Category: cabinet of curiosities (Page 2 of 3)

Inspirations: Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

August 3, 2018 / / 1 Comment

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The Time: Free RPG Day 2017

The Place: a FLGS in Howell, Michigan

The What: Finding a copy of the 2017 Free RPG Day Dungeon Crawl Classics Quick Start Rules

The Result: Nothing.

I skimmed through the rules, liked the idea of The Funnel (where players create 0-level characters, like farmers and urchins and such, and then run them through an arduous dungeon and see who makes it out alive; livers get to become 1st level characters), and promptly moved on to other things.

I wasn’t really looking to run a new rpg. I had given up being a GM after some rocky experiences with a couple of game systems, my husband was taking over the GM role, we were looking at maybe playing some indie games or maybe even The One Ring RPG, but Dungeon Crawl Classics was just this little slim booklet with the cool cover.

But man, that cover. Every once in awhile, while working at my writing desk, that cover would peak through the stack of books surrounding it and I’d start dreaming. The strains of a Led Zeppelin mixed tape would waft through my brain. The feeling of forbidden adventure would beckon, as if I was ten-years-old again, hanging out at the library and gazing greedily at the AD&D 2nd edition books on the shelves, wishing my mom and dad would let me read them, wishing I could travel across Krynn, down into the bowels of a sorcerer’s underground fortress, to speak with dragons and steal magic swords. The cover of DCC’s rule book made me feel all that and more. It tempted me. Intrigued me.

But still, I didn’t go back to it. I was done GMing. We hadn’t role-played or even played board games in a long while. DCC was just a neat cover with some crazy rules inside. I wasn’t going to get caught up in it.

And then, about two months ago, I did. I grabbed the quick start rules again, read through them, loved the artwork, got somewhat inspired to Game Master an adventure (called “Judging” in DCC), and then told myself I was just flipping through the book to get ideas for Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess. But in the midst of my inspiration-seeking idea-getting I found out I was kinda falling in love with this game. The art. Did I mention the art? It’s so freakin’ old school it makes my ten-year-old heart swoon. The game play (especially the magic) is all about wild, unexpected and chaotic shit happening; I loved the unpredictability, the anything-goes ethos. It WAS inspiring; I felt like my fiction had become too staid, too boxed in, and then DCC came along and said, “Go ahead, do something crazy. Nothing is off-limits. Fantasy doesn’t have to fit into neat boxes.” And now I’m ready to write almost anything, to let my imagination go wild, to write as if I’m a kid again, which is what DCC makes me feel: like a kid.

And kids play. Kids make up crazy shit. Kids aren’t bound by what’s expected or what’s “part of the genre.” Kids just know what feels fun, what excites them. DCC does that. It’s the rpg that speaks to my inner twelve-year-old.

I feel like games can be an awesome source of inspiration. They aren’t “literature” in the typical sense, but they do possess many of the features of narrative: setting, characters, conflict. With tabletop rpgs especially, players are encouraged to create a story together, to weave a narrative from the various numbers and statistics and dice rolls of the game. And with board games too, the imaginative elements are there for crafting stories. What else is the book Jumanji all about, after all? As soon as I finished rereading the DCC quick start rules this last time, I started writing a short story based on the zero-level funnel included in the book, “Portal Under the Stars.” Rpg fan fiction, basically. Something I have never done in my life, but DCC inspired me to do.

So yeah. I bought the core book. I’m reading it now and having all kinds of ideas. I haven’t GMed a game yet (planning on doing a modified version of Beyond the Silver Scream), but when I do, I hope it’s as fun and kick-ass as the game in my head. Regardless of whether I play the game or not, DCC still serves as fertile ground for my own storytelling. The feeling of the book — the vibe it gives off — is energizing. It fills me with the gusto I need to be creative.

