“I should have lived before Kennedy died”

Managed to dig up a bit more of the commentary to Appendix P for that parralel world RPG 'River of Shadows'. Including some stuff about CharGen this time. It's all frustratingly incomplete.

Millers Crossing – The Cohen Brothers

Millers crossing is an origin point of, and continual influence on, Stuarts hat obsession. His belief that character generation must begin “from the head down, or, if possible, from the hat down” has been repeated in multiple interviews.

The connection of hats with a society obsessed by status, honour and deception is clearly influenced by the film. Character type and hat type have always been regarded as the same thing in every edition. It has always been possible to identify NPC types via hat types. (Unless a deception is being attempted.) Loss of hat has always been a character fate slightly worse than death. Total Party Hat Loss or TPHL is the nightmare scenario for any game. Games almost always end after such an event. Friendship groups outside the game will usually break up for a year or more after a TPHL, sometimes permanently.

Most readers will be familiar with Stuarts obsession with hats and hat-related cultures (indeed the 25 pages of random hat tables in the first edition could hardly leave one in any doubt of this) and his often repeated remarks that he should have “lived before Kennedy died”. However, few know that due to the disproportionate size, and unusual shape of, his head, Stuart has never been able to wear a hat with any aesthetic success. The cumulative psychological effect of this frustrated desire must have been a powerful engine behind the development of ROS.

Afghanistan, a Cultural and Political History by Thomas Barfield

The rivers run dry into the sand. The routes are embargoed, the roads overgrown by grass. The gem lies uncut from the stone. Chains bar the roads, drones haunt the skies. In the final corners of the earth and the Sargasso of empire, the only export remaining is war.

The development of conflict itself as a kind of product, an investment of last resort, seems unique to the game. Stuarts cross-linked equipment lists which connect the prices of items above and below the earth have never been bettered.

Critics have claimed that the equations used to link the lists together in a reciprocal manner are unstable, following the pricing arrangements long enough will lead to wild swings in costing and ultimately lead to the PC's becoming net importers of gold into the underspace. However this instability-leading-to-collapse is clearly a deliberate part of the design.

Stuart may be the first RPG creator to use notion of the Vertical Archipelago to explain apparently inconstant economic and environment factors in the game space. In nations, like Afghanistan, with dramatic mountain and valley ranges, the shifts in elevation and the micro-climates created by steep valleys means that goods produced by very different environments can be combined in very small areas.

In particular, Barfields description of ripe, locally grown melons being sprinkled with fresh falling snow in Kabuls winter market seems to have been stolen directly from the book.

A Paradise Built in Hell – Rebecca Solnit.

The Anarchist City of Solint ( with the reversal of two letters in the name) was clearly named after the writer. The desperate red-flagged flavela, crawling starfish-like in the ruins of the dystopia it will one day become has been a favourite of players since the 1^st Edition supplement 'Traitor Of The TimeCity'.

Solnit's (the writer) book also inspired the unusual social system shown in 'Traitor'. The citizens of Solint (The city) live every day knowing that the city they are fighting to create will eventually become a vast and corrupt Megopolis, which will then be destroyed in a cataclysmic war whose weapons will shatter time itself, driving the citycorpse in splinters back into its own history like bullet fragments in flesh.

They are also continually assaulted by burnt and voided living memories. Victims of the city's destruction in the far future. Warped and harried ghosts, hurled through the fires of their own destruction to desperately haunt an age long before their own. Mad and grieving they hunt their own ancestors through the ruins.

Despite (or as we can see from Solnits (the writer) book, because of) the continual physical, moral and psychic threat under which they live, the citizens of Solint (the city) are utterly heroic, selfless and brave. That this effect was achieved without numbing the more human, individual, personality-driven aspects of the setting is worthy of note. Later versions of the same supplement have not shown the same elegant synthesis.

The Insurgent Archipelago by John Mackinley

Enemies in the final levels are usually complex formations driven buy the unexpected blow-back from earlier, successful missions. As the players defeat enemies and force order onto the game-world, they discover that the imposition of order, regularity and system does not remove chaos but instead fragments it into strange new forms living in, and expanding, the proliferating gaps in newer more complex systems.

