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| You folks, probably. |
There comes a time in every blog's life when it must attempt one of the many traditional blog topics that have been done to utter death. You know the ones. "Fixing the Thief", for example, is practically a rite of passage into Blog-Adult-Hood. "Overloading Encounter Die", that's a good one. Eventually, we all find ourselves passionately describing our preferred method of "Running a Hexcrawl." Today I find myself prompted to partake of one of these well-trod discussions, in the form of listing my personal Appendix N.
"Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading" is a section of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons DM's Guide, featuring a list of fictional works that inspired Gary Gygax in his production of the game. The original list included such titles as Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Barbarian" novels, Jack Vance's "The Dying Earth", and various works of H.P. Lovecraft's "Cthulu" mythos. For decades, nerds intrigued by Gary Gygax's imagination and the drive could use this list of Authors and titles to begin their own journey down the same path that produced the staggeringly creative Dungeons and Dragons game. Don't get me wrong, a number of titles on said list are good works of fiction, but the hero worship of Gygax himself has lead to the Appendix N becoming something of a holy text in some circles. A structured reading list of books you can absorb to follow in Gary's own footsteps! Wow!
(I pause to make a jerking hand motion I shan't describe further)
When it comes to modern TTRPG, the term "Appendix N" is simply shorthand for "List of Other Things that Inspired Me and Might Inspire You". My favorite such list is found in Claymore's Adventure Module, "The Martial Cult of Blood Knight Gaius", and includes a book, a movie, AND a specific music track from an album! We are not limited to only referencing to the written word, but media as a whole! Revolutionary. Today, as part of Traverse Fantasy's Blog Bandwagon, I have prepared for you a non-exhaustive list of my own inspirations, so that one day, when I make it big, you too can follow in my grand footsteps and learn how the Master grew to become the creative visionary you adore.
(more jerking hand motions)
Sonic Adventure (Sega Dreamcast, 1998/1999)
I've been asked to expand upon what Sonic Games are the best for ttrpg inspiration before, and its pretty much just this one. Like don't get me wrong, I firmly believe we can and should take inspiration and lessons from all media we consume for our elfgames, but as a text to study explicitly for the purpose of acquiring useful skills? Yeah, this one.
Sonic Adventure is, even in it's most stable and visually pleasing (read: modded) form, a game that feels cobbled together. Sonic Team didn't fully understand how to make a Sonic the Hedgehog game in 3D, and this title also had to double as a showcase for the then brand new Dreamcast console's features. It's a game that tries to take the best elements of the previous 2D Platforming Sonic Quadrology and make it work with an added axis. You've probably heard the Internet's opinion of how it panned out.
I find my opinion on the thing waxes and wanes whether I'm experiencing it as a player or as a designer. I can clearly see the -intent- in a number of choices made by Sonic Team, while still disliking the end experience of those decisions. Let me give you an example.
In Sonic CD's first act, Palmtree Panic, there are a number of ramps that switch the player's perspective of Sonic from the side to top-down. He rushes straight up what appears to be a flat wall before being jettisoned off the top. Neat. Playing this set-piece feels cool because you go flying and then have to control where you land, deciding whether or not to aim for the tallest point or to try and travel as far as you can while you have airtime. But something fans have noticed, if not when the game released, then certainly as the internet allowed for the sharing of neat video game trivia, is that halfway up said ramp, the game's 2D Sky box flips upside down. The ramp isn't a ramp. It's an approximation of a 3D Loop in a 2D game. Once you notice it, you can't un-notice it, and the experience is completely re-contextualized! This visual is very simple to put into Sonic CD, because there is a very specific sequence of events that would ever make it visible to the player- they would 1. Have to choose to enter one of the ramps, and 2. Travel up that ramp high enough for the predetermined "flip" in the level's skybox graphic to appear. All the devs had to do was make sure any of the flipped part of the skybox doesn't show up anywhere else in the level proper.
In Sonic Adventure's first level, Emerald Coast, there is a section with a wall run leading into a tunnel carved into the stone of the islet you're racing across. If Sonic makes it to said tunnel with enough speed to also successfully make the wall run, he'll do three loops up and around the tunnel walls before blasting out the other end and jettisoning off into the air. Neat. Unfortunately, playing this set-piece doesn't feel nearly as cool as it should for a couple of reasons. The initial Wall run section is fine; it requires the player to maintain their speed and angle in order to not slip off it and be forced to use the ground route across the islet, but the moment Sonic gets close enough to the tunnel, all control is taken away from the player. A speed booster immediately brings him to top speed, and controller inputs are disabled for the duration of the Tunnel. I can understand why this was the choice made; Sonic Team wanted cool set-pieces like they'd included in the previous games- but in this fully modeled and 3 Dimensional space, there's only one way to guarantee the player experiences them when the designers wanted them to appear in the level. They were still mostly rewards for player choice, but the trade off was taking player agency away while Sonic does the stuff players wanted to see Sonic doing, which soured the experience.
