Thessaly Chance Tracy Needs to Author More Stuff

 Well Thessaly Chance Tracy has finished the third work in what we at the PeryPub figure will be a trilogy. I have to say that I have become quite the fan of her writing since last January when I first started reading her stuff and working to get it published. Thanks to her rather ballsy move to work through us rather than more official T&T channels, I've gotten to think in that game system again as well really delve into the tales contained in the notes from her Hylax campaign. While I still read what's coming out from the T&T industrial complex, I have been doing my own thing long enough that it was getting a little distant to me.

There is loose, yet a strong logic to everything being encountered. Thess has taken some of the tone of the T&T/Monsters! Monsters! that was silly and returned it as a strength to the brand. Not ashamed of pun humor and off-color jokes, she knows how to move the story moving through the characters and encounters listed. The loose format of the rules matrix allows her to explore very non-standard monsters in some details highlighting elements of those rules that are being applied. This is much like many "new" gonzo games, but doesn't shift out of swords and sorcery trappings, well maybe a little steampunk here and there. It just takes more paragraphs by the writer not entire books by entire companies to make it happen.
The tone of each work that I've read stays consistent with its premise enhancing the style of gaming that most delvers, tunnel explorers not dungeon crawlers, like. And that low-brow high fantasy can take on a whole world of its own from adventure to adventure, yet feels like the same campaign.

The one piece I like the best from her isn't even set in her massive Dry Gulch Reservation setting. Her little Halloween piece "Castle Van Hexxen" is one of the better sword-carrying horror crawls I have ever read. You really will feel the gothic horror expressed just as you read through it. I think I am going to make a point to run it this upcoming August through Halloween, that's how much I like it.

So her works are through my publishing company, as said before, but I'd recommend them even if they weren't.

Why is a lot of OSR so Damned Shady?

Okay. Today multiple OSR guys on my FacetuBe feed have either directly asked for money for some amorphous something or another somewhere requiring tens of thousands of dollars to take place or they have sent me phishing attempts. When asked to what the fuck they are saying, I get responses like, "I promise to try to get to the bottom of this scam, so figure out how you can send me money" or "Don't open." When pressed a littler harder, I am hearing that everyone was hacked.

https://photo4.lpc02.com/HtHkcNpk

Is the example of the phishing link that I have to share.

This comes after the Nu TSR folks getting their name splashed across the tabletop RPG news lines with even some diaper bullshit after sending themselves some fake email threats to get the OSR rallying around them at GaryCon- to most likely get up to 40 ppl, out of the 1,900 ppl attending, swinging by their bean-bag and hot cocoa used paperback spot.

Really makes it hard to trust the OSR visionaries if this is their brave, new world of true tabletop gaming.

Every Time At a Table: Bog, Not Desert Planet

 

My setup 

 

1^st Hour- Develop Characters

Characters backgrounds. Some World drops.

Who gets the ship? Define the ship.

Who is the Hacker?

Who is the Spy?

2^nd Hour- Crew Up

Get the PCs together.

3^rd Hour- Catch ‘em

Set-up for session two.

 

The Session

Session 1:

1^st Hour- Develop Characters

Characters backgrounds. Some World drops.

Alezander Daku, Earth-born ACE, the Quick 75
Note: Earth-Born and playing it to the hilt. While a great pilot, he just doesn’t know how to handle love and money, his multi-hued boyfriends are just so damned hot. He is the Captain of the Arcadia.

Nextremi, SHARP “Rad”, the Quick 75
Note: Born on the Proxima Centauri colony of Radamanthus, hence her “Rad” classification. To escape the despotic government of the Dunsany Visionaries, she castaway on the Arcadia after one great party. She has since made herself useful as the ship’s troubleshooter, if not engineer.
She wears a pink jumpsuit emblazoned with a large maroon-colored number 37. She doesn’t comb her hair often.

Uri Keller-Afanti, Native PSYCHIC, the Quick 75
Note: No mere clone or product, Uri was conceived and developed by his progenitors. He is a citizen of Loom (the city above the city in City-Above-City). He’s just a little too sensitive for the cut-throat corporation politics between his Afanti kin and the other Houses. A sex scandal has placed him in the private sector. He’s become co-owner of The Arcadia and is determined to show his worth from there.

Who gets the ship? Define the ship.

Curtis and Jason both rolled the highest and therefore equally own the ship. Alezander is the acknowledged Captain. Uri insisted on Cuniform inscriptions on the outside of ship-- being from Bog and not Earth, Arcadia and Akkadian is the same thing in the PC’s reckoning.

Generic Manatee class ship

The Arcadia

A manatee class ship, designed more for transport than cargo hauling. Its Mechanical Intelligence is Sylvester and has a MENTAL Stat of 42 outside of managing the ships systems.

