"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

So Lamentations of the Flame Princess had a PDF Sale

 I cannot think of a single PDF item related to gaming that I have ever paid money for. I have a small collection of items I found online that cost me nothing. I think over the years most were from The Trove website (does it still exist?) which I suppose can be considered piracy, matey. But most are very old. And mostly Judges Guild items from back in the day that I actually owned at some point in my youth, but are gone for whatever reason. Wilderlands sourcebook, Modron, etc. 

I always preferred to have a physical book on hand, and mostly still do. But in this day of the iPads, I can read a PDF without sitting at a computer. That's big. 

So, I don't have much experience with LOTFP products. Or James Raggi himself. Early in the OSR I remember seeing him post on his website a flyer he was hanging around his town looking for players. It had the image of a female thief at a treasure chest. I thought I saw it recently, but can't find it. But since at the time I was looking for players around 2008 I contacted him to ask about the flyer and if he had luck with it. He gave a friendly reply, and that was the only interaction I had with him. Lately I considered reaching out to ask about the expat experience, since I was considering getting the hell out of this fucked up country. 

It was not long before he had a business, mired in a certain amount of controversy. "Weird Fantasy" products. Cover images of female adventurers losing limbs to ochre jellies and such. But hey, to me all D&D was weird, so I never really looked into his stuff. A lot of the scuttlebutt was about shit monsters and character penis's getting turned into eels, etc. Stuff that was not exactly the call to adventure for me. But I will admit I always had some curiosity. 

I promised myself to spend no more than 15 bucks. Not because I'm broke. That's like 20 minutes pay for me. But because I did not want to get saddled with a bunch of PDF's I mostly won't use. Again, this was about curiosity, though I hope there are things I can use throughout. I went over a bit, and here is what my 16.50 got me.

Veins of the Earth: I found Deep Carbon to be interesting (though I had to change a lot to make it usable for me. For a Star Wars session no less). So I wanted to check this out. I'll do anything to make the stale old underdark more interesting.
Curse of the Daughterbrides: Sound like a father marrying his daughters. Curiosity killed me on this one.
Terror in the Streets: sounds like an urban adventure, so what the heck. Hopefully mine it for bits.
Frostbitten & Mutilated : like other Zak things I got, pure curiosity.
Fish Fuckers: Sounds like humans raping Deep Ones for a change. Pure curiosity. Maybe useful for Cthulhu games?
No Rest for the Wicked: heard somewhere it sucks. So spent a buck fitty to find out why.
A Red & Pleasant Land: I doubt I will get much use out of a setting about Dracula and Alice in Wonderland, but I just gotta find out what the hype is about. Erik Tenkar calls it Zak's masterpiece.
World of the Lost: the cover sold me.
Vornheim: Again, gotta see the hype.
The God that Crawls: Heard it was good.
Tower of the Stargazer: can always use a wizards tower.
Isle of the Unknown: heard good things. Heard bad things. But maybe has a lot of things to mine.
Death Frost Doom: The Lichway from White Dwarf is a fave I have used several times over the decades, and I heard this ripped it off. So gotta have a look.  OK, so there were some I knew well of but just decided not to get. There is Carcosa, which seems more or less a complete setting. I could tell over the years that I could not probably mine much ideas from it. But now that I think of it I should have just got it for a read. I think it is still on sale.  I may go in and see if there was an item or two I missed and want to add to my new collection.  I'll say this. I don't mind supporting Raggi. He does not seem like a bad guy. Not long ago on the Tenkar Discord I made fun of his comments about "why bother cleaning the toilet?"and got a chorus of Tenkars apparently high attendance of mentally ill people piping up about picking on those with mental issues. I just thought he might be a slob, not necessarily bonkers. But really, I can respect what he is doing...in gaming, not bathroom hygiene.   Cheers

D&D and the Rise (and fall?) of the Beautiful People

OK, it may be more truthful to call them "Peacocks." 

