Flash Fiction – The Dice Pool

The Theatre of Trophy Gold

Getting my flash in

Orlen, dusty, wide-brimmed chapeau drowning her alarming eyes in shadow, holds aloft her trophy, beaming. The bag of coin, pleasingly hefty, dangling from her dextrous digits. “‘Aah ‘baht ‘at ‘en?” Her companions, ensorcelled by something above her sturdy, sinister shoulder, point. A hiss, as a punctured bladder, sounds in her ear. Speculative, her left hand shoots up, ready to throttle the looming serpent. It narrowly misses losing its ring finger as a dagger, recently released by Rasei, skewers the snake to the formerly coin-concealing statue. Orlen chances a glance. The cold blood dribbles down the stone man’s shoulder, over the sickle he holds dramatically crossing his sword over his chest. Nima cries, “More snakes!” Time to go. The treasure hunters scarper down the path of the sickle, ignoring the sword’s point and the keep slouching beyond it on the horizon, hoping for Hester’s Mill.

A dramatic retelling of the opening scene of our recent game of Trophy Gold, run by friend of the blog, Isaac. To those who were there, apologies. I’m sure I got a few details wrong, either deliberately or by mistake. Drama seems appropriate for this fascinating game, defined as it is, within Sets.

Trophy

So, as you probably know, dear reader, if you have been with me for a while, here on the dice pool dot com, I am a more-or-less avid listener of the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast from the Gauntlet. I wrote a post on my appreciation for it and the Indie RPG Podcast last Summer. Our path to playing this incursion (as Trophy scenarios are called) leads very much from that. Jason Cordova, one of the podcast’s capable hosts, rarely ventures into the OSR’s hex-defined landscapes. Rather, you can generally find him in the narrative woods and trails of story-based games. On the podcast, he often discusses his experiences in running OSR (or just old tbh) modules in other systems. Back in the olden days of Fear of a Black Dragon, this generally meant either the incredibly rules-lite World of Dungeons or Dungeon World My last post on this blog was about the feelings Dungeon World made me feel. Go and have a look!) These both have PBTA DNA. Their mechanics lend themselves more to the application of imagined narrative than cut-and-dried, D&D-esque, result-binary systems. And this is really only because of the inclusion of a third option, a mixed success, or success at a cost. Since the implied consequence cannot be defined outside the context of the situation, it is usually left up to those at the table to invent it (although Dungeon World generally provides far more pre-written options than does the baldly efficient text of World of Dungeons.) And look, if you’re a PBTA maven, my deepest apologies for what is, no doubt, a faintly condescending and largely inaccurate paring down of a game system that is probably the most influential in the indie game space of the last decade and a half. But if you were raised on a distilled diet of Borgs in your old schools, you’re welcome.

I have gotten off track. The point I was trying to get to was that, a few years ago, Jason switched to running pretty much every module in Trophy Dark or Trophy Gold instead. Mostly Trophy Gold, in fact. Obviously, this got me very interested in the game. The idea of running D&D style modules in a more narrative style highlights a whole new facet of the hobby that I always thought would be very fun to explore. And, after reading a bit about the game and learning of its mechanical descent from Blades in the Dark I wanted to try it even more. It just turns out that, much like Tom (with Dungeon World,) before him, Isaac got there before me. I’m not complaining. I love being a player in these games.

So, to put it briefly, both Trophy games were written by Jesse Ross and published by Gauntlet Publishing. Elements of the rules have been adapted from Blades in the Dark by John Harper, who is also responsible for World of Dungeons and other elements were cribbed from Graham Walmsley’s seminal Cthulhu Dark. They are games about treasure hunters going out into the dark forest to find gold and bring it home so they can continue to survive in a hostile world. In Trophy Dark, your vile little adventurer is a goner; you’re not making it past the end of the session. Sorry. That’s the point of Trophy Dark. But in Trophy Gold you make a treasure hunter who might live to the end of the incursion if you’re lucky. They might even weasel their way through to another one. Speaking of which, I wrote a blog post about making a Trophy Gold character last summer. You may find it illuminating if you’re interested. Do bear in mind, though, the game I used in that post is not quite the same as the one presented in the book published in 2022. I used the game from the Codex Gold magazine, which you can pick up for a steal over on Drivethru. I don’t think there are any really drastic rule changes but we noticed some discrepancies in a few of the tables.

A gold and black illustration of an adventurer being lowered on a rope into a dark cave where a giant spider awaits. the cover is framed by stylised black spiders on a gold background. The words, Codex, The Gauntlet's monthly RPG zine appear in the top left of the cover. — The cover of Codex Gold from Gauntlet Publishing

Hester’s Mill

So, what’s all this about Sets? You didn’t think I remembered mentioning that earlier, did you, dear reader? Well, Incursions are formatted in a very particular way. Trophy Gold helpfully breaks it up and introduces the format like this:

