Over in the thread discussing how TSR fucked up each of their setting in their own way - Dark Sun by meta-plot, Dragonlance by kitsch sentimentalism, Birthright by faulty execution, etc etc ad nauseam - there's an interesting discussion that Planescape didn't make the planes more interesting, it made them duller. Instead of hitting on the notes of the extraordinary, the bizarre, the genuinely novel and bewildering, we got the same old drivel of vanilla D&D with a thin layer of 'more colours! more jargon!' superimposed on it. Planescape, as the Pundit puts it, has Seattle 90s written all over it.
Now, whether or not this is true, I think it touches on a nerve. And that's something I've observed in other settings too. Take Eberron, the starting adventure in the 3rd edition campaign book. If you erase, for the moment, the fantasy elements owing to the place names and the creature races, what kind of plot or situation does the adventure give you? A break in at a FedEx parcel shop. Someone's parcel is missing, and the PCs are asked to retrieve said item.
I'm sorry, but that's not fantasy. That's someone's story in this world, this week, in Seattle or Trenton. And it's an utterly uninteresting story of what went wrong with his post recently. And it doesn't become fantastic simply by adding that the FedEx is run by goblins. That the parcel is made of wood, and has some rune on it. Because them being goblins, and the parcel having this construction, does not actually make the plot more interesting. It just adds a layer of fantasy on top, but what's underneath is mundane, boring, and banal. It doesn't genuinely explore a new world at all. Whatever sense of wonder, exporation, and downright escapism fantasy - and fantasy RPGs in particular - ever offered, is buried in the ground here. I invite you to do this test for any new adventure you buy from Paizo, WotC, FFG, or whoever these days. Strip out the races and the nomenclature, and ask yourself - what, in that layer underneath, is actually fantastic?
A lot of D&D, from TSR to WotC, isn't fantasy. It's the trivia of urban or suburban life of some modern writer, and with it comes a humanly limited perspective that is all but unable to break out of its own perspective and its own daily routines. The stories, plots, characters, and worlds that emerge here could never stand on their own legs. They simply impose some fancy names, and fancy imagery, and call that fantasy. (FFG does this all the time with its boardgames, using other people's IP. But that's simply a shallow instance of a much more widespread trend. Don't be misled by the easy, shallow instances.)
That's a very long winded introduction to that rare gem of an exception to this utter banality. It's a review of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, which came out in the 1950s. It made me go - fuck TSR, fuck Planescape. I'll just take diTerlizzi's illustrations, and chunk the rest. (Not that I ever bought the boxed sets, thank god.) I'll to to Gormenghast and make that my Sigil. That way, there's at least the chance of offering my players, and myself as a GM, the possibility of encountering a realm that's genuinely fantastic.
Let me know what you think - both about the general diagnosis, and Peake's work in particular. Thanks.
---- (rest of post is quote) -----
The Gormenghast Novels
A review by Keely, published November 14, 2011 on goodreads.com
I know of no author in all of the English language who is like Peake, or who could aspire to be like him. His voice is as unique as that of Milton, Bierce, Conrad, Blake, Donne, or Eliot, and as fully-realized. I am a hard and critical man, cynical and not easily moved, but there are passages in the Gormenghast series which so shocked me by the force of their beauty that I snap the book shut, overwhelmed with wonderment, and take a moment to catch my breath.
I would drop my head. My eyes would search the air; as if I could find, there, the conclusion I was seeking. My brow would crease--in something like despondency or desperation--and then, of its own accord, a smile would break across my face, and I would shake my head, slowly, and laugh, and sigh. And laugh.
Peake's writing is not easy fare. I often needed room to breathe and time for contemplation, but he is not inaccessible, nor arduous. He does not, like Joyce or Eliot, require the reader to know the history of western literature in order to understand him. His story is deceptively simple; it is the world in which he sets it that can be so overwhelming.
Peake writes with a painter's eye, which is natural enough, as he is more famous as an illustrator than a writer (the only self-portrait in the National Portrait Gallery). He paints each scene, each moment, in such careful, loving, playful detail that it can only be described by the original definition of 'sublime': a vista which is so grand and beautiful that it dwarfs our humanity, evoking a wonder akin to fear.