The Things That Shaped Me: Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves

May 30, 2018 / / 0 Comments
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Image courtesy of AV Club

OKAY, so Kevin Costner is kinda ridiculous in this movie: his “accent,” his blow-dried hair, his not-British-ness. He makes Christian Slater look like Daniel Day-Lewis. But hot damn, I LOVED this movie as a kid! Yes, I had ALL THE ACTION FIGURES.

(And secretly, I still love it. Watched it with my husband a couple of years ago, and even though we made fun of it in places, we got caught up in the story, in the adventure, in the fabulous over-acting of the fabulous Alan Rickman. *sniff* RIP, Sir. Also, THIS COMMENT on the AV Club article I linked above sums up my feelings about this movie EXACTLY. Just go read it and relive the Prince of Thieves memories.)

This move is not high art. It’s a big Hollywood blockbuster from an era when big Hollywood blockbusters were a bit goofy. And yes, it is dated. But it’s fun. And it’s larger-than-life. There is something exhilarating about it, despite the silliness and awkwardness. I got the movie soundtrack as a Christmas present last year, just to relive old memories, and I swear, as soon as that opening fanfare kicked into gear, my heart was soaring and I wanted to go sword fighting and adventuring and storming the castle right then and there (and yes, The Princess Bride will be a future Thing That Shaped Me post).

I’ve noticed over the last few years that swashbuckling action-adventure movies like Prince of Thieves not only don’t get made (unless the movies include Pirates and Caribbeans), but that things that do get made (various Robin Hoods, the latest King Arthur attempts, etc.) are all either too bloated, too ironic, or take themselves too seriously. Everything nowadays is done with grim “realism” (something that Prince of Thieves somewhat ushered in, with its more “gritty” aesthetic). Everything is either uber-serious or coated in irony.

There’s nothing wrong with seriousness or irony. In fact, the sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean could use a bit more seriousness (and a little less irony). But Prince of Thieves is serious without being pretentious; big without being bloated; sincere without being (too) sappy. It wears its big heart on its equally big puffy sleeves. And yes, it’s corny. And yes, Costner is not really very good at big speeches or British accents. But the look of the film is fantastic. When I played imaginary Robin Hood adventures as a kid, in my mind’s eye, I was seeing THIS version of England, with its lush forests, gurgling brooks, stony castles, and sunlit glades.

I’m listening to the Prince of Thieves soundtrack right now and my soul is roused. For all its “grittiness” at the time, Prince of Thieves is really a sweeping classic adventure. I’m curious if a film like that would work today. Could a story with that much sincerity and bigheartedness and over-the-top cheese survive our jaded culture? I’m not sure. It’s a flawed film that rightly deserves some snark. But all I know is that “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” is coming up next on my stereo, and I’m gonna listen to it and love it without a hint of irony.

The Golden Age of Geekdom

June 27, 2017 / / 0 Comments

thI decided to set my series, Merlin’s Last Magic, in the 1980s because, for me, the 1980s were the “golden age” of fantasy-related stuff: Conan. Red Sonja. Labyrinth. The Dark Crystal. The Last Unicorn. The Neverending Story. Ladyhawke. Dragonslayer. Legend. The Dragonlance Chronicles. HeroQuest.

I grew up in the 80s, and because fantasy seemed to be everywhere during that decade, my imagination was fertilized by all of these movies, books, and board games. In writing Merlin’s Last Magic, I wanted to give a little nod to the decade that nurtured me.

But as I was preparing to write this post, I realized that perhaps the 1980s weren’t really the golden age. Or, if they were the golden age, then perhaps they’ve given birth to an even more exciting and fertile age for fantasy genre stuff: Right now.

I contend that perhaps it wasn’t the 80s at all that were THE decade for fantasy lovers; perhaps that time is now. Perhaps we are living in the true golden age at this very moment (the Platinum Age, perhaps). Just look around: fantasy and science fiction have never been more mainstream or popular, from HBO’s Game of Thrones to the Marvel movies to fantastic writers like Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, and Neil Gaiman (all of whom are being courted by Hollywood for big-budget adaptations of their work).

