The Logline of the Second Session The company proved themselves to Mogott of Ada'an - the leader of an Anantir merchant caravan and a Keeper of the Emporium — by killing a putrid Mangled Son.
Introducing the World’s Factions - The Psychological Aesthetic Default
Continuing from last article’s advice of frontloading the cool things, where the players were introduced to two corporeal gods, I felt it was time to introduce a more down-to-earth faction. Mogott of Ada’an leads a band of Dervish, spiritualist merchants who roam the globe. The Dervish are gonna be important down the line because the company likely won’t stay in any one place for too long, meaning that mobile NPC merchants will be a welcome respite from the dangers of the untamed wilderness.
One of the problems most DMs face when attempting to introduce something exotic into their campaign, whether they are aware of it or not, is the psychological aesthetic default. Simply put, if you want something to feel exotic or foreign in a TTRPG game, you must really drive home the difference of that thing from the psychological aesthetic default in the minds of the players. It is all too easy for you the DM to have a really cool aesthetic concept for something in your world which simply gets overlooked by the players if it does not conform to the default imagery with which the players associate.
Using Proxies to Anchor New Aesthetic Defaults
As an example, if you enter a fantasy city and I tell you that there’s a soldier standing in front of you, you most likely imagine a typical medieval European soldier - likely someone with plate or mail armor, a shield and a sword, and maybe your mind adds a spear from time to time. You most likely don’t imagine a janissary dubbed in banded leather armor with a plumed helm and a scimitar at their side. (Note that historical accuracy has little to do with the visual imagination; the movie-making place in that coastal province has more influence.) Point is, if you want your players to imagine those janissaries in place of typical medieval knights when you say “soldier”, you need to do your due diligence when describing the soldiers the characters come across — you must repeat the description each time a soldier is encountered until your players have it drilled into their heads that the soldiers in your world are distinct from the psychological aesthetic default of the medieval man-at-arms. This is because you not only must overcome the psychological aesthetic default, getting you to neutral ground, you must also establish a new aesthetic default, twice the work.
One way to anchor the minds of your players on the aesthetic default you want for any given group of people in your world is to use a proxy - a single person or entity that serves as a representative focal point for the broader aesthetic. Instead of requiring your players to remember the aesthetic of a vague multitude of people (the Anantir merchant caravan), all they need to remember is the aesthetic of one person (Mogott of Ada’an). By proxy, any Anantir the players come across in the world will be placed in the aesthetic category of Mogott of Ada’an. All I have to do is ensure that Mogott’s description is specific and evocative.
This newly-forged aesthetic default will not remain for long, not unless your players are students of Turkish history. It must be constantly maintained, requiring you to re-describe the aesthetic of your proxy (or anyone similar the PCs come across). You are battling the entropic nature of the psychological aesthetic default. If you want something in the world — NPCs, architecture, weaponry, creatures, etc — to feel truly exotic or foreign, recognize that it won’t be a trivial task, but it’s totally doable.
An Aside: The Emporium - A Neat Idea for Gold Dumping
The players underwent a trial for Mogott of Ada’an, having messed up their first impression with a critical failure on their reaction roll. Mogott forced them to go kill a putrid creature that had been leading a band of marauders in the nearby canyon to prove themselves. Doing so, the company acquired a decent chunk of loot and restored their affinity with Mogott, granting them access to the Emporium. Mogott of Ada’an is the first keeper of the Emporium the characters have encountered. The Emporium is a dimensional magic item shop that can be accessed through a number of keepers strewn about the world. It serves the vital function of being a gold dump for the company and loosely ties into the corporeal versus ethereal theme of the campaign, which I shall touch on later.
The Next Leg of the Campaign
The company will arrive in the first settlement of the campaign, a ramshackle outpost tucked into that very same canyon, a humble place called Lim. From there, the true sandboxiness of the campaign shall open up to the players. I will present a number of paths for them to take, each varying in risk versus reward, but none being presented as more urgent or “main-questy” than any other. Thus the sanctity of the sandbox will be maintained and the players will take their pick of adventure.
As the campaign is on hold this week (due to scheduling shenanigans), expect the next article the first week of August.