Worldbuilding examples: Lucas, Tolkien, Peter Jackson

First example — Star Wars

   Darth Vader is second only to the Emperor, everybody knows that. But it didn’t seem to be the case in 1977.

   In Episode IV, Vader is the muscle. He doesn’t even sit at the conference table, and paces around the room like an attack dog on a leash. That’s exhibit A.

   Admiral Motti says, “Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader.”

   If the supreme ruler of the galaxy is a 10th dan black belt, no officer will ever joke about someone’s “karate shtick,” right? It doesn’t make sense. Motti’s scathing words, “Your sad devotion to that ancient religion...” unequivocally indicates that the Galactic Emperor, in Lucas’ mind, was not a Sith at this point.

   Vader begins to Force choke Motti — but is ordered to stand down. That’s exhibit B.

   The Sith Lord clearly isn’t the Emperor’s second-in-command here.

   In ’77, galactic domination ain’t Vader’s chief concern: he is mostly obsessed with finding and killing his old master. “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed,” he says. “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”

   In the script, we can read: “Grand Moff Tarkin, governor of the Imperial outland regions, enters. He is followed by his powerful ally, The Sith Lord, Darth Vader.”

   That sounds odd, doesn’t it? After all, Himmler wasn’t a “powerful ally” of Hitler’s — he was under his command. Mussolini was a powerful ally: not actually in the Third Reich, but from another country. That’s what an ally usually is. If you belong to the same military, you’re not an “ally,” you’re either an officer or a soldier. That’s exhibit C.

   Three years later, in The Empire Strikes Back, there are no new Grand Moffs. Vader is the Emperor’s right-hand man, and he calls him “my master.” The Emperor is now a Sith, too. Worldbuilding has occurred.

   In the very beginning, it was a military empire, with a lone “sorcerer” ally who wasn’t that impressed by the Death Star. Later, it became a Sith empire — with military personnel.

   Huge difference.

   We can assume that Vader isn’t actually part of the Galactic Empire in ’77. He stands to the side, like Destro in G.I. Joe — scary enforcer and / or independent contractor. The Sith Lord is Tarkin’s powerful ally, not the Empire’s. Seems like the Grand Moff personally hired Vader to retrieve the stolen Death Star plans; an unusual situation quite similar to Vader later hiring the bounty hunters to find the Falcon.

   Tarkin, not Vader, has a direct line to the Emperor. “I’ve just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently.”

   Vader isn’t a ranking officer in the Empire. Not yet.

   Get this: in a “Revenge of the Jedi” deleted scene, the new Death Star commander refuses to let Vader enter Palpatine’s throne room.

   When they remake A New Hope — let’s face it, it’s inevitable — they’ll rectify those details; Vader will indeed sit at the conference table, and Motti won’t mock him at all.

*

   Whether or not you agree with this analysis, one fact remains: the character of Darth Vader is much more dominant in The Empire Strikes Back than it was in A New Hope ― and that is due to cogent worldbuilding. How many times have we heard game designers say: “If your players connect with one NPC, give that NPC more importance in the next games.”

   It is what Lucas did. Both kids and adults loved “The Sith Lord,” enjoyed his “sorcerer’s ways” and his “sad devotion to that ancient religion.” So, now, let’s give him more screen time and make him less of a loner, less like Merlin in Camelot; let’s take King Arthur — boom, he’s a sorcerer too! The Galactic Emperor himself is going to have his own sorcerer’s ways and a (no longer sad) devotion to that ancient religion. Vader is gonna be the Emperor’s apprentice. Thus, technically, the Empire’s number two.

   That’s how you worldbuild.

   Overhaul. Interweave.

   After A New Hope, Lucas took governor Tarkin’s “ally” and the unseen Galactic Emperor, and linked them directly to one another. It made good sense, and enriched the world’s core principle, which is the Force. Imagine what Star Wars would be if Lucas had failed to do that.

Second example — The Hobbit

   In my penultimate 2021 post, Low-concept vs High-concept, I talked about the giants that we see in The Hobbit, when Bilbo and the Dwarves are crossing the Misty Mountains. I thought it was totally preposterous, but someone recently told me that the “stone giants” are indeed mentioned in the source material. I was taken aback. Yes, it has been a long while since I read The Hobbit. I didn’t recall that one sentence, like, at all. My bad.

   “Bilbo… saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out, and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang… they could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides.”

   Believe it or not, those insane 300-foot tall elemental giants did not come from Peter Jackson’s fevered mind. So he was right to include them in the movie, wasn’t he?

