Scampir

Scampir

@Scampir

Be the Choster you wanna read

  • He/Him + They/Them

One Canuck built the #ttrpg tag and the #mecha tag. And that was me.

Cohost Cultural Institution: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots
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Scampir
@Scampir
Scampir
@Scampir
Scampir
@Scampir

Well that's done

Had a great chat after ending the campaign when Coffee decided to pop in and award us each with one question. The conversation of course drifted beyond the questions but we had a great discussion on like, Dungeons and how even though the NSR have moved out of an affinity for the TSR-compatable and taken it's referee mediated, rich world approach to other settings.

But has the dungeon moved on from an enclosed space to engage an other? An other to be encountered, titillated by, and then conqeured? The incentive of treasure has shifted to the disciplinary power of debt, but you are on the lookout for objects of wealth to steal all the same. A Dungeon is a container, and more prolific authors have analyzed what it can contain in a broader scope, but I want to downscale this to simple concepts.

Scampir
@Scampir

If you disagree with the points I tried to make in this chost, I want to hear about it!

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in reply to @Scampir's post:

Jama
@Jama

What was the state of the prison rooms as they were "cleared" by the players? Did any rooms become like, reused safe havens? Did employees return there if the team left for a bit? When you were done, was the dungeon cleared out entirely, or did it pick back up where it left off, or default to some other ownership?

You may have covered that in the Brut big post you made before, sorry.

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Scampir
@Scampir

the players arrived at the brut while it was in lock down! unbeknownst to any of us at the time the Totem that the director was using to anchor his explorations into the Last Frequency broke free of his control and was able to contaminate the facility with shadowy powers and possessions. Most importantly, the robins lied about who they were to trespass more safely, but it was only in the final session when the players took action to reduce the totem's influence before entering the brut that things went back to normal at the facility proper and rooms were restocked.

now, rooms DID change between sessions but not really repopulated.

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Jama
@Jama

Gotcha. I was wondering how the finished areas were like... "Cleared"? Like in a traditional dungeon, you shore up, find a spot that's safe, create "your" path through if you have to go back in and out, so I was thinking "oh is that a form of giving yourself influence and ownership of an area".

Unlike you though, I haven't rehashed the Discourses over 6 years, so I don't know if what I'm saying here is like, well trodden ground and the Dungeon™️ is just inherently about overwriting the status quo with your own influence.

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Scampir
@Scampir

pacification is definitely in the mix! In our case, there were moments where the players had taken too long to get to a room, so i'd add like, the Linemen in Dr Gal's office so the players walked in seeing that a group of albion-aligned psychics had murdered the head scientist before the players could

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in reply to @Scampir's post:

Serket88
@Serket88

"extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty, and where, in one or more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces to extract or accrue value"

Offhand, I see roughly five broad categories where dungeon exploration is not an imperialism.

==> no prior or given legal sovereignty

  • permission given, external
    a government giving permission to adventurers to clear a dungeon they have sovereignty over

  • permission given, internal
    a dungeon's residents, seeking adventurers to delve. a symbiotic, consensual relationship.

  • existing sovereignty
    residents of a land delving into the dungeons of their ancestors or long-dead predecessors.

==> to extract or accrue value

  • no value gain
    adventurers delving into a dungeon to eliminate a dangerous threat
    adventurers delving into a dungeon to free its prisoners

These scenarios line up with my favorite dungeons I've experienced in the past as well as my instincts for dungeon scenario creation.

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vivien
@vivien

i think theres something to be said on sublimating the desire here, sounds like you did a lot more than just a shallow reskin, but i do always think about that wider thing of “fixing” bad tropes

for instance a semi common reskin is the dungeon mysteriously appearing from thin air and causing problems, sometimes accompanied by it being some psychological memory like persona 5 or that one episode of paranoia agent, but repelling an invading Foreign force can easily get fashy, saying nothing of that questin of Why violence is the best solution

like esp with the psych example (playing more persona 5 im replaying it atm) it can end up setting the “monsters” as ontologically evil, and therefore fine to be killed on sight. when combined with an ambition to think about restorative justice (a la palisade finale) it can feel a bit weird

is it fine to sublimate your enjoyment of imperialist tropes? maybe, dunno. its a philosophical question, the old masters tools/masters house one really, i def lean in the we need new stories direction but dont feel SUPER strongly

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