James L. Cambias's Blog, page 27

Antagonists and Villains

In both fiction and roleplaying games, there's a distinction between a character (or NPC) who is a villain, and one who is an antagonist.

The villain is evil, or at least selfish and callous. Not only do his (or her) goals oppose those of the heroes, his character is morally inferior. Even if he believes he is serving some lofty goal, he's willing to let the ends justify the means. A villain may be monstrous, or charming, or sinister, or deceptive, but he's the "bad guy."

The antagonist isn't evil, at least not consciously. Lieutenant Gerard in The Fugitive is a perfect example. He's hunting a dangerous escaped murderer, and is determined to bring him in. It's a noble and worthy goal, and he displays courage, competence, and integrity as he pursues our wrongly-convicted hero.  

Naturally, an antagonist is the most likely to reverse himself upon learning the truth. If he doesn't, he slides over into being a cruel fanatic like Inspector Javert from Les Miserables, who is a villain. Or, if it's a tragedy, the antagonist may learn his error and repent too late.

Antagonists are often praised as being "realistic," since we're constantly assured that in the real world everyone considers himself a good person. Whereas villains are disparaged as being unrealistic comic-book characters.

That's false, by the way. There are indeed people in the world who are consciously wicked. I recall running across an interview with a mid-level Mafia "soldier" in which he mentioned how much he liked to go out on spending sprees with his girlfriend using a stolen credit card. The Mafioso was making thousands off of his various rackets already, but the knowledge that some "sucker" was paying the bill for his entertainment made it that much more enjoyable.

It's also a fact is that many people will do wrong if they think they can get away with it. Think about most theft, or robbery. Think about actual premeditated murder. There's no doubt in the robber's mind that robbery is wrong. Killers know killing is wrong. They just don't expect to get caught.

And of course there are people who are so callous or incapable of empathy that it simply doesn't matter to them if their actions are harmful. Actual psychopaths have that problem ��� and they may make up as much as one percent of the population.

I'm not trying to paint a grim picture of humanity. It's noteworthy that crime has been declining continuously during most of my lifetime. (I'm not saying there's a connection, but you're welcome.) Some of that is due to better deterrence ��� fewer people think they can get away with wrongdoing, so they don't do it. And maybe some of it is due to improvements in empathy and moral sense. I don't know if there's been any research on that. (One colleague of mine attributes the decline in lawbreaking to the increase in obesity over the same period: would-be crooks are just getting too fat to commit crimes.)

What this does mean is that writers shouldn't be ashamed to have real villains in their stories. It's still a good idea to make the villains three-dimensional, with realistic desires and maybe some redeeming qualities. But in the end, good and evil are real, and one reason people have been telling stories for half a million years is to remind ourselves that good can win.

Arkad's World Review From Locus

The new Sage of Providence, Paul Di Filippo, wrote a very kind and perceptive review of Arkad's World. Somehow I missed it when it came out back in February, but he recently put it up on Facebook. You can read the full review here.

Then you can go buy the book.

Random Encounters: In the Wizard War

When the great wizards go to war, even Kings run and hide. In this D20-inspired fantasy setting, two factions of wizards have moved from rivalry to outright warfare. Everybody thought it would end quickly, but of course it has dragged on, drawing in new allies as blazing anger turns to implacable hate. Cities, kingdoms, and castles all over the world lie in ruins, and dangers multiply as the wizards become more reckless in their spells and summonings.

ENCOUNTERS DURING THE WIZARD WAR

Roll d20 when moving, d10 when stationary.

