|
It is common for islander communities to be based in tropical or near-tropical climates, and those areas tend to give the people a tanned appearance. At least, that's my take on it.
The climate of Varisia is a bit more northern, so islanders in this setting could be based on Vikings, early English, Inuit tribes, and the like. Or something completely new.
That being said, I like the roleplaying possiblities in a culture based on historic French aristocracies. Cormyr of the Forgotten Realms plays to the courtly intrigue, and the Montaingue(sp?) empire of 7th Sea (or Swashbuckling Adventures) was well-rendered with the addition of magics to high-seas fleet warfare and piracy. Admittedly, the technology level presented in 7th sea is more advanced than Varisia's, but that could be scaled back.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
|
There is a nation in the Pathfinder world, four or five countries southeast of Varisia, that is currently in the thrall of a decade-long "Reign of Terror" style capital-R Revolution that is loosely based on the French Revolution.
But the people don't have French-sounding names or act particularly French, whatever that means.
--Erik
But the people don't have French-sounding names or act particularly French, whatever that means.--Erik
I'd really like to know what does that mean?
No one eating stinking cheese on a crrrrusty baguette, while seeping a dark-robed cherry-smelling old Graves (south of Bordeaux), monsieur?
Just kidding :))
Bran (Paris).
PS : I love clichés especially US ones on France. I almost died laughing first time I saw the last minutes of "the Bourne identity" that takes place in France. Women dressed like Brigitte Bardot driving 1960's cars, police uniforms dating back from WWII...
PS : I love clichés especially US ones on France. I almost died laughing first time I saw the last minutes of "the Bourne identity" that takes place in France. Women dressed like Brigitte Bardot driving 1960's cars, police uniforms dating back from WWII...
The treatment of Berlin and Germany was marginally better. At least if you are ready to live with two famous landmarks being two frames of "Matt Damon running" away from each other or with the geography being totally jumbled up. ;-)
Bocklin
Contributor
|
PS : I love clichés especially US ones on France. I almost died laughing first time I saw the last minutes of "the Bourne identity" that takes place in France. Women dressed like Brigitte Bardot driving 1960's cars, police uniforms dating back from WWII...The treatment of Berlin and Germany was marginally better. At least if you are ready to live with two famous landmarks being two frames of "Matt Damon running" away from each other or with the geography being totally jumbled up. ;-)
Bocklin
It's not just European cities that get this treatment. Our own American cities are generally unrecognizable in American movies and TV shows, as well. Vancouver, British Columbia often serves as a stand-in for Seattle and almost every other major West Coast city. A few years back, when I was still a courier in Portland (Oregon, 160 miles south of Seattle), they filmed a movie there that was also set there, but because of the way movies are they mangled Portland's geography for the sake of the movie. Between reality and storytelling, storytelling usually (and rightfully) wins out. :)
|
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
|
You've gotta wonder why they don't just film movies like that on location. Is it because the Bronx is too unstable? Are there state laws or taxes which would make filming there prohibitively expensive? Would it cost too much to set up the equipment that far away from the production studio?
I just don't understand.
It's not just European cities that get this treatment. Our own American cities are generally unrecognizable in American movies and TV shows, as well. Vancouver, British Columbia often serves as a stand-in for Seattle and almost every other major West Coast city. A few years back, when I was still a courier in Portland (Oregon, 160 miles south of Seattle), they filmed a movie there that was also set there, but because of the way movies are they mangled Portland's geography for the sake of the movie. Between reality and storytelling, storytelling usually (and rightfully) wins out. :)
Wow! Call me naive, but I would not have thought that.
For me and my friends it was a new experience to see a city we know pictured with a jumbled geography in a movie (for some reasons, German or European films that I have seen seem to respect more the geography of the city). So I thought it was just some kind of logic like "it's in Europe, so the largest part of our audience does not how it is anyway. We can do what we want."
But I am surprised to read that they do the same with US cities. It would confuse (and probably piss) me in the long run if I always experience that! Or maybe I am being difficult... ;-) I guess budgetary constraints are an issue.
