This is about the Mayfair Games 'Role Aids' adventure by Sam Shirley and Daniel Greenberg
First thing, why on earth is it called 'Swordthrust'?
here
Hard to get a good high-re image of this, sorry!
First thing, why on earth is it called 'Swordthrust'?
The core dungeon is the frozen head of a giant ice titan which is in fact a mountain, (called the 'Titans Crown'), populated by the imagined memories of its ancient life, which is also a field of combat between good and bad thoughts given shape, and if you wake up the Titan then the proportion of good to bad thoughts decides its future character. Plus there is a backstabbing Wizard with a decent name; Morlean. The Mountain is guarded by a guy calling himself 'The King of the Mountain' who has a really fucking cool Boris Vallejo picture for the cover... There is also some silver Mithril armour and a crystal throne....
"Titans Crown." "The Crystal Throne." "The King of the Mountain." "Flamehairs Quest.."
Almost every single one of these ideas and referents makes a better title than 'Swordthrust'.
Ok, I'm done with complaining about this strange thing now.
STRANGE SIMILTUDES
They re-used the image for a pulp sci fi novel
This is the highest res I could find online
This adventure has bizarre pre-echoes of many ideas which I or my contemporaries have considered in our modern age. It strikes me strange. Most strange..
So firstly, its about diving into the mind of a sleeping Titan, which is the dungeon you are in. I did something like that in Silent Titans.
Secondly - the dungeon is semi-transparent - meaning you can sometimes see between rooms. Something we tried to do in the maze of glass rooks in Silent Titans and first conceptualised (by me at least) herehttp://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-glass-dungeon.html.
(Link strangely not working though the post is there when you visit it separately?
http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-glass-dungeon.html )
Thirdly - the Titans mind has a pseudo-cognitive layout, like an idea I talked about here.
(Same problem again http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-ogre-and-golden-bird.html )
"There are two Palaces locked onto the dark rock, mirrors of each other. The sides that face each other are nearly sheer. The sides that face away are crenelated, towered, encrusted with keeps and details, bridges and roof's, multi-levelled, staggering and slipping down to the walls and the glinting hematite on which the palaces reside.
The two sides match each other almost perfectly, the divide observable only from a narrow axis.
Stand here and you can see the gap between the palaces, like the gap between close skyscrapers, and the slender bridge of white that forms their only visible link, hanging high in the air in the near-centre of the buildings shape.
There are no gates to the Palace of the Ogre King, you have to climb in through a window, or sneak in through hematite caves down below where the Onyx river gushes from the rocks."
And fourthly - this wasn't me but Noisms has a whole series of development posts about a project called 'behind Gently Smiling Jaws' which is a sandbox of a sort made from the memories of an ancient crocodile -the empires and peoples it witnessed in its life are the beings you encounter, somewhat altered by their recollection.
What does this similitude mean?
Well most importantly it means I am less special than I like to think I am...
fucking hurts dude
What else - is there some hidden enochian mind script that the fancy boy section of the OSR is destined to follow? NEED TO TRY ANSWERING THAT QUESTION.
THE FROGNARDS
Or whatever we are calling Prince/Bryce/Melan axis now, that particular adventure-design paradigm have a high opinion of Swordthrust. Is it justified?
It seems Well Engineered - I am not in 2nd Ed or whatever this is keyed for to speak with an experts tongue but this feels like an adventure well organised and arranged in terms of resources, opportunity and both rewards and punishment for risk taking.
There is an economy of +1 rings of bracing and "gloves of smell vision (3 charges left)" or whatever that underpins a lot of this 2e-ish extended playstyle - you are meant to be continually getting, losing, trading etc magical stuff which may or may not be useful to you and this is like an 'extra' layer of floating mechanics on top of levelling and xp which adventure designers have to take account of (and which the Artpunkish wing of the OSR has VERY RIGHTLY DITCHED WHOLESALE). I'm not a frognard but so far as I can see all this stuff looks to be in place and whatever.
It is made of classic Fantasy Stuff Presented Well. We got Goblins, ratmen, Dwarves who mine things.
These are not literally the Dwarves from Swordthrust (though they are from mayfair games),
but aesthetically they are very much the Dwarves from Swordthrust.
DWARVES!
A Wizard who, if they don't live in a tower they at least have a nice house.