Dungeons invert to become city’s. Castles twist slowly into the earth and become new dungeons. By this point the PC's have assumed incredible new powers but their increased knowledge of the unseen consequences that can result makes them afraid to use any of them to the fullest extent. The randomised knock-on effects of high level spells make them all but impossible to cast. The last lines of high level verse must be curled back into the first in order to avoid catastrophic loss and to avoid risking the end of the game. This is almost impossible to achieve, due to the lyrical density required. Many players choose to leave the game at this stage.

A Commentary on Appendix P

A version of myself from a parallel world ended up making an RPG called 'River of Shadows. I couldn't get my hands on a copy. But I did find this chunk of analysis of Appendix P, which seems to be a list of books that have influenced the game design along with a commentary on the influence of each book.

Empire of the Summer Moon by C.S.Gwynne.

The horrific and sustained level of violence in the mid-to-late stages of the game are clearly inspired by Gwynnes relation of the Indian Wars.

The fact that in early drafts of the game all PC's were referred to as 'settlers' shows the clearest link. Though all such references were utterly expunged in the 1^st edition.

Stuarts controversial zero-sum approach to cultural and political development has attracted criticism, though it is difficult to tell if this is an ironic statement on Stuarts part. This may be the first development of 'ghost protocol' rule systems that play such a large part in later editions.

Blind Descent by James M.Tabor

Stuarts noted obsession with large underground spaces is well documented. The random tables for vast subterranean Karst formations give us some of the most poetic and lucid prose of the first edition. Many players recall being inspired to start their first game simply to explore these ex-luminous negative spaces.

Is is a source of almost universal frustration that the tables are almost impossible to use coherently. Later hacks and adaptations have produced workable versions, but always at the cost of the poetic element.

Stuarts self-devised system for 'easily and and intuitively mapping 3-dimensional underground spaces' using pipe-cleaners and beads has never been successfully used by anyone.

The Theatre Work of Edward Gordon Craig

Few players will fail to recall images very similar to this one

and this one.

Once again we see an obsession with vast underground spaces, the human figure (and human actions) isolated yet, somehow, focused by the rich negative space around it.

Few are aware that Craig's influence applies not only to the interior art, and creative inspiration for the Karstic tables, but also to design. This image of Craig's illustrated Hamlet shows almost exactly the same page layout and design sense as the 1^st Edition.

Though parts of the 1st edition are given as a Socratic dialogue, between designer and player and between GM and Character, attempts to present it as a dramatic work have always ended in failure.

Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack

A random roll for gender at character creation and again at every third level when in the presence of magic, is the most direct of Pollacks influences in the game.

Stuart caused controversy when a transcript of an alleged Internet chat emerged in which he railed against Pollacks 'hippie-ocalypse' and ranted for several non-punctuated pages about a wide variety of apparently unrelated political topics. Stuart has denied any connection to the transcript.

Pollacks influence is clearly shown in the magic system. The use of extended improvised poetics and the rapid power exchange between the player and game master, sometimes peaking in a total and immediate reversal of roles, is one of the most unique features of the game. Many players got there first taste of running a game after an unexpected use of magic and some of the most famous campaigns have experiences multiple, unplanned reversals of this kind.

Personal Memoirs of U.S.Grant.

MCLELLAN! Ah, who does not recall the first appearance of MCLELLAN in their game. That remarkable and engaging enemy/ally figure does more than anything else to add a much needed humanity to what is often little more than a disturbing palimpsest of strange encounters. The dice matrix used for generating Random Falstaffian Counterpoints of Occluded Motivation are one of the most exciting and most-often copied parts of the game. Here, if nowhere else, we can truly say that Stuart has added something to the hobby as a whole.

The Air Loom Gang – Mike Jay

The re-working of almost all villains in the setting as imaginary telepathic machines, manned and created by schizophrenics, is one of the strangest and most disturbing aspects of the game. Few first time players will fail to recall the final door in castle Roscoe opening to reveal, not the cackling Vampire Monroe (who had taunted the players during the whole level) but the shadowy, clattering form of an impossible machine, manned by the insane.

