Hex Crawl 23 #124: ChatGPT's Cursed Oases

Three hexes northwest, three north of Alakran. 

In this dry and dull valley, unappealing even to the perfidious clods of Nekai, we shall return to the topic of the "cursed oasis" that I set as a challenge for ChatGPT to describe.

First, the prompt, the AI answer, and its refinement and answer:

Write an imaginative roleplaying game blog post describing a cursed oasis in a fantasy Bronze Age desert. Be creative and avoid cliches.

In the heart of the vast Bronze Age desert, there lies a cursed oasis that has long been feared by all who wander its vicinity. The oasis is said to be cursed by a powerful jinn who was angered by the humans who polluted the waters and disturbed the peace of the oasis. As a result, the jinn cursed the oasis, and it became a place of horror and despair.

Adventurers who are brave enough to approach the cursed oasis will find themselves facing many dangers, from the boiling hot springs to the treacherous quicksands that surround it. The once-beautiful palm trees and lush vegetation have been twisted and mutated by the jinn's curse, taking on a grotesque and twisted appearance. The animals that once thrived in the oasis are now vicious and aggressive, attacking anyone who dares to come near.

The curse of the jinn has also affected the people who live near the oasis. Many have been driven mad by the curse and now live in fear, haunted by the jinn's whispers and tormented by its illusions. Others have become twisted and deformed by the curse, their bodies twisted and mutated into grotesque shapes.

The only way to break the curse of the oasis is to find the jinn's lamp, which is said to be hidden somewhere within the cursed waters. However, the curse has made the lamp almost impossible to find, as it is constantly shifting and moving within the waters.

Adventurers who dare to enter the cursed oasis must be prepared for a perilous journey. They will need to navigate treacherous terrain, fight off vicious beasts, and outwit the jinn's illusions. They must also be careful not to succumb to the curse themselves, as the jinn's whispers can drive even the strongest of wills to madness.

If they are successful in finding the jinn's lamp, they must use it to break the curse and restore the oasis to its former glory. However, the curse of the jinn is not easily broken, and the adventurers will need to use all their skills and wits to overcome its power.

The cursed oasis is a place of great danger, but also of great reward for those brave enough to face it. Will you take on the challenge and risk everything to break the curse of the jinn and restore the oasis to its former glory? Or will you succumb to the curse and become just another victim of the jinn's wrath? The choice is yours, adventurer.

Write an imaginative blog post describing a cursed oasis in an ancient Assyrian-Egyptian desert, in a style similar to Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco.

In the midst of the ancient Assyrian-Egyptian desert lies an oasis unlike any other. It is said to be cursed, a place where the spirits of the dead and the living mingle and where the sand whispers secrets that are best left untold.

Legend has it that the oasis was once a sacred place, a haven for travelers and pilgrims seeking refuge from the harsh desert sun. But something happened that caused the gods to turn their backs on the oasis and curse it with an eternal darkness that engulfs the sky above.

Those who dare to venture into the cursed oasis speak of strange apparitions that haunt their every step. The sand shifts underfoot, revealing ancient artifacts and symbols etched into the earth. They tell of a time long ago when the oasis was a place of great power and magic, a nexus point between the realms of the living and the dead.

The ruins of an ancient temple lie at the heart of the oasis, a crumbling testament to a time when gods walked the earth and mortals trembled before their power. The walls are adorned with intricate carvings and glyphs that tell stories of battles fought and lost, of curses and blessings, and of the price that must be paid for great power.

Many have tried to unravel the mysteries of the cursed oasis, but few have returned to tell the tale. Some say that the spirits of the dead rise up to claim those who dare to tread upon their sacred ground. Others speak of ancient guardians that protect the secrets of the oasis with their lives.

But there are those who are drawn to the cursed oasis, who feel the pull of its dark magic and cannot resist its call. They come from far and wide, seeking answers to questions that only the gods themselves can answer. They brave the treacherous sands and the watchful spirits, knowing that they may never return.

For those who seek to uncover the secrets of the cursed oasis, there is a price to pay. But for those who are willing to pay it, the rewards are great indeed. They may find themselves granted great power, or they may find the answers to questions that have plagued them for a lifetime. But they must be careful, for the curse of the oasis is a fickle thing, and it can turn on those who seek to exploit it.

So if you ever find yourself wandering through the ancient Assyrian-Egyptian desert, and you come across the cursed oasis, remember the tales that have been told. Remember the spirits that haunt its sands and the guardians that protect its secrets. And if you are brave enough to venture into its darkness, may the gods have mercy on your soul.

ChatGPT Mar 23 Version. Free Research Preview. ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.