MASS 6
MAN 31
DEF 37 (31/6)
SPD 11
OFF 8 (A single mirco-flash antenna doubling as a laser cannon)
Efficiency 9
Range 3
Crew 4

Notes: Built for comfort, but also surviving combat dangers through defensive maneuvering more so than speed or impact absorption. When the vessel has to shift it will cause the PCs to lurch about despite its artificial gravity.

2^nd Hour- Crew Up

The PCs were hired by Ivanoa Deater-Keller-Af, LDS Outer Human Resources Afamt Corp, to investigate a helium harvester station orbiting Caesar that has gone off-line. She is actually Uri’s second cousin and throwing him some goodwill from the family.
The base pay for the mission is 1,5oo Zed.
Recovering the platform is 5K Zed upon the station coming online again.
1,ooo Zed for rescue/recovery of technician Norvak Aftam-Doog, nicknamed “Ango Fett.”

3^rd Hour- Catch ‘em

Getting out of Bog’s spaceport Logjam costed money. And then approaching Caesar costed even more moneys because of the Lukriig’s orbital station Aesir required fees, Locating the harvester platform wasn’t hard as it was leaving the helium reservation strata of the gas giant and moving into orbit-breaking vectors.
While getting there, a ship, a manatee-class modified for heavy combat, known as a Long Turtle ship in the jargon of Spacers in this setting, attacked them. Uri convinced a somewhat skeptical ‘Zander to avoid ship-to-ship combat and fly in close enough so that he could psychically attack their antagonists.
Amazing piloting, aside, the psychic attack went south, only affecting the pilot of the Arcadia. Jason rolled a Critical Failure. Still the sleestacks, err um Glorp Blort species 4 (because otherwise it would be copyright infringement), manning the other vessel’s cockpit were scared off.

With more piloting skills, ‘Zander landed the Arcadia onto the Harvester. The crew, armed with a single heavy-powered Pulsar weapon were able to hack their way past the front door…
(to be continued).

A World a Week: Bog, Not Desert Planet

Getting ready to start my Spacers: Big Space mini-campaign running. From my notes both typed and handwritten.

Bog, Not Desert Planet

A planet that is thirty percent land, forty percent open water, the rest covered in moss-filled and marsh-like environment. The moss is an organism that is akin to similar plants on Earth can be up to five-meters thick.

Settled by human colonists from Earth some six hundred years ago, its colony-ship het Rotterdam, is still in orbit and treated as a shrine to Old Urth. Its original colonists have formed into a dozen or so clan nations, known as Houses, that compete with each other for dominance as well as work together against those that would dominate them. While the cities of planet can be very high tech in their living standards most of the planet remains hi-tek rustic so to speak. Turfskippers, move through the marshes and alternately fuel their abodes energy with peat and cold fusion.

For two centuries now, Solar Standard Calendar, Panni leaders from their Commonwealth Worlds, have noticed Cluster J and have started to incorporate the worlds therein into their territories. Bog being the most prominent of the star groups’ worlds has not escaped their notice. The Gradom Corporation, an agent of the Panni Empire, has taken the lead towards inroads in making the planet one of theirs. This has not been met with much success.
The clans of Bog have developed their own interplanetary fleet, known as the Trot, and increased their own interstellar commerce as well. The largest city of Bog, Jewel, even created a floating city, Loom, above itself to so their capabilities to any newcomers thinking that they might have a technological edge over the natives are rapidly apparent. Now called City-Above-City, it is the premier spot of high tech culture of the Cluster. Gradom has sponsored its own city known as the Spire, in one of the less inhabited portions of the planet. While the Panni boast of one day creating a space elevator on the planet, not much has come of that. They have bred a human/Panni hybrid species called the “Numan” which they are sure will seduce the humans into becoming subjects of the Empire for confused and muddled racist reasons.
The Kodoan species-dominated star systems known as the 19 Worlds has more recently involved themselves with Bog. Cluster J is a lot closer to their territories than any part of the Panni Commonwealth. They are not friendly towards the humans of the Julii star system, but they do not want to see the Panni make any progress there either. The largest clan of the planet, House Ingsco, has been able to tread a careful path of undermining the Panni and not driving the lesser clans towards working with them. How long can they keep this up? Well, this is where the role-playing starts.

Star: J6 Calendar
Type: Red Dwarf
Systems: 5 “dry” terrestrials planets, 3 gas giants, 4 ice giants: 12 planets (a-k) recognized in official navigation archives.

Inhabited Areas:

J6-J Caesar

A gas giant five times the Jupiter. There are three terrestrial-sized moons in close orbits around the planet.

