OK, after some consideration I’ve released the very crude and unpolished and basically barely functional Plot Twist generator. This is in no way close to complete, but I figured it’d be good to get some feedback.
One of the challenges in doing this is that researching plot twists often leads me to the same ones. Yes I know who Luke’s father is, I know about the sled, and so on. So I’m finding little inspiration here, and figured folks might have some good feedback.
Let me know what you think – and your favorite plot twists!
– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
Hello everyone. Had a bit of a busy/crazy time here (work, family visiting, friend busted their car). So I may take a break on the Plot twist Generator.
However, Scott Delahunt, the genius of translations is now publishing here as well – his column Lost In Translation has a home here (as well as other sites), so you can get a brain full of adaption news and analysis. I STRONGLY recommend reading his work, it’s made me understand a lot more about media.
Respectfully,
– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
Hello everyone, been a bit occupied (and caught a cold, allergy season makes people so vulnerable). But here’s the latest update.
Plot Twist Generator
Is in the works! Has data in place! Has some ideas, is really boring right now!
The big issue is just stocking more data and structure, and polishing it – and like the Writing Prompt Generator, it’ll just take time. So far some are good, like . . .
“The antagonist thinks everything is happening is inside a story – and this is due to a substance abuse problem.”
Others are sort of WTF?
“The alternate antagonist turns out to be the protagonist’s father.”
Others are blunt.
“There is a sudden tornado.”
But it’s there, and as I flesh it out, we’ll have more to work with. I figure it’ll be on the level of the Writing Prompt Generator, maybe even a bit better as I have less language structure limits.
Way With Worlds
This is going OK, but . . . I gotta say some of those columns could be better. When I rewrote Way With Worlds, I eventually intended it to be a book, but as I was rewriting columns from 15 years ago I also added a lot, did different voices, small series, etc. Now I’ve got to get it back into a book, and . . . yeah. This is all over the map, and in a few cases I could have done better.
What I’m finding is that the quality was – frankly – erratic. Sometimes its precise (I’m proud of some of my columns on Magic and Technology), other times it kind of meanders, and a few times I somehow avoided the point (like my discussions on Race and culutre, more to come). I think at times it was turning a braindump of 15 years ago into another braindump – and other times it was polishing and precision.
So editing is a lot more work than I expected. Things get cut down, rearranged, rephrased, and in one case I actually am having to reverse a previous conclusion.
However the core information is good even in places that need to portray it better – if anything some of the problems are me massively dumping out ideas and doing it in my coachy/chatty/live talk style as opposed to a better written style. So I’ve got to tweak it – and make sure the book has one voice.
It’ll be worth it, but we’re definitely not seeing this sucker until 2016. I’m going to give my pre-readers two months at it.
Respectfully,
– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
Like everything, these ideas are free for the taking. Consider them to be public domain. Just… grab them, and use them, and stuff. That’s what they’re there for.
- Financial Astrology
Developed in the throes of the Great Depression, financial astrology is the art of using magic to make money, and using money to make magic. To those that have sworn the oaths, the signs of the stars unfold to their understanding. They are able to decipher the currents of the future, at least so far as it pertains to currency. The stock market becomes child’s play to them that have sold their eyes and their hearts to the great god Pluto, and the more learned among them can predict its changes to the minute.
What they do next is based upon a principle that everyone knows: Wealth shapes the world. Only the merchant-kings know how true that statement is, however. Currency has an effect on the ley lines of the world, which themselves have subtle effects on the environment when “plucked” by the presence of money. Where a ley line is plucked, and how strongly (that is, how much money is affecting it) determines what happens, so that the right amount in the right place can lead to decreased social stability in another city.
With the right plucks nearly anything can be done, with the caveat that ley lines influence only living organisms and not natural systems like the weather, and so the financial astrologers carefully manipulate the flow of money to get the changes that they want (which is not to say that others want it— they are not a unified lot). With enough money, ley lines can be plucked so severely that they actually shift in place.
The one thing about their condition that makes life difficult is that they cannot physically handle money. Credit cards and checks are okay, but actual money catches fire or melts in their hands, leaving them with dross (and burned hands).
- Orthosurgy
A system of magic based upon the principle of sympathy, using teeth and nails as foci. While teeth are reasonably potent and retain their power until destroyed, a single full nail is useful for no more than a couple of weak spells, to say nothing of a mere clipping. They may, however, be used for reanimation, whereas teeth can do nothing to one that has died (including those that have suffered death temporarily), and reanimation is not a terribly powerful spell. Full resurrection may require years of clippings, but to turn a corpse into a shambling walker bound to one’s will for a few weeks requires only a few nails.
