"Up from the OSR" - The Redemption of Satine Phoenix?

The other week my year and a half Isle of Dread campaign ended, and also the campaigns of a couple of my players I was involved in. Especially since I rarely sit down as a player, and like to have campaigns be a year or less long, I am kind of burned out on DnD. I am involved in some supers stuff to learn Marvel Multiverse RPG, but for right now I am sort of looking back on my gaming life of the last decade or so and find myself thinking about the advent of the OSR and personalities therein I have followed or even had brief experiences with to some degree or another. So I thought I might touch upon some of the more interesting ones over a few posts. 

(I should note that as I maybe mention multiple times below, that I have zero insider information about Satine Phoenix, Jamison Stone, Zak Smith, or anybody I might namecheck here. All my knowledge, true or not, about the situation comes from following other media over the years. All written about here should be taken with a grain of salt). 

(also please note, as alluded to above, a lot of this stuff from 10 to 15 years ago is part of a fading memory. The last 5 years is easy to research. Not so much 2015 or thereabouts. I am not a journalist nor obviously a professional writer. I'm not here to make accusations. Going by memory banks means I may mix up people in my mind and such. So if anything here needs clarification due to you having info or a better memory than mine, please let me know)

How about I start with somebody whose trajectory the last decade plus has been kind of fascinating to me, Dungeons and Dragons media communities own bon Vivant, Satine Phoenix?

When I started this blog around 15 years ago I was fairly unaware of a lot that was already going on in the OSR. I had first stumbled upon Grognardia when I got back into DMing after a handful of years off from it, which inspired me to post about my own old school experiences. But you could not go far in the rpg Blogosphere without finding out about the Zak Smith gang of the time. 

Besides the Zak blog, they were doing the I Hit it with My Axe show. Both the blog and the videos, due in large part to a porn connection, had a "hey cum look at me!" factor that just demanded you take a look. So I did.

I always found watching other people play DnD was about as much fun as watching flies' fuck. The few minutes I looked had me mostly wondering what having half your head shaved was supposed to represent at that time. The players were pretty much porn actor girls without makeup, who were about as interesting as porn actors usually are in interviews and such. And always looking very different than their heavily made-up video versions. You can look at one of the many docs and specials with names such as "Dark Side of Porn. It's never as interesting as you thought it might be. YMMV. 

Even to this day I have little patience for even big play videos like Critical Role. So I cannot judge. But for Satine it seemed the first step towards a career that did not involve some fairly extreme endeavors of the past. 

The least graphic pic I could find of 
Satine's early work.

If you Google her name, make sure you have Safe Search on if at work or your significant other is around. Even putting "DnD" in the search will still serve up some video nasties.

Look, Satine apparently had a rough childhood. It pretty much had to do with her father. Enough said regarding that. But young women who go through this stuff often end up in adult entertainment. Growing up in LA I have known some folk involved in porn..not high end, for what it is worth, but neither were those associated with RPG porn actor gamers like Zak Smith and Satine. I think Sasha Grey was perhaps the most well known of that bunch, and her stuff was from an early 2000's fascination with gross acts with mass amounts of human fluid, and it is common for people from abusive childhoods to end up in it, sadly. If they find some kind of fame beyond the sex work more power to them. And Satine was and is trying for that fame, albeit of the small pond variety tabletop gaming exists in. Certainly, steps up from backroom S&M. Moreso up from badly lit amateur home video threesomes with Zak and Mandy Morbid. But you can do your own research on that.

Matt can't wait to get home 
and fire up Pornhub

Outside of the Zak sphere in the mid to later 2000's, I eventually noticed that Satine was heavily involved in various things at a Los Angeles comic shop called "Meltdown Comics" (which I understand closed a few years ago). Besides some kind of art classes she was involved in, I recall they were charging for folks to play with Satine there. Sure, shops might charge for table use. But this seemed to be about forking over a bit extra to play with a porn "star." I remember pics of her on the Meltdown meetup page with some of the shop players at Magic Castle in Los Angeles, and I have to imagine they were paying to go with her. I recall some people online gaming with Satine and Mandy Morbid and probably others, paying a few bucks an hour to have games run for them. Satine was hustling, putting the legwork into monetizing the incels of the hobby.  

