Using Flat Earth Theories To Fuel Your Fantasy Worldbuilding

All right, let’s get one thing straight here. The Earth is round, and always has been. If it wasn’t, then artillery troops and snipers wouldn’t have to calculate for the curvature of the planet before sending their deadly care packages to their targets. However, while the things flat-Earth-believers (or FEBs for short) say are absolutely bonkers, they do make for some interesting world building.

Especially if you’re looking to put together your own fantasy setting for an upcoming adventure.

Things are about to get wild, my friends...

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What Sort of Things Are You Likely To Find?

I don’t recommend jumping too far down the rabbit hole of flat Earth ideas, but just skimming the surface you will find some absolutely wild explanations for normal, everyday phenomena happen that would be otherwise impossible on a flat world. Just off the top of my head I’ve heard:

- Colossal ice walls sheathe the rim of the world, making it impossible for you to travel beyond and fall from the edge (double credit for a game world that’s experiencing global warming and endangering this ice wall).

- Massive, magnetic mountains at the poles that create the illusion of a compass functioning (which has all sorts of implications for a world where steel is still the weapon of choice, but which might be more and more difficult to use the further north or south one travels).

- Mysterious dark energy propels the world in a single direction, and the force of this constant, forward/upward movement is what creates gravity (double points for the world being some variety of spaceship hurtling toward a long-forgotten destination, or a weapon that is on a collision course with some sort of cosmic enemy).

The math is... well... doing something interesting...

These are just a few of the beliefs you’ll find out on the Internet (and there are dozens of lists you can check out for additional inspiration, just like this one), but part of the worldbuilding challenge this offers you as a Game Master is taking these various “truths” and attempting to incorporate them into your fantasy setting. For example, is there a cult who believes human sacrifice is necessary in order to maintain the dark energy propulsion and keep the world moving as it always has? Are they right, or simply mad? If there are ice walls around the rim of the world, what happens if one seeks them out and climbs them? Will they find other realities waiting beyond? Will they hear the whispers of Outsiders begging to bargain so they can be let in past the wall? Are there leylines across the world that carry the charge and polarity of these magnetic mountains, allowing some variety of lightning train to move at rapid speed along these charges, even if it is only from north to south?

If you’ve been looking for a new and unique inspiration, I’d recommend making your own disc world (Pratchett reference very much intended), and seeing just what kind of bizarre and unique twists your mind takes on it!

Just remember… this is meant to be a fun, creative exercise. If you find yourself falling down the rabbit hole, go outside, touch some grass, and perhaps watch a documentary about The Round Planet. Then, when you’re feeling a little more centered, dive back in!

And for some additional world building thoughts and advice, check out:

- 5 Tips For Creating Fantasy Towns and Cities

- 5 Real Underground Cities To Inspire Your TTRPG Campaign

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Examining The Fantasy Atheist

For a moment, the light dimmed. It was as if a cloud had passed over the sun, leaving the companions in shadow. Then there was an impact in the air, as if the world itself had gasped, and a being stood before them. It glowed with a preternatural light, and it gazed upon them with eyes of fire. It possessed a dozen arms, each bearing items of a strange, alien origin. It turned to the one who had summoned it, nodding its head in acknowledgement. Before it could speak, though, Korrun rolled his eyes.

"Really?" he said. "Don't you think this is taking your make believe a little far?"

The Herald reached out its empty hand, and touched the cleric on the shoulder. "You bear a great burden traveling with this one."

"I do," Invaris replied. "This I know well."

Could I trade him to you? Please? Any bid, I'm listening.

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There Are No Gods!

Chances are good that if you've been playing fantasy RPGs for a while that you've come across the atheist character at some point. Though, for added clarity, The Fantasy Atheist is the name of a trope, and is not meant to be a deeper examination of this form of philosophy... especially since that's not how these characters tend to be played when someone decides to use this archetype. These characters are, in most cases, merely a more specialized version of the Fantasy Flat Earther, which I talked about in Examining The "Doubting Thomas" Character Archetype in Fantasy RPGs a while back. Because just like the sorcerer who claims magic isn't real, the Fantasy Atheist will watch a cleric perform a miracle, or even summon a celestial being from the outer planes, and stubbornly fold their arms, refusing to acknowledge the divine exists at all.

This is not a clever or unique character concept. It's a joke character, and it's a joke that was never funny to begin with.

You Can Make It Work (With The Right Circumstances)

With all of that said, there are certain ways you can play this style of character, and certain circumstances that can make them workable. I would still recommend against it due to the baggage the concept has, but you can do it if you're determined enough.

