Actual Play Recommendations Reviewed and Ranked

Readers of this blog are people of rarefied tastes and great education and learning, and we should not be surprised to discover there is a high degree of consensus between them about matters of Truth, Justice, and the Best OSR-adjacent Actual Play podcats and YouTube videos. In my last post I asked for recommendations and, lo and behold, they are almost all exactly the same. Here I review and rank them.

3d6 Down the Line, The Halls of Arden Vul (YouTube playlist available here): This is the best of what was on offer and I am surprised to find myself saying that I genuinely really enjoyed watching the first two episodes, and may slowly but surely continue until the end. This, for those who have not seen it, bills itself from the start as really a recording of a regular, average gaming group's weekly sessions, without ornamentation or am-dram performances and 'doing voices' of the Critical Role variety, and it works exceptionally well - it is as close an example I can think of to what I have seen and experienced in my own life running and playing in D&D campaigns. There is a kind of 'let's get down to business' attitude here that I really appreciate, and that I find very comfortable and familiar: we're here to play a campaign of D&D, we know what we're doing and what we want, so let's do it. If you want to watch a group of five middle-aged men playing OSR-like D&D as it is really meant to be played, and is played, in a relaxed-but-competent way, I heartily recommend this, and it actually really got me juiced up to start running a game again after a year or so's hiatus. I have some quibbles about house rules and so forth, and I find the video version much more accessible than the podcast version, but nothing that would stop me giving it 4.5 bec de corbins.

Tale of the Manticore (I watched/listened to Episode 1 of Season 3 here; you can find the other videos easily from there): This self-describes as a 'hybrid between a dark fantasy audio drama and a solo D&D RPG'. In this respect it is actually quite close to what I was trying to do long ago with my dungeon novel, in which I intended to run solo explorations of a megadungeon and write them up as though fiction. I have to be honest: while the concept is appealing, and while I appreciate the effort that the creator has put into his product, it didn't quite grab me at first. It was a little bit too slow-moving and a little bit too by-the-numbers in terms of content for my taste. However, once the mechanical aspect of thing got going and the creator began to adopt an OOC perspective, I enjoyed it a lot more. I am intrigued by the possibilities of this form of storytelling - in a way, it is not altogether different from what Dickens was doing, or Amistead Maupin may generations later, in that it is essentially a narrative pieced together on an episodic basis, without too much pre-determination, but with the added element of dice to spice things up. 3.5 bec de corbins, possibly revised higher with continued listening.

Mystery Quest (I watched/listened to Episode 1 of their Mythic Bastionland series): This is a much slicker, professionalised 'show'; at times it is worth reflecting on how miraculous it is that we are now able to watch people playing RPGs, on demand, with better production values than broadcast television had in the days of our youth. How I would have loved to know this would one day happen if you had told me it when I was the age of 12. With that said, this is too scripted, too narrative-based, and too performance-oriented for me. I understand why it would appeal, but I don't feel that appeal personally. 2.5 bec de corbins. 

Koibu or Neil Pass Erickson (I watched/listened to Episode 1 of the Voyages of Dusk and Dawn campaign): This is a grower. In the course of watching these videos I developed a theory, which is that these Actual Plays tend to function best if they can either rely on a charismatic and watchable cast (Mystery Quest), or on a very strong rules-structure and commitment to elucidating the nuts and bolts of the game (3d6 Down the Line). This falls rather between those stools. It is half like watching a group of actors performing, and half like watching a group of friends playing D&D. I think I would have preferred if these guys had just focused on the latter, and initially, I had a period of expectation-confusion in which I wasn't sure whether to expect Critical Role-lite or something much more grounded. However, I got into it once I realised that it was really more the latter but with fancy maps and some effort being made to 'do voices'. I could see myself waching the rest. 4 bec de corbins. 

Legends of Avantris (here) and World of Io (here): These were described to me as being 'entertainy' channels, and I get that. Of the two, the first was much more enjoyable and some of the videos I watched were genuinely funny, as opposed to, 'ha ha, aren't we funny?', which is a line that is difficult to avoid straying over. With that said, I am disqualifying them on the basis that they are too far removed from being OSR-adjacent. They aren't for me, but that's okay.

Bring Down the Sky (I watched the first epiode here): This is something different, in the form of a mecha SF oriented campaign. The GM narrative style here is I think exemplary - very clear, listenable, and engaging (how to describe things well is a subject that is surprisingly under-discussed); there is no need for fancy visuals since this aspect of the game is done so well. I also found the speed with which this campaign cuts to the chase appealing. With that said, there is quite a bit of scripting here, it seems to me, and things begin to lean fairly heavily into the 'entertainy' end of the spectrum, which, in case you haven't noticed, isn't quite my thing. In the end, I would situate this in the middle of the pack. 3 bec de corbins.

The Dice Stormers (I watched their first episode of a CyberGenerations campaign): I have to say, I loved these guys and their vibe. CyberGeneration would not ordinarily be my thing, and it's quite a stretch to call this 'OSR adjacent'. But it put a big smile on my face to sit in on three mates just having a great time, with exactly the right mixture of comedy and straight-facedness. You can't manufacture this level of obvious good-friends chemistry, as hard as a lot of the more 'entertainy' shows might try. In its tone and atmosphere and the way the three gel it accords very closely with what it is like in the games I run and play in. A diamond in the rough. 4.5 bec de corbins. 

