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.

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/

Up from the OSR - Venger Satanis and the C'orny C'ult of C'thulhu

 (as always mostly going on a decade or so old parcel of memories, so please feel free to correct or expand on anything)

Like a lot of OSR personages I found out about in the latter half of the OSR, well after I first stopped blogging for a long while, I heard about Vengir Satanis on a blog I am ashamed to admit I looked at from time to time: "Yourdungeonissuck," a trollsite that targeted many in the OSR (including my humble self). 

The very first thing that stuck right out to me was the name. Satanis? Cool. Could be the name of the wizard character of a metalhead from back in jr. high. Good enough. But Venger? As far as I can tell, he took this name from a cartoon character. 

A demon that threatens school children. 
So, cool, I guess. 

What little I saw at the time was that he was a Wisconsin native (what is with that place? It's all satanists and serial killers). He was involved in, or even founded, a Cthulhu cult of some kind. Heavy on the Anton Levay as well. 

Anton in the 80's working on his
5th level fighter. Or maybe doing
a dark incantation of some sort. 

And Venger from a few years
ago. Shave yer head and grow
a bitchin goatee and you got
yerself some Anton in the mirror

LeVay was sort of a bargain basement Allister Crowley. A San Francisco suburb resident who in the 70's started his own little Church of Satan by hanging black drapes and Baphomet symbols in his garage, and inviting heavy metal dudes and C list celebs to pray before an alter with a naked chick on it. But Anton seemed more Forrest J. Ackerman than Crowley.

"Ooga booga!"

Anton's most famous tidbit was he was in love with Church member Jayne Mansfield back in the day, and when rejected told her he will curse her to die in a car wreck, which she did. 

"Ooga Booga!"

Anton capering around in satan cosplay reminds me
of this MST3K classic..

I actually first encounter LeVay in my first teenage job at Waldenbooks. There on the shelf either in the occult or the comedy section was The Satanic Bible. 

reading it at the mall foodcourt
will get you some looks. Maybe
a loogie in your Chick Fil A
chicken sammich

Yeah, I read it. I fuckin' stole it like a lot of books I owned at the time. Fuck you Walden! As a DnD kid of the 80's I had to have a look. I was also s slowly falling Catholic so it was perfect. It was chock full of "fuck you, Jesus" sort of stuff.

Yer mother sucks in hell, Karras...

Though a bargain basement Allister Crowley, it was more approachable Satanism. No esoteric number crunching or Prater Parado crap. But it was full of some corny shit. One bit of life advice I remember was not washing so you don't remove your smelly body oils and smells, which he somehow thought chicks were into. As a matter of fact, he talked about a guy who wanted to get busy with a fishermans daughter that he was in love with, so he wiped himself down with fish to get a nice crusty seaman odor to attract the lass. I put the book down and never looked back. Outside of the Mansfield thing, and naked chicks on basement altars, it was fairly cheese. 

I don't know about casting spells on C level celebs or what not, but early on Venger was high priesting it up in The Cult of Cthulhu. VS discovered DnD around 10 years old an Cthulhu stuff a few years later, which is in line with my experience. Though I never considered it as a religious path (HP Lovecraft was plainly fiction, you see). Venger did, whether serious or not. Here is a snippet from an old interview (undated).

 Since foundation, the Cult has been both wildly successful and devoid of meaningful manifestations, depending on the day.  It’s a struggle to keep busy in the right direction when there are so many false paths open to us.  I’ve written two official books, CoC bibles, if you will; and enough essays and articles to fill a third.

  The organization was meant to live and spread the Fourth Way teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky within a Left Hand Path context.  Self-deification is our chief aim, always has been, always will be.  Of course, the slimy green tentacles of cosmic horror only add to the eldritch mélange.  The Mythos gives us visual aid, a different kind of structure.  The Left Hand Path is like a code of conduct, whereas Lovecraft’s shambling alienage is more a code of aesthetics.

His cult name? "Venger As' Nas Satanis." It was an early indication of his love for apostrophe. 