I provided some circumstances in my Sundara setting.

The first way to make this concept work is to play in a setting where the divine is largely mysterious, unknown, and unknowable. Mortals still have their myths and their legends, and you'll still find clerics, oracles, druids, and others wielding the power of the divine, but the gods aren't fully known or understood. Settings where there's an unknown quantity of gods, or where it's impossible to know if the gods of a certain faith are who their followers believe they are, work as well. In short, you need some kind of doubt that what people believe (even people who have been empowered by the gods) is the truth of what's happening beyond the material world.

This is very much the sort of setup you find in my recent release Gods of Sundara, available both in a Pathfinder version and a DND 5E version. Because in Sundara the gods are truly cosmic, which means that mortals can only ever see and comprehend a small portion of these beings. They are alien in many respects, taking different forms and appearing in different ways to different people. So Grimwald with his black sword worshiped by the hill clans of the far north, and the colossal dragon De'nagi paid homage by the lizard folk tribes of the southern swamps are, in fact, both manifestations of the same god; Charne, god of war. The fluid nature of the divine, where people really do have to take it on faith that the things they believe are even remotely true (and not some shell game played by the beings of the spirit realm) means there actually is plenty of room for doubt and argument as to whether a particular god or a particular faith is what someone thinks it is. And that leaves room for discussions on faith, the trustworthiness of religion, and how much knowledge is lost or misunderstood in translation from the realm of the gods to the mortals.

On that note, wanted to mention my 5 Tips For Playing Better Clerics for those who haven't checked it out yet!

Alternatively, You Need To Change Your Character

Not every fantasy setting has that element of mystery to it regarding the divine. In a lot of settings the gods are set in stone, and the faith taught to people on the mortal plane is true. The myths and legends are real, and these divinities will walk the world and perform great deeds... and when they aren't personally appearing, their servants often will in the form of angels, devils, and other divine/infernal beings.

If you're playing in a setting where there's no need to take things on faith because they've been confirmed multiple times, and there are records that this is how the cosmos is structured, then you don't have the wiggle room of a setting where things are more vague. It's hard to argue that the gods don't exist when their servants can wield divine fire to slay demons, and when avatars manifest to aid in your fight against the army of undeath around level 12.

All right, all right, I get it. They're real, okay!

In a setting that doesn't really require belief (since these creatures and powers are just facts of life), you have a few options to really make the atheist character work. The first is using it as a character arc as they learn more about the universe itself. We saw a version of this in Marvel comics when for years Tony Stark refused to believe that Thor was who he said he was. Until finally, out of patience, Thor grabbed Tony and transported them both to Asgard. So Tony saw with his own two eyes that the rainbow bridge, the city of the gods, and more were real. And he learned that the Thor from the old Norse myths and the being he fought alongside were truly one and the same.

As a character arc, this works pretty well. It's usually meant as a way to take an arrogant aspect of a character, and to humble them by showing there are things they don't know, and entities beyond them in the universe. It's similar, in a way, to how we see Han Solo go from, "The force is just a fairy tale," to simply acknowledging it as a fact of the universe.

However, there's the seed of a second way to play this in the Thor and Iron Man example. Because as folks who read Marvel know, Asgardians are not gods as we typically think of them. They are an alien species whose technology is so advanced that it is in many ways indistinguishable from magic. So while it is not inaccurate to call them gods, it is also accurate to say they are highly advanced beings whose understanding of the universe is inexplicable to humanity. It doesn't change the nature of what they are, but the altered definition can make someone seem far more reasonable. Because they aren't denying that these beings exist, nor are they denying the power they wield. Instead, they are simply saying that calling them "gods" is inaccurate, and that more nuanced language is required to understand them more precisely.

The third option was one popularized by Rahadoum in the Golarion setting for Pathfinder. The so-called Kingdom of Man does not allow divine worship or magic within its borders. Not because the gods aren't real, but because the nation acknowledges that they are real, and they want no part of the gods or their followers within their borders. So in this case the "atheist" character isn't denying that gods exist, and that there's some other explanation for extraplanar manifestations and the power of divine characters; they're just saying they want no part of the divine and the mess it represents.

Of the three of these options, the third is probably the easiest to make work in a high fantasy game. From refusing boosts from the cleric, to using health potions and alchemical tablets for restoring your own hit points, to refusing to participate in any form of religious ceremony (or merely making sure others understand you're just being polite), it can cause some friction and challenge, but it isn't usually enough to make the rest of the table want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you for obstinately proclaiming the sky to be chartreuse when we can all plainly see that it's blue.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned For More!

