Lair of the Hardcore Dangerous Extradimensional Sorcerer

A high-level dungeon, season to taste.

The PCs are nominally supposed to free the prisoner (8) and defeat the Sorcerer (21).

The entire dungeon is made of some material on the border between crystal and white marble with translucent veins that seem to move. The material automatically resists any attempt to manipulate or bypass it--it has an extra saving throw to prevent Passwall, Stone Shape,  Teleportation, et al. and if that save succeeds, some unsavory disaster will occur--the caster ends up half-stuck in the wall, for instance.

1.

Eldritch Polyhedra

These are hovering guard constructs, each about the size of a fridge. They cast a random offensive spell at any intruder every round as if 10th level. AC 20, 50 hit points.

2.

Perfidious Mirror

Entering the room through either of the trapped doors without the Sorcerer's key activates the mirror. It reflects everything accurately except it also contains a thief, who pickpockets one (real) item per round the room is occupied by stealing it from the PCs' reflection. The items are deposited at 22. Smashing the mirror results in seven years bad luck--Disadvantage to everything.

3.

Vestibule with Hypnotic Carpet

Save or believe you are sinking into the carpet--if so, you'll scream, alerting those nearby.

4.

Ooze Pool

The ancient ooze here is actually sentient (Zitha'Ninua of the Hallowed Gate, last survivor of a long-vanished oozvilization), and the sorcerer consults it from time to time, in return his servants throw it the flesh of prisoners and intruders.

The secret door in the masonry is actually on the far side of the ooze and nobody knows it's there except the crowling, who sometimes uses it when the ooze is asleep.

5.

Humunculery

Lined with cubby holes in which dwell the sorcerer's various small slaves and humunculi, mostly employed to deliver messages and occasionally curses. They sleep unless molested.

6.

Hall of Torture Chandeliers

Most of the unfortunate chandeliers are long dead and rotted away to bone, but a few are still living, tied up in impossible positions. Whether this is part of some ritual or just the Sorcerer's idea of cool decor is anyone's guess.

7.

Crowling Lair

A 2' tall crow-man makes his nest in the secret room here. He has been living here for years undetected thanks to his small size, 19 Dex, the fact that he's a 15th level thief and a tiny gauntlet that prevents him being detected by magic. He has a decent amount of other treasure squirreled away here as well.

He's here about half the time, and the other half he's sneaking around trying to find a good time to backstab and rob anyone who makes noise nearby.

8.

Prisoner

Whoever the PCs are looking for is here. If they have special powers, the mask prevents them from using them. The Sorcerer has the key to the prison and mask.

9.

Alchemesphere

This 20' diameter thing rotates and shifts ominously while hovering five feet off the floor. It has 83 knobs which glow when touched and, as it spins, reveals a hollow core. Placing any object inside and activating any given number of the knobs transforms whatever is inside into an equivalent mass of another substance. What substance? The substance whose atomic number is equal to the number of knobs activated. 79 knobs equals Gold.

10.

Nythrax Gnashgristle

This most-badass of minotaurs is cursed to guard this room until he dies. Magic has kept him alive for 500 years but the only food he gets is intruders, so he is always upset and almost always hungry. 4 attacks per round.

11.

Organ

Maybe it has powers? Maybe it's the Leviathan Organ of Nasen-Ra? Maybe the sorcerer just likes music.

12.

Spooky Library

Sorcerous tomes, as you'd expect. A Seafarer's Guide to Athas is a fake book and lifting it activates the secret door--the Sorcerer knows about this door and uses it.

13.

Psychedelic Nightmarescape Room

This place is all fucked up and you end up just floating through it. Anyone entering this area must save or be affected as with a Maze spell, and--whether they are affected or not they need to pass an Int test for each door to tell that its even a door. The trap on the door to room 8 activates a magic alarm that echoes through the entire dungeon.

14.

Astronomy Room

Various devices for measuring the stars and the space between the stars.

15.

Specimen Room

No big deal unless you open the jars--or they get broken in a fight...

16.

