Non-D&D books for D&D gamers - Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast
Posted 29th June 2008 at 01:57 PM by Jürgen Hubert
Updated 29th June 2008 at 02:02 PM by Jürgen Hubert
Updated 29th June 2008 at 02:02 PM by Jürgen Hubert
This article is part of a series of reviews of non-D&D game books which might nevertheless be of interest to D&D gamers.
The man makes more connections than United Airlines. Hollow-earth Nazis and mystic architecture? Check. JFK and the man who walked around the carriage? Check. Tarot and television? Check. There are no topics so diverse that Ken Hite can't bring them into brilliant, screaming collision.
And in the process, he makes men mad, You can't read this stuff for very long without that sensation of terrible coherency stealing over you like a vodka buss, that sensation that tells you the whole world makes sense in such an awful way that there is no response save madness.
Thus writes John Tynes in the introduction to Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast, and he of all people should know. But what is this book?
A collection of the first 34 essays of Kenneth Hite's long-running Pyramid Online column of the same name. Kenneth Hite, whose GURPS Horror I consider to be one of the best gaming books ever (and which I will review at a later date), is well-known for plumbing the depths of horror, weirdness, and conspiracy, especially as Earth is concerned. And his essays in the Suppressed Transmissions column examine all of these and more, and some genius at Steve Jackson Games had the idea to publish a collection of those in print, get Kenneth Hite to write extended footnotes and references for each essay, and then add some of the sweetest art you have ever seen in a black & white publication (the fact that most of them are period pieces doesn't lessen the effect in the least). The result is a really dense and well-written collection, with zero game stats (though quite a few references to GURPS books, but that shouldn't deter you).
And let me just say from the start that these essays are Adventure Seed Central - including for D&D gamers. You are likely to get at least one idea for an adventure or an entire campaign when reading through a single of these essays, and usually several. I will give you a short sampling - a summary of two essays in each chapter.
Yes, even our own Earth can serve as the setting for a D&D campaign - especially if you add magic to it and let history diverge from the course familiar to us.
"In Honor of Technomancer: Five More Magical Revolutions": From the proliferation of spell-granting divinities after Alexander's reign to the discovery of magic by Roger Bacon in 1268 to the alchemically powered sky gallons of the Spanish who hold the monopoly on the Philosopher's stone, this chapter has all you need for high fantasy right on Earth.
"Clio's Nightmares: Four High Alternate-Historical Horror-Fantasy Settings": Whether you chose to run a campaign in demon-haunted Rome under the mad Emperor Heliogabalus or play the defenders of the last free realms in a Europe overrun by goblins and werewolves, either setting is easily adaptable to D&D.
"Digging Up Weirdness": Every campaign needs a few ancient artifacts left over from the Dawn of Time, and here you will find inspiration for the people who dig them up. I especially like the description of the "Bone Wars" - instead of rival paleontologists you could have rival necromancers competing for dinosaur bones,,,
"A Swiftly Tilting Planet: The Great Pole Shift": How's that for a natural (or unnatural) disaster - the poles of the planet the campaign is set on change, and suddenly everybody has to deal with living in an entirely different climate zone and struggle to survive or leave for greener pastures (if the PCs don't stop the catastrophe from occurring in the first place, of course). A great way to shake up a setting if the PCs thought there were no challenges left...
"Ancient Astronaut Texas Steel Cage Death Match": Every setting needs a precursor race or two that leaves behind mysterious artifacts and threatens the status quo if they return from distant stars, awake from suspended animation, and so forth. In this essay, we get a good sample of all the precursor races some people thought existed on our world.
"Le Comte de Saint-Germain": It's very tempting for the GM to put an immortal NPC into his campaign. There's always the danger that he will overshadow the PCs. But if you decide to put one in anyway, the Count de Saint-Germain makes for a better model than Elminster in my opinion.
"There's More to Faeries Than Their Glamor": The first footnote to this article starts with the sentence: '"The Gentry" is just one of the nice things you will call the faerie so that they don't get mad and come back and blight your calves and kill your baby and rape your wife.' This attitude pervades the essay, which throughly deconstructs and de-Disneyfies the faeries. I throughly approve, and with the greater prominence of the fey in D&D 4E more relevant than ever.
"Stalking the Wild Manticore": This essay gives an old fantasy staple an in-depth look. Use what you learn in here, and the PCs will never again regard the manticore as just another dumb, poisonous monster...
"Illumination in Theory and Practice": How to make everything seem connected to everything else. Do it right, and the players will jump at shadows and suspect conspiracies behind every corner.
"Metro Section Baghdad": How to get adventure ideas from the daily newspaper, demonstrated with the February 10th issue of the Los Angeles Times.
And this last article shows be general idea of the book best: Our own world can be a never-ending source of ideas and inspiration for campaign ideas. I certainly found this to be true for Urbis (the careful reader will notice more than a few references to real world history in there), and it can be true for your campaign as well. This collection makes for an excellent starting point for your own journey through real world weirdness (and the numerous book references in the footnotes will make it easy to continue on that journey).
And if that's not enough, go buy the second collection. Or subscribe to Pyramid, which costs only $20 per year and gives you access to their entire (10+ years) archives - including 300 Suppressed Transmission essays!
The man makes more connections than United Airlines. Hollow-earth Nazis and mystic architecture? Check. JFK and the man who walked around the carriage? Check. Tarot and television? Check. There are no topics so diverse that Ken Hite can't bring them into brilliant, screaming collision.
