Thursday, June 23, 2011

Dungeonspiration: The Golden Ass

The Golden Ass is a fantasy novel about a man who is fascinated by magic.  His fascination leads him to attempt to cast a spell without knowing what he is doing - and the rest of the book deals with the humorous and horrifying repercussions.

Oh, did I mention that the novel is one thousand eight hundred and fifty years old?

Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass, is the only Latin novel to have survived to the modern age with all of it's pieces intact.  Echos of its substance and structure are clearly evident in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Adventures of Pinocchio.  The book inspired works by Franz Kafka and C. S. Lewis.  Some even trace it's picaresque style forward to Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, James H. Schmitz's The Witches of Karres and L. Sprague de Camp's Novarian series.

Most of you probably have heard of it.  A few of you might have even read it.  Why not more?

Well, for one, it's an old ass book (pun not intended.)  People tend to equate old with dusty and boring.  Two, the novel can be Naughty.  Yeah, I capitalized the N.  Such books don't get spoken about in polite society.

What I find fascinating about The Golden Ass is that the novel provides a glimpse into an ancient world that has not been radically transformed by Christianity.  The setting is second century Greece.  Early Christians were living in the area, to be sure, but it would be a century or two before major political and religious shifts would occur.

While what The Golden Ass shows is a fiction, it is based in truth, at least from a cultural perspective.  We see the descendants of the Roman conquerors of Greece living the good life - to excess.  We see the destitute native population living in deplorable conditions.  Strange religions and cults compete for attention and believers.  Slavery in a natural part of the landscape.  Outside of towns, bandits run rampant and there is no apparent source of law.  Even inside of towns, nighttime is as dangerous as a war-zone.  Law and justice seem to be meted out more by angry mobs than by any official enforcement agency.

This world really screams for a band of heroes.  Even the main character is not very heroic at all.  He's just a poor sap swept up in the chaos.

If you are looking to get away from a 'Medieval American' viewpoint, The Golden Ass is a wonderful reference.  It answers so many questions, big and small.  What do the rich and poor think of each other?  How do people view magic?  What do they think of the witch who lives down at the end of the lane?  When is the right time to kill an accused criminal?  Is there really any difference between 'accused' and 'guilty' to a mob?  What do people do for fun?  What do people think about being 'something to do for fun.'  How do bandits live?  Do rural Greek peasants live in multi-storied houses?  What does an old lady keep under her mattress?

And so on, and so on. :)

There are various translation of the Golden Ass on the net.  Most freely available are the musty 18th century type.  I would really recommend going and getting a newer one - the Penguin Classics version, published in 1998 and translated by E. J. Kennedy.  It's a good read.

So go forth and read old shit and get inspired!

- Ark

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Dungeonspiration: Ants

[Carefully I crept onto the New Post section of Blogger without scanning through the Blogroll.  My willpower is unexpectedly strong today. :) ]


I've got these beach beach recliners with pillows built into the head area.  The pillow can be flipped up, revealing a padded hole for your face.  I assume this is to so you don't have to char the side of your head if you fall asleep while tanning.

I didn't have much to do this afternoon, having declared a moratorium on reading blogs.  Its' a strange feeling.  I've been reading blogs almost every day for half a year now.  The Boy was uninterested in discussing the new idea for a Risus game, so I went outside to get some sun.  The Baby Momma nabbed me and slathered me with a experimental concoction to reduce sunburn.  We have bottles and bottles of sunblock, but apparently all of it gives you cancer now - thus the mix of grape-seed oil, baby butt cream, shea butter and aloe that I suddenly found myself wearing.

Lying on the recliner belly first, I stuck my head in the hole.  I noticed immediately that the backyard needed a good mowing.  The second thing I noticed was all the friggin ants.

We used to have a problem with fire ants in North Texas.  The sunabitches could swarm a dog or deer and take them down.  Their bites burnt like hell.  They were an invasive species that pushed out the original big red ants and big black ants that we had when I was a kid.  But another invasive group of ants came in and has driven the fire ants to who knows where.  These dudes are little and black and they don't sting like the fire ants.  Well, they sting, but it doesn't hurt near as bad.

