Ken Hite on Demon City and The Gen Con Info Post (2018)

Just got finished texting with Kenneth Hite--he's agreed to do two Demon City stretch goals--one on sacred architecture as horror and one on the Lovecraftian mythos.

It's not on the Kickstarter page yet because I just heard it, but Mike will add it on to the official page soon.

Who's coming?

So far me and Stokely are coming from LA, James Edward Raggi IV will be at the booth as well of course. Beyond that I don't know.

Where will you be I want to kill you?

Lamentations of the Flame Princess Booth #2911, at the Ennies when they happen otherwise text me.

When do you roll up so I can murder you because I am terrible?

I'll be at the booth Friday, Saturday and Sunday, usually after noon-1pm because I sleep late and am on LA time. You cannot murder me there will be security at the booth.

Should I go to the Ennies so that I can violently assault all of the many OSR nominees or just angrily leave and tweet about it when they win?

You should not. But if you want to cheer the many many many many deserving OSR and DIY RPG nominees this year you must definitely roll up and sit near us. It's free. Also there will be security at the Ennies this year. It's Friday night at Union Station and Contessa Stacy is one of the hosts.

Will you be throwing another party?

This year's post-Ennie party will not technically be hosted by me, but there will be another party and if you come to the Ennies and ask me I will tell you where it's gonna be at.

What if you don't win anything?

I probably won't because the competition is fierce af this year, but so much of what's nominated is worthy that there'll be a lot to celebrate. I got enough already.

Will you sign my thing?

If you buy at least 10$ worth of stuff at the LotFP booth, sure. It doesn't have to be LotFP stuff, it can be from any of the DIY RPG folks who also have stuff at the booth, but you gotta help somebody out. That's the rule.

Will you draw a funny picture when you sign it?

I usually do.

Will there be copies of Maze of the Blue Medusa available? 

Some are being shipped to Gen Con. So assuming they aren't sold out by the time you get there, yeah.

What about Vornheim, Red & Pleasant Land and Death Frost Doom?

Yup. Again: subject to scrabbling hands.

Will you be selling original art at the booth?

Yes. Mostly from game stuff.

Can I get a "Zak Sabbath Saved D&D" or "Play D&D & Worship Satan" t-shirt at the booth? Or a phone case, or...

No but they're here.

Do you or Stokely have a thing about having your hand shaken?

No, go ahead.

Can I get a picture with you and/or Stokely?

Stokes makes her own rules but my price is snacks. Or Dr Pepper. No chocolate--cashews, dried apricots, healthy things are nice. It doesn't have to be big. I don't like to leave the booth while people are there and I talk a lot to a lot of people so I get tired and need energy to hock these fucking wares yall.

What do you do while at the booth?

An extensive improvised mountebank spiel, peppered with anecdotes everyone at the booth has heard a million times. The word "barking" as in "carnival barking" refers specifically to speaking using only the front of your mouth, articulating quickly in a relatively high-pitch using your tongue and not your throat, which allows you to talk loudly and continuously all day without messing up your throat, did you know that? I learned it from Neal Adams on Kevin Smith's Batman podcast. No relation. To Kevin Smith anyway.

Are you running any public games at Gen Con?

I am not.

Can I run Demon City or something while I'm there?

Sure.

Can I tell you about my character?

Please tell me about your character.

I like your work except this one thing about it, should I just be polite?

No. I will respect and like you much more and be much less bored if you tell me about things you don't like about my stuff and then we talk about it.

Will you remember my name from last time?

Very likely not because my booth memory is terrible and I meet a lot of people but if you have an online handle remind me.

Will you tell me Borderline Unbelievable Insider Information?

Perhaps if you ply me with drinks.

Will you tell me The Secret Anecdote That You Only Tell People In Person?

If you're nice to people.

Will

Will this blog entry end with an advert for the Demon City Kickstarter?

Yes.

Get a copy of Demon City here

"The Game" (that is, "the words")--PIG-PIP

More RPG theory. Thoughts and suggestions welcome and needed.

Part 1--Intro to PIG-PIP
Part 2 
Part 3
Also:
Tactical Transparency

30. Game Text As Reference Vs Game Text As Speech

Tabletop RPG theory has usually, in the past, taken the form of practical advice directed usually and especially to one specific entity involved in games and negotiating its relationship to another entity: Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering is directed toward a GM and telling them how to work with players, the original Threefold Model, GNS, and RSP theory are directed toward matching groups to game texts or instructing writers on how to write game texts. The uniquely rhetorically complex nature of tabletop RPG game texts is often obscured.

