Making Sense of the Forgotten Realms Cosmology

I’m starting to really involve religion and cosmology in my game, the Sellswords of Luskan.  A goodly part of that is because religion is an integral part of the Forgotten Realms (FR)—indeed, it’s impossible to tell a story with High-Renaissance thematic elements and a strong Divine power source without involving the gods and their various belief systems—and then, too, the things I want to do in the Paragon and Epic tiers of my game require a certain setting of the stage now.  If you guys are looking for novels to read to get an idea of what I have in mind and how this might unfold, I humbly suggest Paul S. Kemp’s various Ereviss Cale books.  Sellswords takes place geographically in decided R.A. Salvatore territory, but the plotlines and story elements owe more to Kemp’s work than to Salvatore’s.  As you read, just keep in mind that I change my plans for the game all the time according to the choices my players make and the various storytelling whims that catch my fancy.

With that said, if you’ve been following the game, then it probably seems like all of the gods are staring straight at the Party all the time right now.  That is not the case.  It would be a lot more accurate to say that some important divine agents on Toril have noticed you.  Not necessarily Chosen or Exarchs, but senior priests and important lay-people with significant divine powers—essentially Paragon Tier NPCs with substantial divine resources.  They are using those resources for information and occasionally for direct action. 

With that in mind, I have to occasionally remind myself that not everyone is an FR-junkie like I am, which means that you may not all be making the pantheon-based linkages which in my mind are fairly obvious.  So with that in mind, the following is a brief primer on the pieces of the various FR pantheons that the Sellswords have come into contact with.  The majority of this information comes out of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, Chapter 5.  The rest is either from Kemp’s novels or homebrewed to support my game’s storyline.

There are 18 Greater Gods, each of whom controls a dominion in the Astral Sea.  Each dominion is essentially its own separate pantheon—a self-contained belief system that suffices for all aspects of a complete theological system.  In mythology, greater gods are the equivalent of Zeus, Hera, Jupiter, Odin, Isis, the Earth Mother, Shaitan, etc. 

Under the greater gods, there are Gods.  These “lesser” gods represent some aspect of their ruler’s pantheon.  For example, Loviatar, the goddess of pain, is the consort of Bane, the greater god of conquest and tyranny.  In classic mythology, these guys would be Apollo, Athena, Thor, Venus, Mercury, etc.

Under the gods, there are Exarchs.  These are the immortal champions of the gods, aka demi-gods.  When you take the Demi-God Epic Destiny, you are staking your claim to this level of divinity.  For example, although Maglubiyet was once a full god, since his conquest by Bane, he’s been demoted to Exarch status within the Black Lord’s overall dominion of Banehold.  Maglubiyet still functions as the “god” of goblins, but in reality he isn’t a full god anymore.  In mythology, exarchs are guys like Hercules, Perseus, Cerebus, etc.

Under the exarchs, you have the various denizens of the divine realms and the Astral Sea.  These include angels and arch-angels as well as gythyanki, gythzerai, marut, quom, bladelings, ravastaa, and others.  Mithral dragons are also native to the Astral Sea.  All of these guys either live in one of the divine realms or in some other unaligned but essentially divine place like Hevestar.  Some, like Mithral dragons, are powerful enough to carve out a piece of divine space for their own personal use.  Others have to go along to get along, living in the same kind of feudal arrangements in the Astral realms that are common on the Prime Material Plane.  There are divine kings, and there are divine serfs.

The Chosen of the gods are on the same level of divinity as the Exarchs, but Chosen are mortals whose primary home is in the Mortal World.  A Chosen is literally “the chosen mortal champion” of a specific god or goddess, though most are powerful enough to be immortal in their own right.  This is different from an exarch in that exarchs live on the same plane with their master gods.  So, for example, Maglubiyet resides in Banehold with Bane while Fzoul Chembryl, Chosen of Bane and founder of the Zhentarim, resides in Darkhold—about 250 miles northeast of the terrestrial city of Athkatla.  But in game terms, both Maglubiyet and Fzoul Chembryl are 28^th Level Elite monsters.  They merely have different roles in the cosmology.

As an aside, Chosen is its own Epic Destiny, but I believe that it’s basically identical to the Demi-God Epic Destiny.  The main difference, then, would be the intent of the Player rather than the powers of the Character.

Final note on this topic: Greater gods are like kings.  They want what they want, and they usually get it.  However, as a mortal lord will sometimes rebel against his earthly king, so too might an exarch or lesser god rebel against the master of his dominion.  These beings do not share a mind or will.  They have their own agendas and independent willpower.  As with the Greek gods of ancient times, the FR gods plot and scheme and seduce mortals and all of that other good stuff that makes Greek mythology so interesting and intriguing.

So far, my Players have come into at least some level of contact with the following greater gods:

Ao: The hidden one.  He is thought to have created the universe.  Now he watches as the judge of the gods.  No one knows where he lives or what he does.

Bane, the Black Lord: Bane is the greater god of conquest and tyranny.  He rules Banehold.

 - Bane’s consort is Loviatar, the goddess of pain

 - Tiamat is the goddess of chromatic dragons and greed

 - Abbathor is an exarch of Tiamat

 - Hoar is the exarch of revenge

 - Hruggek is the exarch of ambush

 - Maglubiyet is the exarch of goblins

Corellon Larethian: Greater god of magic, elves, and eladrin.  He rules Arvandor.  His pantheon is called the Seldarine.

 - Angharradh is the goddess of wisdom

 - Garl Glittergold is the god of protection

 - There are several exarchs, but I’ll spare you those.

Cyric: Greater god of lies, murder, and strife.  He rules the Supreme Throne.

