The Cat Completes the Mission

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night as the party confronted the Wizard of Azurth and Morzengersturm over the fate of Roderick Drue, a young occultist, at the Columbia Exposition in 1893 Chicago.

The Wizard recognizes the party calls forth shadows in the form of Expo attendees to attack them. And there are a lot of them! Luckily these are minions (as per the minion rules in Flee, Mortals!), so the party is able to mow them done, but it takes a while and gives them a moment of fright as there are a lot of them. Erekose, Waylon, and the activated Figurine of Wondrous Power Bear takes down five at the entrance of the tent. Shade goes after those coming through the side of the tent with her bow. Zabra witchbolts a couple of them.

Zabra's familiar, a cat, is dutifully carrying the transport gem to the target, Roderick Drue. When it breaks the gem with a bite, a cloud of colorful smoke engulfs both cat and occultist and transports them to the Land of Azurth. 

Waylon gets frightened by the shadows, so moves inside for an attack on Mortzengersturm. The party has a history with the Mad Manticore as they killed him in--well, their past, his future. Zabra delivers a psychic bolt that incapacitates the Manticore wizard before he can act.

His ally and his minions gone, the Wizard teleports away.

The party uses their other jewels to return to Azurth themselves. After some healing they are ready to plan their next mission: black to the Shadow Tower.

Gifts of the Magi

In the Latter Age of Earth, magi are those few born with the Mark, a quirk or atavism of their genetic code, that supports full activation of the nanotechnologic interface within their brains, allowing them to become users of the system enveloping the planet. With this linkage made and mastered, a magus may command and the world responds. They can open the vast subterranean vaults of the Ancients, contain and control willful spirits, and send clouds of doom upon their enemies. 

The magi of the several collegia seek out newly emerged mages to teach them to use their gifts. Those wild talents who are not initiated into a collegium are known as sorcerers. 

The place of the magi varies across the cultures of the world. Where the Instrumentality is at its strongest their practice is generally restricted, regulated, and monitored. Occasionally they are outright banned, but their abilities are simply too valuable to governments and even to the clergy for this to be a common practice.

Nevertheless, the life of a magus is often precarious. Superstitious common folk can easily turn against them, and Instrumentality zealots are often eager to find a reason to punish or imprison them. Beyond that, the very forces they wield and the knowledge they seek can easily prove dangerous to them as much as anyone else.

The Instrumentality of Humankind

 

Lately, I've been thinking about my Scavengers of the Latter Ages idea, which is sort of a "hard" science fantasy setting, and reconsidering some aspects. Here's a new take on clerics in the setting:

"We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolutes – is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men."

- Jack Vance, The Killing Machine

Clerics are ordained individuals in the service of the Instrumentality of Humankind. The purpose of their order is the preservation of Humanity and its restoration as stewards of the Earth. To this end, they seek to discourage the worship of false gods such as digital minds and alien entities, and to limit and manage technologies that might alter humanity or thwart its destiny.

While the Instrumentality is technically a nonreligious entity, its organization and trappings mimic religious forms, and its exoteric teachings (officially allegorical) regarding the Earth Mother and the Primeval or Cosmic Man form the basis of a folk belief system, and this system, along with Instrumentality's ceremonies and rituals have developed into a civic religion in many places.

The Instrumentality is not a group of luddites, despite their goals. They hold technology must be understood and mastered, so that what is valuable maybe used for the benefit of humanity, but not it's transformation. They maintain, for instance, almost total control of advance healing techniques, and can wield terrible weapons if the need arises.

The Institute of Vance's Demon Princes series and the Church of Foster's Humanx Commonwealth are a big influence here but pushed in a more Dune direction by the Terran Chantry Ruocchio's Sun Eater series.

Demons in the White City

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last weekend, with the Clockwork Princess Viola revealing the new plan she had come up with for defeating the Wizard. Her worry was the full-on assault she and the other princesses had been planning was too fraught and would lead to too much loss of life. She had realized the Wizard could be weakened by denying him the strength and knowledge he had built up sending copies or aspects of himself into time. 

The party's adventures, as dutifully recorded by the fans in the Domed City of Yai, show that they had encountered the younger astral projection of the Wizard, Roderick Drue. They had also encountered a Shadow duplicate of him in the Half-Real Tower. If the Wizard could be denied these two, he would be weakened.

