Desire is a strange thing. On the one hand, as the Buddhists say, desire invites unhappiness; we can never have the things we want, and even if we do, the act of receiving extinguishes the desire we felt and leaves us empty and suffering. On the other hand, desire keeps us going. Desire is what makes us get up in the morning; I want food, I want to read, I want to learn, I want to sleep.
Way back somewhere on this blog, I quote Ray Bradbury when he talks of wanting - of wanting a donkey, of wanting jewels, of wanting a woman, and, finally, wanting sleep. Sometimes, I think, all of us desire that final sleep. But then we snap out of it and recognize this desire as a vain and foolish desire. Why? Because it interferes with our other desires. A dead man can't eat or read. We're further kept away from death by the twin of desire - fear.
Sigmund Freud thought people were motivated by two forces: Eros and Thanatos. How to interpret these forces varies from person to person, but one possible way to interpret them is as desire and fear. We want, and we fear. Without desire, without fear, we would come to a standstill. The only reason why we keep going when our desires are fulfilled is that they invite fear of losing what we have found. The only reason why we keep going when our fears come to pass is that they invite a desire to undo that fearful, undesirable event.
There are many who say one should live ones' life according to ones' desires. Do what you wish shall be the whole of the law. I do not object to this philosophy - it is a good thing that people are allowed to pursue their desires. But why is it so, that fear is seen as inferior to its twin, desire? Why do we see the pursuit of happiness as more important than the escape from unhappiness? They are not necessarily the same thing.
Desire is no longer shameful, as it once were; if I want to love a man, it is nothing I should be ashamed of. If I want to stay home and play video games, it may be shameful in certain circles, but overall, society is tolerant of most desires so long as they don't bring harm to others. Fear, on the other hand, is deeply shameful. It is true that fear can limit people, even cripple them - but this is also true with desire. Greed is just as dangerous a shackle as is cowardice.
They key with desire, of course, is to desire in moderation. Your life will be unfulfilled if your only desire is alcohol. It is shameful and unhealthy to be addicted. A man who sleeps with other men is healthy in society's eyes, but a homosexual man who is addicted to sex is unhealthy, because it ultimately hurts him. Could it not be so with fear, as well? Fearing insects is not bad; fearing them so much that you can't sleep for fear of a single mosquito is bad, because it hurts you - it deprives you of sleep.
Wanting and fearing, it seems to me, are yin and yang of human behaviour. Why, then, am I ashamed of my fears?
torsdag 11 november 2010
tisdag 9 november 2010
fredag 5 november 2010
The Male Gaze and RPGs
Caution: What follows may cause reactions of “Well duh”, particularly if you are a woman.
A long time ago, I had a discussion with Nightflyer in which she mentioned that she found it easier to make male characters than female, because a female character felt like it had more assumptions built into it. I understood what she meant, but thought it a little bit ridiculous – sure, I thought, Hollywood women are always a certain way, but how does that restrict you from making any kind of female character you want?
Then, a few weeks later when I spoke to S. (whom I unfortunately don't have a secret code name for) the womanizing swordsman, he mentioned how it was more difficult to put yourself into the mindset of a female character, and I thought that this is perhaps true – as a man, I have absolutely zero knowledge of some aspects of a woman's life. I thought back to my conversation with Nightflyer, though, and wondered why the reverse wouldn't be true – after all, a woman has absolutely zero knowledge of some aspects of a man's life.
Then today, for unrelated reasons, I decided to do some deeper research of the concept of the Male Gaze. I had heard of this concept before, but I thought it boiled down basically to “women are sexualized in most works of art, because the artist expects the viewer to be male”. This is of course old hat, but the theory actually runs deeper than this. It essentially states that “most works of art are created from the point of view of a heterosexual male, even if the artist isn't a heterosexual male”. The fact that women are sexualized in art is just a symptom of this deeper undercurrent; if the artwork is made through the lens of a heterosexual male, it's natural that women would be portrayed as sexually desirable because to a heterosexual male, they are. The work of art is designed to appeal to a heterosexual male as well, of course, and for this reason women are made more beautiful – but it also serves to reinforce that “You, the viewer, are supposed to be a heterosexual man.”
That is, the Male Gaze theory doesn't just state that “Most writers are male”. It actually states – to artist and reader alike – that most movies, books, et cetera are written with an implicit message of “even if you are not a straight man, you should think like one.” I won't go into further detail explaining the theory – there's lots to be read about it all around the intarwebs – but there are numerous examples. If there's no particular reason for the main character to belong to a particular sex, you make him a straight male as a default. This helps the viewer think like a straight man, irrespective of whether they actually are one or not, which is the “goal” of a lot of fiction according to this theory.
I guess you can see where this is leading: My hypothesis is that the Male Gaze applies even in roleplaying games. What Nightflyer said basically translates into “It's difficult to make a female character, because female protagonists in fiction are not the default, so there's just so little material to take from.” Essentially, a woman has more experience being a man, even if she's never pretended to be a man, because there's just so much fiction written from that perspective. Even in roleplaying games, women are “the second sex” - the alternative rather than the default – even if your own sex happens to be female.
What do you think?
A long time ago, I had a discussion with Nightflyer in which she mentioned that she found it easier to make male characters than female, because a female character felt like it had more assumptions built into it. I understood what she meant, but thought it a little bit ridiculous – sure, I thought, Hollywood women are always a certain way, but how does that restrict you from making any kind of female character you want?
Then, a few weeks later when I spoke to S. (whom I unfortunately don't have a secret code name for) the womanizing swordsman, he mentioned how it was more difficult to put yourself into the mindset of a female character, and I thought that this is perhaps true – as a man, I have absolutely zero knowledge of some aspects of a woman's life. I thought back to my conversation with Nightflyer, though, and wondered why the reverse wouldn't be true – after all, a woman has absolutely zero knowledge of some aspects of a man's life.
Then today, for unrelated reasons, I decided to do some deeper research of the concept of the Male Gaze. I had heard of this concept before, but I thought it boiled down basically to “women are sexualized in most works of art, because the artist expects the viewer to be male”. This is of course old hat, but the theory actually runs deeper than this. It essentially states that “most works of art are created from the point of view of a heterosexual male, even if the artist isn't a heterosexual male”. The fact that women are sexualized in art is just a symptom of this deeper undercurrent; if the artwork is made through the lens of a heterosexual male, it's natural that women would be portrayed as sexually desirable because to a heterosexual male, they are. The work of art is designed to appeal to a heterosexual male as well, of course, and for this reason women are made more beautiful – but it also serves to reinforce that “You, the viewer, are supposed to be a heterosexual man.”
That is, the Male Gaze theory doesn't just state that “Most writers are male”. It actually states – to artist and reader alike – that most movies, books, et cetera are written with an implicit message of “even if you are not a straight man, you should think like one.” I won't go into further detail explaining the theory – there's lots to be read about it all around the intarwebs – but there are numerous examples. If there's no particular reason for the main character to belong to a particular sex, you make him a straight male as a default. This helps the viewer think like a straight man, irrespective of whether they actually are one or not, which is the “goal” of a lot of fiction according to this theory.
I guess you can see where this is leading: My hypothesis is that the Male Gaze applies even in roleplaying games. What Nightflyer said basically translates into “It's difficult to make a female character, because female protagonists in fiction are not the default, so there's just so little material to take from.” Essentially, a woman has more experience being a man, even if she's never pretended to be a man, because there's just so much fiction written from that perspective. Even in roleplaying games, women are “the second sex” - the alternative rather than the default – even if your own sex happens to be female.
What do you think?
lördag 16 oktober 2010
The Anatomy of a Choice
Trying to figure out whether or not I want to go to China for six months has taught me a lot about myself and the way I reason.
To many of you, no doubt, the answer to the question "Do I want to go to China" is very clear. Some of you would do it without hesitation; others would not even consider it. I'm pretty much right in between, though - I lean in no particular direction.
The more I dissect the question, the more questions I come up with. For instance - one reason I would want to go is that it's something I could be proud of afterwards. "I had this experience" would be something that would make me a little more special, a little more interesting, a little more worthy of love.
See what I did there? You cut a little in the question, gently remove the ligaments one by one and suddenly, you discover you've accidentally cut up another question entirely. Why would I need to do something to be a little more worthy of love? Isn't that a pretty unhealthy viewpoint? Either it is, in which case it shouldn't be a contributing factor, or it actually isn't and it's just normal human reasoning, in which case I've just discovered that my desire has a base root, no more ephemeral or sophisticated than the desire for food - making me not so special after all. The desire to be special, by definition, means that you're not actually special. It creates a sort of interesting paradox, which I've been pondering as a bit of a tangent to the main question.