Theme – much like any dramatic work that might be presented on the stage, a Trophy Gold incursion should be built around a theme, even if you are adapting it from another type of module. I would call the broad theme of Hester’s Mill to be “Harvest”
Sets – these are particular locations in which the treasure hunters will be presented with clear goals. I find it fascinating that the rules tell the GM to make the goal explicit to the players. I’m not giving away too much by telling you that the goal in the opening Set I wrote up in the intro is to find the way to Hester’s Mill. You complete the Set by achieving this goal and this is eminently important to the cycle of play. You may not wish to complete the goal of every Set. It might not be clever or necessary for you. Your character’s overall goal is to earn enough Gold to relieve them of their Burden, both of which are abstract scores on the character sheet. In other words, you know from the start how much you need to take home so you don’t die on the streets or get consumed by the evils of the world. I don’t think anyone would blame you for trying to convince the party to get the heck out of there once you had managed to collect enough money. But, just because you got your Benjamins, doesn’t mean everyone else did. This can lead to inter-personal conflict, unsurprisingly. But it might also lead to moments of support and kindness in these Sets. Drama, gettit? And guess what you call the things you find within the Sets… Yep, Props. It’s obvious, really. So the statue of the man with the sickle and sword in the intro? Yep, that’s a Prop. You also have Treasure and Traps as defined elements within Sets
Flowchart – What the holy business-process, Batman? Yep, it makes so much sense, when you think about it. When you are trying to play something like an OSR module, you might have a map which visually represents the location but that does not necessarily represent the decisions, actions and repercussions that might lead the PCs from one Set to the next. In many ways, the Flowchart is the more useful of the two. I’d like to give it a go in any game where I’m running a particular scenario, honestly. Not very theatrical though, disappointingly
Monsters – these are specifically mentioned because the section I am referring to in the Trophy Gold rules from Codex Gold is there to explain how you might convert an OSR module to be played using Trophy Gold instead. So, Jesse Ross has helpfully provided a lot of advice on converting Monsters, a staple of the genre, to be used in that system. One of the most fascinating aspects of the game is that the monsters do not come pre-named. That is left up to the party. This can be either cool AF or disastrous. The monsters we encountered in Hester’s Mill so far have been both bonkers and horrifying. And if it had been left up to me, they would have been called something stupid
Magic – Similar to Monsters, this includes advice on conversion. But, I will say that there is a very useful table of already converted D&D style spells presented in the rules for you to use.

Anyway, it should be clear that the Set is the main denomination of organisational structure within an Incursion. So far, I think we have interacted with three or four Sets in Hester’s Mill and achieved the Goal in two or three of them. You can use another highly abstracted currency, the Hunt Token, to complete a Set without having to actually face its dangers. You can receive (and also lose) these tokens on a Hunt Roll, one of the three types of rolls in the game. If you spend three Hunt Tokens like that, you simply draw the curtain across the stage and open again on the next Set and get to work on the new goal.

In general, rolls, of which you have Hunt, Combat and Risk, are made using a dice pool mechanic much like that used in Blades in the Dark. The D6 is the only die you need but you will need them in Dark and Light varieties. You will always roll a Dark Die in Combat and you can roll one to give you a better chance of success on a Risk Roll if you’re willing to risk mind or body… More drama.

The Combat Roll is particularly fascinating because it doesn’t work like a regular success/failure roll at all. Instead, you describe how your character exposes themselves to harm in the battle and then roll your Light Die. That number is your Weak Point. You then roll a Dark Die for each of the treasure hunters in the fight. Ostensibly, you’re rolling against the Endurance of the Monster, but, if any of them roll your Weak Point, that increases your Ruin, which is like a harm track. One you hit 6 Ruin, you are Lost… So dramaaaatic, right?

Add to this the Devil’s Bargain, nicked from Blades in the Dark and you have a recipe for some real dark character moments in Trophy games. You crowdsource the possible options for both Devil’s Bargains and unfortunate consequences of failed rolls from everyone around the table and this makes for some extremely fucked up inevitabilities on a lot of rolls.

In conclusion

We have yet to finish Hester’s Mill. I know we have at least one more Set to get to. I’m really looking forward to going back to it. We’ll be dealing with the aftermath of something pretty messed up and, hopefully, finding some more goodies. I have to say, the Incursion has been very pleasing in introducing us to a lot of lore and cool fantasy history while also giving us the opportunity to get into fights and burn down shrines so far. With any luck, there’ll be more of that as we wrap it up next time.

How about you, dear reader? Have you played Trophy Gold? Or Hester’s Mill? What did you think?

Flash Fiction Challenge Week 5: Subscribe to Life!

Enshittification

I think we all know the feeling, right? Like, whenever the word-processing software you bought for a flat fee decides to switch to a subscription service so you can’t save any files on it without shelling out 7.99 a month? Or when you need to sign up for a free delivery service from the worst company in the world just so you can watch the latest season of Star Trek? Yeah.

Anyway, that’s what this week’s flash is about. There is no hidden meaning or anything. It’s just straight-forward anti-enshittification propaganda. Enjoy!

This is a flash fiction challenge where I challenge myself and anyone else who cares to take part to write a 500 word flash fiction piece every week. I generate five random nouns and five random verbs for each piece. Part of the challenge is to include all the words in the piece. Here are the words for this piece.

Nouns

Session
Nature
Wood
Guest
Membership

Verbs

Dominate
Slow
Forbid
Get
Dictate

Subscribe to Life!

