Scandals In the Cottage

' the Hell is wrong with TSR people?
So like some guys bought the TSR company name because the other guys that bought it earlier didn't refile. Meanwhile, the newer guys, the Nu-Nu, don't have any control of the brands that have been produced using the TSR logo over the last few years. Star Frontiers is held by WOTC and given away with the logo attached because of authorship issues, while they sell the scenarios because the authors are known. Gangbusters ownership was sold a couple of years ago and is thriving using the BX model of its original rules. Top Secret has been produced by the older new guys, let's call them the NuToo, with its original TSR guy involved still. And we all know that they ain't touching Dungeon & Dragons.
So instead of starting with some NuNu products, possibly sneaking in some supplements of their own to the brands mentioned above to make some cash, they offer selling seats for sessions at a table with "legendary GMs." Then they start telling the TSR Fan Club to take down the TSR logo or else. Really? I bet they're planning on trying to shake down the creative people behind the named products for licensing fees next.
I suppose, I will be buying TSR next because whatever these dudes paid for the title, it's now not worth a Canadian dollar. Even Luke Gygax is distancing himself from the Nu Nu while his brother, Ernie, is either involved in the strategy above or is too timid to speak up and try to steer his new ship away from the shoals. I suppose they could sell seats to a duel, a death match even, between the Gygax Brothers to bolster their funds. To paraphrase a friend, how can a "company" shoot itself in the foot before they even try to produce a product?

Ken St. Andre won't fight racism, or not.
I am not sure what he was thinking, but apparently Ken got annoyed when someone on Twitter called on everybody to fight against racism after the murders to two people who were practicing Muslims in Canada. I didn't know about this until I read Scott Malthouse's blog post casting aside all Tunnels & Trolls because of its authors actions. I really don't know what to say here, but you know that I just have to.
It is a personal drama for me. These are two friends here.
I haven't been happy with Ken, one of the best game writers in the world, since he agreed with my assessment of the debacle that was Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls but wouldn't speak up or else the folks at Flying Buffalo wouldn't cut him in on the money they had garnered using his name. Then he tried to sell me some notes of his like he was a superstar and I was struck fanboy too bedazzled to not give him more money. But he's not racist and has been on the social change side of things since at least when he released Monsters! Monsters!. He'd even was the one to remove the Yassa-Massa (Charm Person) spell name from the rules system when he published the 7th edition because he believed, and I quote, "This sort of humor is wrong."
Heck, the man has been working with Mark Hunt and myself on Hunt's Gangbusters: BX material before all this happened. One scenario in particular, PCs get to disrupt a KKK rally and exposing its members publicly in the town that they try terrorize. 
Werdna, my nickname for Scott, got a lot of blow back for his stand. Mostly idiot froggies, that already got upset when his Perilous Lands featured a black person on the cover of the book. Still it wasn't fun to see him get derided for taking a stand on his own beliefs by folks just wanting to turn the whole into a Mexican soap opera while eating the soup their mother brought to the basement for them.
How do I feel? I already have been fighting against racism since the 80s so I am good there. I won't disavow St Andre because anybody who knows him knows he isn't a racist and really believes in peoples freedoms in their own lives. These two things should not contradict each other. Sadly, it is though when others live in a world where everything is a sales pitch disguised as ideology.
As I have T&T-compatible products out there, I can always say "Meh. I sell a game not the man." The folks at FBI have been trying to remove Ken St Andre for years any way. But I won't. To quote Malthouse, "it's his creation and has his DNA all over it."

We've Gone and Done It Now, "Desperately Seeking Plumb Gorgeous"

 We've gone and done it. Thess and I have gone and shown our age. If the title does not ring your 1980s hype nostalgia bell, then you're too young to be reading this blog. Regardless of age, if you recognize the allusion, you'll probably get a kick out of this Monsters! Monsters! scenario. 

Of the works that the author is producing through my little cottage, I like this one the best. It's premise is horrible in today's culture where everyone has to be a prudish eleven year-old to be acceptable on both sides roleplaying political aisle. The Player-Characters, who happen to be wrong side of the Monster/Dickish Hero line, are tasked with basically kidnapping Snow White from her guardian dwarves. Along the way the whimsical land around them will be sure to remind them just how little the world thinks of monsters. And then there is the whole growth and development thing going on, which made me feel guilty. I felt like I was watching a Winona Ryder movie without Gary Oldman in it.

If you're a Delver, that's a T&T fan, you'll find the work refreshing. 

Illustration by Teresa Guido 2021

Escape From Skullcano Island

 

One of my purchases at North Texas RPG Con was Escape from Skullcano Island written by Levi Combs. I happen to stumble across the Planet X Games' booth while he was tending shop. I think the booth monkeys were out having a cigarette or something another. While the author and I were busy talking, I saw the two-headed King Kong and knew which book I was buying from the table immediately.

Me not being a straight-up D&D-hed, you'll have to bear with any inaccuracies I get in the background here. This source book is "Rated 5E" and it is meant for "Tier 3-4" PCs, which I think would be 9th to 11th levels in T&T, assuming there are five tiers to D&D's current scope of Adventure metrics. The book goes from discussing the concepts around the material and then dives into a couple adventure hooks that should be used as prologues to the upcoming campaign. 