But whatever it is, behind my back, a bunch of D&D players have become D&D celebrities. High profile, entourage-towing, "hey look at me" types. Back in my early gaming life the most beautiful D&D player I knew was my high school sweetheart. Me and my friends were lucky enough that our gals were into pop culture things, and D&D was not off the table. All the other groups we knew in those days were sausage fests. Tables full of long hairs in heavy metal band T shirt bands, or young George Costanza's. That's not to say we had it better than anybody else (or maybe we did). But it's always nice to have fun in a mixed group. You know, like a beer commercial. And whether I had a GF involved or not, into the 2000's I was always able to get a decently mixed gender gaming group. 

I guess it was D&D with Porn Stars where a bunch of women gaming came to the fore. Not that I was aware of everything going on in the OSR. I read a few blogs, did my own little blog, made some friends, got in some beefs, then got into other things. When it came to D&D I decided to just focus on running. I've been mostly out of the loop for years now. But I decided to write a little bit in current times when somebody told me a blog is a great place to write for yourself. And that is what I am doing. But my gaming life has gone through changes, and I feel like there are some personal tales to tell. And let's face it, pop culture nerds like to talk pop culture. Even if hardly anybody is listening. But jeez, looking deeper into the game culture scene makes me wish I hadn't sometimes. But trainwrecks are hard to look away from. 

That wasn't so for Zak Smith and his blog some years ago. It was gaming with a whiff of dirty sex; porn girls playing D&D How was that NOT a win? It was popular as hell. Maybe in part from Zaks writing, maybe in part from the presence of the gals. 

Zak and company during much, much, much,
much, much, much more happier times.

 I can't speak on the talent of Smith. To me a lot of what the "edgelords" were doing did not seem much more clever than what those heavy metal dudes in high school were doing. Poop and cocks and unbeatable scenarios. But whatever. When I stopped blogging I paid little attention. When I turned my back on the whole OSR scene I guess the biggest controversy was James at Grognardia walking away from his "legendary dungeon" (that had only been invented a couple of years before) Kickstarter. And with nary a word. He did that going out for smokes and never coming back thing He did recently come back, but I could not say to what reception. He still has (reduced) comments in his comment section, and seems to have been invited to a couple of podcasts (that I never heard of). But I've been out of the loop, and still am. 

Though the Zak Smith/Mandy Morbid controversy was a hell of a thing that happened. A broken relationship and some serious allegations, followed by a big time cancellation of the dude. I never knew how popular the guy had been in the gaming scene, although I can say with a fact that anybody I met and gamed with in the last three years in my new town had ever heard of Zak, and most not of the OSR There is money to be made there, but its still a small pond. And most Kickstarters in the scene seem to go to hell. 

But Satine Phoenix? Some knew about her, mostly I guess from the recent rise in streaming popularity. And spending hours watching that shit. Watching other people have fun. 

I knew of her mostly because she was a major personality at a famous comic book shop in my home town. There was a Meetup. For 10 bucks you could come play D&D with a porn "star" and have pancakes. Well, they did not lean into the porn thing, but Satine was also one of Zak Smith's players, and a part of his video projects (not porn, but D&D with porn stars. And oh, I guess there was some porn too). 

More recently Satine is parted from Zak. Right after the allegations she spoke up in support of his accuser, and went on to her own things. She started living a life in rubber elf ears. Going to conventions and trying to gain a high profile. She was a D&D community leader (that seems to give more bragging rights than anything else). She appeared in a Rick and Morty comic. She clearly was on a path of more fame in the usual small pond of D&D. Special guest stuff. 

But that pond got bigger once 5th edition settled in and got more popular, and started skewing younger. And this was the age of streaming. And even I became a fan of some streamers. Such as the Vtube Egirls using motion capture tech to appear as living anime girls on Twitch and Youtube. 

That's what I'm talkin' bout..

Not so much tabletop. Watching others play D&D is about as much fun for me as watching two flies fucking. No matter how much they dress it up. Not the community theater of Critical Role. None of it.

I like watching streamers play video games...especially when they look like this...

Valkyrae. I have fun watching her have fun.

Pokimane. She's from Monaco! Also appeared 
briefly in the movie Free Guy.

