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.