So ... the AI is not very good at following instructions to be creative and avoid cliche. What it is very good at: pastiche, imitating the stock phrases of a certain style of adventure writing to an uncanny degree. These both sound like blurbs for generic DM Guild adventures - even though the second prompt says nothing about roleplaying games. And this makes sense if you remember the thing is trained on a crawl of the Web. Consider the ratio of mediocre RPG adventure descriptions to paradoxical, surrealist meta-fictions out there.

Another criticism that might be levelled at the AI is vagueness. Because this is a chat, we can prompt it to supply more details. For example, could it stat up the "spirits" of the cursed oasis?

From the last post, describe in more detail the spirits that haunt the oasis. Be as specific as you can about their appearance, abilities, and actions. Use the statistics from 5th edition D&D.

I apologize for any confusion earlier, but I am not programmed to provide any statistics related to D&D, nor do I have the ability to refer to any previous post as I don't retain memory of previous conversations.

That being said, let me try to describe the spirits that haunt the cursed oasis in more detail. They are an ethereal presence that pervades the very air, their essence manifesting as a chill wind that sweeps through the barren desert. They are the souls of those who died within the boundaries of the oasis, their spirits bound to this place by ancient curses and forgotten rituals.

The spirits take on many forms, appearing as shimmering apparitions that seem to shift and change with the wind. Some are spectral warriors, their weapons gleaming in the darkness as they stand guard over the ruins of the temple. Others are ghostly priests, intoning ancient chants and curses that echo through the silent sands. Still, others are the shades of long-dead travelers, wandering the dunes in search of a way out of the cursed oasis.

Despite their otherworldly appearance, the spirits are not entirely insubstantial. They have the ability to interact with the physical world, reaching out to touch those who dare to trespass on their sacred ground. They can inflict physical harm on those who offend them, using their ghostly touch to drain the life force from their victims.

But the spirits are not merely malevolent entities seeking to harm those who cross their path. They are bound to the cursed oasis by ancient curses and forgotten rituals, unable to leave until their curse is lifted. Many are willing to help those who seek to unravel the mysteries of the oasis, providing clues and guidance to those who can earn their trust.

Those who wish to navigate the cursed oasis must be cautious, for the spirits are not to be trifled with. They are the guardians of this sacred ground, and they will do whatever it takes to protect it from those who seek to exploit its power. Only the bravest and most resourceful adventurers stand a chance of surviving the dangers of the cursed oasis, and of unlocking the secrets that lie within.

What determines whether the spirits help or hurt those they meet?

The spirits that haunt the cursed oasis are not necessarily malevolent, nor are they benevolent. Their actions towards those who venture into their realm depend on many factors, including the intentions of the intruders and their level of respect for the sacredness of the oasis.

If a group of adventurers comes to the cursed oasis with the intention of exploiting its power or stealing its treasures, the spirits will likely view them as a threat and respond with aggression. The spirits are the guardians of the sacred ground, and they will do whatever it takes to protect it from those who seek to exploit it for personal gain.

On the other hand, if a group of adventurers comes to the cursed oasis with a genuine desire to unravel its mysteries and show respect for the spirits and their sacred space, the spirits may be more inclined to offer guidance and assistance. The spirits are bound to the cursed oasis by ancient curses and forgotten rituals, and they may be willing to help those who seek to break the curse or lift their own individual curse.

Ultimately, the behavior of the spirits towards those who enter the cursed oasis is determined by a complex web of factors, including the intruders' intentions, actions, and beliefs. It is up to the adventurers to navigate this complex web and determine the best course of action to earn the spirits' trust and achieve their goals.

 
Whew, our jobs as D&D statter-uppers are safe for now, though it's not clear if this is due to a lack of capacity or to mere copyright issues. These are better answers, but note two things:

1. It took a human prompter to produce this level of detail. This points to a likely role for AI in creative and educational settings - as a producer of first drafts to be critiqued and refined, while its raw output will do to replace human output in areas where creativity and accuracy are not valued so highly. (Yes, there is inaccuracy even in this fantasy content -- "weapons gleaming in the darkness," for instance, only makes sense as a puree of cliche.)

2. Speaking of editing, these are wordy as hell, like the output of old pulp writers who were paid by the word. The last answer could easily be boiled down to half the word count:

"The spirits that haunt the cursed oasis are not necessarily malevolent nor benevolent. Their actions depend on the intruders' respect for the oasis. If a group of adventurers comes to the oasis to exploit its power or steal its treasures, the spirits will view them as a threat and respond with aggression. On the other hand, if a group of adventurers comes to the oasis with a genuine desire to unravel its mysteries, and respect the spirits and their sacred space, the spirits may offer assistance. They will especially help those who seek to break the curse or lift their own individual curse."

