The Mythic Underworld and Mythic Otherworld

The working title for the new campaign setting is New Troy. This is purely because I've always liked the completely made-up notion from the Middle Ages that Britain was founded by refugees from the fall of Troy. This is a reality in which that, or something like it, happened. But it was long ago, and nobody really knows much about it at all - or what Troy is or was.

In New Troy, there are two other worlds, called Faerie and Muspel. (There is a third, called Elysium, but it remains inaccessible except to the dead.) Faerie is the realm of elves, changelings, and other beings that are by turns capricious, curious, benevolent or cruel. There, time moves more quickly than it does in New Troy, and nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Muspel is the underworld, the realm of evil spirits, giants, and devils. Sometimes it is like fire; other times like ice. There, time moves more slowly than it does in New Troy, and everything is what it seems: malevolent and depraved.

There are times, and places, where the boundaries between New Troy and the world of Faerie and the world of Muspel become blurred. For Faerie, these tend to be ever-shifting: a gate may exist on a certain hilltop for a hundred years before suddenly moving elsewhere or closing, while another may be found behind a waterfall for one day every decade. For Muspel, they tend to be fixed, eternal: caves, chasms, natural arches.

Faerie and Muspel are where adventure happens in New Troy. Muspel is the mythic underworld as described by Philotomy:

There is a school of thought on dungeons that says they should have been built with a distinct purpose, should "make sense" as far as the inhabitants and their ecology, and shouldn't necessarily be the centerpiece of the game (after all, the Mines of Moria were just a place to get through). None of that need be true for a megadungeon underworld. There might be a reason the dungeon exists, but there might not; it might simply be. It certainly can, and perhaps should, be the centerpiece of the game. As for ecology, a megadungeon should have a certain amount of verisimilitude and internal consistency, but it is an underworld: a place
where the normal laws of reality may not apply, and may be bent, warped, or broken. Not merely an underground site or a lair, not sane, the underworld gnaws on the physical world like some chaotic cancer.  

It is inimical to men; the dungeon, itself, opposes and obstructs the adventurers brave enough to explore it.

Faerie is the mythic otherworld, the wilderness equivalent to the megadungeon. A world of trees, hills, rivers and rain, but where the normal laws of reality do not apply, and are bent, warped or broken. It may even be more dangerous than Muspel, because it resembles the real world so closely that you may not even realise you are in it. But it is not the real world: There are other things there.

New Years, New Projects:

Because of having a busy period in my life as well as devoting most of my creative energies to getting Yoon-Suin in publishable form, the blog has turned away from production of actual stuff and increasingly become merely a forum for my bizarre diatribes and contentless ramblings. THIS MUST CHANGE.

Therefore, I've decided that, as a backlash against this and as a kind of palate-cleanser from Yoon-Suin, I will start publicly creating a campaign setting here on the blog. Nothing huge, but a sandbox in which to place some beginning characters while also showing how I go about prepping for a campaign. When it's over, I may go on to do an urban sandbox for Cyberpunk 2020 too.

Step one, of course, is thematic coherence, which I discussed here as an elaboration of the 25 word method of setting seeding. I want a setting which is high fantasy, because I don't do that enough. Something more European in flavour, more based around faeries and changelings, witches and giants, mythic underworlds and odd folklore, ladies in lakes and geas spells. In other words, I'm picturing a mixture of Jack Vance's Lyonesse books, the Grimm fairy tales, Gene Wolfe's The Wizard Knight, The Chronicles of Narnia, Changeling: The Dreaming, Pendragon and Le Morte d'Arthur. But D&D, motherfucker. Is that 25 words? It'll do.

Some visuals:

Fantasy Books in Parents' Attics Update

Another find from the loft of my dad's house: a copy of The Silmarillion that I picked up at a library stock sale for what must have been less than a quid or so. I can only have been about 14 years old. It's never been read (I have a paperback copy) and is a beautifully constructed book; it is a First Edition, fourth impression, from 1977. Gaze on it in awe.

1977. When fantasy books didn't have pictures of people striking cool poses on the cover. 

1977. When fantasy books had beautiful maps actually within the text where you needed to look at them.

1977. When fantasy books had sub-headings. 

1977. When fantasy books had beautiful fold-out maps in the back.

Good Dragonlance Sentences: Introduction

A few days ago, I took a bet that I couldn't find any good sentences in the Dragonlance books. I don't welch on bets, so it's time to see what I can find.

