Queen Mab

> Confirm. Transponder I.D. is shift-ship "Queen Mab"

> Last ident, hijacked by Some time ago, a group of genius-level transhumanist radicals.

> Skill-set - genetics, cybernetics, direct AI-HUman integration, bleeding edge dimensional technology. > > Transhumanist Views -  Hyper-aesthetic 'new humans'. Something they consider Optimal Beings.

> Be aware, possible development of, extremely dangerous dimensional tech, and access to "True" non-relativistic time-travel. Queen Mab appears and disappears in wildly different volumes. Sometimes seems to dash back and forth across the Galaxy, at other times hovering like a fly around a handful of Suns. 

> Queen Mab itself exists in an variety of states. Sometimes seeming no bigger than a paperclip lost in space, its nature revealed only by its enormous energy emissions and dangerous 'siren song' EM emission sphere. At other times it looms like a moon-sized battle station, blotting out suns in orbit.

> Interior scans ineffective but suggest mycelium web of parasitical, unstable, dimensional conduits to various different realities and paracosms.

> Numerous abductions reported. 

> Mindcrime - Many who encounter the ships EM emission sphere obsessively track it.

> Piracy - stole every perfect circle on the surface of a Omicron III.

> Status and capabilities of the Queen Mab, whether they are developing sequentially or not, may be entering an even more potent and developed phase.

> Suns have gone missing.

> It is feared the Queen Mab may become a Pirate of Worlds.

> Now, by chance, You have encountered the Queen Mab in orbit around a pale and silent moon. 

> Ship is both accessible (at a normal size) and apparently, quiescent. 

> As if it were sleeping.

> Bounty on ships confirmed destruction.

> Bounty on high-status individuals recovered from within (if still living and effectively still coherent individuals.

> Bounty on any post-singularity tech recovered from the Queen Mab includes full pardons, personal A.I.-run paracosm and, through negotiation and dependant upon confirmed results, your own planetary-scale Biosphere.

> Incursion????

"Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;

The subject, not the citizen: for kings

And subjects, mutual foes, forever play

A losing game into each others hands,

Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man

Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys."

"Oh lord oh lord, the Fae Knights of the Faerie Queen came not three dawns past.

Through a magic door to the otherworld!

They have ensorcelled your beloved, taken them to Queen Mabs palace!

Yet the door remains, yes it does. And if the tales are true, not for long.

Take this horse-shoe of cold iron (hide it well).

Remember, the Fae are beautiful, strange, terrible and capricious (really they are bonkers but you should never say that out loud). 

They love beauty and music, and they like to be praised.

Be polite and deferential, yet, never give nothing all away, not even your name.

And you must accept no gifts, make no promises, and *never eat anything*. 

And beware the Faeries charms, for they can be seductive.

And remember that time in the Otherworld is not like time here. You might come back a moment after you left, or a century.

No matter to that. Be quick! The Faerie door awaits!"

"Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,

Without a hope, a passion, or a love,

Who, through a life of luxury and lies,

Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,

Support the system whence their honours flow..

They have three words:- well tyrants know their use,

Well pay them for the loan, with usury

Torn from a bleeding world! - God, Hell and Heaven."

"Dreams. I have such dreams. Do you know that if I dream of a place I will go there? And I dreamed that I learned that time is a place, and so I could go there too, and did, the moment I dreamed it could be, what was all moments.

But if one can dream, and awake in the time and the place of the dreaming, weaving in my sleep, if one weaves a man and meets a man or dreams of him, and weaves a dream, and remembers that one will remember.. Well then, what is a dream at all?

It is a sleep. All dreaming.

Did I make you? Did I weave you and seed you and set you to sprout in that river-realm from which you came with a memory in your mind, a dream of loss to bring you to me?

That is why I made these. The butterflies. Lao Tze no? He was a butterfly, a very nice butterfly, but he woke a man."

"The sensitive extension of the world.

That wondrous and eternal fane,

Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,

To do the will of strong necessity,

And life, in multitudinous shapes,

Still pressing forward where no term can be,

Like hungry and unresting flame

Curls round the eternal columns of its strength."

> Confirm that object is a miniature warp nacelle.

> Not a remote. Repeat, not a remote.

> That is an active, I say again, active interstellar-capable warp engine drive element that she is waving.

> Configuration unknown. Albedo high. Its bright. Hard to see.

> Materials unknown.

> DO NOT LET IT TOUCH YOU.

"The restless wheels of being on their way,

Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,

Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:"

> Seeping entropic loss around the prime biform. Query, is it warm?

> Right eye registers darkness, gloom, cold space.

> Left eye, bright area..

> Check your six, check your feet.

> The floor is Her, the walls are Her.

> Reaffirm Transponders on contact, check H.U.D. for E.M. Manipulation. Eyeballs only, don't trust your screen.

> Crypto is good.

> Confirm, six transponders.

> Query, team is five strong.

> Repeat, we are a five strong team.

> Identify.

> Identify.

[fading]

> identify

"My left eye is a hive of bees..

Would you like to see? See. Little bees, all looking out. A hundred million eyes. Eyes within an eye.

They were not born bees, I made them so, and they may not be bees now.

Be bees. be be be be-be bees. [laughter]

They said a word that pleased me not.

And I made that realm as pale as air and as light as ash, and it blew away in a golden wind from a summer-ripe sun. And.. pop!

Do you know how not to become bees?

No?

You must. Say. PLEASE."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Queen Mab!

A book, that may one day hopefully exist!

A strange new thing in this world.

Made by me and......              AlcopopStar!

Instagram

Twitter

https://ramheadedgirl.com/

(not entirely SFW)

Will it happen? Hopefully! Early days yet, still just brainstorming development.