This is by no means the only contributing factor; I've considered very many reasons to go. I pretty much only have one reason to stay, but it's a pretty convincing one: I like it here. Sometimes I think that's a good enough reason. Sometimes I think it isn't.
And so, I continue to cut my mind into smaller and smaller pieces, hoping that somewhere I can find an indivisible argument, the atom of choice, a fundamental building block of my own psychology. I don't seem to be able to find one.
To many of you, no doubt, the answer to the question "Do I want to go to China" is very clear. Some of you would do it without hesitation; others would not even consider it. I'm pretty much right in between, though - I lean in no particular direction.
The more I dissect the question, the more questions I come up with. For instance - one reason I would want to go is that it's something I could be proud of afterwards. "I had this experience" would be something that would make me a little more special, a little more interesting, a little more worthy of love.
See what I did there? You cut a little in the question, gently remove the ligaments one by one and suddenly, you discover you've accidentally cut up another question entirely. Why would I need to do something to be a little more worthy of love? Isn't that a pretty unhealthy viewpoint? Either it is, in which case it shouldn't be a contributing factor, or it actually isn't and it's just normal human reasoning, in which case I've just discovered that my desire has a base root, no more ephemeral or sophisticated than the desire for food - making me not so special after all. The desire to be special, by definition, means that you're not actually special. It creates a sort of interesting paradox, which I've been pondering as a bit of a tangent to the main question.
This is by no means the only contributing factor; I've considered very many reasons to go. I pretty much only have one reason to stay, but it's a pretty convincing one: I like it here. Sometimes I think that's a good enough reason. Sometimes I think it isn't.
And so, I continue to cut my mind into smaller and smaller pieces, hoping that somewhere I can find an indivisible argument, the atom of choice, a fundamental building block of my own psychology. I don't seem to be able to find one.
söndag 3 oktober 2010
2004: Arcana Unearthed
It began, as I recall, with the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. I had just started the school which I, for simplicity, will refer to as high school, and entered a conversation with a man that I, for simplicity, will refer to as Drake. We were talking about Douglas Adams' book, but somehow the conversation wormed and wriggled, as conversations are prone to, and eventually came onto the subject of role-playing games. To my great surprise, Drake was already familiar with them – which was a bit of a surprise to me, as prior to this encounter, virtually all my friends had been introduced to the hobby by me.
Enthusiastically, we decided to start up a group; no, more formally, to start up a club. It would be the school's RPG club, and its official language would be English; something which, for the first time, would allow me to circumvent the linguistic hopscotch which is trying to play an English-language game in Swedish. Teeming with excitement about all these new things and all the changes, I suggested another change – let's not play Dungeons & Dragons, I said. Let's instead play this strange little game I bought a while back called Arcana Unearthed.
I had unsuccessfully tried to play Arcana Unearthed with my previous group, but somehow they hadn't caught on – we'd run one small, unsuccessful game whose only identifying characteristic was my brothers' bizarre Sibeccai with a badger that could drive a soapbox car, but nobody really liked it. Now, however, was an ideal time to give the game a second chance. I started digging back home for my notes on the game I'd ran with my old group six months earlier, and recovered them – they were decent, a plot about an Iron Witch causing mayhem in a small village in the north. There were some suitable enemies – goblins, bandits, the witch herself. I liked the setting, too; a mysterious forest in the far north, isolated from all sides, accessible only if you had a horse or cart, or were prepared to trek for a long while through dark, dangerous forests. It even had some useful NPCs that I could salvage. But, somehow, I felt that something was missing. This new group was clearly so much more invested in the game – there was a whole lot of creative force here, force that I didn't want to see go to waste. I needed something beyond the usual hack-and-slash adventure. Some element was missing. So I started digging deeper, and found the in-character diary of my old cleric, from four years back – mentioning a strangely scented tea. Recalling a discussion I had with Drake a while back regarding tea as a magical potion, I thought, why the hell not? So I took a blank sheet, and wrote “Plot: Our tale begins when a trader arrives carrying with him mysteriously scented vanilla tea...”
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Before I can move on to the plot, there is the discussion of the who, and almost more importantly, the where. I don't think there is one reader of my blog who has not at least seen that tiny room, with its coffee machine, picture of an old Chinese man, and self-adhering Darin poster. We were initially meaning to call it something with suitable geeky weight – something like “the Dungeon” or “the Fortress” or “the Lair” but, it appears, Fate named it something else. I don't know who first mouthed the term, but one day the name was just there; one day, the room ceased to be a room, and became the Hole. There's not much more to say about it, because I couldn't possibly capture its essence in words - but I will drink a toast in Blood of the Living to its memory.
The game had moved to a new location, and it had also moved into the minds of completely new people. The initial Arcana Unearthed group had five players, and five characters – none of whom I had even known just a few weeks ago, and only one who I had ever met. From the years above me, there was Solomon and Alastair, and from my own year Drake, Kennedy, and Bob. I had known Bob by reputation because we had previously attended the same school, but I had never really spoken to him; all the other people were entirely new to me. In part because they were entirely new to me, I made sure we spent a lot of time preparing for the game. The characters of Arcana Evolved were not just rolled up and fired off; rather, they developed over time, in discussion on buses, in classrooms, and over lunch breaks. In the beginning, there was Beo, the unwilling mohj. Then there was Ling, the paranoid faen. Shortly, the wild man Nasef (alternatively spelled Naseef, I was never really sure) and the Dynamic Duo Sibzo and Euvortacian, a.k.a Vortoc, were finished too, and only then were we ready to begin. Now, where was I? Ah, yes... I remember.
Our tale begins when a trader arrives carrying with him mysteriously scented vanilla tea...
What followed was an adventure that slowly unfolded, blossoming from an evil witch plaguing the north, to the most insanely epic tale I have ever ran, where the fate of the entire Universe hangs in the balance. When we return to the Arcana Unearthed game, it has become Arcana Evolved, and while the first year was based more on “What is the self?”, the finale of the game would expand radically in scope. The Arcana Evolved game would come to incorporate almost every topic I studied during my two years of an IB Philosophy course, ranging from ethics to epistemology to the fundamental question, “What is a human being?”
But of course, there are still two years to go. For now, the five heroes are simply trying to deal with the wicked witch, with the corrupt sheriff she controls, and with the mysterious and inexplicable memory loss that Ling is suffering. Yet, something beautiful has begun – something I couldn't even begin to guess at when I first sat down in the Hole to draw the map of the region. I had no idea then what would happen – that the story would spread a pair of beautiful wings and fly away beyond anything I could have ever imagined.
Wait a minute – how can something that exists only in imagination go beyond what I imagined? The answer is simple.
I didn't imagine it. We did.
Notable Characters:
Beo, the Badger-Killer and Master Planner.
Nasef, the Vampire (nom nom).
Ling Tem'Enneth, the Zero Hit Point Energy Field Manipulator.
Euvortacian, the Womanizing Axeman.
Sibzo, the “Hero”.
Notable Characters (for real this time):
Beo, the Dragon's Prison.
Nasef, the Man Who Should Be Dead.
Ree Kaspathodex, the God of Paradoxes.
Euvortacian, the Idiot Savant.
Sibzo, the “Hero”.
Crowning Moments of Awesome:
Naseef died in the middle of the chronicle. His heart stopped. Beo brought him back, and for a moment, his power to screw with Fate made itself apparent – something I hadn't actually planned for. Beo spent a hero point, hero points achieve the extraordinary. But it became impressive foreshadowing for the rest of the game.
Ling also died, and was reborn as Ree Kaspathodex, the God of Paradoxes. His return as the King of Kaspathodexia took everyone by surprise, I should think.
Next Up:
2005: Survival In Moscow, in which I take the task to lead a Vampire game, and various other games. Three new players are introduced, and I will also take a moment to discuss small games played across all my three high school years – including Parallel Fandango and its sequel, Trigonometry Fandango.
Enthusiastically, we decided to start up a group; no, more formally, to start up a club. It would be the school's RPG club, and its official language would be English; something which, for the first time, would allow me to circumvent the linguistic hopscotch which is trying to play an English-language game in Swedish. Teeming with excitement about all these new things and all the changes, I suggested another change – let's not play Dungeons & Dragons, I said. Let's instead play this strange little game I bought a while back called Arcana Unearthed.