By Ronan McNamee

You roll up to your spot in the Elysian Woods Outdoor Living Simulation Centre and unroll your tent. You hit the Temporary Habitable Structure Instantaneous Construction button on the remote you received in your first Kampzite subscription box and your tent lies there, a useless, Permanent, Uninhabitable Chaos Slowly just existing. You check your phone. In your latest fit of anti-capitalistic pique the night before, you canceled your Danube subscription. It seems, when you did that, Kampzite, Bafftime, Fudz and even Lurollx went with it. You attempt to construct it with your hands. You receive a text message from Kampzite. It is a friendly reminder that interfering with Kampzite property is an offense and that any further tampering will result in the police being summoned and a hefty fine. A moment later you get another text, this time from Danube, this one much less friendly.

A week spent in the wondrous glory of nature. Too much to ask.

You attempt to restart your Danube subscription right then but you had bravely deleted all account credentials from your phone when you cancelled your subscription. You lock yourself out completely, trying to log in with incorrect passwords. You use up the last of your data subscription credits in the process. There are no Elysian Woods colleagues anywhere.

You fold up your “tent” and pop it in your boot. Frustrated, you ask your
EV to take you to the nearest hostelry so you don’t have to sleep in the car. Sleeping in your car is outside the fair use policy you signed up for in your EZ-EV subscription.

You slow, passing the sign. Gaia’s Gardens: Subscription Retreat. Maybe you’ll be eligible for a guest membership. Your EV chimes. You have exited the area covered by your EZ-EV contract. The car lights dim and it rolls to a halt. Wondering how you found yourself in a life utterly dominated by which services you subscribe to, you slide out and onto the road.

You begin to dictate this story to an app on your phone. The app refuses to save it on your free plan.

Gaia’s gates forbid you entry. There is no guard house, there is no intercom. There is only a camera. You peer through the fence into paradise. Forest gives way, beyond, to cold brew coffee houses and hot yoga sessions, to silent discos and loud wind sounds, to glamping. Desperate, you climb that fence, rattling and trembling as you summit before plummeting to the piney floor below.

You awake to pain. Your back. It’s bad. But there’s your phone on the floor nearby. You call emergency services. “Danube Heightened Experience Response Services. Your account number please.” You laugh into the receiver. “Your account number please,” repeats the AI voice. Another voice from the trees, “Hi there, our facial recognition cameras can’t seem to identify you. Would you mind telling us your Gaia Gardens Subscription Credential Code?” The Emergency Services voice says, “Danube Police have been dispatched, please remain where you are.”

Next week

I have been running this challenge for five weeks now and I feel as though I have gotten enough out of it. It has spurred me to write more fiction and has gotten those creative juices flowing (isn’t that a dreadful idiom?) Anyway, I’m going to focus on writing more RPG related posts for a few weeks and I might come back to the flash later in the year.

Flash Fiction Challenge Week 4: He Told Us

The news

Art is political. I might struggle to call what I make “art” most of the time but I guess, whether it’s good or bad, it’s still art. Some of it is more overtly political than others. You can certainly see the politics in NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth novels. It bristles and boils up and breaks the world, but it is still veiled by its fantasy setting. When you read her Great Cities books, based, as they are in her very real home of New York City, the place and the politics are the real deal. It’s right there on the page; the shit that people deal with every day even it is couched in fantastical occurrences and the antagonists are disguised behind cosmically horrific metaphor.

Usually, what I write lies in the former category but, today’s flash is jumping right out of the headlines. It came unbidden, I will say, but here it is. Take it for what it’s worth.

Nouns

crusade
cluster
drawer
railcar
turkey

Verbs

permit
stop
spring
control
fuck 1

He Told Us

by Ronan McNamee

He told us to permit no Rykerites. Neither should we tolerate a Jellicho to live amongst us. For we were the people of the one true god! Kark!

We joined together in a great convocation. We occupied Scotte Station and created of the railcars an impassable barrier. That’s how the Rylerites came to our great city, like diseased cells through the arteries of a body. We watched the trains burn from the terminal.

He told us to take back control so our crusade abandoned the useless railway and spread to the spokes of our great metropolis, the bridges. Those who could, exploded them, the rest of us smashed them, rammed them, blocked and burned them. No more Jenwayers coming across those bridges.

Finally, together on our island of freedom, we beat down doors, beat on drums, beat those damned heathens, the Forgistas. They didn’t belong here either.

He told us to clean the city and that’s what we did. We sprung traps for all the unwanted. We clustered them all in Liberty Gardens and watched them bobbing around in there, like livestock, like turkeys. We fenced them in and went home for dinner.

He told us to eat what the city produced. So we opened our pantries and explored the recesses of our drawers. We ate ketchup and pickles until our tongues fizzed and stung. We drank old soda and energy drinks until our teeth throbbed and our brains balked.

We looked across the barricades and threw obscenities at the filthy outsiders beyond. We returned to Liberty Gardens. The Rykerites and Jellichos had run out of condiments and own-brand cola. They lay in the dirt and we licked our lips.

He told us not to stop until they were gone. So we started and did not cease until we picked our teeth. We were free of them then. Or were we? Some of our crusaders continued to subsist on mayo and sherbet. They refused the “turkey.” They went back to their lives. Sympathisers. Vegetarians. Fuck them.

He told us to find the traitors and destroy them, hang them from the bridges and the tallest skyscrapers. And we did, though we kept a few to make up for the last of the city food. Great Kark would not begrudge his favoured people a good meal.

