Fairy Tales to help you create Fantasy Worlds and RPG's
Fairy Tale Home
Russian Fairy Tales
The Fiend
The Dead Mother
The Treasure
The Awful Drunkard
The Bad Wife
The Smith and the Demon
Ivan Popyalof
The Norka
Baba Yaga
Vasilissa the Fair
The Headless Princess
The Soldiers Midnight Watch
The Soldier and the Vampire
Welsh Fairy Tales
THE MIGHTY MONSTER AFANG
THE
TWO CAT
WITCHES
HOW
THE CYMRY LAND BECAME INHABITED
THE
GOLDEN HARP
THE
GREAT RED DRAGON OF WALES
THE
TOUCH OF IRON
THE
TREASURE STONE OF THE FAIRIES
A
BOY THAT VISITED FAIRYLAND
THE
WELSHERY AND THE NORMANS
THE
WELSH FAIRIES HOLD A MEETING
POWELL,
PRINCE OF DYFED
WHY
THE BACK DOOR WAS FRONT
THE
RED BANDITS OF MONTGOMERY
THE
FAIRY CONGRESS
Grimm's Fairy Tales
The Goose Girl
The Gnomes and the Princess
The King of the Golden Mountain
The Water of Life
Our Lady's Child
Hansel and Gretel |
The Headless Princess, The Soldiers Midnight Watch, Undeath in Russian Fiary tales, and the Fantasy Role Playing Game
In Russian Fairy
Tales destroying and killing something that is evil once and for all is
a truely difficult task, for to kill something that is evil one must
then deal with its remains or it will come back to life, and sometimes
it is these remains that are the most dangerous aspect of evil. For
when one slays a beast if they should strike it once it is dead it will
come back to life. Other times it will reanimate itself the night after
they slay it unless they burn it, in the some fairy tales buring the
creature is not enough however, for as it is burnt it will attempt to
escape in the form of swams of animals. Should even a single worm from
this swarm escape into the ground the creature will come back to slay
the one who tried to kill it. Death in Russia gets even more tricky as
witches are involved for these work to slay and torment their killers
for in the death of those who wronged them the witch will return to
life.
Evils nearly industructable nature is more then a simple story element
in Russian fairy tales for it acts as a means to show the need for
courage in the world, and the danger of the Russian life. As the
creator of a Fantasy world, or the GM in a Role Playing Game you must
realize that any world in which your characters are is infantly more
dangerous then that of Russia, and so their tales, and those of
your character can be much darker. For in the fantasy world
witches, and demons and other fears are real, they plauge the villages,
the cities, and the forests of the world which you have created. When
in such a dark world perhaps the most important thing for survivle is
simply knowledge and understanding, the knowledge which elders can pass
on.
One can see this lesson well illustrated in both "The Headless
Princess" and "The Soldiers Midnight Watch." In these stories the
discovery and the death of the witch are just the beginings of the main
characters problems, for in death the gain new powers. Victory in such
cases comes not through strength for in one of these tales the
character is a young boy, rather victory comes at the advise of the
elders of the characters, in the case of "The Headless Princess" this
is a teacher, while in the Midnight Watch the advisor is the main
characters grandfather.
For Role Playing Games the characters too can know elders, elders who
advise them on how to defeat the great evils which the region is
facing. In this way you can have extreamly complex villions, and
strange tasks such as fetching the heart of some rare creature or an
egg from a well deep in the forset. It is also possable that you could
provide an added layer of difficulty to many of the stories. As in
order to defeat a villion the characters must keep the elder safe or
they won't know how to defeat the villions which they could face in the
future, or to solve the problems that are sure to arise when the
villion returns from the grave.
Further interest can be added to a RPG campaign through elder
characters by the fact that the characters will then have a means of
interacting with the normal world of the people around them. This is a
rarety in role playing games, for typically in such fantasy worlds the
characters do not attend dances, weddings, funerals, or hang out in the
bar with the normal villagers. These stories rather are often very
closed off, leaving the PC's fairly isolated. through having a
character such as an elder with which the PC's must connect you as the
GM or quest writter can draw them into the richness of the world in
which they are playing. |