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.