On Shamanism: Taken by the Fairies

A common Celtic view of the initiatory journey into the spirit world is an abduction by faeries, who may also be called the “gentry”, “the good people”, or the “the people of the sidhe” (the older gods and goddesses who dwell in the hollow hills).

To be “taken” into Faeryland, or into the sidhe, can occur in several ways. Sometimes a person stumbles into Faerie by making a wrong turn on a well-known path or, as the Irish say, stepping upon a “stray sod”. In older myths and more recent folktales, a person is lured into the realms of the Otherworld by a faery man or woman, or by a faery animal, often snow white* or colorless. A variation on this more active entry is to fall into a deep sleep or be lulled asleep by faery music or the singing of magical birds. Accounts of faery abductions indicate that the person “awoke” to discover himself or herself in the faery kingdom.

- "Fire in the Head", by Tom Cowan, p. 14-15

In the course of adventures there is plenty of room for faeries, though most RPGer's I know don't really delve there very much. Yet fairytales and folklore can form the basis for an amazing variety of great game stories. One might consider that faeries belong in the same world as goblins and giants. Yet the Fey get short shrift mostly, and I suppose that's a bit unfair, considering that the fey really do form a great link in the chain of fantasy.

In particular fairytales embody perfect game material for children, even those as old as 11, and especially for little girls, who seem to love faeries even more than the rest of us. Perhaps the faeryworld, after all, is the wellspring of fantasy. I tend to think that at least George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis might agree, though I wonder about Tolkien. His world was more somber than the feylandia of Narnia, as I think it drew more heavily from Norse Mythology than Lewis, or MacDonald. And so Tolkien's elves were made of sterner stuff than what we get from the Celtic Fairytales, or at least those that I've encountered so far.

At any rate, I am interested in exploring the feylandia further for my own game. I took a wonderful little sojourn there 2004 with the Hamfest Hellhounds. What a trip that was! You can find some of the story chapters on the LRPGSW site under Files > Elthos Chapters > 2004 Spring Season Chapters (you must join the group to get access to the file, but that's very easy to do). Well, that's the thought for the moment. I hope it encourages and inspires further consideration of the fey as a source for story.

As for the Shamanistic aspect of Feylandia, I think it very interesting that one of the varieties of Shamanistic inductions is related directly to the fey. Interesting indeed. Further thoughts on this later as I look into this further. Excellent book so far, by the way... "Fire in the Head". So was "Gods and Myths of the Viking Age" by Davidson. Very good.

* - Wondering if there is some thread here leading from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to the Sidhe? It almost seems...

As a bonus, here is Fairytale from the old world. I find it fascinating... though does not on the surface seem to make very much sense at all, and seem almost absurd in its simplicity, when one considers Shamanism and the journey to the Otherworld, perhaps it may take on more meaning...

Fitcher's Bird from Grimm's Fairy Tales

At the very least it gives us an old world view of such matters, and these too can be fodder for excellent RPG campaigns.

Considerations On Aspects Of Norse Mythology

… [the Norse] myths are a comment on human existence and a model of social behavior, an attempt to define the inner realities.

It as the appearance of a body of knowledge about the gods and their world brought together for purposes of memory or teaching.

We can see the myths as a vigorous, heroic comment on life, life as men found it in hard and inhospitable lands. The gods never cease their struggle against creatures of cold and darkness.

In his [Odin’s] cult and in the religion of the Vanir we see most clearly the shamanistic tendencies of northern religion, the emphasis on man’s powers to reach out beyond this harsh and limited world. Above all, the northern myths are clear-sighted in their recognition of the reality of the forces of destruction. The fight in a narrow place against odds, which has been called the ideal of heroic literature in the north, is given cosmic stature in the conception of Ragnorok, the doom of the gods, when Odin and his peers go down fighting against the monsters and the unleashed fury of nature. The depths and dark mysteries of the subconscious are given full recognition in the myths. The greatest terror to be faced, that of the disintegration of the mind in madness or death, is not pushed to one side. At Ragnorok a rich and wonderful world was shattered and the monsters had their fill of destruction. After that facing of reality, it was possible to see beyond the catastrophe and to imagine a new world build upon the ruins of the old.