Binding and Combining

Two big problems inside the mind, neither of which I really understand.

'Binding' which I think is working out what objects are which, and 'Combination' which is about creating the matrix-like world-view which our little homunculus sits inside while riding the body around.

All of this started because I like Louise Sugdens painting style and because I like Dazzle Patterns on ships, and so I began a small investigation into colour, in particular, into colour and mass/shape...

After all, it’s only trying to understand how colour works, and how that combines with our sensation and understanding of mass.. how hard can it be?

Answer - INFINITELY HARD, for the very question opens the doorway to a crystalline dungeon of PRISMATIC MYSTERIES.

The search has taken me through Neurobiology (We Know It When We See It by Richard Masland), Ship Camouflage in WWI (Dazzle - disguise and disruption in war and art by James Taylor), and a deep cut into colour as used by artists (Interaction of Colour by Josef Albers).

We can also possibly add 'Through the Language Glass' by Guy Deushter, about a mild Sapier-Whorff effect in language and colour.

Alllbeeerrrs! HES LOOKING RIGHT AT ME

IS COLOUR THE MOST RELATIVE SENSE?

or just the most obviously relative?

So many scientists, art teachers, philosophers, messing around with coloured thread, coloured sheets of paper, swatches of colour, showing them to people of different nations, in classrooms, in laboratories, to rabbits while a hole has been drilled in their skulls to let the electrodes in, sailing around looking for rare islanders so you can show them the colours and write down what they say. More flags, shining lights, patterns of shade and texture.

Albers would remind us that our understanding of all these colours is massively shaped by context, types of light, (electric, dawn, dusk, passing clouds, albedo), by the arrangement of colours around and within each other, one colour on another, next to another, torn edges, straight edges, curly shapes, blocky shapes, texture on flat and so on and so on, so that he might regard these neurologists and cultural analysts running around as quite mad and pointless.

ALBERS - The most curious and unique of the minds I have witnessed through text. A man with the very tight, intense, highly disciplined brain of a laboratory scientist, a careful, systematic and procedural method to his teaching (learning about colour is *not about self-expression!*). And yet, with the least scientific aim and probably the greatest scepticism towards the systematising, totalising goal of science.

Albers is learning and teaching his students, through the medium of relentless attention and careful systematic analysis, about something he believes is very, very, highly relative. Fluid within perception and within the mind, to the extent that considering colour outside of its context, as an isolated quality, I think to him that would be utterly insane, since that is something it can never be.

Is it really the most relative of sensations? I think probably it is not, but that it is the most *observably relative* because it comes to us always alongside shape, objects and *DIVIDING LINES*, and I think the secret to the perceived relativity of colour is not that it is more relative than touch, smell or sound, but that it is more relative than objects and lines.

The mind is Binding and Combining the shapes of objects and dividing lines between things ("edge detection") all the time, and however it is doing this (we still don't really know), it seems to me that shapes, objects and lines are a lot less relative and debatable (both within the mind and beyond it) than the colours which always are sensed with and alongside them.

We might not all be seeing the same colours, and we can be certain, that in different lights and different times of day, things which register as always having the same colour in our minds, in fact have quite different colours, and that our brain is clearly fudging the issue, but *in comparison* to colour, we can be much more certain that the lines, shapes and objects we perceive, are both coherent to themselves and coherent when discussed and compared between individuals.

"That big rock, is it more yellow or green would you say?"

and never (ok, rarely)

"That big yellow-green thing, rock or sponge, would you say?"

And it is this, the evidently-relative-relativity, if you will excuse an awful phrase, which makes colour more obviously relative than sound or touch, because it lives along side and is always contrasted with, shape and line, which is very much less relative (probably more dominant, earlier maybe, in the binding & combining process).

Neurons! How do they work!

IS THE BLUE I SEE THE SAME AS YOURS

It’s likely. If it’s not exactly the same it’s probably pretty similar, unless you are at the far end of the curve, and most crucially, as Albers would tell you, IT DOESN'T MATTER!

For colour is RELATIVE and exists only relative to its context and therefore all that truly matters is if what you see as blue has the same relative relation to what you see as red green etc as everyone else which it probably does (though maybe not entirely).

COLOUR AND TIME, VISION AND TIME

While I know nothing about any of this I know even less about this part so beware, but it seems to me that vision and in particular the binding and combining of colour and form, and many colours, gives us access to a kind of island of no-time within our own minds.

As Albers would tell us, and here I'll bring in Ian McGilchrist of "The Master and His Emissary", sound is sequential, it can only happen in a row of information (though different sounds can be combined at the same time), touch is a bit less sequential, you can tough something with different bits of yourself, or be touched at once. Movement has a 'moment of movement' but is quite largely sequential, it happens in a row but vision, and the sensing of colour and shape, am I wrong in thinking that it has the least sequential elements?

McGilchrist would say that one part of the mind senses and 'sees' everything in one big burst and the other scans and sequentialises, so maybe sight, vision, has the most complex experience of time within the mind.

When I imagine the binding/combining process, I imagine something with a 'loose moment', a kind of drifting, or indistinct sense of the 'now'. The mind sees, absorbs, identifies, arranges and understands, all happening together. The big blurt of information from the all-at-once scan, the rapid sequential object scanning, the binding and combining shape colour, shade, light, fluid integration and re-integration with the imagined and re-constructed mind-state, both what 'just happened' (the part that makes us think the rabbit is still inside the hat) and the 'about to happen' (that lets tennis stars work out where the ball is *going to be*, all of this, binding and combining, looping and feeding back, continually, whenever our eyes are open.

