Finding Fantasy Settings At Puy Du Fou

I have no idea why Facebook decided to start showing me videos of French theme park Puy du Fou one day, but I'm glad it did. While I'm generally not a theme park aficionado, I've been entranced by footage of knights fighting next to rotating castles and gladiators duking it out in a full-scale replica of a Roman circus ever since joining one of the park's fan groups. Why? Well, blame my love for TTRPGs and world building.

 

The default setting for many tabletop RPGs is based on Western fantasy – castles, dungeons, magic, dragons, swords, and so on. Puy du Fou has plenty of that on display, but what really got me excited were clips from the park's shows and settings that didn't fit that format. The aforementioned Roman circus opened my eyes to the possibility of a game or setting influenced by the ancient world, when previously I'd had no interest in such. Why? I suppose it's because it made the excitement and grandeur more immediate. It's one thing to see a Roman ruin and wonder what might have been. It's quite another to see crowds sitting around a dirt track while skilled stuntmen drive chariots pulled by actual horses. The stadium itself even has a retractable awning, just like its historical counterparts! Puy du Fou also has interactive shows paying tribute to 17th Century theater and WWI battlefields, both of which have long intrigued my husband and me. Imagine an RPG of magic, mystery, and courtly intrigue, or a Great War in which ritual occultists and battle mages hurl spells at each other over a barbed-wire festooned No Man's Land.

 

While I doubt I'll ever find myself visiting Puy du Fou, my online experience with the park's attractions has already helped me come up with potential ideas for homebrew campaign settings, original characters, and other possibilities. Inspiration can be found anywhere, but I never guessed that I'd find it via video clips from a European theme park. It's funny how the world works sometimes, isn't it?