The eyes of the traitors looked down on us, as we basked in the streets, satiated. And I heard him tell the others to take us for anti-city behaviour. We ran and cried but finally obeyed the leader. We gave ourselves to the great people of our city and they fenced us in, fed us stale donuts and old olives until we lay in the dirt, doing what we were told until they came for us with belief and hunger in their eyes. Had Kark abandoned me? Was I no better than a Forgista now? I always did what I was told. Was this a reward?

He told us what he was, but we never listened.

Next week’s words

Here are the five nouns and five verbs to fit into next week’s piece:

Next week’s nouns

session
nature
wood
guest
membership

Next week’s verbs

dominate
slow
forbid
get
dictate

Happy writing!

Flash Fiction Challenge Week 3: All that Glitters

A little horror

I don’t think it’s particularly worthy of a trigger warning, to be honest, but, just in case, this week’s flash features insects, skeletons and flesh eating, not necessarily in that order. Also, it’s got a foolish academic. It’s a wee bit Indiana Jones, a dash of Pirate Borg and a smidgen Cthulhu.

This here flash fiction challenge is to write a 500 word piece, including the five random verbs and five random nouns that I generate each week. Here are the words that I randomly generated last week:

Nouns

expenditure
entertain
tablet
morsel
leader

Verbs

announce
stand
reverse
sue
decline

All that Glitters

by Ronan McNamee

A weevil squirmed fervently behind his right eye. He entertained the idea of a blink. Couldn’t justify the expenditure of such effort. Instead, his eye flicked to the tablet, nuzzling his thigh. Its script illumined impossibly in his guttering torchlight, shifting and slithering like his eye’s new neighbour.

“Stand aside, ignoramuses! Do you suppose I endured my long sojourn just for some roustabout to bear premier witness to the treasures and magics of these fabled burial chambers?!” With ears they comprehended nothing. The Professor’s wild curtain-parting gesture however, banished the obscuring cloud of labourers to reveal a twilit window into antiquity. Almost. Their leader, stout and mono-manual, remained. She pointed with her hook. “Gold, first,” the demand landed at his feet with her spittle.

Inside, he felt his decline. He could see it on the outside. The insects dwarfed the average weevil, or even cockroach. They peeled off morsels of flesh, in strips. His singular orb witnessed it, the other dribbled into his beard. He heard himself draw a ragged breath. This could never be reversed. The tablet…

“My lady, you’ll be remunerated upon the fulfilment of my expedition.” Even standing a full head taller than her, she surveyed him as a disobedient hound. “Pay now, Professor. (such insolence!) Not coming back.” She gestured at the stylised, be-vined, skull guarding the cavern entrance, flanked by glittering, gluttonous beetles. She hooked around at her people, eyeing each one. She announced a single word in her own language. Three syllables rippled out through the contingent, in a shivering susurrus. The mob nodded as one. The Professor quavered a moment, then scoffed and pushed past.

So glad, he was, that he felt nothing more. No pain, at least. Something wriggled fitfully in his brainpan. That tickled? A last gob of meat, dislodged by his dinner-guests, plopped from his tibia to the tablet. A sickly, emerald glow pulsed from the artefact. He felt ready to stand again. He rose with a clamorous clacking, new power making up for the loss of muscles and sinews. He turned towards the broken, sun-bright steps. Outside, they awaited his return. Bloated, distended, still starving, his companions flew up into the last tangerine light of the day. It glinted off their golden shells. “You wanted gold,” he chattered.

The Professor ignored the mindless caterwauling above. She bawled at his back as he descended, “You owe us! Professor!” He rolled his eyes in his sockets. And grinned. The chamber was disappointingly low but the contents! A vast figure crawled skeletally across the far wall in bas relief, a hand raised before a plague of golden insects, suing for peace perhaps? A rugged altar, stained in centuries of sacrifice held a tablet. It shone with a wan inner light. Untouched, as it was, by the ubiquitous dust, he read the first word, startled. It was the word the hook-hand had used… He heard the creatures flitter out of the walls as he collapsed, tablet beside him. The Professor whimpered.

Next week’s words

Next week’s nouns

crusade
cluster
drawer
railcar
turkey

Next week’s verbs

permit
stop
spring
control
fuck

Honestly didn’t know that the random word generator was capable of expletives but… let’s go, RWG!

Flash Fiction Challenge Week 2: Securing Destiny

Bloggies News

A couple of things before I get to this week’s flash. If you read my last post, you’ll know that thedicepool.com was up for a Bloggie for best debut blog of 2024 in the TTRPG space. To those who voted for me, thanks so much! Your support means a lot. It honestly motivates me to keep working on this site and it’s obviously nice to know that someone enjoys what I write. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Murkmail won by a country mile, and deservedly so. You should go check out their blog. I came in seventh place, lower than I’d hoped but higher than I expected. For the full results, here’s a link to sachagoat’s blog. While you’re there, go and vote in the current round! It’s the Advice category right now and it’s down to the last 8 entries. They are all well worth your time to read if you’re interested in RPGs.

