Tuesday, May 31, 2022

The Exalted and the Abased

 

The Exalted and the AbasedThe Exalted and the Abased by Damian Murphy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve run out of superlatives.

If I haven’t convinced you of the brilliance of Damian Murphy’s writings in my reviews of Psalms of the Magistrate, The Star of Gnosia, The Academy Outside of Ingolstadt, Abyssinia, and The Acephalic Imperial, I’ll never convince you of anything. If any of these have convinced you in the least bit, read on . . .

While all of the stories in The Exalted and the Abased contain the signature elements of Murphy’s work: transgressions of rulesets, enigmatic processes, systemic bureaucracy (that may or may not exhibit “mystical” qualities), and so forth; (these are to be expected) there is a deeper feel to these elements, a moral (amoral?) dimension that, while not absent from Murphy’s earlier works, seems to be much more explicit in this volume. This hews closer to an esoteric primer than a work of fiction. Perhaps a series of parables? Because nothing is given outright. There is still a work for the reader to do, if they wish to reach for and possibly seize the reward.

Not every quest results in a treasure, not every question leads to an answer, and not every prophecy fully foretells the future. Such are the vagaries of "The Ivory Sovereign". Here, meanings are hinted at, but obfuscated. Potentialities arise, then, just as quickly, fade away. Revelations are not heralded by a resounding "yes" or "no". There is still much divining to do. The mystery-qua-mystery is everything.

Three of my favorite writers - Borges, Calvino, and Kafka - came to mind as I read "The Notary". Needless to say, this surreal, ever so slightly spry story caught and kept my attention. I don't want to give details on which aspects of the story seemed redolent of which author. That would take your fun out of reading it. Discover for yourself!

Amorality, gamesmanship, and a strong dose of trickery in pursuit of a higher knowledge, a higher being, are woven throughout Murphy's work. These tropes come to the forefront in "The Hieromantic Mirror," a longish (novella? I haven't counted words) piece that lauds the breaking of rules and the breaking of barriers. Here, the unknown becomes known through focus and determination. Will is everything.

Some of the most rewarding experiences are those in which you don't know the rules of the game, but find yourself in the middle of the action anyway. You might even be the focus against which the rules seem arrayed, so you push against them, carefully, at first, sometimes getting away with it, sometimes being censured. And sometimes you win when you lose. Such is the experience in the titular story.

"An Incident in the House of Destiny" reflects on chance versus destiny and which subsumes which. This is personified in two characters and idolized in two houses (which are more akin to temples). An incident is examined, but one isn't completely clear regarding the dominance of destiny over chance or vice-versa. Readers aren't to reach a conclusion, but are forced to contemplate and think, finding answers themselves.

The Exalted and the Abased is a challenging work, yes. But the best rewards are reserved for those who pass the toughest challenges. One doesn’t just read this book, one engages with it. One works (and does a Working, or several Workings) as one reads. It’s not for the faint of heart. Those who persevere through force of will, intelligence, dedicated practice, and a bit of whimsy will understand The Understanding.

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Monday, May 30, 2022

Khazad-dûm, outgunned in Traveller, and 5E

 Trigger Warning: If you looooove D&D 5E, you're probably not going to like this post. I mean, you do you, man. Whatever gets you to the table is great for you. But you're likely not going to like this post.

Events in original version of The Fellowship of the Ring are admittedly different than the movie; in some ways vastly different, in other ways more subtle. The scene in Moria at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm is no exception. The movie, of course, compresses time and does not allow for the same explication that the book provides. Be that as it may, one thing is common: the Fellowship are pursued by orcs. Lots of orcs. In the movie version, they all flee once the Balrog appears, in the book version, they move clear out of the way, but do not flee altogether. They watch, along with the Fellowship, as Gandalf declares his title, gives his command, and seals his own fate.

But the thing I'd like to emphasize here is the sheer number of orcs. I'm sure some enterprising nerd with all kinds of time on their hands has already figured out exactly how many orcs appear in the movie scene. Hundreds, to be sure. The book doesn't elaborate, but states that when they begin to fight their way out of the Chamber of Records "how many there were the Company could not count". I'm guessing they weren't stopping to count. Even with the power that the Fellowship represented, with one of the most powerful wizards of Middle-Earth (not even a human - people forget that Gandalf was, essentially, a demi-god), a Ranger of renown (who wants to guess at Aragorn's level as a ranger? 10th? 12th?), a great warrior in Boromir, a heroic dwarf and elf, and a smattering of halflings (they might be bordering on 2nd level at this point . . . mmmmmmaybe); even with all this firepower, what was Gandalf's reaction? "Fly!"

Remember, this was before the Balrog showed up. With so many orcs giving chase (Okay, they had a cave troll and a big chieftain orc - who doesn't even get a mention in the movie), the leader of this very capable group of adventurers felt it best to just get the heck out of there!

