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.

 

Playing Monsters as PCs Continues: Beatdown

So Thessaly's second book, Beatdown at Big Battle Ridge  has been for a month and is selling well. Of course T&T products usually do. A lot of the feedback that I am getting from longer term PeryPub buyers is surprise. Funny how few of my intimates, they buy my products in a very niche market, ever heard of Monsters! Monsters! though they are familiar with its ancestor. 

 

As playing monsters go, Thess is making herself a master. That is not surprising, she like any really good scenario/setting designer does a whole lot of face-to-face roleplaying before presenting the material. As you read through her work, you see the insights given to her from dealing with players creep in here and there. She is a GM's GM as an author. The person running her material pretty much can sit back and help the players develop their Characters, introduce the obstacles and watch the plot happen.

Now, I know there are schools of thoughts these days, that are promoted by publishing houses that are supposed to be the wave of the future. One side is one where RPGs are supposed to be a product that sells miniatures made in China with paper products from Europe, what every good board game should be, as God meant it. Another side is that products for the Adventure Gaming hobby should be wholly the meeting place of antagonistic cliques competing with each other to score enough points to not only win the internet but to WIN D&D, ADVANCED even. Then there are others that want to produce books for sale showing how they have moved beyond the world of daydreaming but wanting to show how clever they are with verbage and strategy and looking over other people's shoulders. While the RPG hobby can be all of these and more, it is my supposition is that these are not the real draw to our cottage industry.

By the way, playing monsters is nothing new. Games like Runequest and Monsters! Monsters! aside, here are some of my own experiences.

Ever since I first started roleplaying back in '79, with AD&D as my gateway drug, I wanted to play orks. That game system's half-orc option just wasn't that exciting either. Instead my Illusionist PC (a human) would end up marrying an orc princess to make peace with the orc tribe whose living area was where he was building his keep to reflect his D&D character development which was lotsa NPCs and your own little fiefdom. Was I supposed to kill them? My PC was Chaotic Good folks. He was 11th level. By 18th level, I was a bit bored of Dor Tarlson, and started playing his son Tar Dorltarlson, a half-orc Monk. At 4th level, Ken the GM mixed the world up. An Assassin from the 666 planes of Hell, or some such, killed my Illusionist character as well as all of the play groups' high-level PCs playing in his games. While I didn't mind so much, the other players took it kind of personally and stopped playing with our FRPG dealer. Consent issues aside, I had just started playing an interesting ork dammit.

That summer, spending time in my father's familial homelands of Texas, at the store called Austin Books and Comic Books I would discover Tunnels and Trolls, the 5th Edition. While its solitary dungeons, err tunnels were fine and dandy,  I was more interested in the expanded races, called Kin, which included even real monsters as opposed to just the regular dwarf, elf, human, and short ones that everyone was used to. Having a couple of kids near my age nearby, we were able to do a rather expansive campaign involving a leprechaun, an ork, a human, and a dwarve(?). Our group would reclaim the dwarf's clan stronghold, Mine Brand (the dwarf Player's name was Brandon). We'd also have a city adventure and get into a fistfight with some small town bigots that didn't like humans and dwarfs having a leprechaun and an ork as friends. The bar brawl got out of hand where a pen of slaves, conveniently next door, got freed. Before our PCs knew it, they were leading a slave rebellion against the Autocrat of Marshoom City.  We and the surviving now freed people, of many Kin, would escape aboard a  stolen frigate into the cold waters of the Whaling Straits. Promises of a pirate campaign to happen next Summer. We were now Tunnel Delvers on the High Seas! PIRATES, bitches! PIRATES! Six years before the first pirate RPG I ever saw.

Now before you, seated reader, get all persecuted about your political beliefs being under attack, please remember we were around thirteen years-old (9-14 to be exact). It was the Summer of 1979. We had three boys and a kid sister. I was the only white guy among three homegrown Texans (two Hispanic and one Native American, the GM). I was too busy wanting to play a damn ork to develop my taste for DMing, alas the term "game master" just wouldn't catch on for another three years for me. Decades later, I don't marvel at the diversity of the group nor its in-game politics, I am amazed how our tale could have been the inspiration for the movie Ice Pirates that would come out five years later.

