Category Archives: Criticism

Rollplaying Part 1

Once again, I get busy and my co-contributors demonstrate that I am the glue that holds this place together. Actually, that’s not accurate. I’m more the glue that keeps the wheels turning… except glue would have the opposite effect.

Let’s just say I’m the one that posts the most when he’s suppose to.

So yesterday was Thursday and meant to be our second day of Derek’s Ikan Light campaign. I was counting on these D&D sessions to give me plenty of material and ideas for blog posts. That was until Felicia got sick and the game was cancelled. Now, apparently, Derek is spending most of his day trying to extract his stomach out his mouth and my dreams of actually playing D&D have been only so much smoke and mirrors.

Well, God damn it all, I’ll write about it anyway!

In my brief experience with the genre, I’ve found that there are generally two types of players that join into tabletop RPGs. They go by many names but I’m going to affectionately term them roleplayers and rollplayers. I, myself, am the former. I got into RPGs way back in the day through play by post message boards and mIRC chat channels. These were free-form roleplaying communities where rules were light and the focus was more on a bunch of people interacting in a shared world. I have fond memories of this wild frontier. There was a game I played that was essentially Robin Hood. I say essentially because while the thread creator had the full intentions of making it about the classic woodland bandit, a bunch of us ended up taking the game wholly in another direction. Typically with free-form roleplaying, most groups or topics start as a sort of collaborative fanfiction. Generally, someone will begin with a call for fellows to join them in a popular world and the familiar characters will be doled out like a sloppy meal at a food kitchen to the first unwashed miscreants to get their hands on their childhood favourites.

Double Portrait of a Brother and Sister by Cornelius Ketel (1548-1616)

Even at a young age, while I enjoyed the practice of joining these self-indulgent fantasies, I had a penchant for creating my own characters even if the world was not my own. Presumably, having this in a developed world created the necessary “accepted rules” which each of us as creators would play by but that is neither here nor there. The point is that when I joined the Robin Hood thread, I chose not only to ignore joining Robin’s merry band of nitwits but threw my lot in with the Sheriff of Nottingham. Of course, it didn’t feel right playing the eponymous character (especially since the Robin player had already written him in a few of his posts) so I started to develop the deputy. Because every good sheriff needs a deputy. Only, I was all too prepared to have mine play the role of the villain.

My first post was a despicable introduction of abuse of power and megalomania. He terrorized Maid Marian, extorted peasants, berated and whipped subordinates and smeared the good name of the sheriff at every possible turn. The introduction of this character had a rather unexpected effect on the game. Suddenly, the focus was immediately redirected from the sheriff and King John to trying to deal with this abhorrent individual. The characters and events began to drift away from the classic tale and many of us began to fight out this grand struggle between minor and imagined characters that was far more compelling and gripping than the one between Robin and the sheriff. This struggle was made all the more difficult and gripping beneath the one universal rule of free-form roleplaying – you may never write a fellow player’s character’s actions or do irrevocable harm or damage to them without their permission. I couldn’t, say, just march a contingent of soldiers into Robin’s lair and murder him in cold blood. Likewise, none of his band were capable of just hunting my deputy down and slitting his throat alone and unloved by his fellows.

Portrait of Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo by Willem Key (1515-1568)

Instead, the battleground played out between NPCs. I arrested and imprisoned loved ones and those closest to my enemies. They worked vigilantly to discredit my name with the sheriff and king as well as prepare the peasants to resist me whenever I showed up. I don’t remember how it ended but I think part of my final downfall came when a new player arrived to take the role of Maid Marian.

What’s important about this rambling tale, however, is that all of this was possible with only the barest of rules. Since every member of the group was focused on “playing their role” the entire crux of the game revolved around the interplay between player actions, decisions and goals. Nothing was scripted and there was no rewards for us other than developing a damn good yarn between all our meddling hands.

I’ve always approached RPGs with this sort of attitude. I spend a lot of time developing my character, understanding the world and imagining the desires and goals of the person I play. I don’t really care for the mechanical creation of a character. Stating, powers and abilities represent a tangled mess that interferes with the creation process. Instead of just creating a “despicable deputy” I’m forced to consider what skills he has four more ranks in than not, how many “agility points” he has for blocking damage, whether he has enough strength to lift his longsword or not and on and on it goes. And while these limitations can offer additional fleshing that you wouldn’t consider otherwise, more often than not it is almost entirely devoted to elements that don’t form a character but a mechanical automaton.

Which brings me to the rollplayer. My friend Jeremy is one of those other, alien players. They are most excited delving into the systems of the game, learning the intricacies of the combat and skill checks. They derive more pleasure from creating extensive leveling plans, stating out all the perks, feats, proficiencies, powers, spells, abilities and other goodies that they anticipate receiving. Their character isn’t the vengeful victim of the crimes committed by a rampaging deputy in his unswerving hunt for outlaws in the forest. Instead, they are playing the 4/5/1/3/6 Rogue/Shadow Dancer/Shapeshifter/Divine Matriarch/Gooblygook. They create killing machines meant to defeat whatever challenges will be thrown at them, delighting in the combination of powers delved from the obscurest supplement or magazine that can destroy even the god statelines themselves!

Soldiers of Fortune by Francisco Fernandi (1679-1740)

And don’t get me wrong, there isn’t any right or wrong way to play these games. They’re obviously designed for both styles. There are reams of comprehensive rules for managing combat and challenges between individuals. Whereas a duel between people from the Robin Hood adventure would essentially be a few days of colourful riposting and parrying, the conclusion of the combat will inevitably be a draw or well established before the two participants strike the first blow. The classic dungeon delve would fall completely apart in a free-form framework. And those challenges are the ones that rollplayers delight in the most.
Whereas, I am quite happy playing an entire session without throwing a single die. Obviously, not everyone is the same and it’s probably more accurate to say players fall on the spectrum of roll-role playing. And it is the duty of the DM to figure out the perfect balance for the players that she is running for. Sometimes, group dynamics make the games really difficult to balance if you have a collection of extremes. I’ll never truly enjoy combat in tabletop games. Likewise, some players will never enjoy social intrigue and politics. But if you can get a group together that share the same interests and have a DM that likes running and developing adventures in that style… well, then you will have a damn good evening that leaves your players eagerly anticipating each session and writing long, rambling complaints whenever they get canceled.

