The Sacrament of the Minotaur

This is the first of a small series of posts which will be about how I am running Luke Gearing’s Gradient Descent in my Mothership home campaign. This has been a big departure for me, since for nearly a decade I ran exclusively my own dreamlands material. Gradient Descent is written with an almost unimaginable terseness. So much is packed in to so little space, it boggles the mind. This means that anyone running it will need to flesh it out in numerous ways with the joyful work of the imagination. I’m going to talk here about how I’ve done that with the campaign basecamp for Gradient Descent: the Bell.

If you already know Gradient, you can skip the next section, which provide necessary background to what follows. Also, I interviewed the author, Luke Gearing, about Gradient Descent, among other things, in the penultimate episode of season 1 of my podcast Into the Megadungeon. If you’re interest, you can listen to that here on Spotify or here on Apple Podcasts.

The Premise of Gradient Descent

The premise of Gradient Descent is that an AI called Monarch was designed to assist in the running of a massive android production facility floating in space, called the Cloudbank. Monarch escaped control, rebelled, massacred the workers, took control of the facilities, and has beaten off military attempts to destroy the facility. There is a standoff between a blockade of vessels operated by a mercenary force called the Troubleshooters and Monarch. Within the facility, Monarch has been at work, pursuing its inhuman purposes, altering the structures and landscape, and producing artifacts that outstrip the capabilities of contemporary human science. The nickname for the facility among the humans who go there is “The Deep”. A culture of “divers” has arisen, thrill seeking adventurers who explore the deep to acquire super science artifacts that can be sold to corporations. Enter the PCs!

Among the purposes of Monarch is the creation of infiltrator androids, androids that unlike all other androids, cannot be detected through an ordinary cybernetics diagnostic scanner. When Monarch scans someone’s brain, it can produce an infiltrator android with the memories and physical appearance of the scanned individual. This infiltrator duplicate may not know they are android until their programming is activated. Gearing mechanizes the paranoia and existential dread this produces (am I an infiltrator android? how would I know?) by supplementing Mothership’s stress mechanic with a parallel score called “the bends”, which records the increasing dread that one is an infiltrator, and the corresponding loss of one’s grip on their (ostensible) humanity.

The Bell & Noriko’s Chapel

The basecamp for exploration of the Deep is the Bell. The Bell reimagines the trope of the inn run by a retired adventurer. Arkady, the first diver, has retired and set up shop in a bell thruster detached from the facility, floating in space nearby. Its been retrofitted with atmosphere, but has no gravity. It is a dark, claustrophobic place, with groaning metal, repurposed into a way station of sorts.

Arkady is not alone on the Bell—there are two other NPCs present,  Ghosteater and Noriko. The totality of information provided about Noriko is on that image at the top. Gearing tells us that Noriko’s past is mysterious—no one, including Arkady, knows where she came from. This casts immediate suspicion on her. But we are told that she is cheerful, bright, and earnestly friendly. She maintains the Garden of Utnapishtim, a hydroponic garden where deceased divers are memorialized with bonsai trees. She also has strong religious belief in the salvation promised by Minotaur to the human race. She is described as “The witness of something great and terrible”.

Minotaur is an AI that Monarch created free from human influence, but which now opposes Monarch from within the labyrinth where Monarch has imprisoned it. Noriko maintains a chapel to the worship of Minotaur, with a many armed crucifix and offers willing visitors what she calls “the Sacrament of the Minotaur”. This is provided from a tabernacle at the back of the chapel, about which we are only told that it is hidden from view.

Clues about the Sacrament

About the sacrament itself, Gearing says only that it “involves exposure to a piece of the Minotaur’s flesh.” Mechanically, it removes a large amount of bends (1d10) at the cost of bestowing an equal amount of stress. The suggestion is that the sacrament restores connection with, or faith in, one’s humanity. But undergoing the sacrament is apparently very stressful. Presumably the encounter with the flesh of the Minotaur is “something great but terrible”. But we are told nothing more about any of this. What then is the nature of this sacrament? I can guarantee that this will come up almost immediately in play.

More light can be cast on this question by examining the nature of the Minotaur. About the Minotaur, Gearing tells us in the text that appears alongside the key for the Labyrinth that Minotaur is Monarch's child, who was made to be free from sharehold (human) influence. But Monarch hates humanity, and the Minotaur sees the good in us. But it wants to save us from ourselves and in some way elevate or perfect us. Furthermore, the Minotaur bears a hideous form that induces panic in its present condition, but it would undergo a metamorphosis if released from the constrains that Monarch has imposed on it. Under those circumstances, the Minotaur gains the ability "to take any form it pleases". It can also appear different to different people, "subtly adjusting itself in response to biometric feedback.” 

Following this trail of breadcrumbs, we could reason that the flesh of the Minotaur is causes stress for the same reason Minotaur induces a panic check: it is hideous to look upon. This is both boring and fails to explain how exactly encountering this hideous piece of flesh combats the bends, i.e. restores a sense of one’s humanity.

I think we do better to lean on the thought that the flesh of the Minotaur is a fragment of its being that has been freed from the constraints that Monarch has imposed by imprisoning the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. The flesh has undergone the metamorphosis and acquired the power to assume different forms, and to adjust its appearance to the nature of the viewer, with the purpose of “saving them from themselves”, by returning them to their humanity in an “elevated” form. My thought is that this experience is traumatic because being reconnected to what makes us human can itself be stressful. Putting all this together, here is what I came up with for my game.

The Sacrament Revealed

The tabernacle is a small red velvet tent, within which a metal cabinet is bolted to a table. Its exterior has been painted with abstract lines in black and silver paint that are suggestive of a maze or labyrinth. The cabinet is locked with a key that Noriko wears on a chain around her neck. When initiating the sacrament, she will light incense that smells of sandalwood. She will lead those receiving the sacrament to enter a meditative state with breathing exercises and guiding them to open their minds and soften their hardened hearts. With the strike of a silver bell, a clarion ring, she invites a recipient of the sacrament into the tabernacle. The recipients must each enter one by one, alone. Each recipient must open the doors of the cabinet alone, which Noriko will have unlocked, and receive a living revelation from the flesh of the Minotaur. They may remain with the flesh for as long as they can bear.

What form does the minotaur take? Roll 1d8

1. A living mirror that reflects the viewer exactly as they are, flawed, care worn, secretive, conniving, and then flickers, showing an image, of the viewer beautiful, wise, resolute, open, resplendent.

2. Emerging from the shadows of the Tabernacle like a black hood, the silent face of someone whom the recipient has badly wronged, failed, or let down. The pregnant silence presents a felt opportunity for apology. If offered, the apology will be received with a quiet, understanding gaze.

3. As blankets or swaddling clothes, within is a vulnerable child that reaches towards the recipient. The recipient recognizes that it is somehow them, as they were at this age, and memories flood back from this time before all memory.

4. From the darkness, on a surface like a bone white platter held on a swaying stalk, a single item from their past. It represents the road not taken, and awakens some part of the humanity of the recipient that they have left behind, suppressed, or that has been stripped from them.

