Bach never met Shakespeare. Sorry about the clickbait title. Stick around though, because as always with this site we’re probing the creative process and what inspires it. In the past few weeks I’ve personally been going down a deep well with Johann Sebastian Bach, father of western music, and how his mind worked. I’m finding useful lessons there that I thought you might find helpful if you’re a creator yourself. Special focus here is on writing, hence the Shakespeare reference.
And you don’t have to know a thing in the world about music.
Bach composed music primarily for Sunday church services and often wrote the music for existing hymns or verses written by someone else. It was an aesthetic puzzle for him to solve, and sometimes a difficult one. Certain notes clash with one another and can sound harsh. We (somehow) almost universally feel kind of sad with certain notes and sequences and kind of happy with others. We (again, somehow) expect certain notes to show up after others or else it feels weird and lacking closure. For whatever reason, western ears generally agree on quite a bit about how musical notes should string together into music. Strange, but true.
Bach knew his craft well, understood these basic principles and expectations, and steered his listeners like a sailing ship by leveraging them in his works. He didn’t settle for just solving these aesthetic puzzles but broke every rule and went to places with his imagination that suited his own dazzling, soaring intellect in the process. That helped lay the foundations for western music as we know it today.
I noticed the more I read about Bach’s compositional tactics that those who were analyzing the music would very often say things along the lines of “you expect this, but he does that”. Once you get your head around these fundamental expectations I’m talking about above, it gets a bit clearer what Bach was doing, and what it can mean for a writer or creator in different fields than his.
Here’s an example: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. This (in my opinion) is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. Bach fit this masterpiece on top of some stanzas written over 60 years earlier by a minister and musician named Martin Janus in 1661. It opens with Bach’s melody, followed by the first phrase of Janus’ chorale, then shortly thereafter the 2nd phrases of both works coincide flawlessly. The freedom with which he went gonzo with his own melody yet managed to fit without seams over the hymn is my point.
Bach was dancing.
Another example is particularly moving and gets to the heart of the spirituality and emotions that moved him when he was composing.
Sleepers Awake, a Voice Is Calling: An obscure 16th century pastor named Philipp Nicolai had just taken the job in the town of Unna when plague struck and killed half its people. His parsonage overlooked the cemetery. Suffering deeply, yet wishing to record his meditations to encourage the survivors, Nicolai wrote a collection he called “Mirror of Joy” which emphasized shining your own light in expectation of great things, not terrible ones. Bach built his own work on top of Nicolai’s hymn in a masterclass of weaving musical compositions.
In his piece, Bach presents his new melody entirely, then repeats the first three phrases (with 2nd and 3rd swapped) but with Nicolai’s melody in the choral part underneath. Again, separately they sound nothing alike, yet together they are flawless. At one point, Bach’s melody repeats its first phrase over Nicolai’s phrase that does not.
Did you catch that?
Bach wrote something that can repeat its melody and match perfectly in two different places on another melody. In this perfect weave, he was also weaving Nicolai’s times and his own – for Bach’s audience too was being encouraged to shine their own lights into a world that needed hope.
Last example, and another gorgeous one:
Air from the 2nd movement of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major. Click the link and listen to the incredibly talented Evangelina Mascardi (who has said she spent up to 6 months at a time learning Bach’s songs). You can stop after the first half when she pauses and moves on to ‘Gavotte’ to see my point here.
Listen closely for the melody – you’ll catch it right away. It’s really beautiful and poignant. People tend to describe this as, not sad…not happy…but something rather that reminds them of happy times, good memories, good friends. Keep listening though. You want him to repeat it. He doesn’t, not exactly. He adds all manner of embellishments and hesitations and dances around the melody he knows you want to hear again.
He gives you what you want, but embroiders it.
So what’s all this got to do with writing?
Recently, I came across a thorough article describing 49 effects possible in literature. At the time I first read it, I was just starting to examine Bach’s approach to composition and his freedom to innovate with tuning, different instruments, and other elements. I was seeing him play with his listener’s expectations, creating tension and dissonance and delaying resolution till it suited his dramatic purposes.
And I was seeing the same possibilities in this list of literary effects, such as pathos, irony, comedy, and others. Readers most certainly have common expectations and tropes, which can be similarly placed in opposition to each other. Bach mastered the elements of his craft and innovated wildly, though always staying in close view of what he knew were his listener’s expectations of resolution.
Maybe some principles apply here:
Consider your characters and their dynamics. Anticipate the readers’ expectations and play with that. Don’t shortcut and focus on “subverting”, which is obnoxious and unpleasant.
Innovate, but stay in view of the compelling engine driving the story…the central character dynamics. Don’t mess that up in your desire to make the plot happen.
Break the attention barrier with something energetic and wild. Bach’s church audience was rude, reading papers, talking loudly, ogling women, endlessly walking in late and leaving early. He demanded their attention with his craft. We should do the same.
Know the elements of your own craft. Be a professional – no obvious mistakes with grammar or plot holes, terrible dialogue or vague character motivations. It breaks the magic.
Feel it. Bach felt it in his soul. He was talking to God. If we’re going to try and make something new for the world, at least we could try and feel it as we do so.
Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed a layman’s take on Bach. Impressive genius, even if you don’t really understand all the nuances of what he was doing.
If you need to know a bit more about what we’re doing with Salt Mystic, feel free to check this out here.
In the Salt Mystic Sourcebook And Core Rules, we define seven different ages into which the long history of this setting is divided. The brief snapshots there allowed us to drop maddening hints of some intriguing twists and adventures that occurred thousands of years ago, but we never really get the chance to dig in to those earlier time periods. Maybe one day these will all be their own novel series or art lines – but for now, we’re in the Guardian Age, man. It’s enough work bringing that to glorious life!
So this new lore card was a chance to flesh something out that I thought was interesting. There’s already a guy named Murmur in the Salt Flats character cards that has an Artificial Intelligence sprite inhabiting his armor that we’ve always thought was funny. This lore card was where we go big with that.
Horrifyingly big.
As for the art, as always it’s a photobash and paintover of some different elements pulled from a few sources. The background is an AI-generated image of a battlefield. The warriors’ jeweled armor was inspired by Grant Morrison’s 18 Days art book (which accompanied the web series), based on the storyline of the Mahabharata. The carbine was built in Blender as a 3d model, textured with a steel plating from Textures.com. The ruby faceplate of the guy turning on his general was taken from a freely available png – literally just googled “ruby gemstone” or something like that.
I especially love the way the smokey flames turned out, spewing from that fellow’s gauntlet-based plasma weapon. There are at least three overlays on that, all from Nucly. I wanted it to seem like he’s firing that weapon up, and his general has just now realized that he’s stepped over some kind of line.
Anyway, we hope you like the art piece and accompanying flavor text. Let us know what you think.
You likely know if you’ve been here at Grailrunner before that we obsess over the creative process. In fact, the whole point of the company, this site, and essentially anything we’ve produced is to dissect, pick apart, rewire, engineer, and shove ammo clips into the imagination. It’s in the logo, man.
Dreams are engines. Be fuel.
Anyway, there was an interesting riot at a theater on February 25, 1830 in Paris that has a few things to teach us about how to break ground in creative work. And as creators right now, with the looming and worldshaking onset of AI disrupting every outlet of creative work and threatening that age-old security we were all told that computers can’t create, it’s more important than ever that we get really, really good at doing new things.
