The Great Nobility of Harry Potter

 

I am of the view that there is no pursuit that is more noble and no task that is more worth doing than writing novels. Call me romantic; call me deluded; call me a fuddy-duddy; call me a pseud. I will stand by this statement and only nuance it by adding that the most noble type of novel-writing is fantasy fiction. The real world will look after itself. Factories will be built, medicines will be administered, trucks will be driven. But the ability to complete a story in 400 pages which provides an avenue to escapism and wonder is something which we need great talents to provide for us. 

JK Rowling is not a great writer in the strict sense. But she is what I would call a brilliant one. She has not defined an era or created a distinctive style or influenced the way in which novels are written - she is not William Golding or JRR Tolkien or Marcel Proust. Yet she has done something equally as important and impressive: she has given people space to imagine and dream. 

One resorts to The Shawshank Redemption with great trepidation. But I will do it: the scene in that film in which Andy says to Red that people need to know that 'There are places in the world that aren't made out of stone' is I think, here, apt. People, in other words, need hope. And really good fiction provides that. It says: people can do great things, and don't have to be bound to the humdrum, the mundane, the quotidian. They can live beyond and above. 

It does this on two separate levels: in substance and in the proof of its own existence. A really good fantasy novel tells the reader two things. That great things are possible in the world of imagination (a hobbit really can bring down the Dark Lord; a boy from suburban England really can bring down the..er, Dark Lord). But also that great things are possible in the here and now (a woman writing in a cafe can produce something as good as this just by trying). There are two layers of inspiration nested together, and the result is powerfully explosive.

I am a latecomer to Harry Potter. The first books came out when I was about 15 of 16 and I was too old for them. I was also snooty about anything popular (a trait I still have). I have only read them all because my daughter was interested and it was something for me to read to her at bedtime. They are all flawed; the plots don't quite make sense; the writing can here and there be clunky. But it doesn't matter - the heart of the project is good. It is the right kind of story to be telling, and it is told well enough (and with wonderful charaterisation and dialogue) that it fits the bill for what brilliant fantasy fiction requires.

Earlier this week I was at the Warner Bros Studio Tour in Tokyo, which is dedicated to the Harry Potter film. And I was gratified on JK Rowling's behalf to see so many people from all around Asia (mostly Japanese, of course, but many from Thailand, the Phillippines, China, etc.) who were embracing her world and her creation. I found it very moving; what a thing it must be to write a story which transcends borders in that way and can unite people from across a vast continent in sheer pleasure. Good for her. 

I don't suspect that the great Crocodile Memory Palace novel will ever have its own Warner Bros Studio Tour in Tokyo - or Timbuktu. But one can nonetheless dream. Good luck to you, Ms Rowling. And thanks for the inspiration. 

But Where Is the Owner? Or, A Wizard's Garden; Or, Ged of the Golden Stars

The other day I took a walk with the kids to a plot of land, near my in-laws’ place in rural Japan, which is devoted to community use. There are some allotments, a little river walk area, a slide, and so forth. And, it being close to Children’s Day, there was a big display of koi nobori - the fish streamers that are hung up everywhere in Japan as part of the celebrations of spring. 

On a weekday in term-time it was deserted. The only sounds were the croaks of frogs from nearby rice fields, the occasional far-off call of a pheasant, and the sound of the breeze as it swept through the streamers, making them dance and flutter high above us. It was like a scene from a Ghibli film, accentuated by the inclusion of a free-standing pink door, situated as though at the gateway to play. This sensation was strengthened by the addition of a tiny shrine amongst some trees nearby.

It looked for all the world like a wizard or witch’s garden, the owner of which having gone off on an errand of some kind. To be there felt like trespassing. One half expected that at any moment the owner would suddenly walk out from behind a bush or rise up out of the ground or step through the pink doorway and demand, ‘What are you doing here? How dare you play on my slide?’