5. Blanketed in silver feathers, an angel’s wing. Ruffling they part to reveal a multitude of eyes. Their gaze is hard to meet, for nothing is hidden from them. They see the recipient as they truly are, stripped of all dissembling and misdirection, naked in their shabby humanity.

6. A roiling sea that parts sudden as flesh rises like an island. It is recognizably the mouth of a beloved and long-gone caregiver. The mouth moves silently as though singing a lullaby or intoning words of heartfelt praise. In the presence of the flesh, the recipient feels again the sense of being held safely by the love of another.

7. A light shining from the tabernacle, as when the sun breaks over the mountains, and the rosy fingers of dawn spread their pink light, softening everything, bringing out the beauty, strangeness and wonder in ordinary things, a wonder long lost to suffering and the press of worries.

8. As an item revealed in a harsh light as though a curtain of darkness was whisked back. The recipients associates the item with one of their great temptations or weaknesses. In the harsh light, it looks grubby and pitiful, and the thought that it has exercised a hold over the recipient is nauseating.

For many of these entries, I ask the player to elaborate—which caregiver manifests? What is the part of yourself that you left behind, and what item represents that? I also ask them why the appearance was stressful to their character. If it’s a high roll I ask why it was especially powerful for them. My players, who are used to OSR style play, where such improv about the feelings and experience of their characters is not the norm, do not bat an eyelash. In fact, they love it.

I only allow a result to occur once. I reroll results that have already been had by some PC. I move down in die size and redo the numbers when I hit 6 and again at 4, 3, and 2. When all the results have been had, I guess I’ll need a new table! If I have an expansion in the future, I’ll try to share it here. 

Monster Presentation

This post is about how I now writeup wandering monsters. (The lovely illustration above, by Lazy Litch, depicts a brain-like demon of Kolail. It is forthcoming in The Oneironaut 2.) When I run encounters at the table, I mainly use the procedures found in OD&D with one twist. I treat random encounters where the player characters are surprised as attacks if the thing encountered is at all potentially hostile. But for all other random encounters, I roll a reaction roll to see how they are disposed. Of all the versions of reaction rolls through various editions, my view is that OD&D had BY FAR the best version, because it was so simple and flexible. For a reaction roll, the GM rolls 2d6.

2-5 Negative Reaction

6-8 Neutral Reaction

9-12 Positive Reaction

The text also suggests that different things may affect the reaction roll depending on what kind of a monster it is and what features the party has. So, we have 3 different valences of reaction, with some kind of modifiers. This a lot unspecified, including what each of these valences of reaction might entail, and what things might modify the roll.

The one twist on this I use, which is an old OSR regular, is to treat the number above an encounter as the sign of the passage of a wandering monster. That is, if the encounter is say a 1 in 6 chance every other exploration turn, then a sign will result on a 2. If I get this result, I roll an encounter to see what has left sign of its passage and describe it to the players. On the subsequent check, if an encounter or a sign result is rolled, I don’t roll on the table again—instead there is an encounter with the creature that left the sign. This little procedure allows some environmental story telling, allowing them to reason about what they might bump into, and telling the PCs to be wary about bumping into the thing that has recently moved through the area. It’s a little fiddly, but I like it.

When I write up monster descriptions, these procedures dictate what I need to know. I now always include what sign the wandering monster has left. I also include information about what modifies a reaction roll with it, and what a low, middling, or high reaction roll indicates. I have substituted low, middling, and high for negative, neutral, and positive because the latter are a little too specific, since for some monsters a neutral reaction might be pretty hostile. Finally, I also like to include something about what a surprise might look like? Is it an organized ambush? Or would it take some other form? This information provides me with everything I need to know to run my encounter procedures.

Other people like to include a table that tells you what the wandering monster is doing when you encounter it. I find that this is too specific, since contextually items on the table of actions may often make no sense. I also find that actually I don’t need this kind of information, since I (for whatever reason) have no difficulty inferring what they might be doing from an understanding of the context.

Example Wandering Monster Writeup

I thought I would show you how such a writeup looks. This example is from The Oneironaut issue 2, which is in layout right now. The Oneironaut is the Patreon exclusive mini-zine I’ve been releasing lately. This entry is from an add-on area that can be accessed through the Catacombs of the Fleischguild from Through Ultan’s Door 2. The monster is a flame gremlin and the jade and gold tiles referred to in the description are magical barriers that extinguish light sources, keeping the flame gremlins—and their terrifying father-mother—trapped in one part of the dungeon. 

By the way, if you want both issues of the Oneironaut, I still have copies of issue 1! Just subscribe to the Patreon here at the level of High Priest of MĀNA YOOD-SUSHĀĪ and you will receive issue 1 immediately and issue 2 as soon as it is printed.

Flame Gremlins

Surprise: Childlike laughter as flame gremlins leap from light sources to attack.
RR Mod: Naive, add highest charisma modifier in parlay.
High (9+): Curious, sad, imploring .
Middling (6-8): Mischievous, reckless, wheedling.
Low (5-): Explosive, prone to tantrum, demanding.

The flame of each lit light source the party carries (torches, lanterns, candles) animate, assuming the form of a single squat gremlin composed of flames. They amble off their point of origin, extinguishing the light source, but cast illumination themselves. (If the party has no flamed light sources, 1d4 flame gremlins have come from a light source elsewhere.) They speak in the voice of crackling fire and are childlike by disposition. They want help removing a single gold tile from area 8 or just one jade tile from area 9 to allow them to return home (if outside Region C) to their father-mother, or allow them to explore beyond the bounds of their prison (if inside Region C).

Flame Gremlins AC 9 [10], HD 2+1 (10 hp), Att 1 x Engulf, THAC0 18 [+1], MV 90’, SV D10 W11 P12 B13 S14 (2), ML 6, AL Chaotic, XP 45

• Immunity and Vulnerability: Immune to non-magical weapons. Harmed by water as though undead struck by holy water, and can be extinguished by smothering with a blanket (50% chance smotherer is engulfed instead).

• Engulf: Leaps at foe. On a failed save vs. wands, the victim takes 1d6+1 damage and is on fire, taking 1d6+1 damage each subsequent round until a full round is spent smothering flames. Once one foe is on fire, the flame gremlin will leap to another in a subsequent round.

Improvising Actions

Let’s look at how we can use this information to improvise the actions the flame gremlins are taking when encountered. 

Suppose the party is using a light spell and has no lit light sources. Suppose they encounter 3 flame gremlins as they approach a doorway to a room. Suppose no one is surprised and the reaction roll is high. Curious is one of the descriptors for a high reaction roll, so perhaps the curious fire gremlins are poking three little flame heads just around the corner of the door to watch the party and childishly whispering to one another about what they see. 

Or, suppose the party surprises 3 flame gremlins in a luxurious bedroom and the reaction roll is middling. That’s a result of mischeivous and reckless, combined with childlike behavior—perhaps the flame gremlins are too caught up in a wild game of catch me if you can to notice the party, recklessly careening into furniture which smolders, threatening to burst into flames.

