In her Parlour of Doors Mab rests surrounded by portals
which flock like birds.
At times, either through mischance, the forgetfulness of
the Queen, as product of some scheme or trick, or simply through the tearing
and altering of causality around the parlour of Doors, portals run wild like
escaped pets, scurrying away, creeping along walls pretending to be paintings
or mirrors or simple doorways to other rooms.
Cybermice with special wands and nets chase these doors
eternally, trying to contain them and bring them back to the Queen.
Though in theory Mab could open doors to any place or
time, her nature (Asperger’s-level obsessiveness), means she will only open
gateways to times and places were it is *Evening* and *Autumn*.
The sky will be neither light nor fully dark, some stars
may be visible, but not all. Half -occluded alien moons will often hang in the
sky. it will never be summer or bright.
The autumn in question could be an
alien autumn, but it has to be a biosphere,
or a culture area, where there are seasons, and where the gate-point is
currently in between the turning from the bright life-giving season to the dark
dead season. The relics of dying life, of whatever kind, falling leaves (though
they may be silica substrate, frost and snow (not always of water), may be
present, but the place not yet quite lifeless, cold, dark or scoured clean.
Ok so I have a design question for the community
I have a thing for stuff like infinite gateways or doors to wherever. I did a version of this in Silent Titans and somewhat got away with it.
However...
In Queen Mab, at least two of the major NPCs/Monsters/Queens, have this ability in some way. Queen Mab herself rests in a Parlour of Doors and wild doors sometimes escape and drift about, hiding, and another Queen, the Pythian, is a bit like Brunan in Silent Titans, an AI with access to layered virtual worlds.
I like writing this stuff in but it distorts the hell out of an adventure to actually make it workable, or useable. Either I have to create a mini parallel world within the adventure which, even if its good, is not the fucking point of the adventure, or I have to put in video-game invisible walls to say "yes this exists and no you can't use it".
So does anyone have any experience with this problem or has anyone apprehended anything which deals with it *as a problem of design*?
The closest I can think of is the umbra, in world of darkness' werewolf game. The umbra is an infinite realm of the spirits, where one could venture deeper and deeper.. but it is usually most worthwhile to use it as a shortcut (or hiding place) in the physical realm. Basically, from the surface you only get access to the near-umbra, and to get deeper you need to work harder and harder.. Some werewolves might care about the deep umbra *sometimes*, but most werewolves won't work so hard most of the time. If we translate it to Queen Mab's doors, maybe there are doors-within-doors, and while entering the first is simple enough, to get to an alien world one would need to work very hard. The option is there, but not accidental and would take enough time that if the players are set on doing that, they pretty much abandoned the adventure (which, usually, they can always do by simply walking away).
ReplyDeleteThe idea does trigger some potentially-useful associations.
DeleteI find that characters have a "benefit to risk" attitude toward opening strange doors in my games: if theyre NEVER meant to be opened, I can't help, but if theyre merely meant to be explored *later*? Going to an alien or haunted autumn once and running shrieking back to base reality may be its own deterrent.
ReplyDeletehmm that's a possibility
DeletePersonally I don't much like trompe l'oeil decorations. However that doesn't mean they need to be usable right now. It can be a foreshadowing of a possible next stage to the adventure. Not all doors need to be passable all the time. Quests could happen to find the entry conditions to a particular door. Also, considering the nature of the Queen's obsession, you could be immediately stuck for a day when you enter the new world and if you stay for too long it will be months before the portal becomes available again.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the portals are locked to a particular time and just drift around so everyone passing through that portal appears at the same instant but in different locations, but immediately the portal is in the past, a new portal need to be created or the existing one summoned to the new time (which must satisfy "eveing" and "autumn").
The time thing is useful. You might need to wait a year wherever it is, until its autumn again, and there being keys for entry, either as information or magical objects could alo be a thing
DeleteA compromise between the invisible wall and the open world could be a tether of some kind. The other worlds can be explored but there is some limit of time or distance. This means the other worlds can be reduced to finite "rooms". These portals are trans-temporal, right? Maybe matter can only exist for a limited time outside its rightful place in the timeline.
ReplyDeleteTime limits is another good concept
DeleteI dislike 'invisible walls' but it is reasonable to assume that many doors might be guarded (by mice? or owls?) - after all, those are Queen's doors. I can imagine the situation where the Queen herself won't mind or care but layers and layers of the court around her treasure her doors and think they need to gatekeep them from 'abuse' from various low-lifes (such as player characters, for example).
ReplyDeleteAlternatively, I'd use a deck of playing cards or an equivalent tables to quickly build various miniworlds (on more than one occasion not very suitable for our kind of life, given that our kind of life exists on a tiny portion in range of planets) with some special doors described separately. Reference to Umbra above could be used as well, to have each subsequent 'deeper' door more and more bizarre.
More good concepts, thanks K
DeleteThe likelihood that a door to wherever, a wild door, would open to somewhere livable is so incredibly small it borders on something not worth making a mechanic to explain. I don't know they even need to be guarded as anyone dumb enough to try their luck with a wild door gets what they deserve.
ReplyDeleteObvious un-survivability is another good idea.
DeleteSigil did this, obviously, but i don't think the problem of DM having to create parallel world was in any way solved
ReplyDeleteI suppose they would all already have existed in "buy this other D&D product" situations
DeleteIt depends somewhat on the nature of the adventure, and also the particulars of how these portals and stuff work. Maybe "the adventure", whatever that may be, follows them through the doors. Maybe there is some kind of friction when people use the doors who aren't supposed to, and depending on how far away the door takes you from where you are "supposed to be" (in some greater cosmic sense and not in a railroad sense 0.o...), the more the universe rejects you in that place and tries to force you elsewhere. It doesn't have to be obvious, it can be more like a chain of coincidences that inadvertently lead you to another place, and another, until you find yourself somehow back in the realm of places you could otherwise have been. I don't know enough about all the particulars, there might be some circumstantial stuff, but I could imagine various ways along these lines where trying to figure out how to keep this from turning into chaos actually leads to some interesting stuff about how the world itself works. In this case, it seems like somehow tying it into seasons would be the way to go, but I don't have an exact idea off-hand.
ReplyDeletehmmm
DeleteI read a Vance short story recently that had a being who could conjure worlds with its thoughts, but would experience frequent seizures during which it would involuntarily destroy its imagined worlds in a sort of horrifying dreamlike apocalypse.
ReplyDeleteMaybe players could interact with these alternate worlds with the telegraphed assumption that they'd eventually have to make a frantic escape while the ground turns to radioactive slugs and laser-shooting eyeballs rain from the sky. That way it's there, you can play with it, but the players know we'll be getting back to the normal adventure in short order.
Hmm unstable para-reality time limits are another good one
Delete