Bocklin
|
It's not just European cities that get this treatment. Our own American cities are generally unrecognizable in American movies and TV shows, as well. Vancouver, British Columbia often serves as a stand-in for Seattle and almost every other major West Coast city. A few years back, when I was still a courier in Portland (Oregon, 160 miles south of Seattle), they filmed a movie there that was also set there, but because of the way movies are they mangled Portland's geography for the sake of the movie. Between reality and storytelling, storytelling usually (and rightfully) wins out. :)
PS : I love clichés especially US ones on France. I almost died laughing first time I saw the last minutes of "the Bourne identity" that takes place in France. Women dressed like Brigitte Bardot driving 1960's cars, police uniforms dating back from WWII...The treatment of Berlin and Germany was marginally better. At least if you are ready to live with two famous landmarks being two frames of "Matt Damon running" away from each other or with the geography being totally jumbled up. ;-)
Bocklin
I remember when they filmed The X-files in Vancouver, yet the story might take place in Norfolk, VA...with the Cascades in the background...
|
Contributor
|
Wow! Call me naive, but I would not have thought that.
I won't call you naive. I will merely state that I think you have too high opinion of American geographical knowledge. Remember, we're the the nation who cranks out high-school graduates who can't locate their own country (4th or 5th largest in the world, depending on who you ask, by the way) on a map of the world.
For me and my friends it was a new experience to see a city we know pictured with a jumbled geography in a movie (for some reasons, German or European films that I have seen seem to respect more the geography of the city).
That's because Europeans have more respect and knowledge of history and geography, since you live surrounded by it!
So I thought it was just some kind of logic like "it's in Europe, so the largest part of our audience does not how it is anyway. We can do what we want."
Heh. I don't think there was even that much thought put into it. ;D
But I am surprised to read that they do the same with US cities. It would confuse (and probably piss) me in the long run if I always experience that! Or maybe I am being difficult... ;-) I guess budgetary constraints are an issue.
Budgetary restraints, not caring, the audience not caring, and so on... ;D
Whenever I see a movie that takes place in a city--any city--I get all excited and try to name the city before they tell me which one it is. Recently I learned that my father does the same thing (I had no idea until a couple of years ago), and we decided we'd need to have a competition. Unfortunately, where the story takes place usually doesn't help, leaving us arguing until the end credits ("Filmed on location in..."). Granted, I'm lucky to see the guy once a year, but it's still a fun point in common. Imagine our pleasure when we saw "Mystic River" together: we nearly simultaneously yelled "Boston!"... and the story actually took place in Boston.
|
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
|
Remember, we're the the nation who cranks out high-school graduates who can't locate their own country (4th or 5th largest in the world, depending on who you ask, by the way) on a map of the world.
I really want to believe that this is a joke, Mike, but I get the all-too-chilling thought that it is completely, 100% true. And that makes me weep. In fact, I'm pretty sure I went to school with some of those people.
Remember, we're the the nation who cranks out high-school graduates who can't locate their own country (4th or 5th largest in the world, depending on who you ask, by the way) on a map of the world.I really want to believe that this is a joke, Mike, but I get the all-too-chilling thought that it is completely, 100% true. And that makes me weep. In fact, I'm pretty sure I went to school with some of those people.
I once taught a 9th grader who could not point to the vicinity of his home on a map of the world. Nor to the United States, for that matter--where he had lived his entire life. Nor even to North America. I am not making this up.
Remember, we're the the nation who cranks out high-school graduates who can't locate their own country (4th or 5th largest in the world, depending on who you ask, by the way) on a map of the world.I really want to believe that this is a joke, Mike, but I get the all-too-chilling thought that it is completely, 100% true. And that makes me weep. In fact, I'm pretty sure I went to school with some of those people.
I KNOW I graduated with some of those people. So You Think You Know More Than A 5th Grader is funny for very sad, sad reasons.
The treatment of Berlin and Germany was marginally better. At least if you are ready to live with two famous landmarks being two frames of "Matt Damon running" away from each other or with the geography being totally jumbled up. ;-)
We do it with our own cities as well. Kevin Costner in "No Way Out" runs around a Washington, DC that makes no sense geographically, capped off by him jumping onto a Metro in a part of town that famously does not have Metro (Georgetown).
Whenever I see a movie that takes place in a city--any city--I get all excited and try to name the city before they tell me which one it is.
Nowadays, it's pretty much Vancouver, no matter what city it's supposed to be. ;)
mmmmm
I thought dwarves were more stereotypiclly Norse...
Well, culturally, they are kind of Norse with Scottish accents.