Pretty But Dead

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Pretty But Dead – Why Breastplate Doesn’t Include Breasts

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Look upon this travesty and despair!

So this weekend there was apparently a marathon of bad children’s movies. One that happened to catch my attention was Percy Jackson And The Butchered Greek Mythology. I was intrigued by it partly by my sister’s mention that she had attempted the books and partly because Heather is an avid fan. How bad could it be, I wondered.

Well, pretty bad. But that’s not what I want to discuss today. Instead, I’d rather talk about a very specific, nit-picky detail that has farther reaching cultural infiltration. Specifically, when Percy arrived at the awkwardly titled Camp Half Blood there was a greater crime committed than horribly mangling the most culturally saturated mythology in the Western Hemisphere. I am, of course, speaking of Alexandra Daddario.

Though, to be fair to the young actress, it wasn’t her rather lackluster performance but more the costume she was squeezed into. Despite the impracticality of traditional sword warfare in a modern world riddled with guns, for some bizarre reason every single girl at this camp had been issued a custom fitted leather cuirass complete with delightful boob pouches. Granted, this design for women’s armour wasn’t a unique creation of the Percy Jackson movies. In fact, this type of armour design is rather ubiquitous in modern times.

I mentioned how ludicrous this armour was which prompted a rather curious response from my family. “Women aren’t men!” they proclaimed, “and they can’t wear men’s armour. That would be uncomfortable.”

Well, of course it would be uncomfortable. Armour has always been uncomfortable. There was a kid in my high school who was really into the Medieval Ages and had a hobby of creating chain mail shirts. He was kind enough to lend me a finished one that he had fashioned for the day and I walked around school with it on. And I can tell you, the thing was heavy, cumbersome and restricting. But had I got into a knife fight, it probably would have spared my life or at the very least a few extra knife holes.

See, the sole function of armour is to deflect blows and edges from striking and piercing your fleshy bits. It’s not designed to be comfortable or a fashion statement. They’re basically giant metal shells that people wore if their lord valued their life over the handful of arrows that the enemy would drop you with. Having two large mounds in the middle of your chest is going to do the exact opposite of that. Those big pretty hills are going to be directing blows right into your chest instead of away thus increasing the likelihood that an attack pierces the metal and kills you.

Female_Leather_Drow__Armour_by_I_TAVARON_I

Female Drow Armour designed by I Tavaron. See more at his deviant art page: http://i-tavaron-i.deviantart.com/

As such, function has always trumped form. In fact, the concept that a woman’s shapely bits would even need special pounded pouches in the outer metal plates is rather ludicrous when you consider traditionally what was worn underneath. Warriors didn’t just throw a naked brigandine over their body. They wore a rather large padded jacket called a gambeson in order to cushion the body against the metal, absorb some of the kinetic energy of a blow and to reduce chaffing. Straight from wikipedia: “It was very insulatory and thus uncomfortable, but its protection was vital for the soldier.”

Over this, you would then wear the aforementioned chain mail shirt. Then you would finally wear your breastplate, cuirass, brigandine or what have you. If a woman managed to keep her shape through all that then surely she would make even the Venus of Willendorf jealous. Even more worrisome, if a woman fell over in one of these metal bodices, the pressure of the impact, increased by the weight of the armour itself, could very well crack her sternum which could lead to damaging your heart and lungs. These breasted plates are less protective shells and more metal death traps.

To give the misguided designers a bit of credit, however, I can only assume that they were inspired by the classic Grecian muscle cuirass commonly depicted in Roman and Greek art. Here we have finely articulated pieces included nipples, navels, abs and defined pectorals. Surely if the Ancient Greeks wore these then they must have been real. Except, archaeological finds of relatively unadorned cuirasses suggest otherwise. Considering the muscle cuirasses were typically depicted on generals and emperors suggests that these were strictly ornamental pieces used to display the idealized physique than actual armour suited for combat.

If ancient men can have them why can’t modern women, you sexist!

Unless, of course, ancient smiths were secretly trying to off the management during combat with faulty design. Which, if ancient bosses were anything like modern ones, might not be too far fetched.

This, of course, isn’t to say that you can’t take the unique physiological differences between men and women into consideration when crafting and creating armour for either sexes. It just depends how much you care about them being fitted and alive over pretty and dead.

And not a breast to be seen though she’s got quite the upper shelf, if you know what I mean.

Tolkien’s Strangulation

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I have sad news. I tried to do an easy post today only to discover that I’ve already thrown up all my D&D stories. I have something I can dip into when I get busier with other work but, alas, I have nothing for the moment. What does that mean for you, intrepid readers? Simply that you’re going to get more poorly written, rambling, stream-of-conscious essays.

Which brings us to today’s that I’m tentatively calling:

Tolkien’s Strangulation:

The Dominance of Medieval Fantasy

Kind of cute, isn’t it?

This blog is rather dominated by the creative process with an emphasis on world building. As such, there’s going to be a natural bias towards fantasy writing. Fantasy, of all genres, is perhaps the most focused on creating new worlds. I’ve made mention that I believe it’s one of its biggest draws. Which isn’t to say that its brother genre – science fiction – doesn’t have an emphasis on world building: just that fantasy’s is greater. I think this arises from fantasy’s use of magic. Unlike science, which is heavily based on our own understandings of the natural laws and phenomenon of our world, magic and its existence fundamentally changes the fabric of an imagined universe. In science fiction settings, we can generally assume that gravity works as it does in our lives, that the basic principles of of chemistry and physics apply and that the laws that govern the natural world function according to shared fundamental principles. If you look at a world like Mass Effect, while it does include lots of supernatural and fantastical elements, it spends a great portion of time justifying those elements in a framework closely mirroring our scientific knowledge.

The result? We end up with pages of lore dedicated to explaining how faster than light travel works, how species are capable of psychic abilities and the chemical composition of ‘omni-gel.’ In contrast, if you look at something like Harry Potter, there is almost zero consideration for how the universe itself functions. Even taking place in the modern world with the dominance of the scientific method, there is little understanding for why spells require wands, latin and specific hand motions. There is no great detailing about the ecological impacts that dragons and giants would have on their environments and why these mythical beasts must be kept from non-magical eyes. None of its fantastical elements are justified within its own universe and each element is treated as a new spectacle to awe and entertain. It’s only explanation is that “it’s magic” and that’s all that seems required.