My proposal is this: once a week I will read a chapter from a Dragonlance book and put up some examples of what might be "good" sentences in it. I will begin with the "Legends" trilogy, primarily because it's the only one I have to hand at the moment (I picked it up at a secondhand book shop a few months ago), but also because it's better than the "Chronicles" - let's face it. I will continue to do this until Zak agrees that there are good sentences.

We also need to define what a "good sentence" is, because undoubtedly Weis & Hickman are better writers than you or I. (If you disagree, then where's your novel?) The context in which the bet was made was in comparison to Michael Moorcock and HP Lovecraft, so we'll say that a good Dragonlance sentence is one which would also be deemed "good" if written by either of those two writers.

Here goes. From the Introduction to Time of the Twins:

[Describing Astinus, the historian who sees, knows, and records everything] "The historian's face might have been reckoned handsome in a timeless, ageless fashion. But none who saw his face ever remembered it. They simply remembered the eyes - dark, intent, aware, constantly moving, seeing everything. Those eyes could communicate vast worlds of impatience, reminding Bertrem that time was passing. Even as the two spoke, whole minutes of history were ticking by, unrecorded." 

[Describing the first time we see Raistlin] "All she could see before her were two golden eyes shining from the depths of darkness. The eyes were like a gilt mirror, flat, reflective, revealing nothing of the soul within. The pupils - Crysania stared at the dark pupils in rapt horror. The pupils within the golden eyes were the shape of hourglasses! And the face - drawn with suffering, marked with the pain of the tortured existence the young man had led for seven years, ever since the cruel Tests in the Tower of High Sorcery left his body shattered and his skin tinged gold. The mage's face was a metallic mask, impenetrable, unfeeling as the golden dragon's claw upon his staff."

Not great literature, no. But we're not judging them against Proust, remember. This will do for the Introduction.

People Are Self-Entitled Whinge-Bags

Whenever I get depressed about people in the RPG hobby whingeing and complaining about things (from edition warring to supposedly bad DMing to failure to provide orgasms to badwrongfun to rape culture to lack of political correctness) I remind myself that this is not so much a failure of RPG nerds as it is a failure of many human beings. People are self-entitled whinge-bags. They want things to be perfect for them, and when they're not they think they have been personally slighted. This is especially so when it comes to goings-on within their hobby or pastime.

I was reminded of this reading the comments to the "as it happened" stream on the BBC website for the coverage of England's latest cricketing disaster against Australia. Have a look at some of them:

From Sue and Keith, disgruntled in Sydney: Having paid a lot to come out to watch the Melbourne and Sydney tests, it was bad enough knowing that the Ashes were lost. But can we sue the ECB under the Trades Description Act as we haven't seen what could be described as a cricket match at either game. Pathetic.

From Iain: The most pathetic display by any sporting team leaving these shores to represent England. Only Broad and Stokes deserve the right to wear the Three Lions again. Pathetic.

Jack B: Cook should hand his resignation in within the next 24 hours. What an embarrassing, pathetic leader he has been.

Paul R: Make no mistake the English cricket team are a national disgrace. Gutless and clueless. Are they hurting? Not enough.

Lewis C: Not one to knock an England side, but the tour has been a shambles. Not even a victory for pride's sake. Given fans nothing. 

Matt Jones: Can I suggest that the whole pampered squad donate their first-class tickets home to the poor suffering fans that spent thousands on the trip down under. They're not fit to wear the shirt. A total and utter shambles. 

Mark: Awful. Simply awful from England. Resignations/changes please. Just not good enough aside from Stokes in the whole series.

See what I mean? THE ENGLAND TEAM HAVE GIVEN THE FANS NOTHING. We demand reprisals! Punishment! We want people to lose their jobs! Bring back hanging! We wanted the England team to win and they were so fucking inconsiderate they went and lost! PATHETIC.

It's not enough that the England cricket team went and tried their best and happened to get beaten by a better side. They didn't do what we, the fans, wanted, and therefore they are a disgrace. It's not enough that RPG designer Y created a game that wasn't perfect for every individual fan in the entire universe: the fact that he wasn't specifically tailoring it to my needs and outlook on the world is a bloody scandal.

People are self-entitled whinge-bags.

The Advantages of Being First

There are much better systems than D&D in the world. In fact, D&D is rather incoherent and riddled with irregularities, despite its charm. Yet from a certain perspective, D&D is the best game there is, simply because it is the first and most popular.

