King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a cryptofascist masturbatory homage to Brexit Britain. Here's why.

So last night I had the dubious pleasure of viewing King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which is basically everything about a Guy Ritchie movie (sweary dialogue, montages, rogueish lads) but at some kind of cosplay convention where they wear historical costume derived from almost every historical period imaginable saving the Romano-British one in which the legends of the King Arthur are mostly set. There is even a scene where David Beckham, yes that David Beckham, roars defiance with a CGI-burned face whilst wearing something from a Mordor Primark. Mostly though, it’s a sort of cryptofascist masturbatory homage to Brexit Britain.

What I fixated on, beyond the terrible plotting, over-editing and crap dialogue with all the verisimilitude of a Year 6 School Play, was how bizarre the assumptions the film made about power,  righteousness and leadership were. Whilst the core story of Le Morte de Arthur and Arthurian romance revolve around chivalry and principle and the tension of being both a Christian and a worldy knight, and the contradictory loyalties of feudalism, the fundamental themes of Legend of the Sword are a bizarre stew of prejudices about education, class and masculinity.

The main character (played by a budget Tom Hardy chap with an undercut) is a swaggery, macho male power fantasy – hardly rare as Hen’s teeth in a low-brow action film – who initially is some sort of low-key gangster in ‘Londinium’. Despite the fact he is a violent-to-the-point-of-sociopathic brothel-owner and small time thief, we are supposed to embrace this character as a standard square-jawed hero. The chivalry of Arthur here extends to violent repercussions against Viking Johns who take allowances with ‘his’ womenfolk. Here, masculinity – even heroism – is expressed as the violent defence of women that are fairly explicitly owned and exploited for sexual labour by a swaggering male authority figure. (The only other female in the plot is some kind of witch). He is contradicted of course with his foil, the usurping Vortigern. Vortigern is soft-spoken, intimidating and aristocratic: the dialogue between him and Arthur impinge that is his very education and social class which cut him off from being authentic in his relationships, or in his drive.  We know Vortigern is evil because he has usurped the natural order by taking his brother’s throne from the ‘born king’ – the conceit of legitimacy by blood being instrumental to all these stories – and because he has sacrificed his children for supernatural powers. Let’s dismiss this as meaningless moustache-twirling which was clearly a plot afterthought or pantomime homage. Whilst Vortigern is tyrannical, it seems to only be in response to wide-scale dissent in support of The Born King, and his reign otherwise seem orderly and successful. Arthur is a tyrant, too, and also solves his problems only with the application of violence. The only difference is their relationship to the women that make up their household: - Vortigern sacrifices his familial bonds for greater power, Arthur sacrifices power in order to protect his intimates. Two roles are juxtaposed: leader as interested in the preservation of the state, or leader as invested in the preservation of his family. Would Arthur be any less murderous and tyrannical should his legitimacy be challenged? From his conduct as brothel-owner, it seems not. The legitimacy of his reign is explicitly based on his use of violence being more effective. There is a scene where he is basking in the adulation of the crown, the camera fixates explicitly on the sword, not the man himself. And yet, his masculinity, swagger and physicality is what is meant to establish this man has a right to rule to the modern cinema-going audience as well. 

The bonds of fellowship which underpin Arthurian romance are also present, in that Arthur is fanatically, stupidly, idiotically loyal to that fat bloke in the yellow coat from Utopia and a group of ethnically diverse cockneys where every corner of Earth, including several thousand miles beyond the greatest extent of the Roman Empire under Trajan, but let’s not go there. This is supposed to the Round Table motif, and that homosocial bonding element is meant to establish Arthur as definitively heroic and relatable. Vortigern possesses no male relationship which is not with an underling or enemy. Despite the Round Table motif from Arthurian romance, there is no equality here, and the others are merely minions of Arthur, who orders them around with the smug self-assuredness of a bullying older brother (again, this man is inexplicably supposed to be the righteous hero of this film). In fact, this routinely impinges his ability to lead. When a comrade has obviously been captured, and the whole party needs to escape, Arthur announces “We’ll wait until first light” – abrogating the responsibility for decision-making and risking everyone’s life to demonstrate the importance of those homosocial bonds.  This laddy, fraternal conceit goes on to the basis of his regime: his coup is followed by the placing of his completely unprepared mates into positions of supreme power and authority. This will be ok, because…

