I Think You Should Leave

Approaching The House

I'm a massive horror and weird-fiction fan but I did not discover Mark Z. Danielewski's novel House of Leaves on my own. It sought me out. When my brother asked me last year if I'd read it, I had no idea what it was. When I looked it up, my first thought was "how on Earth have I not heard of this?". My second thought was "I'm a bit scared to read this."

I'm a believer that books can change your life. They can change your mind, they can even change the way you think. I worried, given this book’s reputation: What sorts of thoughts will I be thinking while reading this? How will I feel after I finish it? If I finish it? I had the sense that this book would be an undertaking beyond the act of simply reading it, itself a significant one given its page count. I doubted my ability to tackle another "Infinite Jest" at this moment in my life, even if it did prove worthy of the comparison.

So I didn't rush to read it. The book drifted to the bottom of my mental TBR, until I found out about You Will Die in This Place, a TTRPG by Elizabeth Little. After hearing about this, what it was, reading it myself and then backing it because it's an incredible piece of work, I realised that The House of Leaves had caught up to me once more. There was no hiding from it any longer. I'd already entered The House.

Looking Around

Within the novel is the story of the relationship between Will Navidson & Karen Green. As a renowned photojournalist and documentary film-maker Will’s workaholic lifestyle has taken priority over their relationship, causing them to drift apart emotionally. As part of a commitment to heal the rift that has opened between them, they move to start a quiet life in suburban Virginia with their two young children Chad & Daisy. They soon discover something unusual and unsettling about their new home however when a mysterious hallway of impossible length appears in it. Will’s documentarian instincts take hold and he quickly becomes obsessed with the hallway which, upon exploration, seems to be infinite: Containing doors leading to other hallways, containing other doors, to still more hallways, on and on and on…

His resulting film - The Navidson Record - becomes the topic of critical, academic and even scientific discussion, analysis and debate. Among them is an elderly blind man, writing under the name Zampano, attempting to compile the definitive account of The Navidson Record. Zampano dies before he can complete his masterpiece but his notes are found by a tattoo artist named Johnny Truant. Already a troubled soul, Johnny’s efforts to complete Zampano’s work lead him to madness, immersed in the terror of the labyrinth within the House on Ash Tree Lane.

Navigating The Hallways

House of Leaves has a reputation for being a difficult book to read. This is due in part to the extensive use of footnotes, exhibits and appendices (consistent with the academic aspirations of Zampano, one of the two primary narrative voices). Additionally - and far less conventionally - the page layout frequently breaks from standard form; changing orientation, line spacing and length and positioning. This makes for, in a literal sense, a difficult read as the natural flow of reading is constantly interrupted to shift focus to a different part of the page, or to a different page entirely, or rotate the book to be able to read the words. It’s disorientating, often surprising, occasionally mystifying. Much like the hallways of the eponymous house itself. In some cases Danielewski uses the layout of the page to literally reflect the geometry of the physical space being described. The top of a descending spiral staircase confined the prose to the top lines of the page, descending over the following pages until the narrative action reaches the bottom, words now flowing along the bottom lines of the page. Likewise movement through a narrowing passageway sees the margins expand, squeezing the description into smaller and smaller rectangles at the centre of the page till at last it's difficult for single words to fit on one line.

It gets pretty wacky in here!

The epistolary storytelling gives the reader the satisfying experience of a story that is being discovered rather than told, establishing a sense of camaraderie with Navidson exploring the hallways, Zampano piecing together his opus on The Navidson Record, and Johnny Truant in turn assembling Zampano’s notes into something cohesive. It also allows for excellent characterisation through voice: There’s a clear distinction between Johnny’s fragmented and desperate notes, at times more like diary entries, at others almost a stream of consciousness; and Zampano’s more considered prose and comparatively subtle eccentricities.