Final ranking (apologies if I missed any contenders - do let me know if I forgot anything):

1 = 3d6 Down the Line/The Dice Stormers

3 Koibu

4 Tale of the Manticore

5 Bring Down the Sky

6 Mystery Quest

Not Ranked: Legend of Avantris, World of Io

On reflection, I feel bad for marking Mystery Quest down so low. As an example of its type, it is good. It just isn't my type. But I suppose at the end of the day I am the one in charge of the bec de corbins. 

Recommend Me and Your Fellow Readers Some YouTube Actual Plays

What is the state-of-the-art when it comes to Actual Plays on YouTube? If you are reading this blog you are likely familiar with my tastes, and your own will be aligned, but for the avoidance of doubt I am looking for OSR-adjacent, or OSR-sympathetic, content with the emphasis on sandbox play. I am by no means limited in my interests to D&D. (I will merrily watch MERP, Cyberpunk 2020, RuneQuest, or any other RPG likely to appeal to the average old fart.)  

I have tried to watch Critical Role, and failed entirely to appreciate whatever virtues it has. It is not for me.  I also long ago (11 years ago!) watched something involving Will Wheaton, my verdict upon which was: 

I would probably rather be flogged than be involved in that session, and yet at the same time I can't summon up the necessary bile to say I disliked watching it.

I would like something rather better than that. Fly, my pretties! I will watch and review whatever is recommended. 

SomeBing Inspiring

Like any right thinking person, I hate and fear Microsoft Bing. But on my office computer at work, each day a free Bing wallpaper is downloaded and automatically set as my desktop wallpaper image. They are surprisingly inspiring for campaign or adventure site ideas. Viz:

This is quite literally a ruined mountain temple complex of a lost civilisation. It therefore serves as a wonderful template for, er, a ruined mountain temple complex of a lost civilisation.

This is clearly the Makatanti Badlands, once a great formian nest-city which riddled an entire mountain range with tunnels, now haunted by their ghosts and other, Dark Sun-adjacent beings: outlaw githyanki, a thri-kreen prophet, cannibal halflings, etc.

This brings to mind a campaign in which the PCs are borrower-like tiny people, perhaps 2 inches high, trying to survive in a world of giants. Here, they eke out a living from beachcombing, dodging giant crabs and ragworms, not to mention mudskippers and seagulls (the equivalent to them of dragons).

A flooded dungeon. Beneath the cold blue waters is the lair of a sapphire dragon, an ancient wyrm who slumbers so deeply his tunnels have become a hive of lesser forms of aquatic life. To enter, one uses something like gillyweed, which provides sufficient time to swim down and explore the caves; try not to get lost.

This I take to be the corpse of a giant, which has lain semi-submerged in the bog for millennia and gradually become crusted over with rock and earth. He still carries treasure (somewhere) and his body is infested with whatever life-forms are drawn to inhabit such a grim and desolate home.

The fortress that guards the entrance to the inner realm of the Kunlun Shan, the axis mundi - a great mountain that rises to the heavens and towers over the lowlands below. It contains many palaces, gardens, orchards and wild forests, and is inhabited by hermits, magicians, kings and monsters inspired by Chinese myth.

This, meanwhile, makes me imagine a maze that sits atop a hill rising up from a thick forest. Created long ago by a wizard as a birthday present to his favourite daughter, at its heart lies a special treasure. But the daughter died on the morning of her birthday and in grief the wizard cursed his creation. It is now a demonic place into which only the bravest or most foolhardy venture - and none return...

While this at first glance could be the remain of a fortress, say, or a demon-summoning chamber, I like to imagine it as a wrestling arena for fomorians in a pseudo-Irish setting. On hot summer evenings, especially when rain storms are brewing, they descend on this spot to fight out duels and settle disputes; at other times of year, they enjoy sport and sacrifice with the people of the nearby countryside...

Here, we see what I believe to be the homes of the Desert Troll Fathers - two dozen or so hermit trolls who live in isolation in the blasted heart of a great sandy wilderness. They need next to no water and their home is thus far from any oasis or wadi; this makes it almost inaccessible to ordinary humanoid beings. Nevertheless, since it is rumoured that they are in direct contact with gods of sky and stars, there are those who attempt the perilous journey to hear their wisdom. The trolls do condescend to give it - but typically only in return for offerings of fresh (live) meat.  

A town in a quasi-Tuscany, filled with strange guilds, dark plots, cloaks and daggers, sinister demonic forces, and hidden entrances to the Underdark.

I could go on all day but I'll stop now. Try it. The full archive is here.

A Hobgoblin of the Very Worst Kind

One of my offspring is quite attached to a podcast in which a woman very nicely reads (pleasingly unvarnished and unbowdlerised) fairy tales and classic children's stories. One of them is Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen. 

