Inspiring literary works method

[ashenphoenix]

Just thought I'd start a thread on works of literature that are relivant to Exalted.


As STs, our words paint the backdrop of the world on which our chronicles are set. It's therefore worthwhile to analyse what makes certain phrases work, as well as the ideas contained within such works, we can learn how to construct these backdrops.


The Great and Secret Show and the sequel Everville by Clive Barker both seem to be drawn heavily on for inspiration for the Fair Folk, particularly the charms God-Monster Body and similar, and for evoking the feelings of horror, fascination and awe inspired by such beings.


Barker's ideas about Quiddity (the dream-sea) also seem to have influenced Exalted's concepts of the Wyld, and would be particularly useful when running chronicles set near the pole of water.


The feelings of horror are highlighted through the presence of a purely mortal protagonist (Grillo) amongst a host of exalted beings (Tesla, Deathboy, Jaff, etc) in TGaSS.


While I have not read Everville through yet, I have already been inspired by comparing it with E:tFF and would recommend reading both stories in an effort to understand Bergstrom's (E:tFF author) sometimes erratic logic.


Both these works are recommended for mature readers, and contain quite explicit depictions of body functions. Past this, however, is an intriging story about the realisation of dreams, and the passions, emotions and elation that can inspire them.

 

[Bloody Teeth]

Barker's books are great inspiration for games, not always Exalted though. Much of them would make great WoD games. Still, The Damnation Game and Hellbound Heart show characters dealing with powers beyond their imagining. You could use Yozi or Malfean influence on mortals or possibly DBs. Coldheart Canyon is an interesting take on a haunting, that heroic dead/mortals could exorcise. Imajica is great for a Twilight remembering the wonders of the First Age and Galilee reminds me of DBs and Sids working together.


The Jaff seems like a good Infernal Exalted to me. Meanwhile Deathboy is obviously an Abyssal that took time to adjust to his powers and probably had a curse to deal with. Fair Folk and Heroic Mortals are well demonstrated too.

 

[Flagg]

I've found Stephen King's Dark Tower Series (at least the first 4 books) to be great inspiration for a wide variety of role-playing genres.


It's been one of my primary influences in thinking about characters and game settings.


-S

 

[Flagg]

As for Barker, I've only ever tried to read Imajica, but I couldn't really get into it and gave up after about 100 pages.


-S

 

[Sherwood]

Some great fantasy series that I like include the Belgariad and the Elysium by David Eddings, and the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.  On a more modern setting but with lots of political intrigue, check out Tom Clancy.  His run with the character Jack Ryan going through trials in the CIA.

 

[ashenphoenix]

Some great fantasy series that I like include the Belgariad and the Elysium by David Eddings, and the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.  On a more modern setting but with lots of political intrigue, check out Tom Clancy.  His run with the character Jack Ryan going through trials in the CIA.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I find Eddings and Jordan to be quite limiting in their inspirational elements, and would also include Feist in this category (except for the Daughter/Servant/Mistress of the Empire saga) as well. IMO, this is because these athors cleave so strongly to stock fantasy settings, archtypes and themes that they don't encourage me to explore outside my comfort zone at all.


By using different settings, archetypes or themes for fantasy (such as looking to Westerns, Horror, War, Spy, Romance, etc for inspiration), we can better discover how to emphasise elements of our games in order to achieve the desired feelings and reactions from our players.


I guess what I'm asking is what particular elements of King's, Eddings' and Jordan's individual works do you find inspirational, and how would you portray these within the Exalted setting?


For example, Perrin from Jordan's works could be a Full-moon Lunar, or a Lunar Halfcaste. The Aiel could be quite useful for drawing inspiration for the Southern tribes.


What specific characters/setting/themes/moods and other elements could be useful for others when they are considering running their campaigns?

 

[ashenphoenix]

As for Barker, I've only ever tried to read Imajica, but I couldn't really get into it and gave up after about 100 pages.

Imagica's a tough read. Barker also tends to cram a lot of social commentary into his works, and the dynamicism between the genders and sexual relations is mindblowing when you start getting into it. It's not a book I would recommend for STs looking to run Exalted, but if you're planning on running planehopping campaigns (like a combined Cration/Wyld/Shadowlands/Yu-Shan/Malfeas campaign) it may be useful to illustrate how to do it without your brain exploding.


Still, the concept of doorways is explored quite strongly withing Imagica, and so it may contain some useful insights on how Sanctums, Strongholds, Shadowlands and Gateways could be portrayed.