However, whether they be teeth or nails foci must be taken, not given. This is why children leave offerings for the tooth fairy. It robs the leavings of their power by explicitly giving them out to anyone who would be interested in taking them.
The power of orthosurgy is a gift, however, twisted, and it must be passed on to another in order to persist. Without a declared heir, the death of an orthosurgeost permanently reduces their number by one. Heirs may not be replaced except in the case of premature death, so orthosurgeosts are careful about speaking the “naming words.” Orthosurgeosts become more inhuman as time goes on, first in mind and eventually in body. Among other things they are prone to developing slight kleptomaniacal tendencies, long fingers, and in some cases fingers without nails. Their teeth may change shape and their stomachs change, both in response to whichever diet the orthosurgeost prefers.
- Lychery
A kind of ritual magic that makes you the temporary channel for a Power, timeless things from outside existence. The exact ritual sets bounds on the Power and guides its actions toward the desired result: healing, transformation of the body, the unleashing of fire, or whatever other effect is desired.
Lyches know how to use preexisting magical patterns easily enough but experimentation is dangerous. The slightest error can give the Power summoned too much free reign or, if the binding is successful, force it to take an undesired action. Accordingly, innovation is very slow.
Another limitation is tied to candles, which are necessary to strengthen the invoked Power— it might be said that a Power is like a hole of a certain shape which supplies nothing of itself but determines the shape of whatever is put through it. Each candle adds to the potency at hand to make the spell 1.05 times greater than before.
Repeated channeling of Powers affects the body, most principally granting longevity. A lych’s mind is not equipped for this, however, and the weight of memory proves an eventual but inevitable strain. Suicide among very old lyches is common, as senility begins to settle in over the course of centuries. On the bright side, however, senility within the context of a conventional lifespan is far rarer, due to the efforts of lyches to ward off the effects of aging wherever they can, for as long as they can.
If you want some quick figures: 15 candles are necessary to make a spell 2.078 times as powerful as with one candle. 33 to reach 5.003x potency, 50 candles gives it a potency of 11.467x, and 93 candles before the potency overtakes the number of candles at a potency of 93.455x. 100 candles gives a potency of 131.501x and 200 gives a potency of 17,292.58x.
- Greensinging
In the earliest days of Man, he was taught language. The language that was taught him was the language of the world— of life and death, or connection and destruction, of bonds and the severing thereof— and Man’s teachers were the birds. But Man’s first act was to sever the bonds that were between him and the birds, so that they would hold no power over him, and ever since that time the birds have spoken no word that can be understood.
Or so goes the story of the langua verde, a peculiar tongue consisting of whistles and other sounds in marked similarity to bird song. Greensingers, or Green Men, sing songs of empathy and decay. The songs allow them to feel what others are feeling and transmit the same. Skilled Greensingers can learn how to feel falsely, to give fear when they are calm, or to calm the crowd though they have also been roused to anger. The songs also allow them to accelerate the natural processes of destruction by spying weaknesses, magnifying flaws, weakening strengths, and instilling, nurturing, and hastening all rot.
Your turn: What’s your favorite system of magic, and what do you like so much about it?
R. Donald James Gauvreau works an assortment of odd jobs, most involving batteries. He has recently finished a guide to comparative mythology for worldbuilders, available herefor free. He also maintains a blog at White Marble Block, where he regularly posts story ideas and free fiction, and writes The Culture Column, an RPG.net column with cultures ready for you to drop into your setting.
- The old man with jobs for heroes is a dragon
So dragons can shapeshift in your world? And they don’t always get along with each other?
Think back to The Hobbit and put your Imagining Hat back on. Imagine that Gandalf was a dragon. That Smaug was a rival of his, for territory or treasure or something else, or maybe just an undesirable loose cannon and potential threat somewhere two or three centuries down the line.
So Gandalf-the-dragon tracks down some dwarfs that have a personal stake in the issue, gives them advice, and sends them in the right direction. Even helps them pick up a hobbit for the journey, too. And the thrush that mentions Smaug’s Achilles’ heel? Shapeshifted Gandalf again.
Lesser beings are pieces on a magnificent chess set, moved around by their draconic betters. These are moves in conflicts that can last for centuries before they even come to open blows, and sometimes never do.
Another dragon doesn’t even have to be facing down the metaphorical barrel, either. Dragons can have a multitude of reasons for manipulating humans into doing their dirty work for them.