 I think I did watch a lot of Foreververse when I moved into my new town and didn't have a full TV channel lineup for a few weeks. Jason Miller and Amy Vorpahl were on that. 

Who are they? I dunno. Outside of that show I didn't know where they were from or what they did. Though in the pic Jason is wearing a shirt from a famous music store in my home town. But they did seem like very cool and casual people on that show. I sort of liked it for that. Everybody seemed like regular folk. Zero vamping. And Jason ran some Basic D&D with In Search of The Unknown and his style was very endearing.  Miller and Vorpahl seemed to have become part of the Satine entourage lately, minor gaming celebs making up a wall of protection around Satine and her colorful husband, Stone Jamison. Maybe they weren't so nice when with these "beautiful people?"

C'mon, he looks like a nice guy. Who would totally
not tell you to get a haircut and lose some weight..

This guy is somebody I only learned about in regard to the Satine controversy. Yep, of course. Another big controversy in a small pond. I guess Satine hooked up with this guy, a tattooed gym rat with heavily gelled rainbow brite hair who seemed to be making a bicep muscle pose in every other photo I see. I mean, I go to the gym and have decent guns, but I'm not always posing them. Or even wearing short sleeve shirts. 

Oh yeah, there's the flex

And apparently every character is..him. Not too douchy a move.

Satine tends to be rendered in lots of art, and she is featured on the Kickstarted art...big time..

So I don't know about their businesses. I was aware of Satine's Destination Fantastique kickstarter that seemed to be a money making dodge as best I can tell. Hey, when you are getting popular you need to milk your simps, right? But was that a sign of less than genuine intent for Satine? Because just in my reading the last couple days, she appears as a person, when the cameras are off, puts a lot of effort into seeming nice and gaining a following to monetize. Her and the Light Brite hubby running D&D in castles and on cruise ships. Nothing wrong with that. But the main point seems to be they were not really nice people, especially if they owed you money. Becoming hostile and belittling when asked for updates on pay, and a shit ton of gaslighting.  In the latest updates Satine seems to be making a play at throwing the husband under the bus to save that brand. She talks of supporting his abusive behavior, though apparently she was not as nice as her smiles or rubber ears would lead you to think. He can go sulk in the bondage room while Satine goes on to the conventions in the ears and tries to get some good will back. And she does have those industry friends. Who will go and who will stay? Jason Miller and Amy Vorpahl were guests at the velvet rope wedding they had a Gencon (though sources say they had already gotten married...but you need that attention, right? Repeat it at a con where you are already treated as a star). 

I dunno. For me it's much ado about nothing. For my life I mean. Its an interesting story, sure. Its why I'm talking about it. Like any of the controversies. But it is a tale about lives being destroyed, for better or worse. I can't say if Zak Smith got what was coming to him. There seems to be a case of an embittered ex. But I don't know these people. Satine and company as well, but multiple complaints seem to be adding up. And this is just a few days old. There is likely to be more to come. I smell cancellations, but maybe Satine and her ears can at least get her out of it. 

(I want to add that Battle of the Bards, though kind of overly flashy, seems kind of cool to me).

I'll just be gaming. Tonight is game night! I don't know how beautiful my players are. I don't use video on Roll20. Well, "T" is a former actress. I know what she looks like. But the others are fairly young. And that skews much better for me than when I did 1st ed in later years.

YMMV. Cheers. 

Nazi's of Tekumel

 

Hardly a subtle title for a post about an obscure game/setting that after several decades is getting more chatter than it ever did, though not for reasons (most) of its fan base is happy about. 

A focal point of the sudden controversy is over at the blog Grognardia, where blogger (often pejoratively referred to as "The Pope of the OSR") James Maliszewski has, since his return from his abandoned Kickstarter debacle years ago, been making the occasional post about his long running Empire of the Petal Throne campaign online. Though the setting has its fans, the posts about his gameplay seem not as welcome as his posts on old gaming magazines and Dungeon Master Guide snippets such as hit point generation and henchmen concepts. 