Being “Geek” is cool. Nerds no longer hide their obsessions but display them proudly. San Diego Comic-Con (not to mention the dozens of other conventions that have gained prominence in the last decade) has become Mecca not just for comics nerds and sci-fi geeks but for big-name celebrities and the mass media at large. When I was twelve, I tried to hide my love for J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle-Earth; when I turned twenty, Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring was debuting in theaters, and suddenly, I didn’t have to hide anymore.

I think this new geek renaissance can be credited to both Jackson’s films and the Harry Potter phenomenon. Without either of these two creations, my fellows geeks and I would most likely still be part of a niche genre, something that the “wider world” looks down on with slight disdain. But because Jackson’s movies were incredible international hits, and because Harry Potter continues to be a straight-up juggernaut in the film and literature worlds, suddenly being “geeky” was cool. The media at large (and the people who consume it) are always gravitating towards what makes money, what sells. And starting with Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings movies, fantasy started to sell, and sell hard.

The success of the Game of Thrones TV show has cemented fantasy as a genre that adults can and should enjoy. Now we have TV shows like The Magicians, Vikings, and American Gods, (not to mention the Marvel and DC superhero shows), and no one is hiding their fandom for these SFF stories anymore. We are allowed to like (and even love) fantasy and science fiction in a way that was just not possible in the 1980s.

But we can’t dismiss the decade of my childhood. The golden age of geekdom that we are experiencing now is a direct result of the fantasy and sci-fi of the Reagan Decade. What do so many of today’s popular novelists, showrunners, and screenwriters have in common? We came of age in the 1980s (or at least, many of us did). We grew up soaking in the realms of Krynn and Fantasia and Thra. Our heroes were Conan and Molly Grue. We played endless hours of D&D and HeroQuest and Warhammer and turned all of those adventures into our first, fumbling stories and novels. Without the incubation of the 1980s, the golden age of today wouldn’t have happened.

For my own part, The Thirteen Treasures of Britain and the Merlin’s Last Magic series wouldn’t exist without the countless hours I spent reading Rosemary Suttcliffe’s Arthurian books, watching Excalibur when I was probably too young to be watching it, and playing Pendragon role-playing game (which, technically, I first discovered in 1990, but who’s counting). I learned to tell stories — and I learned to love telling stories — from reading MERP and RuneQuest and other fantasy RPGs, and then creating my own fantasy worlds in which to role-play. I fell in love with the realms of heroes by devouring books by Raymond E. Feist and Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weis. I became lost in the kingdoms of Faerie by watching Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, and  Willow like they were on an unending loop.

The stories I write now are the children of the stories I wandered in during my childhood. We are in an incredibly fertile age for fantasy and science fiction. But we cannot discount the debt we owe to the 80s. The cheesy special effects, the cliche story lines, the underground and misfit-like nature of these movies and books are there for us to see, in the hindsight of 30+ years. But these things do not diminish the magic and sway these stories still hold over us. If the future looks bright for SFF, it’s only because our destinies were forged in the fires of the gloriously geeky 80s.

The Things That Shaped Me: Lone Wolf RPG Adventure Books

August 11, 2016 / / 5 Comments

IMG_20160418_171337_829I’m an incredibly nostalgic person.

It also seems I’m not alone, judging by the popularity of stuff like Stranger Things and Ready Player One.

In order to feed my ever-ravenous nostalgia, I’ve spent many an afternoon on eBay tracking down copies of the old tabletop role-playing games I used to own as a kid: MERP, the TMNT role-playing game, Pendragon.

I loved RPGs as a kid. Every time I went to Waldenbooks, I seemed to leave with another game tucked under my arm. But buying and reading a role-playing game is very different from actually playing one. I learned early on that RPGs only work when there are other people interested in playing them with you.