I had unsuccessfully tried to play Arcana Unearthed with my previous group, but somehow they hadn't caught on – we'd run one small, unsuccessful game whose only identifying characteristic was my brothers' bizarre Sibeccai with a badger that could drive a soapbox car, but nobody really liked it. Now, however, was an ideal time to give the game a second chance. I started digging back home for my notes on the game I'd ran with my old group six months earlier, and recovered them – they were decent, a plot about an Iron Witch causing mayhem in a small village in the north. There were some suitable enemies – goblins, bandits, the witch herself. I liked the setting, too; a mysterious forest in the far north, isolated from all sides, accessible only if you had a horse or cart, or were prepared to trek for a long while through dark, dangerous forests. It even had some useful NPCs that I could salvage. But, somehow, I felt that something was missing. This new group was clearly so much more invested in the game – there was a whole lot of creative force here, force that I didn't want to see go to waste. I needed something beyond the usual hack-and-slash adventure. Some element was missing. So I started digging deeper, and found the in-character diary of my old cleric, from four years back – mentioning a strangely scented tea. Recalling a discussion I had with Drake a while back regarding tea as a magical potion, I thought, why the hell not? So I took a blank sheet, and wrote “Plot: Our tale begins when a trader arrives carrying with him mysteriously scented vanilla tea...”
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Before I can move on to the plot, there is the discussion of the who, and almost more importantly, the where. I don't think there is one reader of my blog who has not at least seen that tiny room, with its coffee machine, picture of an old Chinese man, and self-adhering Darin poster. We were initially meaning to call it something with suitable geeky weight – something like “the Dungeon” or “the Fortress” or “the Lair” but, it appears, Fate named it something else. I don't know who first mouthed the term, but one day the name was just there; one day, the room ceased to be a room, and became the Hole. There's not much more to say about it, because I couldn't possibly capture its essence in words - but I will drink a toast in Blood of the Living to its memory.
The game had moved to a new location, and it had also moved into the minds of completely new people. The initial Arcana Unearthed group had five players, and five characters – none of whom I had even known just a few weeks ago, and only one who I had ever met. From the years above me, there was Solomon and Alastair, and from my own year Drake, Kennedy, and Bob. I had known Bob by reputation because we had previously attended the same school, but I had never really spoken to him; all the other people were entirely new to me. In part because they were entirely new to me, I made sure we spent a lot of time preparing for the game. The characters of Arcana Evolved were not just rolled up and fired off; rather, they developed over time, in discussion on buses, in classrooms, and over lunch breaks. In the beginning, there was Beo, the unwilling mohj. Then there was Ling, the paranoid faen. Shortly, the wild man Nasef (alternatively spelled Naseef, I was never really sure) and the Dynamic Duo Sibzo and Euvortacian, a.k.a Vortoc, were finished too, and only then were we ready to begin. Now, where was I? Ah, yes... I remember.
Our tale begins when a trader arrives carrying with him mysteriously scented vanilla tea...
What followed was an adventure that slowly unfolded, blossoming from an evil witch plaguing the north, to the most insanely epic tale I have ever ran, where the fate of the entire Universe hangs in the balance. When we return to the Arcana Unearthed game, it has become Arcana Evolved, and while the first year was based more on “What is the self?”, the finale of the game would expand radically in scope. The Arcana Evolved game would come to incorporate almost every topic I studied during my two years of an IB Philosophy course, ranging from ethics to epistemology to the fundamental question, “What is a human being?”
But of course, there are still two years to go. For now, the five heroes are simply trying to deal with the wicked witch, with the corrupt sheriff she controls, and with the mysterious and inexplicable memory loss that Ling is suffering. Yet, something beautiful has begun – something I couldn't even begin to guess at when I first sat down in the Hole to draw the map of the region. I had no idea then what would happen – that the story would spread a pair of beautiful wings and fly away beyond anything I could have ever imagined.
Wait a minute – how can something that exists only in imagination go beyond what I imagined? The answer is simple.
I didn't imagine it. We did.
Notable Characters:
Beo, the Badger-Killer and Master Planner.
Nasef, the Vampire (nom nom).
Ling Tem'Enneth, the Zero Hit Point Energy Field Manipulator.
Euvortacian, the Womanizing Axeman.
Sibzo, the “Hero”.
Notable Characters (for real this time):
Beo, the Dragon's Prison.
Nasef, the Man Who Should Be Dead.
Ree Kaspathodex, the God of Paradoxes.
Euvortacian, the Idiot Savant.
Sibzo, the “Hero”.
Crowning Moments of Awesome:
Naseef died in the middle of the chronicle. His heart stopped. Beo brought him back, and for a moment, his power to screw with Fate made itself apparent – something I hadn't actually planned for. Beo spent a hero point, hero points achieve the extraordinary. But it became impressive foreshadowing for the rest of the game.
Ling also died, and was reborn as Ree Kaspathodex, the God of Paradoxes. His return as the King of Kaspathodexia took everyone by surprise, I should think.
Next Up:
2005: Survival In Moscow, in which I take the task to lead a Vampire game, and various other games. Three new players are introduced, and I will also take a moment to discuss small games played across all my three high school years – including Parallel Fandango and its sequel, Trigonometry Fandango.
måndag 23 augusti 2010
2002-2003: The World of Greyhawk
The World of Greyhawk: Raiders of the Lost Knark
Of this campaign I simply cannot write enough, because I still have the journal I kept of the first two-thirds of the story. It's several dozens of handwritten pages, meticulously noting almost everything that happened in an eighteen-month game. I can hardly even summarize it without writing several pages, but I'm going to give it a try.
When the World of Gnomon ended, I had already begun to dip my toes into playing D&D online via forums, and that way become introduced to the World of Greyhawk. To be able to keep up with the online game, I had purchased the sourcebook for the Greyhawk setting, and I was pretty eager to try it out my own way. So, I told my players about it and they were pretty enthusiastic, but they were not tired of their villainous antics – yet. Through the course of the game, though, rather a lot of development took place. Before I get to the development, though, it's time to introduce some new players: My younger brother Jack, and a new recruit from the schools' other roleplaying group, the one my readers are most likely to recognize: Luke. It would take some time before he joined the game, but this didn't in any way lessen his impact on the story, because of the huge turnover of characters: the campaign had only five or six players, but featured 20 player characters before it ended. The sixth player, Chris, joined even later than Luke and stayed in the game for a few levels.
Probably the most eccentric game I've ever ran, the Chronicles of the Raiders of the Lost Knark are full of twists and turns. The characters are now thieves and liars, now honest saints delivering aid and hope to the world, and then go back to being thieves and liars. Despite being very incoherent, the story did have some recurring elements – the characters always seemed to have run-ins with a family of criminals named Om, who were distinct in that they always had “normal” names (Anna, Magnus, and so on) in a world where people otherwise only had fantasy names. This criminal family was perhaps not so much a main antagonist as it was the Team Rocket of the storyline – they kept turning up trying to steal whatever the PCs were trying to steal, or kill whoever the PCs had to negotiate with. Later in the story, the Om family turned out to be connected to an evil cult of a horned God, and in the epic final battle, the characters got to do battle with that God in person... and members of the Om family, trying to defend their deity.
As antagonists go, they worked very well: They went from being foils and rivals, to being mercenaries for the bad guys, to being direct lieutenants of the big bad evil guy of the game. If there's anything I'm proud of, it's that the Raiders of the Lost Knark always knew who were the enemy (and the pained look of “aw shit” I could generate just by dropping a normal name like Henrik).
The actual plot of the campaign is so convoluted that I can't easily describe it. There were, for most of the time, three layers of plot going on: The personal hijinks of the player characters, the adventures and suplots they encountered, and the actual, ongoing plot. The characters traveled this way and that across the campaign world, and the magnitude of their journey can't really be described without a map (this is the one we used). To give some idea of the travels undertaken, the players fought demon cultists in the Burneal Forest (right under the word “Living”) and bartered with strange wizards beyond the Amedio Jungle (straight down from Burneal) – they explored an ancient temple by the shores of Lake Udrukankar (above the minimap in the lower left) and served under Pirate King Arkadin in the Relmor Bay (straight down from the word “Greyhawk”). They traveled to all these places and more, all the while having their base of operations in the Free City of Greyhawk, right where the folds of the map meet at the center – and the journeys were rarely without incident, in a world of dishonest innkeepers, far-reaching criminal families, bandits, monsters, and intriguing nobles.
