A Grim Oasis

 "One would scarcely call Leviathan Bay a town in any reasonable sense of the word, so much as a squalid huddle of filth and misery built in the lee of a reeking mountain of bones and blubber."

    -Excerpt from the journal of Eliphas Quinn, renowned traveler and historian

    A town built beside the corpse of a beast so large it had no business ever being alive, so immense that its body is an ecosystem unto itself. It is a town where butchery is the main profession, blood and flesh the currency.

Monster fish taxidermy is my new favourite Instagram page

 

I'm not going to try a photo-bash a landscape of the place because I think it would look rubbish and it's better in my imagination anyway- as I hope it will be in yours after you read this article

    For some context, I recently read In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. It's a retelling of the historical account of the whaling ship Essex and its trouble with a particularly aggressive whale in 1820. When they were out in the Pacific, an enormous whale rammed the ship and sank it, leaving the crew of about 20 men totally stranded in their life boats. They had to navigate the ocean without a map, and many of them starved. Those few who managed to return were never the same, broken physically and mentally. It was the story which originally inspired the tale of obsession and vengeance Moby Dick, and it goes into immense detail about the context of the Nantucket whaling industry, as well as the physical and emotional toil of the job and the horrors of being stranded at sea for weeks on end. If you've ever wanted to read about the effects of severe starvation and dehydration on the human body, this book is for you. Philbrick also does a great job of describing how disgusting and visceral the job of hunting, killing, and rendering whales for oil actually is, with one passage describing the twenty-foot geyser of blood which happens when you pierce the arteries of a ten-ton whale with a spear. It's gross.

Would heartily recommend if you like books about whales or if you are a bit morbid (but not if you're into animal welfare, tbh).

This book inspired me too. China Mieville's weird fantasy is a favourite of mine.

 

 

   Anyway, back to the fantasy...

    The monster washed ashore during a titanic storm, one that will be remembered for generations. When the storm was calmed, the shoreline was flattened, quaint coastal towns and ports were erased from the face of the earth. Atop all the devastation, the felled trees, mounds of debris and banks of fetid mud, was a great heaving mountain of flesh. A malformed titan breathing its last. The squall left it stranded in the open air. It was accustomed to living at unimaginable depth and pressure. A deep dark where caustic horrors creep along the sea floor, along trenches and chasms beneath the waves. Above the surface, its body became swollen and formless, its muscles unable to shift its massive bulk. Its great mouth was studded with teeth like a dense forest of ghostly, branchless trees, festooned with kelp and strands of unidentifiable tissue. Its eyes strained and wept, squinting in the light.Where the sun cracked its oily skin, small creatures from the surface world began to sip at the rank effluvium that flowed out. Flies and maggots began to seethe in the muck. Ticks which had lived alongside it in the deep dark dotted its bulging flanks, hideous arthropods as big as cows, with their jagged maws buried in the creature's thick epidermis. Pores as big as potholes and brimming with foul lymph pocked its hide. A mountain of waxy, grisly purpure. Raw for all to see.

The surrounding land was forever changed. The dead leviathan nourished the earth with its body. In a short time, a profusion of life sprang up in the midden heap around the decaying behemoth. Plant life bloomed in the marshes and rock pools. Vivid fungi and lichens fed on the oil-soaked sand. A rainbow sheen came to rest on the water's surface, on puddles, as if everything were coated in a thin slick of oil. Creatures too - crustaceans and reptiles - grew large off this grim oasis. Giant arachnoid crabs which creep along the sea floor, through the effluence and rotten flesh that makes its way there, feeding on it, began to come up into the shallower waters each spring to spawn- a time of plentiful food but also danger for the inhabitants of the town.

 

Strange, ornate crabs like this, but bigger.

 

Big enough to contend with the beasts which stalk the swamps surrounding the mountain

  

It would be a nice place for a holiday if it wasn't for the... everything else

 In the wake of the storm, the region was wiped clean of people. A tabula rasa, free from the weight of history or the stain of industry which had encroached upon civilised lands. Entire settlements were swept away, claimed by the sea. The shoreline was flattened, remodeled, unrecognisable. A new wild. In the intervening years between then and now, people came creeping back, looking to settle again. This new and empty frontier of flat wetland was difficult to traverse, having no roads except twisting, unmapped waterways. A perfect place to escape the sclerotic gaze of the Silent City.

    The mountain formed by the creature's body was the region's only landmark, and people flocked to it as the stories spread. They came not only from the land but from the sea as well. Travellers and voyagers, escapees, merchants, and the morbidly curious came together by the shallow bay which formed on the leeward side of the leviathan's carcass. The place became a haven of sorts. An anchorage. People found that as the corpse nourished the life which surrounded the mountain, that life was a source of nourishment for them in turn. Not only for food, but for oil as well. Crews of whalers weary of the sea took to climbing the mountain in search of blubber. Other whalers in the region began to take their cargo to the town for processing and for sale. They would set up their catch on the shore of the bay, in the shadow of the mountain, and go about their bloody butchering, rendering whale blubber into precious oil.

Leviathan Bay

   If one were to actually travel to this place, despite having probably received a multitude of warnings not to, what might they find?

    Today, the first thing a traveller to the town of Leviathan Bay would notice is the smell. The musty, suffocating reek of putrid fish, burning oil, and the shit of ten-thousand seabirds is borne upon the wind and up the noses of any unfortunate enough to be within three miles of the place. From inland, the town is obscured by a ridge of hills which any visitor would notice to be somewhat incongruent with the flat, marshy plains to either side. These hills are flush with intensely coloured jungle and crowned with pale, angular protrusions. That this is the carcass of a vast sea creature might only become apparent once they come closer, once they see its skull.

    On the road to Leviathan Bay, one passes Skull Mount- the ragged, empty head of the beast which gives the town its name: millions of tons of bleached bone and sagging, ragged flesh baked hard by the tropical sun all towering over lush, lurid vegetation. Sea birds flock and swarm in the gaping hollows of its eyes, the ruined labyrinths of its nasal passages. A chalky crust of guano is accumulated at its top, like cliffs. It runs down the thing in streaks. Closer up, the sound is deafening. The birds' cries, shrill and raucous, fill the air.

Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, near Edinburgh. Imagine this but with added skull and jungle.

I think this is a Right Whale, it looks suitably monolithic and mountain-like doesn't it?

 

    What can one say about the town itself? A town in such strange and exotic circumstances, this malignant paradise, ought be an equally bizarre and dangerous place. But for all the outlandish allure of its location, the town looks make-shift. Almost temporary, as if whoever set up didn't expect to be here for long. Little more than a tawdry pile of timbers nailed together. Old vessels have been upturned and made into dwellings, Ramshackle cabins are precariously perched on stilts. Lean-to huts balance upon larger buildings. Thick plumes of oily smoke drift skywards, a sign of the town's gruesome industry.

    For all the stink of the ocean, there is a human stink here too. A noisy, bustling place, Leviathan Bay is stuffed with people, with drinking dens, wet markets, bawdy houses, and dark alleys. Effluence and garbage make the boardwalks slippery, and oil lamps cast a dim, flickering light on proceedings.