….this film has some weird class politics. There’s this standard ‘you’re only a real person whose experiences matter if they’re authentic – authenticity being defined by being poor’. Now, I don’t normally object to this: it works for tonnes of characters and I’m a commie who grew up on a council estate so it appeals t the chip on my shoulder. This of course makes Arthur innately a great monarch in waiting – the perfect place to learn the ropes of medieval kingship is in petty criminality, apparently. In the picaresque worldview of the films, just like in Lock, Stock, the educated, middle-class or soft are a liability whose conceit makes them incompetent, whereas the rough and tumble characters from the streets are innately super-competent. (The fact Guy Ritchie is a posh southerner and related to aristocracy complicates the psychology of this considerably). This bizarre creation – the lumpenprole king – saunters through a diplomatic meeting with simple assertiveness to make decisive policy. This policy involves a speech about how no-one should fuck with ‘England’ (Where’s that, Arthur? There aren’t any Angles here yet) and reduces decision making to the simple pronouncements of intent. The details of being blockaded by a hostile European power following this decision are not explored, but I do look forward to watching Arthur launch Article 50 and call Merkel a ‘silly mare’ before nutting Jurgen Klopp.  

That Old Time Religion (Part 1: Movement)

Religion in vanilla D&D is boring as fuck. There’s this big, boring list of Gods (I’m Pelor the Sun-God, I like ‘the Sun’ and grant some fire-related powers and I’m lawful boring) with no interactions. All religions have this generic ‘temple plus one priest in every city’ structure, and all the drama that religion should bring to your game: schisms, crusades, heresy, intolerance, unfailing belief, philosophy , reformation– is just absent.  Even when WOTC writers work to flesh out these religons, they offer meaningless detail in place of drama: the high priests are called such-and-such and they wear robes of blue and all shave their heads and an…

One reason is, I think, that the polytheism of vanilla D&D lacks interactions between the gods. What makes Loki a powerful architype isn’t that he’s Chaotic Evil and that he grants the Trickery domain – it’s the fabric of relationships and stories that define his mythos. Zeus sitting on Olympus being King of the Gods has no story, no conflict – Zeus leafing through an ornithological journal in order to get laid in animal form is interesting, and pushes the story.  If you have a Polytheistic ‘tight’ pantheon, make them have interrelationships of conflict, cuckoldry and conspiracy. Who fucks who? Who tricked who? Who bred a monstrosity that still lurks out there somewhere? Who ventured into the underworld? For every god, a story linking them to another. These can differ geographically or culturally, but they help give a character to these unknowable beings.

To improve this, ensure your religions are in flux. They must change and alter through geography, culture, time and class. The Christianity of a Roman legionary is not the Christianity of a Baptist minister; the Catholicism of rural Spain in the Renaissance is not the Catholicism of Tolkein; the Buddhism of a Sri Lankan farmer differs from that of an American Philosophy professor. Nuances and culture predominate; beliefs fracture; reforms crack up and are carried forward or suppressed. Two fantasy worlds do this extremely well: Dragon Age; Inquisition has huge detail on this, as do the Princes of the Apocalypse books by R Scott Bakker. Contrast to say, the otherwise intricate world of A Song of Ice and Fire where religious belief is a fairly tedious aspect of the world which doesn’t mesh with much else in the world. This ensures the religion is not wall-hangings; it is a sword over the fire: an instrumental part of the world and its evolving plot.

The major homebrew religion of the Company of the Noose/ North Corner campaign has always been the worship of the Iron Tyrant; a Brahma-like super-soulthat encompasses all other gods in the setting. In their doctrine, all gods, archfey and devils are simply aspects or guises of a schitzophrenic godhead.  This bring a nice monotheistic flavour which is lacking in vanilla D&D (and most major world religions are monotheistic for a reason).  As a god, The Iron Tyrant is boring. He’s formless, inert, unimaginable. So the religion itself has to be interesting to compensate.

The flavour is drawn from early Christianity and the millennial feelings around the crusade: to worshipers of the Iron Tyrant, the end of the world is imminent. The cause? Mortal sin, which manifests as monsters and disaster. This puts all their actions on a permanent clock, and makes vigilance, readiness and paranoia the order to the day.  To ensure the religion is in flux and altering, it has a structure. In Damesht, the home continent of the campaign, the organised arm of the faithful, the Order of the Resplendent Star, is organising to tie itself to power. The Dameshti Emperor, long politically castrated by the aristocracy of his realm, is a sympathiser: like Constantine the Great, a single Empire under a single God with a single ruler seems a logical way of ordering the universe, so he is a patron of the faith. But across Damesht (and this was a major plot-point In the first story arc set in the eponymous town of North Corner) the common people are conservative and hostile to this monopolising force and its eschatological fervour.

