Jharat Part 2: Cultures and Deities

There are many different cultures on Jharat, perhaps a thousand or more. But there are five that particularly stand out and formed empires. Their pantheons include the deities that are most commonly worshipped around Jharat. All of the civilizations and cultures below became part of the Eternians Empire, their independence was crushed but they were allowed to keep their respective cultures as long as they did not damage the Empire or interfere with Imperial requirements. 

The Eternians
Eternians are like medieval or early renaissance Europeans They follow the Greyhawk pantheon in general, but other deities from outside the Greyhawk Pantheon are also followed by a few people (including deities of the Forgotten Realms and Ansalon). The Eternian Empire included many demihumans (elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings). The Eternians are known for their knights in shining armour, gothic churches and cathedrals, grand feudal castles and their painting and sculpture that had just began to develop when the Summoning struck. A lot of administration and scholarship was carried out by priests and clerics rather than educated laymen.
Unlike the other cultures described below, the Eternian culture has spread out across the globe of Jharat as the Eternian empire has conquered the world. In many places Eternian culture has not completely replaced the native culture but exists along side it or else mixed in with it.
The most important deities of the Eternians include:

• Boccob, God of Magic and Knowledge (TN)
• Ehlonna, Goddess of Rangers and Forests (NG)
• Erythnul, God of Slaughter and Panic (CE)
• Fharlanghn, God of Earthly Travel (TN)
• Heironeous, God of Valor and Honour (LG)
• Hextor, God of War and Destruction (LE)
• Kord, God of Beasts, Strength and Sports (CG)
• Nerull, God of Death and Undeath (NE)
• Obad-Hai, God of Nature and Druids (TN)
• Olidammara, God of Rogues and Bards (CN)
• Pelor, God of Sunlight and Strength (NG)
• St Cuthbert, God of Common Sense and Discipline (LN)
• Vecna, God of Secrets and Evil Magic (NE)
• Wee Jas, Goddess of Death and Magic (LN)

The Millenians
The Millenians are a mix of the republican Rome and ancient Greek civilization. They worship the Greek pantheon. Unlike the Eternians, the Millenians are quite open and matter-of-fact about slavery - about a quarter of the population of the Millenian culture were slaves, until the summoning. The Millenians were also famous for their disciplined armies of both phalanxes (pikemen in bronze armour) and legions (heavy infantry armed with shortswords and javelins). They were notorious for their gladiatorial combats but also respected for their philosophy and development of drama and plays.
The principle deities of the Millenians include

• Zeus, Ruler of the Gods, God of Lightning and the Skies (CG)
• Hera, Queen of the Gods, Goddess of Wives and Jealousy (TN)
• Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty (CG)
• Ares, God of War and Slaughter (CE)
• Apollo, God of Prophesy and Music (CG)
• Hermes, God of Messengers and Thieves (CN)
• Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, Skill and Battle (LG)
• Demeter, Goddess of Crops and Agriculture (NG)
• Hades, God of the Underworld and Death (NE)
• Poseidon, God of the Seas and Earthquakes (CN)
• Hecate, Goddess of Magic and the Moon (CE)

The Nythians
The Nythians are primarily like the Egyptians of Earth, and their pantheon is the Egyptian pantheon. They also include elements of both Arabic/early Muslim culture and also Sumerian and Assyrian civilizations. Their culture sprang up around the mighty Nythis river, and it still plays a major part of their culture and a vital source of water for their agriculture. The Nythians are very mindful and respectful (some would say obsessive) about the dead and the afterlife. Their tombs to their dead kings are massive pyramids, while even their smaller tombs are impressive pieces of architecture. Beyond the river Nythis, there is the desert, and many Nythians are nomadic camel-riders, moving from oasis to oasis.
The principle deities of the Nythians include

• Ra, God of the Sun and kingship (LN)
• Osiris, God of Crops and Protector of the Dead (LG)
• Isis, Goddess of Marriage and Motherhood (LG)
• Set, God of Destruction and Darkness (LE)
• Geb, God of the Earth (TN)
• Shu, God of the Air (LG)
• Nephthys, Goddess of Wealth and Tombs (CG)
• Thoth, God of Knowledge and Magic (TN)
• Horus, God of Revenge, Justice and War (LN)
• Bast, Goddess of Cats and Pleasure (CG)
• Anubis, God of the Dead and Planar Travel (TN)