Gruumsh: Greater god of orcs and slaughter and arch-enemy of Correllon Larethian.  He rules Nishrek.

 - Luthic is the goddess of caves.

 - Bahgtru is the exarch of brute strength

 - Obould is the exarch of warriors

 - Shargaas is the exarch of night

 - Vaprak is the exarch of frenz.

Lloth: Greater goddess of the drow and chaos.  She is the mistress of the Demonweb Pits.  The most interesting thing about that is that it’s in the Abyss, not in the Astral Sea.  So to get there, you’d have to climb down through the Hells of the Elemental Chaos.

Moradin: Greater god of dwarves and ruler of Dwarfhome.

 - Berronar Truesilver is the god of family.

 - As with Corellon Larethian, there are a bunch of dwarven exarchs.

Oghma: Greater god of knowledge and ideas.  He rules the House of Knowledge.

 - Gond is the god of craftsmen

 - Milil is the exarch of song

Selune: Greater goddess of the Moon and ruler of the Gates of the Moon.  She’s the sister and arch-enemy of Shar.

 - Sune is the greater goddess of love.  She apparently lives with Selune, which is a little freaky.  As a note, like the ancient Roman worshippers of Venus, Sune’s priestesses are often holy prostitutes.

 - Tymora is the goddess of luck.

 - Lliira is the exarch of joy.

 - Sharess is the exarch of cats.  I’ve no idea why cats need their own exarch.

Shar: Greater goddess of night and shadows.  She created the now defunct Shadow Weave and still rules over the Shadow power source.  Her dominion is called the Towers of Night.

 - Sseth is the god of serpents and yuan-ti.

 - Talona is the goddess of disease and plague.

 - Zehir is the god of poison.

Silvannus: Greater god of nature and druids.  He rules the Deep Wilds.

 - Mielikki is the goddess of forests.  She apparently got promoted as part of the transition to 4e.

 - Umberlee is the goddess of the sea.

 - Malar is the exarch of beasts, especially lycanthropes.  He used to be a god, so this is a demotion.

 - Shiallia is the exarch of fertility.

Torm: Torm is the greater god of law, truth, loyalty, and steadfast devotion.  He is the patron of lawful good holy warriors the world over.  He rules Celestia.

 - Bahamut is the god of justice.

 - Illmater is the god of righteous suffering.

Finally, we’ve not done much with Tempus—and I don’t plan to—but I’ll mention him.  Tempus is the greater god of warriors.  I don’t personally care for him because he doesn’t seem to care if you win or lose, only that you fight well—an idiotic idea if I’ve ever heard one.  He rules Warrior’s Rest. 

One last note, on levels:

 - Angels and other Astral servants appear anywhere from the upper Heroic Tier to the lower Epic tier.  Most are in the mid- to upper-Paragon tier.

 - Arch-angels are created by applying a template out of the Monster Manual 2 to an Epic angel base monster.

 - Chosen and Exarchs are in the mid- to upper-Epic tier, usually around Levels 28 to 30.

 - Gods are usually in the low 30s.

 - Greater gods are in the mid-30s.  For example, the Scales of War listed Tiamat as a Level 35 Solo Brute.

Finally!

My Starblazers review is up over at IRateFilms.Com.  They made a whole new "TV" section for it. 

Check it out:

IRateFilms.Com: Starblazers, Quest for Iscandar

Storyteller’s Playbook: Writing Dialogue

Dialogue is perhaps the most important part of any story.  Think about the books you read.  Even if you stumble and skip your way through some of the long, boring explanations and descriptions, the odds are that you read closely every single piece of dialogue.  Why?  Because it’s pure, unadulterated characterization.  It’s the good stuff.  It’s the only time that the characters literally speak to us.  If we’re not open to hearing what they have to say, then odds are that we’re not open to the story at all.  In fact, there are any number of works that work because of dialogue alone.  Look at Shakespeare.  It wasn’t the plots of his plays (all stock, even at the time) or his description that made him famous.  It was what his characters said, and the way they said it.  That’s true in almost any play.  Hell, it’s true of screenplays.  It’s even true in some of the best novels.  For example, the Fletch series is a tour de force of dialogue-based prose.  But even in regular, description based writing, dialogue is the heart soul of the character and the story.

Unfortunately, I think, dialogue is a part of the world of gaming fiction that often gets lost in translation.  Especially in online gaming, the fact of the matter is that dialoguing a scene is kind of a pain in the ass.  And working your way through an online conversation—well, that can take days.  Days during which not much else is happening.  And that’s a problem.  That’s one of the ways that DMs lose players.  And yet, not dialoguing is worse because that leads to a world that’s utterly disconnected with characterization.  And that’s just god-awful.  That’s how good games become boring hack-and-slash-fests.

I have dialoguing in mind this week because the Sellswords are in the port of Athkatla, and I want to do a little characterization.  I want to let in some personality and give the characters a chance to walk around in their skins.  Well, that’s all well and good.  I mean, it’s a good goal.  But I’ll admit that keeping the game moving in what is ostensibly a slower scene is a challenge.  And figuring out how to keep it on course is even harder.

Eh.  That’s why I get paid the big bucks.

Anywho, writing dialogue is tricksy.  As comic writer Brian Michael Bendis says, you have to hear the voices in your head.  Which can be tough.  Because to hear the voices, you need to have a pretty good idea of who the characters speaking are, what they want, and what they’re willing to do to try to get it.  I mean, look, everybody wants something.  And, well, talking is by far and away the most common way in which folks interact.  So a person’s wants and needs simply must come through in their language.  To an extent, what they want and how they want it can even come through in their speech patterns. 

