Houses of Horror

Last night I caught up on the first three episodes of American Horror Story: Asylum. This season takes us far from last season's ghost-crowded “Murder House” in present day Los Angeles to an aging asylum run by the Catholic Church in 1964 Massachusetts. The first season was a lurid (at times almost to the point of parody) romp through just about every modern horror trope the creators could pack in--and was utterly entertaining for it. The second season seems to be shaping up in exactly the same way.

Let’s check the list so far: alien abduction, snake-pit asylum, sadistic nun into corporal punishment, even more sadistic mad doctor with a deformed monster, masked serial killer on the loose,and oh yeah, demonic possession. That’s just the first three episodes; hell, that’s actually just the first two.

It occurs to me that this might be a great set-up for a horror rpg campaign. In the Call of Cthulhu mode, a lot of horror rpgs center on going places and investigating things.  What if all the mysteries were in one edifice? One pretty large place could be the nexus for a whole lot of weirdness.  It could be the horror rpg version of the dungeoncrawl. Maybe it would need to be relatively short in the grand scheme of campaigns, but I think it’s an idea worth exploring. Do you dare enter?

From Where?

Real life has intruded on my blogging.  My current location is the home of Superfriends' Hall of Justice--or at least its real world stand-in.  Any guesses as to where that might be? (no internet searching now!)

Anyway, From the Sorcerer's Skull will return to its regular programming as soon as possible.

The New Avatar

This has nothing to do with that Cameron movie of the same name. Instead, The Legend of Korra is Nickelodeon animated series is set in the world of the much cooler Avatar: The Last Airbender (the animated series, not the Shyamalan film). If you haven’t seen it read this, and then come back.

The Legend of Korra is set seventy years after the end of the original series. Korra, the headstrong young avatar, runs away from the domain of the Southern Water Tribe to get trained in airbending by Master Tenzin. She arrives in Republic City, capital of the United Republic of Nations, rather unprepared for the fast-paced city life. She immediately runs afoul of anti-bender “Equalists”, gangsters, and the police--and that’s just in the first episode.

The Legend of Korra has the elements of the original series: the Asian-flavored fantasy world, distinctive elemental magics based on different martial arts styles, and the crazy portmanteau animals, but adds some new stuff. Republic City has a more advanced technology like zeppelins, cars (with roofs like Chinese palanquins), and radio. The shift to a fantasy urban environment also adds some interesting social wrinkles: a professional sport version of bending, criminal organizations, anti-bending revolutionaries, and the avatar in an age of mass-media.

So far, the series seems just as well-done as the original, with attention to detail, interesting characters, and serial storytelling. The post-Industrial Revolution fantasy world is a rarirty in game settings (rarer than in fiction even) and this is an interesting example of how it can be done without going strongly Steampunk (though that term was used in some of the promo material, Republic City is more Pulp era than Victorian) or magitech.

Railroading All Gamers Can Enjoy

Hell on Wheels on AMC tells the story of a mobile camp accompanying the construction of the first intercontinental railroad. It has the usual assortment of characters and professions one would expect in any boomtown, plus individuals looking to actively escape civilization for reasons of there own.

The series (which just completed its first season) would obviously be good inspiration for a Western or Steampunk game, but I think it has something to offer fantasy gaming, as well. Non-traditional fantasy would be the most obvious (Mieville has a railroad being built in Iron Council and Eberron has got trains) but a good old fashion wilderness hexcrawl might be informed by the series, too.

All that’s really needed is a reason for a raucous camp of adventurers and hangers-on to be travelling through the wilderness. Perhaps they're doing something as mundane as cutting a new road (like Daniel Boone and his men in Cherie Priest’s Those Who Went Remain There Still) or maybe they’re doing something more exotic, like riding a giant monster so they can mine stuff from its body. Whatever. They just need to be travelling across the wilderness and dragging a bit of civilization with them.

One of Hell on Wheels’s promo posters proclaims: “Blood will be spilled. Lives will be lost. Men will be ruined.” Sounds like a call to adventure to me.

Warlord Wednesday: Animated Interlude

My issue by issue review of DC's Warlord will return next week.  Today, take a look at these pics related an appearance by Travis Morgan and friends (and enemies) in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon:

A turn around of the Jennifer Morgan design for the episode by Zealand (Steve) Jones.

