Gateway by Frederik Pohl - Campaign Idea

I picked up Gateway, a short sci-fi novel by Frederik Pohl, at the local library. I'm almost finished with it, and I've been thinking of how well it would work as the framework of a sci-fi RPG campaign.

The 100% accurate but completely gives the wrong impression of the book synopsis is: An AI psychiatrist treats a patient's PTSD.

Doesn't sound like a fun campaign, does it? I'd rather not play some sort of PTSD story-game. Instead, I'd take the story framework for how the guy got his PTSD and use that.

So some time in the future, Earth is a wreck. Overpopulation and rampant capitalism have destroyed the environment. The ultra-rich live in domed cities and have "full medical" which includes all sorts of treatments, organ replacements, etc. The VAST majority of humans subsist. Our hero grows up in the Nebraska food mines. They mine the shale oil and use it as food to grow bio-film which is then processed into food. But luck strikes and he wins the lottery.

Some time ago (in the story), colonists on Venus found an alien spacecraft. The guy who finds it manages to fly it, and it takes him to an asteroid orbiting the sun perpendicular to the plane of the celestial equator, which has been hollowed out with tunnels half a million years ago by aliens called the Heechee. This asteroid also has a thousand or so of their ships docked there.

It's possible to get the Heechee craft to fly, and they go FTL. But it's impossible to know where you're going. It flies on auto-pilot, there and back. Prospectors roll the dice, select a random destination, and head out to the stars. If they get lucky, they find a Heechee ruin and can bring back artifacts. No one knows what they are or what they do, but the Corporation will pay thousands or even millions of dollars for discoveries. Our hero wins the lottery, becomes a prospector, things he witnesses warp his already warped brain (the hellish life in the food mines already sent him to a year of psychotherapy as a teen). And now, as a rich successful former prospector, he lives a luxurious life of wine, women, and psychotherapy in the dome of NYC.

Great concept for a campaign. Stars Without Number would be a great system for this. I've never played Traveller, but it might work well, too, from what I've read about it. Something heavy and crunchy like StarFinder or Palladium could work too, of course, but if the campaign went all out with destinations that could have been safe half a million years ago but now are inside a red giant star or whatever, PC replacements might often be necessary.

I'd also want to increase the chances of finding artifacts, but reduce the reward amounts for finding them. As a story, the rarity of the Heechee artifacts is needed for dramatic tension. The protagonist spends a lot of time on Gateway (the asteroid launching area) fretting over whether he should actually go out on a mission or not. For a game, having players make PCs, go on a mission or two and find nothing, then get a dangerous planet or hazardous system and they just die would not be very fun.

It's mainly the idea of setting out on an alien craft to a random unknown destination that I like. I can imagine a d% table of system types, and then let the players roll the dice to see where they end up. Once they get there, they'd need to examine the system, find any celestial bodies with ruins, then search them for artifacts. Or if there are planets with life, or systems with unusual stars (pulsars, black holes, former supernovas, etc.) they could go for "science bonus" money instead of or in addition to artifact bounties.

Could be fun! But I'm still working on Caverns & Cowboys, so this idea will have to sit on the back burner for a while.

Gaming Inspiration from Artemis by Andy Weir

My mom sent me a copy of Andy Weir's sophomore novel Artemis as a Christmas present, and I read it a few weeks ago. It's a pretty decent book, telling the story of Jazz Bashara, a porter and smuggler living in the first city on the Moon. She gets involved in a corporate espionage plot to leverage existing lunar resources for a mysterious new technology, but the lunar resources are currently controlled by some ruthless folks...

I don't want to spoil the plot. It was pretty good. It made me laugh in parts, and had some pretty exciting scenes, some interesting intrigue, and some solid scientific backing for things going on. I'd say it wasn't quite as good as Weir's debut book The Martian, but it was solid. [For comparison, I read The Martian and Ready Player One back to back, and enjoyed both but liked RPO a bit more. I'd say I enjoyed Artemis a lot more than Armada, the follow up from RPO's author Ernest Cline.]

A few things in Artemis made me think that they'd be useful to think about the next time I run a sci-fi game that's not already in an established setting (or something like Star Frontiers where only the briefest details are given and left for the GM to flesh out).

The lunar city can't mint their own currency, but they use 'slugs' or soft-landed grams. Want stuff shipped to the moon? You've got an allowance in weight from the company every month. You can trade your weight allowances to others. Hence it's a de facto currency. I also recently read Joe Haldeman's The Forever War (yes, I should have read it years ago...I've got a long list of books I 'should have read years ago' and I'm making progress on them) in which the war caused massive food shortages, rationing, etc. and the world currency becomes Calories.

Sci Fi games tend to use generic 'credits' as money in the game, but next game I run the 'credits' will be backed by something the way they are in these two books. It should add a bit to the immersion in the setting, and also hopefully give the players ideas for creative solutions and myself ideas for creative problems in the game.