And so, within the mechanisms of vision are many mutual but simultaneous *perceptions of time*. sequential, global, memory looking back and imagination/modelling looking forward, all happening "at once". The experience of vision is like a kind of time machine, a timeless, or looped moment within ourselves, which we can dip into and experience, slightly, a more or less time-powered moment, variations on what 'now' is.

WHY DO I GET A GIDDY FEELING WHEN PRESSING AGAINST THE EDGES OF THE IDEA?

Perhaps this presentiment of the complex nature of consciousness, vision, time, self awareness, is why when I reach certain points of Albers book, Maslands book and McGilchrists, I get a kind of giddy feeling. That feeling when you are just on the borders of a great idea, the moment before something complex, difficult and indistinct synthesises inside your mind into a coherent whole.

This might just be the borders of my own stupidity.

Or am I pressing against the edge of REALITY ITSELF????

More Albers, you and your GODDAMN SQUARES JOSEF

AM I SMART ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND THIS STUFF?

Probably not really no.

Masland is pop-sci and at the deeper end I struggle.

Albers, god damn fucking Germanic Albers. First its a book of experiments really, that you are meant to perform, and I didn't. Didn't have the right stuff, time or will. And second he writes in this bloody art-school Germanic hyper-clear style, which because it is hyper clear and has only the correct info in it
is fucking hard to get through. There is no pulse of info/blather for you brain to take a moment to recombine, instead its infoinfoinfoinfo.

Its one of the most interesting books on colour that I have ever read, but again, I found it a struggle, especially towards the end. There were effects and ideas that I found it hard to perceive, model and consider, and so I ended up somewhat, sweeping over the words in a fearful rush. Back in secondary school maths again! fuck!

Ian McGilchrist being a WEIRD DUDE

COLOUR AND MASS, SHADE, SHINE, BRIGHTNESS AGGGHHHHHHH!

God fucking damn it brain, why you have to be so complex. All I wanted to understand was colour and mass.

Well, good news. Brain works out what shape and mass things are about 20 different ways at once. Edge detection and memory probably the most simple, though they exist at different ends of the binding/combining process (probably, we don't really know, and as I theorised above, 'different ends' likely doesn't make much sense in a temporarily fluid process with massive feedback loops).

Other ways - shade, light, texture, gleam, RELATIVE COLOUR. whoop de fucking do, all these things are changing massively, continually, always, depending on light, weather, perceptions, environment, background, movement between objects , movement WITHIN an object (which way will the Zebra jump - dunno as bunching muscles all fucked up by those dang stripes), and everything else.

False weathering patterns on 40k minis, showing you illusory mass one way, comic book style highlights on minis showing you mass another way, fake metal gleams in the non-metallic metal process showing you shape of imaginary metal, Blanchitsu style with decay and deep shadows, and the pale and nacreous skin which is good at showing those gothic shadows, showing you mass another way.

All somehow dealing with mass, or the delusion of mass, enhancing and re-creating the sense of 'shape' using false or simulated miniaturisations of aspects of the real(er) large scale world.

AND ALL DIFFERENT!!!

Especially when considered as different painting techniques, as in you literally need to do and think about a lot of stuff differently to employ each one.

Camouflage probably provides the key to entry to this subject but I have only read one book on it - stuff on 'Dazzle' (which seems like it didn't actually work, looked fucking cool though - raised morale, that counts!

But there are even different techniques and ideas behind kinds of camouflage. Camo for invisibility
for disruption of shape, of movement, counter-shading seems to have been invented, or re-invented by camo people (and oddly enough that is the exact opposite of a mini technique called zenithal highlighting).

Looking into the way camo destroys the understanding of mass and shape as a method for understanding how the eye and mind create and perceive mass and shape seems like a good idea.

More on this later perhaps.

Goose-Gold & Goblins

My 'Soft D&D' OSR-alike has a provisional name; (see above)

Intro 
Char Gen
Crappy 1st attempt at Shinto
Shinto in Cumbria
A World Without Violence
Monster Brainstorm

Looking for a Mechanic 

Anne-Lise and The Goose Witch SFA Drawing Illustration Canvas _ Etsy

Reasoning On The Name

Opening structure is that of course it has to be a "This" ampersand "This" name, and it has to alliterate. Preferably it has the same number of syllables, so that's accomplished.

It’s not a double trochee though. GOOSE GOLD & GOBlins vs DUNgeons & DRAGons. There is just no way that either of the single syllable words of GOOSE or GOLD could ever be pronounced without the magnificence of a hard stress.

The Goblins are the easiest part to explain. I wanted something emblematic of D&D (see my previous post) and Goblins are a perfect fit for my idea of this game. They are non-trademarked so I can't get sued. Everyone has an idea of what they are, so no problems with recognition. And they fit real nicely into a non or less violent OSR style game as they are famously full of tricks, deceptions, mischief and hammery. They also make relatively good opponents for child PCs.

But GOOSE-GOLD? That will take some explaining.

Firstly, imagining the game to start with being based around a static community (if PCs "grow up" somewhere and have to deal with the same people and relationships over time they are more likely to invest in them and a lot less likely to be sociopaths as they can't just move on and escape the results of negative actions), I want there to be a pastoral or farming-esque Honobono element. Something from the home or the farm.

However, I also want it to be interesting and fun, and to sound cool. Which, unless you know a lot about farming, it’s hard to find that. Plus it also need to start with a "G" and have no more than two syllables.

I settled upon Geese, and as "GOOSE" has a stronger sound, and matches well with "GOLD", I picked that.