But Peake's writing is not so entirely alienating; on the contrary: he is vividly concerned with life. Gormenghast is the story of a life starting at birth, though our hero only got as far as the cusp of manhood before Peake was seized by malady and death. Each character is brightly and grotesquely alive. The 'fantasy' of this book is not, like so many epics, magic signifying moral conflict. The magic of Peake's world is the absurdly perfect figures that people it.
They are stylized and symbolic, but like Gogol, Peake is working off of his own system of symbology instead of relying on the staid, familiar archetypes of literature. Unusual as they may be, there is a recognizable verisimilitude in the madness imbued in each. Their obsessions, quirks, and unpredictability feel all too human. They are frail, mad, and surprising.
Like the wild characters of his sketches, Peake writes in exaggerated strokes, but somehow, that makes them more recognizable, realistic, and memorable than the unadorned reality of post-modernists. Since truth is stranger than fiction, only off-kilter, unhinged worlds will seem real--as Peake's does. This focus on fantastical characters instead of fantastical powers has been wryly dubbed 'Mannerpunk' or a 'Fantasy of Manners'. It is a much more enveloping and convincing type of fantasy, since it engages the mind directly with visceral artistic techniques instead of relying on a threadbare language of symbolic power. Peake does not want to explain the world, but paint it.
Tolkien can certainly be impressive, in his way, but after reading Peake, it is difficult to call him fantastical. His archetypal characters, age-old moral conflict, and epic plot all seem so hidebound against the wild bulwark of Peake's imagination. The world of Gormenghast is magical and dreamlike, without even needing to resort to the parlor tricks of spells, wizards, and monsters.
Peake's people are more fantastical than dragons because their beings are instilled with a shifting and scintillating transience. Most dragons, fearsome as they may be on the outside, are inwardly little more than plot movers. Their fearful might is drawn from a recognizable tradition, and I question how fantastical something can really be when its form and behavior are so familiar to us.
Likewise Peake's world, though made up of things recognizable, is twisted, enchanted, and made uncanny without ever needing to stretch our disbelief. We have all experienced wonder, confusion, and revelation at the world, so why do authors think that making it less real will make it more wonderful? What is truly fantastical is to find magic in our own world, and in our own lives.
But then, it is not an easy thing to do. Authors write in forms, cliches, archetypes, and moral arguments because it gives them something to work with; a place to start, and a way to measure their progress, lest they lose themselves. To write unfettered is vastly more difficult, and requires either great boldness, or great naivete.
Peake is ever bold. You will never catch him flat-footed; his pen is ever moving. He drives on in sallies and skirmishes, teasing, prodding, suggesting, and always, in the end, he is a quantum presence, evading our cumbersome attempts to catch him in any one place. Each sentence bears a thought, a purpose, a consciousness. The only thing keeping the book moving is the restless joy of Peake's wit, his love and passion for his book, its places, characters, and story.
He also has a love for writing, and for the word, which is clear on every page. A dabbler in poetry, his careful sense of meter is masterful, as precise as Bierce. And unlike most fantasists, Peake's poetry is often the best part of his books, instead of the least palatable. Even absent his amusing characterization and palpable world, his pure language is a thing to behold.
In the introduction, Quentin Crisp tells us about the nature of the iconoclast: that being different is not a matter of avoiding and rejecting what others do--that is merely contrariness, not creativity. To be original means finding an inspiration that is your own and following it through to the bitter end.
Peake does that, here, maintaining a depth, pace, and quality that is almost unbelievable. He makes the book his own, and each time he succeeds in lulling us into familiarity, we can be sure that it is a playful ruse, and soon he will shake free again.
Alas, not all readers will be able to keep up with him. Those desiring repetition, comfort, and predictability will instead receive shock, betrayal, and confusion. However, for those who love words, who seek beauty, who relish the unexpected, and who find the most stirring sensation to be the evocation of wonder, I have no finer book to suggest. No other fantasist is more fantastical--or more fundamentally human.
Should I mention St...
No, not again.
I dunno. While it's a really compelling (the first two novels at least), at the same time, I found it more surreal than anything else.
To a certain degree, Tolkien could have happened. The amount of detail, the coherence (if dullness) of the story, gave it weight.
Gormenghast could not. To me it felt almost like something out of Dr. Who - the background and character development (other than that of the villain) was very sketchy.