The next thing is that Artemis really drilled home how hazardous it can be to go around in EVA suits. (Of course in The Forever War the combat suits they wore had many of the same problems at first, but as technology advances in that book which takes place over centuries, many of them get fixed.) In a space age but not radically advanced sci fi setting, just climbing over rocks in a pressure suit can be risking your life. Leaks are hard to stop, and suits can get damaged easily, and the vacuum of space will show you no mercy. It's no wonder that most sci fi stories take place on what Star Trek considers 'class M' planets or on the ships. Next game, if it's not super-advanced tech level (or even if it is), I need to remember that a moon, asteroid, or planet with no atmosphere can be a challenge without ever needing to break down into combat. Poisonous atmospheres as well, although that's maybe a bit easier to deal with than vacuum.

The Ultimate OSR Franken-Setting?

One of my well-read posts from last September (currently over 1200 page views) but with no reaction (0 comments or plusses, other than the one I gave it for promoting it on G+) was a book review of Ernie Cline's second novel, Armada. In it, I (like most of the reviewers of the book I'd read before picking it up) invariably compared it to his debut novel, Ready Player One. RPO is the superior book, and since I'm on winter break and the dissertation is complete, a few weeks ago I re-read RPO. I likely could have gotten through it in a day if I didn't have family obligations. As it was, it took me two. It's a quick read the second time through.

If you're unfamiliar with it, the book takes place in the near dystopian future, where peak oil and global warming have pretty much ruined everything. But the world's first true persistent VR, the OASIS, has become for most people their means of escape from the hell Earth has become. It has its own economy, and game credits translate into real money. People work there, aside from just playing. Pretty much every internet service is delivered through it. And from the way it's described, it's amaze-balls awesome.

The original designer/coder was a geek roughly the same age as me (born in '72, I was born in '73) and loved to throw in all the stuff he could referencing pop culture from the late 70's to the early 2000's, but mostly from the 80's. Within the VR there are countless planets. Some allow high technology. Some allow magic. Some allow both. As with any MMO, there are PvP zones and safe zones.

There is a zone with planets based on Star Wars, another on Star Trek, one on Firefly, etc. Every D&D module has been coded in there as a 3D environment you can explore, most on the planet Gygax. There are giant Japanese robot worlds and cowboy worlds and Middle Earth, Zork, Hyrule, etc. Whatever cartoons you grew up watching in the 80's? There's probably a world in there for it.

Acererak challenges you to Joust (by J. Delgado)

Basically, it's the Mother of All Kitchen Sink Settings.

So I'm imagining (some day, when time is no hindrance, which will probably never come) setting a game there. Players would start with Classic D&D (or Labyrinth Lord or whatever) on a D&D style planet, but once they've got the funds or means to teleport or travel through space, other worlds open up, and each world has the potential to add new options for the players' character races, classes, equipment, spells, etc. based on other OSR rule sets.

So visit the world of Tombstone, and Go Fer Yer Gun or Boot Hill cowboy characters, sixguns, etc. become available. Visit Gamma Terra, and mutant characters and recovered high tech "artifacts" enter the game. After visiting planet LV-426 (if you survive the face huggers), colonial marines and pulse rifles enter the game. Visit Smurf Village and um...try to catch them and turn them into gold like Gargamel? Or something.

Basically, I'd just be giving myself cover to throw in any sort of interesting pop culture references I feel like. And I'd be forcing myself to actually read through and implement stuff from lots of these OSR games I've collected on my hard drive, but haven't bothered to look at other than a cursory glance or two. 

Book Review: Armada

Last Sunday, we took our fortnightly trek to the local English Library to get books for the boys. And sitting on the new arrivals shelf was a copy of Ernest Cline's second novel, Armada.

You may remember his first book, Ready Player One, which came out back in 2011. It's a dystopian sci-fi novel in which a vast virtual reality network is awash in 70's, 80's and 90's nerd culture, and players who can figure out the nerdiest of the nerdiest references hidden in the game can gain vast fortune and power within the game. It's not Shakespeare. But it is a lot of fun to read, tells an exciting adventure quest in the VR and a political/economic thriller in meatspace. And yes, the story revolves around constant references to all your favorite RPGs (Tomb of Horrors plays an important part in the story), movies (Star Wars/Trek, LotR, etc.), TV shows, video games, music, breakfast cereals (with prizes in the box), etc. If you're in your 40's like me, it's all the stuff we grew up on used as the keys to a massive online treasure hunt.

When Armada came out last year, though, several friends read it and said it wasn't nearly as good. And online reviews like this one at Slate.com (which I read at the time) savaged the book. So I didn't pick it up when it was new. But hey, here it was on the stacks, just in. So, I checked it out and gave it a read, mostly on my commutes or after the boys were in bed at night over the past week. And since my gaming session didn't happen last night, I finished it.

