We Won The 3 Castles Award (Again)

 Like Red & Pleasant Land before it, Nebulith, our Japanese-themed LOTFP book, just won the prestigious (and very heavy) Three Castles Award.

This award is extra cool because the award jury tends to be composed entirely of game designers from the early days of the hobby, the Red & Pleasant Land jury was David "Zeb" Cook (of the original Oriental Adventures), Steve Perrin (Runequest), Dr Dennis Sustare (as in Chariot of Sustarre), James M Ward (Metamorphosis Alpha), and Steve Winter (Nightmares of Future Past, etc). 

Winter, Sustare, and Grubb, were on the jury this year, along with Allen Hammack (of TSR's Slave Lords series), and Ben Burns (Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds)

Grubb, who wrote a lot of classic stuff including the Marvel Super-Heroes (FASERIP) RPG and Al-Qadim and Spelljammer, had this to say about Nebulith:

The Nebulith is a volcano magically halted mid-eruption, so it is a huge frozen stone cloud hanging over the island of Awa Nikko, and serves as the "dungeon" for this setting. The setting is rich in lore, changing the euro-centric LotFP rules to adapt to samurai, ninja, and martial arts. This is the first Asian-themed product I've read that beats out the venerable Oriental Adventures from TSR. I love the art, I love the lore, I love the game design.

So, that's very cool!

If you haven't got it, its available here and here.

If you ask about it and anyone gives you static, it's because of this and this.

John Blanche Is Dead

 John Blanche is dead.

Probably no artist in the gaming hobby was as simultaneously influential and original at the same time as he was. As artist and art director at Games Workshop, he was the key figure in creating and perpetuating the Warhammer Look that still sells gobs of miniatures to this day, and basically invented modern grimdark.

That kinda sells it short because he was also a huge part of what kept Warhammer weird--he had a creaky, eccentrically filligreed sensibility and a wonderful color sense that combined an electric modern intensity with a feeling for the weight of the past in a way nobody has ever managed to copy--war-banner red and the gold-yellow of bad teeth and age.

John Blanche pictures look like ancient records from an alternate universe where it all played out in a series of enigmatic and brutal cartoons. Like history paintings by a post doom-metal Terry Gilliam, everything is alarmingly vivid and yet completely inevitable. Prog rock in Hell.

His sense of anatomy and composition resisted the emphasis on optically plausible movement and scale that was so enthusiastically embraced not only in the fine art in the 400 years after the Renaissance, but by so many fantasy illustrators influenced by photography, comic books and guys like Frank Frazetta. Blanche figures don't move through space--they have always been there. He and a few like-minded neo-primitive geniuses like Ian Miller turned Warhammer and 40k's "backstory" and "fluff" into lore.

He could summon all the connotations of that word using an alchemy that made everything new old again. Anybody can make a picture and say it's something that happened a thousand years ago--with Blanche you felt it, even when they had space armor and bolt guns.

RPG artists can all depict war, these Blanche visuals were key to Warhammer's very cynical, British, and wargame-friendly sense of eternal war. Think Iron Maiden, Mötorhead, Garth Ennis, once more into the breach (and Bolt Thrower, of course). There's no fucking timeline in Warhammer, no progress, no revolution, no good guys, no solutions, no change in the setting, no leader you can trust, no reasons for any of it--you and another unworthy god met in school and now you will be moving miniature men back and forth on a hilltop you made forever.

His art and that of the colleagues he hired on and managed is the main reason that the British D&D crew at White Dwarf that turned into Games Workshop stood apart from all the other D&D competitors long enough to create a distinct identity.

And as far as I can tell, he was also really cool.

Rest quietly in the void, big guy. You've done enough.

Caroline Pierce Ate A Cat

 

If you know Caroline Pierce--outside of her, ahh, work--pretty much the first thing you know is she's a cat lady. Epic scale cat lady.

But last night she ate a cat.

Ok, technically her character ate a cat, Elaria, the half-elf ranger.

In her defense, it was because she refused to eat a person, so that's a good(?) sign.

I blame Session 2 of Maze of the Blue Medusa.

