"Up from the OSR" - The Redemption of Satine Phoenix?

The other week my year and a half Isle of Dread campaign ended, and also the campaigns of a couple of my players I was involved in. Especially since I rarely sit down as a player, and like to have campaigns be a year or less long, I am kind of burned out on DnD. I am involved in some supers stuff to learn Marvel Multiverse RPG, but for right now I am sort of looking back on my gaming life of the last decade or so and find myself thinking about the advent of the OSR and personalities therein I have followed or even had brief experiences with to some degree or another. So I thought I might touch upon some of the more interesting ones over a few posts. 

(I should note that as I maybe mention multiple times below, that I have zero insider information about Satine Phoenix, Jamison Stone, Zak Smith, or anybody I might namecheck here. All my knowledge, true or not, about the situation comes from following other media over the years. All written about here should be taken with a grain of salt). 

How about I start with somebody whose trajectory the last decade plus has been kind of fascinating to me, Dungeons and Dragons media communities own bon Vivant, Satine Phoenix?

When I started this blog around 15 years ago I was fairly unaware of a lot that was already going on in the OSR. I had first stumbled upon Grognardia when I got back into DMing after a handful of years off from it, which inspired me to post about my own old school experiences. But you could not go far in the rpg Blogosphere without finding out about the Zak Smith gang of the time. 

Besides the Zak blog, they were doing the I Hit it with My Axe show. Both the blog and the videos, due in large part to a porn connection, had a "hey cum look at me!" factor that just demanded you take a look. So I did.

I always found watching other people play DnD was about as much fun as watching flies' fuck. The few minutes I looked had me mostly wondering what having half your head shaved was supposed to represent at that time. The players were pretty much porn actor girls without makeup, who were about as interesting as porn actors usually are in interviews and such. And always looking very different than their heavily made-up video versions. You can look at one of the many docs and specials with names such as "Dark Side of Porn. It's never as interesting as you thought it might be. YMMV. 

Even to this day I have little patience for even big play videos like Critical Role. So I cannot judge. But for Satine it seemed the first step towards a career that did not involve some fairly extreme endeavors of the past. 

The least graphic pic I could find of 
Satine's early work.

If you Google her name, make sure you have Safe Search on if at work or your significant other is around. Even putting "DnD" in the search will still serve up some video nasties.

Look, Satine apparently had a rough childhood. It pretty much had to do with her father. Enough said regarding that. But young women who go through this stuff often end up in adult entertainment. Growing up in LA I have known some folk involved in porn..not high end, for what it is worth, but neither were those associated with RPG porn actor gamers like Zak Smith and Satine. I think Sasha Grey was perhaps the most well known of that bunch, and her stuff was from an early 2000's fascination with gross acts with mass amounts of human fluid, and it is common for people from abusive childhoods to end up in it, sadly. If they find some kind of fame beyond the sex work more power to them. And Satine was and is trying for that fame, albeit of the small pond variety tabletop gaming exists in. Certainly, steps up from backroom S&M. Moreso up from badly lit amateur home video threesomes with Zak and Mandy Morbid. But you can do your own research on that.

Matt can't wait to get home 
and fire up Pornhub

Outside of the Zak sphere in the mid to later 2000's, I eventually noticed that Satine was heavily involved in various things at a Los Angeles comic shop called "Meltdown Comics" (which I understand closed a few years ago). Besides some kind of art classes she was involved in, I recall they were charging for folks to play with Satine there. Sure, shops might charge for table use. But this seemed to be about forking over a bit extra to play with a porn "star." I remember pics of her on the Meltdown meetup page with some of the shop players at Magic Castle in Los Angeles, and I have to imagine they were paying to go with her. I recall some online gaming with Satine and Mandy Morbid and probably others, paying a few bucks an hour to have games run for them. OSR blogger and current Erik Tenkar buddy Joe the Lawyer paid Satine regularly for solo sessions I recall. Satine was hustling, putting the legwork into monetizing the incels of the hobby.  

Nothing wrong with any of this. I mean, other stuff she got paid to do is certainly not on the glamorous side of porn. I also remember her posting about her birthday party at the comic shop, and how several hundred dollars' worth of stuff was stolen and she was begging for the return. Potentially something that can happen due to the type of dudes who pay for playing DnD with someone involved in porn. I do recall feeling a bit sorry for her then in regard to that. The comic shops I loved and lived near were on the west side of LA (world famous Hi Di Ho in Santa Monica, started by a dude on my dad's pub dart team) compared to Meltdowns Hollywood home, but I followed what was up on the Meltdown meetup page because they were involved in all kinds of stuff besides art and DnDing with a porn person. 

Below is some doings at Meltdown over a decade ago. She is positive and having fun. Satine clearly involved in some kind of Kickstarter, and years later Kickstarters are a big part of her life, but not in a positive way. Stay tuned. 