Nothing wrong with any of this. I mean, other stuff she got paid to do is certainly not on the glamorous side of porn. I also remember her posting about her birthday party at the comic shop, and how several hundred dollars' worth of stuff was stolen and she was begging for the return. Potentially something that can happen due to the type of dudes who pay for playing DnD with someone involved in porn. I do recall feeling a bit sorry for her then in regard to that. The comic shops I loved and lived near were on the west side of LA (world famous Hi Di Ho in Santa Monica, started by a dude on my dad's pub dart team) compared to Meltdowns Hollywood home, but I followed what was up on the Meltdown meetup page because they were involved in all kinds of stuff besides art and DnDing with a porn person. 

Below is some doings at Meltdown over a decade ago. She is positive and having fun. Satine clearly involved in some kind of Kickstarter, and years later Kickstarters are a big part of her life, but not in a positive way. Stay tuned. 

When The Zak n' Mandy stuff went down, Satine was quick to disavow Zak and be on team Mandy. That never resolved. I think I saw Zak somewhere say she had to because of her other DnD official associations. She moved on from Zak World, which some might say was not a bad thing. She was on her way in the cleaner DnD world. She was a community manager for what that is worth. I honestly still don't know what that means. Was it a paying job?

I think around those pre-covid times Satine was showing up in other, higher profile places. Will Wheaton's Tabletop show had an appearance by her, and other Geek and Sundry bits. And she popped up in the Rick and Morty comic for a couple panels. At this time she was always wearing these elf ear prosthetics, which was part of the brand I guess. 

A hunny fitty is a long way from paying 10 bucks
at Meltdown Comics for Satine DnD and pancakes.

It is up for debate of course, but one has to imagine that there might have been something similar to the Meltdown comics situation. I mean, does having somebody who was fairly involved in porn for a few years make a project more appealing to aforementioned incels? Adding the whiff of snizz to Geek and Sundrey projects? 

One kind of high-profile project around that early Covid time was Destination Fantastic, what was meant to be a sort of DnD themed travel show featuring "Ears" Phoenix and some guy I was not really aware of who owned a mini manufacturing company. I think they maybe managed an episode or two but I believe the Kickstarter failed. But enough money for a free trip or two overseas I guess. More on possible free trips later..

Did he or didn't he? Ah, I think
we would be able to tell if he did. 
On the other hand, I forget his name
but I think it has the word "Poke" in it. 

Post covid I was not paying much attention to these personalities. I was too busy with my new phase of the hobby...running games on Roll20 and ignoring the fading OSR. I didn't even live in LA anymore. I heard nothing about Satine for at least a couple of years. Then her latest controversy popped up. A big one. In a nutshell Satine had hooked up with a bicep-flashing gym meat head gamer/self-help guru/maybe wanna be cult leader named Jamison Stone. 

Jamison is challenging you to a 
pull up contest, fatty bombatty..

My initial impressions of the guy was that he was Zak Smith if he went to the gym 3 hours a day. The Jamison and Satine whirlwind romance was full of Kickstarters and DnD events in castles and on cruises for some big bucks. Also apparently working as personal life coaches. His self-help book at the time, "Dye your hair, paint your nails, and wear bicep ties for a new you!" was a best seller. I read about that somewhere in something..

Actually, Stone was on the hustle years before getting with Satine. He wrote a book and when promoting he was already getting those bicep pythons pumped and dressing up like characters from works he was involved in. 

So author, cosplayer, and life coach to help you with your needs, mere mortal!