This became a problem for me. Occasionally, I could rope my brother or some of my cousins into a game. Other times, my brother and his friends down the street would play Battletech and I’d try to shoehorn my way in (unsuccessfully). Most of the time though, I just sat in my bedroom and re-read the rule books. I made up various adventures, characters, and campaigns that I never got to play.

Then, on a day I cannot remember with any clarity, I stumbled upon the Lone Wolf Adventure books. It must’ve been in a Waldenbooks, but honestly, I can’t remember.

IMG_20160418_171607_374The Lone Wolf books were perfect: Choose Your Own Adventure meets solo-RPGing.

Unlike a typical Choose Your Own Adventure, I got to make choices even before the page-flipping began. I could “create” my character: choose his skills, his items, his weapons.

Perhaps best of all, there was a method for combat. The Random Number table served the same function as the twenty-and-twelve-and-ten-sided dice of normal tabletop role-playing. It was far more interactive than a typical CYOA, and it was high fantasy with a dark, D&D-kinda feel. I felt very grown-up playing the Lone Wolf books; almost like I was a teenager. They helped satisfy my desire to play a “real” role-playing game. I still longed to find someone willing to play RuneQuest with me, but Lone Wolf was enough to keep me happy.

IMG_20160418_172037_031Unfortunately, in the pre-Internet age, it was hard to find many Lone Wolf books. I’m not sure I ever found more than two. Just as quickly as I had found them and loved them, I had met a dead-end.

Flash-forward to today: I had completely forgotten about the Lone Wolf books.

Then my husband came home from work carrying three rough-edged mass market paperbacks on top of his stack of paperwork. (Important note: my husband works for a charity that runs a bunch of resale stores.)

“Found these in one of the thrift stores today,” he said. “Thought you’d like them.”

I looked at the books. The dawning realization that I’d seen them before — somewhere in the distant reaches of my childhood — overwhelmed me.

“I know those books,” I said, awed.

They were the Lone Wolf Adventure books.

IMG_20160418_171112_623Then I laughed almost hysterically. It was like seeing a long-lost best friend while standing in line at the DMV.

Books 3, 14, and 17.

IMG_20160418_171826_890I started with Book 3. Every page was dripping with nostalgic memories: the map at the front, the “Action Chart,” the “Combat Results Table.” I resisted the urge to look up anything on the Internet about how to “win” the adventure. I wanted my experience to be fresh, untainted.

I started the adventure on a Saturday afternoon, and by Saturday evening I had fought with ice barbarians, survived the attack of a crystal frostwyrm, made my way through the underground depths of Kalte, and defeated the evil wizard Vonotar without once having to start over. I was stoked. I immediately went to Amazon.com and ordered Books 4 & 5.

Even though I had scoured the interwebs to find copies of the old RPGs I used to own, I still hadn’t been able to find anyone else to play them with me (the story of my life, alas). That’s the trouble with tabletop RPGs: they aren’t made for solos. But the Lone Wolf Adventure books are the antidote for the lonely RPG-enthusiast. They fed my need for role-playing as a kid, and now as an adult, they’ve nourished my ever-hungry nostalgia.

I’ve got Book 4, The Chasm of Doom all queued up, and frankly, I can’t wait.

Swords, Dragons, and the Iconography of Fantasy

May 20, 2016 / / 0 Comments

DragonsofAutumnTwilight_1984originalI am in the midst of reforging my relationship with fantasy literature. As a youngster, I read a lot of fantasy but fell out of the habit until I hit college. In college, I rediscovered Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, as well as myth and folklore, but it wasn’t until I read G.R.R.M.’s Game of Thrones and Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind that I finally got back into reading fantasy that had been published within the last forty years.