Now, is it as good as Ready Player One? No, it's not. That's true. RPO was an upbeat book, despite the dark turns now and then. Armada is a more pessimistic book. So it's not as fun of a read. And since the main draw of RPO was how fun it was to read, I can see why some people are upset by this sophomore effort by Cline. And reviewers like the one at Slate savage the book for again being mostly just a nostalgia wank-fest with little substance.

BUT... the thing is, the book wasn't actually terrible. If Cline had published this book first, then brought out Ready Player One, people would have likely said Armada is good, RPO is great. Instead, we got the better book first, so the second looks like a pile of suck (or at best meh) to many readers.

Now, Armada's plot is contrived and derivative, but it was done that way on purpose. It's The Last Starfighter and Ender's Game and whatever other story about kid good at video games using games or the skills learned playing games to fight real aliens. But there's a twist, and it's related to the pessimistic tone of the novel. I don't want to spoil it, but the Epilogue turns the "happy ending" on its ear, and makes the book something a little different from the media that inspired it.

Now, the Slate review does make some good points. The 18-year-old protagonist, Zack Lightman, seems awash in the 80's references of his father (and the author), but has absolutely NO cultural references to stuff in his own lifetime other than one reference to the MCU movies. Now, when I was a high school kid in the late 80's and early 90's, I was mostly listening to music from the 60's and 70's (Jimi and the Doors and CCR and Zep and so on), but I was also listening to current rock music as well. I watched TOS and TNG. I ate up old 50's and 60's sci fi movies when I could find them (no cable TV for us out in the country back then), but mostly I was watching contemporary movies. I'd find Zack's encyclopedic knowledge of his father's favorite old media much more believable if it was mixed in with media actual teenagers are consuming these days. Ernie should have done a bit more research for this one.

In Ready Player One, the obsession with all of the nostalgic stuff for us middle-aged readers made sense. The programmer who built the OASIS (the VR network) was an uber-nerd, and when he died he left a message to the world saying that his inheritance would go to the player who could solve his uber-nerd challenge. Since Wade Watts, the protagonist, grew up in this dystopian future (where we can guess there isn't a lot of new pop culture getting spread around because of the pervasiveness of the OASIS and the general shitty level of life outside it) and knew all about the Easter Egg quest. So he had a legitimate reason to be immersed in nostalgic nerd culture, and so were most other gamers who wanted to find the Easter Egg. Yes, it may be a ridiculous premise, but it is consistent. So we can suspend disbelief and go with it.

It's harder to do that in Armada.

So, that's one point against it. The constant nerdy references are a bit out of place, but apparently this is Cline's fictional wheelhouse, and I have to say I wish I'd been less afraid of embracing my geekiness when I was studying creative writing. I could have put out similar stuff, but I was trying hard to be all "serious" and "literary" but that's a discussion for another day.

Back to Armada. This is getting longer than I intended, so I'll wrap it up.

The saving grace of Armada is its consistent tone. Ready Player One had some grim moments, but it was for the most part a positive story. It also had much lower stakes. The fate of the VR realm was at stake, but that was it. It's like a nerdy version of battling whatever anti-net neutrality bill Congress is debating this year. In Armada, the fate of the world is at stake. Now, while that constrains the protagonist (choosing not to save the world is never an option) and is something we've all seen before, most "save the world" stories end with a very optimistic ending. This one doesn't.

But you need to give the book a fair reading (that Slate reviewer seems to have skimmed parts of it, and maybe skipped the Epilogue entirely? There are several places where he gets details wrong...yes, that's very nerdy of me to pick on the nerdy details, but hey, there it is). And you need to consider the tone of the story as you read it, and how that change in tone affects the meaning of the existential crisis for humanity presented in the book.

Bottom line? It's worth reading, even if it's not as good as Ready Player One (and really, that's a hard book to beat in the nostalgic nerd culture fiction genre).

What's going on?

Last week, I finished up my revision of the Tricks, or special maneuvers mostly for shinobi type characters.  There are six categories: Acrobatics, Espionage/Sabotage, Infiltration/Escape, Ninjutsu (combat), Ninpo (special gear tricks), and Social Interaction.

Ninja characters have access to all of these.

Kagemusha have access to all but Ninpo, and instead get access to one category of Secrets, or magical special abilities (still need to revise those, that's the next step).

Taijutsuka (Martial Artists) get access to Acrobatics, plus combat oriented Maneuvers.

Soryo (Priests) get access to Social Interaction, plus magical Secrets.

This week, things have slowed down quite a bit on the RPG front.  My wife and I bought a new apartment and we move in next week, so lots of preparation for that.  I had a job interview last night - didn't get it, so I will keep working at the kindergarten, which is also moving to a new location at the end of the month.  Plus general end of the year class mini-concerts for parents, preparing for graduation, final evaluations of students, etc.  And it's time to get registered for my next semester of grad school.

On top of all that, I'm thinking about a short story (ninja related, since it's on my mind) that I might try to write this week or next.

