Filed under Writing …

Feb 03 2012
Leave a comment
design, Fiction, RPGs, WIP, Writing

Written Sketches

I recently started using Day One, a journaling app that’s sleek and fun and has a popup feature whereby the app tells you, “Okay, write something.” I’ve been using it mostly for sketching — a paragraph or two at a time just to keep the words flowing without any real thought to where they might fit. They all seem to have some commonality, and from that, I’m getting a sense for what the world they’re describing looks like, which is a sort of neat emergent feature. Well, perhaps not a feature, but more of an intersection of how the app works and what I keep scribbling into it. Here are a few of the excerpts.

“What lands are these? They are the lands we lost, as men, to time, to declivity of the soul, and to outside forces against which we failed to rally. These lands once belonged to our fathers, sustaining us on their bounty, but then we grew proud, and in our pride we grew ignorant, and in our ignorance we debased ourselves and called it culture. Ours is not a legacy of culture, our legacy is a loss of the culture that once united us.”

These words were spoken by Taraq, son of Haroun, before he turned his back on humanity and walked into the wilds, never to return. Some will say his bride bewitched him, but others know the truth: that Taraq did indeed fall in love with his beguiling bride, but that the choice to leave the realm of mankind was wholly his. Taraq has followed his wife into the life of the Good Folk, those who were ancient before even the first true Men could speak words. No more does he practice his huntsman’s craft, for now he dwells in the world instead of merely being its guest.

Looming on the horizon is a castle penumbrated in a timeless twilight. I have watched the lords descend from the castle, thralls to their dead with-lord, to pull women screaming from their beds in the village below. They take them up the icy path, into that dark-shrouded castle and their screams linger in the cold air for an eternal moment and then end. I cannot say how often they do this, these awful lords, for the dread that oppresses me makes me fear and look away.

I hate this weakness in myself. I am powerless to stand against the lords from the shadow-castle, powerless to call out their evil, and too small to even raise my eyes to them. What is the greater crime: their boldness and inhumanity to men, or my selfishness and small misery in complicity?

The folk of the undertown whisper of the rogue’s omen, that when a scandal sets the privileged against one another, low men suffer the most. In such ugly times, though, events occur after which those low men’s fortunes change. Not everyone born in a barn need be a horse, to borrow another commoner’s saying. And not every title need be granted at court.

Beneath the manor, beneath the lime and the chalk and the thousand-plus spiraling stairs that crept into the cavern within the mountain, the thing that gives horror to bloom floats, in its parallel of life, in the brackish, primeval fluid that nourished it before the time when gods claimed to have made the world. There, in that stagnant pool, it floats endlessly, glutting itself on the thought and fear of those who live in the valley below the pass. Through millions of tons of stone, it swells in metonymy with the emotional tides of Men who feel its evil and quake in idle dread.

Those who once dwelled in the manor couldn’t have known the awful, cyclopean sect that stirred beneath them when they built it, looming over the pass. Some horrible, cosmic coincidence must have been at play or else, more likely, the creature reached out with its will and forced the construction of the castle, whether through some hellish minion or some more subtle machination. Although, to what end, none may guess.

Some of this should fit easily into the Pagan Lands material, but other stuff might find a place in some Vampire work (with a little retooling). The general sense here is that whatever world this is must ruly be an awful place, with all its rotten happenings and victimizations of the people who live in it. Or maybe it’s the people themselves who are so awful, and they keep bringing ruin upon themselves. There’s definitely a feeling of loss and fear going on.

Tagged , , , ,
Jan 02 2012
2 Comments
design, RPGs, Writing

Give ‘Em a (True) Hand

Something that has surprised me in the ongoing V20 work I’ve been doing is that I’ve taken a new shine to the True Black Hand.

Among the Vampire community, Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand can be an unpopular book. I’ve never been an apologist for it, and I can see what some people don’t like about it. It turns the idea of one of the most distinct Disciplines into something that’s thematically at odds with the rest of Vampire. Some of the powers get a little screwy. It has a few ideas in it that threaten to jump the shark, and the premise of the book itself comes perilously close to doing so, too — it leans on Vampire’s device of secrets within secrets a little too hard. Here’s this ancient weird sect you’ve never heard of before, and they’re pulling the strings of the other groups that you have heard of (so they’re not as cool anymore). A little fast and loose with the baseline Vampire experience, the True Hand is Vampire for people who want something a little weirder.