The manner in which horror is created is unusual and effective. The accounts of Johnny Truant will feel familiar to readers of horror and weird fiction. It is clear he is losing his mind and that, somehow, simply from the pages of Zampano’s notes, a malevolent force related to The House has been unleashed upon him. More interesting is the horror that emerges from those notes as we read them. Zampano’s writing frequently breaks from the commonly-held good writing practice of “show, don’t tell”. This is by necessity because he is a) often describing scenes from a film, a primarily visual medium, and b) he is blind and cannot know, for example, what exactly it is about the sight of those hallways that conjured the feelings of dread, threat and menace reported by the primary source witnesses. He can only tell us what others have told him. The scenes are presented in plain language as they were intended to help the reader to imagine the action as literally as possible. It shouldn’t work but it does. Our imaginations fill in the blanks. The monsters in that darkness don’t come from the author but from the reader.

Inward journeys is a strong, if not the prevailing, theme here. Zampano’s frequent references to Greek mythology clearly signposts the space we are in when venturing into the labyrinth of the house’s hallways: We’re travelling into the mythic underworld here, into The Self.  The Navidson Record documents five distinct “Explorations” of the hallway, undertaken by various parties. As these progress they reveal as much about the explorers as they do about the impossible space around them. It’s telling that the first one of them to bring a gun into that space (Holloway, a professional explorer hired specifically for his “rock solid” composure) is the first one to become truly lost within it. By contrast, Navidson’s twin brother Tom (a self confessed screw-up and coward) demonstrates an inner warmth and resilience when he finds himself alone in the darkness, telling bad jokes to the unseen “Mr Monster” he believes to be stalking him.

Discerning Shapes in The Darkness

From the outset I struggled to imagine where the scares were going to come from. What’s scary about a hallway, even if it does go on and on? The book delivers confidently on this front. This is not the scariest book I’ve ever read - the horror is present and compelling but not its greatest strength - but by the middle of the book I was looking at the hallways of my own house differently. It made me particularly more aware of the stairs. The stairway in this book is very frightening.

I found the many many footnotes and appendices ultimately frustrating. More often than not they failed to provide additional information that I found helpful or meaningful. Often enough they pointed to ‘missing’ documents, and so revealed truly nothing. Most commonly they were simply inconsequential, which led me to the conclusion that they probably are, and their presence is intended to firstly establish a sense of credibility and academic pretension to Zampano’s writing and secondly as another pillar reinforcing the sense of the labyrinth. A list of names that runs for several pages is after all not unlike a corridor full of twists and turns and doors to empty rooms. After a while you stop paying attention because there is nothing to pay attention to. It’s valid and I’m certain, intentional, but not much fun to read.

There is some cool stuff in the appendices

By contrast I loved the use of unconventional layouts to describe the spaces inside the labyrinth. It sounds like such a cheap trick but I found it extremely effective. As the word count per page fell away and the white space increased, it really created for me a sense of space going on endlessly. I often found myself smiling in these sections, turning the page like turning a corner to find something I did not expect, another layer of vastness in an unending maze.

Something I Didn't Like

I’m going to be quite uncharitable about Johnny Truant now because overall I did not enjoy my time with him, and there was a lot of it. His story is revealed through his annotations, which digress abruptly into tales of his wild exploits with his friend (a drug-addicted hairdresser, aptly named Lude). In his attempts to escape the insomnia that has taken hold since his discovery of Zampano’s notes, Johnny plunges deeper into drug and alcohol abuse and pursues sex with a pitiable determination. It's clear this is an escalation of an established pattern of bad behaviour but it fails to provide him any sanctuary from the dark presence that hunts him. 

So the tone of his entries veers between the gonzo energy of “Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas”, the wide-eyed horror of a Lovecraft protagonist, and the self-destructive nihilism of a Bukowski inflected douche-bag. At times he had my sympathy, at times I was genuinely curious to find out where his latest shaggy-dog story was leading. Ultimately however I just found him tiresome. 

Other than a steady downward trajectory there is no consequential development for him, and to be honest I found his whole “troubled young man” shtick a bit cliche. Not to mention his womanising: I’m not kidding, he cannot describe a woman without mention of why he finds her sexually appealing, whether she is single (or who she’s seeing if not) and whether or not they had sex (and if they didn’t why not). There is a big clue as to why he is like this, buried in the appendices, in the form of a stack of letters from his mother, who has been mentally unwell for most of his life. But even with this context… To use Johnny’s own words, “So what?” 