And in the process, he makes men mad, You can't read this stuff for very long without that sensation of terrible coherency stealing over you like a vodka buss, that sensation that tells you the whole world makes sense in such an awful way that there is no response save madness.
Thus writes John Tynes in the introduction to Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast, and he of all people should know. But what is this book?
A collection of the first 34 essays of Kenneth Hite's long-running Pyramid Online column of the same name. Kenneth Hite, whose GURPS Horror I consider to be one of the best gaming books ever (and which I will review at a later date), is well-known for plumbing the depths of horror, weirdness, and conspiracy, especially as Earth is concerned. And his essays in the Suppressed Transmissions column examine all of these and more, and some genius at Steve Jackson Games had the idea to publish a collection of those in print, get Kenneth Hite to write extended footnotes and references for each essay, and then add some of the sweetest art you have ever seen in a black & white publication (the fact that most of them are period pieces doesn't lessen the effect in the least). The result is a really dense and well-written collection, with zero game stats (though quite a few references to GURPS books, but that shouldn't deter you).
And let me just say from the start that these essays are Adventure Seed Central - including for D&D gamers. You are likely to get at least one idea for an adventure or an entire campaign when reading through a single of these essays, and usually several. I will give you a short sampling - a summary of two essays in each chapter.
Historical Weirdness: Alternate Histories
Yes, even our own Earth can serve as the setting for a D&D campaign - especially if you add magic to it and let history diverge from the course familiar to us.
"In Honor of Technomancer: Five More Magical Revolutions": From the proliferation of spell-granting divinities after Alexander's reign to the discovery of magic by Roger Bacon in 1268 to the alchemically powered sky gallons of the Spanish who hold the monopoly on the Philosopher's stone, this chapter has all you need for high fantasy right on Earth.
"Clio's Nightmares: Four High Alternate-Historical Horror-Fantasy Settings": Whether you chose to run a campaign in demon-haunted Rome under the mad Emperor Heliogabalus or play the defenders of the last free realms in a Europe overrun by goblins and werewolves, either setting is easily adaptable to D&D.
High Weirdness: Fun With Phenomena
"Digging Up Weirdness": Every campaign needs a few ancient artifacts left over from the Dawn of Time, and here you will find inspiration for the people who dig them up. I especially like the description of the "Bone Wars" - instead of rival paleontologists you could have rival necromancers competing for dinosaur bones,,,
"A Swiftly Tilting Planet: The Great Pole Shift": How's that for a natural (or unnatural) disaster - the poles of the planet the campaign is set on change, and suddenly everybody has to deal with living in an entirely different climate zone and struggle to survive or leave for greener pastures (if the PCs don't stop the catastrophe from occurring in the first place, of course). A great way to shake up a setting if the PCs thought there were no challenges left...
High Weirdos: Villains, Vagrants, and Venusians
"Ancient Astronaut Texas Steel Cage Death Match": Every setting needs a precursor race or two that leaves behind mysterious artifacts and threatens the status quo if they return from distant stars, awake from suspended animation, and so forth. In this essay, we get a good sample of all the precursor races some people thought existed on our world.
"Le Comte de Saint-Germain": It's very tempting for the GM to put an immortal NPC into his campaign. There's always the danger that he will overshadow the PCs. But if you decide to put one in anyway, the Count de Saint-Germain makes for a better model than Elminster in my opinion.
Highly Significant Weirdness: Clashing Symbols
"There's More to Faeries Than Their Glamor": The first footnote to this article starts with the sentence: '"The Gentry" is just one of the nice things you will call the faerie so that they don't get mad and come back and blight your calves and kill your baby and rape your wife.' This attitude pervades the essay, which throughly deconstructs and de-Disneyfies the faeries. I throughly approve, and with the greater prominence of the fey in D&D 4E more relevant than ever.
"Stalking the Wild Manticore": This essay gives an old fantasy staple an in-depth look. Use what you learn in here, and the PCs will never again regard the manticore as just another dumb, poisonous monster...
Highly Theoretical Weirdness
"Illumination in Theory and Practice": How to make everything seem connected to everything else. Do it right, and the players will jump at shadows and suspect conspiracies behind every corner.
"Metro Section Baghdad": How to get adventure ideas from the daily newspaper, demonstrated with the February 10th issue of the Los Angeles Times.
And this last article shows be general idea of the book best: Our own world can be a never-ending source of ideas and inspiration for campaign ideas. I certainly found this to be true for Urbis (the careful reader will notice more than a few references to real world history in there), and it can be true for your campaign as well. This collection makes for an excellent starting point for your own journey through real world weirdness (and the numerous book references in the footnotes will make it easy to continue on that journey).
And if that's not enough, go buy the second collection. Or subscribe to Pyramid, which costs only $20 per year and gives you access to their entire (10+ years) archives - including 300 Suppressed Transmission essays!
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Comments
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I whole-heartedly second the Pyramid Subscription recommendation. They'd need a dozen trade paperbacks to cover all of the Suppressed Transmissions made so far.Posted 29th June 2008 at 05:10 PM by LoneWolf23
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True, though I still wish they'd make more of those collections. The footnotes - which are missing from the articles themselves - were excellent, and the art was nice, too.Posted 29th June 2008 at 05:39 PM by Jürgen Hubert
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