TBR Appendix N Bandwagon - Hellbenders Playtest is Live!
Marcia at Traverse Fantasy declared a Blog Bandwagon on the topic of Appendix N. This was then formalized by our dear ostrich friend Warren at Prismatic Wasteland as Appendicitis N, an excuse for all of us to share some inspirations that drive our design. Iām pretty terrible at talking about things that I like because I have an awful combination of poor taste and snobby pickiness. My most listened to bands for the last several years have been Linkin Park, Deftones, and Incubus, but if someone recommends that I listen to, like, Staind I will scoff in their face.
I do think that some media has been more impactful on my creative output however, especially where it pertains to the game that weāve been designing here for the last month-and-change, so this writeup will be a real Appendix N. Speaking of, here is my first draft of playtest material for Hellbenders RPG! I would love to hear what you think of it, I have poured a lot of love into this project over the last few weeks. If this is the first youāre hearing of it, then the rest of this post is devoted to media Iāve been thinking about since starting it.
Movies and Television
I love movies, but I donāt think of my games as particularly cinematic ā consequently I donāt know how much movies as a form inform my approach to gamerunning and game design. The biggest exceptions are:
- 0 Brother Where Art Thou. What a picture. I love this movieās portrayal of an adventure through a magically surreal South. It probably would have gone a little bit differently if the main characters had a slightly better party composition, but they still solved their problems creatively
- X-Files. I couldn't resist editing this in but I love this show. Any time I have been motivated to make a monster-of-the-week arc or theme, I've drawn heavily from the themes and approach to storytelling used in X-Files.
If we were working on, say, Blades in the Dark or Scum and Villainy, we would be in very different territory.
Music
This is hard. I listen to a lot of heavy metal and most of it does not necessarily inform what I like to create. That said, I think a lot about these albums:
- Harvest, Harvest Moon, and After the Gold Rush by Neil Young. The man himself.
- Kentucky by Panopticon. I love this mix of bluegrass and atmospheric black metal. While Iām on this tip, Panopticon put out a new country album called Laurentian Blue that is probably too recent (August 15th) for a formal spot on this list, but it deserves an honorable mention, especially the song Irony and Actuality
- The Fall Collection by Hemlock Ernst. I just love this album from a great Maryland-based rapper, the standout track for me is Inherit my Speech
- Anything by Elkhorn. Their vibes just kick ass.
- Metamodern Sounds in Country Music by Sturgill Simpson
- First Base by Babe Ruth, especially The Mexican
- The Bedlam in Goliath by The Mars Volta
- Ordinary Corrupt Human Love by Deafheaven. Probably every Deafheaven album. I love Deafheaven! Standout tracks in their catalog for me are Honeycomb and Revelator
- The Eye of the Icosahedron by Dungeon Weed. This is usually more of an inspiration for my fantasy games, but I canāt put myself into the headspace of a dungeon without sludgy doom metal.
- The Bees Made Honey in the Lionās Skull by Earth. One of my favorite podcasts, Boonta Vista, has a segment stinger which superimposes Mosesā monologue from The Ten Commandments over the rich, lush opening of Omens and Portents off this album and it is the exact feeling you should have while exploring dark fantasy Appalachia.
- A Crow Left of the Murder by Incubus. Just couldnāt help myself, I love this record so much. My favorite track for Hellbenders is Zee Deevil
- Sweet Revenge by John Prine.
- Chorus by Jon Charles Dwyer
Books
- Number one with a bullet is Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. I love all of Pynchonās inscrutable work but Mason and Dixon was the first story that inspired me to write and run a tabletop campaign.
- A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib, specifically the essay āIt Is Safe to Say I have Lost Many Games of Spadesā. No one writes like Abdurraqib and this essay captures some really beautiful aspects of the joy of playing cards with strangers and friends. This is a joy I want to capture with our game
- The Great When by Alan Moore. I finished this book as I was working on developing the setting for our game here and itās a real odd one. It isnāt a particularly pleasurable read but the sheer imagination embedded in the prose is really inspiring.
- EDIT: I almost forgot Ted Chiang's anthologies of short stories, Exhalation and Stories of Your Life and Others. These have had tremendous impact on my relationship to the speculative fiction genre and have always served as anchor points for worldbuilding.
- The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K LeGuin. Goodness gracious what a story.