New things, man. New things. Now AI can’t really do that.
What is the context on this Hernani thing?
Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables and the Hunchback Of Notre Dame. That’s where you might know him from.
This guy:
He was a playwright too though, and in his day the structure and content and expectations of plays were widely agreed and rigid. You didn’t mess around with these things if you wanted to be treated seriously and not look like a disrespectful clown. After all, Aristotle analyzed storytelling in tragic drama at an almost divine level 2,000 years before in his Poetics and designed the perfect tragedy, defining the unities:
Unity of time: the action of the play must unfold over a single day
Unity of place: the action must take place in a single setting
Unity of action: the play should comprise only one plot
If you abided by these principles with your play, which was the norm for hundreds of years in Europe, then Aristotle’s intense study of impact and memorability and propriety assured you that you had a well-constructed play. Why deviate from that – you think you know better than Aristotle?
Another non-negotiable was the clear definition of genre: comedy or tragedy. More than just branding, this was crucial to the audience’s interpretation of your work. Is it supposed to be funny, and so pratfalls and misunderstandings and goofy idiots abound? Or is it supposed to be sad, and so have larger-than-life people make key mistakes based on their natures and lose it all?
And finally, you didn’t show things that were grotesque, things that were compulsively ugly or distorted. It was just improper and undignified.
Oh no, what did Victor do?
Well, he wrote this. It’s the preface to a play called Cromwell. It pissed a lot of people off and set the stage for the riots to come later. A few tastes of his blasphemy:
“But the age of the epic draws near its end. Like the society that it represents, this form of poetry wears itself out revolving upon itself. Rome reproduces Greece, Virgil copies Homer, and, as if to make a becoming end, epic poetry expires in the last parturition. It was time. Another era is about to begin, for the world and for poetry.”
“…the grotesque is one of the supreme beauties of the drama.“
“‘But,’ the customs-officers of thought will cry, ‘great geniuses have submitted to these rules which you spurn!’ Unfortunately, yes. But what would those admirable men have done if they had been left to themselves? At all events they did not accept your chains without a struggle.”
Victor was saying that the unities of time and place arbitrarily handicapped the dramatic potential. Check pages 15 and 16 for his blast on unity of place – it being silly to think so much important action would happen in this one spot, and what blah-blah is needed to tell the audience what’s going on elsewhere! He continues on pages 16 and 17 destroying unity of time – it being equal nonsense to expect important events all to happen in a day.
And wow, is that one something Hollywood sequel writers should read!
In summary, he felt the rigid genre conventions of comedy and tragedy were limiting his ability to express wide ranges of emotion and experience, the unities were unnecessary constraints that forced silly adjustments, and, most importantly, he didn’t care for the convention of avoiding the grotesque. He called for a new genre to explore the essentials of life, with beauty and ugliness, good guys and monsters, gold-laid parlors and miserable alleys.
“These rules, man! They’re cramping my style!”
What was Hernani then?
Well, Cromwell was too big in scope to even be staged. It’s 400 pages long and at one point needs the British parliament to enter the stage. His next attempt got banned. Then he wrote Hernani, which censors possibly felt was too ridiculous to bother with.
Plot? Two noblemen and a mysterious bandit are in love with the same woman. A conspiracy is in play, and things get dark ending with a wedding and poison.
Rules broken? Well, the story unfolds over 6 months at various settings. That was naughty of him. You weren’t supposed to show death, violence, or intimate scenes. Hernani opens in the lady’s bedroom and closes with three suicides. Equally naughty. You were supposed to adhere strictly to your chosen genre: comedy or tragedy, but he incorporated farcical dialogue and had a king hiding in a wardrobe. Language should have been clean and high-minded, but he included lines like:
“Is this the stable where you keep the broomstick you ride at night?”
You weren’t supposed to let your lines of a sentence from one line of verse to another, but that happened too. Characters were supposed to be one-note caricatures generally who didn’t change, to represent some trait or concept, though he fleshed them out far more than was typical and allowed transformations (such as Don Carlos becoming a good emperor). And he used stage directions like a madman, which was also strange.
So this happened:
Why was there a riot though?
These Parisians had been through revolutions and guillotines, deaths and restorations of kings, and were reading on a daily basis about massive changes in nations such as Italy and Germany where entire systems of government were being born while others faded. France was still in turmoil politically and censorship was a powerful tool to shut down free thinkers and radicals. Breaking rules in art was linked to breaking other rules, perhaps those tied to abiding by norms set by those in charge.
Today in a politically split country we might feel threatened by those who question gender norms or who bend traditional family structures because we fear what a loss of those foundations might mean for the country’s future, what impact it might have on our children. You see how mad everybody gets about that every day on Twitter. Here in Paris, it was perhaps as scary for them.
In fact, many of those same rioters a few months later in July ousted King Charles X and replaced him with “Citizen King” Louis-Philippe.
Why is this a big deal?
My point today is that it was risky and insightful for Victor Hugo to see these literary conventions as the limiting factors they were and to dare to break them. And when he broke them, it wasn’t for shock value as so many charlatans today offer instead of talent. Victor didn’t break the rules because he was a renegade, he felt they limited his storytelling.
He kept his eye on the point behind what he was doing: telling an impactful story. Maybe Hernani’s plot is nonsense, but that wasn’t what he wanted anybody to take away from it anyway. Read the Cromwell preface. He wanted a new genre free of limits.
Impressive. Impressive to even notice the limits. How many conventions do we abide by and not even notice. Are our prison walls invisible?
What does this have to do with AI ?
AI writing tools like ChatGPT are not going away. They’re seeping into our marketing copy, our kids’ essays, blog and social media posts, even podcast scripts. As creators, there is one important fact behind any AI-based technology like these which can be an asset for us. They are trained on data sets and those data sets include conventions and limitations like those Victor Hugo raged against.
Ask ChatGPT to write you a story about King Arthur or a D&D scenario and it’s painfully generic. We as creators are in an arms race then, as those tools get better. We have to get better.
Lucian Of Samosota’s True History…I can’t believe I waited this long to read this incredible story! I’ve read it twice now, and I’ll probably read it again. You just need to know about this if you are at all into astounding works of the imagination or gonzo science fantasy. For my part, I’m endlessly fascinated by the creative process, particularly when great creators stretch themselves to build what Stephen King has called a “gosh-a-mighty steam shovel of the imagination” – a paraphrase from an old introduction to the Dark Tower.
You may know we recently interviewed Daniel Sell of the Melsonian Arts Council, writer and designer behind the Troika roleplaying game. His mind is wired like this too, and in Troika, you might encounter among the crystal spheres a ‘Befouler Of Ponds’ worshipper of the toad church, a gremlin catcher, or a thinking engine with detachable hands that can pilot a golden planar barge.
We’ve also hosted Jeff Grubb, creator of D&D’s Spelljammer, which is another mind-expanding launch into the sort of audacious, rulebreaking idea-festival I’m talking about. Spelljammer was recently revived by Wizards Of The Coast but was first born in the early, heady days of TSR. Check that link to read up on where Jeff dreamed up some of that and how it all came about. I’m just smiling thinking about all that.