The Tolteckix
The Tolteckix civilization are a mix of Aztec, Incan and Mayan. They follow the Aztec pantheon. Their homeland is jungle, but they have constructed vast cities and built great temples. Their most notorious aspect is the human sacrifices they sometimes perform - reduced in number since the Eternians conquered them but not completely stopped.
The main deities of the Tolteckix have not been adopted by many outside of the homeland, partly because they are often considered bloody and demanding, and also their names are difficult to pronounce. The most notable members of the pantheon are:

• Huitzilopochtli, God of the Tolteckix people, War and Lightning (NE)
• Quetzalcoatl, God of Air and Wisdom (CG)
• Mictlantecuhtli, God of Death (TN)
• Tezcatlipoca, God of Deception and Thieves (CE)
• Tlaloc, God of Rivers, Rain and Drowning (LE)

The Wazumi
The Wazumi civilization are primarily based on Feudal Japan, but also borrow elements from both Chinese and Korean culture. They worship the Chinese pantheon. The Wazumi were ruled by a Shogun in the name of the Emperor, who governed with a large bureaucracy combined with feudal warlords. The noble warriors are the Samurai, the spies and assassins are ninja, the gangsters are Yakuza and the wizards are Wu-Jen. Monks are particularly at home here - indeed, it is believed the monkish tradition of meditation and self-discipline without direct connection to a deity originated here. There are priests here, including both Sohei and Shukenja and western-style clerics, and the deities they follow include:

• Shang-ti, God of Rulership and Creation (LN)
• Kuan-ti, God of War and Divination (NG)
• Yen-Wang-Yeh, God of Death (LN)
• Fu Hsing, God of Happiness (CG)
• Chung Kuel, God of Ugliness, Testing and Truth (LG)
• Liu, God of Crops and Food (TN)
• Lu Hsing, God of Just Rewards and Salaries (LN)
• Shou Hsing, God of Long Life (CN)
• Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy and Childbirth (LG)
• Chih-Nii, Goddess of Spinners and Weavers (CG)
• Lei Kung, God of Thunder and Vengeance (LE)
• Sung Chiang, God of Thievery (NE)

Then there are the "barbarian" cultures that were subjugated by the Eternian Empire many years before its own downfall. These cultures were coherent but not quite civilized. Because these cultures had fewer hive cities, they were hit slightly less hard than the more settled and complacent civilizations. Furthermore, characters with an affinity to the wilderness (such as rangers, druids and barbarians) are more likely to come from these cultures.

The Fyordfolk are based on Vikings and follow the Norse pantheon. They had a strained relationship with the Eternians. There are many dwarves who consider themselves part of the Fyordfolk.

The Keltoi are based on classical Celtic culture (especially when they were fighting Rome) and follow the Celtic pantheon. They are neighbours and often slaves to the Millenians. The Keltoi include several elven tribes.

The Ubuntu are based on both Zulu and east African cultures such as the Masai. They are neighbours to the Nythians. Their pantheon is uncertain and may not involve conventional deities but animism and nature spirits.

The White Eagle Nation are based on native North Americans, and share borders with the Tolteckix though not usually on good terms.

The Iron Horde are similar to the Huns, the Mongols and the Scythians. They have no pantheon of their own but sometimes adopt other peoples religions. They neighbor and occasionally raid the Wazumi.

Beyond these there are many "minor" cultures that may number up to half a million survivors. These are left up to the DM to fit in. Demihumans in particular may either fit into one of the above cultures or else form their own.

Design Notes:
This is basically my rationale for including stuff based on real world historical cultures. Stuff from conventional quasi-medieval fantasy can fit into the Eternian culture. Part of my reason for including these was wanting to use the deities from the old "Deities and Demigods" book (I'm thinking of the 1st Ed AD&D one with the Erol Otus cover).
The idea behind assigning the Greyhawk pantheon to Eternia was part laziness (I didn't want to create a whole pantheon from scratch), part fitting in stuff from Greyhawk adventures and sourcebooks and part was admiration for the pantheon, which I think is pretty cool. The "core" pantheon from 3rd Ed PHB drew most of its deities from Greyhawk. Although the Greyhawk pantheon covers most situations, I decided to leave the catch-all of "and other deities" so that the DM can include his own deities or those from other sources. 
You might have noticed that the Nythians and Millenians were borrowed from Mystara - their names were, but a lot of the other stuff about them comes from their historical source (Ancient Egypt and Classical Greece/Rome respectively), rather than from their Mystaran namesakes.

A New Direction and a New World: Jharat part 1

Ok, I admit my grand theories about RPGs, settings, the universe and everything are running dry, or at least not so easy to think up and produce. Taking a broad view of gaming is good in short bursts, but it gets boring after a while.
Therefore I've decided to take this blog in a new direction and use it to put out stuff about a world that I've worked on for a bit - Jharat, the Fallen World.
If you have been following my blog, you will remember from the third post I have created a number of worlds for D&D, and Jharat has been one of the more successful (or at least persistent) ones where I have actually built up a bit of info about it.

