This week we’re shipping Game Mastery Plot Twist Cards: Flashbacks, a sequel to the original Plot Twist Cards deck. The point of using Plot Twist Cards is to break out of the mindset that you have to have a precise rule for everything that happened, happens, or could happen in a game. You don’t have to explain why the paladin never mentioned his days as a street thief, or how the “Abyssal bloodline” sorcerer is suddenly manifesting nagalike powers. In a world where magic is real, genetics are subservient to magic, and a spell can create or alter memories, revealing a previously unknown backstory is easy.
Designer Rob Heinsoo and I call this the “soap opera reveal” of character development—as in, “your grandfather wasn’t a powerful sorcerer—he was actually a demon!” Amnesia, secret plans for vengeance, evil twins, clones, demonic possession, dream sequences, mind control, undiscovered siblings, psychic visions, and characters coming back from the dead are all perfectly plausible elements of a Pathfinder campaign. James Jacobs used a derro lab full of clones of Wes Schneider’s character in the Shadow under Sandpoint campaign. Monte Cook used a memory-erasing witch to have his Praemal campaign PCs re-explore a lair they had already explored. Chris Perkins played identity-switching twin elf brothers in Monte’s original Ptolus campaign. I used a dream sequence orchestrated by mi-go to retcon some campaign-derailing events in my Exiles of Zirnakaynin campaign caused by “evil sibling” Rob McCreary and James’s demon-possessed bard.
Using narrative tools like this, even though there aren’t specific rules for them (What’s the saving throw DC to resist a dream sequence? What’s the Perception DC to realize your ally is actually her evil twin?) lets a GM create interesting story arcs for a campaign. Likewise, a player can use these tools to explain gaining an unusual ability, feat, spell, or even something as mundane as suddenly investing 5 skill ranks in a new skill. For gamers hesitant to go outside the bounds of the rules, Plot Twist cards give players and GMs a way to fiddle with bits of the story under agreed-upon constraints.
(As a side note: The woman in the Shadenfreude card illustration is based on Paizo Art Director Sarah Robinson. I can neither confirm nor deny that the illustration is based on an actual event.)
How have you used flashbacks, amnesia, twins/doppelgangers, and similar “soap opera reveals” in your campaign? Would you like to see more examples of doing this, or rules establishing a framework for doing so?
Time for a little back history on everyone's favorite literate goblin (and by that, I mean Golarion's only literate goblin): I love science fiction, but I am woefully ignorant of the subject. I sat on my mother's knee and watched Star Wars and Star Trek, I read through my father's dog-eared old copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and a few of my Saturday morning cartoons were set in space. That's about it. I remember reading some John Carter of Mars in junior high, but it didn't leave enough of an impression on me at the time that I even remember it that well. As embarrassing as it is for any goblin to admit, I just don't know much about this subject I enjoy, least of all its mysterious origins.
I supposed that's why Erik Mona, Pierce Watters, Christopher Carey, and James Sutter, the quartet behind Paizo's Planet Stories, line, asked me to start reading and reviewing this classic science fiction. Without any fond childhood memories (literally; my childhood involved being locked in a rabbit hutch with my 27 siblings), I wouldn't be viewing any of our Planet Stories fiction through the lens of nostalgia. Instead, I can dole out honest thoughts and observations on twentieth-century classics from a twenty-first century perspective.
Illustration by Emrah Elmasli
From my perspective, this is both thrilling and terrifying, like riding one of those blood-thirsty horses humans are so fond of. Now I get to read the classic origins of science fiction from almost a century ago for work, but at the same time, these are books that my boss loves. If I don't like them, will he feed me to the dreaded bandersnatch? Plus the library of Planet Stories is huge, and getting bigger every other month! Growing like a well-fed literary octopus (and you thought those metaphors were dead and gone). For my very first Sci-Fried, I decided to look at Henry Kuttner's The Dark World.
Time for another confession that will get me laughed at in the forums: I selected Mr. Kuttner because I really enjoyed the movie The Last Mimzy, which is based on Kuttner's short story Mimsy Were the Borogroves. I imagined that Dark World would be somewhat similar, familiar, and comforting in this strange new land of fiction.
But no. There was nary a stuffed rabbit to be found.
Instead, the story follows Edward Bond, who is not a little girl but rather a World War II veteran who feels strangely out of place in his own skin. It turns out that Edward Bond is not Edward Bond at all, but rather the wizard Ganelon from a parallel world, trussed up with Edward Bond's memories and life as a prison. I don't want to share too much of the story, but obviously the majority of the book takes place in the bizarre titular "Dark World," and many of the descriptions of this setting are both psychedelic and believable.
Kuttner's writing style is distinctively "chunky;" very intricate descriptions and bulgy sentences that can be a little difficult to handle at first if you're used to the "say it all now" style of modern authors. But The Dark World drew me in after the first chapter, and I had trouble putting the book down once that happened. What at first seemed like a fantasy story instead took a sharp turn into sci-fi as Kuttner tried to explain everything from vampires and werewolves to Cthulhian gods with the science of the 1940s. Some of the theories stretched my suspension of disbelief, but never quite broke it. Having finished the book now, I almost wish it were longer, with more time to examine the uncanny science and history of the Dark World itself.
The narrator is probably the best part of the book. We see everything through the protagonist's eyes, but until the very end we're never told for certain whether it's Ganelon with Edward's memories, or Edward with Ganelon's memories. Control switches between the two personalities, and bits of memory bleed through to the other, which makes what could've been an obnoxiously perfect hero into an underdog I could root for. I really want to spoil the ending, because it made me cackle with delight, but instead I will demand that you order your own copy and read it for yourself.
My final impressions of The Dark World are that it can be a difficult book to start, but once you get into the pace and get used to Kuttner's narrative flavor, it's an impossible book to stop. Once all the pieces are in play, the action flows fast and furious, with only occasional chapter breaks to let you catch your breath. The Dark World is relatively short, making it a great first step into the genre of pulp that you can read in one sitting. If you love science and history as much as I do, then some of the genre explanations will make you positively giddy. A fun book, even 63 years after it was originally published, and definitely one I'd recommend.
Dark World may have lacked hyper-advanced stuffed bunnies, but that's only because this book is for grownups.
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