   Since we’re discussing worldbuilding, this is noteworthy.

   Tolkien wrote The Hobbit around 1933, including the duelling giants for stylistic effect, fairytales and all. After that, as he started working on The Lord of the Rings, he completely scrubbed these creatures. His world was slowly shaping up, and he kept the Trolls, the Ogres, the Orcs and the Goblins, but abandoned the Stone Giants. Why?

   He knew they wouldn’t fit. Even at that early stage, Tolkien certainly knew who Melkor would be, and how he would have perverted some of Arda’s creatures to make Trolls, Orcs, Goblins and so forth; but a race of rock hurling titans — how come? It’d upset the world’s balance. Indeed, why puny 40-foot Balrogs when you could have an army of towering elementals the size of the Statue of Liberty?

   So Tolkien cut them out and never spoke of giants again in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales.

   Top-notch worldbuilding.

   But then Peter Jackson went and undid that.

*

   There’s a reason why Lucas scratched the name Starkiller, and there’s a reason why he cut the scene with Biggs Darklighter: they are bad names. Writing the script, Lucas probably tried many permutations — Starlighter, Starwalker, Darkwalker, Skylighter, Skykiller. In the end, he kept the one name that sounded really good.

   What Disney is doing, returning to pre-1977 drafts and bringing back those deleted names and characters, is bad worldbuilding.

   If there’s a Dark side and a Light side, there should be lightsabers and darksabers — right? Bad, and almost childish, if you think about it. When my nephew was 4 or 5, he saw a blue fire hydrant on the street, across from the park, and as soon as this information registered in his five-year-old brain — those things on the sidewalk aren’t always red, there can be other colors — as soon as he knew this, he started looking for the green ones and the yellow ones and the black ones and the orange ones. For months.

   So, yeah, lightsabers… darksabers… shadowsabers are next on the list, probably.

   All lightsabers in A New Hope were supposed to be identical: white. That would have been great, I guess. Adult sci-fi. Then Lucas thought it would be more dramatic if the good guy wielded a bluish blade (Heaven is blue), and the evil guy had a reddish one (Hell is red). Maybe not George’s best worldbuilding choice.

   Forty-five years later, it’s Toys ‘R’ Us Star Wars.

   And what’s going to be the “light” / “angelic” equivalent of the Nazgûl? The Nazgood?

   What Peter Jackson did was bad worldbuilding, too. Tolkien removed the stone giants from all his works after The Hobbit, so why in hell is Jackson boisterously reintroducing them? Sure, the giants are present in the book — but you also need to look at all the other texts of Middle-earth, and see the big picture, and understand why the author did what he did.

   Good worldbuilding is about adding layers to what’s already there instead of constantly inserting new stuff. Remember that nifty little Ring of Invisibility Bilbo found in some random cave? It turns out that it’s much more than just a generic Ring of Invisibility… That’s right. Think about doing the same in your tabletop role-playing games; instead of introducing a powerful new item, just take that “ordinary” +1 dagger the party found during their very first adventure — and make it speak all of a sudden. It’s an intelligent dagger +1 / +3 vs demons / devils, and it needs the party’s help to go free its former owner from a sorcerous prison inside a huge derelict steampunk meteorite!

   “But why didn’t it speak to us for an entire year?” It’s up to you, the DM, to come up with a cool reason. Maybe the dagger was simply observing the player characters and assessing their worthiness?

   Bad worldbuilding is when you go over the edge. Things were okay before, but then you add something more, and it all goes to hell. That’s what happened in White Wolf’s World of Darkness towards the tail-end of the storytelling game craze; with vampires and werewolves and changelings and mages and celestines and mummies and demons literally everywhere, why and how would there be any normal humans in positions of power anywhere?

   The Star Wars universe is fine without Starkiller and darksabers.

   Middle-earth is fine without Stone Giants.

   The World of Darkness was fine with just seven vampire clans and a few garou tribes.

   The most significant difference between good worldbuilders and bad worldbuilders is that good worldbuilders know when to rein themselves in.

Is Your Party Democratic?

   Don’t worry: this post isn’t political.

   It’s a reflection on which in-game means belong to one character alone, and which resources belong to the entire party or group. In some instances, said question can be annoyingly and surprisingly problematic.

   To demonstrate, I’m going to talk about the amazing game my friend Jean-Pierre has been running since the early nineties. Bear with me for a while, ladies and gentlemen, and you’ll see exactly what kind of pickle I’m alluding to.

