Okay, long car rides with the radio on led to this one.

I have sometimes wondered what it would be like to design your own anime-style game. Something explicitly "this could run in Japan," but not a specific knock-off of any one existing thing. Borrowing from piles of them, though: let's say, something in the henshin genre (because transformation sequences are fun), with a swipe from Persona and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure to give your "remodeled persona" kind of its own strange identity, and perhaps personality. Add the Bleach aspect of special command phrases for transformation, wherein you speak the phrase and then the name of your sword/transformation like "Growl, Haineko." (This is also related to the wonderful Final Fantasy Tactics phrases that characters would sometimes spout when using a technique, like "Legendary sword that kills freely! Asura!")

Then fuse with Song Summoner.

See where I'm going with this?

So, here's how I'd pitch it:

Soul Amplifier: A Game of Sonic Transfiguration

The world is post-cataclysm, sufficiently post- that much of the world is gradually healing. Humans subsist in high-tech enclaves, futuristic versions of Metropolis that have yet to sprawl out over too much of the land as in days of old. In between the enclaves it's Thundarr-esque, and in the enclaves it's generally peaceful, save for the trouble stirred by those with a Pulse.

A Pulse is something a select few have. It's essentially another persona, one that you awaken with a catchphrase, that transforms your body and gives you superpowers. Most Pulses come with a certain warlike attitude, so there are plenty of renegades out there. But at the same time, it also has the power of inspiration. It can amplify your soul, making you stronger, smarter, faster... louder.

The hook? Every Pulse is named after a rock-and-roll song, and the transformation phrase is a snippet of lyric. So it isn't just that you get a snazzy transformation sequence in which you transform into a patch of stylized armored shadow, it's that first you make a gesture and say "I see a red door... PAINT IT BLACK!" The personality, powers and appearance of the Pulse can derive in whatever damn way you like from the song; presumably Rebel Yell would have sonic powers, but its appearance could go any which way. Maybe Killer Queen has stylized armor like a playing card queen, or is white and/or red and/or black like a chess queen, or is just a dangerous-looking female, or even just a dangerous-looking but stylish male.

Why would I want to run this? Well, obviously it's a gimmicky game. But I have a mystery in mind as to just what the Pulses are, and why they manifest the way they do (and why, for instance, Crazy Train would make a powerful Pulse and My Heart Will Go On would be weaksauce at best, if even a Pulse at all). The rest of the justification is that I like superhero games with quirky themes, and this is absolutely one. I would have fun playing with the designs of the various armored forms — does Paradise City look like a white, cathedralesque armored angel? Is Superbeast a quadruped? Certainly I would have to work really hard to run out of ideas for villainous Pulses to throw at the PCs — there's only fucking thousands of potential songs to convert out there. Sure, I need some substance... but this game is about turning the style knob to 11 and breaking it off, and that has its own appeal. I dunno if it would be the kind of campaign that would last for years that I tend to have a habit of running, but I bet you could make a "season" out of it if the players bought in.

Plus also you would get to punch a living representative of your least favorite Creed song right in the goddamn face. I have to think that would be a draw.

Somewhere along the way of turning a misspent youth into a misspent adulthood, you may notice that there's a certain...something about the way we tend to play. It's something that came into focus once when I realized that one of the cardinal differences between an American fantasy like D&D and a European fantasy like Warhammer is that, well, American roleplaying game characters act a lot more like cowboys. Even a casual glance at the origins of how D&D tends to play out Stateside reveals lots of emphasis on frontiers, scattered settlements, huge amounts of space. The current 4e system of "points of light" reflects that frontier mentality, which is itself a callback to back in the days of the Keep on the Borderlands and huge hex-maps of undiscovered terrain. Westerns tend to be easy to cut-and-paste into D&D plots, usually substituting orcs and whatnot for the usual bandits or Amerind nations… with a touch of unfortunate subtext there. (This also means we have a spiritual brother in the form of the samurai epic, of course, but I shouldn't stray too far down that sakura-strewn path lest my writing become any more unfocused.)

When I put a little more thought to it, though, I realized that the Western really is kind of the forerunner of so much of our gaming. A very, very common theme is the idea of taking the law into your own hands, be it altered into the modern form of the maverick cop (and hey, look, "maverick" is a term with its roots in the West) or playing at comic-book heroes like Batman. The basic conceit of the Western is that it's a place where either the law has failed, or if it hasn't, the protagonists are shining lawmen. The geography defines freedom — wide open plains, huge skies, riding across the border — and that romanticizing of the settler places value on the thought of carving something your own out of the land, with few people to tell you otherwise.

The tropes are everywhere. Our superhero battles have their roots in god-making and mythology, yes, but they also absorb key elements from the Western. Superman gets a hefty dose of Hercules, but he abandons the moral failings in favor of another graft from the Lone Ranger. Fights between hero and villain take the form of showdowns. Similarly, in the World of Darkness, martial law prevails. Just as the government can't really reach out and control all of the frontier, it can't reach into the world of the supernatural. A vampire prince draws heavily from the same well as the corrupt sheriff or outlaw who controls a town with an iron fist. And player characters act like protagonists in a Western as well, often shouting defiance and spraying (silver) bullets everywhere even if it's not the optimal course of action.

It's neat. I find it really interesting that this uniquely American philosophy informs our gaming. It certainly explains why you find the occasional D&D gamer who goes into apoplectic fits that so many D&D games are not at all reflective of What Medieval Culture Was Like, utterly missing the point that we're telling frontier stories with longswords instead of six-shooters. The presence of castles and knights is a visual motif, not a treatise — it's really about being cowboys and rangers and grifters. When players decide they'd rather risk it all than spend another night bowing and scraping to Prince Poncipanz, they're tapping into that romance of the lawless. Robert E. Howard did the same thing, and he was a hell of an influence on those first gamers.

