# Stumbling Down the Long Stair into Fantasy Fucking Vietnam tags: #thoughts/game-design ![[Long Stair Jungle.jpg]] Back in 2008, a thread popped up on [[RPGnet]] which wormed its way into my brain and never managed to make its way out. So much so that I've kept notes on the original idea and the spinoff that came into being just in case I ever was wholly taken over by the desire to work on something in a fantasy setting – with a significant twist. ## Down the Stairs That thing was *[[The Long Stair]]*, an idea which – you know what? I'm just going to lift from the original post: > [!quote] [Bailywolf on RPGnet:](https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/setting-riff-voices-from-below-and-the-long-stairs.391379/) > > Influences: old school Gygaxian D&D, Stargate, hell from the Hellraiser movies, Alice in Wonderland (and the most escellent JAGS Wonderland), The Atrocity Archives, The Cube, Aliens, The Bourne films, Species. > > In 1963- post test ban- a nuclear detonation under the Nevada desert knocked a hole in reality. > > > The bomb was something new- and still classified- but what it did was stab through the fragile skein of normal spacetime the whole visible universe occupies, and opened a hole into something stranger. > > The Fed put a door and a lock onto the hole- ninety tons of steel and titanium strong enough to bounce nukes. They kept it secret too. The place the hole opened into was just to weird for people to know about or deal with. It's variously called The Basement, Downstairs, and for those who hide behind terminology, the "Subterrestial Operational Theater". > > In the late 70's, one of the young computer boffins working on the project called it "Gygaxland". > > By the 90's, everyone was just calling it "The Dungeon" despite the term being officially verboten. > > The name fits though. Under reality, in realms so strange they defy scientific models to explain, someone or some thing built tunnels, chambers, traps, lairs… but also filled it with wonders and treasures- including objects and devices which could quite simply, do the impossible. > > Project: LONG STAIR was born. > > Efforts to map the Dungeon proved difficult (and extraordinarily dangerous) for the Marine and special forces survey teams sent down. The place seemed to change, slowly but inexorably, and entirely unpredictably. Maps go stale, get rancid. > > The dangers from the cruel and arbitrary traps (and the constant minefield stress they engender) is bad, but the inhabitants of the dungeon are worse. There's no other word but monsters. Alright, there IS another word- "Xenofauna"- but nobody uses that except in reports. > > Most don't live long when brought Upstairs- weakening and dying in minutes, days, weeks. Some of the more impossible creatures just evaporate when they cross the threshold. Others are more insidious in their efforts to escape the Dungeon. Some of the survivors of early delves came up changed, infected. > > Compromised agents were first studied (for "studied" read "vivisected"), but some proved somewhat stable psychologically, and demonstrated an intuitive understanding for the Dungeon and its ways. The NATIVE SONS program sought to use these hybrids as trackers and guides in the hostile new frontier, and teams accompanied by them showed dramatically higher success and lower mortality rates. The hybrids are stuck between upstairs and downstairs though- if they spend too much time in either world, they'll start to degenerate or sicken, go mad, or transform into something worse. They need to delve to survive. > > The Americans poured money and men into the Dungeon, extracting from it miracles. Impossible devices. Unique wonders. After JFK's assassination, ever US president wears a talisman which renders him immune to gunfire. Reagan's near-assassination was the result of its removal at the behest of Jerry Falwell who declared it to be ungodly. Reagan’s tendency to let slip information about LONG STAR was a constant aggravation for the project’s controllers, but the president loved the project and pushed his allies in Congress to fund its cover programs massively through is two terms. His fear of what the Russians might do if they had access to the Dungeon drove him. > > And with good reason. > > LONG STAIR wasn't the only place the Dungeon impinged on normal reality- the Soviets punched a similar hole in 1984 under Degelen Mountain. > > Then, through the 80’s and 90’s, following close on the heels of nuclear weapons proliferation, new portals to the Dungeon were opened in China, France, and the UK. Following on their heels, Israel (though, never officially confirmed), India, Pakistan, and most recently North Korea (though, the North Korean portal is unstable, small, and dangerous to pass through). > > The secret proliferation of subterestial technology (dungeon devices, monster tech, or ‘magic items’) has flowed out through the military industrial complexes and intelligence communities of the nations controlling Dungeon access- scrying bowls guide missile strikes, rings of invisibility hide black-ops wetworkers, and in a top secret lab adjoining Los Alamos, a team is working to unlock the secrets of a gnarled staff of ancient wood which in the hands of a panicked soldier, incinerated hundreds of attacking sunterrestials. > > The collapse of the Soviet state saw the huge stockpiles of