Proof Trolls Are Real

Some people don't believe that trolls actually exist in the real world. The blind fools! Of course they do. And now there is finally actual cinematographic proof!

Here is your proof, if any were needed:


Don't be a fool. Remember to bring your torch and oil with you. Trolls are a serious threat, and should not be taken lightly!

You may also like to educate yourself regarding trolls with this factual and highly informative guide:

Everything you ever need to know about Trolls, but where afraid to google

One time in a certain campaign in the old glory days we ran across an invisible 6 armed Cave Troll trapped in a 20x20' stone room into which was a thin 3' corridor that the troll could not escape through. Needless to say he was hungry as hell and in a perpetual bad mood sitting on top of his pile of gold and jewels. Needless to say our thief did not fare so well. We watched somewhat helplessly as he lifted into the air and was torn asunder in a few moments. Our Paladin felt compelled to follow after him to Avenge the unrighteous death, but even his magical armor was no match and he was crushed like a soda can. We left. Oh well. Our wizard made a sign and put it up on the wall next to the corridor "Warning: Invisible Cave Troll". When we came back that way a few years later the sign was still there... but had been turned invisible. Very annoying. I don't think we ever discovered who the evil wizard was who was responsible... but if we ever do... we'll be sure to back away slowly and run like hell.

Maps of Hobbinton

As a followup to my post for RPG Carnival - Cartography, I thought I would post these two maps and explain a little bit about how I created them.

Hobbinton Township Environs Map

The first one is the original that I drew on a 8.5 x 11 piece of paper with a felt tip pen. It shows the area around the township of Hobbinton (aka Hobbington, Hobnington, and Hobbnobton, depending on the district of town of the speaker). It shows a little bit of information that the Players don't start out knowing, so if you are one of the players in the current Campaign reading this, then do yourself a favor and don't study the map too hard. It will be more interesting for you if you get to be surprised during the course of play. Anyway, I drew this map, and then used my camera to take a picture of it, which I uploaded to my computer (obviously), and then worked on it in both, Picasa (a great piece of photo-editing software from Google that does all of the basic manipulations very easily and nicely), and then, surprisingly or not, I brought it into Microsoft Paint, a very simple image editor application I still find plenty of use for.

Hobbinton Township Details Map

This second Map is the one that came out of my efforts in Microsoft Paint.  All I did was I take the middle part of the map and cut it out and pasted it into a new image and saved that file. Then I erased the extraneous stuff I don't want to keep it from being cluttered using the Eraser Tool.  I then used the Line Draw Tool to paint in the details I wanted. I used various thickness lines and colors to distinguish elements of the map from one another.  That includes the main road (green), the section walls that divide neighborhoods (brown), the main channels for water (either underground or above ground), and the Main Pipes that go from the Water Tower to the fountains. I included a bridge which I painted in using the Line Tool. I then added text to the image in Georgia font to make it pretty, and used the line tool to show where these places are located.

Pretty simple. But the results, I think, are very helpful to me as a Gamesmaster. I can now look at the map and it reminds me of a ton of stuff that will be helpful to remember during the next Campaign. :)

On Alchemic Gamesmastering

I am a fan of the idea of Alchemy as a system of symbolic relationships. The Alchemists envisioned, it seems to me, a Universal array of Symbolic Correspondences which appear throughout the natural world as reflections of the supernatural world, connecting abstractions with instances in conjunction with a vast interwoven tapestry of underlying meanings embodied in symbols, glyphs, words, songs and art. Alchemists such as Raymond Lull and John Dee seemed to point toward a mathematical and poetical design of The Great Pattern.

I like the conception quite a bit, and I feel that this is what the Greater Ancients may have been alluding to when they said that "a man can see the whole Universe in the flickering leaves of a single oak tree" (Dendromancy). They alluded to the possibility of an intuitive grasping of The Great Pattern. They surmised the existence of hidden meanings above and below nature, as a reflection of the Realm of Divine Idea, and sought to convey the essence of the mystery through folklore, myth and legend.

How Gamesmasters in the future may include such a depth of correspondences in Worlds to come is a matter of speculation at the moment, however I am optimistic that such implementations may make a whole new level of experience of Feylandia possible. One in which symbolic correspondences may give rise to a deeper appreciation and understanding of the “inner landscape” of the Invisible Kingdom.

I look for an Interactive Story in which minds may mingle and find strange inklings of Other Worlds amid the myriad of treasures and perils of our rough and tumble Campaign Settings. Ones in which Adventurers in their pursuit of fame and fortune may happen to occasionally also chance upon that rarest and most precious of treasures, ...wisdom.

Death anyone?

I like this GMs treatment of death in his game. NO bones about it, and no mincing during the chopping.  Just ... you made a big mistake - you're dead.

Nice.