Back in 1983 (I only remember because I watched the Twilight Zone movie on HBO at the Recreation Center right before the game I'm about to tell you about), I played a game of Traveller run by an older gentleman whose name I can't remember. He would run games (D&D and Traveller, mostly, though I only got in on a few of his games) for us kids (I was 13 or 14 at the time - most of the others were a year or two younger than me). In this game, I had a character with a leadership skill of 5, which is absolutely ludicrous. I rolled him up openly and honestly using Mercenary, Traveller Book 4. This guy legit had Leadership - 5. Unfortunately, as a 14 year old kid, I did not.

The scenario was a ticket to assist in training and acting as "observers" (read: people who shoot guns at other people for money) on a backwater planet that was trying to establish its hegemony against, you guessed it, the Imperium. We had visions of glory and took a good part of the session planning the tactics and training the group of rebels in how to fight using guerilla tactics, for the most part. My Leadership score gave us some hints as to how to better prosecute our battle plan, though the GM left it mostly up to us to plan and execute the plan. 

Things started out great. We took out an APC using, of all things, cow manure (flushing the soldiers out and gunning them down, then taking the APC for our own use). Then, we downed an Air Raft and were able to repair it enough for our use. We had a few successful strikes against the local Imperial garrison, wiping out several platoons of surprised low-ranking Imperial navy personnel.

Then the Imperium got serious. They brought in the Marines in a trio of ships boats from ships that were orbiting the planet. And . . . a meson accelerator.

Oops.

Seeing our trainees being needled like swiss cheese with gauss rifles and watching the meson accelerator disintegrate an entire village (and surrounding environs), we felt it wisest to flee.

But it was too late at that point. We had picked our fight. And the fight picked us. Or, rather, the ravens picked our bones clean. It was an utter disaster.

And I'll never forget it. We were devastated that we had been so callously and easily wiped out by the Imperial Marines. But we were elated to be a part of that story, even if the Imperium's data logs would register perhaps one sentence on the incident. We had made history.

Since that time, I've not been afraid to die in an RPG. I've lost countless characters in a number of different games. I'm kind of proud of those graveyards and even more proud of the few characters who made it through adventuring to live to a ripe old age. Okay, one of them was artificially-aged by a ghost, but that's beside the point. 

But I do still get a thrill when my party is outnumbered. Especially when it's *really* outnumbered. These situations can combine the best of hack 'n' slash, puzzle solving (aka: strategy), and roleplaying. Which is more exciting: a group of adventurers ganging up on a big baddie and using their various skills and powers to defeat a single monstrous foe, or having to puzzle out a way to get away when faced with hundreds of little baddies? I can go either way, to be honest. But the prospect of dying at the hands of hundreds of kobolds is, somehow, more terrifying than facing Lolth and knowing you are going to be toast, in all likelihood. I think it boild down to statistics. When my analytical mind boils the situation down, I'm faced with a 5% chance every time one of those little critters attacks that it's going to be a critical hit. And in the games I play (and run), the critical hits tables are absolutely ruthless

Same with that Traveller game. When it dawned on us that those three long cylinders dropping from the skies were filled with Imperial Marines (using Gauss Guns, no less) and a Meson Accelerator. Well, we knew the jig was up. And yet, being early teens, we fought on. Stupid. Just plain stupid. We should have fled. We might have had a chance to escape. Or at least to be captured by Imperial authorities and be "re-educated," if the local noble was feeling in a generous mood. Being stuck in that situation could have forced into some great roleplaying. Alas, we were young and inexperienced. But we learned from it.

Now, full disclosure: I have not played 5e yet. It's been out how many years? I dunno. Many. I have plenty to keep my plate full between my regular AD&D 2e game, my semi-regular DCC game, and any games I might randomly run once in a while (usually DCC, MCC, Traveller, Delta Green, or Call of Cthulhu). Plus with all the con games I play in (I usually try to get at least one DCC game, one CoC game, one EPT game, one miniatures game, and one game I've never played before) I really have no need to play 5e. Yeah, it's what all the cool kids are doing, but I never was a cool kid, ESPECIALLY when I was young and into gaming, when mentioning that you played D&D was liable to get you taped to a locker room pillar and have the entire football team punch you in the arms - yeah, that happened to me. Tell me all about bullying . . . 

Anyway, I haven't played 5e, so shoot me. I have lots of friends who have, and they are still cool people. So I've got nothing against others playing 5e. Whatever makes the hobby grow, I'm cool with it, honestly. But I've learned enough about 5e that I can say that I have intentionally avoided 5e. At last Garycon, I sat down to the table thinking I was playing Mothership, when the GM said "we'll be playing a 5th edition version of this scenario". Thankfully, two other players spoke before I did, saying that they came to this session intentionally to learn Mothership. I'd played Mothership a few times before, and that's what I was looking for, too. So I threw in my 2 cents, as well. The GM graciously switched gears and we played using the Mothership rules. Phew! That was a close one!

