where druids roam the hills, where dragons lurk in the valleys, serpents swarm in the lakes and enigmatic Grey Men in the mountains, where every old building has its ghosts and every crossroads its hellhounds. The new religion sits uneasily on a web of bonfire festivals and even stranger rites, the government is a labyrinth of secret societies with their roots in the knights templar and all power comes ultimately from a magic sword drawn from a stone.

So no, I don't think there's much to work with in the UK.

[cobaltstarfire]

Probably full of chupicabres (how do you even spell that?), magical cowboys/hands, roadways designed by crazy potentially drunken engineers, bigger cats than have been around here in a loooong time...


That's my assumption anyway, most of the American folklore I knew of is more universalish (Johny Appleseed, Pecos Bill, and the like, many of those stories have long since fallen out of my head probably never to return). I don't know too very much about my state, or city in particular, but I'm sure the city has some extra weird bits to it. Because it's a weird city full of very weird people.


I bet you could build an entire fantasy campaign out of bits and pieces of folklore and tradition from any single branch of the military, just based on what little bits and pieces I know from all the family members I have that have been in it. I bet the same could be say of any countries military/defense force. And it'd probably be really interesting to see what it'd come out looking like.

[Yora]

How would you take a standard D&D fantasy world with wizards, dwarves, orcs, and dragons and give it some local nods and feel?

[SiuiS]

On spirits, I recommend Mushishi, an anime series of only loosely connected stories of a spirit master who helps people fixing their local spirit infestations. Very artsy, very mystical.

Oh, and of course Okami for PS2/PS3. Wonderful game that is stuffed up to the brim with Japanese monsters, legends, and deities.

Mushishi is fantastic and an incredible way of showing normal folks how the Spirit arcanum works.

[supermonkeyjoe]

I'm from Cornwall, the south western most area of England and from what I remember from my childhood we have Giants, Mermaids, pixies (piskies in cornish) King Arthur and the Beast of Bodmin Moor (although that latest one is a bit more recent)

[Milo v3]

How would you take a standard D&D fantasy world with wizards, dwarves, orcs, and dragons and give it some local nods and feel?

Make magic users shaman, dwarves are wombat-folk, elves are humans bonded with ancestor spirits, orcs are the invading foreigners, dragons are giant serpents but their are only the chromatic variety.

[cobaltstarfire]

How would you take a standard D&D fantasy world with wizards, dwarves, orcs, and dragons and give it some local nods and feel?

Well since all I really know about is the politics of my city, how weird everyone is in a non-specific way, and that the old courthouse is a strange hodgepodge of architectural styles. I'd just make it a western setting with more fantasy elements, and more hippies than you'd expect.

Most martial classes would be some sort of cowboy archetype, casters would be a mix of sciency/blue collar, rogues would be bandits and/or politicians. Divine casters would probably be all over the place, and also quarrel amongst themselves constantly.

There probably wouldn't be any dragons. They'd be dinosaurs, land/water/airdrakes, and other large reptiles. And like I said other magical fauna would be things like chupacabras, and big cats, ghost cats, killer cows and deer.

We seriously do have urban legends that our highways follow old cow trails, or were designed by a drunkard (it's how people in certain cities joke about why their highways are so stupidly crazy and disorganized). You want to more seriously fit it to a campaign setting than say that the god of travel rides/drives cows and has a fondness of alcohol.

I'd probably also give the setting an undercurrent of ancient long lost aquatic themed things, because the state used to be mostly covered by a shallow inland sea, and I'm more interested in this places ancient history and fauna than its recent history.

It'd probably be all human, or humans and dinosauroids (cause I like dinosaurs and lots of dinosaurs have been dug up here and in neighboring states).

[Eldan]

How would you take a standard D&D fantasy world with wizards, dwarves, orcs, and dragons and give it some local nods and feel?

Hmmm. You know, that goes against just about anything local mythology does. Wizards are very rare and usually noble. Dwarves are small gnomes living under the mountains and forests that leave changelings*. Dragons are creeping, poisonous worm-things. Knights, of course, are foreigners, all of them. Austrians, Swabians, Milanese, that kind of thing.

*I just found a story on how to get your own baby back if you were given a changeling. It's pretty horrific. You take your "wrong" child to the forest and whip it until the dwarf mother runs in to trade you back, because clearly, you're too horrible a mother for her child.