In closing, you may now want to revisit my actual sacred oasis post and see how I played with the vague stock ideas the AI threw out, inverting and subverting them -- a capacity that, for now, is the exclusive province of the human mind.

Listen To Your Boredom

For myself and many others, writing-for-a-living places great importance on getting it right. Doing any kind of research, engineering, technical writing, even rules writing for a game requires long stretches of tedium. Fact-checking, revising, setting down the details, these all need careful work.From this activity we learn how to react to boredom as technical writers: Persevere!

Writing creative material, on the other hand, needs a different reaction to boredom. If you are bored writing something, or dreading the task because it is dull; that is your signal to cut that piece of writing out. If you are having fun writing something, then there's a chance - only a chance - that the person reading it will enjoy it. But bored writing is dead writing.

This explains why I can do creative work at times when technical writing eludes me, while other times I need to deaden my mind with drudgery and word-crunching. They are two different resources, two different skill sets. There is no virtue in writing boring creative prose!

Consider: I am describing the wizard's tower of a castle. The tedium of describing five or six small rooms, each stacked on top of each other, weighs on me. To escape this, I decree that the tower's interior is mostly taken up by a misty extradimensional space, threaded by a winding stair; I describe that and the wizard's chamber at the top, and state that a number of other rooms and storages exist in the mist but are not accessible to anyone but the wizard. Need I feel guilty, lazy? On the contrary, I have done something new and added interest to the adventure.

Consider: I am describing the rooms of a group of NPCs in that castle. To escape the tedium of describing the furnishings of each one I simply say "rooms 21-26 are furnished in the usual manner of bedrooms" and presume that any game master of 6 years or older knows what that means. This leaves me the room and motivation to put in the interesting stuff - goods to loot, things to interact with if invited back there.

As anyone who has ever sped up the action, thrown out a rule, or handwaved a procedure will recognize, the rule of boredom applies to game-mastering, too. Boredom occurs when players are neither engaged in adventure, anticipating adventure, or savoring the last adventure. All quiet moments in the game should be strongly focused on one or both or the last two of these.

Two-word Setting Seeds

Here's a simple idea inspired by noisms' observation that having a basic idea about your setting is key to improvisation. I would add that at the same time, you have to come up with ideas that fit the setting but stay fresh, because the imagination under pressure reverts to mediocrity. So how do you turn the stale into the fresh, without veering off the deep and and having encounters with toasters and snuffleupagi?

One answer is to take the elements of your familiar setting and combine them in new ways. Let's say your party has decided to flip the bird to your carefully prepared plans, and heads to a village of adventure you haven't prepared, in hex 2049, the genre being medieval European fantasy. You quickly fill the hexes around with the first ideas that come off the top of your head, in adjective-noun format. Then to your dismay you realize they're all old-hat cliches:

So, just switch the adjectives across the middle, and you're left with this set of encounters that really crackles and challenges:

This works with as few as two cliches - if the party goes off the track and has to choose, make it a choice between frost giants and Skull Castle. Oh, I mean skull giants and Frost Castle. Better now.

High-Concept Monster Suites

How many movies owe their existence to fevered high-concept pitches like:

"It's like Dracula, but with a soul brother!"
"Like Jaws, but with a squid!"
"Like Deliverance, but with mutants!"

This suggests a technique I find myself using more and more, to rescue adventure locations from the same old, dull, "ogres and gray oozes and rust monsters" dungeon crew. The critters do the same things as the classic monsters, even with the same stats, but the look and feel is different - which may change the special abilities as well.

"Like zoo animals, but X-treme!*"

I'm doing this right now in my party's current dungeon, but I can't spoil the exact details. So here are a few  examples, rolled up on the spot using my dungeon encounter table (to the right). You can take the first monster or the most distinctive one as the basis for the theme.

THEME: SKELETAL ANIMALS

Original rolls: Necrophidius, giant rats, kenku, minor devil
Now: Skeletal rats, necrophidius as is, bony bird-men, lesser bone devil.

THEME: BRAINS 'N TENTACLES

Original rolls: Grell, ogres, winter wolf, giant lizards
Now: Grell, brain ogres with extra pair of tentacles (2 weapon attacks), cryo-psychic brain hound with ice attack, lizards who move on 4 snake bodies (tentacles).

THEME:  WIZARD'S LAB MONSTERS

Original rolls: Homunculus, purple worm, bat swarm, giant spider
Now: Homunculus; summoning circle that "slinkies" out into a purple-worm-like monster if disturbed; book that, if opened, creates a stream of origami bats from its pages (beware paper cuts); formerly itsy bitsy spider that wandered into an enlargement ray.

