Image by Ingo Jakubke from Pixabay

So November has come and gone, and with it, Campaign Mastery’s bonus hosting of the Blog Carnival. Those who got inspired by the topic did a stellar job with some very interesting contributions, which I’ll summarize later in this wrap-up post.

Sadly, there weren’t really enough participants for that to fill this article. Possibly, misunderstanding the closure of the RPGBA, though that announcement seems clear enough to me – see Scot’s announcement – or perhaps potential participants were disheartened by the announcement.

Whatever the cause, what’s done is done and now history.

But, since it leaves this round-up short of content, I’ve decided to re-task a subject that has been sitting around for a while because it also was not substantial enough, and use the blending to create one last entry into the November carnival.

Context

So let’s start by being clear what I’m talking about when I refer to Context, since it’s something that I’ve been banging on about in these posts for absolute ages.

Context is content that implies, infers, or imparts additional meaning or interpretation to another element of content when the latter is considered in light of the Contextual content.

Clear? Or Clear as mud?

Text-to-text context

Sightings of shadowy figures haunting the old cemetery obviously mean something in isolation.

When the PCs discover a body drained of blood some time after hearing of those sightings, that information can also be taken at face value. Or the players can calculate 2 plus 2 equals 4, and put the two facts together, evaluating the reports of the sightings in the context of the later discovery.

2 + 2 = 4, or – in this case – equals Vampires in the Graveyard (or someone who wants the public to think that).

This is an example of one piece of text providing context for a second, conveying additional meaning that is not explicitly stated in either one of the individual pieces of text. It’s a narrative technique that GMs use to create adventures all the time, even if they didn’t recognize it at the time.

Context for Visuals

When using an image, it’s quite common to need to supplement the visual with a description of the significance.

Photo Credit: refer primary image above.

That’s quite normal. Some GMs, when illustrating some element of the experienced ‘reality’ of a campaign, supplement that description or even replace it entirely (if the content’s meaning is sufficiently obvious) with some text that places the image, or some part of the image into a new context that adds meaning to the illustration.

The primary image chosen to illustrate this article, for example, was chosen because it contained two specific elements: distant mountains and sunrise or sunset. Those are not normally interchangeable, because they happen at different compass points, but for the purposes of this example, either would work. There’s a thumbnail version above, just to remind you.

Next, some text.

“The next morning’s dawn promises another day of fair weather and steady progress. In the distance, for the first time, you can see the mountains that stand between you and your destination.”

This text doesn’t give any additional meaning to the image, and the image doesn’t give any further meaning to the text; so neither of them are providing context for the others, this is simple narration accompanied by an illustration.

That’s great for imparting a sense of the environment, but doesn’t hold much importance beyond that. But, if I then add:

“This time tomorrow, you expect to be standing in their foothills,”

then there is an immediate context placed on the image – a sense of scale. If, instead of that addition, I had said

“This time next week, you expect to be standing in their foothills,”

that scale changes quite dramatically. It is clearly adding information that places what you can “see” into context, binding distance and time, and implying how large these mountains truly are.

If they are a day away, they are quite small and not likely to pose a significant challenge to cross. If they are a week away, they are that much more significant (and then some). Views of distant mountains during Tour-de-Fance coverage tells me that three days distance would equate such a view with the Alps or Pyrenees; double that must put the mountains on a scale closer to the Himalayas.

NSW Inland Exploration

Beware of the false equivalence, though you can use it to trap your PCs. Smaller mountains don’t necessarily equate to ‘easier to cross’, a fact that is drummed into residents of my state of New South Wales. When the colony of Sydney was first settled, the focus was on developing the Sydney region. As the colony grew, the presence of the Great Dividing Range (and specifically the local part of that Range, the Blue Mountains) began to impose constraints on growth.

Several expeditions were mounted to try and find a way through the mountains, because arable land was believed to lie beyond, but all failed. They all attempted to follow the rivers and watercourses and valleys, believing that the terrain would be more conducive to passage, but all attempts dead-ended at stone cliff-faces.

This forced the colony to expand along the coast, and to this day, the bulk of the Australian population can be found within about 50km of the coast.

More than 98% of the Australian Population are found in the yellow zones.
Original Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, released under CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, where it is available in much higher resolution; color tweak (sea) by Mike.

