Running Florenelle 2: Literary Elements and Story in Florenelle
Why Add Boring Language Arts Stuff?
Storytelling is one of the key elements of Dungeons & Dragons. Without it, the characters are just soulless pawns on a board slashing at randomly spawned monsters. Story is about making things believable as to why they’re happening in this kind of game. Because Florenelle was designed by an aspiring author, it’s innately a story-based setting. The goal behind this article is how to give more weight to your storytelling and deepen the tension by understanding the themes behind characters or factions and to create your own.
If you’re hoping to aim for an authentic feel with the setting, this is how you do it in the background and subtle mindsets behind what moves the story along.
Storyteller Tools
Like with drawing, anyone can draw a simple shape. However, adding in material like symbolism, themes, foreshadowing, and more can help add further details to your work. So how does that look in the setting?
Symbolism
“The practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character.”
One of the easiest literary tools that can be very effective is symbolism. The means giving something an ulterior meaning. One of the most common examples is black being death, white being life, green for safety, and red for danger.
With Florenelle, black and pale white is used to showcase that something is, or has been affected by something, dangerous. With the Arkonian Order especially, they aren’t entirely black in their color scheme, which can be implied they aren’t fully an evil faction. It’s the Nameless Host where this malevolent force seeks the pure destruction of life.
Themes
A subject or topic of discourse or of artistic representation
Themes are the subtle messages or exploration of a topic behind your story. With Lord of the Rings, one of the core themes with that is the damage greed does.
Florenelle doesn’t have a core theme, as the factions and characters within the setting instead carry those themes. The Doctrine Society and Arcane League is the theme of overly careful study vs the lack of morality in scientific pursuit. The Arkonian Order is about the struggle of living in the past and accepting the times. For the Necromantic War, it’s core theme is about how desperate are you to defeat a foe and because of it, nobody wins.
Tones
The general character or attitude of a place, piece of writing, situation, etc.
Tone is about how something should feel or sound. Going to grandma’s house for cookies and pie sounds splendid. It involves a lot of showing and not telling with this trick. So what tones would someone want to use for the setting?
Assuming your campaign and adventures are set in the current 1700’s period, it’s assumed you’re working with the Restoration Era, year zero being the end of the Necromantic War and the start of a better life for everyone. The general tone by this point should be that the world has been explored again but that means there’s still room for places to be left unchecked.
The Arkonian Order at its heart should feel bitter and resentful for those who put them in the Shadowfell. They wear dark and intimidating clothes. They command undead monsters and can be revived from death, so why should they fear both?
On the surface like with places in Calvora and Thracallia, it’s very average and mundane. The sun comes up and everyone’s back to work. When the sun goes down, people are back to bed. Commoners are blissfully unaware of the strangeness that lurks deeper and darker within the setting. In a sense, it should feel blissful and naive until what lurks outside disrupts normality and causes panic.
The Story Itself
Sometimes the most daunting thing can be working with the story itself. Trying to create something feasible can feel exhausting and stressful, especially with a whole new setting. So what can be done to help? Try these tricks to help keep the story flowing and provide ideas to add onto them.
Cause and Effect
The easiest way to gauge where a story is going is purely from cause and effect. A domino will fall onto another until those dominoes run out. If you corner an animal, expect it to lash out violently to defend itself. Use this method to build yourself a chain reaction that builds cohesive paths that rationalizes how and why an outcome was met.
So if we start our campaign with the premise that Arkengrath is returning, that means the old Coalition alliance from the Necromantic War will have a lot of strong words about it when they catch wind of it. So it’s only reasonable of our heroes to reach out to them and get that potent ally behind them. If we start an adventure with monsters attacking the local village, the rulers over it will want someone to inspect it. If their sentries don’t return then it’s clear they’ll want the heroes to step in and resolve that mystery.
The Seed
Starting small is the best way to go when you’re unsure of things. Starting with just a simple idea is good enough. From there, just ask the right questions to develop it. Maybe you want to play with the idea of a meteor crashing. So what happens next? It’s a hard question to answer and it’s why you need to be meticulous to grow your idea in the right direction.
So a meteor crashes. Where? Into a farm. Which continent would the farm be on? Calvora. Which of the Calvoran powers would this farm be in? Rhine Kaiserreich. Did anyone survive the impact or was it a distance away? It landed into a wheat field. Did anything supernatural happen because of it?
Just keep asking the right questions to carve out the adventure you’re hoping to see it become. Otherwise, it’ll stagnate if you can’t develop excitement and danger.
Conclusion
Hopefully this helps refine the campaign and adventures you’re running in general or further prepares you on aiming for a more authentic Florenelle feeling if you’ve chosen this setting.
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