I'm not going to praise the American Western influence entirely, of course. I think the rest of the world is well aware by now just how those Texan cowboys and their yee-haw attitude can be a royal pain for everyone involved when they take that American attitude too seriously. But honestly, the world is well-served by having a variety of Westerns to choose from, and I honestly think some measure of accepting the frontier romance is well and truly justifiable. I wouldn't enjoy gaming quite so much if all my games had to be Unforgiven. I like the ambiguity (of things other than morals, mind) of Pale Rider for my WoD gaming, usually with a dose of the also-very-American Ray Bradbury for taste. I love D&D that hangs around The Magnificent Seven level of romance, and nobody can tell me otherwise.

Of course, this being gaming, I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that there is also no small amount of Young Guns that creeps into the actual play. I'm lucky enough to attract good players whenever I set up camp at the end of my table, but we're gamers. You know what it's like. You're partway through a complicated story of bad men doing bad things for what they might call good reasons, and hard folks in the saddle riding to dish out the closest thing to justice you can manage, and blam... "Hey, dog. Dog. Did you see the size of that chicken?" 


(Truth be told, I'd be kind of disappointed to find out I was the only person who ever thought that a perfect quote to drop into the middle of a Werewolf session would be "We're in the spirit world, asshole, they can't see us!")

There is a certain image that has always inspired me with a modest level of intellectual dread. Effectively, it is the labyrinth. Not just any old maze, mind; hedge mazes seem almost homey, and the corn mazes that are popular down here are pretty harmless as well unless you go in deliberately churning images of brutal harvest gods and Children of the Corn through your mind. No, I mean the stone labyrinth.

Part of this dread can be traced to reading a very creepy book about navigating a labyrinth as a child, and running across this one particular path ending where you can be orphaned in eternal blackness by the cruel guide just for taking the wrong turn. (I wish I could remember the exact title!) Another part, oddly enough, can be traced to Bard's Tale 3. One of the lovely touches of that game was the packaging, wherein you saw seven separate "windows" of art into each of the dimensions you'd be visiting. But each window was very abstract, implying far more than it showed. And the art for Tenebrosia stuck with me forever: a large stone gallery, in a soft warmish brown, with shadowy archways leading off to heaven-knows-where. In my mind, that labyrinth went on forever, and it was far more disquieting to think of wandering its halls potentially forever while alone, nothing but echoes around, than to think of the inevitable piles of random encounters that no doubt characterized the game proper. (I never made it past Gelidia, sad to say. How I'd love a re-release of those games...)

I love the labyrinth, and I dread it just a bit. I love how Gormenghast implies it, though even Gormenghast is probably a little on the mappably finite size. I enjoy the Jim Henson/Brian Froud take on it, as a lighter shade.

And I try to game the labyrinth again and again. Sometimes it's just a room or a house that appears, like the nearly city-sized theater of M. de la Masque, occupied only by life-size puppets. (The good M. was a Whispering Vault character I threw together when I found the game, never played, and then later transplanted into a different urban horror game.) In modern times, that usually means a dream, or some sort of place "between." In the WoD, the labyrinth would pop up here and there in the Umbra, or in the Hedge, or in Arcadia itself. In fantasy it may be an entire world or plane unto itself; consider a layer of Hell that is nothing but the labyrinth and solitude, inverting "Hell is other people" to "Hell is yourself." There isn't some sort of cosmological connection that I see when I do this, mind; I don't try and jam in links between games. If you wander into the labyrinth in the Hedge, you're not going to come out in a D&D world or anything. The motif is the connection, nothing more.

I got to do the labyrinth recently, although it was a darker and entirely subterranean version, and that was a fine game. And now one of the new groups I'm putting together has voted for another one. And it's going to look like that window of Tenebrosia, or the illustrations in that book I can't name. Stone halls, galleries, shadows. Some of it roofed, or tunnels through the earth, or open to the sky. There will be characters to interact with, of course, because that's one of the things I love about games. But those characters will be somewhat few compared to the space available to them -- villages' worth, in a space that could house metropoli.

I anticipate the echoes.

I wouldn't have expected Atlanta to be at risk of flooding, but well, there you have it.

Things are well enough; the house is on a hill, and the main trouble is getting to work. A 15-minute drive becomes an hour as you go around and try to avoid all the flooded-out bridges (of which we normally cross two). Dogs should be safe.

Actually slept last night, even! Monday night I think I got 4 hours. Very rough. The thunderstorms were fierce, and as near as I can tell, we have a lightning rod attached to one of the trees in our back yard. So we're actually safe from lightning, but that also means multiple crashes of thunderbolts right outside, which makes the dogs very nervous indeed. Plus, hard for a person to sleep through.

Normally I love rainy days, but man, will I be glad to see the Georgia sun again. Never thought I'd say that, but there you have it.

The big-ass move started Sunday. We've been packing for a while, but as of Sunday evening I've begun residence in Atlanta again. Peculiarly, I feel something like a newlywed, standing up around the kitchen counter to eat sammiches purchased at the grocery store because we have no furniture yet. Sleeping on a futon mattress because that's what fit in the back of the truck. Oh yeah, and no Internet at home; that might not happen until October. (I'm posting from work. Sssh!)

It's going to be lightly hellish for the next month or so, as Aileen and I wind up sinking more money into getting the house accounted for and the dogs settled. Five days a week we go to the office and then back to spend time indoors with dogs (they get their walks, but it's been raining too hard for them to really explore the yard for a good long while). At least one errand per night, be it getting a lawnmower or extra pet supplies.  Weekends we head back up to WNC to pack up more stuff and drag it back, just in time to start over.

