The endless durp about "10-foot pole" gaming

 

"10-foot pole gaming" is a term I just made up. I could just say "old school" or "classic" or whatever. But I think the 10-foot pole thing as one of the more cartoonish elements of old DnD. Sure, it would have its uses in classic dungeons, or even in the woods to shove down a hole of an abrasive gopher. 

But the image of somebody with one in a dungeon, where there can often be tight squeeze turns (you ever try get a mattress up the turn in a narrow flight of stairs?). Always reminds me of Granpa Munster trying to get through the doorway holding his shovel and the angle requires a couple of tries. I always thought that a simple 5-foot-long quarterstaff would be about as useful. Tie a torch to the end for extra utility. I really feel the original including of this item in equipment lists was a wink and nod to the old saying "would not touch it with a ten-foot pole." 

But I was thinking about this stuff after about a week or so of sampling some of Erik Tenkar's vids. I like to see some of his takes on things going on in gaming and controversies of the years. But lately so much of it seems about how you are having "bad wrong fun" with your DnD while extoling the virtues of (very) basic DM and player styles. And how you are doing it poorly. Having fun? Fuck that. It's wrong fun. Shades of classic Dragonsfoot forum comments. 

I dunno. That asshat Chevy just 
reminds me of a Dragonfoot guy

OK, I like Erik and don't want to get harsh. And I have not watched all (or even half) of such videos he has been posting for weeks. Maybe he does more explaining in some other places. "Hey, this is pretty much about BX gaming and dungeon delving especially. Not to be taken seriously" 

Which would be fair enough, though I am kind of doubting that. So the good constable will start a video, often with one hand up pinching his fingers in a "that's a spicey meatball!" gesture. Then go into his "tavernsplaining" the topic of the day. Usually some fuddy old approach to doors and thieves and listening and retreating and mirrors and clerics are more than healbots and do theater of the mind hex mats ruin everything and henchmen and yada yada. 

"You don't want story. You want spikes to jam doors. You don't want feats and skills and dice rolls. You want a mirror to peak around a corner. Didn't you see Private Ryan? Thar's ah snipah up thar!"

A favorite was about how old school fighters were not all same-same. They should be defined by their weapon they find! Again, if this was just about how to play BX or older shit, it would be fine. It's that type of game. I guess I personally did not sample all the editions. As a little kid I got the three little books and the Monster Manual. Soon after it was 1st edition, and I stayed with it for decades. The boxed sets were all Toy r Us to me and my friends. It was outliers who had the boxes of "baby DnD" who were friends of a friend. I swear to god the one that comes to mind from my teens was totally "Butters" from South Park.

Not saying this is Tenkar, 
it's just my experience

And by the time I was in my later teens, I was kind of tired of the ol' dungeonarooni. Don't get me wrong, the surreal nature of underworld spaces with monsters and nasty magic had big appeal to me. But my GMing was evolving. I was enjoying having things take place in the city and on the road more than the moldy ol' dungeon slog. Outside of Underdark forays, the dungeons I did were smaller lairs and not of the mythic variety. Sure I would go back to old dungeons again and again, but it was no longer what it was all about. It's one of the reasons I had some older times in the character continuity of my setting be known as "The Dungeon Age." It was a time when we were really young and our characters mostly romped in dungeons. 

I think by the time I was around 17, I was more into higher fantasy. Sure, things could be gritty anywhere. But endless dungeon crawls had gotten old hat for not just me, but it seemed that is the way the general gaming populace was going, for good or bad. 

As an aside, I think that since our girlfriends played with us, or just more females in general as we got older, was also a factor. They might like action, but the endless slaying and dark tones was not overall appealing to them. Some might have anti-hero characters who were even capable of murder, but being either a murder hobo or a fearful poltroon spiking doors was not fantasy to them. Making up interesting characters and the development of them during play was far more fun than adhering to notions of "proper dungeoneering techniques." More on all that in a minute. 

Equipment will always be important to one degree or another to players, but being anal retentive as a professional climber prepping for Mt. Everest is not often a priority. Shit, I think though the characters in my last campaign were going to The Isle of Dread they didn't even bring sleeping rolls on the journey. 