Geese As Nuclear Weapons

In Goose-Gold & Goblins, Geese themselves are both the primary treasure, the sought-for item of the early game, and also poses a monopoly on the use of force.

I will explain all this later on.

The geese of the Capitol by Henri-Paul Motte, 1889

Family, The Honobono Thing

Game starts, your Mum is sick and the Geese are missing.

(Oh and Dad is busy, missing, drunk or dead).

Lets assume you are all from the same family, or are close friends of the family. rothers and sisters likely.

Why?

I imagine the game being played including children, and maybe including parents and children. All being siblings in a family solves a lot of the decision paralysis and 'why are we doing this' stuff from sandbox games, or from people experiencing sandboxes for the first time and gives you a solid relationship in a way immediately intelligible to children, or anyone.

In a wider sense it embeds you in the village/community and gives you something to defend (your mum) and a place to adventure from.

Probably not the only way to play the game but a good opener.

(Could steal from Chris McDowall and say the family is in debt to the Vampire Bank).

Arthur Rackham

Freedom And Violence

is it even really possible to create a game with the levels of freedom, challenge and object orientation, with a genuine risk of loss or death, and not have it turn into violence?

Probably, maybe it is.

The means I am using to do this are;

> 'Set and Setting' (like Ryuutama) - the art, background, aesthetic, the way the world is described. Like in storygames this would also have a meta-effect as Goose-Gold & Goblins would be known as the 'less or non-violent' OSR-like game, and that would affect the people who bought and ran it and the kind of culture they created around themselves.

> Options available - so no specific weapons even allowed for starting characters, or accessible in the early game.

> Nature of opponents - they will almost never default to violence, using tricks and bullshit first.

> Any possible violence is clearly 'warning ringed' or 'escalation ringed', its very hard to get close to anything that might kill you without being warned multiple times. Hopefully three times at least, by diegetic elements in the campaign world. Warnings from Loregivers, the environment, the element itself and whatever else I can come up with.

> Your mum explicitly tells you "don't hurt anyone", and she's SICK and in BED. She NEEDS YOU MAN.

> A more high-level Diegetic reason perhaps? Like a Old king who is beloved but dying and doesn't want any violence, or the spirits of the land or something? Not sure yet. (More negative version, maybe there's a dark god or plague god who feeds off bloodshed?)

> THE GEESE - This is the key point. Nothing is more dangerous, frightening or terrible or upsetting than a violent Goose. All beings and spirits fear their wrath.

Geese become angry when they see or sense violence.

So if you are violent around a Goose, you are about to unleash a demon of Berserker rage. (Possibly they also grow in size in a Slaine-Like fashion during this).

(Otherwise, unlike in our world, the Geese are quite tractable.)

I want to avoid placing lots of explicit rules about 'do or don't do this' onto the players so only one element is an actual rule, and that a request from your sick mum, in the game, rather than from the DM

Set and setting is tacit, lack of weapons is a void rather than a rule, warning rings are part of the process of play, if there's an old king, or spirits who sicken from violence then.. still not sure about that. Could actually leave it up to the process of long-term play.

And of course, the Geese. And what could be more natural or reasonable than being unwilling to enrage a Goose?

Geese As Treasure

I don't yet know why geese are so valuable to this society/reality. it might have something to do with Golden Eggs. maybe each Goose is like a Lottery Ticket and will occasionally bang one out, maybe one in every 100 eggs is a golden egg, and maybe golden eggs (or slices of them) are the main currency of the Realm.

Or maybe these eggs have some magical property, which is why Goblins want them. OR - maybe there is a one in so many chance each time of a Magic Egg or something, so eggs are spells?

so obviously, everyone wants to get each others Geese, and having a Goose, or Geese is a big deal for anyone - if someone gets a special egg, that’s a big deal for the village.

BUT - because Geese have a monopoly on the use of force, you can't just murder someone and take their geese (at least not directly), you have to be subtle and use crime, trickery, persuasion and misdirection.


> Geese as ambulatory treasure/threats/problems.

As well as this, Geese can move around on their own, and they can co-operate or not with whoever wants to move them.

Maybe you need to calm or seduce them with an unguent or flute or something. Likely there are multiple ways to do this and you can find them out in-setting.

Thing is, within reason you can have Geese be a settled thing or you can have them breaking out and wandering etc

PLUS -I really like the idea of some child-sized chibi hero picking up a GOOSE in both arms, like a huge bag of shopping, and fucking running for it while being chased by Goblins.

I also like the idea of Geese in Goose-Gold and Goblins being really big though. Maybe they grow in response to violence, like magically, instantly.

Idea for cover is a bunch of adventurers and goblins running like fuck from a giant goose. Goose is in back field of image, people sprinting like hell in burst pattern towards the p.o.v. Goblins and adventurers intermixed. They were formerly scheming against each other but someone punched another in the nose. Maybe one Gob has a black eye and hero has a broken nose, and now the titan goose hurls itself upon them, their schemes shattered.

Audubon

A Meeting In Marginalia

1.    Cir Talox Blithe

Call me 'Blithe', it was the name of my creator, or so I have written to myself from long ago.

More fully named I am 'Cir Talox Blithe', Knight, made, sworn and chosen for a path of honour and truth. One glance will show you that I am no man of woman born. I was made, long ago, from gears and levers, steel and screws. My eyes are crystal lenses, my guts burn charcoal and my heart is Iron. This gave me my title "The Knight with the Iron Heart", though it has never pleased me for I have always fought to be a Knight of Franchise and of Grace. My mind, I am told is a labyrinth of magic and glass, packed away within my steel skull in directions inaccessible to mortal hands, though I have never seen it.