The most obvious example is how often the game text is simply called "The Game". An example should illustrate the strangeness of this: you can't fully analyze how a team played baseball without reference to the home-field advantage, even though the home-field advantage is nowhere in the rulebook, yet over and over in formal RPG theory The Game and all its outcomes are supposed to proceed from the rules.

Game books work in many ways. Right now I'm going to draw a distinction between non-fiction texts as reference and non-fiction texts as speech.

"Reference" here means in the sense of a dictionary: a set of statements, recommendations, etc consulted in pieces, where the meaning doesn't depend on reading in a linear way. That is: a dictionary still makes sense if you read  the entry for"Pepper" before "Aardvark".

"Speech" here is used in the sense of "The president gave a speech": that is, a series of rhetorical moves where the order changes or is intended to chance if not the meaning precisely then at least the reception of the words by the audience. A speech is different if it begins "My fellow Americans..." vs "A funny thing happened on the way to the VFW tonight..." even if both statements are somewhere in both versions of the speech.

Most RPG theory treats the game text ("The Game") as if it only acts as reference: The rules are there and allegedly responsible for discrepancies between desire and outcome.

In reality, even before the "What's This Game About?" section, there is an image. This image takes different forms:

If the game is not famous (as with most games that you might hear about online or with Dungeons & Dragons as it appeared to wargamers in 1974) the image is a combination of what is on the cover and what the words on that cover communicate ("Dungeons & Dragons, Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper And Pencil and Miniature Figures" "Men & Magic" and a picture of a warrior in unrealistically--fantastically, you might say--spiky armor).

If the game is famous, the first image is a combination of the reputation of the game, the advertising of the game, and the actual packaging.

This is not a small thing. Because both players and GM:

-Choose to begin participating largely if they are attracted to the image
-Are often given the book or offered the opportunity to play based on someone else's assessment that they are attracted to the image--in some cases by parents who will forever know nothing more than the image, and
-(Most importantly) since tabletop RPGs require that participants invent elements to even work at all, and participants consciously and unconsciously assume that fun happens by bending their choices toward the image and the tropes it implies (name the elf "Silverblade", include a castle with a moat even if moats aren't in the rules yet)

...the initial and subsequent images the text presents shape genuine play in tabletop RPGs in real and extensive ways that are difficult to fully describe without going beyond just a programmer or boardgame designer's vocabulary of rules, but also the vocabularies of art, psychology and sociology.

Some examples:

The very first RPG book includes a fan-submitted illustration of creatures described nowhere in the text: "Beautiful Witch" and "Amazon". Knowing this was a "fantastic medieval" game was enough for at least this player to realize these characters could be in it.

Vampire: The Masquerade has a complex and ongoing LARP culture that uses rules nowhere in the original text. However, the themes emphasized in the LARPs (powers, humanity loss, feeding, etc) are all strongly influenced by the text-as-speech if not loyal to the text-as-reference.

It's usually understood that inventions "inside" a game's presumed genre tropes "should" work and those outside it void the warranty ("firearms will ruin your D&D game") but what does and does not fit the tropes is often assumed to be clearer to each living participant than it is. Genre assumptions are usually treated as something that either need not be said, or something that can very easily be said, when in reality getting a full palette of genre assumptions across is as complex and fraught an act of communication as trying to teach someone what musical gestures represent "jazz" and which don't.

For example, this isn't a flaw in Apocalypse World. That's not because it is mechanically impossible or undesirable in the rules-as-reference, but because the rhetorical structure of Apocalypse World as rules-as-speech would scare off anyone who thought this would be fun.

Because tropes and assumptions shape play as much or sometimes more than rules, when considering the influence of a text-as-speech in forming a game experience, a critic needs to consider a number of cultural and sociological factors including:

-When it was written
-What genre tropes can readers be assumed to be aware of (is steampunk a thing yet for this audience?)
-What the illustrations suggest
-What the wider awareness of the game or games was in the mind of the reader (many small online RPGs assume a reader knows what an RPG is, or assume familiarity with at least D&D)
-What gameplay culture does the text assume is dominant
-Whether audiences interacting with the text can be assumed to be homogenous (all equally aware of steampunk tropes) or heterogeneous (some need it explained more than others)
-How much of the text will be read by different participants and which part (it's common that nobody playing a given D&D game has read all the spell descriptions, or that only one person who's playing Dread has even touched the book)
-How charismatic is the text about presenting different principles and procedures vs others and for which audiences (It's possible one potential player could walk away from Dogs in the Vineyard excited about moral choices while another walks away hoping for shoot-outs with demon children whose hair moves in the wind even when there isn't any--this will shape play).

