Marvel RPG - "What Price Three Souls to Save?"

 

So, this couple of session arc would be of the supernatural variety. When I give people a quick description of my setting and what I like to do with it, I call it "Supers/Cyberpunk/Future Noir/Future Supernatural." The Pacific island nation of Haven was not just historically a "weirdness magnet" but the post WW3 refugee crisis brought folk from all over the globe here, along with whatever folklore and myth they brought with them. So especially in the older, lower income parts of the city, I like to imagine there are lots of supernatural goings on. Western Euro, Pacific Islander, Caribbean, etc.

And in my old Champions games, specifically for the then street level Justice Incorporated characters, I created Sister Mary Alice, or "Malice." Sister Mary Alice was a nun at the big catholic church downtown, "Our Lady of Constant Sorrow," made in part of brick and stained glass imported from an old European cathedral in the 1950's. In stands still smack dab in the Eastern District of City Center, with much of the city built around it.

Some decades before, Sister Mary was assaulted and killed by violent gang members and entombed at the church. But Sister Mary's spirit was taken over by a spirit of vengeance, turning the soul of Mary Alice into a Revenant. Every some odd years the possessed spirit of Sister Mary would invade the body of a fit, mostly random, young woman to take on the vigilante mantle and go out seeking violent men to kill. 

Mary Alice could bestow upon her vessel the ability to levitate, pass through objects and produce ancient weaponry (favoring swords, axes, and maces). The possessed woman's body would be imbued with extra strength and stamina (of the max human potential variety). She was perfect for those running battles on rainy nighttime rooftops and alleyways. 

For this recent Rank 3 Justice Inc games, I needed to upgrade her a bit, mostly adding the ability to teleport and also a level of Mighty and Sturdy for the mortal form. Made her Rank 4 as well, which makes her more than a match for any of the characters individually. 

I also brought in a bit of a protege for Sister Mary, a young Latina girl in Day of the Dead makeup who was using her grandfather's heirloom military pistols to go out and blast violent gang members at night in the form of "Devota." The urban legend of Malice and the new, mortal vigilante were out at night taking care of business. Sister Mary Alice mostly being near to help her if she got in trouble and let her do most of the killing. Still, dead criminals were being found with both sword and gunshot wounds. 

Several sessions ago I had decided to start having a 15- or 20-minute encounter a character could face solo every session or two, just so they can have their own moments. The character "Ghost" was on patrol and ran into Devota taking on a gang on a rooftop, with Malice on hand to make sure it went well. You can read the sad tale about how all that went down for me here. I will probably not be mentioning it again in the foreseeable future. 

But this encounter would finish up this little dangling plotline. I won't go into deep detail, but the two-session arc would take place essentially on two maps, the ground floor of an enclosed parking lot, and a section of the roof of Our Lady of Sorrow.

I would bring in one of the members of the group "The Redeemers" who have been around since the very first session of the campaign (the runners up for a job with Justice Incorporated) and also appeared in the "Bar Wars" arc. 

Pretty much like most of the Redeemers characters I came up with Count Carl on the spot when I was practicing creating characters in Demiplane for my hoped for eventual Marvel Multiverse campaign. I really didn't have him all that fleshed out. He was going to be a non-evil vampire who hunts evil vampires. In his first appearance I meant for him to be German or Romanian, but I somehow just started doing a Cockney accent for him when he appeared in game. By his second appearance I decided, based in large part of the image, that he became a vampire in 1960's swinging London and I would basically just do an Austin Powers impression. That stuck. Vampire hunter, monster hunter, and most of all a detective of all things supernatural. He was a chain smoker and before he appears the smell of smoke would proceed him. 

He appeared in the morning in the Safehouse Paladin is living in. Pally woke up smelling ciggy smoke and hearing the news on. Going into the living space there was Count Carl floating in front of the big wall TV, smoking and waiting for him. 

