Narrative and Theme in World-building

    I apologize that this post is going up a day late, and is really going to ramble - I'm having a hard time getting my thoughts together into something useful :(  I'll do my best though...


    So Google has 2 definitions for the word "theme" (as a noun) -

1. the subject of a talk, a piece of writing, a person's thoughts, or an exhibition; a topic
2. the stem of a noun or verb; the part to which inflections are added, especially one composed of the root and an added vowel

    It's the second one that hits me, "the part to which inflections are added."  If the narrative is the drive of the story/ experience, then the theme is the 'inflection' the added something that enhances the experience.  Now hold that thought.

    Dungeons & Dragons has always had the idea of alignment.  It's gone thorough a few iterations, but I want to grab the 3.5/Pathfinder and 5e SRDs that use the 9-points on 2 axis system.  You have one axis, Law - Neutral - Chaos and the second axis is Good - Neutral - Evil.  The double use of 'neutral' is one of the biggest flaws in my opinion, but honestly the whole system is a mess.  The first question, as with any mechanic, is "so what?"  So what does having an alignment do?  It is not tied to experience, it's not tied to much actually.  In 3.5 there were a lot of spells, really quite a lot of spells, that targeted alignment, and then some really vague and worthless semi-guidelines on how alignment could change - and later some really bad optional rules about tracking alignment.  So magic cared about alignment, and nothing else did.  The 5e SRD seems to have backed off, my incomplete reading shows that there are far fewer alignment effects then in previous editions.  So if there is no mechanical significance, then what is alignment good for?
    Well, alignment is a part of the party's Theme, the flavor of their story.  An all Lawful-Good party has a different feel than a few Lawful-Good and a few Chaotic-Good mixed together.  And both of those groups feel very different from an all Chaotic-Evil party.  How the party reacts as a group to events, the kinds of choices characters make and how other characters react to those choices, and how the party fits in the game world are all influenced by alignment.  Or, well, should be.  That however really depends on the GM - since the game gives so little mechanical weight and such crappy guidelines, overall alignment tends to get forgotten (until the spells fly) or forgotten then trotted out to justify one player wanting to harass another player ("but my character would act that way" is a sentence followed by many GM headaches).
    Basically, alignment can actually have a positive impact on the narrative, but it tends to not live up to its potential, in my experience.  One big reason for that is also because the alignments axis are so broad that they kind of lose meaning.  "Good" is a pretty vague term, it's open to a lot of interpretation.

    One of the blogs I follow, Mythcreants, had a pair of posts about "Dualities that can replace good and evil." [part one and part two here]  They listed 10 dualities:

• Freedom vs Safety
• Success vs Selflessness
• Progress vs Preservation
• Individuality vs Community
• Privacy vs Transparency
• Resistance vs Adaptation
• Justice vs Forgiveness
• Safety vs Hope
• Loyalty vs Independence
• Kindness vs Prudence

    I really like the Mythcreants lists because I think they mix well with the idea that the background/ setting exists to give the players something to Support, Change or Oppose.  "Freedom" and "Safety" seem more concrete to define, and link to elements in the setting, and they also seem like clear targets to ask the players if they want to support/ change/ oppose either side.  This sounds more like a useful type of "alignment" to divide the PCs and NPCs that are supporting either side, and how those groups would logically interact.  Add in something for personal motivation, "why did you choose the side you chose?", and I think you have the framework for a nicely robust system that would be practically useful (since it would be in fairly concrete terms) for guiding role-playing.  What kinds of mechanics you would want to hang on such a system is debatable, but as a narrative tool (if nothing else) it should be useful.

    So what all does this have to do with world-building?  I'm not sure :)  The reason for this rambling post is because I've been thinking about other RPG settings I've read.  They typically seem to read like novels, describing the setting.  And that's okay, but I don't think it's the most useful.  An RPG is Interactive Narrative, so just giving me a narrative travelogue of a setting does not really highlight any of the "Interactive" hooks.  Let me use a concrete example, I just finished reading the "Safehold" series by David Weber (awesome books).  There are 2 critical narrative elements in the story's background.  First, the story is science fiction, in the far future humanity colonized other planets and developed advanced technology.  They met an alien race called the Gbaba.  The Gbaba attacked humanity in a genocidal war, with no communication or attempts at diplomacy.  And humanity lost the war.  A small group of humans fled the Gbaba and settled a new planet.  The second part is that on this planet, called Safehold, the human colonists had their memories tampered with, and all knowledge of the Gbaba and Earth was erased.  A single planetary religion was founded, with the purpose of suppressing the development of technology.  Humans had discovered that the Gbaba had attacked other races, and they only did so when those races had achieved a certain level of development.  So the church was created to suppress anything that could draw the Gbaba to the last remaining humans.  A group of the original settlers rebelled, and were killed, and over time the church became corrupt and brutal.
    This is a really quick and basic explanation, but my point is that while the story is nice, since I'm thinking about developing an RPG setting, what in that story can I use as hooks for my players and campaign design?  So how do we take those elements and craft a setting from them?
    Let's take "Technology."  At the start of the game the planet of Safehold is roughly Middle Ages in development.  However, there are remnants of more advanced technology.  One of the main characters of the books is basically a cyborg, but the other characters are limited to the default technology.  So this is what Technology is available for building characters.  But, the concept of Technology also has a broad meaning to the gameplay and narrative development.  "Technology" and "progress" are hated and feared by the church, there is a specific group within the church that monitors and restricts technological development.  The church's equivalent of the devil tempted mankind with technology and knowledge.  So Technology is considered "Evil" by the church.  However, there are some groups in the world who do not view technology as evil, and who are trying to encourage innovation and development, very carefully.  So you have setting groups and characters who Support Technology, and those who Oppose Technology.  In the game you can also have challenges to Investigate lost/hidden Technology, and Working challenges to develop new Technology.  So this one general narrative element, Technology, has many thematic and mechanical hooks for the players and GM.

    The challenge is coming up with some kind of good system for laying out these narrative elements and all their gameplay hooks.  This is where something like the D&D alignment system, applied to specific narrative elements instead of broad concepts, might actually be very useful.  But I honestly don't have any good system to suggest at the moment.  Right now I'm trying to look at this in a new light, and think about how to make it as player-focused as possible.  I don't think the world needs yet another setting, but I do think it is time to take a look at how we describe and define settings and see if we can start writing them better.
    Thus, I'll be back next week with more thoughts :)