Back to the OP's topic--why do we always have to have the French, the Italians, the Germans, the Mongols, the Japanese, or whoever in our fantasy worlds? Robert Jordan and George RR Martin don't do that! Tolkien didn't really do it either, except to the extent that he made the Shire seem kind of familiar to the English reader by making it a bit like an idealized rural England. But even then, the Hobbits have their own peculiarities that make them interesting and different. Sure, it's fine to borrow a few traits here and there from the real world, or even use archetypes here and there. But it always drives me up the wall when people talk about Sembians = Italians and Shou-lung = China and whatnot. (I don't know FR very well, but if that's really how it's put together, it's kind of dorky).
If you really want to play a game that's in a historical setting, just set it there. You want a Norse flavored game? Add some trolls and frost giants and whatever to 9th century Iceland and go with it. You want a 3 Musketeers type campaign? Drop your players in the Louvre and stat up Cardinal Richelieu! Otherwise, please don't ask who the French are in Campaign World X, because I'd like to keep them in France where they belong! (Nothing wrong with the French, mind you, and I wouldn't mind playing a Three Musketeers style campaign. Hmmm. That might be an interesting idea for a low magic campaign. Very interesting indeed!)
The Scottish accent thing with Dwarves is a very recent phenomenon. Dating to the movie version of LOTR, I think, and parodied by OOTS. Dwarves as we imagine them pretty much come from Norse/Teutonic sources, with considerable 20th century reshaping by Tolkien and Walt Disney. I don't really like the Scottish accent thing for Dwarves, actually--I think it's kind of cheesy.
|
Contributor
|
Back to the OP's topic--why do we always have to have the French, the Italians, the Germans, the Mongols, the Japanese, or whoever in our fantasy worlds? Robert Jordan and George RR Martin don't do that!
While I agree with your main point, Martin's books are clearly modeled on the English War of the Roses; Starks vs. Lannisters = Yorks vs. Lancasters, big wall keeping the savage northerners at bay etc.
Someone who knows more about this period of history can back me up or dispute this, especially since I just got home from the pub.
The Scottish accent thing with Dwarves is a very recent phenomenon. Dating to the movie version of LOTR, I think, and parodied by OOTS.
Actually I think it's a Warcraft (not "World of" - the original RTS games) - "Bombs are great!" "I like bombs!" - things.
The Scottish accent thing with Dwarves is a very recent phenomenon. Dating to the movie version of LOTR, I think, and parodied by OOTS.Actually I think it's a Warcraft (not "World of" - the original RTS games) - "Bombs are great!" "I like bombs!" - things.
Hm . . . I always dated it back at least to Bruenor's accent in The Crystal Shard from 1988. That may not even be the first time it was used, but its the earliest I can remember the convention from.
Hm . . . I always dated it back at least to Bruenor's accent in The Crystal Shard from 1988. That may not even be the first time it was used, but its the earliest I can remember the convention from.The Scottish accent thing with Dwarves is a very recent phenomenon. Dating to the movie version of LOTR, I think, and parodied by OOTS.Actually I think it's a Warcraft (not "World of" - the original RTS games) - "Bombs are great!" "I like bombs!" - things.
Same here.
Which means that even if the Crystal Shard (the second FR Novel if I'm mistaken) wasn't the first to do this... the Scottish Accent predated Warcraft 1 by the better part of a decade, and the LOTR movies by almost 2
I won't call you naive. I will merely state that I think you have too high opinion of American geographical knowledge. Remember, we're the the nation who cranks out high-school graduates who can't locate their own country (4th or 5th largest in the world, depending on who you ask, by the way) on a map of the world.(...)
That's because Europeans have more respect and knowledge of history and geography, since you live surrounded by it!
Thanks for the ego-boost, Mike, but I am afraid that this might just be an overly romantic view of the "Old Continent" (or you're just pulling my leg ;-).
Some German TV show regularly organises funny "tests" for high school graduates ahead of elections (they call it something like "first voter check"). Of course they always choose to show the most appalling candidates, but that’s horrific to see how these people who went to school, when faced with a map of Europe, are unable to point their own country or any other one. Like Greece being where Norway is, or Belgium becoming “Mallorca” (“it’s close by”). Quite funny and sad at the same time.
I think that the average European population is as ignorant of geography or culture as the rest of the world.
Maybe European movie makers take more care in the geography of cities, but who knows if this is going to last...
Bocklin
They film quite a few movies in Sydney, though the best way to make use of our city is to say it's some generic North American city - The Matrix, Superman Returns, Dark City - but when they actually set a movie here, foreign productions always screw it up.
