For me, Dungeon23 is about discipline – making time to create something each and every day. I have always believed that this is immensely valuable when pursuing any endeavor, artistic or otherwise. Creating something when you are inspired is fairly easy. Creating something when potentially you don’t feel as though you have any new ideas, or otherwise “aren’t in the mood,” is much more difficult. February has been tough for me in terms of discipline. I’m not off track or “behind” at this point, but there have been a few spikes – meaning I have had a couple periods where I skipped making my character for the day, perhaps even a few days, and then “caught up,” later on. But that does in part defeat the purpose for me and I need to be very careful about it. Sustained progress each and every day is the goal. Practice is the point. No doubt most of you are familiar with the phrase “a practitioner of the art.” This is the first time I’ve set goals for myself w/r/t writing for a very, very long time, and I need to be very careful about not following through, but also forgiving of myself when I do miss a day. Both lack of follow through and lack of forgiveness for myself could lead to abandonment of the work.
Right now my Dungeon23 goals look like this:
Right now my Dungeon23 goals look like this:
- One Place per month (I used to use the term Neighborhood, but I broadened the definition)
- One Faction per week (changed from family to faction - again to broaden the definition)
- One character and that character’s relationships per day.
I have also set two other creative goals for myself:
- One short story per month
- One poem per month
The poem and the story do NOT have to be good enough for me to want to publish to the blog. It’s more important that they get done period than that they are any good, though of course I do my best. But a meet the crew scene ala Goodfellas featuring a 15 foot tall mosquito called “Needleface” and a talking orange tabby housecat named “Mickey Barcode” is totally fine.
Actually that doesn’t sound half bad.
Anyway!
When I started the project, I was using Excel of all things, with the idea that having each character on a tab would make it easy to find the details you wanted and that I could release the files via Google drive when I was ready. That lasted for close to three weeks before I saw that it was an amazingly bad idea.
At the moment I am using a wiki tool called Notion. I think it’s pretty close to perfect for what I want to do, which is to create all these characters and link them together based on their place, faction, and relationships. I was going to have a friend look it over to see if it worked for them, but I ran into a snag – as long as I am the only one editing and adding to this stuff, it’s unlimited and free. If I bring someone else in, I have a limited amount of data I an use before I have to pay. I did some looking into this, and checked with their support team, and from what I can see, it will NOT cost me anything to make the pages public once I have finished with them. So I think this will work. Here are a few screenshots – you can probably instantly see why this is better if you compare it to the screenshots I had in part II of the excel files. Everything underlined is linked.
Anyway!
When I started the project, I was using Excel of all things, with the idea that having each character on a tab would make it easy to find the details you wanted and that I could release the files via Google drive when I was ready. That lasted for close to three weeks before I saw that it was an amazingly bad idea.
At the moment I am using a wiki tool called Notion. I think it’s pretty close to perfect for what I want to do, which is to create all these characters and link them together based on their place, faction, and relationships. I was going to have a friend look it over to see if it worked for them, but I ran into a snag – as long as I am the only one editing and adding to this stuff, it’s unlimited and free. If I bring someone else in, I have a limited amount of data I an use before I have to pay. I did some looking into this, and checked with their support team, and from what I can see, it will NOT cost me anything to make the pages public once I have finished with them. So I think this will work. Here are a few screenshots – you can probably instantly see why this is better if you compare it to the screenshots I had in part II of the excel files. Everything underlined is linked.
I may still make some changes; right now I'm going with a kind of early modern feel - but trying as much as I can to leave out too many references to very modern things with the idea that a DM could lift the whole thing and shift it to any time period and tech level they might want. That is easier said than done, however, and it's difficult to keep references to modern technology out of the text. In addition, I'm finding that creating a character without placing them in the timestream or world makes them seem a little flat to me. But these are things for which I might figure out answers as I continue to wade forward.
The most recent Place is a neighborhood called Devil’s Torso. Filled with abandoned buildings that have broken-window eyes which look down on cracked and potholed streets. The police here are ultra-aggressive, acting almost like a crew themselves, but everyone knows they don’t belong here. Places of worship and places to buy alcohol on what seems like every block. There is mayhem at all times of day and night, filth, profanity, and ignorance, violence so casual it’s like enemies with benefits and amongst it all, dreaming, living, wonderful, beautiful, resilient: humanity.
Two major crews have staked out territory in Devil's Torso. The Almighty Amaranth Nation is led by a man who is almost hypnotically charismatic named Quentin Barnett, and his sister, Kristin “Kiss” Barnett. Kiss took an orphan boy named Emmanuel to raise as her own, and has raised him to obey her every command using a combination of love-bombing and sadism. Emmanuel is the Nation’s current top gunner, a thirteen year old kid who is faster than anyone they have ever seen, and more ruthless to boot. Quentin, meanwhile, is looked upon almost as a visionary or prophet.