An overview of Jharat
Jharat is a huge world, about 3 times the size of Earth. It is covered by one massive continent that spans the entire equator, and two huge oceans, one in the northern hemisphere and the other to the south of the equatorial continent.

Until very recently, Jharat was dominated by the Eternian Empire, which had reigned over the whole world without too much disturbance or trouble for over 4,000 years. The magenta (pink) areas of the map are built-up and heavily civilised areas of intensive farming, towns and cities. Huge populations were supported thanks to magical improvements to agriculture.

Hive Cities
As populations grew, huge cities were built that towered both upwards and delved downwards as well as outwards. These cities became less like normal human settlements and more like titanic termite mounds, where buildings melded into each other above the covered streets and citizens could go for weeks or even years without seeing the sky. Such hive cities reached high into the sky, sometimes up to half a mile into the atmosphere.
Elemental Windows were vital for keeping the hive cities going: these are controllable portals to the elemental planes situated deep in the heart of hive cities. Air windows provided fresh air and ventilation. Water windows provided fresh water for both drinking and washing, Fire windows provided more than just heat for living - with wood being at a premium and coal not really used, the Fire windows were used for cooking food, smelting ore, firing pottery and other such tasks. Earth windows provided building materials and, on occasions, valuable ore that could be smelted into metal. Finally there were Entropy windows which did not produce anything but devoured and disintegrated anything that touched them - dangerous, but ideal for waste disposal.

The Summoning
Nobody is sure why the disaster known as the summoning happened 20 years ago: surviving sages have suggested that it was an attempt by evil deities to destroy humanity, while others say it was not good versus evil but law versus chaos - the forces of chaos saw that the Eternian Empire had made Law too dominant, and sought to redress the balance in a terrible way.
Whatever the causes, the actual events are known: monsters started appearing, especially out of the elemental windows. The Eternian army was not capable of dealing with such a large number and wide range of foes, especially appearing as they did, all over the Eternian Empire.
The collapse was rapid, and the slaughter was horrific. Within weeks, most of the hive cities had been lost. Within months the Empire had ceased to function. Within a year humanity's continued existence was in doubt.

The Situation Today
Humans and demihumans still hold on in pockets, but the grand civilisation of Eternia that had dominated before has now completely disintegrated. The population has fallen from what was 10 billion people to now just 500 million survivors, all of whom now live outside the hive cities, preferably at a safe distance. Politics is now generally replaced with survival tactics. There are still many monsters roaming the lands, and the hive cities are filled with fiendish beasts as well as the bodies (and maybe souls) of those unfortunates trapped inside during the Summoning. But there is hope. Heroes have arisen to champion civilised folk, to defeat the marauding monsters and reclaim the towns and cities. And even if the heroes are not so noble as to champion a righteous cause, there is a lot of treasure, both monetary and magical, in those ruined cities. Someone who could defeat dangerous monsters and defend communities could well become a ruler in these troubled and volatile times.

Designer's Notes
Jharat is ridiculously over-ambitious, and that's one of the reasons I love it. The planet is huge, the cities are bigger (and certainly taller) than New York, and the scale of the disaster is something few campaigns can compare with. No DM in his right mind would try to detail it in any depth. Which is why I'm going to have a go at it. 
Jharat is a setting where anything goes. The world is big enough to accommodate pretty well anything you like, including other campaign settings. With a bit of editing, you could probably have the Flanaess (the World of Greyhawk) sticking out of the northern coast and Ansalon (Dragonlance) floating in the southern ocean. 
More pertinently, because I have never taken it too seriously, I have been willing to include ideas here that I would consider a bit too strange or left-field for some worlds where I thought I had a chance of getting published. With 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D this was both taking things from other D&D worlds and also converting stuff from other game systems and fantasy settings. New stuff from Dragon Magazine and D&D supplements could also be put into Jharat without worry. 
With 3rd Edition, Jharat became the place where all D20 and OGL stuff could be used, no questions asked, and ideas from all sorts of D&D sources were still welcome. Converting stuff from other game systems was not exactly stopped, but there was so much stuff that didn't need converting suddenly appearing, it seemed a bit silly to put in more effort than seemed necessary. 

Thoughts and Feelings about the various editions of Dungeons and Dragons

This post was originally published on my Windows Live blog. I am repeating it here for the sake of completeness.

This is mainly my gut reaction and personal experience, rather than a grand overview of the history of D&D.