There was some debate over what "denial" entailed. It was decided killing was an option, but capture was sufficient, so long as the operation moved quickly and was followed by an attack on the Wizard.

Roderick Drue had claimed to have been sent from a place called Chicago in 1893. A time and place far in the past. Luckily, Viola has a time machine. After getting appropriate clothing from Yai, a map of a place called the Columbian Exposition, and a locator device, the party is ready to go.

Upon arrival, they are somewhat distracted by the strange sights and sounds, but they stay focused. As they get closer, they are startled to see the Wizard walking in conversation with Mortzengersturm (who the crowds don't seem to notice). They also are concerned when they discover they appear to be being shadowed by demonic creatures:

They trace young Drue to a hookah establishment in the Turkish Village, where he is meeting with Mortzengersturm and the Wizard.  The party has a jewel when crushed that will release a small cloud and transport anyone in it back to Azurth. When Dagmar and Zabra try to find a way to deliver that to Drue, the others have to leave the tent to engage the two demons encircling it.

The demons are defeated, but not before Mort and the Wizard become aware and move to beat a retreat with Drue in tow...

The Stranger Realm of Dungeons & Dragons

I got around to watching the series finale of Stranger Things this weekend, and it gave me the idea for setting combining elements of that show and the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series that ran from 1983-86.

We start with the secret experimentation with psychic phenomena in a small town. Through this experiment, a psychic rift to another world is opened. The reality of this world is either maleable or difficult for the human mind to comprehend. The psychic kid raised in isolation for the experiment, doesn't add much detail to the world and its denizens, but thanks to rift, the other world (or an entity in it) begins to make contact with the minds of other, susceptible individuals in the town.

One of these kids plays D&D, so the world begins to frame itself (or become framed) to humans in D&D terms. It's a small realm in Gygaxian fashion just a funhouse mirror of the kid's own surroundings, but with a fantasy Medieval adventure overlay.

Either of their own accord or as recruits of the shadowy researchers the kids would begin to explore this realm of Dungeons & Dragons. The psychic avatars of the kids are often imbued with the classes and abilities of their game characters but mentally and emotionally remain the kids that they are.

There's a dark power in this fantasy realm, though. A demonic sorcerer with origins in our world as well--and a desire to make the two realms one under his rule.

Sweet Sixteen

Yesterday was the 16th anniversary of this blog. If anybody's still reading from the early days, thanks for sticking around. 

Looking at my blog states, my most popular post ("Old School Blogger Advancement Table") was done as sort of a joke but also an attempt to be grab the attention of weekly(ish) blog cycle of that day. I guess in that it succeeded in that regard, but it seems even more frivolous to me today.

The next two most popular posts were part of a series "Real Dungeons, American Style." The top one was "Murder Castle" about H.H. Holmes, featuring the blueprints of his home that were published in the newspaper after he was caught.

The 7th most popular post was "AD&D Cosmology: A Defense." I think I've written a number of posts defending, elaborating, and riffing off the Great Wheel. 

The 10th most popular post was where I announced that Weird Adventures was available. The first actual Weird Adventures post is "Remember Prester John," a few places lower.

The most recent post in the top 20 is from 2023. "The Adventure-Point Crawl" was inspired by my friend's Chris Kutalik's point crawl posts, but also rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender with my daughter.

Maybe for the 20th anniversary, assuming I'm still around then, I'll do a list of my favorite posts.

The Bottled Setting

I may have never played an rpg with one, but I've long seen the appeal of the "bottled setting": a locale that could be the size of a small city or as big as solar system (or more) but is in some way cut off from the outside. It might also be "managed" in some way, having traits established by who or whatever did the bottling, Kandor from the Superman mythos is probably the most famous of such settings, but it shows up in rpg settings like Empire of the Petal Throne and Metamorphosis Alpha in addition to numerous places in fiction.

The inhabitants of a bottled setting may or may not know they are bottled. If discovering that fact or discovering the why or how of it is the main focus of the setting, you're may well be looking at a Mystery Terrarium. Really, though, all that stuff can just be background for a setting with any other sort of focus where the boundaries just happen to be hard stops rather than the place where things get fuzzy.

What's the appeal of this sort of setting? Well, for one, it can be used to disguise the true nature of the setting. The universe might actually be science fictional, but the "bottle" marks the boundary within which you can run a traditional fantasy campaign, if you want. Crossing the boundary can then mark a major turning point in a campaign, like potentially to a whole other sort of game. 