 

 Butchers and Hunters

    The mountain, the body: that colossal heap of mottled, putrid blubber and bones serves the town's people as its primary source of income and fuel. Thus, butchery is the town's most lauded occupation. Crews of whalers grown weary of the sea and its cruelties stick to the shore. Known as flesh gangs, they vie fiercely with each other while wading knee-deep through gore for access to the most prime sections of blubber.

Their profession comes with no small amount of renown amongst the townspeople. They are armed with razor-sharp blades. Not mere fleshing knives, but huge implements- serrated greatswords, saws, cleavers, huge tongs, wicked machetes. They carry these openly, almost proudly even within the town. They look imposing and brutal, obviously used to labouring with great weight in the harsh sun.

The flesh gangs' tools would all be appropriately up-scaled, naturally.

The Golem Shop

The sign above the Golem Shop door

    According to the law of the dead, it is a heinous crime to interfere with a corpse. Desecration of the dead is akin to killing one's gods. An apostate mage, a renegade who seeks anonymity, has set up a shop here. Using the flesh and bone gleaned from the leviathan's carcass, the proprietor is able to create bespoke constructs animated by magic. They can ply their ghastly trade without the impending fear of the agents of the corpse lords coming to their door.

    The shop is known amongst certain circles for producing golems of a curious nature. Strange and misshapen, an attempt at the human form, but only an attempt. And one without a great deal of success, it must be said. The constructions are solid but they lack finesse, clumsy in their execution, almost childish. They are as if the maker is merely approximating human anatomy without knowing its inner workings.

    The thick, rubbery skin of the leviathan makes these golems more durable than the average flesh construct. Although, because the parts used to make them are essentially reconstituted, their overall integrity is probably lower than a golem made from parts which have grown together via more natural methods. They have small, sunken eyes. More like pinholes than functional organs. Their mouths are little more than an asymmetrical horizontal slit in their otherwise featureless nub of a head. Long, misshapen limbs teminate in a clumsy mass of digits. Yet there is brute strength in them. The flesh gangs sometimes requisition the help of one of these mute, brawny pinheads. A useful addition to any team which seeks to harvest yet more flesh from the mountain.

 

 

So Who's In Charge Here?

Who would the players go to in search of jobs? Is there a Mayor? You could put one in but I highly doubt it. Leviathan Bay is a free-for-all where no one tolerates being ruled. This is what the townsfolk came here to escape. Perhaps there is a charter of sorts which suggests how people shold go about their business, a buy-in which seeks to make the town a place where anyone can come and go as they please.

Other NPCs

Who else might be coming through Leviathan Bay with the players? Who calls this place home?

• Sailors- The obvious choice. Sailors and seafarers come and go every day and night. They bring wares, cargo from all over the continent, the world, even. They smuggle, they drink, they fight. They wear odd clothes and sport strange tattoos and haircuts, tokens of their travels. Their skin comes in all colours. People from all walks of life, all clans, creeds, and cultures feel the call of the sea.
  
•  Traders- A merchant can stand to make a good living off the oil rendered from the carcass of the leviathan, as well ass other whales which are hauled into the bay. These merchants broker deals and give a cut to the sorry, blood-soaked butchers who do the more gruesome work

• 

  Savage, gibbering, and insane
  

  Hunters- The townspeople also rely on other creatures on the mountain. They eat the birds which mass on the its sheer slopes. They hunt them for sustenance and eat their eggs, collect their guano which accumulates in lithic formations below their nests. Armed with nets and spears, the town's hunters also seek crabs, alligators, and other meats for selling at Leviathan Bay's wet markets and roadside meat traders.
• Hirelings- It would come as no surprise that there are some people in Leviathan Bay who have no wish to stay there a moment longer. A person desperate enough might seek to sell their services for passage aboard a ship, or a caravan through the swamps in hopes they might find a better life elsewhere. However unlikely this better life may be, perhaps they are simply yearning to go somewhere which smells a little less foul.
• Eaters of the Dead- Those poor, desperate souls who succumb to the disease of the ghoul exist on the fringes of every society. They scrabble and claw at the periphery of society, looking for scraps, their feral eyes watching from the dark. Wracked with an insatiable hunger, they lose the ability to think rationally and are driven by this primal urge.
  

• 

  Probably nothing so obvious.
  

  Agents of the Unquiet- The dead do not rest in this world. They dream and they hunger. Their spies are everywhere, those amongst the living who have pledged their life so that they may rest decadently in death. The Corpse Lords despise those who do not fall under their dominion. Those who are living and free are anathema to the law of the dead. What's more, people come to these lands to escape persecution. No dark abbey rests atop a hill. No watching gibbet or tower looms over the town. Not yet, anyway.
• The cult of the Fire- Adherents to an ancient faith, this cult strives to overthrow the Kyriarchy of the Corpse Lords. The believe in the cleansing, changing power of fire, and they seek to bring that might to bear against their calcified overlords. Rumour has it that a number of ships carrying barrels of gunpowder and weapons have been seen coming and going in the town of late. They are using the town as a base to smuggle supplies into the country for their ongoing efforts.
  

This thing. Isn't it gross?

But also incredible?

That's about it for now. I hope to write some more on this world later. As you might have gathered from some of the descriptions and allusions to the Silent City, the Unquiet, the Corpse Lords and such, there is a bunch more to this setting I have yet to commit to type. It's all in various notebooks I have strewn around the place. I'll be making an effort to collate it all here when I have the time.

I've been taking inspiration from the writings of James C. Scott when developing this world. Namely Weapons of the Weak and The art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.

Peace,

O

Memento Mori: Approaches to Necromancy

I've been thinking and reading and watching things recently regarding various aspects of necromancy in RPGs. Specifically there seems to be a lot of debate as to whether it's a good thing having necromancers as PCs and whether or not necromancy constitutes an inherently immoral thing etc etc. You know, the usual stuff. I don't know if it's specifically my own inclination for morbid fascination with bones and skulls, or whether it's something that most people find, if not interesting as such in a way that makes it an enjoyable subject, at least intriguing, at least something which pulls at their imagination, at least something grimly alluring, but the idea of Necromancy is interesting. Let's say that, at least. Interesting.

By 'interesting' I think I mean 'has held an enduring fascination for thinkers and artists since the conception of mortality'.

What's also interesting perhaps is an examination of possible reasons why it is often looked upon as morally reprehensible. So many times I've been reading about this and I come across the same kind of argument. It's the idea that necromancy, as a force is amoral and thus separate from its actual use and application. If someone uses it in an immoral way, then it is immoral, and presumably the converse is also true. If someone uses necromancy in a moral way, or avoids using it in an immoral way, they are fine (if still a little bit kind of creeeeepy or just morbid).

But in regular D&D, a necromancer has very little choice but to use it in these supposedly immoral ways. The only choices they have when it comes to using the most effective and powerful spells is to raise and bind the dead, to leech the breath and life from the living and twist it, to wrench it away and use it for whatever their own purpose may be. To kill. The general kind of thinking, I would imagine, goes along the lines of 'what's the point of being a necromancer if you don't want hordes of undead followers to do your foul bidding? The minions are what it's all about!' See my previous post regarding effectiveness and its incompatibility with roleplaying.