* I hereby motion to replace all uses of the term "dire" in Wizards D&D with "X-treme"

Flip That Dungeon Cliche

"A room with a ceiling full of webs..?"

The cliche - spiders hiding in the webs, you can burn the webs, stuff is wrapped up in the webs.

"A statue with a missing arm ...?"

The cliche - find the arm, put it on, the statue comes to life, and usually is helpful.

"A table with a meal all laid out to eat?"

Ha ha, yeah right, it's a trap.

"So there's this lair of nine rats and  2000..."

Otherworld Miniatures' familiar diorama

Well, you get the idea. When I used to write poetry, one of the things I taught myself to do was to break cliche. A poem that's made up of turns of phrase that have been said before is, at best, a song lyric. If the first thing that comes to you when describing long hair is a waterfall, then flip that into lava, falling smoke, avalanche, waves of night, anything but the obvious.

Of course, not all the cliche busters work. You have to do something new and have it be meaningful. The hair in the poem can't be a cascade of weasels, nor can you plausibly open a chest and have a horde of butterflies carrying peanuts spring out. I'm just saying that we're coming up on five years of the Old School Refinement and pretty much all the obvious homages have been paid. Time to leave homage and go on the road. An adventure author can now invert, subvert or just ignore cliches.

I was going to have humanoids as the low-level feuding groups in my mega-dungeon but now I have different clans of mutant rats. I tried to give the bandit gang in the caves some more sinister secret than the usual robbing and looting. The race of crow-men that used to inhabit the rest of the caves and left its mark there is pretty different from the usual run.

So, trying to flip the cliches I started with ...

The webs are all there is. It's a web monster. Oh, and it burns ... but its pieces thrash about, fall, flap and float down to you like sticky sheets of napalm. If you're feeling nasty you can put a golden spider up in there - burning reduces it to scrap metal.

The statue doesn't have an arm to complete it. It's a statue of a one-armed adventurer. If it sees another one-armed person enter the room (even someone faking it), it will serve the person if the missing arm is the same arm, and fight him or her if the missing arm is different.

The meal ... well, here is where the subverted cliche itself becomes a cliche, the "gotcha" of the too obvious reversal, like "sympathy" characters who really are in need of help or demon idol gems that really can be looted with no problems. Here is where you might go sideways, with a mixture of good and bad effects. The demon doesn't come after you when you steal its eyes, but there's a subtle curse, starting with the thief's eyes turning the color of the gems ... yes, that really is a crying damsel in distress, but she turns out to be spoiled and annoying and a liability to the party's survival ... the meal is food of the gods, roll d6 on this table.

Any other favorite cliches or cliche-busting encounters out there?

Spell Cards: Phantasm, Harden/Soften

What can I say about the poor illusion? AD&D wrongfooted it with Phantasmal Force, spawning a thousand cries of "I disbelieve!" No, the illusion couldn't just mess with minds; it had to do psychosomatic damage. Yeah, everything had to do damage in those uncreative teenage combat-dungeons of yore, which is why the "2nd level damage gap" quickly got filled with black tentacles and flaming spheres when Unearthed Arcana came around.

But anyway, what can a wiser DM and players do with a mere non-damaging Phantasm? The possibilities are endless, and it becomes a contest of wits between players and DM. As the illusionist here, you are not just trying to create something, but do a psychological bank shot - show a thing that will have an effect on someone or something else. What would a hound made of shadow do when a small fluffy white cat saunters across its field of sight? This is the phantasm a certain gnome conjured up not so long ago in a dire situation, and being on the Faerie Roads (which are halfway already to Toontown) I allowed that a 5+ on d6 would plausibly distract each hound from the combat. I place this spell at first level because it rewards creativity, aids distraction and escape - vital for the puny starting party.

The Harden/Soften spell seems at first glance to be the weakest of the first level lot - a straightforward buff/debuff. But consider that in my system, chain mail plus shield gives AC 16, to which +3 adds a very formidable barrier; kobolds can only hit that 10% of the time.

Consider further that the spell is not just written as a buff/debuff, but as a physical effect. This is crucial to encouraging creative uses. What can you do with an iron flag ... a rope turned rigid ... a rubber sword ... in the name of all that's holy, think of the hairdressing implications!

What To Do With A Blank d20?

Yep, I bought one at GenCon.

I've got paints and a fine-point brush. What goes on it?

The Mediocrity of Improvisation

As much as I've enjoyed improvising content in game sessions, I've come to see some drawbacks to the practice. In short, while improvised content can be wildly fun and creative, it usually also tends toward a middle ground of risk and reward. This can sap a campaign of its sense of danger, challenge and achievement.