But where did science fiction…or science fantasy to be more accurate…come from in the first place? Who was the first guy to put something down that we might recognize as bearing the tropes of space travel, cosmic battles, extraterrestrials, and even robots? And if we can know that, can we also ask what the heck he was thinking that led him down that creative trail?
It was Lucian. Crazy Lucian. He did all of that, and he did it in the 2nd century AD while there was still a Roman Empire.
And what he wrote, in that one cosmos-spanning epic, could seamlessly melt into a Spelljammer or Troika game session or sci fi anime even today. It’s the sort of story where you find a ponderous idea in every paragraph, an impressionist painting in words but with a compelling odyssey. It’s called the True History.
You could almost forget he was joking around when he wrote it. Here’s what he said about you, his future reader:
“It would be appropriate recreation for them if they were to take up the sort of reading that, instead of affording just pure amusement based on wit and humour, also boasts a little food for thought that the Muses would not altogether spurn; and I think they will consider the present work something of the kind. They will find it enticing not only for the novelty of its subject, for the humor of its plan and because I tell all kinds of lies in a plausible and specious way, but also because everything in my story is a more or less comical parody of one or another of the poets, historians and philosophers of old, who have written much that smacks of miracles and fables.
“I would cite them by name, were it not that you yourself will recognise them from your reading. One of them is Ctesias, son of Ctesiochus, of Cnidos, who wrote a great deal about India and its characteristics that he had never seen himself nor heard from anyone else with a reputation for truthfulness. Iambulus also wrote much that was strange about the countries in the great sea: he made up a falsehood that is patent to everybody, but wrote a story that is not uninteresting for all that. Many others, with the same intent, have written about imaginary travels and journeys of theirs, telling of huge beasts, cruel men and strange ways of living.
“Well, on reading all these authors, I did not find much fault with them for their lying, as I saw that this was already a common practice even among men who profess philosophy. I did wonder, though, that they thought that they could write untruths and not get caught at it. Therefore, as I myself, thanks to my vanity, was eager to hand something down to posterity, that I might not be the only one excluded from the privileges of poetic license, and as I had nothing true to tell, not having had any adventures of significance, I took to lying. But my lying is far more honest than theirs, for though I tell the truth in nothing else, I shall at least be truthful in saying that I am a liar. I think I can escape the censure of the world by my own admission that I am not telling a word of truth. Be it understood, then, that I am writing about things which I have neither seen nor had to do with nor learned from others–which, in fact, do not exist at all and, in the nature of things, cannot exist.” -Lucian in his Introduction to the True History
Bear with me here for a synopsis, though it’s a rollercoaster ride like you can’t imagine.
Lucian and his companions set sail through the Pillars Of Hercules, encountering every manner of wonder along the way. Blown off course to an island with a river of wine, they encounter (and barely escape) chimera ladies who are part woman/part grapevine and who transform hapless sailors into vines alongside them should they get overly intimate.
No sooner than leaving that island, a rogue whirlwind whisks them up to the moon where they have arrived in the middle of an interplanetary war between the king of the moon and the king of the sun, fighting over colonization of the planet, Venus. We see hybrid lifeforms and spaceships, giant spiders spinning webs across planets, and entire fleets mobilized in a vivacious, colorful battle that is absolutely mesmerizing. For about 3 pages before he moves on to something else.
Incredible.
The solar fleet wins the battle by blocking out the light of the sun from the moon, winning their surrender. In the truce, mutual colonization is allowed with a tribute to be paid.
After a short tour of the planets and civilization out there, the sailors return to the sea on earth and quickly are swallowed by a 200 mile long whale. I want to make sure you caught that – this isn’t a Jonah and the whale story; it’s 200 miles long and has entire societies living inside it.
Of course, they wage another war, this one of conquest, and eventually have to escape the enormous whale by killing it. In the sea and among the islands (or sailing through the air), they meet everything from giant talking vegetables to talking trees to floating islands to a giant gulf in the ocean itself.
In the climax of the True History, the sailors make it to the Greek/Roman idea of heaven. It’s an island where the heroes of myth and the great philosophers and poets reside. He asks Homer all manner of questions and learns his own future. Of course there is another battle here, this one with zombies.
Not kidding here…zombies. The undead rise from their pits and wage war with the great heroes. It’s just a page or two; blink and you miss it. But it’s there.
And I need to prepare you for the ending. Remember, Lucian was joking. He was messing around, satirizing people who exaggerated their travel tales, and going as boldly and absurdly as his mind could take him.
At the very end, he…
Well, maybe you should read it for yourself to see what happens. Do that here for free.
If you do, read his Life Of Demonax and Alexander The Oracle Monger as well. Both amazing.
Grailrunner is excited to announce the latest addition to our growing Salt Mystic Lore Card set: a mood-setting, rousing vignette titled “Canyon Of Living And Dying”. Download it for free here.
Welcome to the Grailrunner Story Arcade!
Salt Mystic is our rapidly growing western science fiction setting, upon which we’re building everything from novels to games and merchandise. You can learn more about that here. Key to this innovative new way of exploring immersive storytelling is the idea of worldbuilding through a collision of art and fiction. Sometimes the art comes first, then a story is built around it. Sometimes, a story idea percolates and only starts popping after an image is crafted for it.
However it happens, we’re building out locations and settings, characters and background lore, all through experiments and inspirations that often get shared for free on social media and here on the Grailrunner site. The hope is that those of us out there who dream of adventure and exploration, of new worlds and intriguing concepts, we’ll all find a home here! And that you’ll buy books and stuff.
Definitely buy the books and stuff.
The Story Arcade is also a place for people playing the Salt Mystic tabletop wargame to find interesting settings for the battlefields they play upon. That’s where this week’s addition was born, actually.
What was the inspiration for this?
Writing this article here, I was reminded of a really well designed dungeon adventure that appeared in a Wizards Of The Coast compilation titled Ghosts Of Saltmarsh.
Spoiler alert – there is a point in this adventure where the very dungeon setting itself (a ship) starts sinking and flooding. The dungeon destroys itself, and you have to get your characters out or drown. And to me, that’s incandescent genius! I became enamored with the idea of a battlefield setting for the Salt Mystic game where the battlefield floods or sinks or catches fire or otherwise starts snuffing out characters not fast enough to survive.
Generally, I haven’t solved how to convert that to a Salt Mystic terrain book yet. Maybe one day. But one of the ideas that didn’t pan out as I thought about it was a high canyon where the battle was to be fought on crumbling rock walls. I imagined a giant stone golem at the base throwing boulders up at the armies and snatching random people away. It sounded cool, but game rules and art to make that work just didn’t click for me.
This image is what came of all that. I had the picture of a carbine gunslinger nervously clinging to a high rock wall with a derelict in the mist behind him, precariously perched in an inaccessible place.
What was the process to create the image?
Like most of the imagery I produce, this is a photobash of several elements composited together in Photoshop and painted over. The carbine weapon strapped to his hip is something I generated in Blender, but re-textured recently. The climber is a composite of two AI-generated elements and a handful of stock images, run through a filter in Photoshop and color and light graded to match. The background is a composite of two AI-generated landscapes from two different pieces of software, and I used two overlays from Nucly for lighting effects.
What about the story?
I rewrote that three times, trying to give it a western feel. The idea is a dude from a rinky-dink town in the middle of nowhere deciding that the fear of climbing up there is not as strong as his need to really live, to maybe make a name for himself. Or maybe to solve the mystery of what’s inside that derelict.
