So the other night it came up in conversation that my wife had never seen Labyrinth. Tch, those crazy Japanese, eh? We rented it from the local Tsutaya (google it) forthwith, and watched it over beer and sushi.
The last time I'd seen Labyrinth, I must have been about 10 or 11 years old, so my memories were hazy, like when you try to recall the details of a dream you once had. I kept saying, "Oh yeah...." at inopportune moments. I'd even forgotten Jennifer Connelly was in it, for instance. The film has definitely aged in the 16 or so years since I last watched it, but it is still highly entertaining and deliciously eerie.
In particular, I love the fairy-tale skew to the plot, characters and atmosphere, and there are a couple of things I want to take from it and incorporate into a game (probably Changeling: The Dreaming or an especially fairy-tale-esque Basic D&D campaign:
1. Non-humans are literal.
This is a trope in Brothers Grimm tales too: the way mythical beings take what people say utterly seriously. Thus even though the Jennifer Connelly character does not really mean that she wants the goblin king to take her baby half-brother away from her, the fact that she says she wants it is enough for the goblins. "What's said is said," as David Bowie points out when he comes to collect. This message - that once something is spoken, even if you don't really mean it, it cannot be undone - is quite profound as a caution to children, but it's also a great fantasy trope in itself, with the potential for causing lots of problems.
2. There can be deadly danger in innocent play.
When Jennifer Connelly encounters the Fire Gang in the forest, they seem playful and ready to incorporate her into the game. But it turns out that her participation would involve them removing her head from her body - and they won't take 'no' for an answer. Suddenly the entire episode turns very sinister. It's like certain scenes in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, where "let's play" is an invitation to either death or entrapment, or at the very least a perhaps permanent distraction from the mission at hand. Again, a profound about having to leave childhood and childish things behind, but also a great way to cause problems for a band of adventurers.
3. M. C. Escher was brilliant.
When I was a kid I was a huge fan of Escher - I had lots of books of his art, and often tried to emulate his weirder pieces. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that he was as much an influence on my liking for the fantastic as Tolkien was. What I hadn't remembered at all was how much Labyrinth was directly influenced by him also: from the design of the Labyrinth to the faded delicate vistas to the layout of the goblin king's castle, Escher's mark is everywhere. I definitely think that as well as monstrous Things That Should Not Be, unlikely Buildings That Should Not Be should also make more appearances in fantasy gaming.
I've just made my way back over to the opposite side of Eurasia and am suffering from the old bone ache again. So all I have for you is a content-light post of pretty pictures.
There have been a few recent posts in the blogosphere singing the praises of two sub-genres of fantasy art: Fantastic Realism and Extraordinary Ordinariness - both which I love in their own right, but neither of which are my absolute preference. I always liked best what we'll call Fantastical Fantasy: the strand of art which runs from Fuseli to Brom, via Blake, Diterlizzi and Alan Lee, and which creates pieces which are notable for how different they look from our reality. This sub-genre is all about worlds which Could Not Be; what distinguishes it from Fantastic Realism and Extaordinary Ordinariness is that it postulates a fantastic universe which looks nothing like our own. Whereas in other sub-genres of fantasy the dragons, elves (and whatever else) seem real and the artists imagine how they would look in a world like ours, Fantastical fantasy throws reality out of the window and focuses on the gothic, the dream-like, and the unnatural.
There is something genuinely creepy about this Brom piece - I can't work out whether it's the androgyny, the rictus grin, or the hint of Jame Gumb. Perhaps it's all three. In any case, not somebody you would want to run into on a dark night. Or in any other situation you can name.
Take a look at this fellow, penned by Dom Maitz. It isn't enough to have a gigantic spellbook which is probably made from human skin and written in blood - and you can see in the wizard's eyes and the way his fingers flourish as he starts to turn the page how much he relishes reading it. You also have to be able to levitate, and the experience just wouldn't be the same without a hookah to puff. He is clearly relaxing on a Sunday evening, enjoying perusing his collection while he searches for the perfect curse with which to smite his rival.
One of Fuseli's elves. Imagine if Gygax and Arneson had taken this for their inspiration, rather than Tolkien's idea. It's doubtful we'd ever have seen drow, that's for sure. This piece was drawn in 1790; Fantastical Fantasy has the edge over other sub-genres in terms of its age.
The forest is dark, and things which live in it are watching you from the shadows. Is the figure in the background a comrade or an enemy waiting to strike? Like Brom, Diterlizzi was one of the major 'Silver Age' TSR artists who bucked the Fantastic Realist trend, to create art that was Fantastical in the term's purest sense.
Whither now Fantastical Fantasy? WotC have discarded Fantastic Realism, but their art now takes comic books (from the US, Europe and Japan) as its major inspiration. These things go in cycles; by the time D&D 5th edition comes around the wheel will undoubtedly turn once again.
Why is it that nobody has ever told me about Risus before? I've seen the name bandied about on the internet, of course, mostly at therpgsite and on Jeff Rients' blog, but why is it that none of my gaming friends has ever grabbed me physically, by the lapels, and yelled in my face "You've never played Risus before? What are you, stark raving mental or something!?"? With their veins sticking out on their forehead. And slobbering a little.
