fourteendoors

[fourteendoors]

Ready Player One,  The Eighties Future, and the Inherent Tragedy of the Cyberpunk Genre

or: in which I alienate even more of my potential audience by writing about something only tangentially related to RPGs.

There’s exactly one interesting paragraph in Ernest Cline’s 2011 book Ready Player One, and this is it: “In the mid-’80s, when the character of Max Headroom was created, computers weren’t actually powerful enough to generate a photorealistic human figure, so Max had been portrayed by an actor (the brilliant Matt Frewer) who wore a lot of rubber makeup to make him look computer-generated. But the version of Max now smiling at me on the monitor was pure software, with the best simulated AI and voice-recognition subroutines money could buy.“ I don’t think Ernest Cline wrote this intentionally. It’s another little pointless detail in a book full of them, intended mostly to accentuate how cool his bland hero is via association with other, better art. There have been enough thinkpieces on the failures of the novel already. But there’s something that I find incredibly interesting about this paragraph. The machine isn’t limited by processing power, or rendering ability. The machine is only limited by the imagination of its user. Max Headroom looks cheap and fake simply because the protagonist isn’t able to understand anything else. When you watch movies like Robocop or Blade Runner now, you can’t help but see the culture that made them. They’re inextricably linked with the time period. When we make cyberpunk media now, there’s a tendency to make everything sleek and refined, to replace what the eighties thought the future would look like with what 2020 thinks the future should look like. But should we? Cyberpunk is, in its basest form, a story about now. It’s a story about violence, about capitalism, about ecological catastrophe, about authoritarianism. It’s a story where the societies that now exist flash-freeze and undergo no changes, just get more and more powerful and more and more corrupt. But the underlying tragedy is that it’s all unneccessary. The worlds in which cyberpunk stories exist are worlds in which miraculous technology exists- AI a thousand times smarter and more creative than humans, genetic engineering that could feed the entire world a hundred times over, cybernetics that can allow a human being to far surpass the limitations of their biology. These are technologies that could be used to build a paradise, and instead they’re used to opress, to deprive, to surveil. There is enough food. There are enough homes. And yet, on the streets, people kill each other for scraps because the people in power refuse to imagine that there is another answer. Maybe cyberpunk should always look like the eighties imagined it would. The story of cyberpunk is about being trapped, about cycles, about a society that has lost the ability to create and so simply regurgitates the same archaic ideas long past their point of relevance. The world is haunted by the same old evils, and so too it’s haunted by a decade long since past.  Maybe one day it can break free of both.

#cyberpunk #roleplaying #essay #pretentious wankery #bad post #aaaaaaaaa

[fourteendoors]

The Floating Library

If you are a prominent resident of the city of Shaltakoom, you may at one point be approached by a member of the Floating Library. They’ll be perfectly polite, compliment your house, offer you gifts, and, once they have gained your trust, enquire into possibly purchasing your brain.

Of course, they won’t take it while you’re alive- and they won’t even need all of it. They’ll give you an astonishing sum now, and after your death their agents will come to collect your corpse and take it back to the Library, where accomplished surgeons will slice out a bit of your brain, mages will weave preserving spells over it, and dedicated custodians will watch over it as it sits in a brass jar high on a shelf.

It’s not the easiest sell, but for the vast amount of money the Library offers it’s easy to simply stop thinking about it. Everyone knows the soul is contained in the heart, after all.

The Floating Library has a use for these brains, however. With the right treatment (and the right operations), a person can be converted into a living reader, capable of accessing the memories stored within these chunks of brain as if they were their own. The Library contains the dead of centuries past, all accessible within a moment as long as there’s a reader available. They win a lot of their public support that way- dead orators give speeches to crowds, dead composers write new concertos to perform in front of local nobles, dead kings regale the masses with tales of great conquests gone long past. Of course, if one wants a personal audience with one of these figures, the prices can be steep. The readers must be taken care of, after all.

The librarians employ a small retinue of readers. You can usually pick one out of a crowd by a few factors- simple white clothing, a look of calm bemusement, and a head half made of brass. (Of course, they don’t go outside much. Overheating is a serious concern.) They come from a few camps- unwanted children sold to the Library, those looking to experience everything life has to offer, and those with something to forget. Over the course of a few weeks, drugs, hypnosis, and sorcery will wipe their minds clean. Once they’re properly prepared, surgeons will slave over them for hours, replacing the top of their head and preparing them to receive new segments of brains. (The Library claims this process is successful 98% of the time.) These readers live thereafter in a state of pleasant fogginess, capable of carrying on a normal day-to-day existence, but not much more. They are cared for by the Library, and want for nothing so long as their readings are still effective.

