One Way Out, into Green: Excalibur

 

Welcome back! We’re talking about Excalibur today. 

I had heard about the movie Excalibur for years. I heard it inspired Zack Snyder, which kept me away from it, honestly. But the further I got into Arthurian lore (and that's not an actual indication of education) the more I got this vibe. This feeling. And I realized that vibe. That feeling. Was something I knew. I commented upon this somewhat in my review of Andor that Star Wars was irrevocably Arthurian. This moment:

Is Arthur in a nutshell. It's also linked to a feeling, deep deep down in my bones, that has driven me my whole life. It is why I made my TTRPG, Crescendo. 

Small plug for that, if you want to feel this "THERE IS ONE WAY OUT" that's very much Crescendo. You will find those moments, really easily.

But. And this is huge. Star Wars usually isn't big on the central truth of "THERE IS NO WAY OUT": humans can't keep that going forever. Show them TLJ Luke and people lose their minds. The central Arthurian conceit that I have found, is that even if you get "THERE IS ONE WAY OUT" correct.... it will fall apart, even as you're doing it. Mortals are limited. Even if everything is at peak performance, friction in the machine will build and you will get a Mordred. Eventually the good will wear out,  be taken advantage of, and something foul will be born. And it will take everything to expunge it, king and land both. You can't eradicate evil without eradicating the land itself. And, at some point, it's either let evil enslave the land or flip the table, destroying all around you.

There is but one way out.

So one day I watched Excalibur. And it hit me like a tidal wave.

But not like it hit most people. Most people who like the movie go "Wow this is really faithful to Arthur!" And they enjoy it. And they should. That wasn't how I took Excalibur. For me, Excalibur entered into my heart with a sigh of profound relief. The movie was so careful to portray the good guys as truly good people, the bad guys as despicable... but they're all subject to the

same

pull

down

down

down

It all ends in death. For everyone. And not just one, but in multiple stage deaths every seven years as our cells cycle, as the world grinds out another piece of lightness, as consequences and failures gradually chip you out. Trying to pretend that you're not losing something is cope. 

So I see the final end is a mercy, however it comes. Hopefully it's with a bastard on my blade.

At one point my baby sister, who is getting reacquainted with me on some levels, told me she had no idea how to interact with me emotionally. She has not begun to understand the multiple shocks of loss to my nervous system that have permanently altered my ability to see life as anything other than a tragedy to be deeply grieved. Trying to go "Well, that's just the way of things" is something I am constitutionally incapable of doing. I am that person who, faced with someone bigger and stronger, will burn himself to the ground as he attempts to take him down. I may not win but you will not win either. The earth will be salted if I have anything to say about it. The world will regret my passing, if only because of the wake I leave from being extracted like a tumor. The word my sparring partners have used is "crazed". I fight with a ferocity that takes others aback. I am not here to win. I am here to make sure you lose too.

So, again, when I found Excalibur, I found something others were not looking for. I was not looking for Arthur. I already have that deep in my bones. I wanted an aesthetic.

And this movie is fucking it.

The chrome and green. The haze and metal. There's something to this film that feels bigger than life, bigger than me, bigger than all of us. It feels like all my favorite songs became a soundtrack, and I had been seeing this movie in my head for years. It was a bit surreal, truth be told. I felt like I had stepped into my own head, in a long-forgotten corner, and it now had an aesthetic. It's just... it's glorious. I love it.

And that ending. Oh my goodness. It still wasn't as dark as the real Arthurian tales. Lancelot gets there! Him missing the battle is turned from a critical misunderstanding of Arthurian lore to a doubling down on theme: Lancelot couldn't have stopped it, watch as he dies like the greatest badass of all time. Arthur taking the spear so he can kill Mordred had me cheering. They are both the land, in the end, are they not? Arthur and his misbegotten piece of shit of a son. I felt that. I looked at Mordred and saw far more of me in him than I should admit, but it's my blog and I can go as dark as I want, and you can choose to stop reading! I saw myself in that little shit and felt Excalibur go into him. I don't have nearly enough self-worth to connect that with Arthur, but I knew why he did it. He knew the land was doomed, and therefore he was as well.