Their previous encounter having been a brief hand to hand (Paladin handled him then no problem, though Carl's heart was not really into that encounter), the blunt and no-nonsense Paladin told him to go back outside and ring the doorbell. When he reentered, Carl asked that Paladins team members be summoned. When they arrived, he told them of the Revenant influencing the spirit of Mary Alice, possessing and innocent girls' body, and at least to some degree encouraging Yanet "Devota" Inez to be a criminal killer. He said that his friend, the blind elderly Dominican priest of Our Lady of Constant Sorrow, can create an area at the church that he can trap Malice in, and that as an experienced Exorcist (in the real world the Dominican Republic seems to have big history with that) can expunge the Revenant and bring peace to the soul of Mary Alice and free the unknown girl being possessed. 

Carl says that he predicts Mary Alice and Devota will appear the next evening to attack youths who will be doing a violent teen takeover of a parking lot near a theater multiplex. He wants the characters to be there to try and stop any violence they can, but to let Devota escape. The young girl apparently goes to the church after each appearance as the vigilante to pray (and that Carl knows most of this from being in contact with her only close living relative, her grandmother who has been going to the church for decades). The father will have an area of the roof blessed and prepared with candles and incense and will eventually lead young Yanet up to the roof, where Sister Mary Alice will no doubt appear to help her. At that point they can stop Mary Alice and the father will perform the exorcism. 

Part of my philosophy when running games, whatever the genre like DnD or whatever, is to provide different locations to do action in. I think that is especially important for a genre like this, as streets and office building rooftops can get a bit repetitive. So, an indoor parking structure and a cathedral roof section seems to fit the bill of keeping things fresh. 

So once the characters staked the place out, the youths soon arrived to cause a fuss among people going to their cars after a movie or dinner. They were prepared with bats and knives, and as soon as they started fanning out to mug and menace folks, the characters dug in. Paladin and Seraph beating on some of them, Nova trapping some in an energy cage, and Igneous generally menacing them with his giant size pretty much had them in check. But then Sister Mary Alice and Devota appeared. Yanet was hesitant to kill teens, though when a couple of the gang members accidentally knocked down an old couple while fleeing from Paladin she did shoot one of the youths in the leg. But she then took off, as did Mary Alice, but not before producing a mace to smash in the head of one of the teens.

Then off to the church roof, where they met Father Dom who eventually brought up Yanet who had removed her makeup to pray. They disarmed her, and Mary Alice appeared to fight them. I don't have to go into detail, but at rank 4 she could put up a decent fight and dish out some damage with whatever weapon she produced. I even had given her the power to animate a couple of the roof gargoyles to make it more of an interesting fight. But they were finally able to put Malice down, and father Dom freed the possessed body, and Sister Mary's soul from the influence of the revenant spirit. 

Sister Mary Alice's soul was seen rising into a shaft of light, and it seemed like she was finally free. 

The unconscious Yanet was flown by Seraph to the apartment where she lives with her grandmother. With granny being a devout Catholic, she of course thought Seraph was an angel at first. 

Some thoughts: At some point during this 2-session arc, Seraph declared to the others (while on the church roof I think) that this may be the most important thing they ever do. Not sure if they agree, but strong stoic type Paladin seems to be a religious warrior (a session after this he would give an NPC a bible), but he does not advertise it. Also, Igneous' player missed the second part where the roof fight was. Iggy's player misses a session now and again. Since he can grow up to 100 feet tall, he is always conspicuous by his absence.

Anyway, that nicely wrapped up the supernatural vigilante angle. A nice detour from the more science related stuff of previous sessions. But there will be more supernatural based foes in the future. Gotta keep mixing things up. 

Cheers

Bittersweet OSR Memories - Socal Mini Cons

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ooga booga!"

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

"Ooga Booga!"

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

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

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

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

Yer mother sucks in hell, Karras...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe it did not meet expectations?

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

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

He describes the setting thus:

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

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

 

Manos Hand of Fate? I
get that reference!

???

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

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

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

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

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

I think they ended the stream last August. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers

Are many (most) RPG content creators struggling with mental illness?

 

Since I sort of abandoned older edition D&D in order to actually find players with ease, I don't spend much time looking at forums or old school blogs. The last few months I have invested most of my game related time trying to improve my knowledge and skill with Roll20. And since most of my online group are Roll20 and 5th ed experts who have had patience with my shortcomings, I've probably improved about 3% or so each session. 

