Things I Enjoyed in 2015: Castle Gargantua, Fire on the Velvet Horizon, Vacant Ritual Assembly

Castle Gargantua (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/149190/Castle-Gargantua)

Billing itself as "The biggest dungeon ever published by the OSR. A campaign, a massive generator, and a grotesque setting all-in-one", Castle Gargantua would be better described as the best procedural dungeon generator ever published by the OSR, and possibly ever published in general. Its size is a little bit of a rhetorical sleight-of-hand or white lie, because what the author means is (as you may expect from the title) that Castle Gargantua is a castle for giants:

Castle Gargantua is about the same height as the Empire State Building—1,250 feet—and the same size as Ceausescu's Palatul Poporului in Bucharest, a little bit below four million square feet—floor area, the same size as the entire old city of Venice. Its rooms and corridors are so huge that clouds hover within them. Sometimes, it rains inside. There are miniature tornadoes in the spiral stairs and strong drafts of wind where the corridors are sloped. If a curtain fell, its weight alone would smash a dozen men to a pulp.

In other words, its size is physical rather than in terms of having a large number of rooms, which is what I instinctively think of if somebody calls something the "biggest dungeon" ever published.

That said, a slight mis-labelling is one of the few criticisms I can level at Castle Gargantua, which had me hooked by page 8, with its expertly-judged rumour tables, bespoke for each character class. As a procedural dungeon generator it can have few peers: it makes exactly the right choice, in my view, in providing a number of properly-mapped and keyed "special" encounter regions (done by the always-excellent Dyson Logos), but abstracting most of the rest of the process in such a way that allows the DM to create rooms and corridors off the cuff during play. This is a difficult thing to manage, but Castle Gargantua just about strikes the perfect balance between providing a certain amount of randomly-generated details without being too slow and cumbersome to use at the table. It does this through a clever snakes-and-ladders mechanism for generating dungeon regions, combined with colour-coding for tone and flavour, which is both as simple as it needs to be, and also (I think) completely novel.

One thing that hasn't often been mentioned in the reviews of Castle Gargantua is the implied setting, which, to me, has a certain fairy-tale vibe which you don't often come across in OSR products. Castle Gargantua's contents are grim and certainly for adults, but the works I was reminded of most while reading it were the Alice books, Labyrinth, Jack and the Beanstalk, the Gormenghast books, and the Wizard of Oz, if strained through a sieve of Moorcock and Howard. As well as being mechanically innovative it also struck me as being tonally refreshing, which is not to be underestimated given the lack of variety in that respect amongst DIY D&D fare.


Fire on the Velvet Horizon (http://www.lulu.com/shop/scrap-princess-and-patrick-stuart/fire-on-the-velvet-horizon/paperback/product-22094199.html)

Patrick S and Scrap Princess created what is, in essence, a paragon of the stat-less bestiary or the Uncle Andrew's bestiary: a group of monsters, described and painted in an unreliable-narrator-type fashion, for individual DMs to adapt and stat-up as they see fit. But describing it in that way doesn't do justice to the fact that these monsters are so good and so unusual.

It's very hard to think up genuinely new monsters. Either they are a riff off something which exists already within either D&D or mythology in general, or they are a riff off an existing animal or group of animals with powers which somebody has already thought of. It's very difficult to escape from the "this with a this" formula ("an orc with psionic powers", "a lion with the head of a snake", "a vampire with the ability to turn into a fox", "a big parrot with the powers of a blue dragon"), which is why it holds true for 99.9% of the monsters that anybody ever thinks up in the modern age.

Well, Fire on the Velvet Horizon for the most part manages to completely do away with the "this with a this" formula, and that is just about the highest praise I can possibly think of for a monster book.

It's also beautifully written and illustrated, which is the second highest praise I can possibly think of for a monster book or RPG product generally.


Vacant Ritual Assembly (http://redmoonmedicineshow.com/)

There has been an explosion of 'zines in the DIY D&D universe, and Vacant Ritual Assembly is at the forefront. The content is always useful and/or interesting, but what I like most about Vacant Ritual Assembly is what it signifies: if you want to do something, just do it. Create.