The tragic backstory is perhaps an explanation but hardly an excuse, and all to no purpose I could discern. He's no Bunny Munro, but could you imagine that story without Bunny Junior? How pointless it would be? Johnny starts off in a bad place, desperate and wretched, and life only gets worse for him. He learns nothing about himself or whatever force is acting against him. 

Maybe I missed something but I really struggled to find a point to his story in its own right. As part of the whole, it does emphasise the danger of The House, and Johnny’s endless rambling is yet another echo of its endless corridors. But is it necessary? In such volume? If one thing threatened my enjoyment of this book, it was Johnny Truant, and before I’d reached the halfway mark I’d begun to register the incoming walls of Courier New (Johnny’s font) like a bad weather front. Time to stop reading for the night.

The Biggest Surprise

What surprised me the most about the book overall was that at its heart is a story of reconciliation. There are some nihilistic elements here (how could there not be, in a story framed around the exploration of an infinite void) but I believe at its core this is a life-affirming story. There are some excellently observed relationships to be found amongst the characters, especially the Navidson family. There is an authentic messiness to their lives. A true sense of relationships that have already been strained to breaking point, but haven’t broken yet because of the genuine love between them. It's a rare thing to see positive and healthy portrayals of love in any media. So often love (especially romantic love) is mangled and poisoned in service of drama - the same drama that dictates that the doomed individuals must reconcile by the end - by which point reconciliation seems neither likely nor sensible. 

But here we see by stages the frost thaw between Will and his estranged twin Tom who, despite his vices and shortcomings, is a loveable counterpoint to Will’s relentless drive and dedication to his craft. 

Between Will and Karen, we see a couple making the earnest commitment to repair a broken partnership and struggling. Brief moments of intimacy are interspersed with digs at one another disguised as jokes. Ultimatums are laid down, observed, and resented. The paranormal void that appears spontaneously in their home is a brilliant and terrifying allegory for the gap that can open between two people - the more it is explored, the wider it yawns, the deeper it goes. The ordeal pushes them both to their darkest corners, for much of the book it is uncertain what reconciliation is possible, or even desired. 

But those dark corners are where they needed to go. I tend to think of darkness as a creative space. A potential space. In other words, darkness is not the same thing as nothingness. Darkness can contain anything, and the only way we know for sure what is there is to expose it to light, at which point whatever it is has no choice but to exist. At least in that moment. So to face the darkness within yourself is to face what you do not know about yourself. A journey into darkness is a revelatory act.

The resolution, built over 500+ pages, miles of exploration in the cold darkness of the abyss, is surprising and executed with confidence and compassion. It turned out to be a truly moving portrayal of a relationship, leaving me full of hope and more appreciative of the love in my own life.

Make Like a Tree

I could easily see House of Leaves being someone’s favourite book. It certainly left an impression and I’m glad to have read it. Addressing my initial worries about how it might affect me I think I've done ok - as mentioned above I was actually surprised by how much heart and positivity there is to be found amongst the horror, which is also well done.

As for it's notorious difficulty, I'd urge anyone with even a slight interest in reading it not to be put off and give it a go. It's quite an unusual book, at times difficult, yes, but (as Nathan Weinstein succinctly put it in Grant Us Eyes): Art is allowed to be difficult. 

By the same token you are allowed to get fed up with something that's difficult. You are allowed to take a break and see if you feel like going back to it later. Keeping this in mind I never felt like I had to push myself to pick this book back up. It's a feat of storytelling to instil enough curiosity in a reader to lead them through a long story; it's something quite special to leave them with hope. And that's worth quite a lot, I'd say.

-Till Next Time!

An Adventure Site for Break!! RPG

I run a fortnightly D&D game for a group of 9-12 year olds (they might actually be 10-13 year olds at this point - time flies!). Our current adventure was running out of steam so I decided to wrap it up early and suggest a few different RPGs. They were all really taken by the art for Break!! RPG, so we quickly settled on that for our next game! I’ve run a short adventure for Break!! once before and had a blast with it, so I’m excited to be coming back to it.