If I get any more work done on Chanbara this month, I'll be sorta surprised, actually.  Either that, or the story will suck so much that I give up in frustration and go back to RPG design!

On procrastination and good reads

Well, I've come the point where I know exactly what I want to do with Chanbara, and I seem to be putting off actually doing it since it involves throwing out a fair chunk of the work I've already done on it.

See, when I revised the game last, I had the realization that most "ninja" skills were really covered by what I term exploration rolls.  Last edition they were x in d6 rolls similar to demi-human search rolls in D&D, but the potential increase from using a skill die made it seem too easy.  I want ninjas to be good at what they do, but not ridiculously so.  So the new edition uses a 2d6 roll, more like Cleric Turn Undead (again, in Classic, not AD&D).  Gone are the % Thief skills of D&D/Dragon Fist or the d20+modifiers of Flying Swordsmen.

Anyway, if you want to be stealthy, just roll 2d6 + your Constitution related skill die, vs. a target number set by the DM (or the 2d6 + Wisdom skill die roll of an opponent actively trying to spot you).  The same goes for dealing with security devices, acts of theft, bluffing or fast talking, and all that.

So, in the previous draft, the Tricks, special abilities mostly for shinobi types, ended up with a lot of combat powers, even though they're not mainly supposed to be about combat. 

Yet, even though I realize I need to scrap some and move others to the Maneuvers list in order to make room for actual special abilities related to acrobatics, infiltration, escape and sabotage, I keep putting it off.  Well, it's a 4 day weekend here in Korea thanks to the Chinese Lunar New Year, so maybe it's time to set Chanbara aside for a few days and focus on something else with my gaming time.

And that brings me to my next topic.  I have been taking advantage of our local English language library to read some classic sci fi novels that I somehow had never read.  In the past month I've read Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Card's Speaker for the Dead, and now I'm reading Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. 

I'm still in the first section of Leibowitz, and already I've seen how big of an influence it played on the creation of Gamma World, especially the Cryptic Alliances.  Groups that want to preserve the old knowledge of the Ancients, groups that are threatened by that knowledge and seek to destroy it when they find it, groups that worship (the idea of) computers, etc. 

All of this sci fi reading is making me itch to play some Star Frontiers, Gamma World, or something similar (Mutant Future, Stars Without Number, something...).  Or maybe to run something myself.  I've still got a good idea for a Terminator post apoc game.  Or something set in Stephen King's Dark Tower universe.

It might be the sort of palette cleanser I need to get to work redoing the ninja tricks in Chanbara!

Book Review: Ender's Game

With the movie coming out soon, I figured I ought to finally read this book.  And last Sunday, I found a copy at our local English library.  The Busan English Library is pretty awesome for our family, since the vast majority of their collection is children's books.  They don't have much sci fi for adults, but luckily they did have a copy of Ender's Game.  So I got it, and read it.  Just finished the last fifteen pages or so this evening as my son was in the shower.

Man, that was a good book!  If the movie is half as good, it will be worth watching.  Or it should be, anyway.  My faith in Hollywood's ability to screw up any source material is high.  And so far, this year's potentially awesome movies have been more or less disappointing.

Anyway, this is about the book, not the upcoming movie.  There's a lot to like in this book, especially if you enjoy military sci fi (I do).  It's space opera-ish, but we don't get to see much of the enemy "buggers," it (like the movie Full Metal Jacket) mostly concentrates on Ender's training.

Card does a great job of getting into the mind of a six-year-old boy (who grows to be a 12-year-old by the end of the book), but one who also happens to be a genius with a pair of older siblings who are also geniuses.  We hear about the Bugger Wars, a pair of invasions of the Solar System by insectile aliens, and we see how young Ender Wiggin is trained to become the great leader who will insure victory in the third invasion.  There are a few twists at the end, one I saw coming a mile away, and a couple that surprised me. 

It's a fairly quick read, and definitely worth your time if you've never read it.

I hear from time to time some people complaining about Orson Scott Card, because of his religious views (Mormon) or his political views (not sure, don't care).  They don't want to buy his books or see the movie because that would "support" OSC's points of view.  I've never quite understood this line of thinking.  But we see similar things all the time, for example with regards to Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft's racist views or the like.  Personally, I don't buy these arguments.  I believe it's possible to support a writer for the strength of their written works, and that has no bearing on whether or not I support their political/religious views.  If you've been avoiding this book because you don't like Card's ideas, I think you're missing out on a nice, evocative, thoughtful piece of science fiction.

Great Literature as Modules

A few days ago, I snagged this spiffy pic off of G+.

The poster (sorry, forgot who, maybe Jason K?) said it was from an old Dragon Magazine.

Anyway, it made me want to make some other copies, and last night I put my subpar photo manipulation skills to work on this:

Anyone else got any classic literature they'd like to see done as a D&D module?

Maybe I should instigate a Blogger Challenge...