Click this link to view licensing information and gain access to a glorious 3200×1780 version of the image. The lighter-colored areas are freshly-exposed rock, subject to erosion.

It was only when three explorers – Wentworth, Blaxland, and Lawson – attempted the more difficult passage from peak to peak along the ridges that a passage through the mountains was found. Using the same strategy, a few other paths were later found, such as the Bell line of road.

You can get some idea of the terrain in question in this image of the Three Sisters mountain formation at Katoomba, originally presented as part of The Diversity Of Seasons Pt 1: Winter, shown to the right.

Context from Visuals

Visual media can also be used to illustrate or lend context to narration, comveying information visually so that you don’t have to waste words doing so. After all, it can take several minutes to convey what a player can garner in just a few seconds examination of an image.

It can sometimes be hard to tell whether it’s the image providing context for the words or vice-versa. Both are at their most powerful when there is a synergy between the two.

But sometimes, you have to answer the question “what am I looking at,” and the relationship is clear – the words are there to explain the visual and give it meaning, i.e. to place it into context.

This is the meaning of the term when it is applied to seeking inspiration from an image. Without context to give it direction, you are simply free-associating with the image.

The Other Side‘s Contribution

Timothy S Brannon offered up The Witch Babylon: Daughter of Eros, Mother of Harlots, inspired by a full-page panel from a Born-Again Christian comic (art by Al Hartley) that featured the Whore Of Babylon. So he re-envisaged her as a Witch and a leader of a cult/faction called the Daughters Of Eros. There’s a lot more meat on his creation so delve further through the link provided if this is something that would be useful in your campaign. Some conversion may be required, of course.

Beyond The Horizon‘s Contributions

Kim Frandsen offered up a multipart creation of a “Lost World” inhabited by Dinosaurs who have been (essentially) conquered / enslaved / semi-domesticated by a city of Duegar.

The first couple of times that I read it, I conflated the “Dragon Philosophers” with the Dinosaur survivors, as though the Dragons had saved their lives but regressed socially into a massive dark age following the meteor strike that wiped out their brethren still on the surface. Kim’s story was that the Dragons saved some Dinosaurs who survived underground and evolved to fit their new environment but were largely unchanged from their original forms through lack of competition.

This is a union of a pulp staple (The Lost World / Hollow Earth) with a D&D setting that holds plenty of story potential. This review has barely scratched the surface.

Part 1 of the two-part article details the early thoughts and the search for an appropriate image. It also has links to a Starfinder monster created in the same fashion, inspired by artwork.

The second part of the two-part article executes the creative process based on the chosen image.

Between them, the two provide a comprehensive overview of the process employed, so there is lots of useful material there.

Campaign Mastery: The Anchor Post

Campaign Mastery’s anchor post not only contained a dozen or so inspirational images for readers to use, but a bunch of ideas of what could be done with them, plus a few bonus hints on the side.
.
But to round out this post, and to illustrate the importance of context, I’m going to go further, and derive a bunch of different interpretations for some of the images from the anchor post.

Galatea Of The Spheres by Salvador Dali

This painting is still under copyright, but the use of a low-resolution image of the work for critical commentary and as a representation of historical context is believed to be fair use. Use of this image for any other purpose might not be protected. Image source: Wikipedia Commons.

I’m going to interpret this image in four different ways, each of which lends it a different context, and hence a different meaning: NPCs, Physical Reality, Metaphor, and Social Reality. In some cases, the results will be literal, in others, they will be abstract or symbolic.

NPCs

The image could be symbolic or representative of how a character suffering from a Multiple Personality Disorder sees the world. It is fragmented, with some aspects open to any to appreciate, while others trigger a change in persona, the better to deal with a stressful situation.

MPD can be thought of as a small crowd of people. Most of the time, they are content to let one or two take the lead, and simply watch from the shadows; but each will have some specific circumstance in which they will elbow their way to the front and take control.

Each will have its own relationship with the other personas – they may be jealous, angry, spiteful, resentful, supportive, protective, or anything else you can imaging. Some personalities will be aware that the others are mere aspects of the core person, others will not realize that they are not the exclusive owners of the body, and may concoct elaborate fantasies or delusions to explain why things happen that they can’t remember.