For just the local feel: there's big cities and empires in the world, but they aren't here. We have the streets running between the great cities, and the mountain passes, but the land here is wild and mostly empty. The Empire we are technically part of is far away and most emperors have never been here. Occasionally, one tries to send one of his haughty magistrates or nobles here, to strut about and talk about obediance and taxes. We tend to scare them off, burn a few castles. There's only god, the Emperor and then us and no one gets to stand in between.
We're farmers, of course. But the land is poor and there's no resources, so almost every young man does a year or two as a travelling mercenary. So adventurers would fit right in.
Halflings, dwarves and gnomes fight right in, but I'm honestly not much seeing the classical evil humanoids. We never really had a lot of foreign raiders, we just raided each other.

[Yora]

So, Keep on the Borderland? :smallwink:

[Eldan]

Preeeetty much. Only with occasionally going to "civilized" lands to fight in their armies.

[Thrudd]

How would you take a standard D&D fantasy world with wizards, dwarves, orcs, and dragons and give it some local nods and feel?

Small Points of light settlements in a big wilderness. The environment would be northern/temperate deciduous and coniferous forests, rivers, rocky seashores. European/French settlers and explorers would be represented by humans and maybe some halflings and dwarves. Various Native American tribes would be other humanoid races. Elves would be those tribes that generally cooperate with the settlers (but not always, there is a limit). Orcs and goblioids might be others, that tend to be antagonistic toward the settlers and other tribes more often (but not always), but would be willing to trade with individual hunters and trappers occasionally. Other various humanoid tribes will fall somewhere in between those two on the cooperative/antagonistic scale.
Wild animals will take on fantastic mien, instead of Cougars there will be displacer beasts, bears would be owlbears, chimera live in the mountains and catoblepas in the marshes, other monsters in the rivers and lakes, etc.

Wizards and clerics would come with the Europeans, bringing their book learning and monotheistic religion.

The native humanoid tribes practice the equivalent of Druidic magic (calling on spirits of nature) and have magical herbal/alchemical recipes, and some will have sorceror/medicine men that use magic binding spirits or elemental powers. Human Rangers (coureur des bois) will be those explorers who have spent time among the tribes and learned many of their ways. They would be really important guides for most expeditions.

Settlers will be interested in finding mines with ores and precious stones, natives will be interested in acquiring the technology of the settlers and will procure ores in order to trade. That technology might mainly be in the form of steel weapons and armor, and magic items and spells crafted by wizards, rather than gunpowder and muskets. The elven tribes especially would have a talent for picking up the workings of wizard magic.

The antagonistic humanoid tribes will often have such goods procured from raids on homesteads and small settlements.

The hermit that lives alone in the mountains sometimes might be a wizard perfecting his science rather than a trapper/hunter.

I don't see a lot of room for dungeon-type adventures so much, there aren't any castles or ruins of ancient empires here.

Though there could be such a thing added, maybe the underworld/spirit world of some native beliefs is a real place that people can access via certain cavern complexes, and within would live spirits/monsters protecting magical secrets and powers. The natives go there as part of their rights of passage, and their medicine men go there to learn from spirits or deal with them. Settlers want to go there as well, to gain or increase magic power (maybe there is some kind of magical mineral or gem which grows there that powers the creation of magic items). Also, maybe the underworld can be used as a shorter travel rout across the mountains, so settlers want to control the entrances and clear out the caverns of hostile spirits and monsters. They will conflict with the natives over what might be perceived as defilement of sacred places.

I see a possibility that goblinoids, especially hobgoblins, might be a race of settlers rather than natives, in this setting. They are a nation in competition with the human and Demi-human settlers (that mostly get along or ignore each other). Their nations are probably at war on the other side of the ocean, and that sometimes spills over into the new world. They will ally with different native tribes, and something like the seven years war could happen.

[Frozen_Feet]

Power of names and song are big themes in Finnish myths. Knowledge of something's origin can get you power over it, even alter the shape of terrain or yourself. Of course, wrongly invoking the name of something fearsome, especially bears or God, can get you eaten or punished by them. You're supposed to use kind nicknames of them and pay proper respect.

When people die, their spirit lingers around and usually escapes in the form of a small bug, so take care to not squash it before it makes to heaven. Alternatively, the dead just kind of hang around complaining about their misery, becoming uglier and uglier as their bodies rot, until their living relatives finally get tired of them and drive them off to afterlife.