A slight change

For a few months now, the old blog has been getting lots of anonymous spam comments linking to websites that are probably fronts for phishing, viruses, or something.  I'm sick of having to clear out these posts every other day or so.

So I've disabled anonymous posting of comments.

Josh, you're the only regular anonymous poster that I have.  Sorry.  If there's something you want to say, shoot me an email or PM me on Facebook and I'll repost it here for you if you want.

In other news, Chanbara waits patiently while I write a couple of papers for grad school.

Blogging about interesting game stuff waits as well.

Oh, and apparently Jack Vance wasn't dead already, but he is now.  Bummer of sorts.  Maybe when I work through my current stack of Carl Sagan, Poul Anderson, Joseph Campbell and Terry Brooks (hey, it was dirt cheap at the used English book store/cafe here in Busan - don't judge me!), and the next semester's worth of TESOL/SLA readings, I'll try out some more Vance.  I really enjoyed the Dying Earth books.  I'd like to read some of his other works.

Beast of the Week: Huntsmen of Annuvin

My son wanted to rewatch the old Disney "The Black Cauldron" movie the other day, which is inspired (got the characters close, but the story is pretty different) by one of my early fantasy influences, the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. 

Then, today, while going through an old folder looking for some old character sheets to play in a FLAILSNAILS game (more on that later), I found a page with three creatures from the Prydain Chronicles, the Huntsmen of Annuvin, the Cauldron Born, and the Gwythaints.  I already did gwythaints back in May.  The version from this sheet, which must date back to my high school days, are a bit more powerful.  I may use them as a "greater gwythaint" in the future.  I'll save the Cauldron Born for next month, as they're undead and make a good Halloween monster.  So anyway, here is the monster you do get, the Huntsmen of Annuvin:

Huntsmen of Annuvin
AC: 5 (15)
HD: 3**
Move: 180 (60)
Attacks: 1 weapon
Damage: by weapon
No. Appearing: 1d4+2 (3d6+2)
Save As: F6
Morale: 10
Treasure Type: nil
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 65


The Huntsmen of Annuvin were formerly human warriors, but due to a dark magical pact, have left their human natures behind.  They still appear as humans, often garbed in barbaric fashion.  Each group has a living Chaotic holy symbol etched into their forehead, which bonds the group together.  They share an empathic bond with their group.  When one dies, all group members within 120' gain 1d8 temporary hit points and a +1 bonus to hit and damage for the next 24 hours.  Huntsmen are enchanted creatures, and are affected by spells such as Protection from Evil, although they have no special invulnerability to normal weapons.

Busy day!

Today, the package from home, with the second hand AD&D books I ordered, arrived.  The MM is in worse shape than advertised (cover is all bubbly and the bottom of the spine smooshed - the fact that about one in ten pictures have been colored bothers me a little, but at least whoever it was had good sense for the coloring schemes used), but the MMII and OA books are in very good condition. 

Also, as you've probably heard, the next D&D5 Play Test packet is available for download.  Downloaded it, haven't looked at it yet.

Ditto for Hackmaster Basic, which is now free in .pdf.  Downloaded, haven't looked at it yet.

I've got about 100 pages left of A Dance with Dragons, though, and it's due back at the library Thursday but I don't have time to take it back then.  Tomorrow, Wednesday, is a public holiday here in Korea (V-J Day) so if I can get it finished tonight or tomorrow morning, I can take it back and not have to worry about being overdue (although the penalty here is just not being able to check out more books for as long as you went over the due date).

And I kinda need to put something together for my next Flying Swordsmen game, too.

All that RPG reading will have to wait.

From Osten Ard to Narnia to Westeros, all in a day.

I'm just about finished reading Stone of Farewell, the second volume in Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series.  I'm really enjoying the deliberately archaic "what if Middle Earth were more Arthurian?" vibe of the series.  I'm looking forward to the next "book in two volumes" conclusion to the series.

This morning, while reading it, my son asked me to close my book.  He then pointed to the bookshelf and asked me (in Korean IIRC, maybe Japanese, but I'm sure it wasn't English - am I proud of my trilingual 4-year-old?  Hell yeah!  But I digress...), "What's that tiger book?"  Looking up, he was pointing to my collected single volume Narnia series, which has a picture of Aslan (from the movies) on the spine.  "Read it," he said to me, in English this time.  So we read the first chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Planning to read Chapter 2 tomorrow.

Finally, to Westeros.  I've downloaded the second season of Game of Thrones.  Planning to start watching it as soon as I finish this blog post.  Also, this afternoon I took some of my students to the local English Library, and found A Dance with Dragons on the shelves.  As I haven't read it yet, I checked it out.  Now I need to get Stone of Farewell finished soon, so I can read all 1000 pages of aDwD in two weeks!  Good thing I've still got a few days of vacation left!

The Scarlet Citadel

Been a while since I read it now (still taking a little break from the Howard, reading Lovecraft on my commute, so I don't get too far ahead in my reading compared to my posting about the Conan stories), so last night I paged through the story again just as a refresher.