   Jean-Pierre’s game is a genuine homebrew world with its own original mechanics, stats, proficiencies, and magic system. We also get something called “Dragon Points,” possibly the most valuable resource in the game. Dragon Points are not like Fate Points in Warhammer — they are not “spare lives” for your character, video game style. (“I’m fresh out of Fate Points; the next time I die, I die for good.”) Rather, Dragon Points are like Anything Points, in that you can spend one — or more — at any given moment, to secure those additional arrows your character forgot to buy while passing through town, or to ensure that the sacred scroll he or she is carrying miraculously didn’t get wet when a tidal wave swept the coastal village, or to add a number of successes to an important To Hit roll or ability check. Dragon Points allow you to intercede directly, like if you were to become your own Dungeon Master for just a second...

   As the party is waiting outside the throne room, they happen to hear some other guest mention that Her Majesty the Queen absolutely LOVES a rare wine from Ullendale. Your character can choose to spend a Dragon Point to actually have a bottle of Ullendale wine in his or her pack. When the party is finally allowed entry to the throne room, the Queen’s mood immediately lightens as she is presented with such a thoughtful gift.

   You only earn a Dragon Point when your character does something formidable, heroic, or truly hilarious. They’re hard to come by.

   Around Christmas time, two years ago, Jean-Pierre sent an email to all his players. It was a quiz — five increasingly difficult, in-universe questions about his game world, with a total of 15 Dragon Points to win, per player!

   Personally, I have been jotting down notes and sketching cool NPCs and redrawing city maps in my little notebooks for over twenty years, so I got four out of five questions right, for a total of 12 Dragon Points. No other player approached that in the quiz. One player didn’t even bother to answer the email, not because he’s a bad player, not at all, but he knows he isn’t good at remembering weird fantasy names and fictional places.

   So now my character, Stygia Steve, has a huge pool of 12 Dragon Points. I’ve never had so much of that precious asset in all my years playing in this game.

   First time we get together and play since the pandemic began, our party finds itself into an especially nasty fight with an unkillable samurai zombie and a tough Dwarf zombie, plus a couple undead wolves — and our big plate-mail-clad 17th-level tank is rapidly dropped to 3 HP. Fuck…

   We don’t have a healer per se, so the monk tries his very best at first aid, and my character decides to use the free-form magic system to conjure up some degree of healing, but it is costly, very costly indeed; I’m gonna have to roll at least 30 on my 3d12. Almost impossible.

   “What if I spend a Dragon Point on that roll?” I ask.

   “You add 10 to your result,” Jean-Pierre says.

   “I’ll do it.”

   I roll 3d12, and get 6, 4, and 2. Plus 10 for the Dragon Point, it’s a total of 22, and I needed 30 for that spell to take effect. I wasted a Dragon Point, damn it.

   We need our tank to get through this accursed place — so I try again, and this time, I spend 2 Dragon Points, adding 20 to my roll. The roll succeeds. Our tank regains 30 Hit Points, putting him at 33, but it is still an awfully long way from his max HP.

   So, guess what? I do it again. Two more Dragon Points, and another 30 Hit Points healed.

   The big guy is at 63 HP now. It is safe to continue the adventure, right?

*

   Stygia Steve has 7 Dragon Points left, and the adventure is not over yet. What happens after the next nasty fight? Everyone will pressure me to “heal” the tank, even though healing spells are not my character’s specialty…

   I’ll be able to burn another 6 Dragon Points for three 30-HP healing surges, and then attempt a fourth and last one with 1 Dragon Point… and then…

   What is the worst thing that could happen?

   You can almost see it, don’t you?

   My character could eventually find himself in a situation where he must make a very important dodge to avoid falling into an acid pit; 26 to succeed, 16 on the roll, and if he had a Dragon Point in his sleeve, he could push that roll to 26 and make it by the skin of his teeth.

   Or, he could be hanging off a cliff, while the other characters are either down or busy fighting several opponents some fifty feet away. No helping hand available for Stygia Steve; he loses his grip, and falls to his death. If he’d had at least 1 Dragon Point, I could have said, “I spend a Dragon Point and there’s a long, gnarled root not ten feet beneath me — and I try to grab on to it…”

   But I don’t have any Dragon Points left.

   So I die.

   It’s hypothetical. But still a head-scratcher.

   One player takes comprehensive notes for years and years, draws sketches, memorizes the names of kingdoms and cities and rivers and remote mountain ranges, and then, one day, it pays off. Boom: 12 Dragon Points!

   The party’s tank alone is going to benefit from that.

   Might seem wildly unfair, sure, but the tank protects you and everybody else in that party, doesn’t he?

   Yes he does. He is always right between us and danger.

