Essential Viewing for a Weird Campaign
Of course, there is no way to begin a series like this without addressing the elephantine abomination in the torture room, the most obvious, perhaps even cliche choices of inspiration for a deadly, dark and weird game.
The Obvious
This is one of a few films which will instantly be brought up in answer to the question "What should I watch for inspiration for an LotFP campaign?". Considered a modern horror classic by many, except for Mr. James Edward Raggi IV of our very own Lamentations of the Flame Princess fame. His response was "For god's sake, all it takes is a musket or a buckle hat for someone to declare something an LotFP movie."
Here's why you should watch it, if you haven't, or take inspiration from it if you have: Tone and atmosphere. This movie imposes one of the most bleak, stark, and oppressive atmospheres in recent memory (Eggers' follow-up The Lighthouse is also excellent at this, perhaps even more so due to its extremely constricted location). If you want to start a campaign or even a module, you are going to have to establish a strong tone. The grey of the ever-clouded sky. The smell of the smoky remains of devastation. The thirst of the dying land. The stench of the futile death splayed on the battlefield. All of these may come off a bit hyperbolic- and indeed, one cannot introduce every scene as an apocalyptic tableau. But when you can make it count- as the party crests the hill of the adventure location, as they return home to desolation, as they stumble ashore from a wrecked ship, etc, you can set them on edge. "Shit, this isn't even where the fucking monsters are!", they think. "And now, we're going to head into a hole in the ground and find out what could possibly cause this..."
This film is the gold standard in Weird Dark Fairy Tale ™ filmmaking. "Spellbinding" is not an unfair descriptor of the effect on the viewer. Del Toro is the most artful creator of monsters in modern times.
Pan's Labyrinth has lush, detailed creatures. They range from archetypal to mind-bendingly weird, but even in the case of the Faun (not actually named Pan, for pedantry's sake), one of folklore's oldest creatures, gives it such characterization and flair that it stands apart from anything you've ever seen.
The details are layered on past the point of luxury. The Faun creaks as he moves, strange clicks work their way into his speech, his spindly fingers cut the air as he works his magic. Fairies seem off-puttingly insectoid, with veined wings, jittery movements and a strange wetness to them. Fairly normal creatures such as a toad project a disgusting and deadly presence. And then there's the other thing, the one you all know about, unless you don't, in which case I'll let you see it for yourselves. It's a real mindfuck, and it's exactly what we strive for in the OSR. You should be describing your monsters with the care that Del Toro crafts his.
Del Toro also deserves credit for his portrayal of violence: stark, sudden, and horrific. The most impactful death, at least for me, comes not from some oozing horror but:
This is how it should be. Characters have few hit points. Monsters are not tailored to their ability level. They do not have fireball (if you're playing correctly). They're going to fucking die. And death should mean something. It should be horrifying.
A horror classic, arguably the greatest of all Italian horror. Has witches in it. A lot is made of its use of color, its dreamlike atmosphere, the way it isolates the protagonist and emphasizes their fragility and fear. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the soundtrack. It's real fucking good. And so should it be for the music at your table. This stuff is so good that 40+ years later they hold screenings with live performances of the score.
When you've set a scene, you can complete the experience in all kinds of ways; overtly, ambiently or subconsciously. Unless you or your players are they type who can't focus at the table, musical accompaniment is something you won't know you've been missing until you try it. I play all kinds of stuff: noisy sludge metal, atmospheric black metal, unsettling ambient music, dark folk music, synth bangers and more. You can cue it up intentionally, but if you just leave it on in the background it will occasionally jump in just when you need it and that's something your group will talk about. "Whoa, battle's on!" "Oh, shit, this thing is big..." "Uh, we made a mistake opening this door. Fuck." Plus, on some level, your players might pick up on the fact that these fuckers perform covered in goat blood. Can't hurt.
A few recommendations:
Velvet Cacoon- Genevieve (atmospheric black metal)
Kow Otani- Roar of the Earth (Shadow of the Colossus OST)
Ben Frost- Aurora or By The Throat
Wardruna- Any Runaljod trilogy album, or Skald if you want an authentic recreation of traditional Norse instrumentation and skaldic verse.
John Carpenter- greatest hits, Lost Themes, whatever
The Body- XoroahBin (for ambient) or Someday You Will Ache As I Ache (for noisy chaos)
One of the greatest products of the auteur movement. A long fucking movie. Personally I like the even longer Redux, for reasons, although I'm in the minority. For me, it's about the characters.
Everyone in this movie is fucking insane. The main character is a cold killer enlisted to assassinate a fellow American soldier. The army has been institutionalized to The Jungle: most have come to realize they are never leaving, and accept this place as both their deadly playground and their hell. Commanding officers have lost it and conduct operations like symphonies. Playboy bunnies turn into birds. There is no respite. Everyone has succumbed to the Weird. The world is no longer one we recognize; it is one only of violence and survival and whatever sick satisfaction or fleeting escape one can manage, and everyone gets that. But the rest of the world doesn't- they're outside the bubble. The best Weird OSR adventures build their own insular parallel realities: Deep Carbon Observatory, Monolith From Beyond Space and Time, Better Than Any Man, Qelong (especially Qelong). They allow you to cross the threshold where people and reality both play by different rules. Once again, not every location, adventure or NPC is like this. If they were, then that would be boring and desensitizing. But when the players say "Fuck it" and go towards the meteor-crater, then you don't just do a bit of scene-setting, you go all the way and immerse them in the weird, and show them that the NPCs and world are immersed in it too and that they've been marked and changed by it.
This movie is also one of the best examples of a grind that you will likely see, especially Redux. It goes on, and it drags, but in a good way. It shows that there are no Long Rests in a dungeon, there's no easy way out of a conflict, there's no time to re-memorize the spells you wasted. You're fuuuuucked if you didn't realize that this might go on for several more days. The tunnel caved in, the portal closed, the conflict spread, whatever. You're trapped now and it's going to take everything you've got. The only way out is through.
Comments
Post a Comment