The Scarlet Citadel is the second story Howard wrote to feature King Conan, but it shares quite a few features of the other adventurer Conan stories Howard had been writing after The Phoenix on the Sword.  The story begins with Conan the sole survivor on his side of a massive battle (again).  This time, the kings of Ophir and Koth, working under the direction of the wizard Tsotha-lanti, have lured Conan and his Poitanian cavalry into a trap.  Rather than have archers or hordes of spearmen kill Conan, Tsotha-lanti personally comes up and uses his "magic" (a poisoned ring in this case) to paralyze Conan, and take him prisoner. 

Conan of course refuses the ridiculous offer the kings make him to give up his throne, so he's tossed in the dungeons under Tsotha-lanti's fortress.  He escapes, wanders the labyrinthine passages until he meets a rival wizard, Pelias, and then with the help of Pelias' magic, returns to Aquilonia to battle it out with the usurping nobleman in league with the two kings.

It's a pretty good story.  Not top tier Conan, but still really good.  It's also dripping with D&Disms.  Tsotha-lanti seems to be the sort of wizard who has some actual arcane power, but really just uses science when he can (Clarke's Law and all that) since it's easier.  Still, the poison ring trick seems like a Hold Person spell in action (or maybe Hold Monster, since Conan is Name Level).  The dungeons under the eponymous Scarlet Citadel appear to be a fairly standard megadungeon full of monsters and oddities, built by ancient pre-human civilizations and discovered by Tsotha-lanti and used for his own purposes. 

I can easily imagine Dave Arneson and his buddies, playing out some Hyborian wargames using Chainmail, and someone suggesting, "Wouldn't it be cool if we played out Conan's escape from the Scarlet Citadel with the Man-to-Man rules?"  Pure speculation on my part, of course, but it was likely stories like this one that helped inspire the jump from wargames to role playing games.

The Tower of the Elephant

Finally getting back to my literary tour of the Hyborian Age with one of the better Conan tales.  It is a good blend of both Howard's own personal theme of decadent civilization vs. natural or pure barbarism with Lovecraft's themes of cosmic horror man was not meant to know.

The Tower of the Elephant takes place in Conan's young thieving days.  He's in Zamora - the city is not explicitly named as Shadizar, but if I remember correctly, Shadizar is also said to have a Maul district where the thieves congregate, so it may be Shadizar the Wicked...or not. 

Conan being Conan, he decides to embark on the theft no other thief is willing to dare, the theft of the Heart of the Elephant, locked away in the tower of Yara the Wizard (if you've seen the original Conan movie, they borrowed some of the story elements for Thulsa Doom's Tower).  The tower is guarded by two walls, one patrolled by men, the other guarded by who knows what?  Conan meets another thief, Taurus, one of the most experienced thieves in the city, and they team up to try to beat the odds and steal the gem.

They face various challenges very much like a dungeon crawl adventure.  And if anyone ever complains about save or die or XP for gold, have them read this story (well, and the Lankhmar books for the XP for gold bit).

In the end, Conan discovers why the tower is named The Tower of the Elephant (he's never seen an elephant at this point in his career), gets a crash course in the planet's pre-history, and with an unlikely ally manages to come out ahead in his adventure.  Like I said above, I think this is one of the better Conan stories.  It's not so much the quality of the writing or pacing or characterization in the story (other Conan tales do each of those better).  I think it's just the atmosphere that Howard's prose evokes.  It's the right balance of gritty violence, derring-do, and weird horror that perfectly evokes the Hyborian Age for me.

The God in the Bowl

Getting behind in my Conan story reviews.  Sorry about that, folks.  I'm still reading, just haven't had much time to sit down, consider the stories, and write.  At this pace, I'm gonna have to re-read them again before writing.  Or just post a bit more often.  We'll see which happens.

Anyway, on with the review.  The God in the Bowl is the third Conan story that Howard wrote, and like The Frost Giant's Daughter, it didn't sell.  We have another young Conan story here, with him a thief in Nemedia.  The entire story takes place within a rich merchant's store-house, and is a murder mystery story with a supernatural element, rather than an action story.  Until the end, Conan is less the main character than just a participant in the action, being accused of murdering the merchant and questioned by Demetrio the Inquisitor and his police backup.

The story really puts Howard's theme of corrupt civilization vs. noble barbarism in focus.  Demetrio (who is really the main character until the last couple pages) is a decent enough fellow, but the rest of the police, especially the leader, are simply brutish thugs who abuse and terrorize the citizens.  The young, effeminate noble that hired Conan to break into the store house is pretty much Conan's exact opposite, being a weak, deceptive and soulless bastard.  Minor spoiler if you haven't read the story (but probably not unexpected), Conan decapitates him.

The real murderer is of course the supernatural element, and Conan in the end is the only one who faces it.  The "bowl" in the title is a large sealed urn from a Stygian tomb, and the contents of the "bowl" leave even Conan awash with horror.