A cameo by Machiste, Mariah, and Shakira from the episode.

A rather barrel chested Warlord action figure.

Earth's Mightiest (Animated) Heroes

While I found Thor merely adequate, I have been getting my Marvel media itch scratched by The Avengers: Earth’s Mightest Heroes, an animated series on Disney XD--and now partially available on DVD. This series and anticipation of the Captain America film have been sorely taxing my gamer ADD with the siren’s call of superheroics.

Anyway, season one of A:EMH tells the story of the formation and early days of Marvel’s premier team. Actually, it starts before the formation of the team, giving us background on the major characters and setting up all dominoes that will get knocked down over the course of the season. Not only does this give the Avengers-to-be a chance to shine individually, but it gives their world a more “lived in” feel like the comic book Marvel universe.

The version of the Marvel universe presented borrows from the Ultimate universe and the Marvel film universe, as well as good ol’ Earth-616 (as the kid’s call it). Anthony Stark, in particular, is inspired by the movie version; the voice actor practically channels Robert Downey, jr. Coming before the release of their film debuts, Thor and Hawkeye are more like their comic book portrayals.

Though it takes five episodes (sort of--three were aired divided up into shorts) to get the team together, the rest of the season covers a lot of heroic ground. There are breakouts from supervillain prisons, the formation of the Masters of Evil, Loki’s usurpation of the throne of Asgard, and--oh yeah--the creation of the Cosmic Cube. All that still leaves enough time for the origin of Wonder Man, the awakening of a Kree sentry, and a struggle for the throne of Wakanda.

The production values of the cartoon are good. The writing and voice acting are roughly comparable to the Warner Brothers Justice League series. The designs are the melding of traditional cartoon styles and a touch of Japanese influence (but not enough of that to bother anime-haters, I wouldn't think) like in most animation for the U.S. market is these days.  The animation itself has an occasional rough spot, but is overall pretty good, too.

If you enjoy animated superhero action, or just need something to bridge the gap to next superhero summer blockbuster, check it out--ignore Kang's dubious look.

Winter is Coming: Pics Prove It

I know I'm not the only one excited about the upcoming HBO series Game of Thrones based on George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and the more set pictures I see, the more I feel like they're getting it right.  Entertainment Weekly's got a whole series of pics on their website.

I'm glad the armor and clothing have more of a historical feel than is generally the case for TV fantasy (like the recent Legend of the Seeker).

Here's Stark sons Bran and Jon Snow.  Barrington (Snow) isn't really how I pictured him, but that's to be expected.

I think Nikolaj Coste-Waldau is great choice for Jaime Lannister--and check out that armor.

Daenerys' costume does seem a little generic fantasy-ish, though Emilia Clarke wears it well.

How About Masters of Fantasy?

Showtime’s Masters of Horror was in the grand tradition of TV horror anthologies and aired over two seasons from 2005-2007. It featured famous names in horror film (Argento, Gordon, Carpenter, Miike, and Hooper, among others) directing episodes, several of which were based on famous short-stories, or stories by famous authors, including Lovecraft, Barker, Bierce, Matheson, and Lansdale.

Masters of Science Fiction was a short-lived ABC show with a similar premise, though devoted, as the title suggests, to a different genre. It featured adaptations of stories by Robert Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Sheckley among others.

It would seem to me that in the wake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter films, and with A Game of Thrones on its way to HBO, the way might be paved for a fantasy anthology--a Masters of Fantasy, perhaps?

In thinking of stories to adapt, one would have to think of things that could be done justice in an hour time-frame, in the budgets it would likely have, and for the audience of cable TV. Like the anthologies mentioned above, a mixture of classics and new stories would probably be what we’d see.  Of course, while their would probably be a temptation to go with stories set in the modern era, what I'd want to see would be a mixture of settings, both mundane and fantastic. 

