Category: Writing

How Good of a Mythos Story is The Stand? Is it GOAT?

In a moment of what I thought was levity last fall (November 2020, a time of heavy chaos, seriously – was that the craziest month of  my entire life? Except for Sept 2001? Whew, what a world) I had the totally bonkers idea to read Stephen King’s The Stand, Complete and Uncut (clocking in at nearly 1100 pages) and report on whether it is the Greatest Mythos Story of All Time. I’m done with my reading and reporting now, so let’s see where I landed.

Since then, I recorded audio book reports that you can listen to on the Miskatonic University Podcast Patreon feed, even if you’re not a Patreon backer. (I love Patreon but their UI is tough as shit to navigate – here’s the link to my podcasts if you want to listen.) Over the course of 25 12-20 minute podcasts, I reviewed the book in ~50 page chunks, and I’m proud of the work I did, having never done anything like that before. As I’m just finishing up the last episodes now, I thought I’d write my final report here and use that to clarify my thoughts.

Next I put a framework around my hypothesis, outlining my theory:

  • Randall Flagg, the main antagonist of the story, had been identified as an avatar of Nyarlathotep, a key god in the Cthulhu Mythos
  • Inclusion of Flagg then makes the Stand a Mythos story, and it may have further Mythos themes and constructs
  • The Stand is (or rather was) my favorite King novel, and, having read it twice before, I knew that it was an epic tale of good versus evil – so it was great in length and scope

My hypothesis was that, as a epic Mythos story, it was the Greatest of All Time, and that it should be revered as such. So – what did I find? I’ll explore three components to this hypothesis as I build my evidence and conclusion.

[Spoilers for the Stand follow for sure]

First – the story is definitely great, in size and scope *and* quality. It’s really a massive story and as only the third or fourth book that King published, it’s amazing what he accomplished. Basically he destroys America and builds cities of Good and Evil out of the rubble. King said he wanted to write a story at the scale of the Lord of the Rings, and he does it. But it’s not only massive in its scale (both the book and the story) but it’s REALLY GOOD. Seriously, there’s a reason why it’s got two mini-series and is such a key piece of King’s bibliography — it’s an epic tale with massive stakes, a full ensemble cast, and a dark vision of a future that, at least when it comes to how we react to a deadly flu, resembles our world in more ways than one. So yeah, it’s GREAT.

But is it a Mythos story? Is saying that Flagg is an avatar of Nyarlathotep sufficient to make it a Mythos story? Well, let’s go with the assumption that – yes, if Flagg is a Great Old One, then the story should be examined in that light. But what does actually mean to be a Mythos story? I watched an argument unfold on Facebook (I know, crazy right?) when I suggested that it was a Mythos story — one person saying it’s a fight between Good and Evil (and really stated as such) so that’s NOT Mythos, and another saying, Uh, Yeah King is a HUGE Lovecraft fan and that his stories are about personal horror (which they definitely are) and that’s all you need to be a Mythos story. For me, orientation is somewhere in between.

A Cthulhu Mythos (or Lovecraft Mythos, or Lovecraftian, or Existential Horror, however you want to slice it) isn’t just about how the antagonist identifies themselves, but rather is about the questions at the center of the story. Mythos stories (if we’re tracing them back to Lovecraft as the source) are about Unknown Horrors and our interactions with them. “Cosmic Horror” (yet another phrase we can use) centers on two key principles to its stories:

  • The universe is vast and we as humans do not understand all that inhabits it (the Cosmic side)
  • The truth of the universe is so terrible (usually due to the other beings that are out there) that to understand it would drive us insane (the Horror side)
  • Both of these are rooted in a fear of the unknown – Mythos stories then are about unanswered questions, and leave lots of room for the imagination to run crazy… this is why we like these stories

So I believe that the Stand is a great story as well as a Mythos story, but is it the Greatest of All Time? Examining Flagg as the propagator of evil for the story, we rely on him to deliver both the cosmic and the horror. Unfortunately, it’s not his greatest showing.