It has been remarked that the favorite tales of the Germanic peoples and the Scandinavians, the most moving themes of their poetry, were concerned with the deaths of young heroes and with defeats in battle. The myths emphasize the remorseless power of fate…

Men knew that the gods whom they served could not give them freedom from danger and calamity, and they did not demand that they should. We find in the myths no sense of bitterness at the harshness and unfairness of life, but rather a spirit of heroic resignation: humanity is born to trouble, but courage, adventure, and the wonders of life are matters for thankfulness, to be enjoyed while life is still granted to us. The great gifts of the gods were readiness to face the world as it was, the luck that sustains men in tight places, and the opportunity to win that glory which alone can outlive death.

Gods and Myths of the Viking Age, by H.R. Ellis Davidson, p. 213-218

Lets all sing: "It's a cruel world after all... "

Regarding: Re: Tricky, Nasty, Low-Down, Stinking Dungeon Traps! 

My post conjures even more Tricky, Nasty, Low-Down, Stinking Dungeon Traps, it does. 

* The Fishing Lure Trap: The Party sees a girl floating in the middle of a circular chamber bound and and foot upside down. It's a trap. Touch the girl and the hand that touches her sticks to the girl (magic) as she gets reeled in up through a hole in the ceiling. Ice fishing anyone? 

* The Troll Feast: It is dark out, and there's a light on a hill not far away in a lonely desolate region. The Party moves toward the light, but get bagged by three Trolls. Yummy! Thanks JR! :) 

* The Spirit Trap: A Specter wants a soul to suck. He uses greed as a lure. There is a dungeon with a beautiful statue of a young girl standing next to a tree which represents a dryad from mythology. The statue is made of fine ivory. It is beautifully done. The specter hovers in the shadows waiting. When a person comes and admires the statue, if they touch it the statue poisons them, paralyzing the person. The Specter then comes for its feast. The concept of these traps is based on the idea of fishing and snaring traps that humans use to catch animals. Now for animals that trap other animals. 

* The Spider Snare: The Party finds a wicker chest full of fresh food on a table in the middle of a room. If they open the basket lid the trap is sprung. A cobweb sticky net falls on them from the ceiling. It is a spider trap. 

* The Trap Door Trap: The Party is loping along through the woods on their way to the Dungeon. They spot a strange pebble mound next to the path. They approach. Suddenly the trap door opens and a huge hairy spider leaps out, grabs a character, lurches back into the trap and slams the lid shut! Bye. 

* The Camouflage Trap: A certain monster is polymorphed as a tree branch. When the Party moves below it, the monster drops on the lone straggling character. Food good. 

I think these provide sufficient examples for the concept. The idea is that monsters (even purely animal ones) can set traps for humans. Well, when you have worlds with Trolls and Mind Flayers, shouldn't you expect it to be a dangerous world? hehe. My question is, under those circumstances, how would humans have evolved differently? I would think humans would compensate with a greater ability to sense danger, detect traps, avoid traps, etc. Or are humans in such a world more like fish. Part of the food chain, sorry.  Hmmmm... yummy?

Tricky, Nasty, Low-Down, Stinking Dungeon Traps!

Ok a bit of double cross-posting here. But I'm liking this topic a lot. Neat.

But before I send you off, one thing: Again - I honestly think that traps should be done with subtlety just as magic should be done. Over doing it is not a good thing. Characters should not be confronted with traps just for the sake of throwing traps at Characters. They should always have a purpose, a history, a plan, and a story around them. Maybe many. Ok, we're off!

After you read this:

Tricky, Nasty, Low-Down, Stinking Dungeon Traps!

Read these:

Dungeons: First Pass

Dungeons: Tricks & Traps

Dungeons: The MurderHole

Here's a few more:

* Bugbears in the ten foot pit is not bad

* The gargoyle's head with open mouth on the wall, with a Sphere of Annihilation in the mouth.