I wanted to use the opportunity to have another go at using the tools in the book to create an adventure, to get more used to them. So this post is an adventure site I've made for the adventure using pretty much only the tools in the book.

The jist is that an ancient temple has been taken up as the stonghold of a skelemaster. The characters might be drawn here as a result of encountering the skelemen forces patrolling the area, or they might have learned about the treasure to be found at the temple's inner sanctum. The site also features a teleportation 'puzzle': Hard to reach areas can be easily accessed by teleport gates from a central location; the catch is that the gates require activation stones to function, and some of them are missing!

The Temple of Arches

• A crumbling obsidian shrine used by the Dragon Elders in times past.
• Nothing grows here, the whole site is a desolate ruin.
• Now the lair of a newly arisen Skelemaster, Ser Dracomere.

Villain: Ser Dracomere

• Imperious but deluded Skelemaster (p406) once a Dragon Knight of this temple.
• Believes himself the rightful ruler of the surrounding area (his realm).
• Uses the temple as a stronghold to enforce and expand his authority.
• Wears a black stone pendant in the shape of Umbra Draconis (opens door to 3)
• Armed with
• Dragon Glaive (Master-Arc Combination Weapon)
• Drakescale Plate (Heavy Armour, Magnificent)
• When dealing with strangers he:
• Demands fealty, seeing all as his subjects.
• Is interested in any intelligence on threats to his realm.

Wandering Encounters

• Locations 1-4: 4 patrolling Skelemen
• Locations 5-8: 1 Tiny Unhelpful Cloud (generated by the Skelemage's misery)

The Temple of Arches

Locations

1) ENTRANCE

• Remains of a gatehouse, stone ruins sunken in the dry dirt
• Ambush: Bones everywhere, 6 Skelemen waiting to ambush any who approach
• Access: Stairs at the base of the central black tower to 2.
• Access: Across the campus to 4.

2) DRAKESTONE TOWER

• A glossy black triangular Tower with stairs carved into the sides.
• At the top is an exposed platform, no wall or battlement. A stone arch faces each of the gates at the points of the triangle. Each archway has space for a circular stone at its apex. Inserting the Brightstone, Darkstone or Twilightstone allows anyone to teleport to the corresponding gate by walking through the arch.
• Access: At the midpoint of the stairs there is a handsized impression of Umbra Draconis, the last dragon, carved into the stone. If the Dragonstone (worn on a pendant by Ser Dracomere) is inserted here, a stone panel slides up to 3. (the interior of the Tower)
• Access: Via arch to 5. (The Brightstone is inserted)
• Access: Via arch to 7. (The Darkstone is missing (see 4))
• Access: Via arch to 8. (The Twilightstone is missing (see 6))

3) UMBRAL SHRINE

• Sacred inner sanctum venerated by the Dragon Elders of old.
• Torches burn with dark light, the smell of pinewood burning, the shrine is built around a drake skull.
• The treasures and riches of the Dragon Elders (now Ser Dracomere’s) are hoarded here.
• 5 Gems and 50 Coins
• Holy Icon (p180) in the shape of a purple draconic circlet.

4) RUINED TOWER

• Crenelations of crumbling battlements like broken teeth, all that remains of this fallen tower.
• A green mist hangs ominously inside the perimeter, no one can breathe in the mist (Suffocated p457).
• The Darkstone is hidden amongst the debris.

5) BRIGHTSTONE GATE

• A circle of runes glowing with green light surrounds the gate.
• Leaving the circle triggers the alarm bell at 6.
• Interfering with the runes from within the circle can break the enchantment.
• Access: via battlement to 6.

6) THE HIGH TOWER

• Watchtower used by the skelemen under Ser Dracomere's command.
• 1 miserable Skelemage and 2 Skelemen on guard here. 
• Skelemage: Rank 2 Boss with Sage's Staff (p59) and Eldritch Explosives (p63)
• Alarm bell here can be triggered from 5 and 7.
• A chest beneath the alarm bell contains The Twilightstone.
• Access: via battlement to 5.
• Access: via battlement to 7.