But what if there actually was a real choice? A choice that profoundly affected the way a necromancer approached their interactions with the living as well as the deceased.

In my previous post, I speculated upon how the structure of the universe is very important when dealing with things like magic, the dead, and interactions therewith. So to begin with we have the kind of necromancer bent upon indentured servitude through binding the deceased, or the bodies thereof. The issue of whether this constitutes actual slavery depends upon the sentience of the dead when they are bound, but I think it is far more interesting to suggest that there really are souls or perhaps consciousnesses involved in there somewhere, otherwise it would be too similar to simply animating any kind of inanimate object. No, the significance of raising the dead is that it is far easier when one uses a spirit that used to be alive. Instead of going through the rigmarole of animating say a statue, with all the complexity of giving a kind of effective artificial intelligence (which, as we know, is much easier said than done), one can dip into the ether and hunt for an erstwhile living, breathing thing that knows how to think, knows how to inhabit a body.

I suppose a neat parallel I could draw would be the relationship between mages, demons, and the fade in the Dragon Age series. The power of mages comes from the fade, and the demons therein are often bargained with or contracted to servitude with varying degrees of success by mortal mages. This relationship hinges upon slavery and maintaining a tight control over the spirits in order for them to be used and manipulated as the mage wants. However, this does not really speak of an actual relationship between sentient creatures, only one of pragmatism and efficiency. The main alternative to this, I feel, is presented in Inquisition where Solas (we'll ignore any plot related points on how Solas is .. well, I don't want to give away any spoilers for those who haven't played) and his interactions with the spirits of the fade, which are far more mutual, more along the lines of sentient creatures' understanding each other and, although they are of different kind, different nature, they act towards each other with respect. The taboos regarding interactions with demons and the dangers of possession etc etc are disregarded by him because he understands their motivations and has an empathetic kind of relationship with them. He sticks largely to his world, they stick largely to theirs, but there is a meaningful relationship formed between the two. I suppose it is this which I am trying to suggest can be reflected in the workings of the necromancer.

The key theme we see emerging here is one of imposition. The projection of one's will onto another without their consent leads to the subtraction of agency from the dominated party. When a prospective necromancer binds dead spirits or bodies to his or her service, they are stripping this erstwhile person of their free will, taking away what makes/made them human. This works whether or not one chooses to include the existence of souls in their RPGs. A human's body, whether they are dead or not, if often thought to still essentially be subject to the right of bodily integrity, hence the taboo regarding grave robbing and the sanctity of the corpse. Whether you ascribe active agency or not to a person's dead body and/or soul results in the same issues when one attempts to interfere with them.

This feels like a complex issue, but the crux that I am getting at is that there appears to be two opposing approaches to interaction with the dead.

Two different strands of Necromancy. Neither one inherently good or bad. I think we can do away with the notion of inherent good and evil and instead look at these approaches as able to justify themselves in their own ways. Because each one considers the other to be foolish and/or dangerous is simply a product of their differing philosophies.

One seeks to reach an equilibrium with the other side of life, to put to rest any misgivings or misinterpretations about what it means to pass over, to join the choir invisible, or otherwise shuffle off this mortal coil. If one were to D&D-ify this approach, a place to start might be the dubious profession of the medium. One who channels the spirits of the dead in an empathetic and mutual way, seeking to communicate and to understand rather than to dominate. Perhaps this approach seeks the dissolution of the barriers that separate life and death. How can one die in the traditional sense if the boundaries are so blurred? Perhaps this path is about seeking a way to live forever, or to radically change the structure of the world so that death no longer means such and abrupt and definite end to life.

The other is about control and harnessing the potential of the well of souls to which we all go when we die. There's a lot of gravity in that well. It is heavy with the weight of the dead. It's about tapping the power of the billions of souls that have lived and died, for the benefit of those that live. Its about preserving the order of the world. Embracing the ephemeral nature of life and holding the structure of the universe bound in an iron grip to keep it turning, keep it working as it should. The fabric of life and death are such that each cannot exist without the other. If death is rendered meaningless, if the wold is tampered with on such a fundamental level, it is impossible to determine whether life can still exist.

I think I shall compile some more ideas and create some non-competitive D&D classes based around these ideas. Thanks for reading, if indeed you did.

Non-competitive classes

Balance. I'm not a huge fan.

It's been sort of narking me recently that all D&D classes seem to be for is making characters as good as each other. They aren't there to make a character into an interesting or nuanced person as much as they are to make the character relevant in combat. Classes make characters excel at something, make it so that they have a niche and their skills are combat-useful.

Case in Point

When a wizard runs out of spells things get very undignified

Take wizards for example- a staple of D&D, practically the sine qua non of fantasy games. There's always a wizard in there somewhere. In D&D, wizards rely on their spells to be effective, and this is partly where the problem lies. I fully anticipate that this might sound like an absolutely ridiculous statement but I make it because in D&D, mechanically speaking, other than cast spells wizards are good for nothing. When they run out they're basically a peasant with a stick and a large vocabulary.

In order for there to be some kind of balance within the game, class wise, fighters should be balanced with wizards when it comes to efficacy within combat. Combat is the crucible in which all the classes are tried and tested for that thing called balance. But I don't like that. When aiming for a fantasy that is somewhat interesting, balance is something to be avoided like the plague. A person who has trained every day of their life with a sword should be able to come up against someone who has never swung anything sharper than a spoon in all their days and instead spent their waking hours engrossed in books, and completely wipe the floor with them.

The idea is that all classes should be roughly equatable in combat for the sake of balance, right? Alright, maybe not quite... I suppose it's more that each has a kind of niche within the fight- each has a combat role, be it healing, defense, damage, stealth, or what have you. But my point is that none of the classes are objectively not useful when it comes to combat.

I do understand this. D&D is a team-focused game that relies upon people working together, especially in combat. But I would find it odd that someone would devote their lives to reading and delving into the secrets of the universe just so that they could pop a spell at some goblins or bandits or whatever. Yet a wizard in combat is regarded as a somewhat poor show if they haven't memorised a fireball or two and can't keep up with the fighter in terms of damage output.

The key term here is efficacy. The default model is efficacy measured on a numeric scale. But what I'm aiming for is wizards, in fact all spellcasters, that are less powerful in terms of immediate effect. In my opinion, what these classes do within a story is function as the catalyst for inserting magic, for making the adventure magical in the first place.

What makes a wizard an interesting class to me is the concept of their power possibly being measured on a narrative scale. One that is relevant to the storytelling within a game. Their ability to know things and to go places that other's wouldn't otherwise is the interesting part. Their power to apprehend forces beyond the scope of the untrained, their capacity to pull snippets of forbidden lore from dark parts of the universe and follow the trail of occult evidence back to its source. To really delve into the unknown and mysterious facets of the world.