There are schisms in the Order: a faction believe the Order should proactively police mortal actions (there are men worse than any werewolf or hag) and achieve absolute, totalitarian dominion over the lives of its subjects. Some believe worshipping other gods as aspect is an abomination worthy of execution. Some believe the Order should be paragons of honour and be living examples of a life well lived – others believe their position in opposing the looming eschaton makes morality meaningless and the only recourse should be the sword. These factions vie for power, and the actions of players could easily raise one up over the others, and have had different interactions throughout their careers (they have murdered members of the Order, and they have assisted them in conquering Loquista, as circumstances dictated – they currently seek a working alliance.)

A religion must be instrumental to the story to matter. As myself and Gaz’s campaign have seen a number of characters opt to be worshippers of the Iron Tyrant, I feel that this shows a success in making a faith with some bite.  

Records, Railroads and Rewards

I find one of the persistent issues that DMs - myself entirely included – find difficult to balance is the relationship between choice and structure. Ideally, you’d deposit your players in a multiverse of endless possibility and they’d gallivant merrily about pursuing their hearts desires. Realistically, you do need some structure to ensure something is happening. I personally as a player find little more frustrating that endless dithering over a quest or environment to undertake or overrun, and as a DM my eyes glaze over entirely.

To solve this I have three maxims:
- There’s adventure everywhere.
- All roads lead to Rome.
- Constraints power creativity.

Like most DMs, I have a ball-park idea of what The Company of the Noose will one day do, but I wouldn’t railroad them into it. But to ensure action actually takes place there needs to be some overview of options. To this end, I regularly update my Quest Journal and endeavour to summarise options for the players to pursue. Constraints power creativity. If they choose to ignore the main quest, fine – that villain advances their quest correspondingly. The world is alive.

if you have a brief look over it, you can see a number of Main Quests, Side Quests and Personal Quests. You’ll also notice that most side-quests or personal-quests are linked explicitly to a Main Quest. If the players pursue Landar Farshield’s personal mission to slay Valakshanya, the Vampire Queen of the Bleeding Mountain, they will also be combatting long-time party foes the Cult of Ouroboros, and will no doubt stumble across clues related to other Cult of the Ouroboros quests, or even ones related to the main quest. This is not the Quantum Ogre – if the players had instead chosen to pursue Crown, Hourglass, Sword and adventured to Zunia they would have found entirely different lead to an entirely different aspect of the ‘main’ quest – potentially related to Pursuing the Metagnosis. The point is that wherever the players go, they find something pertaining to the larger picture: a lead, a rival, an ally, an item an artefact: a feedback loop to where there is more adventure to be had. All roads lead to Rome.

An example of this is when my players, disinterested in their ‘Main’ quest, endeavoured to instead build up the keep they’ve acquired, and strike up an alliance with a Pirate-King (Blind Agni Nine Fingers) of the acquaintance. Spontaneously, they decided to curry favour by setting out to humble one of his rivals, Rasselas.

They set out for the Sea of Desolation, and there I sketch out some made up locations. I’d dimly thought of the Sea of Desolation before, and had a gist (it’s magical so islands move and shift, there are gaps between planes so weird monsters can pass into the world here, and it’s got a Sinbad meets Stranger Tides meets The Scar vibe). One of the places I’ve sketched, The Weeping Isle, I tell them is a cursed island riddled with tombs. That piques their interest, and they presume it would pique that of Rasselas, so they set out. There’s adventure everywhere.

On the island, they uncover and explore a Duergar ruin – twist, it’s a millennia-old ruin only from the future, and the Duergar meet a horrible fate at some unspecified future date. Tom’s character Rongrim, previously uninvolved in the main quests, now has a connection to explore which will eventually lead him to having a connection to the main-main quest, Pursue the Metagnosis. Additionally, the players encounter the remnants left by a former rival and ex-PC on the very same island, and have another feedback loop to combating the Cult of Ouroboros.