Why I was made, I cannot say, for no precise instruction remains from that deep time, and even when that was is also lost. I have traced my personal history back near one-thousand years, chasing myths and legends of a knight of steel who likely was myself in former times.

My memory is little better than your own. I can recall perhaps one hundred years in detail. Past that I depend on written records and on this rod of enchanted glass which I carry always with me. This slender wand holds a library of my memories, however much I could retain, sometimes memories of memories of memories, condensed, abstracted and reorganised. This is my record of my deeper self which I can read by sliding it into my skull through a port at its rear. I must do this only when the fullness of my thought is directed entirely upon that act, should my focus slip my consciousness might become lost in memory, or irrevocably and chaotically changed by what it finds. This truly is my greatest treasure for it gives me knowledge of myself, and my place within the world.

Many quests have I undertaken in my long existence, but my current trial is perhaps the strangest I have known, for I must journey to Marginalia, the Hyphos, that uncertain realm of timeless madness, there I must find the Fey prince 'Shadowed-Summer' and bargain with him for the ownership of his Incalculable Palace of Lies.

Impossibility upon impossibility, for many do not believe in Marginalia at all, thinking it fiction, or hallucination. I though, do believe, I sense in the deeper structures of my memories that I have been there many times, though the details escape me, and I suspect that I have been dogged and bothered by the attentions of its residents before.

Still, this is the mission impressed upon me by my obscure yet mighty patron, and it was made clear that, odd though it is, this task is of utmost and absolute importance for the safety of reality itself.

Hence, I come to the Mountains of Reality, for it is here, if anywhere, that access to Marginalia can be found.

The Top Ten Emblematic D&D Monsters

In the cause of 'Gygaxian Populism' (its like 'Gygaxian Democracy' except I didn't really think it through), I ventured onto my socials to ask the following simple question;

"What Ten monsters would you say are emblematic of 'classic' D&D?"

After literally minutes of stumbling through your replies and dicking about with an excel sheet, I have synthesised the following cutting-edge breakdown and penetrating commentary;

First....

THE TOP TEN

(In reverse order for greater drama)

10. Skeletons!

9. Kobolds!

8. Orc!

7. Owlbear!

6. Mind Flayers!

5. Rust Monster!

4. Dragons (non-specific)

, but if you add all dragon mentions they come it at number one..)

3. Gelly Cube!

2. Gobbos!

1. Beholders!

Quite a surprising list as its a strange mix of VERY D&D cretures like Beholders, Gelly Cube, Rust Monster, Mind Flayer, Owlbear, all of which you only ever see with WotC product.

And GOBLINS at number TWO? Dragons, Orcs, Kobolds (what the fuck even are Kobolds they change every edition and just do what goblins do?, and Skeletons.

Ok, Orcs, Goblins and Skeletons all need no excuse for placing this high (though I am surprised that Goblins beat out the rest so hard). BUT what the fuck do you all like about Kobolds so much?

The Gelly Cube feels like the MVP here as, for being essentially a cube of corrosive jelly, it has rated very highly indeed.

The question as to who truly deserves top spot, Beholder or 'Dragons' will occupy sages for times immemorial to come. Should all mentions of Dragons be combined into one thing? What about the three people who voted specifically for the 'Red Dragon'?

THOSE WHO NEARLY BUT DIDN'T MAKE IT IN

11. Liches
12. Mimics
13. Carrion Crawlers
14. Slime (green, though many mentions of slime generally)
15. Gnoll
16. Stirges - amazed they rated this high
17. Troll - very sad performance
18. Bugbears - what the fuck even are they
19. Bulette


Clearly the slime/jelly vote was split by the enormous range of possible slimes.

Votes ranged from "Slimes (all)" 2 votes, "Slimes" 1 vote, "Slime (green)" 7 votes. "Fungus/Mold" 1 vote and "Ochre Jelly" 1 vote. This is what happens with proportional voting people.

Absolutely crushed for the Liche here, and the Mimic. They did well and we expected them to do well, just not well enough in a packed field.

Likewise with the Troll, another under-loved classic,

Gnolls - about where I would expect them to be, and while I am a fan, honestly they did well to get even this far.

Stirges - these were really surprisingly popular to me. What the fuck is it about Stirges that makes them, not even "emblematic" but popular at all? Is there a vast Stirge fandom community our there?

Bugbears - get the fuck out, worse than Kobolds. What even are these things. Utter rubbish.

Bullette - yep, harsh to say it but this is pretty much where I would expect it.

And tbh, lucky to be this high.

DEMONS/DEVILS/DRAGONS - A SPLIT-VOTE DISASTER

It seems the key to being memorable and popular is some complex synergy of being part of a strong monster grouping and also specific enough to dominate the concept of that grouping.

So 'Gelatinous Cube' just crushes all the other Slimes, but 'Yellow-Musk Creeper' just isn't strong enough to dominate either the undead or angry plant groups and so gets wiped out.

Many people voted for demons or devils, but unfortunately for the damned ones, they were all seperate votes. Marilith, Pit Fiend & Succubi got one each.

Likewise, a huge number voted for Dragons generally, but a significant chunk was split from that vote by 'Red Dragon' specifically, which got three, making it an important low-level contender just on its own, and by "Dragons (colour coded)" and "Black Dragon" which got one each.

If you put all those together you get the number one spot.

Curious, for the very concept of a 'Red Dragon' implies other-coloured dragons but the specific nature of that particular kind of dragon seems to strike a powerful chord within the mind. I wonder how many voters for 'Dragons (non-specific)' were imagining a Red Dragon?

SURPRISING OMISSIONS

Yuan-Ti - only one vote for the snake-men.

