Tabletop RPG World Compendium - Thelassa

Thelassa is set on a dystopian world where humanity is forced underwater due to inhospitable weather conditions.

In 2023, I was a writer in a group creating a story world compendium using the FATE Accelerated system which focuses on narrative based gameplay.

My tasks were to write and flesh out sections such as World of Thelassa, Game Master Section, and Adventure Funnel. I also contributed to research we used to create a realistic and feasible story world.

The world of Thelassa has been inspired by many great works from different areas and, as such, has contributed to its eclectic characters, creatures and locations. In the world of comedy, we were inspired by sardonic cartoons such as Spongebob and Bojack Horseman. We love the

colour, playfulness and silliness of these cartoons, while still having a darker and adult edge to them. Specifically from Spongebob and Bojack’s “Fish Out of Water” episode we wanted to take the trope of “Water is Air”, which is a physics trope that essentially explains that hey, life underwater isn’t that big of a deal, in fact it’s very similar to life on-land (TV Tropes, 2023). This means that while we do have technology and mechanics in the game that mean that human characters and aquatic characters play differently, we aren’t limited by the realities of underwater physics (e.g. the fish character can sit at the human bar if they want to, and the human character can walk around the fish character’s palace). We didn’t want to restrict

our players to worrying about the physics too much and just be able to have fun being underwater. We also took inspiration from the anthropomorphisation of creatures.

To populate our undersea world with flora and fauna we turned to ever-faithful undersea documentaries, because it’s true that in this case reality IS stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to bioluminescent deep sea monsters without eyeballs! And while the physics for the

characters may be a bit wacky, we did engage in a lot of research to ensure that the rest of the world makes sense and has enough realism that the players can become immersed. For example, the underwater depths of the cities are relative to what would be realistic for the dominant character types that live there, and the location of undersea plants and the types of sea creatures you would find at various depths is accurate too.

As for genre we were inspired by a mix of adventure/fantasy young adult fiction such as Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Atlantis and RPGs such as The Elder Scrolls and Bioshock. We felt that the young adult adventure/fantasy genre was very appropriate to our world and to the FATE system in general as they generally involve heroes engaging in exciting adventures in fantastic worlds often with magical elements. The Elder Scrolls served to inform our general knowledge of the fantasy genre within games in regards to a lot of the language we used in naming locations, beasts, events, the different nations themselves and the way the history

was written. For example our world includes a “Royal Citadel”, various guilds, mess halls and marketplaces, and items common in the fantasy genre such as potions and treasure chests. Bioshock was also a huge inspiration to us as our humans have migrated underwater (albeit this

time the disaster has happened on land), and engaged in all sorts of strange genetic experiments in the past that have led to the present day. We hope that these wide ranging influences result in a rich and enjoyable underwater playground.