I also like its physicality. This is a 'zine which is meant to be bought and physically read, not downloaded and looked at on a screen - although it is available in PDF. Like most things in modern life, the PDF has always sacrificed usability for humanity, for soul, and when I pick up a copy of VRA and hold the printed pages - lovingly but slightly-amateurishly put together - I feel a sense of communion with the different writers and artists that I never would if viewing their work through a screen. This is what a lot of the joy of traditional RPGs is about, for me: they are like wood. VRA is like wood, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Recovered Rudiments of Yoon-Suin Fiction, Circa 2010

I managed to finally get an enclosure to salvage an old hard drive the other day, and discovered in it a treasure trove of stuff that I had forgotten about. I am not the kind of person to inflict my creative efforts on the unwary, so fair warning: this is unfinished RPG fiction that I was toying with including in Yoon-Suin, but didn't:

Liangyu Hui’s tearoom on a warm, late summer evening: there is no better place to sit and dream up ways to gain wealth, women and fame. Something in the backdrop – the mountains glowing orange-pink in the sunset, the scattering of snow in the valleys – inspires the mind to thoughts of transcendent grandness. And the whores inspire a man with thoughts of glories more prosaic. It is the perfect confluence of circumstances for the nurturing of ambition.

                Three men we find on the veranda at Liangyu Hui’s tearoom on this particular late summer evening on which our story begins. One is a youngster, perhaps of fourteen winters, with the somewhat malnourished, poorly dressed air of the lowest castes. Probably, he is the son of a whore. His name is Dev. Another is Paras, an older man with a face dented by many breakages – clearly, he was once a club fighter, and perhaps not a very good one judging by the amount of blows he took to the face. The third is Po Le. Po Le is a slug-man, rare in these parts though not in the South, dressed with the flamboyance and speaking with the phlegmatism common to that race. His eyes, on the top of their stalks, seem somewhat disdainful.

                “Our prospects of success in such a venture are slim to say the least,” he is saying. “Is this really all you have managed to discover in the last two weeks?” He speaks the Yellow City Trade Tongue, that soft, vaguely hooting language which, lacking palatals and affricatives, is one of the few human languages a slug-man can speak without discomfort. It gives him an especially reedy, disgruntled air.

                “It’s gold, Po Le,” says Dev. “Gold. And just one old man.”

                “It is that which frightens me,” says Po Le. “People do not give gold in exchange for an old man unless the old man has something different about him to other old men.”

                “That is quite true.” Dev says. “But who is to say that ‘something’ is dangerous?” He looks at Paras with sly eyes. “And even if it is, Paras can handle an old man. He is an old man himself, so it should be a fair fight.”

                Paras raises his hand as if to slap him. Dev winks at him and sips his tea.

                The three of them are the points of a triangle, and Dev is at the apex. He is the one who knows people, the one who hears things, sees things, the one whose cousin’s best friend’s sister knows a man who can get you one of those, the one who thinks, the one who is never flustered. But he is also the one with the energy, the cajoler, the one who carries the others along by his will. Yesterday he met with Gulgutta the Red, a sage at the Archive, and Gulgutta the Red told him of the mad old man of Jomosom, and the gold that he would give if only that mad old man could be brought to him alive. And Dev means to get that gold. He may be the apex of the triangle but triangles need bases, and for him that is Paras and Po Le.

                “Nevertheless.” Po Le is always the voice of suspicious, slightly condescending prudence. “Simple economics would tell us that there is more to this than meets the eye.” His own eyestalks seem to grow inwards, folding in on themselves in an expression Paras and Dev have learned to recognise as nervous. “If the task were simple, there would be an abundance of greedy men searching for this old man, and the price would be low.”

Dev rolls his eyes.

“Yet the price is high,” Po Le continues, his rubbery mouth hooting in satisfied dubiousness, “Therefore we can conclude the task is not simple.”

Dev purses his feminine lips. For a moment, he looks like an old washerwoman taking a dim view of the behaviour of an errant child. But only for a moment. Then his smile flashes. “By the same economic calculation, the price is high, therefore the task is not simple, therefore we have no competition from other greedy men.”