This push and pull of wanting large, intriguing set pieces and spectacles while respecting player freedom is an important lesson for any TTRPG. You've probably heard of terms like "railroading" before, where players are forced down a set path regardless of their choices. Many a DM has fallen in love with the idea of a story that happens Just So and tried their darndest to ensure it happens, player agency be damned. Sonic Adventure is a series of really cool ideas cobbled together with guardrails to make sure you don't miss them- and that's as much a strength as it is a flaw. But it IS a strength! The cool shit in Sonic Adventure is, without fail, objectively cool! Figuring out how to include them without yanking the controller from the player's hands is a worthwhile aim, in both video and elf games.
Digimon Adventure (Toei Animation, 1999)
I may not post about it as much as Sonic, but I'm a BIG Digimon fan. The American dub was the first anime I really got into; though I had to catch up with re-runs of the first 3 seasons in between the then airing fourth. It wouldn't be until I was in high school that I finally gained access to the original Japanese run of Digimon Adventure and it's sequel, Digimon Adventure 02 and enjoyed the series as a whole in one go. It's a fun Isekai slash Shounen slash Monster Collector slash Coming of Age story if you're into any of those things.
Something you may notice from the image I've chosen above is how many characters are shoved into the frame. Hikari, the kid in yellow next to the cat, shows up 3 quarters of the way through as sort of a Green Ranger situation, but the rest of the cast is present from episode one. Considering the average run time of a single episode is 23 or so minutes, and a good chunk of that runtime is for stock footage transformation sequences, you'd assume that none of these kids get any good screen time. And you'd be wrong! Digimon Adventure is a masterclass at sharing the spotlight among it's ensemble cast, with every character getting development in and out of their focused arcs. Despite it's Saturday morning, monster of the week format, Digimon Adventure makes sure that every character in the cast changes and is changed by their relationships to each other.
Spotlight sharing is a stumbling block for many in TTRPGs. Unlike the 52 episode + 2 movie order that Digimon Adventure got to spread it over, we have no good way of knowing how long we have with the characters at the table. Making sure everyone feels like they got their time to shine is a challenge. But framing it as a challenge to win is a mistake, I think. If the spotlight is treated as a finite resource to battle over, the players will naturally start acting as such. For my money, prompting my players to become the trigger for another player's big moment has worked wonders. Instead of a single spotlight that only one character can stand in, these moments become stories in which one character directly supported and led the other to a dramatic and impactful development. How the supporting characters do this then becomes buildup to their own moments, in which the characters they've impacted will surely do the same.
I make it sound like an easy one size fits all solution, but this is as much a learned skill as anything. It requires all players feel empowered to be the supporter when it's not their focus, as well as take the space they need when it is their time to shine. Prompting can only go so far, as inevitably some characters will simply be louder than others- Digimon Adventure even stumbled with this in it's later third when it focused more heavily on two of the now 8 person cast for the purposes of selling toys. But when I find myself struggling with this, I still cast my thoughts back to Digimon Adventure.
Sandland (Akira Toriyama, 2000)
Akira Toriyama needs no introduction, nor am I the first to write about how his worlds and characters are inspiring for ttrpgs specifically. I could very well put his combined works as the entirety of this Appendix and the lot of you would surely nod sagely and move on with your lives. I purposefully only picked one of his manga for this list, however, and I knew my choice had to be that of SandLand.
SandLand is a fairly short manga, only filling a single tankobon volume and originally running in Shonen Jump for all of 4 months back in 2000. The story it tells starts out as a generic road trip adventure, but quickly reveals the guilt of it's deutoragonist at having participated in the crimes of the fascist human government that rent the world asunder in it's greed to control the greatest resource available- water. It's mere 14 chapters speed-runs the shounen adventure format, revealing hidden villains as quickly as previous ones are dispatched, blasting through the development of it's characters and their relation to each other, and wraps everything up with a nice little bow at the end. It also only exists because Toriyama wrote a short story about a Man and a Tank, and everything sorta sprawled from there.