J6-J4 Javelin

A heavily volcanic world where rain-forest jungles at the equators create an Earth-like atmosphere, but the heavy emissions from the volcanoes fill it with too much sulfur and methane to be breathable except to plants and insects. It is claimed by the Panni-directed Gradom Corporation. House Ingsco also has a military training complex on the planet and does not acknowledge Gradom’s claim to exclusively own the world.
At the Equator: About 280 to 320 Kelvin
At the Top and Bottom: Around 200 Kelvin
Places of Interests: Speartip, Gradom Mining Depot,
Space Ports: Gradmo Industries Port of Entry, Lake Speartip

J6-J5 Bog

Thirty percent land, forty percent open water, the rest covered in moss and marsh-like environment. The moss can be up to five-meters thick.
At the Equator: About 290 to 305 Kelvin
At the Top and Bottom: Around 270 Kelvin
Places of Interests: City-Above-City, Logjam, The Great Southern Marsh, The Spire
Space Ports: Logjam, The Spire

The Lukriig Trot, Bog’s space fleet.

The battleships of the planet Bog are manned by personnel from all the clans institution known as the Luchtkriigmach, or just more commonly the Lukriig. Alternately the vessels are maintained by the biggest clans and therefore commanded by members of those clans. This can cause some friction between the ships when strife occurs between the big clans back on the planet. This disunity is often countered by the other vessels stepping in to moderate potential conflicts between the antagonists. The battleships are known as Turkeys and as a fleet it is called the Trot. Listed from biggest to smaller.

The Ajax
The Cambuur
The Sparta
The Go Ahead Eagle
The Heracles
The Fortunna
The Willem

J6-J6 Orangutan
A very cold world covered in orange colds.

At the Equator: About 180 to 100 Kelvin
At the Top and Bottom: Around 90 Kelvin
Places of Interests: Kastek, the Methane Sea, Ymir
Space Ports: Kastek

Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise

 So into the second Cha'alt book by Darrick Dishaw,  known better by his handle Venger Satanis, which I will lump the overall works into my High Fantasy folder in my head's reality.  I could just be brainwashed from bothering to read the world's filings in any sort of depth, but I doubt that. It is not because of writing structure that I categorize the overall world setting as such. If there are two poles of world-building in gaming such as highly skilled prose and narrative [1] and then massive dumps of notes, charts, and recurring references [0], this work would be [.46] and the rating is probably not on the conscious effort of the author.

 Fuchsia Malaise starts out with bunch of charts, many are designed to further detail the atmosphere of the doomed planet Cha'alt with its pink rose colored skies and purple mountains. Others are the random for random's sake so loved by the professed OSR (the ones that are not friendly to 5e because like there's girls involved) crowd which reminds me a lot of the original Arduin Adventure pamphlets (supposedly written before girls were involved) that I read years ago. Entries such as Dehydration and Henchman reactions are straight up Runequest level of visceral land tromping detail for the D20-addicted.

And then, following all that, there is the scenarios.

It is in these scenarios where a guy like me, an escapist looking for weird fantasy to tide me over until my next foray in the Dreamlands, gets some bang for my buck. The potential GM has hundreds of rooms throughout the book that are, as written, seeds for entire scenarios. The subplots for this or that room does not have to necessarily have to be tied into each other. Malaise is also where Dishaw starts to tie his other work(s?), Alpha Blue, and maybe others which I haven't read, into this long and arduous text. A narrative form of the story starts to come out where the Satanis Federation of Planets (my name not his) are exploiting Chaalt, Pompadour planet (Not Dune, Desert Planet) and an over-arching theme gets developed. This narrative, to Dishaw's credit, gets accomplished in paragraphs not chapters. That is strong work for an Author-GM in the tabletop roleplaying field.

This second book has a lot of problems though. Mostly it is lack of tone continuity control in the project. The tone varies from page to page, making it a hard read. A decent editorial approach could've corralled the work into nice story-stems instead of just making sure the words therein were spelled correctly and formatting was most correct. On top of the approach, I, being a person that does not fault someone for being not fully throughout in their humor. I have to give a pass to a lot of political jokes, not really tied into anything overall, that can be applied to any political group yet somehow tied in Dishaw's mind to socialists. Makes me think he's never met somebody that voted for a Clinton let alone a lefty-liberal. I am joking here, he has and is just being lazy.

The work though overall is a Loch Ness on the scale of Godzilla to Smurf scale of things. An experienced GM can make a whole year of gaming sessions out of this book alone. Their players would feel like they are in a epic quest and the GM would have plenty of leads to start that next campaign.

The World of Revilo Works

 Though the influences on Brian Colin's world may be more Frank Oz than say JRR Tolkien, I'd call his work High Fantasy. I think it was Brian that I met at GenCon this year selling the books. The lure of distinct settings always gets me. The list of authors include him, Isaac Skaggs, Kerry Colin, and Wyatt Colin. The artists listed are Carey Drake and Brian Colin.

