The Island Formerly Known As Paradise

The players come upon an island.

It used to be this place:

1. Palace of Queen Hyppolyte. Here is located the Magic Sphere, in which past, present, and probable future can be viewed.

-Now filled with a variety of "statues" of former amazons. Kria Visthala, a Harryhausen-style medusa now resides here, where she has hoarded much of the the island's treasure

-She is served by 24 small, blinded halflings, skewers still poking from their eyes

2. Palace Gardens

-Wildly overgrown

-Several more "statues"--broken and whole

-Five murderous werecheetahs stalk the gardens now

3. Temple of Aphrodite, located at the highest point of the island

-Much decayed and partially fallen, however its magic is still potent.

-Erotic acts here heal 2d8hp if performed at midnight

4. Memory Center, location of the Memory Chair, which can stimulate or erase memories

-The chair remains, in altered form

-If a creature has lost or forgotten memories (including level drained experience), they will be restored.

-If not, then random memories will be lost

5. Forest

-Hungry dinosaurs

(pterodactyls, raptors, most harmless parasaurs, a blue t-rex)

-Some escaped kangas (descendants of giant riding kangaroos)

-Some remains of dead amazons, with some treasure

6. Pool of Monsters: Very deep, swimming forbidden here

-Largely unchanged

-Contains a plesiosaur, cannibal mermaids, ixitxachitls (manta men), and whatever other freshwater monsters you want to include.

-There's treasure at the bottom

7. Observatory, with early warning system for enemies of Earth or other worlds

-The telescope, orrery and other machines are in ruins

-A wizard who scrounges for an hour here can assemble 2000gp worth of useful materials and books but every ten minutes there's a 2-in-6 chance of a monster from another area nosing its way in here

8. Amazon School and College

-There are still a lot of valuable books here, if you have a random book table this is a time to use it, if not, get Cube World

-Kria Visthala spends a lot of time here (1-in-6 chance)

-Also the cheetah women occasionally hunt here (1-in-6 chance)

9. Amphitheater for entertainment and sport

-If Kria Visthala captures a creature alive she sometimes blinds them and then has them fight here for her entertainment

-The cells beneath contain 3 random blinded NPC prisoners as well as a variety of animals, dinosaurs and other monsters caught on the island, kept well-fed enough to fight in the arena

10. Swimming pool

-Kept in good knick because Kria likes to swim

-Beautiful lapis lazuli tiles and gold trim

11. Hall of Records

-Chaotic, but still has a lot of historical records--a great place to try to find information on lost artifacts, islands, etc

12. Kanga stables, where giant riding kangaroos are kept

-Still two kangas here belonging to Kria Visthala, Octhir and Tyria

13. Science complex

-This place is completely ruined and ransacked, though there are some inscrutably-labelled barrels of radioactive and high explosive material stored here that nobody here knows what to do with

14. Amazon Living Quarters

-Mostly completely dilapidated but for every hour of searching there's a 1-in-10 chance of a treasure and a 2-in-6 chance of a monster from another area showing up

15. Hospital, where the purple healing ray is now housed

-The ray is long gone

-But there are various salves, herbs, bandages, tools etc that will help with non-magic healing and surgery

16. Army barracks

-A mess, but certainly enough weapons and armor to equip a party

17. Navy barracks

-Like the army barracks

18. Dock and ships

-Kria Visthala's pleasure ship, the Sickle Moon, is moored here and guarded by a crew of blind halflings

19. Cliffs from which Princess Diana (Wonder Woman) first spotted Steve Trevor drifting on a bit fo wreckage from his plane

-This happened millennia ago. Nobody knows what a "plane" is anymore, but there is a colony of cannibal mermaids living near its wreckage down here.

20. Princess Diana's private lab, where she used the healing ray on Steve. Now operated by Paula, formerly Baroness Paula von Gunther, now an Amazon by adoption.

-Paula von Gunther was an evil Nazi that Wonder Woman reformed.

-She is long dead but the lab is now cursed by the spirits of her victims. Anyone entering will roll a 1 on their first attack, save or other check next time they're in combat or in a life-or-death situation (initiative not included).

21. Culture complex, including library, museums, etc.

-More books, as in 8

-A blind cenobite cult has taken up residence here--there are 16 of them and they worship Kria Visthala

-Each has a grotesque mutation, 50% chance they have one useful in combat (like being able to throw their head at you) and they're a fighter level 2d4, 50% they just have a cosmetically weird mutation and are a magic-user level 2d4

-The entire complex has been filled with creepy chains and S&M stuff

-They don't leave this area during the daytime

22. Fountain of Eternal Youth, the waters of which keep the Amazons from aging

-The fountain itself is brackish and cracked but the waters still work

-That's why Kira Visthala took over the island, centuries ago

-Drink from it and you will never age

23. Landing field for Amazon air- and spacecraft

-Nobody now living knows what this cracked plaza was used for

24. Hangars

-The semicollapsed remains of strange crystalline vehicles, ribbed like whales.

