A World of Lacunae (and Scaffolding)

Allright, allright, I'm stealing this word from you, Mr. Grand Master of Flowers. Lacunae is the plural form of lacuna, which means an empty space between things that are not... empty spaces. It could mean an area that is undescribed or non-existent, but still somehow given rough location by its borders. Role-playing games are full of lacunae of all kinds. If an RPG system represents an imaginary world, any description of that world included in an RPG book must be an incomplete scetch. Just look at real scientific libraries: we try hard to describe our own world, an even a library full of books is incomplete. How full of lacunae must then a description of an imaginary world be, usually compressed to a chapter or two in an RPG book, or in the case of the most detailed worlds, a meter or so worth of supplements in your bookshelf? No matter how hard the authors try, they cannot outrun the emptiness of the lacunae, and now I'm starting to sound like a Lovecraft impersonator. But the truth is that an imaginary world without empty spaces would have no need of player characters. There must be some room left for creativity in the game itself, room for the heroics of the PC's, or else the world does not function as an RPG world anymore. So, we've established that any RPG world must have lacunae, not only for page-count reasons but also to leave room for the actual gaming experience that happens at your kitchen table.

Dungeons and Dragons, in its various and glorious incarnations, has always had an extremely scetchy description of its gaming world, its lacunae giving relentless vertigo to Dungeon Masters not prepared to the arduous task of giving birth to a living, breathing milieu. Oh, and now I'm impersonating Gygax, it seems. But bear with me, dear reader; I hope I have some points to make adminst all the lacunae. Whether delibrate or due to circumstances, the world of D&D has always been almost non-existent. I suppose the oldest editions had nothing, I know AD&D didn't have anything (except the structure of the cosmos, and I'll come back to that!), and while Frank Mentzer's Basic D&D had this "Known World/Mystara" setting, it was presented in a way that it seemed... very non-intrusive. It was clear that the world was not the cause, the primus motor of the rules: the classes, races, monsters and rules existed because they came from the primal pool of D&D itself. The world was presented as an afterthought of sorts. "Look, here's a map you can use", said Mr. Mentzer, "here are the PC's, there's kobolds, there's elves, here's the castle of an evil baron that you can use as the main villain, here's the capital city, and yeah, there are some other countries in the world as well". It all was very... exemplary, in the sense that it seemed like an example. It was a world made for D&D, not the other way around. You could use it, or make one yourself and lose nothing in the process. This was so very D&D, an approach that made it differ from games like Runequest, MERP, Stormbringer and countless others.

I know that Mystara got expanded by supplement books, but here in Finland, while they had firmly established the Finnish D&D line and put out several supplements (like Rahasia, Castle Caldwell, even Palace of the Silver Princess and so on), the Gazetteers were never translated, so the Mystara world remained full of lacunae to many Finnish gamers. Many people stuck to it, myself included, which is funny in hindsight, because pretty much all we had was this admittedly beautiful map, full of nonsensical countries that we had no information of, except their names that were often so telling that little extra information was necessary. It wasn't much of a challenge to figure out that the "Jarls of Soderfjord", living by the northern seas, were Vikings, or that the "Emirate of Ylaruam", all desert with the exception of one city, was inhabited by Arabs. Known world/Mystara has been the butt of many a joke ever since, and rightfully so - its virtues, however, are not nearly so often noticed. It was immediate like a lightning bolt, it utilized widely known stereotypes, and it DID have a wonderful map full of cool hexes. Like anyone with half a brain knows, stereotypes and archetypes are first and foremost tools that one can use. The quality of the result depends on the skill of the worker, and one can not blame a tool for that. And Mystara - without the Gazetteers - was first and foremost a toolbox. It was much more than say, AD&D had, but it was still so full of lacunae that it should have fallen apart, were it not to the strong scaffolding made of familiar archetypes that kept it together.

What's extra funny is that I hear that in later supplements, Mystara was revealed to be a "hollow" world, like an orange with just the peel and no pulp, and reverse gravity inside, I suppose. Lacunae indeed!

After Mentzer Basic, we had second edition AD&D, and it is the edition most famous of its detailed, intricate worlds. I never played this edition, but many people I know fell in love with it indeed because of the attention given to the worlds. Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Ravenloft... these are the things that some people seemed to love. While there's nothing wrong with that, to me that seems somehow backwards and lightly perverse, if you will. There is no mistaking D&D to Runequest or Empire of the Petal Throne: they have worlds first, while D&D has the system and approach first. So, to love (A)D&D because of some gaming world seems to me like declaring one's love for Indian cuisine because you love naan bread. Still, all these worlds remained optional, and the system itself was presented without a world, in the ancient tradition.

I have very little experience with editions 3 and 3.5, but all my feeble knowledge leads me to believe that the worldless tradition stood strong during these years. Order of the Stick, surely (at least in my prejudiced mind) the best thing that this edition gave us, has its own world and makes few references to any other. All this leads me to believe that the lacunae in the D&D world survived these years, even if things like strong class archetypes didn't. And 4th edition, of which I'm fast becoming a fan, presents an interesting skeleton of a world: a bit of history here and there, giving the various races some history, and an optional small-scale setting reminiscent of the Duchy of Karameikos from Mentzer Basic. I'm sure we're going to have world-freaks again in this age of D&D just like we had during the 2nd ed. AD&D years, but to my joy, the presentation of this "Points-of-Light-land", or "PoLand", to use hip internet slang, has been deliberately scetchy and... not vague, because vague it is not; but full of creative lacunae. To make creative lacunae, a strong skeleton or scaffolding is needed: one need not be vague. The scaffolding can be firm: the spaces in between need not be described at all! Mentzer said something like this: "Here's the map and wandering monster tables, make up the rest like the history of the world yourself!", while 4E is saying "Here are the major guidelines in history that tie these PC races together, make up the map yourself!". Both are firm in their scaffolding, while giving us complete freedom to pain the lacunae in colours that we prefer.