 

https://creaturecuration.com/role-playing-games/

The setting is a continent that can be worked into an existing world if the author/GM has blank spaces on their map. The reason why the PCs haven't heard of it, well once ships get there, they usually crash and the survivors have a really hard time of leaving. The lands go from cold and volcanic lands to deep deserts to cursed areas, and then the obligatory levitating island. The native species of the lands are based off of the art, sculptures I think, from Brian Colin. The traditional D&D player-kin, whatever they are these days, are known as Outlanders indicating their recent arrival on these alien environs. The natives are a mixture of furry folk, with ample bird and lizard influence, with more dinosaur-based species worked in.

Talk about a mythopoetic work, Colin (and Skapps and Colin-s), have developed a whole age of myths and talk about longer than say even Gloratha RQ books do. The species are descended from the earth-goddess figure, Creedona, along with one created by her darker sister, Ghyrma. This makes up most of the history of the world. The more recent history, and more relevant to the players a certain Murk Von Horvath has arisen as the despot in charge of fair lands around Murk's Hollow.

Overall, I find the series a pretty good read. It's a Bigfoot on the Smurf to Godzilla rating scale. It definitely filled up a weekend's reading.

Revilo by Brian Colin

High Fantasy Season Begins

As the veil begins to thicken as the Feast of All Saint's Day takes place, the night before where the ghouls, goblins, and witches brought the spooky season, well month really, to its climax with Halloween. our mood as fantasists turns towards the broader brands of fantasies. I am already reading through the worlds of Revilo (Brian Colin), Chalt, and China Mieville's Bas-Lag so I am not behind the power curve. Little ideas are coming to be for maybe a Holiday Special like the Big Foot that Stole Christmas or Yetis Versus the Great Turkey, that depends on my energy level over the following weeks as I found a job that I like working full-time again. 

The newish Dune, newness depends on region where the viewer is, has me delving into some space opera for the gaming table this winter. I am trying to dwell on topics I think Frank Herbert was really on about, which was transhumanism, with the political history of West Asia being only used as a starting basis. Ecological adaptation is equally important in the books. Thanks to reading Dishaw's Fuchsia Malaise scenarios there will be a lot more Lexx than what one would expect. A GM does have to come up with twists on things to keep the regular and nearly so surprised. 

It has to be the sexy seasons of course.

The Only People That Made Threats Toward the New TSR Were Friends

It is my supposition that the only ppl that threatened the latest take on TSR were people trying to promote TSR. In the world of provocative ideological based marketing strategies, capable of getting tens of sales in the for print RPG market, there is not a whole lot to help the latest product stand out. So maybe there is some subtext that can help boost things? Well guess what, there is.

"New kidders have attackered the 'Nards"

Disclaimer: I only play with games with people that don't have their heads up their asses and their kids had better know how to behave. So us left of Mussolini political belief-holding tabletop gamers are attacking true RPG D&D dungeonne crahwlers John Tarnowski? We're sending anonymous emails to not-yet-published companies about to attend side events around, err um, Gerry Con. Well despite my attendance at GaryCon more often than most OGL-types ever have, I am going to venture forth an conspiracy theory here.

My supposition is that no Communist, tranny cares about any division between Gary Con and the amazing nearby located TSR Con.

My evidence is all as follows:
You froggies always look for provocation. When it doesn't come you do have a tendency to read what others are saying to claim to be persecuted. All the fat chicks do not appreciate you all for that, they were talking among themselves. Somehow this is their fault in your worldview as opposed to you guys picking them up at bars.

The folks that you imply sent the threats have not been know to be nameless. Enough said. But I think, whomever has sent the email is being very careful not to get the notice of the folks that know how to rain down fire upon those that want to reign upon.

It's all too convenient. A side event for GaryCon, that needs to somehow unite the audience that might have separated between Gygax brothers, needing a subtextual unification clause after the subgenre of rightwing fanaticism in gaming to bring them back together again within a couple month? It's almost too sweet to belief. And yet, it has occurred.


Conclusion:
Stop blaming gamers that do not identify as "Oh-Gee-Ell" for the problems you and your ilk make.

Halloween '21 part 5: A World a Week- Lake Blood Moon

 Back about ten years ago, funny how time passes like that, Scott Malthouse posted around December about his Peakvale campaign. The setting was supposed to be his gotcha campaign that would be an analogy on the social realities of modern day Britain. At the same time, him and I were talking about roleplaying in general and the potentials of the 2D6 system that was T&T. One of the things we talked about was a Ravenloft style setting that would be called "Lake Blood Moon". This would turn into a whole slew of scenarios, but we'd never pull it all together. 