Po Le’s eye stalks re-emerge to their full length and stretch apart in an unconvinced fashion. If Dev is the apex, the cajoler, the one who knows, Po Le is power; Dev knows that the slug man is arrogant, mean-spirited, rude, deceitful, slimy, cowardly, and pseudointellectual, but he also knows that he has magic, and that is what Dev needs. Because if Gulgutta the Red wants this mad old man of Jomosom brought to him, it may only mean that he thinks of it as a curio, but what Gulgutta thinks of as a curio is never something that can be easily obtained.

Dev also knows that despite his many flaws, Po Le is lonely above all else. If Dev insists on doing something, going somewhere, and if he can convince Paras to come along, then Po Le will follow rather than face the prospect of days or weeks alone and friendless.

“Don’t you agree, Paras?” says Dev.

Dev is the apex, and Po Le is power; this makes Paras the brute strength. His mind moves slowly, at first, the same way a rock needs to be pushed from a cliff with great force before it has the momentum to move. Dev thinks that if he can give it a good shove he Paras will come tumbling down the mountain on his side.

“Gold is gold,” he adds.

Paras looks at him with wide, pale blue eyes. “Gold is gold,” he agrees.

The next morning they strike South through a mixture of bamboo groves, pine forest, and flooded rice fields which shine in the bright clear sunlight. If you can imagine being a farmer who has never gone five miles from his birthplace, and who thinks of the city as a distant legend that he sometimes sees on clear mornings from a hilltop while watching over his yaks, perhaps you have an inkling of the unfamiliar sight of the teenage son of a whore leading a slug-man and a retired club fighter along a path through a bamboo grove towards you on a late summer morning.

                This farmer is waiting by the trailside as they approach. He is old, wrinkled, and toothless.

                “I’ll handle this,” says Dev.

And on that cliff-hanger, it ends.

Generic Cyberpunk 2020 Bastard System: Fantasy Edition, Pt. III: Semi-Coherent Ramblings About Magic

You may remember that in previous posts (here and here) I discussed using the CP2020 rules as the basic for a gritty, tactical fantasy RPG more akin to RuneQuest and Rolemaster (or CP:2020, for that matter) than D&D.

I still think this project has legs for private games (I wouldn't publish such an abomination), and these thoughts were resurrected after playing Blade of the Iron Throne the other day. BotIT is an odd beast - a sort of amalgamation of the most storygamish storygames you can imagine, and Rolemaster combat but with the complexity dialled to 111, let alone 11. (It even has hit locations within hit locations.) It was a bit too much for me to get my head around as a player, but I enjoyed it, and remembered that there is a lot of fun to be had in the places where RPGs begin to look like wargames: Rolemaster, CP:2020's Friday Night Firefight rules, Warhammer FRP 2nd edition, etc.

I had previously stumbled over how to create a magic system, however. I have come to realise that, fundamentally, I mistrust and despise magic systems which involve rolling and hitting a target number in order to cast a spell. I can't think of much else that would banalify something which should be anything but. Yet CP:2020 is at root a banalifying system - it is a 1980s/1990s game, and it doesn't allow much room for creativity: everything in it is governed by rules.

Nonetheless, there seems to be something rather awful about just creating a new magic system to tack onto the Generic Cyberpunk 2020 Bastard System: Fantasy Edition (GCp2020BS: FE), which would in a sense repeat the mistakes of the original authors and their stupid netrunner rules - otherwise known as the Let's All Drink While We Watch the Ref and Netrunner Character Roll Dice for an Hour System (LADWWWtR....etc.).

So it has to be something that I can retool from the existing CP:2020 rules. This probably means fannying around with Empathy/Humanity Points.

My basic thoughts for the GCp2020BS: FE magic user, then, is as follows:

Magic User

Only gets INT+REF to spend on skills; the other 40 points have to be spent on learning one of the types of magic, which are, for instance:

Sorcery/goety (magic used through demons, and demon-summoning)
Geomancy (elemental magic)
Necromancy ('nuff said)
Thaumaturgy (the working of miracles)
&c.