Tomb of Horrors Session

I have to admire a GM who is perfectly willing to let the PCs get mowed down like so many blades of grass.  Of course there's a lot of angsty Players out there who will feel horribly crushed if their Characters die.  I know.  But there's another side to the argument which is that ever-present-possibility-of-dying-stupidly makes for smarter better players over time.   Sure, you lose a few while you get the hang of how to Be Careful.  But that's part of the fun of the game.   Somehow, in my experience, those games where we all knew we stood a good chance of getting chopped into tiny bits if we didn't pay attention to what we were doing, and plan carefully, were the more exciting (and oddly educational) experiences.

Most GMs I've played with were too wimpy to let PCs die. So whenever we made a mistake the GM would one way or another find a way to save us from our stupidity.   A hint here, a fudged die roll there, a modified result over there, etc.   After a while we got the idea we were not going to get killed because the Great GM in the Sky was looking out for us.   So we just kept playing stupid.   And in some cases we even played stupider, just because we knew we could. After a while we got bored and those worlds shriveled up and died the death of wimpy worlds.

On the other hand were those Worlds where the GM did not pull punches or save us from ourselves.  And those, as it turns out, were the most exciting, and memorable experiences of all.

So I admire the GM who has the balls to let the Player Characters get themselves killed. Its fun.

Some Thoughts on GMing Great Story

Maighdean-Mhara (the Sea-Maiden)

All went well for three years until one day the young couple were walking by the loch shore again.  This time the monster rose out and it was Finnseang who was dragged under the waters before Murdo Og had a chance to defend her.  Murdo Og was wailing and lamenting his lost bride when an old man walking by asked what was wrong.

Murdo Og told him and the old man said: “I will tell you how you can rescue your wife and destroy the monster forever.  In the center of the loch is an island.  On the Island is a white-footed hind, slender and swift.  If you catch the hind, a black crow will spring out of her mouth and if the black crow were caught, a trout would fall out of her beak, and in the mouth of the trout would be an egg.  Now in the egg is the soul of the monster.  If you crush the egg, the monster will die.”  

When I read this passage I was struck by the simplicity and natural forthrightness of the flow of the story. Here is magic at its most enigmatic, and it is at the same time handled without flourish or frills. We are told that the magic is of a certain nature and we are expected to accept that this is magic of an enchanted realm and that the magic works as such. I liked the matter of fact-ness of the way the scene is described and my feeling is that it is the attributes of simplicity and forthrightness regarding an enigma that makes the story not only work, but moreover, great literature, as is evidenced by its vast longevity.

Then I was thinking about how a Gamesmaster could make such stories.  Is it legitimate, for example, for the Gamesmaster who might be playing out this above described Adventure to show up as the old wise man Non-Player Character with the magical knowledge, and even the exact solution to the problem?  Well, almost it does, but it becomes something of Deus Ex Machina, one feels, and I think we can legitimately question if that would be truly satisfying in a game-play sense.  After all, it is the seeming spontaneity of the events in the story that make them charming.   So how does the Gamesmaster go about creating truly literary quality stories, where the Characters (both Player and Non-Player) act in ways that convey the same kinds of qualities as we find in the fairytales and ancient legends of old?   The author of the ancient stories was able to imbue his tales with a depth of meaning and his characters with a significance that makes them accessible to everyone who reads them, even now after many centuries, though the world has changed so incredibly.  The stories still carry the power to speak to us out of the depths of time.  They still have meaning for us, even if we don't quite understand consciously exactly what they are whispering to our hearts.   This is the nature of Literary Quality stories.  They flow with the currents of an inner and often hidden universal significance.

But in a Role Playing Game it’s hard to achieve this.   Naturally, the author has a great advantage over the Gamesmaster and Players in this regard – for the author every Character is far more likely to do what he wants and expects and directs them to than in an RPG where the Gamesmaster does not control the principal Protagonists (Player-Characters).  It is not far fetched to argue that this fundamental difference makes it much more difficult to achieve truly Great RPG Stories.  However, it can be done, and it’s our job to see that it is done.  The question I keep asking us to consider is, How?

Well there’s so much RPG Theory out there, and yet my feeling about the vast majority of it, in summary, is “hogwash and fiddlesticks”.   Honestly, I do not think we can find the answer to that question via RPG Theory.   What the Theorists seem to wish to do is to establish rules by which RPGs can be made into a Science of Story Creation, but that is more than I think is possible for the Art.   They seem to believe that through rigorous analysis of RPG Players and Gamesmasters behavior (and feelings) can be factually and accurately defined, process flowed, and manipulated, just as a biologist might describe the interactions of a microbe, or a psychiatrist describe a patient’s spiritual epiphany.