Pocket Dimension

The Sorcerer performs insane experiments here. Save or be Confused every round you're in here, and the trap on the south door activates an alarm that pulsates through the entire dungeon. Like room 13, you kinda float around in there and must save to even find the far door.

17.

Concubine's Bedchamber

A fearsome sorceress in her own right and nobody to mess with, however:

-She does not know about the secret door, which comes out behind a folding screen so she won't see you if you sneak in, and

-She might be willing to bargain with intruders in exchange for knowledge or power. She won't directly attack the Sorcerer or his creatures, though--too dangerous.

18. 

Crystal Chamber

A creepy humming. The crystal formations are worth 1000gp per foot along their longest side but are very fragile and if they break they cause random magic effects. The trap on the door only activates coming in from 19, and its an alarm that calls any nearby creature.

19.

Puzzle Room

Note that from this side the door to 18 is magically locked.

This puzzle consists of a large square table inset with:

-20 slideable squares

-22 slideable rectangular tiles of various sizes, as short as 3 squares on a side and as long as 7 squares on a side

-3 elbow joints, 1 square wide

The answer to the puzzle is to reconstruct the map of the dungeon. Answering it allows access to the 18 (otherwise only reachable via the secret doors) and deactivates the alarm on the door.

20. 

Jester's Perch

The Jester tends to hang out here, bored, practicing tumbling or juggling, basically because the Sorcerer wants them on hand at all times in case he needs something.

The Jester is relatively subdued, as jesters go--almost more like a mime. He grins horribly and speaks in short, cryptic taunts. He is immune to the first attack in any round, which he will mock, though he is vulnerable while doing it. Indeed, he is invulnerable while silent--nimbly sidestepping or grinningly enduring whatever is done to him, but he can't help making fun of those who try, which fucks him in the end.

The trap on the door to 21 just does massive damage to anyone who touches it uninvited.

21.

The Sorcerer's Chamber

He has a scary magic sword and can use it plus cast a spell each round. He also has any of the PCs magic items that the mirror in 2 managed to steal. Any of his minions not yet dead will roll up to help.

22.

The Treasure Hoard

-

-

-

 

You Suffer--But Why?

My Weird, Dark, Twisted Habit

Seventeen years ago. (Seventeen years ago?) When I started this blog, that is, when I decided to take on another thing in addition to taking care of a spouse with chronic illness, making art to sell in galleries, being in porn movies, playing games, and doing all the other chores a person does to stay around and sane, I had a simple idea about doing stuff on the Internet.

In fact, I'd had this idea since I started doing anything on the Internet, much earlier, near the beginning of my art career. Arguably even since I started doing pretty much anything as an adult: 

If I was going to do something--especially something time-consuming--I should know why I was doing it. And, as a corollary, whatever that reason was, I should feel good about that reason, like that was a good reason.

If I was going to hang out on a website I was going to have it for a reason I knew and I felt good about, if I was leaving a comment I was doing it for a reason I knew and felt good about, if I was disagreeing with someone I was doing it for a reason I knew and felt good about, if I was telling everyone someone else should fucking go to jail I was doing it for a reason that I knew and felt good about, if I was telling literally anyone literally anything on here I was doing it for a reason that I knew and felt good about.

A vital caveat here is "because I was bored" is, for me, not a good reason. Because I have about a hundred other more fun or productive things I could be doing if that's the best reason I can come up with. If I'm bored I could read a book

The reason I started writing this blog, for instance, is because I run games at home with my friends and those games are fun and have all kinds of benefits and when I write about games on here I sometimes get ideas from people who I interact with or who build on the ideas I have here about how to make those games more fun. Benefit.

Many People Do Not Have Reasons

One thing it took me a really long time to learn is that most people do not think this way. They just do stuff and are not conscious of reasons.

For many people, they were either born into-, or quickly adapted to-, a world where writing your thoughts and feelings online in a comment section or even a whole blog entry is either:

• As instinctive as breathing
• Literally because they were bored and had nothing else to do, or
• Actually something they're lowkey embarrassed about

Person with very strong takes on what is Problematic in Gaming:
"I love arguing about petty shit and calling people idiots"

I've had this lack of intention rammed home to me in a million ways. In public conversations with people just bragging about how they don't have or need reasons (free speech!), in private conversations with people who repented their poorly-thought-out decisions, in Dr Weisman's article and the interviews she taped, and in perfectly friendly conversations with all kinds of people when just asking them about their lives and why they made the decisions in them.

