Skulls, Crossbones, and Gray Morality

Let's talk about necromancers for a bit.

Most often, they appear in works of fantasy as enemies. Skeleton hordes, liches, creepy stone crypts with limited light. It's easy to do this, because they use something all mortals are, by design, afraid of- death. They hold it, think about it, experience it in more meaningful ways than we ever can- and it's creepy, dude! Corpses are meant to stay dead, not come back up.

At the other end of the spectrum, clerics, and sometimes angels (or archons, or seraphim, or what have you) rule over the light domain. Heal other, turn undead, cure disease... how cool is that? They are represented as being "good," because we like people who keep us alive.

The obvious dichotomy is white and black. Death, darkness, and ichorous sludge are all black. These are deathly, evil things. Sunlight, life, and clouds are all white- it's easier for us to think of them as being "good," and attractive.

I swear I'm not racist. It's just really hard to discuss good and evil without mentioning the color palettes.

Good: White, gold, blue

Evil: Black, red, green

All of these elements, put together, make a very simple map of two domains. "Us" and "Them." To date, every video game I've played follows that same color scheme. Bright lights, gold armor, and occasionally fire means "ally," whereas dark colors, black robes, and skulls means "enemy." The average gamer can make a quick association without even having to read about it.

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My first introduction to necromancy was Guild Wars. Right next to the other classes, the Necromancer specialized in making thralls, casting hexes, and causing long-term poison damage. Obviously, I had to try it out. The gameplay was satisfying, but what I found most interesting was the NPCs and placement for class trainers. They dress like it's Halloween in Hot Topic, makeup consists of bone-white skin with black and red highlights, and the armor looks mildly like fetish-ware with metal plates. Add to this: a constant juxtaposition to churches, graves, crypts, dark trees, etc, and you have a stereotypical "bad guy" schema-

-Except, they're your friends, and a great addition to the human resistance in the land. Isn't that odd? One comment I remember well from a low-level trainer went like this (paraphrased): "People get scared by the skulls, and candles. We're still people, fighting for the lives of our families. We just do it a little differently."

I never played far enough to beat the final boss- a dread lich with crazy-powerful necromantic abilities.

In a cinematic sense, the contrast would have been huge. Two necromancers, raising zombies, casting curses, for entirely different reasons- one for life, one for death. A light soul and a dark soul, fighting a dark war for the fate of the world. Epic.

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Speaking of dead bodies, let's put the clerics on the stand. Anyone who uses a resurrection spell, and says it's okay because it's a positive-energy spell, is such a hypocrite.

A cleric gets a body. They put their hands on it, say a few prayers, and the dude jumps up, ready to go. Yay!

A necromancer gets a body. They prepare an apparatus, wait for some lightning, put a few alchemical ingredients in the corpse, say a few spells, and the dude jumps up, ready to go. Boo!

It's the exact same thing. Well, not exact- the necromancer knows what's happening, enough to perform the entire activity by themselves. A cleric just channels power from beyond, into the corpse. They get to remain blissfully ignorant, not knowing if it's aetherial stardust or ground-up souls of the damned being used to reanimate their comrade. And who gets all the praise? That's right- the cleric. Oh, wait, cleric's don't accept gratitude. They'll redirect you to their god, and say a few prayers.

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On a certain level, I can sympathize with the layman's interpretation. A cleric brings back a whole person, historically. That person has enough free will to go berserk and kill their would-be savior, if they so choose. A necromancer brings back a mindless thrall, historically. A corpse, little more than a robot, destined to process commands and perform mundane/extreme actions on behalf of their manipulator.

It's an easy stigma to carry on. But how about the reverse? Putting myself in the place of the average necromancer, I'd much rather bring people back to life as themselves. Spare no expense, and never sacrifice a living person to bring back a dead one. Rules and standards are important.

I believe in a world where necromancer's aren't necessarily praised, but do garner a certain amount of respect. It's a dark, dirty, bloody art- not dissimilar to modern surgery. Someone who is, or would be dead, goes in. Someone who is alive and well comes out. The ultimate healing spell. The king doesn't have to die of a heart attack. And, it's a god-free solution to something normally in a cleric's realm, vaguely like druids.

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I'm not asking for necromancers to be brought in to the light, and embraced. That just feels wrong, on so many levels- cinematically, historically, culturally, and chromatically. The dark cannot exist in the light. I am, however, asking for a little leeway to look into alternatives, and perhaps dabble in the... less understood parts of life, namely death. Necromancy, in almost any magical setting, has an important place- and I think the players should definitely see its positive sides. Have some good with your bad.

Now, if anyone needs me, I'll be wearing a hoodie, blasting Death Metal, and trying to cure my friend's leprosy in my basement. Paladins, and other light-domain bigots not welcome.

Foreshadowing, and Brand Identity

I suppose the first introduction to Foreshadowing I had was Chekhov's Gun. From Wikipedia:

"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun

By this logic, everything deliberately "shown" will play a role of some kind. A giant, monolithic tower that dominates the city skyline will almost certainly have a rooftop battle, or fly off into space. The really, really, really sketchy guy is probably going to screw you. The grubby, dirty people living at street level are mostly there for set dressing- until the skyscraper takes off, then mayhem takes place.

To this end, it's easy to get frustrated by stories which show off a lot, without letting the players do anything. We've all heard the line. "But those other guys, who do that one thing, were so cool- why can't we have a movie about them?" That's a failure on the part of the writer/director/GM to show, not tell.

