Perkins' Foreword From OUT OF THE ABYSS

WotC's Chris Perkins on the Alice in Wonderland themes of D&D 5th Edition's Rage of Demon's Out of the Abyss by Green Ronin Publishing.

 

[Zil]

I don't read much fiction, but in fantasy I'm a big fan of Tolkien, and also enjoy REH's Conan. I want to like Lovecraft, but find him pretty hard going.

HPL can be hard going because of the writing style. One option if you are interested is to check out the radio plays and movies that the HPL Historical Society have created over at http://www.cthulhulives.org. They are quite good!

 

[Nemio]

One of my players loves to read the R.A. Salvatore Novels.
If I buy this module will it become an issue if he reads the book before we're finished?

 

[pemerton]

HPL can be hard going because of the writing style.

I have two main issues with HPL.

(1) He is pretty much the opposite of "show don't tell". Sentence after sentence referring to "mind numbing dread" doesn't itself engender mind numbing dread in the reader!

(2) I think his sense of "cosmic horror" has dated quite badly. He is writing in that period when the discovery of biological evolution, and of relativity, was still a source of both intellectual and cultural shock. Personally I just can't feel the shock.


A third issue is probably more particular to me, in the sense that I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone else to feel it the same way: while I think the mythos entities themselves can be quite cool, and I use those tropes quite a bit in my fantasy RPGing, I think that inventing supernatural beings is a strange literary device for conveying the impersonal forces of the cosmos.

 

[SkidAce]

I have two main issues with HPL.

(1) He is pretty much the opposite of "show don't tell". Sentence after sentence referring to "mind numbing dread" doesn't itself engender mind numbing dread in the reader!

(2) I think his sense of "cosmic horror" has dated quite badly. He is writing in that period when the discovery of biological evolution, and of relativity, was still a source of both intellectual and cultural shock. Personally I just can't feel the shock.


A third issue is probably more particular to me, in the sense that I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone else to feel it the same way: while I think the mythos entities themselves can be quite cool, and I use those tropes quite a bit in my fantasy RPGing, I think that inventing supernatural beings is a strange literary device for conveying the impersonal forces of the cosmos.

Many of my friends who I asked to read HPL have said the same thing about dated. A few even laughed.

Most got the point when I showed how he influenced so much that followed.

Read as a gripping story? Not like the first time I read it in the 70s. Read it as literature? Yeah.

 

[pemerton]

Read as a gripping story? Not like the first time I read it in the 70s. Read it as literature? Yeah.

I prefer to read literature that remains gripping. And changing media from literature to drama, Wagner wrote his Ring Cycle around 150 years ago - before HPL - but for me at least I don't feel that it has dated. (I have in mind the ideas about law, agency and social transformation.)

Of course some of these responses are very personal. Literary appreciation and criticism isn't a science!

 

[delericho]

One of my players loves to read the R.A. Salvatore Novels.
If I buy this module will it become an issue if he reads the book before we're finished?

I don't think we know, but I suspect not. I think their intention is that people do exactly what you've suggested - read the book and play the game (and play the AL scenarios as well). Indeed, that's probably why they call these things 'storylines' rather than Adventure Paths - the RPG hardback is only one part of a larger story.

 

[mflayermonk]

Maybe Drizz't will be designed in a similar role to the White Knight in Alice in Wonderland.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I don't think we know, but I suspect not. I think their intention is that people do exactly what you've suggested - read the book and play the game (and play the AL scenarios as well). Indeed, that's probably why they call these things 'storylines' rather than Adventure Paths - the RPG hardback is only one part of a larger story.

Yeah, it is my GUESS that the entire storyline involves all of the Demon Lords. The adventure concentrates on Zuggtmoy and Demogorgon. Sword Coast Legends deals with one of the other Demon Lords and the novels deal with Drizz't and his campaign against yet another of the Demon Lords(or, more likely, with the bigger cause of the Rage of Demons, the Drow of Menzoberranzan).

In this way, you get the full picture that the "Rage of Demons" affects all Demons everywhere and that the effect is larger than any one adventurer can handle.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Anything that Chris Perkins has a hand in is a major turnoff for me. I will be giving this "joke of an AP" a big pass.

 

[SkidAce]

Anything that Chris Perkins has a hand in is a major turnoff for me. I will be giving this "joke of an AP" a big pass.

You haven't actually been following his adventures since early Dungeon magazine? I would not presume to deny your opinion about his work, but I would ask that you give those adventures a second look if you haven't already.