The adventure only truly begins when things take a step away from what is normal. A spellcaster's ability to see elements of the magical in the mundane is what I'm trying to get at here. Having magic and wizards and whatnot lends an element of unexpected and spontaneous significance to what is otherwise commonplace. It makes people re-examine the normal, because what is going on under the surface could be something entirely and staggeringly not normal.

I'm going to work on a list that involves non-competitive classes. Ones that can't even be compared to each other numerically because their domains are so utterly different. It would almost make it so that players in the same group were manipulating the game via vastly different mechanics that only their characters could influence, each representative of how the character perceives the world. At this point nothing is off the table, except that you can take your lightning bolts and your magic missiles and put them ... put them somewhere else. I've got a bunch of other stuff to think about. Hummm...

A Case for the Axiomatic Universe

I am a believer that, in order to be consistently surprising and interesting, a setting needs rules. It needs rules not necessarily like 'rules for combat' or 'rules for spellcasting'. Those are game rules, not setting rules. A setting needs rules that are more like immutable axioms. Laws. Ones that can be used and interacted with and that have consequences for transgression or attempts thereat. General laws that function like mathematical axioms (although it's fine if you're fairly sparse with the numbers. I'm certainly not going to spout any algebra) can help to bring a kind of reliability and structure to a more free-form campaign, or spark inspiration for a deep and involved storyline and meaningful character motivations and revelations.

Amidst the intricacies of world building, there comes a point where you have to grapple with the cosmology of the world. A point where you have to consider what actually happens to a person when they die, and why. Whether it is a simple as going to sleep forever and being subsumed by the soil, or whether it is more complicated than that, is open to different interpretations. This is not a description of the beliefs of people or their convictions or belief in any specific eschatology, but a literal account of the metaphysical (or purely physical) structure of the universe itself, including how living creatures figure into that construction.

For example, a child out for a walk with a parent (I may be recalling from life here) might see a dead bird and make some kind of comment about it, maybe ask what the bird is doing, whether it's okay, and the kid might be a bit sad because I think on a fundamental level, all children understand death in a way, unmolded by growing up. The parent might try and explain death, saying it is dead and leave it at that, or they might try to assuage the child's sadness by suggesting that its spirit is in heaven and is generally having an okay time despite its crumpled body being face down in a puddle (or indeed, that seemingly popular thing that adults say to children, 'bird heaven'. A kind of vanilla version of the Christian argument that only humans really have souls and nothing else is destined for the kingdom of eternal bliss and happiness). Does this then mean that every species on the planet has a specific heaven that they go to? Does this extend to plants? What happens when it gets all crowded? Where actually is it- is it up in the sky? Can I see it? All those innocent and practical things a child might think when first confronted with the idea of 'heaven' have an amusingly apt and appropriate place in fictional world-building.

Anyway, I digress. There are a few key questions that need to be answered in order to address the issue with the hope of coming to any meaningful conclusion. And these questions, although contentions is reality, are so easy to think about in a fictional context. Things that are tragic and immutable in the real world can function differently in fiction. They can be powerfully symbolic and catalysts for profound interpretations of our own lives. That is, after all, I feel what roleplay is for. Getting inside something or someone else in order to allow for reflection on one's own actions and life. These things can be crafted and informed by intent and the desire to convey a particular feeling, metaphor, or, you know, just because they allow for some cool stuff like magic and demons and undead and so on.

A prime example of belief informing practice- Allegedly, The Greeks and Romans were sent on their passage with gold placed upon or in their mouth to pay the ferryman to the afterlife- no one wants to be caught short in that kind of situation.

Some necessary questions (necessary for myself, anyway- take from them what you will, dear reader):

1) What is real?

Detailed in reams and reams of religious doctrine are accounts of the reality of souls, how we are animated by a divine spark or a kind of spirit, energy, identity, or consciousness separate (or not separate) from our material bodies which endures in some way after that body ceases to live in a way that is more than just memory. Scores of different belief systems around the world ascribe to the persistence of a person after they die, in some way or another. They attest to there being something more to being alive than just being able to think. Something that cannot be immediately apprehended and can be accessed through spiritual or otherwise non-physical means.

If the answer is, in actual physical real terms, anything like a 'no', then the sole existence of life after death relies upon human belief and cultural tradition. There is no reality after death that we can definitely verify, there is no afterlife except what people imagine in their minds, and people persist in no other way than the memories of the deceased that reside with the living. This system is not unlike the one we find ourselves in here on earth (that is of course if one isn't particularly religious or spiritual but let's not get into talking about things that are real. It's just D&D here, you understand).

If, however, due to the luxury of fantasy and fiction, we can imagine the answer to this question resembles a rather more concrete form of 'yes', the second question must be addressed.

2) If souls are real, what are they?

This question is not really quite as straightforward as the last one. In fact it's a bit misleading because it could more accurately be described as lots of smaller questions that can or cannot be answered definitively all masquerading as one larger question that is full of holes and confusion...

These questions might be something like-

- Is the living creature's consciousness directly tied to the soul and does it persist with the soul after death?

- Following from that, does the soul have any kind of agency or is it simply an impartial piece of matter or energy, pulled around by the universe to whatever end?

- Do souls have any kind of physical reality or is it impossible to interact with on a physical level? I.e. can a living person actually see or otherwise apprehend it and likewise can it do anything to interact with the physical world?

- If they can exist without bodies, are there souls that have always existed without bodies? Like angels, devils, what have you.

- Where do souls come from? Are they eternal? Without beginning or end? Are they created or do they come into being when something is born? Do they cease to exist as an individual entity at any point?

You can of course kind of riff of anything here until you get to a point you like, or until you feel you've gone far enough to cope with anything that might crop up during the course of play (of course, this is no guarantee, no matter how much you plan).

All these can of course lead into many larger questions about the nature of the universe, its structure, processes of change, its beginning and end.

3) Is the world multidimensional?

In basic terms, this is asking 'does heaven exist?'. Are there any places in the world that cannot be directly seen or interacted with by people living in the material world except by means of magic or symbolic ritual or something, and what are they? There are again many questions one can imagine when trying to puzzle out the nature of these extra-dimensional places. Such as-

-Do they have an inherent nature or meaning or are they just 'other' kind of places?

-How did they get there? Did they exist since the beginning of the universe, if indeed there was such a thing, or did some fluke or the universal mechanics cause them to be, or did some will create them?

-Do they overlap with they world in which humans live or are the two places completely separate? For example, in D&D cosmology the plane of shadow or the ethereal plane could be said to 'overlap' whereas outer planes like the abyss are, although in certain ways connected to the material plane, more or less separately located.

-Do they provide a kind of function to the universe? Like organs within a body, are they necessary to keep the structure of the universe ticking over or are they inherently meaningless? For example, Purgatory serves a purpose in that is a place that souls go if they were kind of okay but not great, or Jewish, or Pagan, or something else deemed by ye olde Catholics to be 'not really cool'.

-What are the contents of a given alternate dimension? Does it look like an alternate version or our world or is it something entirely different?

-Are there a finite number of extra dimensions?

-Are they easily accessed (and if so, how) or are they completely hidden?

Again, like, go mad with the ideas until you feel like you're at an acceptable level of cool, or weird, or intricate, or profound. I don't have to tell you, I'm sure.

