The Mythcreant Podcast 487 – Making Your World Dangerous
We authors face a conundrum: One the one hand, it’s exciting and cool if our hero is always in danger, likely to be attacked at any moment. On the other hand, it’s hard to justify how there could be functioning towns in an area where bandit patrols lurk around every corner. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways around this difficulty, and that’s our topic for this episode!
Transcript
Generously transcribed by Arturo. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.
Intro: You are listening to the Mythcreants Podcast with your hosts: Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle.
[Music]
Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren.
Chris: And I’m Chris.
Oren: And today I want my hero to constantly have to fight for their lives. This world is full of dragons and meteors and roving murder bands, and it’s so dangerous. No one could possibly live here unless they’re constantly fighting. Also, here’s my nice little village with farms.
Chris: That somehow has missed all of these dangerous things.
Oren: Yeah, somehow it hasn’t just been flattened by all the meteors or the dragons or the murder bands. Who do those murder bands attack normally?
Chris: Yeah, murder banding must be very profitable if there are murder bands, and that many of them.
Oren: Yeah, there’s just a very high density of murder bands. I have so many questions about the economics of this area.
Chris: Is there a stable market? Can people get to go to the trade or does that not work anymore?
Oren: Works until you murder everyone, I guess. That actually happened once in a very ill-faded roleplaying game I was playing in, where someone had the idea of, like, “What if we played as bandits?”
Chris: What?
Oren: Yeah, and they tried it and then, like, we killed the villagers, and then we had no one to sell stuff to, and that was the end of the campaign.
Chris: Oh my gosh.
Oren: It was an extremely bad idea.
Chris: Yep. Sometimes, if you want to understand what the people would do in your setting, you need to get some roleplay in there too.
Oren: That is an advantage if you want to try testing your setting out with some player characters, ’cause your player characters will go for the most advantageous route every time. They will not stop to consider your precious plot.
Chris: Yeah, no. It’s funny because at least, again, it goes fast, but in a lot of situations, there are social conventions that won’t hold people back forever, but for a limited time will hold people back, right? Like the filibuster. That was always a broken rule, the filibuster that makes it so that you need 60 votes to stop debate and actually vote on something in the US Congress. But that didn’t get out of hand for a while because it wasn’t a social convention, and that social convention has deteriorated over time. Whereas if you have role players in there, they have no restraints and no ethics, and it’ll be gone immediately.
Oren: Role players: no restraints and no ethics. That’s a good description. I like it.
Chris: Yeah. So, of course, we’re also talking about Fallout.
Oren: Yeah, a little bit. This isn’t only because I saw Fallout, but it is a little bit because I saw Fallout.
Chris: Fallout is particularly ridiculous and it is a pretty low-realism setting. And again, it gets annoying because every time there’s something dark, people tend to equate darkness with realism. But I feel like Fallout is a great example of something that is dark, but obviously low realism. It’s obviously not even slightly realistic, and I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s honestly less obnoxious, because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s not trying to make you feel bad every time something dark happens; it’s almost supposed to be funny instead.
Oren: Yeah, there’s a town in Fallout 3 that is a Raider town and they’re all auto hostile, and I just want to know: How do they know I’m not a Raider? Do they have ID cards? Like, there’s so many of them; they can’t possibly know each other all on site. Like, how do they… how can I not just show up to their town and be like, “Hey guys, I’m a Raider. I have weapons, and some of ’em have blood on them.” Like they… they somehow know.
Chris: You don’t walk the walk.
Oren: Checked my, like, Raider ID badge, and it didn’t check out.
Chris: Your swagger is not on point. And Fallout is, again, they have… We’re talking about markets. They had that scene where it’s like a market town basically, and everybody gets together to actually trade, and then just somebody comes in and just shoots everybody down and, like, that’s not a situation in which you can have trade.
Oren: Yeah. If that happens regularly, your market town is just not gonna work.
Chris: Which again, it goes to the central problem here, which is that civilization and danger just don’t go together very well inherently.
Oren: Yeah. I did like how in that scene, the shop, the one shopkeeper lady is like, “Hey everybody, shoot that guy who’s disrupting our business.” And they all try to shoot him, but he’s kind of immune to bullets and so it doesn’t work.
Chris: But yeah, the whole point of society is just get rid of things that kill people, really.
Oren: Like, you probably can’t have the stationary village if there are always monsters running through it and killing people. Like, you just… it’s not gonna work, right? Like your village will fail, people will leave.
Chris: And I think more importantly is just that constant, like, theft and murder is bad for business. So, like, powerful economic forces, they want stability. If they’re powerful and in charge, what they want is to maintain the status quo. Which means not chaos, not disruptive, right? There can be situations in which, again, there are powerful criminal forces, but by default, right? whoever has power does not want things disrupted and doesn’t want their business cost to go up. And so that’s one of the reasons why, even if you have a society that’s fairly dystopian, why you’re not gonna just have tons of murder bands on the street murdering each other.
