Gnolls, Nuns, Sneaking, Bobbi Starr, Unicorns (new I Hit It With My Axe)

New I Hit It With My Axe!

"I want to shoot a child with my bow and arrow"
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Take the Rubies from the Demon's Eyes

Gen Con is, of course, massive--a brief Disneyland of gaming and of gamers.

However, if you ignore miniatures, boardgames, scenery shops, card game tournaments,"My other shirt is chainmail" merchshops and then run around just looking at and talking to people putting out tabletop RPGs, going to their parties and events, asking about their jobs, a strange thing quickly becomes clear:

While there is a pecking order in the industry, and there are people with and without power, and there are winners and losers, the actual aristocracy of the RPG industry (in addition to being demographically exactly what you'd expect) is:

-Tiny

-Slow

-Relatively powerless

and

-Not particularly internally cohesive

To take the Ennies as an example: Neither D&D nor Pathfinder got the most Ennies. Ken Hite and his co-writer Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan won for Dracula Dossier--a sourcebook for a relatively unpopular game with by no means lavish production values or pictures. Why did it win? It's a smart concept, well-written, by a respected author. Next most Ennies was a tie between Robin Laws (for Greatest Hit Feng Shui getting a new edition) and us (with first-time publisher Satyr Press). Even the most bald-faced marketing-vulnerable fan vote award during a dramatic surge in D&D's popularity as a product recognizes that the mainstream is kinda meh. And the mainstream can't do anything about it.

Other indicators:

-There was not a single RPG bigwig I talked to who hadn't heard of Stacy's female-run auxiliary subCon, Contessa.

-Nobody this year has put out more extensively illustrated color RPGs than LotFP and Satyr.

-People working for the "larger" indies still had to reach out to people they barely knew to work their GenCon tables.

-Nobody with their name on anything is more than a degree of Kevin Bacon from anybody else.

-Freelancers working for major publishers kept saying they wished they could do the kind of stuff we do.

-Everything seriously competing with Maze had crews 3-4 times the size working on it.

-LotFP and Satyr are paying out-of-pocket and profiting off larger, more impressive products than shit more established companies have to run Kickstarters to put out.

-Magpie Games pissed off half the Indie establishment just before the con (including folks at the company that put out award-magnet Feng Shui) and still turned a tidy profit.

-I ran an ad hoc 9-person game of D&D for hours in a bar with the entirety of White Wolf's GenCon presence in attendance and happily rolling.

The bar for entry is as low as it's been since the wargame days, and DIY RPG output has never been better. In the past, I've pointed out that by DIYing it you can make more money than pretty much any RPG freelancer, right now I'm going to go farther:

If the DIY RPG scene wants to, in less than 5 years it can run this town.

Just by hanging out and talking games and not putting up with the usual bullshit, we have accidentally created a monster. We've always known we can out-write, out-design, and out-draw the mainstream, but what I'm telling you is folks like Stacy D and Kiel C and Raggi and Ken at Satyr are proving we can out-organize them and out-market them, too, and this pond is small enough that that's about all that matters. All the boxes are ticked.

The mainstream, with these full-timers whose lives depend on the next RPG paycheck, has dwindled down to such a consistent lowest-common-denominator aesthetic just to pay the bills it's getting sick of itself. Years chasing some elusive imaginary middlebrow customer have taken their toll on them. Yeah, they have licenses. And in 2016 that gets you fuck-all.

We can do this. There are three hurdles:

-You need to clear time on your calendar to make your thing.

-You need to coordinate with folks you probably already know or are 1 degree of Bacon away from to get the thing out there. Make sure it is written, illustrated and produced as well as can possibly be done. Do not half-ass any of those three elements.

-We all need to work together to recognize who is doing good work and cross-promote. Pool resources and exchange audiences.

Goodman Games, Mythmere, Hydra Collective, Lamentations, Gygax Magazine, Sine Nomine, people putting out indie products like Yoon-Suin, everybody: there is simply more substance and better, fresher, more excited personnel there than anywhere else.  The mainstream does not have the talent or the energy to get in your way.