I would add a caveat saying that the more freedom of choice an RPG offers, the more "soft" rhetorical gestures can influence play, but in practice I've found every RPG offers so much freedom that these gestures always matter. You can "break" pretty much any game by deciding to play against the style it assumes but the textual acrobatics required to procedurally hard-code rules that head-off such fuckery are always a burden in themselves (though that subject should be addressed formally in a later entry).
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And now, a word from our sponsor:

Pitch in to the Demon City Kickstarter,
it is going to be the best horror game.

Differences Between Game Groups (PIG-PIP)

PIG-PIP Theory of RPGs Part 3.

Here's 1
Here's 2

29. Common differences between game groups.

Differences between individual players (including the GM) are discussed a lot more than differences between groups as a whole, this is because differences between living people at the same table immediately results in real-life discussion (sometimes this is an argument, a lot of times it's just fun) whereas differences between entire groups can only result in discussion if:

a) Someone records a group's behavior in enough detail to see how the group works,
b) ...puts that record somewhere that gamers with totally different assumptions will see it,
and
c) ...these totally-different gamers notice and say something.

This is relatively rare, though increasingly-common in the post-Youtube environment.

It's impossible to list all extant differences between game groups and how they experience games differently, but some common (and commonly unacknowledged) differences that contribute to confusion in accurately discussing game experiences are:

-High Trust vs Low Trust: In the highest trust games, everyone involved has had a number of voluntary and positive social experiences with each other outside the game. In the lowest-trust games people are meeting during the game session for the first time (like at a con or game store). Commentators who unconsciously assume low-trust games tend to be the ones obsessed with safety concerns and broadcasting the fact that various forms of clearly obviously bad behavior  (racism, sexism, murder) are not👏 allowed👏 at👏their👏 table👏 . Commentators who unconsciously assume high-trust games wonder why this needs to be said.

-RPG-Experienced vs RPG-Inexperienced: Procedures and rules affect players differently depending how aware of the procedures the players are, and also depending exactly which group members have a higher or lower degree of experience.

This can have a variety of outcomes depending on other factors: unfamiliarity can make a group ignore procedures out of ignorance or hew to them beyond the point of utility out of a naive belief they have no other options.

-Text-Deferential vs Text-Skeptical: Text-deferential groups attempt to play Rules-As-Written. Text-Skeptical groups don't.

Mainstream game talk (especially fandom around D&D, Pathfinder and other commercially-dominant games) often proceeds completely unaware text-skepticism is possible or viable even though (paradoxically) most mainstream GM-guides, core books, official communiques and mainstream-designer twitter accounts openly (if not consistently) advocate it.  A fairly confusing situation occurs, for instance, when someone who unconsciously assumes a text-deferential attitude toward a set of core rules attempts to evaluate a (usually 3rd-party-published) supplement that asks for a necessarily text-skeptical attitude in order to be compatible with more than one system. The critic then is in the position of being theoretically able to grasp that different systems are different but unable to grasp that this may require they change something in the supplement's rules or the game's rules or both to make them work together.

-Goal-Homogenous vs Mixed-Goal: This term applies to a number of differences that players often have between each other (challenge-oriented player vs acting-oriented player, for instance) which are frequently discussed in RPG circles. When discussing groups, this means the entire group has the same goal (homogeneous) or doesn't (mixed-goal). We're not going to get into what those goals might be here today because that's a whole thing, but in discussion of group types it's worth pointing out that homogeneity and heterogeneity are themselves characteristics that can affect the game experience.

For example, a goal-homogenous group may require a less-skilled GM, since there are fewer different desires to accommodate. On the other hand, it might require a more-skilled GM since play may quickly stagnate if the group only pursues goals it predicted wanting to pursue in the beginning, so a GM may need to throw them a curve or two.
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And now, a word from our sponsor:

You're running out of time to help out with Demon City

Sunday, on vacation, have a layout

I've been far from home and very busy lately, but I liked Jeff's thing here.

And here's something Cheng did with one of Scrap Princess' monsters for Demon City:

Click to enlarge. Scrap wrote it, I drew it.