Roll twice and combine.
Brain-Eater: A tentacled humanoid from another plane of existence, with psychic and magical powers. It's taking advantage of the magical struggle to conduct some operation of its own.
Demon: A mighty demon accompanied by lesser servitors. It is bound to obey the wizard who summoned it, but it has its own desires and grudges.
Injured Celestial: A powerful angelic being, horribly wounded.
Looters: A band of 2d4 thieves and warriors (i.e., just like the player-characters) looking for abandoned magical items or anything else of value. They're suspicious of potential competition.
Mercenaries: 2d8 hardened soldiers. Roll 1d6 to determine their allegiance. (1-2: Same faction as the player-characters; 3-4: Enemy faction; 5: Deserters turned bandit; 6: Serving nearest temple.)
Swarm of Giant Fiendish Scorpions: 2d6 Scorpions the size of dogs, their eyes glowing with demonic light. They'll attack anything.
Unseasonable Weather: Magical weather control has been playing hob with the climate. This is a blizzard in summer, or a tornado in winter, or maybe a tropical storm far inland. The bad weather lasts 2d6 hours but the effects may linger for days.
Wizard: A powerful magician, with mortal troops and supernatural guardians. Roll 1d6 to determine the wizard's allegiance. (1-2: Same faction as the player-characters, and will likely assign them a mission; 3-4: Opposed faction, will interrogate or enslave them; 5: Rogue Wizard, loyal to nobody; 6: Mad Wizard.)
Zombies: 2d6 zombies, once part of an undead army but now just hunting for living food.
Altered Time: An area about 1d100 yards across has come unstuck in time. Anyone entering experiences only a few minutes in the zone while outside much more time passes. Roll 1d6 to see how much time goes by. (1-2: 1d6 hours; 3: 1d6 days; 4: 1d6 weeks; 5: 1d6 months; 6: 1d6 years.)
Ambush: 1d6 minor demons using illusions to appear as helpless refugees.
Goblin Camp: 1d6 times 10 goblins are camped here. They are poorly supplied and have only basic weapons. Roll 1d6 for their allegiance. (1-2: Same faction as the player-characters; 3-4: Enemy faction; 5: Deserters turned bandit; 6: Serving the Brain-Eaters.)
Hunting Dragon: A young but hungry dragon, sent after the party by some enemy or other.
Magical Trap: A magical glyph which imposes a geas on whoever sees it. Roll 1d6 for the nature of the geas. (1: Guard this location with your life for a year and a day; 2: Kill! 3: Leave this spot and never return; 4: Seek out and slay a specific person; 5: Serve a specific person for a year and a day; 6: Shed no blood for a year.)
Pure Chaos: A zone of primordial Chaos 1d100 yards across. The effects of magic in the zone are massively amplified, but there is a 10 percent chance that any spell will fail spectacularly.
Ruined Castle: Something utterly devastated this castle, leaving a ruin filled with monsters, hazards, and loot. Gee, what to do . . .
Temple Complex: An island of security in a world gone mad. The temple priests have defended their citadel with the power of the gods, and it's packed with refugees. Travelers can get shelter, basic food and water, and a safe place to sleep ��� but warriors may be asked to help guard the walls, and users of magic get a very negative reaction.
Tracks or Signs: Either the tracks of one of the encounters above, or an actual signpost. Roll again to see what is indicated.
Wake of an army: An army passed through recently. Following the trail of the force means the party won't encounter any monsters, but all the food and portable wealth has been taken.

SITUATIONS IN THE WIZARD WAR

Roll 1d6 for each encounter above to determine motivations.

A desires B
A wants to capture B
A wants B dead
A wants to go somewhere
A wants to solve a mystery
A wants X

Uncharacteristically Personal Note

We never observed "Fathers' Day" in my family. Still don't. My father liked to pick out his own neckties, and dismissed the whole event as something ginned up by the makers of greeting cards and electric shavers. So all the appreciations and in memoriams people are posting on 'blogs and social media today are very sweet, but don't resonate.

I miss him every day, not just today.

Godzilla Movie Update

It's always those damned Lannisters messing everything up, isn't it?

Random Encounters: The Hell-Fire Caves

In 1748 the famous libertine baronet Sir Francis Dashwood ordered the excavation of a complex of chalk caves under his family seat of West Wycombe Park. The work incorporated existing caves and mine tunnels, as well as new chambers and galleries, and may have linked to some of the "follies" on the grounds of the manor ��� and possibly to the crypt of St. Laurence's Church, the Dashwood family mausoleum, and an underground river.

The place is known as "Hell-Fire Caves" because it was the meeting-place for Dashwood's notorious social circle known as the "Hell-Fire Club" (or, more formally, the "Order of Monks of St. Francis of Wycombe" or the "Mad Monks of Medmenham." The organization was chiefly an excuse for drinking, whoring, and frat-house blasphemies against Catholicism.

Or . . . was it? Digging a complex of underground passages and coming up with an elaborate set of rituals blaspheming a religion none of the members followed anyway seems a bit over-the-top, even for Georgian-era aristocrats. Surely one of the guests would have rolled his eyes and snorted "Enough jabber about devils and the Pope, Dashwood ��� bring in the laudanum and the whores!"