A lot of people, all over, just never think much about why they're jabbering.

Who Cares?

This seems pretty abstract until you have into a conversation where someone's intentions for typing something and shooting it out into the universe come up.

You ask a guy why they raised a controversial issue, why they decided to get mad about James Maliszewski's specific Kickstarter, that specific niche game's art choice, or the casting of that specific Marvel movie and they act like you just asked for their credit card number and a full survey of their mother's sex life, itemized by year and position.

That is: they act like its offensive to ask them for their goals, or a lot of work for them to figure out their goals, or both. 

Of course, a statement of goals is preliminary to any conversation about whether any given instance of screaming about things on the Internet is going to get you to them or whether those goals are even worth it.  That is: to fix anything or make any of it worthwhile.

A lot of people just haven't thought that hard about it. They're suffering from a terminal case of Heideggerian thrown-ness, just showing up in the world doing things because that seems unreflectively like the thing to do.

Anyway, so...don't be like that? Or at least not when there's stakes to what you're saying.

A Review of Those Magnetic Dungeon-Block Things (& some other tabletop toys)

So you may have noticed, on Facebook and wherever else, ads for Click-Blocks those little magnetic dungeon blocks...

Somebody got them for me for my birthday and my review is: they rule.

Yes, that's a real frog. 1$ on Ebay plus shipping from Guatemala.

Each one is a little cube, scaled for a D&D-scale 5' square, apparently filled with bits of magnetic sand or ball-bearings, so they stick to whichever other block or blocks is/are next to them.

The pack I got had both those grey stone-looking boxes and the wooden-crate looking ones. If you want to get all magical-girl their website has all kinds of Disney-colored blocks for actual children as well which I might pick up.

In addition to all the obvious uses, I also just like:

-Being able to grab a short stack to indicate a character is levitating or whatever

-Quickly snapping-together a little pencil-holder or dice corral or something on my desk

-Using the different-colored blocks or the different pattern-sides to subtly indicate that one block is where a trap or hidden feature is, even though it just looks like I threw a thing together.

The only non-obvious limitation on them is that if you have a block not supported directly from below, it's not strong enough to support a metal miniature--though it might hold a plastic or paper one.

As long as we're here I also want to give a shout-out to just like blocks. Like regular block-blocks. I Ebayed a pack of A-to-Z for like twelve bucks and they're infinitely useful.

I like neat dungeon scenery as much as the next guy--including all the cool walls and stairs and stuff that Dwarven Forge or whatever makes--but the thing is they can be a struggle to keep adapting to situations that come up and crucially, they usually don't stack well. 

Regular old kids' building blocks are at least kind of useful for nearly any situation. Plus they're strong, durable, cheap, less fiddly than Legos, and can be used to teach your players basic shapes and common animals.

In most dungeons I like to use the blocks themselves to indicate a corridor rather than the more model-builder way of using the blocks to build walls and indicate the corridor using the space in-between. It's easier to see them and saves time and blocks.

Also, here's a review of using a real dead giant isopod to represent a giant isopod: freaks players out and works every time.

Also recommended: this wooden prison, sold as a D&D "dice jail" that I picked up at the Ren Faire. The doors slide up and down, so its very serviceable as a dungeon cell---like twenty-five bucks.

-

-

-

Interview With A Man Who Is Angry About Hot Goth Porn Girls

Maybe the second in a series of interviews with people who are totally wrong?

Anyway, readers will be aware that a lot of people get mad that porn stars play D&D.

An adjacent issue is that people get mad when porn stars--or any sex workers really--do literally anything. 

There was a recent internet controversy where a video of a bunch of model-types did a sexy video and they were goths. The internet got very upset that goths were shown as being hot. There was also something about Drake? Idk. There was discourse.

Here at D&D With Porn Stars we know a thing or two about goth sex workers but this is the Internet, where actual knowledge is often a tremendous handicap in trying to figure out what people are talking about.

