Appears-Book-Isms

Here's how it probably starts.

There's a slip between the input and the output of the Gamemaster-In-The-Middle. The adventure writer communicating to the GM says "This appears to be a worn stone stairway leading down, but really is a sloping passage floored with the sticky illusion-casting tongue of a Deceptive Devourer, the rest of which lurks in wait in room 15 of the next level." The GM then communicates to players,  "You see what appears to be ... an old set of stone steps leading down into the darkness." Or consulting the "appears" synonym book, "seems," "looks like," "apparently is," et al.

Who knows why they do this, but two reasons come to mind. It could just be literal-mindedness, relying on the words in the description to craft a speech to the players. It could also be a reflex of honesty; the inner moral angel balking at saying there "is" a flight of stairs leading down when it just isn't true. Whatever the reason, it becomes immediately clear to the players that using "appears"-isms in this way is a giveaway that something funny is up.

Now, there's still time for you, the GM, to repent of your folly. Realize that your job is only to describe reality as it appears at any given time to the players. A successful deception will appear with the full force of reality;  "is," actually, is fully appropriate.

But in some games I've seen, the GM instead takes the left-hand path, doubling down on "appears"-ism by applying it as a decoy to things that aren't deceptive at all.

"What seem to be some mushrooms are growing from the dung heap." (They're just mushrooms.)
"There are some humanoids approaching. They appear to be orcs." (And they are.)
"A stream of what looks like clear water flows from the left wall to the right." (PSYCH! It's acid, save or take 4d6!!)

In any case, "appears"-ism usually gets left by the wayside when the players enter safe surroundings. Or at least imagine this:

You find what appears to be the same trail leading back to the village through superficially familiar birch and fir trees. After walking a distance that feels similar to the distance you took to get there, you see what may very well indeed be the buildings of the village. You go to a low house that looks very much like your inn. A hot meal for five is seemingly brought out within what feels like minutes by the self-styled innkeeper, who closely resembles the man you remember from this morning. Pewter-look plates apparently are sitting on what looks like a table, with a liquid having the appearance of ale in a ceramic-like pitcher. The "plates" are heaped with putative sausage and ostensible beans ...

This, I think you'll agree, is a Brechtian alienation effect gone too far; it turns the game into an exercise in Plato's Cave or radical philosophical solipsism. Whenever appears-speak is used, it will keep the players vaguely tipped-off and on guard, lending a hallucinatory aspect to the proceedings.

But I'm not sure it's necessary to use such a blunt instrument to get that effect -- shouldn't players naturally be wary in the dungeon? And more to the point, how do you really spring the classic "innkeeper-is-a-werewolf" surprise when you telegraph safe and dangerous areas so obviously?

In conclusion, there can only be one response to an environment described through "appears"-book-isms ...

"I DISBELIEVE!"

Adversity Overload

Put together unicorns, rainbow colors, pixies, moonlight and mountains and sparkles and mystery.

Art by PristineDream on Deviantart.com

Does this fit the description of dungeon adventure kitsch? Not really. This picture may be fantasy overload but it's not dungeon overload because it lacks the element of adversity - or mortal menace and danger. Adversity is what you overload to stress the element of fantasy adventure.

There's a paradox in the ways adversity can be overloaded: either by leaning on obvious signifiers of danger, or by creating an environment where danger is concealed everywhere so that the lack of danger also signifies danger. Let's consider the obvious first.

Skulls on mountains (more the merrier...)

From the D&D cartoon

Snakes and daggers on skulls (tattoo flash by Hamera@deviantart):

Swords on seats ...

Spikes, spiders, sharks, crags, blades, fangs, claws, boulders, chasms, chains, bones, wolves, dragons, fire, lava, ice, lightning, lasers ... Adversity!

Now, the other way to overload adversity has something to do with this meme going around (first spotted in the hands of Jack Holt):

Why is Westeros not somewhere you'd want to go? Because unlike the other two worlds, there is no safe and cozy space there. Adversity is part of adventure, of course, but things become overloaded when it starts to appear everywhere, when players start to take it in and see it everywhere.

Adversity kitsch fuels the killer DM legends, the elaborate traps, the "Gotcha" monsters built to subvert and punish rational player behavior. Most of all it overloads deception to create omnipresent threat in adventure design, endlessly repeated in the kind of adventure-hook cheap heat where the inn is really run by werewolves, the farmhouse is really the head of a demon, the friendly talking badger is the charmed sock puppet of the arch-lich conspiracy, and the treasure, folks, is cursed.

