Bittersweet OSR Memories - Socal Mini Cons

 

Around 2010 I had it going on as far as the Southern California OSR scene. My blog was blowing up (at that exact time it was listed in the top 25 of 177 top gaming blogs - I've come a short way baby), and though It was never some huge thing, I was a solid part of the gaming blogosphere and on Dragonsfoot. Before I bowed out of the scene to focus on my weekly game group, and before my general fed-upness with neck-beardness of the scene, I made several appeared at various events, all of which I ran OD&D dungeon romps at. 

I think the first was in late 2010, August, in an apartment complex rec room about two blocks from Disneyland. Bob of the Cyclopeatron blog (all these pics are from him, I think)  was the driving force behind a lot of this stuff. This was the third of such events, but I think this was my only one. 

The resident of the place and our host was Dragonfoot regular Bedevere (white t shirt, top photo on the left). A good guy, though I did not interact with him much. Trent Foster, a well-known old schooler online, ran a popular session. In the pics on his left, with tan hat, was an older dude named Thorkhammer. Seemed quiet in person, but at the time he was a loud voice on Dragonsfoot. He seemed to be going for the world record for making forum posts. Sometimes several a day, usually clearly just to post lots and lots. He was a well-known perv, if I recall. He wrote his own adventures about having sex with fish, and once in regard to a pic of some female players somebody posted he declared something along the lines of "look at all the lovely, lovely estrogen in the room!" Jeez. Also there was multiple forum regular Wheggi, who I found to be a cool dude in person, but a prick online. I remember one time he, a construction worker, called me a "desk jockey." Heh. Sick burn. 

But what the hell, it was long time ago. I quit the forums not long after quitting this blog for the first time and never looked back. Though lots of the forum folk seem to be looking for a community or want to have some kind of notoriety or demi fame in a small pond, I always considered myself getting into it to tell some deep dive stories about my gaming life since childhood. I actually restarted this blog when I moved to a new state, got into 5th edition, and moved to running games online and that seemed ripe for some interesting slice of life gaming stories, IMHO...YMMV. 

I could be Grognardia and go on about dead rpgs and old gaming mags, but I liked to tell flesh and blood stories of life experiences based around gaming. But even that got me heat. There was one angry troll on Dragonsfoot called "Ironface" (who seemed to be buddies with the above mentioned Wheggi) who followed me around for a long time, saying things like I was "bragging" by mentioning having been an athlete growing up, or talking about girlfriends I had back in the day who played in my games, which I thought had some historical value (in our last interaction years ago he said "aw, your OK" out of the blue and that is enough for me not to hold a grudge). 

Cyclopeatron Bob ran a Gamma World thing, and I played in it. We ran a Heavy Metal band in the wasteland and it was pretty cool. Though seemingly very inspired by the cartoon Metalocalypse. I have long wanted to run something similar with Mutant Future. 

Bob emoting well. Might have been the point
when I made a mild "r@pe" joke (our characters 
were based on 70's metal stars)

Later than night, the last game of the day, all the holdovers played in a classic homemade dungeon I did up for OD&D and it was a ton of fun. There was some convention, Socal Smackdown or something, not long after this, and most of the players from this including some others showed up for that. I talk about it here and I especially appreciate Bob at Cyclopeatron's description. Its still my style in a nutshell. Thanks, Bob..Cheers

"Yeah, it was a cool game. You're a great dynamic DM - loud, self-confident, acidically funny, and on your feet the whole time. I also really appreciated how you kept the game moving at a good clip?

The #1 sign your new online campaign is going to be a Banger

 

Around the holidays I worked on putting a new campaign together with all new voices and personalities. A painful process to be sure. I work very hard to try to vet and judge if a potential player will work out (and not be some lunatic, socially anxious snowflake, or LGBTQ plus individual with a chip on the shoulder- which all seems to be about 80 percent of potential players online). I have gotten pretty good at it. 