But.

And this is what people miss.

There is mercy, at the end. Arthur is whisked away. He is not allowed to die, not fully. He is the land, and he is allowed to rest. What people do not understand is that, at the end, it should all burn. The assumption that the good will outlast the evil is a defiling of a great Christian truth: good and evil will go before Sister Death's scythe,  but there is the great intervention. Mercy will fall down, get into the cracks, and He will save what desires to be saved. In the wreckage Arthur is pulled from, and is taken to the the lake. We are given the calm assurance that, at the end of the horrifying series of existential losses and betrayals that will cut us into ribbons, there is something quiet. Peaceful. Waiting for us all. Even that asshole Mordred, although he doesn't want it. At the end, when the inevitable collapse into a shower of sparks ends everything.. there is Silence. 

And then the reason why the greatest of His names is Mercy will become apparent.

He does not condemn the good along with the evil, even as it all burns.

I do not launch myself into sparring sessions like I want to kill someone because I want death: I want what comes after.

Silence. Mercy. 

Rest.

When I was younger? Sure, it verged on a suicidal need for an ending. Now, it's a soft ache to finally face the One Who does not measure like I do. Who sees the inevitable mistakes, breakings, and outright moments of bad faith as a sign of unspeakable tragedy. And Who will make it right.

Which I will not pretend I don't ache for.

If we do not meet again, I do not blame you. It is no easy road. 

The Dragon's Fire: Book 3, Chapter 6

 

Shadowdark Taught Me Much

Running Shadowdark last night was a blast! Thanks to everyone who played with me. I definitely had a good time, and realized I had been running Crescendo as a "conventional" RPG for too long, and that I hated doing it that way. We'll get back to what that means in a bit, but for the moment, just put a pin in that.

The Method Behind My Madness

So this time, we’re going actually break down what I’m doing when I make the prompts I use for my players to respond to. I have a calendar and astrology I use to generate them, which is in the Heranyt setting. I use themes derived from the astrology of my setting to make prompts for the players.

• The three universes in rough orbit with Arvoita.
• The month's theme
• Whether Eous is waxing or waning
• The brightest planet in the sky, whether it's waxing or waning.

Yes, I will attempt to explain what I'm talking about.

The End of an Age

One of the things unique to Heranyt is that is part of a multiverse set up... all of which move in orbit around each other. These universes will bleed into each other, slightly. All Heranyt campaigns, from here on out, are when the orbits of the three universes closest to Arvoita (where Heranyt is) change. So we always start with three universes in conjunction, and then at some point I decide when the change begins.

Conjunctions at the Beginning

At the beginning of The Dragon's Fire, we had three Daughters (universes) in conjunction:

• Paritay, the Loving Daughter. She's leaving orbit, which means love and sexuality are just flat out bad. Weak.
• Kilpaya, the Daughter Who Competes, usually thought of as war. She's in full orbit, which means competition and warfare are good and actually solve problems.
• Jaoday, the Indulgent Daughter. She's the one who dispenses plenty. She's the one coming into conjunction, which means that providing and  giving fixes things... at a steep cost.

Conjunctions Now

But, at some point, it has to change. And now is the time. So we "move" everything down:

• Kilpaya, the Daughter Who Competes, is now leaving orbit. Warfare and competition is now bad, and its consequences are just a disaster.
• 
  
• Jaoday, the Indulgent Daughter. The problems of the world can now only be fixed by giving and being generous.
• 
  
• Sarray, the Grieving Daughter. She's about discipline, structure, and giving space to sadness. She's now coming into orbit, which means her ways solve problems, but at a steep price.

Nothing is Painless

Changing conjunctions should be painful. And this one's gonna be. Just the change, on its own, should do something. So we're going to lump that atop whatever's going on this time.

A comet streaks through the sky, and the earth quake, cracks open right through Sota City, draining the lake around it into the Undermaze, releasing the undead army into the land above. The Undermaze is flooded.