D&D with Porn Stars will be throwing a party next Gen Con. It'll be big and it'll be loud and it'll be a year in the making and the paint will peel from the walls. If you can read this, you are invited. If you're going to put out a game thing, you're gonna show up and you're gonna help us. You have a year to plan.

The Bastille waits, and the guards are drunk.

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All About The Halfling (new I Hit It With My Axe)

New episode up!

This one's all about Connie.
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Dear Mandy We Won Some Ennies

Stokely and Stoya say hi

11:10 AM Fri Aug 6

Dear Mandy,

Before I say anything else, I promised James I'd say this:

Maze of the Blue Medusa Just Won 3 Ennies & Is At Booth 3002. They'll be gone before Christmas so get two, actually. Ok...

Anyway, except for the noise of this keyboard, it's very quiet in room 387. There is some very light snoring coming from the bed, I can't tell if it's Stoya or Stokely.

It's muggy in Indianapolis, a lot things are painted either beige or cream. Otherwise it could be anywhere.

I was at a party last night with the Playing At The World guy and of course he read that Robin Laws book about the history of the Gen Con. I asked him if anything had ever happened at the convention and he corkscrewed up his face thinking and then said "Well, Magic The Gathering was announced here".

I mention this for the following reason: I've seen men decide to spend their lives driving around the country freezing insects, I have seen men claim in all seriousness that a stick figure is ableist, I have seen them say the most stressful part of Dungeons & Dragons is picking a name,  I've seen the news basically ignore a mad throat-cutter in Japan taking out 19 people last week, I've seen a married, mentally ill, asexual mom get paid to write about sex for years. Some of these people are here. Some of them in an official capacity where they might have access to box cutters. So it doesn't seem completely out of the realm of 2016 America that I will be murdered at Gen Con. We are in the nerdiest place in the world (check attendance figures: maybe in history) and people care about very strange things, and there are no metal detectors. But it seems unlikely. Gen Con is not, as a rule, rich with incident--it would be wildly out of character. Plus the girls' cameraphones are--through some witchery I cannot as yet penetrate--always charged. So worry less. I'll probably survive, and after that eight days in the Balkans making some kind of pornography.

Everyone has been very kind. Within 15 minutes of appearing at my first con, 3 fans came up, one of whom said I got him his first girlfriend. I'd taken out the title page to his Maze and written "Glad I could get you laid, thanks for..." when he told me it unfortunately hadn't gotten that far yet. There are virgins here. It's kind of like AVN that way. He, at least, was very young. The only scary thing about cons is when you see in someone's face that this is all they have. I always think the best people who work in fantasy--the Jack Vances, the Dave Arnesons, the Jean-Luc Godards, the Scrap Princesses--they show how this can be an organic part of something else.

The only clear imperative in Indianapolis is to find a decent bar, preferably one with brass fittings and pickle chips and one of those bartenders who doesn't know anything about games but asks questions anyway. I don't really know what their specialty is in Indianapolis besides beef--I'm unconsciously imagining it's apples because of the name but that's stupid. It's nice once in a while though to go into a situation not really wanting anything.

Whenever I leave town, Anne starts to get maternal -- she's already checked that I had enough toilet paper for the two days I'll be back before I head out to Croatia, and made sure that I had condoms. She spent the last hour of the trip sewing up holes in these jeans. You will be pleased to know  downtown Los Angeles has become yet more Blade Runner in your absence--Spring street now has a wonderful blue neon sign: just numbers. Hannah is playing a chameleon woman Paladin--her third character in four sessions, Morgan has a witch with one hit point per level forever at least until her Constitution goes up.

Connie played a sea elf wizard and took off just before I did, leaving behind the Visible Woman and a copy of the Canticle for Liebowitz. Stacy is doing the lord's work at Contessa, had to get up fuck-all early. She was nominated for the Diana Jones and, like Vornheim, didn't get it--a guy at dinner said "Hey, I lost the Diana Jones to Wil Wheaton".

We've had some interesting Lyft drivers--the first one was a championship bicycle racer who'd been chased by a fox. I think the other three were religious, I forgot walking around Indiana with an upside-down cross on your shirt is kind of a thing. Stokes is good at distracting people, though--she's been an invaluable asset. It's funny seeing her next to people dressed as Harley Quinn. Stoya's shy with strangers but super into obscure RPG trivia.

