Fear of a Darkened Closet

Writing Yourself Into a Corner

2008-08-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

Once you've discovered the direction that you want to go in - often many of my writing students will start writing the story. Many times the story sort of "writes itself" from that point, appearing on the page as they type or put pencil to paper.

I love that process. It's a true merger with the Muse. It's no wonder that the ancient Greeks thought that a strange spirit injected people with creativity when they were writing or creating.

What's interesting about interacting with the Muse is that when you're in that zone, you really have no idea what's going to happen next. When all cylinders are firing, and the story is flowing out of you, often events will pop out of nowhere.

I remember one conference I had with an author and she made this great point. She was writing, and had a character who had just worked through a seriously trying time. Just at that moment, the author was surprised to find that the phone rang in the story. Indeed, she didn't even know who was on the other end of the line until she had her main character pick up the phone.

To explain how this can often work with characters I often explain it this way...

You may have a story in mind but if you have really spent time developing your characters, you may run into a situation where you say to yourself, "Wait. My character wouldn't do that. My character would really do this." And suddenly, that grand plot that you had in your head is changed. That's the reality of writing with real and living characters.

That said, this little bit of magic would often get me into trouble when writing novels. My characters would go off in random directions (like people do in real life) and end up in some place that simply made for a poor story. Imagine if we hooked a camera to the shoulder of someone really interesting and famous. Say, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, about 10 to 20 percent of his life would be interesting, but then the other 80 to 90 percent would be snooze-ville as we watching Arnold take a dump, eat breakfast, or run on a treadmill.

There's also the problem that I had in that often I would get my characters into serious predicaments in which there was no escape. Obviously, in my stories, I wanted my characters to face serious odds or something that was threatening. Because my stories flowed realistically...I suddenly found that by all rights, my characters should completely lose the conflict that I set up. Which doesn't make for a very satisfying story. A character who loses in the end can be a great story, but not in the ways that I had set up.

So, when writing novels, I often found that I ended up writing myself into a corner.

Bleah.

That's why I've learned my lesson. I outline my stories now. Yep, I really do that. Keep in mind that my outlines are usually fairly loose and open. But I do it. The reason it's important for me to do that is because when I outline, I am able to see the end of the road. I'm able to keep track of where I'm going, and I can nudge my character in that direction. If the end that I hand in mind doesn't work, that's okay. I just retool the outline so that I can see where the new story is going. The main thing I try to keep in mind is maintaining my eyes on the prize and understanding where my story is going.

All for now.

Writing that Novel You've Always Wanted

2008-08-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

So I'm prepping for DragonCon and every year, I run a panel on Horror in Gaming and DragonCon. It’s a real blast, because I rarely get to talk to people about horror, what makes us scared, and the disciple of horror.

Recently, I’ve been neglecting the blog because I’ve been pretty busy with writing material for Paradigm Concepts, and because I couldn’t come up with any more topics for blogging. However, Daniel Perez recently asked about some of my work with the Grand Tome of Adversaries, and it got me inspired to write some more.

So, what I’m going to be doing is starting a series of blog posts about writing and publishing.

Writing that Novel You’ve Always Wanted to Write

So, I’m going to start with the basics. The real basics. Like, how do you write a story anyways?

I’ve never really sat down and talked about how I come up with ideas for stories or games. I guess because the process is so close to me now that I never really think about it. So, let’s focus for a second on the whole process. Just how does one write a story or game? When it comes to writing a story, I’ve learned that everyone goes about it a different way.

Scenes

Some people get this really cool scene in their head and they want to write about it. That’s where they start. It’s sort of the situation that you have with books like Souls Raised from the Dead by Doris Betts. (By the way, this is not a horror novel, but rather a spiritual journey novel.)

She came up with her book after passing by a massive truck wreck. It just so happened that the truck that wrecked was carrying a load of live chickens. She said that the expression of the officer at the scene was both profound and hilarious at the same time. Everything was covered in feathers, blood, and chickens running around. The police officer's face was simply one of complete turmoil as he tried to make sense of a situation both awful and amusing. He was almost an symbol of how life works in general.

Just the image of that scene was the springboard for her novel.

Characters

Some people start with characters. They get a character idea in their head and they really like the idea of this person. For example, in The Great Gilly Hopkins, the author Katherine Paterson had this idea of a character who was named Galadriel...after the elven queen from Lord of the Rings – then she started to work backwards from there. For example, what kind of parents would name their kid that? Suppose further that this girl was raised by those parents. What kind of life would she have?

Concepts

Some people start with a concept or tension. For example, someone may write a historical novel where the South won Gettysburg. Or like in the novel World War Z, where Max Brooks sits down and supposes that the world really did get invaded by zombies. These sorts of projects start with a basic idea. Then, the writer takes that concept and thinks of the next logical steps in the chain of events that he or she has set up. What was genius about World War Z was that Max Brooks writes about how such a thing could be possible. For example, how could zombies take over the world if people have things like guns, and artillery, and explosives? How could it spread so widely and so fast? He writes about those things realistically in his novel.

By the way, you have to check out The World War Z website. Click on the link above! Be sure to check out the map with the dramatic readings.

Understand that there's not right or wrong way to start a novel. Also, you don't have to "pick" one of the methods I described above. Finally, many people use a combination of the techniques I just mentioned. Myself, for example....

What I Like to Do
For one, understand that writing fiction and writing games are two different disciplines for me. I'll talk about writing fiction for now.

When writing a story, I usually come up with the characters first. I think of some interesting characters and think about their lives. I think about what these characters look like, act like, etc. Then, I usually sit down and start writing a scene putting these interesting characters into that scene. I try to make sure that the scene I write about it fairly interesting. This interesting scene is usually the catalyst for my story.

For example, I might develop a character who is an adult male with a son. To make things interesting, I'll say that he has a son who is autistic. I think about his life, what that character does for a living, etc. Then, I put that character in a catalyst – like maybe he’s going to be depositing a check at the bank when it suddenly gets robbed. To make it even more interesting, let’s say his autistic son is there. While everyone is getting down on the floor, the main character’s son doesn’t want to get down on the floor. The floor feels cool and strange to the son. And he’s just refusing to get on the floor as these bank robbers are waving around their guns and screaming at him.

That is what I do to come up with a story.

Now, that was just me shooting around in the dark. If I want to really get serious and write a piece of fiction, I also do one more thing. I think about some themes.

Yep, that stupid, ridiculous concept that you learn about in 9th grade Literature Class. I literally think about themes I want to explore in the story. Now, I don’t force my story to have those themes. Instead, I think about the kinds of themes and concepts I’d like to explore with my invented characters and point them in that direction. If they don’t get there…then they don’t get there.

For example, I might think about my main character and his autistic son. I might think it would be interesting to explore the concept of fatherhood in the context of an average guy and a high-functioning, but autistic son. Or I might want to explore the idea of childhood discipline with an average father and an autistic son. To do that, I might dream up scenes wherein the father has a “moment” with his son. And these moments might be one of love, or ones where the father unfortunately has to level some kind of discipline on his son. Again, I don’t force this situations on the characters, but I start with the concept and start writing out a scene. Whatever happens next is a surprise. And I’m always surprised.

In this example, what I might do is have the father talking to the son and trying to discipline his autistic son. Maybe the scene is about how the father is trying to explain to the son that he can’t yell in public places – like the bank. Then, in the middle of the father dealing with his son, trying to teach his son a lesson about the world…bank robbers drop in. So now we have a really interesting situation.

And the best part is, I myself am not sure how the scene will unfold.

That, to me, is the most fun part of writing a story - I never know for certain what I'm going to write about next. Maybe I'll touch on that later.

Why Are Zombies Scary?

2008-08-01T22:19:00.000-07:00

Zombies are pretty damn cool.

One of the coolest things about zombies is the fact that they answer the "open the door" problem in horror immediately. The "open the door" problem is a really hard issue to surmount in horror. And that issue is this:

Usually, in a horror movie, we might hear the monster lurking around outside. We might catch a glimpse of it through a darkened window. However, when the heroine of the movie finally opens the door, and reveals the monster...usually it's not near as bad as we thought it was.

That's because up until the moment the door is opened, our imaginations are running wild. And no matter what the movie comes up with 9 times out of 10, whatever our imaginations have cooked up is far worse.

There are a few rare occasions where this isn't true, of course. A key example would be John Carptener's The Thing. That movie continues to horrify us to tears, because we just don't know what is going to happen next. The Thing manifests itself in different forms every time and in new and more terrifying ways. We can never be truly prepared for what The Thing throws our way.

But accomplishing that perfect and pure moment of terror is pretty damn hard. It's extremely difficult to completely surprise the audience or show them something that not even their wildest imaginings would come up with. So, unfortunately, many authors and movie-makers go for a stalemate with the audience.