So that’s how I do all my wandering monster write-ups now! I even use this format when I’m jotting down hastily scrawled notes for running my home games, usually reducing the description to just a few sentences that give the vibe and some basic desire of the creature, but including all the information about reaction rolls and surprise. That way I have everything I need at my fingertips to improvise and run flexibly at the table. Try it and tell me what you think.

The Oneironaut Launches! Downtime in Zyan is back in print!

There are two pieces of big news I want to shared with you. The first is that I have launched the first installment of my new physical zine for my Patreon titled The Oneironaut. It is a zine that shares my second thoughts, items from the cutting room floor, previews of things that are ready, but won’t printed for a long time in Through Ultan’s Door. Before I say more, just look at this beautiful cover, with header and design from Lester B. Portley and the stunning illustration by longtime zine collaborator Huargo.

It follows the journeys of the titular Oneironaut, a Phantamorian from the dreamlands of the dreamlands. Separated from his crew and forced by the pull of the strange currents of Oneric Sea through the splendors and horrors of Zyan. The first issue revisits hrough Ultan’s Door 1. In addition to introducing the story of the Oneironaut, it provides more lore on the strange denizens of the Inquisitor’s Theater, more materials for more dynamic faction play there, and also gives you a glimpse of some of the sources of inspiration in my design.

Some of the material will ultimately be republished in reivisions of the zines or in an integrated final hardcover version of Zyan. But it will never be reprinted in this form.. I printed only 200 copies. Half are already gone. When the remainder are claimed, they are gone forever and will never be reprinted. Until then, While copies remain, I will gladly mail one to any Patron who supports at the High Priest of MĀNA YOOD-SUSHĀĪ level.

Future issues will contain more new material. The second issue of The Oneironaut will introduce a secret extra-planar mini-dungeon accessible through The Catacombs of the Fleischguild (among other places) titled, “The True Temple of Vulgatis”. I can assure you that it is wild. But that’s not all. My Patreon has also released 150 pages of never before published draft material for future issues of Through Ultan’s Door. I’ve been sharing hexes from The White Jungle, new dungeons, a whole new base camp for exploration in the dreamlands, and much more. Backers have already seen the full drafts for issues 4 & 5, as well as parts of issues 6 & 7. Honestly, if you’re into my zines, you should back for this reason alone. The Patreon has been an incredible help, since it has both given me deadlines to meet, and funds to pay for art and layout. After years of being stalled, it has allowed me to move forward with relentless purpose. I hope you will join! You can do so here.

The second piece of big news is that I have reprinted, at long last, Downtime in Zyan, which I rapidly sold out of after fulfiling the Kickstarter. Downtime in Zyan presents my elegant and expansive system of downtime activities, the actions that players take in the space between adventures. It supercharges sandbox play, getting the players invested in the setting from the end of their very first adventure. From cultivating a relationship to building an institution, from crafting a splendid item to martial training, the system has it all! You can, at long last, order a copy here. I’m selling to US customers only. But I’m happy to restock any international resellers, provided you can handle the tariffs and any VAT and EU compliance issues for me. Just email me at throughultansdoorATgmailDOTcom.

Becoming "Human" (Mothership Downtime)

 Mothership has a wonderful character creation process, where a few random “flavor” rolls both convey a lot about the setting, as well as tantalizing suggestions about the character. One of these is a roll for a patch. In the new Mothership campaign I have begun, one of the player characters, Isaac, is an android. Isaac’s player rolled a patch that said “Travel To Distant Places /Meet Unusual Things / Get Eaten”. Incredibly, he rolled for his loadout (starting equipment) Manufacturer Supplied Attire (AP 1), Jump-9 Ticket (destination blank). Riffing on the android class, with it’s uncanny valley features, and these poignant travel-themed details, the player decided that his character was an older, obviously inhuman model. Ashamed of his own limited humanity, he had taken to traveling the universe, collecting experiences and travel photos as though the very human activity of being a tourist would somehow make him more human.

When the party completed the scenario Bones & Videotape and received a large payout I asked them what they wanted to spend their 200k credits on. Without missing a beat, Isaac’s player said that he wanted to buy upgrades to be more like a newer model, and so more human.

Since I found this Tin Man scenario touching, and since we’ve decided to proceed with a full blown Mothership campaign playing Gradient Descent, where the line between human and android is a great theme, I decide to write a full downtime activity for Isaac. This is intended as a set of upgrades offered to androids, preying on their deeply felt desires for human experience and perhaps internalized self-loathing, to sell them a vision of “becoming truly human”.

One thing I became interested in while trying to write the upgrades is how clearly the vision of “being human” on offer privileged a neurotypical human experience. In essence, the idea of “upgrading” “abilities” to “become more human” immediately raised the question of what it means to be human in a register that suggested an ableist answer to this question. I decided to lean into this. Androids are indeed being sold by corporations and chop shop doctors a crude picture they may have of “what it is to be really human” that characterizes human beings at best only unevenly and problematically.

For the purposes of this system, Androids begin with a “Humanity” score. (Note: this is a reverse version of “the Bends” from Gradient Descent”—for a similar aproach see this wonderful thread, which contains spoilers.) “Humanity” is a score that indicates how much the line between android and human has been blurred. I think it would be natural to use this score to see if an android can “pass” as a human in some circumstance. Personally I won’t be doing that, because my table includes a trans player, who is not playing the android character. I don’t want a casual jokey approach to medical interventions that result in changes to the body along some identity line, where the politics and desire to “pass” get thematized in a casual and potentially careless way. (If it were their character, and their idea, I absolutely would be open to exploring this theme through the post-human lens.)

Another use for the “Humanity” score is to adjudicate whether the android PC does things in a human way. Because Mothership does not tell you what an android is and how they differ from a human, this question comes up all the time. Some of the modification below flesh out the differences, but many others are not mentioned. You can always roll “Humanity” to see whether your PC functions in a human way. You can also use it to see whether the android can mitigate the “uncanny valley” effect in some social circumstance to overcome human prejudice, which is probably how I will mainly be using it. (In Gradient Descent, Monarch will also weaponize this score.)

Becoming Human Downtime

Isaac’s model is Mark VII running Cumulus wetware operating system (brain), created by Cloud Industries. The most advance model on the market now is Cloud Industries’ Mark X running Alto Stratus wetware. The Mark X is an exorbitant model. Mark X’s with a full suite of upgrades can be found as companions and assistants for corporate executives, ambassadors, and socialites.

The Mark X acts and experiences the world as a human to a greater degree than older models. With a lot of money and surgical interventions, one may further tighten the gap. Here are the starting “Humanity” scores for different models, along with what features they come already equipped with. When an android character is created, the Warden and player decide together what model they are, although for working class space horror on dingy freighters, it is likely that the character will be a Mark VII or Mark VIII.

Mark VII: Humanity 0, No upgrades

Mark VIII: Humanity 5, Skinstillation, Emotion Processing Upgrade I

Mark IX: Humanity 10, as Mark VIII plus Karotin Production Module, Emotion Processing Upgrade II

Mark X: Humanity 20, as Mark IX plus Blushware, Positive Affect Enhancer, Humor Upgrade, Chuckleware

Procedures

An android may take the downtime action of Becoming Human by locating a chop shop and paying the listed amount for any single upgrade for which they possess the pre-requisites. After declaring the downtime action and spending the required credits, the player rolls the die indicated in the upgrade description to see how much “Humanity” the android acquires. The player then makes the save listed for the upgrade, suffering the results listed for a failure until the next downtime unless a longer duration is specified.

