Fantasy Finds

A Collection of simple tips to improve realism in fantasy settings By Taylor Webb

As a historian I can be obnoxious when playing fantasy games and even reading or watching fantasy. I have had to learn to take the story-telling side more seriously and let go of the extensive research and need for perfect coherency of concepts. This being said, I also have a unique perspective historical fiction and fantasy and so I will attempt to compile a short list of tips to add to your stories and adventures to help with a sense of realism and curiosity. Almost all of these ideas are developed from real historical artifacts or out of research into some project or another. Hopefully you will find a few of them useful, and will be able to work them into your own fantasy worlds. One of my biggest pet peeves is to spend weeks working out how to destroy an opponent, reach an objective, or steal something valuable only to be rewarded with Gold, gems, and even a scroll! Oh the mysterious scroll or wonderous/majical item! What a tired and overused way to develop interest in an otherwise sparkly treasure. Instead, try using some of these more mundane items to populate your loot, and instead of relying so heavily on strictly governed magical realms, dip into the real world for some extra baffling and curious plotlines.

Spices:
The ancient spice trade was vibrant and even today spices are a valuable commodity. They often take a roll in a fantasy world, but I have seldom seen them used to their full potential. Keep in mind that spices were not just valuable for their taste, but they were also used for their smell, their colour, their alchemical and medical properties, and as status symbols. Toy around with spices, herbs and dyes for a while, use Wikipedia, make some up, integrate them fully into your game world, because they would certainly be very well integrated into a realistic setting. Spices can of course be used as treasure all alone, leaving a party either confused or elated. They can also be used as clues for a quest, leading to the discovery of a poison maker, or finding a unique dye that leads to a special location for example. Because of their value they could also be a good way for the characters to try to make an honest living if they ever needed to, or they could be the goal of some quest. Always keep in mind the fact that your fantasy world will be immersed in the spice trade, whether it is central or peripheral.

Insects:
Spices are a common thought, not unseen in fantasy gaming and literature, but bugs? Oh yes, bugs. First of all, its important to understand what ancient bugs were used for. Bugs were crushed and used as dyes, they were ingredients in alchemical mixtures, they were consumed and applied medically (yes, applied), they were used in industry and agriculture, and of course because of their great many uses they were themselves farmed. When is the last time a fantasy character came across a random bug farm that was a mere backdrop setting? Using specific examples gives a clearer picture; silkworms make silk, bees make honey, leeches suck blood, etc. The point is that there is plenty of room in every fantasy world for a few billion insects. You can use bugs much like spices, adding them to treasure or questing for them, but there are a few other ways to creatively introduce them into a game or story. Bugs can be used as weapons, like heat-seeking caltrops, poisonous bugs can be easily hidden in clothing, termites can be used in or against catapults, bugs can be used to discourage looters and robbers, and those are only using real, non-magical bugs. Toy around with bugs for a while, integrate them into your story as well. They go hand-in hand with spices as far as setting enhancement and realism, but they can easily become the unintended focus of a story, so apply them a little less liberally.

Tea:
This one is not uncommon, but like spices I have often seen it become the focus of a story when the author clearly does not develop anything around that focus. Imagine a story focusing on tea for a moment. It could be a quest item or a treasure that needs to be properly appraised, it could even be a clue of some sort, but just think for a second, are you focusing on a certain plant known as tea, or on a mixture of herbs and spices? Never have I come across a story that goes into proper detail even about that simple clarification. The tea plant can essentially be used like spices, and so can the mixture of spices that comprises a certain tea. But what about the recipe? Go to a real tea shop and indulge yourself in learning the ins and outs of a select few teas and you will suddenly open up a whole world of possibilities regarding tea-based plots and settings. Recipes can be stolen, they are valuable, characters can be summoned to find a recipe that was lost, or discern it from a lone sample. The perfect way to serve tea is a matter of pride and immense status amongst the elite of many cultures, leaving a dizzying array of possibilities from fine bone-china tea sets to potentially lethal concoctions that must be brewed perfectly to avoid disaster. Tea can be a great focus for a setting or plot but remember to also fill in the surroundings, there are leaf pruning experts and covert spice transactions to add to the mix and a whole culture and industry to build.

Moulds:
Casting is the process of pouring molten metal into a mould, letting it cool, and then recovering what is left inside. This means that every casted metal object in a setting has a parent mould, many of which are extremely valuable, some of which are lost, and a few of which have lingering magical properties from the casting. You see where this is going, right? Moulds can be for iron, bronze, copper, aluminum, basically anything that melts, and when you add magic to the mix many things that dont melt might have moulds as well. Moulds can be made of clay, stone, or another metal, and moulds themselves are sometimes even die-casted. Before making extensive use of moulds its important to have a really good idea of how they work and what they look like, so I suggest looking it up on Wikipedia or Youtube or something. It could be as simple as finding the lost or stolen mould of a particular mechanical part, or as complicated as an age-old prophecy regarding the second half of a mysterious mould that was found by one of the adventuring characters. Making a plotline with a mould in it can add some flavour to your story (especially in a dwarven setting), but it can also intrigue your readers/players and can let you compile multiple strange artifacts (such as odd metals).