Going by this logic, if you strip away the "fantasy" elements from Gormenghast, you are left with slightly darker Downtown Abbey.
Laying under practically any work of fiction, there is a certain "skeleton" of ideas and tropes, that, if you dissect that work like a dead body, will inevitably look similar to something possible in our world. Therefore, it is a much better indicator of the "fantasiness" of a work how those alien, fantastical elements change or form around those tropes, rather than demand complete alieness. And at the same time, the "deliver parcel X to place Y" or "King Y dies and Heir X must be found" or "Industrialism attacks peaceful Luddite communities" frameworks can be used as excuses for exploration of the world, especially true in the last case.
Are you asking whether you should read the Gormenghast trilogy? You should, it's great. Don't be put off by the review.
After that if you're still hungry for more fantasy that isn't colour-by-numbers, try Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, or John Harrison's Viriconium.
Quote from: Rincewind1;710456Going by this logic, if you strip away the "fantasy" elements from Gormenghast, you are left with slightly darker Downtown Abbey.
Yup. For the first two books, anyway. For the third, Titus Alone, you've got...I dunno, a poor imitation of Catcher in the Rye, I think.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;710478Yup. For the first two books, anyway. For the third, Titus Alone, you've got...I dunno, a poor imitation of Catcher in the Rye, I think.
Should one feel particularly malicious, calling it "Titus' Wake" would not be entirely out of order.
Quote from: smiorgan;710461Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, or John Harrison's Viriconium.
Oh, yes!
Quote from: Rincewind1;710485Should one feel particularly malicious, calling it "Titus' Wake" would not be entirely out of order.
TBH it was the only book of the three I really, really enjoyed.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;710493TBH it was the only book of the three I really, really enjoyed.
Well, I do like Downtown Abbey ;). But I'm not a big fan of the trilogy, or even a fan.
But going back to the RPG subject:
As I said before, I disagree with the thesis (finding it as banal as most D&D settings, placing the blame on lack of some mystical "fantastical" element, which I feel is confused with the term bizarre, rather than simple lack of good presentation and thoughtful creation of plot.). There's more to good fantasy than just the fantastic idea, there's the presentation of those ideas, and as for the "skeleton of tropes", there's also the complexity of said skeleton. Lord of The Rings is a fetch quest planted on a framework of Good versus Evil and Technology versus Nature, but yet the presentation and complexity of said tropes' framework works.
And while I don't doubt that Viriconium or Gormenghast or Malazan Book of the Fallen is more bizarre, or even say, more creative than Another D&D Generic Fantasy setting, if you start the game off with "You are going to break into Gormenghast to retrieve a stolen book", not much really changes in the crux of the matter.
Also, there is a matter of RPG utility. A more or less familiar fantasy setting is easier to get in "on the fly". There's also the setting which requires some reading to understand particular intricacies, and you may also have a setting where the starting adventure will be Flurbes looking for Droghal of Khal'Azavid, the Fifth Shaidil of Muzzis.
Well, I liked Titus Alone and I'm not sure it would have benefited from having to hunt for the story through another 300 pages of wordbrush.
To my mind it is somewhat fitting that the world beyond Gormenghast should seem pale and empty by comparison is rather somewhat the point of the book.
Gormenghast was great. Not sure wtf it has to do with Planescape though.
I mean saying what if we made Planescape into Gormenghast? is kinda like saying what if we made Forgotten Realms into Prydain? I love Prydain, just don't see a single connection. Why not just play a Gormenghast game?
Isn't a poster here writing one of those?
I think what Windjammer was trying to say was Planescape could have been truly fantastic and alien, where gods and elementals interact, etc...
Instead you get (and these descriptions are from a fan here)...
Ciphers and Godsmen = Buddhist/Zen tradition.
Sensates = philosophical naturalists, hedonists, and empiricists.
Dustmen = Stoics of the Greek school.
Guvners = scientific positivists.
Fated = Objectivists, etc..
Bleakers = gloomy disciples of Satre and Kierkegaard.
Athar = whiny atheist types.
So basically if the word came down from above to make a setting to appeal to the WW crowd, and the TSR guys wrote a big satire of undergrad philosophy with a PCs as relativistic PlanePunks with Lorra...err the Lady of Pain ruling all, then it would look a whole lot like Planescape.
