Casting Shadows

The standard prompt for #RPGaDAY2024 for Day 13 is to share something in your RPG life that had you imagining ‘evocative environments.’ When I think about the places where our games take place, I am often reminded of the incredible landscapes, the entirely possible if unbelievable landscapes, of the world we live upon. Most of my gaming is set on or around Earth in one form or another.

Time and again I am drawn to harsh but beautiful settings like Canada’s North or its Rocky Mountains. I am drawn to the cold dark waters and stone-lined beaches of its East Coast. Just as often I am compelled to use the surface of the moon or the bottom of the ocean to capture the plentiful paradoxes of the world we call home.

I like to see the eyes of the players backlit with their imaginations and memories, their ideas and their experiences. I like to know that they have a sense of place as they set foot in unreal versions of lands they know from life or from dream. Our experiences, our knowledge, our imaginations, our memories, and our creativity all combine to make the amazing and the mundane more than just fantastic.

They can make it real.