For today’s entry into the Blog Carnival, I’m going to review a series of new products from Moebius Adventures – one free, and two at the low, low price of $1 (US) that collectively offer a trio of locations to drop into your campaigns.

The candy bar of RPG Supplements

Tiny PDF game supplements are the candy bars of RPG supplements – cheap to buy, consume ’til there’s nothing left, and discard when you’re done. They are also often lacking in substance, just like candy bars, with content missing that has to be written in by the GM before they can be used. You can’t apply the same standards to judging them as you would to something costing $5, $10, or $20+.

But, like the real-world range of candy bars, there is a lot of variety out there. In addition to unadulterated confectionary, you also have your health food bars, and a few products that explore a middle ground, and a whole bunch of products that claim to stand astride both camps. As always, value comes down to the actual content on offer.

The One Spot series: What are they?

The One Spot series is a collection of three (so far) system-neutral locations for RPGs. Each location gets its own 2-page PDF supplement. The front page is information that will be readily accessible by the PCs, so it doesn’t matter too much if it’s visible; the second page is DM’s info, to be shared out in the course of play and only when the GM thinks it appropriate.

Sidebar Disclaimer: Who are Moebius Adventures?
Before I go much farther, I should tell you about the publisher, .

MA were started in the Mid-90s by Brian Fitzpatrick and his buddy Sean Bindel. Sean was killed in an auto accident in 2000, but Fitz is carrying on alone to complete various projects the pair had started as a lasting memorial. (This appeals greatly to me as a sentimentalist, and regardless of the verdict below, I wish him every success in the endeavor).

Fitz is also well known as a writer/reviewer at and a long-time supporter of Campaign Mastery and myself. Although we have never met in person (Colorado is a long way from Sydney!), I also consider him a buddy.

The review copies were provided free.

I’ve tried not to let any of that sway me while writing these reviews, but you have been warned. Hopefully Fitz will still be talking to me after reading these reviews!

The three locations currently on offer are:

• One Spot #0: “” – Hand’s Goods is a mixed business/pawn shop specializing in (used) general produce and refurbished knickknacks, operated (and probably owned) by Taylor Hand, an ex-thief who was caught once too often.
• One Spot #1: “” – The Painted Man is a hole-in-the-wall tavern with a colorful, ever-changing clientele.
• One Spot #2: “” – The Magic Shoppe offers “Tomes and Trinkets”. Nothing gets sold without a thorough investigation by the owner, Angar Bossz. In particular, it focuses on tomes, toys, and interesting illusory items.

Let’s take a closer look at each:

The Content Of One Spot #0

For a small PDF, there’s an awful lot of content delivered. In fact, there’s so much that it’s spilling over into a ribbon running around the frame of the second page.

On the front page, you get:

• An exterior description detailing access to the store;
• A first impression / initial encounter with the proprietor;
• A description of the proprietor, Taylor Hand;
• A picture of said proprietor;
• A general description of the interior and the ‘shopping experience’, with some general impressions of the merchandise on offer;
• The prospects for employment in the store; and
• An image of the entranceway/exterior of the store.

On the second page, you get:

• A map of the store;
• An introduction the location;
• A history/backstory for the proprietor;
• Commodity availability, pricing, and handling instructions for the GM;
• Ten encounters that might take place within Hand’s Goods; and
• A set of nested tables describing 12 general encounter hooks for when those ten are used up. This is the content wrapping around the rest.

Yes, but tell me about the content

It’s all well-written, as you would expect from an author of Fitz’ experience. The front page is presented in a two-column format to give emphasis to the artwork, while the GM’s section is in three columns, making it easy to read each paragraph as a self-contained whole.

I would quite happily expect to be able to drop “Hand’s Goods” into any RPG campaign, with no prep whatsoever. Though you could spend some time generating a list of exactly what’s for sale at the current time, for the most part there will be better things to spend your time on.

But that’s only scratching the surface of what it has to offer.

A trio of campaigns?

There are two paragraphs in the GMs section that really enticed me. The first covers Taylor Hand’s relations with the local constabulary and thieves’ guild, with both of whom Hand manages to maintain a cooperative co-existence. Hand’s Goods is a place where these worlds intersect. The other local authority that gets mentioned is the local mage’s guild, who Hand keeps on-side without seemingly receiving much (beyond cash) in return.

Those two paragraphs immediately suggested three complete mini-campaign ideas to me.

• Campaign One: The first idea was for Hand to be framed for some serious crime (or possibly even be guilty of something that goes too far), or simply need to travel to somewhere distant ‘for his health’. Rather than selling the store, he hires the PCs to run it on his behalf while he goes into hiding. This means that instead of getting to change Hand’s policies, the PCs simply have to implement them, maintaining the fragile peaceful relations Hand has established between the authorities and the local Thieves’ Guild in the face of their growing suspicion that he is their man, and also maintaining his good relations with the great and powerful of the local region.
• Campaign Two: The 2nd idea is for the PCs to be members of the local constabulary maintaining a sometimes-friendly sometimes-adversarial relationship with Hand. Every time they think they have the goods on him, he is able to offer information on a more serious crime, or call in a favor from someone else he has helped to get the charges dropped. From time to time, he may even offer a free tip to the PCs just to keep them on-side or mend fences. This is essentially a police-procedural campaign with Hand as a recurring NPC.
• Campaign Three: The final idea was for Hand to come into possession of something that he tries to sell to the local Mage’s Guild, as is his usual practice, but which lands him in the eye of a tempest of circumstances. Someone else wants the item for themselves, and the people it was stolen from want it back, and the whole thing is part of some bigger plot against the established authorities. This could either stand alone or be tied into idea one as the dénouement of that campaign.

The Biggest Overall Flaw

For my money (all $0 of it, since this is a free supplement), the biggest flaw in this offering is that it is just a little too compressed and compacted. It would have been better expanded to three pages in size – half a page for the map, which is just a little too small to be completely clear and self-explanatory, especially without a key. The extra space could have been used to lay out the “spillover” content in more user-friendly fashion, and to expand the Important NPCs section: a regular seller, specific contacts in the constabulary, thieves’ guild, and mage’s guild, someone powerful who owes Hand a favor or vice-versa.

But really, this is nitpicking.

One Spot #1 in review

So here’s what you get when you plunk down your $1 for a copy of One Spot #1, The Painted Man, taken directly from the RPG Now product description:

• An introduction, location description, tavern map, and image of the tavern sign.
• A bit of background on the Painted Man himself, his mannerisms, and a picture.
• Descriptions for the other NPCs involved in operating the tavern, from the bubbly barmaid to the secretive owner.
• A suggestion of what items might currently be on the menu and on tap.
• A list (10 items) of potential facts and rumors to kick things off.
• A list of hooks (4 tables of hints) for how one or more of the PCs may have interacted with the tavern before.

Inns, Bars, & Taverns are always useful

The first thing I have to say is that inns, bars, and taverns are ubiquitous locations within RPGs, regardless of genre. You can never have too many of them written up, ready to drop into a campaign.

Lots of them out there

This ubiquity means that there are lots of them out there. Most city sourcebooks and game settings will have details of several for you to draw on, not to mention all the ones that have appeared in game modules over the years.

The extra necessary mile

The combination means that to offer value for money, an inn, tavern, or bar has to go an extra mile, offer something the others don’t, in order to stand out from the crowd. In this case, that extra comes in the form of the backstory of the proprietor and his relationship with the secretive owner. Rife with potential interest, an entire campaign could be built around that relationship. I would actually tie that campaign into Campaign Two from Hand’s Goods above, giving me a second location and source of adventures to draw on, adding some depth and variety to the mix, and offering the potential of cross-fertilization of ideas between the two.

The Shortcomings

Unfortunately, in addition to the same overcrowding described previously, that backstory is slightly vague and contradictory – or, at the very least, missing some key details. In particular, the relationship between The Painted Man and the Owner changes midway through the second paragraph of the “Important NPCs” section. There’s nothing there that can’t be resolved with some additional backstory and editorial tweaking – mostly changing the word “owes” to the past tense and filling in the blank spot in the evolution of the relationship that this change implies (I’m being deliberately vague to avoid giving secrets to any player who reads this). At least there’s a key with the map, this time.

So there is more prep work needed before this supplement can be used. Once that prep is performed, though – and it should only be the work of a few minutes – I would be comfortable dropping this location into a campaign as a one-off.

Still more prep work is needed to flesh out the history and activities of the owner before this could be used as a recurring location, though much of that can be done in the course of prepping subsequent adventures.

And, once again, there’s material that could have been included to fill out the empty space if this were three pages instead of two: one or two regular customers, a couple of contacts, and the material that I’ve suggested the GM needs to generate, described above.

Some perspective

On the other hand, how much do you really expect for just a buck? There’s a bucketload of potential in the location waiting to be tapped, and the work that needs doing is quick and not all that difficult. It could also be argued that its absence creates a broader contact patch in which to interface this product with an existing campaign. Its value-for-money quotient remains very high, more than enough to justify the price of the product. I’ve spent more for supplements that have delivered a lot less.

One Spot #2 in review

Like One Spot #1, this product will set you back a buck. For that investment, according to the DrivethruRPG product page, you get:

• An introduction, location description, bookstore map, and image of the sign on the window.
• A bit of background on Angar Bossz himself, his mannerisms, and a picture.
• Descriptions for the other NPCs involved in operating the store, including his assistant Radu and the store cat Iago.
• A suggestion of how Angar operates, what he can offer, and how he deals with customers.
• A list (16 items) of strange books and items Angar may have in stock.
• A list of hooks (4 tables of hints) for how one or more of the PCs may have interacted with the bookstore before.

Magic Shops in general

The very concept of a Magic Shop is less universal than the ubiquitous inn or second-hand goods shop. I rarely employ them in my campaigns, because the economics don’t make a lot of sense to me:

• Sales will be infrequent, though they will generate a lot of revenue when they happen. The number of customers who can afford multi-thousand-plus gold-piece items will be few.
• Costs are high if offering new items for sale. They will still be high, if not quite so ruinous, if the store deals predominantly in used merchandise.
• That means that the owner will have unrealistically-vast sums tied up in inventory.
• Shoplifting of even a single item can wipe out a decade’s profits.
• To buy items, the owner will need to have vast sums of ready cash on the premises. A minimum of 100,000gp in D&D terms.
• That demands a high level of security, and that’s a heavy overhead on top of the operating costs.
• Players expect no hidden surprises in their purchases. That takes away one of the GMs adventure-generation options.

There aren’t many such establishments on offer, though the occasional supplement will include one. The key to how well such a location works for me is how well it answers these problems. I’ve never seen one that does the job satisfactorily without capping the value of the items on sale to one or two thousand GPs – and 300% markup over list price.

Bad Associations

On top of all that, I have a number of bad associations from past gaming with such locations. In particular, they seem to be a favorite of munchkins and Monty Haul campaigns. I once saw a game in which a magic shop was just inside the door into the Dungeon, so that loot brought out could be exchanged without the bother of hauling it back to town – because the GM had found that to be inconvenient when he was a player.

So I openly admit that I’m prejudiced against Magic Shops in general. It’s not like Harry Potter, where magic items are relatively cheap, commonplace, and relatively low-powered; in most FRP campaigns, they are very expensive, and that doesn’t make sense unless they are also rare, and both of those argue against the practicality of the Magic Shop as a concept.

How does “Angar’s” stand up?

Not well, but no worse than most other examples of this type of location, in that not one of these concerns is addressed. In fact, just the opposite – the proprietor prefers to keep his purchases and sales activities as separate transactions rather than bartering exchanges of goods. And he looks far too much like a middle-aged Harry Potter in the illustration – the whole thing screams “cutesy”. He’s also far too helpful/useful to the PCs.

On top of that, it suffers from the same problems as the other offerings in the series. In particular, the map is so small that the key is barely legible, and it would be difficult to design a layout with worse security.

None of that matters if you’re GMing for children, and I would happily use the location as written if that were the case.

Salvaging Something

That’s not to say there’s nothing worthwhile. With a little tweaking, the proprietor could become one of those NPCs around which an entire campaign could be framed, someone who starts out as the PCs friend, becomes their employer in order to achieve his own goals, and then emerges as the ultimate villain of the campaign.

If you start with the premise that the layout is so poor for securing the goods that it’s an open invitation to shoplifters, and that this is by deliberate intent on the part of the owner, you could generate a quite interesting adventure from the raw materials here. Especially if this is happening despite the uneconomic nature of the business in general. Ladies and Gentlemen, start your conspiracy theories now.

The real treasure here is the list of current wares. These are interesting and creative, though I would want to adjust some of them before turning them loose in my campaign, in particular the Mirrored Box of Davos. The ability to hide “anything” from the view of “anyone” except the owner of the Box seems way too powerful to me, taken at face value. But most are far better than this example, and these are worth the $1 price-tag on their own. Anything else of value that can be extracted from the supplement is gravy.

The extra necessary mile

The shame of it all is that this offering has so much missed potential. Make the proprietor more sinister and more learned when it comes to illusions, without much change to the superficial personality. Replace the image, which is inappropriate to most fantasy campaigns. Give him some source of funds that he can exploit to keep the shop in operation despite turning a constant loss on every transaction, justifying that with his darker purpose (conquest?) using the Codex he seeks. Apply some magic to deal with the security problems and make the location more wondrous, such as shelves which are all-but invisible except directly in front of a customer, so that the proprietor can see any attempt to steal from him. Employ another clever deception to protect his liquidity – maybe that’s what the cat really is? And enlarge the map. Those sex steps are all that would have been needed to make this an absolutely killer product.

The conceptual problems I raised are not insuperable, but the solutions demand a little more creativity than usual, and this is one occasion when the extra necessary mile is a journey on which the supplement does not set forth.

Some perspective

Having criticized it mercilessly, I have to reiterate that I think this supplement worth the asking price even though it fails to achieve the stated objective of the One Spot series, of being locations ready to drop into any campaign.

And you might not have the same obsession with plausibility that I do, or the same negative associations; you might have no conceptual problems with dropping a magic shop into your campaign.

An Alternative Application

Of course, all these problems go away if we’re talking about an industrial civilization. Recasting the Magic Shop into a high-tech context solves all the problems. You can even still have Angar searching for a spiritual relic, if you want, minimizing the necessary changes. The overly-helpful and altogether too cute graphic remain, of course; but the major problems will have been solved.

Which shows, of course, that there’s nothing wrong with the execution, just a problem with the underlying assumptions.

Overall verdict

So, to sum up:

Content Quality

This varies from average to excellent, and there’s enough of that excellence in each of the offerings to justify the price tag.

Production Quality

I’d really like to have seen these done in a three-page layout, with a little extra content and a little more white space, and most especially, slightly bigger and more legible maps.

Conclusions

If I didn’t know about the excellence of the ideas in the “current wares” I probably wouldn’t have bought the second of these supplements if I came across it while browsing, but would have taken a chance on “The Painted Man”. But the real prize, and the standard-setter for the series, is the free product, “Hand’s Goods”. With that as the baseline, I would have been happily minded to buy the others in the series, and slightly disappointed that the others didn’t quite achieve the same luminescent standard. As a set, they are nevertheless more than good enough to convince me to await eagerly the next in the series, whatever – or should that be “wherever”? – it might be.

Some Background

There was a time when I never used miniatures in my gaming. This was for three reasons: they were expensive, they needed painting (which I wasn’t very good at doing), and I didn’t have any, anyway. Then a friend bequeathed me his Cardboard Heroes collection (Paper miniatures from Steve Jackson Games) and little by little, they began to seep into my games. Genre was largely irrelevant – I would quite happily use a character to represent an Orc one week and a supervillain the next.

Most of these encounters took place on a plain white hexgrid, or no hexgrid at all. Measurements were mostly by eye, though a plastic ruler might be used to determine whether a character’s line of sight was blocked. This gave the advantage of having no fixed scale, or – more to the point – of being able to use whatever scale was most useful for the encounter. Some printed map-pages got added to the mix, starting with some that I had from Marvel Superheroes modules, and supplemented by some from The Lord Of The Rings. The whole thing was very make-do, but it worked.

Over time, I developed a repertoire of techniques for extending the functionality of the collection. I’ll come back to that point in a moment.

Then collectable miniatures games came along. I never had the money to invest in them, but one of my friends did, and he started wheeling out his collection when a miniature was called for. Unless they were facing something unusual for which he knew he had both the figure and where it was in his collection, the PCs were represented by chosen figures from his collection while we continued to use the Cardboard Heroes for the villains and monsters.

With the figures came tiled battlemaps.

In the early days, there weren’t very many of these, and almost universally, they were fantasy/D&D oriented. This is not a problem when that’s what you’re playing, but is a little more problematic when you’re doing superheroes on a space station or a mad scientist’s lair. But we found that a number of the techniques that I had developed, mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, worked a treat to dress up and extend the usefulness of the battlemaps.

These were followed by dungeon tiles. Another friend amassed a substantial collection of these which he loaned to the cause of a better game, and they have become the mainstay of the miniature representation of my game worlds – but not always used in the most obvious manner, and still supplemented by the old techniques.

In this article, I’m going to share some of those techniques with you, and vastly increase the scope of what you can depict on your battlemaps. Some of these may be obvious, some may never have occurred to you. They come in two categories: Found Objects, and Made Objects.

Found Objects

I’m always on the lookout for objects which have a particular shape that can be used to represent something on the battlemap. I haven’t used all the following, but here are some of the most useful ideas:

1. Paperbacks & CD/DVD cases

These are a great way to add elevation to your map. Paperbacks are often uniform in dimensions other than thickness (though this is less true now than it used to be) and cut flush to the edges. CD & DVD cases are more uniform in size in all dimensions but aren’t completely flush. Place some tiles on the top and – if necessary – stand some more up, leaning against the sides. Use a little Blu-Tack to anchor them if you feel that necessary. Using a couple of small tiles stacked to a height half that of the ‘shelf’ constructed in this manner makes a great 3-D staircase. See also “cardboard steps” under ‘made objects’, below.

2. Tissue Boxes (unopened)

When you need a little more height, these can be useful, used in the same way as paperbacks and CD/DVD cases.

3. Tissue Boxes (opened)

I’ve only used this trick once. I built up the battlemap so that the whole thing was flush in height with the opened tissue box, and made sure to put a tile over the opening. When a PC stepped on the centre of the box, I removed the tile and pushed the miniature half-way through the opening as a dramatic representation of the quicksand he had stepped into. It would also work great for a pit, pushing the mini all the way into the box.

4. Tissues

Thick clouds or spiderwebs can be simulated very effectively simply by dropping a tissue over the top of the miniature; the softness of the tissue means that it will roughly conform to the shape of the victim. You can even poke an arm out through the tissue paper for additional realism and shock value. But there are even more effective techniques in the “made objects” section that I would use in preference – unless I wanted a particularly thick effect, in which case I would use cotton wool if I had it – and tissue if I didn’t.

5. Electric Motor innards

I pulled the rotor out of the electric motor from an old toy. Including the shaft, it’s about an inch-and-a-half long. I actually grabbed it because the shape reminded me of a sci-fi spacecraft. I’ve used this to represent everything from a weird gadget to a diesel generator to a nuclear bomb in games.

6. Cheap Takeaway Containers

These often have slightly oblique sides. Turning one upside down and placing tiles against the sides looks great. Alternatively, cover one in a brown gift-wrap or aluminium (“aluminum”) foil to represent a bunker or a large sci-fi machine, respectively.

7. Salad Bowl and/or Colander

Domed structures are common in sci-fi. Taking a large salad bowl and inverting it gives you something that’s close enough to a 3D representation of one. An inverted colander gives a slightly smaller example. You can also use a large salad bowl, right-way-up, to represent a crater, especially if you sticky-tape some heavy cloth around the edges to form a skirt (stuff the hollow with old scrunched-up newspaper or something). Build up the region around the outside in height using the paperback trick so that the bottom of the crater is below “ground level”. Ten minutes work produces unbelievable realism.

8. Strainer or small Tupperware/plastic bowl

The fact that these are translucent or see-through and come in various shapes and sizes makes them great for representing force-fields when inverted. They can also be used as sci-fi “set dressing”, missile silo hatches, or petrochemical tank farms in a refinery.

9. Measuring Cups

These are cheap, come in various sizes, and usually will sit flat on the battlemap when inverted. They are just the right size to represent various small vehicles, especially in a sci-fi game environment. Alternatively, use them right-way-up and you can fit the minis representing the passengers actually inside the container.

10. Spray Cans

Tall cylindrical shapes. Great for sci-fi furniture, missiles, and rockets. Less often useful but still occasionally warranted as stone columns.

11. Soft Drink Cans

Not quite as tall, but about the same size in diameter, you can alternate with spray cans to form crenellations. Build up the area behind them using DVD box sets standing on their sides or a tissue paper box on paperbacks and you can have minis stand “behind” the crenellations and look down on the battlemap.

12. Spray Can Lids

The lids on their own, inverted, are useful for sci-fi furniture. And you can stack one on top of a mini to represent a character flying overhead.

13. Gummy Snakes

When you really want a snake to look like a snake, use a snake! Bonus: you can eat them afterwards.

14. Jelly Babies

When you have to depict fourty cryogenic sleeper capsules, jelly babies work a treat. Bonus: a snack at the end of play!

15. Blu-Tack and string/colored cotton/wool

A few small blobs of Blu-Tack can be used to affix string or died cotton to the battlemap, permitting the outlining of various strange shapes and persistent effects like electric-eye beams. Throw in some slight 3D work on the “walls” using the techniques suggested above and you can set up a high-tech laser security system. By holding down one end and picking up the other, you can also simulate a laser firing at random. It adds a whole new layer of verisimilitude far in excess of the effort involved.

Taking this a step higher, string can be used to depict electrical cables, fire hoses, and the like. If you’re careful (to make sure that it can be cleaned off afterwards), you can even attach one end to the hand of the miniature “character” wielding the hose.

16. Tiddlywinks counters

Place these on the map board in random positions before the players arrive to simulate land mines. Take a couple of photos from various positions, then remove the counters. When the PCs step in a location that the photo shows used to have a tiddlywinks counter, the mine goes off – put the counter back on the board. Faster, easier, and far more graphic than anything else you can do.

17. Glass Ball

A few years ago, I bought a glass sculpture at a street fair. It has colored glass “streaks” through it but is mostly transparent. I’ve used it several times as a game prop for a crystal ball, and on one occasion used it to represent a dimensional portal on the battlemap.

18. Unusual small electric torches

I have a couple of these. One has a triangular shape, another has rounded edges, a third is all soft curves. They all make great sci-fi vehicles and stage dressings.

19. Abstract-print wallpaper, kitchen-counter surfaces, and gift paper

There are times when I want to depict a strange surface that the battlemaps don’t provide. A sheet of one of these with an appropriate pattern/color/texture can work a treat. Black for deep space; Blue for the ocean; and so on.

20. Adult workman’s boots

Put these on the battlemap to represent the feet of a really BIG opponent and watch your players’ eyes pop. Heck, one is probably enough! But it also works to represent the full “miniature” of a creature when you don’t have one that’s the right size, or the foot of a giant statue. Blue-tack a cutout illustration to each side for additional verisimilitude. If Ragnerok had ever been played out in my superhero campaign rather than occurring between campaigns set in the same game world, I would have used this technique, or something like it, to depict Fenris.

21. Children’s gumshoes

For something in-between a large mini and the BIG boot, use a child’s boot.

22. Artist’s Dummies

A further step down in size are poseable artist’s dummies. I have a pair about 10″ tall. These can be expensive, but I got them for their intended purpose – this function is an added bonus.

23. A long purple or black cotton sock

I’ll use something to wedge open the mouth of the sock without obstructing that mouth – a frame made from paddle pop sticks broken in half and held with Blu-Tack and sticky-tape will do, but I tend to use an egg-ring. The result is a purple worm big enough to actually swallow minis whole and that looks a bit wormlike. Don’t use ankle-high socks for the purpose, the proportions are wrong.

24. Plastic Toys – Dinosaurs

It doesn’t matter too much if these are to the right scale or not. They are close enough, and dinosaurs came in all sorts of sizes anyway.

25. Plastic Toys – Military Vehicles

On the other hand, there are a number of tanks and jeeps that are fairly close to the right scale out there, and quite cheap.

26. Toy Aircraft

It’s so much easier to describe an aerobatic maneuver using one of these as a model. Scale doesn’t matter – the ones I have are about 5 inches across and from WWI.

27. Sculptures & Unusual Cigarette Lighters

I have a small sculpture of a Horus head (about an inch-and-a-quarter tall). I have a sculpted cigarette lighter in the shape of a dragon about 8 inches long. The first screams “Ancient Egypt” as soon as you plonk it down. The second screams “trouble”. I’m always on the lookout for this sort of thing.

28. Blister Packs of Batteries

When you put these down on the battlemap, you get a row of cylindrical shapes about 8′ long (in scale), perfect for LPG gas tanks, modern missiles, etc. Vary the battery size to alter the dimensions of the “tanks”. Bonus: you get to use the batteries afterwards.

29. Large Screwdrivers

Something else that I’ve used to represent alien tech are screwdrivers. I’ve also sticky-taped a matchbox to the blade end to form something rather like a largish cannon. Or tell the players to ignore the shaft and blade and just use the handles to represent bigger storage tanks.

30. Boardgame Boards

There are times when a boardgame board makes the perfect replacement for a battlemap because of what is depicted on it. I’d love to get my hands on a couple of Robo Rally tiles for factories, for example.

31. Boardgame figures/counters

The more modern the game, the more likely it is that these will have a shape that can be used as a miniature. But I have a game from about 15 years ago (I forget the name) that used miniature tanks and army vehicles in different colors, only about 1/6 of an inch long, that work wonderfully as a rat horde, or the little bots from Star Wars. Whenever you find a boardgame at a Garage Sale, it’s always worth a look, and asking yourself “what could I use these for?”.

32. Large Post-it notes

This doesn’t always work perfectly. Covering the parts of the battlemap that the PCs can’t see preserves the mystery of what you’ve emplaced there. If one character has better vision than the rest, you can lift the non-adhesive flap to give them a sneak preview while concealing the contents from other players with a hand, clipboard, or whatever.

33. Toothpicks & Blu-Tack

These make great spears. The Blu-Tack lets them stand upright at an angle for added realism.

34. Aluminium Foil (“Aluminum Foil” in the US)

You can make all sorts of things out of this just by folding it, and alter the appearance of a lot of things by covering them with it. Take advantage of these facts. Heck, scrunching it up into boulders is worth thinking about and about as easy as it gets.

35. Cling-wrap

Some GMs may be reluctant to risk damaging their Dungeon Tiles and battlemaps with Blu-Tack. If you’re one of them (and I am, because I don’t own most of them), cover them in a little cling-wrap first.

36. Plastic Fan

I have a plastic battery-operated 3-bladed fan. It stands about 8″ tall. Which makes it close to the perfect scale for a ship’s propeller.

37. DVD Towers

These can serve as anything tall and cylindrical, from a lighthouse to a nuclear power-plant cooling tower. They are often stackable for extra height. Gift-wrap them with the pattern on the inside if you want opaque white.

Made Objects

Most of the found objects are usable “as-is” with little or no prep-time. But there are a few objects that require more prep.

38. Conical Jelly Containers

Over the last decade or so, Asian jellies have become commonly available in many supermarkets here in Australia. Some varieties come in lovely conical containers, each holding one mouthful or so of jelly. Wash them out afterwards and spray-paint them to create sci-fi window dressing, space capsules, or even generators. I once visited the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Plant (a school excursion) and the visible part of the generators were cones about this size rising from the floor).

39. Matchbox

Another method I’ve used to represent a dimensional portal is a matchbox with holes cut in front and back, and the whole thing wrapped in Aluminium (“Aluminum”) Foil.

40. Old Circuit Boards

These frequently have all sorts of wonderful electronic components on one side to use as “furniture”. The problem is that the other side, which has wonderful high-tech “patterns” on it, also has protruding wires that can be quite sharp and can damage tiles or battlemaps. Solve this by cutting a 1/4″ (1 cm) sheet of foam to the right dimensions and placing it underneath the board. You will also want to remove any wires or cables leading away from the circuit board.

If all you want is the “high-tech surface” of the underside of the device, use a soldering iron and pair of pliers to remove all the electronic components from the other side.

PS: You can get a great “fusion reactor” by finding an old-style TV and extracting the yoke (goes around the picture tube). Leave the wires attached to the yoke (cut them from the far end if you have to). Then stick the thing face-down on the game-board, with the “cables” running off the game-board.

41. Cardboard Steps

It can be useful to cut up an old, heavy-cardboard box into 1″ x 1″ and 1″ x 2″ shapes. You can then stack several of these, holding them together with sticky-tape, to create steps of any required thickness, or arena-like seating, or whatever.

42. Gift-wrap Excerpts

Some gift-wrap has sparkles and fireworks. Other gift-wrap has long streamers or ribbons. Cut these out and use them to represent special effects on the Battlemap.

43. Paper Clouds

I’ve lost count of the number of ways I’ve used these. Torn by hand in a pinch, they have since served as everything from a small pond to a petrol spill to radioactive cloud to trees (actually, that was what they were originally created for). They are just a more-or-less round shape, with somewhat-puffy protrusions, like a thought-bubble, in various sizes. Remember, meaning is whatever you assign. Paper and scissors does the job.

44. Plain-Lace Clouds

But an even better solution for some effects is to get some plain, unpatterned white lace, and cut it into rough circles of various sizes, and then given the “bulbous edges”. That’s because this stuff is semi-see-through, so you can drop it over the minis and still see what’s beneath.

Bonus: they also work very well for swarms of insects!

45. Patterned-Lace Spiderwebs

A similar approach using patterned-lace gives really incredible-looking giant-spider webs. WAY better than simply using tissues.

46. Patterned-Lace Trees

Take some of your spiderwebs and spray-paint them, or soak them in food coloring, or coat them in acrylic paint and water – not so thick that they become too stiff and have the stuff flake off onto the battlemaps. Heck, even washing them in warm water which contains the innards of water-soluble texta will do. The objective is to stain them green – you can then use them to depict trees.

47. Patterned-Lace Ice

Similarly, do some in a sky blue and you’ll get “cracked ice”. Maybe hand-coloring a patch in the centre to represent a hole in the ice.

48. Patterned-Lace Pits

The same technique applied to black lace gives very realistic Pits. Instead of putting the pit under the character, drop it over the top of the mini to show that he’s “in the pit”. You’ll have to explain it to your PCs the first time; after that, the simple act of dropping a “pit” onto someone should tell its own story.

49. Paper Dragons

On one occasion, I needed a large Chinese dragon. So I drew a crude one (outline only) that I could drop on the map-board and cut it out. If I were doing it again, I would then slice it across the flat “mini” at major joints in the neck, tail, & wings so that I could articulate it. I’d also use some cardboard instead of paper and try to find some suitable texture or gift-wrap to glue on it for more realism. Add some Blu-Tack holding a bead or two for the eyes, and you’d have something that could be reused time and time again. Store it in a sandwich bag to keep the pieces in one place.

I’ve also made paper rivers, jungle vines, rope bridges, And hovercraft.

50. Lightning effect, various lengths

Get a sheet of paper and lightly draw some sort of rough lightning bolt from one corner to another, no more than about 1/4″ thick. Trace the outline in a light blue texta. Cut it out, and then cut to various lengths. Do the same thing on the leftover paper until you can’t get any more from it. You should easily be able to make 100′ worth of lightning bolt in fifteen minutes.

The advantage of this is that it preserves the visibility of whatever the details are on the underlying battlemap.

Do the same thing with different colored texta for variations and other special effects. Use brightly-colored cardboard for still more variations. Fluero Yellow works especially well, but you will need a red texta not a blue one.

51. Fireballs from Gift-wrap & Red- or Yellow- tinted translucent contact plastic

Some gift-wrap has nice abstract patterns on it, but it’s rarely the right color for a fireball. So cover it in tinted contact plastic. Then cut out circles of different diameters, using salad bowls, plates, etc to get a round shape.

As a variation: Sandwich some patterned white lace between two layers of tinted contact plastic, glue side inward.

Five-to-ten minutes work gets you some custom fireballs that you can simply drape over “ground zero” without removing the miniatures.

52. Pipes from gummy snake and plastic straw segments

Plastic straws have been used to simulate pipes in models for decades. This often involves a lot of careful cutting and gluing to create bends in the “pipes”. You can do the same thing far more quickly by stretching an inch-long segment of a gummy snake until it’s just thin enough to fit into the end of the straw segments. Hint – stretch the snake before cutting the segments, it’s a lot easier.

In the old days, I might have used the runners from Airfix model kits – used to hold cast components together and left over after assembly of a model – for the same purpose. Easy to work with, but they still would have needed gluing. The only advantage would have been relative solidity and rigidity.

Conclusion

A lot of everyday objects have simple “primitive” shapes that can be used to represent all sorts of things on the game board. Heck, I once used a wall thermometer to represent the business end of a particle accelerator. When you have to represent a location or environment that doesn’t quite fit anything you’ve got in the form of a battlemap, or when elevation is going to be especially important, think outside the box – and then look around you. You might be surprised at what you find.

What is Blu-Tack?
At the last possible minute, I realized that Blu-Tack might be named something else in some countries. While a brand name, it has been generalized to a whole range of similar silly-putty type temporary adhesives here in Australia. So I thought I had better throw in an explanatory note, just in case. And if there’s anything else you don’t recognize, feel free to ask me.