With all of that said, the most useful thing I’ve ever heard about writing dialogue is this: when you write dialogue, you have to remember that most people don’t listen.  They wait to talk.

I work through it by thinking about a radio with a PUSH-TO-TALK button.  One character starts talking.  He has a point to make.  And he’s probably enjoying the spotlight.  But the other characters, they also have points to make.  And if they’re regular humans, then they’re not really listening.  Instead, they’re thinking about what they’re gonna say when the other guy finally shuts his damned mouth.  And while they wait, they’re formulating their counter-arguments.  They’re rehearsing in their heads  And when a break comes—and sometimes even when it doesn’t—they jump on it, seizing their own mikes and pressing their own PUSH-TO-TALK buttons.  The result is static—and a lot of people stepping on each other, everyone trying to be heard.

Folks interrupt each other.  They step on what their peers are trying to say.  They talk at cross purposes, answer questions with more questions, answer illogically.  Hell, most often they don’t answer questions at all.  And if they do, they do it in a way that’s self-serving.  They answer the question they want to answer and not the question that was actually asked.  If you can remember all that—the essential selfish ickiness of the human condition at its worst—odds are that you can write dialogue that works.  You can write dialogue that’s believable.  That’ll have people sitting up, thinking, “Wow.  I totally know people like that.  Man.  People suck.”

To me, that’s where you want to be.

One other thing I’ll say about dialogue is this: if you want your readers to learn something and believe it, one of the easiest ways to get that across is by showing two nominally disinterested characters talking about it.  For example, if I want to get across the fact that Gruuck the Orc is a bad mo-fo, then I can show Gruuck in a fight being a bad mo-fo.  And that’s fine.  But if I then want to drive the point home afterwards, I can have Gruuck sit at a fire and then pan back.  Now two other orcs are looking on.  And the one says to the other, “Man.  That Gruuck.  He’s a bad mo-fo.”  And your readers, having just seen Gruuck in action, will realize how to place that action in the context of the story.  If the other orcs think Gruuck is a bad mo-fo, then he must be one.

And that’s all I got today.  Busy week.  Stay cool, and we’ll come back next week and talk some more.

Movie Review: Aloha, Scooby Doo!

I’ve got two girls at home—one princess, 6, and one would-be paleontologist, 5—and I’ve been trying to wean them off of Disney for a while now.  I mean, the princess movies are okay, but they aren’t what I’d call empowering.  They don’t teach much in the way of self-reliance.  And I want my girls to at least get some exposure to heroes who kick ass.  Or, at a minimum, resolve their own problems in a way that’s more proactive than waiting for their respective princes to arrive.  Hence last week’s showing of Starblazers: The Quest for Iscandar (Disc 1).  Thankfully, my younger daughter, the would-be paleontologist, has taken a decided interest in Scooby Doo.  So this week, I streamed an older Scooby direct-to-DVD movie off of Netflix for her called Aloha, Scooby Doo!

Of the Scooby direct-to-DVD movies that we’ve seen, Aloha, Scooby Doo! is easily the most traditional in terms of its plot and structure.  The gang is out someplace doing something that’s fun and basically touristy, in this case visiting Hawaii as part of Daphne’s swimwear design business, when they run into a monster-mystery.  Aloha’s monster is the dreaded Wiki Tiki, a radical native Hawaiian surf zombie dedicated to scaring beachgoers on behalf of the local surfing scene’s racial purity.  Which is to say that the Wiki Tiki wants to keep the beach for locals only.  And as you might expect, wackiness ensues.

For better or worse, Aloha, Scooby Doo! is exactly what you expect it to  be.  The story plays out over a little more than an hour, during which time it strictly follows the beats of a typical episode of Scooby Doo, Where Are You?  This gives time for any number of chase scenes—in a cave, at a luau, out in the pipeline, through the jungle—and all of that is fun.  Several of the set pieces are clever, and the usual sight-gags abound.  Certainly, my daughter liked it.  She bounced up and down, pointing and screaming at the TV almost the whole time.  Well, that’s why we watch, right?  As for me, I’ve always loved the goofy visual comedy of Scooby Doo, and I knew what I was getting myself into when I turned the movie on in the first place.  The only part that I found annoying at all was the mechanic of the eventual reveal.  Put simply, setting that scam up would’ve cost twice what the crooks were looking to clear via its execution.  But, y’know, that’s a common problem in adult crime thrillers, too.  At least Scooby Doo has the grace to be up front with its goofiness.

Aloha, Scooby Doo! is a fine addition to a generally entertaining and inoffensive series of kids’ TV movies.  If you or your kids are fans of Scooby Doo, and you enjoyed the traditional story structure of the original TV show but wish they’d made more episodes, then Aloha, Scooby Doo! is for you.  We’ve seen four or five of these Scooby movies now, and while I can’t say that this one was the best, it certainly wasn’t bad.  I enjoyed it, my daughter enjoyed it, and we got it for free via Netflix live streaming.  I don’t know what else you could ask for out of a Scooby Doo cartoon movie than that it entertained Emma and me on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Big Swim Day

Last night's workout: Modified SKIPS

500 Swim

200 Kick

400 IM

400 Pull

500 Swim

3 x 100 Free @ 1:30 (holding under 1:10)
100 Warm Down

This afternoon:

300 Warm-Up

500 @ 6:40 (messed up the interval in my head)

400 @ 5:40 (1:25/100 pace)

300 @ 4:15

200 @ 2:50

100 @ 1:25

8 x 50 Kick (IM Order) @ 1:00

400 Pull

5 x 100 @ 1:30 (under 1:30)

200 Warm Down

Grand Total: 5700 yards.