Once he or she has access to a school, a magician can do anything within its bounds - it's just a matter of learning the proper techniques and requisite materials (from a teacher, books, etc.). When casting a spell, the caster has to roll under his EMP on a d10 or lose a certain number of humanity points depending on how powerful the spell he wants to cast is. So if a sorcerer wants to summon a little imp familiar this might just be a d6 humanity point loss on a failed EMP roll, but if he wants to summon the Marquis Andrealphus, the 65th Goetic Demon, he might go completely insane on a failed EMP roll (8d10 humanity loss).

He also rolls against his fortitude (which replaces the "cool" stat) to see if he can control whatever he is summoning - unless he is willing to do weird ritualistic things, and/or is very experienced - you can sink IP into raising fortitude.

Death and the Most Important Thing You Can Do

My Dad died at the end of October. It's one of those events which you can't really predict the effect of on yourself, at all, beforehand (except insofar as banal things like, "You'll be upset"). One thing that surprised me was that it gave me a new found belief, maybe a faith, even, in creativity.

My Dad was a decent poet and writer. He had both poems and short stories published here and there during the course of his life, but never quite made it - a combination of a lack of focus and being easily discouraged, I think. Like a lot of very talented people, he had next to no faith in his own abilities, and I expect (like many of us) was able to pick his own work apart to the point at which he lost the confidence to show it to anybody else.

One thing that he always instilled in me, without my really noticing it, was an understanding that creating art actually means something. When I was a kid it seemed he was always talking about books he'd read, films he'd seen, exhibitions he'd been to, music he was listening to. He wasn't well educated, being a working class lad from Glasgow, but that didn't matter: I am currently sitting in my parents' kitchen writing this entry and, as in most rooms in my childhood home, it has a bookcase. On it, among dozens of others, are books by Michael Parenti and Javier Marias, Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes, Jack Kerouac's The Sea is my Brother, a complete collection of Charles Dickens' novels, something by Zizek, and a biography of Joe Meek. Bear in mind, this is the kitchen. You don't want to imagine the living room or dining room.

So from childhood I was indoctrinated with the idea that writers, artists, film-makers, etc., are the best and most important kind of people; that engaging with the world through the creative arts is one of the best and most important things you can do; that in writing a book or a poem, or painting a picture, or whatever, you are making other people feel something, and that is one of the best and most important things there is. But I never really realised that I believed this too, until after he had died.

I do believe it, though. Now that he's gone and I realise we won't be having conversations about books or films anymore, I get it. The act of creation is, if anything, underrated. And if my father's death has achieved anything (what an awful thought), I guess it has made me appreciate that in a way which I hadn't quite previously. Which is all quite a roundabout way of saying, in 2016 I think you'll be seeing quite a bit more from me in terms of actual published projects.

I hesitate to do this on a public blog entry, but here it is anyway: the last poem my Dad wrote, in 2013. He was already quite ill at this point - he had a very rare brain condition which caused rapid deterioration in his faculties. So it isn't his best work. But it's an appropriate poem.

Silent

To fall silent.
This is the last great ambition
That no one achieves. Not
even after death.

As if nothing has stopped resonating
since the beginning. Not even when
we can no longer trace or recognise the living.
We live, alert to innumerable voices
Distant and unruffled
The feeble echoes of unrecorded lives
Whose cries have seethed
Since yesterday and for centuries
"We have lived and we have died."

Boxing Day Present: The Sorcerers of Ainhoa, Complete

The Sorcerers of Ainhoa are a group of six magic-users of unknown origin who travel the high plains, moving from place to place apparently at whim. Capricious and unpredictable, they are at times benevolent and at times cruel. On some occasions all six are seen together, at others they appear only in pairs or threes. Two of them, Izotz and Hirune, are never seen together unless all six are present.

From left to right, the Sorcerers of Ainhoa are Itzotz, Elixabete, Eguzki, Patxi, Zigor and Hirune.

Itzotz, Magic User Level 8, Chaotic. 

Itzotz is handsome, aloof and silent, barely speaking and ever observant. In magic he tends towards illusion and phantasm, with which he horrifies or delights his victims. 