If you don't know The Snow Queen, it's framed by a sort of story-within-a-story in which an evil spirit has created a looking glass which causes everything to be reflected in a distorted way so as to appear like a twisted, sinister version of itself. The spirit and his cronies take the looking glass to heaven in order to make fun of God and the angels, but it shatters on the way into millions of tiny fragments, which then descend to earth to make various kinds of mischief.

The translation which is used in the podcast in question describes this evil spirit as 'one of the very worst kinds of hobgoblins' - a turn of phrase which never ceases to intrigue me, because of what it implies: that there are lots of different kinds of hobgoblin, some worse than others.

Having done some further investigations I'm not sure this translation is very accurate - the original Danish reads:

for det var en ond trold! det var en af de allerværste, det var "djævelen"!

And this, various online dictionaries informs me, means something like 'there was an evil troll; it was one of the very worst, it was a devil'. I don't speak Danish so I'm not sure, but I don't think there is anything here that implies there are different kinds of 'trold' ('Det var en af de alllerværste' = 'That was one of the very worst'?). MR James (who, astonishingly, translated it back in the day) rendered this 'There was a wicked troll. He was one of the very worst sort—he was the devil.' But, likewise, I don't know where 'sort' comes from here, unless it's just a way of accentuating the wickedness. The rendering of 'trold' as hobgoblin seems forgivable, because as I understand it 'trolls' in Scandinavian myth were more elf-like than ogre-like (as they tend to be in English fairy tales); somebody from that neck of the woods will now no doubt appear in the comments to tell me that I am a fool and wrong and that everything I say here is foolish wrongness. But this is the state of play as I see it, vis-a-vis translations of the opening section of The Snow Queen. 

Anyway, the concept of there being different kinds of hobgoblin interests me. This is because hobgoblins tend to be unjustly overlooked in D&D, at least in my experience. The main reason for this is that they have difficulty differentiating themselves from goblins and orcs. Goblins have the 'sneaky, malicious, deceptive' humanoid angle sewn up, and orcs have the 'evil, militaristic brute' territory. What then is a hobgoblin - other than an amalgam of both?

Over the years D&D staked out hobgoblins as a sort of lawful evil counterpart to the chaotic evil orcs - the idea being that hobgoblins are regimented, militarised, and hierarchical where orcs are savage and brutal. Characteristically this was spoiled in 2nd edition by making orcs lawful evil and militaristic as well, rendering hobgoblins almost redundant But thereafter, at least as far as I can tell (I am no expert on D&D post-2nd edition) the difference has been more clearly staked out: in 5th edition hobgoblins almost seem to resemble klingons:

This is not very inspired and feels inauthentic - sort of tacked on. The good thing about goblins and orc (and any really iconic monster) is that they tap into forms of disquiet that we feel viscerally. There is something scary about a small, sneaky, deceptive, malicious trickster. There is something scary about wanton cruelty and violence. There isn't anything all that viscerally scary about having a hypertrophied sense or order or honour, which appears to be what later editions riff on when it come to hobgoblins. We may disapprove of taking those things too far, but this in itself isn't enough to strike at any nerves in a primal sense (and in any case it overlaps with what we tend to think of when it comes to dwarfs). 

The implication that there are different kinds of hobgoblin frees us up a little bit. Instead of being a single monster type, it becomes more like a category or spectrum - a family, if you like, of different varieties of evil humanoids. The question then becomes, what are the different types of hobgoblin?

Well, there is the aforementioned 5th edition hobgoblin-as-klingon. You could even take this further and make them something almost like the Spartans of 300 stereotype turned to 11 - an entire race of satanic Lt Worfs without Captain Picard to keep them in check.

Then there is the hobgoblin of Warhammer, of course, who if anything, at least in older editions, was supposed to be something like a Hun, Mongol or Cossack - a nomadic steppe raider going everywhere on wolfback. I hadn't remembered this, but they were even supposed to be ruled by a 'Hobgobla Khan', the lord of the 'Mournguls':

Then there is the folkloric hobgoblin, suggested by the prefix 'Hob-'. Tolkien is the one responsible for describing hobgoblins as bigger variants of goblins (in the preface to The Hobbit); actually 'Hob' is said to be a medieval diminutive for Robert or Rob, which if anything suggests a small, familiar or even cutesy creature - more like a brownie, sprite or knocker:

These days in Britain you see Hobgoblin beer everywhere. The latest versions are very corporate and bland, but once upon a time it was a lovely, characterful beer (one of a line of ales with folkloric motifs brewed by Wychwood brewery). Here the hobgoblin is very much along the lines of a goblin, though one rooted much more in fairy tales than Tolkien - more like an evil woodsman who you might, nonetheless, enjoy a pint with in a tavern if he's in a good mood after a day's hunting: 

The most interesting hobgoblin variant may be White Wolf's from Changeling: The Lost, where they can take almost any form and inhabit the Hedge, the liminal realm between the realm of mortals and faerie:

You may be able to suggest more - feel free to do so in the comment. As to which is the very worst kind (Spartan-klingon; 'Mourngul' horde; Robin Goodfellow; evil woodcutter; shapeshifting farie), you can make up your mind.

