It's Not What They Think, Josh

If you didn’t know already I’ve been gearing up to unleash a fiction blog. Not just any fiction blog, but one tied to a work in progress role-playing game. There are several issues involved in creating this blog on many levels. The issue I am interested in discussing now has to do with going against expectation. I can't help but spoiler some things. Sorry. Let me start with the basic premise behind the role-playing game. The game is called "This Mental Eventide" and revolves around the emergence of a large number of psychics. A man named Joshua Gavin Rhoads is the author of the blog. He initially hints that he has a secret that he wants to tell everyone but has to build up to it. The secret is the haunting. From there he begins to detail the various happenings. Here's the catch--and the worst spoiler of all. Josh is not haunted. Rather he is being plagued by his own burgeoning psychic abilities.

One of the elements to this setting is that there are no ghosts or earthbound spirits. There are hauntings sure enough, but they are residual hauntings--those are the echoes or events repeating on a loop--or the work of psychics. All in all this makes for a protracted scenario in which nothing is what it seems. There is the possibility that an abrupt turn of face would be off-putting to some. The haunting has to fall within the extent of Josh's psychic abilities. Since he is the cause of all of the phenomena it has to have some meaning to him or otherwise be in character for him. The incidents must be something he subconsciously wants or they happen in reaction to what he feels toward different people and events. Some will be very obvious, but others may seem particularly inexplicable, or at least unfathomable at first blush.

At this stage only one power is evident. Josh must have telekinesis. It covers a myriad of ghostly phenomena that are poltergeist-like in nature. I have an inkling of one of his other powers, but I won't mention it. The development of the game is incomplete so I do not know how many psychic abilities he should manifest, when they will do so, and what if any progression there is between them. Likewise Josh is a bit of a blank canvas. I have certain traits squarely in mind and the rest is open. I do not even know what his profession is yet. One of the keys to a setting like this, and especially these kinds of scenarios involving adults, is that these people have real lives first before the emergence of the fantastical or the horrific. These unanswered questions play into the next topic I want to write about with regard to this project.

Mood: secretive.
Music: Can't Stop Rockin' by ZZ Top and Black Dragon by Luca Turilli.

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Once Old, Now New Again

Remakes. Yes, the most contested movies in all of moviedom. A lot of people online just love to hate them. They whine, moan, complain, harass people who are excited for them, and frankly can't resist speaking up every single time one or even the thought of one is mentioned. Except for the fanatic insistences and blind hatred I say good on them for sticking to their guns. As we looked at last time out people complain if a movie is similar to a previous one and isn't a remake so there's really no winning. Except... there is one remake that almost no one complains about. That would be John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). Whether you like it--and its distasteful subject matter--or not Wes Craven's acclaimed first outing The Last House on the Left (1972) is pretty much a remake of The Virgin Spring (1960)--apparently the Virgin Spring's scriptwriter based it off of a ballad of all things. Craven himself cites the Virgin Spring, though some debate if that truly makes a remake.

Within remakes there is another subdivision called the reboot. All reboots are remakes, but not all remakes are reboots. To start, a reboot denotes a franchise, meaning a movie with sequels. While there are close remakes and loose remakes--The Thing and Last House on the Left are varying degrees of loose--reboots tend to change something within the story. Again the significance of the change varies. A prime example of a reboot is the remake of Friday the 13th (2009). Its first significant change is that it revolves around Jason, whereas the original first Friday the 13th movie did not. Other than Jason there are next to no other characters from the original film. There aren't even camp councillors. In contrast the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) while different in several aspects does not feel like a reboot despite the different additional characters. It added elements to the original, but not in a way that changed anything.

The adding of elements and expanding upon the ideas in the original is what makes for a great remake. A perfect example is the remake of The Hills Have Eyes (2006). It takes most of the original and then adds to it immensely, and in a way that feels natural. It also modernises the story without actually changing the timeframe (at least as far as I noticed). What it did was make more sense in the story's end, and as a good remake does it removed traits from the film that didn't age well and would make it dated. On the other hand it seemed like some of the addition was very close to a different unrelated horror movie, which itself borrowed from something else altogether. Another great remake that adds to the original is the remake of The Amityville Horror (2005). What it added to the film was in some parts new and in others elements present in the original novel that did not make it into the first film. I think this Amityville is the best remake of the new millennium yet.

Mood: stoic.
Music: Big Man With A Gun by Nine Inch Nails and (Ghost) Riders In The Sky by Me First And The Gimme Gimmes.

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Scareless Horror

One of the distinct qualities of the horror genre is that it does not strictly have to rely on actually causing the emotion for which it is named. A crime novel cannot be without a crime in it. An action movie must have action. A science fiction role-playing game has to have science--though admittedly it need not be fictional science, the fiction stemming from either plot or character or the fact the gaming isn't real is sufficient.