Nyngan (pronounced Ning-gan) is the small town in central New South Wales where I grew up, so I know it well – at least as it used to be. It’s so remote that I haven’t been back there for years. In the following passages, I hope to bring it to life for my readers, then adapt the general description to various game settings.

The Real Nyngan

To begin with, let me acquant you with the real settlement, the township of Nyngan.

The Nyngan Environment

Technically, Nyngan stands astride the desert line, but compared to most towns in central and western New South Wales, they are very lucky in that they have ample water supplies most of the time, though minor water restrictions are permanently in place, and water rates are very expensive. Wooded stands are common, but the general natural ecology is scrubland.

Nyngan in Summer

The heat sucks the breath from your body, and it is all the casual visitor can do to pant and think of something cool and moist. It’s so hot that the bitumen softens to become sticky tar with gravel in it, The earth seems flat as a pancake, and the roads are so straight that they can be hypnotic. It rarely rains, droughts alternating with rare flood years, when sheets of water fifty or more kilometers across sweep over the landscape. In dry years, clouds of thick red dust that sticks to everything like glue occasionally choke the town. When it rains, this turns into a cloying, clinging mud that is more than enough to unbalance tires. Flies are common irritations, most are small in size but occasionally you will find one a centimeter or more in length. The record temperature is 47°C (116.6°F) in the shade, the average is 33°C (91.4°F).

Nyngan in Winter

There are colder places, but there are few that feel so chilly when the southerlies blow. They seem to ferret out any opening and insinuate themselves between coverings and flesh. At night, the temperature plunges, and thick frosts are not uncommon. Fog is infrequent but not unheard-of. The lowest temperature on record is -4°C (24.8°F), but the mid-winter average is about 8°C higher than this (39.2°F).

The Dwellings

Most houses stand alone on sizable blocks of land with front and/or back yards fully large enough for a second or even third dwelling. These tend to be individually fenced. When water restrictions do not force them to burn a withered yellow-brown, they are a vibrant green in summer, a little less so in winter. Burrs and weeds are common. Many have their own water-catchment tanks attached to supplement the town supply. Few homes these days don’t have air conditioning, though a few still make do with electric fans. Many of the homes now have solar panels on the roofs.

Houses all have screen doors in addition to more typical wooden doors. Homes are often unlocked when someone is at home, or even when nipping down to the shops to buy something; crime is relatively low. Many would fit the description, “spartan but homey and comfortable”, but over the years domestic improvements have accumulated. All told, the urban population numbers roughly a couple of thousand people.

Most of the streets are wide; some have gravel shoulders, others are bitumen all the way to the curbs. Trees are commonplace, and their shade provides welcome relief from the summer sun or the winter wind.

The Dangers Of Nyngan

In the surrounding lands, occasional wild dogs and wild boars may be encountered, but the most prevalent dangerous wildlife is the Kangaroo, predominantly the Eastern Grey and occasional Red. These can weigh as much as 90kg (200lb), stand 2m (6’6″) tall, and can leap more than a meter in the air to clear fences. They have sharp claws on feet and paws, and the former especially can be dangerous when the wild animals are confronted.

Black and Brown snakes are uncommon but can occasionally be found in gardens and yards even within the town boundaries. These are highly venomous. The browns are rarer, but often more aggressive, or maybe it’s the other way around – I honestly don’t recall.

Redback Spiders are a menace that children are taught to beware of from an early age; they like to crawl into cool and sheltered locations, under homes and into garages and tool sheds, and will often make a home in any opened can left lying around for long enough, or the undersides of toys.

Nyngan At Night

The stars are breathtaking, especially just outside of town, removed from the glare of streetlamps. Even within the town boundaries, the view is hundreds of times sharper and more densely-populated than the best city view. In summer, a chorus of insects fills the air. Mosquitoes are an ever-present nuisance in the hot seasons, especially at night; the locals avoid standing directly beneath streetlamps and overhead lighting in the open to avoid being (metaphorically) eaten alive.

The locals generally hate daylight savings; it frequently does not grow dark in midsummer until 8:30 or 9:00 PM. The gap between closing time for the businesses (generally 5:30) and darkness is when the town is at its social height (barring weekends). There’s really no excuse under such conditions for parents not spending time with their kids, though it still happens. Casually visiting friends and relatives is frequent during these hours, whether it be for 5-10 minutes or half-an-hour.

The Shopping Centre

Entering the settlement from the direction of the city, almost 600 kilometers away, one is almost immediately within the commercial district. A short distance into town, the major highway turns left to cross the railroad line, though the road itself continues straight ahead; this involves climbing an artificial hill to the not-at-all-level crossing. A system of flashing lights and bells warns when a train is approaching the intersection, but is rarely needed these days; passenger trains now stop at Dubbo, the nearest city, 170 kilometers away (this trip supposedly takes less than 2 hours but most drivers would consider that a good time, 2½-3 is more common, especially if part or all the travel is in twilight or at night). From Dubbo, you take a coach to Nyngan. However, the line remains open to freight trains.

Twilight travel requires both driver and passengers to be constantly alert for wildlife, especially Kangaroos, on the shoulders of the highway; hitting one at speed can write off a car or severely damage it, to say nothing of the potential consequences to vehicle occupants.

Some commercial properties lie along the original route, but it is only across the railroad crossing that the real town centre is reached, as the highway turns right and heads west. Secondary operations exist elsewhere in town, but 95% or more of retail operations occur along this stretch of road, or one of the side-streets branching off to the south, almost all within a block of the main street. Nyngan has the usual shops, but is oversupplied with taverns, pubs, and clubs for a town of its size. It is probably undersupplied with cafes, cake shops, and takeaways relative to most similar towns.

The people

In many ways, Nyngan is the same as any small town anywhere in the world – people are friendly, if not immediately embracing of strangers. The locals generally divide into two groups: those who live on farms and sheep/cattle stations (“ranches” for the American readers) outside of town, and the urban population. The latter like to think of themselves as the reason the town exists, but the reality is that everything local is infrastructure to support those who support the non-urban population.

A vital secondary function relates to the towns positioning on the major connection between Sydney and the capital of South Australia, Adelaide.

As well as sheep and cattle, Nyngan has a large and growing farming industry. Wheat, barley, oats, and canola, are the most commonly crops. This is a very costly and unrewarding occupation; if the rain does not come at the right time, farmers are lucky to cover their expenses, but the odd good year is enough to keep them trying again and again. Another new industry that has emerged in recent years in the area is mining. Nyngan currently mines copper ore only, but there has been minable gold discovered in the region too. For the immediate future, there are no plans to exploit this last development, but eventually it will almost certainly happen.

If this gives the impression that the residents are all optimists, it’s not far from the truth, though they can complain as much as anyone anywhere else. Most of the residents love a gamble but few risk to excess. “You have to be in it to win it” is very much a Nyngan philosophy that extends to all aspects of the lives of the population. Another characteristic is a steady, unwavering determination; no matter how bad the times are, economically, for the region, there is always a new prospect on the horizon that will keep the settlement ticking over.

Most Nynganites are very keen on sport. Rugby League is the most popular and men travel up to 200km each way to compete in both Rugby League and Rugby Union competitions. A local touch football competition is also very popular with high participation and strong local attendance. In summer there is a local cricket competition and both lawn bowls and golf are played all year round. Every few years, Tennis rises in local popularity.

Amongst families, little athletics is very popular and parents think nothing of taking their children long distances each weekend to compete with the “neighboring” towns.

Of course, given the summer temperatures, swimming is a popular recreation. This is not usually organized competition; its more about getting cool and wet, splashing around and having fun. Hundreds have been known to pack the municipal swimming pool at a time.

Leaving Town

Small roads leave town to the north and south. The main routes out of town are to the east (already discussed) and to the west. Taking that westerly course, you cross a bridge across a large, reasonably slow-moving river, the Bogan. Beyond this bridge is another park which provides access to the river for swimming and boating. This has only one advantage over the swimming pool: it’s free to use. Once or twice a year, major events draw hundreds of people to the site.

Facilities

The town has a library, a hospital, 3 churches, and an Olympic swimming pool. There’s a primary school, a catholic school, a high school, and a kindergarten. There are a few parks, a couple of ovals, and an aerodrome suitable for light aircraft. In recent times it has been announced that a huge solar energy farm will be constructed in the region that is expected to generate a lot of employment.

I still have aunts and cousins living in Nyngan, and other relatives who visit regularly so I had some of them review the above for accuracy and comment. I need to thank them for their contributions before I go any further.

The Nyngan Of The Past – a personal impression

Discounting recent developments such as the farming and mining, there’s been very little change in Nyngan over the years. A major event a decade seems to be the average; the pace of life is slower there. Beyond that, only minor differences divide one year from the next.

In part, that’s due to the dependence on the rural economy; if there’s a bad year, you cope and wait for the next in hopes of improvement. In part, it’s due to the isolation, which also insulates against whatever is going on in the wider world. Both of these elements attract a certain kind of personality, those who might list perseverance in the face of adversity in a profile – if they went in for such nonsense, which they don’t.

Roughly twenty years ago (give or take a couple of years), the town was at it’s lowest ebb. That was when the town was at the heart of the worst flood on record. Desperate attempts by the locals to reinforce levee banks failed, and the entire town had to be evacuated by helicopter. The rural economy had been failing for some time, and for many, this was the last straw. I was told that up to 1/3 of those evacuated did not return, and did not intend to return; this was an opportunity for a fresh start elsewhere. Many of my relatives felt the town was dying. And yet, the lure of the easygoing people and the cheap real estate and the homesickness factor has led many of those who departed to creep back in ones, twos, and threes, over the years, and the population level of the settlement is now almost exactly what it was in my youth.

25-30 years ago, passenger rail services to the town were stopped, producing the rail-bus arrangement described earlier, except for increasingly rare exceptions each day that eventually stopped completely. A few years earlier, the public high and primary schools had separated and the primary moved into a new complex. That happened the year before I entered Secondary Education (school years 7-12).

Fourty-five years ago, more-or-less, the swimming pool and municipal library opened, at close to the same time. I think the swimming pool came first by a couple of years, but couldn’t swear to it. I was just starting school.

That’s the pace of events and changes in Nyngan: slow to develop, slow to change, one day much like the next, and even more like the same day the year before. The town preserves, conserves, and encapsulates some of the best attributes of society in a more golden era. Think 1950s, but without the 1950s attitudes. There’s an unhurried pace to life, and the sense that there’s always time to pause and say hello to the people you know and have a chat about whatever. It’s a product of gritty determination, a hardy optimism that rarely if ever relents, a hostile climate, and a relative isolation that spares it from the volatility, the highs and lows, of much of the modern world. They have just enough contact to avoid becoming insular, to remain relatively cosmopolitan in outlook, and avoid living up the cliché of the country hick.

The Isolation Of Nyngan

It’s worth mentioning a trend that has continued for decades: In olden days, when cars and roads weren’t very good, there used to be a lot of country towns half-a-day’s travel or less from each other. As transport and infrastructure improved, people didn’t need to stop as frequently and undertook longer journeys. Travel to Sydney by car used to be a ten-hour all-day trip, departing early in the morning and arriving late in the afternoon; that has now been cut to six or seven hours.

The difference has been small but has accumulated, and many small country towns have withered and all but died. The same is true of many of the smaller settlements that surround Nyngan. This has led to the contact between the town and the outside world being diminished except for when special occasions prompt one or more locals to make the trip to “the big city”.

Prices In Nyngan

Every commodity seems to cost more in Nyngan, largely because it has to be transported to the town. Fuel prices are very high, and enough to invoke slightly bitter laughter when urban dwellers complain about the price of fuel going up; whatever the landmark valuation is, it was old news in Nyngan more than a decade earlier.

Balanced against that is the price of land and housing, which is a fraction of the city or suburban pricing. What would be a million-dollar home and block of land in a cheap Sydney suburb is a tenth that price in Nyngan. At one point I calculated that it would have cost only $5-$10 a week more than I was paying in rent and utilities to buy a house in Nyngan and commute by air to the city and back every weekend.

A lot of services that more populous centers take for granted just don’t exist. I remember it causing a minor sensation when Nyngan first got a taxi. At times there have been a couple, at other times none; whether or not there’s one at the moment, I don’t know. There’s no internal public transport aside from school busses, which collect kids from the surrounding country properties each morning and deliver them back at the end of the school day. You either provide your own transport, or you walk. The town is small enough that you can do that.

Nyngan in Fantasy

Nyngan can be used as a model for any isolated community without much change. The architecture would be different, and perhaps the wildlife that occasionally reminds the citizens that they are surrounded by nature. The climate would need to change to match the surrounding environment. The primary requirement would be to explain the isolation. This can be done with geographic distance, or with geographic difficulties. It’s not a place of high adventure, but it is the sort of place that might lie along an invasion route, or to which a dark evil might escape to lick its wounds in hidden shadows after a defeat. You could change the threat of floods to the threat of a volcanic eruption and never miss a beat.

Nyngan in SF

The same need has to be accommodated to use the town in an SF setting. It could be transplanted to become a small lunar colony, established to extract minerals from the lunar subsurface, an industry that has given way to hydroponic farming, for example.

You could easily scale up the township to provide the model for an agricultural world within some galactic federation or empire. The trick is to expand and analogize the elements that make up the town to the same scale – the major travel route passing through, the relative isolation, and so on.

Nyngan in Pulp & Horror

Nyngan is not the sort of town to feature in either of these genres unless the isolation was somehow unusual, the people trapped in a twilight zone where change hasn’t kept pace with its surroundings, and the citizens live in ignorance of the lurking horror or alien invaders amongst them. The township is even more isolated than the community that is the initial point of contact in “The Puppet Masters” by Robert A. Heinlein, so much so that there would be no need to disguise the spaceship of the Titans as a schoolboy publicity stunt; there wouldn’t be any media attention to begin with. It’s probably the least-likely place in the world from which to launch a bid for global domination – and that in itself makes it an attractive setting for the headquarters of such a bid to a GM.

Of course, it would only take a small exaggeration of the ‘friendliness’ of the locals and their willingness to go the extra mile to speed a stranded traveler on their way to make the township assume subtle but really creepy overtones.

Nyngan in a Western

If there is one genre for which Nyngan seems naturally suited, it’s that of the Western. Some municipal elements might need to be downgraded, and the technology regressed, but the town itself barely needs to change.

Nyngan in Cyberpunk

The internet reached Nyngan a long time ago, but even there it is relatively isolated by slow speeds, something that is only slowly changing. The latest generation of internet-enabled Smartphones have probably had a very big impact – something I hadn’t thought of when talking to my relatives about the content of this article, or I would have asked about it specifically.

What that means is that Nyngan is a surprisingly-good and interesting fit when viewed as a model for a community in this genre of game. You have the physical isolation, you could easily have a backwoods sub-society of cybernetically-enhanced toughs and hillbillies, and yet the township could easily form the nexus for a plot aimed at domination of the Net. Most of the town would be ignorant of this role, but the isolation and the small size of the community would provide a number of natural defenses to such an operation. Strangers would stand out from a mile away, and as I said in a another context a few paragraphs ago, this is the last place you would look for a plot aimed at global domination.

Nyngan & Superheroics

In one way, Nyngan and Superheroics just don’t mix. There’s nothing there to attract the sort of vile menace that four-colored heroes are prone to tackle. In another, since superhero campaigns can borrow plots from just about any other genre, the town is an easy fit. In a recent adventure within my superhero game, a corporation had set up a ‘facility’ for hiding people they wanted to bury away from public scrutiny, disguised as a hospital and attached car dealership. While the township itself was a small community set in Canada, I was all set to use Nyngan as my model for it – but the PCs never went there. It was that idea that initially led to the subject of this Blog Carnival.

The Wrap-up

Nyngan is a strange hybrid of isolated country town and cosmopolitan centre, of friendly folks and a distinct personality, that makes it a useful conceptual model for a wide range of communities in gaming. It is a chameleon, large enough to be used as an urban settlement and small enough to simply be the focal point of a region dominated by primary industry.

With the exception of a year or so back in the 80s, I haven’t lived there in more than 30 years, but it continues to exert an influence over my way of thinking and my personality; in many ways it is the wellspring from which I have sprung. Would I ever move back there? Almost certainly not; I’m too well-adapted to the larger urban environment in which I reside. But you can take the boy out of Nyngan, you can never take Nyngan out of the boy. It’s been a privilege to share my impressions of it with you.

How do you choose a location? Where do events transpire? What considerations should you take into account, and what is the process and the chain of logic that gives the best answers most rapidly? These are questions that Blair and I will have to tackle repeatedly tomorrow, as I write this, because our next pulp adventure has reached the point of being almost ready to improv; we need some places and descriptions, and then some names, some history, and perhaps a couple of pieces of canned dialogue and then we can move on to writing the adventure-after-next – and that’s exactly the order we plan on tackling these requirements.

The Application Of Logic

The usual starting point is to ask if there is anything about the scene’s content that mandates where it is to take place.

The Logic of Events

If the previous scene had the heroes discovering the Secret Lair™ of the villain, and this scene is a raid apon that villain’s base of operations, then it has to take place either at the villain’s lair or just outside it (depending on where we want to pick up the action).

If the scene involves dealing with the wounds inflicted by a battle, then logic dictates that events occur at the scene of the battle, nearby in a medical vehicle such as an ambulance, or at a hospital (or equivalent).

The Logic of Tactics

If the scene involves battling with a Demon, most PCs will seek the advantage of hallowed ground – so look for the nearest church or graveyard. Of course, the enemy will seek out ground on which they will have an advantage – is there such a thing as “unhallowed ground” (or some plot equivalent) and where is the nearest piece of that?

The Logic of Transit

If the scene takes place while characters are in transit, there are generally only three options: Departure, Arrival, or somewhere in between.

The Application of Persona

Basic logic of this sort will generally sort out two thirds of all required locations, or at least restrict them to a manageable subset of the entire range of options. It’s that last third, plus any cases where you still have a choice amongst members of a small set of options, that remain to be dealt with. Basic logic will only carry you so far, and then you are into the non-logical realms of style.

There are a number of factors and considerations that get incorporated into deciding the choice of locations for events when logic is not enough. These are usually not applied in any set sequence; sometimes there’s an elephant in the room that makes the impact of one or more considerations paramount over all others. At other times, these considerations serve to restrict the range of options available, or simply influence the decision, or be not obvious or applicable. Even though they are broadly grouped below, and (of necessity) presented in some sort of order, that’s simply a convenience for communication within this article; don’t take this order as a prioritization of any sort.

I have assembled the first group of considerations under the general heading of “Personalities” or “Persona”.

(Almost) All Events Have An Instigator

A fundamental consideration that should made be clear from the outset: it becomes much easier to make choices of locations if you can point to some one individual who has caused the event to occur at that particular time and place, some one person who has the choice of whether or not that is when it occurs. Of course, chance and opportunism and destiny can all play their part, but even then, some individual has to make the choice to take advantage of such factors when they present the option. Identifying who is responsible for the choice of location of the action within a scene simplifies every other decision regarding the location.

It’s a mistake to think of this only applying to straightforward confrontations, though they keep coming to mind as I write this text. For example, let’s say that the question is where the PCs are going to be, and what they are going to be doing, when they hear about some action that someone has performed (which required a decision to perform that action), or some decision that has been made. The making of the original decision, and its consequences, form one parameter of the location choice. The next parameter is the speed of communications, which dictates how quickly the news can travel. From there, the news has to reach some individual who makes the choice to disseminate the news, and the PCs have to make the conscious decision to engage with the purveyor of that news. So, viewed in context, three agencies can be considered to be the instigators of this simple sequence.

But, more practically, it is a question of opportunity, and the decision to take advantage of that opportunity, or the decision not to. The news in question exists, and there will be various opportunities available for people to hear it. If it’s the sort of news that sets tongues wagging, each person who hears it becomes a further distribution channel for the information. At some point, the set of locations in which the PCs would have the opportunity to hear the news will intersect with the set of locations that define their lives without this information – at which point the PC who becomes aware of the opportunity becomes the instigator. “You’re passing down the street when you notice a crowd gathered around a gossipmonger.” “Escorts blow a fanfare to draw attention to a Herald.” “The innkeeper asks if you’ve heard the news.” “The merchant wants to gossip.” “A town crier rings the bell he carries, announcing without words that he has news available for those who wish to buy it from him.” The circumstances create the opportunity, and the decision to take advantage of the opportunity belongs to the PC. If not taken up, another opportunity will eventually present itself. It’s easy to set up a prioritization list based on who is providing that opportunity, their mobility, and how they will hear the news.

All events within a game can be viewed as the interaction (however removed) between two characters, even if they don’t even know of each other’s existence, or are functioning through proxies. And that means that the choice of a location is dictated by one or both parties.

The Influence of Initiative

The Instigator of the action generally has the choice of where the action will occur, unless it is their choice to go to or confront the Target of the action within the scene – sometimes Mohammed must go to the Mountain, other times he can wait for it to show up.

Not as fundamental as advantage, that comes under the heading of Logic, previously; this requires some analysis of the personality of the instigator and a determination of how that personality will bear apon the choice of location.

The Influence of Timing

The more abruptly and forcefully the instigator is reacting to previous events, the more likely it is to take place either at a Decisive Location, or at somewhere close to the location of the previous scene.

The Influence of Inertia

People’s lives have an inertia. They can be prodded into a particular direction by any number of things, discussed separately below, but in the absence of any of those things, the inertia of past events on both Instigator and Respondent restrict the opportunity for the two paths to overlap to a few occasions. This is especially true early in a story or adventure, and less influential late in a story or adventure when conscious decisions play a much larger role. If neither side is bringing about the action of the scene through conscious and deliberate choice, then the location of the scene must be one of those intersections in the personal histories of the participants, so look for common ground in habits and activities.

The Influence of Comfort

People will naturally seek out places and circumstances that reassure them, even if their confidence boost is the only benefit that they accrue with this particular choice. So the instigator of a scene will tend to make choices with which they are comfortable unless they gain a clear benefit through their own discomfort or are forced into a less comfortable choice by some other factor.

That means that not only can thinking about what location choice would be most contributory to the comfort of the instigator offer a clear and compelling choice, or restrict the range of options, but that subsequently thinking about why the instigator would not choose such a location can serve as a touchstone to guide you through the many options open to you.

The Influence of Discomfort

Equally, characters will tend to avoid situations that make them uncomfortable unless they have strong reasons not to do so.

The Influence of Arrogance

It’s overconfidence if not warranted and arrogance if merited, but ego and hubris can play a definite role in the choice of location by the instigator. The stronger this element of their persona, the more likely they are deliberately override comfort factors, or even go to the opposite extreme of deliberately choosing a venue that places them at an apparent disadvantage. You should always think carefully about the level of arrogance in the instigator’s makeup.

The Influence of Circumstance

Sometimes there is no choice about where an event will occur even if this decisiveness is not founded on strict logic but on some other factor relating to the participants. This often relates to practicalities concerning what the instigator is doing immediately prior to or following the event.

Time is one circumstance that can have a profound influence, especially if one participant in the scene is feeling the pressure of time. This generally produces a situation in which the instigator has fewer choices open to them, and initiative shifts to whatever the respondent is doing in the absence or in ignorance of the scene that is about to transpire.

The Influence of Opportunity

I’ve already preempted a lot of my thunder under this subtopic with my earlier example. An instigator can simply be taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity that presents itself, which means that the inertial activities of the respondent dictate the location.

The Influence of Need

If there is something that the Instigator personally or professionally needs, or needs for the respondent to do, this need will often be a factor in determining the choice of location.

The Influence of Outcomes

Finally, the more of a planner and plotter the instigator is, the stronger the role that the desired outcome of events will play in determining the location of an event.

The compounding of Influences

Like many decisions in life, the totality of influence of personality on decisions is a compounding of many different smaller influences, some of them contradictory. The act of making a decision as to location when personality is a factor is actually roleplaying on the part of the GM; the more successfully he can put himself into the shoes of the instigator, the better will be his choice of location.

The Application of Genre

If only it were that easy! Every factor mentioned so far, from logic to personality, has to be filtered through the Application of Genre.

The Creation of Options

Specific genres can create options that simply don’t exist in other genres, or that can exist only by being reinterpreted.

Fairytale Castles can exist in cartoonish genres; can be given a more realistic rendering (with losing the fantasticality) in high-fantasy; and have to shed most of that extraordinariness in low-fantasy. They are less likely to be encountered in the pulp and secret agent genres, are still more infrequent in realistic genres, extremely infrequent in science fiction, and virtually unheard-of in western and oriental genres – though the latter have their own unique variations on the concept. Arguably, the superheroic and horror genres are the most generous, capable of encompassing locations from any other genre with varying levels of credibility that are more strongly related to internal consistency with the individual adventure than anything else.

Another example, left to the creativity of the readers as an exercise, is the Space Station (try it – you have the genre list in the preceding paragraph).

When considering locations, you always need to be aware of the additional creative options that the genre is offering. What’s more, there is no small validity to the arguement that giving preference to these options reinforces the presence of the genre and thereby benefits the game.

The Restriction of Options

As is made clear in the preceding section, for every door that opens, another closes – at least in most genres. Skyscraper office blocks and suburban shopping malls are rare in Westerns – I’m tempted to say they are unheard of.

The presence of a location that is contrary to the genre is almost a demand that it be given prominence. I may have argued in the past against the principle of Chekhov’s Gun, but this is one occasion when it absolutely applies. That in turn means that you should never introduce such a location without making it central to the plotline from the moment it first appears, even if it’s only an indirect influence at first.

The Shaping of Options

The rules of the genre may not rule a location out, or create the opportunity for a genre-specific location, but even in a more general context, they can shape the options that you have available. Warehouses may be commonly found in several genres, but in the Pulp genre they should have a particular ubiquity and a particular look and feel. It’s almost not going too far to describe them as the “gothic architecture” of the Genre. Almost.

The Application of Style

You also have to consider the stylistic overtones of the adventure/story that you’re working on, and how to use your location choices to reflect and reinforce that style. The next adventure in the Pulp Campaign, which I mentioned earlier in this article, has a very Film Noir feel to it, and that’s going to shape every other decision we can make. I’m even thinking about giving some of the primary NPCs soliloquies through the “fourth wall”, and trying to figure out a way for the PCs to respond in kind. Thankfully, it’s usually more straightforward than that.

The Application of Meaning

It is sometimes possible to add additional depth of meaning to a story with a choice of location. Stories that begin in a morgue or cemetery, or other location symbolic of endings, for example – though that’s perhaps a little heavy-handed. If you can’t communicate it any other way than being preachy, try using a location symbolic of what you want to say. (I had a great example to offer at this point, but it’s gone completely out of my head). Irony, Pathos, Melodrama – they can all be added, sometimes, to a scene by the choice of location.

The Application of Icons

Every city has them, though only a few are famous enough to be known to outsiders the world over. Iconic locations that represent the city in question. Big Ben, The Eifel Tower, Mount Fuji, The Statue Of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, The Sydney Opera House. Some national capitals seem to have more than their share – The White House, Washington Monument, Pentagon, Arch de Triumph, Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing Street.

Especially in a scene early in an adventure, or shortly after the characters first arrive, its a good idea to show or mention one of these iconic locations if you’re in a city that has one – it simply helps establish in the player’s minds that this is where they are. That means setting such a scene where the iconic structure is at least visible in the distance.

The Application Of The Mundane

On the other hand, when the events within the scene are supposed to be especially dramatic or surprising to the players, it can often be a good idea to make the setting somewhere ordinary or mundane – so that they aren’t too busy looking at the scenery to pay attention to the action.

If players are expecting something weird or supernatural, you can sometimes get extra mileage from a mundane locations – especially if you keep emphasizing how ‘ordinary’ everything is. Because after they get used to this, use of the terms ‘typical’ or ‘ordinary’ can really give players’ paranoia a workout.

The Application of Illustration

Sometimes a location will be chosen simply because you can, or have, found some particularly tasty eye candy that meets the general requirements. This is a perfectly valid justification.

The Application of Representation

Still another factor to take into consideration is whether or not you can represent it on a battlemap if that’s necessary. I intend to provide a future article for this Blog Carnival on ways to extend the functionality of battlemaps using props and other tricks and techniques which will expand your scope and reduce the significance of this factor somewhat, but it can still be a valid concern.

The Application of Inspiration

Never neglect the value of a location that inspires you. Your descriptions will be better, and the presence of the point of inspiration will even help with the writing of surrounding passages of text and interaction. Inspiration can persist for a surprisingly long time. And hopefully, it will also provide a factor of “cool” for your players to enjoy in the game.

The Application of Artistry

In some scenes, the location can do more than one job. Providing inspiration is an example, but is so significant that I’ve separated it out to stand alone, but there are other functions to consider – clues to future adventures, for example, or even clues to the solution to the current problem. Deeper meanings and in-jokes can be buried within locations. It just takes a little creativity.

Even more usefully, verisimilitude can be built into the choice of location. I have a theory that any given adventure needs a certain amount of plausibility as a base, plus extra to offset any lack realism about the action or the participants. That plausibility has to come from somewhere – some of it can derive from believable character reactions, some from dialogue, some from the application of an in-game physics, and some from the choice and description of the location.

That doesn’t mean that a location can’t be fantastic or amazing or awesome to behold; this simply means that the burden is transferred somewhere else. Extra realism in one location can counterbalance fantasticality in another. I always try to keep this balance in mind when choosing locations.

The Absence Of Application

Using these guidelines to what you require from your choice of location will deal with 99 cases out of 100, or more. But sometimes, even these are not enough, and you simply have no clue in what sort of location your scene should transpire.

When that happens, let your players decide – without even being asked. You should know what you want to have happen; simply let events develop from the previous scene until one of the PCs goes somewhere that presents an opportunity for that plot development to take place.

The only reason this is in last place is because there’s no capacity for prep, and that can mean inadequate descriptions or visualization and more work for the GM. So the odds are low that this will be the “Best” answer and even lower that it will be “Easiest”.

We all suffer from the occasional bout of writer’s block. This series started with the premise that different types of content meant different kinds of writer’s block, and needed different solutions to the problem. The immediate success of listing so many different solutions while outlining the article showed the validity of the approach; so far, no less than eighty solutions to thirteen types of writer’s block have been delivered, and this article is going to add sixteen-plus and seven to those tallies!

A quick recap:
Content can be thought of as consisting of layers, each layer providing a means of execution and development of the layer above it. From overall plot to specific scene, from specific scene to the setting in which the scene takes place, to the persona required, or to the narrative or dialogue required to achieve a specific outcome that propels this scene into the next, following the path dictated by the overall plot, writers sometimes have trouble translating known content from one layer into the next layer down (in fact, as the diagram in part 5 showed, the real situation is a little more complicated, but let’s not get bogged down). These types of problem are called Translation Writer’s Blocks, and there are lots of them.

If you have plenty of time, the solutions described for generating content for each layer independently (the Primary types of Writer’s block) can usually do a better job of solving the problem. But when you need a solution in a hurry, or just want a quick answer to get your mental gears unstuck, these problem usually take on added dimensions, and that’s where the solutions currently being discussed enter the picture.

Translation: Specific to Dialogue

Quite often, the only reason for two characters to have a scene together is to permit character A to give some information (or misinformation) to character B. This type of writer’s block occurs When you know what the dialogue is to convey but it sounds forced or unnatural.

Solution 1: Small Talk

People rarely get right to the point. Find a subject about which the character can make small talk and look for a way to segue into the information you want to convey. Don’t try to force the phraseology; use the small talk to find the natural voice of the character, then use that voice to convey the information in the dialogue. If you’re writing rather than improvising at the game table, you can even write and then delete this small talk, entering the scene at the point where things get interesting, but having found that character’s personal voice and mode of expression – though I would argue that in most cases, the extra verisimilitude and definition of the character’s personality that results from keeping it in is usually worth the price.

An exception is usually found in military and emergency services during an actual emergency or official report, in which case there’s no problem with it sounding forced, just be careful to have the character’s intelligence and expertise (or lack thereof) correctly portrayed within the dialogue.

Solution 2: Cut the jargon, cut the slang

One of the chief reasons for dialogue to sound forced is because the mode of expression you are using to surround the dialogue is forced. Don’t use jargon unless you know what it means and how it is naturally used by the type of person doing the speaking – in which case, it should sound natural.

Don’t use slang unless you can make it sound realistic. And be especially careful when it comes to profanity – uncensored it can become more important than the substance of what you are trying to deliver, poorly-censored it can just become muddy and confusing.

If you have to, cut these elements and use plain English. This sacrifices verisimilitude for clarity – sometimes a necessary evil.

Solution 3: A Third Party

An excellent solution is to introduce a third party who needs to have the jargon translated into plain English. After the first serving of jargon, to establish the primary speaker’s manner of speaking, focus on the translation as though the translator was the person delivering the dialogue. “If we maximize the over-under delivery of reducables the 702s will be executed with minimal losses within the context of retroactive split-board trading shares” – means absolutely nothing because there’s way too much jargon and assumed knowledge, but it establishes what the primary speaker is saying and how. The meaningful part of the dialogue is the translation.