This is no circular argument: what I mean to say is, because D&D was the first role playing game and has hence secured the Top Dog space for itself and ruled the roost ever since (to mix my metaphors just slightly), there are vastly more people playing it and hence vastly more people creating things for it. To put it in fashionable terminology, the D&D brain trust is massive in comparison with that for any other RPG. The OSR blogosphere is only one small example of this. From house rules to new monsters to campaign settings to alternative classes to whatever else you can think of, there are dozens of times more people creating things for D&D than any other system, and thus there is a greater vat of accumulated knowledge from which any given D&D player can draw inspiration and edification than there is for game X, Y, or Z. Or even A, B or C.

But it doesn't stop there. I would suggest that D&D's pre-eminent position at the forefront of the hobby has a more profound and subtle impact on D&D players than just providing them with loads and loads of ideas, new rules, and customisations. The boon is far greater, if slightly more difficult to access: it comes in the idea that D&D is not a fixed thing but is ever changing. The fact that every month there is (was, once) a new Dragon magazine packed with different rules, that there are blogs and forums and websites out there dedicated solely to the creation of new material, that a never-ending sequence of splatbooks was being farted out by TSR at its height...all of this creates a self-perpetuating, virtuous cycle, in which any individual DM or player is being constantly reminded, almost as if he can't escape the notion, that D&D is ever evolving, ever-changing, ever-ready to be kitbashed and mangled and beaten into something new and different and better. This creates a special D&D mindset. The pressure to think about evolution. Other games may have a certain feeling that the rules and content can change, but D&D is impossible to imagine without the constant pressure of change, improvement, expansion. And this D&D mindset is a precious gift to the player of that particular game. It means that anybody playing D&D is always confronted with the question: what can be done to make this better?

Cthulhu Works With Everything

I've often thought that, if you wanted incontrovertible proof that the Cthulhu mythos is true, it's that you can put it into any setting and it will instantly improve it.

Way back at the start of this blog, in 2008 (it seems like only yesterday, but it is getting on for six bloody years ago), I was talking about OzCthulhu, my idea for a setting inspired by Aboriginal Australians with a heavy dose of the Cthulhu mythos on top. One of the commenters on that early entry postulated the idea of a setting mixing L. Frank Baum's Oz with the Cthulhu mythos, which works too. But other options will suggest themselves, because CTHULHU WORKS WITH EVERYTHING. Ancient Greece, but with added Cthulhu mythos. Icelandic sagas, but with added Cthulhu mythos. The Many Coloured-Land, but with added Cthulhu mythos. Star Wars, but with added Cthulhu mythos. The Incan Empire, but with added Cthulhu mythos. A Song of Ice and Fire, but with added Cthulhu mythos. Middle Earth, but with added Cthulhu mythos. The Nazis, but with added Cthulhu mythos. 1920s America, but with added C...no, hang on.

On Clearing Books Out of the Loft and Ramblings on Appendix N

This holiday I've spent clearing out my parents' old house. Part of this process has involved me appraising my old books (of which there are hundreds and hundreds) and trying to decide which can be thrown out and which can go to the local library or charity shop or whatever. I came across Leiber's Ill Met at Lankhmar, a collection from the early 2000s which brings together, I think, "Swords and Deviltry" and "Swords Against Death".

Re-reading these old stories, it occurs to me that you may as well not read any high fantasy series published in the last 30 years or so if you've read Leiber. I use the words "high fantasy" advisedly, because although the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories are more sword & sorcery than high fantasy, almost all high fantasy stuff that was published in the 80s, 90s and 00s was a footnote on what Leiber was writing in the 70s - from the back-story to both men (every main character in every epic fantasy series has a tragic origin story like Grey Mouser) to the sassy, just-as-good-as-you female leads who are just dim reflections of Vlana, to the innocent-girl-turned-unlikely-heroine female leads who are just dim reflections of Ivrian, to the strong themes of revenge, to the very un-Tolkienesque prevalence of magic (divided, as so often the case, into 'good magic' and 'bad magic')... It makes the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories seem like old hat, until you remember that no, it's just that most modern fantasy series were old hat before they were even conceived.

A while ago, because I felt like being controversial, I made the statement on some forum or other that I though that the Dragonlance books are probably just as good as most of the things in Appendix N. Although I said that with mischievous intentions, I also think it's true. The Dragonlance books are not great, but for a 13 year old boy they are good entertainment, and that is really the most you can say for most of the Michael Moorcock books, most of Lovecraft's fiction, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Phillip Jose Farmer, etc. People in the D&D blogosphere might not like to admit it, but the best you can say about a lot of the writings of a lot of those writers is that they pass the time and have some interesting ideas in. Admittedly there are a number books/authors on Appendix N that I've never read, but even if those works were all hidden masterpieces it would still place Weis & Hickman somewhere in the middle-to-lower rung. In a weird sort of a way, they probably deserve more credit; I know this doesn't apply universally, but I generally think of great books as being those which have moved me emotionally - and I have to confess that I was very moved emotionally as an adolescent reading about the death of Sturm or Caramon's efforts to stop his mad brother destroying the universe. Much more so, indeed, than I ever was reading about Elric's exploits, fun though they are.

