A roleplaying game (RPG) like The Way of the Earth (TWE) can be described as a combination of a tactical board game and an act of collaborative storytelling. Several people called players and one person called a gamemaster (GM) get together to imagine a story. Each of the players creates and controls one of the story’s central protagonists (PC), while the gamemaster creates and controls the environments the player characters encounter and the non-player characters (NPC) the player characters interact with. The board in question exists in everyone’s minds, and bits and pieces of it are created by the choices that the players and the gamemaster makes. Instead of moving pieces around the board one space a time, characters are positioned by statements of intention and declarations of action. Players use improvisational dialogue, narrative descriptions, and dice rolling to meet and overcome obstacles that the gamemaster puts before their characters, and all the while, everyone creates opportunities for each other to enliven and enlargen the story. Characters in TWE grow in strength as they overcome challenges, but growing in strength is not enough to win, and neither is dying or losing one’s mind enough to lose. Roleplaying games are won if everyone has fun and the story the players and gamemaster create together is evocative, interesting, and challenging.
Roleplaying Vaishineph in TWE
Roleplaying one of the returned souls is a bit different from roleplaying characters in other fantasy settings. Some of these differences are the sort of differences that exist between any two fantasy settings, and some are subtle differences in the way rules work or the way roleplaying is communicated. But there are also a few significant differences worth mentioning in brief here.
1) For vaishineph magic is life
Vaishineph in TWE are resurrected by the power of the aihalan, who chose them from among the dead to serve the aihalan’s purposes in a second life. The aihalan replaces the vaishineph’s blood with their own divine blood, called manna, a frost colored fire of languid flames. With manna in the place of blood vaishineph are nearly immortal. They do not have a need for food, water, air, or rest. A vaishineph can walk from one end of the shadow crescent to another without supplies or proper clothing, and without stopping. Vaishineph do not age, they heal quickly from what would be mortal wounds to others, they are immune to naturally occurring illness, and, even if killed, their aihalan can raise them to life again, though at great cost to themselves. While in many RPGs, only certain characters of certain kinds of classes can use magic to any appreciable degree, every vaishineph in TWE can Whisper with proficiency. Even the most novice of characters have access to a range of mystical abilities that they can use with casual ease to aid in combat and problem solving, and a vaishineph’s power only grows in leaps and bounds from there. Things that would be a challenge for characters in more conventional fantasy settings prove to be effortless for vaishineph. Though a vaishineph can learn to wield conventional weapons with as much skill as anyone, first and foremost, a vaishineph is a creature of elemental power. Whispering comes with its own interesting and dangerous limitations however, and players are encouraged to explore where their new boundaries in TWE’s settings are found.
2) For vaishineph magic is progression
In many fantasy RPGs, characters become progressively stronger, wiser, and more capable over time on account of the successful adventures they complete and the enemies they overcome. Characters accumulate experience points to level up, or skill points to invest in their abilities, or character points to buy higher attributes. In TWE, vaishineph progress by mastering Whispers, which are individual expressions of the divine power the vaishineph has been endowed with by their aihalan, and are somewhat akin to spells in other fantasy settings. The use of these Whispers increase the prestige of an aihalan in the eyes of the common folk and undermines the common folk’s confidence in the royal cult’s claim to sole ownership of divine power, and the mastery of these Whispers cultivates the manna inside the vaishineph, concentrating it and making it more potent. Each player character in TWE receives two development points per gameplay session, one they can spend on an exceptionally successful roll of their choosing involving a Whisper and one they can spend on a horrendously failed roll of their choosing involving a Whisper. Spending these points begins to master individual Whispers, and with three points spent fleshing out a Whisper, the Whisper is mastered. A character’s level in TWE is initially equal to the number of mastered Whispers they have. As a vaishineph grows in level, they begin to recall more and more memories of their mortal life. The vaishineph remembers skills and knowledge they once knew, and they learn how to transform those abilities into abilities that will serve them as an instrument of an aihalan’s wrath and cunning. Eventually, vaishineph will remember enough of their past lives that their path toward personal atonement will becomes clear to them. As they continue to pursue this atonement, player characters can then ascend their mastered Whispers, strengthening them even further, and earning even more character levels.