It went like this:

After last session our heroines wake up in the first room there at the bottom, barricade themselves inside and hope to regain spells etc and heal up for their next sojourn into the Maze.

They are interrupted after an hour by a polite knock on the door from 6 Bondye Reparatè (humans who believe the Maze is heaven and their job is to perform maintenance on it). They would never be so impolite as to bash down the door so they slide a polite offering of two hand-rolled cigarettes beneath the door and move on.

Despite Elaria, being a ranger and all, being able to identify these as ordinary hand-rolled cigarettes, a weirdly lot of time is spent trying to figure out what the cigarettes do (nothing except give you cancer 40 years after making you look cool).

The next hour a Chronomancer (lizard wizard) and a pair of his thrall mammals (ape-morons) show up. They kill one moron and steal the pearl that allows the Chronomancer to control the other and shoot him fulla holes before he can use his time-magic to reverse the damage. The newly-cnotrolled moron thus played an important meatshield/scouting role in the rest of the session.

Also note the girls made extensive use of the wardogs in this fight as they pounced on and murdered one of the morons, though out of deference to a recently deceased real pet Kimberly Kane's was turned into a war-cat.

You might see where this is going.

So anyway after defeating the Chronomancer, the girls went past the living chess pieces (basically a wise decision), used a mirror to investigate the Jade Tiles That Freeze You and inadvertently made them freeze themselves.

(Dialogue in this room:

Michelle: "Uh, I have Trap Sense?"

Zak: "You sense this is a trap.")

 ...and then cast Dispel Magic to make thetiles mundane enough to cross. Halfway through another Lizard Wizard attacks and gets beat up.

All this time Caroline Pierce is taking notes. 

Zak: "You take a lot of notes, CP."

Caroline: "Well the thing is your dungeons are always like a puzzle, none of my other games are like that."

Zak: "I don't know whether that's a compliment or not, but you're still around after 15 years so I'll assume its a compliment."

They investigate some more rooms and pronounce them weird. They are: the room with the snail golem, the room with the light-eating roses, the room with the grape juice.

Then they go into the Gallery section.

Those of you who have played Maze of the Blue Medusa know that in the Gallery section there's a mechanic that speeds up time and spoils food. So the PCs get hungry fast and will start to lose hp if they don't eat.

There are lots of solutions to this--the Create Food and Water spell, moving in and out of the gallery from the peripheral areas around it, stashing food in other places, etc., but a common one among the adventuring classes is cannibalism.

The PCs poke around at the magical artworks, including the paintings that show all the wounds you have, then encounter some cannibal critics! They hate art and want to eat the moron! (Contary to popular belief, Patrick Stuart made these monsters up. They are jussssst this side of too whimsical for me.) The PCs make quick work of them and Michelle's halfling Jinx wastes no time slicing off one's cheek and eating it. Kimberly Kane's cleric of the Great Maggot eats the other. I remind her the Great Maggot has no compunctions about eating flesh.

Elaria, a noble half- elf, abstains.

Soon they find the pit in the middle of the reptile-eye floor mosaic and head inside, down into the Reptile Archive. After accidentally annihilating the Nyctocaust Memorial (a touch-sculpture that is destroyed by light, oops) Elaria takes the multi-lingual warning sign ("please do not use light in this room") to see if she can start to puzzle out other languages from it. Clever.

Soon they wind up in the room with the clockwork needlebirds that tattoo you. They send the moron in first. He gets tattooed to death. Then they send in the pets. The cat gets tattooed to death. Only the terrier escapes.

Elaria helicopters in with her magic morningstar (the Steel Cyclone) and kills the remainder of the birds but it's too late. And she's hungry, losing hit points. She barbecues the cat.

Jinx attached the cat's tail to her hat. "Well we are using every part of the animal".

The rest is conscientiously sliced up into pieces and packaged for later. After a short fight with a chameleon women waiting to ambush them and passing some strips of tattooed flesh and undead bees, the crew winds up in the lair of the Lampen Proletariat, a wax golem who urges revolution against the masters of the Archive.

