[Book Club] A Dungeon Hiding in Blindsight (part 2)

This continues my discussion with Anne of DIY & Dragons on the dungeoncrawling implications of Peter Watts' Blindsight. You can read part one here.

Trey: Going back to the alien a minute, it strikes Rorschach's innards are perhaps less a dungeon and more a haunted house. A number of the dangers are really psychological (or neurological) but not less real for that. In that respect it resembles other sci-fi haunted houses like in Planet of Vampires or Event Horizon.

Anne: That's a good way of describing it and gets at one of the things I found most fascinating (and frustrating) about Blindsight as a book. Because on the one hand, it's really interesting to see someone take the various real-world quirks of the way human consciousness works and try to turn them into dungeon hazards. On the other hand, there were points where one character is explaining something to another where I felt like, "ah yes, Peter, I too read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I may be off on a tangent, though!

I think both the Rorschach and the Borg illustrate the difficulty of trying to represent an intelligent but non-conscious entity trying to communicate with humans. Presumably that's something that dungeon masters would find challenging to represent too. I wonder if the rise of chat-bots will make us more accustomed to the way that computers talk and make it easier to fake, though?

Trey: That's a good point. We're becoming more aware all the time of what non-self-aware AI is capable of! For dungeon purposes I think the easiest way to handle this is to have the creatures not communicate really. 

Anne: Or maybe be really obviously like old video game NPCs? They have a line or two of dialogue, and if you try to keep talking to them, all they can do is repeat it.

Trey: I like that. I've toyed with something like that with some monsters in my games, but I don't know if I pulled the effect off.

Anne: It might also be worth noting that killer dungeons of this or any sort seem to work best with either the tournament or zero-level funnel format. To experience them as intended, you need a good supply of characters to get killed, without slowing down the overall momentum of the game too much.

Trey: That's a good point. They are dying dungeons, for sure. 

A Blindsight like or inspired dungeon potentially allows for a different sort of exploration, though. Rather than only the physical exploration of a space, it allows the unraveling of a mystery, though not of the whodunit sort.

Anne: Yes! The payoff for flinging all these imaginary lives into an imaginary meatgrinder can't just be imaginary money. It needs to be knowledge. Ideally, some kind of understanding of the rules for how the killer dungeon operates, so you can learn to avoid its dangers.

[Book Club] A Dungeon Hiding in Blindsight (part 1)

This is the second in a series of chats between Anne of DIY & Dragons and me about dungeoncrawling (or dungeoncrawling inspiring) science fiction. This installment's topic: Blindsight by Peter Watts.

Trey: So, obviously (like Roadside Picnic) Blindsight isn't strictly a "dungeoncrawl" novel--but I think it has some interesting things that might inform dungeoncrawls.

Anne: It certainly has a section of dungeon-like exploration. And one that's kind of consistent with a scifi mini-tradition of people using clones or backups to explore an alien space so deadly that it requires multiple "lives" to traverse.

Trey: Yes. It's a "killer dungeon" as many sci-fi ones are.

Anne: I'm thinking of Aldis Budrys's Rogue Moon and Robert Silverburg's The Man in the Maze as the earliest examples I'm aware of. But Alistair Reynolds's "Diamond Dogs" novella would be another more recent example. I think I've jumped the gun a bit here though. We should probably say a little more about Blindsight generally before getting into the details.

Trey: Good point! Blindsight concerns what happens after Earth receives an alien visitation (not unlike Roadside Picnic in that regard!), but technology is advanced enough that humans can pinpoint where the visit came from in the edge of our solar system and sends first probes and then a (trans)human team to intercept. What they find isn't some more and fuzzy first contact, but a vast and alien intellect with which no communication is really possible. An intellect that wants humanity dead. It takes a while for the team to piece this together though, but all the while the alien is trying to kill them.

Anne: It's been a few years since I read it, so forgive me if I'm remembering wrong, but the near-lethal dungeon is a kind of trap, isn't it? The alien made something that was almost too dangerous, but just safe enough that the team would give in to the temptation to explore it. And while they're focused on the threat of the environment, the alien intellect is up stuff in the background.

Trey: The alien lives in a high radiation environment so some things are hostile because they just are, but it is effectively experimenting on the explorers. This is killer dungeon where the dungeon and the monsters are inseparable.

Anne: "Inseparable" is a good way of putting it! The amount of connection between the intelligence (which calls itself "Rorschach"), the space the human team is exploring, and the monsters that live inside that space is one of the few things the team successfully learns.