25. Reform Island (also called Transformation Island), where female criminals are rehabilitated

-This labyrinthine prison-island is now completely overrun with werecheetahs

-Their priestess has built a shrine here, she is a level 12 cleric and wants to sacrifice you to the cheetah gods

-A female titan named Giganta sleeps in a large chamber beneath the island unbeknownst to anyone but the priestess, who harvests her spinal fluid for her rituals.

26. Forbidden Island, home of menacing animal and plant life; here the Amazons must go for the wonderful sun-swords they use for defense. 

-The menacing plants and animals remain, including:

--A young-adult dragon, grey and fire-breathing

--Giant bats

--Vengeance trees, which ensnare explorers and trap them inside

-At any given time one Sun Sword will be growing from one of the many vengeance trees--any foe looking upon it must save or be blinded each round it is unsheathed. Its power lasts one year.

You come upon a ruined hamlet, villagers all fled or slaughtered

It's the bowl. Someone might find it in any old shop, it is earthenware mixed from the bones of the last shaman of Nilotte. 

Whosoever eats from the bowl is possessed by the shaman, who seeks vengeance on all other faiths and gods for driving his from the Cube. The eater gains the shaman's consciousness and powers (10th level druid + any spells of any kind in the "Necromantic" family up to 5th Level + see below) then goes about: 

1) Slaying the local clergy and destroying the works of their faith, then

2) Converting the locals

3) slaying any unconvertible locals

4) having the converts march to the ruins of the Wrack Citadel deep within the forest and 

5) Kill themselves

6) Collapsing into dust, leaving only a ruined town and a bowl, which is inevitably picked up by some scavenger and moved to some other town or merchant.

Each time the population of a town sacrifices itself, the next possessee to drink or eat from the bowl is 1 druid level higher.

This Is Why D&D With Porn Stars Was Necessary

Click to enlarge

Last night I read the strangest comment I have ever seen.

But then, given all the stupid people I now know who got mad about this blog, and all the stupid things they've done since, I guess it's to be expected.

Transcript:

Joe Reiter

Men vs. Women

I never, from day one as a dungeon master did I let any female player character dress differently in armor than the men. Sure, perhaps there armor may be shaped a little different to accommodate them better, like Roman commanders had formed brest plates. But I never allowed the fantasy skimpy chain mail broads running around like they just got gang raped by rust monsters. Never liked the look 🤣

Zak Smith

Are you saying when a female player said what she was wearing you'd sometimes go "No, sorry, you can't wear that?"

41m

Joe Reiter

yes

2m

Zak Smith

That's one of the strangest things I've ever heard in my entire life.

1m

Those of you familiar with a world full of chatty gamestreaming, OnlyFansing e-girls and hot girl cosplayers bragging out what big nerds they are may not remember this but when I started this blog it was a remarkably common belief that girls don't play RPGs and all the ones that do were part of an online Indiegaming monocult of concerned mothers dedicated to stamping out boobplate.

I disagreed with that, everyone in my game was living proof it wasn't true and we said that on the internet and while a lot of people vocally agreed, all of them got called names about it until they agreed to lie about rape. Now many of them have decided they were wrong but are still scared to admit it.

This is because we live in Hell.

Meanwhile:

In our game the sea elf player formed a dreampop band called Seafoam and they played a benefit show for refugees from the war nobody knows the party itself started. 

The catgirl rogue opened on fiddle, rolled a 1, got in a fight with the crowd.

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Make Items Like This

"Here, in an alcove in the wall of the arch, had once hung the notorious Gabelline Oracle, sought out and yet dreaded by all who entered or left the city: the severed head of a child hanging from a hook, beneath which had been constructed an alchemical "body" composed of yew twigs bound together by certain waxes and fats. A lamp being lit beneath the oracle, or in more special circumstances an inscribed wooden spatula being forced under its tongue, it would give in a low but penetrating voice the fortune of the consultant or of the city itself."

-A Storm of Wings, M. John Harrison

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Stunning and Insane: New Reviews of Nebulith (and Red & Pleasant Land)

Audrey Cusack did an in-depth review of Nebulith and the recently re-released Red & Pleasant Land.