Solution 4: Use Accents and selected phonetics sparingly

Writers often spell accented words phonetically to ensure that the audience hears the accent of the speaker. It’s easy to go way overboard on this stuff, and the more there is of it, the harder it is to execute it ‘cleanly’. Each phonetically-spelled intrusion of accent sacrifices a little clarity for verisimilitude and risks making the delivery seem unnatural – so be sparing. Accent the first word in a line of dialogue or the last, and perhaps one key word, and that will usually be enough. As the dialogue progresses, accent even less frequently than that. It can often be useful to insert or append a word or phrase that is essentially irrelevant to the content of the line of dialogue that can carry the accent – starting a line with “Mon Ami,” or “Mademoiselle,” immediately delivers a French accent; “Oh, I Say!” does the same for a British accent. The more of these stock phrases you have on tap, the more choice you have for utilizing this technique. The same trick also works for slang, but usually fails when it comes to jargon. If your dialogue is sounding unrealistic, try cutting some or all of the accents and phonetics.

Whenever I have a passage of dialogue that is to be delivered by an accented character, I always try to write it in plain English first and then insert the accent selectively. It saves a lot of wasted effort.

Sidebar: Foreign Language Text
In olden days, it was very difficult to render anything in a foreign language unless you happened to speak that particular language. These days, internet translation can deliver what sounds, to lay ears, like a reasonable rendition of text in a foreign language. For anything permanent, these translations are worth the paper they are printed on – when they are viewed on a screen. No internet translation will ever be as polished or successful as the real thing. But you can fake it. Here’s the first line of this paragraph in a selection of languages, generated using Google Translate (I’ve replaced characters that wouldn’t display with something visually equivalent):

• French: Dans les temps anciens, il était très difficile de rendre quelque chose dans une langue étrangère à moins que vous arrivé à parler cette langue en particulier.
• German: In alten Zeiten war es sehr schwierig, etwas in einer fremden Sprache zu machen, wenn Sie auf die jeweilige Sprache sprechen passiert.
• Hungarian: A régi idokben, nagyon nehéz volt, hogy tegyék valami idegen nyelven, ha nem történt, beszélni az adott nyelvet.
• Polish: W dawnych czasach, to bylo bardzo trudne, aby uczynic cos w obcym jezyku, chyba ze sie mówic, ze dany jezyk.
• Swedish: Förr i tiden var det mycket svårt att göra något på ett främmande språk om du råkade tala om att visst språk.
• Turkish: Eski günlerde, bu söz konusu dili konusan oldu sürece yabanci dilde bir sey islemek için çok zor oldu.

I could stumble my way through most of these, no doubt mispronouncing horribly, without practice; but given a few minutes advance warning (and having a prepared phrase in the required language prepared for use) and a little practice at speaking it aloud, I could do a much better job of mangling whatever language was needed. Proof of the mangling? Try reverse-translating the above back into English. The French comes close, but the German totally inverts the meaning by offering “In ancient times it was very difficult to make something in a foreign language if you happen to speak the language”. The Polish is near-perfect, but the others contain fundamental problems of various magnitudes. My favorite is the Turkish, which manages to be almost lyrical in its failure to deliver the meaning of the original sentence: “In olden days, it was out of the question unless you speak the language, foreign language, something that was very difficult to handle.”

In a nutshell: DON’T use an internet translator for any foreign-language material that is to be published, you’ll only embarrass yourself with anyone who actually speaks the language (individual words may be OK); and if you’re in a spoken-dialogue situation (at the game table) where the goal is to capture the flavor of the language without saying anything that you don’t mind being garbled in translation, try to practice in advance.

Translation: Specific to Narrative

Narrative text is used to describe something. It could be a place, an environment, a machine, a special effect, a state of mind, a perception of reality – anything from metaphysics through to the most objective of realities. Most of these are relatively straightforward, but there are times when nuance or context appears to get lost.

When you know what the situational context is but can’t describe it clearly, the problem is defined as a Specific-to-Narrative translation block. In effect, the meaning of the situation is getting lost, or your descriptions of that situation are confusing or inadequate. This can be amongst the most frustrating forms of Writer’s Block, and is amongst the most frequent in an RPG; but it can also be a blessing in disguise because it is often caused by muddled or vague thinking, or by trying to tell and not show.

Fortunately, it’s also a problem with a bucketload of solutions.

Solution 1: Through The Eyes

Pick an NPC (or a PC) and examine the scene through his eyes. What does he see? What does it mean? Why is it happening?

Solution 2: Mouthpiece

If you are trying to convey some insight into what’s been happening, or some implication or understanding that has escaped the players, pick an NPC who might be able to make that observation and put the words into his mouth as dialogue.

Solution 3: Personal Revelation

If there are no NPCs capable of having that insight, take a player aside and let his PC have a private revelation – in writing, so that it can be accurately conveyed to the other players. Make your choice based on the character most likely to have the insight, rejecting any who have already committed themselves to one specific interpretation of events because they will color the information you provide with that interpretation. That often means giving it to the player who has had the least screen time in the last few minutes, which is a side-benefit.

Solution 4: A public voice

A great standby is to have a reporter show up (or town cryer if that’s more appropriate for the era) and let them describe events – incorporating the situational context that you’re having trouble conveying.

Solution 5: Clarity

If none of these solutions work, the problem is most likely to be muddled or vague thinking. There’s a gap in your thinking that you have instinctively or intuitively jumped over, and when you are trying to communicate that thought process, you keep running up against that gap. What’s worse, running over it multiple times in your head often gets your thoughts stuck in a well-worn rut – straight to that chasm.

To solve this problem, you need to stop and take five. Dscribe the situation to a non-participant and explain the contextual point that you want to make; often you will identify the gap and plug it yourself, but if you don’t, your sounding board will usually be able to set you straight.

Solution 6: Live to fight another day

And if that doesn’t work, leave it unsaid and find a way to make the context clear in retrospect by showing the consequences in a later adventure or scene.

Translation: Specific to Narrative

A second form of this type of writer’s block occurs when you are attempting to describe some effect or image that you know is taking place, but which you are having trouble seeing in your own head. “The two realities intersect.” “Space and time begin to shred.” “A glorious sunset is unnaturally calming.” “The overlocking frammistat begins to tear itself apart.” Knowing in an abstract way what is happening doesn’t automatically mean that you can describe it in literal, non-abstract, terms.

This is also a very common problem. Actually, it’s several different specific problems, each exemplified by one of the examples offered, and – once again – each has a slightly different solution.

Metaphysical impacts on the Physical world

“The two realities intersect.” Something metaphysical is happening, and you need to describe what is being perceived by a witness, real or hypothetical. The key to this is the selection of the frame of reference; you would use very different narrative if describing this from the point of view of a witness within one of the realities instead of from outside observer looking on.

In the first case, you have to translate the metaphysical protrusion into the reality being observed; the solution here is to use terminology appropriate to actions that could normally take place in the normal reality. Use physical terms like “stretch”, “distort”, “ripple”, “swirling”, and/or “spinning”; use physical forms to depict the intersection like “a point growing”, or “a perfect ellipse in midair”; use physically transformative phenomena such as “boiling”, “condensing”, or “splintering”. Above all, keep the description dynamic and not static; you aren’t trying to describe the phenomenon, you are describing the transformations caused by the phenomenon. Identifying the phenomenon itself is an act of interpretation, and that should be conveyed either in the first person by the thoughts of the witness in the course of the narrative, or conveyed in dialogue at the end. If we’re talking about an RPG situation, interpretation should be left to the player; let him make skill checks against whatever skills he thinks appropriate in order for the character to interpret the phenomenon.

From the outside observer’s perspective, abstractions and symbolic representations are the order of the day. Identify some way of symbolizing a “reality” and then use that to describe two of them joining, fusing, blending or intersecting. Keep the language more impersonal and remote; personal and subjective reactions should be conveyed separately. In an RPG, it might be necessary to fuel the fire – “[character name] can’t help imagining what it must feel like to those poor souls who feel the fabric of their existence being mangled and twisted; you can’t see how any unprepared mind could experience such shock and remain entirely rational and sane” – but make sure that any such prompts are appropriate to the character to whom they are directed.

It is often helpful to find some real physical-world process that can be used as the foundation of such a narrative. The sudden condensing of a cloud of vapor where nothing was visible; the effect when ink-drops fall into a glass of water; the time-lapse growing of a plant or a crystal; animations of cell colony growth; even camera wipes – any would make a suitable metaphors apon which to base a description of the example phenomenon.

Physical impacts on a Metaphysical reality

“Space and time begin to shred.” Here we have a defined physical transformation – “shred” – being applied to a metaphysical or emotional object. “As the words penetrated, his heart turned to ground glass in his chest” is another reasonable example from an entirely different context. The key here is abstracting the metaphysical reality or object into something physical that can serve as a metaphor, and that can be subjected to the transformation.

This is a useful technique because the abstraction-to-reality effect of the metaphor is subconsciously and emotionally balanced by an unstated reality-to-abstraction effect symbolized by the physical transformation. The trick is making sure that all of these elements work in harmony with each other – if the metaphoric object is not symbolic enough of what it is supposed to represent, or if the physical action is not in keeping with the physical transformation (“the marshmallow shatters”?) then the whole thing will fall flat. If you’re having trouble employing such a narrative technique, it’s almost certainly because one of the elements that you’re employing is out of synch with the others. Where the metaphor is common enough, you might be able to get away with it (we’ve all heard of a heart shattering or being broken, and that’s why the second example works, even though hearts don’t physically transform into ground glass), but it may still feel just a little clumsy.

One word of warning regarding this narrative technique: many abstraction-to-reality metaphors are pretty universally understood, but some may be culturally-derived and meaningless to those from a different culture. Be careful you don’t get too clever.

Sidebar
Deliberately choosing an unlikely metaphor can be a great way of symbolizing an alien perspective – so long as you can find a way for it to make sense in the context of the society, personality, etc of the alien in question. “My minor heart soared with hope, but my major heart was still solidly grounded in the real world” works as an alien symbol of pessimism, for example.

Induced Emotional Context

“A glorious sunset is unnaturally calming.” “The sounds of nature are unusually disturbing.” Narrative often exists to induce an emotional reaction or convey an emotional context. Some come easily, others are difficult, because they are extreme or unnatural. The usual problem that people have in writing ordinary narrative is that it is easy to slip into cliché, and that is solved by finding some original metaphor that can be used to connect the perspective with the emotion that is to be induced.

The cause of most problems when attempting to induce an unnatural or extreme emotion is getting too quickly to the emotional point that they are trying to make; the result seems forced because it is. To solve this problem, the narrative needs to start with an emotional association that is reasonable for the perception and then develop or transform, step-by-step, into the distorted emotional context that is to be conveyed.

The first example is about an unnatural extreme. To make such narrative successful, start with a reasonable emotional tone and continue to layer appropriate descriptive terms until the accumulation becomes entirely too overwhelming to be natural. “The sunset is glorious, full of the promise of a new day and the optimism of hope. Golds and Reds and Purples wrap themselves around the landscape like silk sheets. The breeze is warm and pleasant and clings like honey. A faintly saccharine tinge colors the scent of flowers that fills the air; even the cesspool smells sweet, perfumed, perfect. You have never felt so sheltered, so calm, so safe and secure.” By which point the reader – or the player – is feeling anything but sheltered, calm, and secure. “Caged” probably comes closer, because they have gone on a journey from a reasonable emotional tone to something so extreme as to be unnatural – and that means that someone has done or is doing this to them, and the reality will bear little or no resemblance to the perception. If I had stopped at “warm and pleasant”, the description could have been taken at face value; “clings like honey” is the point at which the description goes just a little too far, and each phrase thereafter carries the reader further into discomfort. The payoff is the four-fold statement of emotional reaction; again, any one of these placed just after “warm and pleasant” would be utterly plausible, but the final statement that exists goes entirely too far to be accepted. If I were to use this in a game, every time the character tried to do something, I would mention “a wave of comfortable drowsiness” that had to be overcome, or something similar; by the third or fourth time, at the very latest, the character’s confinement would be a confirmed if unstated fact in the player’s mind.

Taking the reader on a trip to an unusual emotional destination is a little harder. Start with a general overview and a normal emotional context; then focus on details that can be associated with the desired destination emotion, and describe them in a neutral tone. Next, move to exaggerated details – things the character could not possibly sense – again with a mainly neutral tone with at most just a tinge of the desired emotional end-point. Finally, deliver the reader/audience to that endpoint, having layed the foundations through the earlier parts of the narrative. “The sounds of nature surround you; the burble of a brook, the whisper of a waterfall, the song of the birds, and the whistle of the wind surround you and make you feel intimately connected to world, vital and alive. Carried on the breeze comes the sound of a lion gnawing on a fallen zebra, while jackals circle impatiently waiting for the leftovers. Elsewhere, a great cat stalks its prey, the soft sound of its shallow breaths a barely perceptible presage to the bloodletting to come. Two dogs fight over a bone. Insects scream their outrage as each races to deny the others of its kind their share of the abundant food. One of the dogs bites the other, the whimper of pain melding with the angry growls of the aggressor. Even the waterfall and brook grind inexorably at the rock, slowly devouring it. Everywhere is the sound of one life seeking the destruction of another for its own gain, and the spilling of blood, and you feel a sudden wave of revulsion at the savagery and horror that surrounds you as you realize that everything that exists is a predator at heart, filled with violence and need.” The idea that the sounds of nature are a compounding of the violence and inflicted pain and misery of everything around the person is the perspective-shift needed to go from feeling a “part of nature” to being emotionally disturbed by the horror implied by the elements of that compounding. If I were to visit a Druid’s grove and had this description read to me, I would have a very different view of the druid in question afterwards! (PS: This is a very toned-down version, I could have been far more graphic and extreme!)

Ill-defined physical reality

“The overlocking frammistat begins to tear itself apart.” The problem here is probably that the GM/author has no clear idea of what an “overlocking frammistat” looks like when it’s NOT tearing itself apart. Picturing the device whole, and then what it looks like in proper operation, is an essential requirement for being able to describe the parts flying off as it disassembles itself. I can describe a spectacular engine failure because I know what an engine looks like, I can imagine the parts moving inside it, and so on.

Of course, form follows function; in order to be able to describe that form, I need at least some notion of the way the thing is supposed to work.

Another trap that a lot of writers fall into is describing a machine in isolation. Cables and pipes and hoses tearing loose do a great job of enabling the description to be more dynamic and engaging. And never forget the showers of sparks!

Translation: Scene to Action

All of which provides the perfect segue into our next category, which is all about dynamism. When the location and the action don’t seem to gel, you have the Scene to Action Translation wrong. Trying to set a barroom brawl in a china shop doesn’t work. The “bystanders” don’t fit, and the action you want to take place doesn’t fit.

Solution:

Presuming that it’s too late now to change the setting, what you need to do is to modify the action to have it interact with the environment, and modify the participants other than the protagonists of the action scene to make them appropriate to the setting. Instead of breaking mugs over people’s heads, have someone start throwing china. Which immediately suggests a shrieking housewife, maybe armed with a broom. Have the people who should be there chase out the ones that don’t fit, then have them turn on the PCs – who also (presumably) don’t fit the environment, either.

Translation: Action to Narrative

Describing Action scenes is an art unto itself. Some people can do it fluently and effortlessly, others struggle. I naturally have one foot on the dividing line and the other firmly planted in the “difficult” category. When you can see the action in your head but can’t describe it fluently, you have an Action to Narrative Block.

Solution 1: Game Aids

The best solution to this problem is usually to use some sort of game aid to take some of the descriptive burden off your hands, enabling you to focus on the rest. This doesn’t have to be miniatures and a battlemap; it could be a photograph or piece of art that you’ve found on the net, or it could be a quickly-sketched map on scrap paper. There are times when I’ll dig out “Orbit War” for its counters and game board, or 2038, or some other board game. Fancy contact plastic or stick-on kitchen-surface coating or even scraps of unused wallpaper or carpet can all assume radically different meanings when miniatures are placed on them (green shag-pile for jungle, anyone?)

Solution 2: Divide and conquer

Sometimes it can be helpful to break one big action sequence into several smaller ones, and describe each separately. In an RPG, you don’t really want to focus on one participant for that length of time while excluding the other players, though, so this is an approach that’s better used in writing fiction.

Solution 3: Strobe Light

The final technique is to strobe-light it into a series of freeze-frames. A game aid can be especially helpful in providing continuity to the description.

The ‘Divide and Conquer’ procedure can be extended to permit the recombination of separate action sequences into one massive sequence.

1. Divide scrap paper into as many columns as you have separate action sequences.
2. In the first column, break the events in that combat/action sequence down into discrete actions, reactions, and consequences. Choose the one that is most likely to have a disruptive impact on the environment.
3. In the second column, break the events of the next combat/action sequence down into discrete actions, reactions, and consequences. Take due account of any environmental changes and distractions resulting from the first combat.
4. Ditto the third column, and so on.
5. Locate the shortest column. As soon as that action sequence is complete, any participants not rendered inactive are free to join another action sequence, which will need to be revised from that point on.
6. Compare the recovery time for each character rendered inactive with the remaining steps in the longest combat sequence. It’s possible that they might reenter the action, starting a new combat sequence at the point of their recovery. Or they might be able to escape while everyone’s distracted.
7. Now comes the recombination: going across the page, describe the first action/reaction/consequence set from the first battle, then the first from the second, then the first from the third, and so on.
8. Repeat for the second, then the third, and so on.
9. Or you can use an intermediate arrangement: describe one action sequence up to the point where it influences a second. Then describe that second one up to that point. By flagging or highlighting the points at which one sequence influences another, you identify the natural break-points in the narrative. Crossing off those that have been reintegrated makes sure that you don’t miss any.

Sidebar: The Strobe-light technique in RPGs
Although it might not seem so, an analogous technique can be very useful in an RPG. When the party are divided, and one has a battle or action sequence, make sure that they ALL do (even if these events are not occurring simultaneously). Then you can run each as one big combat taking place in multiple locations at the same time, giving everyone their normal combat screen time. Trust me, it works. The key to success is take each character’s independent plotline to the point where they are about to enter an action sequence and then switching attention to the next plotline. Rapid interchanges between plotlines in a non-combat mode (I try for 2-3 minutes a plotline, 5 minutes at most) achieve the same function outside of an action sequence. Use a stopwatch or egg-timer if you have to. Don’t be afraid to split conversations in the middle. As soon as the end of allocated time begins to approach, look to get that plotline to a point where it can be interrupted. The time required to achieve that is the source of the variability.

Translation: Persona to Dialogue

The drunken cowboy bellied up to the bar and announced, “Proton decay in the antimatter sheath. Should’ve seen it coming,” and burped noisily, reaching for the whiskey bottle. The space pilot opened his comm. channel to home base and solemnly announced, “The fairy queen marches beneath a banner of blood surrounded by fell magiks.” The high priest fell to his knees and prayed loudly to his god, “Why howdy, partners. Who’s got a deck of cards? I got me a powerful itch to play me some poker.”

Smile; you’ve just been bitten by the Persona to Dialogue Translation Block, where the dialogue doesn’t seem right coming from the character speaking. Okay, so these are extreme (and extremely unlikely and obvious) examples.

This type of problem occurs when you have a character saying something that the plot requires be said – but the character is all wrong for the dialogue. Marginally more subtle examples might be a sociopath offering a victim’s perspective, a hard-nosed cop discussing the poetic allusions in Byron, or a bumpkin offering a cogent mathematical arguement. A still more realistic offering might be someone offering a helpful suggestion to a person with whom they have a blood feud.

There are multiple solutions.

Solutions 1-4: Massage the dialogue

The same as described above under “Translation: Specific to dialogue” at the start of this article.

Solution 5: Someone Said

Have the character doing the speaking quote the parts that don’t seem appropriate as having been said by someone else.

Solution 6: Party for three

Introduce another character (who probably has some connection to the character doing the speaking) who can offer the dialogue that doesn’t fit the first character. Depending on the circumstances, this could be a wife, a family member, a friend, a lawyer, whatever. Try to pick someone appropriate to the information that you want the ill-fitting dialogue to convey.

Solution 7: Emphasize the incongruity

One final solution to consider is making the character more complex. This won’t always work, but a policeman who’s useless at interpersonal relations and generally incompetent – except at deducing the events at a crime scene – can be an entertaining character. Just make sure that their personal and professional lives carry the scars of their failures.

Crowding: too many ideas

It’s happened to most creative people at least once – you have so many ideas that by the time you’ve finished articulating one, another that was there has completely evaporated.

Solution Part 1: A Quick Synopsis

When you have an idea, jot it down somewhere as quickly and succinctly as possible. Try not to expand on the original premise too much. More than a line or two is probably too much, unless you can set aside whatever you’re doing and devote time to the idea. More to the point, when you have several ideas, write them down as quickly as possible before you get distracted; you can always discard rubbish ones later.

Try to limit the development time you spend on an idea until you intend to use it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had an idea and spent time developing it, only to throw all that development away when a completely different need came to light for which the original, undeveloped idea would provide a perfectly acceptable solution.

I keep a file of plot ideas for each campaign that I run. Despite the vast number of plots already integrated into my current superhero campaign, I have already amassed 15 more that I have on standby. Some I might integrate into the main plot where my current planning simply tells me I have a metaplot development that needs a plot to happen in, others might never be used. And note that I’m not actively trying to come up with ideas for the campaign, it’s already pretty chock-full.

Once you have the idea written down somewhere, try to connect it with other ideas you might have. Don’t actually put the two together, simply note the possibility of a connection. While you’re at it, list anything else that the new idea might be good for. That’s because some of the ideas that I have had are extremely incomplete, and this new idea might be exactly what I need to plug one of the gaps.

It’s useful to code and number the ideas. That gives you a means of referring to the idea without replicating the whole thing.

Solution Part 2: Consequences, connections, metaplots, and ulterior motives

When you come to the conclusion that you need an idea from your ideas file, for example as a plot vehicle to introduce a new NPC, what you really need is a means of choosing the best idea for the job from amongst those on file – or rejecting all of them and beginning to hunt for something new.

For example, let’s say that I need an adventure to introduce a new high-tech villain. I have a name and a profile for the villain, but no idea what he is up to. I go through my ideas file looking for ideas that have the right sort of consequences and connections. I need the plot idea to integrate with the overall metaplot and to address any ulterior motives that I might have for the adventure. I might come across an idea “stress fractures in the supercooled memory cores of super-computers giving wrong answers”. The team’s base relies on an AI running on just such a supercomputer. So do a couple of high-tech research facilities, and a global security oversight computer. Maybe the latter develops rationality flaws due to this problem and begins inserting a fictitious villain that it has created for systems testing into the live records as though he really exists; his autonomic functions then detect the intruder and sound security alarms, to which it responds by focusing conscious attention on the scene, distracting him from the delusion and causing the ‘intruder’ to vanish into thin air. So, no crime has taken place, no living person has ever seen the villain, no-one knows who they are or what they are up to – but there is ‘incontrovertible proof’ that he exists. Attempting to rationalize and understand what is going on, as its systems degenerate, the AI begins ‘uncovering’ criminal acts that were not noticed on first analysis. These start off being credible, but become more and more unlikely, and the team come to realize that the whole thing is a computer-generated fiction. Why? Who’s behind it? Is someone testing the defenses? Is someone tampering with the AI? And then, more or less at the same time, an accident of some sort downloads the fictitious criminal “identity” into an android body at the same time as a genuine criminal decides to take advantage of the hype and paranoia being generated by this mysterious identity and adopts it for himself – leading to a conflict over who really is the owner of the criminal identity, and to the team being embarrassed when the ‘computer glitch’ shows up somewhere in real life.

I would probably never run this adventure; I don’t want the PCs to mistrust the AI at the Knightly Building, their base of operations. But his combines five mini-ideas: “Virtual criminal in cyberspace”, “AI inadvertently downloaded into android”, “AI has delusions”, “two criminals claim the same identity”, and the original, “stress fractures in the supercooled memory cores of super-computers giving wrong answers”. Instead, I would probably go with the notion that the criminal was somehow inducing these fractures for his own benefit, so that this becomes a plot about a potential threat to an ally of the team – the AI at the Knightly Building.

Crowding: the fallacy of memory

Inevitably, when you look at an idea snippet that you jotted down months or years earlier, sometimes it will be just a cryptic jumble – you’ve forgotten what it means.

When this occurs, you have two options:

• Try to recapture the meaning, or
• Ignore the original meaning.

Recapture

What might the idea mean? Clues may be offered by considering the idea just before it, or by considering any connections or consequences noted. Any of the terms mentioned might be the key to recapturing the original thought. But, if you try all these, and still can’t remember what you meant by “Gilgamesh the Serpents” or something equally strange, you can move to option B:

Ignore the original meaning

If you can’t remember what you meant, and have failed to recapture the original idea, take what you have as a suggestive phrase and try to construct a new interpretation. On rare occasions, this will actually permit the recapture of the original notion – giving you a choice of interpretations. If that doesn’t happen, there are still two outcomes possible: success or failure.

A meaning is found

Regardless of whether the interpretation you come up with is the original or a new idea inspired by the cryptic phrase, the first thing to do is to add a add a contextual keyword or phrase to avoid the problem next time. If you are lucky enough to now have two interpretations, put them both down. Expand and clarify.

Failure

Discard the idea by crossing it out or color-coding it, NOT by deleting it. The answer might come to you hours or days later, or next time you look through the ideas file.

The End Of The Road

That’s almost it for the article series. But I have some parting advice to conclude the series:

When All Else Fails

The ultimate solution to writer’s block, when everything else suggested has failed to solve your problem is this: Retreat a step, change something, and try to go forward again. It’s better to take one step back for three steps forward than it is to be stuck.

Above all, don’t stop working on it for any length of time. There’s always more going on in your head than the part that’s giving you trouble; if you stop, all that will get lost. I’ve occasionally had success by ignoring the problem and starting work on the next section, having made a note about the problem. Sometimes you can work backwards from a future point to solve the problem – and break through your writer’s block.

Everything has to happen somewhere, and that means that locations are an essential element of RPGs and RPG settings. And that makes locations a worthy subject for this month’s Blog Carnival.

Posts I would like to see as part of this month’s carnival are:-

• How do you choose a location?
• How do you represent a location if you don’t have a matching Battlemap?
• How do you modify a location to achieve a specific story requirement?
• Location Descriptions: There are places each of us know because that’s where we live, or work, or grew up. GMs who don’t have that advantage can use that knowledge. Describe the places you know – a town, a suburb, a city, a state, a building. But don’t describe it physically, with facts that can be gotten from a Wikipedia page or a government website; try to capture the flavor of the location, as briefly as possible.
• Location Descriptions Take Two: And then, try to shift the location in time. What will it be like in 50, 100 years? What was it like 50, 100, 200 years ago? What would it be like if it was transplanted to an equivalent location in a fantasy location? Or a moonbase? Or a space station? The more variations on your description you can offer, the more likely it is that it will be of use to someone else.
• Location Descriptions Take Three: If you’re still looking for ideas, you could describe one or more fantastic locations from one of your games. Or talk about how you created it. Or both.
• How do you improvise a location if the dice indicate a random wilderness encounter?
• And finally, anything else you can think of concerning locations, how to choose them, describe them, use them.

A recent article that I posted here at Campaign Mastery might be helpful: The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs. One of the reasons I’ve been holding back on this blog carnival topic, which I’ve had in mind for some months, is that I wanted to have that article available as a reference for participants.

I have ideas in mind for all of the above topics to appear here at Campaign Mastery. Whether or not I get all of them done, or burn out on the subject before I get that far, is another matter. But it’s a big topic, with plenty of scope.

Finally, a piece of information that might be of interest, and of relevance: I once talked at length with a real estate agent about how they value properties. I thought that there was some system, that you set a base price according to the size and number of rooms, type of building, etc, modified it for proximity to amenities, shopping, parks, etc, then applied a factor of some sort to represent the typical relative value shift of the location – some suburbs are worth more than others. But oh, no, that’s not the case at all. It’s one part historical records for the region, one part adjustment for the current property market and general demand for property of that type, one part the value at which neighboring buildings were sold, one part guesswork, and one part chutzpah. They make it up as they go along – though a lot of people like to pretend otherwise. Personally, I think that a really good statistical analysis by a large real estate firm could probably permit then to be a lot more scientific in their approach, but what do I know? I’m not a trained real estate salesman. Think about that, the next time your PCs want to rent a warehouse or buy property on which to build a base…

Location! Location! Location! Let’s go…

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time…
   A triple-sized serving of the Orcs and Elves series today, to make up for missing last week, and to wrap up the Clan Wars plotline.
   I explained what had occurred to destroy last week’s posting in a series of comments attached to the then-most-recent article, but for the benefit of anyone who didn’t read those, here’s what happened.
   After working all day – well, as close to it as my physical condition permits – I was about half-way through Chapter 80 when the combination of time, infirmity, and exhaustion caught up with me and my creative juices just stopped flowing. For various reasons, I knew that I had to get to the end of what is now chapter 86 in the course of the next two parts of the series, and to ensure correct continuity, I had to at least have them outlined in pretty solid detail before I could commit to the content of Chapter 79, especially the dates and lifespans.
   I returned to working on it on Tuesday Night, and in one burst of sheer creativity, I finished Chapter 80 and wrote everything that now comprises chapters 81-86 as a single massive chapter. And then had a systems crash in the middle of saving the updated text. I tried everything that I could to recover the lost data, even searching for ways to do a memory dump, but to no avail.
   I got up early Wednesday, and working from a backup of everything that I had done on Monday, I was able to reconstruct in detailed note form everything that had been lost, in the process plugging a couple of logic holes and breaking what was a monster chapter into the five that it now occupies, from memory – a task that took almost as long as writing it in the first place had done. But by now it was too late to publish it, I had to start work on the article for Thursday – which was delayed and compromised by a blackout. The payoff was that it was a breeze to convert those notes into finished text.
   There’s another reason for the extra-large post this week, which I’ll get to in a concluding footnote.

Of course, I still have notes that didn’t get used in the course of the series. The Warblade and Clan Shaman of the Burning Swords don’t get named until Chapter 79, for example. I had the names all along, it just never became important.
   More significant is the role of Yurtrus, Orcish Goddess of Death and Decay, mate of Baghtru, and since it’s what inspired the whole interpretation of the “stupidity” associated with that deity, which is explained in the course of these chapters, it’s worth noting. Medieval cities tended to have very poor waste-disposal systems – they were unsanitary to the extreme. And if any race could find a way to raise the bar of “extreme” in this context, it would have to be the Orcs, who had naturally immunity to diseases and poisons. Orcish cities would therefore be a breeding ground for pestilences of the worst kind, uninhabitable by anyone but Orcs. Parts of this came out, parts were hinted at, but the obvious logic of one of the patron deities of cities being Yurtrus was never made clear, it simply never seemed to fit.

Unexpectedly, what began as a blend of footnote and afterthought has become one of the most complete and compelling parts of the narrative – originally just three chapters, it mushroomed by more than twenty. Does that mean that I embraced my inner Orc?
   In the process, a lot of what were originally just vague notes – “Verde discovers the truth about his quest”, for example – became clarified by situations and personalities.
  I hope my readers have enjoyed it.

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A couple of reminders that may be useful:
Directions in Fumanor are Sunset, Sunrise, Dexter (90° left of Sunrise), and Sinister (90° right of Sunrise). Modern maps are usually drawn with Sunrise at the top, but when the terms were coined, the practice was to make Sunset the dominant direction. Orcs count in base five, ie 1-2-3-4 fingers, 1 hand=5, 1-hand-and-one=6, and so on through to 4 hands and 4 fingers, which is followed by 1 fist=25. Orcs cannot count higher than 4 fists, 4 hands, and 4 fingers = 125, they have to group larger numbers into groups or units that can be counted on this scale.

Clan Wars XXIII: The Resumption of Normal Hostilities

Corallen illuminated the rim of the portal, and one by one the triumphant survivors passed through. The moment before they entered the passageway back to the doomed city of the Mailed Fist Clan, the Elvish God clouded their memories of events. They would still remember that they had achieved a great victory at equally great cost – of the nine who had dared the Lair of the Hidden Dragon, only five were returning – and would remember what needed to be done next, but not why. The weapon arm of the three Orcs who had struck the fateful blows against the chains that had bound their enemy in slumber had begun to tingle, and the strength in those limbs was fading. In the days that followed, the wounds would with and become diseased – a noteworthy event for a race that had never succumbed to such illnesses before – and the disease resisted all curative blessings. When the trio grew feverish, the decision was made to amputate the rotting limbs. Fortunately, this drastic action, another imitation of human practices, served the immediate need, but they would never be as capable of their former roles in their native societies again.
   They returned to a ruined city; every structure save that of the tower itself had been demolished, reduced to rubble, some of it completely covering the entrance. It took them almost eight hours to dig their way out of the debris. After reporting to the young Clan Chieftain of the Red Eyes, they collapsed in exhaustion.
   The next day, Garunch and his counterpart from the Mailed Fist Clan and old friend, Kudja, supervised a mass prayer to Gruumsh of all the Shaman of the Red Eye clan, beseeching him to tear open the earth beneath the tower and let the river of melted rock beneath well up through the crack to seal the tower for eternity, making it as close to a monument of solid rock as the Orc-God was capable of achieving. First then summoned the power and craftsmanship of the God Of Elves to finish the monument, polishing, carving, smoothing, and inscribing it in Orcish to commemorate the fallen city and the dictum of Gruumsh as reinterpreted by the Burning Eyes and Mailed Fist clan: no Orcish community greater in number than 4 hands of dwelling clusters would be permitted, and no such collection of dwellings to contain more than 4 fists of Orcs, numbering all from eldest to newborn – in other words, the largest permitted communities were to number 2000 Orcs. An exception was declared for Moots, when a temporary gathering of 5 fists of clusters would be permitted (10,000 Orcs) – but these dwellings must be temporary and completely destroyed or removed at the end of the Moot. Even these were barely enough for the Clans to bring a single leader and escort to a moot.