It’s remarkable how lovely these medieval fantasy settings are. It’s almost as if people forget the time period was called the Dark Ages for a reason.

There is a natural expectation from the readership that magic is unknowable. It is the stuff of stage magicians and the whole draw is that it can dazzle and entertain. Hermione sets paper fluttering by with a simple announcement of “Leviosa.” Gandalf chases off a flock of mounted ring wraiths with a beam from his flashlight staff. And I don’t even know what the hell is going on with the Game of Throne’s but apparently it involves women and lots of sex. Wizards, by their nature and mastery of this unknown force, are generally mysterious characters themselves. They rarely are the major actors in their tale and instead take a supportive role, guiding and mentoring some shmuck that is more relateable to the reader instead of just waving his arm and solving the crisis himself.

One need only think of Gandalf from Lord of the Rings to see all of this encapsulated. Now, I’m fairly certain given Tolkien’s desire for creating a modern myth, Gandalf drew heavily upon such classic figures as Merlin and Odin. But this isn’t called “Viking Strangulation” and that’s because so much of fantasy’s tropes are dominated by Tolkien world creation that it’s obvious where most of the inspiration is coming from. Before Tolkien, elves were obnoxious wee folk that lived in dirty holes. Dwarves most certainly weren’t the drunkard, beard loving, elf hating midgets that we have now and halflings weren’t even a thing in old mythology. The success of the Lord of the Rings had such an impact on the genre that the majority of its literature is essentially a reiteration of Tolkien’s world.

Because of the influence of mythology, his world is very rooted in the medieval time period. Though there is little representation of the complex peerage system or the dominance of a centralized church, the technological development of the world is approximate to that time. This led to the development of the Medieval Fantasy subgenre and a quick look over any fantasy section in a bookstore will show how ubiquitous this is. Which is fascinating to me since fantasy is no more beholden to medieval settings than science fiction is to alternate realities of the modern era. Lacking such a domineering figure as Tolkien, science fiction seems liberated to explore as many different stories and themes that it likes. A brief look at some of the largest contributors to the field demonstrate it’s variety. Star Wars is as different as Dune is as different as Neuromancer is as different as Ender’s Game is as different as 2001: A Space Odyssey is as different as The Time Machine.

And then you look at fantasy: Lord of the Rings vs A Game of Thrones vs A Wheel of Time vs Name of the Wind vs Eragon vs Assassin’s Apprentice…

And on and on it goes.

Frank Frazetta art.

It’s a fascinating situation especially since fantasy is arguably more successful than science fiction. Though, to be fair to the genre, urban fantasy is making a large impact now with things like Twilight and Harry Potter having such financial pull (though you could argue that these are are just spawned from Narnia’s success). My only point is that this ubiquitous isn’t necessary. Fantasy isn’t behooved to remain stuck in the Dark Ages. There is no reason that fantasy can’t cover a score of time periods and locations. A setting like Planescape is completely fantastical and even though it is a Dungeons and Dragons setting it is almost entirely alien to any of its other products.

As such, my writing has been leaning away from the standard fantasy tropes. I have my D&D shorts but my novel is fullblown steampunk set in the middle of the 1800s. I ideas for a fantasy story based solely on Native American mythology, tropical island settings, ancient Greek settings, dark modern setting…

There is a wealth of options available once we stop thinking that fantasy means pointy eared elves, knights in shining armour and endless princesses that need rescuing.

War Never Changes – Fallout and the Monomyth

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War, war never changes.

Except when it does.

It’s a bit of a slow news day so I thought I’d spend today discussing something that I love. Followers of this blog will surely know that both Derek and myself are avid fans of role-playing games. They’re a remarkable mode for gaming and storytelling, often harking back to a time of pulp science fiction and fantasy when stories were meant to tickle the sense of wonder and excitement in its readership. Derek has made comment on how early Dungeons and Dragons, as envisioned by Gary Gygax himself, was focused on fantastical scenarios and peoples that placed the player in a traditional hero’s role.

This set-up is considered rather rudimentary as time goes on, the material reaches a greater audience and tastes mature for more complex narratives. This bleeds down into story designs as the classic hero’s journey is forced to adapt and change to its creator’s desires and fans demands. Fantasy and science fiction, perhaps more than any other genres, have a long history of tapping into the primordial hero’s journey and it is no surprise that games derived from that material share prominent elements of its design.

Speaking of pulp, you can’t get more Frank Frazetta than this.

And while there may be some contention and criticism of Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” that spawned the idea of a generalized Hero’s Journey, there is some use in its structure. The journey, as envisioned in its most simplistic form, begins with an unremarkable member of a tribe receiving a call to adventure. This typically represents some dire need to the community that necessitates the hero venturing forth from his known world into the unknown often receiving advice and assistance from mentors and supernatural entities in order to descend into a transformative period characterized by trials and challenges that culminate with the death of the hero as he knowns himself only to be reborn and return with whatever plot device he was sent to retrieve in the first place.

Thus, Campbell envisioned the standard format for mythology and you can see the basic structure in many common tales from The Hobbit to the original Star Wars. For today, I want to focus on a single video game series in particular.

Fallout was created by the now defunct Interplay Entertainment and is set in a post-apocalyptic 23rd century retrofuturistic world. The visual design of the series is characterized by 1950 cold war Americana which plays upon the period’s hopefulness for the potential of technological improvements to our lives combined with the paranoia of global nuclear holocaust caused by the same technology. The first game follows the protagonist from Vault 13: underground nuclear holdouts built to shelter society from the impending fallout of global war. For generations these people have lived underground, waiting patiently for the devastation from the war to clear so they can emerge and begin rebuilding society. Unfortunately, your Vault’s water supply begins to break down and the protagonist is selected to head out into the wasteland to find a replacement before his community dies from dehydration.

Now, I never played the first game and only the first hours of the second but I did read up on their stories. As you can begin to see, Fallout 1 begins with the classic hero’s journey setup. However, one interesting thing about Science Fiction is that, more often than Fantasy, while the stories draw on the monomyth the structure and themes are more often to be criticized and undermined. In Fallout, after the player successfully discovers a replacement water chip for the Vault and saves the world from a mutant army and its master set on global domination, he is denied returning to his home. The Overseer is fearful that the journey has changed the hero too much and worries that his experiences would destabilize the community so he exiles him in order to maintain order.