This question then feeds directly into the last question

4) As a result of interaction between the answers to questions 2 & 3, what generally happens when someone or something dies, and what can happen?

Once all the things in the world pertaining to the cosmology are in place, I find it becomes quite interesting to think about what might happen to a soul after it leaves the body, or perhaps doesn't leave the body. I dunno. This then helps you answer things like-

Can the dead come back to life?

Did they ever even leave?

Does the experience of death stay with one as a concrete memory that carries on into the afterlife, or are all memories and impressions of individual personality erased upon death?

Can one influence or communicate with the dead in any meaningful way? If so, how?

How do the living interact with souls that are devoid of body (whether dead, having left the body, or other-dimensional, having never had one in the first place)?

This section of questioning is interesting in that it opens the way for some really interesting interactions and ideas, but that it also potentially suggests that no matter the structure of the universe, there are some things that are just not possible (but then that just incites a greater challenge in the minds of players upon discovery, no doubt allowing for even more story potential and DM contortion).

Conclusion

Either way, by using the framework you have previously conceived of, you can create logically consistent and interesting interactions that follow the rules that you have set down. Even better, it allows the players to do the same. If the bones of the world are eventually laid bare (in a story-appropriate kind of way, naturally) and the players see that all is not subject only to the fickle will of their DM, a fallible human, but that in many ways the DM is subject to those rules as well, it can act as an empowering experience that helps players feel invested in their story and their character.

Contrary to precluding cultural beliefs and faiths, questions like these can be used as a starting point for imagining ways in which people interpret what they can see of these processes into their own belief and faith systems. Religions and cultural practices can be informed by these things and the ways in which they impact upon the lives of people in the setting. If souls are real, and there are multiple dimensions to the world, and there is significant and meaningful interaction between all of these things, they can perhaps manifest as spirits, demons, angels, inexplicable beings, ghosts, travel to the afterlife (and back?) and they can be present in people's mythology not just as metaphor or folklore, but as tangible things about which to learn, about to wonder, about which to be afraid, and about which to whisper prayers in the dead of night. It all goes together to form a kind of mindset which people in the world have, and upon which they base their actions, beliefs, and knowledge (epistemology- sorry, I said it again).

All these questions of course do not need to be made and answered explicitly to players in a D&D campaign (in fact it is more interesting and exciting for them to figure these things out by themselves as long as, of course, these rules they discover remain the same- enough so they know what to expect next time) but, in my opinion, it really helps a DM to have a fair idea of what happens in definite terms in their cosmology when the players do things like kill stuff, get killed, travel to different planes, mess with magic and the fabric of reality. Converse to limiting player's decisions, I feel it actually allows them to interact with the campaign world in a more meaningful way. If they come to understand the structure of the world they play in, they can inhabit it and use it, they can manipulate it, protect it, destroy it, whatever really.

In any case, the jury is out when it comes to the metaphysical structure of fictional worlds, and you can have as much fun as your imagination can cope with. The key point I'm making here is that laws like this help DMs and players to create consistently interesting worlds and meaningful experiences with logically consistent cause and effect relationships that actually matter. Good things, in my opinion.

A pernicious thing, memory

So I've been sent home from work because I burnt my hand like a giant idiot and I thought to myself 'oh well, what better an opportunity to get down to some long-neglected blog writing, even though I'm typing with one good hand and what is essentially a claw wrapped in gauze.' The left side of my keyboard suddenly seems like an expansive desert which I can traverse only with a single digit, one character at a time. And don't even THINK about trying to hold shift and type at the same time. At least caps-lock exists.

ANYWAY, I'm working on a longer kind of post that I want to accompany with my own artwork and RPG templates. I might even compile it into a PDF and put it up here for people to run if it sounds interesting to anyone, a la Deep Carbon (which is absolutely gorgeous). I read that particular adventure whilst listening to some Cryo Chamber stuff on Youtube and since then I haven't been able to get the weird and wonderful feelings out of my head.

Now would be a good time to mention my utterly sycophantic fanboy-ing for From Software's Souls games, including Bloodborne, so any superficial similarities are by no means coincidental. I adore them. They are hugely inspiring as sources of the kind of bleak and existential aesthetic I simply cannot get enough of, and which seems to influence a lot of the things I write and invent almost without me even realising it. In many ways, I feel they are representative of gaming as an expression of literature and art just as much as they are games in and of themselves. Very good indeed.

The thing I am envisioning at the moment seems to be a kind of megadungeon, a format to which I am rather partial. I suppose smaller and more episodic installments in an overarching campaign would be good too, but the idea of a sprawling expanse of random and spontaneous adventure potential amidst unknown depths and uncertain climes is too tempting to pass up. With regards to the aesthetic, I am imagining it being very heavy on the neo-gothic, or gothic revival style of architecture common in the 19th century in European cities like London, Prague, Ulm, Budapest etcetera. It's a style characterised by a kind of soaring grandeur, hopefulness, and optimism yet it looks simultaneously so foreboding and dreadful. Without further ado, some exposition:

Imrastone

A pernicious thing, memory. What is forgotten is only buried. Wounds heal but beneath the skin is a knotted welt of scars and mangled bone. Pushed below the wash of consciousness into the murky depths, it is free to warp and twist in the primordial trenches of the mind.

 A city in the grips of a nightmare, caught in the throes of a fitful sleep fuelled by its own memory. A city haunted, not by apparitions of people or monsters as such, but by the dreadful remembrance of its own history. A city haunted by a building. A city in mourning for its past, today naught but a ghost of its previous self.

In a flurry off noise and motion, the phantom disappears
(this is the Santa Maria Della Salute in Venice and is more baroque than neo-gothic but you get the idea)

A building that does not exist. Ghosts seen in reflections. Crumbling spires reflected in windows, in puddles of stagnant water that, when one looks up, are not there. A phantom of spires and arches that looms out of the fog, only to dissipate a moment later, nothing but a coalescence of smoke and vapour. Old signs point to a place long demolished or left to ruin. The building's physical locus is long gone, forgotten except in maps yellowed by age. But if one knows where to go, one can get inside this place, this brooding monument. One can see the remnants of its spirit and the collective experience of the people who walked its corridors, tarried in its halls.

It can be seem looming over with no discernable way to find
(and yeah St. Paul's is baroque too but gimme a break man)

It is a place that sits, foreboding, at the back of the city's mind. It is almost as if it is itself a manifestation of a city's collective hallucinations, part of their gestalt consciousness. But the place is real, at least in a historical sense. Years ago, it was built to be a place of hope, a place where things were fair and just. A civil court, a library, a hospital, a place of learning and knowledge and healing. But that was before the misdeeds of a generation past. Deemed irreconcilable and desecrated beyond repair, the building was condemned. The people set it ablaze and watched the place go up in flames, and come down naught but ash. This marked the night of the great fire, as great swathes of the city were forgotten in a sweeping amnesiac madness.

