Landscapes of Fear; or, How to keep PCs afraid: Part 1

Inspired by two excellent posts on using ecology to make encounters more realistic and exciting (Writing Encounters in Networks and Trophic Encounters), I started reflecting on how I use ecology in my weekly game.  I realized I use it in two main ways: to create a sense of verisimilitude, and to create fear.  Realism seems self-evident and the folks over in r/worldbuilding (and linked above) have that covered. In this first post, I am going to describe how I use the ecology of fear to world-build.  In my second post, I am going to describe how I use it to make my PCs very, very afraid.

The Behavorial Ecology of Fear

I have been reading the Hobbit to my son, and I was struck by the quiet menace of the Desolation of Smaug.  Few birds, sparse grass, no trees: the dragon poisoned the rich land of Dale and drove away so many birds that they flooded in after his death.  

And you know what?  Tolkien anticipated an amazing ecological effect that was discovered in the 1990s when wolves were re-introduced to Yellowstone: the Landscape of Fear.  The few dozen wolves had an outsize impact on elk and bison, keeping them constantly looking and running, eating less and dying in winter from low fat reserves.  As a result of less elk browsing, the whole ecosystem changed: aspen and willow appeared along rivers, beaver came back, and tree-loving songbirds returned as well.  Just like when Smaug died.

When you read the DnD 5e monster manual, they talk a bit about the effects on the surrounding landscape of lairs of dragons and other powerful creatures.  After all, DnD and many modern fantasy RPGs are built on the bones of Tolkien.  But looking at the maps of the various fantasy worlds and settings, I just feel like most don't take creating landscapes of fear far enough (Dark Sun excepted, as always).  They really should be asking: 

1) How does fear of monsters fundamentally change the world?  

2) How can we cause PCs to fear monsters?  

Macro-scale: Building a world full of fear

Animals live in worlds bounded by fear: songbirds get picked off by hawks, deer fear wolves, and fish huddle in constant vigilance for sharks.  Human societies that are close to nature often share this vigilance and/or fear. The forest was a dangerous place in medieval Europe, full of bears and wolves and bandits, and the Grimm fairy tales reflect that peasant distrust of forests.  The forest remains a dangerous place for modern poor farmers in India and Nepal, with tigers and leopards attacking villagers and boars and monkeys stealing out to raid fields.  

It's hard to argue that medieval population densities would be achieved by a society exposed to constant monster attacks.  Even if magic and fighting ability were prevalent, food is produced by those skilled in its production: they don't have time to also learn fighting or magic.  Not and maximize production like medieval peasants did!  

So instead, they would constantly watch and maybe flee, like elk before wolves, and food production would fall, and population density will be lower.  One Bullette could destroy most of Normandy before heroes ever arrived on the scene. And in a frontier, it's likely that every surviving adult would be have some experience as a fighter, making low-level PCs less 'unique heroes', more 'fools that want money'.  

Settings that are Points of Light, where cities and towns are small and widely spaced, take this lesson to heart.  If we want to have high population densities in a setting, the monster problem has to have been locally solved.  And honestly?  I don't love Points of Light settings--I want more towns, more politics, more international plots and evil organizations...and yeah, more stuff.  AND I want monsters.  Monsters could be rare, yeah, but where's the fun in that?

So what is keeping the monsters at bay?  

That's one central question of fantasy world-building.  Here are d8 answers I like to use in my settings, with landscapes of fear everywhere:

1--They don't keep them at bay.  Instead folk live in harmony with the spirits/monsters of the world, through sacrifice, rituals, folklore, knowledge of monster behavior and ecology, and adapted societies.  A monster is just an angry spirit, and most spirits can be propitiated.  If you want to cross the Deep, you need the right magic to pass the Kraken without notice.  The goblins do not touch villages surrounded by a ring of bloodweed.  This take works especially well when the PCs are travelers, ignorant of the local customs and ecology.  

2--Walls make good neighbors.  Be they of hewed stone, natural mountains or stormy oceans, or of magic (or all three), one side protects civilization, the other is the Wild.  The degree to which these walls are effective barriers affects the contrast.  The elves raised a line of fairy-mounds to keep out aberrations that hunt them.  Sea monsters never enter shallow shore waters--no one knows why.  The desert Wall keeps the titanic radioactive worm Utu-Hagal from us.  This approach allows you to place civilization in close proximity to a wilderness filled with monsters.

