Welcome to Rathe - The World Design of Flesh and Blood Part 1

After playing Flesh and Blood TCG casually for a few months and failing to find a local playgroup two weeks in a row, I finally sat down to read Flesh and Blood: Welcome to Rathe in preparation for writing a campaign.

Excitement. That's what I've felt a lot of in the past few weeks as I've gotten into Flesh and Blood. Some of it is from having a new hobby to replace those that I've lost over the years. Most of it, I think, is from the design of the game, the art, and a handful of people I enjoy watching explore the game. I love seeing potential in things, and this IP and the studio of people behind it have a lot of potential.

Trading Card Games are an incredible medium for bringing people together. Their unifying force transcends age, race, religion, gender, and even social status, through a common language of "playing great games."
— Flesh and Blood: Welcome to Rathe, Legend Story Studios

These are the first words you see when you open the cover. I agree with them, deeply. Yet, after reading the rest of the book, I feel that some aspects of the world do not align well with that message.

That isn't to say I disliked the book, or its writing and information, or its art. I enjoyed all of those things, and I am still enthusiastic about Flesh and Blood as a game, and about its world—and creating spaces within that world for my own (and potentially others') enjoyment—because of its potential.

I love planting seeds and growing plants of all kinds, literally and figuratively. I view each of my worldbuilding projects in much the same way as I view gardening and taking care of my own and others' plants. Or, in this case, more like a large yard and all of its grass, trees, and shrubs, and potential gardens and visiting animals.
    This series is going to be about me digging into the setting of Flesh and Blood as it has been presented so far by Legend Story Studios, finding seeds (ideas) that interest me, and growing (developing) them into something I can use to create my own story and characters around.

Eventually (whether or not I find other people who are interested and willing to be emotionally invested) this will culminate as a homebrew adventure series that can be played by using print-and-play documents or Tabletop Simulator.
    As a matter of fact, I already have a prologue adventure primed for playtesting, and the fair draft of my story outline and chapters are ready for further development. But first I'd like to learn more; ideally, everything I make for this project would merge with and expand on the existing setting and story threads with fewer seams and smaller voids, just as I want my homebrew game design to work with the existing systems, mechanics, and overall design of the official game.

Welcome to Rathe: The World Map

"Wrath?" "Wraith?" I don't know the official pronunciation but it's cool either way.

Map of Rathe (Extended), Legend Story Studios

Entirely ignoring the nice art in the extended frame to focus on the geography of the world, I like this map a lot, and I don't like it at the same time. However, I also recognize that this map is just a design, and it has not been developed with a vast and complex history and future in mind (as far as I can tell by looking at the map itself).
    It's a design that gives some structure and visual information to help frame parts of the world the players will engage with. It's easy to understand at first glance, and puts things like nations/factions and cities into perspective. It was made to solve a problem ("Where are these people from?"), and it solves that problem well enough.

From a different perspective, I also do not think it is a great world map. It feels small to me because of the amount of clutter and nothing that seems to show the scale of anything, which also isn't clearly intentional or not. The landmass itself is an amorphous blob shape with a center that is notably featureless.
    Geographical features seem placed without much consideration to the geography of the continent. For example, the mountains going east-west don't transition into peninsulas nor islands when they reach the eastern coast, and there are very few transitions between the features in any of the six or seven segments of the amoeba-like landmass. There are mountains in the south, nothing (presumably plains) in the center, a large forest in the west, a smaller forest in the northeast, fields and a large pit or sinkhole in the north-northwest, and a few cliffs, rivers, and detached lakes scattered around. At the very western edge of the map is a giant animal skeleton surrounded by cliffs, presumably a wasteland of some sort. Lastly, there are two islands, one at the very southern edge near the center, and the other at the very northwestern corner.
    Nothing feels like it flows or guides your eye to any other feature, region, or landmark. Instead, it feels like a pizza with a different set of toppings on each slice. Again, this is fine for many reasons, and it is more than able to inspire people like me who love worldbuilding, but it is also lacking in many ways and ends up feeling unfinished (which, as far as I can tell, it was never intended to be a finished, fantastic, sophisticated piece of fantasy cartography).