Not for lack of trying though. The list at the page linked above is flawed, Scott produced a few more than the one scenario for this setting in my part of the cottage. Check other pages at the site. They're there, and I know people find them just from sales.

So imagine a variety of RPG realms united by the theme of Player-Characters being involved in plots against, or at at least involved with, supernatural undertakings around them. All of these situations using 2D6 in a matrix established by Ken St Andre. They would be centered around the locale known as Lake Blood Moon.

 
I always figured that maps would vary. My own were mostly based on mythical takes on Michigan, Ireland, and western-most England, with some northeastern Ohio worked in.

There would be "dark lords" and realms with their own specific atmospheres. Rest assured all the settings should have a strong basis in relatable horror. My starting notes tend to stick towards the left side of map presented above.

Moving from west to east, my tales would develop. My small city of Bend would be a trading center that was plagued by frequent vampire outbreaks and the not too infrequent werewolf. Up in the Midlands, a particularly deranged farmer would become the dark lord of scarecrows inhabited by the souls of individuals that he himself had killed. The lands around him just loved him and his blood sacrifices. The Straits would become my 18th Century-style hub of commerce and chicanery. My Victorian era heroes and antiheroes should be facing  murder mysteries leading into Hammer Horror films B-films. The overall concepts would become the basis for my Pitchfork Pictures for my Crawlspace: Gothic setting.

All this said, Lake Blood Moon tales should be completed and knitted together.

You all have any thoughts?

Halloween '21 part 4: My Own Stuff

You might've heard that I do some dabbling into roleplaying product making. Well Elder Tunnels a 'zine that focuses mostly GM adventures for brands that you might've not heard of, does a Halloween Special every so often. The Halloween 21 issue is available now.

Cover art from Simon Tranter, all rights reserved

My friends, Curtis Evans, Iron Man, and Thessaly Chance Tracy, Thess, have helped me out with submissions. "The Shadark of Space" is a survival-sci fi thing that includes body horror and a lot of action. "Castle Van Hexxen" is more gothic but still it's set in a T&T/Monsters! Monsters! universe so things don't slow down even as the drama gets very heavy. I included some of my notes on graveyard dwellers from a long term horror-fantasy campaign which I call the Grimehaven and Fishhook cycle. Art from Tranter, Teresa Guido, and Janeen Satone highlight things. WARNING: The maps are hand-drawn because we like them like that.

The work is digest size and around 60 pages or so. Check it out.

Halloween '21 Part 3: Cryptworld

 

Ah 2014

 

Daniel Proctor and Tim Snider must really be fans of TV-style monster of the week scares. In the shadows of supernatural works like Chill and Call of Cthulhu and Beyond the Supernatural and Vampire/Werewolf/... and Kult and ... and... and... a whole lot of others, these guys went for it. Another rules system to help the tabletop gamer get some horror roleplaying into their lives. Of course, I had to have a copy.

In the work's 89 pages the reader gets everything they will ever need to run a campaign set in modern times where the PCs encounter and hopefully overcome creatures like werewolves (refer to the cover because Jim Holloway does repeatedly), vampires, ghosts, and zombies. Adding extra spice there are newer creatures possessed dolls, serial killers, and creepy neighbors along side stuff from the zeitgeist of the 20-Teens like chupacabra and sasquatch.

In the tradition of Stalking the Night Fantastic, from the Way-Way Back times, combat and combat situations are highly detailed. the mechanics Speaking of which two D10 are the system's drivers. They can be added together as well as used to indicate percentages. The Characters are defined by their Abilities (Stats) and their skills. The world notes are fairly complete-- a lot of animals listed as well as mentions of organizations that can be encountered during the adventuring. At the end there are Character sheet and a few "Things" (encounters) sheets. 

The art on the inside is wonderful. Hollway, Tim Tyler, and Brian Thomas imbue the pages with very action-packed scenes, which helps out a bit too much dry details in the text. It is black and white and the artist's techniques are not enhanced by graphic art programs, so today's hyperactive RPG reader might not be used to it.

The introductory scenario "Red Eye" is a nice little jot into the "on an airplane" subgenre of modern horror. 

Overall, I'd rate the book a Big Foot on the scale of Smurf to Godzilla. As a guy that has read the horror game that started it all as well as the X-Files TV show, Stalking the Night Fantastic, there isn't much ground that hasn't been covered elsewhere. The read feels like it's updating Chill with some timely mentions. That new material if gone more into would've helped the game standout more in this very populated field of RPG.

