[Dreadful Worlds] Brainstorming & Developement

Hi, my name is J. Vandel and like so many others want to try to do a Hack of AW. Neither am I convinced that I am a great writer nor a briliant gamedesigner, but I am motivated to create a game that I can enjoy and build it on my personal experiences and motivations. If I handle the writing of a RPG as a literary tradition, which is comprises of writing-conventions, philosphical views and the aesthetic (philosophy of art) of narrations, I have to define my own standpoint within this literary/design movement, which is AW (and in similar terms of influence DW).

So, ok, where is my starting point? Obviously it should be AW or? Nay, its starts a bit earlier for me.
I first take a look at the basics of my understanding of narratives. The "Iconologia overo Descrittione Dell’imagini Universali cavate dall’Antichità et da altri luoghi" was a highly influential emblem book based on Egyptian, Greek and Roman emblematical representations, written by Cesare Ripa in 1593, which got me interested in our understanding of Archetypes, which were broadly populised by the theories of psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. Another startingpoint is the understanding of Aby Warburg's System of the Mnemosyne, which combines a collection of images and texts, representation of classical motives into a hypermedial network of interpretations, an extraordinary novum in the field of arthistory.

The core of my theoretical foundation will implement the theories of Josephe Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", the monomythos, and also the expansions of his work by Christopher Vogler. In my understanding, the bonds of AW resembles the interconnection of the figures in the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies, described by Campbell, aswell as the moves as an integral tool of a flexible narrative while still binding it to a structure of choices. The Playbooks are serving as a minimalised concept of Archetypes, constructing them by aplying bonds and moves, which navigates the character on a choosen path, which is, arguable, similar to Champbells thesis about the monomyth.

Dreadfull Worlds is my trial to create a Hack which can implement my philosophical viewpoints into my gamingexperiences. If I didnt bore you to death with namedropping by now, I hope for productive discussions in this thread, about ym project and about the art of making games and narratives.

Edit: As it may be obvious, I am no native english speaker, actually german, so I hope for your understanding.

The Title, the Genre & the Idea

The first distinctive word placed before this "[...]World" hack is "Dreadful" and is referring to the 19th. century british Penny Dreadful, cheap periodically published storyanthologies, which were sold for a penny. Some famous characters like Sweeny Todd where invented within such publications. After the first World War, new magazines were published on cheap paper pulp and where called pulpmagazines. Weird Tales and Amazing Stories are famous examples.

In gaming I like to mixup genres and also prefer to play quiet a lot of shorter campaigns in changing enviroments; therefor I call my hack World(s) and hope its usable for a varity of my aimed settings. Those will be in a genrerange between Weird Fiction, Mystery and Horror. Postmpodern narrationstructures will have a main place within its concept.

I cameup with a coversketch for Dreadful Worlds (PS CS6), as a visual artist I tend to create more images than actual texts, hopefully this time I can also keep up with writing.

The main visual style of Dreadful Worlds will be in a film noir high key aesthetic drenched in a golden light. I try to translate the feel and substance of a Baz Luhrmann film into the design of Dreadful Worlds.

The Playbooks for Dreadful Worlds shall each have a unique style for each setting; first is Delta Realm Seven, which is inspired by Omega World, Tankgirl, Broken World, Evil of the Stars, Danger Patrol, Fiasco and the old Pulpcovers blend into a comicesque and absurd visual.

(I hope the linked images are not too big? I am having problem to read the font if I show them smaller)


[...]

DELTA REALM SEVEN
an introduction

The World has ended. Most even denied it. They couldnt cope with the fact that the world expired. They were shaken, denied the end and died with their world. Now we are all that is left.
The long summer ended without any notice. From one day to the other, the world shifted and things got bad. The ancient ones tried to keep the ways they were used to; the ways they builtup for ages, ways that implied that the world they shaped would go on forever. It just didn't. Nobody saw what was coming, till it was to late to adapt. The first things to go wrong were small and insignificant, but as they started to accumulate, it created a landslide that rolled over the old world and burried it with neither grace nor ceremony.
The autum was like a long march to a funeral. Everyone who crawled out the ruins had ashes on their faces, painting them grimly. Ashes on their tongues turned all food bitter and ashes on their souls churned them bringing their worst to the surface. It didnt stoped there. Not at all. Things started showing up, things that didn't walked the light of day before. Nobody remembers where they came from or if they caused the shift of the world or were a mere byproduct of that changed environment. Now we call them haunts, whispers, nightstalkers, shadows but we still dont know what they are save the simple fact, that when we all have been extinguished, they will remain to scavenge our bones and crawl on the broken world we left.
We built communities. We harvested hope and sometimes things even looked like it could get better again. But after a while those short breaks became rare and we were shattered, over and over again. Against the night we held up our light of hope; technology, religion, family, community, violence, hate. Whatever kept us going on is now lost.
At a point even the wars were dying. Nobody remained who remembered why or for what they were fighting. After a brutal last bloodshed we defeated the pale ambassador and its cohort, but at too high a cost. Those of us who are still breathing now wait for the winter to besiege us but we will not lay down and wait for the end in despair. The fire may have burned down but the embers are still burning bright defiantly. Walk with us and embrace the end of days.