7) DARKSTONE GATE

• A circle of runes glowing with green light surrounds the gate. 
• Leaving the circle triggers the alarm bell at 6.
• Interfering with the runes from within the circle can break the enchantment.
• Access: via battlement to 6.

8) TWILIGHTSTONE TOWER

• Floating tower, a faint purple glow pulses beneath it. 
• Near the gate, a spiral stairway leads down into the tower.
• Inside is the hall of Ser Dracomere. He pores over an outdated map of his realm, tracking movements of intruders.
• The mana crystal keeping the tower aloft is suspended in a shaft of purple light. Removing it will cause the tower to fall.

That's all for this one, till next time!

Warrior, Hunter, Bard, Druid

One of the design goals I've set myself for Legends of Alba is a single resolution mechanic. A lot of TTRPGs have a completely separate resolution system for combat. I want combat to be a feature, but I don't want it broken out into its own thing as I think that puts an undue emphasis on it and slows the game down.

At the minute the resolution for LoA is handled by Tests. There are 4 Ability Scores - called Talents - which are: Might, Agility, Awareness & Charisma (or Spirit, names are still changing).

When it comes to fighting, characters would use their best stat, representing their fighting style. My thinking there is that this allows for player expression in describing how their character fights. But it requires a little explanation to get to.

Separately though, not represented anywhere in the rules for the game, I have four character archetypes in my head when I think about LoA : Warrior, Hunter, Bard, Druid.

"The Chief Druid" from "Mona Antiqua Restaurata", 1723 (public domain)

I always liked how Knave 2E describes its Ability Scores in relation to Character Classes (though it doesn't feature Character Classes at all!). So for example it'd describe Strength as The Fighter Ability, Dexterity as The Thief Ability etc.

Bumbling around online I came across Warrior, Rogue, Mage which uses goes a step further and just using those 3 class names as the Ability Scores. I felt something click. Is it more intuitive if I just use those 4 archetypes as the Ability Scores? Let's see!

The point I'm trying to get to is a minimal set of stats that would allow us to resolve the broadest range of situations that might come up.

It'd be crazy to try and list everything that might come up. So I'll take a look at other games that use Skills and see how these match up.

I play a lot of D&D so it's always an easy benchmark for ideas like this. D&D uses skills to represent a broad range of challenges that Characters might face during a fantasy role playing game. So can we map D&D skills to our 4 archetypes?

• Warrior: Athletics, Intimidation
• Hunter: Acrobatics, Stealth, Perception, Survival, Investigation
• Bard: Sleight of Hand, History, Deception, Performance, Persuasion 
• Druid: Arcana, Religion, Nature, Insight, Medicine, Animal Handling

We kinda sorta can! It's not an even spread, the Warrior is a bit light but that was the one I was least concerned about. Tests of physical might come up often enough.

So how would I describe these as abilities? What's the remit of each?

• Warrior Tests are for feats of strength, endurance, and martial skill.
• Hunter Tests are for awareness, precision and for moving quickly and quietly.
• Bard Tests are for performance, negotiation and guile.
• Druid Tests are for intuition, willpower and communication with nature.

I think that works. The Druid is tricky. My idea of what a Druid is in this setting is clear in my head but hard to describe. My intention with the point about communication with nature is for things like settling a frightened beast, judging if the dark clouds are signs of incoming storm, identifying plants... and I'm already having to be careful here. Generally I don't want players to be rolling to see if their Character knows something. That's something the player and GM agree as questions come up based on the Character's Homeland, Heritage and Service. So the question of "Can I tell if this plant is poisonous?" shouldn't really be answered by a Druid Test: If they're a Blacksmith from a different Kingdom, then it's a no; but if they're a Forager then it's a yes.

My Druid example of predicting incoming weather also sounds dangerously more like a special power the Druid has than an ability which every Character possesses to a greater or lesser degree. And that highlights probably my main concern with using class names is that these bring baggage with them from other games. Players might expect that because they have a high Warrior stat they should be getting abilities like Second Wind or Action Surge. As demonstrated I've already found myself thinking along those lines.