I’m fairly certain all these pictures belong to the Fallout IP. I don’t know what that means in terms of ownership, however.

Fallout 2 begins much the same. Years after the first, you discover that the protagonist of the first game created a primitive village called Arroyo. At the start of the game, the village is undergoing the worst recorded drought in memory and the village elder recruits the protagonist – the direct descendant of the first game – to search out a Garden of Eden Creation Kit in order to terraform the earth and make it more bountiful. Once again we have unremarkable tribe member being called forth by fate and circumstance to venture from home to rescue his community. And much like the first game, this structure is subverted when your entire village is kidnapped while you are away. Course, this story ends a little more traditionally with the protagonist helping his people.

Likewise, when Interplay went under and Bethesda scooped up the rights to Fallout to make the third installment, we return once again to the monomyth structure. You are a child of a very prominent scientist in a Vault near Washington D.C. Fallout 3 was interesting in that the prologue was spent with you growing up in the Vault before reaching young adulthood to discover that your father has disappeared one night and the Overseer for the Vault has gone mad from this abandonment and sent security after you. Here, we see the undermining of the monomyth pretty quickly as you’re chased out from your community and you spend a majority of your time searching for your father and answers for why you were exiled.

While the Hero’s Journey concept was very influential in guiding some creator’s like George Lucas with Star Wars, there is no denying that the idea has some flaws. First amongst them is the gross generalization of so many rich and varied stories into very stripped components as to lose their flavour. But the monomyth further promotes almost anti-populist ideals as, inevitably, the hero upon return is elected into a social elite and his myth is performed as justification for the standing of the current ruling class. More than anything, the Fallout series challenges to this structure undermine the authority of the leadership. In the first game, the Overseer’s “reward” for the hero’s work and loyalty is exile. In the second game, the primary antagonist is the President of the United States who is determined to unleash a virus that will kill all mutated organisms in America to restore a level of purity that his community can rule (and they must test this virus on your people first to make sure it works). In Fallout 3, not only are you chased out by the Overseer who is paranoid that you and your father are seeking to destabilize his rule, but you also learn that all Vaults were designed as cruel social experiments wherein humanity’s survival was pushed aside in order to test scenarios like some vaults being composed of all men or the outcome of calculated system failures on community morale and cohesiveness. Almost universally, authority is portrayed as cruel, paranoid, manipulative or just downright ineffective. And this isn’t even touching on the fact that the setting itself already underwent a global nuclear war – the very definition of a worldwide failure of leadership in the modern era.

Unless I put the keywords Fallout and the monomyth right beside each other, Google gets angry.

This theme reached its height of complexity with Fallout: New Vegas. Now, players were cast as a free agent – a courier with a simple task of delivering an innocuous chip to one of the few surviving cities to not be devastated by nuclear bombardment. New Vegas is the surviving area of Las Vegas still powered by the functioning Hoover Dam and run by the excessively reclusive Mr. House. Only, things aren’t peaceful in the Mojave Desert as both the NCR and Caesar’s Legion are waging a bloody war with one another over the area and its resources. For the first time, players were no longer tied to a Vault beginning and the cruel failures of the past governing regimes. You would expect this liberation from the monomyth set-up to perhaps avoid criticism of authority. However, as you begin to explore the Mojave Desert and interact with the three major factions, you start coming across criticism of each group. NCR is seen as a bloated and corrupted bureaucratic nightmare where the prosperity and wellbeing of its citizens is pushed aside to pursue individual greed and narrow-sighted victory against their enemy at any cost. Caesar’s Legion is a brutal amalgamation of the various wasteland tribes seeking order through a very strict application of the ancient Roman army standard complete with cultural assimilation, slavery and unyielding military hierarchy. Mr. House is just plain crazy (as well as an iron handed manipulator who forces obedience to his reformations through business contracts enforced at the end of an army of unwavering robots).

I don’t think it comes as any surprise that the most popular ending is the one that eschews all factions and strives for a liberated New Vegas.

In this way, the Fallout series has used the mythical Hero’s Journey as a form of social criticism of authority. It’s a brilliant use of the format, taking the natural benefit of the early stages to introduce the players to the Fallout world by establishing a rather peaceful sense of normal (either in the Vault or a small village). Then, by natural exploration of the elements of the monomyth, the developers examine the moral authority of rulers and questions whether people in charge truly deserve the encompassing power that they wield. More often than not, it’s the smaller communities that eschew these more centralized governments that are the most idyllic. Goodsprings in New Vegas is a functioning community with no clear rulership and a pleasant and satisfied people. Rivet city in Fallout 3 follows in the same lines, relying on co-operation between its scientists and military for safety and well-being. Arroyo in Fallout 2 had an elder but its governing structure was nowhere near as striated as the Vaults.

When I first started playing the Fallout games, I thought it’s little tagline about war was cute if a little shortsighted. Surely, on its surface, war has changed as the battle being fought between Caesar’s Legion and NCR is certainly nowhere near the level as the war that brought about the end of civilization. But then, when you sit back and examine the motives for these wars, you find that it’s all the same. The smaller communities like Goodsprings and Arroyo never initiate these wars. All these conflicts are fueled by power hungry leaderships striving for more than what is necessary.

And in that sense, Ron Perlman is right: War never changes.

Burden Of Knowledge – Roleplaying In Fantasy

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Well, Derek continues to struggle without the conveniences of modern life and thus deprives me of material for my blog posts. Much like him, I had planned to spend a few days here and there giving my own impressions of his campaign as well as the development of my character. Dungeons and Dragons is a curious little game that can serve as practice for characterization and character growth and can teach tricks and techniques that are applicable to writing. In fact, both my sister and I have used previous role-playing sessions as the basis for shorts where we explore our character’s thoughts and feelings of the events that transpired in a little more depth.

Basically, a D&D session contains all the necessary components for writing a scene. It has multiple characters with different motivations, action, tension and resolutions. For the budding author, the great thing is that you don’t have to worry about the others. While playing, you just have your own character to deal with. And often times you will be just as surprised as your character by the decisions of the people that share your table and your party.