I always loved the old dungeon notions, but after those early years the chill at the surreal had less impact on me. They stopped being spooky. Getting into blogging and the OSR around 2009 brought back some of those feels. But it was fleeting. For decades I acted like it was the be all end all. I kept wanting to do a dungeon slog every few years but would end up doing something bigger instead. Like The Night Below, which was for sure a giant dungeon. Though I do recall some characters did prep like a cave climber might for that. But there was a lot of build up to the descent. But still, that was mostly just a long rope, lanterns, and some rations. 

So Erik clearly does not like 5th ed or its players. I mean, when he mimics a 5th ed player there is a lot of eye rolling or using a goofy voice to portray them. At first I thought it was kind of mean, but then I remember I have done this in the past years and decades to goof on some DnD people. Though nowadays I try to be more a Buddhist in my kind understanding (often failing). 

Erik seems to allude to some con running he has done with some old school gew gaw, and the modern players who attended going all slack jawed mouth breathers as they were told there were no feats, skills, or superpowers. 

So maybe he has just had bad experiences with the kids these days not falling in line with proper professional dungeon crawler standard operational procedures, like Hulk Hogans "Hulkamaniacs not following his famous demandments..

Or is Erik just talking to the BX fans out there? And if so, how long have they been doing the hard-core mapping, door listening, mirror using, torch conserving, no background having, fuck feats and skills and rolls and full on dungeon slogs. Decade in and decade out. In my last long time face to face group I ran the three little books plus Greyhawk for a few session break from our 1st ed. And it was fun. I did a few sessions at the Socal Minicon during the salad days of the OSR (the actual one) and a local convention soon after. It was fun to revisit.  But good gawd, for that to be my DnD now? 

I remember years ago watching some footage at a con circa early to mid 2000's of Frank Mentzer running what looked like an ad hoc session for some various con folk (like 12 guys and 1 girl). He just had a couple papers and dice in front of him. It was clearly old school in nature, probably his boxed edition (bestselling version of DnD!!!). But you could tell it was old school, because it took like 45 minutes to map 30 feet of corridor, and another 45 of fumbling around with and gang-listening at a door. Yawn, and that is a capitol Y. 

So after several years of my journey with 5th ed, how does it fit my style? Well, I have been into character development since I was a kid. Not only mine, but that of my players. It's kind of my joy. To preside over something they find so fun. And as far as feats and skills, hell, when I was as young as 15 I was just having players make stat rolls for this and that for things that would probably nowadays been seen as a version of "skills." CHR for persuasion type stuff and seducing, WIS for noticing things (prob inspired by Runequests classic "Spot Hidden") or whatever. 

Erik seems to hate lots of dice rolling. But since my earliest days, it was the funnest part of the game. So I don't mind skills and feats or whatever. And all the choices and builds? It is interesting to me. Like I say I love character development. and Creativity. I come from a Superhero Game background since childhood just like I did for DnD. So these aspects of creating a character are right up my alley. Sure, I have seen the dudes who were candidates to be in my online groups who want to run their Half Beholder Half Minotaur Cyborg Ninja Gunsmith. I have learned to weed them out real quick. My vetting of strangers online has become a specialty for me. And I may scoff at Game of Thrones novel page count character backgrounds a bit, but they can be interesting a lot of the time. And why should I give a fuck if they want that? It gets them to ask about my setting. 

OK, I only pick at Erik Tenkar because I like him. I have been on his Discord for years now. But I am just a bit baffled at his nitpicks at 5th ed players. But also these videos are performance to some degree for streamers. I think it is not so much vitriol as much as it is a bit of mean playfulness. I dunno, there are a bunch of these vids up the last weeks and months, so go watch and you make the call. 

Since This post is already getting long, I will probably watch a few more and post about some things. Hex Mats vs Theater of the Mind kind of stuff. Also, Erik is doing these posts as part of a collaboration with the Greyhawk Grognard guy (I don't know much about him) and Joe the Lawyer. I have not watched a lot of Joe's stuff, but I did look to see how his line of thinking was compared to Erik. I was surprised to hear that much like me he came up old school but now runs 5th edition, and he works at keeping those games old school in flavor much like to try to, so I might want to post about one or two of those video commentaries. But for now, yeah, this is too long. So cheers and have a great weekend. 