But I do look around what still passes for OSR. Sometimes at things that are informative, and sometimes things that are dumpster fires. So I learn little bits of info on some of the OSR's more, um, unique individuals. But a blog I have looked at here and there the last few months is Tenkar's Tavern, run by former New York policeman Erik Tenkar. Unlike a lot of OSR stuff I peek at, Tenkar doesn't interest me in a "here's an oddball to have a larf at" way. He seems to be more about news. And to a large degree, showcasing bad behavior among the ranks of bad actors who are trying to get paydays from the gaming scene. 

My interest in the old school has for sure waned, but I still have some. So, this seems a place where you can get info on that, and maybe even look at videos here and there on the subject. For instance, I think it was the first place I heard about the whole Satine Phoenix/Jamison Stone fiasco. 

I'm on the Discord for the blog, and it's a rare case where I interact with gamers who are not my players from time to time. I do my best to not "get into it" with anybody. I'm not doing the act in the OSR I was doing over 10 years ago where I was taking a "Howard Stern" approach to things. But something I wrote that I thought was fairly mild got me into it a bit with a regular there who apparently a content creator and is schizophrenic, in their own words. 

Some time ago I saw a bit somewhere that included a blurb by James Raggi, on his Facebook if I recall, where the Lamentations of the Flame Princess creator wondered why anybody would clean their toilet. Sort of "I mean, you shit into it right? Why have it clean?" So I brought it up in the Discord in relation to an upcoming interview with JR, and said he should be questioned about it. 

I have a couple of friends in Berkley who are roommates, and once when I was staying over one weekend, I went to put some leftover Chinese in the microwave, and it was a sight to behold. Gross is the best word. The debris of a couple dozen exploded bowls of soup and marinara was caked and baked into it. Hanging from the ceiling like stalactites.  Long story short, I ate cold Chinese. 

Did I say anything about it? You bet. To this day. "You guys have much younger, cute girlfriends. For that alone would you not clean it from time to time?" It's mostly a joke, but also a WTF? And certainly, they could have cleaned the toidy a bit as well. I don't know that any of it is out of mental illness, but they are folk musicians, so..

I have to admit I have let the john go for a couple weeks, mostly when I knew nobody would be visiting (I don't tolerate drop-bys). I'm not a clean freak by any means, though a little germophobic. So keeping it, or the kitchen sink, or whatevers clean is half my own notion of how I want to live, and half me not wanting anybody to think I'm a fucking slob. On the weekend if I am in town I work the bathroom, the kitchen, and other spots that go to hell very fast. It's just how I want to live. And there weren't always little birdies floating around me like Snow White. I've done it at times I was unhappy as hell. But at some point you just bite the bullet and get off your ass. But in my case, sure, I am probably a little OCD.

And that is where my comment came from. I don't just assume everybody has mental illness. Unless being kind of a slob is automatically a form of mental problem. We want to tag things nowadays, and sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it does not. But clearly here, though mocking for sure, I wasn't thinking I was making fun of somebody who had mental illness and had lost all touch with humanity and could not take 3 minutes to avoid having a cesspool in their home. No more than me giving pals shit for their lack of microwave cleanliness. 

But then, suddenly, anger in a comment thread:

Regular: You're not punching down on the mentally Ill, are you? I turns out people who create imaginary worlds that few people play are likely to have some degree of mental difference.

So here for the first time I heard somebody say the person I was goofing on a bit was mentally ill. I for sure never thought of it that way. Unless just somebody seeming a bit of a slob and an oddball is to be taken as mental illness. But now I'm not so sure. And even more importantly, most DM's create imaginary worlds that few people play. So, am I mentally ill?

Regular: Ho"How many books have you published? How many hours to you spend working in isolation?"

OK, he went on to say that he was schizophrenic, and he was clearly upset. In my defense I never heard about situations that were mentioned, such as Raggi laying naked in the snow lamenting his life. But long and short I apologized if I triggered anything (and Tenkar came in to defuse things a bit) and the conversation moved on to Critical Role or some such. 