I redecorated

There were a few things missing from the very minimalist theme I was using. I really always wanted a sidebar. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned. Anyway, I switched themes so I could have one. I like it because I can keep useful stuff there, like my archives, lists of categories and tags, a blogroll of other blogs that I like or am subscribed to. That sort of thing. What do you think of the new look, dear reader?

Week 2

This one started with my head in a very contemporary office space and ended with something in a much more far future space space, if you know what I mean. I gave this a bit more time than the last one, but I’m not convinced it’s better for it. I’m happy with the plot I got in there and even the level of character development, but I’m not as satisfied with the quality of the writing. Here are the random words I challenged myself to fit into this 500 word piece:

Nouns

measurement
consequence
desk
winner
employer

Verbs

echo
influence
enquire
mix
pin

Securing Destiny

by Ronan McNamee

“Let’s put a pin in that.” Mr Grogan locked eyes with Terry and dared him to voice another concern. Terry, shook, broke first. “And move on to the next item, shall we?” Timpani thundering in his ears, Terry inhaled through his one unblocked nostril. A trick of his Mum’s, to calm him. The meeting continued, the others focusing on Grogan’s drone. Terry exhaled through an o. His pressure regulated with the cabin’s.

Why? His ghostly face, reflected in the void-dark porthole by his desk, echoed his confusion. Why had he opened his mouth? If his employer worried about the security of the life-support system, he’d have addressed it. Right? His mum beamed at him from her little holo-plinth. She winked conspiratorially. Secrets were her strength. She always said, say nothing and let the fools sing. Good advice, he always thought. So why had he ignored it today? To reassure himself that he wasn’t paranoid, he re-checked the firewall. There: a weakness. A hacker would need to know what they were seeking, but, surely, a weakness is a weakness. The consequences of such a key ship system being compromised defied measurement. Catastrophic.

Maybe Mr Grogan hadn’t wanted it discussed openly at the stand-up. Terry mixed up a lunchtime bowl of blue kibble on the mezzanine, and nodded. Made sense. But why? Security reasons? The other staff were trusted. Too distracting? It was a serious issue. So why? There was his mum again, with one of her sayings. Who stands to gain from it? Grogan? A play for control? Would he gamble with the lives of everyone aboard the Destiny? Did he think he could come out of that eventuality a winner?

Terry overthought everything. Everyone said so. He was pushed to enquire, he struggled to come to decisions, he had a tendency to catastrophise. Of course he did. Every scenario ended in catastrophe on a long enough time-line. That’s why his job was security for the engineering crew. It was why he was trusted, too. He took that trust seriously. Over a thousand souls depended on him.

In the depths of the ship, later, doing his rounds, Terry still debated his options. Grogan found him there, wiped his upper lip and drew close. “I know you think it’s me,” he had to shout his secret over the din down there, “the captain says there’s too many mouths to feed. Wants an… accident. She has… influence over me.” Terry nodded. He had heard rumours about Grogan’s indiscretions. The man sweated before him now in the greasy, red dullness. Terry told him he wouldn’t open his mouth.

Terry stayed late. Got in the back way through the firewall exploit. He selected the captain’s quarters and Grogan’s. Glanced at his mum before hitting EXECUTE. When he took the job, he told her he worried about this sort of situation arising. She’d said, if they don’t deserve your trust, then they don’t deserve Destiny. He tapped the button and listened for the klaxon.

Next week’s words

Random nouns and random verbs to attract those muses.

Next week’s nouns

expenditure
entertain
tablet
morsel
leader

Next week’s verbs

announce
stand
reverse
sue
decline

Please do let me know if you have been writing along with me, dear reader. I’m going to do this anyway, but misery loves company and all that.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Habitant 1306

Week 1

Predictably, I spent absolutely no time thinking about this challenge until yesterday and then I knocked out the five hundred words in an evening. No matter how I did it, though, I have a sense of accomplishment. It’s been such a long time since I wrote for the pleasure of it, I forgot what it was like. That slow unfurling of the story in my mind, the careful (or not so careful) selection of the words, the freedom to make it what it wants to be. I enjoyed it.

Anyway, the random words certainly helped get me started in this case. I had some images from other media in the forefront of my mind as I wrote. Aveena, the holographic assistant from the Citadel in the Mass Effect games was the first thing. But instead of a mysterious space station, it was the assistant for something like the arcologies in Appleseed, a manga that I read more than 30 years ago. I remember almost nothing about it except for the arcologies, which I thought were a pretty cool concept. Habitant 1306 is the result. Here’s the list of the random words that I managed to fit into it first.

Nouns

Development
Surgery
Union
Shopping
System

Verbs

Execute
Finish
Approve
Undertake
Take

Habitant 1306

By Ronan McNamee

“The System is here to fulfil all of your needs, Habitant 1306.” The hologram flickered and flashed, blinding me momentarily. Why had it designated me Habitant 1306? I thumbed my eyes and walked on past it. It felt like a haunting, but not the one I would want. The vastness of the Development’s central atrium bloomed around me, twilit and dripping. I pulled Aunty’s scarf tight.

Maybe it knew me? The cracked and mossy statue of a habitant, gaily swinging their shopping bags winked at me, I’m certain. Did the statue know me too, somehow? Spiders crawled up my spine. I whipped about but caught only the brief flicker of the hologram, awaiting the next habitant. It might wait forever.

