Hungry ghosts and dream-eaters

Tetsubo was originally intended to be the “fantasy medieval Japan” supplement for Warhammer, but there were personnel changes at Games Workshop after Jamie Thomson and I were asked to write it. On the week we were due to deliver the manuscript, contacts in the GW offices advised us it would probably no longer fit their publishing plans. And so it turned out. We recovered the rights, and over the years talked about doing it with other publishers, but most of them wanted more of a 1960s Japanese cinema vibe than a Muromachi/Edo style setting.

In lockdown I took advantage of the sudden surfeit of spare time to start converting Tetsubo to Paul Mason’s Outlaws RPG system. I’ll get back to it in the next pandemic, if we haven’t had a nuclear war first. (My backers on Patreon have access to the work-in-progress version of the rulebook.) In the meantime, here are a couple of yokai from the book translated into Dragon Warriors rules – or should that be “Tatsu Bushi”? If you want the original Warhammer stats, they're here.

Baku

The baku is a powerful quadruped. It is called the Eater of Dreams, and people in rural areas sometimes make offerings so that it will devour their nightmares for them. Nonetheless the baku is not a kami but a physical creature, albeit one with myriad wondrous powers. Its ability is not restricted to consuming evil dreams. It can devour any dream, and characters whose dreams are taken frequently can become irritable or enervated.

If a baku takes up residence in an area it may come close to human habitations by night in order to feed. At all times it exudes a narcotic sorcery – characters who are unaware of its approach must resist with a Psychic Talent roll of difficulty factor 16 or else fall into a deep slumber; the roll is made using d20+2 if the character was already recumbent and ready for sleep.

Characters visited regularly over several nights suffer temporary penalties of −1 from PERCEPTION, Psychic Talent and Reflexes for as long as the baku's visits continue. If the visitations persist for more than a week, characters also start to lose 1 experience point per night. (This only applies to experience built up since the last level break; if it goes on long enough the character will not drop a rank, just lose all their unconverted experience.) If the visitations go on uninterrupted for a month, the victim develops insanity (randomly rolled). If the baku is slain or prevented from reaching its victims, depleted characteristics recover with just a few good nights' sleep but lost experience is gone and must be earned all over again. If an insane victim sees the baku’s dead body, he or she loses their insanity.

Baku are semi-intelligent and have been known to speak in guttural, half-coherent tones. It may be that they do not understand what they say but only regurgitate garbled phrases from the dreams they have eaten. Sometimes baku can be controlled by magic, so players could encounter one as the steed or servant of a powerful wizard.

Physique: The body of a baku resembles a tiger as large as a bull. Its fur is slick black and patterned with green circles like staring eyes. Its head has a long snout like that of a tapir or elephant, usually crested with long slender horns. It has a mane, but its domed forehead is bald (or even, in some accounts, fleshless). This is the appearance of a male baku. Females have a completely different physiognomy, but there are no reliable accounts from which any description could be attempted here.

Behaviour: Baku fear daylight and will always return to their lair before sunrise – usually a burrow or cave, sometimes a deserted temple in thick woodland. Although powerful they are not used to encountering opponents who fight back; any time a baku takes a wound it must make a morale roll or flee; deduct the rank of all opponents it is facing from 25, and the baku must roll the result or less on d20 to stand its ground. Sometimes baku will flee without waiting to be wounded, as they are intelligent enough to recognise there is nothing to be gained in fighting against the odds.

Special rules: A baku given an hour to feast on the dreams of a sleeping spellcaster will cause him or her to suffer the loss of d3 Magic Points the following day. Mystics suffer a penalty of 1 to Psychic Fatigue Checks.

When a baku strikes someone in combat it steals some of the strength of his dream-self. This has no perceptible effect on most people, but against a spellcaster it causes the loss of d6 Magic Points; mystics must roll a Psychic Fatigue Check with the damage they took substituting for spell level. Also, anyone injured must make an Intelligence roll (difficulty factor 14) or fall into a deep sleep until the baku leaves the vicinity.

If the baku is able to feast on dreams it fights with an ATTACK bonus of +3. If thwarted, its ATTACK is as listed.

In retreat, this creature can move ‘like the wind’ according to the description given by Kotei in his Bakemonojin. When the baku is fleeing from combat it moves at three times normal speed.

ATTACK 21                                    2 x Claws (d8,4) or 1 x Bite (d10,5)
DEFENCE 10                                 Armour Factor: 4
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 18             Movement: 14m (42m when fleeing)
EVASION: 8                                   STEALTH: 28
                                                        PERCEPTION: 20 (darksight)
Health Points: 2d6+24
Rank Equivalent: 10th

Abilities & Traits:

• Aura of Slumber: Anyone within 10m of a baku who has not already perceived it must make a Psychic Talent check (difficulty factor 16) or fall into a deep sleep lasting 1d6 x 10 minutes unless the sleeper is physically shaken awake.
• Dream Eater: Anyone injured by the baku’s attack must make an Intelligence roll (difficulty factor 14) to avoid falling asleep as above. If a spellcaster, they lose d6 Magic Points; mystics roll Psychic Fatigue.
• Nightmare Parasite: If a baku visits a person repeatedly, the affected individual experiences a penalty of −1 to PERCEPTION, Psychic Talent and Reflexes for as long as the visits continue. If visited for more than a week, they also lose 1 unbanked experience point per night.
• Wary Hunter: Baku are cautious and will retreat if seriously injured. If a baku takes a wound, it must roll [25 minus combined rank of opponents] or less on d20 or flee.
• Windborne Escape: A baku that flees from combat increases its movement to three times normal, vanishing into the night with uncanny speed.

Gaki

Gaki (‘hungry ghosts’) are tormented spirits cursed with an insatiable hunger due to their past sins, resulting in negative karma that means they cannot be reborn. They manifest in different forms depending on their cravings. Someone who stole from the bodies of the dead, for example, might become a corpse-eating gaki.