Metal:
The cap on the Washington Monument is made of the most valuable metal available at the time of its construction, aluminium. The properties and rarity of different metals often escape fantasy worlds. Many authors and game creators jump into mythical metals without even engaging the perfectly bizarre ones we have here on earth. The exact composition of an alloy can be a very well guarded secret, as can the location of a mine, or even the knowledge of how much of a metal a lord or king has in supply. Strange metals (even naturally occurring Earth ones) can baffle players, characters, and readers. Imagine someone poisoned by uranium, a bucket full of mercury or gallium, or the amazing strength and extreme feather weight of aluminum. These are only a few of the options without using the addition of alloys, magic, non-existent elements and of course storytelling and context. Perhaps a whole city of dwarves lay dead after they find a very rich uranium vein, perhaps the only metal that can pierce the dragons skin is tungsten, or maybe a mysterious light is coming from radium rather than a magical source. There are many kinds of metals in the Earth, and they have all been exploited for centuries. Maybe its time your story added a few.

Skills:
One of the main reasons the Dark Ages were dark was because of guilds. Guilds were the film and music industry of their era, imposing ridiculous penalties on people who are trying to share information and culture in order to try and save as much money for themselves as they could while bankrupting and entire continent. The premise is (like PIPA) not all too bad, basically they were groups of similarly skilled individuals who used their trade monopolies to get stuff like fair wages and guaranteed work for their progeny. In practice they were terrible trade monopolies that prevented innovation and productivity, developed black markets and lawlessness and suppressed liberty and the free market. Considering guilds it might add depth to your story to really think about the skills of the main characters. Many fantasy games allow you to freely take up a trade skill without perilous social consequences, and few have a plot off-shoot where you must save a poor weaver from the assassins sent to ensure she teaches no one her knotting pattern (yes, historical fact). Spice up your plot a little with a little plotting by guilds, or else prevent your players/characters from doing something that would end the story right there by the intervention of the idea police. Usually Mages guilds are depicted as universities of sorts, and Rowling was going in the right direction with the Ministry of Magic, but imagine that that is a super liberal, modern, wayscaled down step from the inquisition style ministry that must have existed a hundred years ago (before all those silly magical creature rights movements). Lastly, ideas can be treasure, they dying words of a renowned trade expert may be just as cryptic, dangerous, and intriguing as the randomly rolled scepter of power.

Allergies:
A great way to increase the suspense, mystery and drama of a story or adventure is to add a very strange, difficult to understand malady that needs to be cured, or that kills off random characters. Allergies can be just that. Never have I seen a spell of instill allergy, but always have I thought that to be useful. Allergies can cause mysterious itches, rashes, lumps, illness, fever, headaches, crippling pain, basically a whole host of things that would seem like poison or sorcery, but could just be a pollinating flower. They also seem to randomly single out characters for no known reason, and can be a chronic nuisance or lighting fast and fatal. Use allergies to let characters on to subtle clues, such as the ingredient of a certain tea, or the type of rare metal they find. You can also use them to mysteriously kill off a random guest at a dinner party and watch the chaos that ensues. Rangers might be charged with banishing all cats from a palace or city, allergies can be used to give false clues, or to simply add a little depth of character where needed. Keep in mind that they are poorly understood and never expected, and they should be able to work themselves in nicely.

Industrial Magic:
At first this doesnt seem like a good way to make your story more realistic, but lets face it, if magic suddenly were a thing people would first use it to make porn, then use that porn to make money, then theyd skip a step and use the magic to make money directly. The fancy fireballs and scrying spells would come out of an industrial weaponisation of magic, and the mend and create spells would be used in conjunction with some sort of animation to make factories. Magic would be just like any other technology. The reason magic looks the way it does in fantasy worlds is because it is created by a bunch of artists who arent actually using it for anything. If it were subject to the whims of busness people and politicians magic would suddenly take a very different turn. That turn is not entirely unattractive to many, some people try to replace modern technologies with magic to give the illusion of understanding this concept. The flaw in this thinking is the technology tree and the generally incoherent slapping together of ideas. Think of the hall in Hogwarts, lit by hundreds of floating candles. Either theyre real candles than need to be made, lit, made to float, made to not drip, and replaced (or made to be everlasting), or theyre illusionary and their sole purpose is to get in the way of the obviously very expensive ceiling. One of these two things was selected over a pure and simple light spell which is taught in a basic form to novice wizards. Now there are ways to get around this, by inventing restrictions on the light spell and so on, but the point is IF you want to add realism to a magical realm, youll have to think of whats cheap, what works, and not what you (an artist) would do if you had infinity everything. Be careful in this realm, as you will have to insure there is no creation or destruction of matter or energy, and you have to at least be able to estimate not only what one business person would do with one wand of lifting but also what would happen if they (and every other wand) were mass produced. Hopefully this helped divert you for a moment, and maybe distracted you from a writers block. I have learned to accept fantasy realms for what they are, but I still encourage Dungeon Masters, game makers and authors to turn to this world that we live in for inspiration, for it is as bizarre and perfect as your own imagination.