RPGaDay 2019: 6 Ancient

Webster’s defines “gothic” in several ways:  the Teutonic Barbarians, which are certainly cool if you're into that whole history thing; the style of architecture that dominated France and Western Europe from the 12th to the 16th century; and the one that I want to talk about, which is "...relating to a style of fiction characterized by the use of desolate or remote settings and macabre, mysterious, or violent incidents."  

Characteristics of gothic art and literature can include, but are not limited to decay, haunted locations, curses, madness, powerful emotions, and the presence of the supernatural. 

Sounds like a hell of a campaign setting, right?

I think the best parts of classic D&D are gothic in nature. It’s one of the over-arching principles that drives the game even now. Consider that of the mere handful of skills allowed the player characters, there are three knowledge skills that relate directly to gothic elements: arcane, religion, and history.

I’ve always preferred the Howardian ideal of dim antiquity and fell sorcery, lying fallow beneath the ruins, weighted down by the crashing eons, waiting in blind indolence for the lone and unsuspecting fool to life the stone, trace the carvings or dig up the skull of the long-forgotten sorcerer so that evil will one day stalk the land again.

Buscema and Alcala. Click to enlarge.

And why not? That’s one third of the game’s primary adventure milieus, isn’t it? The crypts, the ruins, the dungeon! Of course, they are unfailingly gothic and ancient—no one raids the newly-constructed underground lair (though I suppose they could), or visits the brand-spanking-new temple of elemental evil. Those are nowhere near as fun to traipse through. And why? New places can’t have ghosts, supernatural and macabre things, or curses or madness.

Again, I’m sure if you worked at it, you could probably come up with some new evil warlord who JUST put the finishing touches on his labyrinth of madness and he’s now killing all of the workers so they won’t divulge his secrets and the widow of the town’s stonecutter wants you to go pull his carcass out of the abattoir so it can be interred in the family crypt. There’s most of the elements that go into a gothic setting, only fresh and new, but how many times can you go back to that well? And yet, every kingdom, every duchy, every principality has its own mouldering crypt, abandoned keep, ancient ruins, etc. It's part of the creative DNA of Dungeons & Dragons.

I think gothic elements work best when you file the serial numbers off; or to put it another way, I think Ravenloft is overkill. It’s too “on the nose,” and moreover, in danger of sliding out of the low fantasy setting I prefer. I get why it’s popular and why they chose to freshen it up for 5th edition, but I’d rather be more subtle, if not judicious, about my gothic trappings.

The Appendix N author who got this the most right was Robert E. Howard. His successors, Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock, and Karl Edward Wagner, got this idea, as well. More of that stuff in your game is never a bad thing.