That said: I quite like this. I'm not sure if I like it enough to say this is the way I'm going but I wanted to use this post to put the idea out there and get me thinking about it.

Till next time!

Bells & Machines

I've maybe let this one brew too long but I wanted to lay out my thoughts on generative AI. Does it belong on this blog, which is mostly about TTRPGs and game design? Yes.

TLDR: I don't like generative AI and I'm going to take a long time trying to explain why by talking about Bloodborne.

Bloodborne has an obtuse multiplayer feature. In most games, opening up a session and inviting players to join you is done via a menu. It makes sense to at least try to simplify a complicated thing. Bloodborne (and actually all of From Software's "Souls" games) doesn't do it this way and instead uses in-world items. It takes a complicated thing and makes it more complicated. If you've played the game, this is pretty on-brand.

Here's how it works: Players can open their world to collaborators by ringing their Beckoning Bell. Players who are open to collaboration signal this by ringing their Resonant Bell. The Beckoner does not know who they are calling out to. Likewise, the Resonant Bell-Ringers don't know who they are answering. Neither the call nor the response cares who hears them, so long as they might be heard. And of course they might never be heard. It's an indirect, unreliable and anonymous process that, nonetheless, connects people.

Bloodborne (2015, FromSoftware), image from 
https://www.bloodborne-wiki.com/2015/03/co-op.html

This disjointed call and response is a bit like what happens when you make something and put it out into the world. And by something I mean anything like a story you wrote or a photo you took or a game you made. You don't know who will find it. Maybe no-one will. Of those who do, you don't know who will like it. You don't know who it will resonate with. Maybe no-one.

But maybe someone will stumble across this thing you made and realise with astonishment that this is speaking in their language, these are shapes they recognise, this is a song they feel like they already know. They resonate with the thing and, though you might never meet or even know this has taken place, they've resonated with you.

Why is that important?

It's important because you are you. There's no one else like you! You have a unique "you-ness" comprised, to a massive extent, by the thoughts in your head. These are a product of an unquantifiable and unreproducible series of events and circumstance (time, place, experiences, influences etc) peculiar to you and only truly known to you.

No one can look inside your head and see your thoughts. So in order to share them with anyone you have to go through a process of expression. There are lots of different forms of expression for you to choose from. You might even be expressing something through your choice of method! But whatever form it takes, the goal of expression is the same: You are taking a thought that was in your head and trying to show it to another person.

Even via the seemingly simple method of conversation, this is not easy. You have to choose words to represent your thoughts and say them to the other person. You've no way of knowing for sure if what you've said and how you've said it means the same thing to them as it did to you. So you might go back and forth, you might agree or disagree but generally what you are striving towards is understanding. When that has been achieved, you might just have performed something incredible. You might just have shared something of your "you-ness" with the outside world.

All of the above is a very laboured description of the act of communication. It's my hope though that describing it like this conveys my belief that communication is a creative act. Humans are social animals, communication is necessary to our survival. It's a creative skill that we practise daily, so what I'm trying to say here is that humans are also creative beings.

I'm also trying to say that this is what art is. It's not fine art, it's not classic literature, it's not a symphony: It's everyday human stuff. It's people trying to put something that was in their head out into the world in the vague hope that it might be understood. The Beckoning Bell seeking Resonance.

And if and when that resonance miraculously happens, there's the connection. To a time and a place that existed. To a real live person who made whatever this thing is. What an amazing thing this is that we can do - we can reach out to one another across centuries and vast distances of space. As long as art survives, not even death can stop us from reaching out to one another.

So with all of that in mind what, then, is the point of art that was made by nobody? That expresses nothing? Connects you to noone?

None whatsoever.

If we outsource creativity to AI, we are giving up our voice. We are giving up on communication with and understanding of one another, our thoughts imprisoned and unknown, our inner selves doomed to solitary confinement.

I would like to continue existing outside of myself. I I want my world and the worlds of others to remain open, always, to cooperators. So I will continue to ring the Beckoning Bell, and continue to seek resonance.

