Keith Giffen Is Dead And He Was Better Than Anybody

Keith Giffen died.

He has been sick for many years, so it's not a surprise but, still, I'm sad.

If you look him up, you'll notice in all the comic book news site eulogies, he's weirdly hard to summarize. They'll say he created this or that second-tier character or contributed to an influential run you may or may not have read on a comic book you may or may have not have heard of.

This is fitting--Keith's style, like his art and writing--is hard to pin down.

Here's the splash page of one of his comics:

Again: this is what they call the splash page --the big announcement page to get you excited.

Batman's face is in shadow, Robin's facing away and would be unrecognizable if this were a black-and-white comic, and it took me, a huge Giffen fan, like, minutes to realize that what's going on here is there's a blue-clad figure (Clayface) in a hat holding a knife up to stab Robin. 

This is everything they tell people not to do in illustrator school. And Giffen was great at it.

Nobody can use the traditional comic bro vocabulary to explain why his comics were so good.

He also just kept evolving. All of these are the same guy:

Defenders 50, from the beginning of his career

Legion of Super-Heroes #1 when Giffen was a fan-favorite

Dr Fate limited series, when he started getting weird

Near the end of his first Legion run

His soup-to-nuts creation The Heckler

Another later-career all-Keith joint, Trencher. Scroll back up to the Defenders and compare

Throughout his career, Giffen was dogged by accusations of copying other artists--but this misses the point. Giffen was mr anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better. Or at least weirder. He was like the Ridley Scott of comics--Oh you made Barry Lyndon you say? Here's The Duellist. You made Dark Star? Here's Alien. Ben Hur? Fucking Gladiator. You made 2001? Star Wars? I made Blade Runner. 48 Hours? Thelma and Louise.

The early work--like that Defenders page at the top--owes a clear debt to Jack Kirby, but the dense, dark designs and schematic presentation are far too deadpan for Kirby. Keith caught a lot of slack around the time of that Dr Fate page for copying Argentine artist Jose Munoz--but Munoz had that loose, indie sensibility--he didn't have Giffen's full-color design sense. 

And what Giffen did with Munoz's style...

...he summons a bodiless mouth in mid-air to annihilate Batman with green vomit. Meanwhile, what's Munoz drawing? Some guys playing jazz?

I mean, if he's not going to use his style why not let Keith borrow it?

The next page down Giffen's starting to be influenced by Kevin Maguire...

...but whatever the fuck Colossal Boy's lonely shapechanging wife is doing to herself in panel two, Maguire would never. And that snap screwball-comedy transition to the angry-eye close-up? Pure Giffen.

A major reason Giffen's going to be hard to summarize is he did exactly the opposite of the conventional wisdom about what we're all supposed to like in comics.

If I was to try to summarize what that was, I'd say it was this sort of thing:

Ahhh, the podcasters sing, the storytelling. That story sure did get told. That robot definitely busted through that wall and Batman sure does look concerned about that explosion.

We're supposed to really like that. It's clear, it's accessible, it's emotional, it's simple, it's open, it's...meh.

Ever since Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics came out people have been talking like there's something to understand. Like: it's a fucking comic, dude. It's a form literally designed to be understood by schoolchildren. It's never hard to understand comics.

People praise comic artists so often by saying "the storytelling is so clear you don't even need to read the words to understand it, it leads the eye across the page".

Who cares? Giffen realized the eye would always get across the page sooner or later because there are panels and the page is a picture the person reading wants to look at because they bought the comic on purpose to look at it. Comics aren't rocket science.

Giffen went hard the other way. He made gorgeous patterns of color blocks and shapes on the page--and if they didn't tell the story all by themselves--oh right, there's word balloons.

What does it mean? Where is the story going? Who cares? Keith Giffen built comics as labyrinths of color, shape, continuity, reference, collage, image, jokes. They didn't invite you to understand, they didn't have epic character arcs of Campbellian heroics, they invited you to come get lost in the funhouse.

Keith Giffen's comics make you go "What the fuck is this?" and honestly--if you think how everybody who loves comics loves them because they picked up issue 456 of some random comic which was part 3 of a 6 part arc that got finished in some whole other series the next year by different people or loves them after finding some manga with a mythology that you have to get through 4 fanslations a Wiki and an anime to understand--that is what a lot of people want. They want to peel the arcana apart.

I loved Keith.

I hope someone picks up where he left off.

The Most OSR Session

Before I go on to this actual play report, a legal update:

Details here. 

And here.

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Anyway, let's get back to games. This is Slorm:

Slorm is a goblin and a cleric who appears weekly in OSR founder* Jeff Rients' weekly game alongside a guy named Graham played by Lamentations of the Flame Princess founder James Edward Raggi IVs guy, Graham, a fighter who goes around dressed as the dungon-boss necromancer we killed in our first adventure.

Anyway Slorm worships a god that fell out of the God Maker, the Sister of Infinite Punishments.

Last time Slorm played, he was in a giant slime and got stung by an LotFP-style trap where he looked through a telescope and gained a view of the infinite universe like the Aleph in that Borges story and was incapacitated and then the session ended.