Basic D&D: Ok, it’s actually Basic, Expert, Companion, Masters and Immortals D&D, but I like to call it Basic D&D because it’s what it was described as on the purple box with the Erol Otus picture on it, which was the first D&D product I owned.  It is very simple, and I still like it because of its simplicity. I am glad that its retro-clones are doing well, and I personally enjoy using Labyrinth Lord. This summer I used the Rules Cyclopedia to introduce my nephew and niece to Dungeons and Dragons, and it went very well – after the first session they were the ones asking me to play. Although I can be a bit frustrated by the lack of official options (only one class per race except for humans?) the rules system is simple enough that I have created a number of homebrew racial classes to fill the gaps that I think need filling. Simple rules, but the potential for lots of additions (new classes, monsters, spells, magic items and the like) seems to be a good philosophy for an RPG in my humble opinion.

1st Edition AD&D: Varying between brilliant and eccentric, Gary Gygax’s creation broke new ground with its combination of race and class, and new alignment system, plus the huge new range of monsters, magic items and spells that dwarfed Basic D&D (or BECMI D&D). Some parts I am not so sure about, like percentile strength, and Unearthed Arcana introduced two very unbalanced, overpowered classes (the Cavalier and Barbarian), but this was kind of mitigated by the assurance that the DM, not the rulebook, had the final say in any game. I feel that the DMG could have been organised and explained a bit better – at first I went through it from the start and came across the tables for diseases very near the beginning. Not quite understanding the context, I rolled the dice and found that my character had a chronic kidney disease. Bummer. But the random tables at the back for dungeon dressings were full of flavour and were inspiring, especially the city encounters with the notorious random encounter table for prostitutes.

2nd Edition AD&D: Some people say it lost the flavour of 1st Edition, but I liked it because it was better organised and ironed out some of the wrinkles. Looking back, I can say it didn’t go far enough but at the time it seemed a big improvement. Optional rules were marked as optional, morale was sorted out as was surprise rolls, and the ranger and bard became much more plausible. Non-weapon proficiencies gave an idea of stuff that could be done outside of combat.  It’s a pity they got rid of (or put on hold) the half-orc and the assassin. The emphasis was shifted away from the dungeon and towards more story-oriented games, which may or may not have been good in the long run, but at the time I was not keen on the move. Heck, it’s called DUNGEONS and dragons for a darn good reason! I have many good memories of this edition, because at the end of my time at boarding school it was what we were playing together (albeit with 1st edition modules – the Temple of Elemental Evil and the Slavelords and Against the Giants were all tackled with varying degrees of success). The splat books were good fun as well, and they always said at the front that they were optional. The dark red series for players and characters, the blue-grey ones for dungeon masters, the green ones for historical settings and the black ones for the Forgotten Realms were all good fun, and I bought most of them.

3rd Edition D&D: When I first read the 3rd Edition PHB, I thought it was brilliant. The way that levels in different classes stacked meant that multiclassing was easy, at least in working out stats. And they sorted out saving throws! and they introduced feats, which were cool. And they made the barbarian playable! And they brought back the half-orc! I wasn’t sure about the skill system (too much maths for my liking), and the expectation that monsters should be constructed like characters, with skills, feats and correct saving throws just annoyed me (whatever happened to DM discretion and judgement?). The biggest problem I found was when playing it all got rather too complicated. I managed to run one particular Forgotten Realms campaign using 3.0/3.5 rules. For the most-part it ran well, but during combat various things would be forgotten or would slow me down. And I found grappling and attacks of opportunity quite difficult to deal with. There were also various small things that just annoyed me enough to make me want to tweak the rules. As a DM, the Challenge Rating made it easy enough to judge what sort of single monster encounter would test a party of adventurers and then calculating the XP, but with multiple monsters, perhaps some of different levels, working out the Encounter Level and then the XP for the characters just seemed like hard work, especially for on-the-fly encounters. The splat books were bigger and heavier, but still optional – although it was not very clearly stated, a DM could always use the SRD as the benchmark for what was core.

The biggest thing that 3rd edition D&D did was to open up the market to anyone and everyone able to copy and paste the OGL into the back of their product. Even I had a go, though my attempts didn’t get anywhere near being published. But I loved the various game supplements and adventures from third party publishers. My favourites were Swords and Sorcery “Scarred Lands” series, especially the Creature Collections, the Tome of Horrors series from Necromancer Games, and Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics, and there were others (Mongoose Games deserving an honourable mention for its Encylopedia Arcane series and Hunter’s Guides series)

An unexpected side-effect of the OGL was the emergence of retro-clones – as I mentioned before, Labyrinth Lord is my favourite at the moment, but I also have OSRIC. There is also Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game, and I am sort of tempted to include Pathfinder, as it is a clone/variant of 3.5, which is now an “older edition”, even though it’s the edition that the OGL was intended for.