The point of this story, is how organic these multi-species yarns wove themselves among two very different gaming groups. We didn't have collective groups of self-approved semi-scholarly sorts looking over our shoulders to not be racist or colonizers. The GMs weren't worried about the cores of their very civilizations being threatened by the self-approved, self-appointed, and ultimately self-serving folks mentioned. We had some good times. We experimented with game systems, doing that thing called roleplaying. We played roles. Those roles were often beyond us, not just being who we normally were but with day dreams of having swords or wizard staves that weren't really our penises, and accumulating wealth and lovers (breasts!). It would open the door into looking deeper in the works of fantasy of many authors. It was, and still is, a hobby for people that want to find something new in themselves.

Busier than I Look

 

I really am busier than you'd think. I am a bit overwhelmed even.

You see, I have finally been able to get an editor, Bernard Assaf ("Ben" to his friends), to assist me in handling Thess (Thessaly Chance-Tracy) and her fire hose of creativity around her Buzzard Gulch scenarios for T&T. I swear to godshead, that woman is just a wellspring of creativity and drive when it comes to T&T. While I was about proving that Our Game (that's what we T&Ters call the system) could be something for the regular roleplaying table versus the Solo-doldrums, she has ran a campaign that every RPG insider remembers having and swears that are doing the same. Deep down in their heart, though, they know that they aren't. Reading her tales ahead the rest of the world, I am one lucky man.

I am also doing about a page a day for the next edition of Crawlspace. This rendition is going to be subtitled "21 and Over" so I really have to it out this year. And soon enough within this year to be noticed as a product of 2021. Bet more than a few of you totally got the subtitle wrong. Go ahead admit it, I won't tell anyone. Anyway, to get the wife and Beckett off of my back, TACK (Total Action Card Kit) is getting some fluff as well as definition in terms of tabletop mechanics. This may be the version to end all future revisions of the system.

And my 50 Cent Wonders are still being worked on. After looking at my own art, I just had to stop and ask Teresa Guido to help me out. So they might be only half a dollar (US), they will have some really awesome art done by a professional.

Everytime at the Table: Flash Gordon, Part Four...

 So Flash Gordon and the Sphere of Doom, Part Four "Underground and Under Foot" happened. Frankly, our groups' habit of wanting to play the bad guys just took over. You see it's taken three sessions over about as many months to get Flash Gordon crashland-ed on Mongo. But during these sessions, the machinations of Ming and minions among themselves have been way too fascinating for any of us to ignore.

So while working on a little aside about Mingo City with Kal, Peryton, and JerryTel, Renee (Trey Renee) showed up wanting to play not watch. Not wanting to disappoint her, we worked her in as Princess Aurora. In our setting that is Ming's female clone that has equal parts of himself and King Kala of the Shark-Men. She would, of course, be up to nothing but trouble.

Meanwhile, the vast expanse of Mingo City was almost in a civil war in terms of unrest. General Kala (played by Kal, no less) at the same time began his cyber assault on the city's TAO network. He succeeded in launching a metropolis-wide, and beyond, re-boot, even King Vultan's Sky City was affected. The power going out meant that the denizens therein had some things to say to their vastly outnumbered overlords.

High Priest Zogi, is not one to be underestimated. His ties to the true TAO provided him and his citadel complex with all the power that they needed. His priests, armed with Holo-Projecting Staffs, broadcasted calming words reminding everyone that they were children of TAO. As an an afterthought, he mentioned that Ming was TAO's divine voice in the material world.

Meanwhile, Kala, a little worried that the reboot might take a little while to take affect, decided that investigating the notice that an off-world ship had arrived was a worthy endeavor. Princess Aurora was right there behind him. She doesn't like him. but she knows he has instincts that cannot be denied. They ended up as an elevator going to the Out-World Ports. King Vultan, after slowing his Sky City's descent into the Realms of Fire via TEV-COM, would show up to crowd the elevator with his wings because he knew that Baylin had taken the same route a few minutes before.