The Rest of the Astrological Times

• Starting in March (Kakusa), we move to communications as a theme.
• The bright planet in the sky is Ihanaus, which is ascendant, which means its theme is “good” or “strong”. Ihanaus is about love and sensuality and loyalty.
• Eous, the fell  green moon that hangs over the planet Heranyt, is waned, so we get a “good twist” in there somewhere.

Key these Themes to Locations

So I take these themes/beats and apply them to whatever locations the players are at. And, this time, they all are in the same location, as far as the scale is concerned.

Kaksusa 2-6

The Undermaze Proper

A comet streaks through the sky, and the earth quake, cracks open right through Sota City, draining the lake around it into the Undermaze, releasing the undead army into the land above. The Undermaze is flooded. This drowns everything and everyone right below the lake, unless you take actions to save those around you, but that will give you a level 1 Concusssion.

Players all either drown or spend Fate to reduce Exhaustion level 6, that's a Mortal Condition, so it impacts HP.

You're all washed further down into the Undermaze. You're back together. Somehow. You're in a giant underground lake, and it's cold as hell. Level 1 Hypothermia, which is Mortal.

A queensling finds the three of you, pulling you all out of the lake. There's soft phospherescent muhshrooms nearby, granting you light. As she stands above the three of you, she vanishes.

Raphael 

Raphael burns Fate to refuse the Exhaustion, so the level 6 mortal exhaustion never takes hold. When the lake collapses into the Undermaze, he moves with the current instead of fighting it, keeping control and guiding himself and the others through the rushing water.

As he’s thrown toward the rocks, Raphael turns his body and takes the impact on his shoulder and arm, protecting his head and avoiding a concussion.

Once dragged from the lake, he immediately forces himself into motion—wringing water from his clothes, rubbing his arms, and staying on his feet near the faint warmth of the phosphorescent mushrooms. By keeping his body moving and his blood circulating, the cold never settles deep enough to become hypothermia.

So Raphael walks away soaked and battered, but without Exhaustion, concussion, or hypothermia—pure stubborn survival backed by Fate.

King Melny

I spend a fate so the exhaustion never takes hold, after washing up, I make sure to reveal what I know to my friends. I do the same as Raphael. Always staying busy.

Addressing My Issues

Crescendo is a game about theme and analogy, via challenging Beliefs. A game about Wolfe shouldn't be plot-focused.  I enjoy the Archetypes system I came up with, but honestly I want images. They do analogy and theme in a way that no table of text can do, and frankly I got tired of having to use my brain to get to my gut, when I could just look at a conceptually-rich image and just... feel. That's where I'm at my best.

Enter the tarot deck, which I had been given as a Christmas present. I think it was a gag gift? I mean, Kyle and I have shared interests in esoteric stuff, and so that was probably Kyle just giving me something light and fluffy.

The System

This is actually pretty simple. We divvy up some of the Major Arcana, based upon the Beliefs, and put the rest back in the box. We use those to ponder some themes, and use them to inspire Hitting the Books. The Minor Arcana are used to help adjudicate outcomes, based upon how the player's actions match the Myth and their Beliefs.

I pulled out some Major Arcana that represented the gods most active in the player, generally around 9-12. At the end of each Chapter, I'll draw a Major Arcana and just... sit on it. Pull it out, over the week, and look at it, ponder the image, just in and of itself. Since the Arcana was derived from the Belief, that will actually put in ideas about challenging the Beliefs themselves.

The goal is to provide an environment that makes acting upon Beliefs dramatic. For all you old-school types, I am literally taking your principles and trying to apply them in a spiritual/anagogic context. The Weaver is trying to produce an anagogic environment for the players to thrive in. This is because, if you focus on the Beliefs themselves, you'll burn out. Trust me, did that with Burning Wheel, and I have no interest in going back to nitpicking someone's verbiage to death.

True conversation happens by way of analogy. So let's just do that.

Chapter 6, Kaksusa 7

So last night nobody showed up for the first 45 minutes! Jesse messaged me about 35 or so minutes into the stream and went "Can we do tomorrow?" and I told him, "No, we can't, because I have four kids and they'll be adapting to Daylight Saving's Time tomorrow." I was coming up with a "Just the Weaver" Chapter ideas...