Bukyo teaches that appetite and desire are the cause of suffering, a doctrine vividly illustrated by the existence of hungry ghosts. For this reason it is sometimes possible for a Bukyo priest to placate a gaki by offering to perform the Segaki rite. This gives the ghost a chance to escape its suffering and be reborn as some lowly creature such as an insect. However, it is difficult for even a devout priest to reason with a gaki in this way because all gaki are effectively insane in human terms.

Physique: Like all ghosts, gaki are not restricted to one form. Sometimes they appear as roiling clouds of black smoke on which their human form is superimposed. This is thought to be a glimpse into Gakido, or the Hell of the Hungry Dead. Sometimes they are reported as having furry limbs or insectoid features, but this may be a subjective impression resulting from the observer's fear of the gaki. More usually, just as a gaki is about to attack, it will take a guise based on its craving. So a ketsu-gaki will manifest a face of wet blood, a chokenju-gaki might wear features molded of clay, and so on.

Behaviour: Gaki find it hard to resist any opportunity to assuage their hunger. To do so the gaki must roll 5 or 6 on d6. If the roll fails, the gaki must feed even if this means putting itself in danger.

Usually the gaki’s locus of haunting will be a graveyard, temple or mansion, and they will not move beyond that, but in some cases it can be a much more extensive area. One notorious gaki that was eventually enlightened by the priest Dogen had been condemned to haunt the entire length of the Shokowado highway, more than two hundred miles from end to end.

Special rules: Gaki cannot be harmed by nonmagical weapons. They can only manifest with any force at night, or occasionally during the daytime if there is a fog, blizzard or thunderstorm.

People surviving an encounter with a gaki commonly develop a phobia – often, strangely, a fear of insects. Any character who succumbs to a gaki’s fright attack acquires a phobia – 50% of entomophobia, 20% arachnophobia, otherwise roll randomly.

Other powers vary according to the type of gaki encountered. The list here is only a framework on which the referee should feel free to build. Many gaki have magical powers as a residue of merit from much earlier incarnations, and no two are entirely alike.

Chokenju-Gaki

The spirits of men who despoiled shrines for the sake of gain, or who took treasure from ancient tombs. They are cursed with a ravenous hunger for grave-clay, funereal offerings and the charred remnants of funeral pyres. A chokenju-gaki will usually be restricted to a graveyard and will not bother anyone who does not intrude on its feasting.

This variety of gaki is prone to taking normal human form by day. Often they will wear the guise of a solitary priest or hermit living in a cottage in the graveyard. They are typically less obsessive and more reasonable during the day, and they may even ask for help if confronted by one who has guessed the truth about them.

At night the chokenju-gaki may take a monstrous form of earth, cerements and mouldered bones, instilling dread in any living creature who sees it. Roll 4d6 for fright attack, and a victim who succumbs will flee in terror or fight at −2 from ATTACK if cornered.

If engaged in combat, the gaki slashes with jagged talons which carry a variant of the Wasting Disease (see The Elven Crystals). Anyone who takes damage must roll Strength or less on d20 to resist the disease, then if they fail roll again each day to recover. Each day of illness causes −1 to both Strength and Health Points. If the character loses a total of half their Strength or more during the whole course of the disease, then even after recovering their appearance will be permanently affected, making their flesh grey and pitted: the character suffers −2 Looks.

ATTACK 20                                Talons (d8,5) and disease
DEFENCE 16                              Armour Factor: d3
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 15         Movement: 10m (15m)
EVASION: 4                                  STEALTH: 10
                                                        PERCEPTION: 10 (darksight)
Health Points: 3d6+10
Rank Equivalent: 8th

Doku-Gaki

The ghosts of poisoners, doomed to thirst for poison themselves. Anyone who is carrying or brewing any form of poison risks attracting a doku-gaki's attention. The creature is likely to begin its attack by approaching the character while he or she is asleep, usually in the form of a vapour with weak (2d6) toxic or deliriant effect.

Taking a more cohesive form if combat becomes inevitable, it strikes with envenomed claws. Each time it hits and inflicts damage, make a roll for poison of normal strength. The first failed roll results in the victim becoming drowsy (−1 from all rolls), the second in partial paralysis (like a Weaken spell), and the third in death. If rescued in time, the victim will recover from the venom after a day’s rest.

ATTACK 18                                Claws (d8,4) and poison
DEFENCE 12                              Armour Factor: 3
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 15         Movement: 12m (20m)
EVASION: 5                                  STEALTH: 20
                                                        PERCEPTION: 14 (panoptical)
Health Points: 2d6+12
Rank Equivalent: 7th

Jikininki

A ghoulish creature, usually the ghost of someone who robbed or defiled the dead. Anyone confronting a jikininki unexpectedly is subject to a d20 fright attack that can result in them becoming awestruck – unable to move, speak or attack, though they can still defend themselves. The character can attempt to snap out of it by rolling Intelligence or less on d20 each round, and once they do so there is no need to check again in that encounter.

Jikininki do not kill to eat. They usually crave the flesh of someone who has died from other means, and will only fight if kept from reaching the corpse. A person eaten by a jikininki can never be restored to life.

In areas where a jikininki is known to haunt, some families have acquired the habit of murdering wayfarers whenever someone in their household dies. This ensures that the jikininki's hunger will be assuaged by eating the wayfarer instead of the family member on the first night, allowing the householders time to arrange a cremation the next day. Of course, people who do this kind of thing are only ensuring that they will return as gaki in their next life.

Encounter with a jikininki

All then left the house except the priest, who went to the room where the dead body was lying. The usual offerings had been set before the corpse and a small Buddhist lamp—tomyo—was burning. The priest recited the service and performed the funeral ceremonies, after which he entered into meditation. So meditating he remained through several silent hours, and there was no sound in the deserted village. But when the hush of the night was at its deepest there noiselessly entered a shape, vague and vast, and in the same moment the priest found himself without power to move or speak. He saw that shape lift the corpse, as with hands, and devour it more quickly than a cat devours a rat, beginning at the head and eating everything, the hair and the bones and even the shroud. And the monstrous thing, having thus consumed the body, turned to the offerings, and ate them also. Then it went away, as mysteriously as it had come.

