I reviewed The Three Musketeers: D’artagnan recently, but I only realized I hadn’t yet reviewed it because I was deep in the process of creating a T3M inspired setting for an RPG. I knew I wanted the intrigue, the swordplay, the ambition, and the thrill of being small players discovering a much larger political game. So I hunted for and pulled out the themes that felt crucial to T3M’s fun, trying to find ways to create a setting that would evoke those while also incorporating the elements my players contributed.

I’ll lay some of it out for you.

From T3M, I knew that I wanted: 

• Swashbuckling
• Intrigue
• Political infighting above your pay grade (PCs as catspaws, or not calling all the shots)
• Social drama (contacts, allies, friends, dependents, lovers, and their vulnerabilities)
• Subterfuge and clandestine violence
• Factionalism, factional violence, threat of invasion & dangerous foreign powers

My players and I brainstormed these other elements:

• Ottoman-esque trappings
• Hot, dry, and/or arid climate (Mediterranean?)
• No laser cannons
• Low magic (dangerous? Forbidden? Foreign? Collaborate for more detail), pro- and anti-magic factions
• Secret societies
• Largely human culture (more detail later)
• Strong imperial culture
• Political marriage alliances (including cross-species, with same-species partners for producing heirs)
• Common adoption practices (including cross-species), especially in noble houses
• Magic-y black powder

From the T3M themes, I inferred that we needed a central government with numerous factions competing for power and influence. That would deliver the subterfuge and political infighting that makes even minor scuffles in T3M so exciting. My players added that they’d like to see something a little more multipolar rather than a centralized, unquestioned, absolutist monarchy, and that fit in well with my vague recollection of slightly more decentralized Ottoman power structures in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

With that as the jumping off point, we came up with a powerful central imperial court (ruled by an Emperor/Empress/Emprox) that relied on more independent governors to oversee provinces distant from the capital. Those governors would be powerful authorities in their own rights, and there’d be a great deal of competition for those positions. Given the government’s decentralization, the already minimal oversight of the governors might lapse at times. Noble houses would also control large areas, and would engage in low level conflict (espionage, bribery, blackmail, assassination, raids and small-scale war) while trying to keep their contests minor and boring enough that the imperial court didn’t feel compelled to take note and stop them.

With the “strong imperial culture,” I decided to take a very traditional, very human route. The people of the empire are tolerant of other members of the empire. The empire is even fairly tolerant; walking, talking, and dressing like an Imperial is far more important than your skin color, body shape, or species. People from distant lands can acculturate and be considered Imperials themselves. Those who cling to beliefs and practices from far afield, let alone those who espouse those beliefs and practices in public, are far more likely to be laughed at, ridiculed, shunned, or threatened (with severity varying by how threatening any practice or belief may be to Imperial culture).

Geography and climate-wise, I just leapt right for Istanbul. The capital city is called Bospor (I’m amused by the derivation from Bosporus, and I like the name for some reason—I’ve used it in other settings too), and its environs straddle a large strait.

I knew I wanted some black powder weapons. They felt right for anything inspired by T3M, and I’ve long enjoyed the dynamic of swords and single-shot firearms in fiction and in games. The guns are scary, but they’re also finicky and inaccurate and slow to reload. Once they’re fired, the sword rules the fight. But in D&D, Prestidigitation puts paid to normal black powder.

Because I didn’t want a single cast of Prestidigitation to blow up any powder keg, our black powder stand-in had to be somehow magical. I also wanted these black powder weapons to feel special and exceptional. Since we’d just been playing a game in which gnomish laser cannons exist, and those felt like they encroached on the specialness of these firearms, we agreed that no laser cannons were present in this setting, and that firearms were expensive.

In fact, because of how D&D’s magic system tends to warp the world by implication, we decided that most magic would be rare. More importantly, within the campaign’s central setting magic would be seen as bad and frightening. This is a key cultural assumption of the empire. There are exceptions to this idea of magic being frightening, of course; people within this culture don’t see healing potions or such as bad, despite such potions being clearly magical (institutional assumptions, woo!). For the most part, however, people see magic as a dangerous threat tied to foreigners, evil creatures, and barbarians. It’s a cultural issue though, so pro- and anti-magic factions compete for influence within the court and the government, vying for power. And even further afield, in other places where most magic isn’t seen as bad, magic is still rare.

Basic imperial history: the empire began as a peace treaty, ending a long war between humans and dragonborn. This treaty was formalized by a cross-species marriage that united two leading families from the different species, followed by the adoption of several children from both species. That set the cultural pattern which has continued to the present day.

Imperial culture is predominantly dragonborn & human. Due to player request, tieflings & aasimar do exist. My addition was that they can be born at random to anyone, and folks have different stories about why (your parents had sex with a demon/angel!, you’re chosen by some greater power!, you’re innately good/bad!). Those stories aren’t necessarily right, and there’re plenty of arguments about them, as well as stories of villainous aasimar and virtuous tieflings.