An interesting exercise with Imagica is to examine it with regard to Campbell's concept of the Monomyth, particularly the Crossing of the Threshold, which Gentle can be seen to be doing repetitively, but can also be seen to be doing when first crossing the In Ovo (gotta love the gender critique here). This can illustrate how to use smaller monomyth cycles to create a larger monomyth sequence, and so can help with understanding plot construction on both small and large scales.


All in all, not a book I'd recommend for Exalted, but worthwhile if you're planning on running some of the other WW stuff (particularly epic Mage: the Awakening) anytime soon.

 

[Asahi]

Cheers lads, you've just given me a top idea. I'm gonna use something similar to the Fugue from Weaveworld in one of my next chapters. Get the Fae running around in my players city.

 

[Jakk Bey]

For Exalted, you need to check out Barry Hughart's Master Li series. Bridge of Birds, Story of the Stone, and Eight Skilled Gentlemen.


The tales are classic Chinese fantasy, written in modern English, by an American, and the surpise: they're really fucking good.  


Essentially detective fiction based in the Middle Kingdom, where the detective can call in favors from his account in Heaven, purge demons, see ghosts, and rely on Chinese alchemy.


The stories are funny. They're a bit touching in places. They are a perfect blueprint for what you want to hit in any game involving the Realm, and the Mandate of Heaven.  They aren't about high flying martial arts, but the parts folks play in the Celestial Bureacracy.  


They are just about the most perfect sources for inspiration you could get for an Exalted game.  There are just the three books, but they've been recently collected in a lovely edition with all three bound together.  Check out your local bookseller to hook you up.

 

[Sheridan Boyce]

First, though I haven't followed the links yet ashenpheonix, mearly mentioning Joseph Campbell has made you one of my favorite people.


As to literature that might inspire Exalted...  I haven't been playing Exalted for terrible long, probably not even a year yet, but I've got some RPing experiance under my belt and I'm getting around to working on a story for my troupe.  I've got a few suggestions to add to the list here.


The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, which I'm reading now, is about pre-revolutionary China, and while it hardly contains anything heroic on an Exalted scale, it's a pretty good look into peasent life in turn of the century china, something I imagine hadn't changed much over the years.


American Gods, by Neil Gaimen, which I just finished, is excellent and has inspired me to plunk lots of spirits and minor gods into my game, as well as being a marvelous read.


The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchet, has some interesting events concerning fairies that could do to inspire STs for the Fair Folk.  Don't be alarmed by the fact that it's for younger readers, it's still Pratchet and he's still excellent.  Furthermore, familiarity with Ankh-Morepork, greatest city on the Discworld he's so known for, is probably not a bad thing, excellent look at a city that functions when it probably shouldn't.  Check out any of his books and they're likely to inspire you.


George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fireseries, the fourth book of which comes out sometime soon, has a lot of good political manuvering in a midevial style.


The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake is big and moves kind of slow, but it's interesting enough to keep you reading.  It's a good look at the kind of crazy untouchable power figures can go when they've only go so much to do.  Not terribly useful, but it might spawn some interesting NPCs.


The Conan stories by Robert Howard are excellent sword and sorcery tales, the man more or less birthed the genre, and Conan is a great example of a hero, especially for Solars, as he goes from barbarian and thief to king of a powerful nation.


Any good collection of mythology is an obvious choice.  Considering how much WW borrowed from the Greek creation myth, the Greek myths and epics are an obvious choice.  Asian myth is an obvious choice as well but, due to the very nature of myth, anything is useful, and I suggest cehcking out the less famous Grimm tales and the like.


This is a pretty interesting thread so far, I'm looking forward to seeing what else people bring up.


Edit: I think it goes without saying, but there's Lord of the Rings too.  A friend of mine has explained his new found love of Exalted because "it's like Lord of the Rings, it's epic and everything's going wrong at once."


Finally, I've just finished watching the first season of Lost on DVD, and while it's not a book, and it may not be terribly inspirational for Exalted per se, it's pretty impressive from a storytelling point of view.

 

[Obsidian Soul]

Lovecraft, to give your players the sense that they are involved in events beyond the comprehension of even the Gods.  After all, who knows what is out there in the infinite Wyld?

 

[Asahi]

American Gods, by Neil Gaimen, which I just finished, is excellent and has inspired me to plunk lots of spirits and minor gods into my game, as well as being a marvelous read.