And sometimes, of course, dragons head off potential trouble by giving false reports about themselves. Imagine the look on a dragon-hunter’s face when it’s discovered that the secret vulnerability ze was going to exploit doesn’t actually exist.
- The dragon used to be an old man with jobs for heroes
Alternatively, let’s go back to characters like Fafnir. Dragons aren’t born, they’re made, they’ve become. Sufficient greed and obsession, centered on a sufficiently-large hoard, can cause a transformation into a dragon. It may be slow and gradual or very sudden.
A dragon’s new life came on account of its hoard, and its life is forever subject to the same. Dragons can be controlled by holding their hoards for ransom. Luckily, this is usually as far as it goes. A dragon’s strength and power are linked to its hoard and it can be killed if the hoard is destroyed, but dragons seldom fear this fate. They know how hard it is for their former peers to do away with such treasures. More likely is that the thief will turn miserly as well, and a new dragon will be the result of it.
Dwarf-keeps are generally ruled by dragons, of course. More dragons were originally dwarfs than any other species, in fact. Whether this is a natural tendency or their culture has been warped by centuries of dragon rule is anyone’s guess.
I say “alternatively” in the beginning there, but I should add that these ideas are not mutually exclusive. In this scenario dragons have already changed shape once. Who’s to say that they can’t shapeshift back, either into their original form or into anything that their minds conceive. Maybe there are supernatural tells, maybe it’s a flawless impersonation.
- The most important part of a dragon’s hoard is the dragon
Maybe dragons hoard gold and jewels. Maybe they don’t. Either way, though, the real profit from dragon-hunting is in harvesting body parts. Every part of the dragon is useful.
The scales make a serviceable armor. The fangs and claws may be made into weapons. But many of the other body parts may be rendered into potions. Dragons possess a venom in their teeth that keeps long and well in glass decanters. Or perhaps the venom, so quick to kill, is a multipurpose fluid that is also behind their fire.
Perhaps it is their blood, and causes paranoia and various hallucinations. Hence the tales of dragon-slayers that speak to birds after killing a dragon (especially if it can turn into a gas upon contact with the air, which can also add danger to the very fighting of a dragon). Or maybe the hallucinations are the natural side effect of getting down into the depths of reality, where things are truer and the phenomenal world is revealed to be merely symbolic. Or maybe it just makes you invulnerable, as Sigurd discovered.
The heart may prolong the lifespan, cure diseases, or grant strength. The eyes aren’t actually magic, but they do taste pretty good and make an excellent soup.
- The next step is body modification
Silly dragon-slayer, you don’t go and use up a dragon’s bits like that. Didn’t you hear that the future is in renewable resources?
Wizards are the elite of society. They’re almost defined by their practice of grafting parts of dragons to themselves. Some of them have a smile like a shark’s, full of razor-sharp dragon fangs. Some of them have new blood flowing through their veins, opening their ears to the language of the birds. Some have threaded dragon muscle in with theirs, or grafted tough skin in place of their own.
Almost all of them have replaced their hearts. It’s the first thing that you want to do, even if it has a fair chance of killing you. With a dragon’s heart in your chest your lifespan can be measured in the centuries.
In some ways scientific progress is right on the level for a fantasy society, but medical science (surgery in particular) is on the cutting edge, if not entirely past anything that we can do today. Wizards direct all of their efforts in this direction, because improving the grafting process is an effort that never fails to bear fruits.
Some wizards push the boundaries of what should be possible, even allowing for magical cross-species organ transplants. Some have chopped up their stomachs to make room for additional organs, and rely on intravenous drips or nutrient slurries. Others are simply content to become bloated parodies of their former selves
Wizards. Biotech. Body horror. Dragons through and through that all. What are you waiting for?
- Actually, don’t touch anything there at all, mkay?
A dragon’s hoard is cursed, man. It’s the dragon’s last revenge against thieves and murderers that would despoil it and rob its treasures.
Perhaps you hallucinate or turn mad. Perhaps you become mad with greed (maybe even as the result of partial possession by the dragon’s own spirit) until you’ll kill someone for looking at your hoard wrong.
The curse may be applied to the hoard and whoever owns so much as a single coin of it. This means that the curse can be transmitted vertically, generation to generation, and also be spread horizontally, so that many people are affected. Does it matter how much of the hoard you have, or is the person in possession of a cup subject to the curse to the same degree as the person who owns everything else? Does giving up the hoard relieve the curse?
Your turn: What are some other interesting ways that dragons could be used in a story?
