truly excellent stuff, mister g--much thanks for posting these!  

Quote from: beeber;465268truly excellent stuff, mister g--much thanks for posting these!  

Thank you very much!  Here, have another:

11. Inside the Black House

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality."
   - Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

In his essay on the unheimlich, Sigmund Freud theorizes that things that resemble objects, people, and places that are familiar to us, yet have noticeable and nagging differences, hold the power to unsettle and terrify.  Uncanny things are the opposite of the homely—that is, the opposite of the welcoming and reassuring home and hearth.  Since the heart of Weird Fantasy is turning the familiar, heimlich world on its head, let's steal a page from Freud and make the old familial seat a place of horror.

The Setting:
The characters are drawn into an old, dark house next to a still lake.  Perhaps one of the characters has inherited the house as part of a bequest; perhaps the characters simply awake inside the house with no memory of how they got there.  Once they are in, however, the front door refuses to open and the windows remain closed no matter what the characters do; they can't be broken down by force, magic, or divine will.  The only way out is to solve the house's mystery.  

The house is unthinkably vast and full of twisting hallways, random staircases, hidden passages, and confusing rooms—it appears to have been designed at the request of a madmen.  The house cannot be fully explored in a day or in a week; it is a landscape unto itself and of a size far larger than it has any logical right to be.  Above all, though, the house is not quiet; stairs creek, floorboards groan.  And sometimes the house screams.  Sometimes it speaks with a whispering voice.  Words and messages will appear scrawled on mirrors.  This is a house with a tale to tell.

The house's tale is wrapped up in its history.  Perhaps it was formerly the home of a powerful black magician who unleashed powers that still permeate the house's walls.  Or could it be that a madwoman was prematurely buried in the familial crypt and her spirit still haunts the premises?  Bit by bit, piece by piece, the characters will need to assemble that history from disparate fragments; their very lives will depend on sifting the past and realizing what the house wants of them.

The Themes:
Claustrophobia—enclose, entrap, and bury the characters.  Put them in narrow corridors where the use of their most powerful weapons—axes, sword, bows, etc.—is impossible.  Make them squeeze through tiny portals to escape hordes of hungry, gnawing rats.  Make sure that they fear their environment as much as any foe.

The Past Never Dies—something horrific happened with the walls of the house and it is up to the characters to set things right.  Use portends, prophecies, scraps of discovered information in old tomes, and supernatural manifestations to make them seek resolution with urgency.

Not Every House is a Home—play with the characters' pasts by presenting distorted and uncanny versions of the objects and people that make them recall their lives before they entered the house.  For example, if one of the characters has a wife, perhaps one of the servants in the house could be her twin—save for one difference that turns the woman into an unheimlich reminder of the world he is now estranged from.

The Foes:
The Residents—the house is home to a strange, reclusive family of an ancient bloodline.  The characters will only catch glimpses of the family as they scurry away to disappear into secret passageways.  The nature of the residents should remain a mystery until the ultimate scene of the adventure or campaign; of course, this doesn't preclude the residents from harrying the characters along the way.

The Unquiet Dead—the house is haunted by specters who demand satisfaction from beyond the grave.  These ghosts might alternate between raging against the characters with undead fury and pleading with them to locate their bones to lay them to rest.  The stronger spirits may even be able to possess the characters to use their bodies as vehicles of revenge.

The Servants—while the residents of the house might remain mysterious for a time, the character surely will encounter their servants, a race of hunch-backed, deformed butlers, maids, and cooks that live to carry out their master's orders.  The cruelest of the servants will have been given the jobs of jailer, torturer, or executioner.

The Thing in the Lake—once the characters free themselves from the house, they may have to resolve the plot they've uncovered at the lake.  What will rise up from the depths to meet them?  Will it be the corpses of the men and women sacrificed to the residents' dark gods or a long-necked serpent summoned by their eldritch rites?

The Soundtrack:
Inside the Black House demands a soundtrack that is spectral, tragic, and manic.

Attrition, All Mine Enemys Whipsers—spectral ambient music based on the real-life crimes of Mary Ann Cotton, a Victorian woman who poisoned her children and husbands with arsenic.

Coil, Love's Secret Domain—experimental industrial that manages to be both warm and unsettling.

Devil Doll, The Girl Who Was...Death—epic dark prog rock blood opera.

Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows, La Chambre d'Echo—the sounds of a haunted sanitarium.

Literary and Cinematic Influences:
Alejandro Amenabar's The Others, Brad Anderson's Session 9, Poppy Z. Brite's Drawing Blood and "Entertaining Mr. Orton," Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, Charles Dickens's Bleak House and "The Ghost in the Bride's Chamber," Thomas Hardy's Turn of the Screw, William Hope Hodgson's The Casebok of Carnaki the Ghost-Finder, Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, M.R. James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Caitlin R. Kiernan's Silk, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas, Tanith Lee's Dark Dance, Paul Leni's The Cat and the Canary, H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House," Toni Morrisson's Beloved, Meryn Peake's Titus Groan, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," Bram Stoker's "The Judge's House," Lars von Trier's The Kingdom, Sarah Waters's Affinity, and James Whale's The Old Dark House, Oscar Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost."

Gaming Inspirations:
Castle Drachenfels (for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play), Castle Amber (for D&D).

Miscellaneous Inspirations:
Aleister Crowley, Sigmund Freud's The Uncanny, the Loch Ness Monster, Nicholas Royle's The Uncanny, the Winchester House.

12. The Pit Stop in Hell

"Who will survive, and what will be left of them?"
tagline from the Texas Chain Saw Massacre posters

The Pit Stop in Hell isn't meant to be a campaign setting in itself; rather, it is a micro-setting to be used in-between the characters traveling from point A to point B.  Along the same, something happens to sidetrack them from their destination—perhaps their horses are suddenly lamed by caltrops scattered across the road or perhaps their wagon is mysteriously sabotaged at night.  Of course, just then it begins to piss down rain.  But there's a lantern lit at a house off the beaten path.  The characters can seek help and shelter there, right?

Draw them in and let the butchery begin.

The Setting:
A ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere.  The house itself is full of secret passages, hidden rooms, and perilous traps.  The basement of the house is little more than a prison for whoever falls into the Family's clutches.  The house is essentially a dungeon that a family lives in.  There are untended fields of grain behind the house, perfect for a chase scene in which the characters hide from and attempt to dodge a pursuing madmen armed with an ax.  If they characters run far enough they will reach a plundered cemetery where the Family takes all their meals—here they will discover the final fate of the Family's captives.

The Themes:
Gore is God—if you've ever wanted a chance to indulge in lurid, splatterpunk descriptions, this is the place.  Feel free to get as gross as you like; the closer you come to verbally outdoing a Cannibal Corpse album the better.

Out-savaging the savage—the only way for the characters to survive their trek into The Pit Stop in Hell is to become as vile and bloodthirsty as their opponents.  There is no running away; there is only descending into madness and bloodlust.  How far will they compromise their beliefs to survive?

The Foes:
The Family—inbred backwoods psychos, one and all.  They love to murder, they're cannibals, they possess a variety of disease-ridden blades and bludgeons, and they seem impervious to pain.  Make sure to differentiate them.  Here's some common types: the Patriarch (or Matriarch), the decrepit head of the family who calls the shots; the Thinker, the planner and setter of traps; the Hulking Brute, large and physically powerful; the Feral Woman, she oozes animals sexuality, but like the black widow spider she kills after she mates; the Madman, even the rest of the family is afraid of him.  It goes without saying that the Family doesn't necessarily have to be fully human; they could be ghouls, mutants, or worse.

The Broken Ones—the family loves to experiment on their hardiest victims, performing crude operations that stitch them together into new, uncanny forms.  Of course, the process of becoming a medical monstrosity drives the Broken Ones insane.  The Family keeps them as pets, watchdogs, and bloodhounds to hunt down anyone who escapes them.

Traps—while the family lives in squalor, they are adept at creating sophisticated traps.  Traps such as pits, guillotines, and exploding shrapnel grenades are secreted throughout their house and across their property.  The world of The Pit Stop in Hell is one big, mechanized slaughterhouse.

The Family's Pets—no dire wolves or mastiffs will suffice here.  Give the Family something unusual they can use to hunt down any getaways.  Mutant crocodiles, if the Family lives on the bayou.  Trained bloodhawks, if they live in the woods.  Disease-mouthed komodo dragons, if they dwell in the desert. Thrice-headed bears, if they are a mountain people.

The Soundtrack:
The Pit Stop in Hell requires a soundtrack that is brutal, loud, and gut-churning.