The players are choosing their goals, their methods and their priorities, but there’s a reward for each avenue explored, and they’re never not pursuing their main goals. This prevents the strange situation common in PCRPGs like Skyrim or Dragon Age where players cease averting the apocalypse to help a farmer find his lost sheep or look up a companion’s poorly sister: they’re always combating their enemies or growing their organisation’s strength in some appreciable way. Additionally, no one is too bored pursuing that quest that’s the baby of a single player, because ultimately they’re always pursuing their own goals simultaneously.

Additionally,  I’ve found my players love reminiscing about that time they fought on a giant chain hovering over a cavern, or when they burnt a city’s grain supply to wreak economic hell, or when they slew Sheng-Lung, a mighty water-beast in Loquista’s arena. Now, I use milestones for levelling, but that only gives you twenty or so moments per campaign where you can acknowledge a victory or moment of renown.

So as an alternative, and to keep the players mid-level long enough to have a campaign, I’m going to introduce reward feats for completion of those endeavours, either for quest milestones:

Reaper of the Raven Queen
You have vanquished three of the abominations marked by The Chooser of the Slain. Faced with you, even dead hearts shudder with fear.
Once per day, you may make all undead creatures within 15 feet make a CHA check versus fear. The DC is 8 + your level.

Or just moments that inspire bragging rights:

Dragonslayer
You have slain an apex predator – a beast whose eye had appraised civilisation as a wolf watches sheep. All shall raise a glass to your name.
You have advantage on all rolls to track dragons, or knowledge rolls about dragons. If you are a Ranger, you may treat Dragons as your favoured enemy. You need never pay for a drink again.

Power Behind The Throne
I am altering our deal. Pray I do not alter it further.
You have played kingmaker – there is a crowned head who will always be accommodating to you.

I find these are smaller power-boosts than a level, meaning I don’t have to constantly readjust the scale of my campaign to accommodate players who can now throw around a Circle of Death or turn into an Elemental or whatever, and there’s something massively cool about fucking up an enemy using an ability you won with your previous badassery, and it gets players remembering their party’s shared history or achievement and loss – something key to cohesion.

Session Summary: Battle of the Lonely Tower

Dramatis Personae:

Vaina "Full Disclosure" Moynen, blood-soaked barbarian and chosen of Voidwalker.  (Dave).

Landar Farshield, cloak-and-dagger agent of the Emperor. (Phil).
Kavarus, bardic seeker and part-time T-Rex. (Gaz)
Pheobus Arouk, Warlock of the Radiant Light and Astral Wanderer. (Tom).

Barbara, Barbarian ‘on the bench’.  (Chris).


The session opened at The Lonely Tower, where our party had once crossed swords with the indefatigable Black Annis.  Sejuren had raised his camp there, and planned to use the defensible point to hold off the Dameshti army – to hold like a rock before the wave. The Company of the Noose were given command of a flank, holding the dry ground that emerged from the swamp from a horde of Zunian mercenaries. The Company, preparing for battle, schemed at how best to break Sejuren from within.

To that end, Kavarus, Landar and Vaina inspired the green troops under the command into a reckless, doomed charge into the massed Zunian troops. Struggling through swamp water, the recruits clashed with in an agonised moment, being outmatched and slaughtered.  Surveying the bloodshed for a moment, the Company of the Noose then surged backwards in a bid to end Sejuren on the battlefield. Kavarus used his Hypnotic Pattern to easily bypass the last line of defense, and Sejuren himself, seeing his flank collapse and the Company enter his fortress, leapt to battle. Even Arouk, once vanished, was able to materialise in the light of a place so close to his worshippers, and joined the battle.

Even confounded by the Crown of Ruin, Sejuren and his Cambion bodyguard proved a tremendous challenge, shattering the Company of the Noose in the tower. Barbara,and Kavarus soon fell, leaving Vaina fighting alone. As Domorit rained destructive magic from above, the Company nearly found themselves matched. Sejuren even exploited the weakness of Voidwalker to challenge Vaina to a duel – in the realm of shadow within the cursed sword, the two traded blows whilst the fractured remnants of the Company of the Noose gathered their strength, praying for a horde of Zunian barbarians to overwhelm the keep and save them.

Domorit, seeing the Company’s treachery as dealt with, went outside and used her magics to buoy the Loquistan soldiers. The Cambion bodyguard assailed Pheobus Arouk, who once more stood alone, trusting in his armour and the Radiant Light that suffused all things. As scorching rays of fire burnt his flesh and spears bloodied him, he fell dead. Suffused with the light of the positive plane, he exploded – crushing and scattering his Cambion foes.meanwhile, Landar, cursed with the Slow spell by Domorit, struggled with glacial slowness to rouse his comrades. As their blood poured out with disturbing alacrity, Landar willed his sluggish limbs. After agonising moments which felt like hours, he stabilised and revived his embattled comrades.  As Arouk rallied, Landar and his comrades set upon the blinded, scattered Cambions and put them to the sword.

