Shinto-Based Fantasy

How would I do a Shinto-based fantasy campaign?
Urban fantasy, high fantasy, whatever.

Well a few ground rules would need to be put into play:

  • The gods (kami) are everywhere. You have the celestial gods (amatsugami) , the terrestrial gods (kunitsugami), you have the little gods (mikogami). See a tree? It's god a kami in it.  A rock?  A sword?  A song?  All have their own spirit. Just in most cases, these spirits are quiescent unless you do something to get them going.
  • None of these are Good or Evil. The universe and all it holds has a vested disinterest in you and what you're doing. Go about your life. The only thing that matters is that you're being spiritually pure (pure in thought, pure in word, pure in deed). If not, you annoy the kami. If you are, cool.  Good and Evil are mortal constructs, indicating what is good for harmony and society, and what is harmful, causing strife in society.
  • All kami have two aspects: benevolent and wrathful. A kami in its benevolent aspect will be kind, rewarding, and peaceful. In its wrathful aspect, it is a literal manifestation of divine punishment. The personality between 'benevolent' and 'wrathful' are different enough that they might as well be two different individuals.
  • The supernatural is a force of nature -- it isn't meant to be battled, its meant to be survived. Speaking of 'evil' and the supernatural, any 'bad' event can always be traced to a mortal's action -- somewhere, somehow, someone screwed up and pissed something off, and now everyone's paying for it. The trick is to placate the supernatural force before too many people get hurt.
     
  • Things are not 'disposable'.  Everything has a spirit, and it's best to treat that spirit with the respect it is due.  You don't discard your sword because you found a magical one - that's not how it works. You use your sword because it's your sword. Go get it blessed, or enchanted. Or do heroic deeds so it awakens. Don't piss it off.

To give an example, however.
There's a shrine to the Spirit of Storms.  You keep the spirit happy, and the spirit prevents storms from crushing you, your family, the town, and the local villages.  All good.

Someone breaks in and steals something from the shrine.  The Spirit of Storms is pissed off.  This means a typhoon is coming in, and will flatten everything in the vicinity.  Maybe two or three people know why this is happening.  Everyone else is going 'storm's coming, batten down the hatches'. They don't see the Spirit of Storms as evil.  They don't see the typhoon as evil. It's just how things are.

You want to stop the storm?  Find the thief, get the item back to the shrine.  Do a ceremony to appease the Spirit of Storms.  The typhoon goes away, and it's all good again.

J-Horror
J-Horror is an interesting duck. If you've watched it, the usual thing is this:  people go about their lives.  Supernatural thing comes in and screws everyone up.  It isn't really caring who's there or what they're on about, and what they're on about doesn't help them in the slightest. They either survive, or don't.

In most cases, said supernatural is, in fact, undead, and those are considered to be creatures in an unnatural state. So, most heroic deeds will be in dealing with the undead - and most undead are pretty much forces of nature (The Ring, The Grudge). It will typically involve trying to find out why the thing's wandering around and how to put it to rest.

We think it would make for a very different style of campaign.  You can use angels, archons demons, and devils as flipsides of each other:  the 'angel' is the benevolent aspect, the 'devil' is the wrathful.  It isn't 'good' or 'evil', but that's how it manifests to people.

It wouldn't be 'go out and kill monsters for treasure' - you're more dealing with people - selfish people, evil people.  You're trying to keep the community in a state of harmony and keep the bad people from pissing off the kami.

That'd make for a very different D&D game.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

M:tG RPG

You know what we want? An actual to Goddess Magic the Gathering roleplaying game.  Not 'you play normal peeps in a very few settings we've published for 5e', we're talking Planeswalkers who call upon mana they draw from lands they've visited - sacred pools and ancient forests and decaying marshes. They have spells they've learned and stolen from various realms and from rival duels. They call upon heroes and monsters they've met and formed bonds with (though not actually summoning said heroes and monsters, but their likenesses), and unleash spells which could, with enough power, destroy entire nations. We wanted characters who walked from world to world, looking for new adventures, facing new rivals, and taking down new threats as they grew in power. You know, the stuff they talked about way back in Beta . Because that's where we came in, and the very idea was inspiring. The original concept: two (or more) Planeswalkers throwing down against one another ...
Read more

Mechanics and Setting

General Brolynn looked out over the battlefield. The war had been a tough one, but the final battle was taking place, and he knew his unit was going to be key to victory. An ogre stepped out of the mass of fighting bodies and leered at Brolynn and his unit of soldiers. "Attack!" One of his knights rushed forward and began attacking the ogre.  The rest stood still. "I said, Attack!" Another knight rushed forward to begin swinging at the ogre.  Brolynn just stared at the others. "Uh, what did you want us to do, General?" asked one. "Attack!" "Oh, okay!"  A third knight rushed towards the ogre.  The ogre took a swipe at one of the knights. Brolynn looked at the other two knights under his command.  "Well?" "Hey, General?" asked the first one that had joined the fray.  "What did you want me to do again?" Epic storytelling at its finest, right? The mechanics of an RPG should help the characters to act in accorda...
Read more

Many

  Many There’s something wrong. Where are we? It’s dark. His eyes opened.  We looked out, and we saw a simple clay and thatch room. We were laying on simple quilts over a pile of straw. We could feel the panic welling up in the person we were with, as he heard our voices echo in his mind. “Who are you?” No need to worry. We won’t hurt you. This was an accident. We shouldn’t be here. The cacophony of voices did little to alleviate his fears, and he bolted upright, looking about the room. He had enough mind to grab clothes to put on, even as he stumbled about. “What do you want with me?” Nothing. Be not afraid. We are sorry. The man tripped over himself leaving his home and rushed out into the street outside. It was a simple village with only perhaps a few scores of people living there. A place where everyone knew everyone else. He’s going to hurt himself. We should stop him. He flailed. Too many of us, unable to guide his actions.  One of his hands lashed out and struck on...
Read more