What if it mistook me for someone else? Perhaps Habitant 1306 looked like me. What if 1306 was the designation, not just of habitant, but also habitation? An “i” towered, gallingly tall, above a booth, hunkered between ATM and escalator. A gentle glow beneath an encrustation of grime drew me in. With a wipe I discovered a map on a screen. Below, the development delved deep. Caverns occupied by industry, commerce, leisure. Above me, the habitations stretched high into the night sky.

Developers had undertaken the doomed project; the union of all aspects of life in a System-governed space. Self-sustaining, self-regulating, self-populating… 1306 was far above. There were elevators but I didn’t trust them not to take me where they wanted. A stairwell, housed in a tall glass tube, spiralled into the heavens. I stretched, knowing Aunty would approve, and started the climb. Every few landings, a gap in the Development’s titanic cladding allowed the Free City streets to shine out below. My home, where Aunty found me as a nipper, clad in my birthday suit, exploring, unworried and unhurried, she told me.

13 sounds doable, but each floor encompasses cities. Peach streaked the horizon as I finished with the stairs. 06 was on a low inter-level. The halls’ walls and ceilings had partially collapsed. Utility cabling and piping barricaded the way. The Development’s arteries blocking my path to the heart. I had surgery to perform. I hefted my idle crowbar and scrubbed in.

Shocked, soaked and stinking, I left the patient bleeding behind me, crawling to the end of the hall. Forty winks, Aunty found me. She scowled with that smile hiding behind. Only ever in the electrified darkness inside my eyelids, these days. I thumbed my eyes to clear them again, rose and stretched.

1306 said the door. “Everyone left you,” I said to the Development or the door, maybe. Touched, it swung sullenly open. Illumination blossomed. It was a home. Unobtrusive conveniences skulked, observing my steps. But still, a sort of habitation to be sure.

A closet? Located dead-centre, it buzzed and gurgled. Inside was a tall mirror. No, I switched the light on and saw me, in my birthday suit, watching Aunty. The pink water bubbled. A single word question blinked on the tank’s surface, “Execute?”

Next week’s words

And here are the random words generated for next week’s challenge.

Next week’s nouns

measurement
consequence
desk
winner
employer

Next week’s verbs

echo
influence
enquire
mix
pin

I’d love to hear from you if you took part in the challenge this week, dear reader, or if you wrote anything you’re satisfied with in the last few days, even. Get in the comments!

Short Fiction Challenge

These are not resolutions, okay?

Yes, I wrote all the way back last year, that I don’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions. So much so that I then proceeded to list five of them, with the proviso that they were “gaming resolutions,” not real ones. So, I may as well continue along Self-Delusion Avenue into 2025, I thought.

So! There are a couple of non-RPG things I’d like to try to do more often:

Practice my Japanese and improve my fluency before our big trip to Japan in the autumn
Write more fiction that is not related to games

The cover of the book, Read Real Japanese Fiction, Edited by Michael Emmerich and featuring the writing of Hiromi Kawaguchi, Otsuichi, Sinji Ishii, Banana Yoshimoto, Kaoru Kitamura and Yoko Tawada. It also features the illustration of a small, angry, barefoot child with a light blue dress on.

日本語の練習は大変だけど楽しいです。最近　Read Real Japanese　Fiction　という本を読み始まりました。その本の中には日本の著者六人のすばらしい短編小説が読めます。一文ずつ、英語の説明もあるから分かりやすいです。それ以外、Netflixで日本のテレビ番組をよく見て日本語のリスニングの練習もできます。日本語を話すことの練習もできればいいな。

A double-page spread from the book “Read Real Japanese Fiction.” This shows a page of the short story, Kamisama by Hiromi Kawaguchi and the opposite page with explanations in English for each sentence.

For the second point, I thought I might use this very blog, dear reader… and perhaps, dear fellow writer…

Random Word Generator

In a now defunct writing group I was once a part of, we often used a random word generator to get our minds working on new short pieces of fiction. In fact, some of the short stories and flash fiction I posted here came from that group. I think we can all agree that I had mixed success. But, there is no doubt about one thing: it got me writing. I always found that, when my brain was working on the practical problem of fitting those randomly selected words into whatever it was I was writing, I was not focusing so much on the fact that I didn’t have any ideas. I let the words guide me into something resembling a story. After a while, I found the ideas for short fiction coming without the aid of the random words and so I would have to shoe-horn them in, which is an interesting exercise in itself. But the random words were the kickstart that I needed.

So I decided to use the same method again. Here is my first effort. I used this random word generator to come up with five nouns and five verbs:

Nouns I used

Engine
Clothes
Thought
Employer
Investment

Verbs I used

Summon
Chase
Determine
Cheer
Assess

This time, I thought I would challenge myself to write in a format I don’t think I have ever attempted before, a hundred word flash.

Present Imperative

by Ronan McNamee

Swim. Up to the air. Breathe. Curse your clothes. They catch every eddy, urging a return to drowning. Locate your employer. She bobs there on the surface; regards the depths. Consider her investment in you. Learn from her mistakes. Recognise the ice of the sea in your bones. Move. Chase survival, success. Stroke past her and her solitary Chu. Welcome the deep-freeze motivation. Summon your future. Allow it to cheer you, sustain you. Pause, paddle. Resist the chill in your blood. Hear the engine enter earshot. Determine the direction. Assess difficulty and distance. Chatter a grin. Swim.