I miss the mountains and my "proper" house, but all in all I can't really complain, though. I have Aileen again, the critters are healthy (if somewhat unhappy with the new arrangement), and with no TV/DVDs/online connectivity/vidya games at home, I get some writing and planning stuff done. I'm not wild about the process of the next month, but we're still damn lucky, and hopefully by the end of October things will be doing just fine.

I always enjoy GenCon, but this year it's definitely a stressor as well as something enjoyable. So much stuff to do before I go. Aileen not going this time. About a week when I get back, or less, before taking Aileen down to Atlanta to start her apprenticeship. GenCon and moving and all this stuff... it's a rough season. At least we won't be leaving any ongoing games behind us in ugly states: though none of the three we participated in are "finished," they all got good stopping points.

I would kind of like it to be November now, with all the hassles of the move and such behind us, with packets of fond memories of GenCon and lessons learned re: moving and dealing with DMV and such neatly in place instead of the work looming all ugly and real in front of us. It would be nice to only go through the select parts, which is what I almost feel like are the only things we'll have time for.

Like I said to Aileen, what we could really use right about now is a montage.

I actually enjoy reading the occasional Old School Renaissance-type blog post, such as those done by James Malizewski over at Grognardia. I think it's interesting to watch people go back to their old favorite games and strip out all sorts of "modern" methods and techniques of gameplay to find a new (old) experience. The process is neat — even I take some amusement from idly rolling 3d6, in order, and seeing what results.

There's a bit of a theory hanging around the old-school movement, though, that sort of makes me raise an eyebrow. It's the idea that "edition X" of D&D (actual edition may vary), or that some other RPG's introduction, is the mark of when Things Started To Change For the Worse. How various things introduced (and one of them may have been the concept of "metaplot") were ultimately things that had a "negative effect on the hobby." Depending on who you ask, if D&D had stayed the same game (again, actual edition may vary) instead of doing Edition X, the hobby would have remained at the strength it was at the height of the '80s fad. We'd have a unified culture instead of an ultimately divided one.

It's a theory that doesn't sing to me. Because it seems to avoid the (to me, obvious) fact that people like really different things. I mean, we're incredibly diverse. Our hobby cannot help but fragment because not everyone wants to play the same games.

This isn't an endorsement of forum poo-flinging, mind. I don't think we need to celebrate our differences with bile and spite. But whatever your distaste for Edition X of D&D, or the first edition of Vampire, or whatever, it has to be admitted that there was a hunger for that kind of game, or else it wouldn't have been consumed. Vampire made a few design decisions that ultimately couldn't keep it sustainable forever — such as, again, metaplot — but it was devoured precisely because people had an appetite for what it presented. Metaplot provided a detective story for people who were interested in delving through those grand, elaborate world-spanning schemes. If one group hadn't invented it, another would have had to. You could maybe have kept everyone playing the same game they were playing in 1980 by keeping them starved of options — but I doubt it. Too many of us would be waiting for the next best thing to come along.

This is particularly of interest to me because around the time 2nd edition AD&D came out, and the shift to more setting-aspected gaming came along, I was going to college. Seriously, I got my 2nd ed. PHB on a trip to Greenville (NC) with my mother. I think I wasn't alone, either: from '89-'93 or so, a whole lot of those kids who had gotten hooked on D&D during the early 1980s craze were going to college, or moving out. Old gaming groups assembled at elementary or high school splintered, and it was time to forge new ones at college. Right about then and there, brand new social contracts emerged. You know how people talk about "experimenting in college?" Being a completely dull-as-dishwater geek, I never wound up with my quota of collegiate sexual experimentation, but I tried new games: Shadowrun and Vampire and Rifts, I all remember. All of those came out when a classic kid who picked up D&D in 1980 was at college.

I can't think I'm the only one. The people who were older in 1980, maybe many of them already had gone through their explorative phase. But those years had to have been great for new roleplaying games, and for a shift in culture, just because so much of us kids who got in as kids with that red box, right when the craze was going, were trying new things anyway. Some were destined to fall out of the hobby by discovering sex or drugs or responsible living... hell, I don't know, it's a foreign mindset to me.

I hate to say it, old-school folks, but those kids were going to splinter anyway. We were hooked young, but you also hooked us before we'd grown into the people we are today. When we started changing into adults*, we were going to like different things. Maybe more of us would have stayed playing the kind of games you prefer if there were no other options — if you can imagine a world in which nobody ever invents more options — but I think more of us would also have dropped out of gaming forever. There wouldn't have been just the right lure to catch the emerging person who isn't that red-box kid any more.

Has the hobby suffered for all that fragmentation? Maybe. Unfortunately, it did so by being ever more able to give each gamer just the game they were looking for, and to promote good gaming by chemistry. So while game cross-pollination has radically dropped — we certainly no longer live in the world where you can expect to bring your character to some other game across town because everyone's playing AD&D the same way — individual games have become all the better, all the more customized to each group's rarefied tastes. So it's gotten worse, and it's gotten a hell of a lot better.

But you ask me, it was as inevitable as grunge supplanting hair metal.

And I don't even like grunge.



*I probably should have put "adults" in quote marks up there. My mother still is convinced that Ryan North knows me personally because I showed her this.