In Voidwalker, steel met steel as Vaina and Sejuren fought like ghouls over flesh. Blows were exchanged, flesh hewn, bones broken – with all the elegance of a rabid bear the two ‘duelled’. At the end, Sejuren outmatched Vaina, and cut him down. Gloating, he kicked Voidwalker aside and pushed his thumbs deep into Vaina’s eyes, crushing them like grapes. Vaina, still raging, flailed for his dagger and stabbed Sejuren in the throat, tumbling. Pawing at his eyes, he realised it was not just the darkness of the void that robbed him of sight – he was truly, permanently blind. Scrabbling for his sword in an eternal darkness, Vaina wept as his fate. Unaware that above, the shadow watched him with an appraising eye.

In the Prime Material, the Dameshti army assaulted the broken defenders of the tower, and Prince Aurelian heaped praise on Captain Landar and his company of the Noose. As the victory was celebrated, Landar and Kavarus were met by Varro – ‘the Kennelmaster’ – who was master of spies for the Emperor himself. Varro, a Warlock whose left arm has been replaced by some mechanical surrogate, posed to Landar a simple truth: all men are slaves, Landar was simply unfortunate enough to see them. Varro offered to call off The Hound provided Landar completed yet another final mission: to take the Company of the Noose to Zunia and recover the Crown and Sword of the ancient Emperors of Damesht, long stolen. He was also told to advise Aurelian on how to consolidate control of Loquista – which elements of Loquistan society would be preserved, and which purged.

As they return to a city now flying the feathered sword of Damesht rather than the shark of Loquista, the players have a huge set of decisions to make….



Villains Vanquished: 11
Assets Acquired:
Pheobus Arouk, Warlock of the Radiant Light and Astral Wanderer. (Benched player-character.)
Valour-In-Every-Heartbeat-Dwells, a Cambion Paladin of the Order of the Resident Star.
Barbara, a Dwarven barbarian of dubious loyalty.
Agnes, former proprietor of The Mucky Duck Brothel.
Nations Overthrown: 1.

Session Summary: The Crown of Ruin.

Dramatis Personae:
Vaina "Full Disclosure" Moynen, blood-soaked barbarian and chosen of Voidwalker.  (Dave).
Landar Farshield, cloak-and-dagger agent of the Emperor. (Phil).

Bodhi, Assassin-Priest of Beshaba, Lady of Misfortune. (Chris).
Bartholomew, Hunter for the Raven Queen. (Steve).


Our players cease their questioning of the corpses of Teshei and Four Times Jack, and plot the destruction of Sejuren. To this end, Bodhi has crept into the secret sanctum of the Cult of Beshaba with the Crown of Loquista. With the aid of an assortment of fellow worshippers of the Lady of Misfortune (beggars, pickpockets, swaggering sailors, gamblers and prostitutes who fear misfortune) he cursed the Crown in an elaborate ritual, creating The Crown of Ruin. Holding it delicately in cloth, Bodhi felt the tumult implicit in this gilt-and-gold, and was beset by visions of banners fluttering in the wind and falling into mud; of castles crumbling into the sea, or empires hazarded on the throw of a dice.

That night, The Company of the Noose met with Sejuren, and told him the deed was done. Sejuren was soon acclaimed by his troops as Most Sublime Despot of Loquista, Sejuren I, and began bringing his rule to the city with fire and sword. Granted the Crown of Ruin by the party, Sejuren then stormed the Grand Marshal's Keep and slew Tyruk in cold blood, suffering pyrrhic losses as the curse pulsed along the threads of possibility.  

The next day,  Landar snuck out of the city to meet with Prince Aurelian, commander of the Dameshti army: who furnished him with information: that the twin brother of Sejuren, Valour-In-Every-Hearbeat-Dwells, was a knight of the Order of the Resplendent Star and rode with them. Aurelian bade Landar lure Sejuren out of the city, and passed him a letter from the Swan-Emperor of Damesht himself. Landar proposes to open the West Gate for the Dameshti horse, commanded by Valour, that they might claim the city behind Sejuren's back.