Oren: And there definitely are, unfortunately, places where there is a lot of chaos and a lot of violence for various reasons. And that can get complicated. But to put it simply, very few stories have that context, ’cause that’s real bleak. And even if you don’t mind being real bleak, it’s more complicated than most stories want to get.
Chris: So again, by default, if you’re gonna have… once people are organized, they’re going to put a stop to that.
Oren: But it occurs to me I don’t think we ever said what the topic of today’s podcast was. We were just so excited to talk about various worlds. Okay, so the topic, six minutes in, is making your world dangerous, because people want a setting where your protagonist has to carry weapons to defend themselves and is constantly running into problems that require violence, and that’s tricky to set up if you want a world that’s believable.
Chris: So should we talk about how do we… what are different ways that this works?
Oren: Yeah. One way is, of course, that you can just set your story in a place where people don’t live. Or at least no organized groups of people live. Once you do that, you can pull out a lot of stops to make it real weird and dangerous. Like the Southern Reach comes to mind with Area X, and it’s like, “Yeah, Area X is like a weird pocket dimension created by an alien probe where everything is constantly trying to kill you, but also beautiful.”
Chris: Yeah, you can have cool speculative survival stories if somebody’s alone. I think that it’s also possible to have a wilderness and have you encounter people, right? You want to encounter other people who are dangerous in the area where there literally is no law and no civilization, and nothing stops one person from just killing somebody else to steal their stuff. But you have to, you know, if it’s gonna be a big, large wilderness, you have to create a reason why these two people run into each other.
Oren: You also just want to be careful here because there is the tendency to go with… to the idea that, “Oh, well, if they don’t have an organized state, then they exist in a state of barbarism and violence,” and that’s not true. People don’t go around murdering each other regularly, regardless of whether or not they have created something as organized as a state.
Chris: Well, if we want stories like Fallout…
Oren: I mean, in that case, what you need to do is think about what their motivation is, right? If everyone going into this area is a treasure hunter, then absolutely, there could be a lot of violence, because maybe instead of hunting for treasure, they’ll just kill you and take your treasure. We want to avoid the, “Oh wow, this is a vast and untamed wilderness, and it has savage tribes,” stuff like that. Even if you avoid coding them as any real people, that’s just not nice, but gross.
Chris: And, unfortunately, that happens a lot in post-apocalyptic stories, right? and not just Fallout, the idea that if you run into somebody, people just kill each other in this setting. And it’s like, why would they do that?
Oren: But how are there any people left if that’s everyone’s default?
Chris: That’s the other problem, of course, is how could there possibly be people left? Why is there anybody still in this market town if this is a thing that happens with everybody getting shot down? But yeah, no. Some reason why people run into each other there, and of course, if there’s something valuable and scarce, right? it gives them a reason to fight over it, which is why treasure hunting works so well. I mean, you could also have a situation where you have a context where there’s multiple people who have a long history of animosity to each other, and so, whenever they encounter each other, tensions are really high because they’re afraid of each other and then it only takes one thing, you know, for them to start shooting or something like that.
Oren: Yeah. Like, you can have an area where there are multiple factions who are deeply bitter enemies, and maybe within their own areas they try to maintain safety, but, like, in the areas between where they live, like, they… anytime you run into each other, it’s, like, “Man, you who’s put your bread with the butter side down, we’re gonna get you.”
Chris: Bandits are not out of the question, but you have to have a place that is not protected but still has a lot of travelers going through there. So, you know, you have to have… civilization has fallen enough that there’s no authority that can clear the roads or the whatever, travel. Usually, when people would travel on roads, if there are roads, but there’s been some instances where, like, through the prairies or other land that’s already flat, right? there can just be wagon trails, for instance.
Oren: Right. And you want to try to make it feel natural. You want to make it seem like this is a thing that could be expected. So, for example, if your setting is… if you’re in an area where there is no real law, you could very easily have some local strong guy who sets up at the only bridge for a while and demands a toll for crossing it. Or if they’re more violent, maybe they ambush people who go to this one crossing area, because they know that’s where everyone has to be. But what you want to avoid is the random crime zone encounter where it’s like, “Oh, we’re walking down the street and this part of town looks, like, more economically disadvantaged than the other part, so obviously some thugs show up.” That’s just: A) potentially racist and B) feels real goofy. Are we in a video game? Did the screen shatter and now we’ve activated combat mode?
Chris: Yeah, it’s hard not to have the story be punching down at that point if there’s entire… if there is the implication of an area where people actually live, where the assumption is: If you walk in there, people just, you know, they’re just criminals, so they just attack you. It’s like, that doesn’t make any sense. And that’s possibly… stigmatizing somebody probably at that point.