   So where’s the problem?

   It’s a conundrum; sooner or later, somebody’s going to die for lack of a spare Dragon Point — and it might very well be the one guy who had all the Dragon Points to begin with.

   Am I entitled to keep at least 1 Dragon Point in my sleeve, you know, just in case? In other words, what resources are mine and mine alone?

   I remember seeing this in the early eighties: the paladin is at 2 HP, and the thief (there were no rogues back then) is the only one in the group with a potion of healing… and he refuses to “waste it” on the paladin. Different times. We were way more selfish.

   Now that we live in a sharing economy, naturally, we share resources. Your character found a potion of extra-healing during a solo game last weekend? That potion is still going to benefit the next character in your party who ends up in dire need of healing, whoever he or she may be. And yes: when comes your character’s turn to be in dire need of healing, there might not be any healing resources left in the party’s pool.

   Here’s one easy solution. If you create a quiz to reward those players who take abundant notes, the rewards should be ability improvements and / or single-use powers.

   Question 1. Difficulty: average. Reward: add +20 damage to any melee attack your character makes. One use only.

   Question 2. Difficulty: hard. Reward: increase your character’s Constitution by 1, permanently.

   Question 3. Difficulty: very hard. Reward: even if your character isn’t a spellcaster, he or she gains the ability to regenerate 1d20 Hit Points, 25 times (3/day max). Self only.

   See what I mean?

   While we’re here, let’s broaden the scope of this rumination. Why not replace most magic items with innate character abilities? It’ll only prevent preposterous min/maxing shenanigans. I have seen players transfer all useful items and amulets and bracers and rings to one Dwarf fighter, and then this super-buffed character entered the boss’ lair alone, and fought the entire combat all by himself, while the rest of the party cowered in the corridor, “feeling naked.” And this wasn’t in the eighties, mind you; it was four years ago.

   Not fun tabletop role-playing. Again, video game mindset.

   The ultra-selfish players of 1983 look pretty good now, don’t they?

   Three words: Innate personal powers.

   And it works wonders on NPCs, too. Instead of giving Fingon the Elf a +3 longsword, give him an added +3 proficiency bonus, and the innate ability to hit creatures that can only be hit by magical weapons. It’s much better. The bonus lives inside that NPC instead of in a blade that can — and will — be stolen from him at the very first occasion.

   I’m not mad because of the Dragon Points thing. If I burn them all to heal our party’s tank, so be it. And later, if good ol’ Stygia Steve croaks because he doesn’t have any Dragon Points left — so be it. But it’s a thought-provoking prospect, and writing an article on this topic seemed like a worthy idea.

   We’re due to play our next game in three weeks. Literally anything can happen. And I shall write about it right here. Of course.

   I’ll share.

Low-concept vs High-concept

   What makes a good franchise, and, coincidentally, a good tabletop role-playing game?

   It boils down to two things: low-concept, and humor.

   For example, my next dungeon is a “psionic dungeon.” The party is gonna have to make lots of Psionic Saving Throws if they want to progress within those eldritch alabaster walls. Let’s say there’s a giant flow of ⸨psionic⸩ lava rolling down the stairs. Those who make their psionic save won’t see anything but a regular set of stairs, and they can reach the top in two rounds; but those who fail the save see that huge wave of lava all too well, and if they get too close to it, they even feel the scorching ⸨psionic⸩ heat, and if they actually step into the lava, they take actual ⸨psionic⸩ fire damage… And they can die. And their friends can’t do anything about it, even if they keep yelling, “There Is No Friggin’ Lava! It’s All In Your Head!!!”

   There’s a humor factor in this, of course. Big letters sculpted right into the floor of a room read: “Tangled Forest.” Everyone but the cleric saves against psionics. The party crosses the room in a few strides, but the cleric has to go around tree trunks and step over misshapen roots and fallen branches only he can see and touch. It takes him fourteen rounds to join his comrades at the other end of the room.

   If you can insert a psionic dungeon or, let’s say, a zombified Walmart in your campaign, then that game is low-concept – and it is not a flaw, mind you.

   You can have a zombified Walmart in D&D, why not? Omin Dran and the gang once ended up in Seattle and found a PlayStation console, didn’t they?

   And you can have a zombified Walmart in Marvel, of course.

   And you can even have a zombified Walmart in Star Wars; you just need a weird enough planet where strange vortices keep spewing out junk snatched from the future in “galaxies far, far away.”

   You cannot have a zombified Walmart in Nibiru.

   You cannot have a zombified Walmart in Dune: Adventures in the Imperium.

