A New Age of Storytelling

It is easy to be a doom-monger - to literally go out into the world and mong doom. Monging hope is less easy, and tends to have to be done practically rather than theoretically. Doom is monged through words - dire prophecies and warnings, or elegies for times past. Hope is monged through doing, rather than telling. A hope-monger shows the way.

There is a lot of doom (ok, ok, I will stop with the whole 'mong' thing now) being spread about in respect of reading these days. A lot of people are worried that people aren't reading as much as they used to. Apocalyptic scenarios are envisaged: The End of Reading is here; a New Dark Ages is dawning; the era of Post-Literacy is upon us. And, for what it is worth, I share many of the concerns being expressed. I am a fan of the written word and I read a lot of books, as I always have. I think that screen-based entertainment does not facilitate viewer engagement with the subtleties and complexities of the human condition in the way that a good book does with its readers; I think reading great books cultivates empathy, judgment and wisdom, that watching great TV mostly just passes the time really well, and that doomscrolling rots the brain. I also don't think that reading books is something that should have to be defended in instrumental terms. Most of the best things Western civilisation has produced are books - why wouldn't any sane adult want to imbibe cultural artefacts that have been recognised to be great by vast numbers of discerning human beings for tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years? 

With that said, my feeling is that if it is true that the end of reading is upon us (I have some doubts about this, but that is a subject for another post), then there is nothing that anybody can really do about it, and it is certainly not a problem that it is open to politics to solve. It so happens that a few days ago the cross-party Education Committee of the UK Parliament issued a report on the sharp decline in reading for pleasure among the young and what to do about it. No doubt the people who wrote it are well-intentioned but the recommendations in it - automatic library enrolment for children from birth; a state-funded library in every secondary school; a national 'Decade of Reading'; and so on - are either faintly ludicrous or highly unlikely to make much difference. No: it is not in the state's gift to save us from the New Dark Ages. We have to resurrect reading on our own, in our own small ways, and in the meantime accept that the culture is moving away from print.

Part of that acceptance means reconciling oneself to, and taking advantage of, new media, and here is where hope comes into play. There is no doubt in my mind that although reading print literature is in decline, and although that trend is lamentable, other opportunities to tell stories are presenting themselves, and humanity is finding other ways to generate the type of narratives that non-televisual modes of communication provide. The problems with screen-based story-telling are: a) that, while a great actor can give some insight into what the character he or she depicts is thinking or feeling, it does not allow the viewer to inhabit somebody else's thoughts and experiences in the way print fiction can; and b) because the narrative is visual it does not require the viewer to use much imagination.

Books are the opposite in that their main strengths are precisely to do with cultivating empathy and imagination. But as books decline other forms are filing the gap. RPGs, I am convinced, are one of them, and it is probably not a coincidence that as fiction-reading loses cultural cache RPGs are gaining mainstream popularity - again, because they allow the player to inhabit somebody else's thoughts and experiences, and because they require such extensive use of the imagination. 

I also think that the type of theatre-of-the-mind mixture of RPG and fiction that is present in something like Tale of the Manticore will become more popular for the same reasons. We will lean into the convenience and intimacy (that word is the appropriate one to use, I think) that is provided by the spoken word. The result is a differently textured experience to novel-reading. But it can scratch similar itches in a way that screen-media cannot.

This, to come back to hope, is worth embracing. It is a cultural catastrophe that millions of children are now growing up without having a love of reading cultivated in them, and without any experience of living in a print-based world. That represents a devastating loss. Yet all is not lost. Those who love books can still read them. But they can also explore new possibilities for creativity and expand into new frontiers. This needs to happen through practice rather than theory: more people have to just do it. Yet it is within our power all the same. 

On the Hidden Creative Power of Monster Organization Manipulation; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Su-Monsters, Selkies, Shargughs and Simurghs

One of the most important things for a DM to do if he wants to innovate is to switch things up with monsters. You know the problem: orcs, elves, goblins, ogres, dragons - we've seen it all; we know them; they are hackneyed and trite. This is not to say that interesting things cannot be done in the arena of Bog Standard High Fantasy Furniture (TM), but these are tropes which have become more than over-familiar when in their standard packaging.

I would like to here offer one useful way of shaking things up when drawing up a new campaign or adventure site, and it is to unlock the creative power behind the 'Organization' line in a Monstrous Manual stat block.

What does this mean? Well, take a look at the stat block for a su-monster:

From this, we derive the notion that a su-monster comes in the package of a 'family/clan', and in the text we are told that: 

'A su-monster family is composed of two parents (adult male and female) and two young. When two or more families live together, they form a clan.'