When The Zak n' Mandy stuff went down, Satine was quick to disavow Zak and be on team Mandy. That never resolved. I think I saw Zak somewhere say she had to because of her other DnD official associations. She moved on from Zak World, which some might say was not a bad thing. She was on her way in the cleaner DnD world. She was a community manager for what that is worth. I honestly still don't know what that means. Was it a paying job?

I think around those pre-covid times Satine was showing up in other, higher profile places. Will Wheaton's Tabletop show had an appearance by her, and other Geek and Sundry bits. And she popped up in the Rick and Morty comic for a couple panels. At this time she was always wearing these elf ear prosthetics, which was part of the brand I guess. 

A hunny fitty is a long way from paying 10 bucks
at Meltdown Comics for Satine DnD and pancakes.

It is up for debate of course, but one has to imagine that there might have been something similar to the Meltdown comics situation. I mean, does having somebody who was fairly involved in porn for a few years make a project more appealing to aforementioned incels? Adding the whiff of snizz to Geek and Sundrey projects? 

One kind of high-profile project around that early Covid time was Destination Fantastic, what was meant to be a sort of DnD themed travel show featuring "Ears" Phoenix and some guy I was not really aware of who owned a mini manufacturing company. I think they maybe managed an episode or two but I believe the Kickstarter failed. But enough money for a free trip or two overseas I guess. More on possible free trips later..

Did he or didn't he? Ah, I think
we would be able to tell if he did. 
On the other hand, I forget his name
but I think it has the word "Poke" in it. 

Post covid I was not paying much attention to these personalities. I was too busy with my new phase of the hobby...running games on Roll20 and ignoring the fading OSR. I didn't even live in LA anymore. I heard nothing about Satine for at least a couple of years. Then her latest controversy popped up. A big one. In a nutshell Satine had hooked up with a bicep-flashing gym meat head gamer/self-help guru/maybe wanna be cult leader named Jamison Stone. 

Jamison is challenging you to a 
pull up contest, fatty bombatty..

My initial impressions of the guy was that he was Zak Smith if he went to the gym 3 hours a day. The Jamison and Satine whirlwind romance was full of Kickstarters and DnD events in castles and on cruises for some big bucks. Also apparently working as personal life coaches. His self-help book at the time, "Dye your hair, paint your nails, and wear bicep ties for a new you!" was a best seller. I read about that somewhere in something..

Actually, Stone was on the hustle years before getting with Satine. He wrote a book and when promoting he was already getting those bicep pythons pumped and dressing up like characters from works he was involved in. 

So author, cosplayer, and life coach to help you with your needs, mere mortal!

They will for sure improve your eye shadow and 
glitter application game

They apparently had a ton of irons in the fire. Even in the early days of his relationship with Satine, Stone seemed to have a kind of communal living thing going on with his Apotheosis Studios creatives, who he had living with him on a property in Colorado. Check out this not too terribly long video by a young couple who were cosplay professionals and streamers who had a tough time of it living under Jamison's shadow for some weeks. As there are in many comments and opinions by those who dealt with Satine and Jamison, the word "cult" comes up fairly often. 

                                                        Lucy, you got some bitchin' to do!

Their wedding at Garycon, or wherever, in a velvet roped-off hotel bar and got tongues clicking. I mean, they shut down the bar at a big convention for two hours and was very velvet-ropey.  

With a guest list that was a literal "Who's that?"
of minor Geek and Sundry celebs circa 2019-2022.
Jason Charles Miller and Amy Vopal? Count
me in! Oh, wait, I'm not invited..

This looks like that fucked up opening
ceremony of the last Olympic Games

Their final Kickstarter, I have to admit, looked kind of interesting to me. Battle of the Bards. A bardic campaign for bards with lot of people running bards and bard NPC's and bard magic and hopefully some bitchin' bard Pok(orny)ing. 

That's Satine. You know. The brand. 
Pretty cool image though. I don't do 
Kickstarters but I had interest in this.

They even had themselves inserted as major NPC's. Since Jamison barely looked real to me, I guess him being a DnD character is about right.

Witch Bolt. I'm betting 
he's doing a Witch Bolt. 

So Kickstarters and appearances and podcasts and even an honest to god game company. Apotheosis Studios. Working on Battle of the Bards and all that.

Some of it looks cool. But also there is plenty of cringe to go along with cool looking bits. And not I don't think that is Satine singing. 

I have no inside info, but when all the shit was going down over for around a year I started hearing that they, especially Stone, were not very nice people to do business with. Its kind of all over the place. A lot of shit in a short about of time. The first thing I recall is a somewhat famous tattoo artist was hired by Jamison and Satine and treated him like shit personally and professionally. The artist was later quoted saying he was “insulted, berated, and talked down to as if I was a lesser person.”