Merely talking about where isn't very interesting, though. I imagine if you're reading this, you also have some interest in the what. There's almost no end to it, particularly because of the complex intricacies of plot, subplot and sub-subplot, but I can give some examples: They snatched a magical compass from under the fingers of the Om family and used it to find great treasures, but it eventually led them to a strange floating island where a dead goddess was held; they resurrected her through prayer and were hounded by the minions of the assassin who killed her. They singlehandedly turned the tide of a war by defeating a demon and his evil druid minions, and later discovered this was just a small fraction of a vast demonic threat. They infiltrated the secret base of a cult of racist psychic ninjas, who practice the ancient and deadly art of Glue Fu. They crept into a castle in the sky belonging to the settings' most powerful witch, and rescued half a dozen heroes from her magic. In addition to this, there were countless personal subplots: They rescued a characters' father from being falsely accused of a crime, they freed a kidnapped sister, they foiled the plans of an evil older brother, and so on. A lot of NPCs came and went, though very few were actually recurring – mostly because the characters traveled so wide and far.
Earlier years had seen pretty massive conceptual leaps – from game to story, from story to setting, from setting to overarching plots – and although the step was smaller and more subtle in this campaign, it was nonetheless important. Previously, there had always been only one story going on at a time, with some minor frills around it. Characters had their own lives, but they were rarely involved directly in the story, the backgrounds and families were just window-dressing. The Raiders of the Lost Knark introduced the idea of interweaving plots. There were stories based on a characters' background, stories that intersected other stories, stories that only concerned one character that happened simultaneously with stories that concerned the whole group, and stories that the players invented which were then woven into the overarching plot; it was the players who came up with the idea of stealing the magical compass, for instance. Overall, this gave the campaign a very genuine, organic feeling: Nothing existed in a vacuum. What the characters did mattered, both to the setting but also to the growth of new stories. The turn-over of characters actually helped to support this organic feeling, since many of the stories quite naturally involved new people. Some characters reached their goals and retired; new ones then stepped in that were more connected to the task at hand. On the other hand, some characters stepped in that had no connection to anything, just a random happenstance, which sometimes got stupid (“I have been rowing here in a boat, that is why I am so strong!”) but occasionally just felt natural (“I deserted from the army and have no money. There are probably people looking to execute me. Can I come with you guys? That'd help.”).
Perceptive readers may note that I have not yet mentioned any characters' names. I'm getting to that; in fact, I'm actually going to list them all. While there were perhaps ten characters or so who were the real main characters with the most influence over the plot, I figured it gives a better picture of the campaign as a whole to mention all of them. Before I get to that, however, I'm going to mention two small side projects I did with this same group, at roughly the same time. They were the ones in which Jack truly got to shine.
The first one was (informally, as in, only in my notes) called “Two Houses” and took place in the same world, and at the same time, as the Raiders of the Lost Knark game, but revolved around political intrigue between noble houses in Ahlissa. Based loosely on a similar game I had ran on-line, it was supposed to be a game of politics and scheming, but it seems only Andy took any real liking to it (I don't think Luke participated). This game is mostly notable because of Jack's number-one fantastic character Gurgi the Goblin. The other characters were all scheming, manipulative noblemen; Gurgi was a goblin. Not even a particularly noteworthy goblin – he had class levels in Rogue, and that was basically it. Gurgi essentially became the heart of the game, since the most interesting story revolved around the other characters trying to manipulate the naïve, innocent, and ultimately good-hearted goblin into doing their dirty work and taking their falls. He was thoroughly tragicomical – naïve enough to be funny, but also innocent and pure compared to his cynical “friends” - whom he considered his friends right until their political machinations eventually got him killed.
The second side game I want to mention is the Storybook game. This game was ran on the premise “fairy tale clichés”, and as such the group consisted of a princess in men's clothing, an old wise druid, a blue-eyed young hero (uncharacteristically played by Bjarne), a mysterious elf from distant lands with strange customs, and a ridiculously strong brick of a dwarf. The combination was pretty much the perfect five-man band, and the story developed beautifully. It stands out mostly because it was a bit more deep and serious than other games we'd ran up until that point, with more long-spanning story and some serious themes – a pregnant player character, a deal with the devil (in the form of a witch) and some classical fairy tale elements played totally straight, like the troll who can't be defeated, only tricked. Jack played the muscular brick-dwarf, and made the most insane display of stubbornness and bullet-headedness by spending almost all of his feats on swimming, which led to his subsequent fantastically awesome victory in the final battle scene; he also did a good job of roleplaying the Big Guy perfectly straight, and managed to portray something very much like a cross between Gimli and Hagrid.
And while we're on the subject of notable characters...
Notable Characters:
Here's the complete list of the Raiders of the Lost Knark, with the six most iconic characters first.
Arthad af Vaughn / Arthad Aliaster (Charles) – Evil human fighter, later converted to the cause of good. Killed an evil god (with a lot of help from Craven the Raven). Remained in the group until the end of the game.
Kråkmåns Höghatt (Bjarne) – Dwarven cleric, tricked the God of Lies by tricking the GM. Strict and fair, but greedy. Killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood at level 10 and remained dead for a long time, but came back through a miracle before the end of the game.
Todd Ark (Andy) – Human druid with a deadpan attitude. Seduced the Unseelie Fey Queen and became her consort, but was eventually killed by Arthads' hand because the dark god's power was pouring into him. Was the longest-lasting character in the game, and survived from level 1 to 14.
Aust Galanodel (Luke) – Elven wizard, made a powerful artifact hand out of a fist-sized ruby. Calm and controlled, but slowly grew obsessed with power since he always needed more to achieve his goals. Retired very, very shortly before the end of the game to build a flying city.
Vackeria (Jack) – Elven ranger with a giant, evil, intelligent, bloodthirsty mace for a weapon. Was captured by the Om family and implanted with a weird parasite, but managed to turn it to her own ends. Vackeria temporarily retired at level 6, but came back – only to later become imprisoned by the Scarlet Brotherhood. Reached level 10.
Fenith (Chris) – Elven mercenary who loved showing off with his weapon of choice, a glaive. It was hinted that he had a connection to the enigmatic Valley Elves. Was eventually killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood at level 10.
And as for the remaining cast:
Crayloon (Charles) – Gnome wizard, formed the Raiders of the Lost Knark. Retired at level 4.
Brad Rost (Andy) – Human paladin. Not very noteworthy. Remained in play until the end of the game.
Moano (Chris) – Tattooed human monk from the far South. I'm not entirely sure what happened to him, I think Chris phased out of the game and Moano just kind of disappeared, but I don't remember.
Jacarsin (Luke) – Human sorcerous barbarian. Great liar, proficient mountain man. Retired at level 4.
Zok-Hoba (Luke) – Fallen Incubus demon who became good (so he fell upwards). Sacrificed himself at level 6 to show Arthad the Light.
Liam Tindarellion (Luke) – Halfling acrobat and knife thrower. Retired at level 10 to form her own thieves' guild.
Salazar (Luke) – Human monk with arabic features. Could jump like crazy. Was only in play for a few sessions.
Arkas Hörntand (Bjarne) – Greedy half-orc. Picked a fight with the city guard and died at level 1.
Raistlin Långskägge (Bjarne) – Greedy dwarf. Killed by a bear at level 3.
Tikas Svarthorn (Bjarne) – Greedy tiefling. Killed through no fault of her own by a shapeshifter at level 6.
Furkman af Vaughn (Bjarne) – Aggressive half-orc. Killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood at level 10 while trying to avenge Kråkmåns.
Noja Lilltå (Bjarne) – Halfling dragon rider. Sacrificed herself for the greater good at level 10.
Pluppinia av Oljin (Jack) – Halfling who thought she was a dwarf, sister of Plupp. Killed alongside Tikas by a shapeshifter at level 6.
Malefe (Jack) – Female yuan-ti (snake people) who seemed very confused. Killed when a church bell fell on her at level 8.
Minifenix (Jack) – Weird twelve-year old kid with a giant spider. Walked in through a door, out through a door, and promptly died. Gained 0 experience points and died at level 7.
Ymer (Jack) – Gnome cleric/pirate. Looked a lot like Charlie Brown. Retired at level 11.