Then I spent several weeks not playing because life, then I came back and we're in a dungeon but Slorm now has Expanded Life Universe Perspective and talks like a SoCal acid guru who sees....who like seeeees, man, he sees youuuu, he sees what you're about, man, like....enTIREly.

So this game is Jeff Gameblog DMing, Zak S fresh off suing someone, James Raggi on fighter, two trans people and a Ukrainian sniper--you don't get more OSR than that.

So, this report straight from the from the seeeecret LotFP weekly game! (ssssh) :

Slorm wakes up to find the party's bard is dead. "Good!" he says. He is replaced by a blind dwarf.

We are in a Library. James' henchman El Grec has identified a sigil! its the sigil of the king! 

I , theee goblinn has posted henchindividuals outside the library, theres .MAGnificent fresco of the king leading troops. Slorm, filled with a wholly fraudulent sense of the inherent spirituality of a blind dwarf, says we have to follow the blind dwarf's lead through the library.

The blind dwarf has got a book off the shelf. As has Dr Merchandise thee henchman. 

(Not a real doctor just needed a name that began with D to go with previous henchfolk Astrid (R.I.P.), Boulder, and Christopher (R.I.P.).)

One d8 roll later  @Jeff Rients  "Does your character  actually read dwarf braille is the question?". More rolls, no. 

The henchmen notice one of the walls outside are bleeding. Slorm the goblin casts cure light wounds" on it, it scabs over. 

Blarnibus the Ogre licks the wall. The blood tastes significantly more acidic than expected.

Slorm then casts Cure Light on the ogre's tongue.  

The dwarves roll architecture. Nothing happens. Goblin cleric insists we just let the wall bleed because its dungeon dressing mannn. 

Slorm can see through the veil of maya ok? 

We go on. El Grec has picked up some Old Haldrani and can see a book called Lords of Gold!  It says where all the local gold mines are.

I am glad I am doing this write-up because I forgot that we found this.

Slorm can read a book called the Grimoire of Par Kaare which has some spells.

I also forgot that--Jeff what spells are in there?

but WHATEVER...down to level NEXT. We're in a huge corridor. With some...passages? idk James Edward Raggi IV is mapping so I trust him. 

Did I mention my goblin looked through a telescope into the infinite, got incapacitated for 3 sessions and now talks like a cult leader on mushrooms? Ok anyway. So he gets the blind dwarf to listen and he hears Sinister Laughter!  To the north. We go north. 

120 feet and then. Ok this dungeon is REALLLY big like it was drawn in the 70s by someone who didn't do rational architecture but its a Jeff Rients game so that is probably what it is.

(Turns out it's from Judges' Guild Journal. 2 decades of  game blogging for nothing, we are still running around in some eccentric notebook dungeon written by people who know people who give out the 3 Castles Award. ) 

We are in a martini-glass shaped room. Slorm the goblin casts Augury and does not have the spell Augury and so randomly decides to go right and not left. Both left and right doors lead to the same room.

Score! 

Goblin casts Insect Plague and sends the insects go down the corridor, they eventually find a secret door. Graham opens it. 

A TEMPLE! Scarabs on the walls. The floor is made of blue marble with white veins--all veins leading toward a laughing buddha/dwarf like statue. Blarnibus the ogre approaches it. The Statue is entirely blued silver and its eyes are gems. Slorm urges any party member but himself to approach the statue. Quoth Blarnibus "i'm gonna shake it like its a piggybank".

 

The only image that comes up when you google "Ogre with piggybank"

When he picks it up a hidden gong sounds! There's a delay on the guards showing up (Jeff just tells us the mechanic) Blarnibus rolls...4! A bunch of weirdoes in red and black start pouring out. 

I highly suspect Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a reference here. 

Weirdoes? Shaved heads and forky beards! James takes the rearguard and the goblin sends an Insect Plague to protect them.

Slorm is insane but has the Rod of something for Clerics so that's why he's casting all this bullshit. 

The lowest level cultists show up first, and the plague takes them!! We get away scott free! 2500gp statue!

So far, so dungeon. But here's that real sauce:

Then--OF COURSE!--we dress the two dwarves up like the statue of the god by paying 500gp to the best cosplayer in the village. Jeff rules that by coincidence our blind dwarf has EXACTLY the same build as the god. Because: Jeff. 

But the god mostly wears a loin cloth."I'm gonna fast-forward to the stupid corridor with the 2 sets of double doors". Slorm rolls a 2. Slorm casts Continual Light on the dwarf god's loincloths.

So they'll glow, naturally. 

So the nonblind god-cosplaying dwarf leads the blind one to the plinth. The plinth is really tall though. One dwarf tosses the other. "Does he get up there before he sets off the alarm or not?". 1-3 or 4-6? 6. 

So fuck ok the dwarves are messing around on the floor as the alarm rings. Slorm casts Insect Plague! Scarabs to the front! Protect your gods! Guards in chainmail with spears roll up.