Halloween '21 Part 2: Ravenloft a Great Starting Place

 

Surviving Ravenloft Stuff

I can't say I've ever played Ravenloft. But boy have I bought and read plenty of its material. Pictured here is a portion of D&D's 2ed. material that I acquired back in the day (the 90s). Some of it would be used in my T&T campaigns if the names were changed but most of it was for reading. It supplemented the paperbacks that I was reading in the same setting. Hey folks, while dork culture was getting more acceptable back then, it was really hard to find weird fiction that wasn't TSR influenced that was worth cracking the pages. I am pretty sure I have some other Ravenloft materials, mostly 2e and the 4e "Ravenloft" scenario, somewhere but these were the ones that I used.

Strahd, always a source of mirth in my mind, would become Count Vulgarr for my T&T Halloween specials and later the linchpin for my Gothic campaigns for Crawlspace. Having read the original scenario, it is straight up blood-soaked Velveeta in my book. These days, I have to say that Strahd's ill-fated romantic life has influenced our modern Dracula tale more than its original author. I actually threw Strahd, with his own name, into a Mage scenario when White Wolf's cheesiness got too noticeable in my mind's eye.

The Mask of the Red Death would be the start of my personal tradition of mixing historical figures into my RPG campaigns back in the late 90s. I would use Basic Role-Playing rules. The Red Death was Vulgarr's daughter, Lolita Pushkin. She did things things like like enslave Pushkin's great grandfather before losing him in a poker game to the Czar, Peter the first. She convinced my PCs playing Lord Byron and Mary Shelly to create Frankenstein on a lark during a particularly bad summer storm-- the players so played along. The PCs, then using their own characters, would then start chasing her down while fixing her vexations and creations that was left in her wake. The PCs were in Paris and Hamburg Europe then New York, New Orleans, and St Louis USA during the gaslight age. The campaign finale would have four PCs in their 60s and 70s in 1932 San Francisco taking on "Lola" (Lolita took the name on during the 20s) and the lich Azalin, going by the name of Lance Henriksen.

All of these have a Vistani-derivative NPC culture which I call to this day, the Gypsies. These people had connections to the unseen world that is the supernatural in my works. They were both the guardians of the real world as well as more than a few henchmen of various villains. 

Oh I've had some good times with Ravenloft. One day there will be more.

Scandals in the Cottage: The 800 Pound Nazi In the Room

First off, Veneger Satanis is not a Nazi. He is not racist, so that excludes him from the white supremacist camp. He isn't a homophobe and is something of an admitted libertine so that places him out of the religious wingnuts that go on drooling over autocrats like Vladimir Putin. No. No. He likes to dress things up in lethal-looking trappings (Metal) to impress the ladies and is very anti-liberal, more like a fascist from Mussolini's Italy. That said he is not a Nazi. Whomever banned one of his fans from a forum (Discord?) with the justifying statement, "(This Dude) supports a Nazi" isn't just wrong about the details either.

Many of my gaming friends do not like the man. That is their privilege. We're a really liberal bunch and believe in stuff like liberties and diversity, none has ever told me not buy and read his products. It might be because I am older than most of them, but it is probably more the fact that we are most over the age of eighteen and don't condescend to each other. I mean we go from crypto-fascist to communist to capitalist-anarcho (see Star Wars) to pervert in our views, telling each other what to think would just make things boring.

Mind you, like the Mussolini fascists, Darrick's, that is his name, crowd tries to have it both ways. Always looking for the slight to justify their outrage. He's called for wingnut gamers to boycott GenCon, though he and the Frog-Brigade have been doing since ticket prices outpaced their wallets a few years ago-- if the horse dies, walking is a great way to get your steps in I hear. Then they're always worried about what other gamers of differing ilks, especially the SJW-oriented crowd, are doing. His own forum on FacetuBe has restricted my activities there because my sarcasm at their nonsense was too cutting for their supposedly thick-skinned views. Still, resorting to this because they do it does not justify anybody else seeking the moral high ground doing it. 

No the real Nazi-ish thing is the bad taste of the moderator. Sure they can ban whomever they like, it's a free Western Civilization after all, but to single out a game designer in our hobby is bad taste. If the commenter had an agenda, which the Frogs often do, and kept bringing up Venger Satanis though the topics he was commenting in had nothing to do with that, it's called spamming-- there is a real reason. Otherwise, just keeping their mouth shut would've not played so easily into the pointless Banning/Cancelling subculture the cottage is getting bored with.

The semi-LARP life of a game writer

Halloween '21 part 1: Ghoul Keep and the Ghoul Lands

When the heat breaks into the temperatures that resemble what the air conditioning has keeping the house at, the first thing people want to do is dress like Han Solo with high boots and vests and start fires to avoid getting cold. Many will have to fortify themselves with steamy "pumpkin favored" (meaning cinnamon-tinted corn starch and dried milk) drink concoctions.This is so they can start the wait through winter to complain about the heat of summer the next year.