Speaking of the afterlife, it's often quite bleak of a place, with people continuing to mimic their former habits as grey shades. The beds are made of stone and the ale is made of snake venom. Death holds reign there with his blind daughter and the nine diseases who are her sons. Conveniently enough, it's located, like, 10 miles upstream to the north, so you can often just walk there if you need to converse with the dead. You might need some help from a ferryman to get across Death's river. Getting out, now, that's a bit harder, as Death doesn't like people leaving just like that. On the way, you might spot some rare wildlife, like the Swan of Death or the Flaming Moose of Hell. Better not shoot them, though, it usually ends badly for you.

Fishing is a common way of life, but it's not without its hazards. If you're a child or a pretty woman, a nixie or malicious maidens of water might lure you into the water to drown you, so they can hold you as their captive forever. Your boat might also get attacked by a giant man-eating pike or a vaguely Lovecraftian sea-demon. There's rumored to be a whole kingdom under the lakes and seas, richer than any on land.

Your house, barn or sauna might have tiny little elf hiding in there, who keeps it tidy in exchange for gratitude and token sacrifices. Don't try to see it or otherwise bother it in its job, or you'll scare it away. And maybe die yourself. If you're unlucky, instead of an elf it's an imp or the Devil himself making home in your property, and it will cause a ruckus if not properly sedated. It's not usually a big deal, but if you stay in the sauna alone after midnight, it will kill and flay you and hang your skin to dry. If you're a good God-fearing citizen, you might want to contact a priest to get rid of it.

Try not to go to church at night when no-one's there. Lingering spirits of the dead hold their own masses there then, and you might run into Death or the Devil.

As for the ordinary people, the reindeer-herders up north hate your guts for stealing their lands. Your neighbours to the east and west take turns in trying to kill and rob you, and ruling over you. Occasionally, the draft the menfolk for some military campaign or another across the sea to the south, to engage in some good old fashioned murder, rape and pillaging in the name of King, God and one true Faith or some such.

If you're going to embark on a quest that's not just getting drunk and killing people, it's probably fetching important knowledge from the afterlife, or trying to get married to some pretty northener. In the last case, better forget it; the girl's / guy's mom is a witch and will literally make you go through Hell before she'll accept your proposal. Even if you manage not to die, your spouse canditate will turn out to be a bitch / jerk anyway, and one of their employees will kill them for it. No, making a replacement out of gold will not help you, this is not Chobits. Asking the dowry back will also not help, it always ends with a fight and whatever's being fought over getting broken.

Finally, the campaign won't be complete untill someone screws their amnesiac sibling and then commits suicide with their talking sword.

[BootStrapTommy]

You know, there is a plethora of lore among the American Natives which is largely forgotten and would make for awesome campaign settings.

[Yora]

When people die, their spirit lingers around and usually escapes in the form of a small bug, so take care to not squash it before it makes to heaven. Alternatively, the dead just kind of hang around complaining about their misery, becoming uglier and uglier as their bodies rot, until their living relatives finally get tired of them and drive them off to afterlife.
I'm not dead. I think I am feeling better.

people, the reindeer-herds up north hate your guts for stealing their lands.
Aw... Kinda sad I misred that the first time. Angry reindeer herds who want to kick you dead could be so awesome. :smallbiggrin:

[Frozen_Feet]

Well, there's a tale of a witch who could turn into a white reindeer and lured gullible men to the wild to impale with her horns. There's an old but pretty famous movie made of it.

[NowhereMan583]

I don't see a lot of room for dungeon-type adventures so much, there aren't any castles or ruins of ancient empires here.

Oh, there are. Just of a slightly different sort...

Imagine vast abandoned complexes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Pueblo_peoples#Architecture_.E2.80.93_Pueb lo_complexes_and_Great_Houses) built directly into the side of a cliff. The locals shun them, saying they were created by the Ancient Enemy. Elsewhere, extremely large (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monks_Mound) burial mounds in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alligator_Effigy_Mound) various (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troyville_Earthworks) configurations (http://media2.lpb.org/images/povpnt_site_08.jpg) can be found dotting the landscape. There are whispers -- largely dismissed as crackpot rumors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_Builders#Alternative_explanations) -- that the size of the burial mounds is not an accident, and merely scales to the size of the inhabitants. Unfortunately, due to conquest and plague, the knowledge of why these things are here and what might be in them now is lost... bad luck for the adventuring party. They'll just have to try to puzzle things out from ominous petroglyphs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newspaper_rock.jpg).