Ming showed up at the Catherdal-Complex of TAO. Zogi could not help himself any longer. He confessed his sins, having saved the Earth from Ming's plans, and offered himself, and anybody else nearby, as a sacrifice to the will of Ming, Son of TAO, and TAOS. Ming only killed a cardinal, maybe three, while accepting the apology. It was not a pretty scene but it rocked.

Flash Gordon, Professor Zarkov, and Dale Arden felt their elevator jolt as it derailed. As the doors opened they realized they were prisoners of the Brown Dwarves of Mongo. A few meters away, Vultan, Princess Aurora, and Kala would find themselves in the same predicament.

Every Time At the Table: Flash Gordon and the Sphere of Doom, part 3

In this  part three of  Flash Gordon: the Sphere of Doom, "Cannonball Greetings"  there has been tribulations and emergency hospitalizations among the group which made last night session even more enjoyable. Joining JerryTel, Iron Curtis, Peryton, and me was Kal Luin (Brett from Canada). After a quick, roll up the Stats session for the Head Type for Red Bat, I threw him into the roles of Zakov and General Kala, (Stats undefined until next session) chief of Security in Mingo City.

The opening was Flash, Zarkov, and Dale Arden in the life-boat from the Bon Fortuna traveling at speeds faster than thought possible by most of Earth's scientists. Our professor though had been working with theories on "dark gravity," along with Professor Gordon (Flash Gordon's father), for some time now. So harnessing the super-science forces of the dark gravity ray pulling them towards Mongo was rather simple work. Fashioning a Positive/Negative Polar Dark Gravity Harness (a buzzing engine) from some spare parts, those aboard the vessel could start to attempt to pilot it. Now when JerryTel rolled a CRIT FAIL, the joystick pulled up and off of the control board, things went a little topsy-turvy.  

Aboard the War Rocket Fabuloso Klytus showed amazing restraint by not torturing her well-known and somewhat intimate but not friend High Priest Zogi. All evidence is pointing to the theocrat's betrayal of the authority of Mingo by shutting down the forces that was drawing Earth toward's the Mongo-sphere and its assimilation into the worlds of Mongo. Zogi was successful at even being convincing as to how he migh not have had something to do the process-- that is until Clock, the ever over talkative android, had to brag about how it and the High Priest worked so hard to save the doomed planet.

Upon arriving in Mingo City, surprisingly enough, the Merciless only wanted to see Klytus, leaving Zogi back to his own meddling. In these royal chambers, Ming and the cyborg spoke of the High priest being sometimes controlled by the great God TAO. Wherein, General Kala interjected how TAO should only serve Ming's vision and he, Kala once again gender-swapped, could make it happen.

What Ming did not know is that Zogi, with more than a little help from TAO, had full access to this conversation through his success hacking of the imperial security networks. A bit outraged, the high priest called up his twelve Templars of Mongo to go and speak to the Emperor of Mongo. At the same time Voltan and a Wing of Hawkmen showed up at the capitol's flight-zone border looking for Baylin.
Kala back in his internal security nook, was having no sudden moves along the perimeter that marks the central areas of power in Mingo City. Between the armed priests and the fluttering hawkmen, squads of security forces would appear to face them down.


Meanwhile, Baylin, now hiding in the Great Temple of TAO, stumbled into a secluded Shrine of TAOS (TAO and TAOS meant be separately mentioned). She not only found access to something called "OFF-WORLD ports" but also got to see the TAOS tracking of Flash and Karkov's vessel approaching the Dyson sphere. It identified the careening space vessel as a "Possible Hostile Invasive Artifact" which she read as "Hostile Invader Army", so her pressing the button to authorize the docking bay cannons to start defending itself was no surprise to anybody.

