RPG Evolution: Valley of the Dolls

talien

Enter Lyman Frank Baum. Yes, that Baum—the literary mind who gave us the land of Oz. In 1901, hot on the heels of his massive success with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he published Dot and Tot in Merryland, a children's novel following a young girl named Evangeline "Dot" Freeland, sent to her father's country estate Roselawn for her health, and her playmate Tot Thompson, the gardener's son. While playing, they drift in a small boat down a river, passing through a dark tunnel in a cliff face to discover Merryland, an enchanted realm composed of seven circular valleys connected by a rushing river. While Baum's text is decorated with the pastel whimsy of Edwardian fairytale innocence, beneath its glossy coat lies an oddly authoritarian, clockwork underbelly that is our next valley after the (now terrifying) clowns.

Yep, totally a book for kids.

Marrying Edwardian Whimsy to Dystopian Logic

Doll Valley is the center of Merryland's authority. It's the fourth of several, a manicured town of living dolls ruled by Queen Dolly, a beautiful, life-sized wax doll with silken blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing a crown with seven jeweled points. Queen Dolly lives in a massive, round-domed palace featuring bizarre spaces like the Laughing Chamber and the Musical Chamber. To guide her royal decrees, she relies on a "Thinking Machine".

We never seen Queen Dolly consult the machine in her room, but she references it frequently. Perhaps most terrifying, Dolly is quite disturbed that the two children have breached her realm. Her laws are enforced by stiff, unfeeling wooden soldiers and a supposedly formidable, but ultimately useless, Watch-Dog of Merryland, who are completely unable to stop intruders from breaching the borders. The Queen casually mentions she has to decide between turning them into dolls or forcing them to stay:

"It was not their fault," she said, "but when I consulted my thinking machine I found I must do one of two things—either turn them into dolls by means of my fairy wand, or else adopt them as my children. They seem so much bigger and prettier than dolls that I have decided to adopt them, so I have called all my people in to witness my act."

It's not hard to see this casual threat coming from a clockwork sibling to GLaDOS or Harlan Ellison’s AM. This Thinking Machine operates on absolute, cold-logic parameters: to preserve the delicate wax paradise of Merryland forever, it must perpetually manufacture dolls. It has concluded that the optimal raw materials are the organic emotions and biological essences of biological intruders. Queen Dolly acts merely as the palatable, wax-faced interface for the Thinking Machine's horrifying directives.

It gets worse.

The true terror of Dolly Valley lies in its volatile populace. In the original Baum text, the "Revolt of the Dolls" begins when Dot asserts her authority as Princess. A saucy wooden doll challenges her to provide music to dance to, sparking a chaotic uproar where the dolls leap and prance so violently that they literally leak sawdust from their bodies. Scollops, a loyal rag doll servant, fetches the Pewter Marching Band to play a waltz. However, when the band tires and attempts to play slow classical music, the "soulless dolls" turn feral, trampling and shattering the pewter musicians. Led by a messy, rebellious doll with tangled hair, a missing shoe, and a hole in her stocking, the empty dolls demand "dinner"—which is a sawdust refill. Because Dot lacks the key to the Queen's locked sawdust house, the mob wraps paper over combs to make makeshift instruments, marching through the streets and pelting Dot with a rain of tin pans, combs, and pot covers.

In short, the dolls act a lot like rebellious children. Which begs the question: if the Thinking Machine can advise Queen Dolly to turn children into dolls ... how many children were not adopted at all?

Dolls, Puppets, and Silence

There's no shortage of inspiration when it comes to fleshing out the dolls (or lack thereof):

In Dolls (1987), a group of travelers takes shelter from a massive storm in a remote mansion owned by an elderly, eccentric toy maker and his wife. The house is filled with antique dolls that secretly harbor the souls of wicked people who were magically shrunk, transformed, and imprisoned in toy bodies as punishment. The parallels to Queen Dolly's threat are obvious; PCs will have to find which children can be saved amongst the dolls. Perhaps they're after just one lone soul, perhaps they're trying to save the entire valley.
The Puppet Master (1989) franchise is the spiritual sequel to Dolls, in which an alchemist discovers the secret to animating inanimate objects, creating a troupe of living, sentient puppets that each possess a distinct weapon and a specialized lethal ability, such as drill-heads, hook-hands, or spitting leeches. These puppets are not inherently evil, but they must fiercely obey whoever holds the secrets of their creator's notes. These can easily be Queen Dolly's enforcers. There is a mind-boggling 15 films in the franchise so far, and multiple specialized dolls ranging from stealthy assassins with built-in blades to heavy vanguard juggernauts—all operating under the absolute command of Queen Dolly's wand.
In Dead Silence (2007), a small town is haunted by the vengeful ghost of Mary Shaw, a lynched ventriloquist who was buried with her collection of 101 dolls and now rips out the tongues of anyone who screams when they see her. Perhaps this is the real secret of Queen Dolly herself; by movie logic, if every doll was transformed from a human, the Queen may have been a wronged ventriloquist like Mary Shaw, out for revenge. The ghost of the ventriloquist, Mary Shaw, can only kill her victims if they scream when they see her. If they scream, she rips their tongues out. The central nursery rhyme of the movie explicitly warns: "And if you see her in your dreams, be sure to never, ever scream." Once the PCs reveal her secret, everything goes terrifyingly silent before the normally boisterous dolls attack.

The Robots Are Coming

Sometimes it takes a little creativity to make Baum's work terrifying. In the case of Doll Valley, he did the work for us: inhuman thinking machines, robot-like dolls who consider turning children into dolls or "adopting them," and dolls who demand more of the stuffing that keeps them alive and riot if they don't get it.

With just a little push and some horror movie inspiration, there's plenty of adventure lurking in a place of twisted whimsy. Grab your boat, watch the river currents, and remember: keep your eyes on the dolls. Especially when they stop dancing.

Your Turn: What inspiration do you use for creepy dolls in your campaign?