Crowning Moments of Awesome: Either none or too many to count, depending on where you draw the line. This was the most gaming-intense year of my entire life.
Next Up:
2004: Arcana Unearthed, in which an entirely new group is introduced, and a very complex story begins to unfold. Once more I undertake the prospect of world-building, and proceed to only use a few percent of it. In the next year, complicated literary analysis enters the equation, and we embark on a journey exploring themes, moods, motifs, and other such pretentious things.
Of this campaign I simply cannot write enough, because I still have the journal I kept of the first two-thirds of the story. It's several dozens of handwritten pages, meticulously noting almost everything that happened in an eighteen-month game. I can hardly even summarize it without writing several pages, but I'm going to give it a try.
When the World of Gnomon ended, I had already begun to dip my toes into playing D&D online via forums, and that way become introduced to the World of Greyhawk. To be able to keep up with the online game, I had purchased the sourcebook for the Greyhawk setting, and I was pretty eager to try it out my own way. So, I told my players about it and they were pretty enthusiastic, but they were not tired of their villainous antics – yet. Through the course of the game, though, rather a lot of development took place. Before I get to the development, though, it's time to introduce some new players: My younger brother Jack, and a new recruit from the schools' other roleplaying group, the one my readers are most likely to recognize: Luke. It would take some time before he joined the game, but this didn't in any way lessen his impact on the story, because of the huge turnover of characters: the campaign had only five or six players, but featured 20 player characters before it ended. The sixth player, Chris, joined even later than Luke and stayed in the game for a few levels.
Probably the most eccentric game I've ever ran, the Chronicles of the Raiders of the Lost Knark are full of twists and turns. The characters are now thieves and liars, now honest saints delivering aid and hope to the world, and then go back to being thieves and liars. Despite being very incoherent, the story did have some recurring elements – the characters always seemed to have run-ins with a family of criminals named Om, who were distinct in that they always had “normal” names (Anna, Magnus, and so on) in a world where people otherwise only had fantasy names. This criminal family was perhaps not so much a main antagonist as it was the Team Rocket of the storyline – they kept turning up trying to steal whatever the PCs were trying to steal, or kill whoever the PCs had to negotiate with. Later in the story, the Om family turned out to be connected to an evil cult of a horned God, and in the epic final battle, the characters got to do battle with that God in person... and members of the Om family, trying to defend their deity.
As antagonists go, they worked very well: They went from being foils and rivals, to being mercenaries for the bad guys, to being direct lieutenants of the big bad evil guy of the game. If there's anything I'm proud of, it's that the Raiders of the Lost Knark always knew who were the enemy (and the pained look of “aw shit” I could generate just by dropping a normal name like Henrik).
The actual plot of the campaign is so convoluted that I can't easily describe it. There were, for most of the time, three layers of plot going on: The personal hijinks of the player characters, the adventures and suplots they encountered, and the actual, ongoing plot. The characters traveled this way and that across the campaign world, and the magnitude of their journey can't really be described without a map (this is the one we used). To give some idea of the travels undertaken, the players fought demon cultists in the Burneal Forest (right under the word “Living”) and bartered with strange wizards beyond the Amedio Jungle (straight down from Burneal) – they explored an ancient temple by the shores of Lake Udrukankar (above the minimap in the lower left) and served under Pirate King Arkadin in the Relmor Bay (straight down from the word “Greyhawk”). They traveled to all these places and more, all the while having their base of operations in the Free City of Greyhawk, right where the folds of the map meet at the center – and the journeys were rarely without incident, in a world of dishonest innkeepers, far-reaching criminal families, bandits, monsters, and intriguing nobles.
Merely talking about where isn't very interesting, though. I imagine if you're reading this, you also have some interest in the what. There's almost no end to it, particularly because of the complex intricacies of plot, subplot and sub-subplot, but I can give some examples: They snatched a magical compass from under the fingers of the Om family and used it to find great treasures, but it eventually led them to a strange floating island where a dead goddess was held; they resurrected her through prayer and were hounded by the minions of the assassin who killed her. They singlehandedly turned the tide of a war by defeating a demon and his evil druid minions, and later discovered this was just a small fraction of a vast demonic threat. They infiltrated the secret base of a cult of racist psychic ninjas, who practice the ancient and deadly art of Glue Fu. They crept into a castle in the sky belonging to the settings' most powerful witch, and rescued half a dozen heroes from her magic. In addition to this, there were countless personal subplots: They rescued a characters' father from being falsely accused of a crime, they freed a kidnapped sister, they foiled the plans of an evil older brother, and so on. A lot of NPCs came and went, though very few were actually recurring – mostly because the characters traveled so wide and far.
Earlier years had seen pretty massive conceptual leaps – from game to story, from story to setting, from setting to overarching plots – and although the step was smaller and more subtle in this campaign, it was nonetheless important. Previously, there had always been only one story going on at a time, with some minor frills around it. Characters had their own lives, but they were rarely involved directly in the story, the backgrounds and families were just window-dressing. The Raiders of the Lost Knark introduced the idea of interweaving plots. There were stories based on a characters' background, stories that intersected other stories, stories that only concerned one character that happened simultaneously with stories that concerned the whole group, and stories that the players invented which were then woven into the overarching plot; it was the players who came up with the idea of stealing the magical compass, for instance. Overall, this gave the campaign a very genuine, organic feeling: Nothing existed in a vacuum. What the characters did mattered, both to the setting but also to the growth of new stories. The turn-over of characters actually helped to support this organic feeling, since many of the stories quite naturally involved new people. Some characters reached their goals and retired; new ones then stepped in that were more connected to the task at hand. On the other hand, some characters stepped in that had no connection to anything, just a random happenstance, which sometimes got stupid (“I have been rowing here in a boat, that is why I am so strong!”) but occasionally just felt natural (“I deserted from the army and have no money. There are probably people looking to execute me. Can I come with you guys? That'd help.”).
Perceptive readers may note that I have not yet mentioned any characters' names. I'm getting to that; in fact, I'm actually going to list them all. While there were perhaps ten characters or so who were the real main characters with the most influence over the plot, I figured it gives a better picture of the campaign as a whole to mention all of them. Before I get to that, however, I'm going to mention two small side projects I did with this same group, at roughly the same time. They were the ones in which Jack truly got to shine.
The first one was (informally, as in, only in my notes) called “Two Houses” and took place in the same world, and at the same time, as the Raiders of the Lost Knark game, but revolved around political intrigue between noble houses in Ahlissa. Based loosely on a similar game I had ran on-line, it was supposed to be a game of politics and scheming, but it seems only Andy took any real liking to it (I don't think Luke participated). This game is mostly notable because of Jack's number-one fantastic character Gurgi the Goblin. The other characters were all scheming, manipulative noblemen; Gurgi was a goblin. Not even a particularly noteworthy goblin – he had class levels in Rogue, and that was basically it. Gurgi essentially became the heart of the game, since the most interesting story revolved around the other characters trying to manipulate the naïve, innocent, and ultimately good-hearted goblin into doing their dirty work and taking their falls. He was thoroughly tragicomical – naïve enough to be funny, but also innocent and pure compared to his cynical “friends” - whom he considered his friends right until their political machinations eventually got him killed.
The second side game I want to mention is the Storybook game. This game was ran on the premise “fairy tale clichés”, and as such the group consisted of a princess in men's clothing, an old wise druid, a blue-eyed young hero (uncharacteristically played by Bjarne), a mysterious elf from distant lands with strange customs, and a ridiculously strong brick of a dwarf. The combination was pretty much the perfect five-man band, and the story developed beautifully. It stands out mostly because it was a bit more deep and serious than other games we'd ran up until that point, with more long-spanning story and some serious themes – a pregnant player character, a deal with the devil (in the form of a witch) and some classical fairy tale elements played totally straight, like the troll who can't be defeated, only tricked. Jack played the muscular brick-dwarf, and made the most insane display of stubbornness and bullet-headedness by spending almost all of his feats on swimming, which led to his subsequent fantastically awesome victory in the final battle scene; he also did a good job of roleplaying the Big Guy perfectly straight, and managed to portray something very much like a cross between Gimli and Hagrid.
And while we're on the subject of notable characters...
Notable Characters:
Here's the complete list of the Raiders of the Lost Knark, with the six most iconic characters first.
Arthad af Vaughn / Arthad Aliaster (Charles) – Evil human fighter, later converted to the cause of good. Killed an evil god (with a lot of help from Craven the Raven). Remained in the group until the end of the game.