Spell Book (spells sewn in silver thread on the inside of his scarf): Dancing Lights, Erase, Find Familiar, Friends, Push, Unseen Servant, Ventriloquism, Audible Glamer, ESP, Fools Gold, Pyrotechnics, Rope Trick, Invisibility, Magic Mouth, Scare, Phantasmal Force, Suggestion, Tongues, Leomund’s Tiny Hut, Blink, Confusion, Fire Charm, Hallucinatory Terrain, Polymorph Other, Fumble, Distance Distortion, Telekinesis, Stone Shape, Mordenkainen’s Faithful Hound.

Magic Items: Ring of the Ram (8 charges), Dust of Appearance  

AC 8, Hit Points 22, #ATT 1, DMG 1d4 (knife)  

Elixabete, Magic User Level 9, Chaotic.

Elixabete appears as a small and slight young girl in a faded dress, and is never seen without a bouquet of dying flowers. Her grey eyes seem to contain great age and experience. She favours spells which manipulate the weather or natural objects. 

Spell Book (written on threads woven into her flower bouquet): Affect Normal Fires, Feather Fall, Light, Enlarge, Hold Portal, Spider Climb, Continual Light, Darkness 15’ Radius, Invisibility, Stinking Cloud, Web, Wizard Lock, Levitate, Explosive Runes, Gust of Wind, Hold Person, Haste, Lightning Bolt, Protection from Normal Missiles, Water Breathing, Dig, Ice Storm, Wall of Ice, Plant Growth, Fire Shield, Airy Water, Transmute Rock to Mud, Stone Shape, Wall of Force, Animal Growth. 

Magic Items: Chime of Interruption, Dust of Sneezing and Choking  

AC 9, Hit Points 19, #ATT 1, DMG 1d3 (stiletto)
 
Eguzki, Magic User Level 7, Chaotic. 

Eguzki is a corpulent man who is always dressed in the crimson outfit of a jester. He carries with him a sack, whose contents are known only to him. He prefers spells which allow him to teleport or disappear.  

Spell Book (a bundle of quipu carried in his sack): Jump, Push, Shield, Spider Climb, Feather Fall, Shocking Grasp, Darkness 15’ Radius, Invisibility, Levitate, Mirror Image, Rope Trick, Blink, Fly, Slow, Invisibility 10’ Radius, Dimension Door, Polymorph Self, Minor Globe of Invulnerability. 

 Magic Items: Beads of Force, Figurines of Wondrous Power (Ivory Goats) 

 AC 8, Hit Points 24, #ATT 1, DMG 1d4 (club)

Patxi, Magic User Level 7, Chaotic. 

Patxi is gaunt and gangly, always bare-chested. His barrel, which he carries over his shoulder as if it weighs nothing, sometimes contains hundreds of gold pieces, sometimes silver, sometimes copper. He likes spells which give him power over others.  

Spell Book (carved into staves on the interior of his barrel): Burning Hands, Magic Missile, Shocking Grasp, Enlarge, Charm Person, Push, Fools Gold, Stinking Cloud, Strength, Scare, Shatter, Detect Invisibility, Flame Arrow, Hold Person, Slow, Suggestion, Feign Death, Polymorph Other, Fire Trap, Fear, Enchanted Weapon.  

Magic Items: Iron Bands of Bilarro, Dagger of Venom +2  

AC 8, Hit Points 16, #ATT 1, DMG 1d4+2/poison

Zigor, Magic User Level 8, Chaotic.
Dressed in flamboyant but pale blue robes, Zigor, apparently a small boy, is the most exuberantly magical of the group, ever ready to demonstrate his power. When he is not practising his magic he likes to dance, performing for food or money.  

Spell Book (written on handkerchiefs he keeps up his sleeves): Affect Normal Fires, Charm Person, Dancing Lights, Magic Missile, Light, Nystul’s Magic Aura, Unseen Servant, Jump, Pyrotechnics, Web, Mirror Image, Knock, Levitate, Magic Mouth, Explosive Runes, Fireball, Fly, Lightning Bolt, Hold Person, Ice Storm, Wall of Fire, Fire Shield, Wall of Ice. 