Vampire

- One vote! And it can't purely be because they are generic, Dragons are up there.

Shambling Mound - One vote, Swamp Thing not doing it for you?

Slaadi - Fucking Githyanki got higher than Slaadi? Despite being boring as fuck? Shocking.

Purple Worm - only two votes for the vast one. What a shame.

WHO IS TRULY A LOSER, ONE WHO GOT IN ON ONE VOTE OR ONE WHO UNDER-PERFORMED?

The following all could have been expected to do a lot better than they did in my opinion.



Frost Giants - one one vote.

Blink Dogs, only one,

Otyughs - only two votes! Its a Gygaxian classic!

Githyanki and whatever the other ones were, 3 votes. Boring.

Aboleth 

This is a great image too

3 votes, not bad but hoped for more.

Tarresque -

Only four votes for Wallmart Godzilla. Could have done better.

Umber Hulk 4 votes and Displacer Beast 3 votes. Not shameful but I would have expected them to be higher.

Drow

- ONE VOTE for the Gothic Misandrists. All that fetish gear for nothing. I weep.

THE ONES I DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT

Amber Golem - the only mention of Golems and its these?

Seems they are from Ravenloft? Honestly, this sounds like a pretty good name and 'Amber Golem' has that tasty and unusual specificity which suggests something interesting and magical. Their current rules don't seem that interesting so these might be ripe for a remix of some kind.

Rot Grubs - 

3 votes so surprisingly popular. But 'Spawn of Kyuss' got no mentions despite having a better name?

Decapus - 

ok its that thing from Palace of the Silver Princess, ok not that bad.

War Lords?

 (Still have no idea what these are)

THE "WHAT WERE YOU ON?" CHOICES

All of these got one vote. I'm not sure why but I respect that the community still has some independent minds left in it.


Ear Worms??

Flumphs -

 Someone had to I guess.

Goldbugs.
....

Kuo Toa. 

- If there was anything interesting to say about them I would say it.


Theiflings - 

...

Did you mean 'Tieflings' or did I mis-type? (Actually, if they don't already exist a monster called 'Theiflings' sounds pretty cool.)


Wolf-in-Sheeps Clothing -

ahh the hilariously specific-mimic.



Yellow Zombie Creepers

 - Honestly I agree. These are underrated.


Paralysing Claw - I'm not sure what this is. Like an animated hand or a creature *with* a paralysing claw?

Svirfneblin - really?

Water Weird - you do you man.

Draconians...

Orc Warchief -  and yes specifically the orc warchief

Pyrohydra - HIPSTER CHOICE.

THE "PULL YOURSELVES TOGETHER FOR GODS SAKE" CHOICES

Paladins - pfft.

Zagyg the  Sorcerer!

- Stop. My sides.

"I guess the undead in general" - headdesk.

Man (the greatest monster) - SIGH.

"maybe the Demogorgon bc of Stranger Things ??"

TO SUM UP

And there you have it. Dungeons and Dragons, a game, fundamentally, about Goblins, (one of the commonest Fantasy concepts), Beholders, (the mad giant lazer shooting eyeball guys you find nowhere else), and giant cubes of jelly. With Dragons possibly also included.

Does this tell us anything about the complex synthesis of shared paracosms in the corporate-industrial age? How our imaginations are at once united and exploited by corporations and trademarked confabulations which simultaneously give us a shared language of the imagination and allow us to form social groupings far beyond those of our immediate experience while also to some degree making us the subjects of capital to some degree?

Does it tell us anything about the interlacing of the widely-known general powerful and classical idea-structures with the alarmingly-specific, often goofy and bonkers beings we both desire and fear to encounter? How meaning itself is born from the archipelago of our neural networks where the novel and the known combine and contrast?

I do not know, but our course is set; work out better powers for the Amber Golem, work out what 'Theiflings' should be and find out why the fuck people like Kobolds so much.

Soft D&D Monster Brainstorm

Latest in the somewhat-ragged series;

Basic Idea

Char Gen

Shinto-style worldbuilding

Adventuring without Violence

Monster Brainstorm / 

Goose-Gold & Goblins / 

Looking for a Mechanic

Rude Orcs

Other Orcs are poor but these are very rich and pink and loud and will not go away. These Orcs move in groups, riding horses to death and breaking carriages on bending roads. They move into villages and sometimes ruins and have raucous loud and unending parties where they demand to be entertained loudly and endlessly.

These Orcs are very corse, cruel and rude and upset everyone. As well as being very strong, so you can't just force them out, they are also very rich, and have a lawyer, either with them, trapped in a silver mirror, or easily summon able by midnight bat.

Tangling with the Rude Orcs can mean you get humiliated, laughed at, have drinks and food spilled on you, have your clothes torn and be thrown in a ditch.

If the Rude Orcs really take against you they can come to your house, eat and drink everything, break furniture and shout, sing and fight all night, making the place unliveable.

How to get rid of the Orcs?

Magic perhaps, as Orcs are very scared of it. Some other Stranger or Spirit, which would mean making a deal. Or persuading them to go elsewhere for some unknown reason.

Rude Orcs love to bet and hate to be seen to welch on a bet, so its possible to out-gamble them, they also love competitions of eating, drinking, being loud, being strong and breaking things and it can be possible to trick them into such an event.

Moon Mage

Moon Mages live in Silver Towers on the borders of night and are very active under a changing moon.

(This means you can usually only find them around dawn or dusk, unless you have a silver key, or a dream compass to locate them.)

Owls know about the Keys and the Compasses.

Moon mages are very powerful and strange. Distracted and odd. They do not pay much attention to the normal world and are focused very deeply on their moon magic. 