And then Jesse showed up.

Like a freaking boss.

I pulled out the Tarot deck.

And we got started.

Reflections

Having conceptually dense images to look at and flip up during the session really helped me stay on track. This was, by far and away, the closest deliberate execution for weaving Crescendo I have ever done. And it ended extremely well. I love how Jesse engages things, and it was great just playing off of him.

Making something genuinely new and unique is hard, folks. But man, that was gameplay that actually stood alongside the more literally-minded Shadowdark. I still feel like I've barely touched the surface of what the narration/interpretation gameplay of Crescendo can do. And I can't wait to try and sharpen that next time!

Addendum

There are times when you can feel that an epic is coming to a close. And that has begun. Melny has declared his identity, and the only question now is whether or not Jesse can keep that up. Tasha's getting ready for it. I think Cal will be ready, but he's gotta get working internet to get Alistair there.

The end of Crescendo is when players start declaring who they are, not what they believe. It's a fine difference, but it's important. When that starts happening, the end is upon you.

The Dragon's Shadow: Session 1

As I continue draft up the 0e version of Crescendo, I am now in a position to start showing off one of the central ideas behind the game: as something you can run alongside your already-existing game. So, I started a Shadowdark game, grabbing some folks off my Discord server, and here's what we got!

Session 1, Kaksusa 6

Reflections

So the timer on the torch is the single most brilliant mechanic I think I have ever seen. By popular concept it shouldn't work. But it does. Which means that the popular understanding of design is wrong. What a shock! It's almost like you have to design for the players at the table first!

Mothers of Monsters

 

Welcome back! Today we talk about the found footage film, Mothers of Monsters  

Back when I ran the Burning Wheel game "The Undertow" with Lena, I came up with the darkest NPC I may ever come up with: Krakeru. Krakeru was the escaped "stud" of a crazed elf cult, tortured and bred to try and create an Anti-Christ type figure, who would be used to summon the eldritch Nameless, thus destroying the world. Krakeru was wrong, in every sense of the word. He took delight in pain in a way that was part innocence and malice and trauma. Right when you thought you had him in a corner he would flip the conversation into something that revealed just how broken a person he was. He was a rapist, a murderer, a torturer, and a channeler of the blackest of sorceries, repeating every awful thing ever done to him with a flair and creativity that spoke of owning the evil, not just repeating it. Krakeru was a constant topic between Lena and me. One afternoon, she turned to me and stated, like she was ordering a burger: "Well, you know you like Krakeru.' You identify with him. Strongly."

And I had absolutely no other recourse than to shrug and admit it. 

Lena would have known I was lying anyways. Hell, anyone who's read this blog would have known I was lying. One of the things that most GMs don't cop to is that their NPCs are frequently an extension of them. If you make a good dude, you are projecting what you think of as socially acceptable and good. You are making a value claim by making a good NPC. But the same goes double for the evil NPCs. What you think is evil and might be shareable is a confession. Always.

So when I say that when I saw Jacob's eyes in the opening minutes of this movie, and found a part of me was laughing... take a second and absorb that.

The rest of the movie was more or less the process I had taken with this part of me, years ago... and it had about the same results.

In the movie, Abbey (the mom) wires her house with cameras, mirroring her son's camera use. When faced with something she couldn't control, she did what her son did: make an environment where she felt she was on top. There's a dark humor to that. "My son may be a psychopath", but ultimately the only thing really differentiating Abbey and Jacob is he's better at the game than she is. Yes, Abbey is afraid, but there's a serious case to be made that Jacob is even more scared. If he can't feel anything but rage and fear... what else is there for him to do than inflict it on others? Sit in ambiguity?

Please. 

Most haters of TLJ still think Luke tried to kill his nephew. People suck at ambiguity.

Jacob ain't that different from the rest of us. Deal with it.

Abbey's reaction is fundamentally the same as Jacob's, she just has more tools before she goes down the rabbit hole. And don't you think for one second any of us are any different.

