36 character types (extracted from Georges Polti's "The Art of Inventing Characters")

Georges Polti (1867-1946) compiled long classifications of different types of literary devices. His most famous book is "The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations", a description that was also taken as a prescription by future authors. He also did a similar work on character types, "The Art of Inventing Characters". In it, he outlines 36 types of literary characters.

36 you say?

THAT'S A D66 TABLE OF COURSE!

So I took the e-text of the 1922 English translation (available on archive.org!) and turned it into a random table. There are also freakin' subtables for each of the 36 entries, with a dozen or so types.

Warning: Mind, though: the source text is quite awful. It's essentialist, moralizing and misogynistic. It's naive in how the author thinks that a classification of things (including literary constructs) is the revelation of the true nature of the whole world, and a key to understanding human psychology.

Nevertheless, here's a random table!

Good for melodramatic RPGs?

			CHARACTERS
1	1	VESTA	The Pious
	2		The Wise
	3		The Faithful
	4	JUNO	The Jealous
	5		The Vengeful and Just
	6		The Strict and Severe
2	1	NEPTUNE	The Avaricious and Grasping
	2		The Despotic
	3		The Ambitious
	4	MINERVA	The Daring and Romantic
	5		Adventurers
	6		The Eloquent and Boastful
3	1	VENUS	The Seductive and Seducing
	2		Courtesans
	3		The Vicious
	4	APOLLO	The Impassioned
	5		The Chimerical
	6		The Intellectual
4	1	MERCURY	The Shrewd
	2		The Traitorous
	3		The Knavish
	4	JUPITER	The Arrogant and Insolent
	5		The Haughty and Dignified
	6		The Majestic and Protecting
5	1	CERES	The Generous and Prodigal
	2		The Gay and Sensual
	3		The Vulgar and Practical
	4	VULCAN	The Earnest and Serious
	5		The Deluded and Discouraged
	6		The Unselfish and Devoted
6	1	MARS	Murderers and Assassins
	2		The Violent and Rebellious
	3		The Bold and Fearless
	4	DIANA	The Tender and Sentimental
	5		The Weak
	6		The Pure

Subtables for each type:

Set the stage like it's 1681!!! [Inspiration/Random Table]

 I won't rest until I've turned everything into a random table!

Today's offering comes from "Des Représentations en musique anciennes et modernes" by Claude-François Ménestrier (link to scan; the passages of interest begin here, pp. 171-174). Published in 1681, this is a treaties on musical and theatrical plays. It also includes a list of the various types of set decorations. Eleven individual entries, and a twelfth one for "capricci", so this makes a great d12 random table!

Useful for quick inspiration when setting a scene, or describing a painting's contents. Great for historical RPGs, but also for weird / mythological fantasy (John M. Stater's Bloody Basic: Weird Fantasy Edition springs to mind).

The Twelve Types of Scenery

1. The Celestial; the assembly of gods, clouds, spheres, rainbows, the celestial firmament, sunrise or sunset, lightning and storms
2. The Sacred; the temples, altars, sacrifices, sacred places, abodes of priests, augurs, vestals
3. The Martial; the towns under siege, ramparts and walls manned with soldiers, artillery, war machines, weaponry, camps of tents, the General’s quarters, arm stores & arsenals, trophies, spoils of war, battlefields covered with corpses
4. The Rustic; is endless, for it can represent rough landscapes, mountains, valleys, crags, camps, lonely, forlorn places, forests, grasslands, meadows, grottos, streams, groves, hills, shores, villages, hamlets, rustic festivals. According to the season, they can be covered with snow, flowers, greenery, fruits, vines
5. The Maritime; the Sea, ships, galleys, ports & harbors, islands, reefs, storms, shipwrecks, sea monsters, naval battles
6. The Royal; the palace, the throne, facades adorned with columns, statues and other embellishments, balconies, great halls, galleries, private chambers, cabinets, gardens, fountains, magnificent beds, stables full of prize horses, exquisite garments, treasuries
7. The Civic; the city streets, shops of merchants, studios of painters & sculptors, workshops of artisans, markets & fairs, particular buildings, prisons, burning houses, edifices under construction, ruins
8. The Historic; famed cities such as Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Thebes, certain locations of Greece and Thessaly, or Europe, where important events take place, such as the cave of the Sybil or the lair of Cacus
9. The Poetic; the palace of the Sun, or the underwater abode of Thetys, the mansion of Aeolus, Keeper of Winds, the palace of Fortune and of Curiosity; the temples of Death, of Honor, of Fame. The dwellings of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto & Tasso
10. The Magic; the enchanted isles & palaces, the Sabbath, the dreadful & forlorn abodes of Demons, Hell, Pluto’s Court, the Elysian Fields, Styx, Cocytus, Acheron, Avernus, the cavern of the Magician, where everything is dark and full of specters
11. The Academic; the libraries, studies of scholars, the books & instruments of the mathematician, cabinet of antiquities & curiosities, school of painting
12. Capriccio; which can infinitely diversify the appearance of the place [roll twice and mix]

How much D&D can one find in Appendix N?

Obviously, there are a lot of motifs from Appendix N literature in D&D. But how much D&D is there in Appendix N literature? Myriad traces of myriad pulp fantasy/horror/sci-fi works have made their way into the DNA of D&D; but at the same time not many texts feel completely like a D&D session. Which is logical, of course: what works as a game session is not necessarily enjoyable literature. But as an exercise, I thought it would be fun to set up a scale of just how “D&D-like” is a particular text. This is not a score about the literary merits or whatever of the works. It is correspondence to the specific and somewhat arbitrary idea of a D&D session, formulated as:

“A group of adventurers tracks through a wilderness, descends into a dungeon, explores a place of weirdness and wonder, tries to overcome obstacles and monstrous enemies through cunning, martial prowess and magic, retrieves treasure.”