The Negotiator by Horace Vernet (1834)

But all role-playing has some weaknesses. The player must draw upon the skills of an actor if they wish to truly play their character. They must separate their own self from their persona. This is an incredibly tricky proposition, one that requires practice in order to succeed. Otherwise the player’s own knowledge, experience and bias will bleed into the game. This “meta” knowledge is generally considered to be undesirable, though it can often serve a positive function that I may address in a future post.

I don’t want to go into the whole issue of meta-gaming in this post. It’s just important to have a basic understanding as I address my primary concern for today. As followers will know, Derek has been very informative in describing the world of Ikan’s Light. This is more than just filler content that he can copy and paste for his daily submissions. It helps to give the players an understanding of the world and some of the cogs that make it turn. Unfortunately, from a player perspective, there is only so much he can cover whether that be due to brevity or mystery for the campaign’s storyline. This creates a gap for the reader in their understanding of the world. A gap that doesn’t exist for the actual actors within it.

This leads to what I’m tentatively calling “the burden of knowledge.” The formation of an individual’s personality is so reliant upon the experiences and information they have gained through their life that almost every study of an individual will necessitate the exploration of their childhood and known world long before whatever events drew them to prominence. When we look at Hitler, we don’t just discuss the Beer Hall Putsch and beyond. It’s fairly well known that Adolf Hitler originally had aspirations of being an artist until the fickle hand of fate would direct him down a path of infamy and people ponder how things would have been different if he’d succeeded.

Interior of the Nieuwie Kerk in Delft by Emanuel de Witte (1651)

Likewise, the characters in role-playing campaigns didn’t spring suddenly into being when they crossed the threshold into some musty tavern’s hall. Awhile ago I posted a short story about my character Kase van der Nevel. That was an attempt to try and understand the background of my character a little better, especially since I am trying to avoid the sort of stock characters I often fall into playing with these games. In that story, I covered an episode from Kase’s past but though it wasn’t told through his eyes, I spent time developing some of the individuals and interactions he would have during his youth. Though it may be the briefest glimpse into his history, I hoped that it would give a bit of insight into his character. In it, I established things like his relationship with his mother and community.

But in writing this short I came across a troublesome issue. I was stumbling around in a world of fog with just the faintest outlines of shapes to guide my path. Most of my description and references to history were vague or not intrusive. I was just a visitor to this world and I hadn’t the knowledge to properly know what life in Kase’s village would be like. I didn’t know its history beyond the few paragraphs provided for the Dalmistig province. It would be rude and unproductive to invent my own history for the area since Derek is the arbitrator for the world and any conflicts are resolved solely in his hands. I can’t know the history of Dalmistig beyond what Derek provided since I don’t know how much he’s developed and how integrated it is into his world.

I’m going to make a confession. Authors have no idea what they’re doing. There isn’t some grand codex that details how you go about making a story. There are lots of guides but those are merely suggestions by those that have come before us. At the end of the day, writing is a very personal craft and each individual has his own method that works for him. However, I have no doubt that there are many gaps in the history and community of the misty hills if only because it is physically impossible for Derek to have detailed and outlined every single aspect. I know there is room for mutual creation in this world. I just don’t know where that room is.

Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church by Emanuel de Witte (1668)

Unlike most collaborations, one side here has a very prominent advantage. I can’t know the depths of Derek’s knowledge or where the actual holes rest that are waiting for me to plant my own posts. All players work at a deficiency compared to the Dungeon Master. Which is to be expected. The DM puts in far more hours of preparation for the adventures and campaigns and their grasp of the world is expected to be more advanced so that they can dazzle players with exciting new locales and events as well as resolve any questions or problems that arise from the players’ end.

And this puts the player in a tight spot. They can’t just run off, making up what they need for their characters without running the risk of contradictions. They also don’t have insight into a lot of the true history and culture of the worlds they’re stepping into. How then are they expected to play their characters in way that is nature with this deficiency? A player is like a visitor arriving in Japan, trying to seamlessly fit in with their culture and ways with only a collection of books and t.v. shows to work off. In the end, they can’t hide their true origins.

For me this problem is an ever growing one. The more fantastic the world becomes, the less grasp I have on it. A game like Vampire the Masquerade has a built in mechanism to ease this burden of knowledge. The games take place on Earth with most players coming from the human populations which have all progressed along analogous lines to modern times. But in Ikan’s Light, the world is so vastly different that there is no prior knowledge I can rely upon for my understanding.

Now, what is the ramifications of all this rambling? Most people don’t take issue with it and role-playing games are certainly very popular despite of it. For me, it has a direct impact on character personality and decisions. Most players, I would hazard, play characters similar to them or their interests. These ‘stock’ characteristics are likely drawn upon through campaigns and across different worlds. I don’t need to know the minutia of Kase’s life if he thinks and acts like me. But the more drastic departure from my own demeanor, the less I’m able to rely upon my own experiences to direct his actions.

Embarkation of a Queen by Agostino Tasse (1615)

As I mentioned, my hope for Kase is to explore a personality far different from what I’m used to. I want to bring to life an individual that is shaped by tradition and has wholly committed himself to a belief that he has no capabilities of understanding. He is a faith based individual, throwing aside his own personal expectations and bowing before the commands of a higher power. Critical and independent consideration of conflicts and events are an alien method and I really want to examine that sort of blind faith people can put behind a cause.

It’ll be an interesting challenge, I think, and one I look forward to when it finally begins. And while I wished I was more prepared going into it, hopefully Derek won’t mind my own personal tendency for world building and filling in gaps of his world. At the end of the day, role-playing is all about challenging yourself through exploring a strange world in the shoes of another, striving not for your own needs and desires but someone else’s entirely as they struggle against the conflicts arrayed against them. Even if that person doesn’t even exist.

The Night Circus – Book Review

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The jacket cover on my version of the Night Circus. I like it.

This was not a book I chose for myself. In fact it was given to me by my Aunt. While I love my Aunt, I question her taste in entertainment and so I placed the book on my shelf and let it sit there, collecting dust and doing nothing in particular until this weekend.

Desperately tired of the other books I have been trying and often failing to read, I sought the comfort of something familiar. While I was perusing my favourite novels I saw the black and white cover, accented with small flashes of red. The clear white lettering was accentuated with silver scroll work. This time the simple title called to me: The Night Circus.

