Trying to fire up a bandwagon: names

    Names are an art. Some syllables come together and stick, more than the sum of their parts. In the GLoGosphere, we're spoiled for good namers- Phlox, Vayra, and Louis all come to mind, as (very divergent) exemplars- whose naming conventions carry a distinctive sense of identity, taste, and craft. But there are many others out there whose knack for naming I admire.

    I want to learn your secrets, your tools, your ideosyncracies. How do you choose, create names? What sits on your tongue and sticks in your brain? Where does the skill for naming come from? What about the skill for identifying a good, functional name- the taste component? What names don't land at the table? Appendix Ns of legendary names- novels, histories, random tables, IMDB pages?

    Thinking about it, I don't know very many clichés about naming conventions in RPGs. Don't choose anything that the players might take as a false cognate (i.e. "Herpys" to "herpes"), avoid alphabet soup, use google translate to avoid unintended cross-linguistic double entendres... and that's it. So there's a lot of wide-open space to make even the simplest observations! Seeking not only deep dives and sustained thinking, but also rudimentary insights memetically phrased.

(After I finish GLAUGUST and the mask relay, I'll write up some sort of essay on naming and link it here- I'm afraid I'm backed up at the moment, or I'd start the train rolling myself...)

    My corner of the GLoGosphere is filled to the brim with writers and DMs I admire and look up to, and I always appreciate the chance to call upon you all as a brain trust. I'm very much looking forward to hearing what insights people have to share! Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

The Cruel Theatre (GLAUGUST 26)

THE THEATER. When a mystery cult of St. Manganese summoned the demon ANTONIN, he shattered their minds and rebuilt their shrine as a nightmarish theater, pulsing with music and violent light. It now contains ANTONIN, who starts in room d6+3, and the 12 GIBBER-MEN he’s AWAKENED. (ANTONIN: stats as chain demon carrying random TREASURE. GIBBER-MEN: stats as cultists, or zombies.)

AWAKENING. Ailment, cured by a REST outside the theatre. No detriment. TERMINAL (X): become a GIBBER-MAN. Roll BEARING or contract AWAKENING upon first entering each room 4-9.

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS.

1-3 d4 GIBBER-MEN.

4-5 ANTONIN enters a random adjacent room.

6 ANTONIN arrives.

--

1 SHAFT. A hole in the earth, looking down through CATWALKS (2) to the STAGE (3). 2 GIBBER-MEN advertise “a new play of metaphysical proportions”, bringing whoever obliges down to THE STAGE (3) and strapping them in. 3 more GIBBER-MEN hide in wait to push dissenters onto the CATWALKS (2).

2 CATWALKS. d4 GIBBER-MEN reset pulleys and adjust polychromatic lights. Doors randomly lead to room d8+1, where 2 means SHAFT (1).

3 STAGE. Towering, imperfectly scrubbed white walls surround a pile of cushions hiding manacles. Six doors ring the performance area (4-9).

4: Gentle splashing.

5: Thunderous, omnitonic music.

6: Odor of blood and paint.

7: Low red glowing.

8: Whistling and undulating light.

9: Nothing.

Once an audience is shackled, a performance begins, not stopping until it ends or the performers die. Each act (d4 ROUNDS long), roll BEARING or contract AWAKENING.

I: COSMOGONY. Titanic instruments swim through seas of light.

II: SEX. 2d4 GIBBER-MEN enact an sadistic orgy.

III: STRIFE. The GIBBER-MEN descend upon each other and the audience. (1 HD, 2 HD if restrained.)

IV: SACRIFICE. The GIBBER-MEN ritualistically impale one of their own on a massive needle. (Automatically contract AWAKENING.)

V: APOTHEOSIS. Icy chiaroscuro, total stillness.

4 POOL. Two GIBBER-MEN, mutually cannibalized, slumber fitfully in a pool of liquid manganese. Between them sits a TREASURE.

5 ORCHESTRA. A GIBBER-MAN operates titanic, cacophonous instruments. If he stops, ANTONIN and d4 GIBBER-MEN arrive in d4 ROUNDS to restart the noise.

6 SHRINE. Torchlight illuminates a statue of St. Manganese coated in blood and paint. In the offering-bowl before it sits Antonin’s notebook, containing bloody charcoal portraits (12 GIBBER-MEN and mutilated self-portraits), a map of the theatre, poetry, manifestos, and mad hieroglyphs.

7 WARDROBE. Red light illuminates a forest of ill-proportioned mannequins draped in ritual robes and masks. d4 GIBBER-MEN hide ramrod-still among them, grabbing whoever comes close.