One of the little delights about generic fantasy is the trope of the inn or tavern. Yes, "you all meet in a tavern" is a tremendous cliché — but the tavern, being a snapshot of a culture when they're not at work, is the first and easiest way to establish the character of a place. You could, if you so desired, trace the gamer "fantasy tavern" back to The Prancing Pony, but note also that there is the Silver Eel (and its Golden Lamprey counterpart) of Lankhmar, and the difference between the two is essentially one of the first dividing points between the straight-up high fantasy pastiche of classic epic storytelling-meets-rustic familiarity and the more satirical side of sword and sorcery. 

This is also true of modern watering holes and hangouts, of course, though the most famous of those in science fiction are typically on the humorous side (Milliways is the first that leaps to mind, and although I've never read Spider Robinson, I'm aware of his Cross-Time Saloon). Vampire: the Masquerade had The Succubus Club, for instance, a properly memorable establishment. I would be highly tempted to steal the name "Man's Ruin" from an Asheville tattoo parlor, if I didn't think that there was no way I could do it justice. Mainstream there are plenty of familiar establishments, of course, such as Cheers or the Bada Bing. Sometimes they are characters; sometimes they aren't. But it's a theme that endures.

We love our watering holes in games, of course, as it's a chance to show the player characters when they're not at work. (Except when they are, as my friend Jake would often be during our teenage D&D games — "any fat merchants?", he'd gleefully ask, rubbing some fictionally pickpocketish fingers together). But in order for the prospect to work, you have to make the place memorable enough that the players come back. Sometimes it's as easy as coming up with a bar that's a noted hangout for Notable People — an Elysium for vampires, a neutral ground for werewolves, a superhero (or supervillain) bar, a tavern for adventurers. But in order to really sell it, you have to hit your players from the first impression. You have to have a good name.

I love the game of naming taverns. It's always good to have at least three potential dance clup/watering hole/strip club/meat market ideas in your mind, so you can have something ready for the urban group when they hit the town. In fantasy, for instance, I like having the "rich upscale place," the "rough-around-the-edges adventurers' hangout," and "the filthy dive." I would even have IM conversations with friends about naming them (such as the time I told Kathy "never mind, got it... it'll be the Gutspike*." She probably rolled her eyes). Comedy establishment names are of course nothing new, but generally speaking the best ones don't follow the "The Whelk and Firkin" naming convention of two odd names together. That's because they run together and become indistinct, unless you can come up with a pairing that conjures an immediate image. Something themed — I want to use "the Mattock and Grave" at some point, being the death-imagery-fiend I am. Mattock and Grave, proprietors, of course.

But, see, now there's an extra wrinkle. Because my brother runs for me and Aileen now. And he gets that idea of the first impression — of saying "You could drink at the Raging Merchant or the Prone Pony." Good hangout names make you smile one way or the other; maybe in an "oh, cool" sense, but sometimes in the amused "what? Why is the pony prone?" sense. So now it's a matter of escalation. I have to make names that are just as good, even — especially — if it's just a one-shot thrown together to entertain his friends as well as Aileen and himself.

They enjoyed their visit to the Jaundiced Eye, for whatever it's worth (where the prostitutes are somewhat past their freshness expiration date but the alcohol selection is really quite impressive. The two distinctions were not related in my head until Aileen started to snicker). The scene played out like something from Lankhmar, with all the dry wit I'd hoped for and those amused, somewhat alarmed grins on the faces of the players as they considered the, shall we say, reputation of the fine establishment.

Your move, J.




*The Gutspike was on a street by a few slaughterhouses, you see. Also it was a filthy dive with the kind of clientele that has more knives than teeth. I'm still quite happy with that one.

The Internet's a pretty miraculous thing. Between Aileen's original criteria and the realtor ability to put together a website where you can look at houses online, it's pretty neat to be able to narrow down your options for houses with a weekend spent at home, and then go rapid-tour those suckers in person over a couple of days. And with it being a buyer's market right now, you actually have a shot at getting something nice for the money. It's like... an adventure!

First off, though, let me stress that I am in every way aware that we are very fortunate not to have to sell a house in order to buy one. Renting one of my folks' houses for the last nine years has been pretty much a wonderful deal. We're damn lucky to be able to buy without having to suffer through the market as sellers, and I honestly feel sympathy for those who aren't in our position.

But yeah — it's been an adventure. Or at least, the hunting part has been. Some of the houses we looked at were like Manly Wade Wellman's gardinels*, with that feeling that they might chew you up and digest you if you lingered overlong. Maybe it was just the Atlanta climate, muggy and so damnably lowland July, that made us feel like the house was breathing on us all sticky-like. Others were nicer, but there was still the weighing of perils to rewards. What does that ancient air compressor signify? Will that fig tree bear fruit? What's lurking back in this attic crawlspace?

It fascinated me, actually. Your home is familiar, and so is the home of a friend or family member. But when you're prowling through a vacant house, considering how you might hollow it out and wear it yourself, there's an odd feeling of solitude that comes over one. It's the concept of vacancy. People lived here, and now they don't. Why did they leave? What did they leave behind? What did they know that you should, and that they may not be telling you? It's a feeling that doesn't diminish even when the house isn't vacant, but still occupied — the resident(s) just stepped out for a bit to get out of your way. That feels like the Marie Celeste. The dining room tables are set, to entice you to think just how nice it would be to eat a meal with your loved ones in that same room — with your furniture and place settings, of course. Everything's clean but lived-in, welcoming. You see more of the personality of the residents… but they're not there, they "just stepped out." It feels one part archaeology and one part, well, the gardinel again. Lures have been set, like the cute pink tongue of a snapping turtle. They want you to buy the house. They want it to close its teeth around you. In an entirely friendly and consensual way, of course...