Overall its a pretty good story.  It's well done, but it might have been the wrong sort of story for the weird fiction magazines Howard was trying to publish his work in.  The hero is sidelined for most of the story, there are no women (in distress or otherwise), and the one fight scene is cut short by the second murder caused by the mysterious creature.  This is all just speculation on my part, of course.

I'll likely be using "The God in the Bowl" in a future Beast of the Week post.

The Frost Giant's Daughter

The second tale of Conan Howard penned, the first "original" actually as The Phoenix on the Sword started out as a Kull tale and was reworked, is The Frost Giant's Daughter.  Ironically, this tale didn't sell, so a few years later Howard renamed the character Amra (an alias of Conan) and had it published in a fan magazine.

The story is that of a very young Conan.  It doesn't say how old he is, but I'm guessing he's still a teen, maybe 15 or 16 in the story.  He's battling with a group of Aesir against the Vanir, north of the Cimmerian border.  The story starts with him the last survivor of an ambush, against the last survivor of the ambushers.  Of course Conan wins, and as he sinks into the snow in exhaustion, a nearly naked and extremely beautiful woman appears before him.

She taunts the barbarian, and his lust awakes him and gives him the vigor he needs to chase her across the arctic barrens.  It's a variation on the Atalanta myth, and I can see a few possible reasons why Howard wasn't able to sell the story.

First of all, Conan is basically a slave to his raging hormones.  It could be argued that Atali, the Frost Giant's Daughter has enchanted him, but it seems from Howard's prose that it's more that Conan wants to bang her, and he's stubbornly pursuing her of his own accord for that purpose.  Of course, Atali wants Conan to follow her into a trap of her own, and when Conan quite handily vanquishes her two frost giant brothers with about three or four sword strokes (try doing that in D&D!), and begins catching up to her, she panics and uses supernatural means to escape the lustful "hero."  Conan is presented as just another horny teenage boy, really, although one who's already larger, stronger, and more skilled with a sword than most other men.  It's not the most flattering picture of the hero.

Secondly, the overt sexual nature of the story fits in with a lot of rape myths, but may have been too strong for the publishers of Howard's day.  The Pulps had plenty of sexualized stories, but this one may have been too blatant.

Still, on the positive side it does tell of an interesting supernatural event from Conan's youth, one that helps shape his personality later in life.  Viewed in the context of the collection, it's a worthwhile story.  On its own, it's a bit weak.  There could be a really powerful psychological tale of a femme fatale who tempts the wrong man, who happens to then obsessively pursue her with the intent of rape.  Howard, however, wasn't really that sort of writer, so instead we get a sort of interesting event from Conan's life, but not a really riveting one.

The Phoenix on the Sword

I started re-reading my R.E. Howard Conan collection last Sunday.  Why?  Why not!  It's good stuff.

Anyway, it's gotten me thinking about some stuff for the old blog (see my previous post - or rather don't waste your time, it's just me venting on a bad day).  This is the first, some thoughts about the first story, "The Phoenix on the Sword."

The basic plot is that four conspirators are trying to kill King Conan because they can usurp the throne Conan himself usurped.  But there are two things they don't expect.  First is the awesome barbarian prowess of Conan (of course), and second is a betrayal by a slave owned by one of the conspirators.  There's of course a supernatural element, and being the first story Howard wrote about Conan it provides a good basic introduction to the Hyborian Age without being too heavy on the exposition.

The story is well paced, with the conspirators and their slave being introduced in media res, and Conan getting a bit of dedicated character building in the second "chapter."  After that, the plot moves quickly, and the betrayal by the slave being the instrumental event that shapes the story.

This actually is not surprising, since the basic plot was originally written as a Kull of Atlantis story, "By This Axe I Rule."  Howard had written the story already, let it sit, then when the character of Conan came to him, it was rewritten to star his new character.  I've got the 2003 Del Rey collection, The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, and the appendices and introduction make it clear that there were several drafts of the revised Conan version, as well.  I'll have to get my Kull collection to see if it makes any comment about how many drafts the original went through.  Needless to say, Howard put a lot of work into this story, and it shows.

It's definitely a good way to introduce one of the most famous characters in fantasy fiction.  The next two stories aren't so well done, but I'll save them for another post.

Oh crap, it's Halloween!

In fact, here in Busan as I write this, Halloween's almost over -- 2 hours to midnight.  And I've only gotten what, three Castlevania monsters statted up this month?  That sucks. 

Oh well, I've been busy with grad school, reading the Wheel of Time books, and general father/husband stuff.

The kindergarten where I teach had its Halloween party last Friday.  I was a werewolf in the morning.  Let my beard grow, put on some face paint and rubber fangs, and wore a ripped up collared shirt over my t-shirt and jeans.  Simple yet effective.  In the afternoon, I was in the haunted house, where it was too dark to see the face paint, so I switched to a skull mask.  Much haunting was had by all.  My son was Superman for the second year in a row.  He loves that Superman outfit.  He'll likely wear it again next year.