Take for example, The Blair Witch Project. By now, it shouldn't be a spoiler that the Blair Witch is never seen in the film. While I love the movie, and many horror fans do, it only offers a stalemate. Because we never see the Blair Witch, about 50% of the population pans the movie and hates it because it "doesn't show anything". I think that M. Night Shylaman often runs into this problem.

So...here's what's cool about zombies. They solve the open the door problem right away. In a zombie movie, we usually see the object of horror fairly soon. What's more is that usually the film's feature monsters are front and center. The Night of the Walking Dead surely doesn't waste any time showing us zombies in the film.

Even though zombie movies show the object of horror early on, even though zombie movies reveal the monster in the open light of day...we are still scared. And here's why. In a zombie movie, we aren't so much afraid of the zombies as we are of what they represent. I think this is very clear in the introduction of the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Besides that great Johnny Cash song, you've also got all of the terrible fear that zombies represent to us in that opening. You have the complete and total breakdown of society. You have a mysterious plague that cannot be stopped. You are given a faceless enemy that has already been predestined to beat you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdPWrAMXGGo

In a zombie movie, we're far more afraid of being eaten alive, or being turned into a zombie, or one-hundred other horrible things that might happen to us.

Anyhow, that's why I think zombie movies are so cool.

Zombie Horror

2008-06-22T22:55:00.000-07:00


I didn't talk about zombies in my post about the archetypes of monsters because I thought that zombies would need their own post to discuss. The Cultural Phenomenon Obviously, zombie horror is huge right now. I thought it was going to be a fad, but it's turned into a fashion. From zombie movies, to zombie comics, to zombie video games, to zombie boardgames, and zombie roleplaying games...there seems to be no limit as to where this trend will end. I guess the resurgence really started with 28 Days Later, which came out in 2002. It's one of my personal favorite horror movies. But hot on the tails of 28 Days was the remake of Dawn of the Dead in 2004 which got great critical acclaim as well as serious dollars at the box office. Also, in 2004 was Shaun of the Dead which not only drew great critical acclaim but also launched Simon Pegg's career as an old-ball character actor. I'm going to also mention The Walking Dead comic book, which came out in 2003, because it is so critically acclaimed and so influential. The Walking Dead is a comic that is read by people who write comics. And - it's pretty damn good. The fact that these really well-done zombie movies were released in such a short period of time really tells us something - the whole zombie genre was simply simmering in the water. The kids who watched the George Romero zombie movies growing up were now finally in positions of power. They were writers, directors, and producers, and so they brought back something from their youth that they enjoyed. And the response was overwhelming on two levels - they got a tremendous response from the people who remembered the old zombie flicks of yore and from a whole new generation who experienced zombie horror for the first time. All I have to say is: Go Gen X. In any case, there can be no denying that zombie horror has become something of a phenomenon. There's a ZombieCon in Manhattan. Watch that here. There's an incredible fansite for zombie fans, and an extensive site based on All Things Zombie which discusses everything you wanted to know about zombies - from movies, to books, to games. There's even something called Revenant Magazine, which is a whole damn magazine on zombies and horror. So, I say again - it's in the water. The Secret Behind the Horror What makes a really good zombie movie interesting is that a truly good zombie movie, in and of itself is not a straight-up horror movie. Most zombie movies are disaster movies disguised as a horror movie. Like all disaster movies, zombie movies usually feature a cast of disparate characters who are thrown together under extraordinary circumstances. The characters are then forced into a situation where they must combat an elemental force (in this case a horde of the walking dead) in order to survive. Just like in a disaster movie, you know going into a zombie movie that everyone's not going to make it, and often the story becomes one of attrition, where characters are lost throughout the story. What makes a zombie or disaster story interesting is that you have a perfect excuse to throw interesting characters together and have them interact with each other. Often times, the characters will turn on each other, because the desperate situation has in turn made the characters in the story desperate. The idea of desperate characters facing a desperate situation is one of the things that makes the zombie movie so interesting to me - it becomes an convenient vehicle to do interesting character studies during the narrative. After all, when faced with a dire situation, often our civilized facades fall away, and our true natures emerge. Going along with the idea of losing our civility...one strong theme zombie movies is the idea of the breakdown of humanity. That when faced with truly desperate situations, humanity turns upon itself. The reason this theme is so compelling is that behind it lies the inexorable message: "The zombies aren't the true monsters. We are." The reason, of course, that this theme is so compelling is that it's very difficult for us to look in the mirror and see that the true horror is us. All for now - I'll be back later with the intricacies of why zombies are scary.

Ebay - O the Zany Horror!

2008-06-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

A while back, someone posted a comment to me asking me what I thought about this: a haunted Ebay painting.

The painting sold for an incredible amount on Ebay, probably just for the unique story. So why would people want to dish out money for a haunted object? It just points to our unending fascination with the mysterious and unknown.

I mean, if you think about it, buying a haunted painting has got to be a lose/lose proposition. If you get the thing and it's really haunted...well guess what. Now you live in a haunted house. And you paid money for this to happen. Or if you buy it and it's a hoax (much more likey) - then you've just spent a lot of good money on a painting and perhaps a story that people will make fun of you about for a very long time.

The painting is called "Hands Resist Him" . The interesting thing about the panting is that it's supposedly haunted.

According to the Ebay auctioneer, their 4 year old daughter claimed that the children in the picture were fighting. Then, they stated that after setting up video cameras, they could see the boy in the picture trying to exit the painting.

Right. I didn't really buy it, either. But it makes for a good story. If you want to read what the auctioneer wrote in their entirety, click on the first link in this post.

Now, truth be told, there are some interesting phenomena that accompany this painting - the art critic who first saw this painting and the art gallery owner who featured it both died within a year of each other. The artist himself confirms this. Yep, as a matter of fact, the artist of the painting is still alive. His comments are here.

The fact that the artist is still alive and didn't put any curse on the painting or what not sort of kills the "what if" factor for me.

But this haunted painting is not the only such gimmick to appear on Ebay - least we forget the "Ghost in the Jar" that appeared on Ebay as well.

The "Ghost in the Jar" auction featured a jar that was supposed to be full of some kind of black ash or dirt. In any event, supposedly the auctioneer had found two of these jars and broken one. The broken jar released a black, shadowy entity which had attempted to strangle the auctioneer on a number of occasions. So now, the auctioneer was here trying to sell us the other, unopened jar that he had found. Did it have a ghost trapped inside of it? Or something else?

Yet again, this jar started going for a lot of money. However, people started treating this item as it was meant to be (a joke or hoax) and the bidding got out of hand. Eventually, the item was made invalid. The bidding page is here.

What drew so much attention to this "Ghost in a Jar" though was the idea that someone would try to auction an actual "ghost" on Ebay...and our fascination for the bizarre and unusual.

It also shows us that one basic thing about us as human beings - some people will do anything for a buck.

Today, if you go on Ebay today, you can find all manner of supposedly haunted or supernatural items. How fast can you find one? It took me about 4:50 min. I timed myself.

The Three Archetypes of Monsters

2008-04-16T09:37:00.001-07:00

First of all, a shout out to a commenter on my blog for pointing me in the direction of Rado Javor. This guy's art totally rocks.

Many of his works are very much Colonial Horror and feed right into that Witch Hunter ideal. You can see Sir Olivier's comments on the sidebar if you haven't already.

And now, an issue I've been wrestling with - designing and working with monsters. In honor of the upcoming Grand Tome of Adversaries, I’ll talk about the three archetypes for monsters that Stephen King talked about in Danse Macabre. According to King, monsters generally fall into one of three categories: The Vampire. The Werewolf. The Thing.

The Vampire

The vampire archetype of monster is basically the monster that can pass for a human. Part of what makes the vampire of myth and legend so frightening is that it is a creature that can appear as a friend, loved one, or seducer. This is evokes the classic terror of making the familiar unfamiliar. The idea that your very best friend or loved one could be a monster is quite disturbing to us.

Hannibal Lecter is a sort of a vampire. On the one hand, he’s very urbane and intellectual. On the other hand, he’s a killer and cannibal. In fact, with Lecter’s preference for flesh, he’s not very far removed from the vampire at all, which drinks blood instead of eating flesh to survive. In the same way, Lecter eats people for his own survival. Not the physical survival of his body, but for his own psychological survival, because it’s his deep psychosis which drives him to do these deeds.

Moreover, most serial killers in books and movies nowadays are really vampire archetypes, updated for modern tastes. Like the vampires of old, these modern monsters stalk the streets, looking to prey on victims. And what makes them so terrible is that they could be the friendly neighbor next door. There’s also the added fear that serial killers are real, while vampires are part of the realm of myth.