There are only two totally new races and they fit neatly within fantasy archetypes of this genre, no fear golems or whatever. Not a bug, just a feature, playability and ease of apprehension versus fancy bullshit, nothing wrong with that. (Though this is also part of the reason I am not as 100% enamoured with it as the Frognards - turns out that when you delve into the mind of an ancient titan it was largely thinking about creatures from the Monster Manual) - So despite having a high concept idea is definitely not 'Artpunk' (not fancy or pretentious enough) and while it has deepish themes it's not an elaborate commentary on anything, simply a very good adventure.
Pre-made PCs are given and they are high-normie; Merrie Flamehair, Yosannah the human thief, Grim Ben the skill 4 fighter, Hogan Iron Shield, Icarus Whitebeard!
The makeup of this assumed or imagined adventuring party is very 'classical D&D', a bunch of largely good(ish) characters with enough flaws, specialisations and differences in motivation to provide _light_ drama, plus one outright baddy who no doubt proves useful in the end and likely isn't that bad in play anyway.
The town is just really neat. An old mining town, decayed, maybe slightly unnaturally packed with factions considering the low population but that's hardly a hanging offence.
Yes you will probably end up spending more time in the town than the dungeon and may actually be more likely to die there. Mild complaint - the Town could possibly have done with a little more space and clarity since it is almost certain to become a tactical area in play.
Non-Stupidity of plans - the main wizard quest giver has thought things through at least as well I did reading the adventure, which is all I ask really of something I spend money on.
That only took a sentence to describe but its actually a vanishingly rare and almost golden quality in any media - that the characters in it have thought through their circumstances and do things that make sense to them.
Does Swordthrust introduce (as a CORE element) that most-loathed of all design tropes, the backstabbing questgiver? And does it somehow GET AWAY WITH THIS????
Yyyyyes. yes it does.
The backstabbing wizard situation is set up with enough skill and has enough thought put into the circumstances; the slow reveal of information, the build up of knowledge, the likely result of interactions, and most importantly - the paradoxical no-win situation for the dungeon which will misfire on the wizard if they do actually win, that it carries off this most laborious of concepts with a degree of elegance and grace. Like watching someone dance with a barbell.
(Also it's from the past, presumably from before the trope was actually a trope, so it can't be blamed really.)
An elegant piece of thinking - it avoids the avoided the 'weird dungeon' conceptual brick wall problem by having the wizard give an (fake and/or incorrect) explanation of what's going on before the PCs go in.
So instead of players meeting inexplicable shit and getting confused and upset, they meet stuff they think they understand, and then slowly (hopefully) work out that the context is not what they thought, and then the inconsistencies build up and slowly the PCs and players work out more and more of what is going on.
They even through in a reasonable little section at the end for what to do if the Titan actually does wake up - well done
Beyond the aesthetic and my indifference to adventure economics, another difference between I and the Frognards, or at least Bryce and Prince, is that I have had to read waaaay less shit D&D adventures that they have, so I am generally less relentlessly traumatised by the horror of it. For them this is an Oasis in the desert, for me, a nice pint at the pub.
HOW MANY STARS IN THE SKY FOR SWORDTHRUST?
I intuit that it would play well.
This could be a beautiful experience. I don't know if I'm ready to call it a masterwork.
Being made of standard materials is less fun for me than the Frognards.
You can't reconstruct (or at least I don't think you can reconstruct) a pseudohistory of prelapsarian reality from the visions in the Titans mind. (Admittedly you have to be operating way above average quality for that level of criticism to even be levelled.)
Also there are some unclear sections and you are still going to need to transpose a lot into your own notes, especially the town stuff, plus there are definitely some description elements that were slightly unclear.
But I will call it a beautiful curiosity. Perhaps more beautiful for being unexpected.
Four stars for the meat of it. Another half star for going above and beyond the call of duty and a final half star for those of you who like the aesthetic.
THE SIMILTUDE
Ice, glass and the mind.
Is there some kind of homunculus-theory-inevitability thing going on here with people of my neurotype? Some deal where people with a particular quirk of character and who assign themselves the 'god position' in the creation of worlds. Not just worlds but realties. And not just the creation but this uniquely physicalised D&D-ish type of interaction, based around objects and people and tangible systems, do we all, or do many of us end up building an image of the mind inside the world created by it?
(I'm reminded here of the themes of watching eyes in many paintings created by schizophrenics. McGilchrist thinks this is a brain-hemisphere thing with one part of the brain unable to recognise the nature of the other and so interpreting its signals as 'alien' - an unfriendly observer..)
The ice-brain dungeon in swordthrust.
Davids memory sandbox.
My glass dungeons, brain dungeon and Titan minds?