Here are some stories, off the top of my head, I think would work in those parameters:

• “The Charnel God” by Clark Ashton Smith
• “People of the Dark” by Robert E. Howard
• “Only the End of the World Again” by Neil Gaiman. (I would love to see “Murder Mysteries” but it might be a bit ambitious)
• “Undertow” Karl Edward Wagner
• “O Ugly Bird!” by Manly Wade Wellman
• “Mai-Kulala” by Charles R. Saunders
• “The Sustenance of Hoak” by Ramsey Campbell
• “The Cloud of Hate” by Fritz Leiber

What about you guys: What would you like to see? What would work?

It's Adventure Time!

Is everyone watching this?

For those of you that aren’t, Adventure Time is a animated series on Cartoon Network created by Pendleton Ward. It relates the adventures of Finn, a 12 year-old boy; and Jake, a 28 year-old dog with size-changing and stretching powers, who right wrongs (or try) in a loopy, post-apocalyptic world with the whimsy of Oz, the intoxication amenability of H.R. Pufnstuf, and the utilitarian illogic of eighties video games.

There are quite a few D&D-related references, too. In one episode, Finn frets over imprisoning his nemesis the Ice King when he has done anything wrong (at the moment) because it’s against his “alignment.” The Ice King, in an earlier episode, wonders to himself why he’s not liked, musing: “Is it because I’m a magic-user?”

Then there are nice, humorous plays on traditional fantasy tropes. Our heroes visit a City of Thieves, which has the property of turning everyone with its walls into a thief. There are princesses a plenty to be rescued--though most are far from beauteous. Inhabitants of the land can engage in magical summoning of dire beings from other planes, like when Finn inadvertently summons the business-suited, sole-sucking, Evil Lord from the Nightosphere.

Like any good fantasy, Adventure Time boasts and array of interesting creatures. There are the werewolf-like why-wolves--”possessed of a spirit of inquiry and bloodlust.” The vapid,  valley-girlish Lumpy Space Princess, is representative of the extraplanar cloud-realm of Lumpy Space. Then there’s the wizardry-teaching Bufo, which are tadpole-like things in wizard hats, floating in the throat sac of a anthropomorphic frog.

Yes, its pretty weird.  But also very cool. Check it out.

The Other Avatar

Before Cameron's blockbuster, there was Avatar: The Last Airbender, an award-winning Asian-flavored, fantasy cartoon on Nickelodeon.  It ran for 3 seasons between 2005-2008, and is soon to be a live-action motion picture. Avatar was one of the best things to come out of American animation in some time--a bona fide fantasy epic in a well-realized world.

The titular last airbender is Aang, a young boy who is the last survivor of the Air Nomads (think Tibetian monks--with flying, six-legged bison mounts), frozen Captain America-style in ice. Aang is found by two young members of the South Polar Water Tribe (Inuit, perhaps)--the last survivors of their people, as well. The three embark on a quest across the world to help Aang fulfill his destiny. Aang is the latest incarnation of the avatar, the bridge between the Spirit World and mankind--the only human able to master all four elements.

While the writing and characterization on Avatar set it apart from most kids' cartoons, perhaps its freshest trait is the amount of world-building that went into it. Each of the four primary cultures centered around one of the classical elements--Air Nomads, Water Tribe, Fire Nation, and Earth Kingdom--have their own distinctive styles of clothing, architecture, and martial arts based around the use ("bending") or their element. These are drawn mostly from East Asian models, though there are Native American influences among the Water Tribe, and some minor cultures within several lands. There is a coherency uncommon in genre TV for adults, much less children's animation. The recently published artbook for the animated series not only highlights the detail that went into costuming and character design, but also reveals how they employed an instructor of martial arts to help develop the distinct styles of each elemental culture, and an expert in Chinese calligraphy to design all the written documents that appear in the series.

Avatar's strongly categorized world and evocative visuals make it good inspiration for gaming. Bob over at Vargold gave us Barbarians of Lemuria stats for Sokka, one of the main characters, and I've seen Mutants & Mastermind stats, as well. It's too bad there hasn't been any official rpg, though, perhaps one aimed at younger audiences.

M. Night Shyamalan's live action The Last Airbender is coming in July. While the trailers certainly look visually exciting, I have some concerns about the casting, and question whether Shyamalan was right for the material. Still, the animated series will be out there, no matter what, and well worth checking out.