These Covers are something like Gamesketches in itself for me. A cover reveals a tone, a theme, sometimes also a state of mind behind the creation of it. Beside that I just have fun doing covers. I realy like the RPG-Zine format and am thinking about making a series of small booklets with 24-28 pages each.

These covers are really nice.

Thank you Johnstone, I also like your work. Actually seeing your Cat/Human Hybrids on G+ resulted in my decision to stop talking but doing something. A small thing each day is better than doing nothing at all. Right now I am rereading Champbell and am thinking about how to use the principles of the Heros Journey to construct a sheet for fronts. Also musing with making cards for encounter types. Maybe something tarotlike... with the suits representing types of conflict:

- Cup/Water   Health/Body/Sickness/Mutation/Drawning/Medicine
- Sword/Air   Mind/Illusion/Deception/Madness/Breath/Preasure
- Staff/Fire   Violence/Destruction/Warmth/Light/Sight
- Coin/Earth   Wealth/Powerty/Darkness/Intrigue/Power/Hidden


EDIT:

Now am through with Champbells`s Book, which is quiet a tour de force throught the mythologies of the world. And I am sure I dont want to read any more chapters about the "Fathersnake" and the castration fear on the brink of the initiation of boys to the realm of manhood... I think he mentioned that ritus more than 10 times.

The more famous part of the Book, its first half, The Journey of the Hero, devides the Monomythos (a basic omnipresence underliing narrative structure) in 3 phases:

-The Separation (from the known world)
-The Initiation (crossing over into the world of the supernatural in which the The Road of Trials and the main conflict/quests takes place)
-The Return (back into the known world, and brings the treasures/knowledge that was aquiered back to the realm of humans)

These phases contain 17 steps of narrative structures which can be recombined and restructured in infinite ways. It is a modular way of telling a story, which in itself dont claim any paradigmatic order nor completion at all, which makes it so universal.

The second part of the book is about the broader aspects of the monomyth which can be found in all main religions. I was less interested in the region-genese theories, and more focused about the chapter three of part 2, the transformation of the Hero. (After the Journeys end) which could include several outcomes like seperation from society, a ruler becomes a tyrann himself, death, holyness, reincarnation and so on.

Next on my reading list now is Voglers Book about storywriting within Champless` Journey of the Hero.

Sketch of the next Cover this Time "Arkham World"
I try to get back into Sketching more. The Font design works, but there is obviously still an Image to be done.

Hmmm Now I have to get the Arkham skyline and teh tentacles back..... hmmmmm?

These are some beautifully put together covers but I'm really, hugely critical of Joseph Campbell and his monomyth. I'm against it because the idea that there's only one story you can tell is really boring! I mean why not have an infinite number of stories which can be appreciated on their own merits instead of the degree to which they live up to this monomyth? In terms of writing games, I think you should give each setting its own special treatment instead of making them modulations of a single story.

There's some good arguments against Campbell's work here:

"The thing about Joseph Campbell that should immediately make you enormously suspicious is that he claims to have identified a fundamental structure to mythology and heroism that establishes a universal vision of human greatness. This is just too sweeping a claim. But that's not actually the biggest problem. The problem is how cack-handed his approach to it is. He provides an appallingly eurocentric view of mythology that manages to argue that all Eastern mythology is descended from Egyptian mythology and that culture flows primarily west-to-east. On top of that, his view of the hero is absurdly patriarchal. Given that he believes in a fundamental structure in human consciousness that creates the monomyth and that the monomyth is overtly male dominated, the necessary conclusion of Campbell's thought is that patriarchy is a fundamental structure in human consciousness, which, frankly, fuck him. (There are points in reasoned debate about literary theory where it is necessary to tell people to go fuck themselves, and most of them involve Joseph Campbell.)