Like everything else, I have to recognize there's a sliding scale. After the nuclear apocalypse, someone mentions Chicago disappearing off the map. Well, we get it. It's gone, and everything sucks- not enough attention was brought to it to make it worthwhile.

For example, what about the wall pegs Chekhov's Gun rests on? Those certainly don't need to be involved in the story- nothing interesting could happen from those.

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A colleague pointed out to me how rare foreshadowing is in real life. "Things just happen," was the quote I remember; and it's true. Conversely, I can't help but hold my instincts close- I love foreshadowing. It feels natural in a lot of cases, and I sweat nervously if I think of a story without it.

I asked a bit further, and made an important distinction: My foreshadowing, and her's, were subtly different.

Her idea of foreshadowing was, to me, more like a puzzle. X is odd, Y is odd, and... oh shit! X and Y happened because of (or lead up to) Z! It's a lot like a Hardy Boys novel, where there's a very definitive cause-and-effect relationship.

My idea of foreshadowing goes a little bit back. I like mixing irony into it, to give a more dramatic (at the price of realistic) event. The aliens, who happen to be bulletproof, can only be killed by something as dangerous as a single word, elegantly written. The son, who loathes his father, will eventually become him. The clock, which has been mentioned extensively, will signal something at midnight.

Obviously, there was a translational difference between us. I don't claim either interpretation to be "better," just like I can't compare apples and oranges trying to start a campfire. All I can do is try to keep it mysterious, a little mystical, and try to not botch it up.

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Have some popcorn, and make sure you're GMing in the same edition as your players.

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I don't take money for storytelling. It's not right, and I do it for fun anyway. So, imagine my surprise when I realized that I, storytelling of the year month day hour minute happen to be the owner of several "brands."

I suppose they could be called franchises, or canons, or even 'verses. All that really matters is that they're different "flavors" in the same medium.

The far-future post-civilization thriller 850 has a much different tone than the international intrigue stories of Mister X, just as both are a distance from the small-town feel of Quincy, Indiana. There's a definitive style that goes with each one, and it would feel out of place in the others.

Player can't make it? Aww, that sucks. Must be Food Poisoning.

The repetition of these signatures is my job, as storyteller. It lends a sense of familiarity, and does something much more noticeable. In a significantly complex engine, these 'tells' could become a part of the gameplay. For an example- let's check out the gameplay of the Resident Evil movies.

Opening: Wake up somewhere strange, with vague memories of what happened before.

Weapons: Absolutely must use two identical weapons, at the same time, with very few exceptions allowed.

Locations: Once per chapter, there must be a top-secret Umbrella Corp bunker, defended by a crazy AI, Albert Wesker, or a shit-ton of Zombies.

Enemies: Zombie crowds, special zombies, and mercs. Each chapter, the crowds get bigger, the special ones get more ferocious, and the mercs... well, they kinda stay the same.

And, there we go. Mix in Milla Jovovich, sprinkle some Paul W.S. Anderson on it, and bake at 350 until golden-brown. Congratulations! You've just made another Resident Evil movie.

Join us next week, for cliffhangers and consistencies in content. Naw, just kidding. It'll be at least two weeks.

Stay Frosty.

Story Time

As cool as I thought the idea was, having Callahan do the story of King Arthur in the 1990's, it's just not going to work. The story does not allow, very easily, for the players to join in on the fun. So, in the interest of keeping it real, I'm going to skip over the plot and just go with the mood of it. This is a back-burner project, just like the dozens of others.

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For inspiration, I started reading the D&D player's manual again. Just as I expected, it's chock-full of combat tools and abilities. They even have to note "utility spells," as anything other than an offensive maneuver.

This should make the 16 encounter list much easier. Rather than do a full-barrage encounter list, item by item, I think I'll just simplify it into a dice mechanic. X number of Y enemies in Z tier, or similar. This still references a table, but I can probably shrink it down into 16 lines, rather than 50 or something.

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I wonder if my brain truly is broken. No motivation, or no ability to perform most functions. Maybe this is what it's like to go catatonic?

We'll find out, next update.

The Real Badass of Quincy Indiana

First off, the game. 16: A Magic Apocalypse Simulator is doing pretty well. I have an engine that can consistently generate maps, and they look pretty nice. I have a few player classes, and the core gameplay. All I really have to do now is write up some encounter tables, then playtest the crap out of it.

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I once described Callahan as being "a man who cares very deeply about a town, without caring what it thinks of him." It's apt enough, and gets straight to the point. He cares, even cares too much; he's so good at posturing, he's lost himself.

The inspiration for him was a simple enough concept: 40-something white guy, brain damaged from lots of drugs in the 80's and 90's, cigar in one hand, shotgun in the other, with a little bit of cult leader thrown in. Somewhere along the way, though, I began to realize I liked him a lot. Maybe it's the power, or the indifferent attitude towards people's perception of him. Maybe I just like having someone who's controllably crazy, while being intelligent enough to ape Fight Club.

Point being, he's back. I've been thinking for a long time about what to do with him next, and I think I've got it figured out.

He's King Arthur. Complete with a round table of "knights," and a mission from God, effectively.

I'll have to do a lot more research on the Arthurian Legend. This could flop horribly, if I overlook an important detail. I also need to make a way to incorporate players, so it's not just "hey, check out this guy doing cool stuff." Dice are in the air. Let's see where they land.

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We are the rush.