There is a level of the Library of which only its most trusted patrons are aware. Above are the mundane experts- historical figures of renown, acclaimed academics, warriors of immense skill, et cetera- but below, in the vault, are the brains of wizards. The Library’s favored can call up assistance from powerful mages of old, something that has been instrumental in allowing the organization to accumulate as much political power as it has. However, this vast storage of power brings with it a few problems. Firstly, while an artist or a politician may be easily constrained, a wizard is much different. Their memories are dark and slippery things, and a reader who isn’t properly prepared may find themselves overtaken by a surge of foreign thoughts. There have been more than a few attempts at escape, and many have been successful. Secondly, the vast reserve of magical power serves as an appetizing target for extradimensional predators, who pose an ever-present threat to the sanctity of the Library. (The Library was driven from its last home after a host of parasitic aether squids wrecked most of the local Merchant’s Quarter.)

How To Use The Floating Library In Your Game

Graverobbing doesn’t get nearly enough attention in fantasy fiction, which is a shame, because it’s easily one of the most weird and gameable concepts in history. If someone breaks their contract with the Library, they’ll need someone to hunt the disloyal bastard’s corpse down- perhaps the PCs. It’d be easy to introduce a ticking clock element into the adventure- perhaps the Prince’s body will be immolated at midnight, and with it, his brain. Alternatively, the PCs could instead be contracted to steal from the Library itself, on behalf of a grieving lover or bitter enemy. A party that doesn’t mind making powerful enemies could use this as a jury-rigged version of the reincarnate spell, grabbing the brain of a dead friend and kidnapping a reader both.

d10 Brains in the Library

A princess of a faraway kingdom, killed in her bed by her own sister.

A charismatic and well-spoken serial killer.

A cynical philosopher with a drug habit.

A poet, ripped apart by wolves.

A master thief, beloved by the common folk.

A woman who claimed to be the living incarnation of a god.

A honor-bound knight who murdered his master.

A traitor, kept in the library to be tortured past his death.

One of the Library’s founders.

Someone the PCs knew personally.

#osr #fantasy #roleplaying #worldbuilding #i always had a soft spot for the mi-go

[fourteendoors]

The Queen of Akzetha and the King of Crete

Image credit to Denys Tsiperko on artstation. Most modern stories about the Minotaur suck. I’m allowed to say this because I’m an Artist, and therefore objectively correct about everything. These stories suck because they focus on Theseus, a boring prettyboy whose only real talent is murder, instead of the much more interesting blend of divine retribution, personal tragedy, and general horniness that underlies the creation myth of the Minotaur. So, before we go any further, let’s have a quick refresher of the story, and then a dissection as to why I like it so much.