Kråkmåns Höghatt (Bjarne) – Dwarven cleric, tricked the God of Lies by tricking the GM. Strict and fair, but greedy. Killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood at level 10 and remained dead for a long time, but came back through a miracle before the end of the game.
Todd Ark (Andy) – Human druid with a deadpan attitude. Seduced the Unseelie Fey Queen and became her consort, but was eventually killed by Arthads' hand because the dark god's power was pouring into him. Was the longest-lasting character in the game, and survived from level 1 to 14.
Aust Galanodel (Luke) – Elven wizard, made a powerful artifact hand out of a fist-sized ruby. Calm and controlled, but slowly grew obsessed with power since he always needed more to achieve his goals. Retired very, very shortly before the end of the game to build a flying city.
Vackeria (Jack) – Elven ranger with a giant, evil, intelligent, bloodthirsty mace for a weapon. Was captured by the Om family and implanted with a weird parasite, but managed to turn it to her own ends. Vackeria temporarily retired at level 6, but came back – only to later become imprisoned by the Scarlet Brotherhood. Reached level 10.
Fenith (Chris) – Elven mercenary who loved showing off with his weapon of choice, a glaive. It was hinted that he had a connection to the enigmatic Valley Elves. Was eventually killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood at level 10.
And as for the remaining cast:
Crayloon (Charles) – Gnome wizard, formed the Raiders of the Lost Knark. Retired at level 4.
Brad Rost (Andy) – Human paladin. Not very noteworthy. Remained in play until the end of the game.
Moano (Chris) – Tattooed human monk from the far South. I'm not entirely sure what happened to him, I think Chris phased out of the game and Moano just kind of disappeared, but I don't remember.
Jacarsin (Luke) – Human sorcerous barbarian. Great liar, proficient mountain man. Retired at level 4.
Zok-Hoba (Luke) – Fallen Incubus demon who became good (so he fell upwards). Sacrificed himself at level 6 to show Arthad the Light.
Liam Tindarellion (Luke) – Halfling acrobat and knife thrower. Retired at level 10 to form her own thieves' guild.
Salazar (Luke) – Human monk with arabic features. Could jump like crazy. Was only in play for a few sessions.
Arkas Hörntand (Bjarne) – Greedy half-orc. Picked a fight with the city guard and died at level 1.
Raistlin Långskägge (Bjarne) – Greedy dwarf. Killed by a bear at level 3.
Tikas Svarthorn (Bjarne) – Greedy tiefling. Killed through no fault of her own by a shapeshifter at level 6.
Furkman af Vaughn (Bjarne) – Aggressive half-orc. Killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood at level 10 while trying to avenge Kråkmåns.
Noja Lilltå (Bjarne) – Halfling dragon rider. Sacrificed herself for the greater good at level 10.
Pluppinia av Oljin (Jack) – Halfling who thought she was a dwarf, sister of Plupp. Killed alongside Tikas by a shapeshifter at level 6.
Malefe (Jack) – Female yuan-ti (snake people) who seemed very confused. Killed when a church bell fell on her at level 8.
Minifenix (Jack) – Weird twelve-year old kid with a giant spider. Walked in through a door, out through a door, and promptly died. Gained 0 experience points and died at level 7.
Ymer (Jack) – Gnome cleric/pirate. Looked a lot like Charlie Brown. Retired at level 11.
Crowning Moments of Awesome: Either none or too many to count, depending on where you draw the line. This was the most gaming-intense year of my entire life.
Next Up:
2004: Arcana Unearthed, in which an entirely new group is introduced, and a very complex story begins to unfold. Once more I undertake the prospect of world-building, and proceed to only use a few percent of it. In the next year, complicated literary analysis enters the equation, and we embark on a journey exploring themes, moods, motifs, and other such pretentious things.
måndag 2 augusti 2010
2002: Dark Hearted Heroes
Memory betrays me, and I'm not sure when and exactly how these new players were introduced to me. I know that I moved to a new school, and that I somehow made some very unexpected friends. I think me getting involved so much in church work helped turn them from acquaintances into friends, and it was through involvement with the church that I came to introduce them to Dungeons & Dragons. How I came to make acquaintances in the first place is a mystery to me, but I think it was mostly Andy's doing. Anyway, I quickly met a lot of people who were interested, and at one point I ran a game for – no lie – eight people: Linus, Bjarne, Andy, Charles, Eric, Lawrence, and two random girls whose names I honestly didn't catch. It says a lot about the crowd I was hanging with that I didn't catch their names because the rest of the group referred to them as “the bitches”. I know one of them was someones' sister, maybe Linus'. I'm not sure.
Anyway, out of the many new contacts I made, only the ones involved in church business became in any way close to me – Bjarne and Charles. These two players and Andy would form the core of my new group, but it took a while before we got to that point. We played a lot of one-shots, often involving contacts or weird friends of Bjarne, and in the early days it happened often that I unpacked my briefcase and declared “today's adventure is about a goblin-infested ruin” without having much clue about who the hell all of the players were.
Before I go on, I'm going to wax nostalgic about the locations of our games for a bit. We seldom played at my house in the early days, mostly since there were so many almost-strangers – instead, we ran games in the most bizarre locations. Usually, we hung out at the church-sponsored youth center, but we also ran games in Linus' garden shed, outdoors in the school yard or on picnic cloths, in Charles' garage, and even in Andy's kitchen (where a gruesome torture took place, and me and him alike were, I think, pretty scared his parents were going to hear us).
And on the subject of gruesome torture, I quite naturally arrive at the titular Dark Hearted Heroes. I don't know what made us stick to them. Perhaps they were mechanically well-designed, or perhaps it was the sheer glee of villainy that appealed to the players – I honestly don't know – but the main game of this year became the chronicles of Tjocka Bombadil Salabim Potter af väldigt mycket fetstryk, Lord över gläntorna i skogen, helgon av Furyondy och dotter till Tjock and Erok the dark elf. The former was a male halfling druid for the first five minutes of her existence, after which she promptly grew “Dolly Parton breasts” and became a female halfling druid. The latter was a dark elf assassin with some backstory – he was basically such a terrifyingly evil bastard that the other dark elves kicked him out.
The third character was the mild-mannered, kind-hearted half-elf ranger named Amsirac Parwyn. He was chaotic good, liked birds and music, and fit in with the other two about as well as Tinky-Winky would fit in the Inglorious Basterds. They would surely become the best of friends.
I should probably stress, at this point, that by no means was there a lack of roleplaying – at least not by the standards I had then. Sure, they made powerful and optimized characters, but they also did a lot to portray their characters. Charles spoke with a much darker voice than usual and often with in-character language, and although it was somewhat hilarious to see a 2-meter tall man trying to portray a woman less than half his size, the squeaky voice did give a lot of feeling. Furthermore, while two characters were evil, they were not just cardboard-cut-out villains – Erok wanted people to respect and fear him, whereas Tjocka was driven by a combination of greed and religious zealotry. Amsirac was also very well portrayed, almost a little overzealously sometimes, and also had a well-defined goal, namely to settle down and raise a family. On their own, each character was perfectly sensible. Together, only the law of We Are Player Characters kept them from killing each other, and even that eventually failed.
I don't remember how the game begun; I know that Bjarne, for about a session, played a half-orc but grew tired of that character almost immediately and retired him – said half-orc was probably his only character that didn't end up dying horribly. I know that Erok and Amsirac hated each other from the very start, but that they initially kept this hatred down to a tolerable, Gimli-and-Legolas level. The story was set in the Gnomeworld, in Glorywell initially, but of the early adventures I recall almost nothing except that a lot of them were bank heists and that the phrase “I look for the richest house in town” was used a lot.
The unique flavor of the game was of course readily apparent already then, but it didn't get truly crazy until Amsirac haphazardly became the mayor of a nearby city. The storyline centered around a lost ring that was the symbol of office for a city called Hyboria (I was terrible at coming up with names back in the day – Hyboria is from Conan the Barbarian), and whoever held the ring would become mayor of the city. The plot was for the players to be given copious sums of money for returning it to the rightful owner, and I thought money would interest the PCs more than power since money = magic items, and power just means having a lot of peasants.