As I removed the hardcover novel from the shelf I slipped the coloured jacket cover from it. I did not reread the book’s summary, for that was part of the reason I had left it unread on my shelf for the past few months. Instead, I cracked the black cover with its silver scroll work. I flipped past the bold back and white strip end papers to the title page. Beneath the title the author’s name was simply stated: Erin Morgenstern. The book was not filled with extraneous information, advertisements for other works by this author or another. In three pages I was plunging into the novel itself.

The Night Circus is an unusual read. It is written in two different styles: the first is a bit like a narration, almost as though the author is talking to you. The second style is a distant third person; though each chapter often follows a single individual it does not bring the character’s thoughts to the author. It reads like you are an observer watching the players move about the stage. You cannot hear their thoughts, only the words they utter to the world. You can only see the actions they perform. All of this is written in the present tense.

Title page inside the Night Circus. Lots of black and white inside the book.

It was a very distant way of writing. The reader is kept separate from the characters. The story unfolds on the paper before them, but they are not actually a part of it. They are a spectator, capable of catching only glimpses of the characters. While two characters are considered the primary players by the jacket cover, I feel that is an over simplification.

The secondary performers are just as important, more so in explaining the whys and even the hows. The narrative touches on the actions of the primary characters, yet so little detail about their daily lives is recorded on the pages. This is not a novel dedicated to the minute happenings. We are not hand-held and intimate with the characters. We do not follow every day in their lives. Instead the story flits from one performer to another. We touch only briefly on moments in their lives. It is through these fleeting impressions and periodic happenings that the tale is built.

It starts small, with broad sweeping statements and generalizations. We are often told, told that Prospero is a great Magician, told that Celia and Marco study intently for years. There is no detail about how they study – or very little. We see the results of these efforts later. While some of these consequences are described in detail, there is a generalization to it that again makes things seem less personal.

Yet, there is a magic to the writing, a subtle mystery that drew me in. I followed slowly at first, cautious about what I was reading, uncertain I wanted to continue. I did not connect instantly with the characters. They were too remote to understand. But I was captivated by the Circus. Before I knew it, I was hooked. I had to know how the magic unfolded and the story ended.

The chapters often start with dates. It is not a new concept and truthfully it is something I often ignore. I read the date on the first chapter, noted it was set in the past and then continued. I recognized the second chapter took place a little later, but paid little attention to the details. It wasn’t until the date jumped that I became aware of the importance of those words and numbers. Part way through the sixth chapter I realized something didn’t fit. It was more than the change in perspective. Dates serve an importance in this narrative and they needed to be watched with care.

Another cover for the Night Circus. I am fond of the stylized black and white images.

The book itself is like the Night Circus. It is a world of shadow and light, of illusion and theatre. The reader is the audience, watching as performers dance across the stage. While the style is far from traditional and almost cold in its presentation, it is also magical. The story unfolds slowly; gradually revealing its secrets, though there is much that is kept hidden.

It starts in a distant time, popular in fiction, and modified to achieve feats only reached in our dreams. My first inclination is to write this book off as some alternate imagining of our history. While the author has set the story in the real world, she had done so with a twist of magic. To reconcile book and life would be impossible – though it is often attempted. At least, that is what I though until I reached the end, the very last lines where real and illusion blur. Perhaps it is because she is not explicit with her words, though the suggestion is anything but subtle. The connection is made; the story is alive and somewhere out there is the Night Circus.

The Stars Were Right – An Elder Sign Review

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As informed, I spent last week assisting Derek move his things across the street. It was a labourous endeavor despite the assistance of a car and all parties involved were thoroughly exhausted afterwards. But fear not, intrepid followers, I did drop one of his boxes in my glorious rebellion against his tyrannical posting rules however I think that the point had been lost.

I shall strive to find some other method to communicate my displeasure.

While there, however, Derek felt it necessary to spend his government funding and award us with a delightful evening of a card game called Elder Signs. It was flavoured and stylized after Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos which won me over. Derek was convinced by its 7.9 ranking on boardgamegeeks which is, apparently, rather good for the site.

The game is pretty fun, I have to admit. The flavour and mechanics really conjure the right feel for a Cthulhu game and I enjoyed the fact that it was a co-operative challenge that tested the players against the board instead of each other. My only complaint, and it would be a big one, is that the game is far too easy. Especially for something dressed up in horror trappings.

You see, there are certain expectations one has when they pick up a Lovecraftian game. Yes, we’re looking for weird, tentacled beasts and insane cultists. Alien worlds and indescribable horrors are a necessity. But there’s a certain feeling that we’re trying to conjure with all these unspeakable monsters. Lovecraft was and always will be a horror author and if you can fill your audience with a sense of dread then you are missing the point of Lovecraft’s writing.

Now, I feel that Elder Signs can be easily fixed with a few houserules and tweaks to its mechanics. There are elements in place that should work to build a sense of unavoidable doom. The aptly named Doom Track is perhaps the best mechanic and only needs more elements that move it along and force players to deal with challenges that they aren’t properly prepared for in order to work. Course, there are some other balance tweaks the game could use as well. Every player is dealt a random investigator and each possesses a unique talent or ability which they bring to the board. There is the Nun who ignores half of the ill effects of midnight cards and can’t be weakened by locations that lock away dice (dice are used to defeat challenges and resolve combat so each one denied makes each challenge more difficult). Other investigators receive greater rewards when completing challenges like the Magician who draws an extra spell when rewarded or the Scamp who gets additional common items.

But then you have the author who always rolls the extra dice when tackling an otherworldly challenge. Before we played, Derek and I thought she was perhaps the most useless. However, after a few rounds, it become quite clear that the otherworld challenges have the greatest rewards and the author essentially makes them a walk in the park, bring victory closer in great leaps whenever you draw a portal onto the board.

Deesis Range: The Saviour by Andrey Rublyov (1410)

And then there is the Scientist.

The Scientist is a curious investigator. She has a fairly balanced split between her health and sanity (because what is a Cthulhu game without the ability to be driven insane?). But it is her ability which makes her truly shine. She is immune to fear effects from any challenges which, arguably, didn’t play a great deal in our three games since we generally avoided them or threw the Scientist at them to complete them. But more importantly, she prevents monsters from spawning on her round allowing her to tackle the challenges which give a mix bag of positive and negative rewards since she removes the concern for accumulating additional elder signs (the quest coupon the players are attempting to gather in order to lock away the Old Ones) at the expense of making the other challenges more difficult.