Satan Helps Elucidate Skywalker's Rescue Plot

To cut a long story short, I was recently on a long-haul flight and ended up watching The Empire Strike Back and part of Return of the Jedi on the in-flight entertainment screen.

I haven't watched a Star Wars film since The Force Awakens came out at the cinema and I don't believe I had seen any for some time before that either. But there was nothing else on that I wanted to watch (apart from the surprisingly good Everything Everywhere All At Once) and 13 hours is a long time to sit and read without a break. So I watched Empire, was reminded that it is actually a genuinely good and accomplished film, and was enthused enough by the experience that I decided to just get straight into Jedi next.

I loved Return of the Jedi as a kid and was, in a way, childishly looking forward to a rewatch - after what must be approaching twenty years. I know it is maligned in certain circles as the place where the rot set in - and at times it does have the feeling of the prequels, as it were, avant la lettre. But the Jedi I remember from my childhood remains a fun, action-packed roller-coaster ride filled with excitement but leavened by sweet and even moving moments, as when Luke reveals to Leia he is her brother, or when Yoda dies. Yes the ewoks were, in my memory, a bit of an embarrassing misstep. But I also remembered loving the Endor battle when I was a boy and feeling my heart lift every time those furry underdogs destroyed an ATAT walker with a well-placed spitball or made a Stormtrooper slip over on a banana skin or catch his toe in a mouse trap or whatever. So I was up for it, big time. 

What I discovered was that Jedi is just a dreadful film for its first half - almost execrably bad. So bad indeed that I found it practically unwatchable. It is all over the place, filled with ill-judged humour (like the droid being tortured) and weird vignettes that spoil the pacing (like the dance sequence, made unnecessarily longer by Lucas's CGI meddling). And the plot to rescue Han, I thought, doesn't just make little sense, but is also internally inconsistent: I kept asking myself why on earth would Luke send R2D2 and C3PO as gifts to Jabba given that everything we know about Luke previously has indicated a total loyalty to his comrades? Why would Leia be there if Luke has a plan already hatched to free Han? Why doesn't Luke just go in first to negotiate? What is Lando supposed to be doing? 

I got as far as the speeders-in-redwoods bit and gave up. Later, after landing (I don't want to suggest it was the first thing I did when getting off the plane, but it may have been in the first ten things) I sent a message to some friends on WhatsApp observing that the plot to liberate Han made no sense, and wondering why I hadn't realised this as a kid. 

One friend messaged me back the following sequence of messages:

The plot makes perfect sense. It was all about lulling Jabba into a false sense of security. Lando is undercover. Chewie, Leia and the droids go in in such a way as to make Jabba think he is winning or more crafty than our heroes. 

(admittedly C-3PO doesn’t know he is going in but that adds to making Jabba and his cronies believe the story and underestimate Luke) 

In pre-Disney takeover canon, Bib Fortuna and Luke were meeting secretly beforehand; Luke was negotiating for Han’s release and Bib was trying to see if Luke was in some way useful to overthrowing Jabba and installing himself as leader 

Bib Fortuna survived the explosion on the sail barge and then promptly had his brain removed by the spidery monks that live in various parts of the palace (who are weird Force monks that can only commune fully when their brain is in a spider-walker)

Now, one of my biggest pet peeves in life is when the plot of a film can only be made to make sense by retrospectively making it canon that ackshually it was weird Force monks, or whatever (JJ Abrams is always guilty of this type of thing in his film-making); if a film can't make sense in its own right then it is QED a film that makes no sense. But I was amused by the fact that a big exercise had evidently taken place to give a post hoc justification for the Solo rescue and today, recalling the exchange, I decided to ask Satan about it. Here's what Claude's Opus 4.8 with 'extra thinking' and tweaked by my default instructions not to be an obsequious arsehole, came up with:

Short version: there isn't a single authoritative, Lucas-stated breakdown of "the plan." What gets called the canonical explanation is mostly a charitable post-hoc reconstruction that fans and tie-in writers built to make the sequence cohere, plus what's inferable from the film and a few Legends/reference sources. The film deliberately withholds the plan so the audience is as much in the dark as Jabba. With that caveat, here's the reconstruction that's become the accepted reading: 

The operation is a series of escalating contingencies, each a fallback for the one before, with a direct assault ruled out (in Legends, because the Empire had blockaded Tatooine to catch incoming Rebels).

Phase one is diplomacy and bribery. The droids arrive alone carrying Luke's holographic message: he asks Jabba to release Han and offers C-3PO and R2-D2 as a "gift." The critical detail is that R2 is carrying Luke's lightsaber. If Jabba takes the deal, Han walks free with no violence. Jabba refuses. 

Phase two is stealth. Leia, disguised as the bounty hunter Boushh, uses Chewbacca-as-captive as cover to get inside and collect the bounty, then thaws Han at night and tries to slip him out. Lando is already embedded among the guards as the inside man. If this works, they exfiltrate quietly. Jabba was awake; they're caught. 