 Magic Items: Scarab of Insanity, Pipes of Pain  

AC 7, Hit Points 19, #ATT 1, DMG 1d6 (short sword)

Hirune, Magic User Level 12, Chaotic.

Hirune is almost as a sister to Itzotz in appearence, though her skin is paler and her eyes sadder. Like him she rarely speaks, though she often sings in a melancholy and quiet way. She is the most powerful of all of her comrades, though she rarely displays her strength.

Spell Book (in a bundle of scrolls she carries around in a pottery vase): Detect Magic, Find Familiar, Magic Missile, Push, Shield, Sleep, Write, Tenser’s Floating Disc, Identify, Detect Invisibility, ESP, Knock, Leomund’s Trap, Locate Object, Ray of Enfeeblement, Scare, Strength, Stinking Cloud, Dispel Magic, Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, Fireball, Monster Summoning I, Protection from Normal Missiles, Leomund’s Tiny Hut, Confusion, Charm Monster, Massmorph, Monster Summoning II, Wizard Eye, Wall of Fire, Ice Storm, Animate Dead, Cloudkill, Teleport, Wall of Iron, Contact Other Plane, Bigby’s Interposing Hand, Monster Summoning IV, Control Weather, Repulsion.  

Magic Items: Staff of Withering (12 charges), Robe of the Magi  

AC 4, Hit Points 36, #ATT 2, DMG 1d4/1d4 (dagger)

On encountering the Sorcerers of Ainhoa, the DM should roll a d3; on a roll of 1 two of the sorcerers will be present, on a roll of 2 three will be present, and on a roll of 3, all 6 will be found. The DM should roll a d3 to determine the mood of the sorcerers, with a score of 1 being hostile, 2 being neutral, and 3 being friendly.

[This is the completion of a post I did a very long time ago.]

"What it does out at sea, no one can tell..."

"Supposing on Tuesday, it is morning in London; in another hour it would be Tuesday morning in the West of England; if the whole world were land we might go on tracing Tuesday morning, Tuesday morning all the way round, till, in twenty-four hours we got to London again. But we know that at London twenty-four hours after Tuesday morning it is Wednesday morning. Where, then, in its passage round the earth, does the day change its name? Where does it lose its identity?

"Practically there is no difficulty in it, because a great part of the journey is over water, and what it does out at sea no one can tell: and besides, there are so many different languages that it would be hopeless to attempt to trace the name of any one day all the year round. But is the case inconceivable that the same land and the same language should continue all round the world? I cannot see that it is: in that case either there would be no distinction at all between each successive day, and so week, month, etc., so that we should have to say "The Battle of Waterloo happened today, about two million hours ago", or some line would have to be fixed where the change should take place, so that the inhabitants of one house would wake and say "Heigh-ho, Tuesday morning!" and the inhabitants of the next (over the line), a few miles to the west would wake a few minutes afterwards and say "Heigh-ho, Wednesday morning!" What hopeless confusion the people who happened to live on the line would be in, is not for me to say. There would be a quarrel every morning as to what the name of the day should be.

"I can imagine no third case, unless everybody was allowed to choose for themselves, which state of things would be rather worse than either of the other two."

- Lewis Carroll, from The Rectory Umbrella, c. 1850.

Review of The Chin P'Ing Mei

I recently read and finished the Chin P'ing Mei, subtitled in my version as The Adventurous Story of the Mandarin and His Six Wives. It's a naturalistic novel set in medieval China and written somewhere around 1590, but don't let that put you off - it is surprisingly readable, at least in my translation by Arthur Waley, and provides a fascinating insight into how people lived during that era. Essentially a social novel, it follows the travails of one extensive family as they rise, and ultimately fall, through the social ranks, and I found it both surprisingly psychologically realistic, especially in its portrayal of the female characters, and also amusingly weird. The characters are all recognisably and authentically human, and in some ways their behaviour is strikingly modern, but all the time you are reminded that this is China and China in 1590 was a very different place to Britain in 2015. (An example: towards the end of the book two women are brutally murdered. But the correct thing to do, to all concerned - including the police - is to leave their bodies lying in the roadside until their murderer is captured. Why? No idea.)

