Games of Chance

The new HBO series Luck is about the world of horse-racing, from the owners and trainers to the jockeys and gamblers. While the show is interesting as a drama, I think I find it even more engrossing for its portrayal of the world of racetracks. It got me to thinking about gambling, whether at the races, with dice or whatever, within the world of a a role-playing game.

Gambling seems exactly the short of pleasure-seeking activity adventurers would engage in to blow off steam between brushes with danger. I’ve seen relatively few settings tackle unique or interesting games, though. The first chapter of the Pathfinder Adventure Path The Second Darkness, “Shadow in the Sky” featured a visit to a casino and opportunities for PCs to partake in several different games, but most of them seemed a bit silly to me.

While gambling appears in a lot of the source literature for fantasy role-playing games, most are only vaguely described as anything more than “dice” or “cards.” Off hand, I can’t think of any that are well detailed. There’s Dragon Poker in Asprin’s Little Myth Marker, but from what I can recall the details given are mostly for laughs a la fizzbin.

Anybody got any interesting forms of gambling making appearances in their settings?

Cities of the Red Martian Night

Drop the swords (or maybe keep the swords) and add a little spy pot-boiler paranoia enhanced by heavy use of strange drugs and you can get a Barsoom as envisioned by William S. Burroughs rather than Edgar Rice. Brackett’s Low Canal cities become even seedier as they blur with the hallucinatory Tangier, Interzone.

There’s plenty of material in the ERB corpus that needs only a slight twist: think of the rykors and kaldanes, the synthetic men, the planet men, or the realist and etherealist factions of Lothar. Ras Thavas might get along well with Dr. Benway.

No reason not to borrow from Burroughs’s spiritual descendants too: the atavistic drug shanga, Ramas’ mind-transference, or vampiric Shambleau hustlers. Living turbans from the Vaults of Yoh-Vombis would be all the rage.

You get the idea. It doesn’t take much and Mars gets a lot a more alien.

John Carter and a Princess of Mars

...Should have been the title of Disney's new film other than just John Carter.  I saw the film last night and recommend it.  It is good exactly in the way sci-fi spectacle adventure films generally are; in other words, its entertaining, but not something you're going to go see for sparkling dialog or deep characters.  If you've read the books, you'll like it.  If you haven't, but you enjoy the aforementioned sort of film, you probably will, too.

The film takes Burroughs's more rambling (if such a short novel can ramble) and episodic novel and weaves it into a more linear plot, which is largely to the good.  Likewise, the script-writers update of Dejah Thoris to an action and science heroine is well done.  She winds up definitely being the "smart one" in her relationship with Carter.  The Green Men (a term never used in the film; they only refer to themselves by their tribes, leading many reviewers to think they're race is called "Tharks") are pretty well-realized and surprisingly true to the books in terms of culture without the film be exposition-heavy (in this regard).

There are a lot of thinks I would have liked to see done different.  The opening prologue/introduction with convoluted layers of narrative, is the clunkiest part of the film.  It winds up having a flashback within a flashback/framing sequence.  They could have gotten all those elements in, but streamlined it.  Dialogue could always be a bit punchier in these sorts of things, and the mean of some terms could have been better conveyed to the uninitiated.  While the costume design or the design for the Green Men aren't exactly what I would have wanted, they turn out okay, and are really just different choices.  The design of the Martian cities, though, seems to be a bit of a misstep as it's rather plain and block, and exhibits no particular sense of wonder. Faithful woola hit the right notes, but the comedy doggishness of the character could have been dialed back from "11" to a "8-9."

Still, some of my quibbles can reasonably be seen as those of a fan who would never be completely happy with any adaptation.  My main point is, if your on the fence because of the negative press, you shouldn't be.

Updates to the Index

In just updated the Weird Adventures Index page with links to some unusual places.  Vacation in devastated Lumiere (pre-War capital of Neustrie) with mutant pigs, mushroom scientists, and a weird glowing blob. 

Or maybe the Planes Beyond are more to your liking? In that case, check out the entry on the idyllic realm of Arcadia, and the therianthropic juke-joints in the Land of Beasts next door.  On the somber side, there's the Plane of Despair.  Shopping opportunities present themselves in Interzone--at least to buy drugs like bug powder and gray dust.

If you'd rather stay home, there are also a couple of posts on guns.

Check those out and more.

Ants Marching

Some of the gray-suited and nondescript workers in the office buildings of the City aren’t as bland as they seem. Some of them, tireless behind typewriters or stacks of papers, aren’t just inhuman in their work ethic--but plain inhuman.

These insectoid ultraterrestrials in human disguise are called formians for their resemblance in appearance and social structure to terrestrial ants. Born from flaws of chaos amid the reality mechanisms of Machina, the formians live much like earthly ants on their home plane. Tunneling through the astral understructure, the foraging scouts of the formians found the Prime Material Plane and soon the nuptial flights followed.  Colonies were formed.

The ordered layout of modern buildings appealed to them. Their antennae attuned to the the frequencies of the eikone Management, the formians easily adapted to bureaucracy and regimentedness of office work. Their forms changed to accomodate to their new surroundings; only these with magical sight can perceive them as anything other than somewhat odd humans. Those in close proximity for extended periods, may notice a faint but distinct, vinegary smell.

The formians live in the etheric space coincident and between buildings. Generally, they are not threats to their human co-workers--except that their increasing numbers take more and more jobs, until whole offices are staffed by formians. One should be extremely careful in the basements or boiler rooms of such buildings. Formians will react violently if they feel improper deference is shown their queen, even inadvertently.

Art by Jason Godbout.

Warlord Wednesday: Cosplay?!

Here are the Best in Show Trophy winners at 1986's San Diego Comic Con Masquerade: the cast of Warlord!  From left to right we appear to have: Mariah, Shakira, Deimos, Tara, Morgan, Jennifer, Ashiya, Ashir, and Rostov.

More pictures of these costumes can be found here.

A Weird Adventures Review Grotesque

Jack, your host for Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque, takes a break from his excellent exploration of the Gothic and its use in fantasy gaming to review Weird Adventures.

Check it out.