He certainly gets off to a good start. For the first half of the book or so, Flagg mostly appears in people’s dreams as a terrible dark nightmare, wolves and weasels, and a force to reckon even as the world is being destroyed by Captain Tripps. When he’s in this shadow-dream form, Flagg is extremely efficient and competent as a Mythos force. He is intangible and distant, and communicates terror via the Same Dream to Everyone! It’s a great unifying force when the group of survivors realize they’re all having the same dreams of the same terrible Evil Force.

But when Flagg shows up to start running Las Vegas in his post-apocalyptic world, we get to see him run an operation, and even when he still does evil things, a lot (if not most) of the mystery is revealed, and that is enough to diminish his power as an evil force. Once we find out what kind of bad guy Flagg is, he loses most of his powers of horror.

Even Mother Abigail, in her final hours, pulls out some crazy miracle talk and white magic that proves she is not just an ordinary old woman. She ends on a very high note that, as an emissary for God, proves that she still holds mystery and magical powers that no one understands. Abigail herself finishes strong when Flagg does not.

King makes Flagg fallible, which is important for an antagonist, but in doing so he becomes too human and normal, and not mysterious enough. We get to see and understand his challenges, his temper, his dislike of “good people” and, perhaps most telling, his lack of leadership. The best/worst example of this is when his righthand-man Lloyd realizes that he (Lloyd) has been left out of the loop operationally, and that this whole thing would have worked better if only Flagg trusted him to actually run the Vegas operation!!

That Flagg’s downfall is based on his ability to govern New Las Vegas is both startling and hilarious, neither of which should be a key component in the Greatest Mythos Story of All Time. In humanizing Flagg, King removed his mystery, which diminishes all of the story’s power as a Cosmic Horror piece. By the end of the book, Flagg’s mistakes (and his successes) are no more than the ruler of a failed military state.

Another point of note for my reading of this — I was about halfway through the book when the attack on the US Capitol took place on January 6th, 2021. I watched this crazy bullshit failed insurrection from just miles away and wondered “What have we wrought?” Relating that attack to Flagg’s world of sin in New Las Vegas had me realize that Flagg really isn’t evil enough. Especially in the second half of the book when it’s about the new world and Flagg is setting up his empire, and we see some of his followers have  doubts — watching the Cult of Trump seeking to execute members of US Congress in real time really affected my perspective to what can make a charismatic figure evil.

Yes, the Stand is definitely a story of Good versus Evil, and it’s massive in scope and theme. And it’s very, very good. The pacing and characters and setting and execution are all very much above par. King’s work is a masterpiece in epic storytelling, and in the end I was glad to have read it. I examined it through multiple lenses and came out the other side having a much greater respect for King as a storyteller and writer. If you’ve not read it, I highly recommend it.

However, it’s not the Greatest Mythos Story of All time, and I’m not even sure it’s a Great Mythos story. With so much mystery revealed starting about halfway through the book, it loses its cosmic horror tone and moves onto something more practical — a tale of Good versus Evil, and a race to get home in time for a baby to be born.

So that begs the question – what is the Greatest Mythos Story of All Time? Frankly, I do not know. Is it one of Lovecraft’s works? Or something by one of his peers like Clark Ashton Smith? A disciple like Ramsey Campbell? I’m partial to Campbell’s Severn Valley works and wonder if one of his could top it all?

I was hoping to find that the Stand was GOAT, because of its size and scope, but maybe following the idea that the key to quality Cosmic Horror is unanswered questions and mystery, a shorter story might deliver the goods. If you have a recommendation, let me know. I’m still on the hunt.

On Providing Choice to the PCs

I started my 5th Edition D&D campaign last week and am very excited for it. It’s been a while (well, two years) since I started a new campaign, but, more importantly, I’ve invited a bunch of close friends to join me weekly on Roll20, with shorter hours (more on this later), which will make it very easy to keep going on a regular basis. With a consistent gaming schedule, I find I can focus my efforts on prepping and running the game instead of worrying about whether enough players will show.