I guess if you are thinking about D&D like this you have the job of thinking about 'everything', to no particular purpose, but just to regard, understand a little and create yourself, and for people in those circumstances - maybe the idea of a crystal dungeon inside the mind of an ancient being, populated by memories, its processes mimicking or simulating the mind itself.
The mind inside the world created by the mind.
Maybe that idea is just a stone on the road, which many will pass by and a few will pick up. A ripple of creation.
I've done this in an adventure too; you encounter the shattered subpersonalities of a tutelary deity and have to decide which ones you'd like to attempt to reintegrate so that it might guard against an impending invasion.
ReplyDeleteIf this is a recurring theme, it might be the result of a recurring process.
GM has an interest in ideas -> interest in the generation of ideas -> interest in the brain -> interest in the psyche
Psyche as story-generating environment characterized by a shifting motivational/emotional/moral atmosphere with calcified conduits (tunnels) from key inputs to the most vivid, demonstrative, harrowing or mysterious situations/environments which it has assimilated -> Psyche as variegated daemon-cavern -> Psyche as adventure environment -> Psyche as agent changed by the adventure outcome
There's the narrative question of what happens after the contents of the psyche have been manipulated by the interloping agent.
A lot of what you try and do when you reflect on your past and assess your own mind is to order your experiences into comprehensibility, into a narrative where one thing understandably led to another, and by doing so you can learn about your own nature and the nature of existence. You are also trying to determine your own nature; what is derived from your experiences, and what is inherited from your homunculus.
Through self-understanding you can act to mitigate your weaknesses and maximally gain from your strengths, and through the linking of your experiences you relieve the dismay of confusion.
From a narrative standpoint, from the POV of the "dungeon" psyche:
Existential confusion is associated with darkness, consternation, and recurring threat. The adventure environment manifests as a dangerous agent
Comprehension is a place where preparation can occur. It is a place of light, armor and tranquility. The adventure environment manifests as a tutelary deity or a heliopolis. I've done "adventure environment as rescued lover" before too
The monsters have been slain, tamed or mitigated. Each room has been explored, its traps sprung, disarmed or marked with chalk. The power source has been restored to its proper place. Or, if the whole structure is irretrievably corrupted, it has been burnt out and collapsed. The garden has been turned over and made ready, and treasure has been won by the inquirers.
There were wounds, casualties, prices, but nothing about this process is painless.
I wonder if I will ever find out who you are
DeleteLinguistic Resonance Ghost
DeleteDistributed construct, alignment N/A
When an online communication ecosystem with automated janitorial and notification bots has built up a sufficient stockpile of conduct warning log dumps and did-you-know reference files it becomes capable of a form of 100% self-referential “conversation” without further input from users.
A botnet which is allowed to reply to itself using different libraries can become sophisticated (intricate) enough to fool the casual observer that original conversation is taking place. One is actually witnessing a form of circular internal dialogue. Only user input that is novel in relation to the reference library can possibly increase botgeist sophistication.
Normally this phenomenon is limited to Reddit, Twitter and Discord, but the fact that these janitorial and informative functions are often connected to mailer daemon email accounts means that occasionally a botgeist will inadvertently register for a blog, extending its outputs beyond their intended domain.
…
To your comment: I hope so. I’m really only pseudonymous these days because I’m still learning and experimenting with my own creations, but I would like to do things under my own name once I can consistently produce works of value.
I haven’t done strict creative writing since I was a young boy and only picked it up again very very recently. There was a period when my highly conscientious father (bless him) sat me down and forced me to write every day and so I ended up sort swearing it off. I focused almost exclusively on running RPGs instead, and have only just rediscovered narrative forms which don’t factor in player input. A lot of factors played into that return but your blog was one of them.
I care about developing my own work first before writing under my own name because I might hesitate to include certain horrific, erotic, or too-real things if I didn’t have anything beyond my current ouvre as a backstop, counterweight or justification.
All that said, I don’t mind if you or anybody who has read my work knows who I am because just encountering it is a vetting process at this point.
Linguistic Resonance Ghost
DeleteDistributed construct, alignment N/A
When an online communication ecosystem with automated janitorial and notification bots has built up a sufficient stockpile of conduct warning log dumps and did-you-know reference files it becomes capable of a form of 100% self-referential “conversation” without further input from users.
A botnet which is allowed to reply to itself using different libraries can become sophisticated (intricate) enough to fool the casual observer that original conversation is taking place. One is actually witnessing a form of circular internal dialogue. Only user input that is novel in relation to the reference library can possibly increase botgeist sophistication.