Phase three is Luke himself as last resort. He walks in, reveals he's a Jedi, tries the mind trick, and is prepared to escalate. The lightsaber stashed with R2 is the ace in the hole — when everyone is condemned to the Sarlacc and concentrated on the sail barge, R2 launches it to Luke and the heroes turn the tables.

The load-bearing claim in the charitable reading is that the "failures" aren't failures: each blown phase still advances the board, getting all the players inside and ultimately out at the Pit of Carkoon, away from the fortified palace, with the weapon present. Some readings push this further and argue Luke needed Leia's capture. The supporting textual evidence people cite is that R2 holds the lightsaber back during the rancor fight and only deploys it at the barge — implying that moment, not the rancor, was always the intended endgame. 

Where I'd push back on calling any of this "canonical": the rancor was plainly not planned (Luke is just surviving), the mind trick failing on a Hutt is a genuine setback rather than a feint, and the layered-intent version requires assuming Luke foresaw specific failures the film never shows him anticipating. The most defensible statement is that Lucas intended to portray a now-confident Jedi running a graduated infiltration with a weapon pre-positioned via the droids — the precise "he planned every capture" choreography is fan apologetics, not established canon.

Get that, anonymous friend, who I am sure is reading this? It is fan apologetics, not established canon.

Intrigued by the role of Bib Fortuna, I asked it about that too:

Mostly real, with two embellishments and one outright error. The core comes from a genuine Legends source: "Of the Day's Annoyances: Bib Fortuna's Tale" by M. Shayne Bell, in the 1995 anthology Tales from Jabba's Palace. Going through the claim piece by piece: 

Bib survived the barge and got disembrained by the monks — accurate, but not "promptly." In Legends he escapes the sail barge explosion on a private skiff and returns to the palace. He then tries to seize Jabba's empire and actually wins a scuffle over the remaining possessions — he's the apparent victor for a stretch. Then the B'omarr monks emerge from the cellars and forcibly remove his brain. So there's a takeover-and-battle phase first; it isn't immediate. (In the X-Wing comic Battleground: Tatooine, his disembodied brain later gets subordinated to a rival Twi'lek, Firith Olan, and eventually transplanted into a fresh body.) 

Luke negotiating with Bib for Han — partly real, "secret meetings beforehand" is a stretch. The story does have Bib dealing with Luke, who wants to arrange Han's return. So a Luke–Bib negotiation exists in Legends. But "secret meetings beforehand" oversells it; the summary frames it as the business surrounding Luke's approach, not a clandestine pre-arranged back-channel. The kernel is true, the cloak-and-dagger framing is your friend's gloss. 

Bib using Luke to overthrow Jabba — grounded but extrapolated. Bib's overthrow motive is dead-on for Legends: he's characterized as the man with more plots against Jabba than anyone, "somehow involved in every plot against Jabba," positioned to inherit the empire no matter who lands the killing blow. So "Bib wanted to overthrow Jabba and install himself" is solid. The specific claim that he was sizing up Luke as the instrument for that coup is a reasonable inference but not something the text establishes — that's your friend connecting dots. 

"Weird Force monks that can only commune fully when their brain is in a spider-walker" — this is wrong. The B'omarr Order isn't a Force tradition. They're an ascetic religious order pursuing enlightenment through total separation from the material world — they remove their own members' brains and put them in nutrient jars so the mind can contemplate the cosmos undistracted by the body and senses. Nothing Force-based about it. And the mechanism is backwards: the enlightened state is the disembodied brain in the jar. The spider-walker (a BT-16 perimeter droid) is just a chassis that lets a brain-in-a-jar move around the physical world when it needs to — it's mobility hardware, not a communion-enabler. If anything, leaving the jar to ride a walker is a concession to the material plane, not the path to fuller communion. 

So your friend has the right story and most of the beats, invented a "Force monk / commune via walker" cosmology that isn't there, and slightly novelized the Luke angle.

Pro tip: it really helps if you say 'The B'omarr Order isn't a Force tradition' using the voice of the fellow in the Simpsons who tells Marge that 'Some guys at MIT are sending us a list of reasons why Captain Picard is better than Captain Kirk'.

Why, why, why, Delilah?

I recently recorded a podcast episode for higher-level backers of the Yoon-Suin 2nd edition kickstarter, in which I was subjected to some tough questions about certain aspects of the book. I liked the line of questioning, as I think it made the conversation much more interesting than a series of underarm throws ('Tell us exactly what else is brilliant about Chapter Four?'). But I wanted to expand in written form about an aspect of one question that particularly interested me.

The question was about what the interviewer called 'magical misandry', namely a theme which apparently (I hadn't realised this) crops up a few times in the book, and which I will describe as the 'Delilah motif'. This is the succubus-style female monster who uses magical or surreptitious means to deprive an, implicitly male, PC of his strength and vitality, or to kill or enslave him.

I name this the Delilah motif after the biblical character Delilah, who as you will know deprived Samson of his strength by cutting his hair while he lay across her thighs - it being strongly implied that this was after a bit of good old rumpy-pumpy. I am sure there are earlier examples if it in human myth, but this is familiar enough to have resonance.