On the swamp-wracked road, Landar read his letter, and saw that it was parchment containing only the footprint of The Hound. Feeling the press of fate like an insect crushed by a thumb against a window, Landar fled to the city.

Whilst Landar treated with emperors and princes, Vaina, Bartholomew and Bodhi hunted a merchant - a partisan of Tyruk's, who they slew in cold blood. Even Vaina Moynen quailed to see the way their new comrade Bartholomew put even the merchant's children to the sword.

The next morning the Company of the Noose awake to a city beset by a myriad misfortunes: milk spoiled, beasts sickened, wine soured, lovers parted, children tripped, vases shattered, eggs rotted; and they knew they sat in the lap of the Crown of Ruin; a terrible artefact of the Queen of Witches, Beshaba.

Landar approached The Despot Sejuren, cradling the dread coronet in his hands,  and appealed to his vainglory and his purpose - he goaded the man king with the possibility of cowardice. Shocked by such an affront, Sejuren demanded Landar supplicate himself in the dirt, and threw at him the head of the last man who had named him coward. Eye to glassy eye with the former Grand Marshal Tyruk, Landar begged mercy. But Sejuren heeded his counsel, and decided to march to face off against the Dameshti army in the field - with the Company of the Noose in his honour-guard.

In his absence, Bodhi schemes to open the gate in the dead-of-night, as battle-horns roar in the distance. With his Black Finger allies: Esmeralda, Esteban and Elspeta. Beset by all sides by Cambions and guards, the Black Fingers are soon vanquished with only Bodhi reaching the gate house alive.. Using his magic, he controls the mind of one guard to hold the door whilst he pulls the portcullis and the West Gate, hearing the screams of his dying friends above even the trumpets of the Dameshti charge. Picking over the carnage left at the gatehouse as battle rages all around, Bodhi saves Elspeta and Esteban.

As night falls at the tower of Black Annis, the assembled armies of the Dameshti Emperor Audenfeyr and the fiendish legions of the Despot Sejuren watch each other over the gloom, like two wolves about a scrap of meat. A nation hanging in the balance, the session draws to a close...


"I am aware of the frailty of man, I think about the power of fortune, and I know that all our actions are at the mercy of a thousand vicissitudes..... prepare for war, for you have found peace intolerable." Scipio Africanus


Scorecard:
Assets Acquired:
"The Black Fingers": Esteban and Elspeta.
Villains Vanquished: 7.
The Fallen: Esmerelda of the Black Fingers.
Treasure: 200gp (bounty).
Magic Items: The Crown of Ruin.
New Moral Depths Plumbed: 1


The Crown of Ruin.
Artefact. The once-proud coronet of Loquista now thrums with dread purpose. A band of gold with spires of white platinum.
The wearer of the crown takes disadvantage on all saves, actions, attacks and checks and suffers any misfortune a capricious DM can conjure. The effects of the crown are also felt by any organisation or state which the wearer controls directly.
The Crown can only be willingly removed by the wearer following a Wisdom Check of 22.

The Sunday Slush Pile 19.2.17

The Sunday Slush Pile is a roundup of things I’ve listened to, read, watched, scoured the globe for, met eyes with across a crowded room or glimpsed in a darkened alleyway – those things that I think are eminently D&Dable. I’ll share this potent ideas soup with the rest of you every Sunday to give you ideas for settings, encounters and characters. 

Dune (1985). 

It's some weird synthesis of acid-trip and utter kitsch, but the kaleidoscopic disaster that unfolds  is weirdly watchable. I've read Dune (1965), and was therefore in the privileged position of translating to my fellow viewers - like a time traveller to an archaeologist - the narrative behind all the spectacle. 

In terms of inspiration this is hearty stuff: David Lynch's aesthetic direction manages to combine a BDSM riff on Nostromo for the Harkonnens with Kaiser Wilhelm meets Flash Gordon for the Padishah Emperor. Its all so rich in implied meanings and bizarre power relationships and a kitchen-sink approach that it is valuable brain-food for any setting. I think the central take-home is that despite the innate silliness of sandworms and spice and space-travel the narrative is po-faced with the power-relationships and character dynamics that stem from it. Be thus in your RPG settings. 

There's also some brilliant (if melodramatic) villainy in the character of Baron Harkonnen. He combines a repulsive, vengeful, grasping body horror with sexual perversion and body horror. If your RPG villains are anything like the Baron, your players will know to hate them. 