They are not intelligent. The statue of their scarab-friendly god that's been missing has no been replaced by two gods? And a bunch of live scarab beetles.

They immediately declare--ITS A MIRACLE. The guards bow "We're not worthy!" The blind dwarf says "No you are not". 

They fetch the high priest. One of the guards is confused to see two gods. Slorm casts Command. The one word command? PHILOSOPHIZE! For a round (6 seconds) the guard rhapsodizes about how there are TWO where once there were ONE!!! A holy mystery! 

4 junior clerics roll up. Jeff rolls to see if they are swept up by the religious hysteria. They fail their save and begin praying. 

James Edward Raggi IV asks "Um no reason, just asking....whats the dwarf gestation period?" Jeff rules 12 months. 

Blind dwarf goes "I don't feel safe". 

James goes..."i'm just saying, that we have the ability, at the rate of one per year, new gods!" "WE ARE JACK KIRBY!" 

 

Jeff: "You know i don't do this very often but I'm awarding everybody 50 extra xp for shenanigans!" 

550xp each. 

No fights.

*?

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Write Snout To Tail

Material

When interviewers ask me about how I approach writing RPG stuff I usually say something like "It's a lot like writing a novel or other story, you just do it like that."

I realize that might not be the most useful way to put it, so I am going to dig a little into what that means.

The word dressmakers use for stuff that they're going to make into a dress is the same word comedians have for words they're going to turn into a performance: "material". Like: "I need more material,""This is great material,""All out of material," "You need new material", etc.

Material means, in writing: everything in your head that you think might interest your audience that you have not told them already. Material is unformed. It is a thing but not yet presented or presentable.

One way to think about writing that is helpful to me when I'm doing RPG stuff is to describe writing as a process of translation. Material appears in the inchoate language of thought and leaves in the language of, well, language.

When I say writing an RPG thing is like writing a story, remember a story's not just you revealing the plot points in order, it's you revealing anything you want to reveal.

Tolkien begin his whole saga with no plot at all, with barely even a description, but rather by revealing what some things in his story aren't:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hold, and that means comfort.

The plot has gone nowhere and he's already got three lines. Rock on. He did it by thinking about what his story wasn't about, and giving us those thoughts.

If you haven't revealed it yet--or haven't revealed that's what you think yet--that's material.

One way to think of writing:

1. Know what your material is.

2. Reveal it in the most interesting order you can.

3. Reveal it using the most interesting words you can.

Old Material

Material does not have to be something you know but the audience doesn't. You know what an elephant is, but Samuel Johnson is going to tell you anyway:

"The largest of all quadrupeds, of whose sagacity, faithfulness, prudence, and even understanding, many surprising relations are given. This animal is not carnivorous, but feeds on hay, herbs, and all sorts of pulse; and it is said to be extremely long lifed. It is naturally very gentle; but when enraged, no creature is more terrible. He is supplied with a trunk, or long hollow cartilage, like a large trumpet, which hangs between his teeth, and serves him for hands: by one blow with his trunk he will kill a camel or a horse, and will raise a prodigious weight with it. His teeth are the ivory so well known in Europe, some of which have been seen as large as a man's thigh, and a fathom in length. Wild elephants are taken with the help of a female ready for the male: she is confined to a narrow place, round which pits are dug; and these being covered with a little earth scattered over hurdles, the male elephants easily fall into the snare. In copulation the female receives the male lying upon her back; and such is his pudicity, that he never covers the female so long as any one appears in sight."

How did he take something we all know and keep us entertained all the way through telling us it? Let's take a look at one part we didn't need to know:

 He is supplied with a trunk, or long hollow cartilage, like a large trumpet..."

We get "supplied" which is wonderful (because although it's technically appropriate, it summons an image of a uniformed clerk carrying one under his arm to the noseless elephant), there's something great about the forensic precision of "cartilage" leading casually into the bombastic street-party atmosphere of "trumpet".

Here's Paul F Tompkins telling us what we already know about peanut brittle:

This bit--this transformation of the idea material of "Hey, the peanut brittle gag is anachronistic" into five minutes of stage time--consists of just saying what we know over and over, slowly, teasing out every bit of absurdity. "..this peanut brittle--the most common snack in the world--". 

Efficiency

One thing none of these uses of material I've quoted so far is, is efficient. The information's not delivered quickly. The ratio of word to idea is quite high.

It is, however, delivered entertainingly, which is to say: memorably.

I don't have much of a head for recipes, but I certainly remember Harry Nilsson's doctor's formula for gastrointestinal relief: you put the lime in the coconut and drink em both up. Because Tarantino put it in that movie.

RPG writing has a challenge embedded in it--as I've said often, we often want to be able to access rules quickly midgame (that is: we want efficiency) but we also want the rules to be fun to read and (therefore) easy to remember so we don't have to look them up much.

Whenever possible in an RPG, I would not recommend trying to balance the imperative to be efficient with the imperative to be memorable. I would instead recommend just doing both: put a memorable version of the concept in the text, and make an efficient, referenceable version elsewhere, and then make sure you and the graphic designer find ways to tell the reader which is which.