What if Dashwood and his friends were using debauchery and "harmless" mockery of Catholicism to cover up something more nefarious? The underground warren of tunnels at West Wycombe recalls the secret underground complex described in 1797 by the madman/spy James Tilly Matthews as the headquarters of the "Air-Loom Gang," using their clockpunk machines to inflict madness on him. Needless to say, Matthews was hardly the most celebrated madman of the era: what was really behind George III's bouts of insanity beginning in 1788? What was the real source of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's visions of a "pleasure dome" with "caverns measureless to man" and an underground river in 1797? What really caused a "madman" to assassinate Prime Minister Perceval in 1812? To find out, the heroes must venture into the Hell-Fire Caves!

ENCOUNTERS IN THE HELL-FIRE CAVES

There is a 50 percent chance that any titled member of the aristocracy is actually a Reptoid lizard-man using Mesmeric illusions to appear human. Also, unless noted, all gentlemen are accompanied by 1d4 prostitutes dressed in "naughty nun" costumes and acting drunker than they really are.

Roll 1d20 if the characters are moving about the caverns, 1d10 if they remain in one room.

1: Roll Twice and Combine.

2: Plot-Advancing Encounter.Someone or something connected to the reason the adventurers are in the Hell-Fire Caverns.

3: Baboon! A live, full-grown baboon with devil's horns crudely tied to its head. The beast is drunk, confused, angry ��� and can bite a man's arm off.

4: Deros. 1d6 short, obese, hairless denizens of the Earth's interior, secret allies of Dashwood and his Club. Their ancient technology lies behind the Air-Loom, and their own monstrous desires are a perfect fit for the Club's debaucheries. They carry nerve-whips. A chamber containing Deros has a 50 percent chance of being a concealed entrance to their own deeper tunnels.

5: Druids. 2d6 men in Druidical robes, carrying gold-plated sickles. They are slightly less drunk than other Club members, and are preparing to carry out a real blood sacrifice. Guess who the victims will be?

6: Ghouls. 1d6 rubbery, hoofed corpse-eaters ��� more of Dashwood's secret allies, the Ghouls act as "cleaners" to dispose of any inconvenient bodies, witnesses, or interlopers. A room with Ghouls has a 50 percent chance of holding a secret entrance to their own damp tunnels leading in the direction of the nearest burying-ground.

7: Historical Figure. Hey, it's that guy! Roll 1d6. 1: Cagliostro; 2: Sir Francis Dashwood himself in full fake Papal regalia; 3: Benjamin Franklin, a guest of the Club; 4: George, the Prince Regent (future George IV); 5. The Comte de Saint-Germain, even though he's supposed to be dead; 6. John Wilkes, notorious political radical and libertine.

8: Lamia. One of the "Nuns" of Medmenham isn't a London doxy at all. She's a snake-bodied vampiric Lamia, irresistibly seductive and deadly. Most of the Monks probably don't care.

9: Mad Monks of Medmenham. 1d6 "normal" members of the Club. They're dressed in monks' robes over white suits, they're rich and powerful, and they're unbelievably drunk. They're looking for more booze, sex, or something to wager over ��� and preferably a way to combine all three.

10: Secret Agents. 1d6 of Francis Dashwood's elite secret operatives, dressed in the same white suits and monks' robes as the other members. But these men are stone cold sober, armed, and skilled at combat.

11: Air-Loom. A prototype of the "magnetized air" device which the secret conspiracy has installed under London, this one only affects the environs of West Wycombe Park itself. The device can produce various effects under the control of a skilled operator. An unskilled person monkeying with the controls gets random results. Roll  1: Amnesia; 2: Fear; 3: Loss of inhibitions; 4: Mania; 5: Pain; 6: Rage; 7: Sickness; 8: Visual hallucinations; 9: Voices inside one's head; 10: Roll twice and combine.

12: Alarm! Someone has notice intruders skulking about the place and raised the alarm. While the guests are too preoccupied to notice, Sir Francis's agents (see #10) and a crew of burly footmen make a sweep through the complex looking for anyone who isn't on the guest list.

13: Booby-Trap! A tripwire across the doorway dumps a bucket of noxious stuff onto whoever comes in. Possible contents of the bucket include human feces, ink, paint, urine, or ice water. Hilarious! The 1d4 Mad Monks who set the trap are waiting to mock whoever triggers it.

14: Captive Fairy. A fairy girl of unearthly beauty is tethered by an iron shackle to the floor. She begs to be set free. Note that her beauty is a psychic effect; her true form is a hairless gray humanoid with huge black eyes.