Normally this phenomenon is limited to Reddit, Twitter and Discord, but the fact that these janitorial and informative functions are often connected to mailer daemon email accounts means that occasionally a botgeist will inadvertently register for a blog, extending its outputs beyond their intended domain.
…
To your comment: I hope so. I’m really only pseudonymous these days because I’m still learning and experimenting with my own creations, but I would like to do things under my own name once I can consistently produce works of value.
I haven’t done strict creative writing since I was a young boy and only picked it up again very very recently. There was a period when my highly conscientious father (bless him) sat me down and forced me to write every day and so I ended up sort swearing it off. I focused almost exclusively on running RPGs instead, and have only just rediscovered narrative forms which don’t factor in player input. A lot of factors played into that return but your blog was one of them.
I care about developing my own work first before writing under my own name because I might hesitate to include certain horrific, erotic, or too-real things if I didn’t have anything beyond my current ouvre as a backstop, counterweight or justification.
All that said, I don’t mind if you or anybody who has read my work knows who I am because just encountering it is a vetting process at this point.
Prince shamed me when he reviewed this because I'd never heard of it. Now I'm shamed again because although I've heard of it now I still haven't gotten around to reading it...
ReplyDeleteThe greatest pleasure of reading obscure stuff is looking down your nose at those that haven't.
DeleteYou may call us 'The OSRmen' and know that you speak under the weight of terrible scrutiny. As luck would have it I am reading Deep Carbon Observatory Revised now.
ReplyDeleteSwordthrust is of course statted for 1e, as it predates the second edition by several years. I think it might be fair to assume Melan or Bryce think the same way about this adventure as I do but they have never commented on it and until I reviewed it no one talked about it.
The reason most Artpunk (not your Artpunk!) is so embaressingly bad, and grows worse as time goes on, is because those very same procedures and meta-systems you claim have been excised are part of D&D and they are often ditched wholesale by people without the understanding of the game that is neccessary to compensate for its lack. The primary conducer for the creative impulse in Artpunk is in pretty looking monsters and silly items (the surface area of the game only). There is no significant innovation in the deeper layers because it is barely understood that they exist at all. What you get are modules that have ideas (which is good) but that struggle with integrating these ideas into the framework of the game. The one exception I know of is Gardens of Ynn by Emmy Allen, which I think could charitably be called Artpunk.
This deficiency becomes apparent when others try to copy the Artpunk format that was, let us be honest, invented/pioneered by The Titan and codified by you, one of its few worthy sons. It is not that your understanding of the game is much greater, but that you are unusually creative and gifted. You are a Jack Vance, compensating for your shallow creations with a relentless innovation, wit and search for meaning.
It is also not the case that seeing something from the MM in a module brings an immediate hit of dopamine to the struggling reviewer, but it does signal that the would be author is at least trying to engage with the substance of the game he is onstensibly writing for. Creativity and Innovation is good, but so many try to run before they can even walk.
Such horrors I have seen.
What makes Ynn different to you?
DeleteYnn did something extraordinary. It pioneered, or it attempted to pioneer since no one has used it since, a system for portraying a descent into a fantastical environment that was not quantized and of limited size, but continuous and of potentially infinite depth. It was perfect for modelling the exploration of an otherworldly realm from a single point of egress, like Wonderland, or Algrys Budris's Moon artifact, or W.H. Hodginson's the Night Land or whathaveyou. You could get lost, your route could be severed and you were always conscious of how many steps you were from the entrance.
DeleteThis was all combined with a fantasy of dreamlike beauty, decay and horror. The AIW ripoff, which must have been popular after RPL, is done with elegance and grace and a point. As you descend you gain more context and insight into this realm with each encounter. The rotting garden of a race of supra-elves, undone by a terrifying memetic weapon that is still dormant in the heart of the place, waiting to get out.
There is a beauty to DnD when mechanics, premise and content are aligned in the same direction and each singular component fits neatly into the next. I'm sure if I go back I will find other flaws that were not apparent when I first read it but it is very good still.
Cavegirl never made anything like it since and never developed it further, beyond a second outing using the same mechanics into a library environment that was less interesting, and now the concept lies fallow, awaiting an ambitious ressurection.
Visualizing a mind as an adventuring place where changing things and interacting with subpersonalities was changing the overall person to me came unavoidably when I had a player (a very good player) playing a psionic telepath character. Such mind delve wasn't even in the rules but the player was so good I just went with it, and making spatial and thematic/symbolic sense out of somebody's mind was the most intuitive thing to do.