No. Campbell is a crank. A well-read crank, but a crank nevertheless. Basically, he identified one story he liked about death and resurrection and proceeded to find every instance of it he could in world mythology. Having discovered a vast expanse of nails for his newfound hammer he declared that it was a fundamental aspect of human existence, ignoring the fact that there were a thousand other "fundamental stories" that you could find in world mythology and that he'd twisted large amounts of world culture badly out of shape in order to suit his pre-selected conclusion. ... [Campbell] has zero credibility in any of the actual academic fields his "research" intersects with. He's pseudohumanities. Which is an impressive feat, and I'm not sure I can actually think of anyone else who qualifies as that. He is Timecube Man with a Bill Moyers special.

That said, the story he identified does work. It's not a transcendent and fundamental aspect of human experience, but it's a pretty good story, and George Lucas was savvy to nick it for the plot of Star Wars. Unfortunately, because Campbell was a lunatic blowhard who claimed that he'd identified a fundamental aspect of human existence, once Lucas showed that it also made money it became the mandatory structure of any piece of science fiction or fantasy made in Hollywood. I mean, unfortunately, this was the real legacy of Star Wars. Hollywood got suckered by a literary crank and came to believe there's only one way to do a large number of movies. And so we continue to get a formulaic structure applied to all manner of things as though it's the only story in the world. When, in fact, it's frankly gotten boring."

There's some more criticism here and here ('Not Everything is a Hero's Journey').

Hi Spigot, I have the feeling that the person who did the review readed Campbell in an unreflected way.

I agree that not all Heros need a penis and having Freud`s described infantile fear of castration or a form of oedipus complex :P That sounds redicoulus even to me as a fan of the monomyth. So dont worry I am not a unreflective Zealot. In his texts Campbell was hightly critical about western Christianity and its enstrange perception of its own bloody past. Some of his recurring myths in which he analised the myths were, arabian, inuit, scandinavian, egyptian, greek, chinese, japanese and mainly indian. I cannot see the absolut western claims that are there as 70% of his examples were arabic/indian/chinese/japanese which I all dont call western. And I also absolutly reject his title of the "Women as the Seducer" as part of the monomyth, but he also explained who mundanity turned mythology in the helenistic age into a scandaldriven soap opera. His text are no miore mysogyn than most sholars of his time, which aspect rightfully is to dispell. He does his claims in the colour of his time, which is outdated. And therefore the revision into a practical manual by Christopher Vogler in 92 was mainly the work which was influencing Hollywood beyond the few readers like George Lucas.
Vogler worked as a narration / scripttester for Disney, while putting Campbell into a system of his own. And he admitted in his second revised edition that their were critics about his writing that his view of happy endings is typical americanised, that the patriarchy of the term "Hero" is not equally, that their are many flaws, yes. But he also says that the Journey of teh Hero is a tool, not a mantra for mediocry scripts to captcher viewers by a receipt.

The basic can be reduced to:

1.
Normal Situation described.
Something triggers the Plot.
NPCs adding elements or Information to the plot (sometimes in form of a teacher or mentor)
PCs decide: Do I engage with this plot or not.
If no, will there be consequences?, If yes are their Gatekeepers?

2.
Whats different in the Non-Normal Enviroment? (Crimeworld, Underworld, Space, own mental state, relationship)
Many Trials and Dangers (sidequests and mainquests)
Reaching to the Fortress of the enemy or the deepest level of a Dungeon (literary and methaphorical)
Defeating the final Boss, convincing the antagonist, overcome OR fail the main quest
Loot. Magic Item. or Wisdom throught the mastered OR failed Mainquest (this is the something tahts gained, by the way here, that transforms the PCs)

3.
Returning back to where they came from, The Normal Worlds. But beeing transformed by the former events.
Maybe in form of an escape quest, or are forced to come back from the other world. Or refused and stay in the other world.
Resurection means that, the old characters inner setup is changed by teh events, the PC learned something from the past evenst OR not.
Returning with the elixier/potion means, the characters brings something from the Otherside with them, some kind of experiences or knowledge that wasnt there before.

I see a set of instruments before me. A balancing of narrative elements. Not an iron rule of story telling.
And I fully accept your rejection. We see things differently and this post is a base for others to discuss our different views on the Monomyth and not intended to alter you opinion or claim its wrong in anyway.

My biggest issue with the Monomyth is that it's overly reductionist and adds virtually nothing to the conversation. Yes, lots of human stories boil down to: "Stuff happens to people. They face adversity and come through it."

The problem is that that's not at all informative. I think the reason that these themes are so common has less to do with some intrinsically shared vision of human consciousness and more to do with the fact that stories where stuff doesn't happen to people and they don't face adversity are really really boring. That describes the drudgery of everyday existence. Who wants to read the story where Harry Potter doesn't discover that he has magical powers, continues to be bullied by his aunt and uncle, and grows up to be an accountant where he fills some routine function as a faceless bureaucrat?