But there was one individual ‘present’ whose memory had not been clouded by Corallen, nor is it clear that he would be able to do so if he wished to attempt the deed. He was completely unaware that Lolth had been present at the fall of the Hidden Dragon not merely by proxy (in the form of Ambassador Tathzyr) but more directly through the spiderweb mirror he had carried in his pouch. She had heard it all, and did not like what she had heard. The destiny that Corallen sought to ensure had spoken of a day in which Elves, Drow and Orcs would unite to threaten the Chaos Powers directly; since she had expressly forbidden any congress with outsiders save that personally directed by her, and she had no interest in exposing herself to a direct threat by the Chaos Powers, this mandated that her children would one day supplant their love of her for another, as she had long feared. Once again, she realized that she would need to intensify her search for a new populace to rule, one which could never rebel against her; in the meantime, this mooted alliance must be rendered as improbable as it sounded, and placed as distantly into the future as she could possibly contrive.
   It was a simple matter for her to “clear the memories” of her Ambassador, filling his mind with her version of events, and to instruct him to reveal that “discovered truth” to the Orcs. With the Orcish threat and potential of the city dispersed, she had no further need of an Ambassador to the Orcs in any event, though she would keep the now-trusted Tathzyr in place as an agent within the court of the newly-dominant Orcish sub-nation, the clan of the Burning Eye.
   As instructed, Tathzyr went at once to Kurvath, the young Clan-chief, and told him that his mistress had removed the clouds placed on his memory by Corallen of the Elves and revealed to his memory that the entire Clan-War had been the result of an Elvish manipulation of the Orcs. Long ago, they had awakened a sleeping power that was too great for them to control without great bloodshed and loss of life, and so they had – under the direction of Corallen – carefully crafted a deception to cause the Orcs to suffer and die in their place.
   This deception contained just enough truth to completely convince the newly-elevated and yet-to-be-confirmed Clan-Chief, who immediately gathered two fists of Warriors and confronted First and the rest of the Elvish Band. The Huyundaltha were detained and condemned to death, but Second had learned much of Orcish customs during his brief stay and was able to invoke a custom designed to permit defeated clan-leaders to end conflicts without one side completely killing the other. Because the Orcs were celebrating a great victory, and because they had decided that the Elves were their enemies in that conflict, he was able to demand Banishment from the Orc-lands for himself and his companions. Although Kurvath was furious over ‘the deception’, Tathzyr convinced the Orcish leader that it was better to send the Elves home with a warning to stay out of Orcish affairs or face eternal enmity and utter ruination. This was Lolth’s subtle way of warning Corallen that she knew of what she saw as ‘his machinations against her’, and would oppose him at every turn.
   Kurvath relented, and grudgingly granted the Elves the minimum time permitted under Orcish Custom to depart; when the sun had travelled across the sky the width of his First, any Elf in the Orclands would be considered fair game, and his hunters would be dispatched at that time to pursue those fleeing with all the relentless indefatigability at their command.

Thus ended the first great alliance between Elves, Orcs, and Drow, with a restoration of the Status Quo between the three races, but its effectiveness would serve as a Harbinger of the future. While the tale would degenerate over the centuries amongst the Orcs, reduced to myth, anecdote, and custom, Lolth would remember it, and would devote herself to preparing against the day her children rebelled against her rule; Corallen would remember it, and devote himself to safeguarding all three races (from the shadows if necessary), even if that meant that some won temporary victories over one of the others; and there was one other.
   Careful to let his face reveal nothing, First framed a silent communion with his Deity. Since his return from the Lair of the Hidden Dragon, he had been by withdrawn and uncharacteristically silent, feigning a spiritual wound as deep as the physical wounds of the Orcs. With Ambassador Tathzyr squirming under the direct scrutiny of his Mistress, the deception had been accepted without question; even when he and his fellow Huyundaltha had stood accused of being the architects of the misery of the Orcs, he had remained mute. Now, in the silences of his mind, he finally broke that silence. “Great Corallen, Father of all Elves, I must advise that you have failed. My recollection remains clear and my memory of events remains unclouded. I have played my part in furthering your intent as best I could while amongst the Orcs, but now I must have your guidance. What am I to do, now that we return as promised to our homeland?”
   — You have played the wounded spirit perfectly, my son, and I am well-pleased with you. I wondered how long it would take you to broach this subject —
   “I bask in the warmth of your praise, My Lord, but praise answers no questions. I beg for your enlightenment apon my path henceforward.”
   — The tasks that lie before me are many and arduous, and it is possible that I will prove insufficient to their measure. If that should transpire, there must be a way for the truths which have been revealed to you to find their way to the members of the Great Alliance that is to come. Your continued memory is a safeguard against mischance, failure, and chaos. The path to the fulfillment of the prophecy is yet unclear; I must prepare as many avenues to the ultimate victory as I can conceive —
   “If one may remember, why not all? Is not the prophecy complete? We had an alliance of Orcs, Elves, and Drow – and I marvel that I was a part of such an unprecedented event – and there was, too, our hidden ally, the Verdonne – a ‘walking tree’ exactly as foretold – and by undoing the schemes of the Dreamer, did we not threaten the supremacy of the Chaos Powers? And more, did we not forge the bonds of mortality apon them? Where one has been ended, all others become vulnerable, though it take centuries to accomplish the inevitable.”
   — There was more to the prophecy, my son. Some could not be translated by the Orcs, some was cast in languages that do not yet exist and remain impenetrable even to me. No, the true Great Alliance lies in the days to come; your victory lies in setting feet apon paths not yet perceived, and that alone is enough for now —
   “Then the clouding of memory of the other participants was to permit Lolth to serve your needs in restoring relations between the races to what they were?”
   — Exactly so, for there were two cloudings of memory each, and not one. Each of the participants beyond yourself retains part of the truth, enough to prepare them for when the time is right, and these will linger, passed down through myth and race memory from parent to child amongst the Orcs. Lolth, too, remembers, and will unknowingly instill the key fragments of memory in those of her servants who need to know. And you shall perpetuate your own memories against the day when these preparations come to fruition. This was necessary, for should any remember completely, the Chaos Powers would be aware of events and would move to block the path to success before all is prepared for them. All will have their parts to play in making what remains only a dimly-perceived future opportunity for victory, and eventual success is not prophesied – but neither is failure —
   “Then I ask again for your guidance. What must I do, now?”
   — Apon your return to your homeland, you will remake the Huyundaltha, establishing a secret order within their ranks. That secret order shall be tasked with the protection of the One who bears the truth, even should all Elvenkind fail and perish from the World. That one shall bear the title of First, which you have made a name of great honor. And you will cloak the secret task of that order in the guise of the restoring of the Noletinechor, the Guardians of all that is Elvish – a role that is now expanded to include the training of the Huyundaltha. The Order of The Noletinechor will be an elite within the elite. This is a task that will consume the remainder of your days, and at the end of that span, you may pass to the Heavenly Isles content with your life’s achievements. This is my will and my instruction —
   “It will be done, My Lord, to the best of my abilities. It might be well if these others who shared in self-imposed Exile were the first members of the reborn Noletinechor, for in truth, we have all seen enough of War that none will think it strange that we choose a more peaceful role in life.”
   — That would be well. Shared experience is ever a bonding agent. But understand this: you are the keeper of the secret; it would be most unwise to expose yourself in addition to the demands of leadership of those who protect that secret —
   “Second has stepped forward to act as spokesman after I seemed to withdraw. I will appoint him as leader of the Noletinechor.”
   — A wise choice. Put these decisions into action, and I will know that the path into the future is well-cared for. I leave you with this thought, to engage your mind in the quiet times when these deeds are accomplished: Chance favors the opportunist, but none are so vulnerable to the control of chance by the power of destiny. In that thought lies the key to this victory over the Powers Of Anarchy and Destruction. I have always known this fact; now they have learned it, too. It will be a central influence on the shaping of the days to come; learn this lesson well, that it may bring enlightenment to you and those who follow you as First. —
   Straightening from his bowed and stooped position, First looked around at the others in his company, seeming to throw off his solemn and withdrawn mood. Noting that the Elves had just passed the traditional boundary that the Orcs held to be the border of the Orclands, and that they were safe from pursuit, he spoke to his companions. “Our Lord has need of our services, but before I may reveal to you his requirements, I shall require oaths of service and fealty to his cause from you all…”

Orcish Victory Songs

And the fates of the other individuals whose lives were swept up in the Clan Wars?

The Red Eye Clan:

Tathzyr lived out his life under the intense scrutiny of his Mistress, who trusted him and his unorthodoxy even less than she trusted most of her children. The strain prematurely aged him, and his life came to a close a scant century after the fall of the Orcish City. His family, too, were marked with the taint of suspicion, and his male descendants were favorite choices for sacrifice in Lolth’s name thereafter.
   Kurvath went on to become as enlightened a leader as the Red Eyes Clan had ever known, laying the foundations of a unified Orcish Society, drawing apon the harsh lessons of disunity and Clan War.
   Lukzal, eldest child of Kyrd, The Usurper, lost his preeminence amongst the warriors with the loss of his weapon arm, but this bothered him not. Events within the Cavern beneath the Oracle Of Gottskragg had awakened his mind to a larger reality in which the power of strength of arms was a very small thing indeed; he entered the Priesthood, and despite coming to this path relatively late in life, the same determination that had led him to prominence as a Warrior and an ability to see through complexities to the simple truths at their core more than compensated. He would become one of the greatest Clan Shamans in Red Eye history, and would be a staunch supporter of Kurvath for the remainder of his days. In the process, he would revise the belief amongst his race that a maiming was the end of usefulness to the Clan.
   Garunch was already elderly for an Orc when he participated in the raid apon the Hidden Dragon. He survived but a handful of years thereafter, devoted single-mindedly to grooming his hand-picked successor and most devoted student, Lukzal.

The Mailed Fist Clan:

Clan-Chief Agronak never fully recovered from the loss of prestige that accompanied the destruction of the city his ancestors had helped found. Although his followers held him blameless, and even revered him for safeguarding the lives of his clan through extraordinary challenges, his leadership was reduced to timidity. In time, his son would challenge his rule and force him to retire.
   Goral yielded his position as Warblade, and devoted his remaining days to a quest to find and tear down the Oracle of Gottskragg, but even though he was given descriptions to where the explorers of the Mailed Fists had encountered it, he could never find it. He blamed this failure on Elvish Deception, and would rail endlessly against ‘pointed-ear treachery’ to the point where even his most supportive kin thought him addle-minded on the subject.
   Goral’s Mate chose the name Enkarapra, which was Orcish for “Abandoned Child”. Although proud of being granted a name, and of her role in preserving her clan, it was a bittersweet reward for her, for though her husband had survived, his obsessions effectively widowed her. Her simple wisdom led her to be granted a position on the Clan Council, and she was always a welcome guest in the home of Agronak, but this was poor compensation for the loss of loving husband.
   Kudja, who had sacrificed his arm to preserve the existence of his clan, felt humiliated at being left out of the great quest that he had helped to engineer. Compounding his humiliation, he was revered as a folk hero amongst both his own clan and the Red Eyes; their celebrations of his deeds whenever he chanced to be nearby kept the emotional wounds burning fresh in his spirit. While he recovered physically, his mind was never quite right thereafter; he threw his remaining days into an obsessive need to drive the bugbears out of Mailed Fist territory with a cruelty and ruthlessness that was utterly uncharacteristic of the enlightened person that he been previously. No victory was sufficient to restore his pride, and eventually he took one desperate chance too many and was killed in a hopeless raid. Ironically, his sacrifice was instrumental in uniting the Red Eye Clan and Mailed Fist clan in the bonds of mutual peace, securing the prosperity and safety of his Clan; doubly-ironically, his obsession would yield a bitter harvest and be responsible for as much misery for his race and clan as that which it had prevented, re-unifying the Bugbears and triggering a second Clan War against the Bleeding Swords.

The Bleeding Sword Clan:

In every war, there are winners, losers, and victims. Some winners achieve greatness, others are transformed by their experiences into something greater than they could ever have achieved before the events that marked them, and some pay a price for the victory. If any group can be singled out as the victims of the Clan War, it is the Bleeding Sword Clan. Reviled by the Red Eyes for their treachery, condemned by the Mailed Fists for unleashing the Bugbears, and despised by all three for their leader’s cowardice in remaining behind and cowering in safety when the call to battle was sounded in the clan wars, they were left friendless and mistrusted in a hostile situation of their own making.
   Most despised of all was Morbag, the Clan-chief held most directly responsible for these failings, which went against all the precepts of Orcish Society. When the other Clans met in moot to settle their differences, he was unable to attend, surrounded by a wall of Bugbear-claimed territory, earning him further contempt for not even making the attempt. A messenger from the Mailed Fists, as the closest thing to a neutral party between the betrayed and betrayers, had braved the dangers to command his presence at the moot, and even survived to bring word of the Clan-Chief’s refusal to even attempt the journey. His name became a curse throughout the rest of the Orclands, and it became popular sentiment that it was the Bleeding Swords who were the Bugbear’s allies, and not vice-versa.
   Spared some of the acute disrespect and anger of the other clans was their Clan Warblade, Drash, who had led the invasion of Red Eye territory, and who was killed by the Red Eye’s troglodyte allies. Nevertheless, it was popular sentiment that he should have challenged the cowardly and treacherous policies of his Clan-Chief and that he had failed in his duty to do so. The claim of wrong-doing at the instructions of a superior became known throughout the other Orc-Clans as the Drash Excuse, and all Orcs were taught that resorting to it indicated guilt of a crime as great as the misdeeds themselves. “I was only following orders” is an admission of criminal guilt in Orcish Society, and that principle is enshrined in the name of the deceased Warblade.
   Vaaga, the clan Shaman, was held to be largely blameless. With no authority to challenge the Clan-chief, and convinced in what he was doing by falsehoods of sufficient quality to have deceived the other Clan shamans, it there was nothing that he could have done to avert disaster. Nevertheless, the name was considered to be bad luck by the populace thereafter, and became a metaphor for helplessness in the face of impending disaster.
   Surrounded by enemies, Besieged by hostile forces, and held in contempt by their own kind, the Bleeding Swords were the only clan not singing Orcish Victory Songs at the end of the Clan Wars.

The Tranquil Years

For most of the peoples of the world, what followed were three centuries of relative peace and prosperity. The reasons for this have been the subjects of endless speculation by theologians and philosophers; what is clear is that by the end of what has become known as The Tranquil Years, the various races had come to regard the social and political conditions under which they lived as natural and normal, no matter how great a shift they represented at the commencement. Patterns had become established, and memories of the past had faded.
   The consensus amongst the learned was that for some reason, the Chaos Powers had been thrown into disarray by the defeat of their puppets in the Elven Lands, which was itself but the final act in a failed attempt to achieve their goals through acts of genocide against the worshippers of the Gods.
   Humans still thought of themselves as the centre of creation, and few of these learned individuals even know of the events in the Orclands, never mind paying them any regard. They continued to form Kingdoms and Empires and play political games with each other, and considered those games to be the most important events in history.
   The Elves welcomed back the Huyundaltha who had entered voluntary exile, and accepted their story that they had been receiving instruction and training from Corallen, and contented themselves with expanding their forests. The restoration of the Noletinechor as a sect within the Huyundaltha was seen as a return to normality by the bulk of society; the Huyundaltha had been created as an act of desperation, and represented a deviation from the true purpose of the Order. While the Huyundaltha would remain the Elves’ front-line defenders against their enemies, their true purpose was to preserve Elvish Society. Not to shape it, or direct it, but to encapsulate and sustain it in a world where practicality mandates the compromising of ideals. Ellionara, who secretly bore the title of First, made it the Noletinechor’s public mission to find ways of bending the forms and expressions of Elvishness to necessity without sacrificing the quintessential philosophical foundation of Elvishness itself.

   Ellionara thought long and deeply about the parting words of Corallen, and everything that he had experienced in the Orcish Clan Wars, and in the Dwarfwar which had preceded it; he absorbed all that he could learn of human theology, the only one which acknowledge the Chaos Powers, and winnowed through it, discarding self-serving human perspectives and rationalizations, expanding apon the results with his own experiences. Had he published his findings, he might well have been regarded as one of the greatest philosophers ever produced by the Elvish Race; but he kept his own council, and contented himself with being ready to pass his writings on to his successor when the time came.
   His reflections penetrated and punctuated the limited human concept of “Chaos Powers”. These beings were not truly Chaotic, but were expressions of a fundamental incompatibility with structure. They did not desire destruction, they demanded isolation from the impinging of external stimuli apon their personal universe of experience. This left them inherently unstable in any collaboration or cooperation, fighting their own natural instincts. The fact that they were able to unite at all was proof that they had been ‘contaminated’ by order, and were at war with their own propensities; even if they were to succeed, they would remain unsatisfied. They could never go back to what they had been.
   And that, even more than the mere imperative of self-preservation, was why they had to be opposed the last breath of the last living thing. It could be argued that they had the right of prior claim over all existence, and if a void could be created that mimicked the state of existence they desired, a peaceable settlement might have been reached with them; but with that flaw in their nature, this would only delay the inevitable and enhance their destructiveness. They would no longer have anything left to lose, existence would be intolerable to them, and they would be willing to trade their own destruction for the destruction of everything that vexed them – which was, quite literally, everything.
   And that small contamination with order made them all the more dangerous. It gave them the capacity to cooperate with each other to at least some degree, it gave them the capacity to comprehend the world around them, and the capacity to plan intelligently; and with each step, each failed scheme, the capacity for an orderly response in service to their natural anarchy would grow within them. They would learn from every failed encounter, and only grow more dangerous with time. But at the current time, the races in opposition were like babes at arms in comparison; the only hope for success was for them to learn from every encounter as well, and to learn faster and better than their enemy. The Gods, Corallen included, had the power to forestall the enemy, but not to defeat them; their primary task was to draw the attention of the enemy until it was too late.
   Ellionara realized early that it was most unlikely that Ethraztia had told the Chaos Powers the details of his vision of the future. At best, he would have told them that he saw the future; but in order to do obtain that ability, he had embraced the order within and around him, which would have made his presence uncomfortable to his fellows. They would have avoided him as much as possible, having no idea that they were vulnerable to destruction by virtue of the contamination of order, and presuming that this was an advantage that they could exploit until the day of their final success.
   The loss of that ability would have two effects on them, and the combination explained the Tranquil Years. First, they would have learned that there was an advantage to be had by embracing, rather than avoiding, the Order within their anarchy, harnessing it to their own goals; but that would take time. When next they struck, they would be ten times as dangerous, and infinitely more subtle. Second, they would have to come to terms with the fact that embracing this advantage would also embrace the vulnerability and mortality that came with it, and that would encourage them to adopting a more covert and indirect role than they had done in the past; but proxies and lieutenants take time to train, and the Chaos Powers would have to come to terms with the limited lifespans of their recruits. It would undoubtedly take them time and a few false starts to get that right.
   Ellionara spent much of his time coming to an understanding of Corallen’s cryptic final words, and the more time he spent on that task, the more importance he attached to them. The power to direct chance that the Verdonne had shown was the Key; not only would he travel back and forth through time ensuring that chance worked to bring about the opportunity for a direct attack on the Chaos Powers, bringing together the right people with the right potentials and capacities, but he quite literally held the one power to which the Chaos Powers were most innately vulnerable. And yet, Verde’s capacities were not infinite, while those of the enemy he faced were, or were close to it; he would need to husband his resources for those key moments, and influencing just a few key individuals and outcomes throughout history.
   His first priority would have been to ensure that the circumstances arose which had set him on this course in the first instance. That would require ensuring that the alliance that had brought him to a full understanding of his power and his destiny would have to be ensured and preserved, and the confrontation with the Hidden Dragon was a key element of that requirement; and more importantly, the knowledge, wisdom, and insight that Ellionara was cultivating and preserving was also essential to setting that destiny in motion. It was, or would be, in order to recover that knowledge that the Unlikely Alliance – what had Verde called it, “Tajik’s Misfits”? – would deliver Verde to the one that held the keys to Verde’s understanding of his destiny. Whatever was needed to ensure that the “Misfits” were the people required to achieve that, in the circumstances that required it, would be done. Verde’s task was, without doubt, the most cold-blooded and cold-hearted that any being could willingly undertake; if need be, tens of thousands or more would be killed to deliver the messengers to the message. Only once that self-fulfilling prophecy was complete could Verde use whatever power he retained to strike against the real enemy.
   And he could not be infallible; he was mortal, and as capable of misjudgment and error as any other mortal being. While he could use his powers to ensure that such errors were not fatal to his cause, to a certain extent anything less than fatal error would need to be tolerated; chance still favored the opportunist, and the Chaos Powers, the would-be nullifiers of existence, were nothing if not masters of opportunism. Whatever the final confrontation comprised, it would still be a desperate confrontation, with everything to play for.

Dwarves had long memories, and they were of an increasingly solitary and belligerent bent. They wanted to be left alone, mistrusting every other race, and they wanted it with an aggressiveness that posed ongoing risks for the Drow, who the Dwarves had particular reason to hate. Lolth knew that their numbers would increase more rapidly than those of Her followers, and was disinclined to be over-reliant on those followers to begin with; She resolved to be even more ruthless in expending those followers to achieve her goals than ever before, but they could do nothing if the Dwarves invaded her realm or sealed off the hidden entrances that led directly to her hidden tunnels and caves.
   The Minotaur servants of the Orcs were as ill-used in the confrontation with the Hidden Dragon as anyone else could claim to be. While their lives may have been those of indentured servants, they were not poorly cared for under the Orcish regime; but they had been persuaded, compelled, by the dream of liberty into throwing that away. When it was revealed as a chimera, they were trapped with – they thought – all hands raised against them. When a Drow carried to them an offer of Sanctuary.
   Lolth’s plan was to use the Minotaurs to bar the Dwarves from the surface by infesting their upper tunnels with the Minotaurs. She correctly surmised that the Minotaur and Dwarvish cultures would cross-pollinate; the Dwarves would react to this invasion with hostility, the Minotaurs would assume that the Dwarves wished to re-enslave them, and in order to protect themselves would adopt a martial culture of their own. Eventually, a stalemate would be achieved, which would bar the Dwarves from accessing the raw materials they needed to expand their realm; this in turn would force them to limit their population to a manageable number.
   Of course, this risked turning Dwarvish hostility toward her children below; to combat this, even while the Orcish Clan Wars were underway, Lolth had sent Drow Envoys rescue some of the Troglodytes attacked by the invaders from the Bleeding Sword clan, and had “given” them the tunnels that led from her realm to that of the Dwarves to inhabit, escorting them into position through the direct Drow tunnels. In this way, she sought to ensure that no-one living in the tunnels had scope for expansion save her own followers. To ensure her own safety, she clouded their memories, having learned to do so by closely watching Corallen in the cavern beneath the Oracle of Gottskragg.
   This situation quickly degenerated into a messy three-way conflict between the Dwarves, Minotaurs, and Troglodytes, with each side gaining ascendancy over the others in some parts of the underground realm, and taking members of the other races as Slaves. But Lolth’s goals were achieved, as they kept each other far too busy to worry about the Drow beneath their feet.
   Nor was this the only dispossessed group with whom Lolth established relations in this time. The others were the Trolls, who Lolth offered protection if they would guard the surface entrances her people employed against Elvish incursion. For a relatively small investment in effort, Lolth persuaded others to secure her borders for her, then used her new-found ‘party trick’ to make the participants think it was their own idea to do so. It matters not what you promise if the other party cannot remember the promises to hold you to the agreed-upon terms.

It was in the Orclands that the greatest turmoil persisted during the “tranquil years”, where life was not tranquil at all. To the contrary, in Orcish history, these were the Decades of Blood. Central to the turmoil were the Bugbears.

The Decades Of Blood I: Empire Of The Bugbears

Bugbears have never been known as the most pious of races. They have no trouble believing in Gods in the abstract, but have conceptual problems translating that faith into any sort of real expectation of influence, interaction, or concrete reality. Even when one of their gods was standing right in front of them, or so it seemed, they had difficulty believing that the Divine Being was capable of more than what the physical reality appeared able to do, like any other concrete being, and their shamans struggled to invoke more than the most basic of blessings or healing spells. Their society is one bound apon the concept of obedience to the stronger – and of constantly challenging that ‘stronger’ to prove that they are still capable of enforcing their commands.
   When the minion of the Hidden Dragon first came amongst them and commanded them to breed beyond the capacity of the lands in preparation for a campaign of glory and conquest to come, once they had established that the minion had sufficiently great personal strength to force them to his will, they were perfectly willing to obey. Three generations of Bugbears sprouted like weeds in a field, and only their traditional tribal structure and practice of abdicating authority to the strongest whenever two came in contact with each other kept the peace in their numbers as they were reduced to the edge of starvation by their swelling numbers. Although it had not been realized at the time – the full scope of the Hidden Dragon’s machinations was still being discovered by the Unlikely Alliance – in order to achieve the staggering population levels revealed during the Clan Wars, the intervention in the society of Bugbears must have been the true beginning of the Clan War. If Ambassador Tathzyr’s “opportunist” assessment is accepted – and it accords with everything known or believed about the Chaos Powers and their natures – it is likely that the Hidden Dragon did not know at the time to what purpose this army was being raised; it was simply an opportune resource to cultivate and have on hand.
   The very nature of Bugbear religious fidelity makes this a rational choice, since they are not prone to asking deep or awkward questions once authority is established by simple force of arms. The minions of the Hidden Dragon could afford to make mistakes and correct them without significant impact, could practice and perfect their impersonations until they got them right. Gradually, they would have worked their way up to more discriminating and independent audiences – the Minotaurs, and then the Orcs themselves.
   So it was that when the Bleeding Swords concluded their bargain with the Bugbears, expecting a yield of a mere thousand or perhaps two, the Bugbears had both the capacity and incentive to stream into the fertile central Orclands in numbers measured in the hundreds of thousands. These forces were confused and scattered by the transformation of their Deity into what in their eyes was a demonic entity. There had been little interaction between the Bugbears and Minotaurs, and what interaction had occurred was not of a nature to lead to any understanding of Minotaur theology; the Bugbears simply would not have cared about the subject. This left them incapable of associating the apparition with Minotaurs, and ironically left their assessment closer to the truth than that of anyone else at the time.
   But they were too significant in numbers to be cowed for very long; and the lack of depth to their faith also reduced the impact of their disillusionment. Heresy only matters to the pious.
   By the time of the conclusion of the Clan Wars, two fingers out of every hand’s worth of the Orclands had been occupied by the Bugbears. These lands were barely sufficient to sustain the excessive bugbear population. Half of this territory had been captured from the Mailed Fists, the other half was former property of the Bleeding Swords clan that had been captured by the Red Eye counter-invasion and liberated by the Bugbears – who were not inclined to go anywhere.

When the armistice between Red Eye and Mailed Fist clans was confirmed following the return of the Unlikely Allies from the temple of the Hidden Dragon, most of the remaining members of the Red Eye clan’s armies returned to the lands they traditionally claimed. The surviving Bleeding Sword invasion force, already disrupted and reduced to unsteady morale by the guerilla tactics of the Army Of The One Eye and their Troglodyte allies, were ground into hamburger by weight of numbers, more proficient combat tactics, and sheer ferocity, until they were forced to flee. Perhaps the greatest differential were the differences in morale; where the Bleeding Swords army was divided, uncoordinated, and ranged from nervous to near-panic, the Army of the One Eye were united, coordinated, and left confident by a great victory. The outcome of this encounter between Orcish Armies was not all that surprising, and generally all the returning victors had to do was show up to put the invaders into a forced retreat – if not an outright rout.
   Cities may have been forbidden by the Divine Edict that they had agreed to regard as genuine, but that did not mean that the Mailed Fists abandoned or forgot everything that they had learned by imitating humans; immediately the Red Eye clan had quit the field in victory, the Mailed Fists had begun to construct a string of fortified villages surrounded by palisades and prepared defensive trenches. In time, the dimly-remembered events of the Clan War would color even Orcish attitudes toward the Mailed Fists patron Deity, whose policy of putting all his (metaphoric) eggs into “one basket” (one city) became symbolic of foolishness; the most intellectual of the Orcish Gods would become known to the population as the most stupid.
   Long before that perception spread throughout the population, however, the remnants of the Bleeding Sword Army fleeing from the wrath of the Red Eye clan found themselves trapped by this line of fortified emplacements. With the Elvish Forest and impassable mountains occupied by belligerent Dwarves and Desperate Minotaurs on the one side, a hostile army at their rear, and these fortified positions before them, they had no choice but to turn to the Sinister and race for the coastline, then to attempt to cross the hostile territory down the frozen coastline, short of food and ill-prepared for the conditions. Along the way, they had to cross the lines of Red Eye soldiers stretching to the coast, engaged in carrying rubble from the fallen cities of the Mailed Fists (as Gruumsh had commanded them to do) – a task they were quite happy to set aside in order to pursue the hated would-be invaders of their homeland. Past this series of death-traps, they came to the vast territories occupied by the Bugbears, but the latter dislike coastal regions, and provided that they starved themselves by staying away from the more temperate regions where food could be obtained, they were relatively unmolested; conditions and nature picked them off, there was no need for an army to do so. Few survived to return to their clan.

High summer of the following year saw the long-awaited Moot which formalized the peace terms between the Red Eye and Mailed Fist clans, and acknowledged and enshrined the bonds forged in blood and shared battle between the two clans. The Bleeding Swords leaders declined to send representatives, earning them the contempt of the rest of Orcish Society, but they were being squeezed between two populations of Bugbears and their former prosperity was a distant memory. It had only been a matter of time before they defaulted on their agreement with the Bugbear mercenaries they had engaged to fight on their behalf, and the Bugbears had turned on their former allies; they were now overrunning and enslaving them, one isolated household at a time.
   After five years of constant assault, the Bleeding Swords were reduced to small pockets of Orcish culture. That year, the Bleeding Swords swallowed their pride and begged the Red Eye and Mailed Fist clans for aid, a request that was summarily rejected.
   Two fists of years after the end of the Clan War, the last of the Bleeding Sword homesteads was overrun, and the entire Sunset region south of the fortified villages of the Mailed Firsts became one continuous Bugbear Feudal Empire.
   This empire was inherently unstable, in a condition of perpetual imminent collapse into anarchy that never quite fell apart. First one tribe would become ascendant, and then it would fall, its authority successfully challenged by a subordinate, who would then take its place as the rulers of the Empire (or a region within it), only to be challenged in its turn. The only marked change in their rather sloppily-defined borders came as the Bugbears withdrew from the coast; Bugbears swim quite badly when their fur becomes waterlogged, unless they have the chance to protect it by coating themselves in animal fat. Consequently, the Bugbears have never liked the sea, and avoid coastal regions whenever possible.