15: Evidence. This otherwise unoccupied room does hold a treasure. A member's discarded coat has signed letters in the pocket implicating both the coat's owner and Dashwood in occult treason.

16: Exit to Surface. A hidden ventilation shaft ascends to one of the "Follies" on the grounds of the manor.

17: Orgy in Progress. 2d6 Mad Monks, along with a like number of "Nuns" are engaged in drunken sex acts of unusual depravity. New arrivals are invited to join in, and any refusal may arouse suspicion.

18: Pagan Temple. A shrine of Venus ��� although the images of Venus on the walls feature a lot more eyes and tentacles than conventional depictions usually have. The bloodstains on the altar are real.

19: Wardrobe. It doesn't lead anywhere, but the big wardrobe in this room has 1d6 sets of black "Mad Monk" robes.

20: Tracks/Aftermath. Roll again to see what the adventurers just missed.

 

June 6

I visited the Normandy beaches in 1993, a year before the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the invasion. Beaches, of course, don't preserve anything very long. They are places where the ocean grinds everything to sand. Normandy's seashore is good for strolling; the water's too chilly for swimming and there are more rocks than sand. Most French holidaymakers go there to look at the ocean there rather than get into it.

But on the cliffs above the beach, at Pointe du Hoc, the signs of war were still clearly visible, even after half a century. The bombardment by naval guns trying to silence the German batteries atop the cliff left the entire area a moonscape of overlapping shell craters. Visitors have to stay on a raised wooden walkway because of the risk from unexploded shells.

Army Rangers climbed Pointe du Hoc seventy-five years ago. They scaled hundred-foot cliffs and held the top against German counterattacks for two days until troops from the landings below could link up with them. More than half of them were killed or wounded.

Ironically, the German heavy guns had been moved off the clifftops (though the site was still a vital observation post for the enemy). There's a tendency in modern history to focus on the importanct or decisiveness of a battle, and to dismiss the heroism of the Rangers.

But courage is courage. They accomplished their mission against ridiculous odds, overcoming setback after setback, and persevering in the face of horrifying losses. That's actual courage. Not posting something on Twitter that most of your readers already agree with, not engaging in a slightly risky sporting activity, not risking money on a venture without guaranteed profits. Courage is climbing up a cliff on a stormy morning, knowing that men are waiting at the top to kill you.

Random Encounters: The Floating City

Akmon is a city of a million people floating in the hazy blue-green atmosphere of Uranus. The city's held aloft by a ten-kilometer balloon made of diamond, filled with hydrogen superheated by a fusion powerplant which doubles as an artificial Sun. Akmon serves as a hub for atmosphere mining, a base for airships hunting the genetically-engineered skyrays and sky jellys that live among the methane clouds, and a center for scientific research. The inhabitants are a mix of humans, intelligent rats and corvids, and mechanicals. Administration is by a Senate of both biological and artificial intelligences, rife with factional intrigue and occasional violence.

ENCOUNTERS IN THE FLOATING CITY

Roll 1d20 when moving around the city, 1d10 when stationary.