There's two lessons that I think can be extracted here, the first and most visibly obvious is the art of Getting To The Good Stuff. Sandland wasn't written to become another long running series, and while it gives plenty of time to goofs and gaffs, endearing the reader to it's characters, it also noticeably cuts fat to streamline the rest of the process. This story comes at the tail end of Toriyama's mangaka career, after he's gotten all the experience of, let me just check my notes, WRITING DRAGON BALL to understand what makes an adventure story work. Some twists, especially some later reveals feel like they come out of left field, but both I and Toriyama it seems would like to ask: Who Cares? The Son of Satan himself is having a punch out with a giant evil bug man. The secret Government Conspiracy has a second, Secreter Government Conspiracy underneath it. The Tanks look cool and shoot each other a lot. Explain it however you want because that's just cool.
The second and less obvious pull has to be the political overtones of the work. This is a world where war has ravaged almost everything, where resources are hoarded by the elite, who protect their interests with violence. It's an exaggerated allegory that, frankly, is understandable by almost everyone below a certain tax bracket. I groked it pretty quick the first time I read Sandland, and while this may just be a facet of my incredibly sheltered childhood growing up, it was the first time I'd read a story so blatantly place capitalism and the systems of oppression that affected the people around me as the unquestionable villains of the story. That the response the story posits is acceptable to such villainy is 'Blow them up with tanks and your inner demon power what makes you fight good' probably had a larger effect on my psyche than I'd like to admit in writing. I'm not saying Capitalism has to be the big bad of every adventure; we have Brennan Lee Mulligan for that, but I am saying that tapping into the very real problems we face in the real world is the quickest way to get people invested in your fictional worlds. Giving your fantasy a contextual tie to relatable struggles will do half the work of selling that fantasy for you.
Sandland has an RPG and CGI Animated Movie now, neither of which I have taken the time to enjoy- both expand the original world and story slightly to better fit the needs of the two mediums, and I want to sit with my memory of the original being my only experience with the book for just a little bit longer. But I'm told they're good, and keep the spirit of Toriyama's work well, what with it beginning production before his death and, presumably, featuring some level of his participation. I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who's even passively enjoyed his work.
Super Sentai Series (Toei, 1975-Present)
I actually have an unfinished first draft of a post about this one specifically. Lets see if I can condense it into something more useful here so I can put off finishing the full post for a bit longer.
There two things I pull from Super Sentai when I run elf-games, and no, it's not summoning giant robots or doing over the top karate yells when I describe someone punching someone else (though, those are two very cool things that I should be doing more when I run). Super Sentai, which you'll probably recognize more from it's sister show, Power Rangers, is a live action super hero television series for young children in Japan. It features a team of 5 or so heroes in similar costumes that fight monsters (read: people in rubber suits) and features a lot of pyrotechnics and practical effects in order to keep costs down. It's goofy at it's best, and watching it as an adult is the most fun when you can point out exactly where the wires are. By the very nature of it's medium, it tries to do a lot of fantastical stuff with as real their effects budget will allow, which leads to some very interesting artistic decisions.
In Samurai Sentai Shinkenger (2009), there is a ritual that takes place every single episode. The Heroes' entrance is supported by their cadre of faceless servants, who set up banners and flags around them, revealing the team to the Monster to the sound of drums and flutes. A few words are exchanged between the opposing sides and then... The Henshin.
Symbols drawn in the air, wrapping around their bodies, their Helmets forming around them before all five snap attention to the viewer while the music swells. The Camera faces the Red Ranger head on as he introduces himself. It changes angle for every ranger after him, slightly altering the experience for what is a repetitious action as all 5 get their shot. Finally, as a whole, they pose and declare their shared goal, to go forth (and presumably stab a guy a lot). This ritual happens every episode for 52 real world weeks, give or take a movie or special crossover, and you'd think it would get boring really quickly. Super Sentai has been around long enough to know better. Just like how the original ritual shifts ever so slightly for each successive ranger in posing, phrasing, and camera angle, individual episodes purposefully play around with the make up and context of said ritual. Is it an episode where 1 character is otherwise disposed? The ritual has to continue without them, changing the pacing noticeably. One character is having a focus episode? Either they head the ritual, or the others skip it entirely so said focus character has the entire sequence to themselves. If the episode is heavy on dialogue and doesn't have the run time for the full sequence, the rangers will perform the very first steps of the ritual, cut to commercial, then return having completed it off-screen.