In the story, he says “to live is to burn”. I totally stole that from Harlan Ellison, who said he stole it from an Egyptian papyrus. Whoever said it first, it’s awesome.
*
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new Lore Card. Shoot me a comment or note if you’d care to chat it up about Salt Mystic or where we’re going with all this.
If you’ve never heard of the Troika! roleplaying game, I have a real Scooby snack for you today! As part of our Inspirational Creator Series of interviews, we’ve met with artists, writers, and game designers who break exciting new ground in innovation and imagination.
Today, we’re thrilled to bring you some insights and musings from Daniel Sell, who is not only Director of the Melsonian Arts Council game publishing company, but is also one of its most talented and mind-expanding creators! Just to whet your appetite a bit on that, let’s quote their mission statement:
The Melsonian Arts Council exists to publish table top adventure and role-playing game books unlike anything the medium has on offer. To that end we help artists and writers on the bloodied edge of their craft produce beautiful books while helping readers discover this wide, bright world of independent games they never thought possible.
Come on! That’s awesome, right?! Anyway, welcome back to Grailrunner’s Inspirational Creator Series!
Daniel, you’ve said that you run the Melsonian Arts Council as a way to write games without having anyone tell you what to do while you do it. That’s quotable, just so you know, and maybe tells us a bit about your personality. The fresh and innovative approach you and your team are taking with works like Acid Death Fantasy, The Big Squirm, and Troika! are an inspiring breath of clean air in an industry that gets a little hung up on armored dwarves, dragons, and license restrictions.
Thanks for making time for us!
I’m always happy to talk about myself.
Q. Beyond the obvious fact that you have to make games people will buy, what sorts of projects inspire you the most? Is it the game mechanics, the subject matter, the twist on expectations…what makes you smile when you think about spending that kind of effort and time on making a new game?
The thing that sets me on fire is a project that is relentlessly sincere. A major problem with roleplaying game books is that they’re almost always products before they’re anything else, which sends sincerity right out the window. I want books to rip off the mask of best practices and boring choices and let us see what you really wanted to make.
Q. You’ve talked before about things like D&D’s Planescape boxed set as an inspiration for you, imagining a multiverse that maybe lost some of its magic when you were older. Tell us about what sorts of games, books, or films made that magic for you back in the day and what they did right.
0e and 1e D&D were pretty solidly magic, 2e had a spark of it. Really, lots of games from the 80s and early 90s had a lot of magic to them. They were wild, silly, huge, beautiful and diverse, there were multiple large companies with money making bold choices and beautiful books. Palladium are still at it, and I have an unironic admiration for Uncle Kev and his Glitter Boys et al. (Meet them here) As for books and films, I don’t have much nostalgia for what I consumed back then, it was too hard to find good things before the internet. I still have and love my collection of Fighting Fantasy books, which are almost all immensely bold and idiosyncratic adventures that I love immensely. Something about dungeon merchants and weird things waiting for you to find them just gets me going.
Q. It’s one thing to have cool ideas about games, but quite another to design and publish Ennie award winning works for yourself at your own publishing house. How’d that happen?
I’m not sure. I started publishing when I saw a guide on a blog explaining the method by which one could assemble a zine at home by hand and I thought that looked fun. All I needed was a zine, so I wrote one. I took an adventure I had run in my home game, tidied it up, and published it as The Undercroft #1. Then I had to do a second one. A big part of the joy of RPG writing is the necessary collaboration that is involved, so I started asking around and working with people I knew and respected in the scene. Over the ten issue run I oversaw I met people who had ideas too big to go in a zine so I decided to make a book instead. Like with every other step, I asked around, talked to people doing the thing I wanted to do, and then did that. From there the world opens up a lot, with crowdfunding and trade publishers and shipping and so on. It continues to open up.
Q. In ‘Letters Of JRR Tolkien’, the professor is quoted as saying:
“Part of the attraction of Lord Of The Rings is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed.”
French poet, Stéphane Mallarmé said, “To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.”
You said in Troika! “Players travel by eldritch portal and non-Euclidean labyrinth and golden-sailed barge between the uncountable crystal spheres strung delicately across the hump-backed sky.”
What’s that all about?
This is true. Part of the impetus to writing Troika! was a disappointment with Planescape. Growing up I had an incomplete smattering of the core books, leaving massive holes in the thing. They suggested infinite worlds of exciting and absurd wonder in little paragraphs here and there between DiTerlizzi artworks. As an adult I bought more books and it turned out that Tolkien was right, the distant towers were made of cardboard. So I now only fill in the bits I want to fill in, and feel I can fill in while maintaining the tension of a world greater than we can take in with one sweep of the head. I never want to lose that sense of discovery again.
Q. What’s a hump-backed sky though?
The humpbacked sky is an English translation of a French translation of a Greek translation of the term that usually gets translated as “vault of the heavens”. I prefer humpbacked sky because it is more literal and also less easily skipped over, forcing you to think about it rather than going “yea yea vault of the whatever”. So it is the undulating heavens between the spheres.
Q. Troika! offers a marvelous parade of character types players can become or encounter. But we need to talk about the rhinoman. Tell me about the rhinoman.
I can’t take credit for the rhinoman. I took it from a picture in The Citadel of Chaos by Steve Jackson, a Fighting Fantasy book I read a lot as a child. The image is so bluntly weird and has haunted me ever since. So I thought everyone else should experience it as I did.
Q. I need to geek out a second. You’ve mentioned M. John Harrison’s Viriconium series as one of your inspirations. I sometimes think I’m close to getting him to agreeing to an interview because those stories have been lifechanging for me personally. What’s your take on that collection?
I love them. I came to them late, after Troika was already written, but they solidified an idea I was unable to grab. The Viriconium stories create their own canon, in a way. The first book is quite a normal fantasy adventure, then it just gets weirder and weirder. The future books use the original books words to summon up complex allusions that only make sense in the context of a Viriconium book. Intensely self referential, like a Gene Wolfe novel but spread over a shorter distance. It’s how I approach the weird of the world now, in layers that people can uncover. Impenetrable non sequiturs is easy, and boring. I want to know that there is a trail back to meaning somewhere, even if it’s hard to find. Just knowing is enough.
Q. Can you describe your process for creating – whether the writing or the game mechanics?
It depends if I’m laying down new work or working on a draft. If it’s new then I wake up and sit in front of a notebook for 4 hours and see what comes out. If it’s a draft I do it in front of a markup word processor because I can’t be trusted with distractions. When writing I limit my reference books since they can become distracting in their own right. I have a book of the names of Catholic saints, a few different books about interesting words, and one or two books of poetry, scripture or product images. The large books are used like divination, when I’m stuck I’ll pick one up and open it at random to see what comes out and use that. The fun part is making that oracle weave in to what you’re doing neatly. I find that process creates a kind of verisimilitude that can’t come from sitting down and making stuff up out of thin air. Going back to Planescape, one of my issues with it is the apparent ease with which they can describe an infinite realm with infinite variety. With this cut-up method we get a taste of real culture, that fractal variance of real life. It’s impossible to make from just one head.