Hooah!

Weekend Update!

Apologies for missing Thursday and Friday's post.  I'd even written a Storyteller's Playbook entry, but it's on my Flash drive, and I left the drive sitting in my office.  *sigh*  Well, I'll put it up next week, I suppose.  We're not on a deadline, after all.

Decent workout week this week.  You may remember that I'm fighting my way through a little groin injury.  Well, it's getting better, slowly but surely.  I pushed pretty hard on the bike last weekend, and between that and a generally full family schedule early in the week, I ended up taking Monday and Tuesday off.  In retrospect, that seemed like a pretty good idea.  I was tired, and training tired legs isn't always a great idea--at least for me.  I gotta take it a little easier than I did when I was in my twenties.  

Wednesday was kind of wacky.  I had a series of long conference calls with various electrical stakeholders in New York State, and that kept me at work a little late.  So I got up early and went to the gym, going into the office an hour late and basically giving myself a chance to get a little workout in.  Which wasn't bad, but it threw me off, and I wouldn't want to make it a habit.  Then I ran Thursday--only two and a half miles, but that's still more than I've run in a few weeks.  I was a little sore, but I didn't make the injury worse, so I suppose it's all good.  Last night I swam--about 2400 yards.  I wasn't trying to go fast, but I felt okay... about the best I can hope for in the water these days.

It's s'posed to rain all weekend, so I'm probably not gonna get to ride much this weekend.  With any luck, I'll get back in the pool today and then either go to the gym again or maybe go for a little run.  By my count, I need to put in about 3 hours of workout this weekend in order to make my total quota for the week.  Eh.  We'll see.

Well, that's it.  Have a great weekend!

Wednesday Stray Voltage

Not a lot going on today.  Big phone/conference call day for me today.  I ended up catching a late train, which meant that I had to go to the gym at 5am this morning, but I wouldn’t call that bad.  Just different.  I’m normally up at 5, but for whatever reason I still feel like I’ve been droning all day today.  Guess I just needed a double-shot of coffee after my workout.

On the D&D front, the Sellswords finally got into the city of Athkatla yesterday.  They’d originally decided to head into the city because it’s a major slave-trading center, and they have some spellscarred child-slaves to sell.  However, thankfully one of the players has had a change of heart.  Which is interesting.  Now he’s got to try to convince the others to send the kids to an orphanage rather than out to a mad wizard’s lab where they’d be the subjects of who-knows-what kinds of insane arcane experimentation.  Heh.  Morality is a tough issue in a game with no real consequences.

I felt bad for Jack after watching this week’s 24, especially since we now know that the show’s been canceled for next season.  So old Jack’s not gonna have a chance to get his life back together after this.  However it ends this season, that’s how it’s gonna stay for all eternity.  And for a show that’s gone for the super-happy ending more than once, I’m sensing a downer of a conclusion.  With Renee dead and Jack’s mission a failure, there’s really no chance for redemption anymore, is there?  It’s not like Jack’s wife is gonna come back from the dead.  I don’t see how the poor guy could possibly wind up as anything but old, miserable, and bitter.  Eh.  Maybe he’ll die, too, and they can all be together in a big sex-sandwich up in Heaven.  I suppose that’d be a happy ending of a sort.  And anyway, Jack converted to Islam at the end of last season, so I suppose they could always martyr him and then show him with him getting the 99 virgins.  At least that’d be an ending that folks’d talk about.

It was warm in New York City today, and all the crazies came out.  Seriously, I found myself wondering if Welfare checks had gone out or something because bums were literally everywhere, and they all seemed happy and a little stoned.  But I suppose it could just be the weather.  We had a rough, rough winter, and I doubt anybody suffered more than the barely functional.  I slept on the back of enough tank turrets to be able to imagine what it must be like to sleep on a transformer grating trying to stay warm.

Unfortunately, it’s still a little too cool for the NYU students to be out in their bikinis getting sun in Washington Square Park.  Those girls always make the park seem cleaner.  Certainly they make it a better place to take a lunchtime walk.

And that’s about all I got.  Until tomorrow…

Tuesday Reviews: The Cupboard is Bare

So here it is Tuesday, and I don't have a thing to share with you.  I read a Batman OGN last week (Batman: The Black Case Files), but although I liked it, I didn't like it enough to go look up the art and artist and writer info and all the rest of that crap.  I also started reading Red Square (2nd sequel to Gorky Park), but I'm not too far into it yet.  So... there ain't a lot to talk about.  

That said, I did finally start writing for IRateFilms.Com this week.  I did my first review on Starblazers and decided in general to try to be their back-issues-of-TV guy.  Because, bottom line, that's what I seem to be watching.  I NEVER get out to the movies when they're new.  Anyway, when and if the IRateFilms guys get my review up, I'll let you know.  

In the meantime, well, go find a hobby.

Ladies and Gentlemen... Your Hartford Colonials!

I’m just gonna go ahead and tell you that your new favorite UFL team is the Hartford Colonials.  The Colonials started life as the winless (and nigh unwatchable) New York Sentinels last season—under the inept leadership of Ted Cotrell, formerly Defensive Coordinator of the San Diego Chargers.  Honestly, I was both surprised and dismayed when Cotrell was hired for the Sentinels, and in that regard, well, last year’s winless season was exactly what you’d expect out of a guy whose last tenure was also a colossal failure.  Last season the Sentinels were so bad that I ended up canceling my plans to take my kids to one of their games because I didn’t want my kids’ first experience with live football to be a total blowout.  That ain’t the way to show your kids the beauty of the game.

