The Iron Gates - Maps, Clues, and Speeches

I'm working on an Alexandrian Dark Souls setting. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. You don't really need to read the other parts first, but it might help. This is (probably) the last planning post. After this, I'll try to stick to locations, boss fights, items, classes, etc.

The map isn't accurate or complete or to scale. It's just a tool I'm using to plan the content.

PCs will start on the far left, in Outer Meridia. Some locations will have mapped areas but most will use an encounter table or two.

For comparison, here's the Dark Souls 1 map.

Gold and the Promise of Safety

OSR-type games tend to work best when there is localized order but general disorder. "Safe" towns and "dangerous" wilderness/dungeons. Somewhere the PCs can sell loot and somewhere they can find loot.

In this game, markets are bonfires. If there's a market, there's enough local order to allow gold to flow without violence. In a setting where gold is closely tied to ambition, that's more important than you might think.

Repeated Information

Dark Souls relies on repetition. Items with vital lore clues in their description have a random drop rate. NPC questlines have bizarre activation conditions that usually require an internet guide, crowdsourced testing, and a great deal of time.

Well, this is an RPG. The PCs only have one shot. I'll try to layer as many clues and hints as I can into everything they encounter.

Readaloud Text

Embers of the Forgotten Kingdom uses a very unusual technique to convey lore. They have Dark Soul-style item descriptions in each chapter heading page.

Now, this is definitely in keeping with the video game's style... but it's completely useless to the players! The items aren't indexed, so the GM can't flip back and read off the text when needed. They are purely for someone reading the book as a novel. It's one of those frustrating little things that looks good on paper but is useless in practice.
So I'm not going to be doing things like that. I'm going to try to embed as much lore as possible in player-facing content and minimize read-aloud text wherever possible. Descriptions can be read verbatim or summarized.

Dark Souls Names

Anor Londo. Knight Artorias. The Way of White. Yhorm the Giant. Gwynevere and Gwyndolin.

These names are immediately evocative. They evoke real-world myths: Guinevere and Lancelot and Sir Gawain. The developers even used Tolkien's elvish language dictionary to name things. I'm going to try to use names with the same level of care. I'll probably fail, but I'll try.

I also want to use a limited number of names. Jumping into the middle of a module and seeing dozens of named NPCs and/or locations and/or setting concepts mixed together is, for me, a tiring and disheartening experience. If you're going to name something you should have a good reason, and you should tell the GM or the players something of vital importance.

"As children of the abbey, both Ceidwen and Caddell were forced to live lives of the faithful under the care of the Stargazers. Learning the abbey’s role in the Cycle, as well as the nature of souls, aiding their passage into the Hearth. [sic]"

-Embers of the Forgotten Kingdom pg. 31

Speeches

The only "mandatory" readloud text will be speeches. Dark Souls embeds a lot of lore in NPC dialogue. Possibly because the speeches are translated, or possibly because they were originally very strange, speeches have a peculiar cadence. Unlike most things in Dark Souls, this is relatively easy to replicate in a tabletop RPG. I'll use the same format I used in Kidnap the Archpriest - a few introductory words, and then optional answers to questions the PCs might ask.

I also intend to use repeated phrases. I really recommend this as a worldbuilding technique. For some reason players tend to fixate on these phrases and remember them session to session.

"For gold, and crowns of gold"
     "Iron must be quenched in blood." 
          "As it was in Iskandar's day."
                         "A dream, a terrible dream."

Sherbakov Stanislav

Not the Boss Fight You Expected

Dark Souls has several unusual boss fights. Sometimes they don't make a lot of sense if you don't pay attention to the lore. Yhorm the Giant is a good example. He's a giant king. He has very powerful sword... next to his throne. Run over, grab it, and it's trivial to kill him.What a weird fight.

But if you understand the lore (and the linked video helps), you'll realize he put the sword there deliberately. It was half of a matched pair. Its twin is carried by Yhorm's close friend.

Recurring NPCS

The PCs may cross paths with several NPCs. A knight traveling to fight. A merchant with wild dreams. An agent of the church, looking for anyone who might disrupt the existing order. I'm going to try to reference these NPCs in a limited number of locations to prevent flipping back and forth constantly... or telling a novel-length story in the middle of a module.