* Ye old sliding floor to the third level. sheesh. who can forget that classic?

* The ol' Lurker Above is always classic, as is the Gelatinous Cube

* Ooh, the two guards protecting two doors. You know, that whole "one tells the truth, one lies" thing. Except they both lie all the time.

* Traps which go off ten feet behind their trigger.

* Open the front door of the dungeon and it drops you into a prison cell

* One favorite from Master Davids World: There was a long very narrow corridor at the end of which was a square stone chamber with a chest of gold in the middle. In the room is an invisible six armed cave troll. We didn't know what happened when the thief got lifted into the air and rended into pieces the first time we found the place. Just up he went and scrueeench... eventually we figured out what it was. So we put up a sign "Warning: Invisible Cave Troll". Later we wound up back there. The wizard of the dungeon turned the sign invisible.

* He had another room of sliding stone pillars that were intelligent and hungry.

Note: The thing is with David's world that you had the feeling that the traps were not there as devices to muck around with Player Characters. They had the feeling of some other deeper purpose. There was a sinister underlying motif which had to do something with the ancient lost races and their doings... it was pretty impressive

On Improvisational Game Theater

The Play
I have this idea of a Theatre in the round. There is a Gamesmaster who also is acting as the Director. There is a play going on. There are Characters on the circular stage. The lighting is dark except for the center of the stage where the main action is happening, and the stage is flat black. There are no stage furnishings at all, or possibly some black movable cubes which can be stacked to make shapes, such as the outline of a door way, or serve as chairs, or a boundary. There is the sound of wind, the tinkling of soft high bells and a deep somber sounding Japanese bamboo flute in the distance. The play relies heavily on pantomime, verbal description and sounds or music to set the scene.

The Audience
There is a breeze in the theater that comes and goes blowing silky flowing pennants, of which there are twenty-four of four colors, each with a symbol of a zodiac sign or planet on it. The seats are arranged around the stage in a circle of 6 rows and 12 sections. Three rows are the inner circle, three rows the outer circle. The number of rows can be multiplied by multiples of 2 depending on the size of the theater and number of the audience. Thus there are twenty-four Sections that the audience is divided into. Over the seats of each section is one large rectangular Tarot card of the Major Arcana (two will be added to make 24).

The Action
The actors are on the stage sitting or standing depending on the situation. When they sit the crouch on one knee, or in some scenes there may be chairs if there is a feast, or meeting. The Characters are Played by Players. The Director is Gamesmastering the Elthos World. There is a music master who sets the mood based on what is going on in the scene by playing some genre of music - usually classical. There is a definite mood depending on the story that is imbued into the scene by the music master, who is not the Gamesmaster but someone else wearing some sort of cloak and who is partially hidden. On a screen on ceiling are projected images according to what the Gamemaster wishes the audience to see. It might be the path of the party along an ancient looking parchment map through the mountains. It might be an item of power, or the image of a creature standing in a dark corridor. This is the impression screen and is meant to provide enhancement to the visual imagery of the scenes. From the ceiling to the floor is another projection. This throws a grid down on the floor of five foot squares or five foot hexes with terrain. The audience should be able to see the floor and take note of the grids. When combat occurs the grids will allow the characters to move into position as if they are pieces on a grid or hex map. They move five feet per melee if human. The entire system will use the Elthos ODS Movement Rules.  Combat would be pantomimed in slow motion so that as the dice and such are rolled the actors hear the results and can play it out.  So for example if Thorgar the barbarian gets a critical hit, the GM would say "And with a violent heave Thorgar thrust his sword through the fiendish gnome, ending it's miserable existence", and the Player/Actor would pantomime those actions in slow motion.  During combat the lighting would change in order to reflect that a battle is in progress, maybe with red, orange and yellow colors to reflect the sense of danger involved.  The music would also change to "combat mode" as well.

The Story
Each showing of the IGT is different than the last. The stories of the IGT are either episodal (like Star Trek), or Epic (like Lord of the Rings). They embody vignettes of Elthos, and may be fairy tales, adventures, or even on occasion dungeon crawls if appropriate. The Players are playing out a scene in their campaign.