That said, there’s a lot it does well, and I’m really enjoying rooting around in its vaults again. In particular, here’s a list of what I like about the Tal’Mahe’Ra.

  • Perfect Vampire Tone: I’ve said this on panels and in forum discussions before, but the book absolutely nails the “wheels within wheels” conceit that makes Vampire tick. It’s a sect full of factions, and the sect itself overlaps with some of the other sects, and it even bleeds a bit into the thematics of the other supernatural types. What can you believe or trust? No one knows — and since the unknown is such a vital portion of the horror genre, the True Hand is a great sect for fomenting fear of the unknown by its very existence. It’s especially good for a Storyteller whose players know it all, being well-versed in WoD lore, because all that knowledge works against them in a dramatic way.
  • Exoticism and the Macabre: A slightly Eastern, Gnostic flavor mixed in with cyclopean tombs and the bleak resonance of the First City where vampires held sway. It’s a place where stones as old as Eden make up the halls where monsters plucked from their mother’s bosom as infants have never known anything other than servitude to Kindred — Kindred who claim to be shepherding them and protecting them. Everything they touch is twisted or becomes so, and the lament for what’s lost to their unlifestyle is either immediate and poignant or has never even entered their minds.
  • The Dark Side of Academia: There’s a strong monastic element to the Tal’Mahe’Ra, and it works wonders for Vampire. The idea that there’s such a thing as too much knowledge, that some secrets are better left unearthed, and the perils of what someone might do if only they could find out how — that’s a great motivator, both for or against the troupe’s Kindred. What is the morality of fighting to suppress information?

I’ve been scribbling notes for a True Hand chronicle I want to run, a sort of coterie-against-the-world thing that I don’t think should last too long, but would be an interesting exploration of digging some mysteries up and tirelessly hiding others. Tal’Mahe’Ra agents operating in a domain that doesn’t know they’re there but certainly doesn’t want them. When the whole of the local power structure is against you, but what you’re doing you do to protect it? That’s a theme worth telling a story about, I think

Tagged , , , , , ,
Oct 17 2011
2 Comments
design, RPGs, WIP, Writing

Pagan Lands: Where Are We?

"Where on the map is a giant, creepy eye hovering over a ruined fortress? I think we're lost."

One of the things that has enthused me while working on Pagan Lands is that the PCs are literally captives of the environment. They don’t know where they’re going, and they know where they’ve been only if they’ve been keeping a diligent map. It’s an exploration campaign that assumes the characters have been dumped into a strange land with plenty of its own oddities that alter the environment or otherwise ensure they have no adequate way of forecasting where they’re headed until they do the mapping. The semi-aboriginal cultures that exist there don’t do much traveling and when they do, they do so along routes that have an oral or small-scale cartographical tradition.

The upshot of this is that I don’t know if I need to include a map in Pagan Lands. In fact, some part of me believes that the setting would be better off with it intentionally excluded.

It’s a weird kind of thing to consider. I think, from the perspective of Pagan Lands as a “product,” lots of fantasy players —€” especially D&D players —€” expect a map to be included in a setting. GMs usually buy pregenerated materials to save them time, or to steal little bits and pieces from them, including maps. Conceptually, though, what better way to ensure that no two Pagan Lands campaigns are alike than to require part of the creative preparatory work be to build the stage, and only if you need it. It’s perfectly possible, actually, to let gameplay shape the continent. The GM can randomly determine which encounters come after which or can plan a vague sense of a picaresque campaign flow. In this sense, the players and GM would be working collaboratively to not just explore but wholly generate the campaign geography.

"Suuuure, I can get you where you're going. It's over a mountain. Or under a swamp. Or near a— look, do you want to get going or not?"

A map like this doesn’t have to be exactingly detailed. The Pagan Lands are on a peninsula and they’re bordered on the south by the Mark. That’s it. Go! There aren’t any political nations nor do any of the locations require such stringent placement as to necessitate a map. Like the early days of the Hyborean Age or the devil-may-care attitudes of Fafhrd and the Mouser, and definitely the vague destinations of the Dying Earth and Zothique. The idea also allows for making a reliable map be a true treasure. Thematically, the Pagan Lands are a “lost continent,” so the fact that this information simply doesn’t exist anymore is actually a setting detail.