But for me, running a campaign isn’t just about gaming. It’s about taking an opportunity to flex my storytelling muscles at the same time I’m having fun in a game. I can’t help but use the opportunity for running a game to find the story components and engage with those as much as possible. And it’s even more important in a game like D&D, where the story elements aren’t as pronounced as, say, in a Dungeon World, Fiasco, or FATE game (which are more rooted in story out of the gate).

So if I’m taking the effort to learn and explore storytelling in my 5th edition game, there’s no better place to start than at the beginning. And having just begun my game, I want to identify all the places I can get the team working on these elements, and it starts with PC introductions. But it’s not enough just to make the PCs’ various histories important to the game’s present — you need to make it matter with choice. Choice is one of the fundamental aspects of storytelling in that it fundamentally creates characters — when characters make a choice, they show their true colors and instincts. And the harder the choice, the more interesting the story. Does Luke join Darth? Does Frodo keep the Ring? Does Neo take the red or blue pill? Without choice, story is nothing.

For the first session, I came up with a list of choices for each PC (one each) to make that will inform their own personalities and loyalties. Each choice had something to do with the old world versus the new world. In the campaign introduction, the group has been recruited by Lord Silverhand of Waterdeep, but the PCs also have their own factions and other personal allegiances — will they turn their back on their old world connections or move forward into their new futures? Will they accept their new responsibilities blindly or do they second guess why they’ve been hired? How will they approach this new mission in light of their personal backgrounds? These are all interesting choices that give color to characters.

The best games and campaigns are rooted in choice. One of the most classic RPG campaigns of all time — Masks of Nyarlathotep for Call of Cthulhu — opens by giving the PCs multiple choices on how to approach the game with a large handful of clues and information. Out of the gate the PCs have agency to determine their own direction in the game and I believe this set of choices (which ultimately follows the group throughout the game) helps cement the campaign as one of the all-time greats.

As a game master, it’s your job to set the tone of your game — the earlier, the better. Yes, we’re playing out of the box 5th edition D&D, but we’re also playing in my game, and I like stories, the bigger, the better. I don’t want to just crawl through the dungeons or wilderness and not give opportunity to let the story be about the characters and their choices. Just giving the PCs these introductory choices — just one quick choice along with one scene bringing them into the world — set the tone and gave each player something to latch onto. I think it was a good start.

I’m interested in all the ways we can actively bring storytelling elements into our RPGs. What other ways can we allow players and PCs to make choices?

So that was NaNoWriMo

November, as you may know, is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for those of us in the know. It’s an organized effort to help people write a 50,000 word novel over 30 days, and I have been avoiding participating since its creation nearly 20 years ago. It should be a good fit — I am still working on becoming a novelist, after all, and this is a place where you can come for encouragement, methods, and overall support as you recklessly tried to wring 1600 words a day our of yourself for an entire month.

So when my key collaborator and friend Gregory said that he was doing NaNoWriMo this year and asked if I would do it with him, without overthinking it I said yes. I looked at all the positive aspects to sitting down and doing this, and chose a story that I’ve been sitting on for nearly 20 years myself, my SF amnesia thriller The Tunnel. I looked around and realized I had some solid starts on the outlining process and good notes on character for the book, and that I may very well have enough to carry me through to the end of it. And so on November 2nd, I started writing.

For the first half of the month, I did alright, until things got crazy and weird with November and Thanksgiving and school (as they always do) and I ran out of steam. You can view my work here, and see some of the stats behind my first try. For the first couple weeks it was a reasonable experience: I wrote, using Scrivener and my outline to follow along, and got my novel up and running; I wrote scenes I had outlined, I wrote scenes I had not; I shoved characters into each other to see what they would say; I wrote a scene that had been sitting in my head for at least ten years and it was a beautiful experience; and I tried my damnedist to get up at 5:45 am and write for an hour every day, no matter the day of the week or how tired I was.