Saturday, I spent the majority of the day, and all Sunday morning as well, finishing up The Tower of Midnight, Wheel of Time book 13.  Got it from the local English library, and had to return it Sunday, so I wanted to finish it rather than check it out for another two weeks.  I'm really liking the way Sanderson is writing these last books.  He's just less focused on the insignificant details, and he's doing a good job in wrapping up all these little sub-plots that Jordan should have wrapped up two to five volumes earlier in the series.  It's also cool to see a fantasy world going into Armageddon in a way that really feels like it's the end of the world.  I'm glad now that I finally got around to reading these, and I'm actually looking forward to the final book next spring, now!  What a difference a month makes.

And today I was working and had grad school class.  Got a bit of work done on Flying Swordsmen during my breaks at work.  Probably should have posted something here though, instead of just reading about the demise of YDIS and Vincent Baker vs. Jim Raggi.

Anyway, here's one last Castlevania monster for Halloween!

Skeleton Ape
AC: 7 (13)
HD: 4*
Move: 60 (20)
Attacks: 1 bash
Damage: 2d6
No. Appearing: 1-4 (2-8)
Save As: Fighter 4
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: E
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 125

Skeleton Apes are animated simians created to cause chaos and destruction.  They are rarely used to guard crypts, instead being used by necromancers, liches, or other evil sorts as shock troops.  Skeleton Apes typically carry a barrel of flammable materials that they toss as an initial attack.  The barrel can be thrown to a range of up to 60', and explodes in a 15' radius, dealing 3d6 damage to all in the blast.  A save vs. breath weapons reduces the damage by half.  After tossing its barrel, the skeleton ape lumbers forward into melee and clubs any opponents that come near it mercilessly until it is destroyed.  Skeleton apes are Turned as ghouls.

A bit of a surprise

When Robert Jordan died a few years ago, I'd read all 11 volumes of The Wheel of Time series at that point.  And I'd really been reading everything since about volume 8 mostly on inertia.  I'd read that much already, I might as well keep reading them, I thought.  Even though the series was obviously being strung along just for the sake of stringing it along, and the bloated descriptions were getting annoyingly bad.  It's kinda like Jordan ran out of descriptive phrases around book 4, and just recycled them over and over and over again.  But, I was working as a public school teacher in Japan, and had plenty of free time on my hands.

And then Jordan died.  And I thought, "I'm done with WoT."  I just didn't care anymore to finish the series, especially when I found out that Sanderson would not be writing one final book, but three. 

But then this past summer, Steve was giving away books before he left for Singapore, and one of them was a copy of The Gathering Storm, WoT book 12.  And I said, "What the hell, it's free." 

I finally started reading it this weekend.  After two days of reading, I'm 200 pages into it and finding I'm liking Sanderson's prose more than Jordan's later prose.  It's that bit of freshness that the series needed.  It's still long, and bloated, and I'm looking at having to trudge through another 3000 or so pages, but I may just finish the series after all.

The List

So a little while back I asked all you readers for some help, telling me what wuxia books, movies, video games, etc. you found inspirational, or at least cool.  I did this for inclusion in Flying Swordsmen RPG as a sort of "Appendix N" for the game.  I may have presented myself as less knowledgeable than I am in that post, in order to elicit more responses.  A lot of you recommended films that are already on the list.  Still, I did get some new ones, and I'll be trying to locate and watch them before this game goes to print.

And without further ado, here is the list:

Appendix I: Inspirational Media

Books, Fiction:

Cha, Louis (Jin Yong) The Book and the Sword, The Deer and the Cauldron, Heaven Sword & Dragon Sabre, etc.

Gu Long The Eleventh Son

Luo Guangzhou Three Kingdoms

Shi Nai'an Outlaws of the Marsh (also known as The Water Margin)

Wu Cheng'en Journey to the West (also known as Monkey)

Tony Wong/Jademan Comics The Blood Sword, Oriental Heroes, etc.

Books, Non-Fiction:

J.A.G. Roberts A Concise History of China

Charles D. Benn China's Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty

Film and Television:

The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk (1993)

Swordsman Trilogy (1990, 1992, 1993)

Dragon Gate Inn (1992)

A Touch of Zen (1971)

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Hero (2002)

House of Flying Daggers (2004)

A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)

Mr. Vampire (1985)

Drunken Master (1978)

The Bride with White Hair (1993)

Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980)

Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)

Legend of the Liquid Sword (1993)

Ashes of Time (1994)

Enter the Dragon (1973)

A variety of adaptations of Journey to the West and Three Kingdoms for both film and television.

Games:

Dynasty Warriors series (Koei)

Jade Empire (Bioware)

Thanks to everyone who contributed.  If anyone else has something to suggest, or I left something out that you think needs to be there, please let me know.  There's always room for more.