Which fantasy books are really worth reading? Given that you have a finite amount of time in your life and there are so many other books out there? There's a novel by Jonathan Franzen called Strong Motion, which like all of Franzen's books is beautifully and sensitively written, if somewhat appalling at the same time; in it there is fairly extended section which describes the evolution of the music collection of one of the characters, Dr. Reneé Seitchek. She starts off with a large collection of punk music on old cassettes, but as time goes by and she gets older and older and more jaded her collection starts to dwindle and she starts just compiling mix tapes with some of her favourite tracks on...but as time goes by and she gets older still she starts to grow tired even of them, and she ends up just taking segments of single tracks that she likes and running them together, so that she finishes off compressing all of the music in the world that she likes into a single cassette or two. I sometimes feel like that about fantasy fiction. Give me a single 1000 page volume containing the distilled essence of Vance, Wolfe, and Tolkien and that may very well do me for the rest of my days.

What the Lazy Bastard Has Been Working On; Or, Yoon-Suin is On the Road to Completion, Honest

It's been a ridiculous November and December but I have managed to work a little bit on Yoon-Suin here and there. The content is entirely complete and I'm currently undergoing the laborious process of transferring everything from OneNote to Word (having given up on fancy schmancy layout programs after what seemed like aeons of aimless fiddling). This is about 5-10% finished.

Here are some mysterious screen grabs. No art as yet. That's the final hurdle.

Creative Constraint and Beekeeping

An intermittent theme on my blog down the years (see e.g. here) has been creative constraint: how providing strict boundaries in terms of what the DM and players can create (particularly during the setting up of a new campaign) can actually allow imaginations and inspiration to flourish.

Take beekeeping. The latest Econtalk podcast is all about the economics of beekeeping. While it is wide-ranging and covers everything from how to transport bees to CCD (which means Colony Collapse Disorder - don't you know anything?) to externalities to the almond-growing industry of California, the most interesting section by far in my mind is where the conversation moves onto the idea of migratory beekeepers. This may not be the case in other countries, but apparently in the US many beekeepers spend their working lives travelling around: based in the South, say, and moving to California for the early almond pollination season, then travelling up the West coast through Oregon and Washington for apples, berries, cherries and so on, and then pitching up in the Dakotas to allow the bees to spend summer gorging on sunflowers. Then it's back down South for winter. Similar migratory patterns go up and down the East coast from Florida to Maine and so on.

Saying that you are going to run a beekeeping campaign and you would be characterised as some sort of dangerous eccentric in most RPG circles; not because of the subject matter but because it seems so very limiting. The PCs really have to start off as beekeepers and nothing else? And all they're going to do is travel round with, and manage, bees?

But once the limits are set, the mind starts to whir with possibilities. How about, rather than just having honey bees, the world is full of many different kinds of bee, all with different characteristics, tastes, and vulnerabilities? And how about a d100 table of random bee pests and diseases that might strike at a given moment? What about all the possibilities for hexcrawling: where do you stop for the night with your hives? Where do you migrate to - do you follow the spring as it heads Northwards, or strike off on a different, less travelled path where there are fewer competitors? What kind of monsters and bandits lie in ambush on the well-journeyed routes? What kind of monsters does honey attract in general? There would need to be a set of tables for generating competitor beekeepers, their hives, and helpers, of course. Each would have their own agenda, their own rivalries and alliances, their hidden ancestral knowledge. The same goes for the farmers. There would need to be a system for determining costs based on the presence of competition, weather, crop type...and rudimentary rules for trade in general.

And of course, there would need to be complicated procedures for what happens when bees make honey from the nectar of poisonous plants, or whatever kind of weird fantasy flora you happen to come up with.

I'm not suggesting that the beekeeping campaign is the one we should all be running, you understand. The point is simply this: once constraints are set in place, creativity starts to flourish. Envisage human creativity like water: without barriers it floods endlessly in a very thin and ever-spreading sheen. With constraint it bursts upwards like a fountain. And I give you metaphors like that free of charge.