Because I am the lazy

[james_davis_nicoll]

It occurred to me that Santa Catarina Island and the coast adjacent would make an interesting map for a secondary world fantasy ttrpg. It's a mountainous region of Brazil, so lots of varied terrain, and not somewhere the people with whom I game would be familiar.

What I forgot in the half-century since I lived there is its nickname: "Ilha da Magia." Magic Island. Hmmm.

Comments

[rezendi]

Kinda regret not visiting when I was nearby in Curitiba some years ago, but I had a wedding to get to.

[james_davis_nicoll]

I lived there but my players have not.

I've been using streetview to walk around the streets. The mountains are the same. The fig tree is still there. Canto da Lagoa, the tiny village where I lived, seems to have been completely redeveloped. Well, it has been fifty years.

The road is paved now. In my day, it was dirt! Or in the rainy season, thick, viscous laterite mud.

Our side of the lagoa was where the poor people lived (my family being a notable exception). The other side of the lagoa was where the rich people lived. From the way streetview seems to be blind along one stretch of the eastern side, I bet that's still where the rich people live.

My father taught at the university. Not entirely sure why he parked us in a poor fishing village. Beat being in a cosseted expat enclave.

There was a very memorable encounter with an American delighted to run into fellow Americans in Florianópolis. It became very frosty once it became very clear that while he was a missionary spreading the Good Word to all the ignorant pagans my parents were both atheists and not the quiet sort. Even if they'd been religious, my mother was an escaped nun so probably would have been Catholic. Which I can tell you did not count as Christian for this guy.

My father's family was Unitarian, which I am guessing would also not count.

Although my father was more than willing to help the fellow get over his religious delusions, this gracious outreach was rudely spurned. We did not make a new friend that day.

I did not note his denomination, except that it was very sincerely not Catholic. Maybe he was an evangelical. or Mormon.

If he was a Mormon...

So, Orson Scott Card was a missionary in Brazil. Not sure when but Mormons do missionary for a couple of years in their late teens. He was born in 1951 so could well have been in Brazil when we were.

Was he ever in Florianópolis?

Add him to the list of SF authors I may have met in contexts outside SF, along with Edward Llewellyn (colleague of my father's) and Jack Vance (used the same marina as my grandfather).

[ffutures]

When I wrote Diana: Warrior Princess I put in a suggestion that any map used should be an outline of New Zealand, optionally upside down or on its side, with useful place names written on to meet the needs of the plot. It's served me well over the years...

[(Anonymous)]

I surmise that only very good friends or young children would accept "Magic Island" as the game setting. Perhaps you would get away with Thaumaturgia. ;-)

Robert Carnegie