Alternate Islands: Other Ways to Get LOST

"Guys...Where are we?"
- Charlie Pace, Lost

Well that seemed to be the question, didn't it? Now that Lost has finished its sixth and final season we still may not have a definitive answer. No reason, then, not to go looking for alternatives...

I've already suggested that Lost had parallels with the lost world genre, but we needn't stop there. Here are two more alternative islands for Lost-like shennanigans, suitable for gaming.


"Do that good mischief, which may make this island thine for ever..."
- Caliban, The Tempest

"I'm not a big believer in... magic. But this place is different. It's special."
- John Locke (Terry O'Quinn)

Not long after their arrival on the island, the survivors of Oceanic 815 realize they're not alone. There's a group of "others"--a strange society supposedly descended from shipwrecked Italian sailors, and two supernatural beings: a monster that appears as a cloud of smoke, and an entity which appears as ghosts of the dead. These are said to to be the servants of the mysterious and sorcerous ruler of the island--Prospero. One is Caliban, the rapacious son of the witch from whom Prospero wrested the isle and its wellspring of magical energy. The other is Ariel, a spirit of the air, Prospero freed in exchange for service. Which is which remains a mystery, as the actions of both are ambiguous. Then, of course, there's beautiful Miranda, the ingenue and daughter of Prospero--or is all of that just an act?

For extra fun, this Lost in the Tempest, comes with the optional Forbidden Planet--er, Island--add-on, where the Ariel and Caliban are just two aspects of Prospero's psyche, given form by ancient alien technology. Or maybe all the non-crash survivors are the productions of a deranged reality-warping alien AI, fixated on Shakespeare?


"It's an island, where I live. So far as I know, it hasn't got a name."
- H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

"You taste like fish biscuits."
- Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly)

Let's call this one: Island of Lost Souls.  Turns out Wells's novel was true, but not the whole story. The unorthodox (read: utterly insane) experiments of vivisection enthusiast Dr. Moreau only worked on the island, where certain "anomalies" subtley bent the laws of nature. We all know how that ended, so when DHARMA arrives in the seventies to follow-up on those anomalies (Magic? Alien Nanotech? Both?) , they find the island inhabited by the tribal "others"--beast-folk descended from Moreau's experiments. The war between DHARMA and the beast men leaves the island mostly uninhabited by humans until the faithful plane crash.

Did Wells tell us Moreau died? Like I said, that's not the whole story. Somehow, the doctor either evolved himself (or degenerated) into a inky swarm of some sort. Still intelligent, Moreau means to regain control of the island, and his rebellious creations. And then, with the crash survivors, he'll start a whole new set of experiments.

Of course, there are others: Lost on Skull Island, Lost on Monster Island, Lost on Mysterious Island, maybe even Lost on the Isle of Dread?

Saturday Morning Sorcery

For myself, and I suspect many others of my generation, a interest in fantasy was formed long before discovering Howard, Tolkien, or Leiber. Comic books played a part, but a lot of it was born in the ritual of Saturday morning cartoons. Before the rise of anime, before cartoons were slick, 30 minute commercials (even the toy tie-ins), there were a number of cheaply animated, sketchly plotted works of fantasy that captured our imaginations.

The first and maybe of the best of these was Thundarr the Barbarian. Airing originally on ABC from October 1980 to September 1982, Thundarr told the story of the titular barbarian in his battle against evil in a world 3000 years post-cataclysm--"a world of savagery, super-science, and sorcery"--as the narrator told us. Thundarr relies on his strength, his almost insane recklessness, and his lightsaber-esque sunsword to combat bizaare Jack Kirby designed wizards with nonsensical plans of pure evil. He also hung out with a sorceress, Ariel, and the humanoid, Ookla the Mok. Thundarr gets a lot of love of on the internet, and justifiably so. It's like Kamandi plus Conan with all the slow parts taken out for short child-like attention spans.