I know, I'm basically a kid here, playing pretend. I'm well aware that offers and counter-offers and escrows and contracts and all kinds of Boring Adult Business is going to be up next. I'm very well aware that there will have to be a refrigerator and washing/drying machines and even a lawnmower purchased. Life in suburbia is going to be kind of rapaciously dull, and obviously with less privacy than I am inclined to prefer. But the period of exploration when you're trying to make up your mind — if that doesn't get haunting on some level, well, then you probably aren't plagued with the kind of overactive imagination I have.

Which is probably a good thing. If you start talking about gardinels to your realtor, she is going to give you a very peculiar look.


*Gardinels: If you're familiar with the concept of monsters that disguise themselves as treasure chests or floors or ceilings or whatever from D&D or associated video games, be warned that the gardinel predates them. And it masquerades as an entire cabin, shed or house. No foolin'. Read Wellman's "Come Into My Parlor" sometime and see another great example of how pulp fantasy informed the concept of the roleplaying game.

One of the things that I find damn interesting about D&D 4e's design is the concept of the skill challenge. For anyone out there who doesn't chuck around the twenty-siders, essentially these break down as moments where players go in turn to try different skills and accumulate successes in order to achieve a goal. It's sort of like an extended roll in the Storytelling system, save that everyone contributes and there's no one specific skill involved. You want to get X successes before 3 failures, and if you do, successful encounter. This tends to be more complicated than a simple single-check skill roll, but the payoff is immense: you have a skill-based encounter that plays out like a combat, in the sense that every PC is involved and taking turns. I can't stress how useful this is for encouraging player engagement. Now I'll admit that 4e borrows a lot from other games, and I'm not as deeply versed in the number of mechanics out there, so maybe some other game invented the idea. But it's one that deserves to be as widely publicized as D&D can make it.

The thing about skill challenges is that the rulebook recommends writing them out ahead of time: for an "interrogate the prisoner" scene, for instance, they may decree "he is a fanatic and cannot be Intimidated," or "a successful Religion check will grant a +2 to the next Bluff or Diplomacy check." I've found that it's actually more fun not to do that at all, though. Greywulf backs me up on this (relevant info in Part Five). Instead, I like skill challenges as something that either I can initiate or, with enough practice, the players can call for at any time. I've already tried standards like interrogation, chase scenes and "try to kite the troll to the guy with trollslaying experience." Last time, it was a very general "How are you going to get close enough to the villain and his hostage to pull off a rescue attempt?" Now, i could have said ahead of time which skills would work. But instead I had a vague idea that things like Stealth and Bluff could work, and left the rest to the players to brainstorm.

It worked great. The characters disguised the least stealthy of their trio to look like the person expected to report for a prisoner exchange, and while he advanced and tried the Bluff and Diplomacy route, the other two spied out a path among the rocks that would lead them around the back way to get into position (Perception and Stealth). The whole thing ended beautifully, with a Diplomacy check from the disguised priest allowing the other two to get into position for Bonus Surprise Rescue Round! And without planning ahead what they were going to do, it was all player innovation.

This is a really fun mechanic. It works great with the Storytelling system: what you'd do is set up extended rolls with open-ended skill use, and I think likely demand X successes within Y number of turns so as to make sure that failure is a possibility. It would be fantastic for Storytelling games with a strong team dynamic; consider a werewolf pack using a skill challenge to identify prey, isolate him from a crowd and chase him somewhere they can do their thing. It might be a little more easily finesseable by players, of course, because the decoupling of Attribute and Skill that Storytelling uses would allow players to really fudge the rolls they're good at as the ones they want to make — but I'm not sure it would be a bad thing. And after all, it would make things easier in some regards: maybe Dave can't roll on his maxed-out Weaponry for this challenge, but he can still involve Dexterity on something.

It's good stuff. Certainly going as free-form as I recommend would work only if you can trust the judgment of the Storyteller, and the players are going to be open-minded enough to try new things. But since I encourage everyone to play in groups like that anyway if at all possible, I don't feel so bad about saying they're worth a try.

I wrapped up Season Three of the Azuros game last night, completing Paku's ascension to godhood in time for the move back South. It went well; suitable epicness happened. I'll probably pick up Season Four once we go to Atlanta; no telling whether it'll be a one-on-one season with Aileen, or if I'll recruit other players yet. We'll see how the mood takes me.

Though I could theoretically pack up the Champions books now, I've still got a bit more epic superhero afterglow to get out of my system. Brainstorming a way to make a Ten-Eyed Man homage cool wasn't quite enough. Then it occurred to me that with a little restructuring, I could go back and figure out how to make one of the old games of my teenage years relevant. Maybe that'd let me cool down. So here's the pitch for the game I probably won't ever run — though really, the point of the exercise is that I could, and it could actually be worth it.

( Down the Rabbit Hole... )

Better now. Time to go plan how to wrap up the other games by mid-August.

Late to the party yet again, as Aileen and I actually wound up getting around to Chronicles of Riddick. Can you tell we're not serious genre fans? 