Roll twice and combine
Cleaning Swarm: 3d6 small cleaning bots swarm through the area where the player characters are, removing any unattended small items and destroying all tracks or evidence of anything.
Drug-seller: Skeerit, Rat smuggler selling nanotech love potion. There's a 50 percent chance it's a fraud.
Ghost Image: Someone has set up a hologram of a dead political leader accusing rivals of murder and appealing for revenge.
Nosy AI: One of the artificial intelligences in the Senate has become interested in the player characters and what they're up to.
Obsessed Skyray-Hunter: Habba, a grizzled old human gathering crew to hunt a legendary giant skyray.
Plot advancing encounter: Someone or something related to the reason the characters have come to Uranus in the first place.
Rude Mechanicals: A group of 2d6 mechs who have leased your room to use as rehearsal space for a play. They won't leave, and will begin their rehearsal even if you're still around.
Storm! The city is rocked by one of Uranus's rare cyclones. Shuttle traffic shuts down and everyone is distracted by watching the lightning outside.
Vengeful Raven: Aarak Araa, Corvid ex-Senator recruiting followers to help regain power.
Assassins: A band of 1d6 hired rat thugs lying in wait for a member of a rival political faction (roll again to see who).
Bat-Bandits!: 2d6 rats wearing wing-suits who rob people quickly and then fly off. They are armed with stun-wands.
Fugitive Rebels: A group of rebels involved in an off-world conflict, looking for someone who can help them repair and rearm their ship.
Hydrogen Leak! The outer shell of the city is leaking, and hydrogen gas is getting in. Anything involving fire or energy weapons will set off an explosion.
Identical Clone: The duplicate of someone the characters have already encountered (roll again to see who). The clone has just arrived in town and has no idea who the characters are or what is going on.
Rescue Hangar: An emergency rescue station staffed by 1d6 skilled medical rescue flyers wearing jet wingsuits.
Riot! The street is crowded with angry supporters of one Senate faction. They'll assume anyone who isn't part of their faction is an enemy. A clever persuader might be able to target 2d6 rioters at a particular person or location.
Skyray-Hunter Hangout: A teashop catering to skyray-hunters. After a voyage in bitterly-cold winds under a starless sky, the hunters enjoy their downtime in a cosy setting with plenty of hot tea and sugary baked goods. Anyone who calls the decor "twee" is looking for a fight. Nevertheless, this place is home to some of the best atmosphere pilots on the planet.
Trap! Some high-tech prankster has put up an abstract image which hacks the visual cortex of any chordate organism who looks at it, causing blindness and paralysis for 1d6 minutes.
Tracks: Roll again to see what left traces for the characters to find.

SITUATIONS IN THE FLOATING CITY

Roll 1d6 for each situation, and use the table above to see who's involved.

A desires B
A wants to capture B
A wants B dead
A wants to go somewhere
A wants to solve a mystery
A wants X

Medical-Historical Notes

No, I'm fine. Not that kind of medical history. I'm talking about the history of medicine, and the history of medical terminology.

A couple of weeks ago I had my annual checkup. It mostly consisted of a blood draw and some lab work, to see if all my humors were properly balanced.

But I did have a couple of minor complaints and mentioned them to my Primary Care Physician. I've got a swelling on one hand where my ring was digging into the tendon as I split firewood. "Ah," he said. "It's a little hematoma." 

I also had a persistent skin irritation in my ear. "Dermatitis," he said.

The secret to medical diagnosis is the same as J.K. Rowling's magic system: translate it into Latin and you're done.

Now this is just a little bit of daily life to chuckle over ��� but then I had a great historical insight. Now I understand why wealthy Romans of the Imperial era all hired Greek doctors. It wasn't so much that Greeks were better doctors. (Basically all doctors were useless until about a hundred years ago.)

No, the advantage the Greek doctors had was that they spoke Greek! The Latin-speaking Roman patient would not have been satisfied with hearing his swelling diagnosed as a hematoma or his skin irritation as dermatitis, because that's how he would have described the symptoms in the first place. Nobody wants a doctor who just repeats back what you say in the same words.

But a Greek doctor could have looked at his Roman patient's swollen tendon and said "Ah! Looks like ����������������!" Or checked out his irritated skin and sagely said "Yes, ����������������������." And the patient would have happily gone home for some parrot tongues and a massage, or whatever, serene in the knowledge that his symptoms had a fancy foreign name.

That also explains why the ancient Egyptians had an even more formidable reputation as physicians. If your doctor's diagnosis is a bunch of eyes, bird heads, reeds, and dancing men, well, he must be a very good doctor indeed!

Random Encounters: The Infinite Library

"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, which is the distance from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal librarian. One of the free sides leads to a narrow hallway which opens onto another gallery, identical to the first and to all the rest. To the left and right of the hallway there are two very small closets. In the first, one may sleep standing up; in the other, satisfy one���s fecal necessities. Also through here passes a spiral stairway, which sinks abysmally and soars upwards to remote distances."

��� "The Library of Babel," by Jorge Luis Borges

The name of the Infinite Library is a lie. The books within it have a finite number of pages and a finite number of letters per page, so the possible permutations are vast (10 to the 4677th power, according to one source). The library is much bigger than our own Universe, but it's not quite infinite. You can visit it here.

Each book in the Library contains a random assortment of letters, spaces, and punctuation. Some of them (a vast number) are readable books. Even more are gibberish. All possible books exist in the Library. Finding them is next to impossible.

Travelers come to the Infinite Library via magic or super-science, usually seeking a particular book. Without some way to locate the book you're seeking, you can wander the Library's galleries until you die and find nothing but randomness.