On Nebulith:
"All in all, Nebulith is a triumph, and a fantastic comeback to Lamentations for Zak. His whittling away at Cube World really paid off here, and I honestly can’t recommend the book enough. "

On Red & Pleasant Land:
"This book is batshit fucking insane."

Here is a video review of Nebulith (with flip-thru) from Foxxof RPG.
"Nebulith, which is insane."

And another video review that focuses just on the physical book. I think he said "stunning"?
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Almost Every Argument About Indie Games For Almost 20 Years

God They Loved Their Indie Games

I once got dinged by the moderators on a popular general RPG forum for saying only that Death is the New Pink--a post-apocalyptic adventure RPG--is better than Apocalypse World--a post-apocalyptic adventure RPG.

This isn't one of those situations where someone describes an internet interaction second-hand in a way such as to make the other guy seem absurd--it was literally the entire content of my one-sentence comment. "This game is better than that game". 

The mods' argument for the punishment was "Zak, you know most people here like Game 1 and it will make them mad to say it is not as good as Game 2, so upsetting them by disagreeing with their taste is bad". (Details available via request in the comments, because, unlike said forum, I do not have a formal rule against asking for proof.)

This does not encapsulate everything bad about RPG discussion on the internet, but it does encapsulate everything uniquely bad about RPG discussion on the internet. The thing that makes the internet worse than real life.

On A Review of Fair Play

We fast forward now to many years later and we move entirely out of the cloister of the online RPG scene. To this weekend in fact.

A woman wrote a review of Fair Play from her feminist POV. It's a card game designed to point out (the obvious and true fact that) the average married mom does much more domestic work than her husband. It echoes misgivings about the game written by other women on much bigger platforms.

You can just go read it, but I'll pull out a few quotes for convenience:

That’s another point I want to make. Fair Play is ideal for one particular type of husband: a guy who genuinely wants to help his wife with more things, but doesn’t know where to start (the kind of guy who says “Just tell me what to do.”) This type of guy, ideally, will not think the game or any of the cards are stupid. It’s not ideal for men who think the concept of invisible labor is stupid, or men who go into the game with skepticism.

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This game is also not ideal for men who are already aware of all the tasks in the household. This wasn’t something Mr. CHH (the reviewer's husband) and I would have bought if I wasn’t writing about it, because even though my husband was sassy throughout the process, it’s obvious that he’s already pulling his weight around the house and wasn’t shocked by the existence my tasks

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I will say I should defend Fair Play against a rumor about two particular cards. From a previous critique of Fair Play (by someone who had researched it, but hadn’t actually played it) I was under the impression that there was a card for social media and a card for tracking interior decor trends. I felt that both of these were obviously frivolous, but there’s more to the story. The “social media” card actually refers to kids’ social media and managing kids’ friendships. The “interior decor” card isn’t about scrolling Pinterest; it’s about the purchasing of furniture, but presumably the tracking of trends is part of that. Funny enough, my husband took the furniture card. But here’s where I also think male-coded labor should have been separated: what about the person assembling furniture? This takes up a lot of time and effort, and for many couples the person assembling furniture doesn’t fall to the same person who buys the furniture. I also wanted this separated for selfish reasons: I am usually the one who assembles furniture.

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Basically she's saying:

I can see the noble thing this game is claiming to do but this game is not doing what it said on the box for us (subjectively). And it is not doing it because it failed to notice some important stuff (objectively).

This is basically every critique I wrote of every Indie-scene game outside the OSR since 2009, both here on the blog and anywhere else RPG discussion was to be had.

Basically...

It made people mad. So mad they eventually decided to lie about rape in order to make it stop, which is about as bad as a reaction can be, really, not to mention illegal.

Why was the reaction so bad? For so long?

None of them have ever been able to defend their reaction in detail in real time. If placed in a position to do so, they are always immediately conciliatory and apologize. (And, of course, in the more extreme cases of freaking out, when they sue or are asked to testify in court about the more extreme expressions of their distaste, they crumble--five times and counting.)

Like Fair Play, the conversation about game design didn't matter because these games were on the right team. Apocalypse World was supposed to be good because it was by Vincent Baker and did degrees-of-success in a way indie gamers could understand and Blades in the Dark was supposed to be good because it removed the awful cognitive burden of having to think of a plan and Dungeon World was supposed to be good because it wasn't D&D and Adam Koebel was so unproblematic and Fate was supposed to be good because Evil Hat said progressive things (and definitely didn't only pay 3 cents a word) and anything Olivia Hill or Ash Kreider made was supposed to be good because they were persecuted on the internet and etc.