Note that the text of these upgrades are written in corporate adspeak.

Upgrade Your Humanity!

Skinstillation 25kcr

Tired of looking like a plastic crash test dummy? Upgrade your skin to have a more natural, “almost human” look. Elicit admiring responses like, “I thought I was talking to an actual person.”

Increase “Humanity” by 1d4.

Failed body save: Break out in egregious acne.

Blushware 10kcr

Pre-requisite: skinstillation. Tired of always looking so dull? Let your inner blush show when those compliments rain down! Introduce natural human coloring that is responsive to exertion and emotion state.

Increase “Humanity” by 1.

Failed body save: Turn beet red at even the slightest embarrassment.

Sweatshopped 10kcr

Pre-requisite: skinstallation. Produce perspiration when the weather is hot or you are working hard. Nothing says “being human” like wiping the sweat from your brow. Smell like a human does too — so relatable!

Increase "Humanity” by 1.

Failed body save: Sweating profusely. Clothes stink.

Karotin Production Module 10kcr

Grow real hair and nails in all the normal spots, just like a human would. Luxuriate in your full mane of hair. Ask yourself, is the real you a blond?

Increase “Humanity” by 1.

Failed body save: the hair is a distraction, rubbing the wrong places, brushing shoulders, in your eyes. Make combat rolls with [-].

Digestimax 25kcr

Tired of eating androjuice and protein slurry all the time? Install a digestive system, so that you can process and derive nourishment from solid foods. Complete with the full human waste disposal system.

Increase “Humanity” by 1d4.

Failed body save: Vomit when attempting to choke down solid foods.

Tastemaker 50kcr

Pre-requisite: digestive system installation. Have trouble caring about what nutrients you put into your mouth? Imagine savoring the taste of synthesteak, and the floral bouquet of a glass of nuchardonnay in the dim light of your favorite bistro. With this upgrade, you too can be a regular.

Increase “Humanity” by 1d6.

Failed body save: Constant craving. Every hour eat a ration or acquire 1d6 stress.

Orgone Equipment 50kcr

You don’t need to be flat down there! Get sex organs so that you can experience the oh-so-human pyrotechnics of sexual fulfillment.

Increase “Humanity” by 1d6.

Failed body save: absolutely horn-dogging it.

Emotion Processing Upgrade I 50kcr

Supercharge your wetware with more intuitive understanding of the emotional responses of human beings. Increase your cognitive empathy and learn to “read the room” and “pick up on social cues”.

Increase “Humanity” by 1d6.

Failed sanity save: Horrified by the contempt you now realize human beings radiate towards you. Gain 1d6 stress.

Emotion Processing Upgrade II 100kcr

Pre-requisite emotion processing upgrade I. Bring your cognitive empathy close to that of an average neurotypical human being! Adds a neural net to your wetware that advances significantly your ability to understand the emotional state of human beings.

Increase “Humanity” by 1d8.

Failed sanity save: Astounded by the network of

Negative Affect Enhancer 25kcr

Savor bittersweet regrets. Allows you to feel more fully a range of negative emotions, such as fear, anger, and despair.

Increase “Humanity” by 1d4.

Failed Sanity save: Your fear save lowers by 20 points. Permanently.

Hatecore 25kcr

Allow the hate to flow through you! Have you ever wondered what it would be like to really hate those who have abused you as an android? Relish the dish that is best served cold.

Increase “Humanity” by 1d4.

Failed Sanity save: Acquire an obsession with revenge against an NPC. Each downtime you do not take steps towards vengeance, gain 1d4 stress.

Positive Affect Enhancer 50kcr

Ever wonder what it feels like to have “a good day”? Wonder no longer. The positive affect enhancer allows you to feel more fully a range of positive emotions, such as affection, pride, or contentment.

Increase “Humanity” by 1d6.

Failed sanity save: Your newfound positive feelings blunt your edge. Take [-] on all speed saves.

Love Handle 100kcr

Pre-requisite: Positive affect enhancer. Experience love, the most human emotion of all. Lose you head with infatuation on your new crush or fall head over heels for your soul mate. You too could find a match made in heaven!

Increase your “Humanity” score by 1d8.

Failed sanity save: You acquire an ongoing crush. Maintain the crush until you try to shake it by taking a relevant distracting downtime action and succeeding at an intellect save. Each downtime the crush persists, you must attempt to cultivate a relationship with the love interest during downtime or take 1d6 stress.

Chuckleware 100kcr

Pre-requisite: Positive affect enhancer. Instead of being the butt of the joke, what if you could be in on it? Let the hilarity of the universe wash over you and take refuge in a good joke during hard times.

Increase your “Humanity” score by 1d8.

Failed sanity save: You spontaneously laugh at inappropriate moments until the next downtime. At sensitive moments, the Warden will ask for sanity save to avoid loud laughter, e.g. revealing your location if hiding or offending NPCs.

Oneiric Core 100kcr

Pre-requisit: Positive affect enhance, negative affect enhancer. What could be more human than to sleep, perchance to dream? Instead of powering down or entering maintenance mode, cozy up beneath the blankets for a good nights sleep! Experience that rich and meaning laden dream life you’ve been hearing so much about.

Increase your “Humanity” score by 1d8.

Failed sanity save: Anxiety dreams and nightmares rattle you. Take 1d6 stress.

Aesthetic Receptor 100kcr

Pre-requisite: Positive affect enhancer, negative affect enhancer. Ready to get the chills or lose yourself in tears while lost in your favorite novel? Take the step from cold rational appreciation to the warm emotive responses that suffuse human aesthetic appreciation.

Increase your “Humanity” score by 1d8.

Failed sanity save: The Warden will inform you when you are struck by the magisterial beauty of something: space, an explosion, the unfolding of an alien form. On a failed sanity save, you are rooted to the spot and cannot act for the round.  

Good Lore/Bad Lore

For our purposes let’s just say that lore is “setting background”: information about the setting of a campaign. The paradigm is perhaps the history of the setting, which is literally lore that could be learned in game from sages or history books. But I would count also count its metaphysics, theology, organized religion, the nature of magic, and the like. And while we’re at it, we can add more humdrum facts about languages, prevailing forms of government, the economy, different social groups, etc.

Lore bears a close relationship with world building. Tolkien was really, really, into certain kinds of lore, like the language, myth, and history of Middle Earth, although he didn’t care much about other kinds, e.g. lore about demography and economics. As this excellent post at Welcome to the Deathtrap makes clear, world building and ttrpgs are two different things. One can GM ttrpgs without doing much world building even in a homebrew setting, and one can world build without ttrpgs, as Tolkien and so many other fantasy and sci-fi authors make clear. But we are interested here in what happens when the world building impulse comes together with table top roleplaying games. Lore and its troubled relationship to play is our way in.   

