The world of Jaga
I wrote before about the world of Olkhar and my tendency to be a serial world builder. Apparently every couple years now, I create an entirely new campaign world for D&D and telling stories in.
The latest is called Jaga, a world set in a dark age but where the players rapidly learn is built atop the ruins of at least several other civilizations.
The idea for this setting started after listening to Matt Colville muse about why there weren’t more campaign settings in post apocalyptic or post civilization worlds. From there I started watching a lot of post apocalyptic material, but I shied away from the grim possibilities of such a setting. I’d already run a gritty D&D campaign in 5e. I’d run several big sweeping campaigns set in my fantasy-obvious-analogous(ish) to European history setting. So I decided to go a bit sillier. I started watching Thundarr the Barbarian and the Herculoids.
Watching the old Hanna Barberra cartoons got me thinking about taking a cartoon approach to the campaign, and I think the players have really jumped on board the idea. Several of them have lengthy descriptions of their transformation sequences and how the clip is the same every time, using the same background art from the first time they transformed, regardless of what the terrain is like when they do it again. Any time a secret door is found, we all agree that the art for the door panel stood out obviously from the surrounding background art.
Before we begin pretty much any campaign I ask the players that if it were a TV show what are three things their character is doing in the opening credits sequence. (I lifted this from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer roleplaying game, or at least from my friend Steve’s BtVS campaign.) For the Jaga D&D campaigns we came up with more things: what does their action figure look like? What are its accessories? What commercial tie ins are their character used in? Also the players now at the end of each “episode” come up with a PSA, usually hilariously inappropriate for kids, involving death, or the subjugation of ones foes.
The cartoon like setting also allows me to avoid having to worry about continuity between adventures. Things still progress in the world. The villains remember the times the party foiled their plans, the villagers et al remember the times the party helped them, but we don’t have to come up a reason for why we start with the party sneaking into the bad guy’s castle or why they’re in a particular stretch of the forest. We can just start them there and and ask the players to come up with a line of dialogue explaining it away. This gives the players a chance to be part of the story, not just as their characters, but be involved in the forming of the backstory and episodic plots as well.
Also the cartoon like setting allows for the weirdest beasts and strangest amalgam of ideas. Anything can happen. There isn’t as set a system of expectations as happens in a typical fantasy campaign.
In an effort to piecemeal out the world’s backstory, I’ve borrowed heavily from Fringe (one of my favorite shows with my all time favorite character), and there are full modern and even futuristic cities frozen in amber, waiting to be discovered. In fact the villains are more aware of this than the PCs, so there are teams of archeologists working to excavate these sites, hampered by the monsters and beasts of a fantasy campaign.
The simplicity and light hearted fun of the Jaga campaigns has made a nice switch from the politically complex campaigns set in Olkhar.