The Audience Participation
The Gamesmaster calls upon the audience to volunteer to play the positions of creatures, monsters and NPC whenever called for by the action. The audience should also be able to role play to some degree, but the GM gives them motives, and probably actions as well. He might tell the audience members to start on certain (light up) grid locations. He might tell them that as soon as the door opens they are commanded to attack, or negotiate, or something else. They can if they want play the GM's direction, or they might fumble (move illogically) or they might win the encounter. All combat is decided by rolling dice which show up as large six sided dice on the stage in a square section blocked out in front of the Gamesmaster. On another screen are shown stats for the combat which may include percent chance to hit for the current encounter of whomever is currently in action. It is a turn based game, and played according to the Elthos Initiative and Combat rules. The Audience may also be called upon to vote by Section on background events in the game, for example in a trade war between Saptar and Phidel two Sections (Mars and Pluto) might each represent a Faction, and the vote determines something related to the action of the game. The Players may give speeches to influence the Audience vote.

The Over-Story
There is an Over-Story; a purpose, moral, or theme to each Episode, most often dealing with classical themes or motifs from history or mythology. The party might meet Yaga Baba, or enter the Underworld in search of the Helm of Hades, or a bride of the copper kingdom. They might go to the red desert and battle the ant-men, or make their way to the Black Empire. Or they may wander West to the barbarian lands and the jagged sea of Kaos. Or they might adventure through the lands of King Oswald. Or any number of other places. It is a live action, on stage RPG - played live. The Over-Story will be the responsibility of the World Weaver with perhaps a small Council of World Weavers to provide feedback and advice per series. Each series should last 12 weeks and cover one season.

That's the concept.

Thoughts on GM Cheating

My original Post to RPG-Create:

But Never(!) do I like to see a GM who deliberately makes things difficult and changes the stats of things mid-game just because the Players are doing well. That to me seems like a cheat. Unless, perhaps, if the Players actually get bored because the setup was too easy. Hmmm... ok ok. Maybe we need to let the GM do his thing. Maybe we need to say that GMing technique might need to stay adaptable to the situation at hand, and that the general sense of things is pretty simple: Play fair. Make it challenging. Be Flexible. Have fun.

The Reply:

I heard someone describe this Meme as "No Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy" or "Every Encounter Must Be A Challenge". It can be very frustrating if you don't know it's what the GM believes, and you make a very good plan that should have been a cakewalk.

My Reply to The Reply:

I think what you mean is that as Players when you know certain facts about, say, a dungeon, and you go ahead and make a plan for it's assault, if the GM has the "I will be flexible if my (the GM's) pre-set plan regarding who in the dungeon is were and what stuff do they have is too easy" Meme going on then it is frustrating for the Players if the Players don't know the GM has that Meme.

If I have that right then allow me to clarify by suggesting that the key factor in the change from the GM on the difficulty would not be that the Players are winning which in my mind is *Bad* GMing (ie- unfair), but rather that the Players are bored because the scenario was in fact simply too easy. So the GM 'decides' that the kobold that escaped went and got Old Berg, the Ogre, to come upstairs and thwamp on the interlopers.

Yes, that can be frustrating if the Players feel cheated by such an action. I had one GM, Master David, who on the first day I played in his world announced quite blithely and truthfully, "By the way, I cheat". At the time I found his admission both shocking and amusing. But in all, he had one of the best worlds I ever played in; a real masterpiece of fantasy-fiction. And it turned out he 'cheated' in just the way I'm suggesting – the purpose of the ‘cheats’ were to make the game fun. It wasn't rampant really, but it was decisive. David feels that Story trumps Mechanics and if the story is boring the mechanics must be overridden, even if this means he must 'cheat' to make it so. He makes no bones about that. The Players, who know he does that, don’t mind either, which is to your point. He doesn’t say when he’s cheating, he just does it. The game is fun, people are excited, and it works out well in the end. But he’s a big cheater, yup.