The other thing is a that a bottle need not be impassable. Krishna in de Camp's Viagens Interplanetarias series is a sort of a bottle wherein people from a technologically advanced, spacefaring civilization can play at pseudo-Medieval Sword & Planet heroes. Portal fantasies, in general, are not necessarily bottles but could easily be (particularly the sort involving a person somehow getting sucked into an MMORPG world). That allows players to play characters much more like themselves but still get involved in fantasy action.

In the end, though, I suppose the creative constraint it applies makes for an interesting challenge and heightens the potential for player engagement with setting mysteries. Vast traditional settings are great but there's nothing like having the players hit a wall they didn't expect to be there or have hints dropped that things aren't what they seem to get them engaged.

A Highly Derivative Space Opera Setting, Briefly Described

I thought it would be fun to do the Space Opera in the style of presentation of the Known World (later Mystara) in Isle of Dread: A highly derivate, briefly described setting that was easy to understand but vague to allow the DM freedom to make it their own. I didn't have time to come up with a map, but here are the large political entities.

United Federation of Worlds: A multiple species union of planet governments organized to promote peace, justice, and mutual prosperity. 

The Imperium: The largest revival to the Federation is a fascist and oppressive human-supremacist state. It boasts a powerful military, including a large army of clone soldiers. 

Kurgon Horde: Once a group of factionalized, spacefaring humanoid raiders, a new Emperor has emerged among them, claiming the mantle of the mythic First Emperor and forging the disparate tribes into a single nation. Once merely a menace to border settlements of the Federation and the Imperium, the Kurgons now pose a more significant threat.

Outlaw Expanse: A lawless region of spaces, kept so due to its function as a buffer zone, but also due to the bribes paid by its Syndicate crimelords. The region has a whole is a melting pot of various species, the some of the crime syndicates are single species in nature. Illegal commodities in other regions of the galaxy such as slaves, certain addictive drugs, and some cybernetics are available here.

Corporate Zone: Another border region whose only government is large, economic powers. The Corporates are constantly engaged in small-scale conflict and espionage as they jockey for power against one another. Their R&D facilities, with no fear of government regulation or oversight, turn out exotic weaponry and dubious consumer goods that sometimes find their way into other regions via the black market. There are rumored to be an unusual number of Precursor ruins in the Zone, some of which contain biotechnologies that the Corporations have been able to exploit.

Another Year in Gaming

Our gaming group spent our last get together of 2025 having dinner together at a local restaurant, as is our tradition. In addition to the current regular crew (Andrea, Bob, Gina, Kathy, and Tug), and spouses and kids, we also got a guest appearance from Eric, one of the original Azurth players. It's always good to get the group together since we mostly play online since the pandemic (something we'd like to change in 2026).

In addition to our continuing Land of Azurth 5e campaign, we tried Beyond the Wall for 3 sessions. Compared to last year, there were fewer diversions to other games, as I was trying to keep momentum going with Azurth. With the "off-week group" of strictly online gamers, I gave HârnMaster a go, as well as They Came From Beyond the Grave!

In 2026, I hope to give the new Planet of the Apes game a try, and whose knows, maybe do something crazy like start a new, long running campaign, though perhaps not 11 years and counting, like Azurth. We'll see. 

Whatever happens, I'm glad to be in this hobby with these folks.

Mysteries of Tatooine

In discussing this recent Youtube video arguing Star Wars (1977) suggests a setting without FTL communication, my brother and I gradually drifted over to considering some minor mysteries regarding the desert planet Tattooine. The central question is: "what exactly is Tattooine's place in the galactic civilization?" Luke tells us: "If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from," but is that just the restless teenager in him talking?

Canonically, Tattooine is a sparsely populated world located on the Outer Rim, though Wookieepedia suggests the whole concept of an "Outer Rim" doesn't appear in the films until the sequel trilogy. This perhaps implies it is on the edge of civilization, but it's possible that it only means the edge of Imperial (and Republican before that) control. "Sparsely populated" seems reasonable given what we see in the films and the fact it's an entire planet, particularly when we consider this is a relative sparseness compared to the more urbanized, populous worlds.