Planescape: Torment kicked ass though.
Quote from: CRKrueger;710525I think what Windjammer was trying to say was Planescape could have been truly fantastic and alien, where gods and elementals interact, etc...
Instead you get (and these descriptions are from a fan here)...
Ciphers and Godsmen = Buddhist/Zen tradition.
Sensates = philosophical naturalists, hedonists, and empiricists.
Dustmen = Stoics of the Greek school.
Guvners = scientific positivists.
Fated = Objectivists, etc..
Bleakers = gloomy disciples of Satre and Kierkegaard.
Athar = whiny atheist types.
So basically if the word came down from above to make a setting to appeal to the WW crowd, and the TSR guys wrote a big satire of undergrad philosophy with a PCs as relativistic PlanePunks with Lorra...err the Lady of Pain ruling all, then it would look a whole lot like Planescape.
Planescape: Torment kicked ass though.
Atheists in Planescape. HA!
Torment was awesome, yup.
If Planescape did anything, it was take the piss out of pretentiousness in RPGs, not only that in White Wolf games but as Pundit amusingly complains about, pretentiousness in AD&D as well. I thought DiTerlizzi's cartoonish artwork also reinforced that it it was not a setting to be taken seriously, it was AD&D by way of Time Bandits.
Quote from: BillAtheists in Planescape. HA!
Well, the Athar are more Maltheists/Misotheists than "Atheists." Their idea is that the gods are frauds, that they're just powerful entities that call themselves Gods and pretend to be the creators of the Planes - that they rule by might and not by right.
Quote from: Trsitram EvansIf Planescape did anything, it was take the piss out of pretentiousness in RPGs
I tend to agree. Some people seem to think that making reference to philosophy at all is automatically pretentious; increasingly the word pretentious is connected to anything intellectual or cerebral. Planescape is often about undercutting the po-faced gravitas of D&D, and I think you're right that the illustrations were central to that.
Fairly obviously, given my moniker here, I'm a huge Peake fan - he is probably my single favorite writer of the twentieth century, with Jack Vance nipping at his ankles. The review is a good one.
Gaming with Gormenghast as an influence is tricky. As Rincewind points out, if you just staple on a standard plot and set it in Gormenghast it's not going to capture the sublimity of the setting. One of the problems is language: it's impossible to imagine Gormenghast without Peake's lush, convoluted prose. Even if you set an adventure in a giant castle, if you use workmanlike language to describe it, it's never going to have the dream-like quality of Gormenghast.
I think one way that Gormenghast can be emulated is in NPC behaviour; people in Gormenghast behave in very peculiar, sometimes inexplicable ways, from Lord Groan's Death-Owl delusions to Fuschia's introspective fantasy-world to Steerpike's mad obssessions. The rituals and ceremonies that guide the world are arbitrary and bizarre, and yet everyone (save Steerpike and, perhaps, Titus) allows them to guide and shape their lives. Planescape can function in the same way; each of the Planes (and Sigil itself) has a set of strange, often arbitrary-seeming rules, and their denizens are frequently pretty eccentric.
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;710452Should I mention St...
No, not again.
Keep the faith.
Perhaps its having grown up on Vonnegut, Hitchhiker's, Monty Python, Discworld, and other farce, but I've never seen genre fiction as being necessarily an escape. Heck, strip away all the funny looking guys from the Mos Eisley Cantina scene, and you just have a scummy bar in a city with lax law enforcement.
Banality has never concerned me that much as a result. Banality + the introduction of the surreal = comedy. And comedy is definitely an element of tabletop roleplaying as I've experienced. Just look at a percentile roll-under game. In Dark Heresy, a score of 33 would be considered a human average in a rating. Now, say, a Mailman has 33 Intelligence, and is trained in Trade (Mailman). Delivering the mail is a routine task, so that gives him a +10, bringing the roll up to 43. That's a 57% chance to fuck up delivering the mail! And as far as I've read on this forum, "don't roll if the stakes aren't interesting" is Forge talk.
Gormenghast was something I wanted to like, but didn't. Thank goodness for Amber!
It would be easier to set a game in the world of Gloriana by Moorcock, which owes more than a little to Gormenghast.