Thankfully, this season the Colonials have a new Head Coach and GM.  In the spartan UFL, that’s dual position held by a single man, Chris Palmer, a CT native as well as a former Cleveland Browns head coach and the Giants’ quarterback’s position coach.  Eh.  I’ve never heard of anyone else from the staff besides Tony Sporano, the son of the Miami Dolphins’ head coach.

More on the coaching staff:

http://www.examiner.com/x-28793-Hartford-Sports-Examiner~y2010m3d20-Hartford-Colonials-announce-coaching-staff

As far as the players go, the Colonials just announced their “protected” list, the list of the 20 players with whom the team has some kind of initial exclusivity over contract extensions from last season.  The most famous looks to be Safety Tra Battle.   In looking through the news, I see that Battle visited the Tennessee Titans recently, presumably as part of the team’s “emergency call” list off-season update.  A lot of the successful UFL players wound up getting called up last season via emergency call lists when mid-season injuries left contenders a little short.  In fact, it’s because of the existence of these kinds of call lists that the UFL plays its games in the Fall rather than in the Spring.  Playing in the Fall gives UFL players the best chance to see some regular, big-League action later in the year. 

Anway, I’ve not heard of anyone else on the team besides Battle, but it looks like there are a couple of former Houston Texans:

http://articles.courant.com/2010-03-22/sports/hc-golfup0322.artmar22_1_protected-list-ufl

If you’re wondering, the Colonials play at UConn’s Rentschler Field, probably to somewhere around 5,000 spectators if last year’s attendance is any guide.  Colonials season tickets are $100 for 5 games.  Since the stadium is about 45 minutes from my house, I may well buy some, but it depends on the schedule.  Fridays and Weekend nights I would do.  More Thursday night games I won’t. 

Some games are also televised on Versus and via the Internet on HDNet and the UFL’s official site.  I watched a couple of the games on Versus last year, including the very entertaining UFL Championship Game, and most of the games were watchable, but there were a few blowouts.  Still, I think that the key to having a good fan experience is having someone to root for.  At least I’ve given you that here.

Saturday News and Notes

Sally and I sat down and watched this week's Fringe and this week's V last night.  I gotta admit that I was a little disappointed in Fringe.  I mean, it wasn't a bad episode of anything, but they've been building this thing between Peter and Olivia for weeks, and then they did absolutely NOTHING with it.  Disappointing.  They could've at least hung a little teen-angst in the air.  And then, too, Fox had been promoting the big "shocker" ending all week, but folks, if that ending was anything, it was obvious.  Strictly paint-by-the-numbers.  Like I said, I was expecting better from a usually top-notch show.

For my money, V was a little better, but that's a show that needs to turn up the heat, time now, or they're gonna start losing audience.  And there were a couple of seriously groan-worthy spots, too.  I mean, look, the Visitors are supposed to be reptiles, right?  So why so Vulcan?  Some of the best scenes from the original were drawn straight out of the always entertaining Diana's sheer cattiness.  Come on!  Diva-ism almost always plays well in the cheap seats.  Eh.  They seem like they want the visitors to be both reptile and insect, and that strikes me as bad science.  And worse science fiction.

Also... what was up with the whole, "I'm not your real father" thing?  *GROAN*  If it turns out that Tyler is half-Visitor or something, I'll be out.  That's just idiotic.

This morning's TV was substantially better.  As I noted yesterday, Hannah and I made an explicit plan to sit down this morning and watch the first part of Starblazer: The Quest for Iscandar.  Heh.  She got up at 6: 30.  "Is it time yet?"

Me (Groggy): "Yes Hannah.  It's time."

Anyway, I didn't know how she was gonna like it.  First off, this is a girl who gets scared of the wicked octopus in The Little Mermaid, and she's already seen the freakin' Little Mermaid about 1,000 times.  And then, too, we live in the year 2010.  Quest for Iscandar came out in 1979, and I haven't seen it since it was on regular TV back before school in the mornings.  So, bottom line, I had no idea how it was gonna look to modern eyes.

Well, it was pretty good.  I mean, the picture wasn't spectacular--or anything that could reasonably be labeled spectacular--but it was passable.  Muddy but impressive.  The shots were well designed.  They got the very most they could out of their budget and tech.  And the story literally blows away anything that's on TV anymore.  Shit, I doubt the censors would even let such mature subject matter on TV these days.  I can just see some freakin' cartoon getting a TV MA rating because it's too damned "political."  Anyway, I knew Hannah was digging it when the Argo was trying to dodge the Gamalon Marauder Missile, and Hannah turned to me gritting her teeth and said, "Take off!  Daddy, they need to hurry up and take off!  Oh no!"

The good thing about Starblazers--at least for kids--is that the Sequel structure is rock solid.  Or, to put it another way, the characters are constantly recapping the situation in order to express their determination to press on no matter what the circumstances.  And that's good because 6-year-olds don't always follow and remember complex plot details.  So all those recaps really help.

For adults, I think Starblazers is most interesting as a study in post-War Japanese psychology.  The show plays out like a Bushido revenge fantasy, and make no mistake: we're the bad guys.  At the same time, there's a pervasive helplessness that shows up in almost every frame--at least in the initial episodes.  These guys seem to get that Japan was beset by an enemy it had no business fighting.  The Gamalons are literally larger than life, and the producers take the time, several times, to point out that Earth has "No defense" against the Gamalon technology and Gamma-bombing.  I found it fascinating all over again.

This afternoon, I went for a ride.  I finally had a good long time to just get on my bike and go.  Ended up heading out to ride the hills on Stratford's north side.  Very nice.  I figure I put in about 25 miles in a bit less than 90 minutes, which is okay considering that it was windy, and I stopped for maybe 10 minutes to stretch after warming up.  I feel good now, but I need a beer.  Fortunately, there's a little collection in the fridge.

