The late Lou Zocchi - who knew?

 

I have not been known to write about game designers and other such personalities on this blog. The one exception is probably Paul/Janelle Jaquays, who was a big influence on my childhood rpg mindset. You can search Paul Jaquays in this blogs search function for several related posts, but maybe my most significant post about her was here almost 15 years ago. 

But today I read about this guy who passed away last week, Lou Zocchi. In my mind in recent years, I only knew of the guy as a dice designer. But looking a bit into his history, it is a safe bet that I have heard the name since I was a kid. And it rings dim memories from the deep past. Probably saw the name a hundred times in old gaming periodicals. 

Since I am posting about my Superhero gaming of past and present lately, including the first one Superhero 2044, I must have known at some point that Zocchi published the second, full color cover version of Superhero 2044 in 1977. Damn, that should be pretty important to me since that game inspired a lot of my future comic book gaming. 

And as a kid, before I got into rpgs, I had an elementary school buddy, a Korean kid named Michael Yim, who loved Avalon hill wargames, and Zocchi was involved in that early on. And including Star Trek related stuff, he has his hands in various ways in my precious Judges Guild, including printing some of their out-of-print material, which was likely most of what I got my hands on in the 80's. That shit inspired my campaigns for my entire life. 

And of course I knew the name Game Science. Mostly known for dice, he was an advocate for proper dice that truly rolled randomly. I mean, even as kids we suspected dice of being uneven. We all had dice we swore by. That D20 that seemed to get a natural "20" a third of the time. 

He also invented the D100, and I remember how blown away I was by it back in the day. I was still recovering from the D30. He also was the first to make D3, D14, etc. 

I remember we used to joke about what
a D1000 would look like. It would 
probably just roll off the table and 
phase thorough a wall into Liminal Space

So yeah, a revolutionary to be sure. Oh, he also blunted the D4..

I never owned one. I am sure it is less painful. Yeah,
admit it. You have stepped on the regular one
like a hundred times. Like me. 

So glad to read a bit about him, even though its after he is gone. The guy lived to a ripe 97 years old, so good on him!

Cheers!

Backrooms and Liminal Space Horror

 

My parents are European immigrants, and when I was a little kid, before me da' started working for movie studios (mostly Fox and Paramount..I spent a lot of time on those lots growing up) and still poor, he was a painter. Residential and commercial. On some weekends he would often be working in industrial buildings, new office buildings, and such. When I was maybe around six or seven, he would often take either me or one of my brothers with him to watch as he worked, because sometimes three sons were a handful for mom alone. Dad would be in some empty room or hall, and I would go wandering. Some of these complexes were huge, and often empty of furnishings and certainly devoid of people. So I would go off exploring, and the sound of dad and whoever was working with him, and the portable radio they were listening to, would disappear into the distance as I moved on. These were often places in areas like Marina Del Rey near the Ballona Wetlands, where Hughes Aircraft always had these huge buildings. 

I would go through carpeted office areas, down silent stairwells, and into boiler areas full of pipes and machines. I had dreams throughout my childhood of these places, sometimes nightmares where I felt an entity was near, and could hear dad singing to country tunes or whatever in the distance. I would call out and he could never hear me. I may have originally gained my fascination with mythic dungeons from these experiences. 

So when I discovered "Backrooms" and liminal space horror, I was a shoe in. AI search gives this info on Liminal space:

• Liminal spaces are transitional or transformative areas between two states or places.
• They often evoke feelings of unease or nostalgia due to their ambiguous nature.
• Common examples include hallways, airports, and empty parking lots.
• These spaces can symbolize change, uncertainty, or the passage from one phase to another.
• Liminality is often explored in art, literature, and psychology to represent personal growth or societal shifts.
• The term originates from the Latin word "limen," meaning threshold, highlighting the idea of crossing boundaries.

You have probably been in these spaces in your life, alone, as I have. Getting to work in an office building super early. Or going down an airport walkway at 3am. I have often enjoyed the eerie vibe of walking in a long wide corridor between two major Vegas casinos pre-dawn with nobody around with pop music oozing from speakers. 

You can look up the full history of this sublime horror, but it started I believe with this image:

This was a furniture store that was undergoing renovations (I think it eventually became one of those once popular model car racing track businesses). It does seem to kind of go on in an eerie way. As the concept grew, this became known as level 0. The main entrance area of the Backrooms Liminal Zones. Known for drab yellow 1970s or 80's wallpaper, humming overhead lighting, and wet shag carpet that gave off a moldy smell with each step. 

The lore iceberg has it that some old corporation was using some kind of quantum physics science to try and create an extra dimensional space to uses for storage and workspaces etc, and an existing dimension copied inner space areas from the real world to create hundreds of massive levels, often inhabited with twisted creatures whose sole food was people who accidentally "no clipped" into the Backrooms. 

This is based on the video game term "clipping." That is the code that kept you from being able to go through walls or locked doors or the floor.  People who somehow fell into the Backrooms almost always started in the moist carpet wallpaper halls, an endless maze of sameness. 

But other areas and levels were copies of real world spaces, almost always empty and where you might get stalked by something you do not want to meet. 

Empty shopping malls are a fun part
of liminal space fandom

When I first started getting into Liminal space,
I saw this image and was delighted. I recognized it
and had walked these stairs. This is from the 
Queen Mary in Long Beach, where over the years
I performed with my bagpipes at the yearly Highland
game there all over the boat. 

One of my favorite Youtube series is Infographics, which depicts current events, historical events, and fictional ideas in a cartoon point of view. They did one on Backrooms:

Not too many years ago a young man started making short films on Backrooms, sort of making the Creepy Pasta abstract concept more solid, and decidedly his. The films often featured scientists in hazmat suits, who more often than not would meet a horrifying end.

Also was turned into a video game at one point. This stuff just added to the lore and created an actual big iceberg around it. The government sponsored organization exploring and studying it, poor souls randomly no clipping into it, and many of the endless levels explained. The creatures of the spaces described and encountered:

Most of the entities in the spaces seem to be lost victims who one way or another are mutated into these forms. Often due to strange bacteria. Monsters lurk, stalk, whisper, and even sometimes howl as in great pain. Yeah, scary.

So for sure there are similarities to classic magical DnD dungeons, where the laws of physics do not always apply like they do on the surface world. And there is treasure here and there, mostly in the form of drinkable water, edible food, and strangely lots of bottles of almond milk. At least one of the odd creatures can also produce almond milk. Yeah, for sure sounds like something from the mind of a Gen Z'er with progressive, Trader Joe's shopping ideals. 

So lots of inspiration for dungeons. Or even a modern world tabletop RPG where you are lost there and must find your way out or at least survive. 

Half of my does not really like this expansionism. More and more levels, levels with the appearance of towns or even big red hued cities. And in current lore there are areas that are safer and lost people have gathered in little societies. Places with water and food, a quiet misty forest where the lost actually created village societies. Are having babies and growing the population. 

This would all be fine for an ongoing rpg or whatever. But the other half of me wants the horror of loneliness and sameness. Being alone in an endless maze of yellow wallpaper and moist carpet. The occasional stalking from and entity. Hopelessness. "I will never see home again." 

This is all on my mind because I heard last week a movie is coming out based on Backroom lore. It looks pretty good, thought the hero seems to be able to move in and out of the spaces (and of course he has to go talk to a therapist about it). These low budget horror films tend to do  well, so odds are very good a franchise will grow here. It will dull the chilling vibe of liminal area terror. But what the hell, I am all in for the rest of the Backrooms ride. Check out the trailer. Cheers.