In fact about 80% of players who were introduced to the game by the 'Roscoe's Folly' adventure simply stopped playing after the first level. It is of interest that almost all the designers and writers for later editions of the game were drawn from the remaining 20% from the same adventure.

widely criticized for its flickering ghosts

Man-Pac Theology.

EATER OF GHOSTS

When all are eaten, Man-Pac is taken to the next stage

When all lives have been lost, the game ends

The Prophet Midway

  The enemies turn deep blue, reverse direction and usually move more slowly

When an enemy is eaten, its eyes remain 

Saint NAMCO

  In even later stages, the ghosts do not become non-dangerous

Four enemies roam the maze 

 

  each enemy with its own distinct personality in order to keep from becoming impossibly boring

Despite the seemingly random nature of the enemies, their movements are strictly deterministic

The sacred text of Iwatani

 One life should be able to play the game indefinitely. However, a bug keeps this from happening

 

Based on the concept of eating.

 paku-paku taberu

 PAKU-PAKU TABERU!

A boy between the ages of Ten and Thirteen

has a head full of strange patterns, slowly coalescing. Like lightning seeking one particular point of earth and one cracked channel of air, then whipping a crest of ions, drawing down the fire, he is, without realising, looking for ways to be in the world. 

Not like a Hero, its not a job description, you don't really turn into that thing. But a pattern, something to improvise with. A shield between your assumption of yourself and the horrible things the world is about to do to you.

And, for me, at about the age of twelve, it was this guy

It was important that he didn't kill people, and I think it was important, somehow, that he didn't think too much about not killing them. When they point it out to him, he's forgotten and assumed there must have been an occasional casualty. He's surprised when he finds out he's the worlds best criminal with a zero death rate.

And somewhere in the back of a twelve year old's head, a little line gets drawn. Yes. That is how a man should act. That is how to be.

He got drunk and I didn't know what that meant or what it was like. He fell in love and I knew nothing of that. He was good, but he broke the law. He worked for the feds, but only to take down real monsters. When he escaped from training school, he pulled the remote destruct fuse on the ship he stole. Seconds after he did that it went off. He didn't know that they were all programmed to do that. They expect you to escape. They like to give you a little kick when you do to ensure initiative.

He fought dictators and power hungry butchers and awful soulless grey men. Sometimes he fought the military, or just the fact that there was a military. He hung out with aliens.

I can remember, with exactness, the day I bought the first book. I can recall the weather and the sounds. There was a lake. Someone was flying a model plane. The other kids were playing.

If you peel back enough layers, under nineteen years of resentment and fear, you'll find a twelve year old boy who, just once, wants to take down an evil dictator with a hijacked satellite and a sharpened fingernail.

Goodbye Harry Harrison. You changed my life. Not by much, like moonlight on an uncurled leaf, just a touch.


 

The Rules Don't Cover Impolding Friendships

So it didn't really matter that I forgot to bring them.

After being mugged after a carousing roll and turning up naked at the tavern with one hit point and no money. 



Teen1 (about Teen2) "Cut his face."

Teen3 "No, tie him up naked."

Teen2 "Wouldn't they be suspicious that you're taking a naked man upstairs to saw his face?"

DM "No because you're already a couple."*



At the Eternal Feast of the Harvest Knight

"Oh so when it's in town and we're begging you not to drink THEN you get drunk, but you won't eat anything now."

"No because you never eat the food they offer a place called the Neverending Feast."



In the Dungeon beneath the castle of the recently murdered Harvest Knight.

"I'll follow you because something bad's going to happen and I want to laugh in your face when it does."



After pissing on the Mysterious Yet Impossible statue of a PC in said dungeon. And being wrestled to the ground by said PC.

"I don't care if I pee on myself, I'm going to pee on your statue."

Teen3 while holding down fellow teammate.

"Carve 'TIT' into his platemail."

And yet when challenged for a song to enter the feast of the Harvest Knight Teen1 and 2 broke into a perfect dual rendition of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. Teen3 chose 'I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts.'

They seemed happy by the end. I need to focus more. I was lazy, disconnected and unprepared this time. I owe them a bit better than than.

*On reflection, yes, yes they would be suspicious at the facial mutilation thing. Assuming gay couples in mock-feudal settings co-mutilate is insane. I was under a lot of pressure at the time. Sorry gays.