Grinderman, s/t and Grinderman II—psychotronic and psychosexual; the sound of a million exploitation films all playing at once.

The Misfits, Collection I and Collection II—grinning, b-movie horror punk.

Murder by Death, Red of Tooth and Claw—murderous parables about the cheapness of human life.

O'Death, Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin—roughshod alternative country; primitive hootin' and holerin'.

Literary and Cinematic Inspirations:
Alexandre Aja's Haute Tension, John Boorman's Deliverance, Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game," Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, Xavier Gens's Frontier(s), Jean-Luc Goddard's Week End, Michael Haneke's Funny Games, Tobe Hooper's Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Eaten Alive, David Moreau and Xavier Palud's Them, H.G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau, Fabrice du Welz's Calvaire, The X-Files episode "Home," Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects.

Gaming Inspirations:
GURPS Horror and Kenneth Hite's Nightmares of Mine.

Miscellaneous Inspirations:
Ed Gein, home invasions, Sawney Bean.

I admire the notable effort you have made in this thread, and appreciate its presence here.  That said, as I pointed out in my brand spanking new review of the game, there's very little in the actual game that pushes me toward the "Weird fantasy" direction.  I can think of much more interesting things (to me) to do with the rules than trying to figure out what Weird Fantasy actually is and why I should play it (much less address its "themes").

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;465655I admire the notable effort you have made in this thread, and appreciate its presence here.  That said, as I pointed out in my brand spanking new review of the game, there's very little in the actual game that pushes me toward the "Weird fantasy" direction.

That's why I created the thread, actually.  I'm bring the literature I teach to the the goal of giving firm examples of what Weird Fantasy can look like.

QuoteI can think of much more interesting things (to me) to do with the rules than trying to figure out what Weird Fantasy actually is and why I should play it (much less address its "themes").

I plan on addressing this further in the pdf of this project, but I don't mean "themes" here in the storygame sense.  I'm going to advise against GMs bludgeoning the players with demands for strict adherence to theme; rather, I just see them as "window dressing" for immersion in genre and atmosphere.

13. Through the Looking Glass

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."
The Wizard of Oz

In the third act of Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses an exquisite change occurs in the tone and narrative direction of the movie.  The preceding two reels are a standard, if inventive and compelling, example of the Pit Stop in Hell.  However, as soon as Denise and Jerry are lowered into the underground lair beneath the cemetery they are truly through the looking glass—a fact slyly signaled by the Alice in Wonderland costume that the Firefly clan has dressed Denise in.  The rest of the movie makes good on that phantasmagoric descent; gone are the more overt aping of grindhouse and exploitation cinema cliches, and in their places the viewer gets an eyeful of surreal, disjointed nightmare imagery.  The fictive laws that govern the first two-thirds are suspended—the law of the Weird now holds court.

Through the Looking Glass aims to capture the power of that sudden and unexpected tonal shift.  As such, it isn't a great place to start a campaign.  After all, if the players don't have a familiar, comforting backdrop to yank away, then there isn't going to be much reaction to the change of mode.  Rather, think of Through the Looking Glass as a kind of capstone for a campaign that has begun to grow stale.  Perhaps the characters have put paid to the evils that lurk Behind the Facade of the Seaside Town and kept the Cold Northern Winds at bay.  They've claimed a few victories and made the world a less weird place.  What better way to re-invigorate there sense of wonder by stealing the characters away from the world they've become accustomed to and plunging them into a mirror image of it that is exotic, alien, and altogether Weird?  Whereas it is generally advised to mix the Weird with the mundane in your setting, Through the Looking Glass encourages you to go full-on Weird.  There's no going back from this and you can never go home again.

The Setting:
Pick a locale that your players are comfortable with, then run it through a funhouse mirror.  Add or take things away at random.  Make areas that were well-trodden and known byzantine and newly-complicated.  Take the characters the players interacted with and make them into twisted, barely recognizable caricatures of their old selves.  Whatever the "laws of physics" governing your game were, throw them out.  Borrow elements from surreal fiction and films and exoticized "Oriental" fantasy to emphasize the return of the Weird.  Oh, and wherever your game is set now has a labyrinth.  Everyone knows about the labyrinth; rumors about its nature abound, but no one agrees on who built it, why it exists, or what lies at its heart.