As an aside on the question of ‘cheating’ I noticed very early on that GMs all ‘cheat’ to some degree. Why? Well, the early rules systems (at least) encouraged it because they were not balanced very well for our games. So we wound up with the situation that if you played by the original rules strictly (and we had one GM who really did) then the world was simply too hard and everyone kept dying. We also had problems with experience point totaling and so the GMs, until they settled the issue with their own rules, would cheat and just kind of ‘assign’ experience according to the GM’s Fiat. We didn’t like it and would haggle a lot, and in the end it would work out, but that was a rough spot. The original rules of D&D (going back to 1978 or so) were not entirely ‘finished’, but were a “take it from here and build out your own”. Which we did. Until we got to certain areas that we built out on, there seemed to be a ‘cheat’ requirement. That was our take on it, though I’m sure others may have handled it differently and I’d be curious to hear how. The one GM who played strictly by the rules did have a great world, though – but the Players found it just a tad wee bit too rough (understatement).

On the other hand in other worlds the GM may try not to 'cheat' and try to go with the scenario as designed, which means that he won't throw a new set of monsters at the party if they weren't nearby in my setup. But even then you get this area of GM nuance. One might let the Kobold that escape find the Ogre and bring him back if the dungeon gets wiped too easily by the Players. Is it cheating? Well, he rolls for it. Does the Kobold (1-4) run to get The Ogre, or 5 run to get the big dog, or 6, run away and hide? So it is rolled. Does that make it a 'cheat'?

Well the only reason, in this example, that the GM rolled to begin with was to see if he can add something into the mix because said Players are Bored sitting on the coach grousing about "man, that was too easy - what’s on TV?". Hmmm... Otherwise if they didn't feel that way and were rather like "man, that was cool - lets grab the treasure and hightail it back to town while we still have a chance - and come back again later!" then the roll, in my GMerly opinion, might not be 'necessary'.

I'm not sure if this should go down as 'cheating' then. But it is definitely influencing game play on the fly, and is more dependent on Player mood than on the setup in the game. Which is to say, in this case the GM didn't think of any particular pattern for an escaping kobold in advance. He made that up on the fly, lets say. Is that fair? Or is that 'cheating'? My own take is that it is acceptable-cheating. And that’s where that huge gray area sits. What is acceptable cheating for the sake of the game? 0%? 20%? 100%? And that is where I am saying that Gamesmaster’s nuance should allow the GM to cheat within certain bounds for certain reasons which are not easily defined because the number of variables that could necessitate GM cheating are very many, interwoven, and not easily measured. In that case the GM should be given what I am calling Flexibility.

On World vs. Game Balance

It occurs to me that there's two different aspects of game design that need balancing when creating your RPG. There is World balance where you think in terms of the World itself, and then Game balance where you think about the Players and their interests. These two things do not always coincide and often clash. The way it works out is that if you take the game rules and extrapolate on them you find that the World would crash under those rules. That can't be a good thing, can it?

Let's take for example Wizards in Tolkien's Middle Earth. There were few. Very, very few. There was the White Council, who are described as follows in Wikipedia:

"In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Wizards of Middle-earth are a small group of beings outwardly resembling Men but possessing much greater physical and mental power."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_(Middle-earth)

So there you have it. A small group. Very small. Five in fact. And why? Because in Tolkien's mind Wizards were very powerful beings and wielding magic was not for children but for the mighty and the awesome alone. Magic as we think of it, in Middle Earth, was nothing but a dim shadow of Real Magic as wielded by the White Council. That was magic. All else was a distant reflection. Thus the Powers that Gandalf possessed were those of an order of Demi-God (The Maiar), not men. Thus he could do things of great magical prowess. Yet, let us look at some of those things, because when we do we find that they were nothing much like what typical "magic" is in RPGs. What magic did Gandalf perform? Well, lets take a look at what magic Gandalf actually performed in "The Lord of the Rings".

