This page discusses not what Edge of the Sea is or how to play it, but why I created it. Some people like that kind of thing. If you don't, you aren't missing anything by not reading this. Go back to the main page and read about the actual game.
These are some of the primary sources for Edge of the Sea.
I can't, at this point, truthfully say how I was inspired to write Edge of the Sea, as I don't really remember. I can speak a bit more cogently on what I see as the reasons to muck around with some random guy's untested homebrew game setting.
A lot of the most common themes in roleplaying involve defending the status quo. Protect the "good" kingdom from the orc horde. Play a superhero and defend the city from supervillains. Stop the dark god from "upsetting the balance." Let's face it, much of the time, the PC's are tools of the man.
I'm not going to go all psycho on that and try to attribute roleplaying some kind of oppressive psychological significance, but, given that a lot of the more compelling game concepts do revolve around protecting the status quo, how about having a status quo that's actually really worth defending? Life among the Free Islanders of the Archipelago can be pretty utopian, and isn't that what you want to protect? We (that is, roleplayers) are mostly members of fairly egalitarian, fairly democractic, fairly unstratified societies. Would it actually feel better to play out characters who are like that, than ones in less savory ones?
I don't know, but it seems like it's worth a try.
It has been accurately observed that most fantasy roleplaying draws its most important genre elements not from either medieval history or medieval romance, but from the American Old West. The concept of a sort of frontier society, in which much of the law was what a strong man could grab for himself, and with scattered settlements of surprising sophistication seperated by vast uncharted, dangerous wilderness, is at the heart of D&D-style fantasy.
So the Archipelago is at least partially my attempt to rationalize that and put it in some kind of framework that makes sense at at least first brush. My idea was to support both the fun, action-oriented style of play, and the concept of coming to a new location and clearing out challenges there, then moving on, of traditional fantasy, but also have a world that the characters could dig a little deeper into without snapping suspension of disbelief.
Swords and sorcery roleplaying has languished in the last decade while other sub-genres have experienced a rennaisance. Modern-day games have really broadened in their stylistic and aesthetic approaches, ranging from Nobilis to Vampire, and even the traditional ghetto of sci-fi gaming has seen some new approaches with Transhuman Space and Trinity, but, with the exception of Seven Seas, nobody seems interested in moving beyond pseudo-medieval-Europe or pseudo-medieval-Japan in the swords and sorcery realm.
So, tropical islands are pretty. Edge of the Sea offers, for me, a setting where I can play a fairly traditional sword and sorcery game, but have different trappings, where I can "see" characters who look different, who act a bit different. And isn't variety the spice of life?
Go back to the index page for Edge of the Sea