60 minutes of thoughts: Appendix JHGW

 Saw the blog bandwagon and went to the laptop like a shot. This is an ideal opportunity to rant about the things that've made my game design and writing what they are.

Kinda following the model that Traverse Fantasy did of sharing general game-running inspirations, rather than for a particular game/design. (If you want to see my longer list of inspirations for a specific game, my Pillar of Velkith Tales of Theon campaign, have a look here.) Going to start with the things that mean the most to my way of doing things and keep on going.

Babylon Berlin

Weimar Germany neo-noir, 2017-22, created, written & directed by Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries and Henk Handloegten

I really like a game with a strong base of plausibility. The world ought to exist beyond what's 'plot-relevant' - even if there is an established plot, the rails need to be comprised of PC wants and needs rather than hard boundaries beyond which everything turns into the fucking Minecraft far lands. BB does this. I've described it before as 'unfolding like a flower' - it's constantly spinning off new characters who follow their own branching paths and meet new people or cross paths with the old ones, and the camera wants to care about all of them. Virtually nobody feels like a bit-part. There's a load of interesting intersecting factions, and agendas unfold in a way that feels plausibly messy and shaped by the humanity of everyone involved. Season 1 and 2 in particular are some of the best TV out there, and it's one of the only series I've ever been motivated to watch all through. I didn't so much start to run complex games with open worlds where every character is a person to the greatest extent possible based on this, as I looked at it and went 'wow, they get it. I have to go harder'.

Blanchitsu & WHFB 6-7thism

Art style, flourished 2000-10 but still alive today in i.e. 28 magazine, many guilty parties

It's easy to call it just Blanchitsu, but I'm thinking of a very specific sort. Yes, it's influenced by GW's art director as-was John Blanche, but he did a tonne of stuff spanning early Warhammer through to age of sigmar, not to mention 40k &c. What I'm thinking specifically is an artistic vision of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles world that I'd say particularly comes into focus in the 6th and 7th editions, mixing traditional early modern aesthetics with Blanche's famous assemblages of twisted and battered flesh, metal, bone, wood and fabric. Executed by a lot of artists and mini designers, not just him. It manages to look plausible on the surface (which WHFB loses from 8th I rather fear) whilst having a very strong macabre and weird undercurrent. I'm not good at describing physical objects in games, but this is part of how I visualize a lot of my fantasy settings - somewhere you could mistake for some era of earth, full of little details that mark it as clearly other, weird. It's more an ambition than a starting point. But also, mirroring a lot of these it hammers home the individuality of each person; even when somebody is horribly twisted and broken, they are still loved by the grimdark art-gods.

The First Law

Grimdark fantasy novel series, 2006-8 with (better?) standalones and a (worse?) sequel trilogy 2009-2023, Joe Abercrombie

I read these when I was probably far too young for it to be advisable, about 11-15 for the first series plus the standalone novels. I also read the ASoIaF books at the same time, and IDK, I always just found Joe Abercrombie's characters more psychologically plausible? Well, there's a few things: 1) it feels like there's still a grand struggle of powers in the background, a grander struggle even than most of ASoIaF because these powers make meaningful use of the magic of the setting in a way that actually influences their behaviours and approaches; 2) despite this the story is about a group of ordinary-ish people wandering about being manipulated or struggling against that influence; 3) there's a bitter English humour and cynicism to it; but 4) it never seems like it's dismissing people who believe in something (suggesting it's futile maybe, not dismissing it - C&C the treatment of the Faith of the Seven in ASoIaF)

Legends of the Red Sun

New weird fantasy novel series, 2009-2012, Mark Charan Newton

SPOILERS AHEAD! I love Mieville, and in retrospect Newton is very clearly trying to do his own Bas-Lag. I read these so long ago I can no longer recall if they were good, but they did a few good things: persistent attention to class, race and gender that helped form a critical and sympathetic perspective for me, including the first trans woman I'd ever read about in fiction (which meant my first encounter with the concept beyond a brief mention of sex-changes a parent once made); and killing a major character mid-way through the second (third?) book, not in a tragic culmination of his arc but in a random hail of arrows. One of my strongest opinions about fiction is that sometimes characters should randomly and pointlessly die and the narrative impact should be in the fallout of that. Because otherwise it feels implausible.