Q. You’ve launched the hardboiled RPG adventure, The Big Squirm quite recently. Anything new you’re working on now is super-secret, but what CAN you tell us about any projects coming out soon?
We’re very busy. I have a few books of my own coming soon; Slate & Chalcedony is a deceptively normal adventure to beat up a wizard in a wizard tower which goes back to my horror roots; Get It At Sutler’s is a (huge) tool for letting your players work a job at a fish market where they can meet people and experience the city of Troika like a native; and I’ll probably have a layer of a Troikan mega dungeon out before that. Otherwise we have another Troika adventure by Andrew Walter, a D&D campaign boxset sequel to Crypts of Indormancy, 2nd editions of Fever Swamp and Fungi of the Far Realms, a Troika based superhero RPG by Christian Kessler, a Dickension burglar RPG by Luke Gearing, and some others I’m probably forgetting. Busy year.
Q. What kind of pitches are you looking for from aspiring writers, artists, or designers right now?
We’re looking for books now. We have a project which we hope to get people involved in creating short adventures set in the city of Troika. Link here for the full brief.
Q. Where can we find more about what you and the Melsonian Arts Council are up to?
www.melsonia.com is the best place to find new things, but we also maintain a stubborn presence on social media for anyone who likes that sort of thing.
Times are tough and getting tougher for everyone, the RPG industry feels overwhelmingly tight and the only people who survive are the rich and the stubborn. Be stubborn and make games, please.
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Daniel, I can’t stress enough how much your approach and your philosophy towards inspiration and the creative process send us over the moon! Thanks so much for the breakthrough work you and your team are doing at Melsonian Arts Council, and especially for the long nights and brain-wracking I’m sure it took to deliver something as mind-bending as Troika! You’re bringing new and good things into the world – we need many more people like you!
Thanks again for making time for us. Best of luck with the blizzard of new products coming. Have a great year!
Grailrunner Publishing is excited to announce the second art print we’re making available at our online store, introducing a thrilling new setting within our ever-growing Salt Mystic universe! Welcome to Crystal Spheres Oriel.
Outside the Central Remnants and far beyond the eastern Shifting Wilds where computronium-infused dunes and caverns have gone mad…where only the bravest few have travelled and returned with impossible stories of spaceships and cities among the asteroids…lies the ruined spaceport leading to Crystal Spheres Oriel.
You may have seen glimpses before:
To celebrate this new addition to our setting, we’re offering a new art print in the online Grailrunner Store, a stunning 18″x24″ poster format print of an ion sailship opening a new asteroid mine. Click the image to learn more!
We sincerely hope you will join us in celebrating this opening of a new world of possibilities for storytelling!
In honor of a Dungeons & Dragons movie being released that isn’t terrible (Honor Among Thieves – not perfect, overall fun, go see it to encourage more of that), we thought we would point out some free stuff that you can go grab for your own tabletop adventuring. Enjoy!
What was Dungeon Magazine?
TSR was the original home of Dungeons & Dragons, and throughout their history they maintained two periodicals appropriately named respectively Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine. The Dungeon variety especially warms my heart because it’s practically entirely free on the internet now, and because of the liveliness of its Letters section where some of the most creative and insightful people who ever braved a dungeon debated and tossed ideas about. It ran from 1986 to the end of its print run in 2007 and ceasing altogether in 2013.
I’ve written before here about the important explorations and inspirational content of letters columns. In that case it was the early pioneers of science and speculative fiction in periodicals like Amazing Stories and Planet Stories where those dudes not only helped shape the genre itself, but went on to change the world later in life. And they were largely driven by the ideas and fascinations they found in those magazines. With Dungeon Magazine, it feels much the same to me perusing those missives for recommended modules, suggestions on how to improve storytelling and engagement, and especially to hear what elements attracted them (and which didn’t).
What kind of things did Dungeon Magazine include?
Anybody at all could submit their own adventure modules, in essentially whatever D&D setting they liked. Even Spelljammer makes its appearances, which if you’ve been around here at Grailrunner for any length of time you’ll know is dear to our hearts! Go see this if you don’t know what I mean. Seriously, just grab an adventure that hooks you, clarify any stats you need to for whichever version of the game you’re playing, and go to town!
How did you pick these as the top ten?
Personal preferences abound here – I like a strong narrative element with some kind of twist or innovation, particularly interesting elements to interact with or strong NPC characterization. Locations with some solid, novel development are intriguing to me. Twists on established lore are a plus! I can’t imagine I would ever just play one of these as written, so the inspiration for me was to steal cool ideas for my own adventures, as any good dungeon master should. Extra attention was given to dungeons mentioned more than once in the letters column.
In this adventure, you and your companions have sailed to the trading port of Sandbar to find the elven crafts and wine of which you’ve heard such stories. Unfortunately, the port is in ashes when you arrive, still hot and smoking from the marauding attacks of a “tall black warship of alien design”, that had laid waste to the town in “a hail of destructive magic and incendiary missiles”. The magic-using baron in charge of the town asks for your help bringing these marauders to justice, as through divination he’s learned they are a few miles away in port for repairs.
What’s great about it?
Although the module explains in detail who the attackers are, why they did it, along with everything you need to know about the captain and crew, the mystery and intrigue of their identities and motives fascinates me imagining myself as player. I especially like the blend of nautical adventure and spellcasting, and the stages of this adventure highlight that. The story advances to a climactic boarding of the warship, which seals the deal for me, particularly with the line among the instructions to the Dungeon Master (which I don’t really think is a spoiler here): “If the PCs can somehow manage to capture the Dama Rosa intact, they will have acquired a priceless treasure.”
Now that’s an idea!
#9 Palace In The Sky by Martin & John Szinger in Dungeon 16
Livestock and people have gone missing in the night near the city you’re visiting, leaving traces of the footprints of giants. Strangely though, the footprints begin and end abruptly defying all logic. A fortnight ago, an elven hero tried to bring the mystery to light but died soon afterwards. His enigmatic message sent by pigeon read only “Seek the palace in the sky.”
What’s great about it?
A cloud island to explore with its landing dock, and areas of the cloud called “insubstantial cloudstuff” where you might fall entirely through should you misstep. A detailed cloud castle and dungeon peopled with marauding giants. You have to navigate all that, but the module warns in the beginning that it “isn’t a simple hack-and-slay expedition. It also involves diplomacy and wit; if the PCs attack everything in sight, they may be destroyed.”
I’m a bit of a sucker for airships and floating adventures. This one had me at “palace in the sky”.
You’re in the mighty city of Beryl, founded a thousand years ago with its great university, and now a hub of human and elven commerce. The arch-chancellor of the university recently died, and the city is rumbling with rumors and intrigue from the politics of naming his replacement. The half-elf chancellor of the College Of Antiquity reveals to you an ancient mystery signaled by a hidden map and scraps of phrases concealed in the padding of an old shield hanging on his wall. Perhaps you and your companions can follow the clues and discover what happened to elven king Thiondar so many years ago in a mysterious valley…
What’s great about it?