There are, however, at least two details in Star Wars arguing against Tattooine as some sort of wilderness frontier. These have to do with the Jawas and Mos Eisley spaceport.

Used Droid Salesmen

The Jawas are scavengers, and they've got a big crawler full of junk that roams the desert and picks up "gently used" droids to refurbish (a bit) and sell to farmers and rural settlements. If Tattooine is sparsely populated and droids are so expensive relative to local incomes that people have to buy the pre-owned ones Jawas sell, then where exactly do all the droids come from that the Jawas scavenge?

It's possible the demand for used droids has to do with where droids come from which makes new ones scarce. Another possibility is that droids were traditionally priced beyond the reach of rural folk of modest means, but the end of the Clone Wars lead to something of a switch back to consumer focused production in the galaxy's industry over wartime production and restored supply chains, so that the wealthy inner worlders were able to finally get that new droid they'd wanted, leading to an abundance of older models on the market, analogous to the situation with cars in the U.S. after World War II. These older models would naturally wind up in the hands of dealers like the Jawas. 

Still, unless what happened to Threepio and Artoo is just an accident, it looks like they are roaming the desert picking up droids, rather than just waiting for their shipment at Mos Eisley. I think it's at least possible that the desert not infrequently turns up excess droids--and I have an idea as to why.

Scum and Villainy

Obi-Wan says of Mos Eisley: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." This is from a guy who knows the Emperor is a Sith Lord and was made to fight in an arena on Genosis! In the Old West idiom frontier towns are often stereotypically lawless, but I don't think Tombstone or Dodge City would deserve a description like that. Also, Tombstone and Dodge City had reasons why they were boomtooms that drew the riffraff (silver mines and the cattle trails, respectively). 

Obi-Wan's description and the vibe of Mos Eisley in general suggests a pirate town like Port Royal, Jamaica ("the wickedest city on Earth.") Such towns would appear in places the law hasn't effectively reached, but close to very busy and lucrative trade routes. You wouldn't get a crime lord like Jabba rich enough to have a palace and sponsor speeder races without crime being lucrative.

Back to the Jawas and their scavenging: If pirates are often taking ships and hiding the evidence or just discarding the refuse, in the desert, well there would wind up being stuff for the Jawas to "salvage."

Tattooine On Viewscreen

I think the evidence from the movies point to Tattooine as at the edge of imperial jurisdiction, but in a well-traveled zone between the Empire and other, civilized regions controlled by other interstellar powers.  It's nature as a desert world means it is less desirable for heavy colonization, but its location ensures the thriving pirate boomtown of Mos Eisley, and the existence of power strongmen benefiting from that crime.

Differentiating Science Fantasy

Often science fantasy as operationalizes in rpgs is just some flavor of rpg fantasy with ray guns or robots, or "ancient technology" as the default explanation for something strange. (In fact, high tech "science" often  becomes the extraordinary thing in a setting full of magic but completely conventional in its portrayal of magic.) There isn't anything wrong with that, but science fantasy fiction points the way to making the genre feel different from a fantasy setting that just also has some lost tech.

More Psychic than Spellcraft

The magical effects (when they aren't technology mimicking magic) often tend to resemble psychic powers instead of spells or rituals.

Non-Medieval Society

In C.S. Friedman Coldfire series, the owners of a bookshop who are the victim of an attack by the magical agents of a dark lord of sorts have to worry the authorities will think they committed insurance fraud. There's no reason a science fantasy setting has to limit itself to mixing science fiction and the (pseudo-)Medieval. Elements of any era could be fair game, depending on the setting.

Device Dependent

In science fantasy, more magical effects are going to be the use of a device or chemical rather than a spell. A Polymorph effect, for instance, can still exist, but it would be from a transformation machine or "atavism ray" or the like. A variant on this is when a classical magic item turns out to be a technological device, like when Travis Morgan's putting a bullet into Deimos' crystal ball and we see circuitry inside.

Subtle Reminders 

Little details that point to the nature of the setting often help set the mood. Post-apocalypses (fantasy and otherwise) tend to excel at this. King's Dark Tower stories have a witch writing a note on an old Citgo receipt pad, for instance, but having an old device put to a new purpose is a device that works in science fantasy too.

Consistency

While in many situations "science vs. magic" in a fantastic context would just be cosmetic, it's important to keep in mind the different origins and make sure the details match. For instance, orcs that are embodied spirits of evil ought to operate differently in any number of ways compared to orcs who are a transplanted, anthrophagous alien species or orcs that are bioengineered servitors.