– Koizumi Yakumo, Kwaidan

ATTACK 19                                   Claws (d8+1,6)
DEFENCE 13                                  Armour Factor: 4
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 16             Movement: 12m (25m)
EVASION: 4                                      STEALTH: 18
                                                            PERCEPTION: 15 (darksight)
Health Points: 2d10+9
Rank Equivalent: 8th

Ketsu-Gaki

A Yamatese vampire, this is the ghost of a murderer or an excessively cruel and violent person. The presence of a ketsu-gaki induces dread in living creatures: d20 fright attack to induce −2 ATTACK, −1 damage for the duration of the battle. In combat, the ketsu-gaki can either strike normally or else grapple. It will usually do this only when fighting a solitary opponent. A character who is grappled must make an immediate d20 roll trying to score equal to or under the average of their Strength and Reflexes score; if this fails they are paralysed and unable to act for 2d6 rounds. The gaki will make use of this time to drink the paralysed character's blood, extruding a proboscis or long needle-like teeth with which to do this. Each round it spends drinking will drain the victim of 1 ealth Point. When HP reach zero, the victim is discarded and must roll Strength or less on d20 or die at once. If the roll succeeds, the victim is incapacitated and may suffer from recurrent bleeding; assuming they survive, they recover as from normal injury but only get back half their rank in HP each day.

Ketsu-gaki can sometimes appear during the day wearing the appearance they bore in their previous incarnation. While in this manifestation they are able to control their hunger and are effectively just ghosts passing for living people.

ATTACK 22                                 Claws (d10,4) or grapple
DEFENCE 12                              Armour Factor: 3
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 16         Movement: 12m (25m)
EVASION: 4                                  STEALTH: 13
                                                        PERCEPTION: 13 (darksight)
Health Points: 3d6+10
Rank Equivalent: 9th

Kwa-Gaki

Arsonists, particularly those who have set fire to Bukyo temples, are reincarnated as kwa-gaki, or ‘fire-eating ghosts’. All forms of heat and light are consumed by this goblin, including spells such as Dragonbreath and Dazzle as well as the light of lanterns and candles. Such attacks are neutralized within a range of fifteen metres of the kwa-gaki and light sources automatically dim in the same region, with bright firelight guttering to the level of a candle and ordinarily dim illumination dropping to pitch darkness.

The creature’s touch draws heat from the target's body, causing the loss of an additional 1d3 damage from any successful attack.

A kwa-gaki which comes across a sleeping character may try to possess him or her in order to steal bodily warmth over a long period. This process takes 2d6 minutes, but works automatically if the gaki is not interrupted during this time. The character will begin to develop a chill as the gaki first feeds on their body warmth, interspersed with periods of burning fever when the gaki is satiated. This causes the character to be temporarily at −2 to all rolls most of the time, and totally incapacitated while the fever is on them. Normal medical treatment is ineffective, and the character must guess that they have become host to a gaki and seek the aid of a Bukyo priest. If and when the gaki is exorcized, the victim recovers almost immediately.

ATTACK 12+d10                            Claws (d8,4) but will usually attempt possession
DEFENCE 12                                  Armour Factor: 2
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 16             Movement: 10m (20m)
EVASION: 4                                      STEALTH: 22
                                                            PERCEPTION: 14 (darksight)
Health Points: 5d6
Rank Equivalent: 7th

Yokushiki-Gaki

Demonic spirits of carnality, corresponding to the incubi and succubi of Occidental myth. These beings were driven by overwhelming lust when alive, or else acquired bad karma through unnatural sexual practices. By night yokushiki-gaki are able to appear as preternaturally attractive individuals, but this is only an illusion and if encountered at all by day it is in the form of one made hideous by age and depravity.

In its night-time form the yokushiki-gaki can seduce characters of either sex. If the intended victim chooses to resist (they might not even try) roll 4d6 for the force of the attraction, subtract the victim’s rank, and the gaki must roll that or less of d20 to seduce them. If a yokushiku-gaki succeeds in coupling with a character, it drains them of their vitality, and they will awaken the next morning with their Health Points permanently reduced by 1.

A yokushiki-gaki will usually retreat if threatened with combat, though if interrupted in the throes of lovemaking (perhaps by the comrades of its victim, belatedly coming to her assistance) it will lash out violently. If its claws inflict damage on a character it will infect him or her with a disease (roll Strength or less on 3d6 to resist) that causes no HP loss but applies a −5 penalty to Looks for the 1-6 months that the disease lasts. At the same time the gaki will discard its comely appearance, the repugnant sight of its true face instilling dread (2d6 fright check; those succumbing are unable to act for 1-6 rounds) in everyone present. If someone who has had sex with a yokushiki-gaki sees its real face, he or she immediately acquires a form of insanity (randomly rolled).

ATTACK 18                                    Claws (d8,4)
DEFENCE 12                                  Armour Factor: 2
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 18             Movement: 15m (25m)
EVASION: 4                                      STEALTH: 18
                                                            PERCEPTION: 13 (panoptical)
Health Points: 2d6+8
Rank Equivalent: 7th

Adventure seeds

The gaki make for fascinating antagonists because they aren't simply monsters to defeat; they have tragic backstories and represent moral lessons about greed, lust, and violence. This provides referees with opportunities to create encounters with ethical dimensions beyond simple combat.