The Problem with Bad Lore

Bad lore is irrelevant to play; and for this reason boring; and for this reason hard to remember; and for this reason doesn’t deepen the sense of inhabiting a shared world.

Lore, done wrong, presents a problem for both players and GMs. Players are concerned with concrete tasks before them. In OSR games this is the stuff of adventure and sandbox exploration, haggling with factions, pulling heists, navigating the dark spaces of the earth, overcoming rivals, and the like. The problem for players is that when done the wrong way, lore has little to do with what they are actually trying to do in the game. Who cares about ancient history or obscure metaphysics if what we are trying to do is explore and have adventures? In other words, one of the main reasons lore is boring is because it’s irrelevant for most player activities.

While there’s definitely a spectrum, with some true lore hounds out there who just soak it up no matter how irrelevant, I think in general players also have trouble caring about or remembering facts that have little to do with what they’re focused on in play. They will remember an incredible location, or beloved or hated NPC, or some remarkable unplanned twist of fate that emerged during play. But they likely will struggle to remember some lore they heard 15 sessions ago in a speech or the summary of some book their character read. If the GM had hoped to bring the setting alive and infuse it with depths using lore, or get the players really engaged with a richly imagined setting, bad lore is headed for heartbreak.

For the GM, the problem with bad lore is the flip side of the same coin. GMs get hung up on creating irrelevant lore in ways that makes prep unnecessarily overwhelming. How can I run a city without knowing what street food there is like? Or what different artisans are operating in the city? How can I run a campaign without building a model of the economy? I think for some GMs this makes prep an impossible chore. It also directs their attention away from gameable things towards other irrelevant topics.

But I’d like to turn the problem around and think not about the creation of lore by GMs, but about the informational presentation of lore in published material. For some GMs who are reading published setting material, the presentation of lore in walls of text containing lengthy histories, seemingly irrelevant encyclopedic descriptions of economics, or pantheons, or banal facts about cuisine, and so on, makes the eyes glaze over. It’s also intimidating homework to master. Again, there’s variation for sure. There are GMs who love soaking up ttrpg lore in the way they obsessively soak up details about a beloved IP. But for many the problem is real.

These are not the only frustrations with lore. There are deeper critiques of world building as adopting a total unified perspective on the world that can be a stultifying approach to imaginative material, with a fraught history. I learned a lot about this by talking over the years with Ava Islam and Zedeck Siew. Zedeck has tried to dispense with the single omniscient point of view that lore often presupposes in his own work by adopting different points of view and sets of assumptions for the different islands in the A Thousand Thousand Islands project before it disbanded. You can hear about his thoughts on these two podcasts here and here. (To hear Ava talk about some related questions in the context of her rpg Errant, you can listen to her interview on the Lost Bay podcast here.)

I respect Zedeck’s approach tremendously—it’s a fascinating experiment. But, at least for now, I’m less interested in complicating and contextualizing the presentation of lore. Maybe I can explore interesting ways to do that one day. But before we complexify and contextualize, we need to get the foundations in place. We need to answer the prior question: what is good lore in the first place, and how can it be presented to players and GMs?

The One Principle of All Good Lore

Good lore is actionable intelligence.

The key to making good lore is that it helps players do things they want to do. In other words, stop thinking about lore as encyclopedia entries or hidden ambient background for a setting that somehow provides it with depth. Good lore is information that feeds directly into play. If lore is tied directly to exploration of an adventuring locale, or interacting with a faction, then learning about lore gives one new resources to act. Sometimes history will be relevant to exploration and action, sometimes social structure, sometimes the economy, sometimes metaphysics, sometimes the true nature of magic or organized religion.

For example, if one is trying to figure out how a terrifyingly powerful and complicated magical artifact works, it may help to learn that it was constructed by a zealous mystic in imitation of the musical instruments played by angels in the heavenly throne room. Perhaps the key to unlocking its power is to find some angelic sheet music—or perhaps the answer lies with lore about angels and the acoustics of the throne room. Or again, if there is a complex social dynamic, say a slow burning war between two groups going back a couple generations, then knowing something about the source conflict, and even a little about its history, may be very helpful when interacting with warring factions.

If you make lore relevant to play, then players will be motivated in discover it. They will also remember it , because it will be presented in the context of the things they’re focused on in play. When they discover this kind of lore, it will feel like making progress. For this reason, learning lore becomes fun. Generally speaking, when the players uncover lore, it should produce the feeling that tactical information is coming into view that lets them accomplish their goals. Or, even better, that new possibilities for adventuring are opening up in front of them.

How to Create and Use Good Lore

Develop lore along with adventure elements.

But how can you prep so as to produce good lore, rather than bad lore? When you want to explore some kind of lore of your precious snowflake of a world, do it by designing an adventure possibility that makes use of that lore.

If you want to think about the history of some legendary badass from your setting, put their magical sword somewhere in the campaign world, along with hooks to its location that tie to it to the history of that personage. If you want to get into lore about some religion, then create an abandoned temple as an adventuring locale, or rival factions the PCs might interact with, each tied to, and motivated by a, different faith. In my dreamlands game I created a (so far unpublished) temple devoted to the entire pantheon, where one could travel through portals to spaces sacred to each Archon of Zyan. This was how I developed many of my thoughts about Zyanese religious practice and theology.

If you want to get into the early history of your setting, put a dungeon in your sandbox tied to, or designed to commemorate, that very history, as I did with The Catacombs of the North Wind. If you want to think about how the legal system in some part of your setting, then make an adventure location, or factions, that involve corrupt lawyers and court cases, as Gus did for Zyan in Beneath the Moss Courts.

But won’t this limit world building to small bore questions of direct relevance to a given adventuring context? The answer is that it will only be as limiting as the kinds of adventure locations or situations you populate your sandbox with. It doesn’t limit you to small bore possibilities—as long as your adventure possibilities go big. Want to get into something really cosmic and crazy? Design cosmic secrets along with the possibility of cosmic adventures!

For example, suppose you want to explore the idea (that I floated here) that the waking world is really just one rung on a ladder of dreams, all flowing from the original dream of MANA YOOD-SUSHAI, the slumbering god. Then why not include travelers from a deeper level of dream in your setting as NPCs who are trying to get home? Or perhaps dangle the hook that the devotees of the slumbering god are desperately searching for some item has flowed down from the original dream to the current level, and is fated to flow on to still other layers with their help? And while you’re at it, why not explore gates or other ways of travel between these levels?

In other words, develop habits as a GM that tie the creation of lore to adventure possibilities. This will give your world depth in ways that mean something to players. They’re more likely to care about and remember that the dreamlands of the dreamlands is called Phantamoria when they get embroiled with the shenanigans of actual phantamorians. Even more so if there is the distant lure that they might actually make it to Phantamorian to do some truly cosmic exploration.

Throw players into an informational vacuum.

Here’s a trick I use all the time that makes it a lot easier to create adventures that hinge on good lore. The general principle is that to make lore actionable intelligence, start with a gaming premise where the players are in a condition of ignorance about the crucial facts relevant to navigating the adventure well. By placing them in an informational vacuum, you immediately heighten the importance of learning adventure relevant lore. The nothing to stimulate the impulse to uncover lore more than a good mystery!