So I'm chilling, watching these little black warriors like a god suspended in the heavens.  They like to go up one side of a blade of grass, hang out on the tippy top long enough to stroke their little antennae, and then down they go via the other side of the grass.  Over and over, from one blade to the next.  I guess they are patrolling their territory.  Occasionally they'll stumble upon another bug - a little spider, a beetle, or a ladybug, and run it off.  I know the ants follow scent trails and communicate to each other a lot by scent.  Watching then got me to thinking.

What if there were a good reason that dungeons were inhabited by monsters.  Perhaps there was a colony-based burrowing creature that took to dungeons because they liked not having to dig so much.  Maybe there were ant-like - but maybe not.  They were underground dwellers, so had no sight.  They didn't have very good hearing either - except for a sense to detect vibrations.  Their main sense was smell, and the entire colony communicated through scents - quite like ants.

So, a party of adventurers goes to loot the tomb of Rootin-Tootin-Ho-Tep and finds it infested with the critters.  The critters have evolved over the eons - or perhaps have been magically enhanced, to have very separate castes.  Some are warriors, others scouts - but some have drifted very far in physical form and act as doors - only opening with the right scent combination.  Others could have evolved into traps - slashing blade traps, crushing traps, pit traps, poky dart traps - all with a basic intelligence behind them.

Perhaps the goal of the adventurers isn't to loot a tomb - but to raid the critters colony and steal something.  Perhaps raw goods that the things collect - or something they produce - like royal jelly or some sort of secreted gem or the very collectable eyes of the queen herself.

You could have an entire world over-run by the critters - and the adventurers are the some of the last survivors of a post-insect-apocolypse.

Well, anyway, my mind can go crazy thinking about such things.  Go sit down in your back yard - or a park somewhere - and stare at some bugs for a while.  I bet they'll inspire you.

[Just a reminder - I'm not reading blogs for a bit - including my own.  If you reply to this post, I'll eventually read it and respond - but not just yet.  Feel free to talk amongst yourselves until then. ;)]

- Ark

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Happy Trees

Apparently I have been reading too many blog posts and comments lately, because I am finding myself angry at odd times of the day for absolutely no good reason. So I declare a BOB ROSS BRAND HAPPY TREE MORATORIUM on reading any blogs. I'm not sure when it will end, but at least until July.

I'll still write a few posts, if I have a brain-gasm, (and the Dungeonspiration series,) but that is about it.  Forgive me if I don't even look at the replies for a while. 

HAPPY LITTLE TREES TO YOU ALL! :)

- Ark

PS - If you need to get in touch, you can figure out how, I'm sure.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Monday, June 13, 2011

Dead Simple Lock & Trap Mini-game Report

Back in April I posted rules for a Dead Simple Lock & Trap Mini-game.  This was created with help from - oh - just about everybody in the community.  I must say, it's working great.  The Boy is loving it.  Whenever there is a lock or trap, I start shuffling the deck of cards and he runs around the table and stands next to me, making his guesses and wanting to see the cards first hand as I reveal them.

The other players seem to enjoy watching - but I was surprised that one player reported using the mini-game in the rpgs he runs as well.  He said he used it for Pathfinder and it was a hit.  But even more surprising, he started using it in his Shadowrun flavored Savage Worlds games as well, to handle cyber-intrusion.  Seems like it works good for any time you need to create a little more tension than just a flat die-roll, but not take too long.

One little problem I have is that the Boy tends to do a bit better than he should statistically.  Whether he is psychic or not is up in the air, but I'd say that the chance that he is reading his old man's unconscious cues is much more likely. :)

I'm impressed how fun the simple little thing is.  Go ahead - give it a whirl.  It won't bite. 

Much.

- Ark

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Ode to a Tachikoma

Brave blue spider
Innocent as a child
Watching the sun glow through its fingers
Death bringer
Life saver
Downloading enlightenment
Artificial
Yet possessing what so many strive for:

Salvation


- Ark