1. The Hungry Road: A notorious ketsu-gaki haunts a stretch of highway. Fearful locals have developed the terrible practice of sacrificing travellers whenever a villager dies, to distract the gaki from feasting on the remains of their loved ones.
2. The Beautiful Stranger: A yokushiki-gaki has taken up residence in an abandoned house. Several young people from a nearby village have fallen mysteriously ill after reporting encounters with a beautiful stranger.
3. A Pious Caretaker: A chokenju-gaki haunts an ancient temple, appearing as an elderly keeper by day, in which form it is unaware of its true nature, but transforming into a monstrous guardian by night to ward off looters and defilers.

If you decide to use any of these hungry ghosts in your campaign, they could lead to interesting scenarios where players might need to:

• Investigate the gaki's origin to properly exorcise it
• Navigate difficult moral choices when encountering villages with disturbing practices
• Help a gaki that appears human by day but struggles with its nature
• Perform the Segaki ritual to give a repentant spirit a chance at rebirth

Honour the dead

To get us into the Samhain mood, here's another of my occasional reposts from my Jewelspider page on Patreon. You're welcome to join us over there and get all the goodies and ghosties.

* * *

Wherever possible I aim for Legend to have an authentically medieval European flavour. Whenever possible, that's the thing; Emerson's always there to remind me not to get carried away with foolish consistency.

Halloween, for instance. In the real Middle Ages it wasn’t all turnip lanterns and ghostly tales. The main themes of the season instead seem to have been prognostication and love, those two elements combining in various superstitions about young maids spilling ashes on the doorstep or flour on the kitchen floor. If in the coming year they were destined to wed, in the morning they’d see the clear footprint of the man they were to marry. Shades of a gender-swapped Cinderella there, though they’d have a devil of a job finding out which man the footprint belonged to. (Unless of course it was a cloven hoof-print.)

There seems to have been a notion that you could call back souls from purgatory, and speed them on their way by helping to finish things they had left undone. Quite a few real-life folktales, with the instinct for Monty Haul payoffs you often find in oral tradition, are meticulous in rewarding the person who helps the ghost by having them find a stash of buried gold coins or a jewelled cup up a chimney.

I like the (supposedly Welsh/Cornumbrian) tradition of lighting bonfires along the hills, especially if the rationale is that for this one night those fires mark out the boundary with the land of the dead. The fires must all be lit from one torch kindled at a crossroads. There’s an adventure seed right there, if one callow lad cheats because his taper goes out and so leaves a gap in the spiritual bulwark for something to sneak over.

Returning to the theme of prophecy, and because players will expect something spooky for this time of year, you could make something of the notion that anyone hiding in the church porch at midnight on Halloween will see all the people who are doomed to die in the coming year, their spirits walking around the churchyard and picking out the plot where they’ll be laid to rest.

Typically when a local yarn-spinner gets hold of something like that they feel the need to earn their pot of ale by turning it up to eleven, as in this version related by a Mrs Powell of Dorstone in Herefordshire in the 1890s:

'On All Hallows Eve at midnight, those who are bold enough to look through the church windows will see the interior ablaze with unearthly light, and the pulpit occupied by his Satanic Majesty clothed in a monk's habit. Dreadful anathemas are the burden of his preaching, and the names of those who in the coming year are to render up their souls may be heard by those who have courage to listen. A notorious evildoer, Jack of France, once by chance passed the church at this awful moment. Looking in he saw the lights and heard the voice, and his own name in the horrid list. According to some versions of the story he went home to die of fright. Others say that he repented and died in good repute, and so cheated the evil one of his prey.'

Jack of France might be a misremembered skewing of Jack o’ Kent, a local conjurer (ie local to Mrs Powell; he was said to live in Kentchurch, in legends dating back before the 16th century) who was said to own a black stick with a hollowed end that contained an imp in the form of a fly.

For an adventure seed, let's jettison the schlock and present the player-characters (or preferably just one of them) with something quietly eerie that has the potential to grow in menace. For whatever reason, the character is in the church porch at midnight. They see the doomful procession of those destined to die, but they can’t say a word about it. They can’t warn anyone, and it may very well be that there’s no way to prevent the deaths. So first one person dies, then another, and the other characters know that their colleague has had a vision (because they are able to say that much; they just can’t give the names) and start to wonder if one of them is on the roster.

You could let this build up over the course of the year alongside other events. It even fits in well alongside an adventure-of-the-week structure, since the foreknowledge of people’s deaths serves as an épine dorsale to hold the campaign narrative together. And maybe there is a way, albeit very difficult and dangerous, to save just one innocent young soul from the fate that seems to have been marked out for them.

(One of these days I'm going to do a proper version of that DW Players Guide cover, with the "Players Guide" text in the big space Jonny Hodgson left for it at the top, and the smaller "Dragon Warriors" text at the bottom so it doesn't obscure the artwork of the hydra heads.)

Thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls

Paul Gresty is perhaps best known around these parts as the writer of The Serpent King's Domain (Fabled Lands #7), but in the wider world he's the top-selling author of a couple of acclaimed Choice of Games gamebooks, The ORPHEUS Ruse and MetaHuman Inc.

Making it the hat trick, here's Wraiths of SENTINEL, an interactive adventure in which you play a Deadman-like spy:

"Dying made you the perfect spy. You are now a disembodied spirit working as a covert intelligence operative for SENTINEL, a secretive Federal agency. As a ghost, your unrivaled powers of surveillance can safeguard the freedom of the country -- or bring it to its knees. Will you use your phantom powers to defend the United States government, or to overthrow it?"

As instantly gripping and dramatic a concept as Paul's other gamebooks, then. I don't know why he isn't pitching these things to Amazon to be honest, but TV's loss is interactive literature's gain.

Dave: 'The ORPHEUS Ruse and MetaHuman Inc both have high concepts that immediately grab the reader. If they were movies you’d know just from the pitch if you wanted to see them. Wraiths of SENTINEL is like that too. What’s your process for coming up with those strong concepts? Do you start there, or do you begin at a more detailed character level and the world-building comes later?'