They become dangerous 

Their main danger is that they can massively alter the world around them. 

Transform sheep into cheese, which means you need to hide them from mice until they can be turned back.

Lock the sun so it won't rise properly; "It was getting in my way!"

Freezing a river totally solid.

Playing strange music which makes all the trees dance in the night whether they like it or not.

They are not so much 'bad' as they are strange and difficult to deal with, as well as insanely powerful - there is almost no material thing which you can offer them. Most Moon Mages think the daylight world does not understand them, and they might be right, so why should they care too much about it.

To stop or change what a Moon Mage is doing, you have to understand why they are doing it and try to deal with that problem.

Getting through to a Moon Mage can be very hard. They are difficult beings to introduce yourself to and difficult men to get to know.

(Most do have some specific and particular obsessions though, and if you find those out it can help you get to know them.)

Moon Mage servants are often creepy shadows with silver rims and silver smiles in their shadow faces. They creep into villages at dawn and dusk and do the Moon Mages business - usually acquiring things the Moon Mage wants.

MOON MAGE MOTIVATIONS - Lost love. Something in the Past, needs time travel to correct it.

Fear of Nemesis. Wants to change own personality somehow. I guess these are all old-man problems. Old friend died and is trying to make a moon-replica. Had his magical staff stolen by the Master Thief. The Moon on a stick? To travel to the moon and map its cities? Animals from the white low gravity jungle on the moon. Building a spell that can let them travel to the moon?

Loan Troll

(Greedy for credit cards)

CREDIT TROLL

LEND TROLL

'Toll-Troll' is taken I think? Or did I come up with those already?

These Trolls are extremely greedy... for CASH. (Credit will do fine).

They hide under bridges like most Trolls but instead of eating people they offer them bad deals and make them sign unwise legal contracts. Then they come in the night to collect goods, clambering into the house. But there is nothing the person can do because legally, everything is above board and they owe the Troll.

If Trolls capture someone, they will accuse them of trespassing and make them work picking Oakum or breaking small rocks into smaller rocks, or baking bricks, or weaving baskets, or making snacks to be sold.

They capture children and debtors and take them away to Lend-Land, where they much forever work.

Defeating the Troll - they can be tricked or scammed. If the contract or records of the Troll are lost or destroyed then they have no legal right to what they take and can only caper impotently.

If a Troll can be tricked into breaking its word or ignoring the letter (not the intent) of its own promises - then all the chains of the Troll will spring open and its prisoners will be freed

Crime Bird

Creepy crimes have taken place. Could the answer be this disturbing bird?

Answer = YES

And, am I going back to this excellent, and now SEVEN YEAR OLD post?

Yes, yes I am.

Catching the Bird will be a problem, as will absolutely everything else to do with the bird.

Bird or birds may be employees of the Worlds Most Evil Dog as seen below.

THE WORLDS MOST EVIL DOG

Yes, another EXTREMELY OLD POST, this time, one of my own.

The Dragon Equivalent, Final Boss and Ultimate Nemesis of Soft D&D

Goblins

Honestly, what can be added to Goblins that has not already been, by myself and also literally anyone else. They are already pretty much perfect for Soft D&D.

Tricks. Lies. Mischief. Low-Level Magical Powers. Transit through the Otherworld. Riddles. Transformations. 

SAD QUEEN -mmmm, no

SUPER PHILOSOPHERS - nnooo

Ghost

Ok this should be do-able surely?

Dealing with a ghost is like solving a mystery, looking for clues and records, interviewing people. Can range from friendly-and-workable to FUCKING TERRIFYING.

Dealing with Ghosts also has a range of possible solutions;

- Investigate and fix the situation which created the ghost.

- Form a relationship with, and sooth, the Ghost.

- Get religion involved and either banish or lay to rest the Ghost.

- Super-Science, like Renaissance Ghostbuster stuff where its more like a strange technology, like maybe you can hoover a Ghost into a green glass tube with certain equipment. Ghost is still in the tube but it’s a temporary solution at least.

Wide range of threats, responses and fixes makes this a pretty good monster for Soft D&D

For extra child-friendly quality, make it..

THE GHOST OF A SINISTER PIG

Oh My this is troubling

Maybe instead of aging you prematurely the Ghost just steals the last lunch you ate and makes you extremely hungry. Or quietly eats your shoes, like you look down and they are gone..

The pig moves by night, rattling cans and eating pies in the pantry by moving through its walls. 

Well Dweller

WELL SPOOK

WELL WITCH

I think I like 'Well Dweller' the best as its quite indistinct, could be a troll, a Witch, a Ghost, a Jenny Greenteeth, you don't really know what it is, except that its down the well.

You can hear it, and it pulls on the bucket when you go out for water, and asks for things..

Possibly there is a big claw that comes out.

That might be the limit of my description here.

A Well-Dweller could be the opposite of a Hearth Spirit, they are both persistent, connected to the home and family, perform some kind of exchange for information, (for the Hearth Spirit you agree to keep the Hearth Fire burning and also feed it small specific things to eat, for the Well Dweller it asks you to throw things down the Well), but while the Hearth Spirit, largely good, or at least pro-social, gives you broadly legal and decent advice about what you need or how to achieve your goals, the Well-Dweller, while possibly sociopathic and predatory, can also give you advice of a more chthonic character.

A Hearth Spirit might be a little like Google with the safe search on; "Now now, [POP & CRACKLE] Moon Mages are said to be sad and solitary men, obsessed with their Moon-Work. But they often have hobbies, or a special tobacco, or something of that kind. Perhaps that might be a way to speak to him?"