On the other hand, I like maps. I like evocative maps in particular, like this Hârn map or the map downloadable for Vornheim (even though I don’t find the Vornheim map very useful, much as I like the book material itself). And, while there’s something to be said for the gigantic maps for the Wilderlands of High Fantasy and Ptolus, those settings are very different from what the Pagan Lands intends to provide.

Tagged , , ,
Aug 27 2011
3 Comments
design, RPGs, WIP, Writing

Odd Properties

He collects the things you find, even though you found them first.

Vampire doesn’t deal much with “magic items,” so when I use something as a sort of McGuffin in a World of Darkness game, I like it to be something with more affect than just a noun of verbing. This extends often to other games I run, in which magic items are implements with their own histories and reasons for creation, rather then mass-manufactured bonus-givers. I’ve been working on two different items recently, one for a Vampire story and one (well, a set of three, actually) for the Pagan Lands, which really got me to thinking about their narrative properties outside their mechanical properties. before long, I had a fun little list of odd properties that can be attributed to occult objects in any game or story.

1) Draws a cloud of flies

2) Emits a constant unintelligible, agonized whispering

3) Absorbs light, appearing out-of-focus and indistinct

4) Smells cloyingly sweet

5) Becomes hot when hidden from sight

6) Is covered in an unremovable layer of grime; cannot be cleaned

7) Bears a symbol long associated with heresy or unwholesomeness

8) Appears more valuable than it truly is to onlookers

9) Floats or sinks; the opposite of what is expected

10) Causes the owner’s speech to take on a musical lilt

11) Anything written in its vicinity becomes smudged, blurred, or otherwise illegible

12) Possesses a lambent nimbus

13) Kills minor plant life

14) Causes everything the owner eats to taste like ash

15) Rattles as if something was inside

16) Turns the owner’s blood black when it is spilled

17) Excretes a sheen like the oil of saints

18) Draws the attention of animals with a keen sense of smell

19) Cannot be accurately remembered or described

20) Crumbles to dust when held by a poor and pious man

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Aug 21 2011
3 Comments
RPGs, WIP, Writing

Thinking About the Nosferatu

Feels like a fiction bit coming together. Or maybe it’s the prelude to some game content? I’ll have to shape this a little more.

A roar escaped form the darkness as if it were belched from the depths of hell, riding on the fetid breath of the forgotten tunnels beneath the city. It surged past the tunnels where the Sewer Rats made their wretched havens and, to the last, the Nosferatu who dwelled beneath the streets streets knew fear — the stark, oppressive fear of the hunted. The fear of prey. Some went mad in that instant, scourged by the terror that they had previously considered it their privilege, their duty, or their curse to inflict.

In a screaming, humid moment, the Nosferatu grasped the terrible realization that, though they were vampires, something now hunted them. The notion was foreign to them, unknown and shocking. The night belonged to the vampires, the Kindred, and though the Nosferatu were among the most loathed of the vampire clans, they were still predators in the darkness. That something now stalked them was a nightmare made real, yet another foul twist for a nocturnal world that held innumerable horrors.

Dread poured over Ol’ Pitch Morris when the roar broke loose, waking him from his reverie. It made his pallid flesh crawl, spooking him so that his pen skittered across the page of his notebook, leaving a great black mark like a bloodstain.

Pitch had long thought that something out there wanted he and his fellow Nosferatu. He didn’t know what it was, or what they were, since it sometimes occurred to him that more than one “it” sometimes howled for the tainted blood of the Sewer Rats. Pitch spent his nights hunting clues that supported the idea, which he had discovered while skulking among the run-down cellars of the city. His haven overflowed with relics of vampires who had inexplicably vanished, victims or perpetrators of the Jyhad or some less definable event. All Kindred feared some sort of variously definable war or culling culling of their kind. It seemed that the undead brought dooms upon themselves, for some vendetta or supernal reckoning had come and eradicated individuals among the Damned. But the Curse of Caine always bore out and new Kindred forever emerged from the shadows that had swallowed their sires. Ol’ Pitch himself numbered only four years among the Kindred. Four long years finding blackened bones, ominous journals, and havens inexplicably abandoned, all pointing to this war of ages. And now this chthonic scream from beneath the lowest warrens the Nosferatu called their own. Was this the apocalypse he suspected of consuming the Kindred in an endless cycle, or had some new horror been birthed from the collective fears of the Damned?