So I interviewed one of them.

I started talking to B00GIEpunk and asking why he cares about any of this, he eventually got real frustrated and stopped answering and said that he would only respond if I paid him or if it was a formal interview. I said Ok, its a formal interview.

He then put a bunch of perfectly reasonable conditions on the interview assuming I'd decline (he does not assume good faith--which is evil). I agreed to the conditions, he said:

Q:

Ok, you've said that these girls in this video represent a trend that you don't like, is that right?

A:

Yes, with one qualification: I'm not saying the women themselves are the problem, I'm saying the way they've been selected and presented appears to reflect a broader, commercially legible stereotype of goth femininity - the conventionally attractive, sexualised "goth girlfriend" archetype - and I find that flattening of a much broader subculture irritating.

Siouxsie Sioux

Q:

So, the idea of this as "flattening" would seem to suggest that this piece of media is part of a *more* significant trend than lots of *other* media which portrays goths in different ways. Why is it *more* significant than other kinds of media takes on goths?

A:

I don't think it has to be more significant than every other portrayal of goths for "flattening" to be an accurate description.

Different representations can coexist, including ones that pull goth aesthetics in very different directions. My point is that this video participates in one recurring shorthand - namely, goth femininity reduced to a narrow, conventionally attractive, sexually legible aesthetic.

"Flattening" describes what happens within that representational pattern - a broad music-based subculture with many aesthetics gets compressed into a smaller set of immediately recognisable visual cues. It doesn't mean that pattern has successfully erased every competing representation, nor that this particular video is culturally more powerful than all of them.

So I wouldn't claim this video is uniquely significant. I'd claim it's recognisable as one example of a broader stereotype that is significant enough to be culturally familiar in the first place.

Patricia Morrison (Sisters of Mercy)

Q:

If it's not more significant than say "the goths in South Park" or "goths represented as losers who watch too much anime and need to touch grass" or "Goths who will boil and eat your cat" then why are you steamed?

A:

Because "significant" and "annoying" aren't synonyms. I don't need to believe this is the single most culturally powerful depiction of goths in existence to dislike what it's doing.

What irritates me about this particular stereotype is that it takes a subculture with decades of music, fashion, DIY culture and internal diversity and filters goth women through a very familiar lens of sexual desirability - "goth" as an accessory to the fantasy of the hot, available goth girlfriend.

The South Park goths are a caricature too. So are the "anime loser" and "cat-boiling weirdo" stereotypes, and I can criticise those when they're in front of me as well. Other stereotypes existing doesn't make this one less worthy of comment - this happened to be the representation in the video I was looking at, so it's the one I commented on.

I don't rank every cultural irritation on a league table before I'm allowed to be annoyed by it.

Maitri and Valor (Christian Death)

Q:

So would you say "I'm being annoyed on the Internet about something that doesn't really matter"?

A:

I'd say I'm annoyed on the Internet about something that isn't especially high-stakes, which is different from saying it doesn't matter.

Most cultural criticism concerns things that aren't matters of life and death. Representation, stereotypes and commodification can still be worth noticing and discussing without pretending they're the gravest problems facing humanity.

So yes, it's a relatively minor irritation. No, I don't think "minor" means "meaningless."

Cosey Fanni Tutti (Throbbing Gristle)

Q:

Well, I know you said you didn't have a problem with the women themselves--you do understand that they agreed to do this right? And it's basically part of their job?

A:

Yes, of course. I understand that they're consenting adults doing paid work, and I haven't suggested otherwise.

My criticism isn't that the women were somehow coerced into appearing, nor that they're personally responsible for every cultural meaning attached to the finished product. It's about the product itself - how it selects, frames and packages a particular version of "goth femininity" for an audience.

People can willingly participate in something and that thing can still reproduce a stereotype. Consent answers the question "did they agree to do it?" It doesn't answer the separate question "what cultural image is this piece of media constructing?"

Caroline Pierce (currently playing an elf ranger)

Q:

Ok. I'm asking a different thing. Knowing that these people worked on this project as their job, do you get that your nuance between "I don't like this video" & "you're not real goths" might not be real important to them--especially with thousands of others saying obnoxious things to them?