What have we gathered thus far? D&D has never given us a detailed, intricate world that would be inexorably tied to the system. Optional worlds have been presented, as well as scaffoldings and lacunae (I'm going for an internet record here... how many times the word "lacuna" can be typed in a blog entry? Lacuna lacuna lacuna! Allright, let's continue.).

What, then, makes a "detailed RPG world" anyway? How do we define it? Some editions have given us geographical data, some historical data... and actually most editions have given us quite detailed cosmological data, in the form of a universe far more structured than the material world itself. If you have any simulationist blood at all, you must agree that the rules themselves model the physical laws of the world - at least to some degree, perhaps hand in hand with the demands of narrativism, the needs of the story. The classes give us some sociological data of the world - at least of the population of adventurers. And especially the monsters give us a lot of knowledge. If, as a DM, you stick to the monsters in the manuals, as I do, don't think for a minute that your campaign world is a piece of pure originality, created ex nihilo. There's a relationship between monsters and the world, and it goes both ways. If you want to use the various slimes, oozes, puddings and jellies at all, for example, you will probably have to use dungeons. These monsters make much more sense in a moist, sunless and smooth dungeon than outdoors. And if they live in a dungeon, how could the dungeon be inhabited? It couldn't, as the slimes would make any meaningful humanoid inhabitation impossible. Then, who could co-exist with the slimes? Flying creatures like giant bats, or small creatures that can escape them, like giant rats. Or incorporeal creatures like wraiths. So, how did we end up with this uninhabited dungeon, filled with slimes, bats, rats and incorporeal undead? Just with the desire to present a monster (in this case, a slime) to the players in a believable context. The environment deviously created itself.

THAT is one of the secrets of D&D. It seems not to present a world at all, and indeed nominally it does not; it offers the sccaffolding for your imagination, and when you try to fill the lacunae, certain similarities to other campaigns, to other people's D&D experiences, emerge. But like in nature, these are not truly "emergent" properties, but projections of underlying realities and laws. The structure of the game creates them. Granted, each DM's campaign world is different both in matter and spirit, but these "certain similarities" are awfully persistent. Let us take a look at one of the mandatory tropes, the Tavern.

Nowhere in D&D does it say that the adventurers frequent taverns, or that they would originally gather the team from tavern regulars and patrons. This trope does not even exist in fantasy literature, at least to my knowledge. But the structure of D&D tends to create taverns. Let's review the facts: A) Adventurers exist. B) Monsters exist. C) Monsters guide treasure. D) Adventurers need treasure to level up. In other words: the society of this world does not force a certain role or profession to everyone - you CAN be an adventurer. Monsters are dangerous, and if they inhabit any physical places, much of the world must be unexplored by man. Monsters have gotten the treasure from somewhere, so previous civilizations must have existed. They most probably live in ruins of previous civilizations. If you can be an adventurer, this society cannot be totally totalitarian - supported by the fact that human civilization has not achieved total hegemony. So, like in our western civilization, the place where you're most likely meet a stranger is a place where they serve alcohol - the Tavern. Work would not do, as adventuring is the work of the PC's. School would not do, unless all the PC's share a similar class (and that goes against all the most ancient and sacred traditions of both D&D and fantasy literature). So the Tavern it is. Of course, a DM can fight against these tropes. He can subert them, avert them or try to turn them upside down, and that is his Gary-given right. But that does not mean that these hidden and almost subliminal tropes do not exist.

The fact that most editions have clearly-defined stucture of the cosmos and the afterlife is very interesting as well. Most adventures are going to be Earth-based; let's face it, how many of us have ever had a planar adventure? Not many. But how many of us have had our adventures affected by the planes? I bet, most of us. Demon cults and schemes of the Devils are AD&D staples. In absence of those, Basic D&D often utilized Djinn, Efreets and Elementals as messengers from the beyond. The cosmos serves as a backdrop, another scaffold; the fact that is quite well defined does not take any lacunae away from our adventures due to the fact that it is quite rarely entered itself. But the defined cosmos in the backgound is another one of those devious underlying realities that shapes our D&D experiences towards similar results.

I'm not saying that all D&D experiences are fundamentally similar. The freedom that all editions of D&D give to the Dungeon Master still remains extraordinary. But what I'm saying is that despite all that diversity, there is an underlying current of similarity. Different editions of D&D do this in different ways: personally I might be most fond the strange approach of 1st edition AD&D, as it didn't give anything of the world itself, but gave the planes and even individual monsters, like Orcus and Tiamat, who existed and ruled on their respective and well-defined thrones on all of these myriad campaign worlds made by AD&D DM's. So, you could talk to a fellow AD&D player, and your experience of the world would be completely different, but you could still say something like "My paladin went to Hell and was killed by Tiamat!" and be completely understood. Likewise, a Basic D&D player could say "I acually dethroned Baron von Hendricks!", and perhaps a 4E player could say "I resurrected the final emperor of Bael Turath!". But paladins could be all-female, von Hendricks could actually be a legitimate ruler of Karameikos, and Bael Turath could be an island kingdom or an underground one. This fascinating combination of generality and specificity is, to my mind, unique to and quintessentially D&D. The game is always presented as a toolbox with infinite diversity, but the underlying currents subtly guide that diversity towards common ends. That simultaneously pleases our desire to be different and unique, and to belong and have something in common with others.