Trey: Yes, it's an interesting concept we haven't quite gotten in dungeon ecology (I don't think). The living dungeon where the monsters aren't just local fauna/flora but essentially cells in a great body. I'm sure someone has suggested that, but I've never seen it actually carried through.

Anne: The dungeon as body of giant monster is more of a scifi concept than a fantasy one, and it does lend itself to drawing on real-world biology as a starting point. The film Fantastic Voyage (with the shrink ray and submarine going inside a human body) is one approach, but it focuses on the sense of wonder, and maybe the didactic opportunity, more than the unsettling or horrific feeling you could get from realizing that the dungeon itself is alive.

Trey: I think it's perhaps rpgs have tended to be rather conservative in their approach to fantasy. From a practical standpoint that presents a low bar to entry, perhaps. There are rpgs with living dungeons though, 13th Age, for instance. Mostly nonbiological but I think there have been a couple of those.

Anne: The Borg Cubes in Star Trek are kind of like living dungeons. I mean, the ships themselves are entirely mechanical, although they function more like bodies than like starships. The Borg themselves are cyborgs, but their bodies seem to be mostly robotic, with only a vestige of biology remaining. In that case, the individual Borg are kind of like cells within the body. 

Trey: Very true! It strikes me that the Rorschach and its cells introduce a way to deal with the problem of the typical, distasteful narrative of dungeoneer in D&D. If dungeons arrive unbidden and spew forth creatures that you can't communicate with and want to kill you, well clearing them out is a bit easier to justify.

It's kind of the premise of my "Apocalypse Underground" series of posts from years back.

Anne: I wonder if that's something that living dungeons often have in common? They represent a threat that almost has to be explored because of the danger it poses. Roadside Picnic's like that too - the Zone appears one night, and everything inside it is contaminated and ruined by its appearance. At least some of the people going in are the ones who were displaced by it showing up.

Trey: That's a good thought. People who are displaced and lose their homes and livelihoods may need what valuables can be wrested from the dungeons.

to be continued

Wordbuilding Through Social Connections

I've written before about the ways D&D is like (and could be more like) wuxia media. Reading a couple of works by Gu Long before delving back into Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong again, I've been struck by something else D&D-ish fantasy gaming code steal. 

Unlike most Western fantasy fiction and perhaps even Western adventure fiction (which is, admittedly, the more analogous genre to wuxia) wuxia fiction world building doesn't rely as much on description of locales above the single building level. Jin Yong's fiction does give us some local color at times--a description of the region of Lake Tai or the steppes of Mongolia--but it's a relatively small amount compared to say Robert E. Howard's Conan for the page count. Gu Long's stories sometimes come across as almost taking place in a vague "Wuxia-Land" comparably to a "fairy tale" Europe of knights and dragons--or the environs around a D&D dungeon containing the necessary locales at not much else.

What really does the worldbuilding heavy lifting in these stories is the description of the world of the Wulin or Jianghu: the styles, techniques, and personalities--but particularly the relationships between practitioners. This is seen most robustly in Legend of the Condor Heroes with its generations of shifu and students. 

Sometime before the main action of the story the five greatest martial artists of the land came together in a contest to decide the possession of a legendary manual of kung fu secrets. These masters each had a distinct style and resided in a particular cardinal direction. By their nicknames they are the Northern Beggar, the Southern Emperor, the Central Divinity, the Eastern Heretic, and the Western Venom.

These characters' influence is felt throughout the story, and their various students and scions interact, jockeying for power, playing out old enmities, and uncovering secrets.

I think this factional approach could be put to could use in worldbuilding in fantasy games. Instead of inventing various cultures and regions (though there's no reason you can't do that too) establish a relatively culturally homogenous region and instead link characters in some way to various factions. The Icons of 13th Age sort of do this, I think. (I think, because I've really only ever read about 13th Age.)

This sort of approach makes the worldbuilding potentially of more interest to players because it more directly impacts them in play. Maybe they don't start out knowing much about other factions, but if the game is run in the right way, they soon will--or at least will be motivated to learn more.

Wednesday Comics: DC, March 1982 (week 4)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, we bring 1981 to a close with the comics hitting the newsstand on December 24, 1981.