This is a trope of fantasy film and fiction, of course, and a great basis for an adventure site: the wizard's laboratory, garden, mansion house, etc., which the PCs can explore, but with a trigger or time limit that will activate guardians or the wizard's return itself (or both).

This garden I imagined to be owned by a wizard, who we'll call Ged in Golden Stars. He is a 12th level magic-user who is known by the glittering robe he wears, made from dark blue silk but covered in fist-sized stars made from golden thread. It is a Robe of Stars. Using it, Ged wanders the Astral Plane, which he accesses through the pink door in his garden; in an emergency, he can remove the stars and use them as throwing stars +5, which do 2d4 damage. There are 12 stars in total, and they replenish at midnight each night after use, unless all are used, in which case the robe is neutered and useless thereafter.

He also wears a ring of protection +5, a ring of shocking grasp, and carries a stave of thunder and withering, resembling a 7' long earthworm carved from teak. 

Ged in Golden Stars: HP 36, AC 4, #ATT1, DMG 1d4 (dagger), Move 120, ML 12, TT None

Spells Memorised: Magic Missile, Hold Portal, Hypnotism, Sleep, Detect Invisibility, Improved Phantasmal Force, Melf's Acid Arrow, Web, Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, Fireball, Suggestion, Dimension Door, Fire Trap, Polymorph Self, Rainbow Pattern, Chaos, Contact Other Plane, Distance Distortion, Teleport, Antimagic Shell, Demishadow Magic, Ensnarement, Permanent illusion, Prismatic Spray

Ged is normally in the Astral Plane. But he is alerted to the presence of intruders in his garden by four flower-shaped windmills place at its NW, NE, SW and SE corners. These begin to spin if a sentient being goes within 12'; Ged is then alerted and will appear in the doorway within 1d20 rounds. 

The garden has SEVEN GIANT BUMBLE BEES as guardians. These patrol the vicinity and will come to attack intruders within 1d12 rounds. 

Giant Bumble Bee: HD 6+4, AC 5, #ATT 1, DMG 1d6*, Move 60 (Fly 240), ML 9, TT None

*Sting causes additional 1d6 DMG on a failed save versus poison.

A line is strung up, 12' high, across the garden from roughly the centre of the N to S sides, from which hang 43 koi nobori. Within the lining of each of these banners is written a spell; these collectively function as Ged's spellbook. The spells are as follows

1st level: Audible Glamer, Cantrip, Magic Missile, Hold Portal, Taunt, Wall of Fog, Hypnotism, Sleep

2nd level: Alter Self, Blind, Detect Invisibility, Improved Phantasmal Force, Melf's Acid Arrow, Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter, Web

3rd level: Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, Fireball, Gust of Wind, Lightning Bolt, Suggestion

4th level: Charm Monster, Dimension Door, Fire Trap, Polymorph Self, Rainbow Pattern, Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer

5th level: Chaos, Contact Other Plane, Distance Distortion, Major Creation, Teleport, Wall of Iron

6th level: Antimagic Shell, Demishadow Magic, Disintegrate, Ensnarement, Guards and Wards, Permanent Illusion, True Seeing

7th level: Limited Wish, Prismatic Spray, Vanish

The koi nobori catch the wind and hold it within their bodies. If one is removed from its position by any other than Ged, it immediately emits a blast of cursed magical wind akin to a death fog in a 10' cube. This will do 4hp damage to anybody in the area and also destroy the two koi nobori immediately to the left and right within 3 rounds. The koi nobori are lined up from S to N in ascending order of level/alphabet. 