The important thing about the Delilah motif is that, while we may disapprove of it or look askance at what it says about male-female relations, it also speaks in what I think is a very interesting way to a stereotyped feature of those relations which you can think of almost as the inverse, or evil twin, of the story of Beauty and the Beast. Why does Beauty and the Beast have particular power, such that it is basically the plot of almost every romance novel that has ever been written (woman meets strong, virile, wild male figure - vampire, pirate, werewolf, sadomasochist billionaire, etc. - and civilises him with her femininity)? It is because it speaks to a desire that appears to be deep-rooted in a great many people. The mythically or semiotically feminine transforms the mythically or semiotically masculine into something which can be good and productive in human society. Female love transforms the bad boy into a good man. And both women and men respond to that concept in fiction, at least in very large numbers.

(The list of confirmations of this truth are so many it is barely worth even beginning to start - I suppose we could write down 'Han Solo' and start from there.)

The Delilah motif interestingly and powefully inverts that notion by playing on the male fear of being civilised. Here I am drinking mead, eating syrup from the corpses of lions, swinging my dick in the wilderness and killing a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey, and it's great. And she wants me to settle down? Here feminine power is not portrayed as the redemptive power of love ('I've been saved by a woman...'), but as something which saps a man of his strength and vitality and ultimately weakens him to the point of incapacity. This is the stereotyped fear, familiar to us from sitcoms, soap operas and Hollywood movies, in the heart of the irresponsible male of being tied to a particular woman (it being no accident of course that Samson ends up being tied with rope after his seduction and impromptu short-back-and-sides). 

The Beauty and the Beast story and the Delilah motif exist in a state of productive tension in almost every romcom that ever was created, with the female character functioning as both transformative saviour and threat, and the male character functioning as both magnificent untamed beast and irresponsible fly-by-night, with the tension being finally resolved in balance of the former in both instances. And this is part of their charm and what (to a great many people) is part of the joy of male-female courtship rituals in their traditional form.

What monsters such as the succubus (and those of its ilk in Yoon-Suin) really do is simply trade on the Delilah motif in a way that, while it may not sit right in contemporary mores, strikes at the heart of that tension and essentially resolves it in the opposite direction to a romcom. You might even say that this is what the great many horror films that trade on that motif also do (whether as a minor incident, as in the opening to Phantasm, or as the whole plot of the film, as in Audition). They just tip the balance from Beauty and the Beast to Delilah.

And in that regard I don't think there is anything wrong with exploring that motif in D&D monster form. No, it isn't a healthy way to imagine male-female relationhips. But since when did any monster succeed by being a healthy reflection of anything? The point of a good monster is to disturb. And one way to effectively disturb people is to take a trope with which they are familiar - and which is extremely deep-rooted across cultures - and exploit it. So why not? 

And In My Last Hour I'm a Slave to the Power of Death

Apropos of nothing, here are eight ideas for megadungeons, each inspired by the title and lyrical themes of  the Iron Maiden album Powerslave (1984):

Aces High - A storm giant's tower, seated on a cloud; it is reached by climbing to a high mountain peak and then casting off by glider, which limits how much treasure can be taken back or forth (and from which some loot may simply fall off). The giant's goblin servants maintain a fleet of dirigibles, and use these to wage war on the aaracokra and sylphs who inhabit the region. Within the tower itself the giant slumbers, under a curse, and guarded by his silver dragon wife. His other servants include lightning mephits, automata and giff mercenaries - but entire floors have been taken over by interlopers in the master's de facto absence.

Two Minutes to Midnight - Down in the roots of the mountains mighty forces once arrayed against one another in a confrontation that could have spelled the end of space and time - at least within a continent. One was a great demon, another a mighty archmage, another an undead lord, the fourth a dragon queen. But in order to stave off the apocalyptic conflict that was sure to ensue, a demigod placed these four protagonists in time-freeze, together with their servants, in half-mile diameter sphere of stasis. They are frozen down there still, waiting to be released - along with their servants and treasures - but the roots of the mountain are deep, and over the eons many other threats and powers have populated the tunnels and caverns which lead to the stasis-sphere. The other snag is that the only way to get at the treasure held by the four is to bring the stasis-sphere to an end...and thus release them.

Losfer Words (Big 'Orra) - A monastery of monks who cut out their tongues to approach a god that cannot be named. Their home was under a spell of permanent silence and remains so, but the monks all long ago went mad and their god with them. Now many intruders have made their homes in the Labyrinth of Absolute Quiet - but some of the monks wander still, as undead, demonic, or both.

Flash of the Blade - The greatest swordsman who ever lived, wielding a possible sword, created for himself a fortress which he populated with many varieties of servitors and guardians, and then became a recluse. Rumour has it that he has died, or gone away, and that his 3,000 year-old sword - perhaps the most puissant artefact that exists - lies abandoned somewhere inside it.

The Duellists - Two demigods are locked in eternal conflict in the lost city of Tyre. Once the two were worshipped equally and shared the city between them; then a rivalry developed and the two fought each other until no inhabitants remained - and beyond. They still haunt the streets, ambushing, stalking, each sworn that it may not rest until the other is slain. They are watched over by a ghost who referees their struggle judging from an obscure rulebook. But meanwhile in the old sewers and tunnels and catacombs beneath the city life - and unlife - thrives, boiling up from the Underdark below.