Action Comics #529: Wolfman and Swan start this issue with a new problem, I think to misdirect from the inevitable conclusion. Superman can seem to see all the disasters that seem to be occurring over the Earth. The now-friendly Brainiac shows up and reveals that the disasters and Superman's inability to perceive them are all thanks to his Doomsday machine from last issue. He fixes Superman's senses, but the two of them don't know any way to stop the device other than restoring Brainiac's memories and evil personality. Brainiac suggests this would be a fate worse than death. You would think this would be the point where Brainiac reconsiders and heroically sacrifices himself to save the universe, but no. This is the point where Superman performs brain surgery without Brainiac's consent in the name of the greater good. That done, they head off to defeat the Planet-Eater.

In the Aquaman backup, he's still on the planet Vortuma helping the hexapodal aquatic sapients against the Land-Masters--who are revealed to merely be the same sort of beings in environmental suits allowing them to go on land.

All-Star Squadron #6: It's now December 22, 1941, and the JSA has disbanded with most of its members enlisting in anonymity. The All-Star Squadron, however, remains to protect the homefront. There's a lot of business to develop the characters and their relationships more, but in the background there's the machinations of Baron Blitzkrieg who has a plot to replace Churchill with an exploding robot. Luckily, Plastic Man is there to save the day.

Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #1: This new series by Thomas and Shaw/Andru replaces Adventure Comics. Superman tries to prevent a beam from Pluto from hitting the Earth, somehow sending Supes to an alternate earth and splitting the meteor he was using as a shield into 6 pieces. This is an anthropomorphic animal Earth, and the meteorite winds up imbuing the inhabitants that come in contact with it with super-powers. The first becomes Captain Carrot and tries to help Superman track the other pieces until the Man of Steel is caught in a space barrier. Captain Carrot proceeds go it alone, recruiting other super-powered animals that will form the Zoo Crew! The new team rescues Superman and stops the Plutonian menace.

Detective Comics #512: Batman escapes Dr. Death's deathtrap, then takes Robin to the hospital. A whole lot more people have been exposed to the toxin now and Death is holding Gotham for ransom. Batman tracks Death to his hideout and forces him to reveal the antidote lest he die as well. Meanwhile, Vicki Vale has figured out Bruce Wayne is Batman and seems to have uncovered that Robin's mysterious new girlfriend is a vampire, though Vale doesn't realize it yet.

New Adventures of Superboy #27: A husband and wife team of Kryptonian criminals arrive on Earth and claim to be Superboy's biological parents who left him on the El family doorstep. We'll have to wait until next issue to find out what sort of scam they are running, but I'm not convinced. In the second part of the Rozakis/Delbo backup, Superboy solves the mystery of a seemingly forgotten exploit of his younger self. He discovers he self-hypnotized himself to forget the events after his mother chastised him for using his powers to get an unfair advantage on the report he was writing for school on the space launch.

Unexpected #220: The opener here is sort a riff on the EC Comics yarn "All Through the House" except the escaped criminal dressed as Santa is caught, the wife isn't murdering her husband, and the real Santa is perhaps the one that phoned in the tip leading to madman's capture. The next story by Drake and Vicatan has an unscrupulous owner of the Stanhope Nuclear plant get his comeuppance when his daughter elopes with the radioactive guy protests the shabby treatment he got by the company outside Stanhope's mansion.

Kelley and Magalpo have some would-be drug smugglers becoming sacrifices for a serpent person cult in Central America. Finally, Cohn and Cullins present the story of a troll that runs afoul of a wizard and gets transported to a different world. Luckily, he's able to find a new home under the Brooklyn bridge. 

Unknown Soldier #261: Can Bob Haney go too far? I think he can! Exhibit A: this story. The Unknown Soldier has to infiltrate a castle in occupied France where his sweetheart, the Chinese pirate Jade, is being held prisoner. Their escape and defeat of the Nazis includes the Soldier's most outlandish disguise yet: the Beast, as in La Belle et la Bête.

The other two stories are one of those "tragedy of brothers on opposite sides" Civil War pieces by Haney and Estrada, and the Enemy Ace backup by Kanigher and Severin. Von Hammer duels his doppelganger but chooses not to send the plane down in flames. Still, the guy dies. I wonder how von Hammer doesn't get court martialed for shooting at his fellow Germans? 

World's Finest Comics #277: Burkett and Heck open this one with Batman and Superman dealing with a madman trying to start a plague by releasing a bunch of stray animals as carriers of the virus. Barr and von Eeden have Ollie released from jail after Morgan Thorpe is killed by one of Green Arrow's arrows. Now, Queen's got to investigate and clear his alter ego's name. The story ends with a fairly literal cliffhanger as the Emerald Archer is pushed on a rooftop. Kupperberg and Spiegle confronting her evil doppleganger in the dark dimension and freeing Jeff Sloane. 