Moon Melee

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last Sunday with the party concluding their brief trip to the Moon. The Bright Goddess of the Thrice Thousand had granted their request for one of the "tears of Azulina" (celestial sapphires, some of which were allegedly used by the Wizard to grow the Sapphire City of Azurth), but they would have to get it from the Faceless Collector who the Bright Goddess had just given it to.

The Collector agreed to hand it over, but only if the party bested him, and his servitor in combat. The party agreed and the match began. The servitor proved to be a hulking robot with a sword and machine gun army, though this was not a fight to the death. The Collector had psionic powers and a golden scimitar.

The party one out in the end, likely due to their superior numbers, but Erekose and Waylon took quite a bruising. 

True to his word, the Collector handed over the sapphire. The party was guided out of the goddess' gardens and back to their ship. The return flight was mercifully uneventful.

The gnomic technicians in the service of Viola, the Clockwork Princess of Yanth, put their science to work and blasted the petrified princesses with the sapphire's radiation. The stone around them crumbled and beneath they were their normal selves.

As soon as she was able, Viola said: "I've just determined a way we can defeat the wizard."

Longhaul

All the interstellar Science Fiction roleplaying systems and settings I can think of rely on faster-than-light travel (generic systems like GURPs or Hero System discuss the option of forgoing it, but I don't think either devote much space to it) and fairly rapid FTL, at that. It isn't surprising; most starfaring sci-fi literature does so as well. 

There are hard(er) sci-fi writers that generally adhere to a more realistic, slower than light universe, like Alistair Reynolds, Greg Egan or Charles Stross. Reynolds' star travelers enter cyrogenic "reefer sleep" to handle the years long voyages in "lighthuggers." Stross and Egan in some of their stories have digital minds broadcast across the distance as light to be reconstituted at the receiving end.

There are also works with sort of slow FTL, so that voyages still require years. Ruocchio's Sun Eater series has characters entering cryogenic fugue to pass the years. Simmons' Hyperion Cantos has FTL that still results in time dilation so ship time is less than the years than pass for observers.

It strikes me that whatever the method, space travel that takes long periods of time, and where the traveler is somehow able to personally elide the effects of so much time passing (either through cryogenics, weird time effects, or even just posthuman immortality) would make for an interesting aspect to a setting and campaign.

The PCs might set out as smugglers or free traders with valuable cargo for a 20-year voyage (from the perspective of the destination) and arrive to find the market had changed or a natural disaster had ruined their chances for making the sale. Mercenary PCs hired for a job, could find the government they were sent to defend toppled by the time they arrive or the person they were to report to succeeded by someone less friendly. 

Both of these changes are bad for the PCs, but they could have just as easily been advantageous. The point is with years or decades passing, the setting should hardly stay static. I think this would have the effect of modifying PC behavior a bit. It would make them take space travel less for granted, for one thing. Trips between worlds are no longer trivial. Two, even with cryogenesis or the like, long travel times would make PC aging meaningful.

Using a series of random tables to accomplish these changes would of course include the GM in the fun of discovery. A dynamic setting is often, I think, a more alive feeling one than a static one.

Clerics vs. Posthumans

Technology vs. magic, sometimes even to the point of a war, in a feature of a number of fantasy works, though I'm not aware of a published D&D setting that features it. 

Some science fiction settings have cultural/religious limits on technology, either as one facet of the setting or as a means for the author to keep technology in check to tell the sort of story they want to tell. Dune is the primary example, but there are series like the Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio that follow its lead, and other settings that make it a feature. A more recent variant is a group or culture that rejects the rapid changes associated with things like cybertechnology and brain uploading. This shows up in Stross' Accelerando.

I think it would be interesting to sort of combine these concepts. Have the action take place within a fantasy world (perhaps a fairly standard one, or maybe a Spelljammer-ish system), but the demons, devils, and other Outsiders trying to get in and corrupt the world (at least from the perspective of the world's clerics and leaders who consuder them anathema) are actually posthuman intelligences that utilize technology, not magic. Presumably, "magic" (whatever it is) was what allowed these simple, unenhanced humanoids to hold on in a universe of much more powerful sophonts. The Outer Planes (as they view) them are really just planets, habitats or networks.

