MetaMythos - RPG Campaign and World Design

World Design/Multi-Cultural Fictional Settings

Introduction

Welcome

One of the perennial problems of world design is the invention of cultures and nations that are both internally consistent and also fundamentally different from our own. This manual outlines some useful processes and strategies for making up internally consistent Myths and Cultures. Start with the Myths. The Myths believed by people explain their culture. Myths show where the world came from, why people are mortal and sexual, and why and how they need to work. In short, Myth tells people why their way of life is meaningful. And a people and their way of life is the essence of culture.

Some Other Sites

http://www.hut.fi/~vesanto/link.networld/networlds.html
http://www.hut.fi/~vesanto/world.build.html
http://www.hut.fi/~vesanto/link.useful/worlds/world.creation.html
http://www.lastunicorngames.com/ (look for Aria)
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/
http://www.tezcat.com/~markrose/kit.html

MythoPoet

Myths are not made up in laboratories or fabricated by focus groups. A Myth must grab the imagination. A Myth must sing. Words to grab the imagination, words to sing a story, words like that are poetry. And Poetry is written by a Poet. A MythoPoet is a creator of Myths. The one who can bring a song out of a story, who succeeds in making that story resonate in the imagination, is a MythoPoet.

No god, no culture hero ever revealed a profane act. Everything that the gods or the ancestors did, hence everything that the myths have to tell about their creative activity, belongs to the sphere of the sacred and therefore participates in being. In contrast, what men do on their own initiative, what they do without a mythical model, belongs to the sphere of the profane; hence it is a vain and illusory activity, and, in the last analysis, unreal. The more religious man is, the more paradigmatic models does he possess to guide his attitudes and actions. In other words, the more religious he is, the more does he enter into the real and the less is he in danger of becoming lost in actions that, being nonparadigmatic, "subjective," are, finally aberrant.

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane

Religion is a communal system of right belief and right action transmitted from a divine presence.

Let's break down that definition and take it in order.

1. "Communal system" Religion requires community, with those of advanced knowledge instructing novices in mythic and ritual knowledge and serving as arbiters in case of disagreement or confusion on religious matters. Individual belief is not religion, though it may have components in common with religion.
2. "Right Belief" The Myths and Legends of a religion constitute a system of right beliefs.
3. "Right Action" The Ritual of a religion contains the system of right actions.
4. "Transmitted from a divine presence" Truth comes from the god or gods, and is the way that believers distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, sacred from mundane, and the world from chaos. Myth and Ritual are both divine in origin and this is why they are "right."

Another way to describe religion is as a combination of Myth, Ritual, and Philosophy. This fits in with our definition above. Myth is the medium by which the gods transmit religion to the community. Ritual is right action. Philosophy is right belief. Together they create something that is greater than its parts, Truth which resonates in the individual heart and in the marrow of the community. Truth, with a capital "T," is the meaning of Religion. Truth is Religion. Religion is Truth. Truth and religion are the glue that binds the individual and the community together. Religion confers a purpose and destiny upon each person. This is a powerful idea, and it is no wonder that religion is so important in the world.

NOTE: Let us borrow the definitions for Myth and Legend used by Folklorists and Anthropologists. They are not fictional or fabulous stories, but rather sacred truths.