3--Distance is the trick.  The worst monsters are far away, legends that come raiding once a generation at most.  Around their homes are broken landscapes riddled with object demonstrations of their power.  Societies near monsters are warped by fear of them, building towns on lakes (humans near Smaug) or hiding in caverns (elves near Smaug).  Only a fool beards monsters in their lairs. Many of the worst monsters are dormant in this approach, and if the PCs fail in their quest, they doom whole regions.  

4--Constant war.  Every child is training to fight the monsters, and society is organized around driving them back.  Learning the patterns and behavior of monsters is critical for survival. Kobold raids come once a year with the first full moon of spring, and the walled villages are ready to meet them.  The coastal towns use alchemical fire to push the barbarians and their fanged steeds beyond the Great Road. Colonizers of the great jungle live in massive forts, every hand ready to hold back the native's zombie hordes.  I don't do this everywhere in my worlds, but a region at constant war is a great recipe for tension, for quests, and for making the heroes wonder who the real bad guys are.

5--The Gods.  This is why the people pray to anything and everything that can protect them from the dark and the fangs.  They raise up gods, godlings, minor spirits, anything that can get the job done.  When that fails, they worship the strongest monster to keep the others away.  The city of Eversink is the body of the goddess Denari, who protects her citizens from the angry Marshes next door.  Each village in the western frontier worships a spirit, a demi-godling whose job it is to patrol and keep them safe at night.  If we want PCs to engage with gods and strange religions, what better way than making it personal?  Gods can't be everywhere, and even a powerful god can need help driving back the dark.  And if you go with many, many gods and godlings, there is no canon to track, and none of them are perfect or all-powerful.  Evil (or self-interested) quest-givers abound!

6--The Worst are Locked Away.  Similar to the Walls and Distance, but requiring neither.  The monsters flourish in another world, adjacent to our own.  The reason civilization has risen again is that forgotten armies of aberrations have been locked behind Portals, waiting for a chance to invade.  The worst godlings, the ones that turn on their people, become locked in their temples, sinking into the earth.  Dungeons and the underworld are cursed prisons built by the ancients, containing the monsters they could not kill.  This is a fun premise if you want the monsters to be right there, just beyond daily life.

7--Evil defeats itself.  This is the main premise of Krynn, a DnD setting, and assumes that monsters are more interested in attacking each other (or weak/disorganized relative to humanity).  The water grubs of the deep desert are focused on attacking one another.  The dragons of the far mountains rarely leave, or their lairs will be bespoilt by rivals.  The orc tribes only unite once every ten generations.  I feel like this is the default explanation in many traditional RPG settings: there's nothing wrong with it, just feels over-used and too broadly applied.  You really think the hobgoblins couldn't win?  Order of the Stick would like a word.

8--Humans are a sometimes food.  The funniest and most creative responses to this post I have seen so far (from my colleague Jay(189birds) and a creative Redditor who I hope will let me cite them here one day), is that humans and other sentients just are not nutritious enough for monster populations to grow and/or keep eating past a proverbial late-night raid on the fridge for ice cream.  Or that humans and our allies smell bad, and our pollution and stink keeps monsters at bay.  Regardless, something about us is off, and that keeps the monsters in check.  This premise is a great one, especially because it points to a world in which humans and their allies could live in harmony with monsters, but are not for various reasons.  Maybe we need them for alchemical products, like Bennett's novel 'The Tainted Cup'?  Maybe our stink waxes and wanes over time?

If you have more ways you world-build and keep monsters at bay (or not), I'd love to hear them in the comments.  My current game, for reasons of prep-time and personal preference, is a pastiche of different settings and modules.  There, I use most of the examples above. Every society is different, and what some societies consider a monster, others consider citizens (e.g., orcs).  But all the societies are vigilant against monsters, and the PCs learn from the locals what monsters to fear...often after the fact.  This is 5e after all, and super-heroic they feel until it all goes wrong.

The PCs are adventuring into different regions, ignorant of the local approaches to monsters or the history.  They are learning these answers about monsters at their cost (so far, one shipwreck, one tsunami, a month of Geas servitude after they released a monster and destroyed a city block, one plague of mimics, and Gates just waiting to be opened...).  I tell them nothing, and they get adventure, fearful escapes, and mysteries they are just starting to fathom.  

So, the PCs start out cautious because the locals are afraid or reverent, and then I teach them to fear the landscape of monsters (running away makes winning all the sweeter). How, exactly, is the subject for Part 2 of this post.