Since beginning this blog and restarting my writing career, I’ve been thinking a lot about fantasy as a genre and why we as readers are attracted to it. In one respect, my interest in this question is born out of insecurity. When I was a kid, fantasy lit was decidedly uncool. Being into fantasy lit was the kiss of social death, and for a girl it was even worse. “Female Geek Culture” was not a thing when I was younger. The stigma I experienced from being into “knights and stuff” has carried itself with me even into adulthood. I embrace my fantasy love now and proudly proclaim it to any who care to listen, but I’m still obsessed with legitimizing the genre. I still need my love for fantasy to be  validated.

I also see trends happening in the genre that I’m not entirely sure I like. Not for any larger social/cultural reasons, but simply because my personal tastes seem to be out-of-step with some (but definitely not all) of what’s happening in the genre. To be a little less cryptic: I like my fantasy to be a little more wondrous and a little less mundane. More on that in posts to come.

For now, I want to focus on the “old school” fantasy that I experienced in the 80s and early 90s, and what that fantasy had to offer for me as a bookish kid who for some inexplicable reason had a passion for swords and dragons. Because swords and dragons (and knights, wizards, orcs, giants, castles…) are the very things I want to expound upon.

“Fantasy” as a genre is hard to pin down. On the one hand, the word evokes images of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, of the standard medieval-ish high fantasy that involves quests and monsters. But on the other hand, fantasy can also include a classic film like It’s a Wonderful Life. After all, It’s a Wonderful Life has “magic” in it (Clarence the angel and his ability to erase George Bailey from existence). There is no scientific or realistic explanation for how George gets erased from everyone’s lives; the angel grants George’s wish, and suddenly the film enters this alternate-universe where everything has gone terribly wrong. This is fantasy.

Fantasy can also include contemporary and urban settings — worlds where things of magic (fairies, goblins, werewolves, etc.) exist alongside contemporary things like cars, skyscrapers, and guns. This too is fantasy.

And yet, when I feel the desire to experience a “fantasy story,” I don’t gravitate towards the It’s a Wonderful Life or I Married a Witch variety of fantasy, but instead seek out the Tolkienesque. Occasionally, I’ll seek out urban fantasy, like Lost Girl or the Dresden Files. Sometimes I’ll look for wizard schools like Hogwarts, or hidden worlds like Fantastica. When I want fantasy, I go looking for dragons, not Bewitched.

What I’m proposing is this: The official definition of “fantasy” is not necessarily what fans of the genre are looking for. I would contend that what fantasy fans want is both a certain kind of feeling and a certain kind of iconography.

In other words, we want dragons and swords.

Things can stray from dragons and swords a bit, but the further they stray, the less they satisfy that pure desire for other-ness that fantasy promises. An urban fantasy can still scratch the itch for a fantasy fan because even if the hero fights with a gun, she’s still fighting red caps and giants and ghouls, and Baba Yaga lurks in the shadows of the dark, garbage-filled alleyway. But even when fantasy combines with another sub-genre, it still needs the things of fantasy. A reluctant hero may find a sword  stuck in a tree or he may find a revolver hidden in a suitcase, but only one of these images holds within it the allure of fantasy.

We might complain about “too many elves” in the thousands of Tolkien-ish knockoffs that litter the fantasy shelves, but nevertheless, we still want something… elvish. Call them the Fey or the Tuatha or the Fair Folk, but we want human-like, immortal otherbeings who possess a naturalistic kind of magic and a haunting power over those of us who hail from the world of men. We might complain about “another f***ing orc,” but we still want monsters who come from the same deep recesses of human imagination as Grendel and his kin. We might gripe about the glut of fantasy that is too Euro-centric, but the heroes and creatures and monsters of ALL cultures share in the inexplicable qualities of strangeness, of mystery, of “other-ness,” that fantasy fans crave. The djinn and the leprechaun may be worlds apart, but they both spring from the same well of human imagination that seeks to conjure up something beyond the ordinary world.