In 1981, Filmation brought Blackstar to CBS. Blackstar had a sort of sword and planet thing going. It was the story of astronaut John Blackstar who gets sucked through a black hole and spit out into "an ancient alien universe." Stranded on the apparently rather sparsely populated planet Sagar. He pulls on a fur skirt, jumps astride a winged, dragon horse, and swings the crystalline starsword in the fight for freedom. Fighting for freedom against the Overlord turns out mostly to entail hanging with the comic relief Trobbits--who are best described as part Seven Dwarfs and part Keebler Elves--and waiting for danger to find him. The cheap animation on Blackstar made Thundarr look like a Disney feature film, and the plots were thinner, if that's possible, but the exotic creatures and situations did have an appeal if you were 8 years old, which I was. Still, Blackstar only lasted one season.

Filmation struck again with a similar concept, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, in 1983. Masters of the Universe was, of course, a pre-existing toy line, but Filmation made some changes or additions for their animated version--which included adding a secret identity and making it generally more superheroish than the Donald Glut penned mini-comics that had originally described a more barbaric (dare I say, Thundarrish?) world. I was ambivalent about the changes as a kid, and my resentment has only grown over the years due to the relatively greater popularity of the cartoon with its pink-vested Prince Adam and comic relief Orko.

That same year--the same month, in fact--CBS gave us Dungeons & Dragons. TSR and Marvel Productions conspired to bring this to the small screen. It featured a group of kids transported to a fantasyland by one hell of a roller coaster ride (I assume their parents sued the amusement park). They promptly gained the accouterments and abilities of various D&D classes, a cryptic Yoda-esque mentor, and an evil nemesis. Tiamat appeared quite a lot, too, which was cool. I would suspect the cartoon helped get kids into gaming, but I've never met anyone that identified it as their gateway into the hobby, so I can't be sure. I know it influenced some of the adventures and early characters of my friends and myself, though.

There's kind of a lull in fantasy cartoons for the next few years until Visionaries, which was a toy tie-in and was in the era when that really began to matter. It was syndicated (like He-Man had been) and came on Sunday mornings not Saturdays in my market. Visionaries had an interesting backstory, though. It took place on an advanced world, where the age of magic suddenly returned and technology failed. As one would expect in such a situation, people immediately get divied up into heroic and villainous knights and start acting into a pseudo-Arthurian manner.

The era's last flourish was in 1991 with Pirates of Darkwater. Too old for Saturday Morning kids TV (well, at least until college restored that ritual), I missed out on it when it originally aired, but have since come to appreciate it. The story was a seafaring, fantasy adventure on an alien world. A young prince sets out to save his kingdom from an intelligent (and evil) liquid ("Dark Water") which was trying to tke over the planet. Pirates was clever in its use of alien exclaimations (and possibly expletives) mixed into its dialogue. It's really too bad it hasn't had a DVD release.

In the age before there were whole channels devoted to kids' programming, and before network Saturday mornings were given over to tweener programming and kid reality shows, gems like these--even the ones of lesser value--were things to be treasured. I can't claim they were of higher quality than what has come after--indeed, in many cases I'd agree they come up short in that regard--but there was a crazy inventiveness to some that slicker productions seem to have lost.

Fantasy Treks

In the vein of my previous post on movie inspired adventure seeds, I thought I'd turn to the small screen, and see what sort of fantasy rpg adventure fodder might be found in episodes of Star Trek The Original Series.


SPOILERS follow if you haven't seen the forty year-old TV series...

"The Cage"
The Plot: The Enterprise crew follow a distress signal to Talos IV, but find that they've been duped by telepathic aliens who take Captain Pike captive.
The Adventure: Make the distress call a village seeking aid, replace the Talosians with Mind-Flayers, and put the whole thing in a dungeon. Easy.

"Shore Leave"
The Plot: Captain Kirk orders shore leave for the Enterprise crew on a seemingly uninhabited planet. The landing parties begin to see strange sights drawn from their thoughts--including a White Rabbit, samurai, Don Juan, and people from their past.
The Adventure: An island that's basically a thought-responsive amusement park for a long vanished race, is exactly the sort of thing Gary Gygax would've put in an adventure.

"Mirror, Mirror"
The Plot: A transporter accident sends Kirk and companions to a parallel universe, where the Federation is a barbaric empire, and everyone has an "evil" counterpart.
The Adventure: Evil duplicates of the party (or maybe good ones?) running around sullying their good (bad) names, or competing with them would add an interesting wrinkle to any campaign.