I cannot find current citation, but I do remember all those years ago when I first heard of him, he had talked somewhere about hostile shakeups or something among the cult membership. He left the group, maybe? I dunno. 

Maybe it did not meet expectations?

Maybe it got harder and harder to take seriously. I mean, not long into the 2000's you started seeing Cthulhu plushes and the great old one's precense showing up in popular media, more often in a comedic context. 

I think the DnD setting Veng created, Cha'alt, kind of took the place of the Lovecraft focus. 

He describes the setting thus:

Cha'alt is an eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, post-apocalyptic campaign setting + megadungeon for old school and 5e D&D. It's 216 pages of places, people, races, monsters, spells, magic items, and weirdness for your roleplaying game of choice (including my own Crimson Dragon Slayer D20, which is included in the appendix). Suitable for levels 0-10. Amazing, full-color layout and artwork the likes of which you have never seen, nor will you ever see again!

Gonzo it seemed. With influences that seemed to run the gamut, from cheesy 70's Sci Fi, 80's tits and ass low budget sorcery, some Lovecraft shit still, and Saturday morning fantasy cartoons on acid. 

 

Manos Hand of Fate? I
get that reference!

???

Venger was producing all kinds of product related to his game. Time was marching on. You see him pop up in forums like Dragonfoot, and even Your Dungeon is Suck. He liked to call people "Hoss." Along with him liking to throw up a devil sign and exclaim "What's up, Motherfuckers!" as his call sign. Nothing wrong with that I guess. Kind of cringy, but fuck, we are gamers so we are kind of cringy. "Hoss."

In his earlier images, Venger is a fit and buff dude who spent a lot of time in the gym. He showed up in pictures in a tank top more than he did in black robes.

Bu the years passed. There was a transformation, like with most of us I guess. The guy has a wife and two kids, and though I don't, my older brothers did. And when you have kids it's hard not to eat like a kid. The good priest of evil softened up a bit. Some grey getting into the bitchin' Anton LaVey goatee. 

Not sure the gawds of Cha'alt would approve
of the hippy dippy Tie Dye tee..

Apparently, his stuff had some popularity and a following.  A nice addition I guess to his real estate professional earnings. He became a regular on a vlog along with The RPG Pundit, that very often degraded into political talking points (the left these days seems to embrace satanism, but he is a staunch conservative). 

I think they ended the stream last August. 

I also remember some time ago he posted about offering a year of DM experience and running weekly games for the tidy sum of 50 grand. I think I spit out my beer when I read that. I am not sure it happened. Who would pay for that? That much? But then, maybe he is more popular than I imagined. Or maybe it was a psi op. 

In recent years Venger started his own little convention in Wisconsin. Capped at 50 people, I think it started at maybe a little more than a dozen people attending, and in the sequel cons it get up to a whopping couple dozen. 

OK, look. I can fucking joke. Plenty of corny shit about me to be joked about. So I spread the love. But you know what? I can joke, but I can't hate. The guy does what he loves. He gets a little over a dozen dudes to attend his con? Instead of worrying, he is jazzed about it. He gets a handful more at the next one, and he is over the moon. I mean, its an OSR thing. I would sit there worried that nobody will show up. He does the thing, he games in person including with fans of his setting. And he doesn't have to have them in his house where he has to worry about what they are doing in his bathroom. 

I think it was early last year that he announced he would no longer be publishing. He had gone from a few hundred in sales a month to less than a hundred. I remember feeling kind of bad for the guy. But I actually thought I read somewhere that no, he still will publish some stuff. I dunno, maybe it will be a flexible thing? 

But you can't get too heartbroken. He is in the zeitgeist of the OSR. He has gotten talked about for years in forums. He had been targeted by Your Dungeon is Suck plenty, and I was told long ago that is high praise.

Whatever it is, keep plugging away with the corn and cheese, good priest of d'ar'k'ness. There can never be too much cheese in the world. 

Find his blog at https://vengersatanis.blogspot.com/

Cheers