The Decades Of Blood II: Kudja’s Raiders

Ironically. one of the unifying forces that helped hold the Bugbear Empire together were the ongoing attacks by Kudja’s Raiders, which comprised dispossessed Mailed Fists from the sunset regions of their former clan territory. They did not mind overly if the Bugbears had conquered and humiliated the Bleeding Swords, but were intent on liberating those territories that were formerly claimed by their clan. Kudja himself was a folk hero amongst his people, and this crusade had considerable popular support as a result.
   Now, Kudja was a high priest, who had risen to become the ultimate spiritual authority within his clan, the former Clan Shaman. Even reduced to one arm, it might seem surprising that the Bugbears could seriously oppose the forces, both temporal and spiritual, that Kudja could put in the field, and certainly when he began his crusade, Kudja expected the Bugbears to be easy prey; his first recruits were gathered to serve as bodyguards to protect him while he did the ‘real work’ of pushing back the Bugbears. Earthquakes, Pillars Of Fire, and withering storms were amongst the tools Kudja could call apon. If need be, he could raise a volcano beneath the feet of the invaders, shift the courses of rivers, or rain fire from the clouds; how could the Bugbears hope to stand against such might?
   It came as something of a rude shock for Kudja to discover that the indifferent faith of the Bugbears was sufficient to enable them to resist the effects of his most potent spells, imperfectly and inconstantly, but enough that his campaign was not the inevitable and assured victory that he expected. A compounding of overconfidence in his divine abilities, obsession with his mission, and his desperation to repay the faith placed in him by his fanatically-loyal followers, lead Kudja into an ongoing series of narrow escapes and improbable victories. These heroic exploits, exaggerated by those loyal supporters, only reinforces his folk hero status amongst the Mailed Fists, so he was never short of willing recruits and supporters willing to donate food to maintain his crusade against the usurping Bugbears.
   It might have been possible for the Mailed Fists to reach an accord with the Bugbear Empire, had they been willing to accept the status quo as a reality, but the esteem in which Kudja and his crusade were held squandered any opportunity for peace. Time and time again, Kudja would lead his forces in an incursion into the Bugbear empire which would savage one targeted tribe or stronghold only to be driven back when his divinely-granted spells failed him; and, it must be stated, Kudja was no great military tactician. Several times he was captured by his enemies, only to be rescued in daring raids in which his forces traded their lives for his liberation and the continuation of the struggle. Between the dishonor of the Bleeding Swords and the obsessive irrationality of Kudja’s raiders, it should not be too surprising that the Bugbears declared themselves the enemies of all Orc Clans.
   After four fists of years mauling the Bugbear boarders and singlehandedly creating a no-mans-land between the Empire and the Orc Clans, Kudja engaged in one raid against overwhelming odds too many, and was slain. The Bugbear who achieved this victory changed his name in celebration to Urka Priestkiller, and became the first Bugbear in twenty years to become High Lord of the Bugbear Empire unopposed – for all of a year. With Kudja’s passing, the spark of obsessed inspiration went out of the raiders, and their numbers began to dwindle. Slowly the Bugbear borders were secured, and then they began to exact their revenge; over the next 30 years, they overran the fortified villages and townships of the Mailed Fist clan. If they had still possessed their fortified cities, these might have held out long enough to become rallying points, but they were long gone, and no village can support the same levels of protection that city walls afford. The Mailed Fist captives that were taken when their townships fell were executed or enslaved.
   It is often said that Pride goes before a fall, and so it proved for the Mailed Fists. Sure that they would eventually prevail against the Bugbears, so slowly were their enemies proceeding, that they stood alone until the last possible minute, accepting only token reinforcements from their allies in the Red Eye clan. Only when they were reduced to a single stronghold did they reluctantly accept that they were insufficient to the needs they faced; a rider carried word to their old friends and allies in the Red Eye clan, begging for help. Unlike the similar call three Orc Generations earlier by the Bleeding Swords, the Mailed Fists and Red Eyes had established respect for each other and even some limited intermarriage; the Red Eye’s army was gathered and marched as quickly as it could be raised, but it was still too late to save the final refuge of the Mailed Fists.
   Now the Bugbears changed tactics unexpectedly, revealing that the decades of internal struggle had left marks within their society, as well; with the last of the fortified villages overrun, they did not stop to consolidate their conquest, as they had after each previous victory; instead they rushed forward to confront the Red Eye army directly.
   The ferocity of this attack forced the Red Eyes, caught unprepared and out of position, into a defensive battle, trading lives for space, and eventually halting and beating back the advance. Year after year, the Empire would engage the Red Eyes in battle, penetrate deeply into their lines, and be driven back – but each time, they would halt and hold firm just a little deeper into Orcish territory. The Bugbear Empire continued to expand, step by step, year by year, as inexorable as the coming of winter.

The Decades Of Blood III: Strategies And Armies

A century of unremitting warfare took their toll on Orcish society. Much of the progress toward culture that had been achieved was lost; the education of the young became ever-more-confined in scope, the average age of their commanders slowly fell, and the people stopped thinking beyond the next year’s battle. Despite this cultural decline, some advancements took place and became entrenched, most notably those which yielded improvements in efficiency. For example, they had discovered the power of numbering in units of ten, and the use of simplified basic arithmetic that it permitted. Then, too, the Red Eyes had learned from the fate of the Mailed Fists, and from the now legendary exploits of the Clan Wars, though these were now shrouded in myth. They might have been the most culturally insular and intransigent of the Orcish Clans, least willing of all to change their traditions, but even these will bend when enough of those traditional roots are eroded; with two-thirds of their territory forfeit, and the last year’s bugbear incursion halted only fifty leagues from the Clan-Chief’s stronghold at the foot of the mountains, they evolved a desperate, enlightened, and progressive four-fold strategy.
   As was their tradition when faced with the need to accomplish multiple objectives, they divided their Army and tasked each with the single-minded achievement of a single objective.
   The Army Of The Skull was tasked with emulating some of the tricks of the Mailed Fists, constructing defenses and trading their lives to slow the incursions of the Bugbear Marauders, buying time for the other armies to achieve their objectives. The new front-line was their responsibility.
   The Army Of The Moon was tasked with providing offensive counterstrokes to harass and further delay the enemy, supported by the Red Eye’s troglodyte allies, then falling back to prepared positions that were being dug into the foothills. With mountain strongholds held by allies at their backs, they were the Rearguard.
   Ambassador Tathzyr had remained with the Red Eyes at his Queen’s instruction since the fall of the Orcish Cities. In that time, he had helped to educate several receptive officers and warriors in the tactics of stealth and subterfuge. Now near death from premature old age, he nevertheless lived long enough to see those special pupils gathered together into The Army Of The Night Crow, charged with scouting the enemy, functioning as spies deep within their territories, and recruiting slaves within each Tribal Kingdom of the Bugbear Empire to serve as a fifth column and resistance.
   And finally, a select band showing sufficient leadership potential and tactical expertise were formed into the core of the Army Of The Open Hand, their purpose to recruit Allies.
   Each of the three Great Orcish Clans had been socially advanced over the others in it’s own way. The Mailed Fists had excelled in agriculture, domesticity, philosophy, and the intellectual pursuits, especially architecture; the Bleeding Swords had been the most culturally advanced and most adept at making alliances and treaties, the most able to see things from an outsider’s perspective and adjust their own thinking to take advantage of that perspective; and the Red Eye had excelled in remaining true to their cultural heritage and roots, were the most Noble of the clans, and – while not as adept at forging alliances – had proven their capacity for fidelity to such alliances as they had formed over the centuries. The Orcs of the Red Eyes had long recognized that as a cultural strength of their clan, and now they determined to use it as a weapon against the invading Bugbears by recruiting allies into the Army of the Open Hand and welding them into a strike force of diverse abilities.
   In overall command was Kazbran, Warblade of the Clan, responsible for coordinating the activities of the four armies and orchestrating those activities into an overall campaign. It was he who had made the intellectual leap required to seek allies from amongst the other races that surrounded the Orclands.

One by one, members of this fourth force went forth at great risk to themselves and sought out the populations of the neighboring regions, bargaining with them for aid in repelling the Bugbears, and one by one they returned to report varying degrees of success, each now tasked with the responsibility of serving as liaison and overall commander of the troops they had recruited. Each had been given strict negotiating parameters and a free hand within those limits, ensuring that whatever the price demanded, it would be within the capacity of the Orcs to pay should the campaign succeed.
   The first recruits to the Army Of The Open Hand were 2312 Ogres under the command of 35 Ogre Magi. These were soon joined by 431 Black and Green Trolls, each a small army in their own right. Although the Gnolls declared themselves officially neutral (they shared a border with the Bugbear Empire, after all), 1655 Gnoll “irregulars” chose to take advantage of the opportunity for looting.
   In light of the century of good relations with the Red Eyes, and in return for the Orcish promise to serve her in a future military campaign of her choosing, Lolth sent 2400 Drow archers, 3600 swordsmen, 600 mages transformed into Dryders, 4500 of the Giant Spyders of various kinds, and fifty priests to heal the wounded but not take part in combat.
   But not all the recruiters were successful. The Elves refused the entreaty. The Goblins were inaccessible, blockaded by the Gnolls. The humans were unreachable, their Kingdoms and Empires lying beyond the Elven Forest or through more than 1000 miles of Goblin territory. Dwarves were unobtainable, access to their subterranean kingdom blocked by Minotaurs with neither love nor trust for Orcs; these were not even contemplated as potential allies. Together with the Army Of The Open Hand that had recruited them and the surviving members of the Army Of The Skull as they fell back to their prepared positions behind the lines of the Army Of The Moon, these became the Army Of The Five Hands – one hand for each of the Races allied (treating the Dryders and Spyders as part of the Drow contingent).
   The Bugbears had strength of numbers, strength of position, and only the Trolls could match them for physical force, one-on-one (though the Ogres came close).
   The recruitment and assembling of these forces took ten years. In the interim, the fecundity of the Orcs was their salvation. But slowly these forces were gathered behind the protection of the Army Of The Moon to strategize and develop coordinated tactics while awaiting intelligence from the Army Of The Night Crow. When those long-awaited reports finally began to reach the Clan Warblade, they transformed the nature and conduct of the entire war.

The Decades Of Blood IV: The Fall Of Night Campaign

Ogres are simple creatures. Ogre Magi were intelligent, educated, oppressive, and barbarous. Bugbears were merely savage – smarter and more cunning than Ogres, but simpler and more brutal – but they smart enough to adopt good ideas from whatever source they derived.
   Starting with administration of the hunting and herding, captured Orcs of the Bleeding Sword clan had slowly insinuated themselves as the administrators of the households, controllers of the supply lines, dictating strategies and tactics and logistics. Bleeding Swords had become the powers behind the thrones, pampered and preened, feigning subservience, and using their Bugbear ‘Masters’ to exact revenge apon the clans that had spurned them in their time of need. These were the true unifying force that had held the Bugbear Empire intact in the face of its innate propensity to collapse, for more than a century. The true slaves of the Bugbear Empire were captured Red Eye and Mailed Fist clans, Orcs who had been subjugated – in some cases – for generations.
   Peace between the Bleeding Swords and the other Orcish clans had not been established because the former had not attended the Moot where the Clan Wars had been ended. To the Red Eyes and Mailed Fists, this was considered irrelevant, because the Bleeding Swords had been wiped out by their Bugbear ‘allies’; now it was revealed that all this time, the Bugbear Empire had simply been the weapon with which the Bleeding Swords had perpetuated the Clan War against the rest of their race.
   Simple plans for a single thrust through the heart of the Bugbear army to capture the current Great Lord of the Bugbear Empire, Ruckal The Strong, and force the Bugbears to give up their captured territories as the price of his release, were replaced with a far more subtle and sophisticated strategy that drew apon the individual strengths and abilities of the allies and the vulnerabilities of the disposition of the enemy forces, which were concentrated most strongly in the front lines.
   The Ogrish instinct for engineering was turned to the construction of great ships, taking advantage of the thin Bugbear forces along the coastal regions. While these were under construction, the Army Of The Night Raven worked to fulfill its mandate to recruit the slaves of the Bugbear Empire into a fifth column. Much of the overall strategy was modeled on the slave revolt of the Minotaurs a century earlier, and the dimly-remembered events of the Orcs slave revolt against the Ogres centuries earlier.
   All proceeded according to plan, which was a first in the history of conflict. Gruumsh clearly smiled apon their endeavors.

   When the ships were complete, they were used to ferry alliance forces to selected staging points up and down the coast. From these staging points, each force from the Army Of The Five Hands struck inland to capture key points, isolating one Bugbear tribal kingdom from another, and slicing the Bugbear Empire into smaller factions.
   At a prearranged time, those Orcish Slaves in each Bugbear tribal Kingdom who had been recruited into the Army Of The Night Raven emulated the Minotaur revolt, slaying the Bleeding Sword ‘heads of households’ before fleeing toward these rendezvous points. At the same time, Ogres and Trolls disguised as Bugbears through Ogre Magi and Dryder magic, and bearing the colors of a neighboring Bugbear tribal Kingdom, staged from the strategic positions they had established, with Gnoll irregulars in reserve to fend off any attempts to cut their lines. When these thrusts were fully extended, they withdrew under cover of Drow bow-fire, hopefully having been reached by the fleeing Army Of The Night Raven. When they had returned to the forward positions held secure by the Orcs and Drow, the entire force would retreat to the initial staging positions along the coast, leaving the path clear for each tribal Kingdom to turn on the neighbor who they thought had attacked it.
   The key to victory was the Army Of The Night Raven; the Bleeding Swords ‘administrators’ would have been able to reassert order and prevent the Empire from devolving into ten, twenty, even thirty simultaneous civil wars that would eviscerate it. Most of the members of this fifth column were killed by outraged Bugbear “Lords”, but many were liberated. The fifth column was under no illusions about their chances, but the chance of freedom was worth the risk of death, as the Orcs had learned when they had been subjugated by the Ogres centuries earlier, and the slaves themselves had been awaiting an opportune time to again strike for their freedom. Plans and techniques had been passed down from slave generation to slave generation under the very noses of their slave-masters, who had grown complacent. Each household’s slaves knew which of their numbers could be trusted, who had become soft and compliant, and who were pampered collaborators and could not be trusted. At the right time, there were a series of ‘accidents’ that left the overseers without their cadre of stool pigeons and informants, followed shortly by the actual revolt which left those overseers dead.
   Any tribal Kingdom that showed signs of restoring internal order were subjected to a fresh strike by the Army Of The Five Hands, bolstered by the abandonment of disguises which enabled the use of more direct magic against the enemy, but it was hoped and expected that nine tenths of the Bugbear Empire would destroy itself while leaving the majority of the Five Hands forces intact, bolstered in numbers by escaping members of the Army Of The Night Raven. These would then sally forth to occupy defensive positions and consolidate the recapture of the Orclands, and so it proved.

With their supply lines cut, the front lines of the Bugbear Army had no choice but to retreat, harried at every step by the Army Of The Moon and the Troglodyte allies of the Red Eyes. By the time they reached the lands that the Bugbear Empire had settled and not merely captured, the Army Of The Five Hands had fortified, and the Bugbear forces were trapped with nowhere to go, just as the Bleeding Sword’s original Army had been at the end of the Clan War. The plan had been to employ Orcish fecundity to reinforce each defensive position annually, while the returning army was trapped between hostile armies and facing the onset of Winter. With each passing year, the Bugbear army was lured deeper back into the heart of their former Empire; each mile of regained territory costing lives, while fresh forces were put in place to both front and rear. Priority was given to the killing of any Bleeding Sword accompanying the Army, which degenerated with every step into a rabble as the cohesion that sustained and administered it was cut away or starved out, one slice at a time. Thirty Orcs dead for each Bugbear was a net victory for the Orcs. Eventually the Bugbear Army fell apon itself and collapsed, the survivors fleeing as a rabble.
   The Fall Of Night campaign was a slow grinding away of an overwhelming force that was never permitted to come to grips with its enemies. It took twenty years to complete from the day the first ships sailed, and it cost over two million dead by the time it concluded, more than a century after the ‘official’ end of the Clan Wars. One quarter of the fallen were Bugbears, 475,000 were Bleeding Swords or slaves which were killed by their Bugbear “Masters”, and one-and-a-half million were Orcs killed over the 150 years of the conflict that followed the end of the Clan Wars. Only then did the Tranquil Years at last descend apon the so-called Fallen Races.

The Decades Of Blood V: The Price Of Virtue

Victory in the Fall Of Night Campaign was not purchased cheaply. Bugbear numbers were reduced to less than one-third what they had been prior to the intervention of the Hidden Dragon, and the Orcish population was a tenth of what it had been prior to the Clan Wars. In its own way, this was fortuitous, for the promises which had secured the services of the Orcs’ allies in the Army Of Five Hands represented a heavy burden to shoulder.
   Gnoll opportunists had consumed the sunset third of the original Bugbear realm all the while proclaiming their official ‘neutrality’, and had begun to harbor their own dreams of conquest and looting.
   The Sunrise third of the former Bugbear realm, and the adjoining Sunset third of the original Bleeding Sword territory, was given by treaty to the Ogres, who settled in the mountains to the Dexter and only emerged from their hidden valleys to hunt.
   The Dexter Third of the territory that had once belonged to the Mailed Fists, and which contained the paths to the Elven Forest, was given to the Trolls, the first time this simple race had been given a homeland of its own.
   Between the Troll-lands and the Ogres lay the forested mountain passes that led to the Drow and the most sunset-facing of the Dwarven tunnels; this region was given to the Drow, who turned it over (per Lolth’s instruction) to the Spyders to further isolate the Elves and Dwarves, and to place a barrier between the Orcs and the Elves; the prophecy of the Oracle Of Gottskragg was ever-present in her mind. She did not know what turn of events would lead to her children turning against her, but any barrier that could be placed between the races of the prophesied alliance might serve to delay the day.
   The mountains to the Dexter of the former Red Eye lands were offered to the Troglodytes, including those fortified valleys that had been refuge to the Ogres, but they only wanted the tunnels below the rocks and to be left alone; those mountains and fortified valleys were left unclaimed, for the Orcs did not want them.
   Even ceding more than a full third of the former Orclands to their Allies left the Orcs with too great a region to administer. Communities were isolated, and the survivors of the great clans fractured into many smaller clans over the years that followed. They would not reunite as a race until the Drow demanded, in Lolth’s name, that they pay the price of the aid that she had granted the Orcs in this struggle, some centuries later, when the world was a very different place. Orcish society became a more uniform blend of the three former clans; fortified villages surrounded by cultivated farms, in the manner of the Mailed Fists, and herds in the way of the Bleeding Swords, and from which they hunted the wilderness which surrounded their communities as had the Red Eyes.
   So few in number were the surviving Orcs, and so isolated from each other, that they were unable to mount any coordinated defense when one of the human Kingdoms, searching for room in which to expand, discovered passes that could be made traversable into the fortified valleys that had once served as refuges to the Ogres, and descended from the mountains past the tunnels of the Troglodytes onto the great coastal plains of the Orclands.
   These were humans who had grown used to a general peace over a span of nearly 250 years, and while they looked apon the Orcs with contempt as primitives, it was easier to give them a wide berth; the reduced Orclands were still sparsely populated in comparison to their potential, and there was plenty of room for everyone. In time, these human communities even dared to tentatively trade with their Orcish neighbors; thus were the Orcs exposed directly to human culture, human theology, and human politics. There were things they liked about their new neighbors, and things that revolted them, but on the whole, they got on. And so the Tranquil Years rolled on. Amongst some Orcish communities, their Gods came to be seen as one pantheon amongst many, while others abandoned their own Gods in favor of those worshipped by the humans.
   But Chaos never sleeps for long, and the Orcs failed to recognize that in embracing community with their new human neighbors, they were left vulnerable to the tribulations and vagarities of human society…

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The Return of the Ongoing Elvish Glossary

• Alkaith: Curved 14-inch dagger favored as a weapon and general cutting tool by Elvish Spellcasters and some High Elves.
• Arnost: Simple Speech (Modern “Common”, a human tongue)
• Arrunquessor: Plains Elves
• Ayer: Nuthanori word meaning “Squat”. Mont Ayer is the name of one of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands.
• Calquissir: High Elves
• Ciltherosa: A variety of tree which grows very tall before erupting into successive crowns of branches of diminishing size which arch and curve horizontally.
• Comesdhail Osfadara­ Litrithe Congress Of Spellweavers
• Corellan: The First
• Drow: “Those Who Dwell Apart” (in Nuthanorl). Added to Ogre by the Drow with the meaning of “Smart”.
• Ellessarune: The “Shining City” of the Tarquessir, home of the Elvish King and capital of the Elven Lands to this day.
• Eltrhinast: “Guiding Spirit”
• Elvarheim: “Blessed Leafy Home”: The Elven Forest, homeland of the Tarquessir and the centre of Elven Power in modern times
• Gilandthor: “The Gathering”, the formal title of the Elvish Council.
• Hithainduil: High Elven Language
• Huyundaltha: “Masters Of The Ondaltha” (literal), “Bladedancers” (colloquial). Formerly Noletinechor, now Guardians Of Elvish Society.
• Illvayssor: “The Other”, a mythical race
• Infelstreta: “Demon” in Hithainduil.
• Isallithin: “The Sundered”, a name applied to Aquatic Elves
• King: A human title interpreted by Elves as “speaker to others” and defined as such within their language.
• Lesiatrame: “Bright Ego”, a deprecating term used to describe Human Gods, rendered suspect during the commencement of the third Great Dwarfwar.
• Magi: A corruption of the Zamiel word “Machus”, which means “of the wise.”
• Magfelstreta: “Devil” in Hithainduil.
• Mithryl: the Elvish name of an extremely fragile metal given in trade by the Dwarves to the Elves. The word is imported from Dwarven, who in turn obtained it from the Zamiel Tongue name of the metal, “Mithral”. “Mithryl” means “Moonsilver” in Elven. The word also enjoys popular usage as a metaphor for a treasure found which appears initially worthless.
• Mithral: the Drow name for Mithryl. A literal translation from Zamiel is “Shadowsilver”.
• Mont: Nuthanori word meaning “High Place”. Used human-style in the naming of Mountains.
• Noletinechor: “Lore Shields”, an elvish historical vocation, and a secret order withing the Huyundaltha who mask their activities under the cover of this historical vocation.
• Nuthanorl: Low Elven Language, Common Elven
• Ondaltha: A two-weapon combat style based apon Elvish Dance, practiced exclusively by Huyundaltha.
• Osfadara­ Litrithe Spellweaver, literally ‘Weaver of Harmony’.
• Sarner: A human abbreviation of the Hithainduil word “Saranariuthenal” which means, literally, “Swift and Wide”. The River Sarner runs through the central valley of Elvarheim.
• Siurthua: Tainted
• Tarquessir: Forest Elves
• Thonsutriane: “Dark Egos”, a deprecating term used to describe Chaos Powers, rendered suspect during the commencement of the third Great Dwarfwar.
• Thuyon: Nuthanori word meaning “Tall Spires”. Mont Thuyon is the name of the taller of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands; Modern Elvarheim lies between the foothills of Mont Thuyon and the River Sarner.
• Verdonne: “Quickbranch”, an artificial race created by Elves to be “The Guardians Of The Forest”.
• Zamiel: Drow Language

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The Orcs and Elves series is taking a break for most of the next month, when Campaign Mastery is hosting the Blog Carnival. The subject is “Location, Location, Location” and it kicks off on Thursday with a rare double-post…

When it returns, “The Politics Of Heaven” come under scrutiny…

So far, I’ve looked at what I’ve defined as the primary types of writer’s block – initial ideas, detailed plots, settings, actions, character personalities, and narrative – and offered an absolute treasure-trove of solutions. Sixty-five solutions to six types of writer’s block, and few if any of them that can transfer to a different type of problem.

But that’s just the beginning. In that first part, I also proposed the concept of Translation Blocks, and that’s an entire subject that still has to be explored, and solutions presented.

Translation Blocks in General

A reminder: what are translation blocks?

Translation blocks are all about moving from one level or layer of the story that you’re telling to the next. You already have a road mapped out of where you are going, and you already know where you are coming from, but trying to make a seamless connection from point A to B seems to escape you.

I realize that speaking in generalities isn’t very helpful, so here’s a more concrete and realistic example: You know the plot situation, you have just introduced a new character into the story. You know what that character’s personality is going to be, and you know what information that character has to impart with his dialogue. What needs doing is to express that personality in description and perhaps initial activity while setting the scene, and then use the personality to shape the dialogue so that the information being presented is saturated, or perhaps you would prefer suffused, with that personality. In other words, you have the elements, but you need to bind them together into a seamless whole. This is an example of three different translation blocks in succession: Specific to Narrative, Action to Narrative, and Persona to Dialogue.

The diagram above illustrates the ways in which the elements of a scene relate to each other. Each of these lines represents a translation of what is known, or has been decided, about a scene, to the next thing that is to be presented in the scene. Not all scenes will have all elements, and “Action” can be considered a special form of narrative in literature.

Causes of Translation Block

There are three general causes of Translation Block:

• Inadequate Foundations,
• Technical & Process problems, and
• Transitional Issues.

Inadequate Foundations

Nothing creates writer’s block faster than not having your prep done properly. Any inadequacies in any single element contaminate every connection between that element and the rest of your writing. How can you get the dialogue right if you don’t know who the character doing the speaking is? How can you get the action right if you don’t see how the character’s capabilities can react to the existing situation? How can the character decide what to do in order to advance their goals if you don’t know what the character’s goals are, or what opportunities exist within the current situation for the advancement of the character’s agenda?

In every scene, a writer needs to be able to explain to himself why the scene is present, what its purpose is, who is participating, where it is taking place, what is supposed to happen – and how it will lead to the next step in the overall plotline. Any weakness in any of these foundations can manifest as writer’s block and frustration.

The solution to this type of writer’s block is relatively simple: identify the area of inadequate preparation and generate the missing detail. Invent it out of whole cloth, if you have to, then think about how it will fit – and then change it if the fit is not good enough. The previous parts of this series should give you all the tools that you need – if you have the time to employ them.

Technical & Process problems

It’s one thing being able to come up with ideas. It can be quite another to present them in a clear and concise manner. The more writing you do, the more skilled and polished you become. Writer’s block can be a manifestation of the writer simply not having the technical skills to achieve his objectives. This is the hardest type of writer’s block to overcome quickly, but is the easiest type of writer’s block to resolve in the long term; the cure is to read books on writing, attend workshops, and/or write something else; repeat until you achieve the necessary proficiency.

In the meantime, fake it. There are no new problems in writing, and therefore someone else has confronted this issue and solved it before. Spend a few minutes thinking about all the books that you’ve read, trying to identify the single sequence in one that is closest to the situation you have before you, then look at how it was solved by that author. Outline a rough draft of that solution, then polish it using your character names and personalities and situation. The solution used by the author won’t be an exact match to your situation, so it will need to be modified, line by line and word by word, until it solves your problem. Once you have done all that, and have that solution clearly in mind, delete it from your text and write, from scratch, using your own phrases, style, and vernacular, that solution. This eliminates any potential problems over plagiarism.

But this solution, though it is an immediate way out of the creative bottleneck, takes time. What do you do if you don’t have that time?

Hold that thought, and I’ll get back to you in just a moment.

Transitional Issues

These occur when you discover a hole in your planning. A plotting analogy should make this source clearer: you know that you need to move your plot from “A” to “C”, which logically implies a scene in the middle, “B”, to do just that – but have no idea what should be in that scene.

The same thing can occur internally within a scene. You can have a setting, and a character, and something that you want that character to say or do – but no idea of how to passage seamlessly from your description of the setting to the dialogue. Simply describing the physical appearance of the character reads too much like writing by numbers (the equivalent of painting with numbers) – it looks artificial or sounds forced, or – worse yet – fills the page with dull narrative that does nothing but tread water without moving the story forward.

Most of these problems can be dealt with by employing the solutions offered for the type of content that you are trying to create within the scene. Again, the solutions already provided hold the answers you need – if there’s plenty of time to implement them.

Improvising solutions

It’s when there’s no time that you need a different technique – that of improvising a solution. That doesn’t happen very often in most forms of literature, but it’s all too common in an RPG.

I should start by referring the reader to

• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Adventures On The Fly,
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Six Foundations Of Adventure,
• By the seat of your pants: the 3 minute (or less) NPC, and
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics,

my previous articles on improvisation at the game table. These can solve a lot of problems, especially when it comes to the Plot Phase, or the need to create a quick character for a one-off encounter.

If you count up the links leading into, or present within, the Scene Phase, you will find there to be eleven of them. I have solutions for nine of these eleven – not because the others were unworthy, but because they can usually be solved by “backtracking” and taking a different path to where it is that you need to go within the scene. I have also added a ringer from the Plot Phase. These ten problems, and one or more solutions to each (plus a few additional specific problem-and-solution ringers here and there in sidebars) comprise the remainder of this series.

I should stress that there is no reason why these solutions won’t work for literary writers; they have been excerpted and extracted because they are problems to which GMs of RPGs often need to improvise ad-hoc solutions. These solutions are probably not going to be quite as refined or pretty as those resulting from long hours sweating over the word processor, but they have the advantage of answering the need, “I-need-it-right-now!”.

Translation: Conceptual to Specific

I’m starting with a deliberate ringer. This type of writer’s block is defined as when you know what you want to do in general but don’t know how to get there from here. It can occur when the players make an unexpected choice and you have to improv a scene on the spot – hopefully one that will get the overall adventure back on track, if that’s necessary.

Solution #1 (if blockage is due to an unexpected PC choice):

The Best Thing That You Can Do is to admit, “I didn’t think of that, give me a minute to work out what will happen.” Then let the players high-five each other while you think.

The Worst Thing That You Can Do is to say, “No, you can’t do that.” Even if they can’t.

The Second-Worst Thing That You Can Do is to get too attached to the original plotline.

So start by jettisoning that and seeing what will happen as a consequence. Here’s a checklist of questions – work through them, answering each.
 

1. Will their action solve their problem?

• Is there anything they already know that their solution overlooks and that will invalidate it?
• Is there anything they don’t know that will invalidate their solution?
• Are they making a false assumption?

 

2. If they are overlooking something:

• What is the last possible moment at which they can be reminded of that something that leaves them time to solve the problem?
• Will their solution actually make it impossible to solve the problem? In this case, and in this case only, the GM is justified in employing some more heavy-handed solution like a dice roll to “remember” the forgotten detail, or having an NPC point out “There’s something you’re overlooking.” And if there are no NPCs present, have one arrive who can demand to be brought up to date – then make the “There’s something you’re overlooking” speech.
• Is there a natural way in which they can be reminded of what they are overlooking prior to that point in time?
• Is there a point at which it will become obvious from the lack of results that their solution is not working? Insert a scene with an NPC at that point and have him voice the obvious: “It’s not working, you must have overlooked something”, then let the PCs try to figure out what the something was (with the GM’s assistance).

 

3. If there is something they don’t know that will invalidate their solution:

• What is the last possible moment at which they can discover that something which still leaves them time to solve the problem?
• Will their solution actually make it impossible to solve the problem? If so, what is the last possible moment at which they can discover this fact that avoids this difficulty?
• Is there a point at which it will become obvious that their solution is not working?
• Is there a natural way in which their actions will lead to the discovery of the missing information prior to the earliest of these points in time? If not, you will have to orchestrate one – or let the PCs live with the consequences of failure.

 

4. If they are making a false assumption:

• What is the last possible moment at which they can discover their error that leaves them time to solve the problem?
• Will their mistake actually make it impossible to solve the problem? If so, what is the last possible moment at which they can discover this fact that will avoid this difficulty?
• Is there a point at which it will become obvious that they have made a mistake?
• Is there a natural way in which they can discover their mistake prior to the earliest of these points in time? If not, you will have to orchestrate one – or let the PCs live with the consequences of failure.

 

5. What will the immediate consequences of the PCs choice be?

• What plot elements – setting, characters, etc – will you need to roleplay the scene?
• In general terms, what will happen after that, and after that, and after that, and so on?

Sidebar:
These question follow four key principles that are worth enunciating:

• Never, ever, start a plotline without thinking about what will happen if the PCs fail, and how you can recover the campaign from that point.
• Always let the PCs follow their own course until the point where the campaign/adventure is about to become unsalvageable, while watching for opportunities to get things back on track if necessary.
• Never say “No”; find a way for the players to decide to change what they are doing of their own volition.
• Where there is one solution to a problem, there’s usually more than one. If the PCs find a working solution you hadn’t thought of, it’s up to you to accept it, and adapt the rest of the adventure to accommodate it.

Solution #2 (if blockage is NOT due to an unexpected PC choice):

Which brings me to the general solution: Determine how the general plot to this point will interact with the everyday life or lives of the PCs/protagonists and start with the roleplaying/writing of that everyday life, then introduce the interactions. Fiction writers have more scope, as they can use the impact on a minor character.

If you’re desperate and there isn’t an immediate impact on the ordinary life of the PCs/Protagonists, let an NPC feel the impact and roleplay a scene where they meet the PC/Protagonist and tell them their story.

This solution works by casting everything that happens prior to the PCs becoming aware of the situation into the past. This makes the situation established historical fact that can be described far more succinctly and propels the characters straight into the search for a solution, bypassing the scene with the problem. Nothing matters until it affects a PC.

Translation: Specific to Scene

This type of writer’s block is defined as knowing what the next part of the story is but don’t know how to manifest it in a scene.

Solution:

Choose an unrelated setting and let the PCs roleplay something that has nothing to do with the main plot, or is tangental to it. It could be as simple as briefing someone else about the situation. This scene exists purely to stall the action. Use the additional time to (mentally) review where each of the primary characters are and what they are doing. Look for a way to connect those activities with the next part of the plot.

At the end of the stalling scene, touch base with each of the PCs and roleplay their current activities for a minute or two, scheduling whichever one best connects with the next part of the plot, last. Use that connection to lead into the next part of the story.

Translation: Specific to Setting

There are two subtypes to this type of Translation Block.

Needing a location

When you know what is to happen next but can’t find the right location in which to have the events unfold.

Solution:

Identify the key characteristic that the location is going to bring to the story. That’s usually either resources for the protagonists to use, resources that the antagonist has used or stolen, or a particular tone or mood. Then try to encapsulate the resources, tone, or mood into a specific location – choosing with logic in the first case and emotion in the second.

Having an incongruent location

When you know what is to happen next but the location where the characters are doesn’t seem right for it.

Three Solutions:

This usually means that the tone of the story and the logic of the situation are in conflict. If you can change the scene without completely fouling up the story, that’s usually the better solution; but more often than not, you will need to transition the setting to convey the tone of the story, or possibly even set the scene in a completely different location, inserting a scene transiting from one location to the other. A third solution is to play up the incongruity between location and tone.
 

Sidebar:
A shortcut that I sometimes employ when in desperate need is to pick one key adjective, think of a location that encapsulates or matches that adjective, and use that as my starting point for a location. For a variation, try for a location that would normally contradict the adjective. “Sterile” or “Antiseptic” would normally suggest a hospital or doctor’s office. A family home is usually the last place to which such a description would apply – but using it as a starting point conjures a fairly vivid image.

 

Translation: Specific to Action

When you know what is to happen but can’t describe the action.

This type of translation block has two possible causes, and each requires different solutions. The first possible cause is conceptual – you can’t visualize what’s going on in your imagination, so you have trouble describing it. The second is trying to compress or abstract the action too much.