And that's all I got.  I was gonna put up something political this afternoon, but I don't think I have time, and anyway, the news these days is so damned depressing that I spend most of my time avoiding it.  Starblazers and biking are both good for that.

That said, if you got something you'd like to see here, drop me a note in the Comments.  I mostly play it by ear, but I take criticism and advice reasonably well if it's constructive.  Which means leaving a solution or two to go with your problem or complaint.

I doubt I'll be back tomorrow, so have a good rest of the weekend.

NEW New Color Scheme

Any thoughts?

Starblazers!

Big day for me and Hannah tomorrow.  We're watching STARBLAZERS! 

How cool is that?

Also, SLASH has a new album! Cool, huh?  I feel young all over again.

Storyteller’s Playbook: Scene and Sequel Structure

As I’ve noted before, one of the most common problems that I see amongst new writers is structure.  Telling stories can be a surprisingly technical undertaking, and that’s something that your average newbie just doesn’t understand.  Why should they?  For reasons I’ve never understood, we don’t teach story structure in high school.  I mean, your teachers might mention Three-Act structure in passing, but they never get into the actual mechanics of what makes it work, and they then compound the confusion by repeatedly asking students to do “creative” writing without first providing the tools to make that writing readable.  And that causes two problems.  The first is that it helps new writers learn the wrong lessons by accident, ultimately leading to a entirely false sense of security, and then, too, it makes them think that they can figure it all out on their own if they just struggle through it stubbornly enough.  That’s not helpful.  It’s true that some folks can instinctively find their way through some general storytelling, but even then, that’s usually because of an innate grasp of story and scene structure that they’ve learned through osmosis via excessive exposure to common storytelling media.  More commonly, writers come up with workable ideas which they develop foolishly because they’re ignorant of what real story development is.  This is then compounded by a lack of scene structure that makes so much amateur and fan-fiction utterly unreadable.

Story structure is the thing that prevents your idea becoming a mere series of random events that happen to the same set of characters.  Scene and Sequel structure, then, are the things prevent your now structured narrative from going off the rails.  They give good fiction its “I can’t put it down” factor.  They drive the story by maintaining tension.

In my humble opinion, Scene structure is not too difficult so long as you remember one simple rule: in fiction, bad things have to happen to good people.  In that sense, building a scene is a lot like building a story, only taken in microcosm.  You start off with a character who wants something—passionately.  The more he wants it, the more urgent is his need, the better.  You then complicate the scene, putting as many obstacles in our hero’s way as possible.  This is similar to what we saw in the Development phase of our Story structure discussion.  In your scene, you want to set a goal, set an obstacle, and then make things worse.  Look, when you put in twists and turns for our hero to overcome, you give him a chance to be heroic.  The scene unfolds as he works his way through the issues, gradually pushing the issue to its climax.  The climax is where Scene and Story structure differ.  For a Story, you want to resolve all of the issues at the end, generally allowing your hero to triumph in the face of adversity.  A single scene, however, doesn’t work that way.  With Scene structure, you want to end on a disaster!

Why?  Because if the hero wins out in the Scene, all the tension in your story goes out the window.

A great example of Scene structure comes at the beginning of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Indiana Jones wants to get into the tomb and get the golden idol.  And although we don’t know from the start of the scene exactly what it is that he’s after, we know it’s important because we can see how determined he is.  He faces a variety of traps and complications, overcoming them one by one.  He looks heroic.  At last, he comes into the main chamber, and we see the idol.  It’s beautiful!  It’s gold!  Wow!  Carefully, our hero crosses the chamber, pulls out his magic bag of sand, and swaps the sand for the idol, hopefully without triggering the trap.  But then what happens?  Disaster!  The sand starts to sink, and the temple falls apart.  Oh no!

And now we’ve set ourselves up for a whole ‘nother scene—Indy’s got to escape from the temple before he’s killed.  And by the way, how does that scene end?  Again, disaster!  Indy escapes the tomb, but all his work is for naught when the evil Nazi archeologist pulls a gun and takes the idol, telling our hero, “You see Doctor Jones?  There is nothing that you can possess, that I cannot take from you.”  Or something like that.  In any event, it’s that series of disasters that keep the story moving.  We want to see Indy triumph!  That’s what keeps us glued to our seats.

But although you can go from scene to scene to scene as a writer, eventually you have to slow the pace a little.  Eventually, you have to stop long enough to take a breather, set up the next big thing, or otherwise let the audience catch its breath.  And there’s backstory to consider.  There’s simple description.  Hell, there are even issues of clarity.  That’s where Sequel structure comes into play.

A Sequel is the thing that comes after a Scene.  And it’s what sets up the next Scene.  It works like this: Following a serious reversal, our hero takes a moment to take stock of his situation, eventually coming to a resolution.  He will push forward through the adversity, overcoming his challenges no matter what the odds!

For me, Sequel structure is a little more challenging.  For one thing, during a sequel your characters really aren’t doing anything.  They’re thinking.  Plotting.  Planning their next move.  That’s occasionally necessary, but it’s also inherently less interesting.  Sequels don’t move the plot forward.  They provide a segue from one thing to the next.  For that reason, you’re well advised to keep them brief—at least compared to your scenes.