And god bless the dice rollers! Its fun!

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" - Grognardia

 

(Please note: much of what I will be writing about here comes from memories dating back at 10 years or more. Please feel free to correct me if anything is false or at least misunderstood)

In March of 2008, James Maliszewski, long time rpg enthusiast and sometimes writer in the genre, started his gaming blog Grognardia. His first ever post is here. 

This was around the time I had gotten back into regular running of games after a few years mostly off, and started a group in Santa Monica that went on for almost 10 years. One of the first things I discovered while poking around game stuff online was the Grognardia blog, where James was talking about old gaming stuff. Products, modules, mags, systems. I remember thinking "I am an aging gamer who has played since childhood. I can write stuff!" And I did. I started this blog, for good or ill, a few months after the Grognardia premier. 

If I recall JM is a Canadian who was living in Baltimore during the heyday of his blog. Wife and kids. A job maybe. He did some amount of writing for potentially some kind of money. I think in the late 90's he was freelancing for Wizard Magazine. I was an avid reader of Wizard back then. I had not regularly collected comics for years by then, but I followed a lot of what was going on in comics. And Wizard evolved to cover card games and even rpg's to a degree. Just a little tangent here; Wizard had tremendous art within, sometimes full-page posters, but the covers were the big draw. Impulse buy bait to be sure.

I was still going into Hi Di Ho comics in Santa Monica and reading comics for an hour every couple weeks though I wasn't really collecting anymore. I would justify my browsing by buying a copy of Wizard or Toyfare. Another great mag to look at. Mostly due to all the lovely images of the amazing action figure market of the day. I was also a bit of a speculator back then. When Ebay started up I made a small fortune over a couple years selling comics and figures until that bubble burst.

To continue this aside, Toyfare had features where they would pose figures with word balloons and panels and do little skits with them. I am certain Seth Green read these and years later came up with Robot Chicken.

Anyway, I don't know what other pro of semi-pro writing  James did, White Wolf I think, but his blog was bursting at the seams. Sometimes three posts in a day. And the old school goodness really took me back. 

In the early to mid 2010's, James was plugging away creating things to sell on his blog. One item eventually was a Traveller inspired spacegame he called "Thousand Suns." Not to be confused (I think) with a previous Traveller homage from years back called "Fading Suns." JM will tell you all about it in a recent substack post Even seems he is doing a new edition and even adventures for it? OK. The market is fairly flooded with lots of product, but god speed with that, sir. 

But the most well know attempt at product sales was his personal dungeon, Dwimmermount. 

early...ahem..inspiring art from
it. Hee made a whole post about.
I do not think there was any info
about fighters delving into dungeons
with Grandma in tow.  

JM had been posting about his home game Dwimmermount from early on. A very basic dungeon setting with some homebrew elements (dwarves don't procreate through sex, there are aliens or some such, etc). He ran for friends and family. My takeaway over many posts was there was not a lot of investment in the game play by the folks. He openly admitted that there were distractions (I think the TV was on sometimes) and derailing conversations.  This was not the first time I recall James admitted a probably annoying issue with folk in his live games, but putting a brave and understanding face on it. At something called OSRcon James ran a game, and Ken St. Andre of Tunnels and Trolls fame played and proceeded to destroy the session with antics that included cutting orcs face off and wearing it and going "ooga booga" at everybody. In his post about it James was clearly annoyed but took an "aw well" attitude about it. The right thing to do I guess. But I can tell you James does not like being annoyed. More on that later. 

Ken at some convention or another trying to 
impress the chicks. Or something. 

James posted around 2009 that he wanted a few players to join him in some play by posts on the OD&D Discussion Boards. I guess this was the beginning of his playtesting to market the dungeon. I was back then still a commentor in good standing on Grognardia, and I threw my hat in the ring. It was a low commitment thing so why not (also low commitment by JM, but into that in a moment). 