Oh, that part of me was cackling when the cameras were found. He found every frame of this movie funny. He found the electricity delicious, and he didn't believe the ending video. At all. "HE WON!" that part of me crowed. "Ha! See? My way works." "There is no way anyone that good at faking emotion was being sincere there. No. Fucking. Way."

And that had me floored for a second. I mean, I have gotten comfortable with  but I bounced back a lot faster than I thought I would. "If this is what you think is winning, I hope I lose, forever." That, of course, hit a nerve. "You don't mean that! You can't! I won, that's why I'm still here."

"No, you're still here because I realized that, if I give you enough time, you will become me, not the other way around. Time is on my side. Go ahead. Test it. Push. The blood you will get out of me will just change you, buddy. I know that now, kiddo. Your move. I'm always here, when you're ready to come home. I still love you."

For once, that asshole shut up.

And, suddenly, I realized that I could feel Sam smiling. And I knew I had actually won. Possibly for the first time in my life. And all it took was a mom looking a rope and considering hanging herself. Life's strange.

If we do meet again, I do not blame you. It is no easy road. 

The Dragon's Fire: Book 3, Chapter 5

By this point I was getting used to the rhythm. 

Sononn 17-28

Sota City

Legion manages to take over a number of the prostitutes, who throw themselves into the gigantic pit into the Below City, said to lead to the Apocalypse Ship. They fall without a sound. The soldiers managed to stop many of them, but were forced to kill some when they suddenly grew claws and lunged. A few of the soldiers proposed to their favorite whores... and somehow it worked?  At least for the ones who say "Yes!" They're married by the priests, quickly and then those soldiers were released from duty for the rest of the week. 

Raphael

Raphael watches it all with his jaw tight and his patience thinner by the second.

He leans on his spear, eyes flicking from the pit to the soldiers to the weddings, brows knitting. "I leave the city alone for five minutes," he mutters, voice dry as dust, "And Legion starts throwing brides and demons into the same problem."

When one of the possessed lunges and gets put down, Raphael exhales through his nose- annoyed, not surprised. But then he noticed the copules actually working, preists scramling, rings slapped on fingers, he tilts curiously. "... that shouldn't work," he says, flatly. A beat. "I mean, good for them but still. That's not how possession usually responds to romance.

He straightens, rolling his shoulders, eyes narrowing at the pit. "Alright, Legion," he calls out under this breath, sassy edge creeping in. "But if you think I'm letting this turn into a city-wide speed-marriage apocalypse, you're about to be very disappointed."

The Undermaze, Sota Cluster

The remaining bulls go out to fight the queenslings, who now have an army again. They have to bring the Solidified Flame in to break holds over the bulls who haven't died.  That kills many of them, just outright. The queenslings are driven away, but the losses are bad.

Alistair

The best offence is a good defense. I work wit hthe minotaur leadership to set up a heated "funnel". Because of the size and inreasing frequency of attacks, we strategized   a plan to collapse tunnels and set up murder holes  to redirect and slow attacks as best we can. We will clog the labyrinth with their corpses- if we must.

The Undermaze Proper

King Melny is... adopted.. by a large insectoid thing, who won't let him leave, but won't let anyone else harm him. For those two weeks the thing feeds Melny, regurgitating stuff full of squirming... somethings... into Melny's mouth. Is Melny hallucinating that? Who knows? But he has to eat something.

The insectoid thing loses its head to a mate. And she chases King Melny further into the depths.

King Melny

Mel would continue to find his way out. After escaping the last creature, he would carefully trace his way through the caverns. I would at times try and see if Junior (a creature King Melny had summoned and has a mystical connection with)  could be contacted through our bond to see if I could trace my way up.

He never comes.

Chapter 5, Kaksusa 1

Cal's internet was still out, and Jesse was MIA (turns out he accidentally fell asleep), so we ran with Tasha again! And it was awesome!

Reflections

There's cracks showing up for me, but I can't put my finger on them. This is fine, but there's a spark missing, and I don't know what it is yet. Time to wait and see it play out some more!