They will for sure improve your eye shadow and 
glitter application game

They apparently had a ton of irons in the fire. Even in the early days of his relationship with Satine, Stone seemed to have a kind of communal living thing going on with his Apotheosis Studios creatives, who he had living with him on a property in Colorado. Check out this not too terribly long video by a young couple who were cosplay professionals and streamers who had a tough time of it living under Jamison's shadow for some weeks. As there are in many comments and opinions by those who dealt with Satine and Jamison, the word "cult" comes up fairly often. 

                                                        Lucy, you got some bitchin' to do!

Their wedding at Garycon, or wherever, in a velvet roped-off hotel bar and got tongues clicking. I mean, they shut down the bar at a big convention for two hours and was very velvet-ropey.  

With a guest list that was a literal "Who's that?"
of minor Geek and Sundry celebs circa 2019-2022.
Jason Charles Miller and Amy Vopal? Count
me in! Oh, wait, I'm not invited..

This looks like that fucked up opening
ceremony of the last Olympic Games

Their final Kickstarter, I have to admit, looked kind of interesting to me. Battle of the Bards. A bardic campaign for bards with lot of people running bards and bard NPC's and bard magic and hopefully some bitchin' bard Pok(orny)ing. 

That's Satine. You know. The brand. 
Pretty cool image though. I don't do 
Kickstarters but I had interest in this.

They even had themselves inserted as major NPC's. Since Jamison barely looked real to me, I guess him being a DnD character is about right.

Witch Bolt. I'm betting 
he's doing a Witch Bolt. 

So Kickstarters and appearances and podcasts and even an honest to god game company. Apotheosis Studios. Working on Battle of the Bards and all that.

Some of it looks cool. But also there is plenty of cringe to go along with cool looking bits. And not I don't think that is Satine singing. 

I have no inside info, but when all the shit was going down over for around a year I started hearing that they, especially Stone, were not very nice people to do business with. Its kind of all over the place. A lot of shit in a short about of time. The first thing I recall is a somewhat famous tattoo artist was hired by Jamison and Satine and treated him like shit personally and professionally. The artist was later quoted saying he was “insulted, berated, and talked down to as if I was a lesser person.”

 

That there becomes a common thread. Satine and her main man were treating people like peon pieces of shit. Employees, contracted writers and other talent. And the pair, in a certain place of power in gaming and its monetization at this point, were supposedly making a lot of threats about deplatforming people. Here is one example of Stone's request for a personal apology, I think to the tattoo guy..

Hear this; if you want people to treat you like an adult and/or professional, you need to act like one. You have yet to do this. And your carelessness only continues to disappoint me and make the situation worse for yourself. I’m done [interacting] with you […] The only way I can see you salvaging the situation for yourself, both personally and professionally is to write me (and Satine if you so choose) a genuine letter of apology, taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. If you decide to do this, I expect it to be through the post, not email. You have my address.

Put it in perspective of the time. These two considered themselves self-help gurus. And why not? Such careers can get you huge cult like followings. They offered people around them, fans and simps, costly training in life stuff. And went for it. And Satine was talking in some interviews that her exposure to fantasy role play has given her certain mental powers to help others, and other kind of disturbing stuff. 

Pretty sure Leader Stone can
look into your brain as well. 
You know, cuz all that DnD
in his noggin..

Apparently Jamison and Satine liked to throw around their accrued weight in the pro part of the hobby be berating people, acting all high and mighty, and on many occasions threatening to, and actually having people cancelled out of the professional side of gaming. Both Stone and Satine. To the guy who was burned on tattoo work, when he chimed in with some complaints on his treatment, got this message from stone. Lot of such messages to many people would eventually pop up.

and blurbs like this were common...

I believe every word of Chad’s post. This is nearly identical to my own experience. It was the most awful working environment. Jamison Stone repeatedly threatened & berated myself and other freelancers. I had never felt more taken advantage of in my life.