ENCOUNTERS IN THE INFINITE LIBRARY

(Technically, this table should be nearly infinite itself, since almost anything is possible in such a vast library.)

Roll 1d10 if you're staying in a single chamber of the Library, 1d20 if you're exploring.

Roll Twice and Combine
Alien Wizard: It's an ancient supergenius with five eyes, wings, and tentacles, and it knows secrets of magic you've never encountered. It's here looking for a particular book and won't leave without it.
Ghost: The phantom of an author searching for her books in the endless library. It's possible that all authors wind up here when they die . . .
Giant Book Worm: A worm twenty feet long, with a mouth a yard wide. It consumes books ��� but it won't say no to some fresh protein, either.
Giant Wasps: 1d6 wasps the size of dogs. They feed on books to make paper for their mammoth nests.
Gust of Wind: A blast of wind roars through this part of the library, stirring up a blinding cloud of dust and blowing out all lamps and candles.
Librarian: A tall robed figure, its face hidden by a hood, with inhuman proportions and extremely long fingers. The Librarian knows the location of all books and can give directions ��� but note that some books may be thousands of light-years away.
Madman: A visitor to the Library driven mad by the scale and the randomness of the books. There's a 50 percent chance that at first he seems rational and may give advice which is plausible-sounding but utterly delusional.
Origami Assassin: A small, stealthy killer made of folded pages, magically animated and sent after one of the party. It hides between books and waits to give its target a poisonous paper-cut.
Thieves: A band of 2d6 book thieves, sent to steal a particular book. In short, it's a rival band of adventurers. Roll 1d6 to see what they're armed with. (1: Clubs, 2: Knives, 3: Swords and Crossbows, 4: Revolvers, 5: Lasers, 6: Disintegrator Guns.)
Barricade: Someone has used the books in this room to wall off the entrance. There's a 50 percent chance that they're still inside; reroll to see who has built the book fort.
Dangerous Book: Instead of the book you're seeking, you've found a dangerous book. Roll on the Dangerous Books table below for its harmful effect.
Doctor: A blind physician who offers shelter and assistance to anyone who enters the room he uses. He is well-known in this part of the Library and anyone who harms him makes enemies of everyone else.
Empty Rooms: The shelves of the next 1d20 rooms have been emptied of books. Don't worry, near-duplicates of all of them exist somewhere.
Giant Silverfish: 1d6 roaches as big as cats. They scuttle among the books, eating the bindings and sometimes scavenging the bodies of the dead. There is a 10 percent chance that one of the silverfish has attained human-level intelligence and remembers all the books it has eaten.
Inquisitor: An official searching the Library for prohibited books. The odds of finding any book at random are basically zero, but they search anyway. There's a 50 percent chance that any Inquisitor is really a fraud, using bogus credentials to get stuff from people they encounter.
Purifiers: 2d6 members of a cult who believe the random nature of the books proves that this library is a Hellish creation. They destroy all books they encounter, casting them down the cosmologically-long shafts or building huge fires. Purifiers are unarmed but do not fear death.
THE Book: The one you came here to find is on the shelves of this room.
Wasp Nest: Giant wasps have filled this room with a paper hive made of pages of text. There are 2d6 Giant Wasps in the room, plus the remains of 1d6 unfortunate visitors stung to death.
Tracks: Roll again to see what the room has traces of.

DANGEROUS BOOKS

Roll 1d6 to see how harmful a Dangerous Book is.

Blindness: The words of the book damage the human visual cortex. The reader goes blind for the next 1d6 days.
Curse: Anyone who reads the book will be unlucky in all things for a year and a day.
Dreadful Knowledge: The book includes a description of something terrible which will happen to the character or a loved one. (Note that the prophecy can be false, but it is convincing.)
Haunted: A ghost begins stalking whoever read the book. It's both clever and sadistic, so will try to maximize the suffering it inflicts before killing its victim.
Madness: Reading the book drives a person mad. There's a 75 percent chance the insanity will fade in 1d6 days, a 20 percent chance it will last 1d6 weeks, and a 5 percent chance it's permanent. The exact form of the insanity is up to the gamemaster.
Poisoned: Literally. The pages of the book are toxic. Unless the reader wears gloves, he or she gets a dose of something.

SITUATIONS IN THE INFINITE LIBRARY

(Roll 1d6, then consult the table above to determine who A and B are.)

A desires B
A wants to capture B
A wants B dead
A wants to go somewhere
A wants to solve a mystery
A wants X