Back in the Village - A reversal, natch. The PCs are dungeon-dwellers. The village is where the danger lies. They try to raid the human world for gold and glory.

Powerslave - A ruined pyramid where the god-kings once were resident in the months before their great sacrifice and the mantle was passed to the next god-king. This was until it so happened that one such god-king declared that he would not be a slave to death but would make death a slave of his own, and that he would live forever. And sure enough, he has, though he has grown decrepit and senile in the thousand years since. His servants are smorgasbord of ancient Egyptian-style creatures (including scarab-men, jackal-headed assassins, and so on) and those desert beings (trolls, blue dragons, manscorpions and the like) who have made parts of the pyramid their own.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner - It has to be a dungeon carved into the phantasmagorical, many-coloured glaciers and icebergs of a near-frozen sea, doesn't it? 

How to Semiotically Sex Up Your Campaign Setting With Celestial Symbolism

It's funny how you go down rabbit holes. Last week I happened to be in Lund, in southern Sweden, where there is a very grand and beautiful cathedral which is rightly famous. It contains a famous astronomical clock, first constructed some time around 1425, and which calls to mind CS Lewis's observation that the defining characteristic of the medieval mind was 'intricacy':

This is the clock's 'perpetual calendar'. Some more detail:

What you will notice about the calendar is that it is divided into four quadrants, each of which has a defining symbol. Going clockwise from the top, there is an eagle, a lion, an ox, and a man. Curious about what these referred to, I did a little research and discovered that these symbols are associated with the four evangelists, Matthew (man), Mark (lion), Luke (ox) and John (eagle). The first person to come up with this correspondence was apparently Jerome, writing in the 4th century, who derived the symbols from the first line of each gospel (Matthew's begins with Christ's genealogy; Mark's begins with a voice crying in the wilderness; Luke's begins with a sacrifice; John's begins with the eternal logos as an eagle flies to the sun). These in turn are supposed to also reflect aspects of Christ's character: as man, king, sacrifice, and son of God. 

It turns out, though, that Jerome himself borrowed the symbols from a passage in Ezekiel in which the man, lion, ox and eagle are decpicted as accompanying the divine chariot-throne of God. And this is further thought to be derived from the Babylonian 'fixed' signs of the zodiac, with Aquarius the man, Leo the lion, Taurus the ox and Scorpio the eagle (which was apparently the more usual depiction in the ancient world) ruling each of the cardinal points of the heavens.

I was fascinated by the concentric layers of symbolism here, like a nested table, and I was immediately drawn to a comparison with the Chinese 'four symbols' (which I wrote about long ago): the Azure Dragon of the East, the Vermilion Bird of the South, the White Tiger of the West, and the Black Turtle-Snake of the North. Here, the symbolism is again multi-layered; the different colours are supposed to represent the different hues of soil in the different regions of China, but they also map to the four seasons, four time of day, and so on.

I am sure that the two sets of symbols are unrelated, but I was struck by the odd commonality of investing four quadrants of the heavens, or four cardinal points, with symbolic meaning in this way. And it got me thinking about what might be called 'semiotic geographies' in RPG campaign settings - that is to say, making the terrain of a campaign world reflect or make reference to symbolic (or even real) figures or beings of some kind.

At the most extreme and hyper-fantastical, you could imagine a world in which each corner is literally ruled at its outermost extreme by a giant beast; I am picturing here a flat earth, where if you travel far enough from the centre you eventually reach one of four semi-mystical kingdoms whose ruler is an eternal demigod of some kind (dragon/bird/tiger/turtle-snake obviously works very nicely for a pseudo-Asian setting). 

At a slightly less fantastical level, it could just be that the entire world is divided ito four quadrants, each of which has its own flavour, flora and fauna, and so on. So you could have one quadrant ruled by 'Man' (which contains human civiliations), one ruled by the lion (filled with dangerous, belligerent creatures), one ruled by the ox (hulking gargantua) and one ruled by the eagle (flying creatures, obviously).

Or, at a slightly less fantastical level still, the four symbols of your choice could simply reflect something important about the nature of the campaign setting. Maybe each is a particular school of magic. Or character type. Or even pseudo-aligment. 

Or it could even be that each symbol represents a season, with very distinctive moods, dangers, and effects. Azure Dragon season is spring; it is when the world blooms into verdant life, but is correspondingly filled with aggression and danger; Vermilion Bird is summer, when there is intense heat and drought; White Tiger is autumn, when things slip into a kind of bacchanalian decay - rutting and 'tomorrow we may die' feasting being the order of the day; Black Turtle-Snake is winter, when come the snow and ice. Different types of magic are more or less powerful in the corresponding seasons, and different monsters come and go. 

You get the drift. Thinking up one's own four cardinal animals would be fun. Layering different variants of symbolism on them would be even more fun. You probably wouldn't want to have it permeate everything (I think probably deploying it as a subtle thematic motif in the background may be the best usage, keeping it largely implicit or unstated) as it would be easy to go overboard. But it is a way of giving a setting much greater depth than simply at the level of 'the orcs of mshjahsja live in the jungles of Ffnnnar and the dwarves of Eggegegg inhabit the Blood Mountains'. 

