THE WORLD

COMPLEX CULTURES AND COMMUNITIES

Natural fantasy settings often cover a much smaller area compared to others, usually a single region or no more than two or three settlements. You might think that this limits the variety of situations and cultural contexts during the campaign, but in reality it’s an excellent opportunity to flesh them out and make them more complex, human, and multidimensional.

• Recurring characters. When playing in a limited setting, it’s very likely that the same character will appear over and over again, even after many sessions. Give each one a name and a face, learn to love them, showcase their merits and flaws, and do your best to make them grow and evolve as much as the protagonists.
• Humanity. No matter if they live in an elven village in the heart of the forest, are part of an ancient people in possession of extraordinary technologies, or inhabit an underwater city of fishpeople, each and every individual has feelings, an interest in unique forms of art and beauty, doubts, and curiosity, and behaves according to their own personal morality. No community should be a monolithic stereotype where everybody thinks in the same way.

We might say that natural fantasy replaces vastness with density: this style of narrative likes to take time to showcase, for better or worse, all the facets of each character and asks you, in a gentle but firm voice, not to draw hasty conclusions, but rather to love the world in all its complicated, ephemeral, and magnificent vibrancy.

THE RECONSTRUCTION

Natural fantasy worlds have weathered many catastrophes – the ability to get back up after a disaster, to reinvent and rebuild a world together with those who surround us is a recurring theme, but it might take two opposite forms. This dualism is often mirrored in the locations and their inhabitants:

• Hope and adaptability. Some people don’t just survive in this new world, but find ways to gain strength and enthusiasm from it. They find new passion and emotion in an environment that tests them but they still respect the needs of nature.
• Reactionary nostalgia. At the same time, there are those who see reconstruction as a way to go back to the past, to dominate nature without taking into consideration how the world has changed, and how the past they idolize has brought them close to ruin once already. They chase an illusion that will cause untold damage.