# RPG A DAY 2025: Day 05 - Ancient tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2025 ![[RPG a Day 2025 (illo).png]] > [!quote] [**The Nightmare Lake** by HP Lovecraft](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/poetry/p190.aspx) > > There is a lake in distant Zan, > Beyond the wonted haunts of man, > Where broods alone in a hideous state > A spirit dead and desolate; > A spirit ancient and unholy, > Heavy with fearsome melancholy, > Which from the waters dull and dense > Draws vapors cursed with pestilence. > […] *(Why yes, I can still recite most of this poem from memory, thanks to doing a stint in oral interpretation competitions when I was in high school. Yes, I was a complete geek. No, I wasn't very popular. Yes, my choice of material always kind of creeped out the judges. No, I wasn't very successful. Yes, I really enjoyed myself. No, I did not like high school.)* While H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos gets quite a bit of traction in gaming circles, his work beyond the mythos doesn't really get recognized very often. Yes, a lot of the same themes are dealt with in his poetry and other work, at least the bits which weren't historical. There are definite overlaps, but "The Nightmare Lake" stands right on the border between the mythos and the rest of his work. Is it incredibly overwrought, super dense, structurally strange? On every count, yes. Do I love it all the same? You better believe it. The idea of the alien and ancient used to be fairly widespread in fantasy literature, but has largely been driven out by what appears to be a drive for comfort and self-similarity. Twisted alien vistas are out, and cozy inns are in. I consider this a bit of a loss. Even among the ostensibly "classic" fantasy RPG genre, they spend a lot more time referencing each other than pointing out to the far weird horizon and saying, *"There go I."* Guys, there are only so many ways to do the classic dwarves versus elves matchup, and it's also tiresome. There's only so Scottish your dwarves can be. There's only so high in the air the elf noses can get. Please, do something different. ![[Warpland (cover).jpg]] ![[Swords of the Serpentine (cover).jpg]] ![[Blades in the Dark (cover).jpg]] ![[Playing God (cover).jpg]] Honestly, I can't point to much stranger in the world of fantasy than **[[Warpland]]**. It's psychedelic, unafraid to go marching off into a bleak landscape where raining blood is probably the most normal precipitation you've had this week. The art's beautiful, the layout is fun, it's got a weird physical format. I like it. **[[Swords of the Serpentine]]** is also fairly non-standard and experimental in the field of fantasy, though, like **[[Blades in the Dark]]**, it centers its focus on a decadent, decaying city, with the action occurring in and around it. That said, *Gumshoe* is particularly adept at doing stories about investigation and exploration. An actual thriving urban environment is not something that you see being really the focus of adventuring in a lot of modern fantasy RPGs outside of a specific circle, so I'm recommending this to you as well if you're looking for something that might flash on the horrific. It's arguable that this is definitionally ancient, but depending on how you play it out, it could lean more toward the swords and sandals than the new school renaissance, which definitely fits the bill. It's not really possible to talk about things that are ancient without going back to the beginning of time, and by that I mean a time when everyone at the table is a god, and life may not even exist until one of you creates it. **[[Playing God]]** is a great game if you really want to get old school ancient. Like, pre-biblical. Raining fire and brimstone is just a good start to the afternoon. You can get as weird as you want, and I definitely suggest you take it to the limit, because this is a system that is broad enough, generous enough in its elbow room, and unlike anything you've likely played before. We've been to the ancient land of Xan, far from the haunted haunts of man, and returned to tell the tale of things lost in the mountains and buried under the lakes of gods and monsters, cities in the desert, and skies the color of a dead TV channel. Our feet have trod the ancient and returned with the dust of ages. Return to those places buried in deep time, knowing that you have been directed there willfully.