Wasting Material

You can waste material. You can take a perfectly good thought and reveal it in such a way that the juice of what you need to tell the reader stops feeling worth the squeeze of patiently reading those words in order.

Here's Samuel Johnson on "pig":

A young sow or boar.

Fuck off, Sam. We get a 203-word disquisition on the elephant and yet his cousin the hog--a noble, tasty beast, an ally and associate to humanity since well before the bronze age--isn't worth even a full line?

Samuel Johnson has wasted his material.

As demonstrated above, you don't waste material by telling the reader what they already know. That's fine: readers can love reading what they already know and many RPG authors make entire careers dictating readers' own thoughts back to them. You waste material by not presenting it as being as exciting or rich as it actually is to you.  Vegetarians want pigs around, carnivores want pigs around, maybe even more--so, really, everyone wants pigs around. Make us know why.

Writing is revealing your thoughts, nobody wants to hear thoughts not even you think are interesting.

Let's see what else Johnson did with a pig:

Sow-- A female pig; the female of a boar.

Zzzzzz. You would not hire this man to write your monster manual.

Now:

Boar--The male swine.

Triple fuck off! Ok, fine, Johnson is bored but out of sheer bloodymindedness, let's see "swine":

Swine--A hog; a pig. A creature remarkable for stupidity and nastiness.

Finally the doctor has done something with his material. We now know two things about pigs. We don't know how many legs they have but whatever, something has been revealed, and it's interesting: pigs apparently suck, or at least Samuel Johnson thinks they do.

And a hog?

Hog--The general name of swine.

I'm belaboring the point.

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What you must say is a pig, what the audience will read is a sausage. Make the transition with grace, and honor every part of the pig.

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Another Theory Tested (Harry Potter And The Sourest Grape)

One Nice Thing

One nice thing is that for a long time I had no idea there was a new Harry Potter game out.

Nobody in my real life talks about it, nobody in my social media feed talks about it, it's--as it should be--a non-thing. Even among people I knew who used to like Harry Potter--even among people who now have hastily-covered-up Harry Potter tattoos--even from trans friends who once were deeply invested in the franchise.

But then--because I have to check on the worst people in games all the time for legal reasons--I found out there was one.

I wouldn't have thought much of it except--they are all talking about it all the time. Hundreds of them.

Congratulating each other for realizing Harry Potter is bad is now their personality in the same way complaining about official D&D's whole Open Game License fuck-up was their whole personality last week and complaining about me was their whole personality in 2019.

And the same way liking Harry Potter was their personality before that.

Lots of media is made by terrible transphobic people--but they're especially mad about Harry Potter because they fucking loved Harry Potter.

The Soft Smack

Anybody might like any thing for any stupid reason, but before JK Rowling revealed herself to be not just boring but also evil, Harry was frequently recruited by harassers in RPG circles to make a point about how bad it was to like cool, metal things like Warhammer or Jack Vance.

Harry was not like all the terrible nasty media that Old Schoolers liked a lot where push frequently came to shove and shove came to blood and blood came to axes and fire and people sometimes fuck or think, Harry was accessible, Harry was unproblematic, Harry was diverse, Harry wore sweaters, when people died it was emotional and earned because character development, Harry was Young Adult friendly and Dumbledore was gay and the only time anything was sexy it was in fanfic written by tumblr people, and Harry was, above all, soft.

Harry was a symbol for nightmare nerds of all that was wholesome and undifficult.

One RPGnet mod used to tag "10 points to Gryfindor!" when backslapping friends for outstanding feats of online harassment. Former-Pathfinder-employee-turned-professional-Karen Jessica Price once wrote about how since "spirit animal" was so problematic, we should all just say "Patronus" instead.

Which is so cringey that a joke newspaper that probably never heard of her repeated it years later as satire.

The Drama Club Theory of Harry Potter was simple:

1. Good people liked wholesome media where wholesome things happened and that could be shared with the children they would eventually have or already had

2. And this was somehow not a facemeltingly reactionary concerned-parent take but in fact a bold and progressive stance in These Troubled Times

The Failed Test

Just as the theory about morally improving games has been tested and disproved so has this one. They were proven wrong. Rowling's trash and so are zillions of her most devoted fans.

It's hard admit the club you were hitting people over the head with for 20 years is made of human shit.

So instead of apologizing to the people they attacked and talking up something actually cool like Adventure Time, they are rebranding as people so angry about a video-game no well-informed grown-up cares about that they have to tell everyone it exists.

I lay odds this exact thing will happen again with Steven Universe in the next 10 years and, again, no-one will learn a single lesson from it.

The Price of Painkillers

My ex- used to listen to the audiobooks and movies to go to sleep, so I know the story much better than most things I don't like.

Aside from the issue of just how every generation is going to need some relatively long and relatively literary fantasy novel readable by children written in a version of the english language they'll recognize as of-their-own-time, the only distinguishing thing about Harry Potter is its unusually full-throated embrace of the aesthetics of comfort.