Oren: Particularly if your protagonist is your standard fantasy/speculative fiction badass, which they usually are when you are doing this trope, because you were trying to create a reason for your badass to have to defend themselves.
Chris: Who really wants to attack your badass?
Oren: Then you’re just getting into the video game meme of the level 2 bandit who sees, like, a level 50 protagonist with flames coming out of their eyes and a giant glowing sword being like, “Yeah, I think I want to mess with that guy.”
Chris: Um, one thing that I like is just making civilization small in comparison to the context of the world. So the civilization you have is just several city-states, for instance, and there’s, like, kaiju running around, right? At that point, humans are just a small part of the world, and the world is big and overwhelming, and maybe it’s just hard to travel between city-states because the world is inherently that dangerous, and that way you can just have a lot more threats and say that humans just aren’t prepared enough to handle them.
Oren: Certainly not most humans, right? Your protagonist might be a little bit more capable than your average villager ’cause, like, they’re the one who goes outside, but it’s still very dangerous and they will need to defend themselves.
Chris: Or if your character is part of a group of nomads. They travel around and they’re alone wherever they go. You can have mini-civilization that is in a larger world that is more dangerous.
Oren: Another option that is good for some stories, less good for others, is the fact that, sure, you might have civilization and it has authorities, and those authorities try to keep violence down, but for whatever reason, they are targeting your protagonist. And at that point it becomes very likely that your protagonist will have to defend themselves.
Chris: The old bounty trick.
Oren: Yeah, you’ve got a bounty on your head.
Chris: Just you want to aggro against your protagonist. You just put out those little posters and then you can make a joke about how your protagonist looks on the poster.
Oren: You know, your protagonist is traveling through a territory occupied by an enemy nation. They have been declared a traitor to the king because they didn’t clap properly at the king’s royal banquet. Things like that. The downside to that, of course, is that they tend to be all or nothing. If your protagonist is, like, public enemy number one, it might be hard for you to do non-fighting stuff in an area. Although, if your protagonist is good at disguise, you can fix that problem. “Oh, no, we’ve alerted the guards. Fight! Fight! Fight! Okay, now hide under a box for 10 minutes and the guards will forget you were there.”
Chris: Another trick, I think, for all-out chaos is just make it so that you’re in a transition period in your world, right? Because, again, there are various reasons why there can be violence in the area, but by default, power inherently concentrates, somebody takes charge, and that person will impose their own semblance of order. So if you have, like, a bunch of chaotic factions, and I am definitely talking about City in the Middle of the Night, like, that’s not gonna last forever. City in the Middle of the Night is funny because it has… it makes a point of there being two very different cities. And one is like the Dystopian Order City and the other is like the Chaos City. And the Chaos City has all these different factions competing, but all I could think about when I was there is how unrealistic that is, because one of them would’ve taken over.
Oren: Yeah. What is stopping one of them from eventually winning or making an alliance with the others and consolidating? The people in charge don’t want to be in constant competition. They want to win so they can get back to the task of stepping on everyone below them.
Chris: And again, whenever somebody gets more power, they can use that power to get even more power, which is why generally… this is why we have to break up monopolies because, inherently, power concentrates. And so, like, any situation where you’ve got a bunch of different factions, and nobody’s really in charge and everybody’s just at war with each other, that generally does not last forever. Because eventually, again, somebody wins. But if it’s a period of transition, like, for instance, a foreign leader has just died, right? and now there’s a power vacuum and people are fighting over the power vacuum. That’s a good time to have something that’s really chaotic, and maybe there’s a lot of warfare happening in the streets and everybody’s hiding in their homes.
Oren: You can also use an emerging supernatural threat to create a similar effect. This is the case in Lockwood & Co., which is a book series that everyone at Mythcreants read a while back, and, you know, that one has a ghost problem emerging all across (presumably) the world, but they only talk about the UK. And so that’s a situation where there are increasing ghost problems everywhere, but they are emerging inside an existing civilization, and so it’s not like everyone in London can just leave. So they have to stay and deal with this problem, and then the protagonists have to fight the ghosts, and it all works out.
Chris: That one has an interesting balance because they have certain public things that they do to try to keep ghosts away from certain areas. They have special lamps or whatever, but at the same time, it’s generally expected that everybody will just be inside their homes by nightfall, when more of the ghosts come out. So they… it’s still dystopian, we still have a curfew, but at the same time, we see the ways that civilization is functioning in this ghost apocalypse.
Oren: And then, of course, there’s the classic placing your story on, like, the border between your dangerous wilderness and your more inhabited area. Now, that one is a tried and true classic. I’m not a huge fan of it, just ’cause I don’t like anything that feels like my protagonist is fighting animals. But if you make the creature sufficiently monstrous, that’s like less of an issue.