"I, Mudd"
The Plot: The Enterprise is commandeered by an impostor crewman who takes it to an uncharted planet. There the crew find the con man, Harry Mudd, who has set himself up as the king of the planet of androids.
The Adventure: A lost city full of androids (or magical simulacra, if you like) who desperately want to serve--and protect adventurers from their dangerous lifestyle--certainly has humorous possibilities.

"The Way to Eden"
The Plot: The Enterprise is hijacked by a criminal scientist and his space hippie followers who are looking for a paradise planet.
The Adventure: Well...uh...hippies...umm--elves, maybe? Yeah, I got nothing here. Sorry.

Getting Lost

This post can be read as a tacit admission that watching the final season premiere of Lost last night kept me from finishing my planned essay for today.  It also serendipitously gives me an opportunity to formalize some thoughts I've had about the show and its relationship--unplanned, I believe--to the "lost world" genre.

A brief warning: some spoilers for the TV series Lost, and for various works of fiction written over the past hundred years or more may follow.

Anyway, the "lost world" genre is based around the idea that certain civilizations, cultures, or races have been hidden, forgotten or, well--lost. Typically, these are located in out-of-the-way places like underground regions (or the hollow earth), undersea realms, hidden valleys, remote plateaus, or unknown islands. Though the origins of the genre lie in myths and legends from many cultures, its modern progenitor is often considered to be H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885), relating the search for the fabled lost wealth of Biblical Ophir. In the 1887 sequel, Allan Quartermain, Haggard's protagonist, stumbled upon Zu-Vendis, another hidden African realm.

Haggard revealed yet another lost world, Kor, in the apparently crowded heart of Africa in She: A History of Adventure and its sequels. Kor was ruled by an incarnation of a goddess, Ayesha, the She of the title. She was played by Ursula Andress in the 1965 Hammer film version--who coincidentally played another goddess in the original Clash of the Titans.

Haggard had found adventure fiction gold in King Solomon's Mines, and other writers soon sent intrepid explorers out to their own lost worlds. Arthur Conan Doyle gave us the dinosaur-infested Maple White Land in The Lost World (1912), and an undersea city of Atlantis in The Maracot Deep (1929). Rudyard Kipling sent The Man Who Would Be King (1888) to a remote (and fictional) part of Afghanistan to get his kingdom.

Some writers managed to uncover a lot of lost worlds. Abraham Merritt wrote several lost world novels, as did Edgar Rice Burroughs. In The Moon Maid (1926), Burroughs places a lost world inside the earth's hollow moon, but his most inventive lost land must the barbaric, future Europe of The Lost Continent (1915) which is rediscovered by explorers from the Americas.

Original lost worlds have appeared in other media, too. Kong's Skull Island is one, whichever of the film versions you prefer. Sid and Marty Krofft's Land of the Lost gives itself away in the title. Others include the lost valley that Hanna-Barbera's Dino-Boy winds up in, DC's Skartaris, the Lost World of the Warlord; and the world James Scully found through the Bermuda Triangle in Marvel's Skull the Slayer (1975).

So you can see where this is going. Lost spends a lot of time with character drama (and flashbacks and flashfowards that help elucidate those characters), but let's not ever forget it's a story about an island with mysterious inhabitants, ancient ruins--and a monster. Lost is completely a lost world story, just told in a slightly different style, emphasizing things (at least initially) to play to the widest possible TV audience.

Besides the storytelling style, Lost also brings an innovation in its assemble cast. Older works in the lost world genre typically have one main protagonist, one or two companions, and maybe some largely nameless hirelings--typically having a lifespan approximating that of a newly introduced, redshirted member of a Star Trek landing party. Some Lost characters get more screen time than others, but there is no one protagonist.  At least not one that's apparent so far.

It strikes me that Lost provides an interesting way to approach a lost world game. It could initially appear more like a castaway or survivor story, until the weirdness begins to show. It's assemble cast also probably better replicates a gaming group.

Now that I think about it, the same sort of innovations could be applied to a related genre, the planetary romance. Instead of one John Carter, we get a whole airliner--or maybe just a private jet--coming down (somehow) on the lichen-beds in one of the dead, sea bottoms of Mars.