To the rear of the garden is Ged's potting shed. This contains a 24' long potting table on which sit three rows of 10 plant plots each. His treasure is randomly distributed underneath these plant pots (one item beneath one plant pot): A black opal (1,000 gp), an emerald (5,000 gp), a topaz (500 gp), a fire opal (1,000 gp), an amethyst (500 gp), a peridot (500 gp), a gold snuff box decorated with flowers (500 gp), a pair of platinum chopsticks (750 gp), a porcelain blue rose (250 gp), a pair of 1" tall porcelain ducks (50 gp), a bracelet made of chunks of glass (10 gp), the feather of the down of a peacockatrice (50 gp), a catoblepas tooth carved to resemble a mountain peak (500 gp),  a potion of ESP, a philter of stammering and stuttering, a potion of undead control, a potion of vitality, an elixir of health, and an oil of timelessness.

It is watched over by a BLACK PUDDING which inhabits a 5' tall and 5' diameter clay pot decorated with a mosaic of tiny blue and orange square tiles. It emerges within 1d3 rounds of anybody entering the potting shed. 

Black Pudding: HD 10, AC 6, #ATT 1, DMG 3d8*, Move 60, ML 12, TT None

*Each successful hit dissolves armour - chain mail takes one hit to dissolve; plate mail takes two; any magical '+' takes an extra round

Happiness is a New Notepad

I'm sure you'll agree with me that there can be few pleasures greater in life than purchasing a new notepad.  You hand over the money and there it is: a hundred or more blank pages, waiting to be filled. With what? An infinity of options extends to the far horizon of your mind. Will it be the beginning of a novel-writing career that culminates in a Nobel prize? Will it be a book of poems that will win great plaudits and erudite reviews in the New Yorker and the London Review of Books? Will it be where you scrawl the screenplay for what will one day be a worldwide blockbuster movie? Will it provide the space for the initial sketches for great works of art that finally establish you as the greatest talent of your generation?

You have long suspected you had greatness in you. All it was waiting for was the right notepad. And now you have it in your hands! Feel it! Feel how the pages flip! Feel their delightful texture beneath your fingertips! Gaze on it in wonder! What was once a wonderful living tree that supported a miniature ecosystem of birds, caterpillars, lichen, ants and spiders has been reduced to this bundle of paper, all for you to transform into a work of power and beauty!

And then you go and put it in a drawer with the other thirty or forty blank notepads you own and half-forget about it. But at least you had the thought.

There is nowhere greater to buy stationery in all the world than Japan. I visit every 18 months or so to see family, and always come back with a few notepads when I do. Here is my latest purchase, perfect for dungeon design as I'm sure you'll agree:

It even has a beetle on the front!

Check out those numbers in the margins.

Check out those squares. Phwoar.

This type of squared notebook will be particularly prized by the aspiring DM for obvious reasons, but its original use is to help schoolchildren practice writing Japanese characters. You can order many like it Amazon. More expensive than you would be able to get them in Japan (this one set me back about 100 yen, or 50p), and nothing like as adventurous. But it will prove similarly inspirational.

Right now I am imagining using it to write 'the Kesennuma sessions' - thirty one-page dungeons inspired by the Sanriku coast. But then again it may end up in a drawer. We'll see. 

I Hate Myself and Want to Die (or, Frog-People World)

Not really.

But I did just spend an hour drafting a post only for it to disappear into the ether. All the way through, I noticed that the autosave function in Blogger was not working - presumably due to some sort of connection error. But I blithely carried on regardless, and these are the consequences. I hit 'post' and the carefully crafted post I had written simply disappeared. It is not in 'drafts'. It is not in 'posts'. It is gone for good.

To write the whole thing out again would be soul-destroying. So let's do something else instead.

I went to the zoo the other day, and took some photos. Perusing them later, I thought that, put together, they would make an interesting framework for a fantasy world along the lines of Pars Fortuna, which John Stater created by randomly generating an entirely fresh set of races-as-classes for a total revamp of B/X D&D. (I believe the full list he came up with is here.)

The idea here is simple. You know elves, dwarfs, half-orcs, halflings, kobolds, and whatnot? They're all gone. It's a blank canvas. There is going to be a totally new setting with totally new races as PC classes. Here they are:

Tolo-tolo (poison-arrow-frog people): These frog-like humanoids excrete poison, and are fearless, brazen and impetuous for all their halfling-type size. Have excellent saving throws and bonuses to AC and ranged weapons, but lack the intelligence or patience for magic.

