With my regular blogging routine disrupted for the moment, I have been largely forced to make do with scribbling bits and pieces of posts on the iPhone and iPad while on the go. Fortunately, Lowell Francis of Age of Ravens planted a seed of inspiration in my head that has started to bear fruit even within my current constraints.
In his Strange Lists post, Lowell resurrects a classic bit of advice from Michael Moorcock. The gist is that you should always keep a list of weird and mysterious stuff handy, to drop in an off-handed manner during exposition and florid description. He supplied his own list, which he made available to players in his Microscope game for moments when people were grasping for ideas.
I love this idea.
Not only does this give me something to do while commuting to work (i.e. putting a wandering mind to work), it actually promises to be genuinely useful in my games.
It's sort of like the inkblotting I do with DungeonWords, but a much more specific. Each of these "Weird Phrases" (to distinguish them from DungeonWords) is meant to be evocative in its own right, suitable for a plot hook should they capture the interest of those at the gaming table. It's a mix of persons, places, and things. Many of them make great names for important NPCs or locations and I may decided to break them out into separate categories as the list grows. I'm going to continue to noodle around with these for a while and see if this develops into something worthy of a PDF.
City of Jade
The Beast of Darrovan
Rain of Worms
The Warden of the Watch
Harvest Fool
The Shadow Market
The Painted Duke
Grandmother Sword
Dragon grass
The Isle of a Thousand Sorrows
The Temple of the Baboon
Day of the Peacock
Moonspear
Towers of the Sun
The Weeping Wood(s)
House Bittergold
Winters End
Green Mist
The Blue Badger
Silvertree
Hellstorm
Paradise Springs
Spider hounds
Stormhaven
The House of Last Repose
Rusty Gulch
Haragan's Tomb
Redspark Sword
Vampire Rats
Boghammer
Charlotte's Vale
The Battle of Lonely Bluff
The Road to Hightemple
A Host of Sundered Souls
The Bells of Saint Tomin
Coppersteel
The Luck of Robin Spyre
The Blood Curse of Daarkar
"The walls between worlds are thin here and the neighbors are loud"
Mythical Pegapus
Doran's Menagerie
Daughters of Disorder
The Windward March
The Burning Bridge
OSH Armor Reconfigured
1 hour ago
7 comments:
Definitely some evocative stuff there--and vampire rats made me chuckle (though there's nothing funny about the concept! ;) )
I read Dragon Grass as Demon Grass- and imagined it as a spice like Lemongrass, used for make a strange sort of pan-dimensional cuisine.
Nice, I think this is probably even better than the random list as each person would look at this and come up with their own ideas based on their own experiences/books/movies/etc.
Certainly an excellent tool to be used along side your DungeonWords PDFs!
I'm pretty sure this is how some people write Doctor Who scripts. Russell T. Davies in particular had a real talent for inserting mysterious, evocative names as off-hand references; the planet of Woman Wept, for instance.
I'm absolutely pinching Spider Hounds and Vampire Rats. I don't have a use for them yet but it's only a matter of time
That is a really good idea. Like phenomenally good.
@Lowell: We have this mutant weed that appeared in our back yard over the past year. The slightest touch causes your skin to feel like its burning. Thus, I’ve started calling it “dragon grass” and it seemed like the term might have use in games. It’s culinary uses hadn’t occurred to me but now that you mention it, it could make for an exotic and spicy dish (same for Demongrass).
@Tyler: I’m pretty sure a good many writers use the technique but yes, Dr. Who stands out.
@Gryan: Cool. I can imagine that they’d make great critters to throw against your PCs.
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