Maliszewski even did a post not too long ago seeming to lament the lack of comments on these entries and threatened to stop posting them. "Oh no!" cried his faithful. "Please don't!" OK, maybe not so much. But this campaign he does, along with posting long (quite dry IMHO - I rarely could get past a couple paragraphs when I tried to follow them) entries about the gameplay, seems of prime importance to him. But now his heart is broken. Sundered. He is bewildered and lost. Naw, after the weeping and gnashing of teeth he started posting again chop chop. Will he continue his campaign? Perhaps, but I might hazard a guess he'll stop posting about it. At least one of his posts following the wake seem Tekumel related. 

FYI this post seems to be about Grognadia only because the blog kind of seemed to have more Tekumel stuff going on than other places. Though I didn't look too hard. I'm not real in touch with what is going on in Grognard circles these days.  Tenkar's Tavern seemed to have a video post about it, and no beef with The Tavern, but I can't get past a minute or two of most OSR related videos anywhere on the net. His are no exception.

OK, enough potatoes and on to the meat. Apparently, MAR Barker, creator of Tekumel, is an unabashed Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite, as evidenced by some Sci Fi book he wrote while still living, extolling the virtues of Nazi ideals (and perhaps even ripping off decades old Marvel Comics Captain America plotlines regarding a "4^th Reich").

The big takeaway for this image is
Jane Weidlin from The Go Go's
has a blog about comic books

 Ouch. Not just that, but that the Tekumel Society, (Made up of his fans? Family members? I dunno), has known about it for a long time. 

I don't know about Nazi, but Barker
could have a Blofeld/Goldfinger
 thing going on here...

Maliszewski is shaken. His readership pop up in the comments to offer support/unsupport. 

My heart breaks for you. May you find peace with your relationship to Tekumel and all the joy and belonging that it has helped you find.

This really must be the utter worst for fans of Tékumel. It's bad enough when a favorite author turns out to be a bit of a prat, but in the RPG setting you feel like you've been walking around inside the mind of the author. I'm sure people in online fora will be debating and relitigating for years over whether Tékumel is "tainted" by its author's views. Just a sad situation all around.

I refuse to join in with an outrage mob of barbarians seeking to destroy all art and civilization.

It's really awful, and I sympathize with your situation as a "name" in the fan-community. 

OK, I'm not here to make fun, though acting like a family member died over finding out some fairly unknown game/setting/fictional language designer turned out to be a skinhead at heart is.. I dunno. Nothing I can say in that regard won't sound bad. Sure, James at Grognardia was in love with this stuff, and even had a fanzine going, so I guess you can feel bad for him. But, you know, campaigns end. You stop liking some stuff. I read LOTR 3 times growing up, and loved the films. But if I found out Tolkien ran around secretly setting homeless people on fire it would Surprise me. But overall, my reaction would probably amount to "...ah well. That sucks. But I was probably never going to read the Trilogy again anyway." Sure, if I did I would look at it differently. But it wouldn't ruin having hobbits in D&D for me. Oh well, there but for the grace of God go I.

Though I suppose if I was running some long campaign in Middle-Earth it would give me more cause to think. But getting all verklempt over it? Naw. Life is too short. If you can move on from a lost loved one, you can move on from an RPG to another. There are plenty of setting and genres to love (shit, there are guys like Erik Tenkar who appears to love and play them all). Many not put together by a modern Nazi. That we know of, anyway. 

 I have my own history with Empire of the Petal Throne. Not deep in experience, but deep in time. You see, as a youngster I hung out at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica (famous in OSR circles for its mention in Playing at The World), and here I was exposed to early RPG's at around the time they came out. When I started playing there the owner Gary and his crew were pretty much past playing D&D. They were playing Bushido, Runequest, Traveller, and even a bit of Chivalry and Sorcery. And also some Empire of The Petal Throne. I think I only played a couple of sessions. It had a dungeon crawl element, which made it a lot like D&D. But other than that it was very different. I appreciated that in a way. Its even possible I tried a session or two with my friends, though If I did it clearly did not stick. 

