Pictures and Words

According to Kevin Smith, a writer “creates his ideal world”. In the world of Kevin Smith films, people talk in lengthy monologues about pop culture and sex. In the world of Charlie Kaufman films, reality is a bit vague and everyone seems to be miserable all of the time. That’s why the good guys win most of the time, nice guys get the girl, and everyone in movies is so attractive. People create the world that they wish they lived in, and hope that others enjoy it as much as they do.

All my work on All-That-Is has been written with myself as the target audience. If I thought something was cool, would be interesting, would solve a problem I have with the Dungeons and Dragons universe (or fictional universes in general), would be fun to play…if I liked an idea, I’d throw it in.

Bits and pieces are also based on various public domain works (The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan) and others are (much less directly) inspired by works that aren’t public domain. I’ve only included information about the parts of All-That-Is that are vastly different to your typical fantasy universe (Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons) and I’m focussing on the parts that are relevant to the Traveller’s Guide.

One of the most interesting series of articles I’ve ever read was by Rich Burlew, the man behind Order of the Stick. (a webcomic set in a world that obeys Dungeons and Dragons rules, but is not necessarily a game of Dungeons and Dragons.) The series of articles was called “The New World“; it’s an (unfinished) account of him creating a new campaign setting, writing stream-of-consciousness, explaining his decisions as he makes them, and giving general universe-building advice.

I’ve been working on All-That-Is for literally years now, so I don’t even know why some of the decisions were made, but I’ll share the thinking behind the parts that I remember. Over the years I’ve bounced more than a few ideas off people – most notably my cousin Gavin, my friend Damon, and my sister Elizabeth. Without their input, All-That-Is, would be quite a different world.

You can see why I need an artist. This sketch is from 2006, when I first started working on the world. It really wasn't meant to be seen by eyes other than my own, but it nicely demonstrates the difference in size between the races.

Races

There are exactly 10 sentient races in All-That-Is.

In Dungeons and Dragons, not only are there the base races that come with the rulebooks, but you can buy dozens of supplementary books, full of more playable races. What’s more, a huge number of the enemies you fight are sentient as well. Reading through the monster manual (or, honestly, playing a standard adventure) it feels like you’re living in a world where you can’t go ten metres without running into a new sentient race.

It also brings up…I suppose it’s not really a “moral issue”, but I’ve always felt a bit strange, playing a character of “Good” alignment who has no problem murdering an entire town full of kobolds or goblins, casually killing children and unarmed men and women alike. The alternative, of course, is to let them live, which doesn’t really make sense either.

In All-That-Is, I decided to simplify it – there are exactly 10 sentient races, and 20 cross-breeds that can be made from those races. (I’ll be using the word “people” a lot in this article – a “person”, in All-That-Is, simply means “a member of a sentient race”, with people being the plural.)

There aren’t more races on other planes, there aren’t more races coming out in later handbooks, and any group of creatures terrorising a village is either going to be one of these ten races (making killing them a legitimate moral choice) or a non-sentient race that you can slaughter without feeling guilty. (if you’re the sort of person who feels guilty killing fictional people.)

I’ll be making a lot of comparisons to “humans” – this could be confusing, because Humans on All-That-Is are different to humans on earth. To make comprehension easier, whenever I say “humans” with a lowercase H, I’m referring to regular-brand Earth humans, and whenever I use a capital H, I’m referring to All-That-Is Humans. (this is in keeping with my habit of capitalising All-That-Is race names anyway.)

Similarly, if I’m comparing All-That-Is Dwarves to regular-style D&D dwarves, or halflings, or gnomes, I’ll use capitals for All-That-Is races, and lower-case for all others.

Halflings and Peedlings:

Halflings
I have never liked halflings – I don’t like the name, and I don’t like the race. Halflings are a D&D Race who are…well, they’re Hobbit rip-offs at best, but the way they’re described in the handbooks, they’re basically just short humans. They have almost nothing that makes them individual or unique, they’re just short humans with slight personality changes and hairier feet. If you want to play a human but shorter, you play a halfling.

In All-That-Is,”Halfling” is a name for any cross-breed. “Half-elves” aren’t listed as a separate race, they’re simply a Human/Elf halfling. The races are split into 6 different sizes (Big, Large, Medium, Small, Tiny, Xpedious) and any race can cross-breed with races of the same size, or the size one smaller or one larger.

There are a total of 20 different Halfling races – these won’t be covered in the Traveller’s Guide in any kind of detail. Halflings, to keep it simple, were originally going to be born sterile (like mules) but then I worked out a simple system that allows them to breed without a degree in mathematics required to calculate their children’s stats. (more on that in a later post)

While any individual Halfling’s culture is dependent on their parents, where they were raised, etc, they also tend to have an affinity for other Halflings. Most towns have a Halfling bar or club, where they can meet and associate with other Halflings without the prejudice that they regularly face from “normal” people. Halflings commonly become travellers, because they don’t really feel that they fit in anywhere.

Peedlings
To replace Halflings, I included a race called “Peedlings” (the name was chosen at random from about 50 different x-ling names I wrote down) – Peedlings are slightly taller than Dwarves, and covered entirely in hair. They have disproportionately large heads, hands, and feet, and skinny arms and legs. Peedling hair comes in all the colours that human hair comes in – brown and black are the most common, there’s an occasional blonde, and the much rarer redhead. Clothes are optional, but Peedlings in situations where loose hair could be a risk (such as, say, adventuring) tend to wear protective garments and tie their hair back wherever it’s longest. (or cut it off, but that’s not a common habit.)