My goals for NaNoWriMo were many: yes, write a 50k book in the allotted time, but also get my personal writing rhythm up and running after a very stressful and life-changing year; learn to use Scrivener better, both for outlining and actual novel writing; and get back in touch with the novelist side of me who has been dormant for many years. Oh, and not lose my mind along the way.

See, I’ve always wondered why the hell they picked November for NaNoWriMo — what the hell were they thinking? I can think of 10 better months to pick, really any of them besides December would do, and with my family so closely tied to the school calendar, November is even busier now. To me, January seems like the ideal month, as it not only represents the clean, new start that we all need for an inspirational journey like writing a book, but after the 1st there are no major holidays, and life resumes very much in a day-to-day sort of way. November has one of the biggest, busiest holidays in the year, and with the stupid time change has too big affect on people’s abilities to keep their shit together (at least for me it is).

I don’t want to complain too much, but NaNoWriMo in November has never been for me, which maybe is even a self-fulfilling prophecy. I did write just over 20k words, and got some good materials down. I did get up most days before 6am and hit my computer whether I knew what I was writing or not. And I did force myself to not only better use Scrivener but go and see how much of a outliner I truly am.

Between 2002 to 2004 I wrote two and a half novels. Some day I might be able to turn them into something readable, but I always finished them with a feeling of regret and disappointment, not knowing why they didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I came to realize that I really need outlines and proper structure in place before I start writing. I noticed it in my word count every day — if I know what I’m writing when I sit down, I can crank out 1300 words/hour; if I have to figure all that along the way, it’s more like 800 words/hour. I can feel the difference in my mind too; being able to visualize scenes and confidently understand how characters are going to interact (because I’ve done all the background prep already) allows me to sit down and just write. But I really get mixed up if I don’t have those things. It’s been that way from the beginning.

I think NaNoWriMo is an amazing community and collaborative effort that helps people get novels written they would have otherwise just left in their minds. We need more books in the world, more writers, more creative people, and this effort is crazy amazing in what it tries to do. I’m so impressed with the overall community as well as the organizers and their support teams. As a whole, NaNoWriMo is amazing.

But I don’t think it’s for me. Yes, it was very important for me to do it this year — it got me out of bed, working on The Tunnel, and I now have the first 20k words in that book, which I will continue on early in 2018. But the pressure was nearly too much and I almost lost my mind. Another thing I have promised myself is to only work on one writing project at a time. I’m in the middle of writing a large RPG sourcebook (40k words is the goal) and am play-testing one of the scenarios here in early December. Plus Sun Spots is still on my plate as I work on getting the books printed and shipped out. So having this pressure of a daily word count, in November of all months (remember, tired and stressful), was not a healthy experience.

What I think it best taught me was that I am an outliner at heart, and that I really need a solid amount of work done before starting my novel. I’m glad for my 20k words and for the experience. But I think I might try it some other month.

Did you participate in NaNoWriMo? Did you finish your book? Is November as crazy for you as it is for me?

And… We’re Back

In brief, we have turned the corner passed all the craziness (well, most of it anyway), and am back into full creative mode. Two things of note:

  1. The PDF for my Call of Cthulhu scenario Sun Spots is now available on DrivethruRPG here. We’re working feverishly on the physical copies of the books and props.
  2. I am writing a novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for those in the know). The idea is to write 50k in one month, and while I’m off to a slow start, progress is being made. I’m trying to post to both Facebook and Twitter on my progress, so you can follow there. The book I’m working on is called The Tunnel, and has been gestating for a long, long time. It’s exciting to finally be working on it.

Otherwise, per my efforts with The Tunnel and Sun Spots, I’m making a more concerted effort to keep this place updated not only with my efforts, but add some value by demonstrating the process of my attempts at self-publishing both RPGs and novels. So expect a lot more around that soon.

Onward!