Interestingly enough, in Silence of the Lambs we almost want to like and respect Lecter, despite his sinister nature. This leads me to my next point, which is that vampire-archetype monsters often lead people to twisted power fantasies. It’s fun to read The Vampire Lestat or play the Vampire RPG because it’s fun to the be the bad guy. And it’s even more fun to play a bad guy that is at least somehow familiar to us. Something we can at least understand on some level.

The Werewolf

The werewolf monster is a creature in horror fiction which is tortured in some way. It can’t really help being what it is. But we, as society, can’t allow it to live, either.

There are numerous legends and tales about this sort of horror. The story of the Wampas Mask is a classic story of someone who has to essentially trade in their humanity to save their community. To save her community from a terrible monster, a woman has to don a mask that will frighten the people away, but it makes her an outcast to her society, for the mask turns her into a monster as well. The reason the story resonates with us, is that we recognize that tragic choice of having to choose between our own well-being and that of others.

Werewolf stories are not just horrific, but gut-wrenching. They usually involve the theme of looking too far into the Abyss and becoming what you fear the most. A great example of this would be Edgar Alan Poe’s The Black Cat. In this classic horror tale, the narrator increasingly becomes deranged, eventually harming his beloved pets and then murdering his wife. The slow transition of normal man into a creature of madness is truly terrifying for a profound reason. Basically, the werewolf story teaches us that within all of us there lies a beast, and that this evil can be awakened within each of us.

Side Note: I think that the most poignant moment of the film 28 Days Later is when the main character has to surrender his own humanity in order to defeat the soliders, who sort of fit into the vampire category. After all, the soliders invite the main characters into their home, feed them and offer them shelter, only to turn the tables and prey on their guests in the end.

The Thing

The final creature archetype is the Thing. The thing is a horror archetype that represents the unknowable Other. It represents that part of ourselves and the world that is mysterious and unknown.

Ripley’s Alien is a classic example of the thing archetype. We’re not exactly sure where the Alien comes from, or what it’s purpose is. We’re not sure if the Aliens are intelligent or animalistic. We’re not entirely sure what their motives are.

With the thing archetype, the creature is almost a force of nature. It cannot be reasoned with or bargained with. Unlike the vampire or werewolf, the thing cannot be empathized with. Indeed, the thing is so terrifying precisely because we cannot understand it. It is the manifestation of the fear of the unknown in a walking, crawling, or flying form.

A New Archetype?
That leads me to the zombie. The zombie is a curious monsters archetype to me. At first glance, the zombie really fits the thing archetype. You can’t reason with zombies. You can bargain with them. And even if you explain them with a virus or something like that, there is a definite mystery about them. Their very inhumanity makes them unknowable and horrifying.

However, tied up in this archetype of the thing is the archetype of the werewolf. There is the terrible fear in the zombie story of becoming a zombie – becoming the very thing you fear the most. So I’ll give zombies their own special category.

Maybe I’ll talk about that next.

Final Note
I think many monster can be different archetypes depending upon how they are view. The classic Grendel monster from Beowulf would certainly fit into the "thing" category. However, recent fiction about the creature casts him in the "werewolf" like. It's not about what the monster is or is not. It's about how the story is told.

All for now.

Elements of Colonial Horror

2008-03-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

I was writing some notes down for the new book I'm working on and I came up with some themes that often appear in Colonial Horror. These things are not absolutes. Nor must they appear each and every time for something to be considered Colonial Horror.

After all, as the Horror Writer's Association says: Horror is really about a feeling or a sensation.

And that's what it boils down to. Colonial Horror has a particular flavor and taste. But I figure we can always look in the stew and try to see what the ingredients are. So here's what I found in my spoonful.

A Superstitious Setting
For me, one of the key elements of Colonial Horror is the fact that the setting is not based in a world of science, but instead based in a world of the supernatural. As I sit here and think about it, some of my favorite horror stories and films have their roots here.

For example, the film The Serpent and the Rainbow is one set against a superstitious backdrop, where the old rules of science and reason don't apply and are replaced by the rules of mysticism. I guess this conceit really intrigues me, because it is something that is very difficult for us in the modern world to conceptualize. Science is deeply rooted into our society.

In a superstitious setting, there are certainly rules, just like there are laws in a setting governed by science. For example, if it's known that pouring salt around your house will protect you from evil spirits, then generally those sorts if things will work.

It's playing with those unique and interesting rules that makes the setting fun. It's like going back to your childhood, when the monsters couldn't get you if you had a blanket over your head. Or the thing under the bed couldn't grab you as long as you didn't put your foot down on the floor. This sort of strange superstitious rule-making and logic is really fun to play with in terms of story and roleplaying games.

An Unfriendly Wilderness
In a Colonial Horror game, the wilderness is a source of mystery and fear. Its depths are unknown. The wilderness may as well be endless as far as any of the characters are concerned. And the wilderness hides untold secrets.

That's not the say that the wilderness in a Colonial Horror game is the enemy. Just like any aspect of nature, the wilderness in a Colonial Horror game doesn't really work actively against the characters, but it doesn't really help out either. Yet, it remains an obstacle to overcome.

Think about how the wilderness is portrayed in the The Village. In that movie, the wilderness is a great barrier that separates the village from the "towns" which are always portrayed in a bad light. While the wilderness certainly hinders the main character, it hinders the antagonist of the movie as well.

Think also about the wilderness in the Solomon Kane stories. The wilderness in those stories hides vast civilizations that have been long lost to history. It keeps unspeakable creatures hidden. But all of this is not intentional - rather these wicked civilizations and creatures merely use the wilderness as their hiding spot.

Strangers in a Strange Land
Now there's one problem with everything I've said so far. A superstitious setting? Unfriendly wilderness? That's something you could find in Ravenloft, a Fantasy Horror setting. You could also find this in a Medieval Horror setting, like Vampire: The Dark Ages.

So there's one thing that Colonial Horror has that these other two paradigms do not - Colonial Horror, by and large, is from the perspective of the colonists. So another one of the tensions in Colonial Horror is the idea that the main characters are unfamiliar with the world in which they are in. They are outsiders.

That doesn't necessarily mean that Colonial Horror can only take place in colonies, either. Solomon Kane often visits distant jungles or barren deserts - lands that he is certainly unfamiliar with, but he is not a colonist to these places.

That brings up an interesting question, can you have a Colonial Horror game or story with all Native American characters? Certainly. Just as long as you have the problem of dealing with a culture or place that you not familiar with. For example, what if the Native American characters have to deal with a vampire that has moved into the area and lives in the nearby Dutch village? Now, the Native Americans have to possibly travel into the Dutch village and deal with these strange people and their strange customs.

Guidelines, Not Rules
I'll say it again: Everything I've outlined above is, of course, not an absolute. You could easily have a Colonial Horror game set in London, far away from the wilderness and any strange lands...just as long as those themes appearing your campaign or story at some point.

However, if your story or campaign takes place entirely in London, and you never deal with the wilderness or the strangeness of another culture, then I might argue that that sort of game is not Colonial Horror.

But maybe it is. Maybe you've managed to make it feel like Colonial Horror without the wilderness or strangers in a strange land. If you do, let me know, and tell me about it. I'd like to hear what you have to say.

All for now.

Colonial Horror

2008-03-17T09:05:00.001-07:00

Someone emailed me and gently reminded me that I haven't updated here for a while. True enough. So what's to talk about?

Let's talk about Colonial Horror. Makes sense, since I'm working on Witch Hunter, which is a game based on Colonial Horror.

Colonial Horror is a term we made up when we first sat down to create Witch Hunter. The idea behind the term was to come up with a single term or catch phrase that encapsulated the feel and themes of the Witch Hunter setting. Sean Molley felt that if we were going to be making a horror game, the first thing we needed to establish was that this was not Call of Cthulhu in the 1600's.

And that was a good call, too, because whenever you make a horror game you inevitably get compared to CoC. And Cthulhu was not what we were going for at all.

What was difficult was that the idea of Colonial Horror is not one heavily explored in our current pop culture. There were a few current films that sort of captured the sense of what we were trying to achieve. Brotherhood of the Wolf, for example. Or even The Village. But they were really few and far between.

What we were trying to capture and describe was the sense and terror that comes about in a world of superstition and wilderness. That, to me, is the most intriguing aspect of Witch Hunter's setting. Normally, in a horror setting, the character have the cushion or foible of reason to contend with. You know how it is - a character sees a werewolf outside of his window and starts to tell everyone. But no one will believe him.

Well, in a superstitious setting, there is nothing like that to fall back on. If someone thinks they saw a werewolf, people tend to believe that person. What is truly frightening about that kind of setting is that you get something like what you had in The Crucible where fear and paranoia get wildly out of control. Which is precisely how witch hunts occurred in the New World. It's also how numerous wars started between the Natives and the colonists.

