Some Something Wicked things, perhaps wicked
I'm a sharing mood. Here are two bits from Something Wicked. They're very long, so they're going behind a cut tag.
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## Secrets Everywhere: A Few Milieus
Gothic horror is more about a state of mind than any particular set of trappings. The standard places became standard because they're what early creators settled on, but the history of the genre shows that the struggle of suppressed sin to emerge can occur just about anywhere at any time.
For instance, there's a tradition in horror film that might well be called "California gothic", in which things go terribly wrong in a post-World War II small California town. Let's pull apart the elements, starting with "post-war". In the 1950s, the Great Depression was closer to the present than the Soviet Union is to us today, and for a whole lot of Americans who'd suffered greatly before the New Deal and wartime opportunities brought relief, California was the place where things seemed to work. "Small-town" distinguishes the setting from any of California's iconic cities, whether glamorous like Hollywood and San Francisco or rich in technical innovation like Burbank (with Lockheed's Skunk Works) and the industrial hubs like San Diego and Orange County. Many of these towns also offered the allure of the Pacific Ocean, the furthermost edge of the (continental) United States, the way to exotic lands far away, the source both of horrendous storms and of the epic waves beloved by surfers. Santa Mira, Antonio Bay, and Santa Carla could put up signs proclaiming themselves a nice place to raise your kids, and for many of those fortunate to live there, they actually were.
Except, of course, when they weren't. That's when things get gothic.
Sometimes the buried secret is part of the town's own history, as it is in Antonio Bay (_The Fog_) and Santa Carla (_Lost Boys_). The town's promise of relief from the burden of suffering elsewhere is a lie, because the worst is right here, and it will demand its due. In other cases, like that of Santa Mira (_Invasion of the Body Snatchers_), the thing that must be reckoned with arrived from outside and works its harm by destabilizing the balance of harmony within the town. But it couldn't do any harm if there weren't people already on the scene ready to grasp for illicit power or to try some secret vice. Either way, the actual evil conceals itself amid eccentricities and lesser secrets just as it always does in gothics.
**[BEGIN SIDEBAR]**
### Build Your Own Genres, Win Valuable Prizes
As nearly as we know, "California gothic" is a sub-genre we invented while discussing works that might benefit from being interpreted in a gothic light. If you were to stretch the category just a little bit to include _Carnival of Souls_ and _Blue Velvet_, you'd gain a richer spread of really twisted behavior and supernatural menace but lose the cluster of geographical associations. And there's nothing wrong with that, either: Nice Gone Nightmare is a very fine label, too.
Just as storytelling is something anyone can too, so's interpretation. When you find a bundle of concepts and story elements that suits you, go ahead and put your flag on it. Give it a reasonably clear and useful label, work out what's part of the category identity and what's incidental, and put it to use. Writer and critic Samuel Delaney says that every work defines its own genre retroactively, in the web of influences and associations embedded in it. That can be as true of a roleplaying game as of a novel or short story. Identify your work in a way that suits your purposes, just as you do with character abilities.
**[END SIDEBAR]**
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## Gothic the Other Way 'Round
In _HeroQuest_, as we keep repeating throughout this book, an ability is anything that your character uses to solve problems. In gothic stories, those problems tend to be things like finding out what's actually going on, surviving when someone else snaps under accumulated stress and begins a murderous rampage, and resolving the woes that bind ghosts to this vale of tears. But other problems are just as viable, and suggest other sorts of characters.
For instance, what if the problem facing you the character is whether you can persuade the newly arrived visitors to succumb to your temptations? That's a very popular problem in gothic stories...seen from the point of view of the haunted house or other secret-laden ruin. Or perhaps the problem facing you is winning and guiding the soul of the mariner who slew the albatross that did make the fair winds blow, if you're playing Death or Death-in-Life in a game of _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ in which the mariner is an NPC who's the target of everyone else's attention.
_HeroQuest_ lends itself very well to this kind of atypical perspective on setups that might be very cliche-ridden if taken at any usual angle. A completely stock gothic setting might focus on the rivalries of the inhabiting genius of the haunted mansion, the human-hating spirit of the wilderness encroached upon from all sides, the civilizing, constructive soul of the town in the valley below, and the simple passions of the pre-human creature (dragon? anthropoid? something altogether else, like the aliens forced to interact with a medieval German village in Michael Flynn's novel _Elfheim_?). Or you could even zoom in some, each player controlling one part of the sprawling mansion to which unfortunate pilgrims have come, trying to win them over to some particular vice and perhaps hoping to arrange for them to die in its wing so as to exploit their souls later.