Sometimes one cannot be sure which architectural apparitions are real

A mausoleum of dreams, a place where thoughts go to rest. It holds the memories of a painful past. The remembrances that make people weep, a history steeped in sorrow, in redness and madness. Things that should be forgotten, but languish with restless trembling in the pits of the shadowed mind.

In a flash of anamnesis, one sees the jutting windows, hears a flock of birds. One sees spectres pressed upon panes of glass, having been once forgotten and all of a sudden recalled, their accusatory eyes filled with grief.

The city of Imrastone these days is a barren and blasted place. Fields of scrub, rubble, and wasteland intersperse the tightly packed and crumbling streets. People live here, people stay, but they are strange. A look in their eyes and the way they speak, disjointed as though they only say aloud a fraction of what runs through their minds. They are without hope, equal parts recklessly indulgent and wild, jealous, and fearful. During the day some take to the streets and roam in gangs. The only law now is violence, the rule of the mob, and they revel in the power they have. Lynchings are commonplace when the crowd gets riled. Others huddle in the dark and secret safety of their homes, keeping silent, extinguishing the lights, they remain by clinging to the memories of their ancient houses. There are scavengers who comb the rubble and ash for riches, scant though they may be. Old churches dot the blasted landscape and the rituals are carried out still, although dry and lifeless, a parody of once great and sacred rites presided over by the forlorn and the desperate. Bells toll for the lost and the forsaken, throwing their voices out across the thin air, bereft of cheer or promise of sanctuary. There are markets and people, but their wares are insipid, pathetic. Food for general consumption is mostly along the lines of anemic meat and etiolated vegetable matter. Inhabitants often go hunting for food if they have the guts to do so.

A casual visitor might conclude that the city is not such a fearful place. Granted it is strange, barren, and sometimes dangerous unless one has their wits about them. Perhaps other oddities may become apparent, with strange vistas in the fog which clear within moments, or confusing encounters that cannot be explained. The locals are certainly mad, and drink a lot in any case. But it is not a place steeped in horror and tormented by relentless, accusative memories as the inhabitants might suggest.

Until the sun begins to set. Until the inhabitants become frantic to find safety. Until they see those who have gouged out their eyes so they cannot see the abominations of their own minds made real.

When shadows grow long, an elemental and ineffable fear
makes a home in people's hearts

Impending dusk casts a pall of dread over the place. The fervent, clasping terror that assails the city is not truly felt until the time of sleep, when the unconscious comes bubbling to the surface unbidden and unwelcome. Dark enfolds the senses and the mind makes its own demons come rushing from the unknown shadows. Deep-seated fears are reified, given concrete form and intent.

Most people stay inside at night. They huddle around pallid candle flames and listen with bated breath for noises in the streets, noises magnified by the silence. A yowling cat becomes a banshee, a low wind is a lost voice. A pinpoint of light seen from afar becomes the accusing glance of the revenant. A tolling bell fills the immense void with reverberating delusion. Chills run down their spines and lurid imaginings plague their thoughts.

The security of a windowless room
awash with the glow of illumination
is a sacred and precious thing

Night is the time when the beating core of this nightmare, the great basilica and home of all that is wrong with Imrastone, is realised. Towering over every single instance of terror is the dome of the great Tribunal Cathedral of St. Lucidus. This was the place where the great fire was started, where the doors were barred and people screamed and clawed their hands to the bone trying to escape on that dreadful night. A place where the innocent were condemned to die along with the guilty because the people's hearts were carried to despair on a tide of rhetoric and scare-mongering.

Sometimes this soaring edifice appears somber and dark, brooding and reliving its past, other times it is incandescent with the flames of its consumption. It is almost as if the smouldering building remembers itself, recalls the injustice and seethes with rage, with a visceral need for justice in retrospect of the atrocities committed in its lifetime.

St. Paul's during the blitz is an apt illustration of the irrational kind of hatred I am picturing 

Ideas for Monsters

The gazing spectres which roam during the night are part of the collective guilt that the citizens feel, the combined grief of thousands made real. The gaze of these revenants, which accuses and invokes memory, is a terrible thing. It drives people mad, makes them do anything to forget, brings them low into a state of bestial rage in the face of such powerful emotion and pain. They are somewhat benign creatures, and tend not to cause direct harm to observers save emotional trauma but they are terrifying nonetheless.

Hold tight the light, small one
For the flame brings warmth
And cheer against the dark.
The Candle King will come to thee
When hope flickers like a torch.
Let your spirit take courage, small one
The Candle King will come.
(A lullaby)

Elsewhere in the city, there are stories of a being that has come into existence deep in the heart of Imrastone's twilight. One which is almost half-hopeful. Where every shadow is conjured there is an implicit light somewhere else. The Candle King of Imrastone is part vengeful spirit, part ambiguous saviour. Even so, what little hope there is at night for the people of the city is clung to fiercely. Votive tapers are lit in honour of the king, a call to invoke him, with the hope that he will arrive to cast away the dark. Some say the Candle King is a spirit garbed in spun gold drifting through the otherwise accursed streets, with light cascading from its body, bathing the city in the radiance of true being. A creature made of hope. Others say he is simply a courageous man who took it upon himself to crusade against the dark and the legend started there. Perhaps it is both. Perhaps one begat the other. Either way, stories proliferate and grow within the minds of the people. A powerful thing, to be sure.

The memory contained and controlled
allows communion with the dead,
or so it is thought

There are those that make their peace with the pernicious memory. Those that grapple with it and grow to accept it as part of them, as part of their history. By not denying it, they do not come into contention with the memories, but they are forever altered in the process. By accepting the dark of their unconscious they become pariahs, but with that they become immured to the horrors of Imrastone's night. They realise that fear of the dark is only a fear of one's own mind. But this has a strange effect. When they shun the light and shun contact with those who fear the dark, they become almost as liminal as memory itself. They only partially exist in the physical world. On an emotional level, on a psychological level, they feel shifting and indistinct. If one talks to them, half their mind seems to be somewhere else, fixated on some unseen thing. When night comes they become dangerous creatures, powerful and nebulous as shadow itself. Dark magic, one might call it. Witchcraft. It is said of them that they may speak to the memories, make contact with the spirits of the departed. They can contain the pernicious memory and shape it, control it to an extent. Cavorting in the ruins of the city, they indulge in rituals that bring them even closer to the source of this memory. They are said to sleep with the dead, to broker abominable pacts between the living and the departed. They are said to feel something beneath it, some kind of ultimate cause which draws power from the memory.

Back in the years before the blaze, there was a sickness which wracked the city. A mysterious illness which was difficult if not impossible to cure. A plague of sorts, it left its victims spluttering and weak before they eventually died of asphyxiation. There was a curfew and quarantine introduced and any suspected of catching the illness were dragged to the wards of the Tribunal Cathedral, which was set up as a temporary hospital so great were the numbers of diseased citizens. Those who enforced the curfew had orders to take any in violation to the Cathedral to stand trial, or to be themselves quarantined. They wore masks to keep out the vapours of the disease, and kept dogs to track down any in violation of the curfew. Catchers, they were called. The people of Imrastone grew used to hearing frenzied chases in the streets some nights, accompanied by the baying of their hounds and the wailing of their quarry. These days, some say the hounds can still be heard on the wind, searching for any in violation of the curfew, the masked catchers stalking the streets and knocking on doors, hoping to fill the Tribunal Cathedral with poor and sorry souls. The Catchers that prowl the streets of Imrastone at night are emanations of the Cathedral itself, manifestations of its hunger made solid by the collective fears of its citizens. They are towering, hulking creatures that bear little resemblance to the catchers of the past save the masks they wear. And the dogs- slathering hell hounds that leap and bound, seeking to rip and tear, to collect and feed the memory's hunger.