So about all the Monomyth really tells us is that people are interested in things that are different from their everyday lives.

Shocker!

For a counterpoint to the Monomyth idea of storytelling, you need look no further than A Game of Thrones, the first book of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. If that book were told according to the Monomyth, Ned Stark would have avoided capture by the Gold Cloaks and Lannister armsmen, escaped King's Landing, raised and army, and returned to triumph over the evil Queen Cersei and restore order to the realm. But we all know that's not what happened. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that's part of the reason for the overall poplarity of Martin's works - they're both different from our everyday lives and different from the mechanics of ordinary storytelling.

As an aside, a much more intriguing (although still controversial) work than Campbell's Monomyth stuff is Santillana's Hamlet's Mill, which expounds upon the idea of myth serving as a way to encode esoteric scientific knowledge (specifically the accurate observations of precession of the earth's axis) in pre-literate societies.

The wonderful thing about standards is there's so many of them.

There are formulas for narrative structures that have been reduced to templates, and Hollywood often makes use of these templates.  Joseph Campbell's monomyth is perhaps the best-known example but literally hundreds of books exist on narrative structure and scores of them put forward their own author's unique perspective on "THE structure" as though it's the only one.

What these writers really mean to say is: "Here is a formula for creating THIS KIND of story, which I enjoy replicating."

But constantly relying on one particular formula... that feels like the opposite of art, to me.  This is why most network television is so damn predictable and boring, and why Hollywood movies use hackneyed stereotypes and "plot twists" you can see coming from a mile away.

There's nothing wrong with using formulas, per se.  Like any other tool they are ethically neutral.  For our purposes (i.e. Game Design), a formulaic plot template provides a near-perfect amount of detail for a GM to come up with a satisfying story.  Go ahead and use them.  But be aware of their differences and applications, and use the right formula for the story you're telling this time.

@ Munin:

I see the use of the Heroes Journey elements in a diverse way, as an instrument to streamline action and reactions within human behavior range in context of a enjoyable narrative. About Game of Thrones Ned Stark:

The normal World: Peace in Westeros/ The North
The Call: Jon Arryn`s Death
Refuse: He tries to convince the King that he dont want to be Hand
Transition: Killing of Sansa`s Direwolf, realisation of the political Order
The Otherworld: Kings Landing

Meet: The Trickster/Mentor (Little Finger, Varys),
Path of trials and quests (Lannisters, politics, the King´s Idocity)
Shifting Allies and Foes
Wandering into the Deep Dark (Politics and Conspiracies)
The final Trial: Revealing the Truth of the Incest of the Lannisters
The Elixier: The Truth

Return with the truth to reveal to the society.
Failed to get ot of the Dark (Conspiracies) smybolical Imprisoning in the Dungeon
Death without resurrection, his act of honor costs him his life.
His Death becomes the first Call that the Lands of Westeros are plunging into chaos and destruction.

I see a perfect use of the steps of the Journey and no contradictions here.

What I want to say that I would like to use thise system to make the inner logic of my characters work. I am a weak director/GM in terms of Figure conceptions, and with this framework I can learn to construct realistic and interesting figures, understanding their motivations and perrils. Its realy aboutusing tools, not enslaving to a premade receipt. And I think if someone just thinks its about "I came, I saw and I won" than its just plainly mistaken the concepts.
All I liked about those concepts were that they showed me how narratives "can" work. Instead of blind guessing of structures.

What I want to say that I would like to use thise system to make the inner logic of my characters work. I am a weak director/GM in terms of Figure conceptions, and with this framework I can learn to construct realistic and interesting figures, understanding their motivations and perrils. Its realy aboutusing tools, not enslaving to a premade receipt. And I think if someone just thinks its about "I came, I saw and I won" than its just plainly mistaken the concepts. All I liked about those concepts were that they showed me how narratives "can" work. Instead of blind guessing of structures.

I get that, and if you find it a useful tool then that's fine. But one thing you should be cognizant of is that we're talking about role-playing games, which is not necessarily the same as creating a composed narrative. And if you have players like mine, it's very often very different.

What happens to your narrative, for instance, when they meet the Mentor only to then kill him before he can impart his wisdom?

And herein lies the rub - it's not your (singular) narrative but your (plural) narrative (i.e. both you and your players). Your agenda as the MC is not to tell a particular story in which the players partake, but rather to play to find out what story unfolds.