Paul: 'In the case of Wraiths of SENTINEL, the player is essentially a ghost, who's working as an intelligence agent for the US government. Certainly the ghostly, spectral side of that was something that had been bouncing around in my head for a long time, probably a few years. And, for interactive fiction, or for any kind of gamebook, that's how it works for me – the concept comes first. I pick at ideas, sometimes for years at a time, and then at some point things click into place. Or sometimes you have to force a few of those long-held ideas to click together, when you're pitching ideas to a publisher.

 
'I'll specify that concept and setting come first for interactive fiction – but then, the player is by definition the main character; everybody else is the supporting cast. For more conventional fiction, characters can be more prominent at the planning stage. I once listened to a Babylon 5 DVD commentary where JM Straczynski said something to the effect of, 'To write a good story, you just have to create a character that people will like, and then put him up a tree and throw rocks at him.' It's good advice.'

Dave: 'I must admit I had to look up the title each time. Was Wraiths of SENTINEL your first choice?'

Paul: 'It was not. The game went through a few different working titles during development; the game I originally pitched was The Darkling Watchers and then I later decided that I liked Wraiths of AEGIS. But that title was similar to another game that Choice of Games had already published, 180 Files: The Aegis Project. So I had to change mine. And that was entirely my own fault, of course, for being so wishy-washy about the title from the start.

 
'I had a fun time trying to think of names for a sinister government agency, that I could condense into a cool-sounding acronym. I see why so many Marvel writers do that, now. SENTINEL – that is, the Surveillance and Espionage Network, for Tactics and Initiatives in the Negation of Extra-normal Lifeforms – was the one that came out of the editing process.'

Dave: 'It’s 250,000 words, which is incredible value for money – it’s almost as long as A Game of Thrones, and those books take GRRM a decade each to write. How long did you spend on Wraiths of SENTINEL?'

Paul: 'Start to finish, it took me a crazy-long amount of time. Well over four years. In terms of fiction writing work, I've been working almost wholly on this since I finished The Serpent King's Domain. And that's not completely due to the length of the game – I had some fairly seismic life changes, good and bad, during the time I spent writing Wraiths, and that had an impact on the amount of time I could devote to it. At some point, our agreed deadlines became a bit of a distant memory, and I massively appreciate the patience the Choice of Games team showed me. (Note that I'm not encouraging other CoG writers to be so laissez-faire with their deadlines; I may have exhausted the team's patience for this kind of behaviour...)

'I'll add that 250,000 words is by no means the longest Choice of Games title. They've published a few titles over 500,000 words, and one or two that are over a million words. Those are some dedicated writers, right there.'

Dave: 'I’m curious about your process. Do you sketch out the entire storyline, do you write the scenes in order, or do you write the big set-pieces and then connect them with other scenes later?'

Paul: 'My information on how Choice of Games approaches its games might be a little out of date – I haven't pitched an idea to them for a few years, at this point – but they like to see a structured plan from their writers. They maintain an open call for writers on their website, even for writers with no prior experience with interactive fiction, so I feel that this is essentially their way of providing support at the planning stage, and ensuring that their writers aren't leaping out into the void unassisted.

'So, when it comes to creating that structure, yes, I tend to have an idea of the main points that the story needs to hit, but then offer as much flexibility as possible when navigating between those points. I find that it helps as well, in terms of both the story and the worldbuilding, to really drill down to the details of the main character's existence. What's a typical day for a government-employed wraith? Where does he live? Can he listen to music, or browse the internet? What websites might he like? When you reach that level of familiarity with your character – when you see not only the extraordinary obstacles they have to overcome, but the mundane challenges as well – the story kind of starts to write itself.

'A case in point: with Wraiths of SENTINEL, the obvious and most primordial question was why a ghost would be interested in working for anybody at all. Not for money, certainly. This consideration led to some of my favourite sections in the story, quite early on, when the player is exploring the practicalities of being a wraith – but he or she is also learning about how it feels to be truly invisible, and utterly disconnected from the world. Ultimately, and certainly in the earlier parts of the story, the player's work with SENTINEL simply offers a chance to be perceived, and to interact with others.

'For games or interactive fiction, there are also sometimes mechanical elements to consider, which can have an impact on the overall structure of the story. In MetaHuman Inc, the character can lean towards specializing in either magic or super-science – and so, in that case, I specifically wanted to include a scene about halfway through where the player can reverse those choices so far, and develop the opposing discipline without losing progress. It provides a bit more flexibility like that; the player isn't constrained by choices he made early on.'

Dave: 'Presumably there are trade-offs between making a compelling story and providing the player with freedom of choice. Do you feel those different requirements have to involve compromise, or is there a way to deliver both? In the cases when it’s either/or, which takes precedence?'

Paul: 'For the really big moments in the story, you need that element of choice. And that’s the raison d’être of the interactive fiction format; if you don’t want to offer choice, you should go write a novel instead. Moreover, you have to deal with the consequences of that choice, which might mean adding a big chunk of content to the story. You can’t short-change the player by offering a seemingly big choice that has no real impact on the overall story.

'An example in Wraiths of SENTINEL: at one point, about two-thirds of the way in, the player has a life-or-death choice over one of the major characters in the story. Most players are, I think, essentially "good", so I wrote this with the expectation that most people would allow that character to live. Even the story’s main antagonist is expecting the player to let that character live. But, for whatever reason, the player might choose differently, and I had to allow for and respect that. If the player chooses death for this character, then they’re no longer around – but it isn’t sufficient to simply send the player along a truncated version of the story. The player’s choice here isn’t inherently "wrong", and cutting their story in this way wouldn’t be fair. Rather, in writing for this possibility, I had to consider the new paths generated by this death. What actions occur because of this death? What does it set in motion? How does this unexpected move screw up the antagonist’s plans, and what are the consequences of that?