[Thrudd]

Oh, there are. Just of a slightly different sort...

Imagine vast abandoned complexes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Pueblo_peoples#Architecture_.E2.80.93_Pueb lo_complexes_and_Great_Houses) built directly into the side of a cliff. The locals shun them, saying they were created by the Ancient Enemy. Elsewhere, extremely large (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monks_Mound) burial mounds in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alligator_Effigy_Mound) various (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troyville_Earthworks) configurations (http://media2.lpb.org/images/povpnt_site_08.jpg) can be found dotting the landscape. There are whispers -- largely dismissed as crackpot rumors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_Builders#Alternative_explanations) -- that the size of the burial mounds is not an accident, and merely scales to the size of the inhabitants. Unfortunately, due to conquest and plague, the knowledge of why these things are here and what might be in them now is lost... bad luck for the adventuring party. They'll just have to try to puzzle things out from ominous petroglyphs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newspaper_rock.jpg).

That's true, at least in the southwest and colorado. I was thinking more Quebec, New England, great lakes area (for my personal heritage). But the cave dwellings would totally contain entrances to the spirit/underworld, probably through the kiva.

[dps]

Take dwarves, replace gold with coal, adjust dosage of steampunk to taste. A lot of nasties live underground, and that's if the tunnels don't collapse on ya because a foreman held a grudge after the time you kidnapped his daughter to use as bait for the drow insurgents.

I suppose, but I thought the idea was to do something unique to your local culture, not just a dwarven campaign by another name.

[aspekt]

Power of names and song are big themes in Finnish myths. Knowledge of something's origin can get you power over it, even alter the shape of terrain or yourself. Of course, wrongly invoking the name of something fearsome, especially bears or God, can get you eaten or punished by them. You're supposed to use kind nicknames of them and pay proper respect.

When people die, their spirit lingers around and usually escapes in the form of a small bug, so take care to not squash it before it makes to heaven. Alternatively, the dead just kind of hang around complaining about their misery, becoming uglier and uglier as their bodies rot, until their living relatives finally get tired of them and drive them off to afterlife.

Speaking of the afterlife, it's often quite bleak of a place, with people continuing to mimic their former habits as grey shades. The beds are made of stone and the ale is made of snake venom. Death holds reign there with his blind daughter and the nine diseases who are her sons. Conveniently enough, it's located, like, 10 miles upstream to the north, so you can often just walk there if you need to converse with the dead. You might need some help from a ferryman to get across Death's river. Getting out, now, that's a bit harder, as Death doesn't like people leaving just like that. On the way, you might spot some rare wildlife, like the Swan of Death or the Flaming Moose of Hell. Better not shoot them, though, it usually ends badly for you.

Fishing is a common way of life, but it's not without its hazards. If you're a child or a pretty woman, a nixie or malicious maidens of water might lure you into the water to drown you, so they can hold you as their captive forever. Your boat might also get attacked by a giant man-eating pike or a vaguely Lovecraftian sea-demon. There's rumored to be a whole kingdom under the lakes and seas, richer than any on land.

Your house, barn or sauna might have tiny little elf hiding in there, who keeps it tidy in exchange for gratitude and token sacrifices. Don't try to see it or otherwise bother it in its job, or you'll scare it away. And maybe die yourself. If you're unlucky, instead of an elf it's an imp or the Devil himself making home in your property, and it will cause a ruckus if not properly sedated. It's not usually a big deal, but if you stay in the sauna alone after midnight, it will kill and flay you and hang your skin to dry. If you're a good God-fearing citizen, you might want to contact a priest to get rid of it.

Try not to go to church at night when no-one's there. Lingering spirits of the dead hold their own masses there then, and you might run into Death or the Devil.

As for the ordinary people, the reindeer-herders up north hate your guts for stealing their lands. Your neighbours to the east and west take turns in trying to kill and rob you, and ruling over you. Occasionally, the draft the menfolk for some military campaign or another across the sea to the south, to engage in some good old fashioned murder, rape and pillaging in the name of King, God and one true Faith or some such.

If you're going to embark on a quest that's not just getting drunk and killing people, it's probably fetching important knowledge from the afterlife, or trying to get married to some pretty northener. In the last case, better forget it; the girl's / guy's mom is a witch and will literally make you go through Hell before she'll accept your proposal. Even if you manage not to die, your spouse canditate will turn out to be a bitch / jerk anyway, and one of their employees will kill them for it. No, making a replacement out of gold will not help you, this is not Chobits. Asking the dowry back will also not help, it always ends with a fight and whatever's being fought over getting broken.