Next Challenge

Five verbs: execute, finish, approve, undertake, take. Five nouns: development, surgery, union, shopping, system — The Randomly Generated words to use in writing the 500 word flash fiction due on Wednesday, 15th January, 2025.

Here’s the plan. I’m going to generate five more nouns and five more verbs right now. I am going to take these words and come up with a 500 word piece of flash fiction. If you’re interested, dear reader, I would invite you to do the same. I’m going to post my piece on this here blog next Wednesday. If you want, you can leave yours as a comment under this post or under my post next week or on your own blog and link to it, or you can write it in that little notebook you keep just for yourself, or you can write it on the wind so only the birds and the gods can read it.

Here are the words for next week:

Nouns for next week

development
surgery
union
shopping
system

Verbs for next week

execute
finish
approve
undertake
take

And this is the best part: I’m going to do this every Wednesday until I decide I’ve done enough. Feel free to join me in this weekly writing challenge, dear reader. Or maybe just try it this once and see if you like it. One way or the other、よろしくお願いします。

Flash Fiction: The Hunt

New year, old fiction

Happy new year, dear reader! I hope your 2025 is better than the year just passed. And thanks for your occasional glance at my humble blog in the last few months. If you are new here, although the dice pool dot com is normally an RPG-related blog, I also like to sometimes share the short and long form fiction that I have produced over the years. Since I have a splitting headache today and not much in the way of good ideas for original blogposts, it seemed like a good opportunity to post this piece of flash fiction. It’s exactly 500 words and came out of some randomly generated nouns and verbs as an exercise a few years ago. I hope you enjoy it.

The Hunt

by Ronan McNamee

I always think of my ambition as the gun I bring on a hunt. Continuing the analogy; job interviews, important proposals and meetings are everyday hunting expeditions.
But on today’s safari, we’re after really big game.

There he is, the prize: Dr Khan. I’ll call him the Great White Rhinoceros; I’m going to mount his head on the wall of my soon to be much larger corner-office. He is just as I pictured, minus the pocket protector; an irredeemable nerd; nervous,
slightly slovenly, side-parting.

My smile and greeting are genuine. I have never been so happy to meet anyone, to be staring down my sights at such a magnificent beast. My trigger finger twitches and I almost shoot early! He had been explaining his discovery, and I interrupted
like a rookie.

I check that my gun is correctly loaded and resume ambush position. He continues his boring explanation. I do glean a little important information, though. The
product he just developed, the product he is just about to sell to my company, enables the user not just to experience the world from the perspective of a bird or a tortoise or a duck-billed platypus, but to live it. No mere virtual reality headset, this.
This invention of Dr Khan’s will revolutionise humanity’s understanding of the natural world by literally allowing its users to become a part of it. It will also make my
company a metric shit-tonne of cash.

His explanations and interminable techno-babble proceed unabated for the entire walk through the university Physics Department until we are in his lab. I continue to nod and make the right noises. The hands holding my gun are becoming sweaty and my patience with the Great White Rhinoceros grows thin.

He stops talking, I level the barrel at him and fire.

I assure him that we would never try to influence him to use his invention for any purpose but the one it was meant for. I convince him we share his values; the welfare of animals, the preservation of Mother Earth, yadda, yadda, yadda. I watch the smile creep across his face when I mention remuneration, a seven figure sum. He nods excitedly. He shakes my hand as I wonder what to carve into that wonderful, big hunk of ivory.

Khan leaves me in the lab as he rushes off to spread the good news to his trophy team. I receive a text. Unknown number. “I’ve seen you on Facebook with that elephant’s corpse,” it reads.

My gun clatters to the red dirt of the savannah. I hear the door being locked. I rise and approach the window to the next room. The Great White Rhinoceros is in there. His finger is poised on a button. His phone is in his other hand. I receive another
text: “Time for you to see how it feels.” He pushes the button.

I run and run and hide, heart hammering, legs aching, tail bleeding. Another gunshot. I bleed.

Flash Fiction: Anthropology

Funerals

I used to have a hard time keeping a straight face at funerals. When I was young, the only kinds of funeral ceremonies I ever attended were Catholic ones. They are almost entirely devoid of light-hearted or even poignant moments, in my experience. Instead, such occasions are concerned mostly with priests warning you about the danger your immortal soul is in if you continue your sinful ways and telling you about Jesus. Anyway, the build-up of emotion caused by this unsatisfactory vehicle for sending off your loved one would inevitably explode in titters and giggles over silly little things. So this story is about, what if a time-traveler from a future free of permanent death attended a funeral like that? Without the necessary context? What would they think? Also, what if it was an assignment for an anthropology class?

Flash Fiction: Anthropology

By Ronan McNamee

Attendance at a funeral was felt to be the ideal introduction to a society. It was a shock, that’s what it was. Why did the man in the robes spend so much time talking about this Jesus fellow? I thought the death-victim’s name was Gary. Why did everyone keep sitting and standing and kneeling? Why was no-one attempting to revive the deceased? I honestly felt as though I should intervene when I realised they had locked the poor man in a little box. Call a Reviv Team!