Of course, whether the Outsiders are really baddies would depend on the specifics of the setting--or maybe even be open to interpretation?

Challenge on the Moon

 Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last Sunday with the party trying to get to the Bright Rabbit Goddess of the Moon to ask her for a particular jewel that might be the key to saving Azurth's princesses from the petrification the evil Wizard had put on them. 

After several weird encounters in the fae lunar gardens, the party encountered one of the Rabbit Folk working in a fissure in the Moon's surface on the vast gearworks beneath.  He told them the gears controlled the movement of the gigantic, black tarpaulin that was drawn across the Moon's surface, causing its phases as observed from Earth, so that the lunar folk could have some privacy.

 He tells them that reaching the primary garden and the Goddess requires not thinking about going there. Sort of unfocus your eyes, he says, and the path will become clear. Only two of the party are able to accomplish this, but they can lead the other members on. 

They are greeted by a major domo in a ruff collar and fancy dress who listens to their concerns and puts their names on a list to see the Goddess. Then he ushers them off to one of the few empty tables in the expansive, side garden to wait.

Trying to figure out a way to get in sooner, they strike up a conversation with a young woman who claims to be from Mercury. She offers them a letter of introduction from the Empire of Mercury, which they accept but are too wary to use. 

They decide to ask the major domo if there might be some sort of inducement they could provide to get in sooner. He happily tells them that the Moon is mad for the more advanced gadgetry of Earth. They give him a stopped pocket watch (right twice a day!) that used to belong to the young Roderick Drue, who eventually became the Wizard. Or some version of him did, anyway.

They are whisked in to see the Goddess who is sympathetic to their plight. Unfortunately, she just granted the sapphire to a Faceless Collector from the Outer Worlds. Maybe they can convince him to give it to them?

The Collector, a cool, emotionless humanoid with knowledge of time, says he will give it them if they can defeat him and his servitor in combat...

Weird Revisited: The Androids' Dungeon

The original version of this post appeared in February of 2014, inspired by "Bit Rot," a short story by Charles Stross.

Neptune's Brood and related works by Charles Stross take place in a posthuman future where the civilization of humankind's android/bioroid creations has spread out into the stars. These androids can look and act pretty much human--including eating and excreting biological material. The difference is that they are made of mechanocytes instead of biological cells that must "learn" to form organs and "tissue" types, and their brains have soulchip backups they can be placed into a new body if their old ones are destroyed. Interestingly, priests (like those of the Church of the Fragile, who seek to disseminate old style "fragile" humanity in the galaxy) have "powers." Special structures and training that allow them to control the mechanocytes of others to heal or alter forms.

All of this sounded like a good way to in-setting rationalize traditional dungeoneering rpg tropes, if you're into that sort of thing. Imagine a future where humankind is extinct and its android descendants live in a pseudo-medieval society--except for things like soulchips (or something of that nature) and clerical healing. The androids (who would just think of themselves as "people," of course) would go down into the underground ruins of old humanity (who they probably wouldn't realize were any different than themselves) to wrest treasures from less socialized posthuman intelligences, i.e. monsters.
What would be the point? Well, it would be an interesting mystery to add in the background of a science fantasy sort of campaign (like a variant Anomalous Subsurface Environment, maybe). Also, the increased durability and easy resurrection of posthumans would explain some things about how D&D works as written but it could also be used to ramp up the carnage (and probably the black humor). Death wouldn't necessarily mean starting with a new character most of the time, it would just mean starting with the same character, poorer than before or owing a debt to somebody.

Back from the West

I spent much of last week in San Francisco for a conference. It's a city I've also enjoyed visiting, though I haven't been there very often.

Anyway, it reminded me of my old post from 2011 on the San Francisco analog in the world of Weird Adventures, San Tiburon.

Gardens of the Moon

After a hiatus, our Land of Azurth 5e game continued with the party arriving at the Moon looking to meet with the Bright Goddess and get one of the crystals, supposedly the tears of Azulina. 

Whatever they were expecting, it probably wasn't what they found. The structures of the Goddess were contained in a large, walled garden of what marble and coral stone with silver-tinged moon flora. Once they got pass the silver-armored rabbit folk guards at the entrance (who let them pass easily), they found the garden almost eerily empty. The encounters they had were not with rabbit folk, but things stranger.