You know, it's not a terrific movie. We knew it wasn't going to be. Yet I am pretty sure that if I had seen it at, say, anywhere between the ages of 8-14, it would have been one of those movies that I would have loved forever despite its flaws, not unlike Krull. It reads pretty much like Vin's home D&D campaign in space, with freaking elementals running around (Judi Dench, as Aileen put it, as "the air genasi"), bad guys with silly names and lots of pretension — yet I respected that it wanted to be stylized sci-fi, something more like Star Wars or Warhammer 40K (and damn the realism!). "New Mecca" was pretty neat, and a lot closer to how I wish we'd see more far-future cultures: as cultures that have evolved from familiar stock, but feeling somewhat different. (Oh yeah, and really nice to see some serious multi-ethnicity in the crowd scenes full of beautiful happy people instead of reserving it for the bad sections of town. Even if Keith David met a somewhat predictable fate.) And I will always respect a work in which there was a certain level of love going into preparing the world-building. Not scientific love, mind you. I'm no scientist, but I can tell you some serious problems with the whole concept of the planet Crematoria — though again, what do you expect from a film that names a planet Crematoria? This thing was meant to be gameable. And it was a flawed film, but in a way it reminded me of just sitting down with another game master and chatting about world building for a while. The three-faced motifs and the neo-Meccan approach and the prison rail rockets and the killer pangoleopards and the flying ship called "the Basilica" — it's world porn. And I like world porn. It gets me in the mood, aw yeah.

Though honestly, the biggest warning label on this entire movie should be "Watch this before you watch Slings & Arrows." Because holy shit, Colm Feore's a neat dude, but it's the icing on the "these bad guys are pretty silly" cake to be reminded of Sanjay every time the big villain shows up. Though then again, if the Necromongers are in the business of mongering death, they would need a guy with a good marketing plan...

Scale is something that I maybe don't use to full extent in my home games. For someone who enjoys building fantasy worlds, I don't build many of them. For someone who really enjoyed Planescape, loved working on Umbral supplements for Werewolf, and wound up drawing on Champions in 3-D to close out his college-era Champions game, I actually don't muck around with multiverses very often. I have an idea or two for world-hopping campaigns, but they always lose out to the locally based things (and I've never actually run science fiction with multiple planets as implied, oddly enough — not even Star Wars!).

I think part of this is that it's damn difficult to adhere to the "show, don't tell" philosophy of GMing when you're talking about affairs on a grand scale. First of all, you have to watch out for the monoculture. I'll admit it, I'm one of those people who's irritated by alien races who have one language and one culture without some really well-thought-out reason for it. Now, it's arguably much more gameable to have those unifying races and cultures, but it hammers the old suspension of disbelief whenever someone starts talking about, say, "Klingon culture." I would like to think that Klingons would have roughly as many cultures as we humans did if they were around for a comparable period of time, and if you start counting with Sumeria and end up with our current modern mélange, that is a lot.

I work most comfortably at a smaller scale, I think. It's odd because I really enjoy the big-ticket superhero books like Morrison's JLA or Kirby's Fourth World, yet even when I'm doing epic fantasy it's never about saving the world. I like the emotion of a work like Princess Mononoke, where there's basically one forest and one town at stake, yet that story is epic. So, for that matter, is Beowulf (with "just" a mead-hall or two at stake) and the Odyssey (never leaves the Mediterranean, and the emotional context is a man wanting to return home). And emotion aside, there's a sort of real concreteness at the smaller scale: one statue is a solid detail, whereas a town full of statues is more of a general description, and a nation with statuary all over the place is a stereotype. I still enjoy cultural details like "there are many statues throughout this city" and "this culture is fond of sculpture, particularly out of sandstone," and I apply them, but it is more work. If you want the city to pop like the small town does, you need to describe, even name, more specific statues to make portions of the city as solid. Maybe I'm just lazy.

That said, sometimes you want, even need that larger sense of scale. It has a tendency to grip the players in a way that's unlike, but similar to, the clutching intensity of a very personal detail. It engages the sense of wonder, and that's a damn useful thing to be able to reach. Sometimes you want the improbably huge architecture, the vast metropoli teeming with people, the immensity of deserts or oceans, the vastness of space.

But still I find I like the small places. Moving the world is great fun, and there's that sense of wonder in the lever that's long enough, but the small places? Those are Archimedes' fulcrum. On them everything else rests.

Because it's possible that some people might have missed this, and that would be a shame. 

I'll admit it, I'm fond of the "alternate universe" trope. Fond enough of it that I decided to end my college Champions game by liberally borrowing from Champions in 3-D (the dimension-hopping supplement), and having the PCs wind up discovering that saving multiple realities was their purpose from the beginning... and also a handy rationalization for why they were such a weird-ass group of misfits and dimensional exiles.

But it's harder for me to use nowadays, even when I'm running a superhero game. Because I start thinking about probability. And the thing is, an alternate universe where "just one thing is different" is outlandishly improbable. Take your classic good guys are bad, bad guys are good mirror inversion. Unless the inversion starts with the birth of the oldest PC or NPC extant in the game, you have to wonder how the universe would have come out. If Nazi Germany were the good guys in WWII, how exactly would that have played out? If the universe has a higher predominance of really evil people, shouldn't more great-great-grand-ancestors have died out in murderous sprees, thus failing to sire their proper lineages of evil relatives? Maybe Ray Bradbury got to me at a formative stage or something, but it winds up straining my disbelief when an alternate universe features just one accurate analogue of a protagonist, because think of the odds. What are the odds that any of us could have come out different with just one different event in the past? That you would be a different person, with different DNA combinations or parents if, say, your great-grandparents had met two days later than they did? 

Thing is, with an infinite universe and all that, there's probably room for that level of improbability. In fact, you could probably argue that the "proximity" of a parallel universe is probably dependent on similiarities, so as stupidly improbable as universes where most of the players are the same are, they're closest to one another. The ones where things went very different are farther out, because the synchronicity draws parallels "together." Same thing with universes where the break point was very recent, I figure. And of course you can have parallel worlds that aren't really "worlds" in the sense of creation — realities spawned by artifact mirrors or inscrutable super-science or phenomenally powerful psychic dreamers or whatever. (Those are my favorites for "evil versions of the protagonists" scenarios; sometimes a mirror of opposition will be a lot more digestible than a freak wormhole, I'm just sayin'.)