Am I lacking empathy as one comment from the guy had claimed? I don't think so, again mental illness was not on my mind when I joked about the toilet. I for sure have empathy in lots of situations where folk are disabled. Mostly physically so. I have an older brother in a wheelchair over a decade. So for sure I relate to things with empathy. I almost got in fights with pricks who I saw parking in handicap spaces. I run to help open doors or get things off the shelf at the supermarket. When my parents got very old, I suddenly was very sympathetic to the elderly. But these are things I can relate to as it affected my family. Hell, my oldest brother was a raging alcoholic at 13 years old. I spent decades watching him struggle with booze and pills. For me personally there were times in my life I maybe should have had some help. As a teen my breakup with my first sweetheart was devastating. It probably affected my relationships the rest of my life in at least some small ways (I avoided marriage like the plague). And in my life my weight has gone up and down. I've always been very active, and when I have an accident or an injury that keep me immobile and out of the gym and off the mountain bike for a time, I start to pork up. But is that a mental or a physical thing? I guess it's all complicated.

One of my favorite sayings is "there but for the grace of god go I." But an even greater quote is by, I think, Abe Lincoln "many times in life I have been driven to my knees by the overwhelming conviction I had nowhere else to go. 

One of my best local friends was in Afghanistan. I knew that a few months ago when he and my other bestie, his wife, came over for boardgame night and I had Squid Games on. The "Red light Green light" segment, where a big crowd of innocent people are helpless shot at when they move and dozens of heads are shown with bullets blasting through them. He muttered "wow, pretty violent." I asked him if it was bothering him. "Yeah." I shut it right off. I still feel bad about it. I remember the year before going to their place one night and making them watch Kickass, one of my favorite movies. It had dozens of heads and faces being blasted to bits (mostly by a little girl). I never noticed it bothered him then. But now I know. He's not a wimp by any means. But he saw action in a fucked-up place. Saw friends gunned down or blown up. It doesn't matter that he goes hunting every year and blows the shit out of deer and whatnot. It bothers him to see people blown to bits. Now I know. Understanding. 

I have empathy. I guess just like me not assuming Raggi's toilet ponderings were just the thoughts of a "weird" dude and not a sign of true trouble, the upset guy with schizophrenia on the Discord just assumed I ran around "punching down" on folk with mental problems. I wasn't, at least not intentionally. Long ago I stopped being in road rage situations. I realized that you never know what somebody is going through. That they might be acting out from a place of desperation. They say depression is anger turned inward. That rings true. That was a long time ago, but it was a great decision. Don't assume. No more fistfights on the roadways. 

I still think joking about somebody not wanting to clean the toilet is fairly mild as far as insults go. A little mockery can be inspirational. Get called fat a lot and you might try to lose weight. I dunno. I can learn new tricks. I was fairly jokey about transgender people most of my life. As a teen I was a Culture Club fan, but then still called Boy George "Thing George." Some years later I saw footage of him publicly fucked up on heroine, and at that point just saw a person in trouble. Perhaps still slightly homophobic (I never wanted anybody to come to harm despite my mild discrimination) later in life, in the couple of years before I left Southern California, I became friends with a transgender neighbor. She was the first person to call me when I moved to a new state to see how I was. It all birthed new perspectives. 

Anyway, the cherry on top is that within an hour or two of the postings, Tenkar went on camera and spoke out on it. 

Mental Health and the OSR - Just How Prevalent Are Mental Challenges in Our Community? - YouTube

Now, you can't attack the message. He's a sincere guy, and it all has merit. Again, I just thought I was joking about a slobby metal head. I've known a few of them. And punk rock was my teens. I've seen lots of horrible toilets in some domiciles, and I never went to depression or mental illness as the cause. 

But as far as so many RPG creators having real mental issues, I don't have to think too deeply for it to start making sense. I think this hobby, especially the older school inhabitants of it, do tend towards things that I thought of as just "weirdo" and it maybe was much further than that. As Tenkar alludes to at one point, there can be degrees of it. And like most thinking people I have had my bad moments. And months. Maybe even years. Like a lot of people. Most people. 

So maybe I can be less "jokey." At least among strangers. There are a lot of oddballs in the OSR, but there often may be more to it. Hell, maybe I'm one of them. 

Munchkin and Call to Adventure

 So far I've made posts about boardgames I had played the hell out of in the last couple of years. But on Christmas Day I was able to try two games that are new to me. 

With my nearest family members living hours away, and me hating any kind of holiday travel, I was going to stay in town and hopefully see some of the local friends I've managed to make the last couple years.

