A style guide.

Four themes

Every ses­sion should include these:

The Grotesque

• Some­thing weird and hideous. Often a human thing. A sick­ness or an ugli­ness in soci­ety.

The haunting Past

• Fail­ures and ruins that can­not be expunged or put aside. Things that can­not and will not be for­got­ten, though they should be.

The specter of Death

• Memen­to mori. Death waits for every­one. Humans become mon­sters after death. The cut­ter’s life is a short one.

The Supernatural

• Close beyond the reach­es of rea­son and safe­ty lie oth­er worlds, exis­ten­tial threats, and the dere­licts of bad, dead king­doms.

Setting

Dos and don’ts for writ­ing adven­tures on the Coast.

Incunab­u­li is sci­ence fic­tion, not fan­ta­sy. Resist adding any­thing iden­ti­fi­able as core to fan­ta­sy, espe­cial­ly com­mon “races.”

Explain super­nat­ur­al effects. Root them in the­o­ret­i­cal or spec­u­la­tive sci­ence, even if far-fetched. Mag­ic is “mag­ic.” All of it has an expla­na­tion, no mat­ter how odd. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, do not freely explain these things to your cut­ters. Couch the truth in the lim­it­ed per­cep­tion and sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of the set­ting. Expla­na­tions exist not only to be dis­cov­ered in-con­text, but as an exer­cise for you in cre­at­ing inter­nal con­sis­ten­cy with­in the fic­tion.

Ref­er­ence the late 19th cen­tu­ry. Use it for tech­no­log­i­cal and styl­is­tic inspi­ra­tion. Cow­boys and chim­neysweeps. Bud­ding elec­tric­i­ty and the advent of the auto­mo­bile. Some ele­ments even bor­der on the 1920s. The Coast’s Gilden Age has peaked, and the world is advanc­ing head­long into an uncer­tain future.

Mind the issues of the real world. Upon the Coast, issues of race, suf­frage, gen­der, sex, and sex­u­al­i­ty do not exist as we have strug­gled with them on Earth. Coastal soci­eties uphold gen­der equal­i­ty. Peo­ple who do not hew to a bina­ry are accept­ed. Fur­ther, Lit­torans hold no con­cept of human “race” as we know it. Coastal race issues con­cern rag­man vs human, not skin col­or. The fall­en Nör civ­i­liza­tion was a Glob­al­i­ty, after all; genet­ic vari­a­tion in human pop­u­la­tions was wide­spread and accept­ed even before their fall. Issues that are shared—colonialism, eugen­ics, reli­gious violence—should be explored as fic­tion, well-sep­a­rat­ed from real­i­ty.

NPCs don’t com­pre­hend their world. They have lim­it­ed views and ranges of knowl­edge. A Firl­ish home­stead­er in the March­lands may be aware of the Oth­er­world but nev­er con­ceive of any neigh­bor­ing real­i­ties besides it. A cit­i­zen in a major city may be rea­son­ably well edu­cat­ed, but their grasp of world-threat­en­ing issues is prob­a­bly cloud­ed by pro­pa­gan­da and by their dis­tance from dan­ger. Most peo­ple are super­sti­tious, une­d­u­cat­ed, dis­in­ter­est­ed, or amply fed on pro­pa­gan­da, folk­lore, ide­ol­o­gy, and reli­gious dog­ma. Even if they are aware of the high­er ele­ments of the world as schol­ars, magi­cians, politi­cians, and car­di­nals are, they are prob­a­bly too con­cerned with per­son­al pow­er to care.

Mag­ic is not flam­boy­ant. There is no telekine­sis, no light with­out ener­gy source, no col­ored fire. Only the most pow­er­ful effects should have any ener­gy dis­charge at all. See the effects of knuck­le­bones for an idea of the aes­thet­ic lim­its of mag­ic.

The Oth­er­world brings North Amer­i­can fau­na and flo­ra with it. Rac­coon-like sprig­gans, coy­ote-like wags, and black bears. 

Play­ers should not play älves. Keep them oth­er­world­ly, preda­to­ry, dan­ger­ous. älves can turn invis­i­ble and will steal your baby. They may be sexy, but they are aliens, and they do not act like humans.

No vam­pires or were­wolves. Just don’t. Instead, inter­pret vam­pire folk­lore in rela­tion to plague or human muta­tion, like reve­nan­cy. I.e. vam­pire buri­als are meant to com­bat plague.

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