Mbalam (lizard people): These are slow-moving unless provoked, resilient, but possessing deep knowledge of powerful forest magic. Something like a mixture of dwarf and magic-user - a tough spell-caster which advances in XP levels very slowly (or perhaps, like an OD&D elf or 2nd edition dual-class human, alternates between fighter/magic-user as it goes up through the levels). 

Ngulu (jungle hog people): These are cleric-types - useful in a fight, tough, but imbued with a spiritual strength and innate wisdom which allows them to tap into the spirit realm to commune with the Gods. 

Mbote (okapi people): Akin to an elf, these are somewhat slowly advancing, but potentially immensely powerful, fighter-mages - mysterious, stand-offish, and cruelly beautiful. 

Teenu (skink-people): Immensely fast and agile, the Teenu practice a kind of teleporting magic which allows them to perform blink-like leaps from one place to another without having to traverse physical space. They are fragile but deadly - expert backstabbers and ambushers but extremely delicate when forced into a corner.

Nioka (blue viper people): The Nioka are a race of cleric-assassins, followers of a pantheon of death gods who bestow on them great power in the practice of murder. They have very high INT and WIS bonuses, as well as saving throws, and access to various necromantic spells. But they have few HP and cannot survive for long in a fair fight.

Wolo (golden frog people): These are a blessed race, marked out by their gods with their golden-hued skin. Those who adventure are like paladins - powerful in combat, particularly against the undead, but slow to advance and rare in number. 

Mayele (green toad people): The Mayele are wise and ruminate over the deep insights which their ancestors had into the workings of the cosmos. They move slowly, eschew combat, and have few other talents, but possess vast psychic strength and many strange new spells.

Truche (cassowary people): These are strange, sad, and slow - but deadly fighters. Occupying a niche a little like a dwarf, they combine shyness and pessimism with mighty force.

It occurs to me, however, having written all of the above out, that what we are really looking at here is a world with frog-men at its centre. In this reading, frog-men are the default race, as are humans in B/X or BECMI, and therefore the Tolo-tolo are something like fighters, the Wolo are like clerics, and the Mayele are like magic-users. Then the other races are identified with a single race-as-class.

This obviously suggests a tropical, jungle/swamp environment. But it also suggests a civilisation built by different types of frog-person. This speaks to me of tree-cities, or perhaps floating swamp-cities, or even semi-under(fresh)water cities. It also speaks to me of lost ruins, jungle caves, and tiankeng sinkholes. I like it, and I recommend visiting a zoo near you with your phone and a working thumb in order to come up with something of your own. 

Say Goodbye to Felix - It's Dragon Talk

I was recently discussing with two friends, as one does, the important matter of whether a human being could communicate with a red dragon. Could a human learn a dragon's language? And could a red dragon learn a human's? More broadly, is cross-species communication in a fantasy world possible at all? 

This is both a more simple and a more complicated question than it appears. 

First, clearly cross-species communication is possible in the world which we live in. You communicate with your dog. You may even communicate with your cat - who the hell knows with them, though? Famers communicate with their cattle and sheep. Honeyguides communicate with hunter-gatherers in Africa. And so on. Clearly, the appropriate question is not whether some communication is possible between a human and a red dragon (or an orc and an elven cat, or a duergar and a desert troll, or an ogre mage and a tabaxi, or...), but whether and to what extent that communication can take place through speech.

Second, the issue may be an irrelevance if the setting operates on fairy tale logic. Nobody in a fairy tale fails to communicate with anybody else. Wherever they go, and whoever they encounter, the main character(s) can understand and be understood.