- A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick. There are several novels of his that I should cite here, Flow My Tears comes to mind as well, but at the end of the day you should really think of PKDās body of work as just that.
- Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Beautiful story about a group of people with different backgrounds and motivations stuck together on a terrible journey. Thereās really nothing like this book.
- Youth Group by Jordan Morris (comic book). I donāt think I would have ever come across Old Gods of Appalachia if I hadnāt asked around on the MCDM discord about āwhat would be a good system for youth pastors fighting actual demonsā, and I certainly wouldnāt be working on this system if I hadnāt had that experience!
Videogames
My issue is that I primarily play roguelikes if I do play a videogame, so ignore this heading
- Pretty much just Balatro Iāll shoot you straight
- Maybe Fallout New Vegas
- EDIT: After reading Elmcat's great post, I realized that Into the Breach's approach to telegraphing risk at the beginning of the turn HEAVILY inspires the combat in Hellbenders!
Other Tabletop Games
Iāve talked about my other tabletop inspirations sort of ad nauseum, but gotta hand it to
- His Majesty the Worm, for breaking me free of dice in RPGs
- Mythic Bastionland and the Into the Odd family, for showcasing elegance in design
- Old Gods of Appalachia, for making an RPG where my house is on the world map
- Every issue of Knock!, for infecting my brain with adventure gaming
- Prismatic Wisdom, for providing an answer for every question about hex crawling
- Black Sword Hack and Golem Parade, for showing me how much flavor you can squeeze into a page
- Triangle Agency, for showing a structure for investigation games in a weirder reality than our own
- All of the blogs linked on my cover page š
Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think about Hellbenders! Link again: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pxbCX2xR9GYoogOd8cJ5d4_p8-sY5jBc?usp=sharing
Blogwagon Roll Up!
I'll keep editing this as more posts roll in, but I wanted to identify commonalities where I can!
- Rise Up Comus. As a disciple of Josh's and an adherent of the Worm, it's always cool to read about what inspires his work. Like we've talked about endlessly on this blog, there's a direct through line from what I learned reading him to what I have been working on!
- Vorpal Coil. Asimov's The Last Question is probably my second favorite short story behind Heinlein's And He Built a Crooked House. I think I read both when I worked in an office within a factory in Portland Maine and had to keep myself busy between tasks
- Prismatic Wasteland. I need to buckle down and work through this procedure some time, it's brilliant.
- Marcia herself!. Hard cosign on The Green Knight
- Elizabeth at Patchwork Paladin. I haven't read Earthsea yet but I love some LeGuin crossover!
- Wayspell. Hyperion crossover!
- Kati at The Play Reports. Great post framed around a mural that Kati painted on her wall of her childhood home - harder to claim better bona fides than that!
- Personable. This post actually reminded me how much X-Files directly informs my adventure design!
- Martin at Pointless Monument. I've only played Human Revolution but it was cool to read about this perspective on Deus Ex. Game design is game design is game design!
- Serket @ Fluorite Guillotine. Serket cites the real-world temple complex of Angkor Wat as an inspiration which is a very cool artistic motivator.
- Shy Hulud at My Digital Garden. Ted Chiang making another appearance!
- Knight at the Opera. I hate this post because it badly makes me want to play this game that doesn't exist yet. Gremlins mention though!
- Dave at Hitchhiking Diejack. Very different post but really interesting and gameable. Worth a read!
- Lysus at Table46. I didn't expect to see so much Mike Duncan in here! I've loved hearing him on podcasts.
- Scott at XPRolls. Something Wicked This Way Comes was a favorite of mine in college!
- Liz at Magnolia Keep. I finally finished reading Seeing like a State this year and it was amazing to see it pop up in someone's Appendix!
- Noel at Viridian Void. I haven't played the games Noel mentions, but he and I discuss our white whales frequently.
- Zak at Bommyknocker. A really nice appendix of childrens' books!
- Loot Loot Lore. Great companion for Pris's post on "making your inspirations table ready"
- Forlorn Encystment. The author makes a great point about Civ V - I played a lot of this in high school and it gave me a very fun lens for the time I spent daydreaming in history class about how things would have gone differently if a country had gone down a different path on their tech tree. Civ offers a very gameable framework of thinking about how different neighboring cultures might have different resource availability, different access to water, and different productivity.