Dragonborn in this setting live longer than humans, maturing marginally slower and senescing much more slowly than their human counterparts. Most die between 120 to 150 years of age, and remain in good health as they age. Dragonborn are significantly less fertile than humans on average, and their eggs may become inviable if moved. When the humans and dragonborn were at war (pre-empire), destroying vulnerable eggs was a crucial element of human strategy. Perhaps because of this history, families are expected to have many children, and children in the modern empire are especially cherished—with some frightening exceptions which I’ll detail below.

Most noble houses (indeed, many families in general) include both dragonborn and humans in the same family, as equals (except for their actual titles and holdings, etc.). People, and especially rulers without an heir-of-the-body, frequently adopt someone as their heir. This is even more true of dragonborn rulers due to the slow and difficult nature of producing an heir-of-the-body. Adoptees are often from another noble house the adopter wants closer relations with, and often from a different species. Occasionally adoptees may come from within the same noble house as the adopter, following internal house politics.

Legally, adopted children and biological children are indistinguishable. Culturally speaking, adoptees are absolutely as much a part of their new family as anyone born into the family, including cross-species adoptees. Anyone suggesting otherwise is extremely rude. Those who espouse these opinions in public—or repeatedly—may be seen as outsiders, dangerous radicals, rebellious anti-empire zealots, or exceptionally stupid. Despite this, arguments about adoption or parentage do arise when a pretender to some title can find (or create) an error in the documentation of adoption or lineage—greed and ambition are powerful motivators, after all.

Notably, an adopted child’s children from prior to their adoption aren’t also automatically adopted. This can create confusing situations in which full siblings, whose parent was adopted between their births, might have totally separate claims. Adult adoptees’ children are sometimes adopted as well, and there may be preconditions and agreements about who is or is not in the line of succession.

Which brings us to succession.

One of the things I love about T3M is the constant scheming surrounding the succession to the throne. With the noble houses and the more distributed power structure I already knew I wanted for this setting, and the tidbits I remember from the inheritance struggles of Ottoman history, I knew I wanted to create plenty of opportunities for scheming (hence some of the choices above). Get ready for some setting details, and a lot of talk of succession.

The current ruler is Empress Sakar of House Sarkaz, a dragonborn. She adopted Rumi Hakal of House Hakal (an adult) as her child. She does not yet have any other children, nor is she married. Her being unmarried is a big deal; everyone wants to have their family be chosen to provide her an Emperor-consort. As is common in the empire, she is expected to have more than one heir (especially since her adopted child is an adult). There are rumors of a secret love-match, but there are many rumors and this one is not particularly trusted.

The Emperor / Empress / Emprox (Empress from here on out) is expected to forgo close connection to her previous House—she is now the Empire, after all. But her children may belong to different Houses depending on who the Empress marries, adopts, or lays with for an heir-of-the-body. There’s a strong culture expectation of multiple children, as noted above, especially for nobility & doubly-so for rulers.

Seniority is not the supreme qualification for inheritance.

This means there are often multiple heirs with competing claims after any ruler dies, with messy succession crises lying in wait if no heir can garner sufficient support and either kill their siblings or build a coalition.

A successful succession might look like murdering all your siblings, including the babies (which doesn’t delegitimize your claim, but does scare everyone and may earn you a reputation for madness). Or a successful pretender might ally with enough of their fellow claimants that their competitors fade into obscurity or swear fealty. More often, success looks like a mix: some of the other claimants suffer accidents, some swear loyalty, some get cushy positions of authority in your realm, some vanish, some retreat from public life after embarrassing personal details and scandals are revealed… etc.

It’s most prestigious for the Empress if her siblings hold positions of power (envoys, satraps, etc), but that is dangerous because it empowers rivals with claims on the throne.

My brother Nate followed a bunch of my speculation (not appearing here) with this distillation:

This is part of why there are so many different ongoing intrigues, both in court but especially beyond the capital, while everyone pays fealty (honestly or not) to the Empress. Houses are jockeying for position with the current ruler, trying to get a suitable heir with a claim on the throne, trying to build alliances that favor their own candidates or an allied candidate, planning for several generations ahead, avenging the slights of previous generations, etc. The players in this game are in for the long haul.

This also means that, while there certainly are some more powerful noble houses, no noble house is ever truly out of the running. Any of them might be called on to provide the Empress with a mate, or a marriage alliance, or with some other service—which gives the noble house influence and prestige, and thus power. It is widely accepted that wise Empresses spread their affections around a lot, thereby enriching everybody. Empresses that only deal with their own previous House, or with one or two other Houses, are often seen as unwise, dangerous, etc., even as every House is HUNGRY for getting as much of the Empress’s attention as they can while keeping other Houses down.

Okay, enough for now. As you can see, I’m paying more attention to the systems of how the setting works than I am to the specifics of any given noble title. Once I have the systems hammered out, once I understand them, I can fill in endless streams of nobles and claimants and… really anyone who wants a leg up in the never-ending status game that is the imperial court. I think it will fuel plenty of good subterfuge for my players, which is precisely what I want.