But a superstitious setting is only one aspect of Colonial Horror. The other aspect behind Colonial Horror is the colonial part of it. This is important to point out, because superstitious horror still exists in other settings. For example: Asian horror movies. One thing I loved about the film The Eye (the original) was that it really did a good job portraying how Asia still is deeply rooted in age-old superstitions.

But Colonial Horror isn't just about the fear generated by living in a superstitious environment, in which creepy-crawlies really do live under the bed and things really do peek in through your window. Colonial Horror is about the fear of living and surviving the New World.

Any colonist, in any land, will have a deep fear of the wilderness, because that wilderness is unknown, unexplored, and totally uncontrollable. For the colonists that arrived on America's shores, when they looked West and saw the woods, for all intents and purposes those woods were deep and endless. There was no "other side" to those woods - a conceit explored excellently in The Village.

The Native Americans, of course, had some degree of fear of the wilderness as well, since nature and the weather was unpredictable. The life and death of a person and their family depended a lot upon luck - whether nature was going to be kind or not. A bad snow storm, drought, or disease could kill you pretty quick. Of course, the Native Americans were used to that sort of thing. So the land wasn't nearly as frightening for them as it was for the European colonists.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be an early colonist in the Americas? Seeing animals that were strange and foreign every day, trying to till strange soil that doesn't respond to your seeds, growing up in a place where even the trees look different? It'd be pretty scary. And on top of all of those things - mix in the fact that all of the science we have now is unavailable. As far as the European Colonist knows - all of these foreign elements are under the control of supernatural forces. Now that is a truly scary place.

All for now.

Ghost Children

2008-02-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

Right up there with dolls are ghost children. Ghost children scare the heck out of most people. So much so that it's become a staple in ghost stories and now a movie cliche. Heck, I remember that one episode of friends where Joey talks about how he's scared of "little girl ghosts".

What I find interesting about the ghost child archetype is that it's been used over and over...but we still respond to it. It's not just a cliche in current movies. The idea of ghost children goes back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. They still scare the crap out of us.

I mean, look for example at the movie The Orphanage. This is a movie based around the idea of ghost children. In this day and age, when we've already seen The Ring and the The Shining umpteen times, you'd think we would no longer respond to this horror archtype. But we do.

Oh boy do we.

So...why?

The Familiar is Unfamiliar
Yet again, we have something that is normally very pleasant and comforting made unfamiliar - which is very disconcerting to us. Most people see children as a sign of something fun or cute. And they certainly see them as something precious. When something that is normally so beloved and so adored suddenly becomes unfamiliar and strange that really jerks at our chains.

Children are Powerful Symbol
Children are great symbols in literature and art. Culturally they represent live, birth, growth, and prosperity. Think about Cupid, the symbol of innocent, random love. Think about the Baby Jesus, who symbolizes the birth of hope and new life for humanity. Think about baby fawns, who symbolize mirth. A image and idea of a child has powerful meaning for people that crosses all cultures and boundaries.

With the image of a child being such a powerful cultural construct, inverting that symbol becomes a truly dreadful experience. It punches us right in the Spiritual Horror button that I talked about at the beginning of this blog.

Ghost Children are an Enduring Idea
There's also the fact that ghost children are an enduring cultural archetype that has been around as long as ghosts themselves. Ghost children have been around as long as faeries and goblins. Indeed, the idea of a Changeling really is part of the whole ghost children concept, though it sprouts from an entirely different origin. Maybe we'll talk about that later.

One of my favorite ghost children stories is that of the Radiant Boys, the glowing forms of little children who appear before you. Seeing one is said to bring death upon those who witness it.

Picture of a little boy ghost? Grit on the camera? You decide!

Another pretty freaky example of ghost children is the Wild Hunt, which is supposedly a pack of wild dogs that roams about Ireland and parts of England lead by a mysterious figure who bears the horns of a stag upon his head. The pack of wild dogs rips apart those it comes across. According to legend, the dogs are really the souls of unbaptized children who have been transformed into these savage beasts by the Devil himself.

This last part was probably added to the original Celtic legend through Christianization, but it still makes for a great story.

All for now.

Creepy Dolls

2008-01-28T17:33:00.000-08:00

All right. So I'm talking about creepy dolls. Yep, dolls really freak me out. And like all things, stuff that is creepy is often times inexplicable. There is a certain inexplicable quality about creepy dolls. But here are a few elements of dolls that make them scary at times.

When the Familiar is Unfamiliar:
There's nothing more comforting to us when we're children than our favorite playthings. And often, playthings come to us in the form of dolls. Most of the women and girls I know played with dolls. Heck, my wife still has some of her old dolls from back when she was a kid. When these very familiar and comforting object are suddenly made unfamiliar, it's very upsetting to our psyche.

It's the same reason why creepy little kids also provide us with a scare. Which brings me to an interesting point - if you make your doll or kid too unfamiliar, it's not scary anymore. The zipper on the monster's rubber suit begins to show. That's why Chucky has never been very scary for me. He looks too unlike a doll. (By the way, did you know there was a Chucky fansite? Crazy.)

The All-Knowing Quality of Dolls:
There's something like a doll's eyes that really creepy us out. First of all, a doll's eyes are unblinking. They are always watching. And there's something almost knowing about them. There's also the fact that on a creepy, porcelain doll, most of their eyes lack any sort of emotion. So there's the lack of humanity or soul that makes us uneasy. There's also the fact that eyes are supposedly the windows to the soul. Yet, a doll has not soul so their eyes are a window to nothing. All of that combines to make for some really creepy elements.

Did That Thing Just Move?
A friend of mine used to own a pair of Thai dancing dolls that were kept up in his parent's closet. He hated opening his parent's closet because whenever he did, he could swear that he saw those dolls freeze back into position from whatever it was doing. Obviously, this is because of the dolls' fluid dancing poses, which is designed to make them look like they are in motion.

But still....

Most dolls are naturally designed to look like they are animated, lifelike, or vibrant. For example, think of a typical Barbie doll with its big smile, wide eyes, and uplifted hands. Those are all designed to make Barbie look like she's doing something. After all, who wants to play with a doll that has it's eyes blank, it's hands down by it's side, with a blank expression on its face. But the problem is...that dolls aren't animated. So the very thing that makes dolls look friendly to us can look disturbing if it's the right context. The idea that something that has no life could suddenly get up and have a life of its own is pretty freaky.

Cool Sites
Creepy Dolls: A blog with tons and tons of creepy dolls on it.

New Age Dolls:A site for collecting creepy dolls.

Susan Custom Creepy Dolls: Yes, another site for your own custom creepy doll.

Giant Photo Set: Big set on Flickr on creepy dolls.

The Art of the Scare

2008-01-23T11:00:00.001-08:00

The Basic Scare
The basic scare is one of my most favorite things in the world. I love to inflict it on people and have it inflicted on me.

The best part is this - being scary is kind of like being able to tell a good joke. Maybe you aren't the best at it, but if you know just a few good jokes, with some practice, you can get good at telling them.

And anyone can do it. When I teach Middle School, one of my units that I teach every year is on ghost stories. And every year, at least one student will absolutely chill every kid in the classroom with a great ghost story. But I already said that. I talked about the twist and how that can scare anyone.

Now let's talk about how to do it.

Showing the scare right away is like giving away the punchline at the very beginning of a joke. It ruins the scare. Just like any punchline, you want to save that scare for the very end. That's where the art of horror comes in. If you wait for too long to release the scare, then your story become a bit boring and the audience frustrated. If you release the scare too early, then the audience hasn't had enough build up, and your scare is ineffectual.

Usually, a great horror story begins with a subtle change to the familiar environment. On the screen, the music cues and we start to get that uneasy feeling. At this point, a horror movie will usually slow down the action, which makes us lean forwards in the seat. What's going to happen? What's coming up next?

A great horror story requires the same thing. For example, we might talk about how John and Sarah are good friends, how they get in their car, how they go to their favorite picnic spot, how everything is going well. Then...we slow everything down. We pause for moment and explain how the lake by the picnic sight doesn't look quite right to Sarah. How it's changed somehow.

When Sarah turns to John and says that she think she can see a face just under the surface of the lake, we need to make sure our audience is cued in. And we draw them in by slowing down the pace, and then stretching things out in such a way that the audience is hypnotized. Just like we are hypnotized in the The Shining by the sound of the Big Wheel rolling around and around on that hotel floor, our own story need to entrance the audience.

Also, we need to make sure that the audience is kept interested. Slowing down the pace isn't just good enough. You have to start giving away little pieces of information. One at a time. Going back to that lake where John and Sarah are sitting...what if Sarah can start to see more and more faces just under the surface of the water? What if she starts to see something moving just beneath its mirrored veneer? John, wanting to take his upset girlfriend home, starts to escort her back to the car...but there's something in the woods. It's standing in between them and the car. They can't make it out, whatever it is. One thing is for sure, though. It's dripping wet. They can hear the sound of water dribbling on the dry leaves.