I stumbled upon a small group who had played together before, led by a young grad student who had run their previous campaign. That campaign did not reach a conclusion, and I did not get a solid reason why. Red flag number one. OK, cool. Grad student was super enthusiastic so I figured it just might work. His buddy he had been playing games with for years, a guy who was maybe at least 10 years older than him, showed up with him for a quick voice chat to talk about the campaign. The two ladies they had been playing with a while did not show up. Red flag two. But again, Grad student wowed me with his enthusiasm. 

Now, I want to say I normally avoid running for established groups. For a variety of reasons. They seem to have particular expectations, and it can automatically be an "us vs. him" situation. But I was lazy. I just wanted to get going without a ton of fishing for individual players. So I invited them into the Discord text chat. And here is where my doubts came in. 

It was the holidays and I wanted to wait till after the holidays, which would be maybe three weeks. No problem. But here is the rub. There was barely any chatter in the text chat. I might ask about characters, and might get a "oh, thinking of this or that." OK, no worries. They knew each other already. In most campaigns my players would be introducing themselves, mentioning character ideas, and maybe talking about the anime they liked. But hardly anything. Your chat should at least look something like this:

But hardly anything. I came across a young couple who wanted to play, and when they got in the chat they started the chatter. They hardly got a reply. I knew this was bad but went ahead and started the campaign. We had two games, sort of my "0.5" sessions (pretty much some casual doings and encounters in a tavern) with a little bit of action. It went fairly well, although the two ladies were mostly mute. The young couple were goers and tried their best to interact. After session two grad student (by that point I had realized he was gay and one of the "ladies" was trans, for what its worth) said he did not think it was working. So two wasted nights. Not just that, the couple said they liked my style, but that not only did they also see it as a waste of time, but that they had messaged the others in characters during the sessions to role play and stuff and were met with silence. They said that the experience with these others left such a bad taste that they were going to take a couple months off from gaming. Sheesh. 

So my advice is this: get new players into the text chat as soon as possible. Tell them to introduce themselves to each other and discuss character ideas. Then see what happens. If they are all over it, that is a good sign. Cherry on top is if they talk about nongame stuff and end a lot of sentences with exclamation points. You are probably good to go. 

My new group was like this. And not only that wanted to have side chats to talk in character between sessions. I was over the moon about this. Two games in and so far it seems all good. 

So again, get the text channel hopping. If it is quiet, consider asking if they are really into this. Or just abandon all together (maybe keeping one or two people you are more hopeful about) and get fishing and vetting in forums again. 

Cheers

Up from the OSR - "The OSR Bartender"

 

Just like any of the other OSR personalities I posted about, I have done little extra research on Erik Tenkar. Just like them, I speak mostly from experience. And in my early blogging days I had almost none at all. I was kind of aware of his blog, just like I was kind of aware of many others at the time. But whether by circumstance or something else, I just did not take a very close look. Before 2020, I knew very little. 

I will shamefully admit that I looked at the troll site Your Dungeon is Suck from time to time in those early days (something I may post about in the future). And it was probably in that often cringy place of gaming's most angry trolls that I first started hearing about Erik. 

Newsflash: he got goofed on

So up to around around 2019 here is what I knew:

His real name is Erik Stiene. 

He is a retired New York City Policeman (internal affairs I think). 

He had some controversies related to Gary Gygax's widow Gail. Having to do with the Gary memorial. 

So now I know more. I think it was around 2020 when he was hospitalized due to a heart issue. I could post a picture from his posts from around that time, but I honestly do not like pictures of folk in hospital beds. Seen enough of that in real life. But I guess it was a real close call. For some reason I started paying more attention. 

At that time most of his blog posts were essentially promoting the game material of other entities. It took me awhile to realize he was expanding past mere blogging, certainly a dying format. 

Erik was doing Youtube videos about this and that of gaming. One of the main reasons I started following is that he was a great source of news of what was going on in gaming. OSR related mostly. Zak Smith kerfuffles, Satine Pheonix and her shenanigans, and lots of calling out kickstarters for their dastardly deeds. That seemed kind of a specialty. Sort of like what Houdini did with mediums and fortune tellers.