Well, Flash, Zarkov, and Dale would not have to wait too long after crashlanding to meet with the princess of the Northern Verdid Clan. She'd ride the elevators outwards to Mongo's space-docks to meet the invaders. She'd almost swoon at seeing how sexy the newcomers were, because Earthlings, though quite frail in Mongo standards, are, because of pheromones, totally sexy to Mongokinds.  So she decided to throw her dagger at Dale Arden, not the two hot men, in front of her.

Flash would fail his blocking movement, but that's okay. My Dale Arden is from New Jersey. In a bit of judo, Baylin was floored and then tied up.

That is where we stopped for the night. I did a cut away closing scene, where Klytus is notified about the where the Bon Fortuna is stored.

Fast Food Role-playing

 

If you've been reading my blog for a while, I am sure you have noticed that I am not above some of the more cheesy aspects of our role-playing hobby. And one of the cheesier is the fast food fandom role-playing sub-genre. While the most famous of these efforts has been with the Wendy's role-playing game released in 2019, this isn't all that new. I personally have been inserting the abominations of fast food concepts and their advertising gimmicks into my games since like the 80s.

It is at the highest levels of US culture. At least since Bill Clinton would go jogging to grab some Big-Macs up to Donald Trump's fast food extravaganza, there is the unspoken acceptance of how much fun the junk is in terms of Americans' imagination. Indeed, it can be said to be one of the finest expressions of Americana. Nobody sits around to discuss how borscht or sauerkraut is more popular in Mississippi, but we all know Burger King is more popular in the UK than Taco Bell.  So it coming to some of our daydream places in Adventure Gaming should not be surprising. 

Not available at DTRPG as far as I know

 The earliest example of this trend being kind of official that I can think of is Rat on a Stick by George R. Paczolt. Things were a bit more abstract back then. In one of my own RPG impressionable days, in the city-state of Atinsinsin, from the second of my T&T campaign, Cow Mack competed with Monarchy Burger while Tunnel Tacos took a solid third seat. As was the custom in Our Game, the world around around us was okay to parallel for fun.

In the Aughts, I would blatantly drag players from their cozy high fantasy concepts into the degenerate depths of McDonald's advertising gimmicks while they explored a house of the fairy Lands. This was in counteraction of GMs, like Thess (of DT&T-ilk) doing muppets. You see I am an artiste, don't you know. My PCs found out that it was Grimace that was behind the whole Golden Arches that drove away the leprechauns and their rainbows not really Regent Ronald the Red and Gold.

So when I played Feast of Legends in February 2020, the experience wasn't that new to me. For all your beholders and tieflings, nothing says true fantasy as the world as seen through the eyes of the hungry.

Everytime at the Table: New Tales of Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon: The Sphere of Death, Session 2 "Long Shot From Deep Space"

The ISS Centurion

We started out with the International Space Agency ship, the ISS Centurion, piloted by Canada's Colonel Nick Gilmore and the American Captain George "Flash" Gordon (played by JerryTel) en route from Phobos Station to Io B-4. Now Flash, as you know, is a pilot in Earth Central Space Force Reserves now that he is not playing Zero-Gee Football (The ZGFL) for the London Jets. Dale Arden, working for the New York Times, was traveling to Io to cover the current strikes by the miners of SulfOrg Amalgamated. While at the far side of the sun from Earth the transplanet freight-liner picked up the distress call of Dr. Hans Zarkov.
Zarkov was able to eject from the ISS Bon Fortuna when that ship, captained by Professor William "Whiz" Gordon, Flash's father no less. While the smaller ship, meant for its passengers to remain in space sleep until they could be picked up was traveling faster that anything seen in the solar system before and headed out of the solar system. 