The Ennies round up: Feng Shui and Kenneth Hite won almost everything that we didn't. Nobody shitty won anything. Overwhelmingly glasses guys, Shanna Germain and like 3-4 other women won stuff, Mark Diaz Truman was the only not-white person, so far as I know. Stoya got bored with the lack of diversity and told Stokes to fingerbang her, but Stokes just played with her nipples.

I thanked Anton, Patrick, and Satan. If I'd had more time up there I would've thanked you--a lot of this stuff is just about keeping you entertained. Please get well soon.

But anyway no assassins, and it's been 16 hours and still no Internet lynchmobs. It's probably not completely over (we'll see around the announcement of The Big Thing this fall) but the goblins seem demoralized even if they'll never give up attacking us completely. The facts are on our side but you never talk and I make a terrible victim.

Hunter S Thompson said "You'll be flogged for being right and flogged for being wrong and it hurts both ways but it doesn't hurt as much when you're right"--so they'll always hurt more than we do. They'll always be good at performing pain because theirs will always be accompanied by the creeping suspicion that they're just being idiots.

In the end the basic rule serves better than most more detailed instructions: whatever they tell you to do, don't do it.

I love you. We won. Again.

-Zak

Schedule for GenCon Stalkers!

Starting Thursday August 4th

Starting now Vornheim, Red & Pleasant Land, Death Frost Doom revised by me and Maze of the Blue Medusa will be available at Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Booth 3002.

Also a handful of signed copies of Maze of the Blue Medusa plus "Play D&D & Worship Satan" shirts and free "Zak Sabbath Saved D&D" will be available at Sigh Co Graphics, Booth 943

There are not a lot of books available due to the vast distances the various parties have had to travel to get to GenCon and the fast-sellingness of the books involved, so move like the wind. 

Friday August 5th

3:30-4 Me, Charlotte, and a secret D&D W/ Porn Star who doesn't want to deal with the inevitable consequences of any pre-GenCon hype announcing who she is and where she'll be will arrive and hang out probably mostly around booth 3002 or just walk around because none of us have ever been to a game convention before.

8pm is the Ennie awards, which I figured I should go to this year since we're up for 5 of them. If the hall's too packed when you get there, remember: it's possible the harassers who walked out last year will walk out again, which'll free up some space.

I have no particular post-Ennie plans but apparently if I win again it will probably start raining blood so dress appropriately.

Saturday August 6th

2:50pm somebody's interviewing me, which I'm putting here mostly so I remember but if you are one of Brie's friends mentioned above and want to have yourself suckerpunching me and being dragged off by security while porn stars yell at you and your woke friends declare I deserved it because I said Torchbearer sucked immortalized in HD, there you go.

Around 3-5pm I might be hanging around Sigh Co (booth 943) and will sign something if you bring it.

5-6pm I will be definitely signing books at LotFP (booth 3002)

Game industry pals, hit me up at Zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm if you don't already have my cell.

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Mandy's Ringo Walk (New I Hit It With My Axe)

Still haven't heard back from Paizo about their employee harassing us last week, hope that gets sorted before Gen Con.

Also, there's a Maze of the Blue Medusa actual play from Ropecon.
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The (Incredibly Weak) Case Against James Raggi

As will surprise nobody, Mark Diaz Truman continues to receive abuse for calling out some broken stairs and harassment in the Indie game community. The project of pressuring Mark to abandon his principles is aided and abetted by the fact that for some reason nobody in that community ever asks for evidence to back up accusations.

Lots of folks are whaling on me--of course--but I saw some collateral damage in one public thread and if we don't provide facts we're no better than they are.

So: you can see some pretty harrowing accusations here against James Raggi, publisher of Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

So, the evidence: The threads the accuser is referring to are here (you gotta be in James' circles to read it) and here. You can judge for yourself.

If you want to support James during these trying times, you can get something cool at the LotFP store.

Edit Aug 2, 6:03 pm Pacific Time:

I got 2 reports in the last hour about the person who harassed James quitting G+. The second one suggested James' harasser had received some kind of threat from some other harasser.

Obviously: do not do that, don't send threats of any kind to people. Do this instead.
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