As amorphous and shifting thoughts come oozing from the psyches of Imrastone's people, there is no telling what one might come across if they ventured into the city at night, save that it would be quite awful. Manifestations of the deepest and most perturbed regions of the unconscious mind warp the buildings and streets. It is impossible to navigate with a conventional map of Imrastone, with timelines and hallucinations overlapping so. The geometry of the buildings appears to subtly change with each observation, as in a dream. 

Yet the entire city is not without some recourse, not without some method of recovery, however obtuse or self-destructive. Even though it is difficult to face any kind of recollection directly, there are a number of ways by which people seek to assuage the memories and lay them to rest. They are a mixture of curative and palliative measures. Some seek to destroy the madness at its heart, others perhaps lacking courage can only bring themselves to find a kind of temporary respite.

The Church of the Lethean is one such institution that has taken it upon itself to cure Imrastone of its affliction. A cult which has risen to prominence since the time of the fire, its task it to expunge the memory forever with rites and rituals of amnesia. They are partly an organisation of healing, and partly one on a self-righteous crusade against the dark. The Lethean is a hypothetical perfect being which has no memory and exists only in the present. It has no past and no future because it remains the same forever in ecstatic bliss, utterly at peace. The parishioners of the cult aspire to emulate the Lethean and do all they can to attain a similar perfection. As such, anything which is thought to carry overt connections to the past or to the pernicious memory in particular is to be put to rest forever, to be erased from the cosmos.

There are other methods that citizens use on an everyday basis to combat the memory. Alcoholism is rife in the populace and is frequently consumed until the imbiber lapses into a drunken stupor. Other substances like opium are widely taken to dull the senses and cloud the mind. But drugs of this kind cannot be found in such quantities as to medicate the entire population.

Ravens and crows are killed on sight- they are dark birds of memory that plague sites of death and decay. People find their cries to be like the pointing of a finger, the laughter of damnation. Tame birds of this kind are kept by the Church of the Lethean in the belief that they can search out places where the pernicious memory resides so it may be erased.

One surefire way to rid Imrastone of its past, of course, is to kill all those that remember it- to erase the collective memories by destroying the houses in which they reside. However, many say this method is controversial, rather like throwing the babe out with the bathwater so to speak.

And still, the search continues for the ultimate cure. For knowledge of the cause. Perhaps the pernicious memory can be purged, but the wound might still remain. No one is sure. The memory seems like a catalyst, a bridge of sorts between the world and some other place, but why this should happen, why Imrastone should be snagged on the metaphysical barb of its inhabitants' past misdeeds is still unknown. Scholars of the esoteric search blindly for the answer, plumbing depths of the universe without recourse, without recompense. If living memory of the atrocity were to be erased, were to be cured, there might still be an opening to Imrastone's past.

The first rays of morning are met with tears of joy and relief

In any case, these memories are felt and endured by all those who continue to live in Imrastone, whether they were there at the burning or not. Whether they live in denial or strive to set the city free from its past. And each morning, the dawn is greeted with ashen, sweat-drenched faces by those who remain, knowing that after the next day they must face night once more. That is unless this cursed memory can be purged.

What's more, the dear reader will no doubt be pleased to learn, during the writing of this article I returned to the doctor's and they gave me a much smaller dressing and now I can type completely normally and fluently. Hurray. Although now I have little to no excuse for my blogging negligence.

There's still a lot of ideas to get down for this, so in the future I'll try posting some designs for adventures and monsters and more of the setting etc etc. It's a good place to keep track of ideas for now.

Alignment and epistemology -Part 1- A Comprehensive or Narrative System?

I realise it's been a while since I posted anything. I have a number of articles approaching a state which one might call 'messy', and as such, it's taking a while to puzzle them all out before I feel it's right to actually publish them... Sorry everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Excuse me, where is Ron?

Epistemology is a word I've been throwing around quite a lot recently, and I'm not sure I should continue to do so without offering a little explanation as to what I mean and why it's such an important word in understanding many things in a traditional D&D game, not least of all alignment (in my opinion).

Same alignments, different epistemology.
(also Ron is not important)

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge- how we know things, how we might go about differentiating the subtle line between opinion and some kind of more concrete and informed belief, how we construct knowledge, and systems of understanding. Michel Foucault and successive scholars who built on his writing developed his theory of social discourse over the course of several books, and it is this idea which I feel is key to understanding the importance of epistemology in RPGs. More specifically it is integral to understanding the reasons for different outlooks that groups of people have regarding the same thing, i.e. the world and its content. Basically what I'm trying to suggest is that with the addition of a bit of complexity, a few more layers of meaning, we can get to a system which is deeply meaningful and fulfilling when it comes to player interaction with the world. From the perspective of a DM, we can see that this might potentially help to create more believable NPCs, and from a player perspective it could help to solidify their character's relationship with the world around them.

Foucault

Of course, this discussion is nothing new. The topic of alignment is divisive and people will debate it forever, and I'm sure I'm not going to say anything that hasn't been said before by a great many people, but I'll say it now in my own words, for my own reasons.

(p.s. I'm not saying I don't want to hear other people's opinions. I really do- morality is a debate, and it will go on forever. To suggest otherwise is utter hubris.)

Actually no this is Foucault.

I don't want to suggest that the alignment system in D&D (for example- it's the main go-to I have when it comes to RPGs) is useless or somehow broken, but it can be seen as deeply flawed when trying to construct a more nuanced view of the world that a given character or NPC might have. It seems that. naturally, the alignment system presented in the Player's Handbook is somewhat devoid of context. Of course, it has to be. Any given rule system that isn't blind to context is inherently limiting, and the more constrained a given system is to a context, or a world, the less flexible it is in facilitating the kind of campaign the players or DM actually want to run. And I know, I know, that in D&D the alignment system is inherently absolutist, as are a great many spells and effects and actions and whatnot, and that's the game. It's touted as evil vs good, holy vs demonic, avenging heroes defeating villains bent on global destruction, and that's all fine. People are of course allowed to play the game exactly the way they want to play it, but I think we can go further with this. Of course, to create a system that isn't blind to context means you have to create that context, and that might take a lot of work. Potentially a looooooot of work, but with that work I think it's possible to make something a little more interesting. A little more complex. And by complex, I mean specifically in the academic way. Not unnecessarily purposefully obtuse or confusing, but the product of interacting layers that give an output which is less predictable and (in my opinion) ultimately more engaging. 

But you have to admit, they do look similar...

(p.s. I'm not going to suggest a system as such in this post- I'm not going to write a whole new RPG here. Not yet. I'm just discussing how it might be done. Make of it what you will and play the games you want).

