Subject: (urth) Wolfe RPGs

From: Joel Priddy <jpriddy at saturn.vcu.edu>
Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 14:18:41 +0000

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

So I was looking at the web page for the New Sun GURPS game,
and am very curious as to how it's going. I admit that my first
reaction was horror that anyone would even make the attempt. Then
I saw that our very own mantis was at the wheel.

  Back in the old days, when the internet didn't have visuals and I
was in school, a friend of mine and I were given a big chunk of
server in order to run a virtual-community project. We were
looking at MUSHes at one point, and briefly (very, very briefly)
considered a New Sun themed MUSH. One reason we decided against
it was that (and this may sound tired to any one who has read
enough reviews of Wolfe over the years) the aspect that makes
those
books mesmerizing has more to do with the style and the
atmosphere than the specific attributes of, say, an alzebo or a
destrier. And since you can't quantify style, you won't be able to
maintain it with all (or perhaps any) of the participants. And
without the style to lay over New Sun, a MUSH based on it would
look a lot like a MUSH based on Gamma World, or even Thundar the
Barbarian.
  Of course, we didn't have nearly the understanding of the New
Sun's environs that mantis has. A major part of that "atmosphere"
we appreciated so much was a sense of wonder at all the
opaque phrases and names. This is the level on which we (or at
least I) was reading the New Sun on: given evocative but largely
uncommunicative language, one's own imagination filled in all the
details, creating a fantastic landscape that is also highly
personal for each reader.
  (I was neck deep in communication theory at the time, so this
idea of noncommunication in order to spark the audience's
imagination really appealed to me, and perhaps I leapt too quickly 
to ascribe everything Wolfe
was doing to the single explanation of "closure." Just as I now
have to resist explaining everything away as Catholicism)

  Later, as I read more about the New Sun books, I learned that
in fact the language did represent specific ideas, that there was
an idea behind each bizarrely-named creature or weapon or
character. The term "destrier" isn't supposed to merely conjure
up an exotic or alien war horse, but is a
genetically-engineered animal with very detailed attributes. So
maybe my reservations regarding the ability to diagram the Urth
for RPG purposes were misplaced.

So, What I'm trying to get around to is: how's it going? Is the
translation from novel to RPG working? Is the style, spirit and
philosophy surving the process? How many character points does it
cost to wax melancholy any given moment?

-cephalothorax-

PS Now, while I considered New Sun an impossible task, the entire
time I was reading Long Sun, almost from page one, I was
translating it into GURPS format in my the back of my head. This
is an old habit that I'm sure lots of people here can relate to.

---

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 19:43:00 +0000

Reply:  Item #5008537 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#

cephalothorax,

Thank you for your interest in "GURPS Book of the New Sun"!  As for
how it is going as a project, the two easy answers are "slowly" and
"please tell us: download the (second) draft, look over it, and send
comments to SJGames and/or me."

Re: capturing the mood as key to the experience, I agree with you.
(Urth as a "Gamma World" variant is an especially astute call--bonus
points for "Thundar the Barbarian."  It is as if you are reading my
mind!)  If we look at how "Original D&D" was actually played (nevermind
for the moment the issue of what was published and how it was presented,
etc.), it is hard to believe that Jack Vance's THE DYING EARTH or
Tolkien's TLOTR had any sort of influence.  Or that =any= "classics"
of fantasy fiction did.  In fact, the chaotic ooze had no real
parentage and, imho, is primarily responsible for computer arcade
games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and all their more "serious/blood
thirsty" descendants <g>.

However, the RPG industry has been moving ever closer to issues of
style =and= substance.  "Recent" vampire-mania LARPs, where your
local goths get out and literally "do it" out on the streets after
dusk, show that "mood" and "context" are both valued commodities.
Also the rise, however feeble, of "storytelling" games leads away
from the elements appropriated by the computer arcade games.

And there has been a tradition of author-sanctioned
games-based-on-fiction, too (as opposed to the r/i/p/o/f/f/ "homage"
scenario first pioneered by the first edition of "Gods, Demigods, &
Heroes" which "borrowed" material from the works of Moorcock and
Lovecraft).

Having writ that, still--given the improbability of a "perfect" game,
one cannot ensure that the players will play it in the perfect way.
And likewise one can imagine people playing a quintissentially
Vancean adventure from such an obviously flawed game as "Original
D&D."

Chaosium's "Call of Cthulhu," an excellent rpg based upon fiction, is
a good reference point: how can the referee create the suspense and
chills of a Lovecraft story when the players have knowingly signed up
for a Lovecraftian adventure?  (How to keep the usual gaming clowning
around from turning it into "Ghostbusters"?)  With this kind of
self-knowing, can a true "Lovecraft" story take place as an
adventure, or will it be more like "Prohibition Era: X-Files"?  (Granted,
the characters =all= must die or go insane, preferably both.)

Re: "how many character points does it cost to wax melancholy?" LOL.
In truth I've added a Fugue State mental disadvantage for those who
have Severian-brand Eidetic Memory (tm), for those unpleasant times
when you'd secretly rather be lost in memory (roll for hours) instead
of dealing with the muck of the moment.

Finally, this annecdote: when Neil Gaiman heard about the project he
said (words to this effect), "How neat--a game where everybody tries to
figure out who his own mother is." <g>

=mantis=