Squashy armchairs, butterbeer, kids living in castles, bumbling idiot villains, shapeless outfits, plots so casual characters forget them because they keep going to class, authority figures who are not only good and wise and all-powerful yet non-threatening because old and gay they also respect you personally and say it a lot, domesticated goblins, wands instead of any more interesting or scary weapon, reading presented as the be-all end-all of fighting evil, and all this even as the stakes rise to death and genocide. All in prose so bloodless it made Peter Rabbit look like Les Chants de Maldoror.

It's as if the whole of Lord of the Rings took place in Hobbiton. The British genius for coziness-uber-alles given full vent over stressful social concerns like how to dress for a date or feed yourself--or anyone else.

If you dreamed you'd leave your shitty family and go to school and there discover you're really good at everything that matters with no work and have everyone decide you are an awesome celebrity because of your trauma and then successfully fight for what's right by pointing your finger at people and saying words while wearing glasses, Harry Potter is the power fantasy for you.

It was meant to be, by its author, a monstrous, thoughtless person who thinks she's being socially progressive by avoiding any invitation to engage her victims.

Again: there's nothing wrong with liking that story or any other--but wielding it should have always been suspicious. It's not a coincidence that all the people who did that as adults to other adults later turned out to be yes, actually, really bad at real-word problems and being adults.

It should be no surprise that, like Rowling, these people thought of "This conversation makes me uncomfortable" as a reason to leave it.

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They Could Never Control The Game

I do and I don't know why the OGL thing made fans turn against corporate D&D in numbers big enough to cost them money.

On the one hand it makes the owners of Dungeons and Dragons look not just greedy, but clumsily so--on the other hand, so does nearly everything else they've ever done.

I mean, this is a company that could have--with the snap of a finger--vastly improved the community for everyone--including themselves and their most important employees--by pointing out all the worst actors online spread a right-wing conspiracy theory about Mike Mearls and didn't lift a finger, presumably because they were scared of Streisanding the situation in the press.

They'll take steps to protect their IP, but not their community, their employees, or their own reputation. Always and forever.

For example:

What have we here?

This gelatinous cube, this dragon? So precise, so assured, so elegant, so finicky, sensual yet controlled, one might even say... continental?

It's 1982.

You know who really wants to play D&D?

The French.

A woman named Mathilde Maraninchi--arguably the author of the first retroclone--says fuck it and makes French D&D:

...the rules are a simplification and mash-up of the various TSR versions of the rules by that time.

I'm told it's a little chaotic--but that was pretty normal back then--and hard to play--also pretty normal for a circa 1982 RPG--and the illustrations by Joël Bordier are kinky as fuck:

It is arguably not just the first French RPG but the first retroclone ever, and one of the earliest works by a female RPG author.

TSR killed it of course.

Thanks to French gamers Peggy and Arnaud for bringing this to my attention, here are some more details...

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

And some more here courtesy of Google Translate and French gameblogger Dvergguden.

Thanks to all of them for their help with this article!

Vive la resistance.

"Apparence d'un Rubik's cube"

Scale of Grimdark to Cute Fantasy Correlated With Creators' Behavior

 

Click to enlarge

As the graph clearly shows, at least in popular traditional fantasy: soft creators are bad, brutal ones are good. Possible theories:

A) Random Noise: There's no trend and this is just sampling error or something. Counterexamples welcome.

B) Jamie Lee Curtis Thesis (Grim Art Causes Empathy): Plausibly imagining terrible things makes you take moral choices more seriously.

C) Jean-Paul Sartre Thesis (Empathy Causes Grim Art): A person who takes moral choices seriously knows fantasy from reality and uses art as a place to safely explore dark feelings.

D) Art-as-Religion Thesis (Comfort Fantasy Amputates Empathy): An imagined world without terror or grey issues stimulates in the audience an expectation that problems should be able to be solved without reference to other peoples' needs or safety.

E) "I'm Baby" Thesis (Lack of Empathy Creates A Desire For Comfort Fantasy): A belief that the world is too horrible to handle so its ok to be self-absorbed also leads them to seek escape in worlds lacking in complex problems or difficult choices.

F) Self-Defeating Insular Fandom Nightmare Thesis: Note that creators on the cute end of the graph tend to be "from the internet". Grim fantasy has been increasingly ascendant in popular culture since the '60s and so many people who became successful in traditional ways ply its byways while safe fantasy as respectable pursuit is a result of the internet's refocusing on the aesthetics of underserved marginal communities (women and lgbt people looking for escape from a patriarchal world) but in addition to being more female/queer these creators are also more internetty and so reliant on internet communities--and internet fan communities are toxic and make people evil.

G) Inherent Profitability and Horizontal Competition Thesis: Either because they are inherently more dramatic thus appealing thus profitable or because that's the current public taste and thus profitable, grimdark creators make more money and don't exist under as much competitive pressure as creators doing comfort art. The comfort art creators are fighting over limited space and so do terrible things. 

I have no idea which of these, if any, is accurate.