-This comes from Tristan and Katie who hired the pair as guests for a livestream of PAX West. They detail mistreatment at the hands of the pair, including being lectured for drinking more than one glass of wine, getting berated for mishandling a suitcase, and being relegated from employer to assistant.

They knew they could “ruin anyone [they] wanted with a single tweet.”

Finding out about Tristan and Katie was what really made me perk up. By then there was already an appalling amount of rough bits and pieces coming to light about Satine and Jamison's alleged horrible treatment of people. But these two young people really put it over the edge. Brian W. Foster, a Critical Role minor personality (who had his own controversies and cancellation soon after) streamed hours of material on this, including a long interview with the pair that had harrowing tales of their experience with Satine and Stone at Pax West. 

Tristan and Katie were rising stars at a streaming company or something, and they had arranged through work to pay Satine and Jamison to appear on a stream at Pax. Through T and K were literally the bosses, our heroes S and J were said to have treated them as unloved peasant servants from the get go. Pick up coffee at Starbucks early in the morn and bring it to them. This is the worst to me. A Starbucks near a convention hotel is going to have a line out the door by 6AM. You can practically hear in your mind Satine and Stone talking about this in the hotel and laughingly deciding their bosses should shlep for them. At the con the bosses were made to carry all their bags and such throughout the day. 

At one point they got berated for not making sure S and J's coffee was accounted for. They had left their own coffee on a lobby table or something and their bosses were expected to make sure this did not happen. Satine and Stone also got pretty personal with them, each taking the significant other aside to give them the life coach shit they both thought they were experts in. Jamison told Tristan how to be more of a man in his relationship, and also workout advice because he was "soft around the edges." 

Tristan and Katie were young people trying to move up in the company they were working for. So they went along with Satine and Stones treatment, because what else? They were hoping associating with the latest thing in gaming communities would be a step up for them. So they shlepped, they got up at dawn to get coffee for two infant terribles, and followed them along the con floors as S and S held our their hands to various merchants for free swag. 

So this came out, and the damn was opened. All the shit they were allegedly up to became well known in gaming circles. People were speaking up. Posting in forums and on youtube. 

There is enough material to fill a book at that point, but the long and short of it the meanie bobeanies had to make a plan. First up was Satines public apology. 

Satine cried, whimpered, round about blamed the victims for taking the abuse, and talked about her career being over..

Right off the bat, she says her "partner is being bullied" and now she can't do what she wants. Here it becomes all about her "trauma" and yeah, trauma begats causing trauma sometimes. Those abused by a parent often end up abusers. But I always thought being abused is no good excuse for being an abuser. 

The cancelling of various con events occurred. Satine thrashed about a bit, then mostly vanished as far as I can tell eventually.

As Tenkar explains below, Stone took the hit. Purposefully. Clearly the plan was to save the brand, which probably much to Jamison's chagrin meant him biting the bullet. He talks among other things about how mental illness guides his passions (I think) and that he is going to do some serious self-reflection (I guess). And Satine was glad to NOT share the blame.

The most recent Kickstarter, Battle of the Bards, did not deliver. You can go in and read the comments from angry donators going years back now. Though I have heard there has been some movement in fulfilling some things, but there will be no full boat. Satine pleads poverty to a degree. See below about her trips to Bali.

Before mostly going into the shadows, Satine began her main excuse of her own mental issues making her not the best person she could be (and making her be mean to peons). 

In the couple of years since I was not much aware of Satine stuff. Jamison certainly went away. 

Well, not away from Satine. Long enough that Satine emerged a year or two later with revelations that she divoced her husband, who she claims was mentally and physically abuse. Most harrowing sounding was multiple chocking's which she claims changed her voice. Yow. 

When Satine started popping up more and more the last year or so, she was still involved in stuff. Back to life coaching. Apparently she was claiming to be a professor of human anatomy, though I can't really find citations on that. And twice in the last year or so, the second time very recently, she has gone on extended trips to Bali.