But RPG Stories are not subject to this analysis any more than is art or spirituality.   In fact, it really comes down to the fact that you cannot codify the Spirit of Beautiful Art.  As such, I do not believe in a 'Science of the Spirit of Beautiful Art'.  Science is based on facts and measurements, and art is based on intuition and spirit.   You cannot measure intuition and spirit, so there can not be a science of it.  There is a great deal of scientific (or analytic) commentary on Literature, its styles, modes, periods, forms and the myriad of other things that Academics and Scholars like to study.  And all of it is well and good and interesting stuff.  But I think the Ancients went to school to learn the craft of authoring the immortal myths learned that craft in a very different way than what we think of as School today.  The myth-maker was, in the most ancient of times, a Shaman, and his education was obtained by two means.  The first was technical.  He learned the tools of his craft, which were complicated and difficult to learn and use well, with many technical details to be mastered.  But there was another side to their education that I do not think is generally understood today.   And that has to do with the Mythic-Journey.  The entering, spiritually, into the Other World to glean wisdom, and winning such pearls of wisdom, bringing them back to our ordinary world as the gems we have handed down to us in the ancient myths.

The ancient Shaman-Poet-Myth-Maker wrote from the genius of his heart, mind and spirit, and he took the world around him in all of its glory and pain and translated it into words for the sake of creating beautiful art.   I do not believe it was a science of art that made him great.  In fact, were he to have tried to do this via a scientific method (or in our case Gamesmastered according to RPG Theory) I seriously doubt he would have produced the wonders he did.  So that’s my criticism, anti-Intellectual as some people may find it.   Nor do I think we will find that RPG Theory alone can produce Great RPG Story, try as it might.   What I do not find when I read RPG Theory is what I'm seeking - how to create RPG stories that have the qualities of great literature or ancient myth.  There is something deep and profound hidden within and behind the mythos of the ancient stories.  I would like to know how I can bring this quality into my RPG World, and allow my players to experience something similar to what we experience when reading the ancient works of literature.  I do not feel that I will find the answer in RPG Theory as I find it has been discussed thus far.

What I think is required, instead of Analytics, is actual Life Experience.   Gamesmasters who wish to create Great RPG Stories should read great literature in abundance, and learn to distill out from it what makes those works Great Story, or Great Art.   But moreover they should seek to live a life full of experiences that can help them to shape their Inner Vision of the World, and make their inner light gleam with the pearls of wisdom so necessary to creating Meaning in Story. Then they can begin to add elements to their RPG Worlds that may begin to cultivate a landscape in which Great Story has a chance of growing.   It is not an all or nothing thing, but I see it as an evolutionary process.  You simply start with something that has literary qualities, and you keep watering it, cultivating it, and letting it grow with your players until you begin to see that your World bears the fruits of Great Story over time.

Sea-Maiden

Another aspect that I think may be helpful is for the Gamesmaster to learn to develop a vision of the world based on their own life experiences.   To do this requires living a life in which experiences lead to insight.   I recommend this in the same sense that Shamans would head off into the other world via their dreams and obtain wisdom from the spirit world, and bring that back to their community in the form of healing stories.   I read a great book on this named “Coyote Wisdom”, and highly recommend it for Gamesmasters to read and consider.  Spend some time reading the classics and contemplating the stories of the ancient world.  In them you may find hints of Shamanistic experiences from the long forgotten swell springs of inspiration.

Now back to my questions:  How can Gamesmasters and Players create truly literary quality stories via their games?  And really, is it legitimate for the Gamesmaster to show up with the Deus Ex Machina, and for the Players to follow certain pathways pro-forma?  Well yes, sure, of course – it all depends on the timing, the mood, the Players, the phase of the moon, and how many butterfly wings flapped along the beach on the coast of Hawaii in the year 1200 BC.

But I also think that Gamesmasters who have insight, who have through their life experiences obtained a certain wisdom, can, and indeed do, foster Worlds from which Great RPG Stories can emanate.   I am seeking that path, and encourage my friends to do the same, as I believe in that direction Great Story is to be found.   Many say "it is impossible", and "Games can never be art" and other such nonsense.   I don't believe them.   And so I will continue my search, alone, perhaps, but happy in the delusion of my Great Story Dream.

If you care to read the outcome of my latest effort in this direction you may find links to my 2009-2010 Elthos Game Story here.   Enjoy.

Elthos PearlTree

Just a little something I've been toying around with... :)



Maybe it will work? What the heck, I'll try it.

...hmmm... seems to work nicely in Chrome, but in IE7 not so great. Not sure why. Oh well. Nice try. Anyway, I like the base website for PearlTrees. Definitely cool. Embedding, so so. But main site? I like it.

The Sisyphus of Game Designers

- Sisyphus -

One profound lesson that I've learned during the course of this project is that it is really impossible for me to tell how long something is going to take.  A very good example is my current efforts at play-testing my Elthos RPG skills system, taking the feedback I got from my play testers, analyzing it, and then integrating the recommendations.   Wow!   Recommendations finished rolling in last Thanksgiving!   I'm still working on it!  Almost finished, but still!   WOW!   That's a very, very long time!