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The Opposite of a Dungeon

 Sometimes the best way to figure out what something isn't is the best way to figure out what it is. That is: what's essential to it.

It also helps if the opposite is--or is incarnated--in something you also think is good, so you're not just listing off bad qualities you want to do the opposite of.

So, I submit, the likable opposite of a dungeon is Gustav Klimt's landscapes. The Park from 1910ish:

What we've got: Light, space, air, freedom of movement, color, abundance. And, crucially: there are no nymphs, satyrs, weird faeries or even unicorns hiding in these trees--they aren't twisty or architectural--they aren't mysterious. Head out on a day off to the museum and stare into that green and you don't see mystery you see a bubbling static of permission--this is nothing, you're alive, trees are alive, all life is one life, variety is infinite but in that infinity: simple.

Unlike the forest in, say, Durer's Knight, Death and the Devil, these trees don't have any narrative opportunities--they're a terrible place for a random encounter. How would you describe anyone's position? Where's the orc? Where are you?

It's a park and not a forest. A park in the mid-city lunch-break sense: not a national park, not park-land, just green. The purpose of these trees is not to tell you about the trees, its just a place for you to sit and see green.

This is nature as only a civilization where the average person never really saw nature as a threat could see it.

And what is there to see in this green? Hold up your finger to cover the bottom fifth of the painting and you lose all context, it's just colors moving. Nothing concrete--it's pure emotion.

The outside world as just a bright, super-saturated meditation space for whatever you're thinking over lunch, with your bologna sandwich. No demands on you, just openness. You're free to let your mind wander not because the world is blank but because it is abundant with all the signals about what you need: there's food here, there's water, there's no need to worry.

Definitely not gothic.

So what's a dungeon then? And what's the aesthetic of the dungeony world that has villages and mountains that also feel of a piece with dungeons?

Unfree, simple wants thwarted, twisted in some way, toward purpose and intrigue. The simple made unsimple. A kind of clarity (Klimt landscapes are blurry) but the clarity shows things you have to deal with. Emotions aren't just there to be experienced --Ah, Spring!-- they're passions in the Shakespearean sense, pushing toward trouble--The King covets the Duke's hunting grounds. Contorted and demanding, everything in the dungeon and the dungeonized world has a purpose or might, every detail a thing, a constant anxiety you're not noticing the things--nothing is an abstract field of open play. 

Spikes and Edges

So much depends upon your attitude toward the sky.

In LA--in Sicily and Morocco and all the places Europeans and North Americans call "The South"--half the time you don't even want a roof. The sun is up there, life spills horizontally out, eager to take advantage of it, soak up the sun, providence, goodness.

In The North things are different, God rains semisolid death whiter than bone down on you several months a year and liquid inconvenience half the rest. What's the point? It's on the roof, which is invariably pointed--to keep the snow off.

This is The Gothic: Protection from the sky. Protection from God. A pointed roof implies (in churches and palaces and any other structure required to project a sense of power and the ability to create visual unity that power implies) doorways with pointed arches, windows with pointed arches, multiple floors, dense cities close together (to make dashing from front door to stable, inn, or armory, convenient), skinny buildings with small windows.

Power in the north is the ability to create long, tall, pointed, defensive things.

Spikes? Whole cities of spikes. Months spent in darkness. Much is made of D&D's invention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin--where it's cold.

This also implies: extensive interiors, underground cities (Montreal has one, kind of), tunnels, networks, coziness in-and-despite darkness, storytelling against that darkness, introspection, interpretation (discovering not just the story but the story behind that story--to kill time), torchlight and candlelight versus moonlight, books, research.

So: Dungeons.

Having moved to Los Angeles as an adult I'd also say the North connotes: precision (please arrive on time because conditions might be different later, please make this properly because otherwise it will leak), efficiency, slowness and patience (we'll do it when the season changes) and therefore: planning.

Contrast the Southern Gothic (which is only a common phrase because it implies something new, a great contrast--"western gothic" and "eastern gothic" don't imply as much because the disconnect is smaller): people always outside or at least always hot, where the sun can always get at them, they're always at God's mercy, torn apart, emotional, and so often horizontal: long roads, flat horizons. Dead mules. Mad Max is as southern gothic as Faulkner. The spikes are almost an afterthought, the key signifiers of the southern gothic are dust and rust. Exhaustion. God has already gotten to you. There was never any protection. If The North has any comforts, its the high quality of man-made protection: armor, thick walls, central heating, furs.

Anyway, we're all Northerners now...

On The Reliability of Magic

In fairy tales magic is reliable: if the leprechaun wants you to be a donkey, you're gonna be a donkey. No save.

Magic in that context is just the continuation of Nature by other means. And Nature is, if not exactly Good, then at least implacable and to be respectd.

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In D&D, it's somewhat less reliable--the sufficiently tough, clever or spiritually advanced can escape it, sometimes you even have to target it and land a hit as if it were a mere superpower, like Superman's heat vision.

It's still way more reliable than combat (as "caster supremacy" conspiracy theorists are quick to point out).