In Mission: Impossible 2, for instance, they drop Thandie Newton in "downtown Sydney" (we don't call it that, but maybe an American would, that's fine) and fifteen minutes or so later, she's walked all the way to the edge of North Head - which is at least a half-hour drive (with implausibly light traffic) and a ten-minute walk from the carpark away, on the north side of Sydney Harbour when Sydney itself is on the south side.
Seriously ill and apparently feverish, she walks from the middle of the city over the Harbour Bridge, up the Gore Hill freeway and down through about a dozen more suburbs - which would take a healthy woman, by my estimate, at least three hours to jog - just to dramatically throw herself off some cliffs? There are cliffs overlooking Sydney Harbour proper, she could have jumped off one of those. Or off the bridge, which would have looked even cooler (and I wouldn't mind them pretending we don't have incredibly-hard-to-climb security fences preventing exactly that).
For whatever it's worth, Hollywood can't even get Los Angeles right. The only two television shows that routinely seem even halfway correct to Angelenos are The Shield and The Closer. It's especially ironic with the former, since it's not a view of LA that the rest of the world really needs to see (since it's so accurate -- check the Rampart Scandal on Wikipedia for a shocking amount of Shield spoilers). ;)
The Wire is made by Baltimore natives, so as far as I know they don't cheat with the geography much - and they have good reasons when they do.
The project towers that feature in the first couple of seasons, for instance, were long-demolished, but the real-life stories that inspired some of their plotlines took place there, so they CGIed them into the background and used a high-rise retirement community as the exterior when they needed to actually go there.
They eventually showed the towers being torn down, just as they were in real life.
I come from Sydney and run my Cthulhu campaign in modern day Sydney, and even I don't stick with the geographical facts. Most people really don't care that much, or at least not enough to have a problem with it. It allows me to turn Nyngan (a town in rural NSW Australia) into a Cthulhu cultists paradise and not have the PCs batt an eyelid.
To threadjack a bit I think that all goblinoids in Varisia should have funny french accents.
I can just picture a group of kilt wearing dwarves battling a group of beret wearing bugbears. Hairy naked dwarf knees and funny hats!
Well, culturally, they are kind of Norse with Scottish accents.Sorry, just not seeing the Scottish there.
Norse and Scots aren't actually that far removed geographically and there was a lot of contact and cultural influence if you go back to the viking age - plenty of Norse ruins in Scotland as I understand it (I've not been to Scotland myself yet).
The accents - thts a function of taste.
I like Dwarves with a Turkish spin - makes them different puts them at odds with all of the "western" races and many of the "eastern" ones and gives them a plenty of stylistic elements.
Back to the OP's topic--why do we always have to have the French, the Italians, the Germans, the Mongols, the Japanese, or whoever in our fantasy worlds? Robert Jordan and George RR Martin don't do that! Tolkien didn't really do it either, except to the extent that he made the Shire seem kind of familiar to the English reader by making it a bit like an idealized rural England.
Jordan uses bits and pieces, but certain associations are fairly close (Andor=England, Cairhien=France, Altara=Italy, etc.). Martin, as already stated, is basically retelling the War of Roses. Tolkien, apart from a few tweaks (i.e., horses instead of longships), drew heavily on real world cultures for language (he was a linguist) and other elements.
This is something all authors do. It's always easier to develop a culture if you use a real one as the basis. RPG material does the same thing, but also draws on fiction and myth, so you can only go so far. It does provide a good initial conceptual hook and a core of material to work with, though.
(Nothing wrong with the French, mind you, and I wouldn't mind playing a Three Musketeers style campaign. Hmmm. That might be an interesting idea for a low magic campaign. Very interesting indeed!)
I rest my case. :-)
Personally, despite their Norse origin, I'd always viewed dwarves as the Swiss with axes instead of pikes ("longspears," although they'll use them when facing large numbers of mounted troops).
Hairy naked dwarf knees and funny hats!
Gah! Where's the bleach?!?! I need to pour it into my mind's eye.
NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yet another of my romantic delusions comes crashing down around me in the face of reality. WHY? Oh why?!?!?!
*sob*
Okay. Definitely pulling my leg... ;-)
You want to see jumbled up geography in your town, try living in Vegas. I've seen 20,000 movies and TV shows set here and never once has the geography been correct. Add to that things like on CSI, where everytime they have to talk to a witness he's in Henderson. Henderson is the second largest city in Nevada and has its own big police force, who could question witnesses.