8 SCULPTURE. In the center of a broken ring of towering, polychromatic glass sheets, a chest-high chandelier orbits on a chain, whistling as it swings. ANTONIN occasionally comes to reinvigorate the contraption.

9 PAINTINGS. A disemboweled GIBBER-MAN (1 HP) uses his own entrails to paint a savage mural. Behind a tapestry of a brutal battle are stairs to the SHAFT (1).

GLAUGUST 6: “Art movement dungeon.” Inspired by The Theatre and its Double and the Outlast video essays I've been watching. (Eventually for Pb's STARTER BOX, though if anything gets cut from that project, it's this.) Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

THE WRECK OF THE RED HORIZON (GLAUGUST 26)

    (If you don't want the STARTER BOX's mysteries to be revealed prematurely, don't highlight the redacted text. It's not all that shocking, but I want to keep the mystery alive, you know?)

 THE RED HORIZON. An armed cargo ship whose skeleton crew carried clandestine delivery runs for the Church. Scuppered by a storm, it crashed deep in the K--Y forest, splitting in two on the bough of a great tree.

WHAT THEY KNOW. The crewmembers (L--, B--, R--, T-- (deceased), V-- (deceased), U-- (wandering the forest)) know that they’re carrying dangerous cargo to Outpost Delta, a secret laboratory in the trackless depths of the K--Y forest. If the Church learns its secret has been leaked, they’ll be marked for heresy, so they’ll withhold unless their life is on the line. Only Captain K-- (deceased) knew that their cargo was a dragon larva.

UNSTEADY. The wreckage is tangled precariously in the tree’s limbs. Whenever anyone causes a major shift of weight, roll FINESSE or the ship teeters. When a given half would teeter three times, it instead crashes to the forest floor (all take 3 HD).

(1) TRUNK. Crewmember L-- nurses B-- against the trunk of the tree. Without intervention, B-- dies in d4 ROUNDS. T--’s fallen corpse lays nearby. The two halves of the Red Horizon groan 60 feet overhead.

CLIMBING. The trunk is slick with rain. Instead of branches, it’s lined with shelf fungi, releasing soporific spores (roll MIGHT or fall asleep) when broken.

CRIES. R--’s groans of pain are barely audible from the COLLAPSED DECK (4) above. His crewmembers are eager to see him safe.

(2) GUN DECK. Over the door to the CARGO HOLD (3) lays a lightning ballista (2 HD). Also thrown against the back wall are three hypo-oxygen tanks (Ud12), one of which is crushed, a lead diving suit (armor AS PLATE, immunity to radiation, DISADVANTAGE on FINESSE rolls), and coils of extra rigging-rope.

GAS. Hypo-oxygen from the ruptured tank saturates the room. Every ROUND holding an open flame, roll FORTUNE or the room ignites (2 HD).

(3) CARGO HOLD. A massive gold-and-tungsten cage sits empty, its bars wrenched open. Three TREASURES hide in the wreckage of shattered crates around it.

RADIOACTIVE. Every ROUND, roll MIGHT or contract radiation sickness, residuum from the dragon larva’s blighting presence.

(4) COLLAPSED DECK. The forecastle has collapsed downward into the galley. A splintered plank spears R--’s leg in place near V--’s corpse. The dragon larva attacked R-- as it escaped, and the claw marks on his irradiated chest bloom with scabrous pustules. He’ll promise anything for freedom, even revealing what little he knows about the secret shipments or what attacked him. Even if he’s freed, he’ll succumb to his wounds in d4 days without expert treatment.

(5) CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS. The mangled, irradiated corpse of Captain K-- bleeds out over a pile of shattered silicon crystals and destroyed documents bearing the Black Hierophant’s seal. (There is no Black Hierophant, only the three Red Hierophants.)  Around his neck is a key to a locked chest against the wall containing a piece of TREASURE.

CRYSTALS. The larval dragon killed the captain before he could destroy the crystal map to Outpost Gamma. Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omega lie in pieces on the ground.

GLAUGUST 4: “Tree dungeon.” Also a dungeon with no monsters, which I think would make a sick GLoGtober prompt all its own. Eventually for Pb's STARTER BOX.Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

Beneath a moonless sky... (GLAUGUST 26)

    On the Calculation of Volume I, first of a septology, is a beautiful novel about a woman trapped endlessly repeating the 18th of November. (It’s my next musical.) Much of its beauty is in its exhaustive, unsparing contemplation of life in a time loop and all its ramifications- the weight it puts on her posture to the world, relationships with others, and sense of self. (Incidentally, it’s the next musical I’m working on.) In that spirit, here are some interesting properties and mores of the motescape, a world without sun.