Unfortunately, the players were smarter than that, and double-crossed me; only to be promptly double-crossed by Amsirac. Through a complicated series of diplomatic deals, both within the party and outside it, the ring wound up in the hands of the good player character, who took it to protect the city from the onslaughts of his two terrifying companions. Amsirac then decided to settle down there, took a wife, and had three daughters. His two companions were furious, and traveled back to the dark elven kingdom to kill Erok's elder brother (who had just killed their father) in order to have his estate fall into their hands. Finding the estate too small and too far north to be pleasing, they kidnapped all the homeless people from Hyboria (because no one else was stupid enough to waltz onto a ship to be sold into slavery, basically) and established their own kingdom, then immediately declaring war on Amsirac. Almost immediately thereafter, they decided that one kingdom was too small for the both of them, so Bjarne arranged to become the ruler of Gnomeworld's equivalent to the Shire, which he immediately turned into Soviet Mordor.
From here, the story really, really took a gleefully suicidal turn. Erok wrote a pact with the Demon Lord of Lust, Graz'zt, in exchange for great powers. Then he also made a pact with Nerull, the God of Death, in exchange for immortality. Then he also made a pact with Erythnul, the God of Slaughter, to become a terrible and dangerous fighter. So then, to one-up him, Tjocka willingly became a vampire, and also made a pact with Tharizdun, the Ultimate Evil God of Being Such A Massive Psycho Even The Other Evil Gods Are Afraid of Him, Also God of Madness. Then she turned into a pig.
For those who haven't heard this story already, the explanation is that druids in D&D can't cast resurrect, but they can cast a spell called Reincarnate, that allows the recipient to return in the form of an animal. Tjocka had died at one point, but through favors with an NPC druid had managed to reincarnate in the form of a piglet. Fortunately for her, druids can always shapeshift into their own true form (which is explicitly counted from before the reincarnation), so she could turn back into a halfling more-or-less indefinitely, needing to reflexively reactivate the power every 36 hours or so. However... druids whose alignment shifts so that it no longer has “neutral” in it (in her case, to Chaotic Evil from Neutral Evil) immediately lose their shapeshifting powers. Meaning that, when her 36 hours were up, she couldn't reactivate the power, and so reverted to a pig. A vampire pig.
At this point, the entire campaign world was basically going to hell. The three player characters were among the most powerful beings in the setting, and had sort of as a byproduct of trying to become rich defeated the most dangerous villains around (villains that my father introduced when he ran a brief game based on the Wheel of Time series with me and Alex). Now, Charles and Bjarne were raising the stakes.
Erok and Tjocka set out on a quest to find the legendary Sword of Kas, a blade used by a vampire to backstab the God of Lies. The ultimate in traitor accessory, the sword is an artifact and unrivaled in power, but getting to it required asking demons to find out where it is. So, naturally, they summoned a couple of demons and let them loose on the countryside, finding out that they would have to travel to one of the Nine Hells to ask more questions there. They used Tjocka's magical cloak to open a portal there... and sort of casually left it open.
Some explanation of my reasoning here is in order: I was, by now, pretty tired of the Gnomeworld. It had already been entirely bent out of shape by the mad antics of this group of three, and I'd also started playing in several internet games, taking place in the World of Greyhawk. To this end, I'd purchased the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, and suddenly had 200+ pages of pre-written campaign world, plus 25 years of experience from my new online friends, since the setting is one of the oldest RPG campaign settings around. So I had decided to let the Gnomeworld go. The heroes had already travelled beyond the Impenetrable Mountains of the West, seen the King of Glorywell die, founded three separate kingdoms and generally turned the setting into something quite different from what it had initially been. So, when the two evil players gave me the opportunity, I ended the world.
Through the casually-left-open portal, the demonic forces of Hell poured out, spurred on by the evil gods who now reaped their end of the bargain with Erok and Tjocka, turning them into their helpless pawns. The forces of evil marched against Hyboria, where I allowed Amsirac one last hail-mary solo adventure to summon the forces of Good. The resulting cosmic cataclysm tore the Gnomeworld to pieces, and when the dust had settled, Tjocka the Vampire Pig was imprisoned in a magical coffin at the bottom of the deepest ocean, Erok the Assassin had become some kind of utterly insane demon, aimlessly wandering the ancient deserts of the South, and Amsirac had managed to save his family and a small fragment of his kingdom. With that, we took a final farewell to the Gnomeworld, leaving the world in ruins – except for Amsirac's beloved Hyboria, which stood as a last, flickering beacon of hope.
Notable Characters:
All three were of course notable, but Amsirac gets the special mention here. Playing the good guy when both of the other characters are explicitly evil is a dangerous move, and I wouldn't allow it in a chronicle run nowadays. However, Amsirac became an interesting character, acting as a damper on his villainous friends' behavior. Often ridiculed as wimpy and spineless, Amsirac was actually the direct opposite – and I let him survive the end of the world for a reason other than him being sympathetic. Amsirac was, actually, pretty damn smart, and had countless times managed to counter the onslaughts of his friends through careful applications of diplomacy, strategy, and the right choice of spells. His most clever move was probably getting a hold of a crystal ball – which his character couldn't use – and then doing small solo missions for a friendly wizard in exchange for the wizard spying on his enemies. Bjarne and Charles never figured it out, because they still thought inside the box of game rules – rangers can't use crystal balls, so how could Amsirac possibly be predicting their moves?
I should also mention three characters that were in a humorous side-game: Bjarne played a combat chef, Andy played a stoner wizard, and Charles played a monk who had seen the Matrix film in a vision, and sought to mimic it. Very badly. They made a great gang, who ran a delivery service together, and ferried absurd cargo to even absurder recipients. Although it was short, it was very, very fun.
Crowning Moments of Awesome:
Ending the world was a lot of fun.
There's also: Tjocka throwing herself off a tower to seal the pact with Tharizdun through her own death. Erok's return from the Abyss after his first demonic pact, now in the form of an ebon demon with blazing red eyes. Amsirac's ascension to the throne of Hyboria. My favorite, though: That one time when Tjocka and Erok blew up a bar for no goddamn reason at all, and then fled the explosion by turning into a rhinoceros with Erok riding on its back. Amsirac was right outside, trying to persuade some NPCs to help their cause when the rhino and its maniacally laughing dark elf rider burst out of the wall.
Next Up:
2003: The World of Greyhawk, a.k.a. Raiders of the Lost Knark, in which four villains and Todd set out to gain riches and respect, but come to discover the errors of their ways, and eventually gravitate to the forces of good – becoming champions of all that is right and just in the world – until they eventually meet their tragic demise. A full story, with beginning, middle and end, continuity, and an impressive main villain, this chronicle took the good pieces of the previous games and put them together into a beautiful whole. Also: People die. A lot.
Anyway, out of the many new contacts I made, only the ones involved in church business became in any way close to me – Bjarne and Charles. These two players and Andy would form the core of my new group, but it took a while before we got to that point. We played a lot of one-shots, often involving contacts or weird friends of Bjarne, and in the early days it happened often that I unpacked my briefcase and declared “today's adventure is about a goblin-infested ruin” without having much clue about who the hell all of the players were.
Before I go on, I'm going to wax nostalgic about the locations of our games for a bit. We seldom played at my house in the early days, mostly since there were so many almost-strangers – instead, we ran games in the most bizarre locations. Usually, we hung out at the church-sponsored youth center, but we also ran games in Linus' garden shed, outdoors in the school yard or on picnic cloths, in Charles' garage, and even in Andy's kitchen (where a gruesome torture took place, and me and him alike were, I think, pretty scared his parents were going to hear us).
And on the subject of gruesome torture, I quite naturally arrive at the titular Dark Hearted Heroes. I don't know what made us stick to them. Perhaps they were mechanically well-designed, or perhaps it was the sheer glee of villainy that appealed to the players – I honestly don't know – but the main game of this year became the chronicles of Tjocka Bombadil Salabim Potter af väldigt mycket fetstryk, Lord över gläntorna i skogen, helgon av Furyondy och dotter till Tjock and Erok the dark elf. The former was a male halfling druid for the first five minutes of her existence, after which she promptly grew “Dolly Parton breasts” and became a female halfling druid. The latter was a dark elf assassin with some backstory – he was basically such a terrifyingly evil bastard that the other dark elves kicked him out.
The third character was the mild-mannered, kind-hearted half-elf ranger named Amsirac Parwyn. He was chaotic good, liked birds and music, and fit in with the other two about as well as Tinky-Winky would fit in the Inglorious Basterds. They would surely become the best of friends.