My besties B & L (a younger couple who kind of adopted me when I had first moved to my new town) came over to spend Christmas afternoon with me and eat slow cooker chili, drink beer, wine, and cider (maybe a little smokey smokey) and play some games. We had a certain window of time; whenever they would drive the half hour to my part of town they would usually come around 4 or 5 and hang till 9. But a powerful winter snow storm was due at some point. A predicted 4 inches. They have a big truck but currently live in a rural part of town that doesn't have priority for snow plowing. So they came around noon and we put the chili cooker on to bubble and settled in quick to try a couple of new games as snowflakes began to slowly accumulate outside.

Munchkin is of course an infamous game that I have wanted to try since impulse buying the deluxe edition a couple months ago. Call to Adventure was given to me by B & L on the Thanksgiving I spent with them and their local friends. Having not heard of it (it never appeared on the Will Wheaton Tabletop show where I was exposed to most games I currently love) I kind of had doubts about it. 

I spent a couple hours Christmas Eve trying to teach myself Call to Adventure. The rules are a wee bit hard to grasp on whole at first, but as soon as you know the basics you wondered why you thought it was complicated. Its not really. Besides the character/story building aspects, things like memorizing what various runes mean seem hard on the surface but in like two minutes you got it. The first game will go slower mostly from trying to correctly pick out the needed runes for your challenges. But after a couple of turns we were in full swing, not having to look up advanced rules until the need came up.

The second game goes much faster (game one was around an hour and a half, the second a bit less than an hour). 

It's a fairly quaint and dare I say maybe a bit elegant game engine. It goes from awkward to intuitive fairly quickly.  You basically start with an origin card (you are a hunter, farmer, merchant, etc), a motivation card (Bound by honor, seeking vengeance, etc) and a destiny card that spells out your final fate and what points you get at the end for various other cards you obtained that relate to the destiny card. 

Runes stand for the usual character traits; strength, dex, con, Widom. You cast runes representing how many of these you have to defeat challenges that get you more cards to expand your story cards. 

The character and story building elements, that you have a lot of control over, promotes role playing and storytelling by default. B & L are not community theater rpg types by a long shot. But they extrapolated their cards into compelling stories. 

What really struck me was the spirituality aspects built into the game. In my late teens and eearly twenties I had a period of exploring many religious, spiritual and occult things. So I was famiar with rune casting. And there is a lot about the relating of various cards here that reminds me a lot of reading tarot. Exploring the artwork imagery to expand upon the card relations even further helps foster the storytelling fun of the game. 

OK, the storm was on. Snow was coming in sideways. But it was not packing significantly. So my pals decided to stick around long enough to get in a game of Munchkin (it was around an hour).

I personally found it clunky at first. Pulling high level monsters you had no chance against, and constantly having to ditch cards. If you have too many you cannot discard. You have to give them to other players. So it seemed there would be a lot of crap cards going back and forth a lot. But very quickly things started tying together so you could use more cards, and as levels were gained the more powerful monsters you could fight. Just like D&D, how about that? 

It is an amusing RPG parody, but I think the game play has to potential to be kinda deep. I didn't think I'd like it much due to the level of the whimsy in the artwork, but the nods to D&D really won me over.

The storm deepened and B and L hit the road. Our exploring these new games was the highlight of my long weekend, and can't wait to play more. New Years weekend?

I need to play both of these games a bit more to have a final verdict, but they made for a fun few hours. A heavy role-playing game and a not so much one. I'll post more in the future about both games and will also try the solo feature Call to Adventure includes. 

Merry Chirstmas and Happy New Year!

Old School vs. New School

Yeah, I was a pretty tried and true 1st edition guy. I can nail down a handful of reasons for spending decades NOT trading up to newer edtions:

1)  it's what I knew for most of my life. 

2)  It was easy not having to memorize the DMG. Just proclaim "rule of cool" and wing everything. 

3)  Who wants to learn a new system?

4) Who wants to buy a bunch more books?

When rejecting 2nd edition back in the day it was easy to just say "its not Gygax." But even then it was more about the 4 points above. 