Finally, the campaign won't be complete untill someone screws their amnesiac sibling and then commits suicide with their talking sword.

That was awesome. I've wanted to go to Finland for a long time. This should scare me, but it just intrigues me.

[Cealocanth]

As far as the local culture where I grew up, it would probably be a 'points of light' style setting with an old western twist. There would be several fantasy races, all with their own unique cultures and values, which all mix into a vast, untamed expanse of plains and mountains. Nature would be viewed as cruel and wild, but not untamable, but there would also be those who give it reverence because of that. People would be taught to be tough as nails, to value athletics and personal prowess above all else, to show one's value based on the extent of the land that they plow and the beasts that they have killed, and to give unyielding respect and priority to one's own family over all others.

Monsters and the like would take the form of everything from the wild 'diablos' of the southwest, native american spirits and beasts of legend, animals so big and tough that they would become legends to hunt, and a whole host of 'trickster' creatures (such as the 'snow snake' or the trickster coyote) which GMs would primarily use to mess with their players.

Technology would probably be placed no later than late 19th century, but it may be left ambiguous. Something about the local culture around these parts is that its less important what you have and what you can buy and more important that you know how to use them. Spells and powers and the like would be largely skill based, and a rifle probably wouldn't be much better than a bow and arrow when you got right down to it. Magic items would not be made by people, but instead would come from rare and precious things, particularly metals and gemstones. Your +2 bullets are made out of 'akkadium' and can move at supersonic speed, and your magic charm necklace is made out of 'malarite' stone.

[daremetoidareyo]

Young kids report that when they visit their aunt, that they sometimes find dogs ripped in half. Stoned teenagers stumble into the woods and run out screaming in sobering fear. Everyone has a different story about where the jersey devil came from. Some say it was a curse put on the english settlers of New Jersey by the natives. Others say that the Leeds family had a 13th child that they couldn't afford to feed, so they stuffed the kid in the basement, feeding it table scraps here and there, and the kid escaped. Another story of the 13th son of the leeds family was a bastard, a biracial bastard at that, so the child was locked away and tortured until it grew old enough to violently retaliate. The final tale is the jersey devil was the product of consorting directly with the devil.

The descriptions speak of a vaguely humanoid creature, the legs of a man, the trunk and head of a horse with carnivores teeth, wicked claws at the end of manlike arms and tiny bat wings fluttering above it's mishappen back. The jersey devil is sometimes sought out at night by would-be satanists unaware of how big a bite they are about to chew off and nihilistic teenage hicks. They all leave the woods a little bit different. Most stories speak of strange floating orange lights, but a few say white balls of light in the distance. Everyone speaks of knowing it was present, whatever it was, and it's shear presence dilated time. Dark nights goofing in the woods become an eerie silent drone of where your eyes meet, at least the respondants think their eyes met with dark eyes of a beast whose stare whips them cold. Face to face contemplating a sentience that seems so much more vast, makes the kids fill with fear. They see visages of violence, attacks. They hear their friends running, falling, and screaming. And when everyone exits the woods, no one has any injuries. Everyone is freaked out. And Everyone is quietly assuming that it is time to leave this area. And then one of their friends cracks a joke, and it is like it had never happened.


That is literally everything I ever heard about the Jersey Devil growing up in the 80s and 90s.

[NowhereMan583]

That's true, at least in the southwest and colorado. I was thinking more Quebec, New England, great lakes area (for my personal heritage). But the cave dwellings would totally contain entrances to the spirit/underworld, probably through the kiva.

That still includes the burial mounds. In fact, the largest is in Illinois, which is at least generally "Great Lakes area". Monks Mound is about as large at the base as the Great Pyramid of Giza -- I'd bet you could fit a pretty exceptional dungeon in there.

[Twice]

Down here in Texas? A lot of animal spirits and gunslingers.

[Thrudd]

That still includes the burial mounds. In fact, the largest is in Illinois, which is at least generally "Great Lakes area". Monks Mound is about as large at the base as the Great Pyramid of Giza -- I'd bet you could fit a pretty exceptional dungeon in there.

Yes, that is true, too. There would either be one humongous burial mound that contains the entrance to a mega dungeon, or several of them scattered about. Ultimately, all the "dungeon" areas are probably connected, the spirit underworld would serve as a sort of underdark.