What will they do???? Find out next time!!!!

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The Testing Chamber

This can be used in any appropriate dungeon or just as its own dungeon. It should keep players busy for an hour or two.

• PCs appear in the chamber colored green. 
• Each of the four doors out of the green room has one symbol: sword, coin, cup, wand.
• Behind each of these doors is a sleeping ogre with a sack of coins worth 100gp. Each ogre is identical to the other three.
• Opening the red doors leads to a magic portal--the portal leads back to the green room.
• To end this loop, each ogre must be overcome by the proper means, which won't be told explicitly to the PCs:
• --The ogre behind the sword door must be defeated (at least partially) by physical attacks
• --The ogre behind the wand door must be defeated (at least partially) by magic
• --The ogre behind the coin door must have his coins taken by the PCs in a nonviolent way
• --The ogre behind the cup door must not be harmed (or robbed) at all--just get to the door
• If an ogre is overcome in the way appropriate to their door, then they will remain in the state they were left (dead, sleeping, etc) any time that door's checked until all 4 of these identical ogres have been properly overcome.
• If an ogre is overcome in an "inappropriate" way, they will reappear in their original state (unharmed and asleep with all their coins) next time their door's opened and any coins taken from that ogre will evaporate.
• Once all four sleeping ogres are overcome in the way appropriate to their door, the PCs still reappear in the green room, but this time each door leads to an ogre that's awake. This is a different ogre (technically a mountain ogre rather than forest ogre) and he has a sack of coins worth 400gp. He must be overcome 4 times in the same ways as above.
• After the mountain ogre, the 4 rooms contain coffins, inside each of which contains 800gp and an (identical) sleeping vampire. She must be overcome 4 times in the same ways as above.
• After the coffin is overcome, the 4 rooms each contain a different vampire (awake) wearing 1200gp worth of jewelry. She must be overcome 4 times in the same ways as above.
• After all that, the test is over and the new, richer PCs can go back to whatever and wherever they were.

Return to the Maze of the Blue Medusa

Oh you all know the Maze of The Blue Medusa, right?

It's the dungeon where Andy Markham of the OSR Facebook Group said "It's definitely one of the best looking books ever published for the OSR, or for RPGs in general," (before he joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.)

...and where Ben Milton from Questing Beast said "One of the biggest releases, I think, in the history of D&D publishing", (before he joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.)

...and where Ken Hite of Trail of Cthulhu "Let's put it this way: it's a dungeon you actually want to read the prose in. To grown adults." (before he also joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.)

...and where Tim Brannan from The Other Side blog said "After 36+ years of gaming, precious little seems 'new' to me. This feels new." (before he, too, sadly joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.) 

...and where Monte Cook said "Clearly jam-packed with awesome ideas." (before he as well joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.) 

I wonder if they went back to feeling that way now that I successfully sued five times about this bullshit? I recommend asking them. I recommend asking them any chance you get. Anyway, I always liked it.

So the girls were in a spot of bother

After successfully handling the giant shrikes and some adventures in the Scorned Mountains, the girls...

Caroline Pierce aka Elaria, Half-Elf Ranger

Michelle aka Jinx, Halfling thief

Kimberly Kane aka Dr Feargood, tiefling cleric

...were given an assignment by Dr Feargood's Church of the Great Maggot to clear out a fortress full of moon priestesses and werewolves.

To make a long story short, things went poorly, they lost the element of surprise and several henchmen, their pet giant turned against them and they wound up surrounded, low on hit points and in need of escape. Luckily, Jinx had a book containing a ritual that allows you to teleport away to The Maze of the Blue Medusa. They used it, the session ended.

It's been ages since any of the players were in the Maze playtests and none of these characters have been, so its fun to see how it handles after a few years...

1. In the standard Maze, you steal the painting to open a portal to this room. In this case, they were transported in an emergency by a spell so I figured the painting wasn't actually in the room. There's just a space where it use to be.