   D&D has humor. Marvel has humor. Star Wars has humor.

   That is key.

   Purple Worms on strike, demanding better working conditions? Totally okay.

   Arrakis sandworms on strike? Nope.

   Twi’leks launching a new social media platform? No problem.

   Mentats launching a new app in Dune? Nope.

   Psionic dungeons in D&D? Sure. In Marvel? Sure. In Star Wars? Why not? The cave on Dagobah is basically a psionic dungeon.

   Dune is very high-concept indeed, and it won’t make a very good franchise. Apart from the sandworms, there are no monsters to speak of. And you can’t play a wicked Ferengi or a woke Ithorian or a scheming Githyanki.

   If you want your next game to be a zombified, psionic Walmart, you’re in for a treat, I guarantee it. If you just want your heavily-armored highborn from House Whatever to square off against heavily-armored fighters from House Harkonnen, well, I bet there are several video games out there that can do it for you – and much faster, too.

   Whenever they make a high-concept thing like Curse of Strahd, they say it’s a demiplane – in other words, a pocket dimension inaccessible and thoroughly cut off from the rest of D&D. If you take a fantasy setting and make it high-concept without the demiplane hack, it becomes some sort of Middle-earth. You can’t have Tomb of Horrors in Middle-earth, because it would imply that Acererak once ruled – in lich form – a vast kingdom of the undead, and now you have to fit that element in your timeline. Is a lich stronger than a Maia, or weaker than the Witch-king? How did this vast kingdom of the living dead impact the Sindar, the Ents, the Dwarves?

   Middle-earth only have something like 12 sorts of monsters in all. Ogres, Trolls, Uruk-hai, Orcs, Goblins, but no Gnolls, no Hobgoblins, no Troglodytes, no Lizardfolk, no Kobolds, no Hill, Stone, Frost, Fire, Cloud or Storm Giants, no Otyughs, no Xorns, no Ropers or Storopers, no Beholders, no Mind Flayers, no Umber Hulks, no Githyanki or Githzerai, no Mimics, no Piercers, no Trappers, no Carrion Crawlers, no Green Slimes, no Black Puddings, the list goes on and on and on—

   You can’t have hundreds and hundreds of different monsters in a high-concept setting like Middle-earth or Dune.

   Modrons? They’re from Nirvana. Devils? They come from the Nine Hells. Apart from the Timeless Halls and the Void, are there planes of existence in Tolkien’s cosmology?

   High-concept means explanations.

   Explain that Balrog? It is the last of its kind, created by Morgoth during the First Age, and annihilated – except for this one who fled the scene – when the Valar came and destroyed Thangorodrim.

   Explain Shelob? Well, she’s also the last of her kind, a rather puny descendant of the great spider Ungoliant, the one who consumed the Trees of Valinor.

   Now, explain those Gelatinous Cubes, please…?

   Low-concept doesn’t need any explanations: it’s an open buffet, and you can have whatever the hell you want, really. Rabbitfolk? Yes! A Lamborghini? Why not! AD&D had cowboys from Boot Hill, after all. A Star Trek phaser? Sure! Dave Megarry’s druid actually had one. A karate robot? Absolutely! There’s one in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks…

   What you can’t have is a crashed spaceship full of Vegepygmies in the Misty Mountains south of Rivendell. It would shatter Tolkien’s cohesiveness – like Peter Jackson did in The Hobbit when Bilbo and the Dwarves are trying to cross the mountains and stumble right into a titanic rock hurling match between 300-foot tall Earth elementals.

   You broke the world, Peter.

   The largest “monsters” in Middle-earth are Smaug and the Balrog; but if you suddenly introduce 300 feet tall elemental giants that could stomp on a Balrog with one foot and kill it stone dead – that changes the whole story since Beleriand. Indeed, if such gigantic creatures had existed, wouldn’t Morgoth had made good use of them? If he could recruit Ungoliant, he could also recruit those guys. Forget Gothmog: one such elemental giant would have sundered the ramparts of Gondolin like a sledgehammer pulverises a watermelon!

   Peter Jackson took this well-balanced, high-concept world, and tried to turn it into a low-concept monster extravaganza not unlike D&D. Read my lips: It. Doesn’t. Work.

   Imagine this scene in Dune: Harkonnen ships are leaving Giedi Prime to return to Arrakis, when all of a sudden they come across two Borg Cubes, or two Cylon Basestars. WTF?!?

   This is essentially what Peter Jackson did in The Hobbit.