dungeon artifacts broken up, looted, stolen, sold off. Now keeping a lid on the stuff is getting harder and harder, and more is leaking out all the time. > > Perhaps worse, every breach into the Dungeon has been followed by an increase in so-called fortean phenomena. Nothing as overt as monsters in the street, but probable hauntings, psychic events, missing time, UFO sightings, and even some semi-credible criptozoology. The most common are the voices- weird, semi-audiuble hallucinations which almost makes sense. Those who hear them are usually labeled schizophrenic, but they don’t respond to medication. And every year, the voices get a little louder, and a little more intelligible. Those who recognize them as a dungeon-linked phenomena are extremely worried. > > The world is getting stranger. > > And so… that’s what I have. > > Espionage, D&D style magic items dropped into an otherwise normal world, specop dungeon crawls, half-breed Pc’s, and the secret proliferation of impossible artifacts. You can see why I might immediately be drawn to that sort of thing. It's brilliant. It ties together modern political concerns, modern technology, innovation, military operations, and that thing from outside, the other world, the Dungeon. I'm not a big fantasy TTRPG fan, strangely enough. I own a ton because there's no way to avoid owning fantasy RPGs if you're into RPGs. I just don't find the Tolkien-esque fantasy tropes to very really compelling. They lack something that I find vital to my enjoyment of a setting, almost any setting. Innovation. By nature they tend to be stagnant with no cultural changes for thousands of years at a time. Deep Time is clearly just another version of current time. That's not my gig. It's not what I'm here for. Fantasy stories don't tend to be about someone discovering a new thing which could change the world or, better, creating something that could change the world – they are about discovering some ancient thing that failed to change the world. The villains are proactive and seek to change the world; the heroes are reactive and seek to keep the world as it is. If the villain actually succeeded and forged in Empire, the hero doesn't want to create a successor, they want to turn back time to a place before the Empire was there. I don't like it. Philosophically, it grates at me. *The Long Stair*, though – that's a different thing altogether. Things are going to change. Things are constantly changing. (Literally, if you read the thread.) Fantasy is impinging on "the world we know" and changing both, which makes it a form of speculative fiction rather than fantastic fiction. Suddenly I'm paying attention. Then came *[[Fantasy Fucking Vietnam]]*. ## I Wanna Be An Airborne Ranger ![[Viet Cong Tunnel Complex.png]] > [!quote] [Chris Kutalik on Hill Cantons](http://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2011/04/fantasy-fckin-vietnam.html) > > Fantasy fuckin' Vietnam. > > Some of you may remember the above phrase. A couple years back it took on a life of its own in classic D&D circles, hanging around just long enough to spawn a killer dungeon-style adventure and a great deal of vitriol about its ostensible offensiveness. > > As used it was supposed to signify the dead-at-any-moment life of old school dungeoneering. The kind of play where you inched along the corridor, 10-foot pole in hand probing every foot of the floor, walls, and ceiling for traps. The kind of play where losing a limb prying open the lid of a chest was as quick as a death by an arrow from your flank. It was the gaming mirror of then still-fresh cultural memory of the stress, paranoia, and grittiness of the Vietnam War. Of course it kicked off a thread on RPGNet: > [!quote] [Miss Atomic Bomb on RPGnet](https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/necro-what-system-for-subterranean-fantasy-fucking-vietnam.407357/) > > This quote keeps staring out at me from signatures. And I keep thinking… I'd like to play that game. Take the literary and film traditions about Vietnam. Turn the clichés of D&D into squad-based military fantasy. The jungle becomes the dungeon. Landmines become spike traps. Napalm becomes fireballs. And embrace the potential racism of the dungeon fantasy genre. Everything that's not on your side is an "orc." Most orcs are human. One of the replies further down in the replies rubbed suggestively up against **[[black-leaf-noooooo|Dark Dungeons]]** in a way guaranteed to give me a thrill: > [!quote] [Stuartr on RPGnet](https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/necro-what-system-for-subterranean-fantasy-fucking-vietnam.407357/post-9180930) > > The thief, the one they called Blackleaf, was from Waterdeep. She was wrapped too tight for the Dungeon, probably wrapped too tight for Waterdeep. Elfstar with her magic missile spell was a famous mystic from the woods south of Shadowdale. You look at her and you wouldn't believe she ever cast a spell in her whole life. Ironwolf, Morgan Ironwolf, was from some South Neverwinter shithole. Light and space of the Dungeon really put the zap on her head. Then there was Frederick, the Dwarf. It might have been my quest, but it sure as shit was the Dwarf's party. *Fantasy Fucking Vietnam* is as much if not more a concept than it is anything more. It's a setting looking for a life. As much as some have claimed that it's essentially just