So...

A person's outlook and behaviour is deeply linked to the world in which they live and the model of the world (both material and social) that they build in their minds. In traditional D&D, the different alignments reflect a person's opinion and ethical outlook- the likelihood of a person to do or not do a certain thing, act to benefit themselves or others and so forth. I mean, I don't need to explain this to anyone who might stumble across this, I'm sure, but I'm trying to explicate what I mean in order to suggest how things might be different.

What I mean to say is that things like social context, social class, and environment should play a big role in deciding how a character acts whether they are conforming to their role or acting against what is expected of them. Interpreting the same alignment for one character might be wholly different for another from a different context, and a large part of what a character things is informed by what they know. One person's lawful good might be one thing, whereas another's take on the same alignment might be wildly different, depending on their world based context. A helpful bureaucrat, looking to give the full support of the state to those in need, would be wholly different to a righteous crusader whose only aim is to smite infidels and evildoers. Similarly, a (good) serf living off the land and providing food for their community, being exploited and stripped of all their worldly wealth by their (evil) baron, might still follow the law and subscribe to the feudal model. Likewise, this baron (good, in their eyes) has no knowledge of the serf's life other than that they often withhold the resources necessary to to pay for their liege's standing army, which keeps the neighbouring kingdom (evil) from invading and slaughtering all the serfs. This neighbouring kingdom (good) might be seeking to invade in order to expunge the malign influence of a wicked sorcerer (evil) from the land. While all this is going on, this sorcerer (good) who has uncovered mysteries of the universe is working to bring all life to a halt, an un-moving state of entropy, eternal stillness, and harmony in order to counteract forces (evil) that seek to torture and destroy all living souls. I mean this sorcerer might have to do some pretty gnarly stuff to get there but, in the end, his (admittedly utilitarian) viewpoint can still be argued as the right thing to do. Of course, these aren't watertight examples. I'm just trying to illustrate that alignment cannot be devoid of context when everyone has a reason for their actions which isn't just 'I'm lawful good'. In-groups can see out-groups as whatever alignment is convenient for their own world-view, and justify their actions thus.

Good versus evil as self-interest- We might be able to help tease this argument apart by explaining what we mean by 'good' and 'evil' in the alignment system, and we can explain it in a couple of different ways. It is often thought that characters in the 'good' bracket are lacking in self-interest. They place their own needs after the needs of others, and that would perhaps include things like economic and bodily security. Conversely, evil characters are inherently self-interested. They put their own needs above others, which would imply they are okay with theft and violence. The problem here is where we draw the line. In an adventure game, there is a certain degree of violence required for almost all characters. A lawful good fighter would still have to fight, and most likely kill, even if it were in defense of another. Similarly there is the need for cooperation is paramount. An evil character might have to actually help another at their own expense, justifying it by providing more long-term personal safety. Again, we see that the implications are in- and out-groups. The lawful good fighter can kill as long as they are destroying a kind of 'other', an 'evil', in the process, and the evil character can help their in-group because they are part of the group, and it is in their own interests to do so. In the same way, we can see how actions relating not only to self interest but also self sacrifice can be made apparent between members within a group. A good character might act against the interests of the group (and thus themselves) by trying to purge evil from within, and an evil character might similarly take from within to benefit themselves personally. A good character might fight a member of the group if they are putting group safety in danger, whereas an evil character might seek to kill a good party member if they feel they are putting the group (and thus themselves) at unnecessary risk. Furthermore, can we not argue that a good character's inner motivation for self sacrifice actually comes from a self interested desire to be praised? If everything is a form of self interest, no matter how obtuse, can good even be said to exist? Is an evil character's motivation for group destruction actually a hidden self-loathing, wanting all to hate them as much as they hate themselves for being such a rascal? Dunno.

I believe here we can begin to see that the traditional alignment system is potentially quite difficult when it comes to actually justifying the 'right' actions for the 'right' reasons, in that ... well, they are all justifiable, really. I might even go so far as to say that 'good' and 'evil' as such are almost entirely meaningless. Even if we add more dimensions to the equation, namely the third moral category of 'neutral', what happens? All we see is another category that is kind of self interested, but not as much as evil characters. Does that then shunt evil from self interest in a passive sense, to actively wishing or enacting harm towards others regardless of who they are? I mean, perhaps, but I have real issue with citing that as a core motivation for any character. We might be verging on discussing the difference between a rationally minded and a mentally ill person, but then again that is a discourse that Foucault has written extensively on and I wouldn't go as far as to critically engage with that right here right now in a fantasy RPG context. Furthermore I wouldn't espouse anyone to actively play a mentally ill person in an RPG without extremely careful and considerate thought, nor would I like to suggest that an alignment system can accurately account for mental illness. Categorisation of the mentally ill is a minefield that I am not remotely qualified to talk about.

We might then talk about whether a person's core motivations and principles can be accurately represented in their actions in context to all that is going on around them. Some characters are more courageous than others, and stand up for their own beliefs, but then again some characters don't necessarily have strong beliefs about method, and others care little for outcome. It's all a bit tricky really. Furthermore, I'm a staunch believer that in real life, no one wants to be evil. No one wants to cause pain and suffering for its own sake. It's tragic and misguided. But then in an RPG, the rules are different. We can do these things. We can explore impossibilities. I get that.

One thing we can do, however, is to be aware of a character's context and knowledge, and take into account what they think of other groups of people and other individuals as well as themselves in order to gain a more realistic and less reductive picture of what they are like as a person. If it might have seemed so earlier, I'm not trying to suggest a system for restricting player action, only that player actions should be convincingly justifiable within a system that can account for human complexity without violating itself several times over.

A comprehensive system of alignment can be a good thing- it allows for greater understanding of characters and NPCs within a given system and a more believable sense of verisimilitude when it comes to roleplaying. However, perhaps one advantage of a more simplistic system of alignment is that, when a character's actions don't fit with their pre-determined alignment, we can see it as an opportunity for change- a deepening of a character's complexity and a furthering of their development as a person- in other words, a narrative. And in essence, is that not what RPGs are about? In my eyes, they have always been a medium for collaborative storytelling. I will try to write up some more of my notes on the matter soon.

Of course, there are almost infinite potential systems. One interesting, putative model might be something akin to a Myers-Briggs test, which combines four mental processes in various forms to produce a complex array of personalities. In my opinion, it could offer an interesting way of looking at alignment without getting into all the 'good guy' and 'bad guy' stuff... Plus it does go so far as to suggest societal roles that each type might embody. I don't think this test has all the answers, of course, but it is an interesting (actually quite fascinating) tool with which to think about people. The pictures are from 16personalities, for those who are curious. Worth a look, in my opinion.

A well as that, this page gives an interesting analysis of alignment in a slightly different way.

I suppose I could sum up all my thoughts on the matter by with a typical Chaotic Neutral response. In the end any system of rules is unimportant as long as you play the game you want. Comments are actively welcomed. :)

And as always, of course, the hunt continues for a gaming group in which I can actually run some of these ideas...