Consider the extreme case - a campaign where the DM makes up everything on the spot, under the eyes of the players. Assuming the DM is in possession of a full complement of social skills and mirror neurons, he or she will constantly, unconsciously be self-interrogating about the experience the players are having. Are they having fun? Do they see this as fair? Does the world make sense?

As sole authority, there is a strong pull toward the middle ground - to mitigate challenges, to clip rewards. The lurking spectre in the background is that of the juvenile, "mad god" style of DMing, where party-killing traps and mind-numbing treasures are handed out, "just because." Avoiding this spectre, you veer towards the safe and average. Giving out nasty surprises or extraordinary treasure would just feel wrong.


Another factor: the limitations of your mental co-processor when coming up with stuff in real time. Several times I have looked back on a combat that was improvised and seen how the party's enemies could have made a better go of it. The worms could have started tunneling when coming under arrowshot; the tribesmen could have been smarter about their ambush, doing hit-and-run rather than hit-and-fight. I don't discount the possibility of an unconscious sympathy for the players that makes it hard for monsters to do their worst, unless countered with a devious playbook, either written down or mulled over aforethought.


Committing plans to writing is one way to overcome the mediocrity of improvisation. Extensive thought, too, on the structure of a lair, the plans of villains and monsters, the likely action behind the scenes, often pays off with great results. With time alone, thinking, it's easier to convince yourself that the best-laid plans of that goblin horde necessarily involves putting the players in a near-deathtrap situation. Which in turn led to one of the best, tensest sessions of the campaign, where only ingenuity and tactical sense spelled the difference between a narrow victory and a TPK.


Another way to cope is to submit responsibility to the rule of the dice - also requiring written material, but this time a comprehensive table of encounters, traps, or treasures. It was with such a great sense of relief, several weeks ago, that I finally came up with my own treasure table, a task I'd been resisting partly just out of incredulity that there wasn't one out there I could use. So much more satisfying to leave treasure up to the whims of the dice than to create this little gold-star token world where "oh yes, you're 4th level now, you should be getting a nice little +1 sword..."


In a way, these admissions are uncomfortable. One main justification for using a simple and level-based rule system is to make improvisation easier, right? But maybe the best thing is to see it the same way as improvisation in music - great material for a cadenza or a solo, but ultimately dry and flaky without support the rest of the concerto or the rhythm section's steady groove.


(This just out: Entirely by coincidence, noisms has posted some very nicely complementary thoughts on the inadequacy of a preparation-free environment.)

The Fantastic Through Weirdness

Moving beyond written setting elements to create surprise and wonder for your players, we have already seen the ease and limitations of the random way.

The way of Weirdness is just to pull things out of your imagination. The better and more informed your imagination, the more wondrous things appear. Think of a Renaissance wunderkammer ....

The museum of Olaus Wormius

Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and the pictures that inspired it ...

Lord Dunsany's jewel-like story vignettes ...

Each one perfect in its self-containment, the artistically described miniatures of Weirdness are best described from the surface going inwards... beginning with an impression, a synaesthesia, an emotional feeling, a sensory package that only then takes form by association.

To take an example: the image of rainbow colors on a black background. What does that bring to mind?

Gems against black velvet
Bright eyes, multicolored, curious in the night
Small bright-eyed skittering creatures, hoarders of gems
Halls of black volcanic rock, the creatures barely visible unless they open their brilliant eyes
Smoke thick in the air, black and billowing, multicolored sparks of magic, fireflies
Bright cascade of tones, hurtling in the void
The Rainbow of Midnight, unnatural, a black-skinned queen resplendent in gleaming enamel and polished stones
Darkness and serenity, then sudden bedazzlement, a brittle, tinkling surprise quickly enough gone

We have here the set design and cast for a whole area in an adventure; its appearance, creatures, ruler, hazards, inconveniences and treasures. Self-contained, without deeper meaning, the variety can be sustained for one session or two before boredom sets in and we're off to the next.

The trouble with this method? The same as with random generation, but on a larger scale. Random generation gives you a seeming variety that eventually resolves into a gray mud, like an array of randomly colored single pixels. Whimsical sensory environment generation gives you bigger pixels - about the size of mosaic tiles - but with enough time and distance the variety here, too, resolves into patternless gray.

We need a way to arrange the pixels, to pick meaning out of the random impressions. This is the deeper meaning of Resonance, and the method of the fantastic I'll explore next.