'But, yes, the medium of interactive fiction does impose some constraints. Purely in terms of the word count required, and the work that would be involved, you can’t realistically include such far-reaching consequences for every single choice. You have to hold them back for the really significant moments in the story. And you can fudge things to some degree; the example above, for instance, is a binary choice, life or death, so in this case you only have to accommodate two main outcomes – but even then you can add in extra considerations to broaden that choice somewhat. I personally like to add motivations in to big decisions like this: "This character should die for the greater good," say, or, "This character should die because I just don’t like them." That kind of thing can have an impact on your overall character build, in addition to the outcomes for the story as a whole.

'When it comes to tradeoffs between absolute freedom of choice and an interesting story… I think I’m going to prioritize the story. All art is subjective, of course, but my own feeling is that the only bad story is one that’s dull. That said, every single choice in the game should have an impact. That might only be a small impact – it might only be an adjustment to your character’s stats, which only affects the story in the aggregate – but it needs to be there. Inconsequential choices are pretty dull too.'

Dave: 'When Choice of Games realize that you’ve created the bases for three hugely successful TV shows or movies, do they get a cut of that or are the subsidiary rights in your hands? (Asking for a Hollywood producer friend.)'

Paul: 'Heh. I’ve retained intellectual property for the content of these games; that is, I think, standard for Choice of Games writers. I’ll make sure my phone is on the hook, just in case.'

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I'm mostly famous, insofar as I am famous, for writing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles books back in the early '90s. Because of them I was the bestselling author in the UK. I had the fan mail to prove it - cartloads of letters every week from all over the world. If you wrote and didn't get a reply, apologies. I set aside a day a week for writing to readers back then, but it wasn't enough to clear the backlog of TMNT mail.

My editor was the marvellous Philippa Dickinson, who also published Dragon Warriors. When a new TMNT book was being commissioned (the publisher usually contracted for two or even four at a time) I first of all had to produce a treatment (they're not just for movie scripts, whatever Wiki says) outlining the story. This one, Get That Ghost!, never got used - but if you're interested in the process of creating a franchise book, this is step one. Oh, and happy New Year!

GET THAT GHOST!

After an arduous night training exercise in Central Park, Splinter agrees that he needs to lighten up his ninja teaching and make it more fun. He sets the Turtles on a very unusual scavenger hunt to test their initiative.

The last item on the list to be scavenged is “a spook”, and the Turtles all independently wind up at a reputedly haunted house near the park around midnight. They get inside and are nervously exploring when an eerie sound makes them all jump—

“—And just a glimpse of a shadowy figure at the top of the stairs – particularly because the moonlight was visible right through it – sent us running like startled rats,” Leonardo breathlessly explains to his master when they reach home.

Splinter winces. “I believe you will find the proper expression is ‘startled cat’, Leonardo,” he says quietly. “Now, there are no such things as ghosts, my sons,” he tells them.

“Then what do you call those creepy, wispy things that glide around haunted houses scaring the pants off innocent turtles, master?” retorts Raphael.

“It was doubtless a trick of the moonlight, Raphael – perhaps reflected in a mirror. A good ninja does not hastily jump to extreme conclusions. Also, none of you wears pants.”

“I don’t get it,” says Michaelangelo. “Didn’t your list say for us to find a ‘spook’, Master Splinter?”

Splinter looks a touch embarrassed. “My handwriting is not always very readable, I know,” he admits. “I’d actually written ‘spoon’.”

Raphael instantly grabs a spoon from the sink. “I win the scavenger hunt!” he announces.

However, when the Turtles tell April about their weird experience the next day, she isn’t so skeptical as Splinter. “A reporter has to keep an open mind. My boss would say I’m crazy, but I say, if ghosts do exist then we ought to find out about it. Who’s for a return visit to that house tonight?”

The Turtles are none too keen at first, but they can’t let April down. They show her back to the house and take her to where they saw the apparition. Suddenly a ghostly figure walks right out of the wall beside April, and they all beat a hasty retreat. April keeps hold of her video camera, though, and when she later plays the tape back they get a closer look at the ‘ghost’. The face stirs a hazy memory with April, who checks the files at Channel 6 and comes up with a file on a Professor Crankel, who was a brilliant but eccentric scientist. The file says he died many years ago when a ray-gun that he’d developed backfired on him.

“So he must be a ghost!” cries Michaelangelo.

“Maybe, maybe not,” says April. “Would a ghost show up on video tape? I really think we’d better go for another visit.” She looks at their none-too-keen expressions and laughs. “Is this my intrepid band of heroes? You’re never afraid to face a hundred of Shredder’s soldiers. Surely one little bitty ghost doesn’t scare you?”

“Of course not,” snorts Leonardo. “A ninja is never afraid.”

“I’m a turtle, not a chicken,” says Raphael.

“Count me in,” adds Donatello.

“Uh, guys...” says Michaelangelo. “I’d love to come, but I don’t want to miss the midnight horror movie.”

“Relax,” April tells them. “We’re not going at midnight. There’s no time like the present.”

“Three o’clock in the afternoon?” says Donatello. “Aren’t ghosts usually asleep then?”

“Don’t argue with her, you dope,” whispers Raphael as they follow April out. “Do you want to be there when it’s awake?”

They return to house, but this time sneak in and manage to surprise the ‘ghost’. In fact Professor Crankel turns out not to be a ghost at all. He explains to them how the accident with his ray-projector years ago partly transferred him to another dimension, so that ever since he has been ghost-like and unable to touch anything solid.

“Like the ray-projector that Krang uses to teleport troops from Dimension X,” says Michaelangelo. “It must be a hard life.”

“That’s why I live as a recluse in this old house,” says the professor. “I can’t mix with normal people anymore. I can’t touch anything. I can’t even put on any clothes apart from what I was wearing when the ray struck me.”

The Turtles are sorry for him, but then they have a lucky accident. While Leonardo is making some tea, Michaelangelo starts playing with the ray-projector and inadvertently fires it at the teapot. That, too, turns intangible and none of them can pick it up – until the professor saunters in and absent-mindedly pours himself a cup.