So even though the pace is slowed, we start to fill in the gaps with the audience. When we finally reveal the scare, that's the tricky part. The actual scare itself should carry some kind of revelation. It should shed some new light on the story, so that when all of the details are added together, it makes sense in a very morbid sort of way. Just like...a punchline to a joke.

So what if John starts to explain to Sarah that she doesn't need to be afraid? That the faces in the water are all just former girlfriends? And that he's taken every one of them to this very spot? And now? They all just want Sarah to join them. In fact, says John, if you listen hard enough, you might be able to hear them calling.

All for now....

More Cheap Tricks for Scary Things

2008-01-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, surely you didn't think it was just little girls, doors, and animals, right? There's alot more to that list. In addition to the previous three, let me add a few more:

Dolls: There is something just downright chilling about a little doll. In, in fact, the more life-like the doll, the scarier it tends to be. Think about it. Which is scarier, a porcelain doll with a pale face, whose eyes open and close? Or a cabbage patch kid?

Sometimes, a life-like doll isn't what scares us but a doll with something a bit odd about it. The monkey with symbols what was forever immortalized by the book Skeleton Crew looks like a monkey...except for that weird grin. If a doll isn't going to look life-like, then there needs to be just one thing wrong about it.

One person said this a while ago, and I have to agree...there is something all to "knowing" about a doll's eyes. They seem to look for forever, with a hidden wisdom about a world which we do not know.

Masks: Going along with our doll theme, masks tend to scare us as well. Think about some of the great horror movies of all time: Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream...all of these films feature an antagonist with a distinctive mask. Heck, even V for Vendetta's protagonist is given a creepy vibe with a perpetually smiling Guy Fawkes mask.

Masks tend to unnerve us because they take away our ability to see someone's expression. We don't know what the person is really saying or doing, making the masked person mysterious. Even frightening.

Things in the Distance: Let's think about it. When something is up close, you can see it. You can take it in. You can understand it. However, what makes all those bigfoot pictures with that furry man in the distance scary is the fact that we are looking at something that could be. We're not sure if what we saw is right.

Think about this. Let's say you woke up to hear the sound of laughing. You look out of your window to see that something is on a far hill, watching you. It's look at your house. And you could swear it's looking into your window. In the distance, you can only see a thing silhouette. That's freaky, right? Because you can't see it. You can't reach it. And it's threatening you, even from that far place.

Old Places: The haunted house is always old, right? It's always falling apart. The boards are always splintering. The cobwebs are always in the corner.

Why? What is it about Old Places that really pushes our buttons? Old places have a history. And many times that history is hidden from us. It makes us wonder, making our imaginations run wild. Or worse, the history is revealed. We learn that a terrible crime was committed in the Old Place, and this stirs our imagination even more.

S'all for now.

Discussing Horror

2008-01-16T08:15:00.000-08:00

All right, here's where I start up a series of posts returning to the discussion of horror writing in general.

First, some cheap tricks I've come up with.

Whenever I've written games, run games, created supplements, or written adventures, I've found that certain elements tend to be alot more scary than others. Here are some things I've found interesting to use:

Children and Old People: I can't tell you why, but little kids and old folks really scare the crap out of folks. Let's look at The Shining, for example. That movie features both little children and folk folks and makes them really creepy. The little girl ghost is a cliche nowadays, but it often still works if done right. Also, there's the "little kid who is wise beyond his years" motif, which we see in The Ring, or The Sixth Sense.

The key to making little kids or older people scary is to add a bit of twist to them. Both children and the elderly are normally a comforting sight, so to see them in a darker context is unsettling.

Animals: Is it any suprise that one of Stephen King's better works was Pet Cemetery? Animals normally represent nature and the natural cycle. When we watch animals in the wild or even in our home, we percieve nature's way. However, put a little twist on it, and we get the disturbing feeling of nature tilted on its head, which alarms our sense of order in the world.

In Pet Cemetery, King writes about how Gage's pet cat is brought back to life...but it's not quite right. It has lost the grace and agility that cats normally possess. To see a cat without the traits we normally associate with them distrubs us and our world view.

Doorways and Windows: Both doorways and windows symbolically represent many things to us. For one, they represent possibility. What lies beyond an open door? A new world? The next day? But this can also be scary for us because it represents the unknown to an extent.

But doors and windows are also a danger. If you drove up to your house and saw your front door wide open, what would you think? How would you feel? So, doors and windows also represent some kind of weak point in our psychic defenses. When you think there's someone walking around your house outside, what do you do? You make sure the damn door and window is locked, that's what.

Is it such a surprise that so many superstitions have to do with doors and windows? Hang a horseshoe over your door for good luck. In the Chinese tradition, it's bad luck to hang a mirror in front of your front door. And Hindus often bless the portal of a door to give a house good luck. Doors and windows are the passages in and out of our lives and our security.

More later....

Wrapping Up

2008-01-11T20:40:00.000-08:00

So this concludes my series on writing for Witch Hunter. From here on out, for a while, I'll be going back to the subject of horror and exploring that.

Watching your baby walk for the first time is pretty darn exciting - and, of course, I'm talking about our role-playing game.

You know, it's one thing to write material for a game system.

It's a whole other ball game to watch people play that system. And then it's yet another to actually sit at a table with folks you don't know and be a player. Let someone else run you through a game.

Because if you're GMing and your running your own game, you know generally how it's supposed to go. But what about the guy or gal who just picks your book up off the shelf?

So, it's pretty neat to be there and experience it with people. To see that, hey, this group project that you've been working on for two years...it all worked out. The game works. And people enjoy it.

It was totally awesome to sit down at a table at Gen Con and play Witch Hunter. To sit back and have someone else tell me what was going on. To be directed in an adventure where I didn't know what was going to happen or how. To see if the themes, concepts, and spirit of the game that we set up was really going to fly.

The biggest compliment we ever go was when I ran it at Gen Con, and I noticed two guys across from me having a blast. I also noticed that they definitely knew their history. Everything from their character names to their mindset fit just right.

So during a break, I asked them how they knew so much history - it turns out that these two guys were both professors. One was a professor of History the other a professor of English. And they were both loving the game. The fact that college professors gave our little historical horror game the thumbs up felt pretty darn cool.

All for now.

Designing Iconic Monsters

2008-01-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

One of the first things we decided about the Adversaries Book in Witch Hunter was that if the whole thing was just a big list of monsters, it really wouldn't stand out too much. Especially amongst the numerous other monster-type books in the market.

One Adversaries book that I always loved was the d20 Modern Menace Manual, for the d20 Modern system. The reason I loved that source book was because the designers could have really just phoned it in and created a Big Book of Monsters.

Well, they didn't do that. The Menace Manual has some monsters, but it also has bad-guy organizations, neutral organizations, and whole parties of antagonists complete with backgrounds and personalities.

That, too me, was a far more dynamic book that would get much more use from a GM rather than just a box full o' threats. Basically, the Witch Hunter Adversaries Book would feature not just creatures, but stuff about the actual World of Witch Hunter. By presenting rival organizations, we would be helping GMs start up their campaigns. When a whole organization is detailed for you, it should help the GM create a campaign by featuring a group that could be the main villains for an entire story arc, whereas a single monster is usually only good for an encounter or two. Occasionally, you might get a creature that will serve as a spring board for a campaign, but that's rare.

We also decided that Witch Hunter monsters would be broad categories with lots of different kinds of monsters underneath each category. For example, a vampire might be a savage beast with glowing eyes and massive fangs. Or, it might be something that looks exactly like a human, can walk under the light of day, but just needs to drink some blood from time to time.

This way, a vampire is not just a vampire. A werewolf is not just a werewolf. The GM would always be able to keep his or her game fresh and new with the different versions of the creatures at hand. That was something also decided from the very beginning.

Adding the Twists
When I started making the monsters for the Core Rulebook, I was pretty aware that what I was doing was pretty big. The design of the monsters would set much of the tone for the campaign. For example, if they were all tentacle-y and Cthulhu-like, that would definitely set a certain tone for the world. If the monsters were more "classic" then that would set a different tone as well.

Right away, I took Sean Molley's advice and tried to stay away from Cthulhu-type concepts with the Core Monsters. Call of Cthulhu is a great game, but it's its own thing. We weren't there to offer something like CoC. We were there to showcase something new and different.

So, the challenge was to try to put a new and fresh take on things like the vampire, werewolf, etc. That was hard, because those guys have been done to death. What I did was to go all the way back to the beginning - to look up the original myths and legends that spawned these creatures.