Staying with the Indiana Jones theme, we get into Sequel structure when Indy gets back to America.  He’s at the college, he goes to meet his boss, and he immediately starts recounting his adventures.  That’s a necessary part of Sequel structure.  You have to recap the situation.  Put it into context for your readers.  Indy then starts on about wanting to get back out there—also part of the Sequel structure, the explicit statement that Something must come Next, that our hero is still determined—but that’s when we jump into the next Scene.  The men from the government are here to see Dr. Jones about the Ark.  And with that, the story takes off on its new course.

Scene and Sequel structure are a little more complicated for gaming.  For one thing, as a DM you don’t control the characters.  The Players control the characters.  And so, the characters’ drive and motivation is fundamentally up to them.  You can do things to give motivation, but ultimately the Players have to make their own characters live.  What you can do as a DM is keep an eye on the golden rule—in fiction, bad things have to happen to good people.  The other thing you can do is utilize Sequel structure to segue quickly and effectively from one Scene to the next. 

And then too, a big problem with Scene structure for gaming is that although encounters make good natural scenes, they also tend to end in triumph.  Your PCs defeat the evil monsters, and the world is a somewhat safer place.  Which would be fine if each scene were a separate story unto itself, but it presents a problem when you’re trying to link Scenes into a larger framework.  Each time your PCs triumph, you risk letting the tension out of the story.  And that’s no good.  So then, you need to have an idea of what’s going to come next BEFORE you start each encounter.  That way you can segue into it.  You can set up some kind of non-combat disaster that will propel your PCs and your story onward.

With apologies to my own gaming group, here’s an example of a Sequel that I wrote just this morning for the Sellswords.  After being stranded on a remote desert island, the group challenged and defeated a powerful black dragon named Scylla.  They then defeated a group of elven mercenaries led by a young and impetuous silver dragon named Baelthus.  In so doing, they’ve taken a prisoner—and possibly stirred up the wrath of a much more powerful ancient mithral dragon named Typhon.  In this piece, I’m trying to use the threat of Typhon to turn their triumph into a little disaster that will keep our story moving.  I also tried to set up the fact that our heroes need to make some important decisions—as part of the story’s Sequel—which will set their next course of action.  Structurally, this is set up by our prisoner, who recaps the situation in order to put it into context and set up the decision.  Our next Scene can then flow organically from whatever my Players decide they want to do.

Oddly, now that the battle’s over, the eladrin spear-sorcerer seems pleasant.  Even charming.  If he bears you any ill will over the deaths of his comrades, it’s buried deeply under his innate elven reserve.  He drops his spear to show that he is unarmed and willing to surrender, but he’s still wearing a golden circlet upon his brow, and a close examination of his person reveals a sheathed wand hiding in his left boot.  He was clearly holding this in reserve.

“My dear boy,” he says in response to Jaeron’s question, “where else could you possibly have gone?  You didn’t follow us into the Feywild, and it’s not as though this is a big island.  When Baelthus overflew the area and saw that you’d wrecked the lizardling village, well, it wasn’t hard to guess what you were after.”  He gestures at the beached caravel.  ”A chromatic dragon preys upon the pirates of the Sword Coast.  It’s only natural that she’d have acquired a little ship as part of her horde, no?  Of course, most Blacks wouldn’t go to the trouble of restoring a prize to quite this extent, but even so, Scylla is hardly unusual for her species.  Why even Baelthus knew of this ship’s existence, and he’s hardly a member of Great Typhon’s inner circle.  I doubt he’s ever even seen the Scrying Room.” 

At that, the eladrin’s reserve cracks.  But only for a moment.  An instant later, his icy reserve is back.  With a show of dignity, the elf brushes a bit of unseen dust from his shoulders one at a time. 

“Well, you have me now, gentlemen.  But what shall you do with me?”  He looks directly at Baslim.  “I tell you truly, Dead Man, that you cannot outrun Great Typhon forever.  And whatever fate finally finds you, I can assure you that your companions will share in it—completely.  What’s more, though I doubt that the Great One will care personally for the fate of one foolish Silver youngling and his followers, she was very interested in YOU.  In all of you, actually.  I do not pretend to be in the Mistress’s confidence, but I strongly doubt that she will allow you to simply sail away unmolested.  It is, after all, no secret that she has been locked in the Divining Room ever since that massive storm blew you off course—and into her sphere of inlfuence.  Alas, it goes without saying that the contents of her divinations are unknown to me, but I am aware—as you must be—that she possesses enough of the Spark of the Eternal to follow you wherever you might run.  At this point, she probably knows your future course better than you do.

“Ahh… the Court has been pondering it all for days.  As you might imagine, the mystery has only added to the intrigue.  They were divided on the meaning of the portents—and upon your personal fate in general, Baslim—even before you ran.  Now…  Well, Baelthus’s actions speak to belief of the larger faction, I think.  Desmond spoke for caution, but the more senior members—the dragons, you understand—they wanted action.  Quite apart from your inclination towards violence and mischief—and your association, however casual, with evil deities—I think that the Court members were afraid that our haven’s existence might be discovered because of you, and that this might ultimately compromise the Great One’s mission… whatever it might be.  The, uh, lives of a few inveterate slavers were but a small price to pay for our continued secrecy—at least as far as most of the Court was concerned.”

The eldarin shrugs.  “Well, it matters not now.  By right of victory the next move is yours.”

So.  It’s little cut-scenes—or as in this case, cut-sequels—like that that I find useful in keeping my story moving.  Not because I want to railroad the Players but because I want to be able to keep things in the proper context.  The Players control the characters, but I control the World.  We have to work together to keep it rolling along.  My half of that is setting things up in such a way that the flexibility of the characters makes sense inside a larger context of the story through which they’re moving.