I like the character as her special ability is both strong and very characterful. But Kate Winthrop brings to light a greater weakness in the overall Cthulhu world than just making balance in a card game difficult. It is her scientific skepticism which makes her such a good investigator against the Elder Gods and it is the same scientific skepticism which locks Cthulhu safely away in the 1920s.

For I think there’s more reasons why we don’t see a lot of Cthulhu stories beyond Lovecraft’s times and not just because other authors are paying respect to the grandfather of the style and the period he wrote in. Lovecraft was obsessed with the cosmic horror – an idea that life was wholly incomprehensible to human mind and that the plumbing of the universe’s secrets would ultimately lead to such revelations that would lead the explorer into madness. Forbidden knowledge is rife through his work and more than once scientific study and its failure to address the mystic and occult has led to a protagonist’s unavoidable defeat.

But this concern over science isn’t that surprising given that he was writing at the turn of the century. The world was undergoing a great upheaval in scientific thought. Einstein’s theory of relativity essentially upended the entire field of physics, tearing to shambles the established doctrines and leaving uncertainty in its wake. Furthermore, the coming of the World Wars were heavily influenced by technological developments and the machine gun’s use on the field of battle produced unheard of casualties to a population unprepared for modern war. In that day and age, no doubt technology looked like some horrific instrument quickly tumbling from man’s grasp and the further they delved the less anyone seemed to know.

This is, however, in stark contrast to our current age. Einstein’s relativity has become so widespread as to be taught in high schools. The breadth and depth of human knowledge is greater than at any single point in history. We understand more. We develop more. We research more. I feel that there is no coincidence between the rise of the Information Age and the apparently neglect of Lovecraftian horror. So much of Lovecraft’s creatures and world relied upon the unknown and the hidden that as we become more educated and enlightened we dispel the dark shadows that clung to the corners of our knowledge. Uncertainty washes away and in this new light we find not terrifying creatures to behold, the strings and fates of man wrapped in their tentacle appendages.

Which is a bit of a shame, really. Despite Lovecraft’s personal flaws, there is a source of wonder and excitement in his stories. True, they seem almost quaint in their crafting of horror. People driven mad by things that to the modern eye seem so much more manageable. What place does a wandering mountain of a monster with tentacles for a mouth when we live in a time when a single bomb can destroy an entire nation? A simple look at our own current media portrays science as this indomitable force capable of overcoming any obstacle that arises. In Pacific Rim, we had invaders from another world being thrown down before the mechanical might of giant exosuits. Independence Day saw the collapse of a technologically superior race through the application of a computer virus (a clever spin on War of the Worlds but nevertheless demonstrating that even technological horrors are brought down by our own scientific mastery).

Science isn’t something to be feared but embraced and there is seemingly nothing to fear from it save itself.

So, Kate Winthrop represents something rather curious in the Elder Signs. The game seems less about a group of investigators racing to lock away an ancient evil before it escapes and destroys existence. Instead, it almost feels like we’re looking back at a battle that was already fought. And this race was not between the investigators and the forgotten gods but between Cthulhu and Kate. It almost seems inevitable now that the Ancient Ones end would come. And I can only begin to imagine what horror they must have felt as Ms. Winthrop turned her microscope upon them.

Jane Austin

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The truth is I haven’t read anything new lately. I did however finish writing my 60 000 word story in a month. I know the official NaNoWriMo is supposed to take place in November, but that is not a good time for me. August however works well with my schedule. Between my own writing, gardening and various other projects I simply have not read anything new or interesting.

Favourite version of Pride and Prejudice.

I did however spend a solid six hours watching the BBC series of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. It is by far my favourite rendition of this popular Jane Austin novel. I actually love the fact it is so long. The perfect sort of thing to have in the background while I am busy hand sewing pieces of denim together to make myself a blanket. Also, it is the most faithful version to the book. Probably the most accurate portrayal of any book converted into a visual format. Because we have so much time to cover the story, the pacing is relaxed. Everything unfolds over time, just as it does in the novel. The visuals also appear, to my uneducated eye, authentic to the time. Some of the characters are more caricatures they are well done and amusing. To me this is the definitive adaptation of P&P.

And I have seen several versions of P&P, including some very cheesy much older variations. There was a black and white set in Victoria period that deviated so far from the novel to leave me a little confused. One version that features prominently is the recent rendition with Kira Knightly and Matthew McFadyen. I remember seeing this one in theatres and laughing throughout the entire two hours. In fact, I laughed the first two times I saw the film. I don’t know if the director intended for the audience to find it quite so amusing, but there was something very comical about their portrayal of the story. That I have seen this version several times does mean I like it on some level.

In fact I think the Knightly/McFadyen version did some very interesting and effective things with this classic tale. I am particularly fond of the casting of Jane and even the younger Bennett sisters. I was intrigued and impressed in the way they dealt with Charlotte and Mrs. Bennett. There were, however, some glaring offenses. The biggest one was the change in dialogue – the paraphrasing of familiar speeches sounded awkwardly modern and abrupt to my ear. The other, cutting hours of material to create a two hour film, I understand was necessary but not endearing.

While Jane Austin’s P&P is probably her most famous and well-loved novel Jane Austin did write other really good stories. Sense & Sensibility is another very enjoyable and popular story. While I liked reading the book, I also really loved watching the film. The movie version with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant is my favourite. It is still so much fun to watch and recognize more and more of the other actors in the piece – it has a very famous caste.

Another favourite novel for me is Persuasion. It is a shorter story and the lead female certainly lacks the outgoing spunky nature associated with many of Austin’s other heroines such as Elizabeth, Emma or Maryanne. Anne is comparatively plain, shy, quiet, reflective, and lonely. Yet, I find her soft manner very compelling. I also like the way the story gives love a second chance between the two leads. Again, I have seen several adaptations of Persuasion. Both the 1995 and 2007 versions have some very good points. They are well caste and both run about the same length. For me it is a tossup as to which I prefer. I do however like both of these far and above the 1971 version which is just silly.

As I write this, I am forced to realize how pervasive Jane Austin’s work is in our society. There are more than just the direct translations of words onto screen; there are also the movies and TV series based on her books. Modern versions have taken the stories and set them in current times – generally I am not fond of these pieces. Though, I do remember thinking that Clueless (based loosely on Emma) was well done. For a woman who wrote only six stories some two hundred years ago, it is impressive to see that her work is still relevant in modern times.