“You can touch anything else that’s been treated with the ray!” Donatello realizes. “All you have to do is turn it on anything that you’re going to use, and then you’re okay.”

As the Turtles and April leave, the professor thanks them for their help. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything the first couple of times you came round, but I was so startled and you ran off before I had a chance. I hope I didn’t scare you fellas too much.”

“No way,” replies Raphael. “There’s only one thing that scares us, and that’s missing our dinner. See you around, Prof!”

The unquiet grave

Here's one I did earlier - thirty-two years earlier, as a matter of fact, in the July 1984 issue of White Dwarf. I used to write so much of the magazine in those days that I had to use pseudonyms or the contents page would have looked a bit repetitive. This piece appeared originally under the nom-de-plume 'Phil Holmes'; Phil because I was and am a huge admirer of Professor Barker, and Holmes because of the detective.

*  *  *

Lost on the barren moors of north of the Hourla Hills after nightfall, you have little hope of surviving to see another dawn. You have trudged through the freezing mud for hours but finally you stumble and sink to your knees, your iron will no longer a match for your weariness. You bow your head and compose yourself to meet your god. Your only regret is that you did not die in battle.

Through the closing haze of darkness you seem to see a light, and dully you turn your head to watch it approach. An old man stands before you holding a lantern aloft. When, in later years, you think back to this moment it seems that you recall vividly the look of quiet strength in his grey eyes, and the sound of his cloak as the gale snaps it around his frail body.

Beckoning you to follow, he turns and walks away. Somehow you find the strength to rise and stagger after him. Holding the bobbing lantern up to guide you, he leads the way to a small cottage where a welcoming light shines from latticed windows. A few more steps would take you to the cottage door, but your fatigue is too much and you pass out. Barely conscious, you sense yourself being lifted up and carried towards the cottage. As in a dream, you abstractly wonder at the strength in the old man’s arms. He takes you inside and lays you on a pallet beside the fire. Your last recollection is of thick fur blankets being drawn up around you.

It is noon before you awaken. At first you remember little, but as fragments and tatters of memory return from the previous night you are amazed to find yourself in a dusty, derelict cottage. There is no sign of your rescuer and there does not seem to have been a fire in the grate in the recent past. Outside, the bleak landscape lies bathed in cold, winter sunshine. You see smoke rising from beyond a wooded hill and head in that direction.

An hour’s walk brings you to the village of Hobvale where you quickly seek out an inn and treat yourself to an ample and warming repast. Then, sitting by the fire with a cup of mulled wine in your hand, you relate the events of the previous night to the innkeeper.

‘An extraordinary tale,’ he says, ‘but one which I have in fact heard once or twice before from other travellers like yourself. Some years ago an old monk called Alaric lived in a hermitage out on the moors. Anyone who came to his door would receive shelter, and he often went out with his lantern when a sudden storm or blizzard might have caught wayfarers unawares.’

‘Why, then, clearly this was he.’ You are on your feet at once. ‘Come man, I am no churl. Tell me where he lives now and I shall go to thank this monk and reward him for his kindness.’

The innkeeper shakes his head and waves you back to your chair. ‘Hah! I cannot think you would care to undertake the journey. He took in a stricken traveller some ten years past and then died himself when he braved the storm to fetch the man a doctor. He is buried up there on the moor.’

For thousands of years people have enjoyed ghost stories. A dip into the folklore and literature of any country will uncover dozens of variations on the theme. Unfortunately this rich vein of imaginative material is all too often reduced to absurdity by the need to frame everything in simple game-terms. How impoverished and inadequate the modern horrors of adventure gaming can seem when compared to the originals from which they were derived (Grendel, Dracula, the Green Knight, the Balrog, et al.)

The problem in part comes from trying to define things exactly, for this can also limit them. It would be very difficult to create anything like the story of Macbeth in a standard adventure, say. Banquo’s ghost would either have to be a genuine Dragon Warriors ghost with a 1d12 Fright Attack, or a figment of Macbeth’s guilt-ridden imagination, which could be established if the PCs have some way of detecting spirits or the undead when the ghost next shows. Storytelling allows ambiguity whereas games enforce the leaden certainty of binary logic.

I am not suggesting that creatures should not be defined at all in game-terms. But there should certainly be a shift away from a rules-and-stats approach which makes it all too easy to roll hosts of uninspired random encounters. There must be a sense of (and fear of ) the unknown when encountering fantastic creatures, particularly ghosts and undead. Player-characters should not think of such things as standard, nor should they ever feel that they or anyone else in the world knows very much about them.

To help deal with the problem, here is a new term for referees to use: revenant. A revenant is anyone who returns from the dead—whether in physical form, as an apparition, or as an ambiguous and undefined combination of the two. There is no one set of stats for all revenants, because they are not all of one nature; some you can fight, some you can banish with magic, but many can only be dealt with by discovering their particular weaknesses.

Alaric’s revenant could be thought of as a sort of ‘psychic residue’. It could not harm a character, nor be harmed. It could not be pigeonholed as a standard Dragon Warriors ghost, because it was not a conscious and reasoning entity, it was a part of this honourable man which did not fade from the world when his body died and his soul passed on. Revenants like this will appear in scenarios as a means of giving the characters clues to past events, assisting them, hindering endangering them or simply to create an eerie effect.

Revenants may be brought into existence when a person dies as a result of gross injustice, or with a task or duty still to complete. This is the nebulous and inconstant magic of the human psyche, there is no ‘Create Revenant’ spell!

If you left a companion to die then his revenant might pursue you with a view to evening up the score. Maybe he can only be laid to rest if you go back, find his body and give it a decent burial. Or maybe you will have to fight the revenant because it will only be satisfied by your death. Possibly the revenant will depart if you can merely fool it into thinking you are dead. Scenarios involving a revenant will thus often revolve around finding out what it wants and then accomplishing this with minimal unpleasantness to yourself!