Donate to the Demon City Kickstarter here

Demon City Rules Index + European Shipping News

This is either really boring or really exciting but we got European shipping for Demon City down to about 17-25$ if you're into that. Official statement:

" (mind you this can change somewhat- roughly a 4-5% flux based on the market) Europe: $17 to $25.Canada: $22 to $28.Norway: $30 to $35.Australia: $25 to $32. China/Hong Kong/Macao: $16 to $22.Rest of Asia: $33 to $43. All Other Countries: $95 and higher."

So if that's been holding you back...

And for whom it may concern, here are the main posts about exactly what's in Demon City...

Rules

Character Generation

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/05/demon-city-character-gen-revised.html

Getting Things Done

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/03/getting-things-done-in-demon-city.html

Combat

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/05/demon-city-combat-using-tarot-cards.html

Decks

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/07/decks-in-demon-city.html

Downtime (early draft)

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/03/downtime-in-demon-city.html

Horrors

Aliens (the Narth)

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-narth.html

Artificial Life

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/01/fa-ther-what-am-i.html

Choking Ghost

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/01/thanks-to-maxine-hong-kingston.html

Cultist

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/01/cultist.html

Demon of the First Order

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/03/satan.html

Demons of the Second Order

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/01/those-who-crawl-to-godless-place.html

Demons of the Third Order

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/08/those-concealed-from-light.html

Demons of the 6th Order

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/06/those-who-dwell-in-tears-and-disputation.html

Demons of the 7th Order

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/02/those-who-bring-piercing-weapons.html

Demons of the 8th Order

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/02/those-crowned-in-bone.html

Demons of the 9th Order

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/12/those-who-are-obsceneiv.html

Demons of the 10th Order

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/03/those-who-bring-strife.html

Devouring Plasm

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/07/goo.html

Fetch

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-fetch.html

Foetal God

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/05/foetal-goddiy-d-gen-con-party.html

Haunt

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/03/youre-gonna-wanna-get-those-floorboards.html

Haunted Doll

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/08/haunted-doll.html

The Horde

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/09/horde-creature.html

Lexicon Devil

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/07/lexicon-devil.html

Lycanthropes

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/06/werewolf.html

Psychic

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/03/nice-spoon-it-would-be-shame-if.html

Revenants and Drones

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/09/revenants-and-drones.html

Strangers

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/11/they-sag-shedding-onto-ikea-chairs.html

Swarms

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/02/if-i-have-to-paint-one-more-goddamn.html

Tiyanak

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-bad-baby.html

(Stretch Goal by Mabel Harper)

Vampire

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-demon-city-vampire.html

Witch

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/02/shes-witch.html

Zoomorph

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/01/zoomorph.html

Sketches (adventure possibilities and lore)

Communicants

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/06/communicants.html

Down and Out In Demon City

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/06/down-and-out-in-demon-city.html

Don Membreño and Julio Elespe

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/06/don-membreno-and-julio-elespe.html

The Glistening Chamber Codex (or The Nyctythatic Text)

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-glistening-chamber-codex-or.html

Medical Suite

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-medical-suite.html

On Crime

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-nature-of-crime.html

On The Occult

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/08/notes-on-occult.html

The Poison Cabinet

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-poison-cabinet.html

Police

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/04/some-things-to-know-about-cops-crime.html

The Show

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-show.html

Host Advice

Ecology of Murder

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/04/adventure-building-and-ecology-of-murder.html

Horror Sandbox

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-horror-sandbox.html

Hunter/Hunted

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/03/hunterhunted-in-demon-city.html

Investigation-As-Dungeon

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/06/werewolf.html

Invisible Dungeon and Wallet-Keys-Pants (Dungeon formats)

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-invisible-dungeon-wallet-keys-pants.html

My First Conspiracy Kit

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/10/my-first-conspiracy-kit.html

The Three Shadows

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-three-shadows-escalating-inventions.html

Tables

Murder Victims

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/06/d100-murder-victims.html

Ritual Killings

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/06/d100-ritual-killings.html

Ritual Locations

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/06/d100-ritual-locations.html

About the Graphic Designer, Shawn Cheng

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/07/he-knows-where-to-stick-things.html

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/05/love.html

Actual Play

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/05/theres-lot-of-screaming.html

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2018/05/theres-lot-of-screaming.html

Recommending Watching

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/04/demon-city-appendix-n-part-2-movies.html

Recommended Reading

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2017/04/demon-city-appendix-n-part-1-books.html

....

And now, a word from our sponsor...

Maze of the Blue Medusa is back in print

The First Thing You See When You Open The Book & The Last Thing You See Before You Close It

Cheng is working on the endpapers for Demon City.