The girls decided to rest 8 hours and get back hit points, abetted by a magic lock that could lock any door. I rolled 8 hours of random encounters but the only things that could past the door was Torcul Wort, a friendly ghost, and Pellory-of-the-Walls--usually a dangerous plant monster that could've TPKd the party but luckily the ranger had read a book (The Green Opus: Leveling up with this book allows the PC to know all the stats and abilities of any plant monster on a successful Int roll of 10 or better, received as treasure in some adventure) that gave her info on plant monsters, so they made short work of Pellory.

2. After a refreshing sleep behind a barricade they came out met the artifact hoarding dragon-woman Lady Crucem Capilli.

"So she's all blue, and has like, ram-like horns on either side and..."

"Wait, is she hot?"

(The girls always ask this.)

"Yes, she's hot."

So Jinx tries to flirt the Lady into telling her where things in the Maze are but that's not The Lady's way. The party agrees to fetch her some items for some cash-as-xp because they're in need of a motivation anyway so that all works out.

They take a look through the archways:

3. The room where you can fall through shadows into a floor is always fun. The girls think to throw a lantern in their first and notice it sinks partially into the floor. They decide fuck this room.

4. They look down into the vertiginous tangle of the Escher stairs and think well probably also fuck this room.

7. Poking the floor in 7 causes Cyanoxantha, the Living Mosaic, to speak:

The first to cross these coils must dance,

The second, sing to safety reach,

The third must bleed or risk mischance,

The fourth one dies between my teeth,

The next will be the first once more,

And do not cheat, I’m keeping score.

That's an immediate 'Nope' because nothing is more fearful than poetry.

Being like "Ok, we gotta go somewhere..." they eventually pick the stairs.

4. (again) Jinx bravely sends her war terrier, Kevin, to investigate by throwing a biscuit onto the stairs. Kevin luckily rolls a Nat 20 when the stairs violently re-orient midway down which reveals their magic, and allows Kevin to avoid becoming one of the corpses at the bottom of them.

Dr Feargood (played as she is by longtime barbarian Kimberly Kane) briefly considers going back into room 2 and just beating the shit out of Lady CC before accepting that the stairs are are a problem that can basically be solved with rope. They decide the locked door's not worth the trouble and head into the dark fastness of Subfoetens and his Filomel Shell.

8. Since the girls aren't carrying much treasure, the Shell is perfectly happy to let them pass while it tries to keep Subfoetens asleep. 

Jinx tries to talk to it. It goes "Sssh!", points to the sleeping baby, and keeps singing its lullaby.

Frustratedly, she mimes uselessly for a bit, then threatens "Let us pass or else!" with sword drawn at which point I remind her the Shell is not in the way and they can just walk past to the next room and they do. 

9. On the rope bridge through the next passage, I roll a random encounter and its the Decadent Waste--a valuable mechanical hummingbird that leads you into danger.

They remember they have a net, catch it in one round, and then try to figure out how to get back to Lady Crucem C to sell it.

7. (again) They prod the living mosaic again, this time from the north end. It delivers its second spiel:

You didn't listen to my rhyme

And talked amongst yourselves like fools

You’ll pay attention more next time

Now risk your death to find my rules

It's deal with this shit or go back the way they came, so they opt to deal. Jinx tosses a dust that distorts magic onto the mosaic, making the serpent only partially able to become three-dimensional. Dr Feargood using a potion of being invisible to reptiles to sneak over and deliver a Nat 20 to it while Elaria bashes it with her magic morningstar. After getting bit twice, Jinx coup-de-graces it with a silver rock hammer she picked up somewhere.

2. Back to Capelli to get paid for the hummingbird, more flirting.

1. Back to the start. Door closed. Magic lock in place.

They try to sleep but after 15 minutes there's a pounding noise--six chameleon women start trying to machete the door open. 

Dr Feargood lives up to her reputation and Causes Fear to one of them and Elaria takes the rest--luckily these were the first Chameleon Woman encounter so they were just 1HD hatchlings. 

The girls close and lock the door again. Maybe next time they'll be lucky and no more random encounters? Maybe KK won't have a migraine? Who can say? Find out in the next episode!

Starting to think 4chan's not a reliable source of information on games

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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