Monthly Archives: July 2021

Some Etymologies in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

A sentence on Zelda Wiki posits that “Sahasrahla may be named after the seventh chakra of Hinduism, Sahasrara.” Sahasrahla, it goes without saying, is the wise old man who guides your quest in the early sections of A Link to the Past. His name, it goes without saying, is weird.

When we see sentences like these, it is wise to be skeptical. There’s no obvious reason for Sahasrahla to be named after a chakra, and the author of the sentence offers no support for the supposition. But it is not wise to conclude on this basis that the theory is incorrect. It is not wise to dismiss an idea out of hand just because at face value it seems goofy. Wise people are aware that the objective world, the world of facts, is extremely goofy.

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K84: A Diachronic Survey of Ravenloft’s Catacombs

In this post we will look at the crypts in Castle Ravenloft and see how they changed from edition to edition.

Here’s a different post about locations in Barovia outside the castle. Here’s a third post about the castle itself.

Unnecessary Abstract Introduction (JUST SKIP THIS SECTION PLEASE)

Perhaps you have heard somewhere the idea that all stories—sitcoms, epic poems, video games, This American Life vignettes—are fundamentally retellings of older stories. Perhaps you have even heard the idea itself multiple times. In some contexts, the proposition refers to deep underlying structures to which storytellers inevitably return. This is a rich subject for analysis—but the big money is in abandoning all but the merest pretense of originality and casting the same characters in the same conflicts in the same settings that the audience remembers from 30 or 10 years ago. And this might be a good subject for analysis too. I hope.

This practice of story-rehashing is especially salient in the stories of Dungeons & Dragons, many of which are embodied in physical locations with detailed maps. The most successful D&D settings and stories are reprinted decade after decade, edition after edition, so that new players can enjoy the same adventures so beloved by their forebears, and old players can whine about the things that got changed.

I believe the paradigm example of this is Castle Ravenloft, depicted in the modules I6 Ravenloft (1983), RM4 House of Strahd (1993), Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (2006), and Curse of Strahd (2016). All four of these books tell basically the same story: “Go to this spooky castle and kill this evil vampire.” The vampire is always menacing the same young women; the aged fortune-teller always helps you find the same artifacts that will help you slay him. And in all four books, the floor plan of Castle Ravenloft is presented in basically the same form. This is fascinating, but not surprising: Nerds, who are humans, naturally hate change. Also, the original dungeon is very good. Why would you change it? Why indeed.

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