Running 30 Minute Fiasco for Middle Schoolers… With No Prep

“I want you to teach my class how to tell a story,” came the original request from my wife, an eighth grade teacher.

My first thought was: “Let’s send them all down to Robert McKee’s Story Seminar for a weekend. That’ll learn ’em.” But no, that’s not what she was talking about.

“I want you to use one of your game systems and help them understand how a story is formed. Can you do that?” Well, yes, of course I can. I can teach them about story and characters, about goals and conflict, about how gaming and writing are similar in that the most important part is the journey, not some destination- “You can have 30 minutes.”

Ah. Well then we’re playing Fiasco.

Fiacso, if you don’t know, is a collaborative role-playing game where a group of 3-5 players builds characters in a setting, then gives those characters certain ill-advised desires. Play begins with the PCs building their plans but usually poor impulse control gets in the way. These plans get built up over one act, then come tumbling down over another act, as the poor impulse control leads to worse and worse decisions until the bottom falls out. It’s a game that’s modeled after Coen Brother movies like Blood Simple and Fargo, but can be put in just about any setting where ambition and greed intersect (I have written a Fiasco playset for The Man in the High Castle — more on that in a later post).

To me, the best part of the Fiasco game comes from the setup, where the group builds out four categories of information to use during the game: Needs, Relationships, Objects and Locations. Because it’s a collaborative game, everyone builds these together, which does an amazing job of giving everyone stake in the game; the Needs and Relationships build out the foundation for the story, giving the characters immediate agency and action; building out these factors fresh every game allows amazing portability and replayability; and designing the setting like this is just plain fun.

I explained Fiasco to my wife, how all of these elements come together to provide a fun experience that actually does a pretty amazing job of teaching the fundamentals of story-telling. You learn how to create interesting characters and settings, then give those characters conflicting desires and goals — conflict brings drama. And drama is just life with all the dull bits cut out, to quote Alfred Hitchcock. Drama is interesting. Drama gets us coming back for more.

She nodded to all of that and wanted me to wrap all of those core ideas into a snappy 30 minute presentation. I explained how I could run a setup with the class, then take them through a couple scenes to give them a grasp on how “easy” it is to pull these elements together, once you know how it works. Great, great, she said, just do all of that.

And so that’s what I did back in December, when I showed up with just a smile and a love for stories and games to share.

Teaching kids Poor Impulse Control

The class of 26 13-14 year-olds was mostly eager and attentive. I got one of them to play scribe and then explained what we were going to do: the game would be set at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (a nearby coastal amusement park); I would get different parts of the class to figure out the different elements of the story we were going to tell (Objects, Relationships, Locations and Needs); then I’d call up four volunteers to role-play the game with some help from the crowd.

While I am not professionally a teacher, I have found myself in a teaching role frequently in my life. I was a technical writer for years, which is teaching via written manuals. These days I’m a software consultant that is often teaching both concepts and specific technical details. And I like to both play and run games, and am often in situations where I am the only one who knows how to play games. These situations require at least a fundamental understanding of both explaining and teaching. I think I do a pretty okay job of it.

After covering the core concepts and getting the class to collaborate on the details for the game, we jumped in to the actual role-playing part. I brought up two boys and two girls and gave each set one of the needs. We really only had time for six scenes, so we would be just doing a quick setup before I threw in a twist of some kind and then we’d have two more scenes. We talked about how desire unmet is the core to any interesting story and that two of our characters had some sort of unmet need. Hey look, there are the needs right on the board.

It didn’t take much to get through the scenes. One of the boys was trying to ask one of the girls out, and boy howdy do I not miss adolescence. True to his character, he could not figure out what to say in the moment, and so we roleplayed his anxiety and indecision as it happened. Frustration and a little embarrassment added to the tension as we moved onto the next scene.

We had another two scenes, where we brought the characters together by playing off the other needs, and used the locations and items to center the story on the same items that were introduced at the beginning. Everyone was ready for the climax, and we soon came to the end scene, where one question loomed large — could the boy summon the courage to ask out the girl?