   You can still take a low-concept setting and “high-conceptualize” it with lots of writing, abundant explanations, and the “demiplane” trick, but you can never take a high-concept setting and make it low-concept. Try as much as you like; you won’t succeed.

   Some gamers on social media seem to hate Greyhawk, and I don’t understand why, since they also admit that Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms ultimately suffered from the same flaws as the World of Greyhawk. Lots and lots of monsters and weird kingdoms and character classes and planes of existence? “Fun” is the word you were looking for. All low-concept settings are more or less kludged together: it is the only way to go.

   Low-concept makes for funnier games, while high-concept brings about better novels. Movies and TV shows are somewhere in between.

   Disney seems to be more interested in buying low-concept franchises, which are easily manageable. I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney ended up buying Dungeons & Dragons. The endless deluge of bad TV shows and movies directed by J. J. Abrams would be something to Behold.

Pokémonization

   Someone on the Internet talked about Lucifer, the TV show. They said, “Get Ready For Lucifer’s True Final Form!”

   At first, in 2016, Lucifer had glowing red eyes. Then, he sported beautiful angel wings. Then, he showed us his devil face. Later, Lucifer lost his angel wings. Later still, on Netflix, he got demon wings instead. Then, a full demon body. And finally, he was revealed with his devil face and demon wings and demon body all at the same time.

   Lucifer Mega EX, if you will.

   Slowly but surely, everything is being “pokémonized.” Everything in the mainstream media – and also in tabletop role-playing games, obviously.

   In role-playing games, it translates into each individual paragraph having its own little title. Reading through monster descriptions, each new paragraph has a header or subtitle: “Malicious Glee,” “Challenging Lairs,” “High and Mighty,” “Chained to the Grave,” “Dwellers in Darkness,” and so forth – like lists of powers and effects on Pokémon or Magic cards.

   Incidentally, the first Monster Manual was the original set of critters with stats, but instead of acquiring 10 little monsters at a time in random booster packs, you purchased the complete monstrous collection all at once, from Rot Grub to Demogorgon – from Smeargle to Mewtwo.

   The Monster Manual was so damn popular in ’78 and ’79 that it spawned a monster creation craze in the UK and the rest of Europe, which they called “The Fiend Factory.” Yep, that’s where the Fiend Folio comes from.

   The “build” philosophy is another pervasive effect of pokémonization: you no longer just roll up a new character, you build one – like you build a powerful, kickass deck.

   In First Edition AD&D, a level 10 ranger with STR 18/00 and a +3 longsword could strike a Troll or Hill Giant and do a minimum of 20 points of damage, and he or she got a second attack in that same round. Maximum possible output: 54 damage in one round. A 1e Hill Giant can have up to 66 Hit Points.

   What else do you need to build here?

   Before the pandemic, one of my players decided that his new cleric was a hermaphrodite. That’s cool. A few weeks later, I emailed him a two-page backstory that (kind of) made his character an offspring of the Cat Lord... because the Cat Lord looks pretty androgynous to me. No new shapeshifting powers, no formidable DEX bonuses or catlike reflexes – just a nice and slightly wicked background.

   The character’s mother had gotten lost one evening, and was being pursued by a bunch of zombies – like in Thriller. The Cat Lord showed up and rescued her. The next morning, two giant panthers escorted the young woman back to her village. A few months later, her parents found out that she was pregnant. “The Cat Lord’s baby!” she repeated. Village elders went to find the Cat Lord, demanding explanations. But the Cat Lord insists that the child isn’t his – like in Billie Jean.

   Player gives Dungeon Master something to work with; Dungeon Master gives player something new and original. Player has the right to refuse, of course.

   He could have said, “No way. I hate it.”

   But he didn’t.

   Another player sold his character’s soul to a devil in exchange for two experience levels. That’s gold, right?

   He could have refused to sign the contract. “No way in Hell, man.”

   But he didn’t.

   If and when another player gives me something to work with, I’ll come up with twisted new ideas and outrageous new deals.

   That’s how you “build” a unique, interesting character: not by min / maxing everything all the time and replacing Clustered Shots with a better Metamagic feat, but with some funny, flamboyant, original backstories – and by actually doing crazy shit.

   Sometimes you get the impression that Mike Krahulik and Scott Kurtz don’t really understand how all the game mechanics work – and yet their characters are larger-than-life, and Krahulik’s and Kurtz’s presence at the table is impossible to ignore.

   If you’re dull and uninteresting, your overpowered Sorcedin or Wizarbarian will be dull and uninteresting; at the end of the day, the most important part of your build is you.

*

   Our fact-obsessed culture has pokémonized the work of great authors like Tolkien, Lovecraft, and now, Frank Herbert.