In the 90's it was easy to stick with 1st ed. 90% of my player pools would be friends who wanted to play but had little experience with it. So no rules lawyers or power gamers. They were happy to play and didn't care about system. Those were the salad days. Long, amazing campaigns of a half dozen genres. 

Then in the 2000's after some years off I entered a period of years where most of my players were seasoned 1st edition wonks. Here I was forced to be more rules wary, or what passed for rules in 1st ed. Forum folk would argue that it's a sound system. But they are wrong (IMHO). Its a mess.  So open to interpretation all it leads to is argy bargy and rules lawyering. So many "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situations. It could get annoying. I mean, all you want to do is present a fun game. That thing right there is not even in the top 3 list of what many 1st edition enthusiasts want out of it. 

Dissatisfaction with old school D&D and the people who were the most into the edition  lead to me running anything but D&D for around three years. And I was happy for it. Some Metamorphosis Alpha, Cthulhu, Runequest, and even Champions filled my gaming needs.  

The group suddenly got an influx in its last year or so, of younger dudes who were 5th edition guys who had zero 1st edition experience. I ran a somewhat short campaign1st ed, using the environs of Tegel Manor. It was some brutal scenarios and a couple characters died, which the newbs were unfamiliar with. Though I think this campaign was some of my best DMing ever, they wanted to play 5th edition. So we decided to give it a go with a more or less noob DM. 

I ran a bard. What struck me the most was how pretty much every character class is a magic user of sorts. I found that very odd. A bard casting thunder wave? But there were things I liked, such as the standard stat modifiers. Not having to have the hit tables handy was nice. But I wasn't really sold. In all honesty it may have been the ability of the DM that kept me at arms length, but at any rate I wasn't ready to make the full move to the new edition. Though there were good points for doing so:

1) straight up rules so you have less arguing about them. 

2) You don't really need all that many books. The PHB and Monster Manual will do (if you don't have power gamers). 

3)  there is a far far far far far far far greater player pool if you want to start a group. And they skew 20-40 years young. And, heaven forbid, lotso grrrrls..)

4)  you can still run games with an old school feel and mentality. Its still D&D if you think of it as that.  D20's. Rangers. Elves. It's D&D as you want it to be, dog. 

Along the lines of this post but also as an aside, a couple of years before leaving LA I had a shot at putting a Champions group together with a lot of people who weren't in my regular group. I love running Supers campaigns so I gave it a real go, but my Grognard attitude about edition got in the way. I wanted to use the old Hero 4th edition, the one that was a sort of all inclusive system for all comic book stuff, not just superheroes. I even had multiple copies.  But the folk I was looking at running for where insistent at using the newest Champions edition, so I demurred on the whole thing. If I had at least tried to learn a newer edition I'd maybe have had some great games of Champs. 

When I moved into my new town the other year, I started an old school rpg meetup and tried to get some 1st edition going. Though the meetup had a lot of folk join it, there just was not that much interest in actually playing it. 

So I got involved in a new campaign at *gasp* a game/comic shop. Dungeon Crawl Classics seemed super popular, but I got involved in some D&D after a few fun games of DCC. The 5th edition DM I played under for a few months was a good guy, and a sort of unofficial community leader, but he was inexperienced. Though fairly talented at running from material he did not prepare all that much (the revamped Keep on the Borderlands), for me the lack of prep shined through. Lots (and I mean lots) of reading the text box descriptions out loud. And actual role play was about zero. In one session the other players would be gung ho wanting to kill all humanoids, then the next would have all this sympathy for them and be anti-killing. It was all fairly annoying, though to be fair many of them were more or less noobs. One guy, a young redneck construction worker who showed up covered in drywall dust, was a jackass at a nuclear level.  When at some point I asked the DM what a particular statue represented and he replied, annoyed,  "it doesn't matter"I knew I was more than ready to get out of the shop and get my own hand picked group going. Something like that should matter to a DM, not to mention a player actually showing some interest. If you are unprepared with the material just make something up that makes sense. You don't have to look at it as art, but put a little work into it. 

So I did with the help of a couple I met through the local game shop Facebook page.  They actually became my besties in general in town, also getting me involved in a local poker group. I got to do a bunch of great games (centered around that old classic The Lichway, which I'll probably talk about in another post) but then the whole virus thing hit.  So I started looking into running games on Roll20, with some helpful remote guidance from  the comic shop DM I mentioned above. 