Solution 1 to cause 1:

Simplify the problem. Picture one thing that’s going on, then add each of the other effects or activities one at a time until you can visualize the whole. Sometimes it’s better to imagine the scene as a freeze-frame or a painting, other times it’s easier to get one dynamic process in mind and view it as an imaginary animated sequence. Whenever possible, use the second of these approaches; the first can solve the immediate problem only to have it recur a few seconds later when the PCs respond and react.

Solution 2 to cause 1:

Sometimes there’s a specific reason why you’re having trouble conceptualizing a specific effect, and it’s usually because you are trying too hard to be unique or original. Almost everything in the way of visual effects that can be done has been done by someone, and trying to avoid the ‘classic’ appearance of an effect can become a real mental block.

The best solution to this version of the problem is to start from a “classic” form of the visual effect, then tweak it. Make the energy beam narrower, or phase it in and out of visibility, or have it pulse, or change the color, or something. Think about the ancillary effects that Hollywood often neglects – the thunderclap caused by heating of the air, the red shift caused by the gravitational field of extremely concentrated energy – it takes a lot less energy to shift colors. If you can emphasize these secondary consequences, or make them unique, you can solve your problem indirectly.

And if you really want to stretch your imagination, read some of the classic Dr Strange by Steve Ditko.

Solution to cause 2:

Slow it down, take it step by step. If you have to, break the action into second-by-second components, or even smaller. If you have to, look at the action from one character’s point of view at a time.

General note:

This situation is where game aids like miniatures or even just hand-drawn quick maps come into their own. They take some of the work out of visualizing the action by doing part of the job for you. A lot of writers of literary fiction might find that using miniatures to plot out their action sequences makes them a lot easier, too.

One of these days I’ll get around to an article on some tips and tricks I’ve developed to extend the usefulness of minis in describing a particular scene.

Translation: Specific to Persona

When you know what is to happen but can’t visualize who is to do it.

Solution:

The key to this problem is motive. What is the individual to do, why are they going to do it, and what do they think they are accomplishing? Once you have that, you have a generic profile of the required character. From there, the techniques offered in By The Seat Of The Pants: The Three Minute (or less) NPC will do the rest.

Sidebar
You can sometimes solve persona questions by taking the same adjectives that you’ve used to describe the setting and applying them to a person. They may require reinterpretation, but it almost automatically makes the person you’re describing fit their environment. Then rephrase.

 

Five Translation Blocks down, five to go.

I commented in the previous article (when explaining the trials and tribulations I had experienced in trying to get the next part of the Orcs And Elves series, “When it rains, it pours”. Well, sometimes when it pours, it can be a deluge. In this case, a massive power failure affecting 60,000 homes in Sydney, including mine (a substation exploded, I think), left me with a lot less time to write this article than I expected or anticipated. It’s all there, but it might be a little less fulsome and explanatory than it would otherwise have been. There’s only one part left of this series, but in September I’m committed to hosting the Blog Carnival here at Campaign Mastery – so look for the final article in this series to appear as part of a double-post next week!

A change of pace this week, as I want to talk about some observed trends in internet usage patterns and the impact that they have on sites like Campaign Mastery. This is not only directly relevant to the value that I can offer our readers, but – since many RPGs are set in the ‘now’ or ‘near-now’ – are also relevant to game backgrounds.

Likes, Tweets, and the dying of comments

Over the last five years, there has been a pronounced drop-off in the number of (non-spam) comments made to sites like mine. The prevalent trend is to Like something via facebook, Tweet that you have read or are reading something via Twitter, or something similar. This essentially informs the public at large and particularly the social circle of the individual (which presumably includes those of similar interests) of the existence of something interesting, with minimum effort by the reader. We’ve become something of a pushbutton internet.

Smartphones and Tablets

Part of the reason may well be the rise in popularity, even to the point of dominance, of internet-capable devices that usually don’t have a hardware keyboard. I don’t consider it a coincidence that these two trends are coinciding. If you don’t have a physical keyboard, composing any sort of text message is a lot more work in comparison to simply pushing a button and letting the site’s social media plugins compose the message for you.

Upsides

There are a number of compelling advantages to the user in this behavior. It’s easier (as noted already), and it’s much faster. Two clicks and you’re done.

It’s anonymous, so far as the site is concerned – they can maintain a nose count of the number of people who have done so, including any retweets or likes of likes, but that’s about it. In modern times, personal data security is a genuine concern for a lot of people (or should be), and the anonymity is therefore a definite advantage to them.

And it’s not bad news for the site, either, because it publicizes the site in a focused manner to what is hopefully a target audience interested in the subject, and can therefore generate immediate traffic to the site. I have already noted a strong correlation between “extra traffic” (over and above the usual minimum) and social media responses to articles. What’s more, this tends to be an immediate hit, within 24 hours at the most (arguably less – much less).

In The Middle

One consequence is a change in the sense of positive reinforcement. In broad, Likes and Tweets can be considered the equivalent of compliments and kudos, at least until you look more closely. All those tweets might be about how unsatisfactory the article is, or how the author failed his spot-the-bleeding-obvious skill check. Likes are a little more significant as an indicator, therefore, because they are only positive statements.

But even there, there’s a problem. What if thee-quarters of an article is brilliant but the author has crashed-and-burned in the final part? What if there’s a problem that readers are willing to overlook because a post is top-quality in every other respect?

There’s no specificity. If an article is popular, the author no longer gets feedback on what they did right to make it so, and where they can improve. All they can do is try to capture the same genie in the same bottle, or take a chance that their next article is not going to be as popular as their last.

And make no mistake, there is a momentum to success. One hit after another has a compounding effect on site popularity, while a string of misses has a dampening effect. “People say X is great, but I was disappointed the last time I went there, so maybe I won’t bother right now, I’ll look at it some other time when I’m not so busy.” It’s very easy to go from a must-read to a maybe-I’ll-read – and the result is that in any given week, half the potential readership don’t show up.

So, while it’s easier to offer general encouragement and positive reinforcement, it’s a lot harder to get specific feedback and therefore to improve.

Downsides

The transition from textual comments has some pronounced downsides. To start with, both Tweets and Likes tend to be transitory, visible for only a brief time (unless one digs for them), while comments remain visible with the article forever (or until deleted). That means that the traffic boost that is received from social media also tends to be transitory; at the very least, you would have to describe it as ‘volatile’. You could also describe this as a deterioration in Site Loyalty relative to Casual Readership.

One capacity that has largely been lost in consequence of the change is the potential for a lasting dialogue. I’ve been looking over a lot of our older articles lately, and time after time I have observed a dialogue in the comments that extends, enhances, or clarifies the content. These days, such discussions seem to take place within social media if at all, and as such, they are also transitory, and not a resource that the casual reader can benefit from in a year or two, and something that the site author may never even hear about.

Finally, one of the things that used to happen in the comments was the provision by readers of links to other relevant articles, blog posts, and resources. The ‘web’ was self-assembling, with crosslinks to other relevant material. These days, the web consists of more centralized hubs without the richness of those crosslinks (except where the author has provided them). Twitter is a hub. Facebook is a hub. Tweet Aggregators are hubs. Google is a hub. The casual visitor comes from one of these hubs to a site that looks interesting, but then has nowhere to go except along paths the author has defined, or back to the hub.

In the ‘old days’ of the web, the wealth of cross-connections were able to extend the knowledge of the author as well as the reader, and web-surfing took you from one site to another related site. The result is the increasing isolation of the author, which in turn restricts his growth and hence impacts the quality of the material he is able to offer. It gets harder to write something of quality, and more of the author’s creative time is consumed by research.

This is a self-accelerating phenomenon; the harder it becomes to contribute something of value, the less frequently it will happen, and the more reliant the public become on those centralizing hubs to separate wheat from chaff, making it even harder to contribute something of value.

Long-term impacts

In my original draft of this article, that was about as far as it went. But the penalty for being of an analytic bent, philosophically-inclined, and used to extrapolating from the known or assumed to a bigger picture, is that first drafts are usually only a small fraction of the content; I kept moving the goal-posts of the article as I found more things to say on the subject. I started this downhill slide by asking myself, “What are the long-term implications of this trend and the associated consequences that I have identified?”

Reduction of long-term traffic flows

Here’s how the web used to work: A site would publish a new piece of content. After a day or three of peak traffic brought in by the newness of the content, it would get replaced with something else that was the newest content on the site, and the older piece of content would begin generating residual traffic. That residual traffic stemmed from other websites referring to the content, from search engines referring readers to the content, from internal links contained within newer content by the same author, and by the occasional reader who explored the site’s archives. In general, it would be a fraction of the initial traffic, but it would persist for years, if not forever. The more content that you provided, the more these fractions would accumulate to increase the site’s overall traffic. Comments and pingbacks were significant sources of some of that residual traffic.

I might post an article, and someone else would be inspired to write an article based on something I had written in that article, and that would inspire someone else in turn, and we would all tell each other about those articles in the comments sections. Traffic to any one of those sites would connect through the links within the comments to each of the other pages. Particularly valuable in that respect were sites where an author would aggregate and review links to the content that he had discovered during the last week. There used to be lots of them, but most are now gone, killed by the instant (quicker and easier) push of a like or tweet button and changing priorities.

The result is that residual traffic sources are shrinking, with one exception: search engine results. Even these depreciate over time, but relevance remains a primary factor. This in turn has several flow-on effects.

Reduced economic and social viability of websites

Websites take time to create and maintain. Campaign Mastery is my sole source of income outside a disability pension. That income is proportionate to the traffic that a site generates. Anything that reduces the long-term traffic flow to the site reduces the economic viability of the website and the ability of the site’s authors to justify the time and expense of maintaining that website and adding new content. Dozens of sites devoted to the RPG ‘niche’ have gone dark over the last few years; it used to be that for every site that died, one or more would take their place. That doesn’t seem to happen as often anymore, because they are simply not as viable as they once were.

I remember when almost every internet user seemed to have a personal website. Those days are gone; the web is shrinking in diversity. Does that mean that those users no longer have something to contribute? No. It just means that they are making that contribution through social media, or youTube, or podcasts, instead. Transitory media, generating transitory traffic. (Podcasts are amongst the worst problems in this respect; you can’t embed a hyperlink in them, they aren’t searchable, and there is no direct traffic generation as a result. But it’s easier to talk about something than it is to write about something, and the results have an immediacy, so they aren’t going to go away).

They were replaced by, or have evolved into, subject-oriented specialist sites like Campaign Mastery. Or they have simply stopped, as hard economic realities dictate that a time-consuming hobby becomes less worthwhile than something that is more fun and less expensive.

Greater reliance on SEO and search-engine traffic

As other forms of residual traffic dry up, sites become increasingly reliant on the few that remain. That means an increasing reliance on the relevance of search engine results and search engine placements. And that means that SEO (“Search Engine Optimization”) becomes a critical consideration.

Just what website owners didn’t need – another overhead to worry about. SEO either adds to the administrative burden of the site, or it adds to the economic pressure on the sites viability if a consultant does it for you. Or you can largely ignore it, and continue to focus on generating relevant and interesting content – and watch your site’s residual traffic diminish over time. But if one site does it, everyone has to; those who don’t will fall off the front pages of results.

‘Content-is-king’ replaced by ‘Publish-or-perish’ paradigm

This inevitably leads to a fundamental shift in the operational principles of websites. An increased reliance on the initial surge of readers from the newness of content to maintain viability promotes a change from “Content Is King” to “Publish Or Perish.” The newness value of a post is more important than the depth and long-term value of the content. Hit-and-run articles become the norm – something quick and concise and easily-digested.

Economics-driven publishing

What this amounts to is more cutthroat economics-driven publishing designed to appeal to a wider audience and less hobbyist/special-interest niche content. Reduced Feedback equals less encouragement for mavericks and individualization and more ‘lowest common denominator’ editorial direction. This trend can be summed up as “The homogenization of the web.”

I don’t yet know of any website owners who choose what to publish in any given week based on what will give them the biggest hit in the search engine results, but the increased emphasis on SEO leads to an increased awareness of what is popular, and an increased temptation to pander to that popularity. There is an analogy to be made, comparing this with the transition of television from 1950s and 60s – when it was easier for individual visions to make it to the screen, and networks would take chances and see what worked – to the television of the 1970s onwards, where networks lived and died by the ratings. It might seem a long step to go from the shift to social media expressions of approval to viewing SEO as ‘pandering to the ratings’ and ‘publishing by the numbers for mass appeal’, but the path seems clear.

Worst-case prognostication

Extrapolating a little further leads to the death of the web as we know it today, reduced to function-driven websites or ‘virtual apps’ linked by search engines and other traffic hubs.

What do I mean by “virtual apps”? I mean that content is function-driven. Visitors only go to that site when they want to employ that specific ‘function’. The transitory traffic becomes all-important.

Do I think that this is what’s going to happen”? Yes and no. Let’s consider an alternative long-term view.

An alternative future

Sites become forced to optimize their subject matter to rely on ever-more-targeted search engine results. SEO therefore forces websites to specialize in increasingly-narrow niches within even a specialist subject (excluding e-commerce sites, of course): a site that specializes only in maps, a site that specializes only in Science-Fiction gaming, a site that specializes in world-creation, a site that only deals in encounters.

It can be argued that the reduction in ‘link review’ sites/series that has taken place is a sign of this narrowing of focus on the part of those sites. ‘Content is king’ thus becomes ‘publish-or-perish’ without sites changing anything that they are doing other than narrowing their definition of ‘content’.

But this future holds more scope for synergies amongst web conglomerates resulting in site mergers. Megasites that, like a shopping mall, consist of sub-sites dedicated to each specialty subject within the general. There’s an analogy here to what happened to business in the 1980s and 90s – corporate takeovers and mergers, with shared overheads reducing the economic burden and increasing the economic viability of the sub-sites. I would also point to the rise of book and media merchants who rely on Amazon for point-of-sale services. These have nothing but “back ends” and use a third party for the showrooms of their products. There’s a clear similarity between this business model and this projected future of the internet.

The narrowing of focus will mean that the content gap, where articles bridge one part of a hobby or interest to another, becomes wider. Gaps will open up, creating opportunities for new sites. However, the reduced economic viability of individual sites means only the real anoraks of a sub-industry, driven by personal interest and not by economics, will be willing to take a chance on exploiting them. This will produce a model more reminiscent of the glory days of the web, where start-ups could produce rags-to-riches stories – but for every over-the-top survivor gone-viral success story, 100 others will fail and vanish, or be absorbed into the conglomerate sites.

Ultimately this leads to the same worst-case prognostications by a different road.

A Personal view

I sure hope I’m wrong. I like the way the web was, even 3 or 4 years ago. People contributed more. The blogosphere and internet in general feel colder and its components more isolated, these days. There’s less of a sense of community, and less of an opportunity to explore; the better the SEO-and-search-engine marriage becomes at filtering out the not-quite-relevant, the less scope there is for the accidental discovery.

Avoiding the worst-case

By nature, another of my personal attributes is that I’m a problem-solver. Having identified what I perceive as a growing problem, I had to turn my attention to possible solutions.

The reduction in comments simply makes each comment received, each favorable review of a piece of your content, that much more valuable to a site owner. Right now, a tweet or like is worth roughly the same as a comment, but this ratio is dropping.

So the most immediate action you can take to avoid the worst-case and to combat this trend is this: If you have something to say, don’t just commit it to a perishable visible-today-gone-tomorrow social media mention, post it to the website as well.

Tell someone you like what they have done. Tell someone if you have a different idea. Ask a question. Criticize if that’s warranted.

And get into the habit of doing so, before rising spam levels lead sites to stop accepting comments at all.

But that’s a short-term behavioral solution, and the problem is really a technological one. What we really need is a technological solution.

A search engine for old social media mentions that works

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to search for something on twitter. The results are the worst, most literal, that it is possible to conceive. There’s no relevance ranking, there’s no context, there’s not even a sorting so that items with multiple keyword matches are at the top of the results. The search functions are primitive at best.

Searching for something on facebook is worse.

I know of absolutely no way to find out what people on facebook are saying about a site that they like. I know of no way to even find out who liked it.

This seems strange to me; if we both like the same thing, it seems likely that we have at least a chance of wanting to become followers of each other’s accounts. If I like an article, I have something in common with others who also like that article. Failing to provide a way to identify those people with whom I have a common interest seems a fundamental hole in the services provided by Facebook.

I’m not talking about a Google web search, which can include tweets and facebook mentions. I’m talking about a dedicated and optimized search engine dedicated to showing “what people are saying about [search subject]”, with a full range of tools for narrowing the results.

Automatic Feedback

Next, as part of this solution, we need a way for those mention results to connect related posts and replies within that search engine, so that site owners (and the general internet user) can see the whole conversation – the whole iceberg – and not just the mention (the tip of the iceberg).

It then becomes a simple matter for site owners to include a pushbutton “see what others are saying” on the content page.

The Lasting Conversation

Finally, we need a plug-in for websites that permanently and automatically attaches those search results to the comments section of the site via the original “tweet” or “like”. This represents a genuine coming-together of the social-media pushbutton and the comment so that sites can automatically capture, store, and display those social media conversations AS comments on the content – essentially, self-generating forums powered by social media as part of the site platform.

Right now, the internet and social media are like a couple on their first date, only barely connecting with each other, a little shy and awkward, and a little clumsy in their connection. They need to become more tightly married together, to integrate into a more seamless whole.

Put all three of these developments together, and social media comments can become a true replacement for old-style “manual” comments. All those negative and gloomy prognostications go away.

To make this happen

Part of the problem is that social media platforms change the way they do things all the time. Twitter Apps need to be constantly rewritten and revised to deal with changes in the way Twitter works “under the hood”, and that is difficult and time-consuming. To make these solutions viable, what’s really needed is a way to monetize this platform integration feature, so that investing the time and effort into maintaining the service becomes profitable. Alas, that’s where I get stuck.

So it’s over to those more qualified in the relevant technologies than I am. Experts in the configuration of blogging platforms. Experts in SEO and search-engine software. Experts in Social Media Apps and Add-ons. The future of the internet is in your hands. Don’t break it.

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time…

It’s all been leading to this! Although there are a few more chapters to come, this is the climax of the Clan Wars plotline, which in many ways is the climax of the whole Orcs & Elves story. One major narrative arc remains, but it was the need to reach this point that has had this Campaign “on hold” for most of this year. The weekend that we (usually) play is already committed in September and October, but come November, it should be able to restart – right on schedule.

In the meantime, I hope that everyone (especially my players) enjoy the twists and turns that follow below – hopefully there’ll be a jaw-dropping moment or two when you see what I’ve been building towards….

*************************************************************************************************

Clan Wars XX: The Freedom Of Nightmares

As prophesied, the Hidden Dragon had awoken!
   The chains which had bound Ethraztia, forcing him into endless slumber, him had shattered and fallen away. The Hidden Dragon, the literal stuff of nightmares, exulted in that release. “Free at last! Oh, how you shall regret that folly, pathetic Elfling. As reward, I shall permit you all to survive, to endure, and to bear witness until the last; a fitting reward! You have earned your freedom and your impotence, for nothing can oppose me! Creation is mere putty in my hands, and at last I am free to reshape it however I see fit. It shall tear itself apart under my control, and this intolerable reality will finally be ended.”
   “You had better have had a good reason for this, Ambassador.” growled Garunch, the Shaman of the Red Eye clan, ignoring the posturing of the Chaos Power. He could tell that even though the Dragon had directed his comments at them, he was too absorbed with his sudden awakening to really be aware of their presence.
   “How was that even possible?” moaned First in disbelief. “Corellan himself forged that spell, and he made it to be unbreakable. He gave up much of his power to ensure that those chains could never be broken. I would have wagered my life that they were as immutable as the mountains themselves…” The three-fold simultaneous strike by the Orcs had not simply shattered the chains that bound the nightmare, they had shattered part of the bedrock of First’s life. If mortal Orcs were more powerful than the God that defined his reality, nothing made sense to him anymore.
   “The absolute faith in their beliefs is strong enough that the Orcs don’t need their Gods to be real in order to work miracles, First. The chains were never real, they were magic that looked like something solid. The Orcs broke them not with their weapons, but with their belief,” answered Tathzyr. “To you or I, those chains would never have yielded. You, because in your world, Corallen’s power reigns supreme over all; me, because only my Queen has the power to oppose the father of all Elves, even when his view of the world is incomplete or inadequate. Nor could the servants of the Dragon ever have done so, because he thought them unbreakable, and he forced his followers to subscribe to his world-view. Belief and perception are always more important than objective reality – when those beliefs are made manifest through magic.”
 
A sudden flash of blinding light filled the chamber, accompanied with a rush of air so forceful that it forced the Orcs, Elves, and Drow to their knees. Corallen appeared before them from nowhere, seizing the Drow Ambassador by his clothing and hauling him off his feet to gaze into the eyes of the infuriated God of the Elves. –What have you done? Not even your mistress would have dared this!–
   The ambassador was not cowed in the slightest. “Release me, Corellan. I am protected by my Queen. This was necessary. Your chains bound him in slumber but not his power, and that power had grown to the point where the world was imperiled by it.”
   *CORELLAN! Most hated of all the Gods. You shall be the first to feel my power!* Not even a self-absorbed self-possessed and self-distracted Chaos Power could ignore the appearance of a God. With a baleful expression, the monstrously oversized and diseased head focused it’s gaze back on the party, glaring specifically at the ten-foot-tall Elvish Deity.
 
Nothing happened. The dragon head reared back in confusion, then snapped it’s withering gaze back on its chosen target, who had dropped the ambassador and was shielding himself with his hands ready to counter whatever magic the Chaos Power threw at Him.
   Getting back on his feet, a cruel smile started to spread over the Ambassador’s expression. “Is something wrong, Ethraztia? The Father of Elves seems quite undamaged.”
   With an ear-splitting roar, the dragon-shaped Chaos Power lunged at the waiting God, attempting to bite him in twain, only for its jagged teeth to pass harmlessly through the metaphysical form of the waiting god. Once again, the head reared back in confusion.
   “Why, I’ll bet that you can’t even change your shape anymore,” continued the Ambassador, “because you have no shape to change. You gained your power by embracing the change that Corellan had forced apon you, and reshaping it to your own ends. You became the essence of nightmares, but dreams have power only in sleep – and, as our Queen has taught my people, the Dark Never Sleeps. Only one power have you now – the power of prophecy – but even that is confused and fading. You saw the world of the past and future, what was and what would be, through the dreams of those who dwelt there, but you were connected to them only through the fact of your slumber. But now the Sleeping Dragon has awoken, and like all nightmares, fades to nothing when the sleeper awakens.”
   The Ambassador’s smile widened. “Oh, perhaps you might find that you can still whisper scary thoughts into the minds of those who slumber from time to time, showing them your nightmares instead of their own, but that will change nothing. You will still be impotent. Even should your brethren one day succeed, you will remain ephemeral and unimportant – even more so, for they never sleep, do they?” Each statement seemed to strike at the very reality of the Nightmare form of the Chaos Power, rendering it a fading, translucent, image.
   Positively grinning, he concluded, “Your fondest wish was to be awoken. I have granted it. You prophesied that this day would come, and your own machinations have led to the fulfillment of that prophecy. And now, we will permit you to survive, and depart, and remain a forgotten phantom for the remainder of eternity. As you put it: A fitting reward for your long labors! You have earned your freedom and your impotence. Begone! Trouble some other sleeper; we are wide awake!” Without even a whisper to mark its passage, the last vestiges of the image faded from view.

Clan Wars XXI: A Grip On Reality

–You were brave, Drow, to speak as you did to such a being.–
   “I reverence only one being in all existence, Corellan,” answered the Ambassador, deliberately ignoring any respectful titles, “and I obey her implicitly.”
   “How did you…?” asked Lukzal, confused.
   “The Sleeping Dragon crafted a spell to permanently open a doorway between the realm of its servants and the world in which we live. I don’t understand much about magic, but I understood that much – after it was explained to me. First reversed that spell, establishing a permanent connection between our world and the world of the caster. Here, everything is whatever the Dragon dreamed it to be. I simply spun him a nightmare of his own, and let his own powers make it real for him. The more real it became to him, the more impossible it became for him to ever undo it; his own power makes his impotence eternal.” Corellan nodded as his understanding grew.
   “But how did you…?” asked Lukzal again, still not comprehending.
   “I simply asked myself what would be the most cruel thing I could do to him, to repay him for all the misery he has brought me and others, and suddenly it came to me – the worst possible thing I could do was to give him exactly what he wanted,” answered the Ambassador, still trying to guess at what question Lukzal was trying to express, without great success.
   Corallen nodded again. –Very Clever, Tathzyr. I see why your Queen insisted that you participate in this expedition,– he said, ignoring the Ambassador’s title in turn. –Your insight is a credit to you, and raises hopes that there remains common ground through which your people may themselves earn redemption and reunite with your kin.–
   “I would not presume to know my Queen’s mind, Corellan, and so long as she wishes us to stand removed from them, we will obey – without hesitation. There may be common ground, but it remains forbidden territory to my people, save under the most extraordinary of circumstances. According to the prophecies of the Dragon, it may not always be so; but we live in the here and now, and that is the reality of it.”
 
   “Are our Gods not real? It said they weren’t and so did you,” moaned Goral. The Ambassador hesitated; he still had to live amongst the Orcs, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find a diplomatic way of answering.
   “It doesn’t matter,” said First, beginning to regain his mental equilibrium. “Your Gods are real for you, and that should be enough. It doesn’t matter to you whether or not anyone else believes in them, because you are right, and your priest’s ability to convey their blessings proves it. The Dragon believed they were not, and the Ambassador had to include that belief in his story to convince the Dragon – but the Chaos Powers are the masters of deception, according to the Humans, who know more about them than I; I would mistrust anything that one said, and believe the opposite until proven wrong.” Dimly groping for an elusive insight, he added, “That was what this was all about, in the end – what we believe. I believe one thing, and that shapes me, and what I do in the world. You believe another. The Ambassador believes something else. We’re all right – from our own point of view. Even the dragon – his power was to overrule what we believe with his own manufactured nightmares of reality – but he needed to sleep to create those nightmares.”
   –You are grown wise, my Son,– said Corallen. –The service that you and your fellow Huyundaltha have performed is more than sufficient to redeem you, and I grant you forgiveness and absolution for your misplaced Passion. You may reclaim your names when you return to your Homes.–
   “I give thanks and praise, my God,” answered First reverently.
   –A word of warning to you all,– said Corallen. –The Hidden Dragon he became, and as the Hidden Dragon he has rendered himself powerless and ineffectual through his belief and the power he held to reshape existence to match that belief. Mention of his true name erodes the singularity of identity that he has created for himself and may restore him to power. Let that name die here, and let him be the Hidden Dragon henceforth.–
   “That seems wise. If belief shapes the world, let us remain focused in our belief that he is as the Ambassador described him.
   –Then Hope endures.–
 
   “Is it true, Lord Corellan? Were our people created to care for the first Elves?” asked Garunch, his mind still reeling from the revelations that he had been forced to assimilate.
   –To protect and care for them, yes. A century of service in recompense for existence and freedom seemed fair. But it is not yet time for you to embrace the softer aspects of your existence; should the prophecy stand true, and an alliance between your three peoples one day threaten the Chaos Powers directly, you will need to remain ready, and that requires you to remain in the embrace of your warrior culture for a time yet.–
   “I cannot forget what I have learned here. I will never view my people, or these, the same way again.”
   –You must. You Will. Those memories that must not be revealed will be caged. I am not your God, but in their names I will make it so.–
 
   “What now, Corellan?” asked the Ambassador.
   –I do not have the authority to give instruction to these Orcs. I freed them from that authority long ago. But I may still advise,– replied Corallen with a wink. –In a moment, I will return you to the place from whence you came, and cloud your memories of what transpired here, until the time is ripe for your people to relearn what you have discovered. When you return, obey the instructions you were given by Gruumsh – level the city in which the passageway to this place abides, save only the tower. Fill that tower with rock and seal it in steel, so that the passageway is hidden from view and access. Then travel overland to this place; collapse the caverns and bring down the Temple overhead. Leave no avenue by which what was done here may be undone. That is my advice.–
   “I think Gruumsh would approve. I will advise our Clan-Chief to do so.”
   “One thing more needs be decided before we return,” stated First. “Ambassador, what will you tell your Queen of these events and discoveries?”
   “She sees all and hears all, First. She already knows. I will supplement that knowledge with whatever I can recall, to the best of my abilities – is that understood, Corellan?”
   –Perfectly,– answered the Deity.
   “Very well. We stand victorious over a Dark Power, the essence of Nightmare, the Sleeping Dragon. Let us go and consummate that victory with celebration.”
   –Not yet, my son. One thing more must be understood first, that the memory that is confined will be complete. When I arrived here, I sensed a hidden presence. As we have spoken, I have been probing the reality of that presence. I now require it to come forth and reveal itself.–
   The Orcs snatched up their weapons and began to scan the cave warily, uncertain whether this was a new enemy.

Clan Wars XXII: Death Of A Traveler

With a vast creaking sound, the scaffolding tore itself from the wall, shedding an exterior coating of solidified rock as it did so, and its shape began to twist and writhe as the magic which had distorted its body for centuries was finally released.
   “I might have known that I could not hide myself from your view, Lord Corallen,” it said as it stood revealed as a strange blend of elf and tree, and so ancient that age seemed to linger in its presence.
   Of those present other than Corellan, who already knew who and what it was, only First recognized its species, and that recognition left him stunned. “A Verdonne! Why? How? Who?” His mind was now reeling every bit as much as those of the Orcs had been.
   “Is it an enemy? My axe is made for flesh, not wood,” stated Goral, Clan Warblade of the Mailed Fists.
   –It is no enemy. This is Verde, and – in a way – he may be the first and last of his kind. He has come here from the time when the prophesied alliance of the three Kindred Races has come to pass, his purpose to ensure that the prophecy is fulfilled. His power to twist possibilities such that the unlikely transpires has had much to do with what has transpired here.–
   With a voice like the breaking of timbers that has been under too much strain for too long, the Verdonne began to speak, and so captivating were his words that none could interrupt.
   “Long into your future, a destiny was revealed to me. I did not know fully what it was, but my belief in that destiny unlocked a power within me to achieve it. As my understanding of that destiny grew, so did that power. I have seen more of death, and tragedy, and joy than any mortal being in the course of fulfilling that destiny, and I have more blood on my hands than any living being as a consequence. It was only when the truth of the Sleeping Dragon was revealed to me that full understanding came. I have spent my life in the service of that understanding, knowing that by doing so I was safeguarding friends and loved ones. For Ten Thousand Years I have battled and thwarted the Powers Of Chaos.
   “I was there when the Orcs cared for the nascent Elves. I was there when the Dwarves fell under the sway of a Demon. I watched as the Halflings were all but obliterated. I released the power of the Sleeping Dragon and shaped it into a form that was ultimately self-defeating, knowing that by doing so, thousands would perish – but that this was better than the destruction of all.
   “One of my companions in that future time when the Kindred are allied was inadvertently brought forward in time. I was able to use her displacement through the centuries to propel myself backwards in time as though it were a whip whose end I rode, enabling me to travel much further into the past than she came forward. Five times have I made the long journey from what will be to what was. I am my own fulfillment, for in time another branch of my existence will ensure that she makes that inadvertent trip into her future – the act that enables me to travel in time and ensure that chance always favors the defenders of Life. I cannot ensure the ultimate victory, but by acting behind the scenes in the service of my doom, I have ensured that hope remains, and that the chance of achieving victory is achieved.
   “I speak not to you here, but through your memories, to my younger self that is yet to come. With these words, I complete the circle. As you perceive them, in the distant future, you will know what you have to do. The adventurers with whom you have travelled are the embodiment of your life’s work. They are your friends, and that is why you will spend your life doing what needs to be done. Without you, Tajik’s Misfits will never come into existence. Elves, humans, Orcs, Drow, Dwarves – none of them will be as you know them to be, and from those foundations stem the reality that has produced those friends. It is their task to end the menace of the Queen Of Elves, for she threatens all of existence with her capricious ambitions. Conclude this business of the Empire Of Gold; its sole purpose has been to produce the conditions that unite you, but now the time has come for you to defeat it and turn your attention to the greater menace.
   “To those others in the distant future who hear these words, I greet you one last time, old friends. The memory of your company has sustained me, and given me purpose. I thank you and salute you. But beware; I have done all I can, the rest is up to you.
   “The affair of the Sleeping Dragon was one of my most arduous and onerous tasks. Now it is complete, and at long last I can rest.
   Verde paused, and went silent. A shiver traced its way down its limbs and leaves and he quivered; and then, like a tree whose strength, sapped by insects and age, can no longer sustain it, he fell with a great crash. Startled out of their stupor, the band who had dared invade the realm of the Hidden Dragon rushed forward. Verde was blinking rapidly, as though fighting the need to sleep. “Always remember: Belief changes the world. You have only to act on it.” Then his eyes closed, and the oppressive sense of age and timelessness was lifted.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

I’ve been foregoing this while our attention is focussed on the Orcish side of the story. It will return next time, as our attention shifts back to the Elves.

*************************************************************************************************

Next time: The Final Chapter of the Clan Wars saga and the aftermath. Chapters 78-80!

In part one of this series, I identified several primary types of writer’s block. All but two have been dealt with; this article examines solutions to those remaining primary types:

• Dialogue Blocks, when you have a conversation to write but have no idea what the participants will say, or what they are saying seems wrong, somehow, or unnatural; and
• Narrative Blocks, when you have information to convey to the players, or to the reader, but can’t seem to explain it clearly.