The Minotaur is a creature entirely born from the fuck-up of King Minos of the Isle of Crete. Upon ascending to the throne of Crete, Minos was having trouble consolidating power, and as such asked the sea-god Posideon to send him a snow-white bull to show that the gods favored him for leadership. Posideon asked Minos to sacrifice the bull to honor him, but Minos valued the bull so much that he instead sacrified another instead. Angry at this, Posideon caused Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, to become incredibly attracted to the bull, at which point she begged the inventor Daedalus to build her a bull-shaped armature so that she could have sex with it. Upon doing so, she became pregnant with the half-man, half-beast Minotaur, who, being divided between two species had no natural source of food, and so (logically) was only able to subsist off devouring human flesh. Although Pasiphae attempted to take care of it for a time, eventually Minos imprisoned it in his Labyrinth, constructed by Daedalus. There’s a ton of interesting things here. Firstly, that the Minotaur was entirely born out of hubris and spite. He’s not a monster because he was made by an evil god, he’s a monster because he was made by an incredibly petty one. The detail about the wooden cow is incredibly choice, but not really gameable (although I am begging someone to prove me wrong.) It’s interesting that Minos chose to imprison the beast, rather than kill it. If you can contain something enough to trap it in a giant maze you had your inventor friend build, surely just straight-out murdering it wouldn’t be impossible? I like to imagine that Minos felt some guilt about what he’d done to his son, and couldn’t bear to have it killed on his own orders until Theseus arrived. Anyway. Here’s a Minotaur-variant you can stick in your own games. ------ The Queen of Akzetha The Kingdom of Akzetha is a small city-state on the Sea of Silk. It’s not a Kingdom anymore- it hasn’t been for the past few decades- but the Council currently in charge of the city is absolutely resolute that Akzetha is a kingdom, and will be known as such. (They tried to issue an official motion to transition the city into the Republic of Akzetha. They had to suspend the vote because of the nightmares.) For its size, Akzetha is fairly wealthy. This is mostly due to the exploits of its founder, Vrantearn the Serpent, a legendary Yncol pirate who terrorized the Sea of Silk for nearly a century. Upon his retirement, he took the hand of a legendary songstress in marriage, and bought the island where he would found his Kingdom. Vrantearn’s hoard funded the fleets of trade ships that now ply the Sea of Silk, making the early years of the kingdom very profitable for The Serpent and his loyal crew. There is a story about his death, and the story goes like this. Vrantearn and his lover had a daughter after Azketha’s founding- a clever and bright-eyed girl named Xurah. Vrantearn truly loved his child, and spoilt her with exotic trinkets from across the known world. One night, while Xurah was being tutored in poetry by a Cvess philosopher, a bedraggled man approached Vrantearn’s throne. He claimed to be a priest of Rhulenkaath, the goddess of blood and birds and contracts, and asked after a certain artifact that had come into the Pirate King’s possession. The artifact was of grave importance to the priesthood, and if Vrantearn would turn it over they would consecrate a new temple in his honor. The Serpent simply laughed, saying he had no need for the assistance of a goddess who could not protect her own subjects, and turned the man away. Ill omens followed. Traders at port found that the touch of gold opened cuts on the skin of their palms. Vrantearn’s prized monkey died, bleeding black ink from its eyes. And Xurah grew strange and distant, keeping odd hours and odder habits. The people whispered of the wrath of the goddess, of the folly of the Pirate King. One day, Xurah entered the royal bedchambers and devoured both her parents whole. The girl hungered for blood, and although the guards fought valiantly they found that she healed from any wound they could give her. It was only through the wit of the King’s advisor that they were able to Xurah beneath the palace, in a network of secret passageways that had been built if an escape was ever needed. The entrances were sealed, but for a single accessway, watched day and night by guards to ensure the monstrous child would never escape. This is what the story tells. It less often discusses what happens next. Although Xurah is monstrous (guards report glimpses of feathers and talons and wide, dark eyes), she is intensely intelligent, charismatic, and persuasive. The art of statecraft seems like an intriguing game to her, and it is one she is very, very good at. And although the Council would never admit it, in matters of politics they still often answer to her. It goes like this. The most heinous criminals in Akzetha are sentenced to the worst fate imaginable: to be devoured by Xurah. They will not go willingly, of course, and so they’re often given a soporific beforehand. Under the soporific, a question may be tattooed on their back- ‘should we go to war,’ perhaps, or ‘how do we cure the blight.’ They are cast down into the dark, and they are not seen again. The answer will usually appear by the next morning, either in a dream, whispered on the wind, or (in one particularly unpleasant case) spelled out in animal viscera on the floor of a Councilman’s estate. This is the price for the questions of state. For questions of one’s own life- the Councilmen’s aspirations, their relationships, their future- Xurah demands flesh from one’s own body. In recent days, a change has occurred in Xurah’s behavior that terrifies the members of the Council. It’s not that she’s began to try to escape- far from it. Xurah’s entire life has been marked by escape attempts, each more elaborate and unpredictable than the last. (The Council has spent a fortune hiring wizards and engineers to try and keep up.) Rather, it’s the fact that in the past year, Xurah has not tried to break free once. The more optimistic members of the Council speculate that her will is broken, that she is now utterly resigned to her fate. The more pessimistic members say that she’s only biding her time, or even perhaps that she’s realized that staying trapped beneath the earth can inflict more cruelty upon them than her release ever could. And in the dockside inns and on the cold beaches at night, you will sometimes hear the commoners speak of a queen that speaks in dreams, a queen whose crown is wind and blood... ------ How To Use Xurah In Your Games: Xurah will take an interest in your PCs, because your PCs are likely interesting. What this interest will actually mean is entirely up to you. Perhaps she’ll want to eat them (if that’s what she’s doing), and will convince the Council to frame them for something heinous and cast them down into her lair. Perhaps they’ll end up serving her, knowingly or unknowingly, following the cryptic words on the wind and the voice in their dreams. (She can pay them well- there are caches of pirate treasure all over the island, and she knows each and every one.) Maybe she’s not even interested in escaping anymore, and is instead looking for the PCs to assist her in her newest scheme- perhaps killing the old rivals of her father, or serving the interests of the god who made her. I wrote Xurah’s followers as acting on her behalf, but I actually like it better if they’re not, instead misinterpreting random dreams as signs of divine prophecy. Of course, when Xurah tries to drive them away with nightmares, that’s just more signs that the prophecy is fulfilled. This gives Xurah, the Council, and the cultists a push-and-pull aspect, each ostensibly allied with the other, but secretly working on their own agenda.