One other thing a lot of people do is prepare for Halloween. These stalwart people try to stave off the store fulls of Christmas junk shipped in from China for littering the lawns of America by creating horror movie sound sets in their garage and driveway. Others rewatch classic and not so classic scary movies. Still others are tabletop gamers, these brave souls delve into the very prominent subculture of horror-based RPG. Well, this year, I am doing the later. I've seen enough horror movies over the course of the year that compiling a list of movies to watch over the next few weeks just isn't going to do it for me. Nor do I want to deal with other ppl's kids by setting up my own lawn haunted house scene.  So I am going to delve into reviewing the Halloween-appropriate game books I have lying around the place.

 Author Peter C. Spahn, Art by Luigi Castellani, Maps Tim Harten

 Ah 2011. 4 Ed, D&D with its collectable card game mechanics and its makers, WotC's, dickishness towards OGL gaming established in the Aughts had pissed off enough ppl that there was a cultural renaissance of independent game creation. One of "Oh-D&D clones" big in those days Labyrinth Lords, had its share of takes on horror-based settings. Ghoul Keep and the Ghoul Lands  was one of them.

Spahn's work is from the ground up "Oh-D&D". After a couple statements about the tone of this horror-fantasy setting, he outlines the geography, the territories, and then the counties as in where the Counts live. He goes into the various Counts and the sects of the region that will interact with PCs as well getting into all-important magical items. Then, and only then, he gets into his bestiary. From there the book slips into the adventures. It even ends with a decent index.

The artwork is good gaming material. Castellani keeps it good and blocky but has a clear vision of his ghouls and the milieu in general, so the drawings help the reader stay in world that they are reading about. Meanwhile the maps are adeptly put together just ready for the enterprising GM and their group. 

I happen to be something of a ghoul snob, Brian McNaughton's Throne of Bones gets reread more often than LOTR by me, so I am a little underwhelmed by Spahn's dark lord and his oppressing minions. Still, the author has a clear idea of the type of setting he has going on here. The scenario(s?) has been an interesting read. I am going to spend a bit more time reading it again because of some interesting subplots I skimmed over the time through.

Well, I'd rate this a King Kong on the scale of Smurf to Godzilla. But it's Halloween season, so it's a Godzilla. If you have a Ravenloft-style subgenre in your gaming pack, I strongly recommend the Ghoul Lands as a good spot to add in.

GenCon '21: "What is the GenCon?"

 GenCon reopened its door this year and boy was I happy to hear it. While they didn't open the events registrations to any small time gaming outlets like Peryton Publishing, a guy like me that has some wherewithal was able to show up and run games in the open gaming area and still hang out. Heck, I even got a room at the Omni Severin without having to rely on the GenCon room lottery or a distributor allotment.

I left last Monday in the later AM after working a night shift. I had put in my reservation for the Indy Severin for Tuesday and wanted no interference with getting into the room by showing up late. The road trip went swimmingly and I could've showed up in Indy that night (Northwest Arkansas to Indianapolis is only just over one tank of gas in my newish car). I was still getting droopy and fatigued, so I stopped where else but Effingham, Ill. The Drury Inn where I stayed was full people that made me look young and happy, meaning that they were all older and grumpier than I am. Still, El Rancherito remains an amazing Mexican spot, and this comes from a guy that lives in a state where good Mexican food is the norm not the exception. The next morning, once again a late start, I started the final part of getting into Indy. My drive and check-in were spotlessly easy.
I have been to the city on the regular week days away from the convention more than a few times before. On my walk around the downtown area, I was kind of struck by how muted things where. I meant to stop by a CVS and figured I must've gotten lost when I couldn't find it. Accosting a passerby, I told her I must've took a wrong turn. "You're not turned around." She replied. "It was burned out during the riots."
So not only kicked by the Bat-Flu, Indy was dealing with the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests. Later at a the Good Wood Brewery, the old Ram, I'd hear that most downtown restaurants went fairly unscathed by their owners hiring people to board up windows before things got really going last year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still, the places where I hanged out were, like me, ready for GenCon to get things rolling again.

Wednesday I mostly walked around seeing how big the event was likely to be. As as experienced GenCon-ner, you can get a feel for the rest of the convention by all the fussing on the day before it, the "Fuss before the Muss" as I like to refer to it.

 

Good friend-wise I was pretty lonely. Nobody, except Jordan and his youngest son, showed up for Wednesday night's Old Home Dinner. He announced that now that I was not running events all week, he didn't have time to be bugging me to do other things. He had found a yoga retreat to get his excitement from. Getting back to the room somebody else texted me telling me that it was my fault that she couldn't make it to the dinner because I only posted in our groups forum with a time and location months ago-- it was like confusing or something. Other folks would wait a day or until after the convention to tell me that they weren't coming this year. Bricker was too busy to check his phone while drinking late nights at the McMarriott and without a call I wasn't leaving my comfortable nest. Sligo was attending so I'd end up doing dinner with him on Saturday.