Spellcasting

Essentially only the Maiar (i.e. Gandalf and Saruman) are known to cast spells. However, there are some questionable cases otherwise. Higher being may imbue another with power -- such as The Mouth of Sauron. There are also "black arts" mentioned which Men practiced -- though it is not clear whether there were also "white arts" or what precisely the black arts were. For the Maiar, there are some definite effects known:

Illusion: Both Gandalf and Saruman could make themselves appear as someone else or to make one object appear as another. Or, as Gandalf does, he can keep people from recognizing him for who he really is, until he wants.

Create Light: Gandalf could start fires or make things glow with little effort, though it required an appropriate object (like pine cones).

Enhance/Weaken Nature: Spells to enhance or weaken the natural or intended purpose of objects are often done. Thus, there are spells to bind doors shut or open them. Spells may make wood rot or put people to sleep.

Mind Control: Saruman primarily, but also Gandalf could command people and even work long-lasting changes to them.

- Principals of Tolkien's Magic

What is of interest to the discussion is that Tolkien's most powerful magicians used a very subtle form of magic. It helped them greatly against their foes, but it was not extraordinary. There is no hint of Fire Balls, or Lightning Bolts, or Polymorph, or Prismatic Wall, or anything of the kind. No, rather it was all very subtle, and yet, most powerful for all that. One could sense in Tolkien's work that magic was a power not to be trifled with, not for it's own power's sake, but for the sake of those who wielded it. One did not trifle with Gandalf. And that's a fact. One also gets the sense that magic was mysterious and subtle for a reason. It balanced the world of Middle Earth. Extraordinary displays of power were not to be seen because they represented a grotesque overuse which Tolkien abhorred. No, rather he was interested in the subtlety of the power which magic presented. Even the most powerful of all beings could not make a wingless creature fly. There was no Flying Spell that could launch a man at 60 mph through the sky. It simply could not happen in Middle Earth. And so the subtlety of the magic is evident throughout the work. And this we should account as wisely done by a great literary master. Lord of the Rings, for all its darkness and light, did not present us with a World in which Wizards contested each other’s wills with flashes of light and huge explosions. Nay, friends, nay. It was not like that.

Yet, if we take the rules of a standard RPG like D&D we find that almost anyone can roll a Wizard. Extrapolation would indicate from this that there are many wizards in such worlds. Lets also consider their spells. My goodness. Hundreds of spells at each level. Sleep Spell, Magic Missile, Polymorph, Wizard’s Eye, Lightning Bolt, Fire Ball, Teleport, Time Stop, Haste, Freeze, Finger of Death, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. And the spells at higher levels are such that had any wizard from the D&D World entered Middle Earth one would think he’d have taken Mordor in an hour and put Sauron over his knee and spanked him right good. Such is the power of the modern D&D Wizard. And so one must ask, where is the balance in that? Where?

I propose that there simply is none. And that no world which incorporates that free range of super-colossal spells and miraculous invocations can possibly achieve for one nano-second the grandeur and gravity of Middle Earth. Tolkien’s World relies on subtly of power, not in the flash-bang-boom of RPG rules systems. And so, based on this thought, my conjecture is that to obtain Literary Worlds we MUST curtail the magic, and return much of it to the void from whence it came. We must discard the vast majority of it, and the more we do so the more possible it is for us to achieve the Tolkien effect. That mysterious awe beneath which the mind and the heart race toward the ineffable and the unknown ancient and incredible power of that all but lost art of World Weaving.

Yet at the same time we can not lose magic altogether or the World becomes mechanized, materialistic and empty of that subtle mystery which magic affords. It is a subtle act to create a World that is balanced. It is a more subtle act by far to create one that is also Game Balanced. One wonders, can it be done at all?

My own feeling is that it can, but it is far from obvious how, nor is it easy to do. But it requires a certain deep understanding of the nature of magic and what it means historically and psychologically to our race. We have had magic for thousands and thousands of years. It was ever the same – a thing of subtle beauty and power – sometimes a thing of dread. As World Weavers we must immerse ourselves in its concepts in all their subtly – and then, and only then, can we employ the concepts to our Worlds without causing them to lollygag and gyrate wildly out of control. We must, in a word, be ourselves, Subtle.