Peedlings are the entertainers of the world – the vast majority of the great writings, paintings, songs, dances and plays of the world have come from Peedlings, and their culture is based around culture. A stereotypical Peedling is like a personified D&D Bard – great at chit-chat, terrible at combat. (give them the right class, of course, and they’re as tough as any other character.)

Peedlings suffer from an artistic temperament. This invariably makes them restless – a Peedling rarely stays in one city for their whole life, preferring to see the world, draw inspiration from life, and have adventures that they can work into creative pieces.

Tomorrow: Angels, Fairies, Demons, Ogres

I saw Synecdoche, New York yesterday. Here’s a short review, for people who don’t want to wade through my copious wordage to find out what I thought: I’d give it 7/10, 3/5, 73%. Two word review: “Beautifully dissatisfying.” Ten word review: “I don’t want to see it again, but probably will.” 

Love it or hate it, you have to admit that Synecdoche, New York is a beautiful film.

That sentence doesn’t make any sense.

“Beautiful”, by its very definition, is a subjective term. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure and all that. Something that makes you weep with beauty might leave me cold. Something that makes me reconsider my life and purpose might make you angry at the sheer pointlessness of its creation.

And no, Synecdoche, New York didn’t make me weep with beauty, leave me cold, make me reconsider my life or make me angry at its sheer pointlessness.

The closest we can get to “proving” that something’s beautiful is to have lots of people agree with us. Millions of people watch Big Brother, but I don’t think that makes it beautiful. Millions of people think that Keira Knightley is absolutely gorgeous, but I know people who can’t see the appeal.

The next step is to point to a certain class of people who agree with us. “Every art critic in New York agree, Donovan Steissel is a brilliant artist.” But I can guarantee that there are movies that are critically acclaimed that you think are absolute garbage, and movies that were panned that you love – I think that Spanglish is one of the most beautiful films of the 21st century, but RottenTomatoes tells me that I’m the only one who thinks so.

Fact is, beautiful means something that pleases you. If it don’t please you, it ain’t beautiful.

(some people try to get around the subjectivity of beauty by adding an objective word to it: “Say what you like about Synecdoche, New York, you can’t deny that technically speaking, it’s quite beautiful.” Nope. Makes even less sense.)

When reviewing something, you’re allowed to state your opinions as fact – “It’s a beautiful film. It’s a terrible novel. She is a fantastic actor. The set design is wonderful.” All of these words are subjective, so we know that every time you’re stating one of these “facts”, you’re really just telling us your opinion. It only annoys me when people make generalisations, and tell you that by straying from these generalisations, you are somehow “wrong” – “Anyone who enjoys this book doesn’t know what art is,” “This painting will change your mind about what it means to live, and if it doesn’t, you’re an idiot.”

“Love it or hate it, you have to admit that Synecdoche, New York is a beautiful film.”

The other problem with the that sentence is the word “film”. What is a film?

Technically, a film is “a sequence of images strung together to create the impression of motion”, but I hope we can all agree that there’s a bit more to it than that. The next definition down tells us that a film is a “connected cinematic narrative.”

One more definition and then I promise I’ll start talking about the film:

A million people have had a million arguments about what constitutes a narrative, so I won’t define it too strictly, but I think you need a beginning, middle, end, and a buncha characters to care about.  My personal favourite definition of narrative comes from Tom Salinsky, a British writer/improviser:

A story is a linked series of questions and their answers. When all questions are answered, the story is over.

Obviously it’s no fun when every question is answered, but it’s infinitely more irritating when significant questions go un-answered. It can work when done well – the end of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels springs to mind – but when it’s done badly, it can ruin a film. I loved No Country For Old Men until we reached the end, and I realised that they’d cut out the final third, and all the answers that should have accompanied it. That’s another movie where I disagreed with the critics – Rotten Tomatoes tells me that 94% of critics loved it, it won four Oscars including “Best Film” but I think that ultimately, it was a beautifully shot complete waste of time. 

Synedoche, New York is also beautifully shot and has zero closure, but there’s no way I could call it a complete waste of time. I think that it was beautiful, and I think it failed as a “film”. It’s full of great moments, and it creates at least one character that you care about and one character that you despise, but ultimately it raises far too many questions, and refuses to answer 90% of them.

It’s worth seeing, and as I said in my 10-word review above, I’ll probably go and see it again, just because it’s got me thinking, but it’s also a miserable film to sit through. Bleak, depressing, full of unhappiness – there were devices in the film that really worked for me, snippets that I loved, but this film (“film”) manages to be beautiful without being even remotely uplifting.

After seeing the movie, I went and had a meal. Thinking about what I’d just seen, I suddenly realised the significance of a couple of earlier events, themes leapt out at me that I hadn’t noticed at the time, and I almost cried, thinking about a relationship in the film. At the time, it hadn’t affected me at all, it had bored and disappointed me, but looking back, realising exactly what had happened, I was almost brought to tears.

As far as I’m concerned, that makes it a beautiful piece of cinema.

But the complete lack of closure, the lack of explanation as to what’s happening 90% of the time, the last, bewildering twenty minutes of the film…

As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t count as a “film”.

Spoilers follow. If you haven’t seen the film and intend to, don’t read on.

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