OK, its all kind of off topic from the title of this post. Getting back to that I guess my point is a transition to a newer edition was fairly easy. I find it enjoyable because I can inject my old school philosophies, such as they are. Noobs at the shop didn't want to hear about it, and maybe they were right. Stop talking and just run new edition games and find my old school nostalgic joy within what I bring to the table as a DM. 

More play injected with my old school style, less reminiscence. Walk the walk.

Cheers

2012 - a great year of just plain gaming

With the Temple of Demogorgon 4 year anniversary just this last week, I thought it might a good time to talk about some of my gaming from the last year (as seems to be the tradition). Mostly the last year was about focusing on actually running games over blogging or kerfuffling in the OSR, and I found it both peaceful and fulfilling.

In 2012 I didn’t do much in the way of gaming outside the regular group. After a couple of shitty experiences in the previous and other years both at tabletops and online (there were some good ones too), I dedicated myself to the regular group and to new campaigns with gusto, and kept my posts here to an average of 2 or 3 a month.

Pretty much started the year jumping right into my long-daydreamed about classic Runequest game. I did a lot of research, and dreaming up of my own stuff in relation to existing data for this campaign. It was a lot of work, but I love Glorantha and could not wait to portray my version of it. Though I used a lot of the Celtic imagery and some clarifications on locations from later editions, I did my best to keep my Glorantha very basic, they way I experienced it as a kid. There was a bit of work to be done with the crunch, as I almost immediately threw out some of the Strike Rank stuff and started houseruling to make the game and all it’s combat focus go smoother. I think that went well, as I’m pretty sure I captured the groups imagination with strong tribal-clan setting, a nice break from generic medieval Europe setting of D&D. I finally got to do the classic Gringles Pawnshop and Rainbow Mounds scenario’s, and it was all good. I think I left the campaign off later in the year with the players wanting more, and that is the feather in the GM cap as far as I’m concerned. I will for sure revisit the characters later this year.


In January regular player Paul brought a copy of Arkham Horror boardgame when we were low on players, and though lengthy (as most boardgames seem to be) it was fun, and got my juices flowing to do some Call of Cthulhu. We did eventually get a few sessions in, and it was good times. I called this part of the campaign “Fangs of New York,” with a classic New York setting. Byakhees and Chinese Gangsters over Times Square on New Years Eve, Cho Cho People and Chaugner Faugh in the Jersey Pine Barrens. Really great sessions, and as in the past some players hemmed and hawed about the genre, but loved it once we played. Quite honestly, I think I do my best GMing with Cthulhu. I’m really “on” when I run it. Looking forward to getting in some more of this soon. It is a good game for when you are low on players.


Just a quick video gaming mention as an aside. Around the earlier part of last year my video game of choice ended up being Fallout 3. I hadn’t played a video game with this much enthusiasm since Resident Evil 4. Just a great and immersive game, and a big time waster in 2012. Right now, into 2013, I’m putting a bit of effort into Borderlands 1 and Bioshock (I might have mentioned in the past that I am always 2-4 years behind on my video games).

My Knights of The Old Republic campaign continued. Despite the crunch, or maybe even because of it, the group on a whole seemed to really enjoy it. I cannot compare it to AD&D as I hadn’t run that for the group in over two years, but out of everything else I have done; Mutant Future, Champions, and Call of Cthulhu, this seemed to be what the gang liked best. I ran it right up to the holidays, but have set it aside since I want to do D&D so bad. We’ll hopefully get back to it later this year, maybe summer.

In addition to this new D&D campaign we are just getting underway, I also still want to do a mini-campaign with the high level dudes left over from the Night Below campaign I ended two years ago. The players seem very attached to these characters, and it seems a shame to not do the occasional outing with them, despite my mild dislike for high level play.


So we in the group have started my new AD&D 1st edition campaign, and the characters seem like a lot of fun so far. So my gaming wish list for lucky number 2013 is to do a bunch of this AD&D campaign, a smattering of the high level AD&D, More Call of Cthulhu here and there, a continuance of KOTOR later in the year, and…heaven forbid…maybe sneak a little Champions in? That would be a damn good gaming year for me.