The truth is, you don't always have to avoid the river police. Sometimes you just have to toss them out, saying that they're outside their area of jurisdiction.Originally Posted by TheMarcus7
Being more serious, the river police are very valuable for people who want rivers in their fantasy RPG setting to flow the way that they do in the real world. But that's also where their jurisdiction ends.
Fantasy and fantasy RPG settings have their roots in mythology, and many mythologies have their own geographical and geological premises that are pretty far removed from those of the real world. So ... if you want to make your setting more or less in the manner that a mythology explained it, you may have to ignore some of the otherwise meritorious rules that the river police want to enforce. On the other hand, once you've mapped in the parts of your mythology-based world that violate the "river rules," you might do well to obey the rules in mapping what's beyond the violated areas. The reason to do that is that your world will have a more natural feel to it and work more down the lines of the logic that players in the setting understand.
My arguments here should lead one to the reasonable conclusion that I - or in my case the entire Vintyri (TM) Project - are among those who intentionally live outside of the jurisdiction of the river police. That's correct. The root of our Jörðgarð (TM) campaign setting is Eddaic. The Elder and Prosaic Icelandic Eddas are the granddaddy of a large segment of the fantasy RPG and novel markets, including the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. In fact, Prof. Tolkien offers a prime example of operating outside of police jurisdiction, in his case, the jurisdiction of the mountain police. If they had had their say, the mountains of Mordor would have been banned, and we would have had an entirely different story, if any at all, from Prof. Tolkien.
In the Eddas, the 11 great rivers of the world all flow down from Hvergelmir on Upphafsjall, and from there they flow through great mountain ranges in 11 different directions from due east in a half circle to due west. So, the Jörðgarð setting does indeed have a single source that feeds 11 rivers, and these 11 rivers forge gorges through great mountains that are without a parallel in the real world. The river police would be out of bounds in that part of the setting. However, once the 11 great rivers have broken through the mountains, they follow the otherwise sensible (in most respects) rules by which the river police work.
However, I think the river police give too little credit to some real world realities that can be very useful in RPG settings:
An old truism (but not one enforced by the river police) tells as that all rivers flow into the sea. The unfortunate thing about truisms is that they're untrue. There are some rivers that never flow into the sea.
We find a prime example in the Bear, Jordan and Weber Rivers, in the state of Utah in the U.S.A. These three rivers flow into the Great Salt Lake on the Bonneville Flats. The Great Salt Lake has no outlet. Its water does not flow into the sea; it evaporates just as sea water does.
This brings us round in something of a circle, where we may be able to find a bit of accuracy in our inaccuracy after all: The Great Salt Lake is what remains of a great inland pluvial sea in prehistoric times.
Another interesting example in the U.S.A. is the link of Lake Tahoe, the Truckee River and Pyramid Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and Nevada. Melting snow from the mountains flows down into the Tahoe Basin, which is 1,645 feet/501m deep, forming Lake Tahoe. The great lake has only a single outlet, as the river police demand, the Truckee River.
Nearby Donner Lake also is a part of this system. Its outlet is Donner Creek, a tributary of the Truckee, which flows down Nevada's east face of the Sierra and across the Northern Nevada desert into another basin, Lake Pyramid, which, like the Great Salt Lake, has no outlet.
There also are streams that spring from the ground, forge a course along the surface and then flow into a cave system running underground once more. The Puerto Princessa River in the Philippines is one of the better known examples.
Don't hesitate to break the rules of truisms in the manner Mother Nature does, if it serves your campaign well. But if you do so, follow another of nature's examples: Don't overdo it. Rivers that flow back into the ground or that never reach the sea are exceptions. They should be that in your gaming world too.
Reply With Quote