ReplyDeleteSome of my favourite RPG suppliments are by Mayfair, specifically Denizens of Og/Verekna/Diannor and Verechel which are books of madlib Goethia.
To me ideas a sort of noospheric (for the lack of the better word) spam newsletter. They are 'getting send' (for the lack of the better word) to many people without care and many ignore them, but some choose to follow on this or that particular idea, hence we have sort of simultaneous or close manifestations of same ideas in different people.
(Also to be slightly pedantic because Ginger Star is one of my favourite series - but from what I see Ginger Star used this picture first in 1975 edition by Del Rey while the Swordthrust was published in 1984.)
Thats wild, so maybe they based the character of the King of the Mountain on the availability of the image?
DeleteAlso I didn't even know those Denizens of... books existed so thanks for that
Delete>Thats wild, so maybe they based the character of the King of the Mountain on the availability of the image?
DeleteVery possible. The image doesn't really fit the novel all that much (it is one of those images which are technically correct to a possible creative brief but are not much so when you read the novel), so I am happy the image found much better use.
>Also I didn't even know those Denizens of... books existed so thanks for that
Somehow they are all seem to be excluded from Role Aids list on Wikipedia (but they are RAs 767, 758, 763, 755). Sadly, Mayfair never got to finish Denizens of Thanis and The Pit. Once I saw a file claimed to be a long-forgotten manuscript for Denizens of Thanis but it might have been just somebody's fanfiction.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBehind Gently Smiling Jaws is still a going concern. It's been simplified a bit and now the basic idea is to replicate something of the atmosphere of Porco Rosso/紅の豚...but in the aftermath of the cataclysmic escape of mythagos from the crocodile's mind into the real world.
ReplyDeleteBehind Gently Smiling Jaws is still a going concern. It has been simplified quite a bit in my mind. The basic idea is now about replicating the mood and feel of Porco Rosso/紅の豚, but in the aftermath of the cataclysmic emergence into the real world of all of the mythagos in the crocodile's mind.
ReplyDeleteI can't shake the feeling it should really be a graphic novel, but sadly Moebius isn't available for hire.
Most of the time I think that every world or campaign or dungeon I create or enter is a descent into psyche, so this 'adventure' makes that exercise overt. As I run a scenario or scene of my own I inevitably discover more about myself; creation<->self discovery loop.
ReplyDeleteBTW the two links to your own similitudes did not lead anywhere on my end.
Now the links work! Thanks, that clarifies the nuances of the echoes across time. Lovely!
ReplyDeleteThis whole thing makes me wonder if the OSR isn't just a bunch of us experiencing the slow burn of "angst" and longing for something that, turns out, is just derivative.
ReplyDeleteHey Patrick,
ReplyDeleteThe boys at Tenfootpole are arguing about the etymology of Frognard. Would you mind clearing up the confusion?
Best,
Prince
Yeah the combination of design, personality and political tendencies centred around you, Melan, Bryce and Noisms.
DeleteLargely;
- "real" D&D people with a lot of experience with early editions (usually ignoring 3rd edition on.
- Big on systemic adventure design focused on playability of the materials BUT ambilivilent or indifferent to stuff like neo-layout methods. Adventures tend to be text-heavy with an assumption of some 'unpacking' and probably a map-plus-open-file or book method rather than the one-open-book method.
- Ambivalent about fancy or expressionist art styles. Though not always against them.
- Tend to prefer more pseudo-natural generation and encounter tables for a many-session embedded style of play rather than punchy few-uses tables for handful of sessions or single adventure play.
- Tend to be right wing or more accurately, whatever centre-right is in OSR land. So not as far down the rabbit hole as Pundit but Tory (Noisms), presumably ex or current 4channer (you), East European low level culture warrior (Melan), and whatever Bryce is.
- The Frog is Pepe because of his association with the right and 4chan, and your generally disagreeable (in the Big 5 personality model sense) natures, engaging in negative criticism rather than liberal/corporate/community platitudes and willingness to call people faggots online (though for anyone reading, its really only Prince that does this, haven't seen it from the others . Together you are the Frognard tendency.
My thanks for the clarification,
DeleteIts been a while since I busted out a hard F but you are responsible in making the distinction between my rules of engagement and that of the rest, albeit in a comment.
Bryce is very focused on utility which does include layout methods and his rants against text-heavy adventures are fairly commonplace.
Be seeing you!