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In classic pulp stories and in games that try to emulate them like Dungeon Crawl Classics, magic is extremely unreliable. It is Things Best Left Untouched By Mortals. Results go all over the place, they can fizzle or backfire or result in discoveries.

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As usual, the Rosetta Stone here is Tolkien vs classic pulp (Lovecraft, Lieber, Vance, etc):

Tolkien lays out a fairytalish paradigm of magic as primarily a moral force: creatures who use it are in tune with higher things. Magic does what it says on the tin because it is the tin: the way the world is supposed to be working itself out. Magic only goes wrong and becomes weird when in the hands of the unworthy (like The One Ring). (As the OSR Discord reminds me, Dr Strange, Dr Fate and The Force in Star Wars also all work on this paradigm.)

The pulp paradigm doesn't so much posit a difference in magic itself as a difference in who a protagonist of a story could be: the unworthy--for whom magic is a risky proposition--are generally the focus.

So you have Lovecraft characters trying to use forbidden lore to gain knowledge and power, Lieber has the morally somewhat Grey Mouser as a sorcerer's apprentice who can't always get a spell right, and Vance has the inimitably amoral Cugel as much abused by-, as using-, magic.

Tolkien might agree they were getting what they deserved from magic, he just might not agree they were fit subjects for a story. At least not one of his.

In that context, it's easy to see why the game with the famously unreliable magic is also the one where it says right there on the book that you're no hero.

Question: Does this mean cleric spells should be inherently more reliable than wizard ones? My instinct is yes.

Worst Tropes

Generic But Emotionally Unambiguous Music Communicating This Is How You’re Supposed To Feel About This So Why Is There Even A Scene Why Did We Have Dialogue Kill Me

The Ethnic Person Shows You The Ropes And Now Their Coolness Is Transmitted To You And Now They Aren’t In The Story Anymore

Oh They Were Promiscuous But Not Anymore Because Now They’re Good

I Am A Humorless PaleoConservative Setting You, The Marginalized or White Marginalized-Protector, Up For Your Self-Assertion Speech So We Can All ReTumbl That Shit Without Addressing The Underlying Structural Problem That, While It Does Not Necessarily Create That PaleoConservative Attitude, Positively Reinforces It Usually Through Economic Means When It Does Occur Thus Ensuring Its Longevity And Spread Despite Widespread Overt Popular Disapproval And All Your ReTumbling

Also Said Speech

Also Cute Webcomics That Are Just Said Speech Sliced Up In Panels

I Am Wise And Spiritual But Don’t Know Kung Fu And Yet Somehow Still Expect To Be Taken Seriously

Sympathetc Character Saying Politics Is Like A Vague Hurty Noise That Has Nothing To Do With The Problems In The Plot

The Power Of Rock Evoked By Clueless Writer In Any Era Where Hip-Hop Should Be The Dominant Mode

She’s So Sexually Aggressive He Is Not Into Her

TNG’s Sharper-Image-Catalogue-After-8-Minutes-In-A_Blender Aesthetic Bafflingly Replicated Despite This Property Not Having Syndicated TV’s Budget Constraints

George Clooney

We're Pretending The Traditional Garb Of The Not-White Culture Is Basically A Superhero Costume Already So Not Real Trying Here On This Not-White Superhero Character Enjoy Beads Until They're Cancelled

Girls Hate Seeing Tits

We’re In Japan And Should Be Fighting Mutants But Let’s Do RomCom Jokes And Talk About My Feelings First

The Japanese Boy With Access To The Giant Robot IS Coincidentally The Only Japanese Boy Who Doesn’t Want It

Unconflicted Hug As Plot Point

Sandals

Adorkable

The Moral Is Don’t Hurt People Even If They’re Like Hitler Or Hitlers are Just Conveniently Left Off The Table As A Possibility

There’s An Explicit Moral But It Isn’t “Use Effective Tactics”

The Only Reason For This Dialogue Is To Point Out That This Place Or Time Has Different Cultural Mores Than Our Own

Things The Adult Says To The Kid That Are Expected Be Taken At Face Value By A Young Audience And Applied To Real Life That Aren't "Use Effective Tactics"

What Spike Lee Called "The Magical Negro" But Really Anyone Of Any Marginalized Identity Used Like This

This Is For Kids And Has A Positive Message So This Mountain Of Cliches and Failure to Innovate Which Will Rot Their Brain Into Uncritical Plasm Is Acceptable Because The Explicit Text Is Strangely Assumed To Be More Important Than The Subrosa Message That Media Can Be Trusted To Provide Guidance

Boring Disney or Disneyesque Characters Have Guitars Now Or Are Rapping In This Fan Art As If Like Popular Music and All Of Its Most Meaningful Content Didn’t Have A History Closely Tied To Gritty Class Struggle, Performative Sexuality, Corporate Exploitation And Celebrity-Culture Decadence The Likes Of Which This Property Wouldn’t Touch In A Bajillion Years

We Have Sexy Cyborgs But Wouldn’t You Rather Discuss The Overlap Of Philosophy And Bureaucracy?