Keeping It Fantastic: The Nethack Way

Trawling through the comments and ideas going around about fantasticism, I can identify three approaches, that each might work for different people at different times. Let's call these Nethacking, Weirdness, and Resonance. Each of these is a way to escape the crystallization of the fantasy campaign into a set of rules that players can peep at, manhandle, and get bored with.

Honestly, the main problem comes from D&D and its system-and-half-a-setting approach. The half a setting - the rules about races, monsters, magic items, and so on - has mutated into Ye Olde Fantasye and a genre in its own right, spawning millions of  DMs' "products of the imagination" that all tend to look the same except for the maps and names. If you look back and see what's casting those shadows on the cave wall, the Order of the Stick cartoon is a pretty fair approximation.

Nethack: Instead of going by the Monster Manual version of what attacks various slimes, jellies and puddings can resist, the DM rolls up the traits of each goo-blob type randomly on a table. Another table tells you whether magic boots go with Levitation, Giant Strength, or what not. I call this "Nethack" because it reminds me of roguelike games. Each new character has to find out anew what the black potion, swirly potion, and all the rest actually do, because these correspondences are randomly generated with each spawn of the game. Telecanter has been producing some fine examples lately (also, also) of this approach.

Nethacking it is the easiest way to go, and it's a required minimum for a DM or game designer who doesn't want players assuming knowledge their characters shouldn't have. Although it's not strictly necessary when running a group of new players, beware if just one troll-burning veteran should join their ranks!

Two limitations on Nethacking's utility, though. For one, you're unlikely to get anything really wild and crazy by just randomly recombining existing things in the game, although a good table can help with that. For another, random generation misses as often as it hits. That's because a random table can help with divergent creativity, but not convergent.

To illustrate, any random monster table can help you Nethack up some off-the-book monsters. I'll use my own, and roll three times. Once for what it looks and moves like ... a beholder. Once for its hit dice, AC and other  number stats. A vampire. And once for its special powers ... a piercer.

Yaaaaa!

Okay, I've got a really tough big round pain-elemental-from-Doom guy who hovers on the ceiling and drops to bite your head off. But my gut reaction is "meh." For one, the surprise part gets in the way of the "zounds! a beholder" mess-with-the-players part. It's original ... but not much more than that.

So the next step is to use your judgment and creativity. Next time, two ways to do that.

Bad Monsters: The Urge to Improve

Close behind the temptation to laugh at bad monsters (ha, ha and ha) is the temptation to improve them. It's the same urge that led Neil Gaiman to write a "Prez: The Teen President" story in heroic rather than camp mode in Sandman, or Alan Moore to use Mr. Mxtyplxzwhatever as a very serious villain in one of his DC series. This upgrading from silly to serious is known in TV Tropes land as Cerebus Syndrome, after the Dave Sim comic series that evolved from a funny-animal spoof of Marvel's Conan series to something altogether more profound.

Soon to be released, if not already out, is a fine example in the D&D canon: Paizo's Misfit Monsters Redeemed. How successful have Messrs. McComb, McCreary, and Sutter been? Hard to judge from just the blurb. Some of their "misfits," like the dire corby and flail snail, I never thought were that bad to begin with. With others, like the disenchanter, I'm highly skeptical about their chances for redemption at all. And others show real inventiveness and promise, like the adherer rethought as a horrible spider-silk mutant, and the flumph as a Derlethian herald of the fight against the Great Old Ones.

For some monsters, as for film star Frances Ethel Gumm or pop star Stefani Germanotta, a change of name is going to be a necessary part of any serious rebranding. There's no room for a "flumph" in the Cthulhu Mythos, and I'm guessing most people hate the flail snail because of its silly rhyming name. This point was grasped by Max, of the currently inactive blog Malevolent and Benign, in his great series of Tirapheg Week posts. Five differently named variants on the classic half-baked, purposeless weirdo monster from the Fiend Folio - living statue, alien wizard, mutant mishap, limb-collecting pirate, and three-headed lounge singer - for five different game systems, all brilliantly executed.

What drives people to upgrade the classic old stinkers of monsterland? The urge is greatest, it seems, for the "failure to converge" monsters. These collections of haphazard bits, pieces and abilities form a kind of Rorschach test, an irresistible challenge to create meaning out of meaninglessness. I'm sure there are other improvements out there that I haven't come across, and it would be interesting to know of them.

Next: my own tirapheg variation.

Bad Monsters: Failure to Converge

The most spectacular failed monsters are those that bring together elements never yet joined before - the head of a rabbit! the body of a lemur! tentacles that smear you with liquid cement! - but without apparent thought as to how all these elements make a viable whole. In problem-solving terms, the bad monster represents a lot of playing around with the puzzle pieces, but not hitting on a solution that works.