There was a beat, a moment where it was unclear. But then yes! He took a deep breath and asked if she would go to the dance with him! The class thundered with applause and a sheepish grin came over the boy. Object of desire achieved!

I sent the kids back to their desks and explained what had happened, how the boy’s embarrassment and anxiety had created distance from his goals, how that distance had created tension, how that tension had created interest in the story. We talked about how some of the story elements might have come together differently if we could go back and alter them; if we were writing fiction, we could add and subtract elements until the story was just right.

But most importantly I talked about how these elements, and the game of Fiasco, help bootstrap us into building a coherent and interesting story, and that they can be used both in and out of a game context. If, as a writer, you can understand how the concept of unmet desire is fundamental to story (and humans, really), then you understand what goes into building good drama and interesting characters. With that, my 30 minutes were done.

And that’s how you run a 30 minute Fiasco game for middle schoolers with zero prep. It works for a reason.

My First Published Call of Cthulhu Scenario

Back in 2007 (nearly 10 years ago, mind you), I promised myself I was going to work as hard as I could until I finally (Finally!) published a Call of Cthulhu scenario. I made two distinct efforts to make this happen: one, I responded to an ad from Keith “Doc” Herber to write a large scenario for his Outer Gods book; second, I responded to a request for materials written for an upcoming companion to the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign for Call of Cthulhu. And while I wrote and wrote and wrote over the next couple years, producing at least 50k words for those two project, neither was ever published.

Well, as you know, Sun Spots will finally see the light of day (pun ultimately intended, after a few minutes of thinking about it) next year after my Kickstarter last October. And the latest posts from SixtyStone on the Masks Companion say that its actual publication is eminent. But still, neither of those has been published. So, as of the end of November 2016, I still had not seen my name associated with a Call of Cthulhu publication.

Oh yes, there was He Who Laughs Last, something of which I’m very proud of, and I do not diminish in the least. But it is still not a Call of Cthulhu scenario. However, back

wrath
Here are the grapes – and here’s the Wrath!

in the summer of 2014, I was first asked to pitch a Call of Cthulhu scenario to Golden Goblin Press for their upcoming Tales of the Caribbean book. So I pitched, then wrote and playtested, and finally rewrote and handed-off a scenario about evil under a volcano, all under the guidance of Oscar and Lisa, who kicked my ass to write the best possible scenario.

And so, finally, nearly 10 years after I made up my mind, I finally have published my first Call of Cthulhu scenario. And it’s out before both the Masks Companion and Sun Spots.

What’s more, it came out under the guidance of Oscar Rios, who has dozens of published CoC scenarios to his name. Many of the people I’m working with now are in the same boat, with plenty of published gaming materials to their names. The last couple years have been amazing as I’ve worked with more and more of these people, and become friendly and friends with some of them. Even across continents and oceans, I’m building relationships with a small circle of very talented, imaginative, and really sorta crazy people. It’s really been fantastic.

I was first published in the Oregon State University Daily Barometer sometime in 1990/1. My first story (a 300 word piece about some committee’s decision) was a brutal, drag-out affair that took me hours to write. I had never done anything like it and I was so thankful that my second piece took half the time to produce twice as much. After college, I wrote for other newspapers, and as an intern wrote for ComputerLife magazine (RIP). So being published is nothing new.

But this piece is something else, and I wanted to pause and reflect on my journey. I’m very proud of the work I did for the Masks Companion, and clearly am excited to help Sun Spots finally get published. But Wrath of the Sulfurer will always be my first, and I thank all the readers and gamers who supported the project. I can’t wait to write some more.

High Castle Playset for Fiasco Under Development

One of the best parts of living in our Golden Age of RPGs is that the choice of systems to use provides an unprecedented level of game design flexibility. Recently I was watching the Amazon TV show Man in the High Castle thinking how much I liked the story as possible RPG setting. While my first impulse was to develop some system and setting out of whole cloth, I quickly realized that the setting was the perfect candidate for a Fiasco playset.