Post-Vornheim design means you use the endpapers, especially for things the GM might wanna reference all the time.

So from the left we've got the action system (maybe looks more complex than it really is but new GMs will probably appreciate it), the Downtime System (after any undeniably successful session) and d100 panic symptoms on the right (and nice one Cheng fitting all 100 in there).

And yes, the idea is every page will be full-on like this.

If you're into it, help out here.
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The Quality of A Ritual

We all tend to like rituals, but when it comes to actually describing them in games we tend to choose one of two options:

-Verrrrry specific rituals that basically only end up getting used once for a specific effect, or
-Abstracted ideas about rituals like "Requires 800gp worth of materials" that are generally useful but lack flavor.

For Demon City, we tried to get a little deeper into how the systems of ritual worked. Here's Zedeck Siew with Corpse Oil rituals...

CORPSE OIL 
(a riff off Nam Man Prai, which is from the Thai phram (shamanic) folk tradition)

The act itself is relatively simple: chanting scripture, you hold a candle under the chin of a recently dead person. The air is rancid. Yellow, fatty fluid seeps from the crisping flesh.

Corpse oil has many uses. One chin yields a jam-jar-ful. Potency depends on provenance. If a corpse is:

- Beloved.
- A young woman.
- A virgin, until death.
- Your blood relation.
- Killed in grisly violence.
- Killed by your own hand.
- Properly buried and mourned.

Then each of the above conditions increases the quality and potency of the oil. In game terms each confers a “point” of Intensity.

~

Mixing in consecrated philtres, speaking the proper spells, a necromancer may prepare corpse oil in several ways.

As an ointment, on contact with skin, it can confer the following effects (In order of quality of oil required)

Requires only corpse oil—the quality is irrelevant
- Wheezing fatigue.
- An inability to recognise faces.
- Bad breath that spoils food.
- The ability to talk to gravestones.

Requires an oil of Intensity 2.
- Wracking back pains.
- An inability to use stairs.
- A musk that attracts vermin.
- The ability to command birds.

Requires an oil of Intensity 3.
- Night terrors.
- An inability to feel pain.
- An odour that repulses women.
- The ability to query reflections.

Requires an oil of Intensity 4.
- Miscarriage.
- A strong sexual attraction to you.
- A bright glow visible to evil entities.
- The ability to dictate card games.

Requires an oil of Intensity 5.
- Liver failure.
- Susceptibility to your suggestions.
- A touch that burns holy persons.
- Invincibility, when holding breath.

As a grease, ritually applied to a single building’s foundations, it lends the structure special virtues:

Requires only corpse oil—the quality is irrelevant
- Unnaturally stuffy.
- Deals made here cannot lose you money.

Requires oil of Intensity 3
- Gives restless sleep.
- Residents are inclined to obey you.

Requires oil of Intensity 5.
- Sounds do not carry.
- Doors are always open for you.

Requires oil of Intensity 6.
- Traps disquiet spirits.
- Irresistibly draws the eye.

Requires oil of Intensity 7
- Confuses your enemies.
- Cannot be demolished.

As a fetish, a jar wrapped in yellow talisman paper, it fetters the ghost of the person from which it came. This spirit:

Requires an oil of Intensity 3:
- Cramps or twists muscle, with a touch.
- Manifests a corporeal, unspoiled body.
- Speaks with the voice of anyone living.
- Roams beyond the sight of its fetish jar.

Requires an oil of Intensity 6
- Exudes steamy, flesh-eating ectoplasm.
- May possess any male-identified person.
- Captures the souls of un-weaned babies.
- Banishes other ghosts with its presence.
- Steals air from the lungs of living things.
- Does not remember anything of its past.

Each preparation comes with a unique command mantra. Those who speak this formula are masters who the corpse oil cannot harm, and must obey.

~

Without its command mantra, corpse oil effects can only be lifted by ritual healing (Heal the Flesh ritual, etc). Effective treatment depends on who’s treating. If an exorcist is:

- A priest or religious ascetic.
- From a different religious tradition.
- Celibate.
- Vegetarian.
- Of non-human lineage.
- Related to a royal family.
- Master of their own corpse-oil ghost.

Each of the above conditions improve the quality and strength of the exorcism. You may disrupt one corpse-oil effect per condition met.

If the exorcism’s total number of conditions exceeds the corpse oil’s total quality, the substance is destroyed. If not, the corpse oil’s effects return after C10 (that is pick a card 1-10) days.
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Donate to the Demon City Kickstarter here