We rolled 3d6 in order. Got a 15 to put in INT Enough to be a low caliber MU for me, so I created Thurston "Thirsty" Brewer, a pub owners' son. He had like a 6 CON so I made him a skinny alcoholic and decided he looked like bedraggled actor Steve Buscemi. 

Amazingly, there are plenty of images of
Steve wearing robes if you google it.

I found an old post by me talking about it, among other things. 

Over a couple of weeks our characters entered the dungeon and explored a handful of rooms and passages. I really do not recall there being any combat. I mostly remember something about a magical pool and some baby giant spiders running along the ceiling towards some destination. More or less nothing of note. Anyway, James just stopped posting. After a couple of days we were like "Um, James? After over a week we just assumed he "went out for a pack of smokes and never came back."

It was weird. I mean, we committed to him and this little campaign. What was weirder, he was still posting on Grognardia daily. Sometimes twice a day. But he fucking left us hanging. Not a big deal, but disrespectful was certainly a fair way to feel about it. Just a quick post "sorry guys, I just got real busy and cannot finish up right now. I will keep in touch about this if we can get back to it." But nope. It remains a mystery to this day. I may have been miffed a bit about the lack of a single word to that little pbp crew. In the link a couple paragraphs up you can check a bit how I felt about my impressions of Dwimmermount from my experiences, and James own play reports over the previous couple years. This was around 2012 when the kickstarter was kicking ass to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. 

Below are a couple paragraphs I wrote on it then. Certainly, one can tell I had grown my own little attitude about my experiences in the OSR, which whether by my own sometimes behavior or the behavior of others, I was getting fairly negative sometimes. 

As anybody reading this probably knows, Grognardia James’ Dwimmermount dungeon, a recent surprise hit on Kickstarter (close to 50 grand in profit), has been getting some gameplay and a few early reviews (the entire dungeon has yet to be finished). A lot of reviews from fairly moderate sources have not been good. A lot of the dislike seems to be in the presentation of those classic old dungeon tropes that James has been so enamored of and blogging about for years. Empty, dusty rooms with no real function having to be explored and searched. Minimalist room occupant description such as the orcs n’ gold combo mentioned above. Dungeon dressing with no interaction or function. Not exactly inspiring.

See, none of that gives me those kiddy thrills anymore, and apparently others who actually paid for that dungeon agree. I read Grognardia for a couple of years faithfully, and the recounting of Dwimmermount game sessions was probably part of why I was no longer reading every day. No knock at James; I only started this blog, my first and only, when I heard him on some podcast I listened to through dumb luck, and checked out his blog and saw old modules I loved being talked about. But man, the later old school gameplay presented in session reports did not exactly draw me in like I guess it has some others. The Gygaxian mandates and strict adherence to them became a turn off. I actually had a chance to briefly explore the early Dwimmermount in the ill fated thread sessions James started on OD&D Discussion, but that didn’t get far. James dropped that like a hot potato around week two, with no explanation or apology. But hey, those forum play by post sessions tend to be kind of a clusterfuck anyway. Maybe that’s why James jumped out the bathroom window and never looked back.

So am I the only one who has tired (again) of this classic D&D dungeon play? Is the whole mythic maze-underworld something that has popped up as some sort of delayed nostalgia? On forums such as Dragonsfoot, the humanoids are still constantly bleeping and durping about this or that aspect of classic dungeons with childlike glee. Minimalist description dungeon locations the size of Disneyland still seems to be the wheelhouse of the so called “OSR.”

He ran another play by post around 2012 for backers of the thing. I have no idea how that went. It was on G+ I think, which I had zero experience with.

James was raking in around 50 grand so far before he noped out again. But in a much larger, far more important situation. Much like that play by post, he just was not communicating. With backers, his partners, nobody. James had the money, the delivery date passed, and artists who worked on it were not paid. For at least several months, nothing. Then I guess, as best as I remember, he made a statement. His father was sick or some such. I remember some blurb somewhere about how he had been estranged for years from his dad, but I can't of course be sure. It was his dad and that is enough. My own dad passed away a couple of years earlier, almost blissfully because he had real bad dementia for a couple of years and I had helped take care of him despite having a demanding high end professional job. When he passed away it hit hard, but I was back at work in 3 days. I just wanted to be busy. James just dropped all responsibilities. I don't want to judge, but a word about his trouble a few months earlier would have gone a long way to get folk to understand. Folk in the OSR were aging, and many of us had lost our dads, moms, or whoever. People put hard earned money on the barrelhead to support his art. And he did not seem to give a fuck. Perhaps the most baffling and complained about thing was, during his ghosting of his project over those months he was still making multiple posts a day on his blog as if nothing had happened.  