Chris: Or just anything that’s out on the outskirts where you’re far away from authorities and help can, you know… Or, for instance, if people went to start a new settlement somewhere in the wilderness, right? So they’re alone.
Oren: Yeah, moving to a new area is a good one, right? ’cause you’re not familiar with its dangers and you haven’t set up whatever is necessary to create like a stable living area, so you can… that can be the story.
Chris: Right. And then, if you want people to fight each other, and you’re like an isolated group, right? then there can be a power struggle within that group, and there’s no outside help to enforce who’s supposed to be the leader in this situation.
Oren: Right? It’s like, “Well, I’m in charge. We all voted on it.” “Okay, but did we vote on the fact that I have a gun?” There you go.
Chris: This is definitely what should happen inside the Fallout bunkers or what have you. Vaults.
Oren: Significant spoilers for the Fallout show if you haven’t seen it, but, like, it really weirded me out, this idea that everyone in Vault 33, I think it was, would just kill each other when they found out about what was going on with the overseer. Like, I can buy that some of them would want to kill the overseer, and that the overseer would probably have loyalists, and maybe there would be other factions, but a 100% fatality rate? I don’t buy it. Oh, another one that I’m a big fan of: I’ve sort of mentioned this a little bit, but it’s worth talking about specifically, is a place that has been relatively safe and stable, but something has happened that has changed that, and it’s no longer safe and stable. Because then you will have people who try to stay, right? People who try to cling on, who try to preserve what they have or maybe make things better. But because you’re in a transition period, it’s a lot easier to justify why there would be danger all over the place. But, like, also things that we associate with more stable areas, like a store.
Chris: Yeah, that’s what everybody wants. Probably one of my favorites… again, this… you actually did an article on the worldbuilding of these books, and they have some problems, but Martha Wells’ Raksura books also have some really cool things about it. And one is just a world that inherently feels very wild and dangerous, because she focuses a lot on megafauna and also on tons of different… there’s no humans in this setting. There’s just tons of non-human species, like countless ones. And what that means is that any sapient group is small in the scope of the world. And then there’s just tons of large predators everywhere. And so the characters, whenever they’re traveling, are constantly on the lookout for… even though they’re predators and they do hunting, constantly on the lookout for predators even bigger than them, that they wouldn’t be able to handle and… constantly on guard. And their group is a, you know, an independent unit that is inherently little, like a little clan, right? in the context of the world, but there’s no larger government, not really.
Oren: And they can’t just go roll up to another unit and just be like, “All right, we’re team members now,” because then they would have to deal with resources, right? Because they all need to eat and, like, a certain area might not have enough food for two clans of these… Raksura, they’re called.
Chris: So they all have their territories and they all have to very carefully manage their relationships with each other so they don’t fight other Raksura, so that kind of makes them end… like act more like independent entities. And then, when something happens and something gets stolen that they need, that’s really important, and taken far away, they don’t have any big authority that they can call. It’s just them and… and the context of the story, they’re a clan that’s been failing, right? So, when they find, like, a big wizard has something really important that it was stolen from them, it’s just up to them to get it back from the big dangerous wizard.
Oren: Yeah. And you can do similar dynamics with, say, urban fantasy, right? Where, especially if you have a masquerade, don’t ask too many questions about the masquerade, but if your urban fantasy is one in which the creatures in some way derive sustenance from humans, whether that’s literally by feeding on them or if it’s like the humans produce a certain amount of emotional energy that your creatures need or whatever, that can be a really good way to have to spread out how many magical creatures there can be, ’cause you can’t have more than a certain number of psychic vampires in an area, or else the humans will all leave. Then you can have them be cool, territorial, like big cats.
Chris: Yes. And same thing, right? if they can’t announce themselves to the humans, they can’t also benefit from the support of human authorities.
Oren: Yeah, that’s why all urban fantasy stories have similar politics to, like, feudal fiefs, like all arguing, each with each other. Sure, maybe there’s a distant authority somewhere, but really, your neighbor is the one you have to worry about.
Chris: Of course, Buffy completely ruined this. Like, in multiple ways. It’s like Buffy is going with this idea that, “Okay, we can’t go to the cops ’cause the cops would just get killed.” So Buffy’s on her own, but we have both all this Watcher Council, which sounds like a group with resources, and then, of course, we involve the US government for some reason in season four, and then they have to disappear.
Oren: Choices were definitely made in season four. That’s the best we can say.
Chris: That’s the best we can say.
Oren: All right, I think we’ve successfully made this podcast a pretty dangerous place to be. So we are gonna go ahead and call this one.
Chris: And you can seek safety at our Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/mythcreants.
Oren: And before we go, I want to thank a few of our existing patrons. First, there’s Aman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We will talk to you next week.
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Outro: This has been the Mythcreants Podcast. Opening and closing theme: The Princess Who Saved Herself by Jonathan Colton.