Read Stardust. It's a really good fairy tale that has some wicked uses of confused time and peoples promises to each other. It also uses small gods to good effect. And it's a lovely story.

 

[Jakk Bey]

While we're on the graphic novels, Jeff Smith and Charles Vess' Rose is amazing. Set in the wold of Smith's Bone, and with the talents of one of the best water colorists of the last fifty years, this is a gorgeous book, in the grand tradition of high fantasy.


Vess does fantasy well though. His work on Stardust* made it a favorite for my daughter, and she's four. Vess has a great eye, and while we're there, for a smaller scale tale, and very gentle, you can look at Charles De Lint, and again hombre Vess in another great work for the little ones A Circle of Cats.


A good deal of Charles De Lint's work is good for mining for Exalted--he deals with myth, but with a gentler eye than a lot of fantasy writers. His tales are personal, with a tight focus, and never over the top--he deals with some neat concepts, but always with the focus on the consequences to the characters, and while his stuff isn't neccessarily great for complete ports into a tale, he is very good inspirational material.


One more idea, if you can find it, because it has been out of print for a while, is John Barnes, One For the Morning Glory.  Great young adult fiction, and I'm planning on reading it to my little girl when she's old enough, it's a great Faerie tale from a modern standpoint, and it builds a world that is amazing, poigiant, and well crafted--and the common thread here is that the cover was done by the amazing Charles Vess again.


*As a sidenote--Charles Vess is also involved pretty heavily into theater back home, and one of my waitresses at the Iron Horse years ago noticed my copy of Stardust and asked where I got Vess' notes from Peter Pan. I answered her that it was a story by Gaimen and WTF was she talking about.


She then pointed to the illustrations of our dear Star, and told me that the picture was from the costume notes from a production of Peter Pan that she'd done years ago for a childrens' theatre troupe, as Wendy. Over the next few days, she brought in her copies of from the production, and sure enough, her costume, and in fact Jodi herself was the original Star. Her Wendy costume notes became Star for the story, and she was the original model--blond wig and all.  


Yes, I became a drooling fanboy when I found out she had worked with Vess, and was amazed that she didn't know who he was. She had some vague recollection that he was a painter, and was very flattered that her costume notes spawned Stardust.

 

[Jakk Bey]

DC's League of One--with the equally amazing Chris Moeller--while essentially a Wonder Woman tale, it has some great themes that touch on Exalted-ness.  Wonder Woman's lasso is a great idea for an Artifact all on its own, and the story of a risen dragon, gnomes of an Old Skool persuasion, and other Fae critters is fantastic for mining for a great game--including the evil that dragons absorb from the gold that they eat, and their fire burning away lies. It's a great tale, and beautifully illustrated.


I know, our Dear Author is looking for literary works, but the above illustrated stories are great examples of how words and pictures should go together, and how graphic novels are exactly that. Novels with great graphics.


If you haven't checked out Moeller before, try to. His art is great inspiration for Exalted, and his tales, even his science fiction work like Shadow Empires and Shiva's War are great fodder for Dragon Blooded tales, despite their science fiction theme--and they are gorgeous to boot. Moeller has a great eye, a steady hand, and his paints are just stunning.  While I can appreciate Alan Ross' ability to paint portraits, Moeller can put them together better. He assembles his work with precision, and while Ross can do realistic and amazing portraits, he stumbles a bit, in my opinion, at putting together panels in a coherent form. Moeller's ability to compose books is far superior, and his art has a grand style that is just amazing to behold. Great inspiration for anyone who wants to tell tales of larger than life heroes, and he can write to boot.

 

[Persell]

I just read "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny.


Awesome. Without giving the plot away, all I can say is it's the war of Buddha against the Hindu pantheon, waged through many lifetimes, with superpowers, weird tech, and demons (actually, Rakasha... spot the Exalted correspondence). The book begins with The Enlightened One being summoned back from Nirvana by the death-god Yama and his simian assistant. They use "many gigwatts of prayer" and beam his atman into a new body... and then the book gets really crazy.


Another science-fiction that could be quite useful is "Consider Phlebas" by Iain Banks. Whereas "Lord of Light" is excellent setting and combat inspiration, "Consider Phlebas" is an excellent source for ideas for shapeshifting characters. The protagonist is a Changer: a human who can assume any face and mannerisms he chooses. Excellent material for a campaign featuring Prey's Skin Disguise or the Alchemicals' face-changing charms.