For werewolves, I made different types. Some werewolves were men who donned skins and became that animal, tying into Celtic and Native American legends. Some werewolves were the "classic" werewolves that most people know. And then I made up my own kind of werewolf that could infect people with its own personality, not just its lycanthropy.

With the wendigo, it was easy, because there were so many different versions of the wendigo in Native American lore anyways. Some wendigo were big, furry beasts with white fur. But others were creatures like looked like skeletons, or creatures made of ice.

Most of the Core Monsters turned out this way, with me trying to give them at least three different takes. At the same time, I didn't want each monster to be so different that it was unrecognizable. That was the real challenge. To make these iconic monsters something different - yet familiar at the same time.

As for the Baykok, when I found those creatures I thought they were pretty terrifying as they were. Skeletal beings that ran through the air firing invisible arrows. That's just awesome on its own. However, I wanted to kick it up just a notch, so I made the Baykok have deer skulls instead of regular human skulls for heads. In any case, the result was fantastic, because Pat Loboyko really came through on that one. He took the vision I had and made it far cooler and creepier than I had ever imagined.

Creating Monsters for the First TIme

2008-01-07T23:21:00.001-08:00

So, Henry Lopez gave me the assignment to create monsters for the Witch Hunter game...

...but he didn't just turn me loose and say, "Have at it!" There were some very specific guidelines. And that was a good thing.

One of the very first sacred cows that Henry developed for Witch Hunter was the idea of the Laws of the Universe. And that was that every monster might have a power, but with it came a price. His key example was that a vampire might be able to be immortal but at the cost of having to drink blood.

He envisioned monsters having powers like "a Chinese restaurant menu", where you could pick something from Column A and then something from Column B. That gave me the structure that I needed to create the list of Powers and Weaknesses.

I decided pretty early on on the division of powers that all monsters would have. Corpus Powers, which would be of the body. Movement Powers, which would affect their mode of moving around. Etc. But for each kind of power chosen, the GM would have to also pick a corresponding weakness. So Body Powers would come with a weakness of the body as well. Something that helped a monster move faster would also mean that it had certain restrictions on movement, like not being able to cross a threshold without an invitation.

Then, after playing around with the powers for just a bit, I started to work up a series of monsters for the Adversaries Book. I remember very distinctly when I first began on that monster list. It was Gen Con of 2006. It was late, very late, and I sat out in front of the Ram, drank a beer, and made up my list. By the way, the monster book is scheduled to come out in 2008. So that should give you some perspective on the time and effort it takes between the creative process and putting it out for publication. I was very fortunate, I must say, because many folks in the RPG business don't get the luxury of that much time.

(Whenever I write, I always pre-write with a pen and legal pad. This is very important, and I'm deathly superstitious about this.)

Many of the monsters on my original list did not make the final cut. They were either inappropriate for the setting, didn't fit our powers/weakness paradigm, or just plain sucked.

The monster list really started to come together when I started doing research on the superstitions and creatures of the time period.

But back to the Core Book...
Meanwhile, I still had come up with the core monsters that were going to go into the regular Witch Hunter Core Book. All that brainstorming and pre-writing that I did was perfectly fine and dandy, but that was for a monster book that was pretty far in the future. So, I set aside my monster list and just worked on some of the core monsters of the Witch Hunter book.

Henry said that he wanted some more familiar monsters for the Core Book, because we had a new game system and a new setting. Having brand-new, unfamiliar monsters would make the whole thing harder to grasp. So I made up some typical criitters - Vampires, Werewolves, Revenants, Wendigo, etc. However, I also put in some new creatures like the Baykok.

More on that Baykok and new twists on old monsters later.

Creating Your Own Game System

2008-01-05T18:26:00.000-08:00

Why Creating Your Own Game is Hard:
I think many people out there flirt around at least one time with coming up with your own homebrew system. I'm definitely guilty of this bug, and attempted it many times from middle school until right now.

However, actually going through with creating your own system and making it functional so that it works? Wow. As much work as you think it might be? It's more work than even that.

Creating your own game system is an incredibly difficult venture. For one, no matter what, you're going to hit a wall of tedium. Eventually, you will have to write out the descriptions for every single skill that is in your game. You will have to write out every single feat in the game. You will have to write out every single spell.

It's just not at cool as you would have imagined. Basically, if you look at most role-playing games, their text is made up of large lists. Heck, most of the D&D Player's Guide is a list of spells and their effects. Now, let's say that you do get through this titanic wall of tedium. Now you have to go and playtest your game.

Playtesting is Trying:
When others playtest your game, the flaws in the system will be immediately apparent. They haven't been apparent to you, because you're probably too close to the system to see where the loopholes are. However, other people will immediately see the dynamics of your game that you did not.

When we sat down to playtest Witch Hunter, our playtesters continually and constantly found flaws in the system. The game was too slow. Or too confusing. Or damage didn't work right. It was too deadly. Too easy. The list went on. Every time we changed a rule to make the system work, it opened up another problem, which again caused the whole system to fail.

That was what was so difficult about creating our own game system. Any flaw that was found in the game usually caused the whole structure to collapse in on itself.
And, really, that shouldn't be surprising, because any game system works on a holistic level. For example, in D&D, the rule of Attacks of Opportunity affect a wide variety of other elements in the game.

One of the most contested issues in our game system was how Defense was going to work. How does someone defend against an incoming attack? We literally went through 5 different methods of generating Defense before coming to our current solution.

And it's not just combat that we had to worry about. We had to concern ourselves with how social challenges would work. How monsters would be constructed. How monsters would be built. How monster powers would work.

In the end, the final game system that we arrived at was very different from the original design. 3 game stats were dropped entirely. Damage was completely redone. And the way weapons worked was redone.

At the end of the entire process, which took 2 years, we were even debating at the last minute if people should be rolling 10-sided dice and looking for 7's or higher...or if a success would be 6's or higher. So even as we were putting on the finishing touches, debates raged on about even the most fundamental aspects of the game.

Now, that being said, I've been very pleased at how the game has turned out. There are broken parts to the game (not problem, all games have that), but nothing in the game breaks the system apart, which was our main concern.

That's all for now. Next time, I'll actually talk about making the monsters of Witch Hunter.

How Witch Hunter Got Started

2008-01-03T21:20:00.000-08:00

So, in Atlanta, a small group of us gathered together to talk about creating a brand new roleplaying game.

The first thing we did was to start with the basic pillars of the world that we were creating. The developers of D&D used the term "sacred cows" and I'm going to use it here, too. We sat around and thought about the sacred cows of our game system and our world.

We knew, for example, that our game was going to have both horror and swashbuckling in it. We knew that our game was going to be set in the Colonial Period of American History. And we knew that it was going to feature an alternate history. Meaning, we would not be sticking to historical events 100%, but instead focused on what we think might have happened if magic were real.

For example, one thing that was discussed early on was that the Aztec Empire was still going to be around, because the Aztecs were going to have repelled the Spanish Invasion of South America. That meant that the Aztec Empire was still around, and that Spain was still a vital force in world politics, because one of the great detractors in Spain's power was the influx of gold into Spain from the New World. When there was so much gold coming in from the New World, the price of gold devalued, and Spain saw a great deal of inflation.

It was these kinds of things that we looked at right off of the bat with Witch Hunter. Other things started to fall into place during the planning session, like the fact that we wanted men and women to be on equal footing in this setting. However, we did decide to keep slavery.

One of the major things we got our minds wrapped around was the the paradigm of the Colonial World. In a typical horror game, people can often easily dismiss the supernatural or the horrific. For example, if the main characters in a horror game see something moving in an old house, often the supporting characters will dismiss what they saw. "Oh, it was just the wind. It's just your mind, playing tricks."

However, in the world of 1689, the paradigm would be totally different. What we discovered was that unlike most horror games, where people are loathe to believe in ghosts and goblins, one of the major tensions of this game was that people were all too ready to leap to the wrong conclusions.

So the sighting of a bear in the woods might get inflated into a story about a vicious beast. A case of epilepsy might be interpreted as someone being possessed by evil spirits. The problem for the Player Characters in Witch Hunter, then, is the rampant paranoia and superstition that pervades every aspect of the culture. People actually believe too much. I was particularly thrilled about this aspect of the game, because it was something that I knew wasn't in many horror games out there, if at all.

Well, that's all for now. Next time, I'll talk about the trials and tribulations of coming up with a system.

Developing Witch Hunter: The Invisible World

2008-01-03T13:57:00.000-08:00

Here's where I'm going to delve into the roleplaying game that I help to write, which is Witch Hunter.

I can't really claim that this is "my" game, because it isn't. First of all, it was a group effort to produce. Also, if anyone can claim most of the credit, that would be Henry Lopez, who was the lead developer and had the overall vision for the project.