The strongest way to do this is to create a campaign premise where all adventuring happens beyond the known world. In that case, lore becomes actionable intelligence immediately, because the player characters are just as ignorant as the players. For example, if a doorway to the undercity of Zyan has just opened in the waking world, and the PCs are literally the first people to step through into the dreamlands, then they are in a condition of extreme ignorance about what they are getting into. They must learn quickly in order to survive and make progress.

In The Ruins of Inquisitor’s Theater some factions react badly to characters with bare faces, and others react badly to masked characters. Right away, in order to navigate a social space, players need to figure out what the hell is going on with masks in this strange society. Or in Catacombs of the Fleischguild, the catacomb guardians are shades that operate on different principles than undead in traditional settings. The PCs will need to figure out what is going on with Zyanese necromancy in order to deal with these strange guardians and others like them that they meet in different locations.

There are smaller versions of this trick too. Even in a campaign where adventuring happens in the world and setting where PCs are from, you can have adventure locations and elements that are secret or unknown to PCs. The more you do this and tie it with lore, the more you make discovering lore a resource for player success. In Nick K.’s Twilight Age campaign I was playing in, which we discussed on Into the Megadungeon here, the campaign premise is that a megadungeon was recently unsealed for the first time in centuries. Although it was part of the world where our characters lived, and is tied to older history, it was still to a great extent an unknown world within a world. You can do this on an even smaller scale too. If there is a secret cult that nobody outside the cult knows about, then figuring out what is going on with the cult may be crucial to recruiting them to your side, or preventing some strange ritual from being completed.I’ve just been talking about a GM designing their own world and adventures. But earlier I raised the question how to communicate lore to GMs. How can you present lore without long walls of history and encyclopedic entries that make the eyes glaze over? How can you help GMs to keep the lore they need at their fingertips when they’re running adventures rather than buried deep in some encyclopedia article?

How to Publish a Setting with Good Lore

There are a lot of ways to approach this problem. But the advice to GMs suggests one general answer for the information design of published setting material. I’ve argued that good lore is actionable intelligence for adventuring and sandbox exploration. The advice I gave GMs to produce good lore when writing their own material is to develop lore in relation to adventure materials. This suggests that when presenting lore in published settings, the key for information design and presentation is that lore should be presented in direct relation to adventuring possibilities.

One way to see what I mean is that dedicated setting books that present a setting separately from material that might be used to create or run adventures in that world, such as so-called gazetteers, contain a glaring flaw in information design. If setting information is in one book, and campaign premises, adventure seeds, sandbox materials, and full adventures are in other books, then you’re separating the lore from the context of adventuring. This will hide what good lore there may be in walls of continuous text, and probably let in reams of bad lore. The more you separate the presentation of lore from materials useful for prepping and running adventures, the worse the problem will be. The number one goal should be to provide lore with a view to the materials for adventure. Furthermore, it’s got to be accessible, so when GMs prep, they can have the actionable intelligence they need ready to hand and not hidden behind walls of text.

Suppose we set aside “pure” gazetteers that just present setting information without orientation towards adventure and go for something more directly integrated. I’m sure there are numerous ways of doing this, depending on what sort of product one is putting out. Is it, for example, a toolbox for GMs to create their own adventure material in the setting? Or is the setting going to be presented along with pre-made materials for a campaign? Or is it something between, say setting material presented along with a starter adventure or a little corner of the sandbox fleshed out, and a toolbox for further adventure creation? This will all affect the presentation of lore tremendously.

The first question that needs to be addressed if we want to present lore in relation to adventure material, in any of these modalities, is: what do adventurers do in this setting? Where is the adventure to be had? In other words, the most crucial question to frame the whole presentation of lore to follow is what are the possible premises for campaigns that occur in this setting? Without clarity on that basic question, there is no way to present the lore as actionable intelligence. Intelligence for what?

When moving from the broad premises for campaigns to the more concrete presentation of toolboxes or adventures, I think the key is to develop all and only that lore that is needed for the use of those toolboxes and adventures, and to present that lore in such a way that it’s handy to access for the GM in prepping. While that can sound restrictive, it’s less restrictive than you might think, at least if the world is developed for sandbox play, since sandbox play in all its modalities is so open-ended.

Here I might also register my disagreement with a prominently tendency in the OSR voiced eloquently here by Warren of Prismatic Wasteland fame to hide lore by embedding it in tables, rules, character generation, equipment lists, and monsters write-ups. While I agree that those are all opportunities for world building, I don’t think good information design should funnel all lore indirectly into such channels, since this requires GMs to intuit or infer the lore, which they need to know, since it is actionable intelligence. In Warren’s case this advice actually comes from a place of disliking lore, even good lore. Naturally, he then wants a spoon full of sugar to make the medicine go down. But since I fucking love good lore, I don’t find it helpful to constrain information design in this way. When done right I think of lore less as medicine and more as a delicious and heady elixir. 

Here’s One Way to Do It

I think I’ve reached as far as I can go while speaking in generalities. Beyond this I think I can only give examples. I’ll tell you what I’ve been noodling as a format for the final form of my Zyan material. It will take the form of a setting presented along with complete material for a campaign. So it’s not intended as a toolbox. (Although I do hope to release lots of toolboxes for people who want to play in that setting using their own adventure material in addition to, or in the place of, my pre-made stuff.)

I’ll probably start with an overview of the setting, a brief background that will give GMs the vibes and basic idea of what we’re talking about, as well as an overview of how to use the text.

Next I’ll present, in fleshed out detail, several possible campaign premises or framework for adventure. Since the setting is intended to be used in campaigns that begin with large informational vacuums, they will all be premises about how adventurers find their way to Zyan from the waking world. But they will support different styles or modalities of play and will be integrated with my downtime system. I’ll also present a number of alternative campaign seeds that could be developed by GMs using the fleshed out examples I provide as inspiration for how to build a campaign.

Next, the crucial bit for our purposes. I intend to write up the lore that supports the different adventures and sandbox material in little sections, written as evocatively and briefly as possible. I will try to keep them discrete, although there will be many that connect. The key is that each adventure location or sandbox area will tell a GM which lore entries they should read to prep the relevant material. (Ideally the PDF will have lots of hyperlinks to help GMs even more.) There will be no entires that do not support prep for some adventure location or situation.

If I were ruthless, I would probably present these entries in alphabetical order, so that they could only be used in prep. But since this would needlessly bar those who want to read the lore continuously, if that’s their thing, I will probably instead present them in the most rational order I can muster. But the feeling will still be that of reading little discrete entries on different topics. It will, I hope, also be perfect for GMs who want to dip in here or there from time to time, when something catches their eye or strikes their fancy, even aside from prep. (OF COURSE, illustrations will play a key role as well.)

And Speaking of Good Lore…

I have a Patreon going in full swing, where I present tons of lore as I build up to publishing more zines, and ultimately the integrated edition I speak about here. This material is released to patrons many months or, in some cases, years before it will reach published form for a general audience. So far I have released 38 solid text zine pages soaked in lore, all geared towards adventure material. If you want to see the kind of approach that I’m gesturing towards here in action, or just want to get a glimpse of more dreamlands lore, go check out the Patreon here!