I just wish that creators would actually talk about the odds a little more often. Because I realize we all accept the trope as genre fiction fans, but man, sometimes it'd be nice to see an explanation for why this insanely unlikely level of synchronicity is de rigeur. Because once you figure out why, theoretically you have some rationale to then do a story about that mechanic and its ramifications. More story ideas are good, right?

(And while I'm doing the math, maybe I'll figure the odds on a parallel universe where I exist but am not such a picky bastard.) 

The word "steampunk" niggles at me a little bit. I assume the etymology is such that it's a take on "cyberpunk," but it's an odd derivation. Does it really have punk ideals? Look at Girl Genius, for example; it's clearly of the steampunk genre, but it's not really very punky at all. There's not really the sense of rebellion against authority, the fever of angry youth — rather, there's an out-and-out sense of wonder, and one that's embaced with pride. The world is a mess, yes, but the heroes are people of almost traditional idealism. Possibly steampunk could be considered a punk rebellion against Victorian morés (and like that I start thinking of Victorian morays, never mind me), but it doesn't seem to be handled as such very often. People like the top hats and the cultured diction. Steampunk involves gentleman adventurers, and it's damn hard to be a gentleman and a punk at the same time.

Gamers are pretty bad for using -punk as a suffix with a very vague meaning. "Gothic-Punk" actually did consider what punk meant, back in the day, but "dungeonpunk" is an art style. Steampunk is used to describe a certain aesthetic of technology. I don't think there are "wuxiapunk" or "Westernpunk" or "spypunk" terms out there, but it's probably a matter of time.

If it were up to me, now, I'd use a different suffix. I'd want to see "-pulp" out there. The idea being that it would evoke the sensibilities of pulp novels and suchlike. We already have pulp science fiction and pulp fantasy and pulp spy fiction and pulp noir, all that kind of thing. There it exists as a prefix, because those are historically established genres. But honestly, I think much of what we call "steampunk" would be more accurately described as "steampulp." "Steampunk" is more fun to say, of course, and is now sort of a fashion movement, so there's no putting that genie back in the bottle. That said, I can't help but feel that there's some measure of value to the idea that "pulp" is a potential descriptor for a frame of mind. If used as a suffix, it could be shorthand for Exciting Adventure and Spine-Tingling Chills!

Take Street Fighter, for instance. I've long held that the RPG is an example of modern pulp: larger-than-life adventurers who exemplify certain broad archetypes, traveling the world and getting embroiled in mysticism, mad science and vicious criminal conspiracies. (Also you can play a cyborg gorilla in that game, which to me is a pretty good acid test.) You could call it "eightiespulp" if you wanted, though I suppose true eightiespulp would be Buckaroo Banzai and Big Trouble in Little China.

Try out some other genres. If "dungeonpunk" is a word, why not dungeonpulp? D&D needs little to no modification to justify the term. Some play it like "true" pulp fantasy already, but Eberron is an example of pure dungeonpulp, and I'm sure many others play the game with that kind of rollicking sensibility.

What would horrorpulp be? I'm gonna say Hellboy. Yes, there's clear horror, but there's also a love of jamming adventure, quips through gritted teeth, and yes, there's a cyborg gorilla in there, too. Multiple cyborg gorillas, actually. The old World of Darkness would also qualify in its more outrageous moments, n'est-ce pas? 

Cyberpulp? Shadowrun's almost there already. It still retains some of its punk vigor and stance on rebellion, but there are a lot of pulp elements infused in the world.

Post-apocalypsepulp? Ugly, clunky word, but... Rifts.

Now ultimately, I don't think this sort of thing could ever catch on. It's not immediately intuitive, and honestly people are already attached to their "-punk"s. But I like the idea, if for no other reason than it's another tool to brainstorm subgenres for RPGs and other creative works. What would a pulp graft do to a favorite game? Or is the -pulp already there, and is that why people love it so much? In the case of many of my favorite games, I'd probably have to say "yes." But then, I do have a weakness for gaming in that fashion.

Okay, just to make sure I've got all my bases covered:

Carrion apes: check.
Reaver baboons: check.
Man-eating ape: check.
Man-ape gladiator: check.
Demonic winged ape: check.
Two-headed mandrill demon: uh-oh. Could be overstocking the final encounter.

Rework demonic winged ape as "familiar" to priest, make two-headed mandrill demon the new main attraction of the final fight?

I'd better get to work.

(Note: This is going to talk about D&D, and a not-so-gritty, unabashedly heroic version of D&D at that. Yeah, I know, morally simplistic when I can do so much more, but I've already explained the premise of the semi-nostalgic Easter game, and with the promise of having to move back to Atlanta in near future, I'm gonna glom onto all the optimism and wild unspoiled lands-fantasy I can, because fucking Atlanta. I am not above going escapist in response to stressors.)

Wankery. It's kind of a goofy word for an unlovely process, isn't it? I was interested recently to see someone describe the process of world-building, specifically with regards to D&D, as such. The argument went something like this: It's a waste of time to detail stuff that hasn't been requested by the players, or to build setting aspects without specific players in mind. Creation just for the sake of the creative exercise is just so much intellectual masturbation.

I disagree profoundly, of course. Part of this is because I'm an inveterate world-builder, obviously, but I think that just gives me experience with why devising setting details even without specific player characters in mind is helpful. For one, there's the whole aspect of inspiration: world-building can give you ideas for games in the same manner that watching movies or reading genre fiction can. And with luck, they'll be less familiar to your players.