I'd worked for game companies before, but those were for established worlds with established backgrounds. Here, I was given an opportunity to sit down with a development team at the outset and help create an entire gaming world from the ground up. That was tremendously exciting.

With Witch Hunter, we started with pure brainstorming. It literally began with the lead developer (Henry Lopez) saying, "You know, it would be cool if we could have a game like this." It was his idea, his baby. The vast majority of the credit needs to go to him.

Of course, we contributed ideas and tossed concepts back and forth. It was a collaborative effort, but one person, that being Henry, had a leading vision. It’s been my experience that the most successful projects that are both creative and collaborative usually have one person at the helm who has a broad vision. That one person works with everyone else to help their ideas become part of that vision. It’s a group effort, not a dictatorship, but in the end you have to have someone being the “guide” so to speak.

So how did it all begin? Henry had always wanted to do a Solomon Kane type of game, that was set in the American Colonial period that featured both horror and swashbuckling. He got the idea from watching the movie Sleepy Hollow, but was further inspired by the writings of Robert E. Howard and his Solomon Kane universe.

Being gamers we all knew that there wasn't any types of games like this in the industry. We briefly looked at Northern Crown and determined that our game didn't have too much crossover with what was offered there.

Henry proposed his idea to his business partners and the development began. He contacted writers that he knew and had worked for him before - like Sean Molley and Brian Schoner. They, in turn, recommended that I be put on the project, because they knew my authorship from the Living Death Campaign that was run by the RPGA.

What was funny was that no one up at Paradigm knew that I had published material for Ravenloft, which would have actually given me more street cred. Instead, they wanted to hire me based on work that I was doing mostly for fun and assumed would get lost through the years one day. You never know what writing of yours will come up for review! So even if you’re writing fan fic or just putting something out on the web for fun, do a bang up job of it.

Henry contacted everyone, went over his initial ideas, and then we all went to a focus group meeting in Atlanta to hash out the game. We went about setting down the basic precepts in which the game would be founded.

This is where I pause and tell you that a larger company like White Wolf does things a little differently. When it comes time to consider a new line, say for example, Promethean, the developers all send in memo explaining their ideas for the next upcoming product. The proposals are all reviewed and examined, and the next idea is chosen from that pool. I don't know the details of how a proposal is accepted and finalized, but I highly suspect it is by consensus, with their CEO arbitrating the process.

So that you understand, most meetings of game companies are with people sitting around in their T-shirts and jeans. And just about everyone at the table will be friends. There’s no large power-point presentation, or people wearing power-ties. I’m sure the experience would be very similar to many peoples’ here of just sitting on couches, coming up with cool ideas.

Next time, I'll talk about building the game from the ground up.

Villainy, Part II

2008-01-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

So, I was talking about villains earlier and what makes good villains. One of the things I mentioned was that magical "X-Factor" that all good villains seem to have.

My wife and I were mulling this over and I think we stumbled onto something: Villains usually have something about them that we can relate to, but taken to an extreme level.

We were talking about some of our favorite villains and mentioned these guys:

Khan from Star Trek II
Darth Vader
Hannibal Lecter
Magneto
Norman Bates

By the way, I was able to find some very awesome sites on these guys. Check 'em out.

Now, each one of these guys definately had an X-Factor, that certain something that made them very memorable...almost likable. For villains like Khan and Magneto, part of you could relate to them. Who wouldn't want revenge for being wronged? In Khan's case, he was left on a planet that turned into a wasteland, and he watched his people die around him. Who wouldn't turn bitter and angry over that? For Magneto, he was put in a friggin' concentration camp. Who wouldn't be full of hate after such an experience?

However, both Khan and Magneto take their passion or sense of revenge to an extreme level. That's what makes them so intriguing. Part of us identifies with them, but then there's that aspect where we say, "Whoa, okay. You've stepped over the line."

Now, on the other hand, you've got a villains like Darth Vader, who is very intriguing in the original Star Wars trilogy because he's so mysterious. He's the Dark Knight in Black Armor. His voice is menacing. He has this mystical power called the Force, and yet he's Luke Skywalker's father. So he's not just some faceless brute. In this case, Darth Vader's X-Factor is not that we can identify with some aspect of him, but instead because there are so many aspects that we don't know about him. (Again, speaking from the Original Triology standpoint.)

So, what scares us is the known and the unknown. The known aspect of the villain that we can identify within ourselves, and the unknown aspect that we would like to possess. After all, who wouldn't want to be Darth Vader?

There are also characters that possess both the known and the unknown. Hannibal Lecter, for example. Lecter is an almost likeable guy in many of the scenes that he appears in, especially in the film version, done by Anthony Hopkins. He has an almost genteel way about him. He listens to classical music. And then there's that incredible intellect. But there's the cannibalistic side to him as well. The animal savagery that hides behind the chilllingly calm exterior. So Lecter possesses both the familiar and the unfamiliar, making him doubly intriguing.

The same might be said about Norman Bates. We can all relate to people with overbearing parents. After all, who hasn't believed at some point and time that their own parents were overbearing? We can all relate to being awkward or having problems getting along with people. Of course, it's pretty difficult to relate to having your mother living inside of your head, right? That's the mysterious and intriguing part of Norman Bates.

That's all for now.

Villains

2008-01-01T19:23:00.000-08:00

So, we're talking about villains, right? Well, at least I am.

For me, the key to making a memorable villain is making one that has several things going for him or her:

The villain has to be credible.
The audience has to believe that he or she would really be doing what they are doing. One of my favorite villains on TV has always been Scorpius from TV's Farscape. Wayne Pygram always made me really believe in that character, no matter what he was doing or saying. Even in his first appearance as Scorpius, where he shows up as a minor character, I really bought into what the character was all about.

If you don't have a credible villain, a character that audiences will believe in to some extent...you might as well pack it up. An example of a non-credible villain is your typical "evil genius." The guy who dresses in black, who speaks with an aristocratic accent, etc.

The villain needs to have clear motives...for you, if not for your audience.
Evil exists. Evil people exist, too. Hitler, Stalin, Ted Bundy, Scott Peterson...these people were pretty bad guys.

None of these people, however, were evil for the sake of being evil. They all had their reasons for doing what they did.

A good villain needs a clear motive, a desire or need that they have to fill. Your audience may never know this motive. That's okay. But you definitely need to know it. Because when your villain has a clear motive, they become a lot more credible. Because clear motives make for believable characters.

This is the hardest thing for me as a writer, because when you design a villain, you are designing someone who has something fundamentally messed up about them. Ted Bundy just isn't a regular guy. He's got all kinds of issues, making his motives very complex. That's why a villain is hard for me to create.

That also what has been plaguing me in this latest work. I'm creating a demon as a villain, for crying out loud! What does a demon want? Why do they want it? Do they have other interests? What do they do in their spare time?

A great villain has an X-Factor.
The most interesting thing about the greatest villains of all time is that there is that certain "je ne sais quoi" about them. The X-Factor.

Why is Darth Vader such an enduring villain? Well, there's his appearance. There's the Dark Side of the force that he seems to control. There's his intimidating voice. Etc, etc. But when it comes down to it...it's the whole package. All of the aspects of Vader come together to make a fairly memorable deal.

The same could be said about Hannibal Lecter. Or the Wicked Queen from Snow White. Or Hal 9000.

I've found that if you can find one sticking point, one unique aspect about your villain, that people will remember him or her for a long time. When I made the Telling Man, for example, I created a villain who stitched various body parts harnessed from people onto his own. He always picked the parts that people were most vain about. So if you liked your hair, he would scalp you, and stitch your hair onto his. If you liked your eyes, he would take them and put them into his own sockets. This wasn't the extent of his villainy, but it created a nice sticking point to really bring him out of the background.

Okay, enough rambling.

How about the ultimate geek-list of villains?

Or AFI's 100 top movie-villains of all time?

2007-09-26T20:37:00.000-07:00

So, the current writer's block that I'm chipping through right now is creating a memorable villain for the Witch Hunter campaign.

I'm going to feature him in the first adventure that we're writing for the campaign setting. I really want this villain to have some punch. I want him to get under people's skin.

I've been able to do this before with Toben the Many and the Telling Man from the Ravenloft products that I've written in the past. People gave me a good response on those characters, so I'm assuming that history can repeat itself.

What I'm going to do is create a villain who's one of the demons mentioned in the Bible. The reason being is that one of the themes of Witch Hunter is Biblical Evil. The dark and twisted things that happen in the Witch Hunter setting are seen very much through a Puritan scope. So, of course Satan and the Bible need to come into play.

I'm perfectly cool with that, too, because Biblical evil is pretty dark. Herod killing all of the children under a year old in his province in an attempt to kill Christ; the men of Sodom screaming at Lot to come out of his house so they can rape him to death...all of these things are as wicked as they come.