If you’re not familiar with Fiasco, it’s a GM-less RPG that revolves around high ambition and poor impulse control. Originally seeded as an opportunity to play out a Coen Brother style session, it has evolved into an RPG engine that can provide amazing gaming sessions in myriad different genres, tones and depth of story-telling. The writers of Fiasco have open-sourced the playsets it uses to allow anyone to create a Fiasco session in any really anyway, anytime, with all sorts of interesting gaming levers to pull.
So instead of going and designing a new game based on The Man in the High Castle (both the TV show and novel, both of which I like immensely), I just decided to build my own playset. And, quite frankly, it worked out quite well. This last weekend, at BigBadCon in Walnut Creek, CA, I ran two separate sessions of Return to the High Castle, a Fiasco game set in the world of The Man in the High Castle. My game description was as such:
Canon City, Colorado, 1962: Sixteen years after the Nazis bombed Washington, D.C., the Greater Nazi Reich rules Eastern North America, while the West is governed by the Japanese Pacific States. High in the Rocky Mountains lives the remains of the USA, those unwilling to submit to the will of the totalitarian state, those hiding secrets and their past, and those who are still willing to stand up and fight. The Resistance has a move to make, something to hide and sell, but there are spies, moles, and double agents everywhere. Time for plans to fall apart. Time for a fiasco. Loosely based on the Philip K Dick book and Amazon TV series “The Man in the High Castle.”
I will be writing more on the playset, but for now, I wanted to note some of my thoughts on the two sessions and some give feedback for myself on where to go next with the playsets. Most of my feedback drops into one of two buckets:
1. The Setting Can Be Really Dark… or Not: So just running a game with Nazis and Imperialist Japanese with a modicum of verisimilitude creates problems right out of the gate. Basically, these were horrible fascist regimes that did horrible things to many, many people. The impact of what was done is still being felt today and will be felt for a long, long time. So much so, that there are a lot of stripes to fascism that are still in our public conversation today, in discussions on race relation, immigration, and, oh, I don’t know, the fact that Aleppo, Syria today looks like Berlin in 1945. So yeah, those are still fresh scars.
The first key here is, then, to just talk about it. We had an open conversation at both tables, though one was far more thorough than the other, on where we might cross boundaries and how we were going to talk about it if we did. One observation is that, for both sessions, we limited the action in the game to just the city and area around Canon City, which plays a central part of the TV show. My playset is set there because it represents the perfect arena for plans to come undone, but we also found that no one wanted to play in the either of the occupied parts of the former USA, either the West/Japanese or East/Nazi occupied lands. Not playing in these areas allowed us to stay away from most of the really dark stuff that might come up. We were playing in what was, ostensibly, the remains of the USA, which allowed us freedom that might not be available in the occupied areas. It also kept us at arm’s distance from the fascist regimes that might be able to easily crush the freedom that we, as players, needed to exercise in order to avoid some of the darker topics.
The key component of a good Fiasco game is high stakes in imperfect plans that come tumbling down, usually in a tragic manner. Keeping the action to Canon City, and away from the darker parts of the setting, allowed us to set up some dark comedy and tragic plans without needing to pull in the really, really horrible stuff.
2. Dick’s Split Reality: One of my favorite parts of any Philip K Dick story is his playing with reality and perceptions. All the best PKD stories have characters punching through the veil to realize that things are not really as they seem. It’s very Dickian for the High Castle stories (both novel and TV) to have people realize that their reality, in which the Axis won WWII by dropping a bomb on Washington DC, is not the only reality, and that a reality exists where the Allies won (aka our reality). Not only do the characters realize it, but they travel to that reality at some point, as well as have artifacts (film and book) come from one reality to another. So it’s key to any PKD-inspired story to have shifting realities be a part of the narrative.
Well, in the first game we played, this was only hinted at when one of the PCs (mine) came across a USA flag with 50 stars. Not only is the the flag banned contraband but the USA of the High Castle reality would have never reached 50 states (with Alaska and Hawaii both gaining statehood in 1959). So 50 stars on a USA flag is something strange but not reality shaking. In our second game, as we attempted to raise the stakes, one of the PCs encountered what seemed to be a Nazi listening post (much like the Japanese one in the High Castle TV show), that implied that every place the PCs had been was tapped. This had serious implications for the narrative. Well, we just ran with it, and came up with a very Dickian story with double and triple realities, possible time travel, and maybe even androids posing as PCs. So yeah, Dickian.
Lots of different avenues to investigate then with this playset, and I was amazed and overjoyed with the sessions. Of course, it helps to have high quality players, and I was blessed with eight amazing gamers who jumped in with both feet for this unusual and somewhat risky endeavor. But the session bouyed my intuition that the High Castle is a valid and interesting setting for RPGing, especially in the Fiasco realm. The possibilities and details providing in the playset were more than enough primer to help build a unique, interesting, and most importantly fun Fiasco session.
There is still work to do on the playset, some tweaking and some open questions on organization that need to be answered. I aim to provide this playset free of charge, so we’ll see how that whole thing works out with Intellectual Property and all that. More soon with further developments.