Hawkman receives an urgent message from Hyanthis ruler of Thanagar asking for his help and saying the world is in ruins. Katar doesn't have any way to get home since Shayera took the rocket, so he heads to the JLA satellite to get help. Bridwell and Newton end the issue with a charming Captain Marvel Jr. tale of a professor who perfects a seed from which a giant tree grows that he plans to climb to reach the Moon. Marvel has to deal with the all the consequences.

The Evil Wizard Explains It All

 Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last night with the part "thought projecting" themselves back to the future they visited before to fulfill Kory Keenstep's unorthodox scheme of making a new film to rouse the Land of Yai from its isolationism. The arrive in the future unscatched except for Shade who has somehow thought herself into a rabbit body. They play around with their ability to think up equipment but realize they can't create a new elven form for Shade--at least not without expending too much energy.

The team goes about their tasks. Most of them are getting footage of generally dystopian events while Kully goes to deliver to the party from the past cryptic messages. After filming their past selves' entrance to the roving Castle Machina, they decide to go to the camps outside of the ruins of Rivertown and do some interviews. Waylon asks after the confused young man they met last time, Roderick Drue. They don't find him, though.

Later, when they are camping, Drue approaches the camp. He asks them for the book, The Wizard of Azurth. When he realizes they don't have it, he becomes angry and transforms into an older and more imposing man who looks like a film negative. This is the Wizard of Azurth! He reveals the young Drue had long ago returned to his own time and that the Drue they met was merely a thoughtform of himself created with the aid of Mortzengersturm in 1893! 

The Wizard reveals how he has been after magical power in an attempt to obtain immortality. He had hoped he would find it in the Land of Azurth, but when he finally achieved the means to travel here in person, he found a post-apocalyptic wasteland. He did meet several child-like, alien creatures, faeries really, who had a copy of the book and were obsessed with it. He coaxed the simple creatures into using their vast powers to create the Land of Azurth from the story book in that wasteland. In the process, they became Azulina and her hand-maidens, and Drue became the Wizard of Azurth.

Since that time, he has realized that that book, imbued with such magical energy, is the object he needs--but the book is lost. He had hoped to use the spy apparatus in Yai to find it, but the city's defenses have kept him out. The party, perhaps unwisely, volunteers the information that it is perhaps no longer so difficult to get into the city. The Wizard, though, is still focused on using a page from the Book of Doors. 

The party did have that book, but now they only have one page. They fool the Wizard into believing the page they have is the entrance to Yai. They turn it over to him and while he examines it, quickly think themselves back to Yai. All except Erekose who can't seem to make it work! As the furious Wizard advances to attack, the party slaps around their friend's sleeping body until he snaps back.

\

They get Kory to make a VHS tape of the Wizard's confession so they can show it to the Elders of Yai. Surprisingly, they are able to convince the Elders to view it and the Elders are convinced. They agree to join the resistance. They tell the party where the Princess Viola is--the Junk City of Sang.

Jianghu Dungeoncrawl Sources

 

After my previous blogpost, fellow blogger and Asian Cinema-phile Steve suggested a couple of martial arts films that actually have some vaguely dungeoncrawlish sequences:

Masked Avengers (1981)

House of Traps (1982)

18 Bronzemen (1976)

Wednesday Comics: DC, March 1982 (week 3)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around December 17, 1981.

Brave & the Bold #184: This is a Christmas story by Barr and Aparo teaming Batman and the Huntress. The Huntress comes to Earth-One to spend Christmas with her quasi-family, Batman. The holiday spirit is soured when records from an arrested mobster appear to show that Thomas Wayne had financial deals with the mob, and his former accountant's records seem to confirm it. Bruce decides to give up the cowl and the Huntress frets that that decision will lead to his death just like it did for her father. In the end though, the accountant was the dirty one and Thomas Wayne is exonerated.

Legion of Super-Heroes #285: Levitz and Broderick/Tanghal have the Legion in the market for a new cruiser on Nullport, but they uncover a Khundish plot. The story introduces H'Hrnath, the cigar-chomping, hard-bargaining, equine manager of Nullport. There's a Dream Girl backup by Levitz and Giffen where she works to restore the Naltorian precognitive abilities.