The Tamuli

High fantasy novel series, 1992-5, David Eddings (oh dear)

Not Eddings' best-known books, I think it's fair to say, The Tamuli trilogy followed on from the characters of the Elenium trilogy, but I read those later. In retrospect it's stereotypical schlock, but it plays very interestingly with making all the characters extremely powerful, commanding armies of hundreds of thousands, armed with magic and a world-shaping gem and the friendship of a god (who represents an entire pantheon). They're in their twilight years, but they're heroes who've already defeated one world-conquering god whilst in their twilight years and they're damn well going to defeat another. There's a lot of attention given to logistics and battle tactics and fighting dirty, even though they're nominally heroic knights. Also lots of negotiation and intrigue. It'd be so good if it was good; much like a marvel movie, the level of quippiness and snark weakens it whilst also making it a fun light read. 

Exalted 3rd Edition

High fantasy TTRPG, 2016-present, credits

Speaking of high-power... the demigod drama of Exalted changed a lot of how I thought about design with a set of social mechanics that aren't just social combat and a very creative approach to what immense power for PCs can look like that focusses on narrative-manipulation effects as much as anything else. It's something a lot of indie games do, or that you can see in many good book (see especially any depiction of Cohen the Barbarian in Discworld GNU Sir Pterry) but they do it by handwaving/not having rules whereas exalted has to fit every world-bending power into a framework basically derived from that which powers VtM, whilst still making them hard mechanical packages, and that takes much more skill and effort for my money.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Fantasy short story, published 1943, H.P. Lovecraft

Dream-Quest has drawn criticism for being the 'nerd's Lovecraft' - this may be true if you read it in conjunction with the rest of the dream-cycle, but by itself it's more like a fairytale than a detailed piece of world-building, filled with pieces for the imagination to spark off. I want everything I make to give people the sense of wonder this story gave me when I first read it as a standalone - a vision of a place that maybe isn't quite real, but is nevertheless full of strange corners to explore. I got a similar feeling as a child from reading The Hobbit, or the sections on all of the odd little under-detailed corners of Middle Earth in David Day's A Tolkein Bestiary. Pretty much whenever I read a piece of fiction, actually, especially if it's one where you're encouraged to identify with a faction, I tend to be drawn to some odd little corner that has been under-detailed and develop a short-lived special interest in it. Thus it was with Malal and Araby in Warhammer (which I've got an army for and so many opinions on the Warhammer Armies Project handling of), the Slaughth in 40k, with the Fiefdoms of Gondor in the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, with Dorne in ASoIaF, and probably with other things in properties I've devoted less of my life to and so can't call to mind rn. Dream-quest feels like a world made up entirely of these weird fragmentary corners, and that makes it beautiful.

Witch's Blood

Historical novel (possible magic realism?), 1946, William Blain

I've never seen anything on the internet talk about this one. Basically: a Scottish woman is burned as a witch, leaving behind a prophecy which will guide the course of her family over many generations as they rise to prosperous textile merchants in Dundee. It's short, significantly about textiles, spans the world and three centuries. It's fascinating! Its concern with family and the effects of slow economic change make me excited to tell the kind of story that is more about solving problems with ledgers and clever family planning than swords.

The Cloister and the Hearth

Historical novel, 1861, Charles Reade

After spending my teenage years reading a lot of fantasy, as you might have gathered, I was ordered by my mother to read a classic novel and so decided to be contrarian and pick something nobody else had heard of. Cloister and the Hearth follows two young lovers as they deal with the corrupt leaders of their small Dutch village, then wind across a Europe being transformed by the printing press, trying to decide whether to get married or pursue the religious life. Despite sort of being a morality story and a fairly firm commitment to Victorian Christian ideals, it manages to portray a verisimilitudinous mediaeval Europe in which most people are not really all that committed to their nominal faith. It's also full of basic everyday kindnesses as well as threats, and long stretches of boredom for the characters. It never lets pacing get in the way of weaving a convincing world - or rather, since the story stays engaging throughout, it never lets narrative pacing dictate the flow of the plot. And it finds interest and beauty in small details of life. But also it can be funny, adventurous - it's not po-faced about being a Serious Novel With A Moral.

There's loads more I could list. Notably, I've not touched on non-fiction, a list which would start with Graeber's Debt and go from there - see the link at the start for a doc that includes some of those. But this is a starting list I'm fairly satisfied with.  

Sayonara,

Jago