She claims Stone took the money and ran. But going to Bali and doing yoga and eating high end food and all that would cost most of us several thousand dollars at the very least. I read somebody postulating that Satine had some "benefactor." and consider some of her background I suppose that could be the case. She has also apparently gone on fantastic vacations to Aspen. But what cost mental wellness, right? 

Satine most recently is clearly trying to get back in the lucrative gaming space. She has appeared on some podcasts and such talking about her experiences, mental health, and getting back in the space. 

She did a couple interviews for this (not very highly viewed) podcast. And it is clearly about making her look good. There are many edits. Also , after some light convo, they ask her about the controversies and she is all "Oh man I really didn't want to talk about this" when c'mon, this shit was about talking about this to get the redemption train moving. It's hard to tell the sincerity of self-improvement. I try and often fail. We all try to be better people. I guess being happy is the best way to feel improved. I hope Satine is happy, and truly is trying to be better to not just herself but to the people she has some kind of power over. Assuming she gets back in that space. 

Jamison "Light" Stone is still into life coaching in Colorado. Apparently far away from the gaming space. There seems to be less glitter and eye shadow, and those trademark bicep ties are gone (though the pythons are still properly pumped). 

Human Excellence Coaching — The Stone Protocol

The Last Isle of Dread Campaign and too much DnD

Last week I finished up my latest Isle of Dread campaign. It has pretty much been a year and a half of mostly weekly sessions. 

I have used Isle of Dread a bunch of times since I was a kid. I remember at around 17 years old at Loscon, a Southern California Sci Fi convention, with my girlfriend, my best friend and his GF, and a couple of other dude friends (we all usually played DnD together) spending around 8 or 9 hours over two late nights in one of our rooms sitting around the little hotel room table making a quick trip to The Isle of Dread. I managed to cram in a sea voyage with a surprise stowaway assassin attack and a fire, landing at the island native villages, and trekking to the plateau and partying with alchohol and sex loving Rakasta up in the clouds. I don't recall for sure, but I think we did do the plateau dungeon in the days after the convention. But the point is I had early memories of this module and have used it every several years in a major way. In later in life campaigns, I had a campaign "The Pagos Trading Company" where characters helped a start up trade company travel to the Island and start up a trading post. Though the Pagos company is defunct, one of its old merchants still works out of the trading post and even has a tiki bar! 

I know that sounds like its a busy place now, but it is still hard to get to. You know, that mysterious fog and monsters and pirates and etc. And the main island is as wild as ever. 

I really vetted hard to get a good group of players. The online forums and Discords with the best odds to reach potential players have become, at times, wastelands of lame and weird usernames and particular expectations. But I have gotten good at picking my shots. And I did not rush those early games. You might call them several sessions 1's. I started with a solid player, Christine, who had advertised on Roll20 looking for a campaign, and I sort of team up with her to get a few others together. Some good ones that remained. A couple that ended up not working, but by around sessions 4 I had a solid group of people.  And pretty much all those of us played together for that long year and a half. 

I did not rush them to the Isle of Dread. I hooked them up with Merlot Von Tanmoor, a very connected (knows the queen and proves it) wizard and academic from old Tanmoor money. I used him in the last couple of campaigns as an easy patron type. The characters included a couple of freshly arrived drow from the deep. A gnome artificer who also considered herself an archeologist, and who quickly became a mentee of history professor Merlot. Also Kork the dragonborn cleric. That was fun because Dragonborn are newly showing up in my originally 1st ed. setting. 

Merlot took them to the opera in a carriage one night, and the characters role played for an hour in it though the ride was probably only 20 minutes. He took them to a major party he threw for connected people and fought assassins there and later in the street. Got arrested for the street fight and I played rap music for that scene inside the precinct with them in chains and we all laughed.

They spent nights drinking at Merlots haunted estate house, and enjoyed the city through second level, then went to the island. All this time there was great role-play, engagement with my stuff, and I was really loving it all. 