This was around the time I stopped posting on my blog. I was super busy with career, an active dating life (getting in the gym every day after years of recovering from an auto wreck and making great money and dropping tens of lbs can do wonders), still doing Ren Faire to a large degree, and running multiple campaigns was taking up so much of my time. Also there seemed to be a lot of toxicity in the OSR at the time. I remember one gamers statement on some forum saying, "the old schoolers keep bayonetting their own wounded."  And sometimes my own behavior was less than laudable. I was coming off years of Howard Stern fandom, and I naturally have a bit of a dry and sarcastic wit and I often peppered my humor with that level of boyishness (still kind of do but I think to a much lesser extent these days). I said a few things I regret back then. 

Even in the Grognardia comments sections. I had long disagreed with some of the things James posted on. He hated the 80's Ah-Nuld Conan. And man, I loved it. Saw it with friends like 5 times in theaters as a kid. I scoffed at his "Conan should have blue eyes and not be that big!" sort of statements.  Or that Dejah Thoris in the John Carter movie was not hot enough (I retrospect I agree with that one now). Disagree on some things enough and its "why don't you go your own way and leave us to our delusions?" So I did eventually. 

This is my last post of that time period. 

So I only watched from afar from time to time. James eventually handed over the reins to others to finish Dwimmermount. It eventually fulfilled. Reactions were mixed. Ten Foot Pole reviewed a draft copy, and it is more or less similar to other mixed reaction reviews. Including my own opinions. Here is an excerpt. 

Adventure Time! This is a Maliszewski dungeon. If you’re familiar with his other work them you’ll be mostly familiar with this. It doesn’t deviate much from his usual style. The best parts are when it does. He’s got a kind of bog-standard D&D vibe going on that I don’t really get in to. Knights, brave paladins, holy clerics, etc. Not quite the nonsense I equate with 2E, but more of a non-weird 1E style. IE: Boring. This feel is exacerbated by the O M G LAME room descriptions. He’s got this style where he describes meaningless detail. Something like “This room was once a vestibule” followed by several sentences of what it was once used for and what it once contained. That’s then followed by something like “but it’s now filled with just some wooden scraps and debris.” WTF dude? What’s the point of the description provided? It did nothing to help me run the room or inspire me, the DM, to greatness. There is A LOT of space wasted on this kind of thing. Here’s an example from the text: “6. Trophy Room This large room once contained trophies commemorating Thulian military victories. There were plaques, statues, and other similar ornaments all long since looted and removed to other parts of the fortress. There are indentations in the walls, shelves, and brackets that all give evidence to their former presence. Also in the room are the bodies of two dwarves, both quite fresh though cold to the touch. They wear chain mail and carry axes, but the rest of their belongings (if any) are no longer present.” That’s once of the most useless room descriptions I’ve ever seen. It’s long, boring, and does nothing to help the DM with the room. The vast majority of the rooms have this problem. It’s almost like …. idk, the fluff text that appears in those fluff supplements. I loved the “Eye, Tyrant” book, but its not a dungeon supplement. In a dungeon description I need to be able to find information quickly and I need the information convey general ideas about the room. Things to spark my own creativity. That trophy room description does none of that. It’s just text that has to be slogged through, for fear of missing something, in order to run a boring room. That room did not make my job as a DM easier. It did the opposite. Most of the rooms have this problem. I don’t usually comment on layout/etc, all I generally care about is content. I’m going to make an exception here because the style chosen makes the problem worse. I’m not sure if James or Autarch are doing the layout, but it stinks. It takes these long, boring, meaningless text blocks and turns them in to giant text blocks. I believe the style is called Full Justification. ANY soul in the rooms descriptions are completely killed off by this style. You can’t quickly pick out anything important. It’s just a mass of fully justified text. If you’re lucky there’s a second paragraph. HATE.