My two big problems with 5e, and I'm speaking from a stance of relative ignorance here, I admit are: 1) the fact that you have to try really, really hard to die in 5e, from everything I've heard from people who play the game and 2) Challenge Ratings for monsters facilitate this, more-or-less guaranteeing a "balanced" encounter where the difficulty of defeating the monsters is commensurate with the power of the PC party. This is purely a preference. If you play that way, I'm not knocking you. You do you, man. But as for me and my house, we will face enemies that are well beyond our power to defeat and, usually, we will die.

Now is the part where you type up comments telling me I'm sociopathic (if you've ever met me, you'll now how far from the truth that is) and that I'm a boomer (false: my parents were boomers. I'm as Gen-X as they come and I've got the credentials to prove it). But what I'd really like to know are: have you ever faced overwhelming odds, in terms of sheer numbers, as a player? Or have you thrown impossible odds at your players as a DM? And most importantly, how did you handle it? Has it ever gone horribly wrong (for the players, not for the characters)? And what are some of the best solutions you've seen come out of those situations?

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Monday, May 23, 2022

Wherein I Lament the Loss of G+

While reading a post from the excellent RPG blog "Rise Up Comus," I was struck by the following paragraph from Josh:


having a game based on a my own post is enormously flattering. But beyond that, I love how design in the OSR space is often translatory. That is, one writer creates an idea, two authors iterate on it, a fourth author unifies the disparate iterations, etc. I find that fascinating. My post was a response to another blog post, and Ray Otus carries the torch even further than I did. Wonderful.


And while I own an original art piece from Ray and think he's fantastic, I saw something beyond this simple, yet profound paragraph. This got me thinking about why I miss the old Google+ RPG communities so much. It wasn't just having a listening voice, it was the spontaneous bursts of creativity that blossomed out of the simplest comment. It was really more about collaboration than camaraderie. THAT is what I miss in most social media. G+ had just the right amount of mental creative space to collaborate. Twitter doesn't have the characters to do it. Facebook is much more concerned with the social aspect of gaming, I find (with lots of inside jokes, etc.). Instagram has a similar problem to Twitter in that few people will take the time to read a longer post when there are so many pretty pictures and reels flying around. Mewe devolved into an unregulated morass; at least it did to me. And don't even get me started on TicToc. 

Part of the problem may be too many choices. We're spread too thin to effectively and consistently work together to create synergy on our RPG projects. Divided, we fall.

Blogs probably come the closest to the functional space of G+, but jumping from blog to blog is cumbersome (though, I admit, I kind of enjoy the cumbersome aspect in some ways. It *feels* more analog to me, even though it isn't). For some reason, G+, by it's nature, fostered the action of picking up where someone else left off and running with the ball, so to speak. Many really great RPG materials came out at that time as a result. And while there continue to be great materials coming out, there hasn't been such an outpouring of creative, collaborative spirit since. There was a certain ease of use and fluidity to G+ that I just don't see anywhere else. I also feel like there was a great deal of balkanization that happened when G+ gave up the ghost. In our mad dash to find a substitute, we all sort of ended up scattered into online pockets here and there, a little fearful to reach out again, maybe, for fear of being so disappointed again. That loss took a serious and very real emotional toll on a lot of us.

I feel like conventions are the best places to pick up the pieces and maybe reconstruct something of that feeling of common creative push in person, but we need something else to foster ongoing work like this. 

Or maybe I'm just turning into a bitter old man. 

Please, prove me wrong.

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Saturday, May 7, 2022

Oculus Praedecessoris Out Now!

Edit: I have sold out of all my personal copies of Oculus (save one, and I'm keeping that one). Thanks to those who jumped in so quickly! I do have a few other titles of mine for sale, but they are going fast!

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My newest fiction collection is out! Oculus Praededecessoris features stories three stories and one novella of weird "ancestral" origin (define that as you will - one of them has hauntological elements, if that gives any indicator) in a beautiful artifact as only Mount Abraxas Press can deliver. Stories included are:

"Gemini"

'Liminal Slip"

"Obverse Reverse"

"The Simulacra"

It's a cloth-bound hardcover, with silk ribbon, and several pieces of art by legendary dark surreal artist Roj Friborg. It is a part of the new Mount Abraxas series "Seance in the Grey Garden," of which I am absolutely thrilled to be a part! Only 103 copies are printed, of which I have a few. If you're interested in buying one (or if you're interested in buying some of my other Mount Abraxas releases, including my collection The Varvaros Ascensions), please contact me directly at F_o_r_r_e_s_t_J_A_g_u_i_r_r_e_@_G_m_a_i_l_._c_o_m (remove the underscores) and I will get you pricing information. They are not cheap! But you'll get your moneys' worth, guaranteed. These books are collector's items that appreciate in value rather quickly and you won't see them re-released in a later edition from Mount Abraxas. 

I am using all money raised this way toward buying myself a (rather expensive) typewriter. I've only got a few copies, so first come, first-served! Here are some photos showing the book, cover, and artwork:


Cover


End Papers


Pre-title page


Title Page


Internal Page 


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If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!