The Implied Setting of Mortal Kombat 2 Fighting Arena Backgrounds

Hear and attend and listen, O best beloved. Once there was a man who had two daughters. Each Saturday, the elder of the two daughters attended a dance school, O best beloved, around the corner from which was an emporium which sold coffee, and this was what befell and was befallen: the man would visit the emporium each Saturday to drink said coffee in the morning sun and entertain his daughters before, lo, the eldest's dance classes would begin. 

And in the corner of this emporium, about which I have told you, best beloved, it so became and was become that there was a row of arcade machines, which included among their number Pac-Man, Street Fighter II, and Mortal Kombat 2. And since these arcade machines were free to use, O best beloved, the man would play Mortal Kombat 2 with his daughters and they would woop and yell with glee at the sight of the great gouts of blood that sprayed forth across the screen in the games they played. And so it was that the man learned of the mysteries of babalities, friendships and special moves, though he was mostly reduced to operating the joystick while his youngest daughter pressed whatever buttons she so chose.

*

Yes, I have been playing a lot of Mortal Kombat 2 recently. And last week, while performing my allotted role of joystick-operator and trying to anticipate the quixotic button-pressing antics of a four-year-old, I began to study the backgrounds in the various arenas in which fights take place, noticing that they were absolutely redolent of a type of extreme sword-and-sorcery that I have written about before - an approach to fantasy art where

magic is everywhere and poorly understood, where monsters are mythic and better understood by Freud than Darwin, where there are no farmers or cities because everyone is either Conan or The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Something illustrated by Frazetta, Brom, John Blanche, Dali and Brueghel the Elder, penned by Leiber and Vance, and printed in 1968.

I do not claim this is what the plot of Mortal Kombat is all about (I actually have no idea, and no great interest in finding out), and I have not watched any of its various dramatised iterations - it was only in doing some 'research' for this post that I discovered there is actually a Mortal Kombat II film that has recently been released. All I know is the characters and the arenas in which they duke it out. I am talking not about its actual or canonical setting, but about its implied one. I therefore base my comments on the images alone:

What we see here is a forest of living, demonic trees: not so much an entire forest of Old Man Willows, but an entire forest of Old Man Willow's psychotic nephews. These are not mysterious, brooding treants filled with resentment of the 'quick', as we find in Tolkien's ouevre. No: they are just gleeful, sadistic tormenters of those with legs. They like murder. Tolkien's Old Forest has a soundtrack written by Bruckner. The Mortal Kombat 2 forest has a soundtrack written by Wolves in the Throne Room.

Brutal weapons. Molten metal (or lava chanelled from a nearby volcano?). The people of this world are warriors, not soldiers - an important element of the sword-and-sorcery genre. Soldiers are citizens who defend their territory in organised armies. Warriors rely on their martial prowess and concern themselves with glory, not defence. Soldiers equip themselves like hoplites. Warriors equip themselves with big, scary weapons which accentuate their power and individual strength.

What more needs to be said about this other than, floating wizards, interdimensional portal, red planet? Here, magic is great and powerful. It is to be feared and misunderstood. It can change the metaphysical presuppositions on the basis of which we orient our lives. It can transcend the barriers between worlds. There is nothing ordinary about a reality in which this is possible. This world does not contain humdrum civilisations - it is not one in which there is a comfortable Hobbiton which can serve as the base for adventure. Everything is adventure because everything is Weird.

This is a world with conflicting motifs. Yin and yang: all is harmony. Yet all is also DEATH. And WINGED (I should probably say WINGÉD) BEASTS. There is not a philosophical or epistemological consistency to this world. Rather, there is a consistent mood. It is a mashup defined by aesthetic 'fit' rather than by any notion of thing having to make sense.

There may be peace in this world, but it is a peace that is contingent. One imagines a sultry night of lovemaking between a warrior and his woman under the stars and a clear moon, with incense in the air and the distant sound of croaking frogs and insects. And yet! In the background a duel commences between a man and fire demon. Because this is just the sort of thing that happens. 

It is a world where life is plentiful and cheap, for the masses, but not for the Heroic and Villainous, who are literally larger than life itself. I am reminded here of the sense one gets reading Lord of Light that there are untold numbers of ordinary people going about their business but whose concerns are completely meaningless when set against those of the Great. What defines individual importance is not the santity of life and the moral worth of the human person but what one Achieves. We are in the world of Nietzsche, not Jesus - Eddison, rather than Lewis. 

This is world in other words that has been washed in a purple glaze; a world in which whenever it is not the night time it is only ever dusk; a world in which the magical and martial are of equal but oppositional status; a world in which might makes right, and a world in which whatever peace and tranquility are found are momentary, fleeting, bittersweet - because death may strike at any moment. It is a world in which glory triumphs over good, and a world in which power stands astride virtue. It is a world of sword and sorcery's value writ large.

I rather like it.

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.