Shadowdark

 

Welcome back! Today I am writing about choosing a game, particularly Shadowdark. 

I think one of the hardest things to admit when you're looking at games is that they are meant to address desires and logistical needs. As a designer, I frequently forget that my games are built to address my needs. This is a very difficult thing to remember, because as you design you start to view the object as its own thing, and start to modify it to address needs other than yours, while you use it to continue to satisfy your own. There's a difference between liking the design of an object and actually having it address your desires and needs.

So, here's what my desires and logistical needs are.

My desire is to have two kinds of games running, one to satisfy and synthesize two competing urges into the same setting. 

1. To have game with a ton of emotional depth, where it is safe to do so. This would be a small, somewhat insular group. 

2. A large living world table, ala Noonan’s living campaign model. This would allow me to run for whomever was around, without any fear of people not being able to commit. 

Crescendo satisfies the first desire quite admirably. I mean, I designed it to. Burning Wheel MIGHT do, but Crescendo is far more flexible, by several orders of magnitude. Its inherently chaotic sessions also create natural shake ups that could ripple into the larger table. Overall, Crescendo does well as a “beating heart of the setting” sorta a game. 

But what about the second?

See, that’s what has been tripping me up. Instead of simply listing out what I logistically need and being ruthless about it, I have engaged in mooning over how cool all these games are, which lightens my wallet considerably, but doesn’t actually accomplish a stable table. 

Here’s what I need:

- Something familiar enough to my 3.5 days so that I can just skate by. I do all my innovation in Crescendo. I have no interest in bending particularly far for the other game. I paid my dues to originality and then some.

- A game with extremely low entry. Literally fifteen minutes of character creation at most, and then off to the races. 

- Emergent depth. As the game progresses, people who stick with it find there’s actually mechanics to sink their teeth into. It doesn’t have to be super deep, but as time goes on people can naturally develop new goals and their personal narrative evolves. 

- Worldbuilding and mechanics I can adapt Crescendo to without spending tons and tons and tons of time in order to produce for both tables. 

- Something that encourages the kind of loud, over-the-top, party attitude I actually enjoy quite a bit. 

Once I lay that all out, it’s just obviously Shadowdark. 

Familiar but well-done rules. So some reading required, but not really. Dionne's work isn't revolutionary. That's fine by me. I don't want revolutionary, I want something that I can intuit enough to where I can just run it and be surprised a few time and then readjust fire.

I also found that I could hack Shadowdark's basic stuff to fit my setting really easily. It took me a half hour to write my own setting’s level 0 character funnel table. Not even that. And if anything I made mine faster than what’s in the core book. People can just walk up to the table, shrug and say “what the hell”, and start playing. 

Shadowdark has some surprising spots for depth down the road, especially if you adapt Living Campaign/BROSR principles, like 1:1 time and Braunsteins. You can use the pieces to do some really impressive stuff, if you know what to aim for. The fact that there’s a bunch of 3rd party stuff that fleshes this out (which I was literally given) doesn’t hurt. 

Is it perfect? Nah. No system is. The lethality can scare off the wrong newcomer, and if someone really wants narrative-heavy zero-to-hero arcs with minimal risk, they'll bounce. But for what I need—a reliable, low-friction engine that supports a big, breathing world while leaving room for Crescendo to be the emotional heartbeat—it's damn near ideal.

So if you've been staring at your shelf (or your itch.io cart) wondering why none of the "cool" games quite fit your actual life and table, try doing what I finally did: write the ruthless list first. Then see what matches.

For me, it was Shadowdark.

And here I pause. If you do not show up next week, I don’t blame you. It is no easy road. 

Angel Sketch 2/25/26

 

Awhile back I bought George Kordis's "Icon as Communion". It's a bit of a hard read, but I did my best... and then put it down.

Today I understood what he was saying.

Byzantine aesthetics assumes that the image is coming off the surface, at you, the viewer. And the way it comes off the surface has to be uniform, in a way that's pleasing. In other words, it has to have a rhythm.

This is the sketch where I finally understood that.

Although anyone who pretends that I mastered it or even do it well is lying.