• There are three levels of natural light: pitch black (underground or in shadow), ambient (open sky; the light of the Æther reflects off of the firmament), and bright (proximal to the Æther). Your eyes are adjusted to these fine variations, and are easily overwhelmed by intense light. Your torch going out in a dense forest is just as debilitating as in a tomb.
• Flames are almost painfully bright and visible. Using flame to see is difficult (that is, more than normal), and treated as vulgar in contrast to dimmer, longer-lasting lights, like phosphoric or sodium lamps. Common, impoverished adventurers are derogatorily referred to as ‘torchbearers’.
• When you travel, you can rest whenever you’re tired, shortening or extending your adventuring day by a watch or two without affecting your ease of sleep.
• There is humidity and dryness, and warmth to bitter cold, but no bitter heat. Unheated waters remain cold. The vast majority of people have only ever sweat from exertion.
• Nocturnal animals, like opossums, raccoons, and bats, are common pets.
• No city is without a bell tower that dictates its rhythms. If that bell tower is on a church, they send over a cleric with a highly calibrated nocturnal and a precisely manufactured hourglass to sync your bells to standard. Without this intervention, provincial towns mere miles apart can be on totally opposite sleep schedules, with bell-intervals minutes different in length.
• Interrupting a city’s light infrastructure debilitates it faster than starving it out.
• No moon means no moonlight or tides. Menstrual calendars replace lunar calendars, but sidereal calendars (or zodiac calendars, as they’re called) are what’s most commonly used.
• Seasons are created by the great migration of the birds, who carry the warmth with with them when they leave.

…I’m certain there’d be more to say if I played with the ideas even longer.

I remember playing this same game with a setting on a flat disc. The sun and moon, equally sized, orbited on a flat plane above the earth around the world’s center. That meant the city in the world’s center was in an eternal gloaming, and that on the edges, day and night were defined by the moon and sun growing and shrinking from pinpricks in the sky.

All this is to empower you to spend a moment taking your conceits seriously, and play in delight with the dividends of your imaginative exercise.

GLAUGUST 3: "The many qualities of night air." Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

A RIVERSIDE SHRINE (GLAUGUST 26)

Spoilers for the Pb starter box. Thinking I'll call it THE WINDOWS OF THE HEAVENS. Too on the nose?

 SHRINE TO ABZU. Patron god of the R--n river since before the days of the Church.

V--. A sickly, smiling sociopath masquerading as a beneficent priest of Abzu, ‘disciple’ of the ‘recently departed’ D--. He believes that gods are made from worship, and SHE, a giant leech he’s nursing to titanic size through holy sacrifice, is his great project. He walks with a limp, covering up the wound from when SHE tried to feed on him.

At any given time, V-- is...

1-3 Tending the SHRINE (2), wiping away bloodstains.

4-5 In the UNDERCROFT (3), feeding a traveller to SHE.

6 In his TENT (4), writing in his journal.

(1) DOCK. Splintered, mossy, serviceable. Around the next bend of the R--n river, out of the temple’s sight, a river skipper lies scuppered and emptied after a bloody altercation (with V--, who fed its crew to SHE).

(2) SHRINE. Its support beams, circumscribing the squat stone structure, stick out above its cupola, imitating river reeds. Inside the wood door (V-- has the key) is a small, dimly-lit room, dominated by a statue of Abzu. On a plinth before it sits a dented brass offering-bowl. A hidden drain in the base of the bowl would deposit in the river, but V-- has broken open the pipe so it drains into the UNDERCROFT (3) instead.

SURFACES. It takes someone looking for it, but nearly every surface in this room- walls, floor, offering-bowl especially- has been scrubbed imperfectly clean of blood.

V--. If he is here, he’ll play the part of a kindly old priest. Please, leave a sacrifice for Abzu; maybe a gift, maybe some gold, or if you don’t have anything else, perhaps a rabbit in blood sacrifice?

GHOUL-HOUND. Behind the shrine hides a ravenous, tortured ghoul-hound (stats as bear at half HP). V-- has whipped it so grievously that it won’t emerge from behind the Abzu statue unless V-- gives a whistle, at which point it will pounce on whatever’s nearest.