At the heart of both of these is the communication of information, making these a natural pairing.

The Purposes of Dialogue

Dialogue always has a dual purpose, and sometimes a triple purpose:

• the author/GM always has a reason for the dialogue taking place that reaches beyond the immediate story needs, though they may not always recognize that reason, or even the need for such a reason.
• the dialogue will always convey characterization information about the person speaking, though this may be deliberately false information if the character is attempting to disguise his personality.
• the character will sometimes have ‘factual’ information to convey, or opinions that the author/GM wants to make sure that the other parties in the conversation have, or that they want to introduce to the readers/players. It is often better to convey such information in the form of dialogue rather than narration, because the interaction of personalities makes the information more interesting and more captivating, especially when (in an RPG) a PC is one of the parties engaged in the conversation.

It’s always important to recognize the purpose of the dialogue, because you need to make sure that it achieves that purpose, or – more correctly – all those purposes. If you don’t know what the purpose is, you can rewrite the dialogue as often as you want, it will never be “right”. This becomes even more important in an RPG, which is a “live” setting – while you can retcon a dialogue scene to fix a problem, it will never be as satisfactory as nailing it the first time out. GMs have to know what they want the dialogue to achieve before it starts if they are to get it right the first time.

I make it a practice after every revelation in an RPG plot to allow the players time to discuss the revelation unless they have to react immediately to that revelation. If I don’t, they will do so anyway – interrupting the flow of whatever I had planned. It’s far better to allow for such discussions and build them into the structure of the plot.

Metapurposes of dialogue

Dialogue’s metapurposes are any reasons for having the dialogue take place at the time and place at which it is occurring. These can be as simple as establishing a relationship between two characters meeting for the first time or justifying a character’s future choices of action or as complex as planting a particular philosophical seed in the mind of a character, a player, or the reader, which will bear fruit at a future point in the story. That fruit might take the form of a sudden insight, a new context, a deeper layer of meaning, or many other possibilities. Dialogue can be used to explain choices already made or choices that are yet to be made.

At it’s minimum, dialogue always either establishes, extends, or expands on the relationship between the participants. The fewer the participants, the more intimate the dialogue and the greater the role this metafunction has on the dialogue’s substance.

More importantly, metapurposes must be achieved seamlessly within the dialogue; otherwise you have changes of subject that seem unnatural or forced. This can be made more difficult because metapurposes can sometimes be at odds with other dialogue functions. This most frequently results when a single passage of dialogue has too many purposes to achieve – trying to be too efficient results in unnatural dialogue. You are often better off, when this occurs, breaking the dialogue into smaller conversations and putting something – anything – in between. Have the initial dialogue achieve its initial purposes, then have another character arrive, interrupting that dialogue, and then start a new dialogue with the same characters to achieve the rest of the objectives.

Characterization through dialogue

A second function that dialogue always has is revealing or reiterating the characterization of the participants. I was once told that “good” dialogue never merely recapitulated on characterization or relationships, that in order to justify its presence in a story it should always extend or expand or develop one or both aspects.

I don’t necessarily agree with that, and I know a lot of scriptwriters and TV viewers would disagree; the first time two characters in a serial situation interact within an episode of that serial situation, it can often be useful to reestablish where those two characters are at. That makes it easier for new viewers to pick up on who they are and what their relationship is.

At the same time, you need to avoid having such introductory dialogue having NO other purpose; it has to be interesting enough for those who have seen it before. It is for that reason that recapitulated introduction should always be a secondary function of the dialogue, while the primary reason remains the relevance to the scene, situation, or circumstances being discussed.

A sure sign that the metapurposes of the dialogue are getting in the way is when you have a character saying things that are in opposition to the characterization of the participant who is speaking. The street punk sneered at the cop, “Quantum theory implies that causality is a casualty of inverted temporal divergences.” – just to throw a completely over-the-top example out there. Though sometimes this can be exploited for comic effect – “Flash! I love you! But we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!”

If the dialogue is unnatural for the character, you have the participants of that particular conversation wrong. They may have been right for an earlier function of the dialogue, but they are wrong for this conversation.

Content Of Dialogue

Dialogue may have an explicit purpose to achieve in communication of information. The relevance and urgency of that information to the current situation dictates how dominant this function of the dialogue is in the conversation. If it is both directly relevant and urgent, there is no time for the conversation to meander around to the subject, and most other functions of the dialogue have to be subverted to the immediacy. If the conversation is to be relevant but non-urgent, there’s more scope for a natural dialogue flow.

It is almost always preferable to impart information in a dialogue structure rather than a narrative one. The latter is the author/GM delivering a lecture to the readers/players; the latter is one character interacting with another. This is even more strongly the case in an RPG.

The Complexity Of Dialogue

Dialogue can be simple, or complicated, or VERY complicated.

• Simple dialogue is a conversation between two participants. Others may be present but some sort of protocol or voluntary choice precludes them from being a part of the conversation.
• Monologues are conversations a character has with themselves. These are often trickier to write than simple dialogue because the interaction between two personalities is absent; the one character has to both respond to the preceding conversational stimulus and provide their own stimulus for the next passage of text. But we all have conversations with ourselves in our heads from time to time, especially when we have a difficult decision to make, so a monologue can be a great tool for taking the listener/reader into that character’s head. Be aware, though, that if you do it for one major character, you will probably need to do it at some point for all the other major characters.
• Dialogue increases in difficulty and complexity as the square of the number of participants minus 1. Or maybe the cube. Or somewhere in between. Three-character dialogue is 4-8 times as complicated as simple dialogue. Four-character dialogue is 9-27 times as complicated as simple dialogue. Five character dialogue is 16-64 times as complicated as simple dialogue. I’ll talk about the reasons for that in a minute.

Simple Dialogue

Simple dialogue is easy to write – some of the time. At other times, it can be like pulling teeth. That’s because it’s easy for the dialogue to wander down a blind alley and stumble to a premature conclusion, in which everything that can be said on a subject by those participants and at this time has been said. Very little feels as false as a conversation that lingers after it reaches what seems a natural conclusion. With a third participant, when a conversation between two comes to an end, the third can stimulate the conversation down a new course, in effect starting a new conversation between the participants. I always approach a simple conversation with some wariness, simply because there is less room for mistakes.

Simple Dialogue has its place, though, because the fewer the participants, the more intimate the conversation – and intimacy is important for some dialogue functions.

Monologues

Stories written from a first-person perspective can be considered one long monologue, and this conversation type is an essential element of some literary forms, such as the plays of Shakespeare, and film noir. It might seem that they have very limited utility in RPGs and in more interaction-oriented forms.

Permit me to take a moment to expand your horizons, if that’s an opinion you happen to share. Star Trek’s log entries are essentially monologues – useful for synopsizing past events, putting them into new context, for getting inside the head of a character (a traditional purpose of monologues), for bridging periods of slow action – or for slowing events down, if it comes to that. Characters can muse or reflect aloud – those are monologues, too, and those musings and reflections can be overheard by someone if the author/GM wants.

In the course of writing the most recent chapter of the Orcs and Elves series, I exposed the thoughts of a couple of the participants at key moments – essentially mini-monologues – because I found the characterization potential too great to ignore. Strictly speaking, they should not have been there, since there was no way for that information to be conveyed and incorporated into the source material that the series supposedly reiterates and integrates to tell “the whole story”. Bah, humbug, say I. That information could have been expressed as a character muttering under his breath, assuming that he would not be overheard, or as a snatch of dialogue, or it might have been inferred as occurring by one participant based on the expression on the face of the monologuing character. It read better, communicated to the reader more effectively, as a snatch of monologue. But that’s a literary application, once again, for all that the Orcs and Elves series is background material for one of my RPG campaigns.

Most RPG adventures are written as relatively linear plotlines, told from the collective third-person point of view of the PCs. For variety, why not occasionally consider changing it up and exploring a different framework, when it is especially useful to the adventure? Start an adventure with a character monologuing, film noir style, with events in the past tense – and then let the temporal perspective shift to the PCs and their situation in the then “now” being described. My name is Phillip Baker. I live an ordinary, humdrum life, for the most part, but there was one occasion when I found myself at the centre of extraordinary events. It all started…

Or perhaps, in a superhero or secret agent game, using a similar framing device in the form of one PC or NPC dictating a mission log or preparing an after-action report.

In a fantasy game, does the princess keep a diary?

Modern-world or future-world, perhaps a little girl preparing a class report?

Superhero again – why not frame an adventure from the point of view of the villain? Not all the time, but every now and then, when there are some particular insights to be offered to the players?

Rule one of an RPG is always to make it entertaining, make it fun. Monologues have a lot more to offer RPGs than it might initially appear.

Heck, I’m tempted to use just such a framing device for one of the upcoming Orcs and Elves, told from the point of view of an Orcish Keeper Of Memory. Why? because the limits of understanding of the narrator restrict how much of the context and events have to be made clear to the reader. If there’s something I’m having trouble explaining, or don’t want to explain at the time, I can just have understanding of the why elude the narrator and leave it unexplained or misunderstood at the time. But that’s getting off-track for this article.

Complex Dialogues

Why are complex dialogues complicated?

It’s a question of interactions and combinations. If there are three participants, one participant can speak to himself, can speak to either of the two other participants, or can speak to both at the same time. Either or both or neither can react. So, for every line of dialogue, there are three x three, or nine, possible contexts and developments in the conversation. Each of the participants has a personality that can influence the delivery, the content, the reactions. Each pair of participants has a relationship that is inherently entwined in that line of dialogue. Each may have an agenda that shapes that line of dialogue or the reactions to it. That’s 9+3+3+3, or 18 possibilities for that one line of dialogue. If the conversation consists of more than one line of dialogue, the number of possible combinations increases exponentially.

These factors only increase more quickly with each increase in the number of participants.

Authors, and GMs, manage by cherry-picking the conversational paths that seem more likely to achieve the purposes of the conversation, and ignoring as many of the others as possible. It’s easy for an author, because he has total control over all participants, subject only to the exigencies of consistency of characterization; it becomes much more difficult for the GM, because one party to the conversation is usually controlled by a third party, who is not privy to the hidden agenda that the GM is using to shape the conversation.

Add to all that the difficulty of ensuring that it is clear who is speaking at any given time. Writers can explicitly state ‘replied {X)’ after the line of dialogue, etc, but that can be easily overused. Finding new ways of stating the identity of the speaker is a continual challenge that only grows more onerous the longer a conversation continues. GMs can attempt to use props or accents or can resort to a blunt “(X) says,” – it lacks finesse, but it gets the job done.

Given all these complications, and the fact that any line of dialogue can be “wrong” if it doesn’t match ALL these contexts – something the character would not say for reasons of his personality, or for reasons of his relationship with the character he’s speaking to, or because it gets in the way of his agenda, or because the mode of expression is wrong, or because his emotional state is wrong for the content, or…. well, the point is made – it’s a wonder that any line of complex dialogue is EVER satisfactory.

And on top of all that, you have the meta-problems of having the conversation flow naturally, and of delivering any content that has to be delivered, and of steering the conversation to achieve the metapurposes of having the conversation take place.

Coming to the rescue is the fact that there ARE so many possibilities. There are many paths from first word to last in such a conversation, and far more than just one are “right” – defined as meaning that the objectives for the conversation are achieved. This factor is so powerful that three-cornered conversations can be easier to write than two-person conversations, as noted earlier.

For me, the keys to success are always, at each step of the conversation:

• Does any participant have something their personalities would require them to contribute at this point?
• Is the mode of expression ‘right’ for the character? How can I rephrase? Is there any extra nuance of personality that I can convey as a side-benefit?
• Does any participant have a personality, agenda, etc, that require them to react even if they don’t have something to contribute?
• What is the next point that I want to emerge as part of the conversation, and who is the logical character to make it, and how can I steer the conversation so that it will be natural for them to make that contribution?
• If there are more than one points remaining, is it possible to construct a dialogue ‘flow’ or ‘map’ that generates a sequence for them to be logically made?
• There is always a rhythm, an ebb-and-flow, in any conversation of any length. Am I ‘going with the flow’ or am I swimming upstream – and is that what I want to be doing at this point?
• How do I want the conversation to end? Make sure to avoid getting to that point too early, but make sure to get there AT the end.

Employing these seven principles enabled me to get through the long conversations in the Orcish Council Chambers in the Orcs and Elves series, where – at times – I had as many as seven or eight participants, in what I hope was reasonable clarity. There were a couple of secondary personalizations and reactions that I would have liked to include, but by making sure each conversational passage achieved what it HAD to achieve, and only including those extras that fit naturally, I ensured that the conversations worked.

There were a couple of occasions where I was driving towards a particular contribution only to have the conversation temporarily derailed by one of those “necessary” reactions, but I was always able to find another path from where the conversation went to that contribution – even if it came later in the dialogue than I originally intended.

Planning a Conversation

I want to briefly look at the structure of a typical conversation, because violating that structure can be the source of unexpected problems – and opportunities.

Participants

The first step is to make sure that I have the participants right. That means looking at the key revelations/insights that are to be emerge, and who is the logical character to make these contributions. What factual information has to be conveyed, and who is most appropriate to know it? If every contribution doesn’t have an appropriate ‘planned source’, can I have one of the participants quote an appropriate source, or must I introduce another participant? Is there anyone whose reactions will be particularly relevant or interesting to the outcome? Is there anyone whose reactions or knowledge will get in the way? How can I get them out of the way, if they would logically be part of the conversation?

I always try to start planning a conversation by assembling a “cast list”, all of whom are involved in the conversation for a reason.

Starting Dialogue

How do I want the conversation to start? This is almost always dictated by the circumstances that have led to the conversation taking place ‘here and now’, and always has more to do with pre-existing opinions and relationships than with the purpose of the conversation. It lays the foundation for the effect of the conversation on the plotline by relating to conditions prior to the conversation, and focuses on the personalities and relationships of the participants.

Sustaining Dialogue

The middle is where content is generally provided that does not provoke immediate action that would end the conversation. Quite often, it prepares the ground for a change in personality or relationship if that is one of the metaobjectives.

Ending Dialogue

When something has to be done immediately, because the personalities or circumstances mandate someone actually doing something, or because everything that needs to be said has been said, its time to end the conversation. Conversations should always end in either an emotional state, a stunning revelation that stifles further discussion until it is digested, or in a need for action, because that propels the story forwards into whatever happens next.

The sources of Dialogue Problems

Any of the attributes or aspects of conversation that have been discussed can be the causes of Writer’s Block when creating Dialogue. This is particularly the case when two or more are at cross-purposes within the dialogue. What’s more, in addition to the specific functions that the dialogue is to serve, there are the general requirements of all writing that have to be satisfied – consistency, clarity, and connection with the audience – whether that’s readers or players. If they aren’t engaged in what is going on, the conversation will fall flat, no matter how witty, insightful or erudite the writing might be.

Which brings us to the subject at hand: You have a situation in which you know that two or more characters are going to have a conversation, but you either can’t seem to get started, or the dialogue ends in a train wreck, or just doesn’t seem right, and you don’t know how to fix it.

Solutions to Dialogue Blocks

In addition to the general advice offered above, I have ten solutions to offer to get through Dialogue writer’s block, plus a couple of variations.

Solution Zero: Revise the functions of the dialogue

Are you trying to have one conversation do too much? Have you forgotten one or more key purposes of the conversation? What are you actually trying to achieve? Make sure you have these answers clear within your mind, or the results will inevitably be muddled. It’s also worth double-checking the participants list for contradictions and conflicts with these purposes at this point. Only once you have these ducks in a row can you apply the specific solutions I am offering below. Most are designed to get you past the initial writer’s block, but a few also apply to the content-inappropriate-to-the-speaker problem. If that is your difficulty, though, and you haven’t been able to put your finger on the specific cause in the process of performing this step, I suggest reviewing the general advice offered above.

Solution 1: Have them say something else

Very few conversations in real life get right to the point. If the situation is such that your conversation has to do so, you may be better off not using a conversation to achieve your purposes at all – look for a way to monologue it, or to describe it through narrative. Perhaps a third party’s point of view can get past the sticky point? I occasionally use the press for this purpose in my superhero campaign; a news report of an emergency or crisis or whatever permits the reporter to monologue a description of events without giving the PCs the chance to ask “inconvenient” questions, as they might do if they received a direct call for help from the authorities. I’ve never had to do so, but I’m always prepared to impart essential information third-hand in my fantasy campaigns through a Bard’s song. Or a bird-song.

But, if you really need a conversation, try starting it off with some appropriate small talk. Even in the military, something like “Sir, do you have a moment?” or “Sir, if I may be permitted a personal observation?” are not inappropriate.

This has five benefits, and any one of them can get you past the blockage: First, it gets you (and the reader/audience/players) into the personalities of the participants instead of trying to leap right into the meat of the conversation “blind”. Second, it gets everyone into the relationship between them, giving a starting point that is independent of the purpose for which you’re having the conversation take place at all. Fourth, it humanizes the participants, and the conversation feels natural as a result. Finally, it gets you started with no pressure.

If you’re word-count limited for some reason – often the case – you can still write the small talk beginning of the conversation and then cut it out of the finished draft, joining the conversation midway through. That always feels more natural than having the conversation start abruptly.

Look on this choice as an opportunity, not a problem.

Solution 2: Talk around the situation

Consider having the participants deliberately avoid the subject until they can no longer do so. This is especially appropriate when it’s a conversation that one or more of them don’t want to have. Only when it becomes obvious that they are stalling can one of them get to the point, and force the conversation onto the track that the author always wanted it to follow.

Or you could have one participant talk about a metaphor or analogy to the current situation, rather than talking about the situation directly.

This has most of the benefits of the first solution, and can be viewed as a variant of it. But there are times when small talk is inappropriate, and this can be a way of exploiting that.

Solution 3: Reflections of personality

Still another variation is to make the initial conversation reflective of the personalities, deliberately showing these off through a discussion about a minor, unrelated, incident – either contemporary or in the past. Careful choice of incident/subject can provide a vehicle for explaining why and how a character feels the way he does about the main subject in advance of broaching it – achieving some of the objectives for the conversation before actually starting the part that (technically) matters.
   “Have you ever played baseball?”
   “No, basketball was more my speed.”
   “One man at the plate, an entire team intent on making sure that he fails, but most of them can only react to what he does. It still comes down to one pitcher and one batter and dealing with one pitch at a time.”

Solution 4: Through a mirror, Darkly

Sometimes you can solve your conversational problem by having one participant deliberately speak out of character. “I would never normally say this, but…”

A variation on this has one participant expounding the worst-case situation as an inevitability, challenging the other to show that the situation (whatever it is) is not so hopeless.

Solution 5: React, don’t act

Have one participant talk about his or her emotional reaction to the current situation instead of talking about the situation itself. The other participant (or ANother if there are more than two participants) then react to this emotional state as is appropriate for his or her personality. This especially works well when the initial reaction is unexpected, and can be quite enlightening as to the personalities as a result.

   “It feels good to be back in a good, old-fashioned hopeless situation again, with the odds stacked against us and every hand raised in opposition to us, the few against the hordes.”
   “You’re joking!”
   “I hate the pressure of expectation when it looks like everything is going our way. I keep wondering if I’m going to be the one to blow it and lets the side down. No, make me the underdog any day of the week. I’m at my best when the chips are down.”
   “Well, that’s definitely the situation this time…”

An entirely natural transition to the actual discussion of what can be done about the situation.

Solution 6: The Directly Indirect Approach

Another solution is to have one of the participants get right to the point – but advocating an obviously-flawed approach to the situation. This carries a subtext of the character feeling out of their depth, but trying gamely anyway. It works especially well if infused with a touch of humor.

   “Hey, boss, I had an idea about that alien fleet hovering overhead.”
   “Oh?”
   “Yeah, why don’t we take all the Captains down to the pub and get them drunk?”

Or perhaps, “Yeah, why don’t we all go down to the pub and get drunk?”

Another pair of entirely natural transitions to the actual discussion of what can practically be done about the situation.

Solution 7: Add Color

Well, I’m certainly motoring through my list of solutions this time around. This solution has one participant talking about someone else’s reaction to whatever is going on, often in a humorous or light-hearted way.

   “Well, it’s official. (X) says that Air Traffic Control Pasadena just reported a flock of winged pigs flying south for the winter.”
   “I don’t believe it.”
   “Oh yes. Of course, the official report will read ‘Geese’ but (X) can read between the lines.”
   “Before we go any further down the rabbit-hole, let’s see what we can do to get some perspective around here.”
   “Sounds good to me. Where should we start?”

Or,

   “(X) has just finished field-stripping and cleaning the guns for the third time this morning. We’d better have something to tell the others soon, or he’ll start on the ammunition.”
“Got any ideas?”

Or,

   “FOX is running continuous coverage of the end-of-the-world parties. CNN has some talking heads rabbiting on about mass psychoses – could come in handy when we try to explain all this.”
   “Could be worse, then. Anyone got any rabbits in their hats they haven’t told us about, yet?”
   “Actually…”

Solution 8: Nonverbalize the communication

My almost-last-ditch solution is to do away with the dialogue completely, or at least up to a point. Winks, nods, facial expressions, strumming fingers, body language like shoulders slumping, shrugs… do as much you can non-verbally before one of the participants breaks the silence, either by reacting to the silence or to the bottom line from the non-verbal communication:

   “It’s hopeless, then?”

Or,

   “Say something, dammit.”

Solution 9: Have someone DO something.

This is a different form of non-verbal communication, and it really is my last-ditch go-to technique for fixing the dialogue problem. Have one of the characters do something that is both physical and expressive. Get up and pour themselves a drink from the scotch-bottle that was full only an hour earlier. Lean back and light a cigarette. Run their fingertip over a bookcase as though checking for dust. Remove a weapon from a scabbard or holster and place it on the desk in front of them, or start cleaning it. Smash a mirror in frustration. Play with the dog. Stoke the fireplace. Either they, or the other participant, can say something about the action performed, thereby breaking the ice on the conversation.

Heck, picking up a tennis racquet and practicing a few return-of-imaginary-serves might help the character think or take their mind off the situation for a moment, and definitely adds personality to the character. Just make sure the action is appropriate to the personality.

Solution 10: Solving Premature conclusion

Sometimes, the conversation stumbles to an end before everything has been achieved. When that happens, you have three choices: One participant can have an afterthought, restarting it; one participant can employ one of the 9 solutions listed above to restart the conversation; or you can have a subsequent conversation, involving a completely new choice of participants (who might happen to be the same ones) to achieve the remaining purposes of the conversation. Any of these can be preferable to taking a conversation that seems reasonably natural and achieves most of the purposes set for it and throwing it out the window.

Narrative & Flavor Text Blocks

Descriptive text is intended to impart information directly to the reader/players as a substitute for not really being there. It’s an ex-parte communication of what the characters would perceive if they were really present in the time and place being described, or of what they would know if they had really grown up in that environment.

It can be dull, lifeless, and/or irrelevant. It can also be vitally important, and its certainly ubiquitous.

So what can cause writer’s block when trying to craft narrative and flavor text?

The obvious causes are an inability to visualize what you are trying to describe, or getting swamped in details, or not being articulate in the subject you are trying to describe, or being vague. Using too many analogies or adjectives is, unfortunately, symptomatic. Well-crafted narrative text provides the maximum specificity, relevant detail, and atmosphere with the minimum verbiage that is readily digestible by the reader or person hearing it read.

It is often possible when describing places to employ verbal shorthand, because we all create a general idea of the setting in response to a simple label. “Police Station” conjures an image in the minds of almost everyone – those images might be different for each person, but so long as the important details are then described to be incorporated into that general vision, all will be fine. The same thing works for “Fire Station” and “Warehouse” and “Throne Room” and “Subway Platform” and many others. But there are other situations in which this doesn’t work, or where the general term is not specific enough, or where the situation is more complex.

Then there’s the problem of giving information about somewhere or something. It’s very easy for this to be too bland, or for there to be too much. A little bit of detail can work wonders – but can also offer clues that should be buried; if the only geology you talk about are shale deposits, it’s a fair bet that shale is going to be important. If you talk about the spin of quarks, and don’t mention any other characteristic of them, or the spins of other particles, it’s a fair bet that quark spin is going to be important, and so on. The only way to avoid giving the game away is to give more information. And more. And there’s a very real danger, when you do that, of crossing the line and going too far.

There are too many kinds of information that has to be conveyed through narrative for any set of solutions to be universal. Some of the techniques that I am about to offer will work in one situation and not in another. So this is not necessarily a case of trying solution 1 and then solution 2 and so on; solution 1 might well be totally irrelevant to the writing task in front of you. And, yes, at least some of them may be contradictory to the general advice I’ve already offered.

Solution 1: Research the subject

Know what you’re talking about. I can’t emphasize this enough. If you want to use a shimmering heat-haze effect, look up heat-haze and refraction on the internet and get some understanding of why this effect takes place. Once you do that, you’ll be in a position to think up a magical heat-haze with no heat, or perhaps an ice-haze, or whatever. If you want to talk about the Swiss Alps (or model another location on the Swiss Alps), watch a documentary on the subject or skim a book or check out Wikipedia – the more information you have at your disposal, the more choices you have to cherry-pick the vital facts from.

Solution 2: Look for an analogy

Although I recommend against using analogies in your narrative and flavor text, except perhaps to encapsulate and sum up a description you have just detailed, having an analogy in mind for you to use as a guide when crafting the description can be simply magic. It can clarify and guide your thinking, define what details are most important to include in the actual description, and bind your notions together while you’re exploring all the elements that you might include. You can try one way of phrasing your description, and if it doesn’t work, avoid losing the grand vision by using the analogy as a touchstone to find your way back.

Solution 3: Modes of expression

When I was in high school, there was a creative writing exercise that was so invaluable that I remember it to this day. Each student was given a brief piece of text extracted from a book, about a quarter of a page long. Some of it was first person, some was in third person. We were then required to rewrite the original text in the other mode of expression. Naturally, some students were better at this than others, but most were good enough that the profound differences caused by the changes were made clear. The first-person text recast into the third person became far more impersonal and authoritative, but also colder, drier, and much more condensed. What was even more interesting were the cases that ran in the opposite direction, from third-person to first-person mode of expression; where the student recognized the source, they tended to incorporate the perspective and personality of one of the characters – to the point where the identity of the ‘speaker’ was recognizable to others who recognized the source material. Where the ‘translator’ did not recognize the source, they generally (and seemingly quite inadvertently) incorporated their own personality and perspectives, though a few invented generic ‘speakers’ whose voices were used as the point of view. Of course, the text inflated in size to contain this additional material.

The reason this lesson has stayed with me through these many years is that I have learned that when I get stuck while trying to write narrative, it can often be much easier to invent a generic citizen or knowledgeable person and then write the narrative as a monologue from their point of view. Once this is complete, I then have the choice of either introducing that character into the plotline to provide the description (and then depart the scene) or of taking the first-person monologue and redrafting it back into the third person. I have also found that when there are too many details coming too quickly, I can slow down the delivery to a manageable rate using this technique. Finally, by implying the personality traits and attitudes of ‘the typical citizen’, I can often cut whole paragraphs of descriptive text. Lots of advantages that make this technique worthy of serious consideration.

On the other hand, if the first-person narrative runs over a page, I’m in danger of making the mistake that I described in Information Overload in the Zenith-3 Campaign. That’s definitely the point at which I would – with the benefit of hindsight – look to compress the information by switching to the 3rd person. At most, I might keep a single short paragraph in first person at the start and end.

The upshot: if you’re having trouble, changing the mode of expression can sometimes get you to a solution, and can also have side-benefits.

Solution 4: Someone’s point of view

This can be tricky to pull off, but sometimes I have gotten results by putting the narrative into the context of what a particular individual perceives, whether that individual is a protagonist/PC or a minor character/NPC. Or even, on one occasion, an antagonist. This orders the information to be presented by applying the context of their perspective to the relative importance of each piece of information, and helps sequence everything.

Solution 5: Importance

There are other ways of ordering the information. That helps get through writer’s block because it breaks the problem into smaller, more easily-solved, sub-problems. The most obvious sequence is in order of likely importance to the party. That means describing the charging bull before the color of the window glass, or the height of the roofs.

But sometimes you can achieve even better results by starting from the least important and working up to the most important – then cutting small details off the top until a reasonable length is achieved. And, if you know it’s going to get cut anyway, you have the freedom to be a little clumsy starting off – which can be quite liberating. Finally, this means that instead of the most important thing (the ‘charging bull’) being a distraction from absorbing all the smaller, less-important (by definition) details, the narrative ends with a call to action of some sort – even if that action is to engage in dialogue.

Solution 6: The Most Obvious

Sometimes, the most important detail is not necessarily very obvious. So ordering information according to how obvious it is can be a better alternative. Think about that for a minute.

Solution 7: Essence of Abstraction

I have occasionally found it useful to abstract the information more strongly than would normally be the case. This emphasizes conceptual qualities over specificity, and there are times when that eliminates a lot of unnecessary detail and concentrates the attention on the conceptual.

Swirling ribbons of marshmallow tango and foxtrot over passionfruit marmalade, twisting and entwining like a gymnast’s ribbon. Soothing, restful, comforting thoughts surround you and cloud out all other details. Drowsiness blooms as your eyelids grow heavy and your heartbeat calms.

Try reading that when your PCs next open a door, or just imagine reading it. What actually lies beyond the door is insubstantial, ephemeral in comparison. Sure you could describe the room or area, and then the 12-foot-tall Ogre Magi casting the spell, and then have Spellcraft rolls made with virtually no chance of failure to identify the spell, and then naming the spell. If you then followed with the narrative as written, it would have all the impact of whet spaghetti. Far better, under those circumstances, to assume success and go straight to the abstract description. The very fact that the PCs are expecting all those dry details makes the impact all the greater.

Solution 8: Emotion and Allusion

Preceding those dry, factual details with a little poetic allusion or emotional context leaves that contextual information as an ‘aftertaste’ that colors and enriches those details. Compare:

The firehouse has red brick walls and white plaster ceilings. A brass pole lies bright and shiny in your field of view, as does a line of helmets and jackets hanging on a row of brass hooks on the wall. To one side is a freshly-washed and polished fire engine.

with

The frangipani tree fills the air with comforting but cloying scents. You can’t help but remember the sense of security you felt whenever you passed by the fire station in your respective home town as a child, and the thrill when the fire bells rang, the time old Macpherson’s barn burnt down. The walls are the same red brick that you would find in a hundred other municipal fire stations all over the state. Through the welcoming open doors you see a shiny brass pole and a line of yellow helmets and black jackets hanging from a row of brass hooks, and a brightly polished fire truck to one side.

Sure, the second one is about twice as long, and omits the white plaster ceiling; but it transports you to the location far more effectively. And, because it starts with an impression of the place rather than a specific – the scent of flowers in the air – it starts getting you into the creative mindset before you have to worry about specifics; from that point on, you are more concerned with not breaking the mood than you are with getting the details right. The specifics sort of come along for the ride.

Solution 9: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

I have found that when I need to describe a more complex scene or situation, I can often break through any writer’s block by finding a relevant image using Google image search or Wikipedia commons, creating a thumbnail impression of what I can see in that image, then focusing on the ways in which the image doesn’t match the scene to be described. If necessary, I might even go hunting for a second image that helps visualize the next missing element, and repeat the technique.

For example, that would give me a description of the forest, and then the mountains in the distance (which aren’t in the forest photo), with the moon rising behind them (which isn’t in the picture of the mountains), and then the castle (ditto), with the light spilling from its tower windows, and so on. Focusing on what is there in the photographic reference and describing it, then identifying something that isn’t there and looking for a way to describe that (using a new image if necessary) permits you to build and layer your description.

Since you only use ‘thumbnail descriptions’ and general impressions instead of a load of specific details to describe each part, what you are slowly building up is a visualization of the scene in your mind based apon the visual notations that you are making – once you have that, you can go back and flesh out the details that need to be included, and ignore the ones that don’t.

Solution 10: Adjectives in free-fall

My final technique for breaking down writer’s block in narrative is to list nothing but relevant adjectives. No nouns, no objects or subjects, no context – just the adjectives. When you have a satisfactory list containing everything relevant that you can think of without consulting a reference, link one element of the scene with that adjective – which restricts the number of specifics that you can incorporate to the number of descriptive terms that you came up with. Then you arrange those adjectives so that they have some sense of continuity and flow, giving you the order of description of each of the elements you’ve selected. I find this to be a great tool for sharpening my mental image of a scene that needs description. It can be challenging and a definite spur to the creativity, because you want to match the adjectives with the most significant elements of the scene.

In the next part: It’s time to start looking at Translation Writers Blocks. Don’t know what they are? Check out the first part of this series…

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it publicly, I’ll never get it done in time! Only one chapter this time, but it’s a biggie…

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Clan Wars XIX: The Hidden Dragon

Beneath the granite facade of one particular mountain range lies a heart pockmarked by limestone caverns. Once, this region was beneath the sea, and coral and seashells littered the sandy surface. As volcanic pressure beneath the ocean floor exerted itself, this ocean floor was lifted clear of the waves. Eventually, a huge volcano punched through and erupted, spilling tons of ash and rock over the land. Much of this volcanic outflow formed a vast plain leading from the mountains that had formed. Slowly the rain and wind leeched the smoke and ash from the air, carving deep ravines and furrows in the rock and sweeping loose ash downstream. Then it grew much colder, perhaps because of the thick blanket of haze in the air, or perhaps because the elementals at the world’s heart were tired from their exertions, and great mountains of ice swept down from the Sinister.
 