Green Lantern #150: Wolfman and Staton finally close in on the reset I had been anticipating since the outset of this storyline. First though, a defeated Jordan is taken by St'nlli to Qward. The Qwardians have developed their own Antimatter Lantern Corps, but they need to reverse engineer Jordan's ring to maybe keep their lanterns from dying in 24 hours. Rebuffed by the Guardians, Arisia shows up to help Hal, who reveals this has been an undercover mission all along. They defeat St'nlli, but with an army of Antimatter Lanterns against them, they only triumph thanks to the timely arrival of the Green Lanterns. 

With the Qwardians thwarted, the Green Lanterns return to Oa, where the Guardians given Jordan their verdict. Even though they don't like his recent approach to his duties, they can't ignore his outstanding history as a Green Lantern. As punishment, they command him to leave Earth and not return until his penance is paid. They give him only 24 hours to resolve things back home. Immediately, Hal recharges his ring and returns to Earth, where a lot of story threads having been coming to a head in his absence.

House of Mystery #302: The cover here is completely misleading and seems to reference the story in the next issue if the blurb can be believed. Jones and Sutton again pick up the saga of I...Vampire after Bennett faked his death and started walking across Kansas a couple of issues back. He visits the home of the man he switched places with after the auto accident. The guy's widow, June, takes him on as a boarder and the family grows fond of him. Then her son gets a stake through the heart in an attempt to kill Bennet. Realizing he's brought more death to the people he cares about, Bennett tries to leave. The Cult of the Blood Red Moon catches up to him, and June is killed by an arrow helping him escape. Bummed out by having caused the deaths of an innocent family, he wanders sadly into the night.

Mishkin/Cohn and Redondo/Pabulos present a tale of a roulette game where years of life are the stakes. There's a jokey, alien invasion one pager, then a Christmas tale by Jones and Spiegle. Charlie and Benny are barely scraping by, and Charlie is even considering putting his mentally handicapped brother in an institution, but then a thief who has stolen a Santa disguise leaves his loot and their house, giving them a green Christmas.

Phantom Zone #3: Gerber and Colan/DeZuniga continue the Phantom Zone criminals' assault on the Earth. Supergirl escapes the disintegration pit they through her into but is very week. Batman encounters Jer-Em, the mad prophet, and barely makes it out alive. Meanwhile, Superman and Kweskill continue to try to find a way out of the Phantom Zone, encountering dangerous and bizarre beings, including a Kryptonian wizard who tells them Aethyr, the sentient universe of which the Phantom Zone is a manifestation. 

Sgt. Rock #361: Kanigher and Redondo phone in the main story about two Colonels wanting to know who really leads Easy Company. All the flashbacks tell us it is of course Rock, but none of the Combat Happy Joes say so, fearing that Rock will be moved to a different job or something. Kanigher and Mandrake do a little better with a short about a downed Japanese pilot and a gunner from a sunk U.S. ship fighting to the death over a life preserver. Then there's a story of Celts versus Romans with art by Duursema. Finally, Creamer draws a story about a cowardly Huey pilot in Vietnam who declines to pick up a group of soldiers in desperate need of evacuation only to discover upon his return to base that his brother was among them.

Superman Family #215: After a rocky start last issue, the two Supergirls, who have switched time periods, manage to pull things together and defeat their admittedly B-lister foes, even though classic Supergirl has her powers diminished by the future orange sun, and future Supergirl has her powers increased almost beyond control by the yellow sun of the 20th Century. Then, future Supergirl hypnotizes classic Supergirl so she forgets the whole thing. In Mr. and Mrs. Superman, Superman has to attend Lois's and Clark's anniversary party, but how can Clark be two places at once? With the help of Batman is disguise, of course. 

Rozakis and Calnan/Hunt deliver the obligatory Christmas story when Superbaby helps Jonathan Kent play Santa Claus for the kids at Smallville Orphanage. O'Flynn and Oskner/Colletta Lois Lane teaches a cocky journalism grad about first-hand experience in the sort of crazy-ass reporting she seems to do. Kupperberg and Delbo have some fun with Jimmy Olsen investigating an attack with an acid-tinged cream pie on a rival newspaper publisher, where culprit turns out to be a gruntled, former cartoonist.

Warlord #55: I detailed the main story in this issue here. Kupperberg and Duursema start their high sorcery Arion series as the new backup. Atlantis is beleaguered by the advancing glaciers of the Ice Age and the displacement of "primitives" that live north of them. Only the arrogant young high mage Arion is able to keep the ice at bay--but now it seems his magic has left him.