(3) UNDERCROFT. In the center of this dank, earthen chamber, once a ritual burial site, is a pool of blood and gore. SHE, a massive leech, writhes in her feed. (Stats as carrion crawler w/ vampirism; heal for all damage dealt.) D--’s corpse is chained against the far wall, cut along the throat and drained of blood.

(4) TENT. In V--’s small canvas tent, tucked just behind a tall clump of reeds, is a bedroll and a journal; the ‘gospel of SHE’. Under the pillow is a bloody, coiled bullwhip. If V-- learns his tent has been, or is being, disturbed, he grows violent.

GLAUGUST 2: “Deicide dungeon.” Eventually for Pb's STARTER BOX. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

Garamondia in Review (GLAUGUST 26)

  Louis du Garamond is a luminary newcomer to the GLoG scene (by my crusty old standards). I’ve read some of his work, but I never quite got into it the way others have. This GLoGtober is my excuse for exposure therapy. I’ve selected a small handful of his posts for totally subjective and personal review.

Pilot-in-Dreaming. A unique class, deftly expositing setting mystery, and a well-executed retire-as-monster capstone. The tension between the evocative concepts, reminiscent of Vulvania or the Bad Doctor, and quotidian mechanical text dulls the shine. 6/10

North, South, East, West. Punchy and cool. Are we supposed to go there, or is this a glorified rumor table? 9/10

Brain Ghosts. My career aspirations are as a songwriter for musical theatre. I often feel that, beyond the basic principles of engaging storytelling, there are limited ways to bring that experience into gaming. A unique, compelling, and theatrical monster is ingenious, and inspiring. Can I come up with an existentialism monster? A dad rock monster? 9/10

Modron Calculator. I don’t know if the Modron Calculator lives up to the beholder’s standard of iconicity, and I don’t know if it’s worth its weight in ink (do we need, say, Matrix? Or the banal things you’re signing off to do?), but there are some fun ideas hiding in the excess. “The next time you fight a Calculator there will be two of them. The third time there will be four, etc. etc.”- I really like that. 5/10

What are your Dragons/Who's in Charge. For a long time, I wasn’t sure what Pb’s dragons looked like, and now I do. Epochal post of ideas (save for the unremarkable Baroness). 10/10

Hatesteel Blades. Holy mechanical text, Batman! 2/10

How I Run Games. This was a very interesting post, but I was particularly struck by Louis’s description of his blog writing. “I really enjoy writing in this mode, totally detached from running games.” In my experience DMing, players get antsy when they’re not speaking. As I write for games, even when I’m getting heady, I try to design with verbal economy in mind- designing things that, even when they’re meant to be complex or alien, can be described and grasped in few words. I wonder how Louis would introduce the Barony to new players? Would its most abstruse elements, like image games, make it to the table? (How) can one offer its depths to a player who won’t take on assigned reading? (I have the same question for authors like Locheil.) 8/10

Overall, while Louis’s writing is often more verbose than I think is responsible, it’s more often compelling and inspiring than I’ve historically given it credit for. I don’t know if I’d read through his whole backlog, but I’ll certainly click a few more index links, and read his new output more consistently. (Leave any other must-reads in the comments.) Thank you, Louis, for your writing, and commitment to craft. We’re all bettered by it.

GLAUGUST 1: “Review Another's Blogpost.” Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

In Favor of Repetition

• In Favor of Repetition

• In Favor of Repetition

• In Favor of Repetition

• In Favor of Repetition

• In Favor of Repetition

It bears repeating.

I'm working on a Pb STARTER BOX (more on that as GLAUGUST rolls around), and one of the things I wrote up was a strange theatrical horror dungeon. As a piece of work, I think it's strong- I could run a deliciously creepy game with it- but something nags at me about it, and the language of In Favor of Repetition helps me pin down why I feel like it's out of place in what's supposed to be a quintessential Pb adventure.

In the Motescape, there are two types of dungeon: tombs and shrines.

Tombs are ruins, overripe with dead worlds. Hulking, rusted war machines that predate man's discovery of fire, sunken castles with alabaster towers, ruined alchemical laboratories reclaimed by malignant molds. What was here is gone, and what is here is dying too.

Shrines are touched by God. Riverbend altars to local spirits, bloodstained altars in fungal groves, byzantine chemical cathedrals. Sites of worship where the stories of the saints crackle with holy life.

The best Pb dungeons are sites that work through the problems of faith and death. How do we shirk their duties, embrace them? How are they swallowed by empire? What is it to live, to live, in the ruins of generations who never found the answers they, too, sought?

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.