Well, let's imagine we keep everything about su-monsters the same (including their psionic powers, not listed above) except the 'Organization' line. And let's change that to: 'Empire'. Now what? Suddenly we have a campaign setting in which there is a su-monster empire. What does that imply? It certainly has a sword and sorcery vibe (I mean, it's an empire of psionic monkeys, for heaven's sake) but it also raises important other possibilities. Empires (Rome, the Incas, the Aztecs, the Persian) are built on the rule of one group over many. What are the groups the su-monsters rule over? Presumably they are the elite caste, ruling a portion of the world's surface due to psionic mastery. Are humans their slaves? Their foodstuff? Their servants? Perhaps their empire is a genuine conglomeration of different races - manscorpions, lizardmen, thri-kreen, aarakocra - each occupying different geographical and social niches. Perhaps this is a tropical region of the campaign world (we can infer that from the image of psionic apes constructing cities and temples in vast jungles beneath the heat of a red sun at dusk); what, in turn, does that suggest about the setting as such?

Selecting a monster at random and fiddling with the Organization line, as you I hope can see from this, has a way of unlocking vast creative potential. Let's pick some more examples, all taken from the 'S' section of various bestiaries:

Selkies live 'solitary or tribal' lives, it says here. Well, what if we were to change it to 'Monarchy'? I'm picturing a selkie queendom. Selkies are seal-like beings which can change into a human for a few days each month. Clearly, this is going to be a semi-aquatic monarchy formed in the deep fjords of a remote temperate or subarctic land - something like the south of New Zealand, Norway, Tierra del Fuego, or the coast of Alaska. Many of the settlements are in semi-submerged caves (seals do need to be able to breathe air now and then) or perhaps on the beaches of defensible coves and bays - or else floating off-shore, having been constructed on rafts. The selkies can wage war on land for limited periods and are also capable of raiding and capturing shippings, which is the source of much of their power, but they are restricted by being unable to go across land for extended periods of time; perhaps they employ (or marry?) true humans who act a messengers, traders and emissaries where required? 

Shargughs are a race of forest-dwarf types, with a bit of hobbit mixed in. They have symbiotic relationships with the plants in their territories, and can even move from place to place within their territory through the plants within it - a kind of vegetal teleportation. Well, what if instead of living solitary or family-based existences these instead formed a 'Druidocracy', ruled by a council of powerful elders? Here, the implied setting is I think a temperate rainforest, verdant and filled with constant wet and slimy growth; the shargugh druidocracy would have constructed into the very landscape a labyrinthine communal home, formed from the vegetation itself - the trees, the mosses, the ferns, the vines and creepers. The shargughs would use this huge, interconnected network of plant life to shift about from place to place, allowing them to traverse great distances within short time-frames - the many hundred square miles of their territory would be theirs, and accesible to all of them almost at any given moment. This would result in a genuinely communal, almost hive-like collective psyche at the individual level, and outsiders would find it bewildering to comprehend and almost impossible to access. Its enemies would be the myconids and vegepygmies constantly threatening to undermine it from beneath with the spread of decay - or, perhaps, an encroaching desert fostered by the magic of a vile conglomerate of githyanki sorcerers.... 

A simurgh is labelled a 'king of birds', but is described as one of those good-guy quest-dispenser type monsters along the lines of the ki-rin, gold dragon, sphinx, and so on. The path is therefore open to a genuine reconceptualisation as indeed a monarch of birds - with a literal kingdom under its command. Here, one imagines a vast mountain range peopled by rocs, giant eagles, and the like, as well a lesser 'normal' birds and perhaps bird-men of the aarakocra style, with simurghs at the top as a sort of brahmin or noble caste. The question then immediately becomes: what does their kingdom live off, and how do they organise their society? The answer, I think, is that they use their intelligence and mastery of the sky to dominate the peoples who go about on land. Humans in particular are formed into a serf-caste beneath them (in every sense): they farm the crops to feed the vegetarian birds, and also provide the livestock to feed the predatory ones. But, naturally, a ritualised pseudo-religious pattern governs the relationship between serfs and overlords; certain humans are elevated as priests to commune with their feathered rulers, while for the ordinary person birds are considered almost as demigods - their every movement studied, and their every cry interpreted as fraught with prophetic significance. Their societies are stratified into various clans modelled after different types of bird, and their religion includes a doctrine of reincarnation, with those who are the most deserving being granted the chance to be reborn as the lowliest sparrow or starling...

Anyway, you get the idea. The point is that by changing the 'Organisation' of the monster one is then forced into imagining the world in a different way: what would it need to look like in order for an empire of dryads, eblis or rust-monsters to make sense?