Third, there are lots of nuances. We might want to interrogate:

• The Chewbacca Problem. Chewbacca can understand what is said to him, and Han Solo can understand Chewbacca. But the two are not physically equipped to make the relevant sounds in each other's languages. That works in Star Wars, but is it plausible? Are we satisfied that it is possible to make sense of sounds linguistically if we are not able at least in theory to vocalise them? My feeling is that the answer to this question is yes, given enough time for the ear to become accustomed to those sounds, but I have no reason to assume this beyond gut feeling.
• The Conceptual Problem. Languages are not just made up of nouns. They are figurative and rooted in feelings and emotions. Consider: 'I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow.' Would that sentence make sense to a creature that does not have a concept of 'hope', such as an orc or kuo-toa may indeed not? What concepts to do orcs or kuo-toa have that we lack? 
• The Inferential Problem. Languages rely on inference, and cultural embeddedness, to work. Consider: 'I've been sitting around waiting for a response to my email for months.' Have you really been literally sitting around waiting for a response, or have you just been waiting? We all know that the turn of phrase is figurative. What about creatures which literally do not sit (because they have a snake tail, like a naga) or which do not sit when waiting? And what kind of inferences would be necessary to understand the speech of dragons, or bullywugs, or ixitxachitl? 
• The Embodiment Problem. Languages are spoken by physical beings with bodies, and this affects not just the act of speaking (we have mouths that can only produce a limited range of sounds) but also how we express ourselves. Consider 'I have a good grasp of X now.' To an animal which does grasp things, that makes sense. What about to one which doesn't? Does an elven cat understand 'grasping' and why that would mean 'understanding'? 

The interesting question for me is whether a 'common tongue' is a remotely plausible concept. Clearly, it is useful to make a game work. But how confident are we that humans, orcs, elves, dragons, giants, trolls, wraiths, demons and locathah would share enough thought processes to be able to come up with common language that contained anything other than simple nouns? It seems likely that all of those creatures could find agreement on things like what a rock is, what grass is, what death is, and so on. But would nuanced communication be achievable at all? 

Against the RPG Rulebook Spartans

 

I have been writing this blog, and reading other RPG-related blogs and forums, for almost twenty years (!). One thing I have noticed during this time is that there is a species of gamer who sees it as an important part of his (always his) identity that he only uses RPG materials for play and has no other earthly use for them. This type of individual always belittles and pooh-poohs any desire to make a product read well or possess any sort of literary merit; he insists instead that useability is the only valid concern. Everything about a book should serve that end - all of it ruthlessly shaped and focused for efficient use 'at the table'. 

This is generally coupled with a derisive attitude to those the RPG Rulebook Spartan percieves to be interested in RPG books for the wrong reasons - the Spartan thinks very poorly of anybody who would want to get such a book 'just' in order to read it and not play it. Reading, he insists, is for fiction. And it is illegitimate for any RPG writer to aspire to create literary art. To do so would be to inculcate in the masses the foolish and corrupting notion that prose style matters. And in any case the RPG Rulebook Spartan strongly believes that only namby-pampby, friendless, introverted girlie men would want to read an RPG rulebook for entertainment in the first place. No: gritting his teeth and staring off into the distance with flinty eyes, the RPG Rulebook Spartan reminds his audience that he has seen things. He is a man of action. He sits down around a table with other men and takes with great seriousness the task of pretending to be an elf. Ideally he would want the rules of whatever game he is playing to be etched in slabs of granite or carved into tree bark. But at the very least those rules should have the decency only to present themselves as rules - and never to try to look or sound nice.

I reject RPG Rulebook Spartanism. I don't think that RPG rulebooks should only be designed with usability in mind. The only ones I have ever read and wanted to play, in fact, are precisely those that prioritise readability over usability. And I am going to out myself. I have played lots of RPGs over the years. But I also - and I am going to shock you, now - going to proudly declare that I own many RPG books that I have absolutely no earthly use for, but which I like because they are enjoyable to read and full of interesting ideas. I do not think it is a sin against God for a designer to prioritise the reading experience over the gaming one. I have no problem with confessing to reading things and enjoying the images they conjure in the mind as an end in itself.