While a Well-Dweller would be more like trawling the dark web, /pol or advice from your sketchy friend who often has speed on them and who's parents went on holiday without telling him; "Ssssteeall the sssilver stafff of the mooon maaan, for his sssorows are in the ssstaff and without it he sssshal forget them and hissss magic sssshalll be losssst. NOW. Ffffeeed eee Mothhhherr Hitttons Litul Kittonsssss asss weee agreeeed."

https://twitter.com/timbougami/status/1065257196869611520

God damn it anime

The Master Thief

Ah, the master thief.

The way I used him before was really as a kind of meta-agent, setting up impossible situations, always escaping, interacting with the world almost like an uncatchable god who sweeps through invisibly and re-arranges everything around him.

In many ways that's not that good for a game. You can put him (or HER) in an adventure as you can control the interrelationship of elements more easily but as a piece of world-building technology they are a bit irritating.

Could be someone that you call on in an emergency, like maybe they owe you a boon.

Could be that only a deranged plan created by children can catch the Master Thief, but you can only catch them once, and they must answer a question or do you a boon if you request it to let them go.

Sticky Mimics

Mimics but they don't actively consume you but just adhere to you in a friendly but disastrous way, like Acme glue.

Like they use you as if they were a tree parasite and eat any food coming to you before you can get it, and obviously no-one wants to be around you while you have a cupboard with a mouth on it hanging off you.

So - appears as an ordinary piece of furniture- but being dumber than a normal Mimic, will often just 'double' something else like a chest or a sink. So now there are two.

If you interact with the wrong one, it sticks to you and you can't get it off. So you are walking around like a complete tool with this piece of furniture hanging off you except it has a gawping, chattering cartoon mouth with a super-long tongue that comes out and snaffles your lunch.

Corn Goblins

We are doing Goblins again? Ok. 

The fact that these are out in the Corn, still and watching, maybe made of corn, makes them feel rather more disturbing than just "Goblins". Why is that?

They steal your hair and come back for your eyes - that's a nice escalation. Small things go missing, and someone’s like 'oh ho look out for the Corn Goblins' and then someone wakes up without fingernails, and then without hair. Then its like o fuck we have to sleep tonight.

And the thing with agricultural monsters that live in the same crop the community itself grows is - you can always destroy them, or remove the threat of them, by destroying the crop;

Corn Goblins - burn the corn.

Rice Imps - crack open the gates and let the paddies dry out.

Apple Kings - just cut down the apple trees.

But then your family or household are 'thrown into poverty' and what do you do then?

So you have to look around to find some other way to deal with this. (Obv, talk to the Hearth Spirit or Well Dweller first).

Sky Witch

How is a Sky-Witch different and/or better than any other kind of witch and didn't Adventure Time do this first?

So - if her house is in the Sky, and her power comes from the Sky, then presumably if you are *under* things, like roofs and trees and under the earth or under your bed, then her power is limited.

If 'the floor is danger' is a common childrens game then 'the sky is danger' should also work as a kind of game?

How does the Sky Witch come down from the sky? Presumably with a Sky Ladder, so if you can find that ladder (and its glass, to keep it secret, and so heavy people can't get up it) then you can find the Witches Sky-House.

She wears and very heavy hat, which squashes her down, and heavy shoes, to keep her on the ground so you can spot her in disguise that way, and if you can trick her into taking off the hat and shoes then she will float away, up into the sky again. (But she will hold a grudge). Also she might grab someone on the way up so you will have to go and rescue them.

Snail Knight

I guess these would be extremely honourable and very slow and quite mad. Like a slow Quixote invading the village doing all kinds of crazy stuff like duelling scarecrows or marrying shadows, fighting an army of bread loaves.

You can't really hurt them as they are not a bad person. You couldn't anyway as they are pretty heavily armoured. So you have to see inside their madness to try to get them to stop, go away or be less insane.

You would need to find out their quest I think.

Mirror-Gibbons

Gibbons which stand on each others shoulders and wear long coats, trying to act human. Or steal paper and write letters trying to lure people out to the trees; "PLS COM KWIK 2 TH GIBON TRES I UR MOFER NED U I AM NAWT A GIBON RITING TIS"

Then you wander out there and BANG, you are in a Gibbon-Sack and some Gibbon is in your house pretending to be you.

They act human by doing a crayon drawing of your face and sticking it to the front of their Gibbon face, and also wearing human clothes on their Gibbon bodies.

CREATURE FROM THE UNKNOWN

The False Parcels Store is BACK UP

GOOD NEWS:

You can now combine postage for DCO - Remastered, Gawain and the Green Knight and A Night at the Golden Duck.

More packing protection added to secure orders from rain damage and the hatred of an uncaring world.

U.K., U.S. and WorldWide options are now tracked.

CAPITALISM!!!

BAD NEWS:

LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE.

Basically prices are up to a crazed extent. There are a few reasons for this;

Our initial postage prices were too low. We lost quite a bit of money on that.
Charges from many nations, especially the U.S. have been raised. (This is the main one).
Service charged added by fulfilment people after initial honeymoon period.

The result is that for our parcel sizes its the same price to sent stuff in the U.K. tracked and un-tracked, so you are getting tracked. For the U.S. its actually cheaper to send it tracked, and this hopefully means we will have less stuff going missing. For many nations Worldwide, if we don't send it tracked, it might not get there at all.

Europe.. You get un-tracked.. BECAUSE, it costs you a lot less and we (I) am pretty sure it will get there even un-tracked because you are a CIVILISED PEOPLE.

(We are working on getting the prices for ordering Golden Duck on its own down, still waiting to hear back from fulfilment)

https://falseparcels.bigcartel.com/