They had been warned the garden was a faerie place, but that hadn't quite prepared them for the ice cream ooze they had to battle or the annoying rust hornets that degraded Erekose's and Dagmar's armor. The close harmony singing of some living hothouse flowers or the philosophizing of a praying mantis-appearing visitor from the astral plane was also strange but less threatening.

The session ended with the party still no closer to the rabbit parties they are looking for.

On Magitech

I'm going to define magitech for my purposes here as technology (in the sense of items that appear industrial, mechanical, or electronic) that is powered by magic. I tend to like magitech when it is done well, but I find it often isn't done well, in my judgement. I've spent some time thinking about what for me constitutes "doing it well" versus not.

There are, I think, different types of magitech in media, and the one that almost always works for me is what I would call naive. Naive magitech occurs when the portrayal of something mythic, fairytale-like (and I think those are the two most common modes) just happens to feature some trappings of technology. Stories with naive magitech give the impression the technology they feature is just assumed in the same way Medieval or early modern tech is just assumed in traditional fairytales. Baum's Oz includes elements of this, but so do the New Gods related series from Kirby, or other works  of later creators working in a Kirby mode.

I revisited the Blackstar (1981) cartoon series not too long ago, and it has a great example in the episode "Lightning City of the Clouds." Crios the Ice-King is trying to stop Spring from coming to the Planet Sagar, keeping the planet in eternal winter. He attempts to steal the key to springtime with his fortress that flies on a cloud and appears to be made of ice. That fortress also has a futuristic-appearing control room (draped with icicles) complete with a video screen where he can talk to his boss, Overlord.

It's a setting that makes no attempt separate science fiction and fantasy. We might well call it science fantasy, though that term also covers works that include things clearly defined diegetically as scientific, but are utterly implausible. What I'm interest in here is fantastic technology that is understood within the story as magical or at least implicitly such.

Other examples of magitech, what is more traditional meant by that term, occur when magic is used to replicate something close to modern or science fictional technology. Unlike the naive magitech, it is often part of a rationalized or systemized portrayal of magic, but not necessarily. It's this sort of magitech that can often go wrong because it ends up with obvious cliches (magic carpet taxis, magic wands for guns) or the Rube Goldbergian devices on Flintstones or Gilligan's Island where it becomes a joke based around, "just how are they gonna build this device?"

I find both of these approaches unsatisfying because not only are they often silly (intentionally or unintentionally) but because they make the fantastic mundane. 

I think good magitech ought to aim to do the opposite: make the mundane fantastic.

How does that work? Well, I think magitech should general not be identical to a scientific technical solution to the problem. There ought to be new (and interesting) complications and implications. I'll give a couple of examples: In the comic book series The Outer Darkness, the starship is powered by a captive god who demands sacrifice. This has all sorts of implications for how one might coax more power from the engines or what an engine breakdown looks like. A containment breach becomes a whole different sort of danger.

In my Weird Adventures setting there are radio para-elementals. Their existence suggests something about the physics of the setting, making it more aligned with fantasy, but also brings up interesting complications for radio operation.

There are lots of other examples, but you get the idea. In summary, I guess my pitch is: if you are going to include magitech, think about what it implies about how the world is different from the one we know. That doesn't mean you need a rigorously worked out "magic system." It just means putting though into how technology and the world it exists in are of a piece.

Weird Revisited: Alternate Ravenlofts

The original version of this post appeared in 2016... 

Jack Shear brought to my attention an idea Kreg Mosier proposed of a Southern Gothic Ravenloft. Which is a great idea! It also got me to thinking about other settings where Ravenloft could be repurposed:

Planet of Vampires

A commercial cargo-hauler spacecraft responds to a call from the Demeter from a nearby planetoid, and finds an planet shrouded in eerie mists. The Demeter's crew have undergone a frightening transformation into the undead. At the center of all this strangeness is a weirdly earth-like castle and its master.

Inspirations: Planet of Vampires, Alien, and the Star Trek episode "Catspaw."

The Creepy Castle

Teenagers returning from Spring Break have their car break down in an eerie fog somewhere in Appalachia. Going the the forbidding European-style castle for help seems like a good idea...

Inspirations: any number of horror films including Texas Chainsaw Massacre; Scooby Doo, and for more of a tripped out euro-feel, things like Nuda per Satana and Requiem pour un Vampire.