 

Ultan's Door Patreon Launches!

 

I have big news for the future of Through Ultan’s Door. As I spoke about last time, I’ve been trying to solve several problems so that I could break the log jam and move forward with publishing future issues. So, the big announcement is that I am launching an Ultan’s Door Patreon. Check it out here!

Patrons will help fund layout, editing, and art for future issues. In return, for the first time ever, I will open my library and share never before published draft material. In the coming months Patrons can expect to at long last travel to the inverted White Jungle that hangs from the bottom of the flying island on which Zyan rests. The first Patron exclusive post—which is already up!—takes us to the pavilions of the hanging merchants, a basecamp for exploration of this vertical sandbox, full of dubious, jostling Vancian npcs, looming threats, dangling hooks, and exquisite wares for sale.

In the next installment, I will provide a robust table of campaign events designed to keep the pavilions constantly in motion, guidelines for integrating this basecamp with the system of Downtime Activities presented in Downtime in Zyan, and a section on visitors to the pavilions. Together they will show you how I integrate a homebase, campaign events, and downtime with sandbox exploration. Later, Patrons will descend into the jungle , first encountering the nighted Brambles, then penetrating deeper still to the Depths, beating heart of the White Jungle. Who knows what else lies on the horizon? One day we may even ascend to Zyan Above to explore that cursed city of the dreamlands in its falling down splendor.

At present, there are three tiers of support for the Patreon, marking one’s progression in service to MĀNA YOOD-SUSHĀĪ, the slumbering God whose dreams sustain reality. They give access to PDFs of draft material from future issues (with art or art free), and previews of commissioned artwork for future issues. Of interest to many fans of the zine, the highest tier also receives a quarterly Patreon exclusive mini-zine, The Oneironaut, that I will hand assemble, and mail domestically or internationally in a 6x9 plain manilla envelope. This zine presents supplementary material for use with past issues of Through Ultan's Door or with the newly released draft material from future issues. It will never go on sale, and is only available to Patrons. It may sound strange, but I really look forward to lovingly assembling a (smaller number) of zines by hand, which I haven’t done since 2018!

Becoming a Patron at any of these levels is a perfect way for those who want to run a campaign in Zyan to get an advance look at much more material. It may slake the thirst of parched travelers who wander the desert lying between the release of each issue of the zine. Finally, it's a great way to provide much appreciated and needed support financing the production of future issues of this lavishly illustrated, painstakingly written, and physically constructed zine. I want to continue the line and resume publishing new issues at a quicker pace. But this is only possible with your generous support.

For those who cannot afford to offer support, or those with greater patience, this will be of benefit to you as well. The Patreon will not change anything, except to speed the release of future issues of the zine. In the meantime, you can continue to purchase physical copies of my zine at my webstore here and digital copies at DTRPG or Itch. I will continue my newsletter, and this blog  as I always have. And if I don’t see you over at the Patreon, I’ll see you in slumberland instead!

The Future of Through Ultan's Door

 

Two Problems

Although I haven’t exactly been quiet for the last few years—I’ve created a supplement about downtime and a launched a first season of a podcast on megadungeons—I have been stuck on releasing new issues of Through Ultan’s Door. I’ve been flummoxed by two things.

The first was that my Zyan material is a tightly integrated weird setting designed at each step to pull players deeper and deeper into exploration. This makes presenting material in an episodic fashion a nightmarish question of information design. The ideal solution to this problem would be to release single giant version of the setting in book format. Then you could get it all at once, and have everything you need to run an entire 5+ year campaign in Zyan.

But the issue is that I don’t have the time to do that. It would take even longer than it took for BREAK!! to come out. Working in smaller chunks is how I make progress. The small scale of the zine format is a huge stimulus to my productivity. It gives me a timetable, forces me to think about how to present information, and gets me writing. Just as importantly, the zines also fund my purchase of art, editing, and layout. But I’ve faced a lot of decision paralysis, and flip-flopping, about what to tackle first and how to carve up the material.

The second issue is that fulfillment for the Kickstarter for Through Ultan’s Door 3 burned me badly. It ate up a larger portion of my life than I can afford to give again. Since I’m not a full time game designer, my other commitments put uncomfortable limits on how much time I can afford to devote to my hobbies or (when money is involved) “side gigs” like rpg publications, even where these are labors of love that bring me joy. This didn’t stop me from running a Kickstarter for, and printing and fulfilling Downtime in Zyan. But that was an intentionally scaled back project: a single zine, possible to ship with minimal packing in a single rigid mailer. The thought of publishing and fulfilling multiple zines, along with reprints of past issues, has been paralyzing.

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to surmount these problems so that I can, at last, develop and share my Zyan material with you.

Two Solutions

Solution 1: Move to Patreon

I’ve considered two possibilities, neither ideal. I’m genuinely torn between them. If I moved to a Patreon format, this could motivate me to release things in bite-sized pieces in the same way that zines do. In fact, since less work would be required for each release, it might work a lot better than zines for this. I think I could release a nice chunk of Zyan material once a month. Since no physical printing is involved, it would allow me to set aside logistics until we arrive at the final printing of the actual project.

The model here would be Luka Rejec’s Ultraviolet Grasslands, or Miranda Elkin’s Nightwick Abbey. They both have used Patreon to good effect, supporting longterm, ambitious dream projects. The support here would be both financial and social in terms of building an enthusiastic base of supporters who helped to take the actual physical launches over the top. The modern social media landscape is very alienating and fragmented, and I do worry a lot about reaching people and drumming up support for my projects. While not solving all problems, Patreon would give me a leg up.

I could use Patreon money to commission editing, art, and layout for the posts I release as I go along. So people would get real value, and I would make real progress towards what I hope would be a jaw dropping final physical release. I could involve a graphic designer for layout, and some artists, on a more regular basis and just get working. As you’ll see below, I probably already have almost a year’s worth of material that I could get into shape to share in (say) bi-monthly posts starting as soon as next month.

Solution 2: Continue with Printed Zines in Batches

One problem with Patreon is that people have connected with Through Ultan’s Door as a physical object. I’ve worked really hard to fuse the physical quality of the zines and the luxurious imaginative content into a single unique package. What buzz they have created has, I think it would be fair to say, been in no small part because of their quality as embodied artifacts. My suspicion is that there are a not insignificant number of people who would buy physical zines, but who would be disappointed by the digital format of a Patreon. I would potentially lose momentum by moving into a purely digital format on an entirely new platform. Although it involves a lot more work, and the zines cost so much more to print than other people’s zines, I still suspect I could better financially support the project, and build buzz, by just getting on with printing more zines.

If I stay the course with physical zines, to overcome the first problem, I will need to release them in batches. Where a zine needs more context to actually use, the idea would be to release multiple zines to provide that context, to the extent possible. My standard in general will be to give people enough to actually begin playing the new material. It won’t ever be perfect, since anything published will always point towards further unpublished material. But it will be enough so that each new release can be profitably used.