Finally: I reject wholeheartedly the idea that readability and useability are at odds with one another. If something is enjoyable to read then it will inspire you to want to run it, and to make it a success. If something reads like a long list of bullet points, numbered lists, sidebars and the like then its flat and uninspiring nature will work against the desire to make use of it. RPG Rulebook Spartanism is in other word based on a misconceived premise, which is that usefulness can be extracted from aesthetics. It cannot and should not be. 

The Holy Grail of Dungeon Representation

I read an interesting blog post today in which the author makes an eloquent and compelling case for describing dungeon locations (and, by inference, hex map locations) using only normal prose sentences and paragraphs, and without 

boldings, italicizations, underlinings, smallcaps, parentheticals, bracketed asides, sidebars, lists, tables, bullets, nested sub-bullets, color-coding, font alternates, and all the innumerable other invented methods to display text.

The thesis is that the use of these 'innovations' tend to be distracting and, perversely, makes the parsing of the information both more difficult and less interesting. The post concludes with a cri de coeur which I can certainly get behind: 'The character of writing should be embraced as humans have written for millennia: in sentences and paragraphs, one after the other.'

I find myself agreeing with this, although I am a confirmed middle-aged fart whose innate proclivities tend towards agreement with any thesis that stands athwart change - or, even better, which advocates return to the antique past. 

But then again I am also somebody who made an abortive attempt at writing a dungeon novel, which I consider, were such a thing to exist, to be the absolute pinnacle, the Platonic ideal, the holy grail of good representation of gameable material - something which is as enjoyable to read as a fantasy story but also usable to run games with. Or, as I put it back then:

The idea is: it's a collection of stories about adventurers exploring a dungeon, which follows their escapades in a sort of detached pseudo-Vancian narrative. Accompanying the accounts are maps, which can be pieced together. Periodically there are summaries consisting of big sections of the dungeon mapped out and keyed, detailing "the adventure(s) so far" - and at the end there is a full map of the entire thing, with contents, which you can then use to run your own parties of PCs through.

There are three reasons why I would advance the argument that this is indeed the pinnacle, and the best way to communicate the information. 

1. It recognises the fact that most RPG materials are bought for entertainment as much as for use at the table, and that indeed there is a market for RPG materials which will never be used for gaming.

2. It recognises that the human brain processes information in narrative form very effectively and that reading a dungeon as a story, or set of short stories, allows the DM to imbibe a mood and a 'thick', tacit awarenesss of the contents much more readily than would be the case with simple, inert room descrptions.

3. It recognises that fantasy fiction has reached something of a dead-end in terms of genre; that there are lots of RPG players who like fantasy fiction; and that there is therefore a big gap in the market for such a product.

The chief hurdle is that which confronts any creative act: procrastination. The next biggest one is actually doing it. To which I can only respond:

A Western in Fantasy Dress

D&D can be understood as a Western in fantasy dress. The reasons for this are not complicated. D&D grew largely out of the American pulp fantasy tradition, and that tradition largely had its historical origins in stories about cowboys and Indians. This is present in the game's very DNA. D&D PCs roam around a landscape full of danger and carry out feats of derring-do in return for glory. And this is, essentially, what every cowboy in every Western does. Sometimes the feats of derring-do are unquestionably good (like The Lone Ranger or Shane). Sometimes they are morally ambivalent or even morally undesirable (like in High Plains Drifter or A Fistful of Dollars). And both of these are present in the different branches of D&D play, with mainstream games often resembling something like Rio Bravo, High Noon, or The Naked Spur, and more OSR-oriented games often resembling something more like The Wild Bunch or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The genius of D&D, however, is that it (entirely, I am sure, unconsciously) recognises that Westerns have both limited shelf-lives and limited scope. Ultimately, the Western is not that interesting as a long-term proposition. Westerns work best as short stories, or as films (which are the visual equivalents of short stories). They are a chunk of concentrated action and adventure with a definite beginning, middle and end. They are not the stuff of, say, a multi-volume series of epic novels each of 1000 pages in length.