Broadly, like all the people who are somewhere on the internet defending Fair Play, they felt (did not think, but felt) that any game that claimed to promote progressive values probably did, and:

• That any game by a personal online internet friend should be promoted just out of chumminess and self-interest, 
• That anyone being in any way negative about their games was probably evil because from the other team,
• That there was no point in thinking deeper about any of it because there isn't a person in front of you to make it obvious you're ignoring those deeper things, and
• There would be social and perhaps financial rewards for publicly attacking anyone perceived as an enemy. 

This last idea was accurate.

Fannishness, Incompleteness, Imperfection, Fascination

We all like lots of things. We only gab all day about certain things. This is about why that is.

 

Stimulating The Gene

If someone old me they were going to make a movie where Boba Fett fights The Predator I would want to see that.

If the same person told me they’d done one where Indiana Jones fights Ernst Stavro Blofeld (a villain in the Bond films, including my favorite, Diamonds Are Forever) I would be like “Whatever. Is the movie good?”

This has little to do with how much I like the source media: I don’t really even like the Predator movies that much*—and I love James Bond movies.

Somehow, Predator and Boba Fett activate the fan gene and Indiana Jones and Blofeld do not.

Two Things

I think this has to do with two things.

First thing is simpler:

Boba Fett and Predator are toyetic. That is: they look like they’d make good toys. They also—and this is more elusive—act more like toys. What is interesting about them in the movies is very much their physical actions, what they are capable of. Indiana Jones is capable of action of course but also he's an interesting guy incarnated by the arguably greatest heroic actor of all time with all the personality and complexity of facial expression that implies—it is interesting to hear him talk. Boba Fett talking is just a prelude to Boba Fett doing something cooler than talking with a wrist rocket or some shit. His whole body, character design, look, is built to do things on the screen—he wears the backpack that he will fly with. His entire visual image is defined by actions he will take, his body is a threat—the same goes for the Predator, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Gundam mecha, a space marine, a wizard, a dwarf barbarian with an axe.

While these characters suggest to you what they might do, Indiana Jones is someone where you would wait to see what he will do. His story is as much about (cliché incoming) whats inside as what’s outside—that’s why God doesn’t melt his face. I wouldn’t dream of telling Indiana Jones what to do—that’s the job of people who invented Indiana Jones and want to tell me what he’s like.

This leads into the second thing:

There is always some sense, with toyetic characters, that what has been done with them is wrong. Maybe not totally wrong, maybe just not enough or surely not everything they could do.

I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark and I was happy. To me, Indiana Jones was basically a real guy and that thing I saw up on the screen was his greatest adventure and he told me about it. I did not need him to have another adventure or fight another guy (though if he wanted to, I was happy to hear about it)--that seemed enough for me.

When I saw Empire Strikes Back I was also happy. And I could start thinking of other, cooler things they could have Boba Fett do in the next movie. And this wasn’t just because he isn’t in it much—I liked the first Iron Man and had the same reaction.

Indiana Jones' adventure seems complete because it is part of a good story where what is interesting about IJ is woven into and somewhat solved by the shape of that story—his possibilities are, if not exhausted, then explored thoroughly. While Tony Stark is similarly solved in the Iron Man movie, Iron Man’s not: there’s soooo many cool things they could do and didn’t.

Fascination

I would say that I love Raiders of the Lost Ark (and Julio Cortazar novels, and Wong-Kar Wai movies, and cheeseburgers), but I would say that not only do I love but also I am fascinated by games (and comic books, and giant robot cartoons). 

The things in the first category are great and satisfying. The things in the second category are great and unsatisfying. You not only always want more but somehow your brain just starts going “well what about..and what about…and what about…”. I am not going to blog about cheeseburgers—I am perfectly happy with cheeseburgers as they are and lack entirely the will to tinker with them.

There is something about the kind of media for children that also translates well for adults that is forever mysterious. Perhaps it is the point that—unlike a classically great work of art—it takes no arrogance to see the flaws, while still being wholeheartedly devoted to the result. These things work on your mind and should not. They are forever incomplete in an interesting way.

This week I went through every single comic Gil Kane ever drew looking for the really good ones. I read some really good ones. I came away happy and wishing he’d drawn the Flash more, and wishing that the scripts they gave him were better. It was great and unsatisfying—and fascinating. I can’t stop thinking about Gil Kane.

I feel the same way every time I open up an RPG. That was cool—why was it cool? How come it worked or didn’t? How can we do it better next time? 

I don’t know whether everyone in the RPG scene feels exactly this—but I think there’s a reason that we blog about some things and we just sit back and enjoy others.

*Except Prey, Prey rules).

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