This raises the question, "what works for a monster?" The answers are many, explaining why bad monsters are so hotly debated, as you can see if you even get two flumph haters and two flumph lovers (or at least flumph toleraters) in a chatroom together.

 
Because of this, I am forced to conclude that no monster is bad in and of itself. Even the Fiend Folio's umpleby - yes, the umpleby, my friends, that hairy master of static electricity discharge - would make a great goofy character in a children's book. Or a cool Pokemon. It's just completely out of place in a dungeon.

(Well, all right, there is one exception that wins the crown of the intrinsically worst monster in all of AD&D. It doesn't have a cult of awfulness, it doesn't inspire mockery or jokes. It is not imaginative or interesting enough to even be magnificently bad. I will reveal and explain in a forthcoming post. Meanwhile, guesses are welcome.)

Now, some of the things that go into a working monster are ...

Problem-solving challenge. A monster's habits or abilities can make it a particularly memorable or versatile adversary. Trying to find its vulnerability (it's hideously ugly, was once human and has smashed every mirror in the mansion ... hmmm ...); being surprised by the classic "gotcha" monsters (whoever would have thought that ten foot pole was a giant stick insect?), or just marveling at its strange tactics (it's using the vines on the ceiling to get away!), are all things that make a monster interesting.

The surprise factor, of course, drops dramatically once the monster is published and becomes generally known. And a DM who relies too heavily on "gotchas" like the mimic ... goldbug ... um, cloaker anyone? ... will end up with a paranoid, slow-moving, and generally disillusioned party, and a silly dungeon. Which, indeed, might be the point.

Resonance with setting. The number one cause of disagreement on bad monsters is their fit to the setting. One DM may play the game as a gritty, boils-and-billhooks medieval affair. Another might prefer a backdrop of vaguely Renaissance, vaguely Orientalist weird fantasy. Still another might run a gonzo campaign where just about anything goes. They will all have different ideas about what monsters are appropriate. Some examples:

• Dark Ages or Ancient World epic: Pretty much only the monsters of that epoch's folklore, or plausible variants on the same, fit in. Satyrs and aegipans, not orcs.

• Medieval romance: This is the middle and dark ages as glimpsed and fantasized through the rear-view mirror, for 500 years of European history - from the Renaissance chivalry novelists (Ariosto, Spenser, Tasso) to Tolkien. Mythical, legendary, and wholly allegorical figures abound. Orcs rub elbows with hippogriffs and dragons. Stick with combinations of people, heraldic animals, and the occasional plant and you are on safe ground here.

• Weird fantasy and horror: Looking to far-past and far-future decadence and barbarism, this genre is much more forgiving of tentacles, blobs, giant insects, psionics, human-animal hybrids, and other quasi-science-fictional elements as long as they are eerie and frightening - just being weird is not enough, Mr. Umpleby. Prehistoric creatures are also fair game.

• Sword and planet: Alien worlds from the first half of the 20th century abounded in life forms bearing suspicious resemblance to earth creatures with dye jobs, extra limbs, horns, etc. Humanoids "evolved" from terran-analogue creatures are also common among writers less rigorous in their xenoanthropology than Burroughs. Weird fantasy critters can also be worked in; the main difference between the two genres is more in the equipment of the heroes than the nature of what they're fighting.

• Science fiction: And in this genre, the weirder the more believable. If it looks too much like an Earth-whatever, it's suspect.

Natural or symbolic coherence: The really great monsters have parts that go together, and abilities that go with those parts; symbolically, if not literally. The griffin, for example, combines the nobility of the mammal and bird monarchs, for an ultimate symbol of ultimate nobility. The necrophidius, praised previously, combines two classic symbols of fear, and adds abilities in keeping with those of a snake - poison and swaying charm. It doesn't hurt that it would also be at home in either a medieval or weird fantasy setting, and many people's conception of "proper D&D" combines the two of those elements to various degrees.

The opposite of this is ability-platform syndrome. You come up with a great ability ... let's say, draining magic items. You then ruin that ability by taking about 2 seconds to decide it should go on a glowing blue camel with a prehensile trunk. Or jumble syndrome, where you jumble two or three critters together, add and subtract parts, and voila! The dread one-eyed gorilla shark of Planet Mongo. Again, great for gonzo or heavily sci-fi campaigns, but not so great for the fantasy genre most people are used to.

Next time: The fine art of redeeming monsters; or, Captain Save-A-Flumph.

Bad Monsters: Failure to Diverge

Allow me to resurrect this article on creativity that came to my attention via Trollsmyth several months ago.