That's all for this installment of Unusual Character Concepts. Hopefully this one gave you something to chew over, whether you're a player, or a game master.

For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my alley cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my most recent collection of short stories The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Examining The "Doubting Thomas" Character Archetype in Fantasy RPGs

Normally when it's time for an Unusual Character Concepts update I'll talk about a new spin you can put on an old class, or how you can step outside the usual tropes and archetypes that cling to certain concepts. This month, though, I'd like to address a character concept that I've seen a lot, but which has rarely been played well. A character archetype I refer to as the Doubting Thomas.

Look, can we just stop with all this talk of "magic" and "vampires" already?

What is The Doubting Thomas?

For those of you who haven't been to Sunday school in a while, the term Doubting Thomas refers to how one of the apostles refused to take the word of the others that Jesus had risen from the dead until he'd seen him with his own eyes, and touched the wounds left behind. Colloquially, the term refers to someone who remains skeptical about the stories told to them by other people until they have experienced the phenomenon themselves.

In short, for Thomas, seeing was believing.

All right, my bad, looks like you were all telling the truth about this.

In the case of fantasy RPGs (this archetype is pretty scarce in other genres) I use the term Doubting Thomas to refer to a character who refuses to believe in some supernatural part of the game. Done right, this concept is the mythos investigator in Call of Cthulhu who is always looking for a rational explanation to what's happening, or the private eye in a Chronicles of Darkness Mortals campaign who doesn't believe in vampires and thinks it's just a gang of delusional serial killers responsible for all these deaths they're tracking down.

In order for the Doubting Thomas to work, though, they need to be doubtful of something that is not a part of the day-to-day mechanics of the world. They need to be skeptical of something that is rare, unusual, or which is widely deemed impossible... like a crucified man coming back from the dead three days later, still bearing the wounds of his ordeal.

Because if you are skeptical of the regular, operating reality of the world in which you live, you don't look or sound like a reasonable skeptic... you just come across as a crackpot.

How To Avoid Becoming a Fantasy Flat Earther

Generally speaking, if something is in the common knowledge sections of the game, you can take it as writ that people know this thing exists. People outside certain communities might not know the tribal traditions and naming structure of the orcs of the Shadoval Reaches, but most of the time they're at least going to recognize that the character is an orc. And even if someone was playing a sheltered farm boy who'd never been more than two miles from where he was born, someone who thought all these other fantasy races were just bedtime stories, you wouldn't sit across the table from Harton Ax Hand and Simerian Heartsfire and tell them to their faces that orcs and elves don't exist.

They're right in front of you. It's a fact of the world.

This applies to basically everything that you will encounter.

This doesn't work any better with magical skepticists in high-magic setting, either. If a character comes from a place where there is no magic to speak of (no magical creatures, no enchantments, no sorcerers or wizards, etc.), then sure, they might initially believe that tales of magic are all fairy tales and hokum. But the first time a goblin shaman flings a fireball at them, or the first time they see a cleric repair wounds with a touch of their hand, they have seen the evidence that such a thing is real, and exists.

Denying it at that point isn't a unique or interesting character quirk. It just makes them look unreasonable at best, or stupid at worst.

You can apply this to basically any element of an accepted setting that a character refuses to believe in once they have experienced evidence that it exists. Whether it's the avowed atheist in a fantasy setting where divine envoys can be summoned with a word, or someone who refuses to believe the dead can walk being attacked by a horde of zombies, these are things they know are real aspects of the world. A character may believe in alternative explanations for what they experienced (someone who feels that god is a misnomer for the beings whose servants wield their power, for instance, or someone who feels that "arcane science" is a more accurate term instead of something vulgar like "magic"), but they shouldn't deny what is right in front of their eyes.

The thing to remember is there are plenty of rare phenomenon in any setting that one might never actually come into contact with, or be proven wrong about. Someone might feel that the ancient empire of Kalasar is actually just a myth, as were the Jadori people that made their cities fly on glowing crystals harvested from the chests of dragons in the deep earth. Stating that, from a scholarly perspective, there is no evidence that such places ever existed is probably safe, since the civilization isn't a part of everyday life.

On the other hand, if the party finds themselves in the midst of a ruin of this forgotten people, and then a massive crystal flares to life and the ruins start flying... that's probably when it's time to rethink what your character does and doesn't believe.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned For More!

That's all for this installment of Unusual Character Concepts. Hopefully this one gave you something to chew over, whether you're a player, or a dungeon master.

For more of my work, check out my Vocal and Gamers archives, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my most recent collection of short stories The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!