Sun Spots to be Published for Call of Cthulhu

Weird 8 Becomes Chaosium Licensee — Sun Spots to be Published for Call of Cthulhu

Kickstarter Will Launch Thursday Sept 15th and Be Updated for 7th Edition Rules

Sun Spots is now an officially licensed Chaosium Call of Cthulhu® scenario and will be published for the recently released 7th edition of the rules. The Kickstarter for this scenario, originally scheduled for September 13th, will begin two days later on Thursday, September 15th, and will otherwise continue as planned. chaosium_logo

“With our new edition recently released, we need high quality Call of Cthulhu scenarios to meet the pent up demand for new stuff to play. Sun Spots promises to fit that bill nicely, ” Chaosium vice president Michael O’Brien said.

Sun Spots was originally written and designed by Dave Sokolowski as a Call of Cthulhu scenario for Miskatonic River Press, so will require very little effort to publish as a stand-alone CoC scenario. Furthermore, conversion notes for both Cthulhu Dark and Trail of Cthulhu will be published for free on Weird8.com once the scenario is complete.

The updated press release for Sun Spots with details on the scenario, its art, and storied history can be found here.

 

Stranger Things is Honest in its Love of the 80s and D&D

Finished watching Stranger Things. Loved it, but I’m pretty much the ideal audience. It’s not for everyone, but like True Detective Season 1, it rises above and entertains better than most.

But hey, some people are sticklers and parse everything out, looking for every possible fault before deciding from on high whether something is good or bad. Some people need to make their opinion bigger and more important than the art they are commenting on. Here, cruising along in the 21st century, everybody thinks they know better than artists who pour everything they have into a project.

Me? I want to be entertained. But more importantly I want to be entertained honestly. I want to see clarity of vision, risk taking, and art with boundaries. I want to see love and passion for a project, brought to life with care and creativity. And while I loath both laziness and complacency, I mostly hate those who compromise a vision because they refuse to be honest. With themselves. With their characters. With their audience.

You may find fault in Stranger Things because it’s not perfect. You may not like it because you can’t relate to the characters. You may think its horror-SF trappings cliche and dated. And that’s fine. Good for you.

But I liked Stranger Things. A lot. Because it was written for me, and not just 12-years-old and playing D&D in the early 80s me, who is basically a composite of many of the main characters. But also the me who is a father who loves his child and would do anything for her. And also the fanboy me who likes to be entertained.

And finally for the writer-me, who wants people with my upbringing and interests to be successful and create more cool stuff. The show is honest with its characters, its setting, and, most importantly, its audience. It gives us everything it’s got and asks for little in return. So yeah, I liked Stranger Things. A lot.

I hope you do too.