When they informed us all we were to proceed to the graveyard outside the pointy building I grew truly scared. They intended to bury the poor man! Perhaps he had been a criminal; perhaps this was his punishment. What sort of crime could warrant such barbaric cruelty, though? How could these people (some of them
called themselves Gary’s family for crying out loud!) sustain such a desire for vengeance once the man had already died. He must have been a terrible dictator or CEO of some kind, like Aldorf Hipler or Donal Drumpf? Perhaps he deserved it?
Outside, I discovered many marked graves. By the dates of death many of the incarcerated had been buried for decades. Far past their sell-by dates; no chance of reviving them anymore. I felt sick. I gave my left clavicle a rub to release some Calm. I relaxed and smiled at the woman next to me. “Did he steal something valuable?” I asked her as we shuffled together out of the pointy building into the rain. Her eyes, previously quivering with sympathy and sadness, turned hard and grey, her mouth drooped and she shook her head, turning to speak to the man beside her.

“What did you say to my wife?” said the tall, shiny-headed man to me. I looked to either side but he was definitely looking at me. I pointed at myself. He glared, tears streaking his face.
“What did you say about Gary?”
“I simply wished to understand his crime,” I wished I had read the preparatory pamphlet before I got myself into this.
“Crime?! You little toerag,” said the man lunging at my face with his fist, his fist! I had been struck by a human being at a funeral. I felt that I was beginning to understand the culture. It was one of violence and vengeance and lies.
“I just wanted to understand this funeral ritual!” I screamed. I feared for my own life now. The bald man was gaining allies from the crowd of brutes collected there by the graveyard.
“Understand it? I’ll give you one of your own, you fucker!” I turned and ran down the lane with the mob following. I rounded a corner and whispered, out of breath and scared witless, “Return, please, please please, Return.

And here I am, making this report to you.
What do you mean, failed? You can’t fail me for that! They were out for blood! Unfair test!

Flash Fiction: Kitsune

Japanese inspiration

I lived in Japan for a few years. I actually studied Japanese language, history and culture in university as well. I got into it through my love of manga and anime when I was young. A recurring motif in several of these stories and in Japanese mythology in general is that of the fox spirit, the trickster god who worked their magic on foolish humans for whatever unknowable reasons, or just for laughs. This story was a take on that. It is not particularly unusual to have this sort of story translated to the modern day. In fact, you can still visit shrines to Inari, the fox spirit in Japan today. But I liked the idea of pairing the fox spirit with the common phenomenon of dodgy looking recruiters in shopping districts of Japanese cities, looking for girls. This story is the result. I hope you enjoy it, dear reader.

Kitsune

by Ronan McNamee

The Galleria: home to predator and prey alike, wimp and bully, shyster and mark, the girls and the recruiters.
Over the Sega-Zone-din the boy in the suit called, “Oi, O-nee-san, are you alright?” He had dyed hair, tanned skin, a kind face. Michiko Minami had been stood up by her friends; not for the first time. She shook her head, long black hair curtaining her face.

“Call me Jun. I’ll be your knight in shining armour today.”
She smiled.

Later, they sat near Inari Shrine and she told him her dreams; her ambition to write songs and sing them. Someone clapped twice in the shrine. Michiko glanced. No-one was there but the two fox guardians. Everything paused. Michiko bowed towards the shrine.

“Can I hear you sing?” he asked. She suggested a local karaoke box. He clapped once and led her by the hand.
He bought her a couple of chuhai to loosen up the vocal cords. She was too young but she didn’t want to upset him.
“You’re very beautiful Michiko. You know that, right?” She reddened, turned away, but performed the next song with vigour.

“You could make more money than you’ll ever need, you’re so beautiful, Mit-chan. I could help you!” This time Michiko shuddered, closed her eyes, felt a squirming in her belly, a tingling sensation.
She opened her eyes to see Jun: a rat in a suit.
“Your eyes! What ar-?”
“They see you now.”

She ran outside to the alleyway in the back. The sensation enveloped her. She twitched and shifted; her breath caught and her muscles spasmed. Her mind and spirit rushed. She transformed.

Michiko sniffed the wind and, catching Jun’s scent, darted up onto a recycling bin; further up: top of a vending machine, corrugated roof. Behind an unlit snack-bar sign she hid.
He rounded the corner after her, scanned the alleyway.
She swished her fiery tail and blinked her golden eyes. An image of Michiko the girl appeared near the other end of the alleyway; uniform slightly bluer, hair a little longer than true: what she wanted him to see.

“Oi! Mit-chan!” Jun shouted, shoving shades onto his head. Michiko the girl turned, winked at him, then danced into the night. He broke into a run, passed right below her snack bar sign, calling her a “dumb kid.”
On four slender, white-socked legs she sped after him, all diamond grin, magnificent tail and golden eyes. Odd, watching herself lead him on. She made sure the image remained tantalisingly out of his reach all the way back to the shrine. It was… easy.

The fox guardian statues turned, eyes glowing, as Jun passed between them. He followed her heedlessly through the darkened doorway. With satisfaction, Michiko watched a golden luminescence begin emanating from the building. The kami kept its promise and she delivered what it wanted. She swished her tail and sauntered off into the night humming a tune that had only just occurred to her.