World Building Through Class Constraint

I went to a small Halloween party with some friends last week - among the costumes were a monk, a witch, a vampire, and a gorilla. It got me thinking about those 4 as core classes in an RPG setting - an alternative to the classic fighter, magic-user, cleric (and rogue/thief). 

What would that class selection say from a world building perspective? There's a religious order, but they're not the armor and mace type. There's also magic, but how are witches differentiated from magic-users? Are they a women only group, in contrast to a male only monkhood? Is it magical movement based in the countryside, as opposed to a city-based magic school? Is it focused on an oral spellcasting tradition rather than spellbooks and study? Gorillas - I guess they're sentient. Do these gorillas wear armor and have their own civilization or are they unarmored, beefy brawlers, barely one step above their wild cousins? Is the setting near a tropical jungle - a gorilla's natural habitat? What role do vampires play into this group? Are they the sneaky rogue type, blending into shadows? Are they spellcaster-fighter hybrids? I like this group - it's evocative; it says something about the world when these are your only options to be an adventurer.

In the original versions of D&D, there was a limited selection of classes. With race as class, most adventurers would be humans - the world that you came out of was human centric. The classes you can choose from, when classes are limited, say something. Using the Acolyte and Mage (from Carcass Crawler for Old School Essentials) instead of Clerics and Magic-Users presents a setting with lower magic. A selection with only one human class might imply a world where the human kingdoms are in decline - or a campaign set in a region where few humans have come. A selection of drow, duergar, svirfneblin, and human suggests something different than elf, dwarf, gnome, and human about where the campaign is and what it will entail.

As a fun exercise, I picked random groups of 4 classes from this list of Old School Essentials classes and imagined what these settings would look like.

Patrol Beyond the Borderlands

• Paladin
• Hephaestan
• Ranger
• Beast Master

"Rest Under Rocks" by Stanisław Witkiewicz

This campaign takes place in the wilderness - on the edge of human civilization, where the Ranger and Beast Master would be most at home. There's one demihuman class - Hephaestans (aka Vulcans) - presumably their home is deep across the wilderness or they have an enclave in the area. This is also a magical setting - Paladins and Rangers have access to magic (though only at a high level), the Hephaestan's abilities could be seen as magic and Beast Masters can have a magical connection to animals. There's no squishy spellcasters here, everybody fits into a martial or semi-martial role - any party composition would be well suited for combat. I envision this campaign involving a lot of hexcrawling -  travelling around the region, helping out isolated villages. It reminds me of Rangers of the Midden Vale and its setting as well as West Marches games. There'd be an emphasis on discovering locations and and mapping safe routes.

Knaves of the Four Realms

• Goblin
• Bard
• Hephaestan
• Half-Elf

"Evening, Cattle Watering" by Samuel Palmer

We have three demihumans now. The bard represents divine spellcasting while Half-Elves are their arcane counterpoint. In the previous setting, Hephaestans held the role in my mind that elves would in traditional fantasy - a long lived, mysterious, people group who was probably as curious about humans as humans were about them. Here, the question is raised of how do elves and Hephaestan's differ? I might lean into their source material and say that elves come from the fey realm (true elves are horribly unknowable, only the "fey-touched" half-elves are relatable enough to humans to be considered for adventurers) while Hephaestans "fell from the stars" and have been trapped here, in the realm of humans. You could interpret this as half-elves representing the Fey lands, Bards the human realm, Hephaestans the stars above, and Goblins the rock and stone below - each class has its own "domain" it comes from. Perhaps these four groups had to come together to confront a threat to the region? Perhaps this campaign would have a big emphasis on travel between realms or planes of the world - each class could act as "ambassadors" of a sort in their home.

Communion of the Saints

• Knight
• Ranger
• Druid
• Paladin

"A Procession in the Catacomb of Callistus" by Alberto Pisa

An all human group, like the first one the ranger and druid are classes more at home in the wilderness. the knight and paladin would be connected to a lord or bishop in a town or city. There's three spellcasters here and they're all divine spellcasters. Do they represent different expressions of the same religious tradition, perhaps one that broke away from the other, or do they have different traditions and different gods? This group wouldn't be motivated by treasure for its own gain, but should have more ideological motivation - honor or religious devotion. Perhaps, like in the Nightwick Abbey game I'm in, there's a location so horribly evil and corrupt that religious orders feel compelled to cleanse it.

The Caverns of the Unknown Beyond Good and Evil

• Duergar
• Warden
• Wood Elves
• Chaos Knight

"Cave of Surtshellir or Robber’s Cavern, Iceland" by Charles Hamilton Smith

This is a weird group. Wardens are compelled to be Lawful or Neutral. Chaos Knights are compelled to be chaotic. Duergar find their homes deep underground and hate natural sunlight while Wardens and Wood Elves are at home outdoors. Wardens explicitly protect their lands from the forces of chaos. This is a much lower magic group - only the Chaos Knight and Wood Elf gains spells and both are divine casters. Perhaps this group is exploring a great cave system beneath the wilderness, descending under a mountain. This could be seen as a "neutral" land that neither the wardens and elves nor the forces of chaos lay claim to or it could be an eldritch location, strange to even the gods of law and chaos. This could also be home to the duergars, explaining their presence. I'd  make sure the Warden's abilities had uses under the earth - perhaps there'd be large caverns that operate as their own wildernesses locations of different biomes. 

Daggers in the Nighttime

• Mycelian
• Hephaestan
• Assassin
• Halfling

"Figures Around A Fire On A River Bank Beneath A City Fortification At Night" by Cornelis van der Schalcke

We have three demihumans again. The dice loved the Hephaestans today, but we also get the Mycelians and Halflings. Mycelians represent the most martial class and we have no true spellcasters. I'd make this an urban setting, set in a Lankhmar-type city. The PCs would be a group of outcasts and outlaws on the edges of society, just trying to get by. Several years ago, a tragedy (war, plague, magical disaster?) destroyed the pastoral Halfling homelands; today, there is a large number of refugees from that event displaced to the city. Perhaps the halfling lands were the breadbaskets of the land, and their destruction, combined with the influx of refugees have but a strain on the means of food production and distribution in the city. This could be the motivation for the party - earn money to provide for their families/social groups in the midst of socio-economic turmoil. The Mycelians were discovered in the sewers and catacombs of the city - no one, not even them, knows how they came to be, but they've developed their own society beneath the city. The Hephaestans could be the extra-planar visitors like above, or they could represent visitors from a distant kingdom - either way, they're a small and distrusted faction within the city. The Assassins are group of cutthroats and thieves whose methods are too brutal for even the thieves' guild, which they have been kicked out of. I'm picturing an almost Blades in the Dark style campaign, with a focus on social connectionss and faction relationships.