   We gladly forget the writer’s original message, and focus solely on the characters or things he or she had to evoke in order to articulate that message. Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth and Hastur and the Nightgaunts are unimportant in and of themselves – they are but the various embodiments of Lovecraft’s fear and chief concern: the unknowable.

   Since we cannot “play” with the message, we dismiss it out of hand – and invest all our efforts in the systematic enumeration and precise categorization of all those imaginary creatures. A Great Old One isn’t the same as an Outer God, the Outer Gods are totally different from the Other Gods, and so forth. We’ve created a set of Pokémon with HPL’s symbolism: now, the whole thing is gameable, and we know whether Cthulhu is stronger than Mother Hydra, whether a Mi-Go can kill a Fire Vampire, and if the Yithians are in fact older than the Flying Polyps.

   Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua, low-level card. Y’golonac, “EX” card. Nyarlathotep, “Break” card... You get the gist.

   Same thing with Tolkien. Can Saruman defeat a Nazgûl? Is a Troll stronger than Shelob? Could a Balrog actually vanquish King Fingon?

   In the Lord of the Rings video games, you assemble your formidable army, customize your Rohirrim, and recruit some Ents. We have made Middle-earth into one more game of Pocket Monsters.

   And now, since the release of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, people begin to pokémonize the Duneverse, too. And why not? Someone on Facebook asked if the Jedi or the Sith could stand up against the Bene Gesserit.

   That’s certainly not the point of Frank Herbert’s books – but that’s where we are.

   We don’t care for metaphors; we want collectible, sortable critters and beasts.

   The systematic proliferation of minute, easily-accessed, easily-understood snippets of information is making the fluff a bit crunchier by the day. Creative Dungeon Masters could easily bestow new feats – or even a subclass – on any character through storytelling alone. You say: “Ever since you’ve been told that the Cat Lord might be your sire, you have developed a few thief-like skills. You can Hide in Shadows and Climb Walls...”

   Why not let DMs do that instead of feeding the endless stream of stuff that obsessive players can browse and choose and maximize?

   The overall trend is here to stay, I know.

   The only thing we can do is to manage and hopefully keep pokémonization within bounds at our own tables and in our own games.

   I guess I’m suggesting mental Poké Balls –– yes, kids, you got it right.

Dungeon Tiles: Are They Useless?

   There’s been a lot of talk about Dungeons & Lasers, and it should be no surprise; these sets are absolutely breathtaking. But before you dish out enormous sums of money, ask yourself this question: do I need modular dungeon floors and walls?

   Who runs endless megadungeons these days? Who has the time? If you manage to get your entire group around a table for a few hours, first, you’re my hero, and second, would you like to run a fresh, eventful adventure with beginning, middle, and big finish – or are you simply going to pick things up where you left off three months earlier, in room number 18c, and proceed to rooms 19 and 20... and perhaps 21a, if all goes well?

   So here’s the truth.

   You can handle the truth.

   Corridors are a nuisance.

   Corridors are killing the fun of role-playing games by making it always the same fight: wizard in the middle, fighter up front, rogue rearguard, cleric at the ready to heal the tank. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?

   Static. Boring.

   Even in Gloomhaven. Yes, and the reason why so many groups fail within the first room is because it’s the first room: you can’t park your tank in the doorway and then do everything else with ranged attacks – which is what you do in rooms 2 and 3. Not always, mind you, but most of the time.

   You cannot change Gloomhaven, but you can change your own game of D&D—

   Get rid of corridors. And staircases.

   Open spaces only, à la Chris Perkins.

   Take Prisoners of Slaughterfast, for example – the game they played at PAX Prime 2010. Aeofel is stranded in Hell, all alone, standing in front of a huge fortress. In other words, he is fucked. And then, just in the nick of time, his three friends appear in the distance, riding on the back of a hell-cow!

   The entire fight takes place in front of that hellish fortress, in the open, with the big bad looking on from the top of the battlements. Now that’s D&D.

   In the PAX Prime game of 2015, a robot beholder apparatus takes the party to a cavern somewhere in the Underdark. There is a noxious pond in the middle, steep cliffs on both sides, and the head of a (dead) purple worm jutting out from the top of a mound; there’s even some sort of lodging inside the worm’s gaping maw. Looking for loot, Jim climbs up there – and starts hallucinating. Meanwhile, Viari is up a cliff and cutting off a rope bridge, while Omin and Binwin are down by the pond, gauging an Illithid and a weird, shambling Kuo-toa.