Ultimately James partners took over and finished up the Kickstarter product, and it seems JM's hands were washed of it. Searching for Dwimmermount on Grognardia it looks like the last time he made a post that referenced it was in 2011.

This is completely accidental on my part, but James restarted his blog in 2020 about the same time I did with mine (I had moved to the Pacific North, and was now involved in 5th edition and online DMing so it seemed a good time) . I was not aware at first but saw his video interview on Wandering DMs. Gaming pods are not my jam, but I listened to the whole thing. Most of what I remember was them amazed at his number of posts on a weekly or even daily basis. I also recall that as best I can remember, James smiled exactly once for about 20 seconds. They used that as an image of him in their ad for the episode.

James has been posting pretty much daily like the old days, and in seems that over these five years he has a lot of irons in the fire. He has been running Empire of the Petal Throne for over 10 years for the same group online. Looking just recently he has Patreon's and Substack's and all. He seems to be doing a new version of Thousand Suns. He also is doing his own version of Empire of the Petal Throne (some years ago it came out that the original creator was a nazi or something). Other projects likely looming. 

I do want to sadly say that when I saw James was doing his blog again I made comments for awhile, and we interacted cordially. He read and commented on some of my posts. Suddenly, my comments on Grognardia were not being posted. Though a lot of the posts I made back in the day that contained any kind of toxicity or anger were deleted by me just to get a fresher start. Not that I was planning to beef with anybody like in those days that seem so long ago, though my wit would stay dry (these days I would say my sense of humor would be more in line with the Red Letter Media guys than Howard Stern).

That's 2012 me on the far left.

I checked out the comments of my final posts in 2012, and I found a couple with me and some other chucklehead goofing on something or other about James and or Dwimmermount. I cannot recall if or how mean the comments were, but I do not think they were deeply hurtful. To most folk anyway. But I deleted them, and it was over 3 or 4 years ago or so and really don't remember the specifics.

Since getting into 5th edition to run on Roll20 almost 6 years ago, I have had little desire to be a part of discussions online. I am on Tenkar's Discord and have made a comment here and there. A couple of private messages with the good constable a couple of times. Other than that little else. But something about the return of Grognardia around the same time I decided to get back on it sort of drew me back in. On the Wandering DM's podcast JM appeared on, one of the guys mentioned something about blogging for yourself as sort of a journal or diary, and that was exactly my newer attitude about it. I just like writing (if you can call it that - I hardly ever use the word "indeed" in my posts) about my gaming experiences and thoughts. I do not try to get the word out about the blog or comment in a ton of places. Most of my posts barely get a couple hundred views (though some occasionally get way more. A recent post about James Raggi has way over 1500 and my one about my alcoholic monk got over 2000). But there was something nostalgia about doing it again, especially since leaving old editions behind. 

And it was double nostalgia commenting on Grognardia again after over a decade. But it is what it is. A case of sins of the past coming back to bite you. And I'm not trying to stick it to him. Lately I just feel like talking about some of the personages of the OSR, and maybe some scandals from back then.  I don't know that the Dwimmermount thing is as big as scandal as Satine Phoenix's Battle of the Bards thing (that seemed a literal take the money and run...to Bali). But it is an interesting part of the OSR history. 

I hope the Dwimmermount thing is something James can laugh about now. I am sure he meant no harm. There were probably a ton of reasons that lead to the eventual outcome. All of us from the OSR heyday have plenty about us to goof on.  On me for certain. And I hope his variety of endeavors pay off for him, and that he keeps posting about stuff my players these days have not even heard of (average age 25-35). Plenty of people are like me and are old enough and old school enough to know about it all. James just ended a 10-year campaign. I just ended a year and a half one and boy, am I a bit burnt out.  

So he is doing what he loves, gaming and writing about old game gew gaws. And if he can make a few bucks off it then good on him.

You should have no trouble finding the Grognardia blog if you have never been there.  His Patreon is here.  And he has a Substack here.

Cheers

"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