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark. 
This is not an easy read. The tangled history of the Prussian Reich has no room for coffee table books, and almost everyone is called Frederick or William or occasionally, for novelty, Frederick-William.  It tells the story in rough chronological order of Prussia from a backwater Kingdom on the periphery of Europe to the villainy of the Nazi empire. Having loved Christopher Clark's Sleepwalkers, I'm glad he's maintained the humanising microscopic interludes to the vast and soaring epic that is a historical narrative. The cast - which includes luminaries like Frederick the Great and Bismarck alongside some fascinating twenty-page digressions on the politics of grumpy Calvinists at the University of Heidelberg - is rich in human drama interposed with the innate stiffness of the average Prussian.

From a D&D perspective, it is again rich in mind-food for villainy. Clark's descriptions of the Freikorp's hyper-masculine and deliberate cult-like fetishisation of violence is Lawful Evil as fuck. The toxic ideology that willingly embraces devotion to a state or a throne - even an empty one - over all considerations of morality would be a perfect match for an RPG villain. Somewhere in the Freikorps is a  Paladin of Vengeance itching to get out. This captures smart, psychopathic, amoral evil like nothing else. 

A Gladiatorial Arena where Humans fought Dinosaurs and Giants.
Creationists, eh? 

The Sunday Slush Pile (5/2/17)

The Sunday Slush Pile is a roundup of things I’ve listened to, read, watched, scoured the globe for, met eyes with across a crowded room or glimpsed in a darkened alleyway – those things that I think are eminently D&Dable. I’ll share this potent ideas soup with the rest of you every Sunday to give you ideas for settings, encounters and characters.  This week’s theme seems to be history and myth.

TV: The Shannara Chronicles (Netflix)
As there is a dearth of quality on-screen fantasy, I gave it a go. As I feared this is lukewarm fantasy garbage featuring beautiful clean people farting about in generic Tolkienania. Despite being heralded as a Game of Thrones competitor, the characters are mainly useless whimpering Millenials who can’t decide whether they can hang out with each other long enough to save the world. Whenever something needs to happen for the plot a convenient vision from the future occurs to ensure it happens. Dreadful but weirdly watchable.

The world itself does have some interesting things to say about history and myth: it transpires that Generic Tolkeinania is actually the ruins of our civilization, and there’s scenes with nuclear waste and mutations and a cult trying to recreate human society as was using Star Trek as their model. This play on cargo cult thinking would make a great D&Dable as the players would be in on the joke the characters aren’t. I also think subways, nuclear silos and buried shopping malls would make excellent dungeon locations, and aren’t hard to find maps for. As my gameworld has extinct iterations of the Prime Material as an aspect, making one the current world and having the players explore some kind of post-nuclear-war event or see the Statue of Liberty poking out from the desert a la Planet of the Apes seems too good to miss. This peculiar anxiety around nuclear warfare would seem a little dated, but luckily Trump is giving us a nostalgic taste of a ‘Duck and Cover’ reality.

Podcast: The King of Kings (Dan Carlin's Hardcore History).
A gargantuan podcast (totalling some tens of hours), this has been my chief gym and commute listening for the last week. When I lift, I lift to the conquests of Alexander the Great or the intrigues of Persian harems – what could be more motivational? Dan Carlin is conversational and possessed of a child’s enthusiasm for his subject. With my ‘historian’ hat on, I’m always a little concerned by the age of his secondary sources but as a storyteller he is excellent.

There are tonnes of images and moments that are D&D as fuck – it’s often hard to remember this is real. Xenophon, Greek mercenary, camps among the ruins of destroyed Assyrian cities – no local can match the building or knows who made them – and they still stand sentinel to a lost empire. An imperial army with aristocrats from every corner of an Ancient Empire, each with their own eccentricity: peacock feathers, zebra-skin shields, Amazons, Scythians. The idea of statues of gods as living aspects of the gods, and the suitably mercenary way gods can therefore be kidnaped, held hostage, threatened or destroyed. Archaeologist-Kings eager to seek evidence of epic ancestors. All of this would be excellent for your campaign – I have included the god-statue thing already.

Secondly, there’s the fact that Ancient people(s) lived so violently, that their reprisals and struggles were so life-and-death, that we often forget it as modern people, and even our fantasy worlds can often have a sort of Cowboys and Indians vibe. Not here. If you want tutoring in psychopathic violence, listen to Assyria.