So, specific example. Easter game coming up, one I've mentioned before. Arabian Nights-inspired D&D. The overall quest is very find-the-MacGuffin, at the players' own request. I asked if they'd prefer to be mercenaries, treasure hunters, corsairs, fatebound or tribal defenders as a general hook, and one player suggested a "get the stolen MacGuffin" quest as a way to bring in all those concepts. Everyone glommed on it, so essentially my trek to the Temple of the Horned Ape is going to be tied into that MacGuffin hunt. Fair enough!

As I mused on it, I decided that I wanted this one-shot to represent a certain in media res snapshot, sort of like catching a random episode of an ongoing series on TV. The whole "the gem is stolen and the party comes together": that would not be played through, as I want to get to the action. So I advanced the timeline such that we would pick up with the PCs having run together for a while, probably having hunted down a couple of the thieves already. (Here I could not resist my love for Numbered Villains; nothing delights players quite like a checklist of enemies to trounce.) 

So I got the hankering to spend a few minutes on a frame story/mood-setter. In the process, I wound up devising details that would not impact the upcoming session. Time wasted on wankery, eh? It went something like this.


( (Embarrassing floridity) )


Is this world-building pretty much for my own sake? Yeah, it is, among other things. No need to devise a City of Locks for the backstory if the players won't visit it in-game. There's no info in there that's critical apart from "You've been at this quest for a while, it looks like they've divvied up their prize, and your next target appears to be in Hamaji," and that could be delivered separately. There are details in there not relevant to the game at hand, like the glass strongbox. Arguably, I could have been spending that time detailing things they'll see over the course of the game. I just spent the time devising details because it was fun, and I'm sure some would call that intellectual masturbation.

But yeah, I know my players, and two of them (admittedly the ones I was aiming at the most) were delighted. It successfully implanted the idea that this is how adventure is going to look in an Arabian Nights-inspired setting, and primed the mood. And the extra details help bring out the idea that these people are heroes, that this one-shot is a snapshot taken right in the middle of their careers. And, perhaps most tellingly, this was useful for my creative process: devising superfluous details puts me more in the mood to work on the important ones, and sets up chains of inspiration. If there are even any superfluous details at all, of course; Aileen and Kathy devour non-relevant details that make the world come alive like I was throwing popcorn to a dog, and the others enjoy them to varying extent. The "intellectual masturbation" argument relies on the idea that your players are not interested in the not-so-relevant details you like to create, but I'm lucky enough to have a group where that's not the case.

It just goes to show you: It's not wankery if there's actual penetration.

(hur hur)

I don't even want to think about how many times I've listened to the Persona 3 soundtrack working on Geist. But good goddamn, fire up "Adventured Act" or "Joy," and there we go. I like moodier "World of Darkness" music a little more often, which means there's also usually a lot of airtime for Brotherhood of the Wolf or Bram Stoker's Dracula or Interview With the Vampire, stuff composed to be background music for creepy World of Darkness-style action. But Persona 3 is, well... it's jubilant and off-kilter and bittersweet, especially to those who have played the game and remember what, say, the final fight was like. And it works. It's Geist.

I am at heart… if not an optimistic person, then a romantic one. I like morbidity, but I really like it when it's married to dynamism. So far I am happy.

Of course, right after Persona 3 comes The Shadow in my soundtrack list, courtesy of Will Hindmarch. Thankfully it is too late to add more silver-plated .45 automatics and broad-brimmed hats to Geist. You'll have to do that yourselves.

The tradition, when Easter rolls around and my parents do the rural hippie equivalent of the block party, is for me to run a Saturday game for any friends that show. And it's traditionally fantasy, too; horror I like for showcasing autumn, but I think raw fantasy is good for spring. It's kind of renewing. And it fits my belief that people find fantasy comforting because there were trees involved.

Two years ago, it was Azuros, and lots of hidden in-jokes (a hare-kin named Blackberry leading the PCs to where wicker men had been constructed with ovoid gems at their hearts entrapping friends: yes, I turned Easter baskets into wicker men). Last year it was kind of a nod to my friend Kathy (author of little things like, say, the Amanda fiction of Mage: The Ascension and Clan Novel: Setite), bringing old favorite college-era D&D characters back. You can call it an Easter resurrection if you like.

This time, screw theme. It's gonna be scimitars and sorcery. I love my Sinbad movies, even if I must do so in qualified fashion. For example, I'd really like a Sinbad movie with someone, I dunno, not purely Caucasian in the lead? Oh well.

The thing is, I really like the romance of Middle Eastern mythology and folklore. They have some fantastic archetypal critters and villains: the ghul, the djinn or ifrit, the wicked sorcerer, the prideful nobleman (you know, like that villain who married Scheherazade — it always freaked me out that the framestory for the 1001 Nights was essentially "Bluebeard gets a happy ending"). There are so many classic bits to pilfer: Death as a lovely woman, creative curses, bizarre and appealing talking animals, the whole nine yards. One of the reasons that I loved Al-Qadim so much — one of the best things ever done with D&D, the way I see it — is that it celebrated the exact same romance, and it did so intelligently. They set up a very well-done regional approximation of romantic Arabian fantasy, and then they included a variety of city-states and religions to fight the idea of monoculture. You like women heroes with 100% equality to men? Done. You want women in chadors to explore the more patriarchal aspects of the source material? Also done, a couple of cities over. It was an incredibly gameable romance, just what hits the spot.

Also, Aileen is looking at cooking something Persian or Mediterranean for the weekend to match. If there is a greater chance of couscous, hummus, kebabs, that orzo-chickpea-feta salad, or tabouleh to munch on in warm spring weather, damn right I'm running a game to inspire that kind of food.