I broke down this description into 10 categories, took three short stories I like, and scored them:

	“The Weaver in the Vault” by Clark Ashton Smith (1934)	“The Jewels of Bas” by Leigh Brackett (1944)	“Straggler from Atlantis” by Manly Wade Wellman (1977)
Group of adventurers	1	1	0
Wilderness	1	0.5	0
Dungeon	1	1	1
Weirdness & Wonder	1	1	1
Obstacles	0	1	0
Monsters	1	1	1
Cunning	1	1	1
Martial prowess	0	0	1
Magic	0	0.5	0
Treasure	1	1	1
Final score	7/10	8/10	6/10

 

“The Weaver in the Vault” by Clark Ashton Smith stars “three of the king’s hardiest henchmen” on a quest to retrieve a mummy from the ruins of a royal tomb. If this isn’t a D&D setup, then what is? The wilderness track is cool, my favorite part is when they rest at the “wayside shrine of Yucla, the small and grotesque god of laughter”. Also, spoiler: it ends in a TPK (they should have thought about party balance! Three fighting-men…). [read it online!]

“The Jewel of Bas” by Leigh Brackett starts out with just two “adventurers” (a bard and a thief!), but along the way they pick up a rag-tag team of outcasts (like an insane hermit and a hunter). The monster section is great: there are low-level mooks (the Kalds), Big Bads (the androids), and even a high-powered NPC. The wilderness is mostly a scenery, not really interacted with. The dungeon is very cool, and there’s lots of weirdness, much of it rather dangerous. [read it online!]

“Straggler from Atlantis” by Manly Wade Wellman has a single main protagonist, which is, of course, not very D&D-like. And he faces the monster without bringing henchmen or torchbearers, the fool! Still, the story (which has a great Odyssey feel) has a small cave dungeon, an interesting monster (alien ooze!), nice NPCs, and a capable cunning warrior. [buy digital/print]

1d10 weird books

1. When this book is open, everybody in a 20' radius is compelled to close their eyes. Save against Magic to resist.
2. This book can only be comprehended if put under the pillow and slept on. It takes 1d6 nights of sleep to "read" it from cover-to-cover.
3. Nasty papercuts! Save against Poison to avoid book mold infection. The infection leads to rapid decline of eyesight over 1d4 weeks.
4. The middle of the book is cut out to make place for a hip flask. The flask contains a random liquid, roll 1d6: 1-3 - high quality liquor; 4-5 - green tea with black pepper, ginger, vanilla and cloves; 6 - cinnamon-flavored reading potion (effect as Comprehend Languages, but only for written texts, duration: 3 Turns).
5. The book's contents are of no interest. The actual information is the wisdom of the unborn lamb whose skin was used to make the parchment. Speak with Dead and other necromantic methods establish contact.
6. A real page-turner! After looking at any page, the reader must save against Paralyze or be unable to stop reading for 1d6 hours. Repeat save every hour to snap out of it.
7. This book comes alive when nobody's looking and devours other books in its vicinity.
8. A family of albino mice with glowing eyes made this heavy tome their home. Their youngest can be trained to attack Magic-Users' spellbooks.
9. The pages regenerate if torn. Damaged text regenerates in a garbled form. There is a cumulative 5% chance for every regenerated tear that the new text now spells out a weird but valuable insight.
10. A tome of anti-knowledge! When read, the content of this book is erased from the reader's mind. If the reader knew something about the topic of the book, they forget it. If they didn't know, from now on they are unable to learn about it. A save against Magic is permitted.

Reading is dangerous! Watch TV instead.

[Magic Item/Book] Tome of Higher Constellations

The Tome of Higher Constellations was created by an anonymous scholar in Prague, for the library of Rudolf II. The first half of the book consists of astronomical tables: meticulously compiled and corrected, but nothing out of the ordinary. However, the second half introduces more charts, graphs, from a wide range of sciences natural and occult. Through complex calculations these are cross-referenced with the heavenly constellations. Uncanny patterns, otherwise hidden, emerge… making it possible to trace and predict the finest shifts of the celestial spheres that command the fate of the whole universe. The final result is a single date in the future, when all factors align, and major, cosmic changes are possible. Actions undertaken on that day will bear major consequences: warlords bent on world domination crave to know this date, alchemists and magicians seek it as the date of their opus magnum or most complex ritual…

The catch: this prognosis is not descriptive. It’s prescriptive. Once a date is divined using the Tome of Higher Constellations, something world-changing is bound to happen. But the exact details are malleable. Anybody who knows the time can attempt some insane endeavor.

To peruse the Tome, one must have a strong academic or arcane background, and then spend 2d4 weeks working on the calculations in a library or laboratory.

After the period of study, a date in the future is predicted.

	Dice type	Time unit
1	1d4	days
2	1d6
3	1d8	months
4	1d10
5	1d12
6	1d20	years

Roll two d6’s and consult the chart. The first d6 gives a dice type. The second d6 gives a time unit. A roll with the given type of dice defines the amount of time units.

Example: roll #1 is 3 = 1d8. Roll #2 is 5 = months. The 1d8 roll comes up as 6. This is combined as 6 months.

Repeat this process two more times, then sum up all the results to learn how far into the future will the grand constellation take place, counted from the FINAL day of work with the Tome.

Example: #1 = 6 months; #2 = 8 days; #3 = 12 years. The constellation will take place 12 years, 6 months and 8 days into the future.

If one time unit comes up more than once, just add them up as usual.

Example: #1 = 6 months; #2 = 13 months; #3 = 2 days. The constellation will take place 19 months and 2 days into the future.

Yeah... This is how I envision "epic level" games in LotFP, mwhahah...