Many of the encounters can be deadly, and to simply bash your way through will get you killed. I really like that about this one. Some wit, a willingness to retreat, and finding clever things to do is the best way to approach the adventure. I especially appreciate the lore-heavy narrative elements hinted at in the beginning, then strung along as you follow the clues. That valley has some terrible and mighty magic and beasts awaiting you. Tread carefully…
You are travelling alone in the frozen wilderness, looking for some kind of shelter from an oncoming winter storm. It’s going to be a bad one. When you stumble into an open glade and smell wood smoke, you think you’ve found a welcome place to hide out till the storm passes, a fortified trading post in the middle of nowhere called Jacob’s Well. There are a few other guests there, and as you will learn, one of them has brought a deadly affliction inside the fort that may consume you all…
What’s great about it?
It’s rare for an adventure module to be intentionally designed for a single player and a Dungeon Master, but this contributes to the intentional paranoia and claustrophobia engineered into this dark, creepy ride. It’s basically the movie, Aliens, set in a D&D wilderness. There’s advice in here on how to build a sense of dread and for jump-scares. Definitely a great adaptation of the movie trope to the game.
You and your companions have arrived in the run-down port city called The Styes. Once a metropolis and marvelous ocean gateway, with dancing statues and impossible towers, constructed of marble on a man-made island, The Styes now lies practically in ruin. What’s left of the place is gripped in the fear of murders committed by a mystery figure they’ve dubbed The Lantern Man. In the hushed whispers among the alleyways, there are rumors of a Kraken and weird dreams centered on the weed-choked sea. Hopefully, you’ll survive long enough to puzzle out what nightmares are at work in this ruined place…
What’s great about it?
This is basically Cthulhu for D&D. That should be enough to say. Krakens can’t miss with me. Put a Kraken in the story, and I’m in. Add creepy murders, rumors of an underwater city, and a conspiracy of silence with the looming atmosphere of dread…this one is a slam dunk if any of that sounds cool to you.
#5 The Ghost Of Mistmoor by Leonard Wilson in Dungeon 35
You and your companions arrive at the lonely village of Mistmoor, drenched from weeks of rain in this part of the countryside hunting for dragons. A local family fell into ruin years before, and its current young scion is embroiled in debts for some indiscretions with a duke’s daughter. He’s desperately in need of unlocking the mystery of his inheritance, which vanished into history in a terrible tragic series of murders and suicide in the family manor. Let’s hope terrifying spectres and encounters in the middle of the night don’t spook you too much, because you’re going inside, where nightmares and abominations await you…
What’s great about it?
The encounters with various ghosts are well structured, triggered with the timing and mechanics. I like the backstories and defined nature of the ghosts especially, and the encounters are well integrated with the architecture. There is a genius mechanism here provided for the Dungeon Master to create a sense of dread and wild shock that I really don’t want to spoil. Check out pages 55 and 56 to see what I mean. It’s a great, fun spook-fest with plenty of atmosphere and would make for a great time at the table.
#4 Kingdom Of The Ghouls by Wolfgang Bauer in Dungeon 70
You and your companions are following rumors of the taking of mountain strongholds by terrifying creatures who have risen from beneath the earth. Hushed whispers from the few survivors tell of a mighty empire growing in The Underdark caverns, with vile beginnings from a spell gone bad years before that summoned a powerful ghoul named Doresain who stepped from the eldritch portal to either eat or convert the mages to his will. They’re coming to the surface now, to grow their dominions and to destroy anything in their way. You’ll need to be brave and bring torches. You’re going underground!
What’s great about it?
A region of deep caverns, of strange races, ancient civilizations, and lost magic. This one’s a keeper for atmosphere and for something different than your ordinary imperiled village or stone dungeon. I hope this isn’t a spoiler, but there are intentional opportunities among the encounters underground to ally with enemies of the wicked ghouls and form an army of your own. And I’m not sure you can make it out of there alive without an army! I consider the different locations provided, the details and architecture defined in this module, and the robust characterizations and NPCs herein as a master class in a good adventure module. You really should give this one a try!
You and your companions have been hired by the Silvery Moon Vault Of Sages, to find the ruins of an old library and recover any magical tomes therein. Once a temple that fell in a terrifying schism years before overrun by a horde of undead, the library is believed to contain powerful books worth your risking your life there. And that’s very much what you’re doing. Zombies and snakes, giant snakes and centipedes, trapped spellbooks, and crawling claws are waiting in the shadows, though a much more sinister and bewildering threat than any of those beckons as well…a threat from the architecture of the ruined library itself!
What’s great about it?
This is a spoiler big-time, so if you’d care to remain surprised about it, skip this paragraph entirely. It’s pretty awesome, even as a Dungeon Master honestly, though a player could really his mind blown trying to puzzle this one out. Each room is an 80′ x 80′ square with a 20′ foot ceiling, and a starting configuration is provided for the DM. However, at regular intervals, the rooms shift. Mechanics for how to determine the room moves are provided, based on a D4 roll, and it’s silent to the players. They’re faced with trying to find a particular the pages of a particular book to gain control of this madness, which is complicated by the fact that certain creatures from the Nine Hells are bound into the pages of certain books to protect them. Honestly, this mechanic of room shifts is just amazing innovation! I give it third place just from the audacity and novelty of it.
#2 Salvage Operation by Mike Mearls in Dungeon 123
You and your companions have been hired by a down-on-his luck former trade captain whose flagship vessel, the mighty Emperor Of The Waves, which was lost in a storm (and actually turned into a temple by cultic orcs). Its loss ruined him, and he’s desperately hoping you can investigate and regain some of the magical items that were lost with the ship. It may be his only chance to regain his glory, a glory you might be able to share if you’re successful. You’ll be exploring ruined upper decks, slowly descending into the depths of the mighty ship in a nautical dungeon crawl where the compartments are flooded with seawater and infested with the undead. Yet time will become you biggest threat of them all.
What’s great about it?
Again – spoiler on this one. If you’d like to be surprised, you probably shouldn’t be reading some of this. This one’s an easy entry for my top 3 just because I’m enamored with the idea of a dungeon destroying itself slowly as the players race to escape. And once the players are down in the holds, deep in the dark lower levels where there is only cold seawater, choking weeds, and zombies, you realize the ship is sinking. One by one, the compartments flood leaving the players to desperately cast about for a way out. And that’s when the giant squid appears. Come on! That’s genius!
#1 Maure Castle by Robert Kuntz and Gary Gygax in Dungeon 112
Before you lies the enormous, deadly, bewildering Maure Castle. The promises of treasure lie within, but generations of treasure seekers and adventurers have stood where you’re standing and thought what you’re thinking. It’s a maddening, twisting beast of a castle full of images that come to life, attacking fish, an iron golem, cultic demon worshippers, and a lunatic mage. Yet it’s in the lowest levels of this mighty, megaplex of a castle where it is said dark secrets of power lie in the shadows, and where a resurrected demon-handed man searches for them. It’s best you find them first…
What’s great about it?
This one would be number one for the sheer history of it – the origins of Maure Castle lie in a pre-commercial campaign Kuntz and Gygax worked on before Dungeons & Dragons existed, and formed the seed for what became the Greyhawk setting. And Gygax – he’s devious and clever with traps and overall audacity in trying to kill the players. He must have been working overtime with this one. It’s just stuffed with weird encounters and lore and has enough to keep adventurers busy and scheming for session after session. In fact, the adventure takes up the entire issue!
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That’s what I wanted to bring you today! It was a lot of fun digging through these, and I’m glad to have this list and the respective links in one place for my own reference. There are some amazing ideas in here! I can’t promise that I’ve reviewed every dungeon in this wonderful lost magazine, but these gems stood out for me on first pass.