Anyway, that’s a few words on Scene and Sequel structure.  If you want to see it done by a master, go pick up one of Jim Butcher’s many very readable novels.  Note the Scene and Sequel structure of his storytelling and the way it keeps the plot humming along.  The man is a master.  I merely offer him up as an example of how to do this right.

What I’m Reading: Recent Reads

You might’ve guessed this, but just in case you didn’t, look, I been busy, yo.  The super-secret project has been kicking my ass.  It’s not so much that I don’t know what to do or how to do it.  It’s not even that I don’t have the time.  The problem is that the damned thing’s been taking so much sheer mental effort that honestly, there just hasn’t been a lot left over for anything else.  I mean, I can still ride and train because for the most part that doesn’t take mental effort.  Triathlon is the antithesis of my work.  But blogging, writing, even managing Sellswords… all those things have kind of gone by the wayside this past week or so.  With that in mind, I’m not gonna do a full-on review this week.  I’m just gonna tell you what I’ve been reading, and you can take from that whatever you will.  And at this point, we’ll just have to see about Storyteller’s Playbook on Friday.  I’ll try, but I make no promises.

So.

Yesterday I finished Drew Karpyshyn’s 3^rd Star Wars book, Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil.  Fun stuff.  The first half dragged a little, but in general, I’ve enjoyed all of the Darth Bane books, and at least for me, this last one tied it all up nicely.  It ended well, and old Drew left himself some running room in case they let him write some more of this series.  Personally, I hope he does.  I’ll keep reading.

While we’re on the subject of Star Wars, I notice that Paul S. Kemp has a new Star Wars novel out called Crosscurrent.  I don’t know anything about it, but Kemp—a Canadian lawyer in real life, just like my own sometime writing partner Steve—is one of my favorite Forgotten Realms authors.  His Erevis Cale books are some of the best in the Realms.  With that in mind, if I see this one at my local library, I’m gonna check it out for sure.

I also skimmed Kevin Smith’s Batman: Cacophony yesterday, but it sucked a high hard one.  Look, I know a lot of folks like Smith and all, but for me, he hasn’t done anything decent since Mallrats.  And yes, I did like Mallrats—a lot—and if you didn’t, that’s not my fault.

Last week’s big read was the second of Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko books, Polar Star (the sequel to the much more well-known Gorky Park).  I’ve mentioned before that Smith is one of my personal heroes, and this book reaffirms why.  First off, the man isn’t even Russian, but he seems to understand Russians in a way that’s almost inhuman.  And then, too, who else could come up with these odd-ball plots?  Polar Star is a murder-mystery set on an Arctic fishing factory ship!  It’s also a damned-fine novel, which is probably a part of why I’ve had so little patience for bad writing—like Kevin Smith’s—lately.

Over the weekend, I read Storm Front, the second of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files comic adaptations from the Dabel Brothers, and it was LIGHT YEARS ahead of what the first one was.  Where I found Welcome to the Jungle plodding and poorly executed, Storm Front was a very faithful adaptation, easily capturing the original’s wry wit and sheer mad-capped excitement.  In fact, there were several places where the OGN actually improved on the original by the addition of simple clarity.  For that fact alone, adaptation scripter Mark Powers deserves a medal.  Even better, however, is the fact that although the GN Storm Front has the same illustrator as did Jungle, in the newer volume Syaf’s fanboy tendencies are kept well in hand.  We see him go over the top only once with fanboy excitement, and when he does, it’s entirely appropriate.  Plus the coloring is decidedly darker, and the inks are heavier, leading to a much, much edgier look over what I’m sure are similarly styled pencils. 

My only complaint on Storm Front is its cover.  It’s ugly.  Harry Dresden should NOT have a late 80’s Jheri curl style white-boy afro.  In blonde, no less.  Gimme a break, alright?  If he stands too close to an open flame, he’s gonna catch fire like Michael Jackson dancing for Pepsi.  That’s just wrong.

Finally, there’s this morning’s fare, Vertigo’s Madame Xanadu (Volume 1), a book that Variety called “Classic” but that I personally found a little plodding in its 3^rd Act.  Eh.  I’m not gonna sit here and say that’s it’s a bad read or anything.  It grabbed me from the beginning, and the art is excellent throughout.  Where it came apart for me was in the end.  We never get what I’d call resolution.  The whole thing reads like some kind of weird, fanboy-esque unfulfilled lust fantasy.  And that leaves me cold.  If I end a book wondering “what’s the point?”—I mean, what’s the point?  Girl makes mistakes, fails to learn, and makes more mistakes.  She not only doesn’t get the boy, she never even gets a chance to try to get the boy.  And that’s supposed to be a story?  Come on.  That’s the START of a story.  But it plays like it’s an ending, and in any case, I’m sure as Hell not gonna hang on for Issues 12 through 15 (i.e. Volume 2) based on a false finish.  Ugh.

So there you have it.  This afternoon I’ll be reading Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert’s Batman and Son.  Morrison hardly ever writes bad stuff, and Kubert is a legend in his own time, so I have high hopes.  But I feel like Batman done me wrong a few times lately, so…   

Well, here’s hoping.

Happy Easter!

I hope you had a good holiday.  We finally had some nice sun this weekend, and I managed to get in a pair of rides.  I even got in some climbing yesterday.  Not too bad. 

Today we went to early service and then headed out to Sally's sister's for a late lunch.  Again, that wasn't bad at all.  We took some pictures, so if i get a chance, I'll post a few.

What about you?  Did you do anything good?

Injuries, injuries...

Well, the good news is that I don't have a hernia.  But the bad news is that I do have a pretty badly pulled groin muscle.  And it hurts.  I can't run, and really I can just barely ride.

*sigh*

This tri season is already tough, and it hasn't even started.