These Are Supposed To Be Real Apartments But They Don’t Look Remotely Like Nick Waplington Photos

Relatable Kid Sidekick Point Of View Character

Oh Come Here Outwardly Nihilistic And Interesting Character And Accept This Affection From Those Of Us Who Are Going To Die While Our Ninth Child Brings Us A Home-Baked Tofu Bulb While We’re Writing To Friends We Met On A Harry Potter Shipping Forum

Dancing

There Is Absolutely Nothing Visually Compelling About This Post-Bruce Timm Comic But Oh Man The Facial Expressions, The People Are So Expressing Emotions Obviously With Faces Its Therefore Somehow Good

There is Absolutely Nothing Visually Compelling About This New Yorker Three Circles And A Nose Art But Oh Man The Storytelling That Story Sure Is Getting Told Unlike Other Comics Where I Can’t Ever Tell What Happened Did Destro Fight A Boat I Don’t Know Storytelling

White Savior

The Climactic Fight Scene Is Abstract Zapping 

Brushed Steel And Clean Black

This Mediocre Artist Is Clearly A Genius Because There’s Music Under Them While They Paint

The Plot Is I’m Conflicted About Something Even Though There Are No Swords In This Movie

The Hot Girl With The Eyeliner Who’s DTF Is Somehow Less Desirable Than The Monogamous Momface Lead

Babies Ever After 

Teenager Learns Things That Everyone Interesting Actually Knows Before They’re Ten

We Are Signalling This Person Belongs To A Subculture Using The Name Of The Only Musician The Mainstream Audience And Probably Screenwriter Has Heard Of, Get Ready For A Really Sharply Observed Character Fuck They Like The Clash Is Your Mind Blown Yet

Violence Is Bad And Also The Only Fun Part Of This Movie

Sex Is Bad And Also The Only Fun Part Of This Movie

The Ultimate Weapon Is An Emotion But Strangely It Isn’t Hate Which Is The Emotion At The Core Of All Weaponization

Tim Allen

Family Comedy About How Hard It Is To Have These Kids I Chose To Have

The Stylish One Is Evil or Vapid And The Dull One Is Therefore Honest Or Smart

They’re A Mary Sue Or Marty Stu But The Supporting Cast That Foregrounds Their Omnicompetence Keeps Chucking Softballs At Them And So The Audience Thinks Of The Smart Character’s Joke First And Is Being Flattered For Being Averagely Smart

These Women Are Having A Conversation About A Guy They Like But Don’t Talk About Fucking

They’re Frumpy, I Settled For Them, I’m Noble

James Brown Is Being Used To Signify Sex Occurred Or Shall

All I Needed To Do Was Believe In Myself

: The Musical

This Speech By The Protagonist Plus The Genre You’re In Lets You Know What Lesson They’re Being Set Up To Learn

Music-Accompanied Epiphany About The Beauty Of The Artform I Heretofore Disdained

But What About The Colonists???

The Content Of This Inspiring Speech Is That We Won’t Give Up, Like That’s It, Like: Was There A Question About Whether We’d Give Up? We Can’t That’s Not The Genre We’re In Seriously Was There Not Any One More Specific Twist You Could Put On It?

White Person Referencing R&B And Becoming Therefore Sexy 

Nerds Vs Jocks

Jazz Therefore Sophisticated

Crying But It's Not Funny And/OR Not Over An Evisceration

Family Is Really Important Despite The Fact This Isn’t A Mafia Movie

The Chosen One

I Was Serious But You Have Undermined Me With Farting

The Interesting Character Secretly Likes the Boring Idiot Character That Created The Problem By Being A Boring Idiot

The House That Signifies I’m Happy Is A Ballardian Nightmare of Bed Bath Boring and The Plot Does Not Acknowledge It

I’m Hot But What If He Doesn’t Like Me Because I Ate Spaghetti Wrong Or Some Shit?

Faith Is Worthy Of Respect Without Asking What It's Faith In Exactly

Nature Is Good

Bards

Happiness Is Integrating With A Friendly Community

Schoolwork Is As Important As Checking Out About These Space Murders

Heartwarming When You Most Expect It

White and Grey Morality But Not Funny  

Comfort Satire (“…its real purpose is just to congratulate the audience for believing things that they already believe" -Paul O’Brien)

The Disdainful Technocratic Skill Of This Hero Makes The Nerds In The Audience Be Like Hey That’s Me When I Have To Reboot Windows For The Assholes In Sales, Fuck Yeah I’m That Guy

Tattoo Revealed To Have Meaning So Now It’s Ok

and, worst of all…..

We Made The Setting A Liberal Utopia So (1) You Can Get The Escapist Thrill Of Hearing Imaginary Powerful People Agree With You And (2) You Can Vicariously Indulge Your Passion For Unquestioning Submission Through Our Protagonists, The Utopia's Agents, Without Being Reminded That Those Desires Are Both Fundamentally Fascist Impulses When Applied To Public Life

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