Big time EOTPT fan. I get the feeling this
guy isn't too worried about the 
nazi stuff

In Tekumel, Culture and such were very different. There were oddball aliens races. And it had a very complex history involved that I found fascinating at first. An advanced resort planet out of Star Trek or Dr. Who or something. Indigenous races rounded up into reservations so visitors from outer space could enjoy Space-Disneyworld.  The whole shebang getting lost in a dimensional vortex and smooshed together on one interdimensional planet devoid of stars. And THEN the apocalypse begins. Flash forward ANOTHER 60,000 years and hey presto Sci Fi world is now a fantasy world. Hmm..Ok, that all does sound pretty cool. Assuming I got it right. 

Like I said, fascinating at first. But these concepts did not hold my interest for long. I was far more interested in other batshit and perhaps more lowbrow stuff like Arduin or Wilderlands of High Fantasy. City State of The Invincible Overlord. This stuff was not the type of setting implied in early D&D. But I could grasp what it was. More or less easily described to players, if needing described at all. I don't remember my first time as a player in Empire of The Petal Throne. In fact, the older dudes briefly all wrapped up in it at Aero probably didn't even bother to describe the background to a young teen. But I can imagine there was something like "Your fighter of the single Gammahydron, "Umaoprah", arrives on the shores of Whatasnozz, and exits the boat. A large Sar'to'nack approaches you and hands you a moldy purple plum. This is your invitation to fight in the labyrinth of Gr'in'zel'mort for prestige, honor, and a shot at becoming a fighter of the second Gammahydron.."

Ok, it's been over 20 years since I read the book. But I'm sure a lot of names were all Ch'alty. 

 Arduin and Wilderlands were far more accessible. And they were full of variety. They were chaos really, and as a very young person I did not need more explanation than that. And I don't think it was less serious than some far flung, mushed together pocket dimension, high tech as magic setting such as Tekumel. Now, decades later I learn more and more about Wilderlands and Glorantha, that makes me wish I appreciated those even more back in the day. Wilderlands was a setting at the end of its days, a land made up of layer upon layer of civilizations that lay under our sandaled feet in the form of endless ruins, and a place still reflecting the remainders of ancient interstellar war. That was at least as awesome to me as what EOTPT had going in terms of background IMO.  And Glorious Glorantha, which I loved perhaps most for its divided map of "in Column A you get ancient Ireland/Germany and in Column B you get ancient Middle East...with a topping of ancient Greece." Great stuff, mostly just lacking made-up languages. Unless somebody did that. I'd like to know what Praxian sounds like. But again, more accessible. 

I suppose many consider Empire of The Petal Throne is more for the "intellectually" inclined. If you are like James at Grognardia and say "indeed" a lot, then I guess that's for you. 

So back in the day during its brief run at Aero, I got a copy of the game. I don't know when the boxed edition was available, but mine was pretty much the rules and a map in a plastic bag. For decades it was in my collection, occasionally pulled out to look at and wonder if I should try to run a campaign, or just stare at it like the oddity it was.  But I usually ended with a "nope," and playing something else. So many good things to play. 

Around 2000 I put up a lot of my old unused game stuff on Ebay. Bunnies and Burrows, early White Dwarf issues. And EOTPT went as well. Don't even recall what I got for it. But while I regret not holding on to that adorable old copy of Bunnies, I never missed Empire of The Petal Throne. Thought to be honest I'd like to look at it now. 

Would I run it? I guess. Maybe not. I dunno. If I did it would be as a museum piece. I don't really tend to hold up classic game designers on pedestals. Gygax, Perrin, Peterson. I loved the games but most of the time don't think much of the men behind them besides basic historical context. For the most part these guys despite often being the catalysts were just part of the ultimate stews they made, especially as time went by. But Barker was the sole dude behind EOTPT. It makes a difference. Yeah, I'm not Nazi, but I'd maybe run a short campaign of it if give the opportunity. Mostly if I didn't have to study the ins and outs of the backdrop. And I guess I would have to. And that combined with the Nazi stuff would probably make me "nope" and save the (probably pirated) PDF onto one of my old external drives. 

YMMV, as they say.