An eventful couple of week sea journey, meeting the Tanaroa natives and drinking at the old Pagos tiki bar on the beach. Kork, and orphan who grew up back in the Tanmoor healing gods cathedral, found the secret society of silver dragonborn expats from the mainland that his parents were from. Fought a recurring group of Allosaurus the islanders called "The Seven Brothers," saved villagers from the big pirate camp. All the good stuff. Everything but the plateau (where now instead of the old dungeon I have the spaceship from Barrier Peaks). 

Never went there tho..

The campaign rolled along on the reg. In those early months I had some rough times. I had a family member pass, and I had a long struggle with a persistent sinus infection that could have killed me (takes forever to see a specialist in this town) and a surgery for it that could have blinded me. But the games were so much fun. So much great character interaction. In a good way (mostly) I could barely get a word in sometimes. I like to say, "Sometimes you run the game. Sometimes the game runs you." But I loved it. 

But it let me kick back a lot. The scenarios and campaign had a slow progression, combined with all of them pretty much were Eastern time zone, and since I like to start games at night we usually only played three hours. But for online gaming I have really specialized in getting a lot done in a short amount of time, even with all that role playing. And as a veteran DM, especially with people you are meeting online, I have come to understand most campaigns will not get to their conclusion. Live for the now.  

Early this year, maybe four or so months after my campaign was in swing and my rough times of late 2024, a couple of my regulars started their own games on other nights. Kate, a 24 year old from Tennessee who had an odd Slenderman fixation (who knew there was a "Slenderverse"?) and had a great energy also had a Legend of Zelda fandom, and was starting a campaign based in Hyrule (look it up if you don't know). She invited me and the players to play in it. I was the only one who bit. I mean, Breath of the Wild is a modern favorite of mine, and outside of the original game it was my entryway into the world. K was having trouble getting players at first, so I decided to play to be supportive (always the road to hell is paved with kind intentions). A week later she had found several people WAY into the "Zeldaverse" and pretty much all also aficionados of Pokemon, Digimon, whateverthefuckmon, and furry stuff etc etc. I mean, it was LBGTplus plus plus plus. But hey, I have had such in my games of recent years, but this was next level snowflaky floof 🌈.

I have to admit, K is creative, but I was just not into the Zelda stuff, the creatures and lore and all that. Though I had been playing BOTW for a long time, I could never get the names of the creatures correct. That shit did not matter to me in a video game. It was basically 5th ed DnD, but everything skewed to harken to stuff from a dozen different versions of this setting across games that are only slightly connected to each other. I invested myself into this character, a ruthless young hunter and wild child who was deadly with a bow. But the action was few and far between. There was once three sessions where zero action happened. And since at least one of the twinks (they openly referred to this term) and one of the PokePillow hugging cat ladies was uncomfortable with my character hunting and butchering wildlife. So I made her mostly a forager. Jeez. At least I had all those hours to work on my own campaign while long, out of game conversations broke out about "which Pokemon do you most feel a bond with." Ugh. 

And then another one of my players started a Sunday campaign, their first attempt. So I had to of course try to support that. Especially since all his players were pretty much recruited from my thing. It's a free world, but you know, I worked hard to gather this group and it would be good for to talk to me about it first, plus Sunday was meant to be my alternate day was kaput. Ah well. 

He was pretty good at it being a new DM.  This started I think while I was on an out-of-town trip, and I joined a couple weeks later (I talk about my monk character Zen in some recent posts).  But I dunno. I was never truly happy in these other games. I think it showed sometimes. Like I said I used a lot of the time to just be a quiet player and work on my own stuff (something you could never really do in face-to-face gaming). 

I have to say about this, in my life I rarely have been a player compared to my gamemastering hours logged. Since I was a kid. I don't know why, but the player experience never appealed to me. Outside of "story" or "agency" for any of this stuff, I just want to set a scene with a map and some description, sprinkle in some NPC's and maybe some interesting thing happening and let the characters romp around. I don't really want to do the romping. So when I realized I was not really happy with all this other gaming I started feeling burnt out. And though I always had fun within my sessions, which I think were some of the best of my online gaming life the last 5 years, I was starting to yearn for some new voices in my games. 