I should probably stress, at this point, that by no means was there a lack of roleplaying – at least not by the standards I had then. Sure, they made powerful and optimized characters, but they also did a lot to portray their characters. Charles spoke with a much darker voice than usual and often with in-character language, and although it was somewhat hilarious to see a 2-meter tall man trying to portray a woman less than half his size, the squeaky voice did give a lot of feeling. Furthermore, while two characters were evil, they were not just cardboard-cut-out villains – Erok wanted people to respect and fear him, whereas Tjocka was driven by a combination of greed and religious zealotry. Amsirac was also very well portrayed, almost a little overzealously sometimes, and also had a well-defined goal, namely to settle down and raise a family. On their own, each character was perfectly sensible. Together, only the law of We Are Player Characters kept them from killing each other, and even that eventually failed.
I don't remember how the game begun; I know that Bjarne, for about a session, played a half-orc but grew tired of that character almost immediately and retired him – said half-orc was probably his only character that didn't end up dying horribly. I know that Erok and Amsirac hated each other from the very start, but that they initially kept this hatred down to a tolerable, Gimli-and-Legolas level. The story was set in the Gnomeworld, in Glorywell initially, but of the early adventures I recall almost nothing except that a lot of them were bank heists and that the phrase “I look for the richest house in town” was used a lot.
The unique flavor of the game was of course readily apparent already then, but it didn't get truly crazy until Amsirac haphazardly became the mayor of a nearby city. The storyline centered around a lost ring that was the symbol of office for a city called Hyboria (I was terrible at coming up with names back in the day – Hyboria is from Conan the Barbarian), and whoever held the ring would become mayor of the city. The plot was for the players to be given copious sums of money for returning it to the rightful owner, and I thought money would interest the PCs more than power since money = magic items, and power just means having a lot of peasants.
Unfortunately, the players were smarter than that, and double-crossed me; only to be promptly double-crossed by Amsirac. Through a complicated series of diplomatic deals, both within the party and outside it, the ring wound up in the hands of the good player character, who took it to protect the city from the onslaughts of his two terrifying companions. Amsirac then decided to settle down there, took a wife, and had three daughters. His two companions were furious, and traveled back to the dark elven kingdom to kill Erok's elder brother (who had just killed their father) in order to have his estate fall into their hands. Finding the estate too small and too far north to be pleasing, they kidnapped all the homeless people from Hyboria (because no one else was stupid enough to waltz onto a ship to be sold into slavery, basically) and established their own kingdom, then immediately declaring war on Amsirac. Almost immediately thereafter, they decided that one kingdom was too small for the both of them, so Bjarne arranged to become the ruler of Gnomeworld's equivalent to the Shire, which he immediately turned into Soviet Mordor.
From here, the story really, really took a gleefully suicidal turn. Erok wrote a pact with the Demon Lord of Lust, Graz'zt, in exchange for great powers. Then he also made a pact with Nerull, the God of Death, in exchange for immortality. Then he also made a pact with Erythnul, the God of Slaughter, to become a terrible and dangerous fighter. So then, to one-up him, Tjocka willingly became a vampire, and also made a pact with Tharizdun, the Ultimate Evil God of Being Such A Massive Psycho Even The Other Evil Gods Are Afraid of Him, Also God of Madness. Then she turned into a pig.
For those who haven't heard this story already, the explanation is that druids in D&D can't cast resurrect, but they can cast a spell called Reincarnate, that allows the recipient to return in the form of an animal. Tjocka had died at one point, but through favors with an NPC druid had managed to reincarnate in the form of a piglet. Fortunately for her, druids can always shapeshift into their own true form (which is explicitly counted from before the reincarnation), so she could turn back into a halfling more-or-less indefinitely, needing to reflexively reactivate the power every 36 hours or so. However... druids whose alignment shifts so that it no longer has “neutral” in it (in her case, to Chaotic Evil from Neutral Evil) immediately lose their shapeshifting powers. Meaning that, when her 36 hours were up, she couldn't reactivate the power, and so reverted to a pig. A vampire pig.
At this point, the entire campaign world was basically going to hell. The three player characters were among the most powerful beings in the setting, and had sort of as a byproduct of trying to become rich defeated the most dangerous villains around (villains that my father introduced when he ran a brief game based on the Wheel of Time series with me and Alex). Now, Charles and Bjarne were raising the stakes.
Erok and Tjocka set out on a quest to find the legendary Sword of Kas, a blade used by a vampire to backstab the God of Lies. The ultimate in traitor accessory, the sword is an artifact and unrivaled in power, but getting to it required asking demons to find out where it is. So, naturally, they summoned a couple of demons and let them loose on the countryside, finding out that they would have to travel to one of the Nine Hells to ask more questions there. They used Tjocka's magical cloak to open a portal there... and sort of casually left it open.
Some explanation of my reasoning here is in order: I was, by now, pretty tired of the Gnomeworld. It had already been entirely bent out of shape by the mad antics of this group of three, and I'd also started playing in several internet games, taking place in the World of Greyhawk. To this end, I'd purchased the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, and suddenly had 200+ pages of pre-written campaign world, plus 25 years of experience from my new online friends, since the setting is one of the oldest RPG campaign settings around. So I had decided to let the Gnomeworld go. The heroes had already travelled beyond the Impenetrable Mountains of the West, seen the King of Glorywell die, founded three separate kingdoms and generally turned the setting into something quite different from what it had initially been. So, when the two evil players gave me the opportunity, I ended the world.
Through the casually-left-open portal, the demonic forces of Hell poured out, spurred on by the evil gods who now reaped their end of the bargain with Erok and Tjocka, turning them into their helpless pawns. The forces of evil marched against Hyboria, where I allowed Amsirac one last hail-mary solo adventure to summon the forces of Good. The resulting cosmic cataclysm tore the Gnomeworld to pieces, and when the dust had settled, Tjocka the Vampire Pig was imprisoned in a magical coffin at the bottom of the deepest ocean, Erok the Assassin had become some kind of utterly insane demon, aimlessly wandering the ancient deserts of the South, and Amsirac had managed to save his family and a small fragment of his kingdom. With that, we took a final farewell to the Gnomeworld, leaving the world in ruins – except for Amsirac's beloved Hyboria, which stood as a last, flickering beacon of hope.
Notable Characters:
All three were of course notable, but Amsirac gets the special mention here. Playing the good guy when both of the other characters are explicitly evil is a dangerous move, and I wouldn't allow it in a chronicle run nowadays. However, Amsirac became an interesting character, acting as a damper on his villainous friends' behavior. Often ridiculed as wimpy and spineless, Amsirac was actually the direct opposite – and I let him survive the end of the world for a reason other than him being sympathetic. Amsirac was, actually, pretty damn smart, and had countless times managed to counter the onslaughts of his friends through careful applications of diplomacy, strategy, and the right choice of spells. His most clever move was probably getting a hold of a crystal ball – which his character couldn't use – and then doing small solo missions for a friendly wizard in exchange for the wizard spying on his enemies. Bjarne and Charles never figured it out, because they still thought inside the box of game rules – rangers can't use crystal balls, so how could Amsirac possibly be predicting their moves?
I should also mention three characters that were in a humorous side-game: Bjarne played a combat chef, Andy played a stoner wizard, and Charles played a monk who had seen the Matrix film in a vision, and sought to mimic it. Very badly. They made a great gang, who ran a delivery service together, and ferried absurd cargo to even absurder recipients. Although it was short, it was very, very fun.
Crowning Moments of Awesome:
Ending the world was a lot of fun.
There's also: Tjocka throwing herself off a tower to seal the pact with Tharizdun through her own death. Erok's return from the Abyss after his first demonic pact, now in the form of an ebon demon with blazing red eyes. Amsirac's ascension to the throne of Hyboria. My favorite, though: That one time when Tjocka and Erok blew up a bar for no goddamn reason at all, and then fled the explosion by turning into a rhinoceros with Erok riding on its back. Amsirac was right outside, trying to persuade some NPCs to help their cause when the rhino and its maniacally laughing dark elf rider burst out of the wall.
Next Up:
2003: The World of Greyhawk, a.k.a. Raiders of the Lost Knark, in which four villains and Todd set out to gain riches and respect, but come to discover the errors of their ways, and eventually gravitate to the forces of good – becoming champions of all that is right and just in the world – until they eventually meet their tragic demise. A full story, with beginning, middle and end, continuity, and an impressive main villain, this chronicle took the good pieces of the previous games and put them together into a beautiful whole. Also: People die. A lot.
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