A:

Yes, I understand that. If someone is already receiving thousands of obnoxious comments, they may not care very much about the distinction between criticism of a piece of media and criticism directed at them personally.

But that doesn't make the distinction unreal or unimportant in what I'm actually saying here. I'm responsible for the claims I'm making in this interview, and I'm being explicit that my criticism is of the representation and packaging, not of the women as people or their legitimacy within the subculture.

I can understand why somebody on the receiving end of a pile-on might not stop to parse that distinction. That's a question of how criticism is experienced, though, not whether the distinction itself exists.

Vampira

Q:

The extent if your grievance is "this annoys me but I can't think of any way it really affects anything" correct?

A:

No, that isn't correct. I've said it's low-stakes, not that it has no effect. My criticism is that repeated commercial shorthand can narrow how a subculture is popularly understood, particularly when women within it are repeatedly filtered through a sexually marketable archetype.

I'm not claiming this video causes some large, independently measurable social harm by itself. Cultural representation generally works cumulatively, not because one video changes society overnight.

So if you want to characterise my position as 'this annoys me and it isn't terribly important,' that's fair. 'I can’t think of any way it affects anything' is using your own interpretative wording to misrepresent what I said.

Ms. Cassandra Peterson

Q:

Ok, so this "narrowing"--how could that affect anyone concretely?

A:

Concretely, repeated narrow representations can affect what audiences come to recognise as "authentically" goth, which in turn affects how people within the subculture are perceived and treated.

That can mean:

- women who don't fit the conventionally attractive, sexualised archetype being treated as less recognisably goth

- people assuming goth women are inherently sexually available or performing for male attention

- commercial spaces increasingly rewarding the most immediately marketable version of the aesthetic

- newcomers encountering the subculture primarily through that stereotype rather than through its music and broader history

None of those effects requires this one video to be uniquely powerful. They're cumulative effects of repetition. My claim is not (and has never been) that this video causes measurable harm by itself, but that it participates in a representational pattern which can shape expectations about what goth women are supposed to look like and what their participation in the subculture means.

Penny, who ordered this miniature

Q:

Let's start with the first one: if someone is not conventionally attractive and so they're not read as goth (by someone really stupid and impressionable who watched some videos) who cares? Why would even they care? How does this hurt anyone?

A:

Because being persistently misread or treated as inauthentic within a community you actually belong to can matter to the person experiencing it.

That doesn't require catastrophic harm. It can mean being dismissed as "not really goth," being excluded from spaces or conversations, having your taste and identity treated as illegitimate, or being expected to perform a narrower aesthetic to be recognised at all.

And I don't think you need to posit some uniquely stupid person who watched one video. Cultural stereotypes work through repetition: people absorb shorthand from lots of media and social encounters until it starts to feel like common sense.

You asked me for a concrete effect. That's one. If your next question is "but why should anyone care about that effect?", that's a different argument.

Chelsea Wolfe

Q:

Why should anyone care about that (entirely hypothetical) effect? Both the person causing it and the person feeling it would appear to have such a severe mental health problem to start with that the video wasn't the issue. The problem is untreated mental health problems.

A:

If you continue framing ordinary social behaviour, identity, or (illegal claim deleted) as evidence of "severe mental health problems," or otherwise introduce (illegal claim deleted) premises into the questioning, the interview is over. You're free to challenge my argument as aggressively as you like, but I'm not obliged to participate in (illegal claim deleted) or pathologising framing.

I don't accept the premise that caring how you're perceived within a community, or being influenced by cultural stereotypes, constitutes a "severe mental health problem." Those are ordinary features of human social behaviour.

People care about belonging, recognition and how others perceive them. People also absorb stereotypes. Neither of these require a mental health diagnosis.

And even if someone involved did have a mental health condition, "therefore the surrounding social influences don't matter" wouldn't follow anyway. Individual psychology and social environment aren't mutually exclusive explanations.