[CoffeeIncluded]

There's a lot of campaigns you can do in New York City.

You could do a gangster/mafia or noir campaign, have the players either try and bring down infamous gangsters, or be some themselves. The Godfather took place in the city after all. Bring them to Tammany Hall, a government teeming with corruption, and see what you and they can do with it. Or what about immigration? A place of hope and opportunity. Perhaps your players are refugees, seeking a better life and a place where they can make lots of money without their violent deaths being part of public policy. What will they find when they get there? Show the struggle, the strife, the incredible diversity and the tension and growth that come from it. One of the economic and cultural centers of the world, maybe festering and falling apart, or maybe built back up again. And that's not even getting into the underground, where sturdy Manhattan shale is carved up like Swiss cheese for subways, sewers, and all other sorts of tunnels. Watch your step--the rats are as large as cats and you never know when an alligator might crawl up the pipes.

There's a lot of campaigns you can do in a fantasy New York City.

[cobaltstarfire]

I saw on the old wizards D&D forum a loooooooooooooooooong time ago a fantasy survival style campaign based on the idea that walmart had taken over the whole world. And everything was just one giant huge defunt walmart that was too big to get out of or something like that. The only easy way "outside" was to climb onto the roof.

I can't really remember the details beyond that, but I do remember it being a pretty entertaining idea to me. Say it's based on the local tradition of excessive consumerism which then implodes on itself. :smallbiggrin:

[Benthesquid]

Let's see- a couple old tales from the area where I grew up, a little north of where I am now. The Snake Bit the Hoe Handle, in which a farmer fends off a venomous snake with a hoe handle, resulting in the wooden tool swelling to such size that he's able to build a barn out of it. Sadly, during a cold rain, the swelling is reduced, and his cow walks around with a tiny barn stuck on its back to this day!

Another one about the farmer as a young boy being attacked by giant mosquitoes, hiding under a huge iron pot, and, when they pierced it with their proboscises, hammering them sideways so they flew off in tandem with the pot stuck to their faces.

All of this delivered... well, anyone familiar with American Gods might remember Hinzelman's tall tales, which is pretty much accurate to how the storytellers I saw growing up would tell their stories.

We also had our own celebration- the Ring of Fire, which marked the end of summer with a set of huge bonfires all around the lake.

Not sure how any of these would fit into a fantasy campaign (except the mosquitoes, which would make a pretty good low-level encounter).

There's some Iroquois folklore in the area too- the Flying Head, particularly.

We also had some traditions, as most small towns do, of local ghosts, granny-women, witches, and whatnot. I'm trying to remember any particular Ghost Tripping that went on when I was young, but nothing comes to mind.

[Spiryt]

A bit to the south from my city people apparently were keeping snakes in their stables, houses, and damn beds along into the 20th century.

Feeding them, protecting and generally treating well due to some hardly grip-able beliefs that they protect from spells, protect the cows and other animals and so on.

Could be some interesting snake-cult that, for a change, wouldn't be sinister and Illuminati, I guess. :smalltongue:

http://www.grupabieszczady.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98&Itemid=109

[MrConsideration]

My home is in Yorkshire, where local folklore has already given D&D a monster in the Barghest. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barghest) Although the original is a giant black dog which can turn invisible and is meant to hunt travelers on the Moors.
(http://www.theweekenders.co.uk/images/destinations/thumbs/yorkmoors-stone624x400.jpeg)
Additionally, York is supposed to be the most haunted city on Earth, so a campaign with lots and lots of ghosts, spectres and apparitions of all kinds. It's also been a Briton, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Norman-ruled city.

We also used to have a giant, and Dracula docked in Whitby according to Bram Stoker.

But being British, my folklore is more or less part of the folklore most fantasy campaigns use anyway.

[IZ42]

Due to me being too lazy to actually read through the thread, I don't know if anyone had mentioned Scottish or Celtic folklore, so I will. I'm not actually Scottish native, but it formed a big part of my upbringing, so it's something I guess. Scottish and Celtic lore includes (IIRC) lots of the Fey. Like, LOTS of fey, and there are some influences from Scandinavian culture, as they came down from Norway and Sweden and settled in the British Isles. As for my local culture, I suppose a lot of the native and Spanish cultures would feature in, as well as some folk heroes like Davy Crockett and Bowie would feature in.