#fantasy #osr #worldbuilding #roleplaying #minotaur #monster #i've been listening to a lot of Spencer Krug lately can u tell

[fourteendoors]

A Brief Sketch About Mechs

Image credit to Guillaume Menuel on Artstation.

What is a mech? An eighteen-foot chassis full of tungsten-reinforced metaphor. Or, to put it another way: the reason that mechs are cool and tanks aren’t is because mechs look like people. They’re big stompy robots with cool future guns, and they look like US. This is why I’m not really a fan of attempts at ‘realistic’ mech settings, even if they have produced some pretty cool designs. Putting aside the fact that building a giant walking robot is incredibly impractical for any kind of realistic setting, making a mech into just another piece of equipment takes away a lot of the interesting aspects of the genre. If you’ll let me be pretentious for a second, a mech is the ultimate expression of personal agency. It’s why the protagonists of Gundam always get cool unique looking mechs and the antagonist grunts always get similar-looking mass produced ones. It’s an expression of your character, of your personality, of your identity, your fundamental selfhood, and it can kick cars like they’re soccer balls and cut apartment buildings in half with its sword. Here’s a setting I wrote about it. ------ HYPERMODERN EXOKNIGHTS AGAINST THE ENDLESS DARK THE ARCHONS rise from the deep and endless seas of another world, and with them bring despair: the corrupting force known as KELIPOT. It drains the light from the world around it- emotions dull, pain numbs, the world is drained of color. In these places chaos becomes impossible- the anarchy of life is snuffed out, and a grey waste of elemental law takes its place. We fought them- with our armies, our steel, our regiments, our discipline. We turned our laws against them, and theirs were far more ancient and far more primeval than anything created by living beings could be. You can still find them now in the places we abandoned- troop formations turned to salt, fighter jets frozen in an impossible mid-air diorama of violence. We stumbled upon them as the last of what could be considered civilization huddled in its bunkers, pulled them from the ruins of an Antarctic digsite: the AUGOEIDES. They look like machines, but they’re nothing of the sort- they eat metal, use it to build themselves to the whims of the one who commands it. A giant made out of a power plant brings a zweihander down into the skull of a thing with ten thousand eyes. One hundred and eight piston-arms crush a horse-faced lizard beneath a storm of blows. A beetle of blinding glass rubs its forelimbs together and lets loose a shriek that makes a decrepit toad-thing’s blood boil. These are the Augoeides. The Augoeides are not machines, not servants- they are the Will, the deepest and most primeval part of the human soul. Those who lack the clarity of purpose necessary to pilot one are disintegrated by the god-armors without quarter. All who pilot them must truly believe that their spirit is strong enough to protect them from death. This pure expression of will is what generates the Morphic Field, the power source that allows the union of Pilot and Augoeides to perform the impossible. It can drive back the Kelipot, bring color to the world, make the demons mortal again. The stronger the Will, the stronger the Augoeides, the more hazy the boundaries of the possible and impossible become. The weaker the will, the weaker the Augoeides- the more heavy the limbs feel, the more impossible the battle, the more pointless the life. Watching a Pilot work is hypnotic, in and out of their cockpit. Some are young, some are old, some are scarred, some are beautiful. All are individuals of singular charisma, a singular drive. They love purely and hate deeply. All of them go to their deaths without regrets. In the walled fortresses where Humanity resides, it’s not uncommon to see shrines to the patron Pilot of a particular region. They are those whose self is so powerful they can make the impossible real- are they any different from gods?

#mechs #worldbuilding #roleplaying #remember that part in pacific rim where the robot used the shipping container like a bat? damn that shit fuckin' ruled dude