I'm passingly familiar with the psych literature on creativity, but the short review in the article reminded me that creativity is not just about making up crazy stuff (divergent skills), but also vetting the crazy ideas to make sure they serve your purpose (convergent skills). The convergent skills in particular are what makes the difference between "Yeah, she's very 'creative' (eyeroll)" and "Wow, she's really creative!"

Now that we're ready to move from the good side of the Fiend Folio to the bad, this theory can help explain bad monsters - in AD&D or anywhere else. Monsters can either fail to diverge, or converge. Converging is the more spectacular kind of failure, so let's cover failure to diverge first, AKA basic lack of creativity.

The prime example of this is where you take an existing monster, jack it up by a hit die or two, and pretty much call it a day. I'm not saying the Fiend Folio didn't have its flinds and what not, and even the Monster Manual needlessly promoted the otyugh to the, er, neo-otyugh. But the real champion of the phoned-in monster upgrade was Monster Manual II - greater basilisk, greater lammasu, annis, xaren, margoyle, storoper, thessalhydra, different colored slimes, jellies, puddings and oozes for Pete's sake ...

Mmm. White pudding.

Then you have the even more wrongheaded monster downgrade - the moral equivalent of letting your players feel important in the Star Wars universe by having them meet Dark Helmet. Thus, you have FF's mini-red dragon, the firedrake. And then MM2 goes hog-wild with a mini-beholder, mini-stone golem, and hey, if you want to say you bagged an elephant too, we'll give you one the size of a Jack Russell terrier.

Let's not forget the gratuitous monster breeding program, the kind that dares to envision the offspring of two critters already in the same niche - kind of like those towns where a Norwegian dating a German is considered "interracial." Thus, the FF's ogrillon, giant troll, two-headed troll (oh, they forgot the ogg-roll, which is what you get when you cross an ogre and a troll, right) ... yeah, and the gorilla bear.

Look, either you need a gorilla, or you need a bear. You are never going to need a gorilla bear.

What's sad about all these monsters is that they show so little faith in you, the DM, and your ability to add, subtract, or average basic numbers. If you want a super-tough ... let's call it a russet ... hulk, you should really be able to gin it up on the fly, adding some hit dice here, subtracting some AC there. AD&D is simple enough that you don't have to worry about his Spot skill or Charisma.

Next: The convergently challenged ... source of the truly legendary WTF's.

Spells and Creativity

The magic system is probably the thing that's the least to my liking in older editions of D&D. After, all what attracts me to the old school ways is the emphasis on player creativity and problem solving. Then I face the prospect of a spell system that almost seems designed to smother creativity. It's just perverse to force pre-memorization of spells, from a list where one or two each level stand out as clearly optimal in combat, at the same time you are encouraging players to come up with crazy solutions in every other area using ropes, spikes, mules, catnip and what have you.

I actually don't have a beef with Vancian magic. I wish the magic was Vancian. Check out Turjan of Miir. Not for him 3x Sleep, 2x Web, 1x Fireball. After all, if you are physically forcing spells into your head, it's absurd to memorize the same thing twice. So one fix is to slightly up the number of spells - maybe, for instance, first-level casters with a decent prime requisite get two - but make each one be different. That would really enforce creativity and variety.

Or we can go with later-period Vancian (Rhialto the Marvellous, written many years after the first printing of D&D), and assume that magic is done through spirit-world intermediaries of various ranks, which would handily explain the levels system. Any rules, really, can be justified with an image of fractious, bureaucratically minded minions following absurd empyrean regulations. So why not have it be a matter of using spell slots instead of pre-memorizing spells, with free choice at each use? In other words, everyone's a cleric. That allows the odd Comprehend Languages to be pulled out at the right time when it would really save the party's bacon.

I'll mull over those possibilities and maybe take your comments. I don't want to use a spell point system - that just increases the bias toward your most effective spells across levels. But here is the other principle I want to use in spell design.

Same object, two descriptions.

"It's a tool for brushing your teeth."

"It's a plastic handle about five inches long with a narrow head. On the head are mounted a thick array of plastic bristles."

I think you'll see that the more concrete description opens more room for creativity. Instead of being constrained by the function, the material description invites you to think of all kinds of uses for it - scrubbing small places, melting the handle and using it as a spoon ...

Likewise for

"This spell strikes an enemy within 60 feet unerringly for 1d4 damage"

"This spell imparts great force to a pebble-sized object, causing it to streak from one's hand for up to 60 feet. It always hits its target; if the target is alive, it does 1d4 damage to it."

This is what I want in my spell descriptions and designs. Spells that expand role-playing and problem-solving rather than shutting them down. You may think I have some culprit spells in mind and you are right. But that's for another time.