It all depends on how you approach the question "What's the question here?"
=-=-=-=-=
## Secrets Everywhere: A Few Milieus
Gothic horror is more about a state of mind than any particular set of trappings. The standard places became standard because they're what early creators settled on, but the history of the genre shows that the struggle of suppressed sin to emerge can occur just about anywhere at any time.
For instance, there's a tradition in horror film that might well be called "California gothic", in which things go terribly wrong in a post-World War II small California town. Let's pull apart the elements, starting with "post-war". In the 1950s, the Great Depression was closer to the present than the Soviet Union is to us today, and for a whole lot of Americans who'd suffered greatly before the New Deal and wartime opportunities brought relief, California was the place where things seemed to work. "Small-town" distinguishes the setting from any of California's iconic cities, whether glamorous like Hollywood and San Francisco or rich in technical innovation like Burbank (with Lockheed's Skunk Works) and the industrial hubs like San Diego and Orange County. Many of these towns also offered the allure of the Pacific Ocean, the furthermost edge of the (continental) United States, the way to exotic lands far away, the source both of horrendous storms and of the epic waves beloved by surfers. Santa Mira, Antonio Bay, and Santa Carla could put up signs proclaiming themselves a nice place to raise your kids, and for many of those fortunate to live there, they actually were.
Except, of course, when they weren't. That's when things get gothic.
Sometimes the buried secret is part of the town's own history, as it is in Antonio Bay (_The Fog_) and Santa Carla (_Lost Boys_). The town's promise of relief from the burden of suffering elsewhere is a lie, because the worst is right here, and it will demand its due. In other cases, like that of Santa Mira (_Invasion of the Body Snatchers_), the thing that must be reckoned with arrived from outside and works its harm by destabilizing the balance of harmony within the town. But it couldn't do any harm if there weren't people already on the scene ready to grasp for illicit power or to try some secret vice. Either way, the actual evil conceals itself amid eccentricities and lesser secrets just as it always does in gothics.
**[BEGIN SIDEBAR]**
### Build Your Own Genres, Win Valuable Prizes
As nearly as we know, "California gothic" is a sub-genre we invented while discussing works that might benefit from being interpreted in a gothic light. If you were to stretch the category just a little bit to include _Carnival of Souls_ and _Blue Velvet_, you'd gain a richer spread of really twisted behavior and supernatural menace but lose the cluster of geographical associations. And there's nothing wrong with that, either: Nice Gone Nightmare is a very fine label, too.
Just as storytelling is something anyone can too, so's interpretation. When you find a bundle of concepts and story elements that suits you, go ahead and put your flag on it. Give it a reasonably clear and useful label, work out what's part of the category identity and what's incidental, and put it to use. Writer and critic Samuel Delaney says that every work defines its own genre retroactively, in the web of influences and associations embedded in it. That can be as true of a roleplaying game as of a novel or short story. Identify your work in a way that suits your purposes, just as you do with character abilities.
**[END SIDEBAR]**
=-=-=-=-=
## Gothic the Other Way 'Round
In _HeroQuest_, as we keep repeating throughout this book, an ability is anything that your character uses to solve problems. In gothic stories, those problems tend to be things like finding out what's actually going on, surviving when someone else snaps under accumulated stress and begins a murderous rampage, and resolving the woes that bind ghosts to this vale of tears. But other problems are just as viable, and suggest other sorts of characters.
For instance, what if the problem facing you the character is whether you can persuade the newly arrived visitors to succumb to your temptations? That's a very popular problem in gothic stories...seen from the point of view of the haunted house or other secret-laden ruin. Or perhaps the problem facing you is winning and guiding the soul of the mariner who slew the albatross that did make the fair winds blow, if you're playing Death or Death-in-Life in a game of _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ in which the mariner is an NPC who's the target of everyone else's attention.
_HeroQuest_ lends itself very well to this kind of atypical perspective on setups that might be very cliche-ridden if taken at any usual angle. A completely stock gothic setting might focus on the rivalries of the inhabiting genius of the haunted mansion, the human-hating spirit of the wilderness encroached upon from all sides, the civilizing, constructive soul of the town in the valley below, and the simple passions of the pre-human creature (dragon? anthropoid? something altogether else, like the aliens forced to interact with a medieval German village in Michael Flynn's novel _Elfheim_?). Or you could even zoom in some, each player controlling one part of the sprawling mansion to which unfortunate pilgrims have come, trying to win them over to some particular vice and perhaps hoping to arrange for them to die in its wing so as to exploit their souls later.
It all depends on how you approach the question "What's the question here?"