With the holidays swiftly approaching, this seemed like a good time to wrap up all my gaming for the year a bit early and to start working on a new one for next year. I have to admit, I have been building life rafts for months because I foresaw I was getting more and more dissatisfied.  There was a line in the show Mad Men where his soon to be ex-wife said to him "You only like the beginnings of things." And that's me in life in a nutshell. Relationships, jobs, or campaigns and game groups. The earlier parts are deliriously happy. But I get discontented with some situations that started out amazing. I actually like a lot of quotes from Mad Men because I feel kinship with lots of them.

 So yeah, I was doing too much of it for too long (a year and a half is longer than most of my romantic relationships). So I needed to cold turkey for a couple weeks before working on the new things. A new campaign. I might even consider playing in campaign of somebody as well. But three nights a week? It was too much. As with any drug you do too much, I am jonesing a bit now. And I did like most of these people. But life is getting short and like Duke Leto said to Paul "a man needs new experiences."

I am in a semi-weekly Marvel Multiverse thing the last few weeks to learn the system (so in my final weeks of my group I was actually in FOUR campaigns, though this one had none of my regulars in it). 

But now that I treated you like my bartender and told you about my gaming trials and tribulations sinking in a gentle pool of wine, I can mention the topic title of this post. "The Last Isle of Dread" campaign I will ever run. 

OK, maybe saying that is hyperbole. But look, I'm a GenX'er and I ain't getting any younger. Sure, been eating fairly healthy in recent years. Going to the gym every other day. Riding my mountain bike on the weekend in the Sierras. No grey hair yet. But why age myself? Well, this campaign was weekly but was still a year and a half. In large part due to fairly short sessions and all that role-playing by the kooks, but still. I wanted to touch on Isle of Dread in a campaign again for years. And here it was. I did it. A great campaign everybody liked, much initially being in the city which are games I love doing. Then the Island. There it is. I did it. Do I want to do another campaign with it soon? More sea voyages and time in the villages and going off to fight dinos and encounter interesting shit. I certainly did not get to do all I wanted. 

The campaign had to switch directions a few sessions in when player Christine, who was in my game and the Sunday one, suddenly had to miss my Saturdays because of some medical thing she did on Fridays that made her ill for a day or two. She made Sundays a couple more times then vanished fully without letting us know what is up. Now, I work in healthcare and I can only imagine she was in chemotherapy. Hopefully she is better, but who knows. The point here I guess is I was prepping sessions a game or two ahead of time, and the plan was to explore rumors ancient civilization ruins around the island. Hidden cities and maybe going to the plateau to explore the old ruins there (and finding out a big spaceship is up there). But when she dropped out I had to start improving. I liked Chris, and felt bad about whatever she was going through, and that took some wind out of my sails months ago to a degree. Leading to some of my disappointments with how things were going. But I changed course and kept going because when actually in my zone with my wheels greased during a session, I was loving it. 

But maybe that is a reason to have another party go back in some later campaign. I have all this prep work for ancient cities to explore. But I dunno. One of my players was a big Curse of Strahd campaign and fan and she turned me on to it, and I have been studying that a good deal. I have the Roll20 purchase for that material with all the tokens and locations with dynamic lighting already added and all this shit. But I am keeping open about what it will be to wait and see the make up of the next group. Maybe something more basic like a Keep on the Borderlands campaign. Or one of a couple other campaigns I created in recent years. Just use them again for a new group. 

Whatever happens, that big Goodman Games copy the Isle of Dread update will stay closed for some years I think. But who knows. If I am still gaming several years ago from now maybe it will get touched upon, if not a whole other campaign with it. But for now, I want to explore new situations with some new people. Duke Leto would approve. 

Cheers