The Anatomist’s Apprentice – Book Review

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It started when I was surfing the ebook section at my local library. The idea was to find new reading material, for it has been a while since I read something all the way through. My interest had returned from fairy tales to steampunk. What I wanted was something light, fun and fast paced. Amidst the stream of vampire flooded section I found one title and skimmed very briefly the summary.

I read the title as: The Automatonist’s Apprentice (or something of that nature). Certain I was getting a steampunk mystery filled with automatons and dusty, coal-streaked London I flagged the title and waited for it to become available. It was probably this wait that distorted my memory of the book. For what I got instead was a novel dealing with dissected dead bodies and a long-winded murder mystery. I was utterly disappointed with the first chapter. It was a bucket of cold water on my eager anticipation.

However, I forged ahead with the Anatomist’s Apprentice by Tessa Harris. After all I didn’t have anything else to read and I had spent a good three minutes downloading this book. To my surprise, I started to get into the style of the writing and the intrigue of the plot.

I suppose I should have known from the cover which certainly lacks the expected mechanicals.

The beginning revolves around the sudden gruesome death of a young lord, observed by his doting sister. Rumours quickly spread through the county that it may not have been naturally caused. Even the sister begins to worry over the cause of death. Eventually, an inquest is ordered. In the meantime we are introduced to a young, brilliant anatomists who has taken over for a blind professor in London. We meet him as he cuts carefully into the recently deceased flesh of a former acquaintance. The two threads of story merge when the dead lord’s sister requests the secret help of the renowned anatomist.

The piece is written in third person, though each section usually focusses on one individual at a time. While I like this style, the author kept adding new and new character voices as she wove a convoluted tale of intrigue. I was happily following along, wondering if the Harris was the type of author to add a massive twist at the end of the story or not when suddenly an unexpected romance was thrust unwelcoming upon the reader.

I think it was about halfway through the book when the two ‘primary’ characters where suddenly thrust together. I suppose it was supposed to have been a slow building of feelings, but it felt shockingly awkward in a plot focussed on a potential murder. So disconnected was their midnight rendezvous that I put the book down. I suppose her writing was not good enough to keep me engaged. The mystery that was being subtly built with layer upon layer of deception and complexity no longer held my attention.

After a period of reading nothing else, I did return to the story. I skimmed my way through two more chapters before skipping to the end. The final chapter was significantly better than I expected. It did not explain everything that happened in the last 40% of the book, but it suggested at even more complex a story than I previously imagined. In fact, while I spoiled the mystery I am actually now more intrigued by the plot than before. I just might return to this book at some future date.

In the mean time, I think I will return to my own bookshelf and the well-known friends that rest within. I know they will not disappoint me with discontinuous moments or awkward transitions. I will be safe between the familiar covers as I relive their tales.

Author Review – Jessica Day George

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Recently I read a good book. It was a bit strange, as I was half certain I had already read this particular book, but as it was a fairy tale I wasn’t entirely certain. After all, everyone knows how the fairy tale is going to end and who the main characters are. This was further complicated by the fact that I know I have read more than one telling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. In the end, it doesn’t matter if I had read Princess of the Midnight Ball before or not. I read it recently and I enjoyed.

Book Cover

In fact, I enjoyed it so much I checked out the other titles by the author Jessica Day George. It my utter delight she had written two other Princess books: Princess of Glass and Princess of the Silver Woods. Both books were retellings of fairy tales – Cinderella and Red Riding Hood respectively. I enjoyed both.

The first book focusses on the classic story of twelve sisters forced to dance every night until their shoes are worn out. The helpful strange, cloaked with invisibility is the only one able to follow secretly after the princesses, discover what they are doing and help free them. As I said, the tale is classic. The author told it in a world like and unlike ours, set in some fantasy medieval period. It was filled with tiny kingdoms and a bit of magic. If there was any complaint to make I would say that the story lacked depth. It felt simplistic and flitted between several characters without the depth I would have preferred. In this manner the characters moved across the pages, playing their respective roles. Yet, I never felt drawn into their personal conflicts. I suspect this is in part due to the fairy nature of the story and the emphasis being placed more on the world than the inhabitants.

I preferred the second of the books which was surprisingly a sequel. The main character was one of the twelve dancing princesses visiting a different character. I liked the different and not entirely flattering portrayal of Cinderella. I was also surprised by how much I liked the Princess as she reacted to the trauma (forced dancing) of her childhood. Here there was more emphasis on characters than setting and I enjoyed the story much more for it. I also appreciated the link to the first book.

The third book in the series also followed one of the original twelve dancing princesses – the youngest. It was a different twist on Red Riding Hood which was good, but not great. I feel that the author missed a fantastic opportunity to really play with the Red Riding Hood characters. I also wasn’t whelmed to the continuation of the first book’s plot. I understand why we came full circle to the main problem of the first story, I just wasn’t enamoured with it. I would have preferred more of a character piece, which I think is the strength of the author.

Overall, these are good, fun, fairy tales. A great young adult read. As such I was then tempted to read move of Jessica Day George’s books. Her Dragon Trilogy was great original fun. I liked the dragons and who they fit into the world. I liked the main female and her love of sewing (another thing I liked about the Princess books was the incorporation of knitting – being a knitter myself).

Another Book Cover

By far the best book in the series was the first: the Dragon Slippers. This is where we were introduced to the main character, to the world and importantly to the dragons. The dragon hoards are the very best part of the series. The following two books, Dragon Flight and Dragon Spear where good but not as great. The first book held mystery and adventure. So many things happened. When I reflect back on the story, things that didn’t make sense at the time or seemed like the author pushing the story ahead were actually explained. These events didn’t just happen because. They followed in world logic and plot making a cohesive and tight narrative. The second two books lacked the complexity of the plot.

If I had to choose I would place preference for the Princess books over the Dragon books. Why? The Princess books are written for a slightly older audience, the stories feel slightly more complex as do the characters. Also, I have a bias towards retellings of fairy tales – my new obsession.

In summary, Jessica Day George is a good author of children/young adult fantasy adventures. Her writing is fun and imaginative and her characters have some scope. Her work is set in comfortable fantasyland, that may not be revolutionary it is extremely appropriate for these stories. I would recommend her books.