   They didn’t split the party, not really, and yet they’re all over the place – still within earshot of each other – in that awesome-looking cave. It ain’t static. It ain’t boring or tedious.

   Another example: the PAX Unplugged game of 2019 happens in and around a colossal hell-vehicle made from part of a tarrasque’s carapace, complete with a stage on top of it, and seating for more than 60 people.

   You should always run that.

   I blame video games for the way doors and corridors are “tactically” put to use in tabletop role-playing games these days.

   Imagine you’re reading one of Robert E. Howard’s classic Conan the Barbarian stories, and you get to a part that goes like this:

   “Broadsword in hand, Conan stepped into the sanctuary; eleven demons lurked in the low-lit columned room, wielding warped, unholy blades. The Cimmerian quickly closed in on the first two demons, delivering five savage slashes and two backswings – but then he had to retreat into the corridor, because his arms and chest were severely lacerated by the demons’ nasty claws and curved blades.

   “Conan drank his first potion of healing.

   “When he reentered the sanctuary, he noted that one demon was in his death throes, sprawled on the blood-soaked pavestones. More demons charged towards the intruder.

   “Conan’s sword chopped off an arm and punched right through another demon’s jaw; that opponent toppled immediately, while the one with the chopped arm was reeling. Conan freed his weapon just in time to swing it at another demon – then, alas, he had no choice but to retreat again into the corridor.

   “He was bleeding profusely from at least ten grievous cuts.

   “He downed another potion of healing and ate a magical berry that the priestess of Asura had offered him right before he journeyed to this fell temple.

   “Conan reentered the sanctuary. Eight demons left.

   “The melee resumed, and the Cimmerian parried scores of deadly blows. He managed to hit the two demons closest to him; one died, and the other lost a leg below the knee.

   “Conan retreated to the relative safety of the corridor yet again.

   “He was covered in blood: his own, and the demons’ evil blood that burned his torn flesh.

   “He quickly drank his third potion of healing.

   “Five down, six to go, he thought.

   “Bellowing Crom’s name, he charged back into the sanctuary...”

   Who would read that? It’s absurd. It ain’t entertainment.

   Personally, I would throw such a book out the window.

   But that’s how most video games work.

   Don’t allow that to happen in D&D. No corridors. Your game can only be improved. There are no downsides whatsoever. And if the party is overwhelmed, the wizard can still cast rope trick, and they can take refuge in there for a while.

   The Dwarven Forge and D&L stuff is beautiful, but you don’t really need it. The only thing you need is one fantastic location, Sly Flourish style, with lots of different things going on in that place. Players and monsters will do the rest.

   And sometimes you don’t even need miniatures, only a detailed diorama – this is gonna blow a few 40K minds, obviously. Take a look at the PAX West 2017 game (Tomb of Annihilation), or the Apothecary / Switcharoo games of 2018, or that one with the aforementioned tarrasque vehicle, and you’ll see.

   I don’t despise modular dungeons per se; I just don’t want D&D to become Warhammer – loads and loads of terrain with a tiny thread of actual gaming buried underneath all that pricey hardware.

   Folks who build and assemble their entire dungeon up front suffer from what we might call the Minecraft Syndrome. If they have fun doing it, that’s fine. Personally, I don’t have that kind of time, so I cut corners – like a movie director. Indeed, when you shoot Star Wars, you don’t build an entire Death Star, you only build the 5 or 6 parts you need for your story.

   I’m not against D&L or Dwarven Forge: I just can’t afford it. But if you have the money, knock yourself out. I shook Stefan Pokorny’s hand after the premiere of The Dwarvenaut. “Lucky you,” I said. “You do what we all love.”

   Model-building is a wonderful craft: you listen to your favorite music, drink some tea or coffee, and forget about absolutely everything else. Hobbyists have been doing it for over two hundred years.

   If you still want to build the whole thing, suit yourself; play Minecraft D&D and then Call of Duty D&D if that’s what your players want. The only overarching rule is fun.

   But if your group seems to be ready for a style that is more targeted and more “open” at the same time – get rid of corridors! Instead of building megadungeons to accommodate your awesome adventures, build awesome adventures to accommodate unique, extraordinary locations, whether it be a vast purple worm cavern or the Darkmagic mansion or the Moloch statue from the iconic cover of 1978’s Players Handbook or a gigantic tarrasque vehicle in Avernus or Arneson’s Comeback Inn (e.g. once the PCs have entered, whenever they try to leave the establishment, they “come back in,” as in inescapable pocket dimension).

   Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins and Dave Arneson all did it.

   Why wouldn’t you?