One bigger, more serious issue that comes up for me when looking at this map, and others like it, is that it makes every region and city and culture feel starkly segregated from each other. When I see that one of the regions is named the "Savage Lands" and that green-skinned people are from that region (in contrast to the non-green-skinned people from all the other regions) it makes that feeling much worse, and, frankly, gross. Just skimming through the section in the book about the Savage Lands gives more gross feelings, as the heroic human adventurers have obvious parallels to real-world conquistadors and other white explorers and settlers wishing to dominate other parts of the world.
    For my headcanon—thinking the same way with the same goals as I would if I were writing adventures for my own Eberron campaign, or if I were hired as a worldbuilding, writing, and/or sensitivity reading consultant—these particular qualities of the world do not exist.
    I do not mean that I will refuse to acknowledge that the "Savage Lands" exists in the world, rather I mean that name, for me, needs more thought and consideration behind it, and the segregated slices of the geographical features need to be developed and blended together in a way that makes more sense and creates less of that gross feeling.

More specifically, that name, if I would use it in my fan fiction and other unofficial content, is likely an in-world label from another region waging war or holding a grudge against that region. Continuing to follow that thought strand, it could be that this map, in-world, was created a long time ago or, possibly, as a kind of propaganda against the Savage Lands.

But that's an easy way to get around the issue. The better way to address it is through writing. Not a few salient points presented in a short story—and absolutely not a new piece of lore or short list of retcons—but by developing the world with these flaws in mind, writing sophisticated and complex characters that come from all over the world, and telling a long, serious story.
    Whether that story is an epic fantasy book, political drama, slice of life, or a tabletop adventure doesn't matter so much to me, but I want to see something like that happen, I want to see this world developed and see great stories come out of the work put into it.
    Since I'm already in the middle of making my own RPG campaign for the game and its world, I'll decide to not wait, and simply construct my own headcanon and create my own characters and story elements that transform the setting my players and I are going to play in from something that is (so far) shallow and somewhat gross in areas to something that is exciting, enjoyable, and that everyone can experience happily and seriously, completely enjoy.

But why not find another setting since you found so many problems with this one? Well, I genuinely enjoy the parts of the setting that show up in the game itself, and anyone I would play the game or my homebrew/fan content with is going to engage with this setting. By using my own world, or any other setting, I would be fighting an uphill battle on many fronts.
    I also thoroughly enjoy tackling these problems as a writer, game designer, worldbuilder, and what-have-you, and discovering little pieces of existing worlds that I can expand on with other enthusiastic people.

I did consider adapting my ideas for this campaign to an Asunder campaign and homebrew world I created for that game, but for now I'm excited to get back into card games and creating an experience like the one I had with the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game (its Raid and Dungeon Decks in particular).
    If all else fails, I salvage some scraps from this and adapt them to my Asunder world and, potentially, a tabletop RPG I've been designing off and on for a few years.

Solana: But One Perspective

In my headcanon, the entire world as presented by the book is the world as viewed by the people of Solana. It is propaganda fabricated and dispersed by the government, the cult/church, the aristocracy, an individual leader of the distant past, or all of the above.
    The simplicity of the continent, the way it is split into distinct segments, and each monoculture in those segments are not representative of the actual world. Rather, this is how people in Solana are taught, how the Grand Magister and his allies see the world, how Solanians have viewed other people and cultures beyond their walls since the inception of the small town hundreds of years ago.

Just like how world maps in the real world have been drawn out of proportion to place greater emphasis on the importance of certain countries or landmasses over others, the in-world map of Rathe we are shown is disproportionate, simplistic, and incomplete by some combination of biased design and honest miscalculations never corrected since it was first drafted.