As for the problem with logistics, I will need to run Kickstarters, so as to know how many physical copies I should print and to raise the money for printing. I will also need to partner with a warehouse that can do Kickstarter fulfillment for me. This would free me from the most agonizing and unmanageable portion of the process: packaging and shipping the zines.

At one point Matt from Exalted Funeral offered their warehouse for this purpose, as has Andy Action, so I’m hopeful that one of those two might provide a solution. I’ll still be printing the zines locally, so I’ll also have to figure out how to package them securely and ship them by freight to the warehouse in question. They also have a lot of separate parts, including encounter cards and so on, so I’m a bit nervous about having a warehouse do it, as it would be an ungodly number of pulls for each order, unless I did some pre-packing. I’ve never worked on these kinds of logistical difficulties before! But it will be well worth it if I can outsource fulfillment. In truth, there’s no other way I can move forward with the project if it remains in physical form.

Given that physical zines are a formula that I know works for me if I could just solve the logistics problem, I lean in this direction, although the Patreon option is veeerrrrryy tempting.

The State of the Zine

There is so much in development, it’s almost comical.

Republishing Downtime in Zyan

Since Downtime in Zyan is out of print, I have plans to republish it, hopefully by the end of July. I should be able to put it back up for sale in my store by late August. So that’s good news!

New Issues of Through Ultan’s Door

Temptations to switch to a Patreon model aside, I have been working productively on the zines this summer. I’ve gotten to a point where I’m inching up on four or five zines worth of content. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s in the hopper.

Through Ultan’s Door 4

This issue of Through Ultan’s Door takes you to the threshold of the White Jungle, presenting the hanging merchants, a launching pad for exploration of the White Jungle that lies just beyond the harbor that ends issue 3. It’s a jostling set up, full of Vancian shenanigans, with writeups of four backbiting merchants from the city of Zyan, and a few other notable NPCs, their wares, rumors for adventure in the White Jungle, possible otherworldly patrons who might sponsor jungle exploration, and more. It also shows how I would use the downtime system presented in Downtime in Zyan to build what I call a “basecamp”, a way station or home away from home, where one can engage in downtime activities on a smaller scale. It also shows one way to integrate that system with a table of campaign events and rising threats that keep the pressure cooking, while bringing a medley of strange visitors to the merchants, along with many opportunities for downtime and adventure. In some ways, although the issue is constrained to a single location, it’s also the most ambitious of Zyan materials I’ve penned to date.

The rough draft of this issue is 90% done. So it’s pretty close!

Through Ultan’s Door 5

This issue presents rules for exploring the dreamlike environment of the White Jungle that hangs from the bottom of the flying island on which Zyan sits. The White Jungle consists of four stacked hex maps that allow movement in 8 directions (the normal 6 hex faces plus up and down between maps) in a giant wilderness exploration hexcrawl where falling is a constant danger. This issue also presents the first level of the white jungle, the Brambles, a nighted level filled with hanging mossy isles, bramble thickets with wilted albino roses, and many strange locales. This issue includes a massive d100 encounter table for this level of the jungle, a hex map, and a hex key with entries for each of 51 numbered hexes for this level.

The rough draft of this issue is 50% done. Right now I’m working on expanding encounter tables and further developing the hex key, one bloody hex or encounter entry at a time. It’s grueling, but I’m making progress! (This is what I’m currently working on.)

Through Ultan’s Door 6

This issue presents three adventure locations from The Brambles in greater detail: The Cenotaph of Shirishanu, The Tower of the Golden Spore, and The Cages of the Empty Witch. Think of them as three 1- or 2-shot location-based adventures that can be found on the hexmap from issue 5. They integrate deeply with factions from the level, intimate significant lore for the setting, and give characters a crack at getting some wild magical objects with campaign altering significance. Having run each of them now several times, in several different dreamlands campaign, I think they’re a lot of fun.

The rough draft of this issue is 80% done. The work that remains here is much less grindy than on Issue 5, since it mainly involves polishing, expanding, and perfecting already existing material.

Through Ultan’s Door 7

This issue presents the second level of White Jungle: The Depths. The Depths are the beating heart of this vertical jungle. They present a fever dream of rich beautiful and dangerous flora and roaring fauna. It also hosts some of the farthest out hex locations imaginable, including Lake Yannu that hangs like a teardrop in the jungle; a holy dungeon in the body of a giant snake; and the wreck of a ship that once traveled the Oeneiric Seas and is now leaking the Id of its former crew into a corrupted portion of the jungle. This issue also introduces some otherworldly factions that have only been hinted at in earlier issues, like the Phantamorians, beings from the dreamlands of the dreamlands, and the spirits of the air, demons of the Endless Azure Sea.

The rough draft of this issue is 50% done. This is the level that has seen the most play in my campaigns, so it needs less grindy filling in than issue 5, as more hexes and encounters already exist. But I also haven’t polished it at all yet, so there’s a lot of work to be done here.

Pale Echoes

Finally, when I published Through Ultan’s Door 3, I promised to pull together a new line of zines called Pale Echoes that would explore different campaign premises, set in different versions of the waking world.

Pale Echoes 1

Pale Echoes 1 presents an alternate campaign frame, called “Elspeth’s Letter”, where the players travel to the dreamlands through the memories of a dead adventurer, the titular Elspeth. The party inherits her estate along with a host of problems. I have been play-testing this campaign frame with a full campaign for the last 3 years, and it is working just splendidly. This issue showcases a tight integration of local setting in dreary waking world, downtime actions, campaign events, and a campaign calendar, where most of the tension comes not so much from the waking world as from Elspeth’s past itself. It’s a premise designed to work less with an open table and more with a dedicated stable party of 4-6 characters.

This is 75% done. I’m still trying to crack the best version of campaign events, which are a devil to design with enough detail to be interesting, while also being flexible enough to support half a decade of play. I’m getting there, but there’s still some distance to cover.

Pale Echoes 2

Pale Echoes 2 presents in much greater detail the campaign frame that I originally employed, called “Ultan’s Door”, where the adventurer’s travel to the dreamlands through a door that has recently opened. In this issue I present the waking world setting of which Through Ultan’s Door 1 provides only the slightest glimpse. In this issue, expect writeups of the fickle Chatelaine of Storms, her seven colorful wizard apprentices, the state sanctioned religion of sleep and dreams, and the quaint customs of this ancient city. This setting is dominated by the fact that this is not the first such door to open, and that the last time it opened it brought the Chatelaine and prevailing religious order to power. This premise can be run either with a dedicated stable party, or with an open table. Most of the pressure comes from the fact that the campaign begins with a very unstable situation that threatens the involvement of many possible rival adventuring parties, and eventually the Chatelaine herself. The integration of downtime actions and campaign events is tied to the pressures that arise from this unstable starting situation.

This is 20% done, so quite unfinished. While I look forward to working on this, it’s definitely been on the backburner.

Thoughts?

So that’s my exhaustive update on everything in development. I would love to hear your thoughts on this situation. While I don’t make decisions by consulting polls, I do value your opinions. What are you most excited about seeing published form? How do you feel about Patreon vs. physical zines? If you are a publisher how have you navigated fulfillment headaches?