How's that for a deep reference?

He and his wife do a regular "Gamers Health" video feature that I believe was inspired by Erik's health issues. More on that in a moment. 

Erik does regular videos with OSR pals like Joe the Lawyer, Robert Conley, Bad Mike (who I am almost sure I bought a bunch of Wilderlands of High Fantasy maps off of through Ebay over ten years ago), and a few old dudes I have no idea who they are.

Erik also has a Discord for years now, and I actually joined it not too many years ago. Interact a bit there and have even messaged a little bit with the good constable one or twice regarding this or what issue going on in the OSR. One thing I have found is that he and the Discord is sort of a safe space for potentially more sensitive gamers out there. Case in point:

Not too many years ago I saw a comment in the threads about an upcoming James Raggi interview, and asked that James be asked about his recent comments about why anybody would bother cleaning their toilet since they shit in it anyway. I mean, I found it funny. If not a little gross. That was enough to trigger at least one person who accused me punching down on the mentally ill. I thought that was kind of silly since I am not sure that was a serious attack on Raggi. But what the heck, OK. Erik actually was inspired to post a video on the subject, and though he did not mention me in particular, he clearly was thinking of me when he mentioned "somebody in the Discord being insensitive." Read about my post on this here..

Around 15 years ago I would have had a field day with this. But being more mature, and more on a path to being a more enlightened person, I actually gave it some thought. I still don't think it was an unreasonable comment. But I started to realize Tenkar was providing a bit of a space for folk who would be anxious about things. I mean, if we have been playing DnD for long enough we have seen a shit ton of this. People a little bit on certain spectrums. I mean, around that time on he and the wife's Health feature, they talked about maintaining hygiene at conventions. Literally advice on how the viewers should occasionally go in the rest room and splash water on their stinky pits. 

Erik suddenly catching a whiff from the audience.

That is kind of the thing we all discovered when girls started paying attention to us, maybe even sitting up close next to us. But fuck it, there but for the grace of god go I. It boils down to advice on helping people, so I don't want to make too much fun. And from the rare times I have been to conventions I will agree, yeah, more of these dudes need to be taking their Star Wars and Naruto T shirts off in the bathroom and splashing hot water on their steaming flesh pits. 

But besides news and health advice, Erik is clearly a defender of the old shit. The good old Mythic Underworld stuff I once found so fascinating. It lost a lot of its luster for me before I was out of my 20's. All this stuff particular to lovers of old DnD that Tenkar is recently posting about (every day now). Encumbrance, low stats and no skills, rations, dungeon trope this and dungeon trope that. He is a warrior for that stuff that was a part of my DnD (and still to a degree). And it's all good. 

I was ride and die for early DnD as well for most of my life. But when I moved to a new town and started running DnD online around 2020, I adapted to 5th edition. I no longer hated skills and feats and this and that. I no longer referred to newer DnD as "superhero games." I was running campaigns for people in their 20's and 30's. They don't give a shit about that old durp. But that is OK. I still have an old school vibe to my stuff. I don't do dungeon tentpole campaigns anymore. I slowed way down on that in my 30's. But I still love my Judges Guild and Arduin Grimoire stuff. I still use some old material for these kids I run for these days. And they eat it up, not always knowing it is old stuff I am tapping into. I just finished a year and a half Isle of Dread campaign for players 25-35, and they loved it. 5th edition has its issues, but I don't care. It has grown on me. 

But Erik Tenkar promoting the old stuff is all good. And talking about secret doors and treasure allotments may be pretty much preaching to the choir as far as his cronies and viewers are concerned. But he is expanding things from his simple blogging days, coming up with new angles. And from what retired policemen get as far as pensions he doesn't have to do it for the cash. It's clearly for the love of the game. 

Find the OSR Bartenders blog here and easily find him on YouTube. Cheers. 

https://www.tenkarstavern.com/