Heroes, Heretics

Long ago, a team of surveyors, cartographers, mathematicians, and astronomers sponsored by one of the multiple Magisters of their time (with permission from the Grand Magister) were sent outside the town's gate to travel as far as the rations and coin in their pockets could take them. When they returned home years later—each of them changed from their clothes and skin to their mind and soul, sharing new objects, seeds and dirt, and wondrous stories with every curious person on the road—their stacks of calculations and collection of maps were rejected by the new Magisters of Divinity appointed during the long adventures.
    Their maps and books were stowed in the deepest bowels of that old ampitheatre, lost over time, eventually destroyed by floods, scribes making room for new tomes, and infrastructural reconstruction. To appease the discontent and wanderthirsty population, another mapmaker was instructed to draw a world more acceptable to the simple and obstinate minds of the gentry—they, and the city, are the center of the universe, after all, and their people must believe the same.

So, what happened to those first surveyors? None can say save a few old bookkeepers who have seen the heavy bars of ink redacting their names from official records, and decrees by lower Magisters calling for a stray soul to be found and brought back to the Light by whatever means necessary. Simply put, they were erased from the city's official history, along with every other cartographer whose name is replaced every few years by another Magister, aristocrat, cleric, scribe, or teacher who proved their devotion to Sol and the preservation of their grand city.
    They still have a legacy, however, even without their names. Many ancient pieces of vellum and scrolls in the Solarium's libraries were brought by them, and no less than a dozen artefacts in the vault of Signarus were eventually discovered because of the knowledge they shared and one particularly adventurous student they mentored. All but a scant few plants grown in the Silvaris and farmed in the Golden Fields were brought either by them personally or by the hundreds of travelers, minstrels, and merchants who came from all across the continent after meeting one of the mapmakers (or a bard spreading wondrous rumors about the adventurers).

Not So Simple

In reality, Solana itself is the only place in the world with anything close to a simplistic monoculture. Even just outside the city walls, the dress and body types and attitudes and beliefs of people are drastically different and endlessly diverse. From the kingdom's many different families of sedentary farmers and traveling merchants to the many sub-factions within the goverment's militaries and old cliques of the original cult/church, numerous beliefs and sub-cultures have remained and transformed over a dozen generations.
    Since the construction of those first timber walls and creaking gate hinges and pitifully shallow moat, memories and the city's history is perhaps best preserved by the oral lore of those deep-rooted farmers and merchants who retain the messy details (funny, gross, traumatic, miraculous, and otherwise) that paint and smudge the colors of their sub-cultures but get left out of so many hand-written books.

Not to mention new concepts percolating through the jaded elderly and inquisitive youth populations all around the city—ideas the aristocracy has been unable to quietly put down to maintain their carefully-crafted status quo, and philosophies the Grand Magister himself may soon be forced to accept, at least to a degree.

So, that's one step for me on a new project. How long it will last and how consistently I will work on it (and whether or not I will finish it) depends on many factors. For one, if I never get a local playgroup together at least once a week, I won't be able to play the game much and designing anything for it will be too much of a challenge, too much work and stress with too little fun (fun and mental health being the whole point of the hobby).
    For another, if nobody shows any interest in the story I'm writing and the community disagrees with the direction of the project—or someone at Legend Story Studios sees it and disagrees enough to issue some form of cease and desist as if it harms their company—then I'll have to be content with working on it alone in private and the majority of the work I've already done (none of which is really in this article) will never be published. It'd be cool if that did not happen.

I'm also in the middle of another chunk of massive life changes, packing to move by the end of the month but still not yet knowing where I'm going to be able to live, and scheduling meetings and interviews for jobs that I can physically and mentally do day-to-day or a couple times a week (on top taking care of myself as a stressed and sleep-deprived neurodivergent person every day, and the handicapped person I visit three times a week).

Deep breath.

But no need for worrying. For now, I'll just keep doing what I find enjoyable. And try to get back to a more consistent sleep schedule.

Next time, I might dive deeper into the Savage Lands, and hopefully get to Aria soon.

Or, maybe I'll develop a new world map in spite of an email response telling me that Legend Story Studios is entirely, totally, completely uninterested in whatever I'm doing and that they are not looking for GMs or worldbuilders or writers and they are not offering any licenses and... And so on. Expected, of course, and understandable.

Just ideas.

Thanks for reading! Good luck, have fun, and stay safe!

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