The Grey Disciples are led by a woman named Gabriella, who has begun to supplicate dark occult forces in strange bloodletting rituals to protect her from the repeated assassination attempts of the Nation. Whatever she’s doing, it seems to be working, as she strides fearlessly through what she thinks of as her city and miraculously survives no matter how meticulous her opponents’ planning has been. Her older brother is a priest named Ariel who despises the entities Gabriella has begun to worship; there is a deep rift between these two and it is growing deeper. Ariel is saddened by this. For her part, nothing makes Gabriella sad or guilty save for the plight of one of her soldiers - Pierce Montoya, who at 16 has been languishing in a coma for the last two years, wounded while acting as a human shield in the first attempt on Gabriella’s life. Gabriella pays the healers and ensures his father and mother have a roof over their head. This situation is the only lever by which she might be moved.
Ariel works for a collection of humanists who have founded the Crisis Intervention Service, an organization dedicated to stopping violence in all its forms, though they specialize in gang-related violence and domestic violence. They are responsible for the fact that Devil’s Torso isn’t a full-blown war zone. Ariel is good friends there with a woman named Meadow Wise. Her name suits her – her wisdom is widely respected in spite of her harsh demeanor. Meadow has a knack for giving the most valuable possible advice someone could hear right at the moment when they are open to hearing it. Those who have not experienced this almost divinely-inspired ability think of her as unfriendly and unforgiving, but nothing could be further from the truth. Many of the other counselors and people who work at the Crisis Intervention Service consider her a mentor and seek her counsel.
Some kids are recruited into a different kind of crew – the Red City Art Ensemble. This is a loose organization of developing, famous, and washed up artists. One of these, Ryder Duran, is a tattoo artist who has started to become sought after for her intense compositions, especially those that use the entire upper torso. She is petite, with flashing eyes and an attitude to match. She is covered with her own work. Avi Bowman, an eighteen year old kid who recently joined the Ensemble, has intense fantasies about her. Avi has a talent for technology and his main work involves light shows, especially for live music, and he joined the Ensemble after watching Ryder dancing at an event he was involved with. He has managed to hide it thus far, but Avi is also a budding sociopath who could wind up being a serial date rapist. He keeps this part of himself secret, so secret, but he knows it is there. It is possible that instead of flowering into a real monster, he will bump into Meadow Wise, to whom he will be completely transparent, and who may be able to help him develop into something and someone else, someone who values the people around them and wants to make a contribution to the society which they share.
The Grey Disciples are led by a woman named Gabriella, who has begun to supplicate dark occult forces in strange bloodletting rituals to protect her from the repeated assassination attempts of the Nation. Whatever she’s doing, it seems to be working, as she strides fearlessly through what she thinks of as her city and miraculously survives no matter how meticulous her opponents’ planning has been. Her older brother is a priest named Ariel who despises the entities Gabriella has begun to worship; there is a deep rift between these two and it is growing deeper. Ariel is saddened by this. For her part, nothing makes Gabriella sad or guilty save for the plight of one of her soldiers - Pierce Montoya, who at 16 has been languishing in a coma for the last two years, wounded while acting as a human shield in the first attempt on Gabriella’s life. Gabriella pays the healers and ensures his father and mother have a roof over their head. This situation is the only lever by which she might be moved.
Ariel works for a collection of humanists who have founded the Crisis Intervention Service, an organization dedicated to stopping violence in all its forms, though they specialize in gang-related violence and domestic violence. They are responsible for the fact that Devil’s Torso isn’t a full-blown war zone. Ariel is good friends there with a woman named Meadow Wise. Her name suits her – her wisdom is widely respected in spite of her harsh demeanor. Meadow has a knack for giving the most valuable possible advice someone could hear right at the moment when they are open to hearing it. Those who have not experienced this almost divinely-inspired ability think of her as unfriendly and unforgiving, but nothing could be further from the truth. Many of the other counselors and people who work at the Crisis Intervention Service consider her a mentor and seek her counsel.
Some kids are recruited into a different kind of crew – the Red City Art Ensemble. This is a loose organization of developing, famous, and washed up artists. One of these, Ryder Duran, is a tattoo artist who has started to become sought after for her intense compositions, especially those that use the entire upper torso. She is petite, with flashing eyes and an attitude to match. She is covered with her own work. Avi Bowman, an eighteen year old kid who recently joined the Ensemble, has intense fantasies about her. Avi has a talent for technology and his main work involves light shows, especially for live music, and he joined the Ensemble after watching Ryder dancing at an event he was involved with. He has managed to hide it thus far, but Avi is also a budding sociopath who could wind up being a serial date rapist. He keeps this part of himself secret, so secret, but he knows it is there. It is possible that instead of flowering into a real monster, he will bump into Meadow Wise, to whom he will be completely transparent, and who may be able to help him develop into something and someone else, someone who values the people around them and wants to make a contribution to the society which they share.