I hope you enjoyed this, and that you get inspired for whatever creation you might be working on.
Oh, my…the bunny trails we do chase here at Grailrunner for your entertainment!
I’ve got a crazy one for you today: a 14th century copy of an 11th century book called The Experimentarius by Bernardus Silvestris of Tours that he had virtually nothing to do with, that is nowhere titled like that, that played a desperate role in a terrifying city siege, and that has a funky set of cogged wheels embedded in its cover.
Welcome to the Inspirations From History series!
I’ll define my terms shortly and explain all this, and provide you some fascinating links, but let me tell you how I came across this intriguing bit of historical curiosity. I was writing this article here about a 13th century geomantic machine and saw something in the footnotes of a 2003 study by Emilie Savage-Smith and Marion B. Smith (follow the link for a download option). I’m a sucker for little nuggets in footnotes buried in dense books. If you’ve never read Jorge Luis Borges, he does that in some of his fiction.
Anyway, here’s what I read:
“The Oxford, Bodleian Library, Western Manuscripts, MS Digby 46, a fourteenth-century copy of The Experimentarius, has set into the inside front cover of the volume two interlocking wooden cogged wheels with twenty eight and thirteen teeth, by which one can find a random number, rather than by counting random points.”
And I thought…huh? Why in the world would I need a random number reading a book? What’s it for? And how cool does it look? And can you play Dungeons & Dragons with it?
Once I started chasing details on this little marvel, I realized quickly the scarcity of information available about it. I did however find a deep dive article written by Dr. Charles Burnett in 1977, who’s still teaching at the Warburg Institute in London (but who hasn’t unfortunately responded to an interview request). He specializes in the transmission of texts, techniques and artifacts from the Arab world to the West, especially in the Middle Ages.
Here’s a link to the article I’m talking about, titled What Is The Experimentarius? It’s behind a paywall unless you have some connection to a recognized university, but it really offers a wealth of history and analysis on the book in question and is the source of much of what I say here.
Who was Bernardus Silvestris?
Bernardus Silvestris was a 12th century philosopher (and scientist, I guess, though that whole thing back then was a bit of a blur) who wrote an influential poem called Cosmographia that supposedly inspired people to feel good about exploring metaphysics and science with allegories. Anyway, Dr. Burnett effectively swats away any notion that Silvestris wrote any substantial portions of the book we’re discussing today, so let’s not dwell on him. We’ll have to find peace with the idea that the author is unknown.
What’s this book about?
We’ll also have to recognize that big portions of the book in question are a bit irrelevant for our purposes here today, as its varied copies in various museums around the world bear somewhat different content and don’t all matter for those weird wheels or their function. No, the main event here is a subset of the book that Dr. Burnett prefers to name Sortes Regis Amalrici, meaning “The Lots Of King Amalric”.
Why that name?
Sortes literature was a long-standing means of using various mechanisms to produce random numbers (like dice or random pokes in sand), forcing some pseudoscientific-looking ritual involving bouncing around tables, and ultimately selecting from a wide set of verses an oracle answer to whatever question a seeker was asking.
So it’s a 14th century copy of a 12th century book for telling the future?
Yes it is. And I became terribly interested in understanding what manner of questions and concerns these seekers would have to ask such a book, given their belief that this secret tome had unlocked a means of resonating with the very day and time of their consultation, and the crystal spheres inside which they lived, to reveal the secrets of the universe.
So I used Google Translate to convert the functional tables from Latin in Burnett’s article to experience how this all worked. I included that and the instructions on the book’s usage in a spreadsheet, which I’m including at this link here.
Where can I see the original parchment pages of this book?
You can go to the Bodleian Library site here or to the British Library site here to take a luxurious look if you (like me) see the joy of perusing high resolution images of super old parchment documents and the little doodling pics in the margins like these:
Here is a reproduction of tables 1 through 4, which are the ones I translated in the Excel document linked above:
Don’t make me read all that, how did this book work?
Determine a random number, either through geomantic points or a dial like the one on our cover in question. Spin it or close your eyes and start turning, then peek to see what you got.
If the random number exceeds 7 (say 10), find the theme of the question on table 1 (say “about war”) and count that as 7. Move up the table till you hit your number (in this case, move 3 up to “about wishes”). Then follow table 1 instructions (“western face of the tower of Jupiter”) -> table 2 instructions (“13th day of the Moon”) -> table 3 instructions (“18th moon”) -> table 4 Judge (“Alchozean”)
Each Judge has verses, and you add 9 (a constant) to your random number to select the relevant verse which is your oracle. (So in this case, verse 19).
If the random number is exactly seven, then follow the tables as above but begin directly from the theme of the question (“about war”). The oracle will be the verse for the respective Judge numbered 7 + 9 = 16.
If the random number is less than 7 (say 5), then count the theme of the question as the random number (so 5 in this example) then go down the table till you reach 7 (“southern face of the tower of Mars”).
Let’s keep in mind here that the point of all that jumping around and Middle Ages tech-speak is to make this seem like science. It’s possible seekers could only finish their consultations in many cases on the actual days listed in these tables, which would really make it all seem super serious.
Where the heck are the Judge verses?! I wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons with this thing!
I hear you, and that’s totally what I was going to do. I wanted to see if I could use an ancient fortune-telling book to act as dungeon master for a solo roleplaying game. Would have been awesome. However, Burnett didn’t include the Judge verses in his appendices, and the Latin font in the originals I could find was incomprehensible to me. I couldn’t even make out what letters they were. Was hoping Burnett would provide originals so I could translate them, but no luck.
Well, what kinds of questions did people ask with this book?
Ahhh…that was super interesting to me. Take a look at Table 1 to see what issues concerned these folks. Some of these are very telling of the times (“about prison”, “about hope”, “about a dream”, “about a foreigner”) but practically all of them are common to all of us and incredibly easy to understand why they concerned the book’s users a thousand years ago.
One curiosity here: number 25’s original Latin is clear on the parchment and reads “egro” which translates as “in the desert”. I strained to see why anybody had questions relating to the desert (though my imagination wandered) till I realized they probably slipped and meant “agro” which means “the field”, or crops probably. Yeah, that’s more likely by a mile.
What was that bit you said earlier about a terrifying city siege?
I’ll leave you with this story, this glimpse of what the Sortes Regis Amalrici and these weird little tables meant to some extremely frightened people in a terrible time. It’s an excerpt from a book written in the late 1200’s by Rolandino Patavino, a notary who worked in the Italian city of Padua.
The background is that Padua was on the rise and set to be as big a deal as Venice back in the day before Italy was a thing. Twenty years before, the Holy Roman Empire had taken and held Padua up until 1256 when some exiles (supported by the Pope) took it back. That lasted a year until the villain and tyrant of the story (named Ezzelino) laid siege to Padua to return it to the hands of the Holy Roman Empire.
Here’s what Patavino recounted of those days trapped and surrounded by a returning conqueror and likely wondering whether they would all be slaughtered or would starve to death inside the city walls:
“Some of the prisoners anxiously searched through the lots to find when the army was to arrive. And one of the points of a certain art…is to say that Padua could not be captured in these times. Another one of the prisoners favored this, saying, “Examine the book carefully.”