You asked for a concrete way narrowing representation could affect someone. I gave you one. Declaring everyone involved "mentally ill" doesn't actually rebut the mechanism. It just changes the subject in a deeply offensive way.

Morticia

Q:

Offended or not, do you dispute either of the following:

1. Someone who decides someone isn't a goth because they're not attractive has a mental health problem

2. Someone who decides they care significantly whether that person thinks they’re a goth has a mental 

health problem 

?

A:

I dispute both. Neither of those facts, by itself, is sufficient to diagnose someone with a mental health problem.

More importantly, I explicitly told you that continuing to frame ordinary social behaviour as evidence of mental illness would terminate the interview. Your very next question did exactly that.

So the interview is over. You may publish the answers given during the agreed interview period under the terms we established. I won't be answering further questions.

Astarte

Q:

Yeah you have been perfectly clear: you think things that are absolutely bananas aren't and that pretty much explains your whole deal. No need to ask any more.

Brides of Dracula

You Got To Appreciate What An Explosive Element This Bonnie Situation Is

On Quentin Tarantino, GMing And The Art of Anti-Mystery

0. This will all have to do with games, trust me.

1. Pulp Fiction was in a small class of films that changed movies forever. Directors like it, arty people like it and audiences liked it--which is rare enough by itself--but also it changed what Hollywood thought regular people could put up with in a movie. Only a few other movies did that and most were genre movies with special effects showing you something only movies could show you (realistic moving space ships, dinosaurs, demonic possession, etc). Pulp created a director-centric frenzy not seen in a decade that lasted basically until the Marvel movies--which Pulp strongly-influenced.

2. There's no one simple explanation because, as so many people-- including QT--have pointed out, all the cool things in it have roots somewhere else. The lurid subjects appear in all kinds of old B movies, Shane Black and Howard Hawks did good dialogue in crime films before Pulp did it, Scorsese did those needle drops and cool characters, Godard and the French New Wave did a lot of the experimental film techniques, the plots were standard potboiler fare (thus the title), etc.

3. A common thesis might be that he did them all at once, but then you've got things like The Long Goodbye which arguably did as well, and a million movies since (including ones with Samuel Jackson, Uma or Travolta), which don't hit as hard.

4. I think I have a piece of the puzzle:

5. For all his interest in genre films Quentin Tarantino has never done a spooky or mysterious movie. Death Proof is mayyyybe a horror movie but it definitely is not spooky.

6. One thing Tarantino does not do is mystery. And not just spooky horror mystery but also another kind of mystery.

7. You've seen the other kind of mystery in a lot of the foreign films that Tarantino loves: a character appears and is doing something and you don't know what. It may turn out to be something banal, like shopping while waiting to hear back from her doctor about a life-threatening illness, or something crazy, like running from the mob or stepping through a time warp to talk to a machine consciousness from the future.

And, crucially, even when you do know what's going on, you aren't told what the interesting part of it is supposed to be. The point is: you don't immediately know what's going on and part of what the film is saying is: I know you're confused, we have to watch other peoples' lives carefully to see what's going on. The mystery around simple plot points is part of the aesthetic. The poetry is in the difficulty of extracting any meaning from anything in this crazy world. David Lynch was an American director who definitely did take on this kind of Euromystery. He could make a diner or a police station as strange and new as a black dimension of evil spirits. 

8. Basically these kinds of films trust the audience to eventually notice there is some kind of beauty in what's going on. But it is also possible that the audience won't "get it" because the movie never signals "Alright, here's where it's supposed to be awesome". You either notice The Week-End is beautiful and surreal and as absurd as life or you scratch your head wondering where those sheep came from. 

9. Often this is when a film critic is brought in to explain the art movie to the audience.

10. So here's my thesis about Quentin, with Pulp as the prime example:

Quentin managed to use all the techniques of arty filmmaking to make a blockbuster by chucking out the mystery and instead making the explaining-what's-going-on part of the movie. The film critic has been entertainingly imported into the movie.

He shows instead of telling---but then he also tells.

But he doesn't do it in a Deadpool way, as a winking meta-comment, he does it by making the explaining part of the movie--sometimes the best part.