4th Edition D&D: I have left this alone as I have said in my first post in this blog. At first I had a knee-jerk reaction of contempt for some of the new ideas it brought in (healing surges, doing away with Vancian spell systems, powers at will and per encounter) and though I am not entirely comfortable with these changes, I’ve got a grudging respect for it. A lot of people enjoy it, and it seems to be doing well. Maybe not as well as 3rd edition when it was first released, but that was a real phenomenon. When 4th edition was first released, I reckoned that WOTC had sabotaged the D&D line, and that published and WOTC-supported D&D would die out, leaving only the fanbase to carry the hobby on. I’m not so pessimistic now, but I am still not tempted to actually play it. Leaving out certain classes and races out of the PHB1, and then saying that PHB2 and subsequent books are “core” makes me feel that the DM has to deal with players with more and more options and combinations, while the DM has less and less discretion and authority about what goes on in the games he runs. And third-party publishers seem to be far less enthusiastic – Goodman games is the only company of note that I can remember offhand producing stuff according to the GSL. I am not a lawyer, but from what I’ve heard, the GSL is nowhere nearly as publisher-friendly as the OGL was.

It makes me wonder whether the guy who introduced the OGL deliberately took the right to make D&D products out of WOTC’s hands and put it into the hands of fans and 3rd party publishers, with the unspoken instructions of “Listen, if WOTC totally screw up D&D, you’re the back-up plan. If necessary, you can use the OGL to keep D&D alive even if WOTC stops the product line.” I hope that doesn’t happen for a while, but it’s reassuring to know we are not entirely dependent on one company’s strategy.

And finally, a word massive rant about Edition Wars. I can get quite annoyed with people who get arrogant and self-righteous about their preferred edition. Although I prefer some editions more than others, and can quite easily point out things I don’t like, I try to be respectful about both the people who play the different editions and the work that went into creating them, and assume they are created in good faith, and people have fun playing them. The most annoying instance I’ve encountered was in “The Delver’s Dungeon” forum, where the webmaster insists that the only D&D that is “proper” D&D is those that were written by Gygax himself (i.e. the brown/white boxed set and 1st edition AD&D). He is dismissive of both Basic D&D (both the Holmes and the Moldvay editions) and of 2nd edition AD&D, and then to my surprise he declared that 3rd Edition doesn’t really count as D&D at all! At this point I have to assume he is being a troll (forum troll – deliberately provocative, rather than D&D troll, rubbery, carnivorous and regenerating). I reckon he is being deliberately antagonistic – nobody would be such an arse as to honestly believe that crap.

There is also the Knights and Knaves forum, which declares itself unashamedly Gygaxian, and goes on to explain that the forums on that site are not for either 2nd Edition AD&D or Moldvay-edition Basic D&D. The last one really irks me, because it was my first D&D product and my introduction to this great hobby back in 1982, when I was 9 years old. For some elitist snob to say that it isn’t old-school enough just pisses me off. Nonetheless, they point out that this is a private forum and therefore it is their rules. Fine, but don’t expect me to join.

I have to say, I admire Gary Gygax and his massive contribution to this hobby. He and Dave Arneson created D&D and thereby created pencil-and-paper roleplaying games as we know them. I was lucky enough to correspond with him in a few emails in the late 1990s, and he seemed really friendly, if a little opinionated. I also met him briefly at GenCon UK 2000 at Manchester University, and he signed my copy of Descent into the Depths of the Earth. I have been a little bit awestruck, but at the same time I am not afraid to disagree with him. When I heard that he referred to the Forgotten Realms as “The Rotten Realms” I was kind of disappointed. I am a bit worried when people venerate him as a saint and hold his word as law - “This is how you should play because that’s how GARY played it!” has never been a convincing argument for me. What about how Dave Arneson played it?

For me at the moment I am happy playing and writing stuff for Basic D&D. There is an element of nostalgia of the old days with the Erol Otus pictures, the excitement of working out how to play (and how to keep your character alive), but increasingly it is about keeping it simple, fun and fluid. For me, the two websites above are warnings about not getting too snobbish and elitist about being old-school. I should also be wary of swinging too far in the other direction and assuming that newer stuff is automatically an improvement. Not necessarily. Whatever edition you play, I hope you have fun with it, and maybe pass it on to someone else who would appreciate it.


More soon, 
John