This is the reason, I think, why we don't really see many Western RPGs in general. There are only so many innocent Indian tribes to vanquish, robber barons to dispossess, stagecoaches to protect, banks to rob, and outlaws to apprehend, before things get stale. Those things are fine as one-offs. But they aren't the stuff of campaigns.

The genius of D&D lies in the fact that, just as English layers a great deal of French (and loanwords from other languages) on an underlying Germanic chassis, it submerges its Western skeleton in fantasy tropes - and thereby brings in almost limitless variety. And this variety comes in at two levels. On the one hand there is just so much more to do (you can vanquish hostile tribes, dispossess robber barons, protect stagecoaches, rob banks, and apprehend outlaws, but you can also fight dragons, defeat vampire lords, delve beneath the ocean to fight sahuagin, summon vile and ancient demigods, and so on). And on the other hand there is much more scope to improve. A cowbody is always a cowboy. But a D&D PC can go from being an ineffectual, green-around-the-gills schlubb to being in effect a demigod in his own right.

I don't think that Gygax and Arneson explicitly saw this (maybe they did), but they certainly unconsciously intuited it. Western bones + Tolkien meat = a delicious feast. 

Two corollaries arise from this.

1. The Western structure also works for other genres - certainly science fiction. In principle, any type of meat can be put on the Western bones so long as the underlying skeleton is left intact.

2. It is I think also true that fantasy dress can enliven any underlying structure. Mystery RPGs on their own are quite dull and hard to make work. But the structure of the mystery may be vastly improved by making it a mystery in a fantasy setting, with all the variety that entails. There may be other examples.

Adding a Touch of Colour: Or, Blue Dwarfs, Yellow Giants, and Red Trolls, Oh My!

There is a pleasing direct vividness about colour words appearing in book titles, monster names, or fantasy geographies. 'The King in Yellow'. Red Mars. Purple Worm. 'The Masque of the Red Death'. Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight. 'The White People'. The Silver Chair. The Black Speech. And so on.

The reasons for this are not very complicated, I suppose. First, we are so alive to colour as such that it instantly appears in our mind - one need only see the word 'red' to immediately see vivid red in one's mind's eye. No mental effort required. 

Second, colours often have connotations. Silver feels mysterious; white feels cold; red suggests blood or fire; green suggests nature or spring, and so on. There is a lot of semiotic significance packed into these single words. 

And the third is the blunt effectiveness of these often monosyllabic, Anglo-Saxon-sounding terms. Which of these is more evocative: The Blue Mountains or the Mountains of Syllrabiastra? It is the former for a whole arsenal of reasons, but one of them is simply that 'Blue Mountains' has a ring to it. 'Blue' is a good, solid word that anybody can understand; it also doesn't beat around the bush. It goes straight at you, in your face. Most colour words - certainly the simple colour words that we learn as children, or when learning a new language - have this quality. They don't mess around.

It follows that if one wishes to add some spice and vividness in worldbuilding, one can't go too far wrong with creative use of colour in the naming of things. This perhaps shouldn't be overdone, but it is surprising how much life can be breathed into even the most hackneyed concepts with a fresh hue. Instead of the Goblins of Elrexinfrax, go for the Purple goblins of Elrexinfrax. Instead of the Dwarfs of Undermountain, go for the Blue Dwarfs of Undermountain. Instead of the Empress of Yeffinfeff, go for the Red Empress of Yeffinfeff. And so forth. 