Reminder: Directions in Fumanor are (clockwise): Sunrise, Sinister, Sunset, Dexter.

 
   In time, the ice receded, and the mountains began to grow again, though not at the same dramatic rate. More volcanoes erupted, and then went out, laying down fresh coverings of rock from deep in the surface. The rains came, and the fertile soil bloomed, and the elementals beneath the mountains were driven out by the Gods, returning to their homes in the World Of Fire at the heart of the world. As is their way, some of the rivers that formed found the limestone deposits that once were shells, sand, and coral easier to attack than the granite, and caves beneath the mountain were opened. From time to time, the world would shake, and mountains would shift and move and tilt, and old watercourses ran dry as easier paths were found for the rain to flow, and some of the caves became dry.
   Into one of these vast caverns, a teardrop 400 feet long by 200 feet wide at its greatest, a warband materialized as though by magic, riding the ritual cast in haste by the Hidden Dragon back to its originator. Standing back-to-back, not knowing what to expect apon their arrival save that it would be in the heart of their enemy’s stronghold, it took them a moment to get their bearings and make sense of what they perceived.
   At the distant wider end of the cavern, a monstrous figure barely small enough to be contained beneath the 150′ ceiling was enshrouded in chains of mist and cloud that glowed with a pearly light. It had the body of a dragon, ninety feet in length (plus tail). From it’s feet sprouted seven toes, disproportionately large for the size of the body by a factor of five. But most monstrous of all was the incredibly oversized head, easily ten times the size it should have been, and a strange and disturbing blend of humanoid and draconic features. It’s eyes were closed, and its head rested against a silvery silk cushion of incredible proportion, 80′ square, which was held upright against the cavern wall by a rough scaffolding carved from the rock itself. The creature abruptly twitched in its sleep, one vast foot flaying out, and it suddenly became clear that the bowl end of the cavern had started existence not much larger than the narrow end, but had been excavated and carved out by the monstrous creature in it’s sleep over a span of centuries. But this was not the totality of its vile description; for the skin of the creature was mottled with age, mildew, and a leprous rotting, and the nauseating odor of decaying flesh filled the cavern. Slowly the creature’s tongue stole out through the side of its cheek and licked the lower extremity of one the great bat-like wings, a point some eighty feet removed from the head, leaving a slimy glaze over the rotting tissue. And yet, there was something slightly insubstantial about the creature, as though it were not fully present in the same reality as everything else.
   Surrounding what could only be The Hidden Dragon were a small horde of devils and demons, fourty or more strong. Some were engaged in polishing the teeth or claws, others scrubbed the flesh of the dragon, or threw infant creatures down the monstrous mouth. One spotted the intruders and called a warning in a language that was painful just to hear. Many lay on sleeping pallets arranged in a ring around the dragon; at first, it might have been hoped that these were actually sleeping, but that hope was dashed when they began to rise from their reclining positions in response to the alert.
   “Ambassador, watch the rear for more,” yelled First as both he and Third let fly with their arrows, taking two of the servants in the throat and eye, respectively.
   “Fan out,” ordered Goral, and stepped forward, his war-axe at the ready. Reality dissolved around him…
 
The creature, suddenly vibrant and healthy, hung suspended in space with a litany of horror. A creature with tentacles where a mouth should be, an inky blot of 10,623 eyes, a relentlessly amorphous blob, a humanoid figure with a front but no back, and many more. Around them, reality shimmered, twisted, and distorted, straight lines and edges tying themselves in knots. One spoke, and somehow was understandable, though the language was nothing that had ever existed before or would exist in the future. *This order, this regularity, burns within me. I want it gone, gone, gone forever.*
   Another replied, in still another incomprehensible tongue that was nevertheless crystal clear in its meaning, *it sneaks under my surfaces and insinuates itself. Sneaking up, it twists my thoughts until I find myself lessened, reduced to what I think I want to be doing. Who wants to have to wait for the perception of want before its satisfaction?*
    *It is still a fragile thing. It can be broken.*
   *If there are none to perceive it, there is no pattern. We must cleanse all existence of this foul corruption that confines and regulates the infinite possibilities.*
   *If we destroy it all, only the void – and ourselves – will remain!*
   *It burns, it burns.* Suddenly, one realized that they had fallen into the orderly pattern called “conversation” and screamed in pain, longing, and frustration.
 
The Cavern:
   Lukzal, son of Kyrd, Warrior of the Burning Eyes, shook his head to clear it of the clinging vision, and realized that the Demons had been unaffected, and had taken the opportunity to arm themselves and begin – according to their forms – to run, slither, or fly toward the invading force. Trying to recall why they seemed so familiar, he suddenly had a mental image of the “Army Of The Eye” summoned by what he had since learned was a false Gruumsh. Rage overwhelmed him, and he did not fight the berserker fury as it rose. If they had to fight while blind, at least some of the time, sheer violence would have to substitute for vision.
   “It sleeps, it dreams, and we share those dreams!” exclaimed Garunch, the Clan Shaman of the Burning Eyes.
   So that’s what it is, thought Lukzal. A trick of the enemy. Ignore it. Fight. That seems clear enough.
   Reality swam around him as he dimly perceived that the two who had been struck by Elven arrows rose up. One ripped the arrow from its throat and tossed it aside, the other ignored the shaft protruding from it’s eye – it had two more, after all – and lurched toward the Orcish raiding party.
 
The Dream:
   *These things of order create other things of order to oppose us. I cannot escape their thoughts, this unnatural progression of effect following cause becoming new cause in its turn. They twist and turn and collide within me.*
   *The things they make are imperfect. There is a little of our nature within them.*
   *But we have been contaminated a little by them, also. They are within us, under my surface, their thoughts slithering and crawling.*
   *They can be rendered self-destructive, self-defeating, impotent.*
   *Show us these creatures, Arioch.*
   *Don’t call me that! I am me, not some label. Every time you say the words to mean me, you confine me to the limits, the content, of that label. You lessen me, you lessen us, you are seduced us with the order that corrupts you.*
   *Just show us.*
   *These are Dwarves. Made of stone, minds of stone, they may break but will not bend. Order is strong within their natures.*
   *But they are flimsy things, whose sense of order can be shattered if the world around them is anarchy. They need order without to anchor themselves to, and without it, they are bereft. They pose no threat to our need.*
   *These are called human. They will exist in great numbers and have the quality of imposing order on their surroundings with their presence.*
   *Horrid, horrid, foul, vile.*
   *Their strength is their flexibility. They can turn their attention to many things, all imperfectly, but improving in flawlessness each time.*
   *They may one day be a problem, but their flexibility is a weakness. They will bend and not break. We can bend them our way and make of them our instruments.*
   *Not all of them.*
   *Enough that one will neutralize another.*
   *More dangerous are these, called Elves. The inferior Order which names itself Corallen has designed them to withstand our greatest weapons against this befouling order, and uses these others, called Orcs, to rear and protect them. The Orcs are orderly without knowing why, it is so strongly embedded within their natures. The Elves have the ability to sew patches of order into patterns of still greater order, and with their immunities, can only be intended to serve as weapons against us.*
   *But they will be aware of that ability, and it will make them vulnerable to corruption and desire. It will be difficult, but they can be overcome.*
   *The Order of the Orcs can be corrupted and misled. Without their shields, these Elves will be easily ended.*
 
The Cavern:
   As the vision faded, the Orcish group completed their maneuver to put enough space between them to permit them to fight without interference. Goral had taken the left flank, and Lukzal had found himself on the right. Next to each was another warrior from the Mailed Fist clan armed with sword, shield, and long spears attached to their shield arms with a sharpened blade on one side of the point. Next in line on each side were the Elves, First and Third, with the third unnamed Orcish warrior shielding Garunch, who had begun casting a spell asking Gruumsh to Smite these unholy foes. Behind them was the useless Drow, armed with a wicked looking dagger of little combat value beyond intimidation – and the Demons and Devils did not seem particularly intimidated, perhaps because some of them had razor-sharp fingernails longer than the blade.
   With one final beat of their scabrous bat-wings, the first wave of infernal enemies reached the skirmish line and engaged. Lukzal, Goral, and the three Orcish warriors swung as one, even as the Elves ignored the attackers immediately in front of them and fired at another pair of approaching enemies. Lukzal’s preferred weapon was a broad-bladed sword of his own design, with a sharpened narrow-bladed hook at the point; swung one way, it gave his weapon additional weight that enabled it to chop through poorly-crafted mail, swung the other, the hook would catch around limbs or weapon-shafts or necks, and sever them. Spikes on the heavy pommel gave additional threat. Like most Orcish weapons, it was sharpened regularly but not cleaned very well.
   “Fight even if you can’t see what you’re doing”, Goral instructed. Better the right instruction late than never, thought Lukzal. Their first two attackers had paid the price for daring to attack while outnumbered; it would not be so easy when there were more of them attacking at once. The cavern shimmered….
 
The Dream:
   *These are called Dragons.*
   An unholy scream of withering frustration erupted from the gathered Chaos Powers.
   *Every scale is in a predictable place on the body. These scales have shapes that progress in shape in predictable pattern. They bend and reflect light from one surface to another and then back again, giving them an iridescent metallic shine that is perfectly orderly. And more, they are beings of great power, imbued within them by the order that twists around them and shapes them.*
   *They will be few in number. Such order will be slow to develop.*
   *It will be hard to overcome them, but they cannot be everywhere. We have only to act wherever they are not.*
   *There is a chaos within that pattern. By being so predictable in pattern, there are more places where no scale should grow than there are right places. If we can but invade their forms while still growing and grow in one of those places a single wrong scale, or scale of flawed shape, that chaos will overwhelm the end result. They will destroy each other for us, and pose no threat.*
   *Good.*
 
The Cavern:
   Goral felt, rather than saw, the satisfying crunch as his war-axe met flesh and bit deep, spraying him with blood. One of the demons hooked its claws into the shoulders of one of his warriors and scissored it’s hind legs into the air to rake savagely down through the innards of the Orcish fighter. Lukzal had just beheaded another with that wicked weapon of his. Garunch swung his light mace overhand to strike the four-legged bird that had just savaged his protector; when its barbed spikes bit into the back of the attacking creature, the air around the head of the weapon seemed to burst with a forceful thud, shattering the creature’s spine in multiple places. First let fly with another shaft, ignoring the proximity of enemies to either side of him with great discipline, while Third wrestled with another flying creature that looked like an octopus with bat-wings that had wrapped it’s tentacles around his bow. The warrior to Goral’s right was hacking one enemy with his sword while the polearm blade swung past that foe to strike the chest of another coming up behind it. Abruptly, the Ambassador seemed to throw his dagger with a peculiar underhand motion, the blade flicking out on a long chain to whip into the lone eye of the octopoid engaging Third. He had never suspected that the Ambassador had such hidden talents. Eleven of their enemies had fallen, and another six were wounded; the band were giving a good accounting of themselves.
 
The Dream:
   *These are the most foul of all creations. They are called Trees. They exist purely to exist in orderly manner, day after day, year after year. Infinitely flexible, inexorable, persistent, there is nowhere that they cannot take root and multiply, given time. And once they do so, their very simplicity of purpose makes them inherently almost purely order.*
   *We can twist their shapes.*
   *They seize the chaos within them and twist their own shapes, rendering it harmless to affect their central existence, their purpose, their order.*
   *They are inactive, though. They do nothing but exist, and that means that things can be done to them by others.*
   *Against one at a time, yes. But even that does nothing against the next save perhaps giving it more air, water, and light, the things that it binds into more of itself. Destroying one makes the next imperceptible stronger. Destroy many, and the remainder become many times stronger, and more pernicious.*
   *If there is no water, no earth, no light, no air, they will be destroyed. They anchor order, and will be the last to fall, but they do not impede us.*
 
The Cavern:
   The warrior beside Lukzal was gone, half-swallowed by a serpentine bear before the terrible jaw with a hidden forest of razor-sharp teeth had closed and severed upper torso from lower. Lukzal himself held three foes at bay with his maniacally-swinging weapon’s figures-of-eight. Occasionally an attacker would spot an opening and strike, only to lose a limb or suffer a deep wound as the blade came out of nowhere. First and third continued to pepper the oncoming attackers with arrow after arrow; Goral thought they had yet to miss, even though half their shots were fired from memory while ‘blinded’ by the Hidden Dragon’s visions. Garunch alternated casting spells with savage strokes of his mace against any foe who dared come too close. Tathzyr was the least effective of them all, though since they had not counted on him to make a difference in the fight at all, that little benefit was a welcome bonus. The Ambassador was restricting his attacks to nuisance strikes against an enemy coming against the Priest or the Elves. Half of their enemies were dead or dying, and half the remainder were crippled or injured sufficiently to impair them in battle.
   Abruptly, Garunch yelled “Down!” as a gout of flame erupted from the throat of a creature consisting of nothing more than necks and mouths attached to a wolf-like body. Fortunately, everyone reacted without hesitation, but even so Goral could feel the flesh on his back blister and burn. But the attackers, who seemed immune to the flame, or who ignored it while showing no injury, were able to take advantage of this moment of vulnerability. One leapt on the Lukzal’s back and began to slash and worry at the Warrior. Another gored Goral’s side. A two-headed snake bit Third repeatedly, who immediately stiffened. A flier slashed at First, but the Elf was able to roll to one side and seize the polearm still strapped to the arm of one of the fallen warriors, impaling his would-be attacker. Tathzyr’s dagger whipped out and around again from the Ambassador’s prone position and sliced through the bat-wings of the creature on Lukzal’s back. The warrior stationed between Goral and First leaped over his fallen Warblade to engage the attacker who was goring him with it’s antlers, severing it’s head with one mighty stroke of his axe, but in the process leaving himself exposed; the barbed tail of another attacker struck at the warrior’s undefended right flank, inflicting a deep wound. The skirmish line that had proven so effective was broken, with Goral and the Warrior isolated. And then his vision wavered once again.
 
The Dream:
   *This is the last. These are creatures of pure order, expressed in form reflective of that inner order. The Gods name them Celestials, and they are a part of the Gods themselves.*
   *What is their purpose?*
   *The Gods intend them to function as their proxies, sheltering and marshalling the other races against us.*
   *Their purpose is to confound us, then. We must destroy these before all others.*
   *No. That is orderly thinking. We will destroy them when opportunity presents itself, and not bend ourselves to the timetable their existence seeks to force apon us.*
   *Clever. A subtle trap to bind the order that contaminates us ever more strongly to our natures.*
   *I was going to suggest that we each take one of these creatures and seek its destruction, but I see that is another such trap.*
   *Yes. Each must seek the destruction of all, as our chance and anarchy creates opportunities. Predictability and logic and pattern are the weapons of the enemy.*
   *I have an idea…*
   *Then implement it. You do not need anyone’s approval, and should one of us have an idea that works at cross-purposes to yours, it only acts to increase the chaos in this unnaturally orderly world and give opportunity to the rest.*
 
The Cavern:
   A wall of whirring blades manifested between the enemy forces and the Orcish party as Garunch released his spell, giving the invaders the chance to regroup. They had all been wounded to some extent, save Ambassador Tathzyr. Healing drafts were quickly quaffed, stemming the flow of blood. Without warning, Goral fell through a chasm that opened from nowhere beneath his feet. With a crash, he landed, and felt one of his leg-bones snap. Involuntarily he gave a roar of pain and collapsed, unsupported by the damaged limb. “Goral! Grab the rope! Quickly” yelled First as he tossed one end of a thin grey rope down the chasm.
   “My leg is broken, and I have not the strength to climb!”, he called back. “Leave me!”
   “Your leg can be healed, but only once the bone has been set, or you will have a permanent limp. Now grab the rope, Warblade Of The Mailed Fists, and hold fast; I will pull you up!”
   “Elves! Only thing more stubborn than a Dwarf,” yelled Goral. Abruptly he realized that the mouth of the unnatural chasm was beginning to close, and hastily wrapped the rope around one arm repeatedly. There wasn’t much that scared the Warblade, but being buried alive was one thing that did. “All right, I’m secured.”
   With a speed that astonished him, he was hauled back to the surface. With an astonishing economy of motion, First released the rope and grabbed the foot of the broken leg, the jagged bone protruding through the flesh above the ankle, and pulled firmly. Garunch was immediately at the wounded Warblade’s side, casting a Healing spell. “You’re stronger than you look, Elf,” murmured the Warblade.
   “So are you, Goral,” replied First.
   “I felt a twisting in the earth just before the chasm opened,” reported the Ambassador.
   “As did I,” admitted the Clan Shaman, “but I did not know what it meant.”
   “Now we do. How did they do that?” answered First, still breathing heavily after his excursions. Goral’s vision swam…
 
The Dream:
   The Chaos Power roared with laughter, exulting in the anarchy, blood, and confusion, watching as the last Celestial was slain and its skull ground into the reality beneath it.
   *You should tell us what you have done that we may learn from it.*
   *Learning from experience, even from the experience of another, is a symptom of order. It is anathema to our nature.*
   *It is foolish to ignore the contamination of order within us. If it is there, we must try and use it to our own ends.*
   *You seek to pervert the order within you to serve the cause of Chaos? Intriguing. Very well. I implanted in a few of the Celestials the thought that if the Gods were dead, they would be all that was left of them. They would then be the Gods. Each was drawn by the order within them to contaminate a few more, and then a few more. A few resisted, by chance, as it should be when chance rules supreme. That resistance caused them to fight each other, but they were too perfect for either to fall. Only by drawing on the chaos within them could those I corrupted succeed, twisting and transforming them into agents of Chaos and not order. Those that had resisted were no match for the power of order augmented by the nature of chaos. Now the chaos within them burns them as it does us, and they corrupt the order around them to ease the suffering. They cannot do so perfectly or completely, of course – there is too much order still within them – but imperfection is chaotic.*
   *The Chaos is stronger in some than in the others.*
   *Yes. Again, it is by chance – some held on to the order within them more strongly than others, who rejected it almost completely. The Gods foolishly showed what was occurring to the humans they breed to oppose us; those more orderly have been named Devils, those who rejected order more completely, Demons. They will hate each other for the order in some of them, and compete endlessly to be the ones that tear down all order and remake it all to their liking. And already, some of the humans begin to think that one day they will be able to supplant the Gods.*
   *It will take time for this to grow, but it will give us endless opportunities to act, to cleanse existence of this agonizing regularity. You have done well. Already, I can see a way to take advantage of what you have wrought.*
   *Then do it!*
   *I have only to put an idea in the minds of these Devils or Demons, and they will act as my proxies, thinking it all their own notion. I shall start by turning one against the other, that the chaos within them will never be stilled by order and predictability…*
   The Chaos Powers exulted.
 
The Cavern:
   “This place is part of the Dragon’s dreams!” said Tathzyr with a sudden insight. “When it is not distracting us with visions, it can reshape it! That’s how it opened the chasm!”
   “My barrier is about to go down,” warned Garunch.
   “And here they come again,” announced Goral, climbing to his feet. “Ready yourselves!” Suddenly, his vision shimmered once again. “Oh, not now!” he moaned, tired of fighting blind. “Advance, slowly!” he instructed.
 
The Dream:
   “It is boring! I want to hunt, not care for these pathetic mewling cubs!”
   *That’s right, little Orc. Doing what you want to do is more satisfying than doing what you are supposed to do.* The Orc was in a forest, gazing longingly at a stone-headed axe and leather shield that rested against a tree. The Chaos Power was in a lair that it had created for the benefit of the many demonic and devilish servants who worked on its behalf, convinced that it was merely a Demon Prince gaining power in Stealth. But it was also whispering into the mind of the young Orc.
   “I am going to hunt! Let the child cry, I am tired of putting its needs ahead of my own!”
   *Yesssssss…. that feels good, doesn’t it? And its not as though you are neglecting it. Someone else will do it if something has to be done for it.*
   — YOU DARE!?
   *Corallen? None of your kind have ever dared confront one of us Directly!*
   — My ‘Kind,’ as you put it, never do anything without a plan. I have such a plan, prepared against this day, and so I act! Understand this: the Elves are under my protection. Their Guardians shelter and guard them, and so I protect them, also. I tell you this so that your Brethren will understand the consequences of your action and never dare to confront one of us directly, in the future.
   *You are too late, Corallen. This is not the first of your Guardians that I have corrupted with indifference and desire, and already many of your beloved Elves have buried kernels of arrogance, pride, cruelty, hatred, and ambition growing within them. If I fail, another will find a way to make those seeds bloom.*
   — I know you engage me in conversation in hope of buying time for your servants to come to your aid, for you are unsuited to physical actions of your own. It will avail you naught, for in assuming a physical manifestation for their convenience, you have made yourself subject to the Order inherent in a physical existence, and have slowed the passage of time within this chamber. I shall be finished and gone long before time ceases its temporary, leisurely, crawl.
   — Around you I weave a spell of order.
   — A Spell of purity of purpose.
   — A Spell of unalloyed slumber.
   — Into this spell I confine you.
   — Your assumed fleshly form will wither with disuse.
   — Your servants shall tend your needs for eternity in hopes of releasing you.
   — The Words shape your mind, the words give structure and formality, the words impart order and confine your thoughts within that order.
   — The Chaos within you shall suffer for eternity in these chains of order. I bind them with the final word: I name you Ethraztia, the dragon which hides within slumber, the sleeping nightmare. And I bind you to that name and its meaning for all time.
 
The Cavern:
   “What does this mean?” demanded Lukzal, killing another demon as the group slowly advanced, and their enemy just as slowly retreated. 25 of them were now dead, and 12 were wounded; only three remained unmarked by the battle.
   “I don’t know. Worry about it later,” replied Garunch, fending off one attacker with a borrowed shield and chopping into the arm of another with his War Axe one-handed.
   “It’s the Dragon trying to distract us,” answered First, interpreting the question in a way that would forestall a theological debate.
   Abruptly, stalactites ripped themselves from the ceiling and flew like javelins at the compact group of invaders. Once again, Garunch instructed “Down!” and was instantly obeyed. He had clearly been anticipating this mode of attack, and released a spell that created a wall of wind that swept the delicate spires of razor-sharp stone to one side and away from the group. Most shattered harmlessly against the cavern wall, but several struck and wounded the waiting demons, killing another four outright, and wounding two of those who had been whole.
   “Predictable,” muttered Garunch as their vision again began to waver. “Whenever we seem to be gaining the advantage, the Dragon cloaks his forces in these visions. Brace yourselves!”
 
The Dream:
   The Dragon slept, and dreamed of its confinement, and slowly came to realize that Corallen had sacrificed much of his power to confine it, and then to recognize that the binding was not purely directed at it alone; should any of its brethren seek to interfere directly with the Elves, they would be trapped, confined within the dreams of Ethraztia, helpless. And for a time, its dreams were full of anger, fury, and frustration. He dreamed of the Elves as a unified race, standing proud as bastions of Order, and knew that this was what Corallen planned, and that nothing would stop it, for this was the future.
 
The Cavern:
   “Woman! Why are you here?” cried Goral.
   “My heart knew you were in danger, and I prayed to Luthic to permit me to share in that peril,” replied Goral’s mate. All around the group, other reunions were occurring, no matter how improbable.
   “Father! They told me you were killed!” exclaimed Lukzal.
   “Gruumsh released me to aid you, my son,” answered Kyrd. “We fight side-by-side one last time.”
   “It’s a trick, a deception,” shouted First. “They are demons! The Dragon defiles the memories of your family and friends!” One-by-one, he touched each of his companions, permitting them to share his Elven Sight, and revealing the true shapes of the monstrosities approaching casually. Though the true sight was immediately again clouded in the deception when he released his touch and moved on to the next of his companions, the one brief glimpse was enough to convince the others and rouse the Orcs to new levels of fury. As one, they snarled their defiance and anger and struck out at the cloaked demons. Abruptly the deception was lifted.
   “How did you do that?” demanded Tathzyr.
   “Long ago, Corallen taught me to do it, though it only works for a moment. ‘One day, you may have need of this ability,’ he told me. Perhaps he foresaw the possibility that Ethraztia would one day pose a danger, and prepared me to counter it, I don’t know!”
 
The Dream:
   The Dragon slept. And the dragon dreamed of what had been, and what had been done, and of the things that it had seen in Corallen’s mind when it opened before him to expose the chains of order that bound it. All of it’s existence, past, present, or future was open to its dreams. And slowly, the dragon learned to turn the pure order in which it was chained to the cause of the chaos that was its nature.
   It started when a wanderer chanced to sleep on the mountainside above the lair, and Ethraztia found that it could present its dreams to the wanderer as his own. And the wanderer, comprehending what he had seen but a little, and remembering less than he had comprehended, spread the word that this was a holy place where visions came to those open to them.
   Other pilgrims followed. Some were holy men of various species; others were troubled souls seeking solace from pain, fear, doubt, and confusion; and still others came to test their theories and imaginings. To each, Ethraztia showed a different vision, a different dream, one chosen at random. It could not lie in these dreams, for they had to be filtered through the orderliness of its confinement; but it could shade, and distort, and present a portion of the truth that each dreamer would find unsettling or affirming or gratifying. And Ethraztia fed apon the other dreams and nightmares of the dreamers through this connection, and slowly it grew in strength. This was not a strength as it had possessed before, the power of whispering within the mind and soul of another, but it was akin to it, though more indirect.
   And through the dreams of the pilgrims, Ethraztia learned of events beyond its confinement, and learned to add their dreams to its own.
 
The Cavern:
   “Did you sense an air of desperation about that last vision?” commented Tathzyr drily as Lukzal slew the last of the demons. “I had the distinct impression that Ethraztia was trying to convince us of it’s power, of the futility of attacking it.”
   “I don’t think I’ll let that stop me,” answered Goral, striding forward, war-axe at the ready.
 
The Dream:
   In time, as the Dragon slept, the servants of the Chaos Power now named Ethraztia noticed the pilgrims, and tortured a few to learn what brought them hence, and through the dreams of these pilgrims did Ethraztia re-establish contact with its servants. It directed them to labor to further grow its powers, summoning forth skilled artisans from the nearby Dwarven realm to craft a great temple in the place of dreaming, which they named Gottskragg. And Ethraztia dreamed a fantasy of its own devising, in which the order of the chains which bound it was linked to the purity of the temple, enabling his dreams of what was, what had been, and what would be, and all that it desired to appear as holy writ apon its walls. And through this medium, it was able to lure the servant of another of its Brethren, and through its dreams, to warn them of the trap that had been layed for them by Corallen.
 
The Cavern:
   With an angry bellow, Goral struck at the Hidden Dragon, but his blade passed harmlessly through it as though it were nothing but smoke. Lukzal, First, and Garunch joined in, but again nothing was achieved. “Ethraztia is definitely growing desperate,” remarked Tathzyr. “If I were to translate the last two visions, I would say: ‘I warn you, I’m stronger than you are, and I have powerful friends.”
   “I don’t know why it’s so desperate, nothing we’re doing can hurt it,” screamed Goral in frustration.
   “It’s as though there’s no substance, it’s like trying to cut through a dream with a knife,” added First.
   “If I’m right, next it will try to subvert one of us,” answered Tathzyr.
 
The Dream:
   With each dreamer lured to the Oracle of Gottskragg, the reach of Ethraztia’s dreams became greater. Eventually, a high Elf of the Orb-spinner totem came to dream, dimly, of the Oracle, and set out to discover if it was real. Elves do not sleep as do humans, but they do rest and meditate at need, and they do walk the path of dreams at such times. Ethraztia, unlike his brethren, had no fear of direct meddling with the Elves, but soon found that the immunity to enchantments built into their natures by Corallen left the elf immune to his whisperings, as the Chaos Powers had long ago forecast would be the case.
   But, to his wonder and amazement, Ethraztia found that the Elf’s spider-totem was not immune – but only because of the trappings of order in which it was confined. Sympathetic to such order by its nature, Ethraztia was able to pour into that vessel the same dream of supremacy, ambition, and hatred that it had once instilled within the Celestials, and spun a fantasy of the spider-totems uniting into a single being, a near-Goddess. And when reality mirrored art, that being named itself Lolth, and the high elf became her first hand-maiden. And thus Ethraztia fulfilled his own threat against Corallen; it had indeed found a way to make the kernels of chaos and evil that it had, in its former existence, instilled within the still-unborn Elves.
   And, having learned that it could still influence events profoundly and further its cause in spite of dreams of a contrary future, Ethraztia began to examine its own visions of the past and future, and to dream schemes of victory. His Prophetic dreamings were not what would happen, they were what could happen – if no-one did anything to change them.
 
The Cavern:
   With a snort, Tathzyr said, “See! I told you. Claiming to have created my Mistress and Queen, implying that I should be loyal to it. What nonsense.”
   “Then what can we do? Our weapons are useless,” answered Lukzal. “I did not come here and fight demons and dreams to do nothing.”
   “Dreams. Dreams. First, what did you say? ‘It’s like trying to cut through a dream with a knife’… Almost, almost. The answer’s there, I can taste it.” For long minutes, the Ambassador was lost in deep thought. Suddenly, his eyes widened. “What did the vision say? Of course! It all makes sense, now!
   “You, Ethraztia! Show us why you have done all this – and the truth, mark you, or as much of it as you are capable of. If you do this, I will release you – I know how to do it, now!”
   “What are you DOING!?” roared Goral.
   “Trust me,” answered the Drow, with no hint of irony, as once again, their vision twisted…”
 
The Dream:
   Ethraztia discovered that one day, an Elf, an Orc, and a Drow would unite with diverse others to directly threaten both itself and others of its brethren with ultimate defeat and destruction, including – horror of horrors – a walking, talking, tree, or something so close to one as to be anathema to his kind. Let others fight the battle against order in their own way; Ethraztia was the only one who knew of this eventual threat, imminent from the perspective of an immortal, and so it was Ethraztia’s battle to fight. When an Orcish exploring party discovered the Oracle of Gottskragg, Ethraztia began to discover part of the reason this combination would be so dangerous: the Orcs had a gift for being able to see many spiritual parts as a whole. They did not perceive a single Deity within their pantheon, they saw – and believed – in it as a whole, as they did their tribes, and their clans, and their race. The simplicity and directness of this perspective made them more closely attuned to Order than any other race. Elves were not the true threat Corallen had raised against the Powers Of Chaos, the Orcs were, for – while the time would come for them to set aside the deities in whom they now believed – they would view the true order of the Gods as a united whole, almost instinctively. The purity of their belief already enabled them to call apon their Gods as though they were real. So strong was this belief that those Gods were real, at least so far as the Orcs were concerned. The Orcs had been deliberately designed to compliment and complete the Elves, the more overt threat, and a distraction from the real menace. Together, the three would have the knowledge and power to unmake his prized creation, Lolth, and remake her into a weapon against the Chaos Powers themselves.
   And it all stemmed from the sense of unity of the Orcs. At all costs, this unity must be shattered, and the Orcs set at each other’s throats.
   Ethraztia’s dreams were a blend in equal measure of careful strategic planning, opportunism, and fantasy wish-fulfillment made manifest, and all were directed to this end. It was not enough for the Orcs to go to war against each other, they must be convinced that their gods were equally divided. Only then could they persuaded to set in motion a vast summoning, to bring forth permanently every fiend of the Abyss from which Ethraztia had obtained loyalty, that every last one could be hunted down. If extinct, or close to it, and at the hands of their own Gods, the Orcs would never threaten Ethraztia again.
 
The Cavern:
   “Half-truths and distortions. But probably as close to honesty as your kind can come. Very well, you have met the terms of the bargain. Goral, please stand here. Garunch, you here. Lukzal, over here.” Having positioned one of the Orcs before each of the chains. “The purity of belief of the Orcs is enough that their Gods don’t have to be real for them to be able to work miracles in their names. That belief is pure order. I want you three to concentrate on your beliefs and, on my signal, strike at the chains. First, I expect a rather important visitor to show up a soon as I give the signal; I would appreciate it if you would prevent him from incinerating me before I can explain.
   “Ready? Three, two one, NOW!”
   With a sound like breaking glass, three weapons struck the chains, shattering them. The Dragon’s great eye snapped open in an instant; lifting it’s great head from the pillow against which it had rested for centuries on it’s impossibly thin neck, it gave a shattering trumpet of triumph and exultation.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

I’m going to forego this while our attention is focused on the Orcish side of the story, as it has no relevance to the narrative.

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I love it when a plan comes together! For those interested in the technical details: I wrote the “Vision” sequences first, answering almost all of the questions posed by the “behind the curtain” article published last week, and with a few more ideas thrown in for good measure. This told me how many action sequences I needed in between them, so I worked out (roughly) what was going to happen in each, and then wrote all of them up. Because I knew which ‘vision’ scenes would be significant to the Orcs, I was able to attune the interaction to match. This whole thing was done in two sittings, with a ten-minute break in the middle, totaling about 10 hours. There was virtually no correction needed, last week’s article had primed me so that the words just spilled out one after another. I haven’t been inspired like that in a long time.

And oh yeah: if you think I’ve written myself into a corner, getting specific about all sorts of things that I said I wasn’t going to get specific about, or making it clear that the characters would have had access to the top-secret information I’ve only revealed in the course of this series at the start of play, there are a couple of twists on the way that should explain everything… Like I said, I was inspired today.

Next time: The Conclusion of the Clan Wars saga, and what happens afterwards. Chapters 75-77!