-Till next time!

Tabletop Scotland 2025

Our second year attending Tabletop Scotland and a fantastic time was had!

I got a sneaky peak at a preview copy of Carved in Stone, the upcoming Pictish source book from Stout Stoat. I've been following this project since 2021 so to see it this close to it's release in November was really exciting as it's been a big inspiration for Legends of Alba! 

My wife got a full colour drawing of her Legends of Alba character, Mitha Seawolf, done by Tanya Roberts at Blue Bottle Ink. Tanya was there all weekend doing drawn to order commissions! Lovely person to have met and her work is awesome!

Between us we came away with a bunch of new games and books, here are my highlights: 

Doomsong by Caesar Ink - God is dead, the apocalypse looms! This one drew me in with it's grim line art, Mordew vibes and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style character creation system. I've had a chance to try out the character creator and can confirm it's great fun! The book actually includes sheet music for the Doomsong, or you can sing the other doom song.

 

Goblin Country by Biscuit Fund Games - GM-less, diceless RPG where you play as the Goblin camp plotting against the human settlements for a change! Character Creation is a playbook style, with representing a goblin archetype characterised by a set of Weak Moves (unhelpful action
s you can perform to gain 'tokens') and Strong Moves (helpful actions you can perform which require and use 'tokens'). Really like this as a design space to explore!

Rising Star Championship Edition 2025 by Dog Petrol - this was a bit of a gamble to try out something a bit different! It's a co-operative RPG where players help a rising sports star achieve their goals. So you might play as the star, or their coach, or their number one fan. The catch is that you each take turns playing as the Heel - their rival trying to mess everything up! It's a small book but it's got some really helpful examples, and great random tables for prompts, including some for making up your own weird sport! A great candidate for a one-shot if ever I saw one! 

Tabletop Scotland is such a great event that we'll definitely be back next year. I said it last year and missed the boat but I'm also going to try and be more organised this time round as well to get myself signed up for running something! We'll see how that goes!

Till next time!

Inspiration: The Buried Giant

Kazuo Ishiguro's mythic fantasy tale takes place in an imagined past, in which a strange mist has settled over the British Isles, causing everyone to lose their memories. The story follows an elderly couple named Axl and Beatrice who set out from the safety of their underground village in search of their adult son. Dangers await them in the form of monsters and strange folk roaming the wilds. They also find allies in a Saxon warrior named Wistan and in Sir Gawain, the last knight of King Arthur's court. Axl & Beatrice's journey to reach their son's village leads them to discover the true nature of the mist itself, and puts them in the position to bring about an end to it. As they come closer to achieving this, we are invited to consider along with them what it means to remember and to forget, to hold on and to let go, to persevere and to resign.

I loved this story. Ishiguro’s clear and simple language leads you confidently through the tale. There’s a care and gentleness to his storytelling which (as with Never Let Me Go) does nothing to detract from the hardship or distress of the events being described. He also tackles the mythic fantasy genre as faithfully and yet innovatively as his treatment of the Kafkaesque in The Unconsoled. Much of the world is discovered by characters asking questions of one another, lending a dream-like quality to the landscape as it emerges from the mists. Characters are met along the way who seem familiar and yet are not decisively revealed as a new or returning character, hinting at the narrative warping of stories told and retold through oral tradition till they are written down at last. This occurs even between characters in the story, with both Wistan and Sir Gawain recalling memories of Axl himself that might not quite align but equally could both be true. Archetypes too are well used, with Knights, Hags and Ogres simultaneously subverted and permitted to resonate with their forebears in every story that’s come before. Achieving this balance of the vague yet evocative is extremely hard to do without plunging an exciting tale into the realm of inconsequential, disjointed nonsense - and it’s struck perfectly here. 

A key component of this balance is the anchor of Axl and Beatrice throughout. One of the most compelling elements of their journey is the early-asked question of whether love can exist without the anchor of memory. They are tested by doubt and fear throughout, and when presented with the path to dispel the mist and regain their memories, have quite different views on whether they should. It is telling on both their characters that Axl, afraid to confront their memories since they seem content in their present, refers constantly to his wife as ‘princess’ while Beatrice, desperate to remember what’s been lost, no matter what it is, calls Axl ‘husband’. Axl, though fearful of the past, still lives firmly in it. Beatrice meanwhile, though suffering far more from the physical frailties of age, shows perhaps a greater strength here.