describing old-school D&D, that's not quite the case. That was never really how dungeon crawls played out in practice (though [Blackmoor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmoor_(campaign_setting)) definitely nodded in that direction once or twice[^da]). That thread rolled out almost 20 years ago, now. Kids born on the day the first post was made are now dating. Have we really made progress on figuring out what system would be ideal for the experience? ## Systema Short answer: No. Long answer: No, but longer. See – here's the thing. There are a lot of moving parts in this concept. Do you focus on the psychological toll with mechanics that strongly center the transformation of Self into something Other, not just as a metaphor for war transforming "a good citizen" into "the killer," but more literally and more abstractly as increased knowledge of the world making the you less content? (In which case you might want to try a variation on **[[carry]]**, which strikes me as particularly good for that.) Do you focus on the gear porn, not just fantasy but military, and the interaction between these two differentiated forms of technology and how they interact and reinforce or can be opposed? (If so, then maybe you want to go with something quite crunchy when it comes to the mechanics. Building off of **[[Twilight 2000]]** would certainly be possible given the mechanics were used in at least one fantasy game, **[[Forbidden Lands]]**.) Do you focus on the moment to moment play at the table, leaning into the old school fantasy with a drizzle of modern tech and culture? (If so, you want something lightweight, fast, something that gets out of the way like a lightweight adventure wargame system, possibly assembled from the intersection of THW's **[[Warrior Heroes - Adventures in Talomir|Warrior Heroes]]** and **[[FNG]]**.) You know what? Let's go with that last one, just as an experiment… ## Chargen Let's grab the latest edition of **[[Chain Reaction 2023]]**, the free core rules used across all of their game lines as a solid basis. That includes **[[5150 - New Beginnings|5150: New Beginnings]]**, **FNG**, and **Warrior Heroes**. Maybe we'll put together a basic fire team. ### Sergeant Axel Harmon Fireteam leader, US Army Rangers, *Star* Reputation: 5, Star Power: 5 Class: Exotic | Attribute | | | --------- | --- | | Nothing | | | Weapon | Type | Target Rating | | ---------- | ----- | ------------: | | M4 Carbine | Auto | 3 | | Knife | Melee | | We also need a few more guys to flesh out the team. ### PFC Sasha Korrin Rifleman, US Army Rangers, *Grunt* Reputation: 5^[Yes, I rolled for that. A PFC Rifleman with Rep 5? That guy's going places!] Class: Exotic | Attribute | | | | --------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --- | | Coward | Treat Shaken as Leave the Fight!^[A Rep 5 PFC who's also a Coward? This is a complicated character indeed.] | | | Weapon | Type | Target Rating | | ----------- | ----- | ------------: | | M16 | Auto | 3 | | Short Sword | Melee | | ### Specialist Aaron Lagrange Grenadier, US Army Rangers, *Grunt* Reputation: 4 Class: Exotic | Attribute | | | --------- | --- | | Nothing | | | Weapon | Type | Target Rating | | ----------- | ------- | ------------: | | M16 | Auto | 3 | | w/203GL | Grenade | 5 | | Short Sword | Melee | | For the sake of the moment, assume the grenade launcher attacks a single point and on a successful attack can hit up to five targets within 5 inches of that point. If the attack is unsuccessful, no one is hurt.^[You probably want the grenade rules from **[[NUTS!]]**, **FNG**, or **5150**, too. But this'll do for now.] ### CPL Rashkar M'larn Automatic Rifleman, US Army Rangers (Half-Orc Recruit), *Grunt* Reputation: 4 Class: Exotic | Attribute | | | --------- | -------------------------- | | Rage | Count Rep +1 when in Melee | | Weapon | Type | Target Rating | | ------------------------------ | ----- | ------------: | | M249 LMG | Auto | 3 | | Broad Axe | Melee | | | Buckler (doubles as LMG bipod) | Melee | | > [!note] Editor's Note > > Look, there was no way that we were going to do a military-fantasy hybrid and I wasn't going to have a half-orc as the automatic rifleman in a US Army Ranger fireteam with a battle axe strapped to his back and a shield that doubles as a prop for the LMG. It was just going to happen. Sometimes you have to lean into these things. ### Specialist Rhonda Capalan Combat Maga, US Army Rangers, *Grunt* Reputation: 4 Class: Exotic | Attribute | | | --------- | --- | | Nothing | | | Weapon | Type | Target Rating | | ---------- | ----- | ------------: | | M4 Carbine | Auto | 3 | | Dagger | Melee | | Can cast Fireball per the rules on page 4. > [!note] Editor's Note > > We also needed an attached Caster; it's fantasy! Just imagine a tall, severe woman wearing digital camo wizard robes and you're well on your way. ## Exunt And that is a reinforced fire team we have both an orc and a Caster – which seems perfectly normal for this kind of set up. Perhaps I'll come back to this sometime later and walk through a combat encounter with this particular group using the CR 2023 mechanics across the board. That could be a good time. I'm starting to hear voices from below. There's probably a stairwell around here somewhere. Out! [^da]: But who really thinks about [Dave Arneson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Arneson)?