The Themes:
Everything you once knew is gone—unsettle the players by radically altering the game world they've come to expect.  Subvert their expectations and throw them from their comfort zone.  

The rule of law is absurd—steal a page of Kafka and expose the new workings of your world as ambiguous, bureaucratic, and arbitrary.  Those in power should have no right to it and less sense of what to do with it.  

Nothing seems real—make the world a gauzy, dream-like, hallucinogenic place.  Don't be afraid to flout the precepts of realism; this is a bad trip, not a subtle stroll through the uncanny.

The Foes:
The Rakshasa—man-eating spirits confined in the flesh of aristocratic cat-men.  The rakshasa and their ultimate goals should be inscrutable; forget getting a straight answer from them, as they are the servants of the Prince of Lies.  Also, you can forget about keeping yours plans secret from the rakshasa; the hordes of stray cats that prowl the streets act as their eyes and ears.  

The Mugwumps—vile insect men whose secretions act as a powerful hallucinogen that is traded openly on the gray market.  Mugwumps are muses gone sour; they hold the power to inspire great works of literature and art, but the price they exact is paid in shattered souls.  

The Howlers in the Wilderness—the supernatural predators that haunt the wilderness are heard, but seldom seen.  Their baleful howls warn of their approach, but what are they?  Are they ghuls who eternally hunger for human flesh or are they djinn who wish to capture and enslave men as chattel?  

The Larva Mages—mystical sages comprised of crawling insects in the shape of men.  They are wise and learned in the magical arts, but for what purpose do they walk amongst mankind?  It is said the for a price they can shape a man's flesh to make him pleasing to the eye.

The Soundtrack:
Through the Looking Glass requires a soundtrack that is lost in spires of incense and otherness.

Arcana, Le Serpent Rouge—Arabian-inspired exotic delights; decadent and unearthly.  

Dead Can Dance, Into the Labyrinth and Spirit Chaser—Eastern and world music influenced sonic journeys into the fantastical.  

Jaggery, Polyhymnia—prog-touched, many hued-splendor.

Visa, Maktub—a madcap musical passport to the Middle East.

Literary and Cinematic Inspirations:
The anonymous One Thousand and One Nights, Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland, Clive Barker's Weavewold, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, William Beckford's Vathek, William S. Burrough's Naked Lunch, Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Jim Henson's Labyrinth, William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland, Neil Gaiman's Stardust and Neverwhere, Nathan H. Juran's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony," Tanith Lee's Night's Master, Death's Master, and Delusion's Master, C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, H.P. Lovecraft's "The Nameless City," "The Cats of Ulthar," and "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath," David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Twin Peaks, Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique, Jan Svankmejer's Alice, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.

Gaming Inspirations:
Al-Qadim (for AD&D), Dungeonland (for AD&D), Everway, GURPS Arabian Nights, JAGS Wonderland, Lacuna, "City in Dust: Many-Columned Irem" (in Kenneth Hite's Suppressed Transmissions), Over the Edge, Talislanta, The Zorceror of Zo

Miscellaneous Inspirations:
Astral projection, The City of Brass, djinn, dream interpretations, ghuls, the Greek myth of the Cretan Minotaur, time travel.

As promised, the musing in this thread have been collected as a free fan supplement.  Here's what you get for the low, low cost of zero dollars:

- All of the setting sketches originally posted here, expanded with additional content (now with bonus spelling and grammar!)

- More Kickstart tables in case you come up blank for adventure ideas

- A Bestiary of examples monsters drawn from the setting sketches (a bestiary in LotFP?  revel in the blasphemy!)

- A 3d6 Random Weird Monster Generator for making monsters on the fly (with pictures of ACTUAL DICE!)

- Jeremy Duncan's awesome primer on Weird Fantasy gaming in the Classical Age (truly great stuff)

Where can you get this wondrous .pdf?  Here is a link to the pdf as a Google doc; here is a link to the pdf on Scribd.

If anyone wants to host this file, that's fine with me as long as it remains unchanged and attributed to its authors.  Enjoy!

Excellent, thanks!

Thanx a bunch Mister G, it's a well cool and weird companion you have written and gathered.The effort is greatly appreciated.

Wow!  Well done!  This is indeed a golden age.



-TGA

Excellent supp!

Thanks for the kinds words, everyone.  Hope you get some use out of it!