As the holiday season arrives in the real world, it’s time to think about how they might work in a fictional one. If you’ve created a world for your tabletop roleplaying game campaign or creative project - or if you’re currently making one - then holidays are an interesting worldbuilding element to consider including.
Holidays can say a lot about your fictional world - they can inform your players and audience about key elements around your world’s different cultures, civilizations, and factions. They can also act as a trigger or core concept to shape a quest or storyline around, or otherwise provide an interesting backdrop to play against or tell a story against.
Why are holidays a great worldbuilding tool?
Holidays can serve as a subtle and immersive approach to worldbuilding, thanks to the fact that they inform through interaction and participation. These are examples of worldbuilding that your audience can choose to engage with - whether they’re for, against, or neutral towards them.
What do holidays tell us about a group or a person? It really depends on what the holiday represents and how they view it. Some holidays can tell you something about a character’s opinions on their culture, on their nation’s history, on what they cherish, and their core beliefs. All of this without having to clumsily explain anything, because the audience can see these things by interacting with - and roleplaying as - these characters themselves.
How do you brainstorm fictional holidays for your world?
When thinking about introducing fictional holidays into your world, there are several things to consider, such as what your holiday is commemorating. Your fictional holidays can commemorate a wide variety of things:
- A historical event that’s important to that culture (e.g. Juneteenth)
- A day celebrating or damming an important figure (e.g. Martin Luther King Day)
- A holiday representing a particular key belief or beliefs (e.g. Hanukkah)
- An event that marks a transition moment in the year (e.g. Summer Solstice)
How different characters, organizations, and cultures react to these holidays should inform players and audiences about them. One faction might celebrate a historical event because it marks a major turning point for their people, whilst another faction might be disdainful towards the same event because their ancestors were forced to relinquish power.
Alternatively, a character might be skeptical towards a holiday because they have a more critical view towards their culture’s history and peoples’ perception of it, perhaps they’re aware of the powerful propaganda surrounding the holiday and the truth behind it?
Or, it can be as uncomplicated as a cultural event that folks in your world celebrate to bring hope, happiness, and good times - which your players and audience can choose to indulge in themselves.
How do people celebrate your fictional holidays?
How do people celebrate your fictional holidays? What traditions have been developed? What do these traditions say about the holiday and the people who celebrate it?
- Are specific foods and drinks eaten and prepared? (e.g. turkey eaten at Thanksgiving)
- Are certain groups encouraged to gather together? (e.g. LGBTQIA+ folks gathering at Pride)
- Which rituals are performed during this period? (e.g. fasting before Eid)
- What ideas, beliefs, and events are remembered? (e.g. rebirth remembered at Easter)
- Which kinds of activities are carried out? (e.g. watching fireworks at Lunar New Year)
What do these different traditions communicate to players and audiences?:
Are certain foods eaten because they represent something or because they’ve coincidently become associated with the holiday? Have particular rituals changed and evolved over time? Do some ideas and beliefs celebrated by a holiday clash with other factions or cultures’ own beliefs and holidays?
Or are these traditions just some fun elements for your players to engage and interact with during a certain section of your campaign, or in a one-shot that coincides with a real world holiday - such as Christmas or Halloween?
How could you craft an adventure or campaign around a holiday?
Fictional holidays can serve as a brilliant trigger point or core concept to shape a TTRPG adventure or campaign around. A holiday can provide a unique flavour to an adventure or campaign, as well as communicate some key ideas or themes that you’re interested in.
How you build this adventure or campaign section will depend on the players’ goal/s. Is there a person or a faction that’s threatening to cancel the holiday or are they planning an attack to coincide with it? Are the players aiming to make a stand against a holiday or use it as a moment to challenge what it represents? Is the holiday just a backdrop to the campaign or adventure - offering a unique theming or enforcing key themes?
Maybe your players must rescue an important person who has been kidnapped? Or perhaps a faction is threatening to ruin a key ritual or event for the holiday? Could the players be aiming to expose a holiday as a sham? You could also just plan a more relaxed one-shot or campaign moment for players to explore a holiday fair or prepare for the holiday themselves, with very low stakes involved.