Outside, in the streets above, rain fell, and that always meant trouble for the Sewer Rats. The cesspit that was the world poured all its effluence into the Nosferatu under-kingdom when it rained, from trash, muck, and the undesirable detritus that accumulated in the gutters and alleys to the unfortunate, wayward, and foolish mortals who took refuge below — when the skies opened up, it all came sluicing or crawling into the sewer warrens. The anti-cathartic rain-filth tumbling down from above and the howling hell-thing now surging up from below made for a foul time to be Nosferatu, Pitch thought.

Tagged , , , , ,
Aug 13 2011
1 Comment
design, RPGs, WIP, Writing

Pagan Lands: Widdecombe’s Laboratory

Widdecombe’s laboratory is a tragic place, where creatures never intended to encounter life have been brought into painful existence. The building where Widdecombe’s experiments took place certainly served some other purpose before the eugenicist established his laboratory there. Indeed, it seems that it may have been a grand manse or even some sort of temple, given the open gallery and pillared hall that make up the front face of the building. Composed of fine marble, the building itself appears august until its horrid purpose becomes evident.

This is actually Tilda Swinton, but the photo says what I want it to say.

Of Widdecombe himself, little trace remains, save for some of his foul notations and some of his devices and instruments. Part demiurge and part eugenicist, Widdecombe appears to have vanished from the world over a millennium ago. The creature Adapa in area 9 can sometimes recall the name of his vile “father,” and Widdecombe recorded his own name in the journals that can be found in area 1 only once. Finding the name among the notes would certainly be a lengthy undertaking. Certainly, Widdecome comes from some world other than this one, as neither his language nor the technology he commanded has a counterpart in the Pagan Lands.

