Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most popular tabletop role-playing games out there, and for good reason. The mechanics are solid, and even the basic lore and official settings have immense depth and mystery to them. However, not everyone is satisfied with what the books provide. Some people want to be more creative, to design a kingdom, a country, a world for their players to explore. Sophomore Astrid Fishman is one of those people, and for her D&D campaigns, she has built the magnificent world of Aturn.
Fishman could not point to a specific time where she created Aturn. Rather, she said that Aturn is more of an “amalgam,” a “leftover casserole of a ton of scrapped ideas and worlds.”
At first, Aturn wasn’t even a whole world, it was just a part of an island in Fishman’s first campaign. “It started off as a peninsula, then expanded into the rest of the island, then expanded into some islands across the sea, then an archipelago surrounded by fog… and suddenly, there is an entire world map,” Fishman said.
The name Aturn just happened to stick, now being used for both the planet most of Fishman’s campaigns take place in, as well as the greater universe(s) in the lore. In terms of inspiration, Fishman said, “Every single piece of media I consume, in one way or another, ends up being added into the inspiration pile.”
However, some sources are more notable and significant than others. “Arcane has been a super big one recently, especially with season two having come out late last year,” Fishman said.
There is also the impact that other people, mainly players and friends, have on the world. The world is, “less mine only, and more mine and my players,” Fishman said.
Of course, with all this inspiration and general creative drive, Fishman has deviated from ‘standard’ D&D lore and mechanics, such as the way damage works. Fishman said, “In base D&D, [damage] makes no sense; How can one person punch you [and] deal one damage, if one damage is enough to break a bone?”
She has also changed the magic system; Where base D&D has something called “the Weave,” which has its own set of rules and characteristics, Fishman’s world has what’s been nicknamed “the Arcane,” (and yes, that name was taken from the show Arcane mentioned above) which functions differently and “might be sentient.”
With the amount of depth Fishman has gone into while creating Aturn (she has begun creating new subatomic particles for magic), it stands to reason that she would enjoy creating some parts more than others. Fishman divided her answer into multiple categories; for locations, she said that one of her favorite places has been the Redwood, because “it’s silly, it’s joyous, [and] its lore is actually funny.” The Redwood is, of course, similar in appearance to the redwood forests of California and Oregon, but “supersized.”
In terms of history, Fishman said that her favorite part to create was “the Elven Empire, and just a lot of stuff with the elves, purely because they have had so much effect on the world that it’s just a lot more to work with.”
Aturn has been a collaborative labor of love between Fishman and her friends. All of this effort serves as not just a creative outlet, but a source of countless memories and endless enjoyment for everyone involved. Aturn is beautiful, and none of it would exist without Astrid Fishman.