Then the "Kaiju" that inhabit the island are discussed. These are basically monsters that populate the Godzilla and Gamera movies from the 50s and 60s through our own current post-plague movie theaters. King Kong is a newcomer to this genre, only meeting Godzilla in the late 70s, but a two-headed 80 meter tall ape, makes you wonder, where has it been until now. Each of these creatures are discussed in depth, including their possible origins and their "cults." These cults being the humans, maybe humanoids, that see the beasts as deities or at least expressions of the universal truths that shape their reality. It goes from cyclops lizards, to crabs the size of small towns, to gigantic spiders, to of course the two-headed gargantuan gorilla promised on the cover.

Meanwhile, the reader is introduced to the Doomsayers a cult, with human/humanoid members, that are using the Kaiju and the island of Skullcano itself as a doomsday device. The information gets more detailed as the campaign begins to form from there. The last parts of books had me turning pages back and forth with intense interest for a few hours. Levi as a dungeon designer trusts the GM reading things to garner the tones of the tales that he has crafted, it really made the read fun.

Overall, I am impressed with the work. At first, I would rate it a "Bigfoot"  on my Smurf to Godzilla scale of things. Despite my own rating system, I am just not a big monsters, nor a big robot, guy. But the quality of the book in front of me, complete with some absolutely great art and fine production, Skullcano gets a Godzilla. A perfect Adventure Gamer experience waiting to be had.

On the Road Again: North Texas Con 2021

 I took the week off work because I received my second vaccination and knew I'd be suffering too much to play at being a working body. Pretty much laying still where ever I was from Monday AM until Wednesday AM, I was done with it. The sweating, the heart palpitations, complete with slightly more than usual nearsightedness had worn down enough, to where I could do a road trip to check out North Texas RPG Con. I had planned on going on Friday night, but I was really tired of being cooped up at home. So I left the house too early and moved some money around via my interwebby phone and made the drive from NWA (mountaintop Arkansas) to the DFW, as in the airport that is its own city.

The drive itself was easy, from I-49 to SH 121, I had about a dozen stop lights and one stop sign for the whole trip. Oklahoma has strict "Get the hell over already laws" when it comes to lane closures, so even the traffic jams were quicker than most. In my new-ish VW Golf it was 3/4 tank of gas. I reached the Westin around 2pm, was able to grab a room throughout Sat PM with no problem. If it had been full there were four other hotels, well one motel, within walking distance. The beer store was within 150 meters from the front door, but there were no rooms with hot tubs and the rooftop pool was not open. I mean, I was recovering yet again from the Bat-Flu sideshow-- I don't need such Spartan conditions, but alas I struggled through.

SO when the bar opened, I met a couple ppl straight off the bat. One of whom Dimitri Del Castillo, "Dimitri" from here on, had flown in from LA and we became fast friends. He steered me towards one of the pre-con sessions. Something called Crouching Hamster: Lost In Translation written by Chris Clark (the guy who wrote Inner City back in the day). I had a fun time doing nonsensical Ninja Kung-Fu action complete with bad dubbing and the rules written on a Chinese restaurant menu. I started writing a Red Bat campaign in my head based off of our antics.

The next morning I got to play Carl Kolshack in Jerold Stratton's homage to the show using a Dare Devil scenario. I was doing the best that I could, but the fellow that was playing Kolshack's editor, Tony Vincenzo, was too spot on. I really felt like that I had been in the show.

Break time at Dare Devil

 

On purpose, I didn't plan anything for Friday. Instead I hanged around the bar. Dimitri would show up that evening and I would corrupt him into being a drunken conventioneer. We'd party throughout the night with a lot of names I should remember, but you know. Had a late night chat with Mark Hunt of Gangbusters and Tall Tales fame.

Though hungover on Saturday, I was able to make it to Merle Rasmussen's table for his Top Secret/New World Order scenario "Operation Sasquatch". For as bad of shape as I was in, I was the only show, but boy was it fun talking to him and his wife, Jackie(?), for over an hour. It was actually more fun than me trying to ham it up for a four hour session AND I could get some more sleep.

Saturday evening, Mark Hunt would oblige me by running "Welcome to Rock Junction" for Ganbusters. The night before I had drunkenly begged his to run one more session as I had missed the one he did on Friday. He, like Peryton did a year and a half before, subverted my expectations with quite a new take on the gangster subgenre of the criminal underworld. You'll have to wait for the scenario to go on sale, no spoilers. But sheesh guys and gals...

This picture is about the thing on the guy's shoulder.

After the game, Hunt and I had a stop at the bar, where I closed out my tab early. He doesn't drink, so I actually tried to go to get some more rest. AND then I remembered the Midnight Auction. It was quite occassion, if a little sparse on decent stuff to bid on. I did score a VHS copy of two episodes of Wonder Woman, the Linda Carter ones. But for all the theatrics going on, I asked Dimitri, whom of course would appear, like an avatar of Nyarlathotep in a Delta Green narrative, to settle my purchases and went to bed then

 Overall, for all the star power at the con, I was impressed for the lack of pretension.  Folks were busy being at a tabletop roleplaying convention rather than glad handing. Folks that were plying their wares were busy selling rather than trying to recruit fans. Other attendees would start up conversations with me about the mundane details of their current lives, as well as whatever was their last championship in Adventure Gaming. I met a couple of different people that are big time gamers from the state of Arkansas where I currently reside.

Sunday I was on the road by 8am. Before I got into the car though, that I finally got a plane passing overhead. I had been trying for that picture since Wednesday.