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Vulpes vulpes

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 Is a fox magical? Contemporary wisdom says no. One of the benefits of an information-rich society is that we can have each creature mapped, learned, and counted, and once we've shone the light on them we can pat ourselves on the back knowing there is no magic to the creature at all. The fox belongs to the canine family, along with jackals, raccoons, and, of course, the domestic dog, and it has 6-8 nipples. Yet the magic remains--what else compels us to learn about each creature to begin with? What drives us to watch and write and draw them with such earnest observation, to learn every behavior and cycle?  Despite their solitary nature and rare interaction with men, foxes are considered among the wisest of all creatures in virtually every culture on Earth in contact with them. The Japanese Kitsune changes shapes, but in truth is indistinguishable, even one and the same, with the mundane fox. They call youth to themselves, seducing them like sirens. Even in the west we may call such
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Magic turns in-setting beliefs into gameable content

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    It's often said that Magic needs to be uncertain, dangerous, or strange in order to be interesting. Games like Dungeon Crawl Classics or the upcoming Arcane Ugly take this route. I, however, feel that Magic is best used as the vector for the players to experience the individual cultures of your world.  The quickest way to get your players invested in your game is through gameable content, something they can interact with. I've already described how I use race and culture for this on my blog, but today's focus is on how to use magic to make your fictional cultures tangible. If you do this right, your players will be eating up your fantasy lore in no time.      In the 1st century A.D., a book called the Testament of Solomon  was written describing how Solomon built his famous Temple. He received a ring from the Archangel Michael, and used it to command legions of demons, named and ranked in their filth, to build the temple for him. For if the Lord is above the demons, and
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Solving Humans

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  Stop me if you've heard this one. You've just started a new game of D&D, and one of your players decides he's going to roll up a Human. What kind of human? Well, something vaguely European, probably. What does their culture value? Probably whatever the player does. This is a problem I like to call "Playing a Regular Person". This isn't a problem unique to Humans, but it can exacerbated by blindly picking Human. In D&D specifically, cultural aspects of other races can often be picked up through their descriptions or mechanics. But Humans are made out to be intentionally vague. There are no human subraces, no flavor that indicates a culture. But as much as you can create with a blank slate, in reality, creativity thrives on limitation and guidance. If we take a look at major works of Fantasy, this is almost never an issue. The Lord of the Rings has Northmen, Gondorians, Númenóreans, Haradrim, Easterlings, and more. Many groups of human cultures. The Le
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Sailing to Hell

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In your world, how do the living visit the Underworld? When Theseus and Pirithous traveled to Hades to kidnap Persephone, they did not take a portal. They took a ship. Sailed right up to the front gates. Olympus itself was often a given name to several mountains, each believed to be the metaphorical (or even literal) home of the gods. In the Lord of the Rings, do the Elves use a Plane Shift spell to reach the Gray Havens? No, they sailed there on a ship.  Sometimes, the metaphysical location of a plane doesn't need to be metaphysical. Sometimes, it feels more real if it's just there .  In the last world that I wrote, there were 3 ways to get to the Underworld. First was dying. Second was Plane Shift or Gate. Third was taking a physical ship to where the sun sets, riding head first into the horrific whirlpool as the sun was swallowed by the sea, and following it on its 12-hour journey through the Underworld. In the Forgotten Realms, the Abyss was physically positioned below the
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