It is only by uniting these fragmented perspectives that a full appreciation of the total personality can be achieved. If you were to ask one of the personalities who was aware of the others hosted by the shared body, they might well represent it in this way.

That makes this a useful tool for the GM attempting to portray such an individual, a way of getting them into the correct frame of mind for the role.

Physical Reality

What if this were literally true, what might a character be observing? Two possibilities, both related, come to mind: either an Explosion of parallel worlds, or the collision of alternate timelines, either viewed from some sort of privileged super-position. Cosmic!

It’s also possible, if a little less literal, to depict migrating or traveling from one world to an alternate reality – a panoply of worlds opening before the character, and the selection of the destination.

Metaphor

If I were to take this image as a metaphor, it would be of confusion, of a character at a crossroads with multiple directions to choose from. I’m talking a decision of the irrevocable, life-altering kind. If the character was a PC, this is the sort of decision that I might devote multiple adventures to; if an NPC, it would all be over and done with in one or two adventures.

When the PCs had to choose a 12th deity in the original Fumanor campaign, it was a decision of this magnitude. It’s indicative of the depth of the preparations they had experienced leading up to that decision that their ultimate selection was the individual that they had originally ruled out of consideration, no discussion necessary!

This image would serve as a metaphoric summary of that entire adventure, and even to large parts of the campaign. Contemplating it would have served as a valuable reminder of what I was intending to achieve, from a plot perspective, something that helped get my into the right headspace to work on the campaign.

Social Reality

Finally, this image could also be a metaphor for the social reality of a large organization. While that organization would present one unified face to the public, the reality is that it consists of a collection of individuals with different strengths, weaknesses, and personalities.

These would not represent the full gamut of possibilities; the recruitment process and performance reviews would function as a means of selection, winnowing out those most significantly at odds with that unified face. But there would still be significant levels of diversity.

I try very hard to make those NPCs representing an entire organization in one of my adventures individuals who fit – to a greater or lesser extent – the overall generic representative mold. I actively look for ‘acceptable’ ways for them to express their individuality – or, if they are the type that would push the limits, perhaps even an ‘unacceptable’ way.

I never want any character to be ‘just’ what he or she appears to be. They should all have at least a little more substance than that!

Old Man In An Armchair (possibly a portrait of Jan Amos Comenius 1665), by Rembrandt

For this image, I have five different contexts in which to interpret it: Literal Reality, Psychological Reality, Medical Reality, Intellect or Wisdom, and Wealth or Authority.

Photograph by Hakjosef, released under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped by Mike.

Literal Reality

Quite simply, this is what a particular character actually looks like. This is by far the most obvious interpretation. Anything else that is known about the character thereby becomes context for the interpretation of the image, while the image itself is context for anything the character says or does.

Psychological Reality

Things become more interesting if this is not the physical reality of the character, but how they see themselves. The contrast with the reality therefore defines what the context of this image is.

In the Lord Of The Rings, Saruman (and his spy, Wormtongue) take the relatively young and vital King Rohan and instill this sort of decrepit self-image in him, as revealed in The Two Towers.

But that helpless interpretation is not the only one. What if the character is physically or mentally disabled (or both), but views himself as being an ordinary person suffering from the effects of premature aging?

They are as capable (in their own minds) as anyone of comparable self-perceived age. That means that any personality that is valid for a figure of the depicted age would be appropriate to the character – from ‘crotchety old man’ to ‘overactive retiree’ and all points in between.

This is a profile that I would never have occurred to me without this stimulus, despite the known truism that the elderly often get on well with children because the two are closely matched in abilities.

Medical Reality

When my back was really bad, several years back, my doctor of the time described me as having the mobility, and associated impacts on my health, of a 101-year old. I could barely walk half a city-block without needing to rest; could not spend more than about 5 minutes in a bus, or about half an hour in a suburban train. Being in the back seat of a car was not much better than the latter, but I did better in the front seat, where I could stretch out a little more.

Should I exceed these limits, I spent weeks or months in pain with even more greatly reduced capacity – walking in a slow shuffle, for example.

By very carefully learning what I could and could not do, and building my lifestyle around those limitations, my health gradually improved, and my tolerance for these activities slowly increased. I can now walk two or even three city blocks without ill-effect, for example. It’s as though I were banking capacity for when I needed it.