From Thursday on, the convention would start filling up with probably around 30-40 thousand ppl. While many were complaining about how emaciated the place was, the numbers were more akin 2005-2008 when ppl were complaining how big the convention was-- and ten times bigger than any other TTRPG gathering ever. In the Open Gaming Area and at the bars, I'd meet ppl. Some where newcomers, a lot were ppl that I'd seen around and were hardcore attendees like me.

Out of five potential sessions, two of my on-the-side games went off. I am particularly proud of "The Streets of Gotham: The Smell of Fear and Cats". While we never really got into Cat Woman, my three players complimented me on my take on the Scarecrow. You see my professor Crane was not spraying people in the face with some gas, he was forcing the three PC detectives to face fears like rats and spiders, darkness, and heights. Then he used the gas... . My Crawlspace session "The Hotel Detective" was a fine romp for two players that weren't actually attending the convention so we did it in my room. 

 

 

Funny tales
At a party on Wednesday, I watched a Pathfinder fan and a D$D: 4th Edition go at it. It was all fun and games (and fucking hilarious), until 4E dude threatened to report the Pathfinder for harassment. It was still funny.
I ended up at a strip joint on Thursday instead of trying the mac and cheese GenCon dish.
Friday night, I didn't even try to party. I figured I'd dork out with the Sy-Fy Channel. I'd end up watching something science-fiction-y on TBS because it was John Wick weekend on the science-fiction outlet.
I had multiple ppl ask me "What is the GenCon thing going on here?" all weekend long.

Well, well, well. Since coming home, as well as "Oh was there somewhere we were supposed to meet emails" filling up my inbox, sales of my Crawlspace and Red Bat  products have almost paid for my room at the Omni Severin. THANX GUYS!

 

The Cottage is Changing For Me

 I was doing my mid-month sales check the other day and noticed no major changes. The money brought in was what was expected between new releases, with a nice emphasis on older works by myself and Peryton, which always means having made them just that much more meaningful. That is on top of making profit from them. Then I went outside to do some yard work and lumberjacking, I BOUGHT A CHAINSAW. Coming back inside to catch up on my blogging, hey it's my journal I checked my blog views for the last few weeks. I was floored. It was almost eight times greater than it normally is. While I usually get about one to two thousand hits, I was sitting there looking at nine thousand, almost ten, hits. AND boy was I disappointed.

Back in my small little world of a couple thousand hits, I had worked out a metric that seemed to work for the seventeen years this blog has been going on. Every eight hundred hits, I would sell between two to six products. That is excluding the sales spikes that come with new releases. Here I was looking at eight thousand hits over two days and couple thousand following over the rest of that week. Sales had remained normal so to say that I was underwhelmed would be an understatement. Despite increased coverage, I was still selling my usual products, not the new sexier products to people that are most likely digging up my work and then the more obscure stuff from 2000-2009 in support of products made in the 70s and 80s.

I have been living a much more professional RPG writer life than I ever have. Dealing with other designers and business managers. Heck folks, PeryPubbers has this new line of Monsters! Monsters! products by a T&T new-but-true-blood. I am wheeling and dealing with folks in the BX/OSR movement meaning more developments there soon. Getting contributing authors and artists is easier than ever. Likewise the Flying Buffalo Brand is being bought by some big business name meaning there will be some action going on there in a few months to a year. So with the disappointing indicator that more does not mean more, at least immediately, I started looking deeper into things.

While I figure that the OSR exposure is a more of a social endeavor because of incapability between my 2d6 system and their d20 matrix, I would've thought that the game collectors among them would've picked up something. But that is because I disbelieve as many of them claiming to be broke and often not having two nickels to rub together. I mean dudes, the tabletop RPG hobby is a small print industry. Meanwhile FBI, that's Flying Buffalo Incorporated and I have a few works involving the company, was bought out by what is essentially asset managers of the RPG field. It's pretty clear the new company is about selling back inventory and paying portions to the people holding interests in boxes of merchandise moldering somewhere-- like when slum lords get "bought out" by a group of slum lords really to be incorporated into their collective residual income scheme but removed from the day-to-day management of that property. That situation is not meant to expand market but to improve capital from existing hard property. So in short, if you're not caught up in the marketing of Strahd the D&D vampire, now available for the fourth time since the 80s, there is not a lot of money going around.

Maybe next month I'll see some boost in sales, but I am not counting on it. Perhaps I'll branch out into products that seem to be expanding, like 5th Edition or the OSR badly named title of the week or Chaosium-compatible horror works. Probably not. This is a hobby to me. I like my particular game systems.