R. Donald James Gauvreau works an assortment of odd jobs, most involving batteries. He has recently finished a guide to comparative mythology for worldbuilders, available herefor free. He also maintains a blog at White Marble Block, where he regularly posts story ideas and free fiction, and writes The Culture Column, an RPG.net column with cultures ready for you to drop into your setting.
First of all there’s a chance to help with research on anime culture – take this poll!
The return of Otaku No Video! GO KICKSTART.
Respectfully,
– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
Ennead Games is looking for blog contributors.
As a designer I’m running out of time to work on both my blog and the publishing side of things, so I need your help.
Most of us have the urge to try to get something published on the net at some point, or just get exposure for our own previously published work.
What I’m looking for is contributors for the blog. This blog was orignially planned to be a resource for both designers, stroytellers and and roleplayers for all genres. A combination of bad health, multiple family deaths and work-load has seen this fall by the wayside and I’m trying now to correct this , hopefully with your help. All contributions will of course be credited to the author. Think of it as a platform for showing off your work and ideas.
The type of contributions I’m looking for :
- Random Generator
- Articles
- Short Stories
- Artwork
- Posts about anything you may find within a gameworld, such as equipment, spells, NPC, races etc
The main genre is fantasy/medievil, but other grenres, espically science fiction, is welcome.
If this is something you are interested in doing, then please get in touch via contact@enneadgames.com
The awesome Digital Games Museum is doing a fundraiser – but you can contribute ahead of time!
If you’re big on Video Games, game history, and geek citizenship, you can do your part at Silicon Valley Gives!
Respectfully,
– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
Hey gang, hope everyone’s doing good!
Our latest big news, is that after my last Way With Worlds, Blaze over at Trilobyte Studios decided to do a MB effort to define language for worldbuilding! Looking forward to seeing how this goes.
Respectfully,
– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
Continuing from last week’s discussion on adaptations surpassing their originals. it’s time to look at a specific example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The original Buffy hit theatres in the summer of 1992. Kristy Swanson played the titular character, with Donald Sutherland playing her Watcher, Merrick. The film was marketed as an action/comedy/horror movie, taking the elements of the typical slasher flick and flipping them around. Thus, the blonde cheerleader who would normally be one of the first victims of the slasher becomes the heroine, with her love interest, Oliver Pike as played by Luke Perry, becoming the dude in distress.
Los Angeles is in danger from a cabal of vampires led by Lothos, played by Rutger Hauer. One girl can save the city. Too bad she doesn’t know she’s LA’s only hope. Buffy Summers is a high school senior and a cheerleader, looking forward to her hobbies of shopping and her boyfriend, Jeffrey. Naturally, at Buffy’s school, there’s a schism between the popular and the outcasts, where Oliver and Benny (David Arquette) fall. Fortunately for LA, Merrick is searching for the new Slayer. The Chosen One, Buffy, isn’t as impressed, but her new abilities start manifesting. In addition, Merrick describes a dream that Buffy keeps having. She begins training under Merrick’s tutelage.
Oliver and Benny are the first of the school to run into the vampires. Merrick arrives too late to prevent Benny being turned into a vampire, but does rescue Oliver. Another of Buffy’s classmates, a girl named Cassandra, played by an uncredited Ricki Lake, is kidnapped by Amilyn, played by Paul Reubans, and sacrificed to the vampire’s master, Lothos, played by Rutget Hauer. Lothos has killed a number of Slayers in the past and has set his sights on Buffy. An encounter in the woods has Amilyn and his gang of vampires fight Buffy, Merrick, and Oliver, leading to Amilyn losing an arm and Buffy and Oliver getting closer.
Later, at a school basketball game, Oliver recognizes a classmate who has become a vampire. Buffy chases the the vampire and runs into Lothos himself. Lothos hypnotizes Buffy, but Merrick arrives in time to prevent anything further. Merrick is staked himself by Lothos, and dies. The Watcher gives Buffy one last bit of advice, to do things her way, not the old ways.
Shaken, Buffy tries to return to her old life. At school, though, her friends have turned on her, making her an outcast. Buffy realizes that her priorities have changed while her old friends are still fixated on shopping and the upcoming senior dance. Even her boyfriend, Jeffrey, has found a new girlfriend. Oliver, though, stays by her, understanding what Buffy is going through.