The important point here is not that the goblins, dwarfs, or empress are necessarily actually purple, blue or red (though they may be). Perhaps the blue dwarfs are called such because they mine blue-tinged iron to make their weapons. Perhaps the purple goblins make a violet dye from some strange fruit and use it to colour their skin, or for tattoos. Perhaps the Red Empress is known for bathing in the blood of virgins. Whatever. The colour both generates an evocative name - and a reason to pique the curiosity of the players - but also gets the creative juices flowing. 

To this end, I recommend using this technique before coming up with any details in advance. While stocking your hexmap you decide that this area of land is populated by a race of giants known as the Yellow Giants. Why are they yellow? That's what gets the ideas flowing. 

Terrain Types for Encounter Tables and Hex Maps: What Principles?

How fine-grained does one like one's terrain types, sir? And is it possible to come up with some principles regarding how many such types there should ideally be? 

I ask because I happen to have been paging idly through Oriental Adventures just now, and came across in it a page of Encounter Tables by Terrain Type. These are:

• City/Town
• Tropical/Sub-tropical mountains
• Tropical/Sub-tropical ocean
• Temperate swamp
• Rural
• Tropical/Sub-tropical forest
• Temperate mountain
• Temperate freshwater
• Steppe
• Tropical/Sub-tropical swamp
• Temperate forest
• Temperate ocean
• Aerial
• Tropical/Sub-tropical freshwater
• Temperate plain
• Cold regions (all terrain types)

Clearly the designers got bored by the end - or perhaps just didn't have enough monster varieties - and decided not to bother with distinct tables for 'cold' forests, mountains, swamps and so on. There are also some oddities and lacunae in their approach. One is that there is no distinction drawn between tropical, temperate, and sub-tropical cities and rural areas. Another is that there is no concept of hills: everything is either mountain or forest, or open flatland. 

Otherwise their usage is pretty consistent with what one would expect, and what I imagine most DMs resort to when populating a hexmap and writing up wilderness encounter tables. 

But this does raise the (to me, at any rate) curious fact that, for all that there are more blogposts and print and digital products about how to create, populate and run hexmaps than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches in the universe, I don't believe I have ever read anything by way of principles guiding selection of terrain types for hexes. All I've ever seen are rough and ready preconceived ideas put into practice. People just do it 'by eye' and don't, I think, give it a great deal of thought. Nobody really seems to think through, in a reasoned way, why the division is between temperate forest, temperate mountain, etc., but not, for example, temperate deciduous versus coniferous forest, or dense versus light forest, or mountains above and below the treeline, or whatever. Likewise, nobody really seems to consider whether there are meaningful differences in terms of movement rates or the population of wilderness encounter tables between, say, a temperate plain versus a steppe, or tundra versus arctic, or whatever. 

Without having thought the matter through a great deal, and therefore offering this post as a conversation starter more than anything else, I will suggest there are probably three main approaches to the matter:

1. The realistic approach: the DM simply tries as hard as he can to come up with a list of terrain types which reflects actual real-world complexity as he sees it. If he thinks a forest flatland is different to forested hills, or a rural piedmont is different to a rural plain, then he duly deploys different hex styles to reflect those differences. 
2. The game management approach. The DM uses as many terrain types as is practically useful given the nature of the campaign. If the hexmap is mostly jungle, then he may divide the terrain into dense versus moderate versus light jungle; big and small rivers; bogs versus marshes versus swamps; forested hills; etc., so as to maintain variety. On the other hand, if there is already natural variety within the hexmap (because one area is deserted, another mountainous, another more temperate, etc.) then there is no need to get too fine-grained.  
3. The monster-availability-led approach. Rather than starting off with the map, the DM makes a list of all the monsters he can think of and, from that, decide how many terrain types are meaningful. Why draw a distinction between arctic and tundra if the number of cold-place monster varieties is very small and the wilderness encounter table will therefore largely look the same? Why draw a distinction between dense versus light forest if there are only so many forest-dwelling monsters in the bestiary? And so on.

Have any readers given it any more thought than this? How do you decide how many terrain types your campaign map will have, and how fine-grained or abstract do you tend to get?