I've just downloaded it, and it puts the very phrase "insanely brilliant" into a whole new light.
Of course, comedy gaming isn't my thing, but as you're probably aware, pseudo-intellectual literary wankiness most certainly is. So as soon as I started leafing through the .pdf my brain got to working and came out with: The Wizard Knight, but ROLE PLAYING.
I love The Wizard Knight, and I love Gene Wolfe. First things first, if you haven't read that book but have read a lot of Gene Wolfe, it's important to say that it isn't anything like The Book of the New Sun apart from being brilliantly good. The Wizard Knight is fantastical fantasy in the finest tradition of Lord Dunsany, T. H. White, Thomas Malory, Chaucer and George MacDonald, but with a very Wolfeian twist and a fine smattering of Norse mythology. There are no orcs here; it's all about knights who fall in love with faeries, fight giants and dragons, and never refuse a challenge to a duel or a request to rescue a fair maiden - just like Gawain and Lancelot. It's all larger than life, and concieved of in a universe of seven realms, from the pits of hell where the dragons and giants come from, to the heavens themselves where the Valfather lives.
This is just made for a Risus game, I feel. Not entirely the same as The Wizard Knight, of course. But a game where all the characters are writ large and their challenges are rogue knights, evil enchantresses, giants, ogres, gryphons, dryad temptresses and vile dragons. Travel to hell to fight wyverns! Outwit villainous hags who've charmed you with their magick! Swear oaths to never rest until the manticore is slain! Fight hour-long duels knee deep in the icy waters of mountain rivers, only stopping to trade insults! Seduce elven queens! Quest for the love of maidens!
You get the idea. Possibly. If you don't, I really feel this picture just sums it up:
There is a fantastic thread over at the RPG site at the moment entitled Get Off My Lawn: Gamer Generation Gaps. No, not more unsightly ranting about 4th edition. Well, okay, it sort of is. But the poster makes some very interesting points. He's been hanging around the official WotC forums and discussing the 4th edition Monster Manual:
The new 4E Dryad is depicted as angry feminine treant looking thing. Maybe more of a shrubant. Some of the complaints about it were:- Looks too much like the Warhammer Dryad
- Why does the Dryad have to be female?
- The Dryad should look more like a person, specifically an attractive woman.
Now, I understood the first and last complaints, but the middle one took me off guard. Someone else whipped out a dictionary and proved that a dryad is a forest nymph, and nymphs are always female.
Then the lamia was brought up. The new 4E lamia is completely divorced from the mythology of the lamia, and is now a humanoid creature made of bugs that turns into a swarm of scarabs or something. Has nothing to do with the half-woman half-lion it has traditionally been.
Some people pointed to the lamia as an example of where WOTC had "wisely" divorced the creature from mythology and made a "better" creature because of it. They followed this by saying that dryads shouldn't be locked into the idea of beautiful female tree spirits just because mythology says they are, and that the more separated D&D becomes from myth the better D&D is. I've seen many similar arguments made about D&D and history, and the more ahistorical D&D is, the better it is.
The strange thing is that the proponents of this worldview seem to believe that D&D is a better game if knowing something about history and mythology does nothing to improve your game. Also, they all seem to be younger than me, and to have come into the hobby post-Magic:TG.
I'm not sure about the last point, but coincidentally I was thinking about the same thing earlier today while flicking through the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual. I noticed that there are huge differences in tone and flavour between that book and its later editions: the 2nd edition version contains many monsters which are in the spirit of the genuinely mythological/fantastical, from Dryads to Brownies to Sylphs to Mist Dragons, that just aren't there or are vastly different in 3.X and 4th edition. I mean the type of beings that aren't just things to fight; they're creatures born from our own fairy tales who enchant, deceive and mystify. They're deliciously capricious and ambiguous in the way that fairy tale/legendary monsters so often were - just as likely to help or hinder depending on the vagaries of fortune and whim. That sort of "magic" appears to have been almost completely lost from later editions of D&D.
As another poster in the thread put it:
I can see how one might come up with a cool new spin on a mythological concept that weds it to the setting better. When that's done right, it can be cool.
But "become less mythological = better"? Nonononono.
And when it's clearly worse, it certainly does nothing to salvage the concept. An alluring woman tied her tree is a potentially intriguing story element. A treant with bewbs... not so much.
This goes back to Borges and his Book of Imaginary Beings. One of the reasons I like it is that it is a genuine head-trip. The creatures in it aren't just orcs and ogres who are going to stab you with swords. They're Eaters of the Dead. They're birds who live off gold. They're Malaysian ghosts who try to follow you up the staircase to Nirvana. They're serpents with heads at both ends trying to eat each other. Their behaviour is unknowable and incomprehensible. They're part of a completely alien and "fantastical" reality.
There needs to be more of that in D&D, I think. There once was. Dryads in 2nd edition were beautiful nymphs who might cast a magic spell on you and enchant you into being their husband. Not treants with bewbs. And the world was better for it.