The Ironic Situation

There have been several times playing RPG's when I've become frustrated and thought that the most effective way to progress would be to form the players into a tight military-style team with a clear hierarchy and relentlessly pursue the goal of levelling up. I have never actually played this way because it seems like to opposite of fun.

Its generally accepted that almost no group of players anywhere has acted anything like this. (If you have, or did, feel free to comment below.)

So we accept that players will act in a way that stops them pursuing the most optimal goal. This is so obvious to state about RPG's that it's a cliche.

And the most effective way to oppose the players is to persistently try and kill them with whatever resources the imagined world can reasonably provide.

So there is a kind of abstract, absolute version of D&D kind of operating in the background as people play. One where ruthless, dedicated teams of highly focused players try to outwit deamonically clever DM's in order to advance in level.

None of my games are remotely like that. The players, in fact, play against themselves to a high degree and I play against myself. I tend use the dice to ground myself and make sure I'm not going too soft on players. I roll publicly so I'm not tempted to fudge. The dice want to kill you. They are like dogs I own. I don't want you to get hurt but the dogs are hungry and they have to have their chance.

And now a bit of Reinhold Niebuhr.

'hey girl'

“But irony is something more than comedy. A comic situation is proved to be an ironic one if a hidden relation is discovered in the incongruity. If virtue becomes vice through some hidden defect in the virtue; if strength becomes weakness because of the vanity to which strength may prompt the mighty man or nation; if security is transmuted into insecurity because too much reliance is placed on it; if wisdom becomes folly because it does not know it's own limits – in all such cases the situation is ironic. 

The ironic situation is distinguished from the pathetic one by the fact that the person involved in it has some responsibility for it. It is differentiated from tragedy by the fact that the responsibility is related to an unconscious weakness rather than to a conscious resolution.

While a pathetic or tragic situation is not dissolved when a person becomes conscious of his involvement in it, an ironic situation must dissolve, if men or nations are made aware of their complicity in it. Such awareness involves some realisation of the hidden vanity or pretension by which comedy is turned into irony.”

Virtue becoming vice, strength becoming weakness through vanity, security transmuted into insecurity, wisdom becoming folly.

This sounds like every good game I've ever run or played in. In fact it sounds like the best parts of those games. The un-plannable aspects that make the game different to everything else.

But the situation does not dissolve. We continue regardless, in full awareness of the irony. We continue because of the irony, hoping for it, playing towards it. What is this?

"You know it's always more fun when we split up."

"Ok my backstory is that my parents were killed and I was raised by Dwarves" (who apparently named him after the city they lived in, Wiggleton) "but the corrupt dwarf king's men killed my dwarf dad and then I picked up a bar of iron from my fathers forge killed the kings guard and that's how I kind of became the ultimate person, oh, and I slept with the kings daughter."

...

Teen1 - "Do I have to take a WIS test every time I take a drink? I don't really feel like my characters an alcoholic."

DM- "I'll give you and Teen2 50 XP each if you can persuade Teen3 that it's a good idea to get drunk right now. Teen3 I will give you 100 XP if you can persuade them to stay sober."

30 seconds later

Teen1 - "If you take a drink now, I won't kill you."

.....

Hold on! Do you think this monastery might be a very evil monastery?"

Two minutes after cutting the arms and legs off an undead monk in abandoned swamp-struck Hellmarsh monastery.

.....

After a five minute discussion of the accuracy of scholarship surrounding the life of Jesus, the relative loyalty of Lizardfolk to a six-foot lunatic wearing enamelled plate mail with the Crown of the Lizard King gilded to the helmet, the poor conditions in the swamp around Hellmarsh monastery and the negative impact of human hypocrisy on possible re-settlement of an occasionally man-eating race because "we eat cows and nobody says we're evil.'

"It doesnt matter what the actual Jesus looked like. The Lizard Jesus can be a totally different thing. I can be Lizard Jesus wearing enamelled Platemail."

.....

On the complaints of the relatively sane Teen3 when going through three separate doors in Hellmarsh Monastery with three separate characters.

"Come on, you know it's more fun when we split up."