What took the most time?  The analysis, of course.  Actually, once I determined what needed to be programmed, it was difficult and tedious and time consuming (and not quite finished yet), but in all it did not take that long really.  Only maybe 10 hour stretched over 3 weeks.   That's not too terrible.  If I were not working a day job, and taking Wudan classes (which requires a lot of practice time), a some fascintating but time consuming personal matters, and family & friends, well, of course that 10 hours would have taken maybe 2 days instead of three weeks.  But as it is my calendar is packed solid every day, and so real life has a way of interfering with my fantasy life (of finishing this project in time for my fellow human beings to actually get a chance to try it out, hopefully before the world ends).

But really, it was the Analysis that took most of the time, and I did not expect that.  I should have expected that, but when I got my first set of emails on the skills system the ideas seemed reasonably simple enough to parse through and organize, so I expected the process to take maybe one month.   Hah!   Took a lot longer than that!

One take away from this was that communicating with the Player Testers by email has distinct pros and cons.   The positive side it is easy and the play testers can just jot down their thoughts and send them along very simply.  On the negative side it created a huge mass of emails that had interwoven comments about different facets of the problems (of which there were more than a few interlinked with each other) that had to then be tweezed out into individual (yet related) statements that could be analyzed.  That document in the end turned out to be 11 single spaced pages in MS Word!  Holy Macrel!   Unexpected!   That's what I'd call A LOT of information to analyze.  In case you're interested you can find the analysis on the Elthos RPG Forum here.  All of it, by the way, was really excellent information and feedback, so I'm very happy I have play testers willing to dig in and help me think through the issues!   It's absolutely great!   But it is also time consuming.  Not complaining, just explaining, so don't get me wrong.  I am writing this just as a hint and reminder to those who may also want to program their own game system in the future that these are the kinds of things that you can expect to happen along the way.   I didn't expect them, and so I was surprised.  Maybe you won't be quite as surprised as I've been.   Doubtful, but maybe.

Anyway, of course the analysis in the end distilled down to only a few statements.   And finally, it distilled down to two very simple formulas.  Hah!  The joke is on me that later people will scratch their heads and wonder, Gee - these two formulas are so incredible simple, so basic, so fundamentally no-brainers - what in the world took you so long!?   Next lesson learned:  sometimes to road to simplicity is very circuitous, winding, and torturous.  It was in this case fo'shizzle!

Don't get me wrong, though.  All of this effort was necessary in order for me to derive a simple system that actually balances and hangs together nicely.  It's just that this process of analysis and resolution took me a long time.  Especially when I have to balance the working on the project with my real life.   Were I to live in a cave with no day job, no family, no girlfriend or any friends at all, and a meager supply of food and water, then it would take much less time.   But that, friends, just ain't how my reality is configured.  Nor would I want it to be.  So the result is that ... it's slow.  Maybe if I had a team of top-flight programmer analysts to help me it would also go much faster.  You know, there may just be something to that!   But how to get from here to there?   Clue-free.

Of course, the risk I run is that because I am working on this project pretty much solo end-to-end, with few resources other than my own tiny fingers and a few pretty messed up computers (another reason for the delay was two severe computer crashes that cost me a lot of time), that I will get this project out into the public domain just in time for the sun to go into it's Red Giant phase, and our poor little world will be engulfed in a magnificent sea of scintillating fire.  Well, I hope I can get it finished before then.   That would be nice.

In fact, I hope to have it finished in time for people to try it out sometime soon.  Right now Elthos RPG is actually on the web.   It is in beta test mode.  It works, and does a pretty nice job, but I would also say that it's still got a lot of rough edges that need polishing.   I should probably mention that I started Elthos way back with my original rules system (still inherently intact) in 1978.  I began programming the system in QBasic in 1994.   I then converted over to Visual Basic in 1995 and finished the VB Application in 2000, and then extended and enhanced the application through 2005.   I should also mention that I did manage to play some pretty spectacular games with it over that period of time.  But anyway, I then began working on the simplified rules and Internet application for the "One Die System" which I created for use by the Literary Role Playing Game Society of Westchester in March of 2006.   So now it is an astonishing 2011, and I'm still not finished!  Yowza-Crikey-OMG!!  Good thing this is a really tremendously fun hobby!

Anyway... last lesson:  Keep At It!  It may seem like you'll never achieve your goal sometimes... but if you stick with it, eventually, one day, hopefully before the end of the world, you'll make it.  And then you'll be proud to look back and say, well, no matter how long it took, how difficult the challenges, and how discouraged I may have felt at times, I achieved my goal!  So...

Don't Rush Me!!  I'm working on it!  
hehe... :)

Sincerely,
Sisyphus of Elthos