Quentin Tarantino made an arty, creative movie that does not trust the audience at all. He tells everyone everything multiple times, but somehow manages to not make it condescending either.

11. The stakes, context and meaning of basically every single big plot event in Pulp Fiction are hyperexplained by characters in the movie--in ways that don't suck:

-A European director would've just let that diner get robbed in the middle of Jules and Vincent's conversation about walking the Earth. This would disorient the audience, making us feel like we were getting robbed of the one thing we now know Jules and Vince reliably supply (great dialogue)--which is fun! But QT is making a blockbuster. 

Tarantino doesn't want audiences confused by where this new two-person gun crime is coming from and what it might have to do with the previous two-person gun crime (nothing, but Godard would want that confusion--America is just full of guns and violence and so its absurdly funny for two violent criminals to get robbed at gunpoint just after a violent crime of their own). 

So what does Tarantino do? QT gives us a prologue at the beginning of the movie where the two diner robbers extensively discuss why anyone would rob a diner (Denver omelette, anyone?). We don't know why they're doing it when we see it, but when it pays off, our confusion evaporates.

-J &V discuss Tony Rocky Horror and the foot massage. Why? It sets up the stakes of the Mia Wallace date. Tony stepped out of line and got thrown four stories. Almost every other director would've let us realize for ourselves that touching the boss gangster's wife is a high-risk activity (Hell even I know that), QT makes sure we know, but does it fun, and with swearing.

-At the end of the execution scene, Jules recites a Bible verse and we're left hanging with that--shots fire and the scene ends. Why did he do that? Again, an art movie director would've just let us live with the weirdness of it (David Lynch would've), but no, QT then has Jules explain, scenes later “I just thought it was some coldblooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass.” Then his spiritual awakening is because he is thinking about what it means and he explains that.

-Christopher Walken's cameo. What's he explaining? How important the gold watch is. Again: many other directors would've made a scene where the boxer, trying to survive in a world of murder-capitalism, is fixated on a gold watch he used to own for reasons of symbolism alone. Not QT. You're gonna be told and you're gonna be told by the greatest weird-exposition scene guy in film history.

-Butch kills a guy in the ring. Do we see boxing? No. Do we see a scene where the boxer explains to a driver how he feels about killing a man in the ring? Yes we do.

-Willis blows up at Fabiana for forgetting the watch. He then, in the car, explains it all to himself (and us) again. "I didn't explain to her how important the watch was..."

-Now we have the one thing that's not glossed by anyone in the movie: the pawn shop basement grotesquerie. Why is this happening? Well, its in the title at least: Pulp Fiction. This is a lurid story and you came here for violence and cheap thrills. No explanation needed.

-The Bonnie Situation starts with the unlikely end of the execution previously seen and then Jules and Vince discussing the meaning of the previous scene--was it a miracle?

-Marvin gets shot. Grieving Marvin--Jules! friend!--takes a back seat to Jules (to Vincent), then Quentin (to Jules and Vincent), then Jules again (on the phone to boss Wallace), then the Wolf (to Jules, Vincent and QT) all explaining how dangerous it is to be roaming around The Valley in the middle of the day with a dead body.

This sequence contains almost nothing but people explaining to each other how serious the situation is and other people trying to crack jokes while they do it. And did they have to? No. Like 90% of crime directors before 1980 would've maybe spent one line reminding the audience that cops tend to notice shit like you're driving a car drenched in fucking blood, then gone about the business of having these cold-hearted gangsters get to work doing their mysterious, underground business with hatchets and garbage bags and whatever. Watch, say, Sexy Beast or Gangster Number One for great examples.

-The whole film basically ends with an exegesis--Jules explaining the Bible verse. 

12. So what's all this have to do with games? 

13. Remember: while immersion (mystery! confusion! where are we?) is fun. But the other thing can be, too: just explaining what is going down and why you should care. And in RPGs, with all the numbers, and the players who missed sessions or forgot the rules, or were in bathroom, often requires a lot of explaining--about the story or the stakes or the backstory or the math. But explaining can be fun. Explaining can be the difference between a fun afternoon at the movies and a full-on blockbuster.