Plus, if you look at the writings of this time period, people had really vivid and nightmarish imaginations when it came to things evil. Look at what people believed went on at a witches' sabbath. Pretty messed up, eh? Of course, these assumptions were wrong, but we're coming at this game setting as if all the superstitions and fears that people had at this time were real. Look at the legends about the monastery of Lucedio, as well. These legends also spring from the same time period.

But of course, the challenge is to create a character that comes from this tradition. A character that has motives, feelings, thoughts, and a background. A demon, no less. It's a hard nut to crack, because these old superstitions labeled such things as "other" and left it at that. They didn't plumb the depths of their characters.

So I've had to think backwards in my writing. I've had to assume a Milton-esque approach and think...why would this powerful entity make these decisions.

I've come up with some interesting answers.

Ground Rules, Part III

2007-09-22T21:07:00.001-07:00

Okay, so we've talked about what horror is and the different layers of horror.

Now, we'll get down to the brass tacks. How do you scare people? I'm often asked this one question when serving on horror gaming panels at conventions. Actually, it's really quite easy. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. In my day job, I'm a school teacher. Around the month of October, I teach a unit on ghost stories.

To start the unit off, we go around the room, and tell ghost stories to each other. Well, just about everyone knows a good ghost story. If middle-schoolers can scare the crap out of me while in the middle of a well-lit classroom, then you can scare the hell out of your players. Or audience. Whoever.

So what's the secret behind a good scare? Here it is: You find one thing. Just one mundane thing in your story or gaming session and twist it. You make that object or person unfamiliar...and it instantly becomes scary.

For example, let's look at something totally familiar. Like your dog. You know your dog, you love your dog. Your dog is just not scary. However...

What would it be like if your dog started to bark at something in the corner of the room? You keep looking and there's nothing there. Yet, your dog keeps on barking. Then, your dog starts to growl viciously, savagely. The hackles stand up on its back. Yet, as you look in the corner of the room, you can see nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Now what was once familiar has become unfamiliar. That's unsettling to us. But this slight twist to reality is only the beginning of terror. To really get a good scare, the twist can only be a springboard for jumping off into the pool.

So let's think about your dog, barking at something in the corner. It keeps on barking, and then suddenly, your dog jerks back and cowers. It whimpers and hides behind you, shivering. Now, as you look at that dark corner of the room, as you peer at it, you swear you can see the outline of something. Like a person, except so transparent as to be almost invisible. Are you really seeing it? Or is it just your imagination? The next thing you know, the thing in the corner turns around and walks into the wall...disappearing.

We can keep using this method for just about anything. Nothing's very frightening about a little girl. But there's something about a little girl ghost that gets under our skin. Nothing is scary about a mundane mirror. But what if you catch sight of your reflection not moving quite the same way you move? Dolls are welcome playthings. But what about the doll in the picture above? Just find a few things, twist them, and see what you come up with.

Remember, however, after the initial twist, you have to escalate the tension, to bring the big scare. And about that...well...that story will just have to wait for another time. A good magician never tells all of his secrets.

Some Ground Rules

2007-09-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

All right.

Now that we've talked about what horror is, I'll talk about one of my basics when it comes to writing horror. There are four levels or depths of horror. These four layers are very important for me when it comes to writing. Namely because I might hit all four of the various layers, but I know that my eventually goal should be the Fourth Layer. When you write, you want your work to hit the reader in their spiritual center. Not on their skin, where they forget about it an hour later.

The Four Layers of Horror
The first layer of horror is what I call Physical Horror. Physical Horror is basically the most basic of frights. This is basically the "gross-out" fear that Stephen King talks about in Danse Macabre. It's that fear that you get when you see a mutilated body or a splatter of blood.

The reason I call this Physical Horror is because this kind of scare that hits you in your gut. It makes you say, "gross!" However, that's all this kind of horror can do. It makes you a little queasy, but we can get away from the horror by simply turning our heads. So this level of horror is fairly weak.

Important to note: It can be effective if used correctly. For example, it's kind of gross to see a mutilated body, sure. But what if it's the mutilated bodies of everyone you are friends with at work? And they're all piled up on the inside of your car, and you were just about to go home and celebrate your birthday with them? Ah...now we have a little Physical Horror with some meaning. That's when it really works.
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The second layer of horror is something I call Emotional Horror. This is the fear of when someone puts you in immediate fear for your safety or well-being. I call it Emotional Horror, because it's what gets the raw emotions and adrenaline pumping. For example, if a maniac with a chain saw comes running after you in a warehouse, that's Emotional Horror.

However, it's still a fairly weak fear, because even if you are in immediate fear for your life, you can at least confront the fear and understand it. Sure, it might be a guy with a chain saw, but at least you can still think about how to stop him. You can look for something to fight back. You can try to outwit him, somehow.

Important to note: This is the same kind of fear that you might have in combat in an RPG. Sure, there might be a big scary monster right in front of you, but if you can roll your dice or cast spells at it, you get the sensation that there's at least something you can do against the threat.
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Next on our list is Intellectual Horror. Intellectual Horror is the fear you experience when something is left to your imagination. Let's say that you are out grocery shopping. Then, your girlfriend calls you. Suddenly, you can tell that she's crying. The next thing you hear is a strange voice saying, "Your girl has beautiful eyes. Too bad she's not going to be needing them anymore." Then, the caller hangs up.

Immediately, you're left wondering...what the hell is going on? Who's got my girlfriend? Oh my God, are they at the house? Is she kidnapped? Is this some sick joke?

These unanswered questions create some of the worst horror experiences known - the unknown factor. I call this kind of fear Intellectual Horror because it preys upon your intelligence and imagination.
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The final layer of horror is the grand-daddy of them all. It's what I like to call Spiritual Horror. The reason I call this type of fear Spiritual Horror is because it hits us in our spiritual center. It means that we've discovered something so terrible that it turns out whole world upside down. A great example of this is the news of the launch of Sputnik, which is discussed above.

The greatest horror movies of all time, always have a moment of Spiritual Horror. When Jack Torrence in The Shining discovers that he's "always been the caretaker" of the hotel, and that he's doomed to repeat history. When the investigator in the The Sixth Sense realizes that he, himself is a ghost. All these are examples of the fear generated when our world is turned upside down.

Spiritual Horror is big. Let's look at the grocery shopping incident for example. Your girlfriend calls you. She's crying. You hear a voice say, "Your girl has beautiful eyes. Too bad she's not going to be needing them anymore." You race home and discover that your girlfriend's eyes have been cut from her face. She's screaming bloody murder. But you realize something. There's no one at the house. There's no one who could have gotten in. The doors are locked. In fact, the only bloody knife around is in your girlfriend's hand. And you realize...she cut out her own eyes. It was her voice over the phone the whole time. And now...you hear a strange voice in your head. The voice is telling you that you need to cut out your own eyes as well.

Important to note: It's hard to get to this layer of horror. Why? Because you have to really build up a lot of trust with your audience.

Ground Rules

2007-09-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

So what is this? It's a personal blog on horror and writing. It's about horror writing, horror movies, horror video games. But it's also about creative writing, getting published, and role-playing games. Finally, this is about Witch Hunter: The Invisible World, which is a horror role-playing game, and what it took to create this wonderful piece of horror/swashbucklikng.

All right. Let's set up some ground rules, right?

First of all: What the heck is horror?
As many of you already know, horror a dread sense of realization. It's that terrible moment when you make a discovery that you didn't want to make. When you finally put all the clues together and understand something is true that you don't want to be true.

Stephen King's classic example of true horror in his book Danse Macbre is the moment when Sputnik was launched. For King, he remembers that day because he was in the movie theater and the film he was watch was actually stopped so that the manager could deliever the news to the audience.

For Americans, that moment was a huge shot the gut because it represented the idea that the U.S. wasn't on top any more. We no longer led the technology curve. Someone else was in space before us. And the people who were in space weren't the nicest of people towards us.

But let's look at a more personal example, shall we?

Let's say you come home to your lovely wife. You go upstairs and hear the shower running. You grin to yourself and get this really hysterical idea to give her a little scare. Maybe flirt with her in the shower a bit.

You open the door to the bathroom. And then you see it...a long trail of blood on the floor. It's not a gesyer. It's just a long, trickle, dividing the tile of your bathroom as vividly as a sharpie line. You follow the crooked signature to the shower, and see someone's wrist dangling upon the edge of the tub....

That moment in which you see the blood. That moment in which you see the hand, is the very moment in which you come to realize something absolutely terrible has happened. Right when you put two and two together, that is horror.

All right. Tomorrow, I'll lay out the second set of ground rules: The four layers of horror. Then, I'll talk about how I scare people.