Horror can have no scares for the reader or viewership. It can have no horror for the characters involved. What it needs is to have certain elements. A good example of this is the current trend with vampires. For these stories to be, say urban fantasies, they would have to have certain tropes that make it fantasy. This would cause its own problems since much of what describes fantasy is rooted in medieval or Tolkienesque fantasy.

Certain character types just scream horror (or fantasy) even if they engage in drama or action or comedy. Sometimes these rise to the level of cross genre, other times they do not. This seems to be very true of drama. There are no cross-dramas. Drama is integral to anything and everything that is dramatic or a dramatisation. So too is horror except in a pseudo form of reverse. This makes for great versatility and draws in a larger audience, which is good for all involved.

Mood: harried.
Music: Coming Soon by Queen and Black Lodge by Anthrax.

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Role-Playing Game Run Down

As a writer, and therefore an editor I have cultivated a sense of judgment on various levels of what I read and watch. I put this to use as reviewer for the Bob's Reviews site. Likewise, whenever I set out to create a new product I use that critical eye to look at what is out there in the market and target concepts, methods, and procedures that could do with improvement. Familiarity with products in particular veins improves that sense of what could be done different or better--the two are not always exclusive with better being a matter of taste in some instances. I have a great familiarity with one product that I look to speak about specifically today and as long as it takes to cover the concepts I wish to discuss. That product is role-playing games.

Kevin Siembieda is famously known as saying that "RPGs are, after all, part novel, part text book, part instruction manual, part art book and all imagination." That's a good covering of the main facets of role-playing game books, but as far as games and their design goes it is not the entire story, not as far as I am concerned here. The games themselves are part collaborative story telling, part acting, part strategy, part chance, and all game. A lot of the time people gravitate to one of those more than the others, sometimes one or two. It all depends on the game, the personal goal in playing, and a likely host of other decisions and desires held in balance. A good game system, that is the core rules and setting, should offer many possibilities in each of those elements of the game.

One area where a game might fail, or not measure up is in the balance between strategy along with numbers and dice, and the art of telling a story. This can be a matter of one getting in the way of the other and bogging things down or hindering the smoothness of game play. The purpose of rules, and dice, known as the mechanics of the game, is to provide a framework upon which to tell the stories, set up the scenarios, make it a game rather than just writers or actors collaborating. There is a level of simulation involved, simulating physics, simulating character or psychology. How much it feels like a simulation or how much verisimilitude it doesn't or doesn't have is a frequent failure point for RPGs. There are a number of ways this can happen. Tune in next time for more.

Mood: declarative.

Music: Voodoo Medicine Man by Aerosmith and Harvester Of Sorrow by Metallica.

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Nothing But Time

The game changing nature of powerful healing at accelerated rates presented two factors upon which the differences were built. The first was the change in risk aversion factors. The second was the effect on the time scale. The shortened time makes for altered pacing. In the fantasy setting this is especially true because of the otherwise limited state of medicine and lack of pain medication. While quickening the plot pacing changes the game or the story one way, shifting things in the other direction has alternate effects. Longevity has its own way of changing the game in a setting. Long lives, immortality, and the changes caused by continued healing and durability are one possibility. The other is less fantastical but no less powerful and involves controlled cross-generation planning.

Many fantasy settings have long lived elves and other inhuman beings. They have immortal wizards both of the perpetual living and living dead kinds. The same is true of settings with vampires of enough intelligence to keep a lower profile and out live generation upon generation of mortals. It is not often enough that the immensity of possibilities this creates is touched upon. These beings can achieve singularly what others cannot. They can plan according to the long view of things, adapting as they go, patiently manipulating events in tiny increments over a vastly extended time. This affords them a lot of power. Beyond that it allows them to cultivate great experience and with it wisdom. This experience and wisdom is stronger for being first hand.

Magic, supernatural biology, or the science and futuristic equivalents of those, are not strictly necessary to take advantage of this game-changing element. Family groups, organisations, secret societies and sects, and some tightly focused societies can do so as well. For them it requires more discipline due to the larger number of members required. It also requires all parties being able to understand the plan not only to fulfill their parts of it, but also to the greater degree of being able to pass on the knowledge and impart the importance of the actions that go into it. If any later generation fails in understanding or implementation, even in gradual degrees from one generation to the next, then the plans and their benefits diminish, fail, or outright disappear.

Mood: fluid.

Music: The Edge Of Darkness by Iron Maiden and Ride Thru The Storm by Desperado/Dee Snider.

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