Whatever you do, if you come to Vegas, don't stay in the Tangiers Hotel. The (fictional) hotel is where 90% of the murder victims are found.
You want to see jumbled up geography in your town, try living in Vegas.
Heh. I had recently visited Las Vegas when I saw the episode of Angel set there - so he's in one casino on the Strip, runs out into that big light-tunnel thing downtown, into another casino, and comes out on the Strip again!
Amazing how some of these casinos run for miles.
Back to the OP's topic--why do we always have to have the French, the Italians, the Germans, the Mongols, the Japanese, or whoever in our fantasy worlds? Robert Jordan and George RR Martin don't do that!While I agree with your main point, Martin's books are clearly modeled on the English War of the Roses; Starks vs. Lannisters = Yorks vs. Lancasters, big wall keeping the savage northerners at bay etc.
Someone who knows more about this period of history can back me up or dispute this, especially since I just got home from the pub.
Big wall keeping the savage northerners at bay? In England, the only one of those would have been Hadrian's Wall, and it predates the War of the Roses by about 1300 years.
Certainly both Jordan and Martin borrow from the real world--as did Tolkien. It's what makes medieval fantasy medieval fantasy. The point is that they do it in a way that doesn't make you feel as though you're in a particular historical setting, like fifteenth century England or whatever. I've read Jordan's series twice and I never actually made the connection Cairhien=France and Andor=England until one of the posters above mentioned it, and even then I think it's a bit of a stretch, although Jordan may have borrowed one or two signature elements from both cultures.
What irritates me about the "where's France" question is not the idea of using elements from the real world to create our fantasy worlds (I do this as much as anyone else does in my homebrew). It's the idea that we need to mechanically transfer all these real world places into the fantasy world whole cloth in such an unsubtle way. And especially (forgive me FR fans) the urge to make sure that every culture in our world (or at least every one that has potential to be played in fantasy) has a spot in our fantasy world. The most interesting and believable fantasy countries may have certain things that resonate with our images of real world societies, but they are nonetheless unique. The Shire is the Shire, despite certain similarities to pre-industrial rural England. Martin draws on medieval European archetypes to create the intricate conflict that drives his series (although one could see parallels with the Warring States period in Japan, or the Three Kingdoms period of China as well), but even the parts of his world that evoke a specific real-world culture (like the Ironmen or the Dothraki) have their own flavor that makes them different from Vikings or Mongols. Every now and again I catch bits of the real world in various places in Jordan's Wheel of Time world, but never enough to make me feel like he's really modeled any of his countries or cultures closely on specific real world ones.
Perhaps all I'm really arguing for is creativity and subtlety in the process of fantasy world-building. Let it grow up organically.
What irritates me about the "where's France" question is not the idea of using elements from the real world to create our fantasy worlds (I do this as much as anyone else does in my homebrew). It's the idea that we need to mechanically transfer all these real world places into the fantasy world whole cloth in such an unsubtle way. And especially (forgive me FR fans) the urge to make sure that every culture in our world
You might be surprised to hear that a lot of really "hard core" Forgotten Realms fans aren't big fans of some of the settings that were added to the world during 2nd edition. One of the reason's that the Hordlands article from a few months back was a big hit is that it took the Hordelands from being "Just like the Mongolian Steppes, but with magic," and made them a region that was influenced by that culture, but also had a lot more fantasy elements and elements drawn from cultural practices unique to the Realms.
I wouldn't want to take Maztica, Kara-Tur, Zhakara, or the Hordelands (as well as some sourcebooks the the Great Glacier, which transplanted Inuit culture to that region) out of Forgotten Realms now, but I do lament that when they were first placed in the setting that much of the source material seemed to be taken straight from an encyclopedia, with the main changed being the proper names used.
|
Contributor
|
Big wall keeping the savage northerners at bay? In England, the only one of those would have been Hadrian's Wall, and it predates the War of the Roses by about 1300 years.
True, and while in Martin's books the wall is still manned, it is old enough that its original purpose is all but forgotten; like Hadrian's wall, it is a relic of an older time that still leaves its mark on the world. Of course, the scale and nature of the wall of ice is epic, as its importnace, as is the whole series.
Mainly I was pointing out a geographical similarity that supports my comment on the inspiration for the setting, ie. England.