The senior dance is for seniors only. As per tradition, vampires cannot enter a building unless invited. The vampire army built by Lothos and Amilyn, though, consist of high school seniors, and each of them received a formal invitation to the dance. Buffy arrives in time to fight the vampires inside and outside. Oliver takes on his old friend, Benny, while Buffy first stabs Amilyn then goes after Lothos. Once again, Lothos tries to hypnotize her, but Buffy is ready with a cross and a can of hairspray. By using her keen fashion sense, Buffy defeats Lothos.
As mentioned, one aspect of the film was comedy. The movie was light entertainment, a summer popcorn movie that was common before the Blockbuster Era we currently have. Buffy was moderately popular but not a major hit. Joss Whedon wrote the screenplay for the movie, though there may have been some meddling by executives to get popcorn fare.
Five years later, Joss Whedon returns to the character with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. The pilot for the series was once meant for a potential sequel to the original film, but as the show continued, the link between the movie and TV series became nebulous. Ideas from the film appeared, but reworked to fit the new show.
The TV Buffy, with Sarah Michelle Gellar taking over the lead role, kept the horror and the comedy, but became far more darker and tense. The show first aired on the WB, owned by Warner Bros, and was a breakout hit for the fledgling network. In 2001, Buffy moved over to UPN, a Paramount owned network. Despite being on smaller networks, the show gained a following.
In the pilot, Buffy Anne Summers and her mother move to Sunnydale after an incident that resulted in the burning down of the gym at Buffy’s previous school. Buffy is hoping to be a normal girl, despite being the Slayer. All those hopes are dashed when Rupert Giles, played by Anthony Stewart Head, appears as her new Watcher. Sunnydale High sits on top of a Hellmouth and Buffy’s abilities are needed to prevent Hell from boiling out. Being the newcomer, Buffy starts out as an outcast in the school. She meets Xander Harris, played by Nicholas Brendan, and Willow Rosenberg, played by Alison Hannigan, who befriend her through common experience of being outsiders. Cordelia Chase, one of the popular crowd and a cheerleader to boot, represents what Buffy could have been. Cordelia eventually joins in with Buffy and her friends in fighting the evil lurking in Sunnydale.
Through the series, the cast grows, emotionally and numerically. Seth Green, who had an uncredited role as a vampire in the original Buffy, joins the cast as Oz, Willow’s boyfriend. David Boreanaz joins as Angel, a vampire who becomes romantically linked with Buffy. After Buffy is clinically dead but revived, a new Slayer, Kendra, played by Bianca Lawson, arrives. Unlike Buffy, Kendra was raised by the Watchers, and the difference between the two Slayers is evident. Kendra lacks Buffy’s ability to improvise, leading to her death and the activation of Faith, played by Eliza Dushku. Again, the difference between Buffy and Faith is evident. Faith didn’t have the support system Buffy did with her friends.
Each season carried a theme. The first season, set mainly in and around Sunnydale High, showed that high school was hell. By the time Buffy graduates in season three, she had prevented several apocalypses, saved the student body more times than they could count, and befriended many others. Season two shows how Buffy’s approach, while not always successful, had advantages over a strict teaching. The season also had Buffy fall in love with the wrong man, Angel. Angel was under a Gypsy curse; if he ever achieved happiness, the Angelus personality within would be released, causing untold tragedy. Season three shows the difference between the relationship Buffy has with Giles, the relationship the Council of Watchers would impose on Slayers, and the relationship Faith had with the Mayor, who was using the girl for his nefarious purposes. Season four was about change, with Buffy and Willow heading to university, Xander getting a job, Oz leaving because he’s a danger as a werewolf, and Cordelia leaving for LA with Angel for a spin-off series*.
The series became known for its writing, taking chances that wouldn’t normally be seen on the regular networks. “Hush”, a fourth season episode, took a show known for its snappy dialogue and made everyone mute, unable to speak, and was successful. “Once More, with Feeling”, from season six, was an all-musical episode, making /Buffy/ the second show to try that, the first being Xena, Warrior Princess.
How does the TV series stack against the original? The series built on top of ideas presented in the movie and gives them more time to develop. The implications of the Buffy-verse is shown to viewers. The result is a TV series that has more than its fair share of academic papers written about it, with over two hundred produced about various aspects of the show, from dialogue to characterizations to the metaphors of humanity used as the base of many episodes. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series has had comics, including Seasons 8 through 10, and games, including Eden Studio’s role-playing game of the same name. The TV series has far surpassed its original.
Next week, continuing the history of adaptations with the early years of the film industry.
* Angel, naturally enough. Set in LA, Angel was the head of a small private invesitgation company, specializing in the unusual.