I was also struck by how Yoon-Suinish the whole thing is: anybody who had read Yoon-Suin and this would probably think I was strongly influenced by it. This is a society of bureaucrats and judges, poets, prostitutes, gossip and a certain louche depravity: everybody is after money and sex, but they do it with such decorum that it almost seems polite. I loved it.

Some observations:

1) I've never had six wives, obviously, but the depiction of polygamy in the book struck me as extremely authentic. The women are in a sense rivals, but also in a sense sisters. That fundamental conflict is very sympathetically portrayed: there is an astonishingly moving scene towards the end of the book, indeed, which encapsulates this, as a solitary wife who finds herself living alone realises her profound loneliness without the other five around (despite the fact that she spent the whole book wanting her husband for herself). And while the husband is one of the great fictional anti-heroes and an all round cad, bounder, and whatnot (I reckon he has somewhere around 20 sexual conquests in the book, and isn't averse to having husbands and rivals killed off or falsely imprisoned), you also get a strong sense of his charm. The author was a keen observer of human relationships.

2) The legal system is amazingly corrupt. All the judges are venal and investigators either stupid or amoral. Becoming a judge so you can do away with your enemies on trumped-up charges is a matter of course.

3) While strikingly modern in some aspects, in others it feels a product of a world with a very underdeveloped sense of what a novel should be. The plot is sprawling and has a kind of "broken back" structure in which, three quarters of the way through, the hero dies (that's not a spoiler alert - the chapter titles all tell you what happens in each chapter) and we suddenly find ourselves following the exploits of his dissolute son-in-law for the last portion of the book. The author also starts off by presenting us with a story which is apparently going to focus on Hsi Men, the hero, and his gang of male drinking partners. But within a chapter or two this is abandoned and the plot becomes more and more about the relationships between the different wives and concubines and Hsi Men himself. The drinking partners appear from time to time, but have basically no role to play in the story. It's as though the author slowly but surely became more interested in the wives than the men - and indeed that's where the reader's attention is gradually drawn too.

4) Sex. If you're a teenage boy I reckon this book would be like mana from heaven.

In any event, I strongly recommend tracking it down and seeing for yourself. It's a long book but nothing like the marathon that you might expect, thanks to the very breezy and light-hearted style of the prose and the breathless speed of the plot.

The Need to Delegate Imagination

There is a new TV series of Star Trek coming out, in case you've been living under a rock. I'm not quite sure what to feel about it. I am pleased in principle; I am not a boxed-set watcher at all (my TV watching is limited mostly to Match of the Day, live sport, and the odd quiz show or wildlife documentary) but I do own the complete series of Next Gen and DS9 on DVD. I don't do visual SF or fantasy, really, in other words, except for Star Trek.

And yet on the other hand there is so much that could go wrong. Everything in popular 'geek' culture at the moment seems (from my limited experience, anyway), to be dark - not to say grimdark. If the producers of this new series think that dark is the way to go for Trek, it will be a gargantuan error. Star Trek is and always has been fundamentally optimistic. It is not childishly or unrelentingly so, but the core message of each series has always been: humans (and aliens too, for that matter) can surmount problems if they work together. That USP shouldn't be sacrificed.

I'm also terrified that the "let's all have fun blowing things up in space and not think about anything too much" approach of the JJ Abrams films will bleed into this new series. There has always been derring-do in Star Trek but there has also always been contemplation. Its traditions are thoughtful. And promoting the idea that being thoughtful about things is good is so counter-cultural nowadays that sticking to its roots could really make the new Trek stand out.

All of that said, however, I do wonder why it is that I care. What is it about fans of a series, or book, that makes us so passive? We start off watching a TV programme or reading a book, and we start to enjoy it, so we keep doing so. We follow along. At some point, though, our attitude changes: we become in a strange way dependent on the writers. I care about what the new Star Trek series is like because I am sure I'll end up watching it and I want it to conform to my expectations. I am worried about what the producers might do to it. But why?