  1. The amoral scientist once made his apartments in this room, at the center of his ghastly bridewell of harrowed beasts. The room contains a daunting array of notes, books, chalkboards and charts on display to interlopers.  Widdecombe appears to have been a very principled and orderly fellow, judging from the precise notes on his papers, in his books, and printed on the chalkboards adorning the walls. The texts themselves are indecipherable, but the sketches make it evident that the writer’s interest lay in combining, transposing, and breeding the qualities of creatures left in his horrific care. If a magic-user can somehow decipher the notes and other details, they can be used to aid magical research and magical item creation for items and spells that summon animals or monsters. The rooms also contains small alchemical devices worth 1200 gp.
  2. Tattered curtains hang from the walls of this room, rent by the claws of the anguished beast that dwells here. The creature resembles a great, awkward ostrich with the torso and head of a humanoid woman and ever-molting, useless wings instead of arms. The creature’s humanoid appearance is misleading, as it is hopelessly stupid, venturing forth only to eat the birds (or whatever else it can find) in area 8. This room was once a salon or something similar, and a damaged bust of a forgotten poet or philosopher lies next to an overturned pedestal in the corner, worth 1200 gp and 225 gp, respectively, to an interested collector.
  3. This pair of laboratories contains the incomprehensible apparatuses and bizarre ingredients used to fabricate artificial life, or provide the “genesis fire” required to spark actual life, however flawed the results may be. These items are surely of inconceivable value, but they are alien and not at all portable, and finding a buyer in the Pagan Lands who might want them is surely a quest in and of its own. The laboratories have been constructed to fit into the rooms that preceded their current purpose, and various tubes, pipes, fittings, and wires emerge and vanish from holes bored into the marble walls.
  4. This room contains six great metal tureens, the lower ends of which depend into funnels that look like a hose might be attached. The contents of the vessels are a protein-rich broth of viscosity varying by the vat in question. The contents of all the vessels has long gone rancid, and whatever life-nourishing properties it once had have become vile and poisonous. If someone consumes it or exposes it to a wound, the victim suffers 8d8 damage (reduced to 8d4 on a saving throw of target number 18). The noxious stuff becomes inert when exposed to air for longer than 15 minutes, and lasts only one turn if applied to a weapon as a poison.
  5. Two great, exposed electrodes descend from the ceiling in this chamber, terminating inside a vast, brushed-steel tough inside which pulses a glistening, gray-pink slab of protean flesh. An inch-deep pool of cloudy fluid stands stagnant in the bottom of the trough. The room is humid and smells of brine. A cabinet of cutting instruments, for work both coarse and fine, occupies one wall of the laboratory. The cutting instruments are comparatively easy to move, and are cumulatively worth 600 gp.
  6. The door to this room is extremely difficult to open, but with a suitable application of strength, it gives, accompanied by a shattering sound from the inside. The interior surface of the door had been layered with a thin sheen of nacre, and the whole room bears a subtle sheen of this pearly substance, which becomes thicker in proximity to the corner of the room, where a great agglomeration of the stuff creates an organic bulge. Sheets and hunks of the nacre may be harvested to a quantity of 72 pounds, worth 200 gp per pound to a gemseller or artisan. The room is humid and unpleasant. If the bulge is attacked or an attempt to harvest it is made, it erupts into a moist gray-pink mass of mottled flesh and defends itself (treat as a gelatinous cube that can’t move from the room, but can attack anyone occupying the room or immediately outside).
  7. This room houses an androgynous, fine-featured individual who sits on the floor, his head in his hands. The creature wears tattered and filthy finery and a bedraggled powdered wig, and its eyes are solid black orbs. If anyone attempts to converse with it, the fellow shrieks and squawks in an attempt at communication that cannot possibly be a language, and tries to push a few broken sticks into a pattern on the floor, using hooked fingers in a way that suggests the creature occupies a body not its own. The room also holds the ruins of once-comfortable furniture as well as 63 scattered gp worth of the “changeling money” described on p. XX.
  8. On the two tables occupying the bulk of this room, two partially complete (or partially disassembled…) brass automatons, a seeming matched pair of male and female constructs, lie in stasis. If a humanoid or demi-human enters the room, the automatons activate, rattling and flailing, attacking everyone present in their clumsy but effective manner. Treat the automatons as flesh golems.
  9. In this secret chamber that passes for Widdecombe’s treasury, 1,648 gp worth of ceramic chit-coins are scattered on the floor and pour out of shattered cubical coffers. A black lance-shaped rod with a cowl at one end hangs from a mount on the wall. Inside the cowl are a handle, which has two studs on it. Pressing one of the studs releases a cloud of pyrotechnics (12 charges remaining)while pressing the other one causes the lance to emit a shrieking sound that functions as power word: stun (two charges remaining) on the creature toward which it’s pointed. Blood, a pulpy crust, and a greasy ash streak the marble walls and floor in this room.
  10. Stone stairs lead into this ruined marble gallery, in which caryatids sculpted into singing poses uphold the ceiling. A blue-green fungus grows up the walls, over the surfaces, and especially in the cracks of the gallery, which is home to over a hundred birds. The birds find nourishment in the fungus, and the gallery is also stained by their droppings. There is a 1-in-6 chance that a pitiable, vaguely canine humanoid creature (treat as a kobold) is in this room at any time, trying to skewer birds with its spear. This creature (and the birds) are easily frightened.
  11. The creation known as Adapa prefers to bask in this area, contemplating exactly why it was concocted. The room itself is a fabulous ruin of quarried marble tarnished by neglect and a thousand-plus years of exposure, with marble columns sculpted into caryatids holding unfurled scrolls. Adapa is a miserable combination of fish and man, of melancholy disposition but not inherently hostile, and he actually enjoys the opportunity to have a conversation with anyone willing to speak with him. Drawing breath is a labor for him, as the complicated lung-and-gill structure that sustains his respiration is far from perfect, and he has no desire to leave his “solarium.” Unfortunately, Adapa has no long-term memory, and cannot remember longer than one day. Once per week, Adapa can cast any single magic-user spell of level seven. Adapa’s treasure is an ivory-handled knife worth 300 gp.
  12. This loggia admits visitors from the thoroughfare into the pillared hall of area 11. The walls are of crenellated marble and similar marble pillars comprise the supports of the loggia. A pair of tarnished silver salvers lie discarded on the floor here (worth 100 gp each), amid broken glass and the debris of untold ages.
Tagged , , , , , ,
Jul 31 2011
5 Comments
design, RPGs, WIP, Writing

Pagan Lands: Self Inventory

What lands are these and what sorts of men call them home?