This entry into something beyond the ordinary — this desire for fairies and their magic — is what I’ve been seeking lately. I want to go back to the classic tropes, to the skies filled with dragons and the dusty roads traveled by surly dwarves. I’m reading the Pern books for the first time. I’m going to be rereading The Lord of the Rings. I’m making my way through the Dark Is Rising sequence. I’ve got A Wizard of Earthsea on my to-read queue. I’m currently on the hunt for original editions of the Dragonlance Chronicles. I’m re-reading some old copies of the Lone Wolf role-playing adventure books. I finally picked up and read The Neverending Story — a book I’ve wanted to read since I was twelve.

As much as I want the fantasy genre to expand and to refresh itself (simply so that it doesn’t stagnate and calcify into something boring), I don’t want to see the classic iconography of the genre disappear either. I still want warriors on horseback, wielding swords and spears, fighting dragons and goblins in dark forests and ancient castles. The things of fantasy matter. They are the blood and guts of the genre, even if we often dress them up in different skins. These are the things I’ve been craving lately; I want dark lords and even darker crystals. I want dragons. And perhaps, most of all, I want a sword of my very own — a sword with spells woven into the blade, with powers from the otherworld, with an ancient history beyond the mists of time. A sword to vanquish a dragon, or to enchant one.

Loving Fantasy Literature

July 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes it starts with the cover of a book. The colors, the creatures, the young hero swinging a sword. There’s a promise of adventure, of something strange, of hidden worlds that await just behind a tree trunk or a closet door or a looking-glass. There’s a promise that our mundane, everyday world is not the only one out there, that there are worlds upon worlds waiting to be discovered. These places might not be anything more than an illustrated cover or words on a page — but they are as real as any world we inhabit.

Sometimes it starts with a title. The lyrical, whimsical, powerful, magical. Things both earthy and ancient. Things that are imagined and things that are dreamed. Cauldrons and dragons and kings and gardens and cities and seas. Sometimes the titles are enough; we don’t even need to read the book to experience the fantasy. Example: The Last Unicorn. This is a world and a story and a feeling already contained in a title. It is its own fantasy, one that I imagined even before I read the one inside the covers. The Black Cauldron — there is an entire myth contained in that one phrase. A darkness and an oldness. The story which goes with it is partly of my own imagination; I wrote the story in my head long before I read the story on the page.

Sometimes it’s the experience of searching the shelves — the bookstore, the library, my own bookshelves — and seeing the spines glimmer like jewels in a dwarf hoard, and knowing that each is a key that will unlock another door to distant worlds. It’s also the warmness, the giddiness which comes with knowing that I’m not alone. That others have wanted the same adventures and the same escapes from ordinary reality. That there are people out there who also love to imagine and create and tell stories about monsters and heroes and faeries and gods.

I can’t quite explain the effect a fantasy story has on me. The mediocre ones satisfy my need for swords and magic. They scratch the itch I have for high adventure and monsters. But the great ones make the world — our own world — something brighter, something more alive than it was before. And they make me want to live more fully. They infuse the real world with some of the magic of their imagined worlds. I think Tolkien wrote about this in his essay “On Fairy Stories.” That the talking trees of Faerie somehow make our real trees more beautiful. And the really great stories — the ones that I think about for days after, the ones that transform my imagination — they feel like they’ve come straight from the Realm of Story itself, the origin of all great tales, so that when I read them, I am connected in some way to that larger place. And it is this connection that makes me want to write my own fantasy stories. I want to tie my own tales into this Realm of Story, to join my fantasies with these eternal ones.

I guess this all sounds ridiculous to those who don’t love fantasy literature. Maybe it is. But to those of us who love the realm of fantastical fiction, to those of us who yearn for an escape to Faerie, I bet this doesn’t sound strange at all. It starts with a sword or a monster or a piece of magic. A book cover. A title. It starts when we open that jewel-covered book for the first time. And if we’re open to it, if we’re lucky, if we’re ready for the adventure, the journey through the fantastical changes us. Like magic.

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