3) For vaishineph magic is redemption
A vaishineph is a bit of a blank slate in the beginning. Although vaishineph retain knowledge of the world, cultures, and languages around them, they do not have personal histories in a meaningful sense on account of their missing memories. When a player creates a vaishineph character they are not creating someone with a long list of defining past events that shape their present personalities and future aspirations. Instead, they are creating someone out of nothing but the immediate memories of their death, and working backward over time to fill in what kind of life led to that end. The Character Creation pages have a number of suggestions for how best to accomplish this backwards approach to character identity. Whispers are intimately tied to a character’s identity, and each mastered Whisper is bound to a defining memory which acts as a piece in the puzzle of who the character is. Beyond this, not all vaishineph are the same, even if they serve the same aihalan. Each vaishineph has one of five callings, a kind of covenantal relationship with their aihalan which defines the terms of their resurrection, service, and power. A vaishineph’s calling enhances their Whispers but also places restrictions on them and how they may use their mystical powers. A vaishineph understands their calling as both a burden and a goal, preventing them from lapsing into the mistakes of their past lives while driving them forward toward redemption. Ultimately, aihalan depend on vaishineph to be their word and will in the world of Hadam, and vaishineph depend on aihalan to give their hopes of redemption a concrete form. When the chance for atonement comes, a vaishineph’s power to Whisper and the calling they have been chosen for, will both be keys to seeing that opportunity fulfilled.
Themes and Setting
TWE is a dark fantasy game of subversion and redemption set in a mythic biblical past. The dark element indicates that, while heroism is possible, it is always in response to tragedies and horrors already faced, and no success is ever quite enough to save the world from much more of the same. The dark element also relates to the moral quality of many of the powerful and prominent characters and factions in TWE, who are oppressive, violent, intolerant, and tend to appreciate abstract principles of their own creation more than the lives of those who are ruined in their wake. The fantasy element indicates that magic, contest, and competing ideologies are at the heart of TWE’s fiction and gameplay. There are plentiful opportunities for one handful of characters to stand against another handful of characters in a martial or social contest to decide the fate of thousands. Subversion and redemption are two themes which play a significant role in TWE’s gameplay. Vaishineph are essentially roving spies, thieves, and assassins. They are small bands of warriors who are up against large military, state, and religious powers. Victory in a complete and total sense is all but impossible, but the slow, corrosive subversion of the great kingdoms’ might and ideological influence is a realizable goal, and likely, the focus of much of TWE’s moment to moment gameplay. Redemption too becomes a significant aspect of vaishineph life, especially as characters progress over time, and players and gamemasters alike are encouraged to delve deeply into these personal stories even in the midst of their otherwise epic adventures.
TWE is set in a chaotic and fantastical version of the ancient near east, and is heavily influenced by the history, geography, and cultures found in the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament. The contest between wandering prophets on the one hand, and kings and their priesthoods on the other, was the primary inspiration for TWE’s aihalan and vaishineph. Biblical stories like Samuel’s secret anointing of David, Nathan’s condemnation of David’s immorality and the resulting civil war, Elijah’s bloody contest with the prophets of Baal, and Micaiah’s deceptive confrontation with Ahab’s professional prophets, all serve as examples of this dynamic. Many of the people groups in TWE have fairly obvious, if drastically dramatized counterparts in the biblical texts, especially in those of the post-conquest and monarchic period represented by the biblical texts of Judges - 2nd Kings. Ancient near eastern mythology, from both within the biblical texts and from among the surrounding cultures, heavily influences the worldview of TWE’s setting and the imagining of its supernatural elements. The creation narratives in TWE are reworked versions of themes frequently repeated in actual creation narratives throughout the ancient near east, and the interesting combinations of the aihalan’s domains and powers reflects the appearance of these same combinations in the same body of texts. TWE does not aspire to any real sense of historical accuracy, but rather, attempts to make visible, evocative, and tangible some of the more unique and confronting elements of the biblical past.
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