I cracked open the cobweb-beleaguered project binder for the Pagan Lands yesterday. Pieces of the setting need to be sent through the iteration loop. It’s usually my habit to highlight these, because I can generally tell when something feels a bit off to begin with, but I also like to go back and read over the whole thing to see if something that sounded hella so awesome last time I worked on it instead needs a little more time in the crucible. That sort of circumspection has characterized the whole of my work on the setting. It has its potential perils — optimally, I need to get a draft done before I lose myself in the tinkering — but in some cases, adjusting the assumptions the whole work makes can help push a project toward the finish line. Here’s some of the stuff I tinkered with.

Scale: The Pagan Lands were originally intended to be an England-like island off the coast of a greater continent, where a loosely sketched Imperial power held sway. It’s a good idea in general, because it provides a reason to put the players in the environment and deny them a way back into the “home country,” but the more I put the details together, the less I liked the scope of the island. It’s one of my design precepts that, as the campaign continues, the PCs come to own the Pagan Lands. And for such a goal, there’s eminently such a thing as too big. For example, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy assume a geography of roughly the size of the Mediterranean. That’s a bit too big for my purposes, so I redefined the area of the Pagan Lands as about the size of Wales — about 8,000 square miles. Not that expected the figure to come up often, but just knowing “how big?” lets me think about the spatial relationships of the geographical features to one another. Once I had a more reasonable sketch of the size, another detail refined itself as a result. The Pagan Lands, I reasoned, once belonged to the Empire but had since fallen into barbarism. This fit nicely with my literary influences, gave a reason for the Empire to want the region, and provided a “dark ages” of indeterminate duration during which all of the weird events could take place. How old is the Empire? Who knows? But it’s obviously quite old, which again highlights those literary roots, in that the current civilization has obviously become decadent, soft, and complacent. Such times call for able adventurers to make their way.

Races: Classic D&D is pretty inextricably bound by notions of what the post-Tolkien fantasy races are. On the one hand, I like this. I see an elf, I know its job/ class is “elf” and I know what it’s supposed to do. On the other hand, I’m pretty tired of what that is, and Tolkien’s epic fantasy is less compelling to me than the down-and-dirty realities of Aquilonia, Lankhmar, and Kaiin. To that end, I’ve made a few cosmetic and perspective changes to the races that leave them mechanically alone, but make them thematically more appropriate to the Pagan Lands. My elves become more attached to their Fae roots, my dwarves are more like Howard’s Picts, and my halflings are an artificial slave race long left without its master. Again, purely cosmetic and skirting the vanity of heartbreak, but definitely more in line with the literary feel I want to convey and evident of debasement and the weight of history. Consciously and critically, I want these, but I want them to have a specific flavor. Here’s an excerpt:

The elves are a race trapped in a world foreign to them, which makes them appear wholly Other to its natural residents. A breed of Fae that the realm of Faerie has long since abandoned to the world of Men, the elves linger as outsiders even in their own kingdoms. They speak sometimes of lost homes, such as Tir Na Nog, Avalon, and the rolling hills of their sidhe, none of which have a place in this world. To the perceptions of non-elves, the elves hold the other races of the Pagan Lands in very low esteem, and they can be capricious, cruel, and incomprehensible. To the elves, everything else in this half-realm is incomprehensible, and only the waning memories of their bygone Faerie make any sense, even if this world cannot understand them.

Does Crowscroft Manor make the final cut for Pagan Lands? It remains to be seen after a few more playtest loops.

Intended Result: One of the bits of feedback I took from a tabletop session was that the situation “got all Moorcock.” In the context, it meant that previous sessions had focused on the exploration and challenges, but the session in question focused too much on its own importance. I took that to heart and would probably call a do over on that session. The Pagan Lands aren’t about figuring out the storyline I build, they’re about creating the characters’ own storylines, insofar as they relate to the region sprawled out before them. I pushed an NPC into the limelight and I shouldn’t have, so I need to go back and pare down that encounter, or at least my handling of it. Likewise, I had another encounter that, as I was writing it, I knew that it was uninspired. I wrote it anyway, just to get the words out, but it’s a prime candidate for either cut or heavy retooling. Again, I don’t like to edit during the writing process too much, but when something is wrong and obviously wrong, it’s sometimes best to pull it out like a peach pit so that it doesn’t make for an uneven presence in the work. At the very least, I need to put it out of mind and not write anything else that relates to it.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Jun 26 2011
1 Comment
design, RPGs, Writing

Post-Morality?