This month I'll be working on Shattering Stone, the part of the city where people wind up when they truly bottom out.
I'm glad that Notion has been working out for you! The Devil's Torso neighborhood and the factions sound really cool. I like the way that, while the factions have distinct themes in themselves, they're also very driven by the characters that comprise them. I'd be interested to see more about the neighborhood itself. Right now it's a rundown neighborhood, but are there any old iconic locations languishing? Was it once thriving? Are there places that rich people will still go to, with expensive valet parking? Places of respite within the community for those who want to make it better? How did it get this way?
ReplyDeleteYou know, I'm glad you said that, about being interested in seeing more about the setting itself.
DeleteI have been thinking kind of the same thing about wanting to see more of the place these people inhabit and struggling with that because my original intention was to try to make something that could easily be picked up and fit into just about any system or world. I think in the end, I may not be able to resist placing these people into some kind of a more coherent setting, even if it makes the task of moving it to a different setting more difficult.
I keep having thoughts that this might work best with something like Delta Green, but even there I'm not particularly sure - part of what makes DG work is that it places Lovecraftian stuff very firmly into our modern world and exploits modern problems - if you have not checked it out, have a look at The Labyrinth by John Scott Tynes - which combines everything from the tragedy of the modern rust belt to online stalking and SWATting to incredibly toxic incel movements with the Unnatural to create a truly potent brew. But while I would like elements of the supernatural to take place here, I do not necessarily want that to be the focus.
Yesterday I idly thought it might be interesting to introduce the setting to players and then one by one, make people disappear. One person every day. These might not even be people the PC's know at first, but perhaps they hear about someone going missing, then eventually someone they know or is important to them goes missing. I already have a few things in there that could be responsible for such disappearances, and the investigation could easily resolve to very different root causes depending on who the PCs were, what parts of the city they interacted with, and how they conducted themselves. It could even be relayed and have a different "ending." I will probably seek some feedback on this idea.
In my head, this is all part and parcel of the Scarlet City, and it might be best if I made that explicit, instead of trying to shepherd this into a form that is generic enough to fit anywhere anywhen. I guess bottom line is, you saying you'd like to know more about the setting dovetails with instincts that I have been fighting - and I am starting to think I should stop fighting those instincts even if it means I have to abandon my original goal of making the people in the setting universal enough to fit into any game.
The missing persons idea is interesting. In the module for MRD I created Roles, and for each Role there were a handful of characters who could fill that Role, and it was a way of using distinct characters to allow for variability and replayability. What you're describing is one step further in that all of the characters are present at the start, but disappear presumably in some customizable or randomizable manner, but that seems consistent with the general theme of what you're doing here.
DeleteI do see what you're saying about wanting the setting to be generic enough that the characters and factions can be transported. The fact that the factions are themselves rooted in the characters buys you some flexibility, but ya I guess it's another tricky thing to thread.
Yeah the Roles idea is very similar! Yes, it's tricky for sure, and I feel like I may need to give up the idea of keeping it generic in favor of making it more impactful! Time will tell, and I will carry on for now, but it's interesting that you asked about this because it's been on my mind a lot as the project starts to sprawl out.
DeleteThis project gets exponentially more impressive every update - can't wait to see the full Scarlet City wiki so I can gatekeep people for not accurately citing blog lore. I really like the two gangs here. Took a class a while back that had us read Ward's "Gangsters Without Borders" for class, which is an ethnographic study of MS-13 members in both LA and El Salvador; some of the key points (most people age out naturally, there is typically a stratification between life-members/deeply involved members/transients that gets larger each step down, gang structures as dysfunctional families) are p well reflected here. I remember being a little surprised by finding out that "big men" often facilitated transition out of the gang or that most of gang life was pretty routine/boring, but I was pretty dumb back then so it doesn't say much. Best of luck with your writing schedule (!!), fam!
ReplyDeleteOh man, I hope it gets to a point where it's worthwhile to gatekeep, lol.
DeleteThere are a lot of older guys who are former gang members here (Chicago) who do de-escalation, basically try to stop young folks from killing each other over nothing. I've talked to a couple of them. Those guys have my total respect.
Dysfunctional families is right; the key is that they are often exponentially more functional than blood family, or in a lot of cases there is crossover between the two - the gangs are intergenerational and often far and away the most stable social structure in the immediate environment. I really hope I can depict these characters realistically and pitilessly without glorifying or vilifying them through bias, but give them the motivation and inner life to do that for themselves as their stories develop within the framework of the game (yes I'm still looking at this as a gaming aid, lol). Hopefully I don't totally fuck it up!
Thanks for the wishes of good luck! I will need them! I think what I have outlined as goals for myself is aggressive without being unrealistic!