I still can’t exceed whatever my current limits are without doing semi-permanent damage; but those limits continue to rise ever-so-slowly. The degree of excess is also a factor in how long it takes me to recover, and in what my limitations will be after such recovery.

I can never look at an image such as this one without being reminded of this medical realty. It took me a long time to learn these limits, because I still felt as capable as ever until going too far. Then, it was like flipping a switch; I went from capable to incapacitated at a stroke.

Intellect or Wisdom

If I were looking to represent a character of intellect or wisdom, this image would be perfectly suitable, simply because we often associate those achievements with age.

Wealth or Authority

You get completely different implied personalities for characters of Wealth or Authority if you choose an image like this than if you choose one of a younger individual. This is largely a matter of stereotyping, but there are times when that’s acceptable; as I have said before, there are usually good reasons for a stereotype being perceived as valid.

A useful tip, however, is to view all members of a stereotype as part of an organization – refer to what I’ve written about “Social Reality” and the Dali image.

The Scream, Edvard Munch

I’m starting to run short of time, so I will only offer three different contexts in which this image can be used for inspiration: External Reality, Altered Perceptions, and Paranoia.

This work is now in the public domain because it was created prior to Jan 1, 1927, and because Munch died in 1944. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

External Reality

if this image is a literal reality, or representative of same, it implies that the featured character depicted has some reason to scream in fear or pain, or thinks they do.

This is a circumstance in which reactions and behavior will dominate or even over-rule personality to at least some extent. There are only a few reactions to acute distress of this type – the rational, the curl-into-a-ball, and the headless chicken, with the first one in the distinct minority.

Altered Perceptions

In general, however, i think this image is more useful to the GM as representative of an altered perception of reality. Such altered perspectives are commonly associated with Undead in D&D, and “Fear” spells are difficult to convey; there is always the question of whether or not such Fear is total (and better described as a “Panic” spell), or if it merely impacts on decision-making processes. Again, there are only the handful of expressions of such intensity.

But this also always reminds me of descriptions of some comatose patients, so psychologically damaged by an experience that they run from the world mentally since they can’t do so physically.

As a representation of an induced state of mind, this speaks directly to the way the GM wants the affected character to be played. It’s then up to the player and GM collectively to determine how this mindset will be reflected in the character’s behavior.

Finally, as a depiction of how a character might be feeling on the inside, this would be a useful stimulus for characters being subjected to extreme forms of blackmail, so fixated on their fear of exposure (or whatever) that all other considerations become wispy and ephemeral.

Paranoia

Finally, we have the question of unreasonable fear. Everything I’ve offered up so far for The Scream takes the perspective that the fear is reasonable (even if induced or externally amplified by circumstance). What if it’s not? Look at the two smaller figures who may or may not be pursuing the main character.

If the fear is in response to them, you have to wonder what they have done to inspire it – they certainly don’t look to be doing anything particularly menacing!

Two possibilities suggest themselves – either their faces are so horrifying, so terrifying, that their mere presence is sufficient to put the witness into such a state, or the witness is imbuing them with such menace. And that’s paranoia – and far more likely than the alternative.

As the clinician’s guiding aphorism states, “When you hear hooves, think Horses, Not Zebras”. Mundane explanations are always more probable than exotic ones – an expression of Occam’s Razor.

Of course, sometimes “Zebra” is the right answer. But that should never be assumed until their is some evidence that contradicts “Horse” being the right answer.

Matching context to image

Create the examples offered earlier in this article was done by starting with the image and free associating – not for interpretations, but for categories of interpretation.

It’s actually far more common to do things that other way around – to have a context in mind and simply scan collections of images looking for one that sparks an idea. You can then either accept that idea or continue searching.

Try not to overthink the initial phase of the process. Get yourself into the right frame of mind and then employ your instincts. Once you have the right image is the right time to analyze it intellectually, with the advantage of knowing that your subconscious has selected it as an appropriate ‘answer’ to the question posed.

So, that’s a wrap to the November 2022 Blog Carnival, which has now moved on to Rising Phoenix Games and the topic of No Dice – I Hope host Rodney gets some interesting responses! I have an idea for one, myself, but that will have to until another day…