Don't judge the book by its cover. Maybe this guy has something you want or need.

One of the things I enjoy about the swords and sorcery genre and about much vintage weird fiction is that it doesn’t bother itself with good and evil. The rogues and warriors are morally ambiguous, and often wicked or selfish, but both the writing and the character possesses a charm that makes you come back to their travails anyway. Sometimes the struggle is between law and chaos, while at other times it’s a less overt setting device invoked by barbarism, the decadence of society, or some sort of historical lacuna or frailty of man.

The picaresque is a great gameplay-adaptable narrative model here, in which a scoundrel (or pack of them) selfishly ambles through life, occasionally helping people or places through no conscious choice, but without the predatory motive typically associated with evil. Treasure, booze, women, weird cults, momentous forces of society, savages, customs, and weird creatures all fall before the wiles of the protagonists with often nothing more complicated than an exciting tale told. There’s no greater comment necessary. It’s just fun or exciting.

If it's not the focus of the detail, where the skulls come from isn't as important as the presence of skulls.

Moreover, in game terms, this freedom from confinement to a moral role opens up avenues of activity and problem solving. I’ve been rereading the updated Judges Guild classic Caverns of Thracia, and the way into the darkest depths of the dungeon involves four sacrifices. Now, these don’t have to be sacrifices of damsels in distress or unblemished virgins — any four sacrifices will do. Gnolls? Sure. Lizard-man? You bet. Hapless retainer? Okay, if that’s how you want to play it. Sacrifice isn’t going to fly with a paladin (probably), but for a Conan, Cugel, or Mouser type, it’s just a detail before moving on to the next action sequence or moody set-piece. It shows that these are bloody times, and that hard men drive them. Moreover, they don’t linger on the details of the sacrifice with unsavory zeal. They have no good or evil component of their own.

And a lack of moral compass makes for other dramatic elements that have their own weight. For example, what of the adventuring party that puts its torchbearers through the ominous portal first? Hardly “heroic,” but certainly “adventurous.” What about the seemingly doomed last stand against the monstrous hordes that — improbably! — survives and makes its way out of the dungeon only to pass the corpses of two other PCs who fell to squabbling over treasure and knifed each other during their exit? It completely invalidates the sacrifice in a morality tale, but it’s a perfect element of an adventurer’s story that gives a lingering redolence of gallows humor. Dark times for hard men, indeed, but high adventure doesn’t have to invoke shining knights. The Pagan Lands are like this. They don’t care for good or evil, but rather rely on concepts of empire, the melancholy of dying cultures, and the impermanence of the memory of Man. Morality doesn’t often enter the equation.

This is certainly at odds with my work on Vampire, which was almost wholly a morality passion play under my stewardship. My Frostholm proposal, similarly, revolved around turning up the morality in standard adventure gaming. Using this different focus doesn’t take anything away from those other efforts. It’s just a different exploration of game content that results in very different stories being told around the table.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Jun 19 2011
7 Comments
design, RPGs, Writing

Evil as Adversary Motivation

One of the things that never sat quite right with me about fantastical theology is the idea of evil gods. Sure, you kind of need them to make the cosmology work in a good-versus-evil themed storyline, and maybe they work for the more primitive monstrous cultures, but the idea of people — civilized people — venerating openly evil gods just doesn’t work for me.

Paladins of the Bull-God preparing for the bloodletting.

