"Syncretism: The practice of combining different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in theology and mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity" - Wikipedia
Myth and folklore have a long history of syncretism. Many of the tales we know contain bits and pieces from different times and different cultures, taking them all and weaving them together in an entirely new creation that appeals to our narrative instincts and paints a satisfying picture with a distinct flavor.
My own efforts at doing this begin with two ideas of Empedocles (5th century BCE) and Paracelcus (16th century) as my starting point. The first from Empedocles is that there is a set of basic elements out of which everything consists. The four classics are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. To these I add Time. (If for no other reason than I love time travel stories!) The second is the that there are beings that are aligned to each of these elements in an essential way. Paracelcus claims four basic categories of these beings: Gnomes (earth), Undines (water), Sylphs (air), and Salamanders (fire). I have added Elves (time) to this list.
My thesis, if you will, is as follows:
- Creatures are living things created by the Gods
- Plants and Animals are Creatures
- Creatures are made up of all five elements
- A being made up of a single element is not a Creature
- Anything not a Creature is either a God, a Monster, or Fey being
I built upon this foundation by starting with the pantheon. A god for each of the five elements, plus two gods to rule over the Creatures. The Green Man for the plant kingdom, the The Horned God for the animal kingdom. Seven creator gods who created The World in seven days.
Next I looked at the existing monsters in D&D for an pattern that stood out. Among Stone Giants, Fire Giants, Frost Giants, Red Dragons and White Dragons, I saw what could be interpreted as themes of the core elements. So for each of my five elements, (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Time) there is a sub-category of Dragon, and a sub-category of Giant. To these I also added Trolls, Hags, and Goblins.
With this hierarchy, possible combinations are Fire-Dragon, Earth-Troll, and Water-Hag, or Time-Goblin. I then looked at myth and folklore to find examples that fit withing these categories. I'll be delving into more detail on each of these, but my Kobolds (drawn from German myth) are now Earth-Goblins, more closely resembling the Pech (Introduced to D&D in The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth).
These monsters are closely related to the Fey. Beings who are also aligned to a single elements. It now becomes interesting to consider what makes a Gnome or Dwarf a Fey being, while a Kobold is a monster.
From one point of view, I don't think such distinctions matter. But my goal is to come up with a set of rules that does not depart too far from standard OSR systems. This means clearly defining what qualifies as a Person, a Monster, or a Sylvan Being if possible for the sake of interpreting spell descriptions.
Part of my reason for writing this blog is to think through all this, and see the holes I have yet to fill. I run a human-only PC campaign, so it is fairly easy for me to define a "person" as a human, as I have eliminated the category of Demi-Human. Hold Person only works therefore, on humans.
I could just classify Fey as monsters, so you would need to cast Hold Monster to affect an Elf or Dwarf. But this doesn't feel right to me, and I think Hold Fey or Hold Sylvan Being would be more apt. I could classify Monsters as Fey beings, which makes more sense, so Hold Monster becomes Hold Sylvan Being or Hold Fey. However, this does not address the issue of monsters that are monsters because they are cursed, which is another favorite folklore motif of mine.
So I have yet to solve the puzzle, what makes one a Fey being and the other a Monster. Free Will something something curse something mortality something...
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| Marcel Rieder |
Interesting system
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