I still have my old Star Trek episodes. That won't change. And nobody will force me to watch the new series. Moreover, if the new series isn't to my taste, there is nothing to stop me imagining my own version of it - where a plucky kid from Merseyside captains the Enterprise and gets to shag Counselor Troi while exploring the Delta Quadrant or whatever. I can even write fan fic if I want. (Just to be clear on this: I don't.) I can play RPGs in the Star Trek universe with my mates or people on G+. Why do I delegate the imagination of future Star Trek series to a handful of writers and producers somewhere in LA, now that I know what Star Trek is and can think up my own version of it?

The Heron Men

I am working on a new project for release early next year. Await further instructions. For the time being, however, here is a sample.

Heron Men

They live amongst reeds and bull rushes, on the shores of lakes and rivers. Long limbed, lurching walkers, with the feathered heads and beaks and sharp yellow eyes of the heron, and the gracile limbs of the man. Like the birds which are their namesakes they are patient and quiet; they prefer to wait for the chance to kill. Though they are neither great makers nor thinkers, their intelligence in the hunt does not waver; their eyes are as adept at spotting a chink in a man’s armour as they are at seizing on the silvery flicker of a fish darting from shadow to shadow in the shallows of a pool. During the day they scatter around the waterways to hunt alone or in pairs; in the dusk they gather together in their reed huts, and sit with their heads hunched between their shoulders to sleep, stooped against the cold of the night.

HD 1+1, AC 7, #ATT 1, DMG by weapon (spear, axe, dagger, club), ML 7, No. Enc.: 1d2, or 3d20 in lair with a 3+3 HD big man and two 2+2 HD shamans

*Heron men receive a +2 bonus to hit rolls

*Heron men are never surprised, and surprise opponents 5 times out of 6

The Death of HP Lovecraft

To write is to reach, through a pre-existing impersonality...that point at which language alone acts, "performs", and not oneself...

- Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"

In case you've not heard, HP Lovecraft is no longer the model of the trophy for the World Fantasy Awards, because he was manifestly a racist. Long-term readers of the blog will probably be able to guess at my views on this, and I don't particularly have any urge to sally forth into the lists of online debate over it, but I do think HP Lovecraft is a fascinating illustration of the way "the absence of the Author", as Barthes put it, "utterly transforms the modern text".

There are very few authors I can think of who, more than Lovecraft, embody the way in which a text can go through Barthes' process of "opening up". Anybody attempting to close his ouvre off, to put a "stop clause" on it, by interpreting it as the product of a racist has to ignore the way it has been plucked from his grasp and transmogrified into something utterly different from anything he may have intended. We readers have created an extensive mythos which he never envisaged and which still evolves and develops to this day. We have turned his ostensibly most terrifying creation into a child's stuffed toy or a joke for crude political satire. We have re-worked his stories into terrible films. Those of us who are Japanese, Mexican or African have recreated his work through our own cultural lens. We have flipped his male-centric universe. We have based board games and hard rock albums on his stories. We have joked about Necrotelecomnicon and created dishes like "Eggs Sothoth". We have mangled it and stomped all over it, smashed it up and put it back together, over and over and over again, and that process only seems to gather pace as Cthulhu in particular becomes a kind of internet totem or touchstone for nerd culture. Just as any Reader takes the text and interprets it in his or her own way, we as collective Readers have done precisely the same thing with HP Lovecraft's work as a text - writ large and to the extreme.

And players of Call of Cthulhu, perhaps more to the point, individually and collectively do the same thing in miniature for every session they play. They run games set in Norway, Australia, Egypt and Kenya and anywhere else in the world besides. They create new Old Gods, reinterpret existing ones, bastardise Lovecraft's stories and invent their own. They imagine themselves as black female Harvard professors, Chinese artists, Irish philosophers and English rugby players engaging in his world, and it doesn't matter in the slightest because the text is now theirs and not his. The man himself was a bigot and an appalling one. But his work as a text is constituted by us and not him, in a myriad of ways limited only by the number of individuals who read it and the number of interpretations they give it.