It can work, sure, but it needs a layer of sophistication. Degenerate, selfish gods who are evil, sure. But the cackling God of Destruction archetype is more suited to worshippers who are insane rather than evil. I suppose these are built on the idea that the evil-faithful will want to reign in whatever hell the evil gods brings about after Armageddon, but that lacks an immediacy that makes it impossible to take seriously. Is the GM really going to shift the focus of the campaign to Hell on Earth if the characters don’t manage to squelch Sycorax the Apostate? Probably not (but if they do, more power to them), and that’s where evil gods fall flat to my tastes. I don’t care if the orcs worship Blood-Eye, because if Blood-Eye’s apocalyptic plans come true, that’s where the game goes. But people? People genuinely wanting to annihilate the world and hope that their Darke Loarde gives them a castle in the ruined aftermath? I don’t buy it as a motivation.

With that in mind, here are a few of the themes and elements I use when employing evil morality as an ingredient in my games.

Evil as Selfishness: Rather than cackling holocaust, evil characters in my games usually serve their own ends first and at the expense of others. That’s what I find evil. In this sense, you can have “evil priests” like Thulsa Doom (as portrayed by James Earl Jones, but even somewhat in the original Kull story) who may or may not be faithful but enjoy the power they wield over their gullible or desperate thralls. The evil god, which may or may not be real, is simply set dressing for the selfishly evil individual. Whatever fills the ol’ collection plate; the end justifies the means.

Evil as Placation: Borrowing a bit from animism and mythology, some “evil gods” are actually spirits or other forces of nature or the world. They’re not divine, but they’re not above pretending to be or even demanding a little tribute. I especially like this as it blurs the line between these spirits and demons and the fae, in that the “Good Folk” also occasionally wanted to be courted and flattered. We used a bit of this in Vampire, envisioning the Slavic entity Kupala as a demon. No one (sane) worshiped the Kupala as presented in Vampire, but it sure did command tribute and sacrifice. An evil that wants to be placated is grasping, bullying, and potentially wholly alien, as its relationships are so so different from those of people.

Evil as Nihilism: I hesitate to overburden the already groaning adjective “Lovecraftian,” but the idea that the gods out there in the great void don’t cherish men’s souls but instead often cannot even notice us — now, that’s a place where an evil individual can wield great power. Perhaps he’s siphoning off some of their uncaring potency, or perhaps the gods are simply pushing incomprehensible icons of power around a cosmic game board. Whatever the case, an evil priest taking power rather than venerating it and being given it, well, that’s all kinds of unwholesome right there.

Tagged , , ,
May 13 2011
20 Comments
design, gaming, RPGs, Tabletop Games, video games, WIP, Writing

Up and Movin’

So, I’ve been wondering what to do with this blog again, as I do about every year and a half or so. My post frequency has fallen off a bit of late, because I had directed so much attention on working on (and blogging for) the 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire. My work there is done now, and Eddy’s taken over the management and development of it. That will maybe let me get back in here and bang around with blogging more than once a week.

It's a prison.

I’ve also left White Wolf/ CCP again and have taken a position with Ubisoft that will be moving my family and I to France. The projects are under heavy NDA, so I can’t talk about them here or even say what they are, but I’m glad to be working on them. (I know, I hate the “Oooh, it’s under NDA” non-remark remark, but I don’t make the rules.)

For a while I was talking about the intersection of tabletop gaming with digital gaming, and I’m sure I’ll continue to have some amount of that sort of outwardly facing contemplation. With the conclusion of my Vampire work, I’m able to turn more attention back to my Pagan Lands setting work, which has received some good feedback over its course. I’ve also got a little darling game project that’s a sort of dinner-murder-mystery about Queen Victoria trying to raise Prince Albert from the dead that may see the light of day. And, of course, fiction writing, for the two or three projects that occupy my hobbyist’s attention in bursts. Maybe some more mixed music sets when I find the time. Probably change the general look of things here.

General RPG consideration, video game consideration, and just plain design talk have always been fun for me, so I’m sure that’ll remain here, too.

I think the biggest change is that this blog might actually become more personal again. Not personal as in things that I don’t want people to see, but personal in that I may end up showing a more holistic approach to games design than I had previously. A designer doesn’t exist in a vacuum: A designer is the sum of the games he plays, the life he lives, and the external influences on him.

I’m about to have a lot of external influences. I’m moving into a different culture, learning a new language, and still being a parent while continuing to design and play games amid it all. At the very least, I hope to have nifty photos of cool European surroundings. Hopefully you remain interested.

Tagged , ,
← Older posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 2,625 other followers