So adversity overload taken to the extreme would present you with this ...

Which is just an illusion, luring you in to this:

And the change in character art after 2000 or so? From facing adversity, character designs now project adversity. Today they bristle with spikes and flanged armor-blades and energy auras, whereas before they were just poor working stiff adventurers plunged into Lava Skull Mountain. But this is all by way of getting at the next and final building block of dungeon kitsch: Awesomeness ...

Gotcha World

The "Gotcha" mentality of the Original Adversarial Game Referee is responsible for more than one in thirty-six monsters in the AD&D Monster Manual ... between mimics, lurkers, trappers, rust monsters, ear seekers, rot grubs, jackalweres (my high school dungeon had one who used the not very clever pseudonym Jack Alwere), other lycanthropes, dopplegangers, rakshasas ... later books and editions continuing the trend on well into the zone of sheer awfulness. Add to the "Gotcha!" factor all the cursed items, tricks, traps, perma-spells and situations, and we have a clear candidate for one of my thirty-six genre tables. You don't even get a verb. Just GOTCHA!

May I also remind you that the tedious process of rolling d20 on each of the three (well, here, two) columns of the table has been automated, and the results added to a gigantic generator including all (by now) 24 genre tables, on this perma-page. One, two, three ...

"Petrified tree trunk taming dubious oracular advice."
"Sasquatch living with illusion of ruins."
"Ogre mage healing a shaft to the surface."

Did I mention you should feel free to change the verb? Either that, or live happily with surrealism.

Vanceburgs, for Jack

News of Jack Vance's passing, a few days delayed, is now hitting the old-school gaming sphere. Although I could wax in already-waxed ways about his fantasy, his science fiction, or for the n-teenth time about the vision of magic in his Dying Earth novels, there's a less obvious way his fiction has influenced the world of my campaign games.

In whatever genre, Vance's fantastic fiction excelled in the creation of a specific kind of society which I'll call the Vanceburg. Assembling some elements from Robin Laws' analysis of Vance's fictional elements in the Dying Earth roleplaying game, the Vanceburg merges "Strange Customs" with a "Crafty Swindle." Specifically:

1. The community projects a fraudulent myth to outsiders and visitors.
2. The myth is shrouded in some obscure custom or activity.
3. The custom or activity is presented as advantageous to outsiders.
4. This is not the case; a situation of exploitation obtains, in which outsiders are easily ensnared.

Vanceburgs from the Dying Earth novels are legion, but include the gruesome ponzi scheme of the rat-men; the town of Vull, where Cugel is set on watch for Magnatz; and Master Twango's scale mining operation. The Planet of Adventure series arguably describes a series of Vanceburgs, from society-scale to the intimate scam of the eel-race at the end of Chasch. In Lyonesse, one is reminded of fish dishes sold at a "seasonal price."

In my own game, the memorable Vanceburg was the far northern town of Parmentell, peopled by bluff merchant factors  and evasive townsfolk, and dominated by a secretive citadel. The authorities' constant fees, levies, regulations and imprecations lent a Vancian air to the proceedings. The town billed itself as a prime base for adventuring parties to hunt the secret stores of purple worm ivory and even the Purple Worm Graveyard itself, scattering maps throughout the realms.

In reality, few adventuring parties found any ivory, but their activities concealed the actual source of the town's wealth, for the Graveyard itself lay underneath the citadel. The mysterious ceremonies were actually farewells to desperate citizens daring to descend to this vast cavern, which promised unimaginable wealth but also speedy death at the hands of lesser worm guardians and worse. Thus, a double-tiered Burg, with the townsfolk persuaded that their knowledge of the truth and chance at upward mobility gave them an advantage over the visiting rubes.

While the Vanceburg is at high risk of being overturned in one way or another by its perceptive visitors - and my campaign was no exception - I should also mention an inversion-variation on the theme that sometimes pops up in the Vance corpus. In this concept, the inhabitants of a place have themselves become deluded by their own myth, and so ripe for upending, exploitation, or outright robbery by the canny interloper. Shining examples are the villagers of Smolod who lived in the paradise granted them by the cusps of the Overlord, or the pilgrims of Gilfig on whom Cugel practiced a memorable deception. The Burgvance, perhaps?

Although I've shied away from this kind of adventure plot because it seems too easy, I'm sure it could be put to work, with the primary risk being the awakening of the inhabitants themselves ... Perhaps this is a good way to tone down the threat of monsters stronger than the party can defeat toe to toe. Imagine a society of hallucinating minotaurs, or a revival tent meeting of altruistically deluded mind flayers?