They do however have faith in their promise to one another, not only to find their son, but in their commitment to one another. This, together with their moment to moment kindness to one another, account for some of the most touching scenes in the book. In the face of their fading memories, Axl and Beatrice’s love learns to live in the active present and potential future.

As a shadow to this love at the centre of the story, there is a pervasive sense of ending. The faded grandeur of Sir Gawain, the frailty of Axl and Beatrice themselves, the giant cairns that loom from the mist: It’s a story that is saying goodbye. Goodbye to the last remnants of magic in the world, goodbye to the Britain that came before Britain, perhaps even a goodbye to life itself. Somehow even this darker element landed for me as a life affirming one because even with the sense of loss, there is one of acceptance and dignity. There's a natural order of things at work here. Standing in the way of that, clinging on to what should be let go, can only lead to the wasteland. The ending, though ambiguous (perhaps even because of its ambiguity), has stuck with me since I finished reading. It’s one that I truly hope does not fade into the mists.

Till next time!

Mythic Bastionland Without Knights?

I’ve been running games in the Legends of Alba setting since January last year. Under the hood of these ostensibly 5e games though, the engine that has been doing the real work has been the World Prep and Travel procedures from Mythic Bastionland. These are excellent - they’re lightweight and evocative and I find them intuitive to run. The game has been at its best when the player characters have been journeying between destinations on the Kingdom map, encountering the Augurs of the Legends, seeking out Hags for advice, or negotiating clan politics. Seek the Myths, Honor the Seers, Protect the Realm… where have I heard that before?

The Mester Stoor Worm,
from my copy of "The Lore of Scotland",
Westwood & Kingshill

Taking stock of where I’m at with Legends of Alba as a project, I’m reconsidering whether this setting might best be expressed as a ‘module’ for Mythic Bastionland. If I wrote up the Clans like Knights, and the Legends as Myths (which they pretty much are already), would that ‘just work’?

Let’s see. What needs to change?

Clans instead of Knights

Player Characters are called from the clans to answer the Legends. The clans are also effectively the NPC factions that the Characters will be dealing with. Clans are ruled by Chiefs. Druids advise the Chiefs in terms of The Law of The Land, Bards chronicle and spread word of a Chief’s deeds, while Warriors lead their warband. 

 Knights in MB are expected to uphold their Oaths, which elevates them from the vassals but places a burden of responsibility upon them. There’s a great line in the book that they ‘rely on their arms, but are expected to know the customs of peace’. 

The clans of Alba meanwhile are all about finding the balance between civilization and nature. They are dependent on their harsh but beautiful land for survival. They also walk a line between prioritising the self and the community, embodied by the Chiefs, whose ambition can get the better of their sense of duty. 

Hags instead of Seers

The Seers are one of my favourite parts of MB, but are more morally ambiguous than the Hags of Alba. Both fulfil an important role - a hermit that players can seek out for information that not everyone has access to. But while the Seers are intended to provide an optional extra level of conflict to the game (their motivations are not always aligned to the PCs), the Hags of Alba embody the link between mortal folk and The Otherworld, as they have one foot in each. Like Seers, they are able to glimpse the past, present and future, making their advice tend towards the cryptic. But what they offer is Truth to those who seek it, and they aim to steer mortals towards equilibrium with the land and, by extension, The Otherworld.

Just Works?

So if we take Mythic Bastionland and swap Knights, Seers, Myths and The City for Clans, Hags, Legends and The Otherworld, do we get Legends of Alba? And are those two meaningfully distinct? To the first, I think so. To the second, I hope so! I had a go at writing up one Clan and one Legend just to try it on for size. It was good fun, so at the moment I’m thinking it would be worth writing more. If I can get up to 12 Clans and 12 Legends, that’d be enough for a test game I think! 

 Till next time!