ABC, easy as 123, simple as current epoch, antichrist and katechon

Work continues on the Paladin Project, my ongoing effort to come up with an OSR 'good guys' campaign toolbox. Regular readers may recall my last post on this subject, in which I described the phenomenology of the anti-rogue campaign. The nuts and bolts of this remain, but I am now positively steering clear of the 'anti-rogue' motif and am accentuating the positive: this is not anti- anything. It is a campaign style revolving around Paladins, conceived not as a single class but as a character archetype: a paladin is a man or woman for whom their honour is more important than their lives. 

The phenomenology of the Paladin campaign concerns a relationship between three phenomena, which for illustrative purposes I labelled:

A - The Current Epoch (meaning the status quo which is desired to be preserved - A is Hobbiton; it is Gondor; it is the Empire of Warhammer; it is Lanthanum Chromate; it is the world before the flood; it is Rorke's Drift; it is the high plains of North America threatened by encroaching Europeans; it is Tenochtitlan on the eve of Cortez's arrival; it is Muslim Grenada under assault from the Spanish; it is the Kingdom of Asturias threatened by the Islamic host; it is Hogwarts threatened by Voldemort's return; it is wherever there is a particular place or way of life which the PC wish to protect).

B - The Antichrist (meaning that which threatens A in apocalyptic terms - B is Sauron; it is generalised Chaos; it is the giants who live beneath the ocean; it is the conquistadors; it is Voldemort; it is the Old Dark Gods; it is Winter; it is the Princes of the Fae; it is whatever is threatening, whether through force or more insidious means, to destroy or overturn that which the PCs are sworn to preserve).  

C - The Katechon (meaning the order, however formally or informally organised, to which the PCs belong, initially at the bottom rung: it could be a knightly order, a loose affiliation of heroes and apprentices, a cabal of magic-users, a school of philosophers, an underground movement, a caste of warrior-monks, an elite clan of assassins, a band of holy eunuchs or courtesans, whatever - it is that thing which protects A from B). 

The important point to emphasise here is that A, B and C can have any furniture you wish, and cab also change in substance as time goes on, provided that the phenomena of A, B and C exist in that pattern and relationship. For example, I'm very taken with the idea at the moment of running a campaign in a tropical, jungle setting - all sweltering heat and life-thronged forest. I might decide that here A is a city state that sits on an island at the mouth of a great river, B is an empire of su-monsters ruled by a new God-Empress bent on suberting the city and eventually turning it to her worship, both by infiltrating it with her agents and also by waging a sort of relentless psychological warfare campaign against its inhabitants to slowly drive them all insane, and C is an order of jaguar-priests who are attempting to combat this quasi-siege.

But equally, I might decide that A is a tribe of thunder-worhipping steppe nomads, B is a pseudo-Chinese bureaucratic empire bent on conquest, and C are the camel-riding warrior elite who protect the undersky homeland.

And if I fancy a bit of nostalgia I might just go full TSR: A is the Kingdom of Oakeneshott, B is the forces of chaos boiling up from the Underdark, and C is the Order of the Phoenix Knights. 

The point is that the game lives in the relationship between A, B and C and is operationalised through embedding the PCs within C and A, and ensuring that B is a varied, and unpredictable threat not governed by DM fiat but by emergent properties and tables. It is vitally important that C is properly elaborated because I envisage it as the mechanism by which the PCs earn XP and advance, where they train, where they deposit treasure, where they derive their values from, and so on. And that must also be properly elaborated in its relationship to A, which has to feel like a living, breathing entity rather than just a dot on a map. The book in other words mostly consists of ways to make A, B, and C fully fleshed out, interesting, intricate and deep. 

I Am Foolish, Wrong and Naughty, and I Apologise

I believe it is important in life to recognise when one is in the wrong, and apologise.

To that end, I have two apologies to make.

I owe the first to the creator of Tale of the Manticore. In my post yesterday, I posted the following review:

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.

It turns out I spoke too soon. Something about the episode I listened to must have intrigued me, because on the way home from my office I listened to the next two episodes and became hooked. I listened to the following two episodes today and I must say, my review was unduly harsh. The podcast is excellent listening, and I highly recommend it. I hereby give summary judgment that the original review is overturned and a mark of 4.5 bec de corbins granted.

The second apology is to fans of solo RPGs everywhere. Over the years I have pooh-poohed this practice. (I have gone back through the history of the blog to try to remember where, but there are thousands of posts to get through; all I know is that I have definitely done some pooh-poohing and even possibly some look-down-nosing. I know I definitely took a swipe at journaling here.) Well, having listened to Tale of the Manticore in earnest, and while recognising that this is not likely representative of the experience of solo play, I begin to grasp the appeal. I retract the pooh-poohs. 

Here endeth the apologies. 

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.