Meanwhile inside the sphere of death, Mongo, King Vultan (Iron Curtis) of the Hawk People, has found out about his main man Nero having captured Zigo (JerryTel), the High Priest if TAO from Mingo City and an android that started blending into the background really quickly. Just as the hawkman was about to berate his general, a full squadron of Ming Hegemony rockets showed up on the radar sensors of Sky City. The Ajax, War-Rocket Ramones, and The Fabulosa along with ten Strike-Skiffs each with no less than Klytus (Robin) leading them.
Vultan, being the scoundrel that he is, without blinking totally denied any sort of wrongdoing. He stated to the rather officious Klytus, that they were "merely having lunch." Ming's right-hand woman wasn't quite having it. Zigo was sending messages to a part of TAO systems that she did not have access to. There was also the disruption of the Assimilation Rays that were supposed to be drawing the target acquisition [EARTH] into Mongo as new material and colonization territory which needed to be questioned. She demanded Zigo be released into her custody aboard the flagship Fabulosa, that Ming is so damned gay. Zigo, playing the long game, played it off like he was guest not a captive as well-- Vultan now owed the High Priest a favor.

On the surface, Edgia, the lands between Lan-N'Da, kingdom of the Lion Men, and the Mediterranean-sized holdings of  Shark City, the "North Verdid" (an ethnic of Verdid people with varying degrees of cat-ness) needed to strengthen their ties to the denizens that weren't Shark People.  So our PC, Baylin (Peryton) is betrothed by her grandmother, the Matriarch of the North Verdid, to Knz Thunn (Thun the Lion Man) of the Lion Men. Well, she, as eighth princess of the leadership of the Edgia never expected to be treated as royalty, let alone to be subject to per-arranged marriages. So stumbling upon a Mech-Man (an android) that was hiding in the wedding gifts from King Vultan of the Hawk People requesting her help to get back to "Dream Island" and do the bidding of TAO was all the convincing she needed to highjack a sky-cycle get the hell out of Dodge, the capitol of Edgia. So there the two went into the swirling clouds that make up Mongo skies most of the time.

Back on Centurion, Flash Gordon figured out a way to combine the vessel's meteorite deflection system with the laser-driven communications devices to develop a "gravitational nullification field"-- We are playing Spacers and player-driven "Technobabble" is a convention-- to be able to achieve vector parity with the life pod. Zarkov relayed that he needed his craft to left not accosted to get to where it was headed. Flash, and his now smitten Dale Arden, was not going to let him face the unknown by himself. In a tense scene, they donned vacuum-suits and transferred between the two craft. The Centurion could now start decelerating and get close enough to Earth's relay satellites and relay communications.
It was on the life pod being drawn towards the Dyson sphere that is Mongo, that Flash Gordon began to realize the enormity of the challenges he would be facing.

Back on Mongo, King Vultan was once again annoyed by outside forces buzzing his communication Tele-Visual-Audio-Com, Tev-Com. This time it was Zagzaag, the Matriarch of Edgia, complaining about one of his wedding gifts, a Mech-Man, absconding with the Bride of the Prince Thun of the Lion Men. She just knew that he was behind it. So somewhat grumbly, Vultan rallied his elite raiders to head back to Dream Island.

The episode ended with Vultan's platoon showing up interrupting the Mech-Man, Clock, from stopping TAO from consume the "Savior of the Universe."

There are a couple of things going on here.

It is awesome to see my players so motivated about the roles that they are playing. This Flash Gordon guy is so popular that it just proves my belief in role-playing as an exercise in you know playing out parts in epic tales from the players' perspective, NOT a dragged out wargame with everyone about to fall asleep with measuring how far their lead miniature can move along a grid.
I was thinking that the "two Characters: one Player" would work a certain way. Instead just removing the walls of my expectations has opened up entire segues done by the Players using alternate PCs. I realize that typing it out looks so simple, but it has taken me, at least, a while to get here. Image people playing a role-playing game liking to play roles.

My Mongo is varying from the material that I drawing from as much as that same material varied from our source material. The 2007 (8?) TV series mixes in with the stuff I knew about the 80s cartoon, and then the 1980 movie pops its head up. Things feel creative and not driven.
Besides all of this Iron Curtis's take on Ming and Vultan is worth the price of admission to begin with.