That’s our book he’s talking about. They were desperately flipping through those very pages to find hope of salvation. And it was right.
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That’s what I wanted to bring you this time. I hope you found it diverting like I did. Let me know what you think. And till next time,
I know. I know. AI for artists and writers and pretty much every creator these days seems big and scary and threatening. I’m not ignoring that, I promise. For people who make their living off bringing new things into the world, the shocking advance in the quality and capabilities of AI tools in the last few short months can be terrifying.
However, Grailrunner’s position on AI chat and art generation tools is that we are seeing the beginnings of an unstoppable wave of technology that isn’t going away. It isn’t. In fact, more is coming, and the world of creators is turning upside down rapidly. Let’s find a way to strike the balance and live together. Astounding things are becoming possible.
For instance, today I thought I’d bring you a short overview of how to quickly and painlessly generate elements for use in roleplaying games. I was just messing around, and startled myself with the quality of what I was producing.
Here is ChatGPT. If you’ve not played with this incredible mechanism yet, please go do so. Let me show you what it can do (and stay till the end for a freebie!):
I was exploring Free League Publishing’s Coriolis roleplaying game ruleset and wondered if ChatGPT knew those rules and could generate a spaceship for me quickly with the stats and everything. It seemed a bit exotic and unlikely to me, but wow.
Name: Al-Kahf Class: Light Freighter The Al-Kahf was built on the planet of Jabel, known for its rugged terrain and harsh climate. The ship was designed to be a reliable and durable vessel, capable of handling the toughest conditions and making long journeys through the Third Horizon. The ship was commissioned by a wealthy merchant, who wanted a vessel that could transport his goods across the Third Horizon without relying on a large crew. The Al-Kahf was fitted with the latest technology and a state-of-the-art navigation system, making it one of the most advanced light freighters in the Third Horizon.The Al-Kahf quickly became known for its reliability and efficiency, and its owner became one of the most successful merchants in the Third Horizon. However, the ship’s owner soon retired, and the Al-Kahf was put up for sale.The ship was purchased by a group of adventurers, who saw the Al-Kahf as the perfect vessel for their expeditions into the unknown reaches of the Third Horizon. The adventurers made several modifications to the ship, adding weapons systems and upgrading the engines, making the Al-Kahf even more capable and versatile. The Al-Kahf quickly became renowned for its daring exploits and daring rescues, earning the respect and admiration of the people of the Third Horizon. The ship and its crew became legends, known for their bravery and their ability to handle any challenge that came their way.Despite its many adventures, the Al-Kahf remains a reliable and sturdy vessel, always ready for its next journey into the unknown. The ship is a true symbol of the spirit of exploration and adventure, and a testament to the ingenuity and determination of its crew.
Speed: Refers to the ship’s maximum velocity and maneuverability. A score of 7 means the Al-Kahf is a relatively fast and agile ship, able to make quick turns and escape danger.
Handling: Refers to the ship’s ease of control and responsiveness. A score of 6 indicates that the Al-Kahf is easy to control and responds well to inputs from the pilot.
Armor: Refers to the ship’s durability and protection against damage. A score of 5 means that the Al-Kahf has average armor for a light freighter, able to withstand some damage but not designed for heavy combat.
System Strain: Refers to the ship’s ability to handle stress and strain during high-stress situations, such as combat or high-speed travel. A score of 4 means that the Al-Kahf is capable of handling moderate stress, but may struggle during intense situations.
Crew Quarters: Refers to the ship’s accommodation for crew members. A score of 3 means that the Al-Kahf has basic crew quarters, providing a comfortable place to sleep but not much else.
Cargo Hold: Refers to the ship’s storage capacity for goods and supplies. A score of 8 indicates that the Al-Kahf has a large and spacious cargo hold, capable of storing a significant amount of goods and supplies.
Fuel Capacity: Refers to the ship’s ability to store fuel and make long journeys without refueling. A score of 9 means that the Al-Kahf has an impressive fuel capacity, allowing it to make long journeys without worrying about refueling.
I am a huge fan of the way Shawn Tomkin manages dice tables for solo roleplaying in his Ironsworn and Starforged roleplaying games. His philosophy of ‘creative interpretation’ at work when we roll some dice with a particular context in mind is fascinating. Basically, we bring baggage to the dice table result, and the game mechanics bring it all to life in a unique way. I wanted to see if ChatGPT could generate a 100-entry encounter table of monsters, which it did no problem at all. So I pushed a little harder and asked for a 66-entry dice table of different types of space ports. And I got this:
Commercial spaceport
Military spaceport
Research spaceport
Smuggling den
Trading outpost
Asteroid mining station
Gas mining platform
Refueling station
Communications relay station
Repair and maintenance station
Luxury space resort
Cargo transfer station
Private spaceport
Space museum
Black market hub
Planetary defense platform
Medical station
Terraforming station
Scientific research facility
Space elevator
Zero-gravity training facility
Space tourism port
Space manufacturing facility
Cryonics storage center
Astrobiology research station
Interstellar gateway
Wormhole research station
Cargo hub
Passenger terminal
Habitat ring station
Interstellar trade hub
Orbital defense platform
Space colony supply depot
34. Colony ship docking facility 35. Refugee processing center 36. Galactic news agency headquarters 37. Mercenary outpost 38. Pirates’ haven 39. Alien embassy 40. Emergency response center 41. Planetary observation post 42. Interstellar prison 43. Military research facility 44. Debris clearing station 45. Terraformed planet terminal 46. Space observatory 47. Space casino 48. Interstellar sports stadium 49. Weapon testing range 50. Hyperspace testing facility 51. Cosmic phenomenon research center 52. Space-time anomalies research station 53. Galactic archives 54. Intergalactic judiciary court 55. Space monastery 56. Zero-gravity art gallery 57. Space academy 58. Celestial navigation training center 59. Smuggler’s warehouse 60. Orbital refinery 61. Astro-mining hub 62. Interstellar advertising platform 63. Space advertising platform 64. Space entertainment center 65. Space hotel 66. Interstellar luxury cruise liner.
Finally, I was curious whether one of the many art generators out there, like Codeway’s Wonder app or Stable Diffusion can generate maps. And the answer is sort of. Here are some results as they were generated by Wonder without any editing whatsoever and based solely on precisely worded text prompts:
Just extrapolating, I requested some isometric maps for some lower level, grittier encounters. Again, these are from Wonder and with absolutely no editing whatsoever:
Come on! That’s incredible, right?!
I’m not ignoring that this is a delicate issue for people who make maps or write encounter tables for a living. But for my part, I see this incredible new technology as pushing me to be better, to be competitive and push the boundaries of my craft so I can stand above works that are jumbles of previous works.
Just ask ChatGPT to tell you a story, and you’ll see what I mean. They’re the most plain vanilla, generic fan fiction you can imagine. It’s terrible, no matter what you do with the prompts. And that’s the point I’m making here. If I worked with isometric maps for a living, I’d probably know these images for being generic and predictable. But I don’t, and I think they’re amazing, practically ready to use in a game with some minor adjustments.
Now for the freebie I promised you (click the image to download this in pdf). I present to you a set of adventure-building dice tables entirely built in ChatGPT:
Anyway, delicate but intriguing topic today. Go explore and let me know what you come up with!
Grailrunner Publishing 