The importance of the ritual is in it's emotional shorthand. When it can be performed uninterrupted or abridged, its a declaration of the heroes' confidence. When it's rushed or done during a battle, it feels tense and like the outcome is uncertain. When the lead is given to someone who normally stands to the side, it's a triumphant success that signals that character's growth. Seeing how the ritual shifts and changes episode to episode is fantastic storytelling without needing to say a thing. After 5 episodes it becomes familiar. After 10 episodes, it's been lampshaded or jossed enough that it can be comedic or tragic as needed by the plot. Adding members, removing members, changing the graphics so that it's Christmas themed; the sky is the limit.
In Shinkenger, there is a part of the story where the Red ranger is replaced, as the true heir of the family he believed himself to be the head of reclaims her birthright and pushes him to the side. The remaining members, as Samurai bound to the family, struggle with the reality that their beloved leader is no longer in charge, and they have a duty to humanity to fight alongside this complete stranger. They follow her into battle and, as always, with full aplomb, perform the ritual. Everything is accurate, the posing, the phrases, the banners and flags. But the music is played in a minor key. They've skipped sections of the music. They've played a character's personal theme instead of the music. But once and ONLY once do they play the song in an off-key. The impact of this tiny change says so much about the cast and their difficulty adjusting to this new reality, and when the team fails to defeat the villain of the weak due to their struggles working as a team under this new leader, the failure feels more powerful for it. The audience could tell this wasn't going to go well, even if everyone performed the steps of the dance perfectly.
In elfgames, we have a lot of rituals that we expect and enjoy. Rolling for initiative. A Wizard casting Fireball. The all important roar of joy when someone rolls a natural 20. These are different from Rules, I must stress, though there is significant overlap. The key is to never Break a Rule but to Bend a Ritual. An interaction your player expected to go one way very clearly goes another. A description of a spell you've said multiple times before is worded just off-key enough to be noticed. A cool character moment shorthands the longer motions you normally let fully play out. Stuff like that. It needs to be used sparingly lest it lose it's impact, but when it hits... oooh, it's delicious.
There is a second thing but now that I've written this, I imagine I'll need to save it for the full blogpost I never finished lol.
Garfield (Jim Davis, 1977-Present)
Garfield wasn't made to be funny. Jim Davis, over his decades as a cartoonist, has never shied away from admitting that the formation of the Lasagna cat was an attempt to create a marketable figure, not a comedic masterpiece. There are a handful of repetitive tropes that have become staples of the character; Jon is dumb, Mondays suck, and Garfield is fat, but in that repetition comes something I find interesting. Garfield's continued success posits that the premise doesn't have to be novel, nor the punchline very good, if the audience supplies their own joke. The magic, and the devil, are in the details.
Take this strip, printed August 23 2005. Three panels, one word bubble, only 4 pieces of bespoke art as there's plenty of copy-paste editing happening here. Garfield walks in to Odie in a Situation of which there is no context. He looks up beyond the frame towards something the audience cannot see. He leaves the situation, commenting dryly, that whatever the Situation is, it has to do with the Ceiling Fan. This is not a joke. It has the scaffolding of a joke. There is a joke implied that is much funnier than what actually happens in the script, but we don't get it. The joke is left to the reader to imagine and in doing so, creates a funnier situation than Jim or his staff could ever invent. "Odie gets his ears stuck in a ceiling fan" is a Looney Tunes sight gag that wouldn't elicit a single chuckle out of a newspaper strip reader. "Garfield casually ignores whatever Looney Tunes sight gag Odie has found himself in," though? That's funny. "Garfield doesn't even bother to clue the audience in on what the sight gag is, dropping the barest of context before removing himself from the shenanigan entirely?" That's INSPIRED.
There is an old piece of advice for tabletop games that I've never seen codified into a specific quote, but still find it useful. It goes something like "When the players ask if one plot point is connected to another plot point made sessions ago, you nod and smile and let them think you a genius, even if you never even considered the connection between those points." Putting things out of sight makes the players consider what might be over there. Mentioning concepts or scenarios outside the range of the player's reach makes the world feel more alive. Leaving space for implication and imagination fill doesn't just give you a chance to rest and enjoy the game, it also leads to a better joke than you ever could have written on your own.
But wait, there's more!
There are honestly a ton of other titles I could include in a fully exhaustive list- Dragon Ball, One Piece, Homestuck. A lifetime's worth of art has slowly built me up into the author and designer I am today. Maybe someday, I'll do a follow up to this post where I separate the disparate media types into their own expanded lists... But that's a post for another day.
Until Next Time,
Farmer Gadda
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