Revenants are a useful way of keeping powerful PCs on their toes. The characters might be able to defeat ghosts and spectres with their hands tied behind them, but they will just have to rely on their wits when facing a revenant which inconveniently ignores all the usual tricks for dealing with undead.

Any powers that a revenant possesses should be counterbalanced by specific vulnerabilities. These could relate to the way the revenant arose, so if a person died in a fire, his her revenant could manifest itself in a form mutilated by horrible burns, becoming able to utilise flame-related attacks and being driven away with water.

When you’re devising a revenant, start by deciding on its ‘life’ history and how you’re going to bring it into the scenario, and only then work out its stats and powers (if any)—let your imagination take the lead and make the rules run to catch up!

Second, take great care in the way you play a revenant. Supposing you have a revenant which wants a character dead. It might make repeated attacks night after night, but it would not plan its attacks as would a human assassin. Revenants are isolated fragments of a psyche, and they lose their qualities of awe and strangeness if made to act like rational living beings.

Scenario Outlines

The High Priest of Nebr’volent
After discovering the pyramid of a wealthy dignitary of Ancient Kaikuhuru in Opalar, a high priest in times long past, the characters return home with a fortune in tomb treasures. Shortly afterwards, a succession of deaths among the NPCs who accompanied them alerts the player characters to the danger they are in. The next night, one of the PCs is visited in a dream by the high priest’s revenant. In the dream, the character finds himself running, parched and weary, across the desert sands. In the moonlight, he sees an oasis and heads for it. As he cups his hands to drink, however, his relief turns to dread—for reflected in the water he sees a terrible apparition standing behind him. It is the mummified corpse of the ancient, dressed in its priestly finery. It reaches for him with clawlike hands but he cannot move or turn to defend himself. The water in his hands turns to dust and he awakes in a cold sweat. The dream recurs every night, and each morning the character finds he is getting weaker. (In game terms, he is losing a Health Point every four nights.)

Consulting local sages, the player characters are told by the most well-read sorcerers and exorcists that someone must sit with the character while he sleeps and cast Hold Off The Dead the moment that it seems the dream is beginning. This course proves partially effective—it drives back the revenant until the next time the character goes to sleep—but the sorcerers are charging a great deal each time they are called on to cast the spell....

The other PCs probably realise it is their turn once the haunted character is dead, so they do everything possible to keep him alive.

In desperation, and after a gentle hint from the referee by way of local lore, the character goes down to the docks and seeks out a notorious sorcerer who lives there. This fellow consults his books, charts and astrological devices and then explains that the tomb was cursed. He tells the character that he has only one hope (choose the solution which fits best into your campaign):

1. (For long-term campaigns) The characters must gather together the priestly regalia they stole and return it to the tomb. The problems arising from this are that they possibly do not have enough cash to buy back some of the items, or a collector who bought one of the items refuses to part with it. Once they manage to get back all of the items and set off for the tomb, the haunted character loses no more Health Points—but he doesn’t recover the Health Points he’s already lost until all the items are safely back and the tomb sealed.

2. (For episodic campaigns) The sorcerer knows of a way to help the character fight back: he must go to sleep clutching a pile of salt in his left hand and an antique jade shortsword (provided by the sorcerer) tied to his right with a silk cord. When the revenant appears behind him in his dream he is able to throw the salt up into its face and then, with its gaze momentarily averted from the pool, he is freed from his paralysis and able to turn and fight it. This is a straight ‘physical’ battle; no spells can be used. The character and the revenant are closely matched, and neither has armour. The revenant wields a mace of mauve stone, so the character has an advantage in that his weapon can impale – and because of the silk cord he cannot lose his grip on it. If he defeats the revenant, he wakes to find he is back to full health. If he doesn’t defeat it then he never wakes up, and the next PC will have to pay the sorcerer for his services.

A Noble Knight
This is intended as a sub-plot to run alongside whatever main adventure the characters are on at the time. A number of strange events occur over a period of several days—e.g. a golden hawk leading the characters to a companion who has fallen in the hills and broken his leg, a lion which silently approaches when they are lost in the mountains at night and guides them to safety. Mention enough of these that the player-characters have a sense of something significant in the offing, but keep them busy enough with the main adventure that they don’t have time to analyse it all.

Eventually, while traversing a mountain pass, they are ambushed by bandits. Things look bad for a while until the sudden intervention of an armoured knight on horseback saves the day. The knight turns out to be an uncommunicative sort, though he does reveal his name (Helvelas) and seems very pious. He walks with a slight limp. At the next town the characters lose him, but he meets up with them when they continue their trek into the mountains in search of whatever tomb or treasure trove they are after. Helvelas accompanies them when they enter a cavern complex infested with monsters, and several times steps into melee to save a character’s life as the party fights on towards its objective.

Finally, after a pitched battle in the main cavern chamber, the characters look around to find Helvelas gone. But while gathering the treasure, they discover the corpse of a knight in the shadows under a shelf of rock to one side of the cave. Mystics with the party can tell that he died of a wasting infection— probably caught from the monsters when they took him prisoner. His left leg was broken. Although his armour was rusted over the years, the characters can still recognise the heraldic design on the breastplate. A golden eagle on a red sun—Helvelas’s coat of arms. His revenant has helped the adventurers reach his body so that they can administer the proper funeral rites.

Recommended sources
Films: The Fog; The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean; High Plains Drifter; Rashomon; Don Giovanni.
Books: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M R James; Dracula by Bram Stoker; British Folktales and Legends by K Briggs; The Room in the Tower by E F Benson; The Bull and the Spear by Michael Moorcock

Not all of these are strictly concerned with revenants, but they are valuable as inspirational material.This article is also available in Magnum Opus's beautifully produced supplement In From The Cold - but good luck finding a copy of that.