 

That there becomes a common thread. Satine and her main man were treating people like peon pieces of shit. Employees, contracted writers and other talent. And the pair, in a certain place of power in gaming and its monetization at this point, were supposedly making a lot of threats about deplatforming people. Here is one example of Stone's request for a personal apology, I think to the tattoo guy..

Hear this; if you want people to treat you like an adult and/or professional, you need to act like one. You have yet to do this. And your carelessness only continues to disappoint me and make the situation worse for yourself. I’m done [interacting] with you […] The only way I can see you salvaging the situation for yourself, both personally and professionally is to write me (and Satine if you so choose) a genuine letter of apology, taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. If you decide to do this, I expect it to be through the post, not email. You have my address.

Put it in perspective of the time. These two considered themselves self-help gurus. And why not? Such careers can get you huge cult like followings. They offered people around them, fans and simps, costly training in life stuff. And went for it. And Satine was talking in some interviews that her exposure to fantasy role play has given her certain mental powers to help others, and other kind of disturbing stuff. 

Pretty sure Leader Stone can
look into your brain as well. 
You know, cuz all that DnD
in his noggin..

Apparently Jamison and Satine liked to throw around their accrued weight in the pro part of the hobby be berating people, acting all high and mighty, and on many occasions threatening to, and actually having people cancelled out of the professional side of gaming. Both Stone and Satine. To the guy who was burned on tattoo work, when he chimed in with some complaints on his treatment, got this message from stone. Lot of such messages to many people would eventually pop up.

and blurbs like this were common...

I believe every word of Chad’s post. This is nearly identical to my own experience. It was the most awful working environment. Jamison Stone repeatedly threatened & berated myself and other freelancers. I had never felt more taken advantage of in my life.

-This comes from Tristan and Katie who hired the pair as guests for a livestream of PAX West. They detail mistreatment at the hands of the pair, including being lectured for drinking more than one glass of wine, getting berated for mishandling a suitcase, and being relegated from employer to assistant.

They knew they could “ruin anyone [they] wanted with a single tweet.”

Finding out about Tristan and Katie was what really made me perk up. By then there was already an appalling amount of rough bits and pieces coming to light about Satine and Jamison's alleged horrible treatment of people. But these two young people really put it over the edge. Brian W. Foster, a Critical Role minor personality (who had his own controversies and cancellation soon after) streamed hours of material on this, including a long interview with the pair that had harrowing tales of their experience with Satine and Stone at Pax West. 

Tristan and Katie were rising stars at a streaming company or something, and they had arranged through work to pay Satine and Jamison to appear on a stream at Pax. Through T and K were literally the bosses, our heroes S and J were said to have treated them as unloved peasant servants from the get go. Pick up coffee at Starbucks early in the morn and bring it to them. This is the worst to me. A Starbucks near a convention hotel is going to have a line out the door by 6AM. You can practically hear in your mind Satine and Stone talking about this in the hotel and laughingly deciding their bosses should shlep for them. At the con the bosses were made to carry all their bags and such throughout the day. 

At one point they got berated for not making sure S and J's coffee was accounted for. They had left their own coffee on a lobby table or something and their bosses were expected to make sure this did not happen. Satine and Stone also got pretty personal with them, each taking the significant other aside to give them the life coach shit they both thought they were experts in. Jamison told Tristan how to be more of a man in his relationship, and also workout advice because he was "soft around the edges." 

Tristan and Katie were young people trying to move up in the company they were working for. So they went along with Satine and Stones treatment, because what else? They were hoping associating with the latest thing in gaming communities would be a step up for them. So they shlepped, they got up at dawn to get coffee for two infant terribles, and followed them along the con floors as S and S held our their hands to various merchants for free swag. 

So this came out, and the damn was opened. All the shit they were allegedly up to became well known in gaming circles. People were speaking up. Posting in forums and on youtube. 

There is enough material to fill a book at that point, but the long and short of it the meanie bobeanies had to make a plan. First up was Satines public apology. 

Satine cried, whimpered, round about blamed the victims for taking the abuse, and talked about her career being over..

Right off the bat, she says her "partner is being bullied" and now she can't do what she wants. Here it becomes all about her "trauma" and yeah, trauma begats causing trauma sometimes. Those abused by a parent often end up abusers. But I always thought being abused is no good excuse for being an abuser. 

The cancelling of various con events occurred. Satine thrashed about a bit, then mostly vanished as far as I can tell eventually.

As Tenkar explains below, Stone took the hit. Purposefully. Clearly the plan was to save the brand, which probably much to Jamison's chagrin meant him biting the bullet. He talks among other things about how mental illness guides his passions (I think) and that he is going to do some serious self-reflection (I guess). And Satine was glad to NOT share the blame.

The most recent Kickstarter, Battle of the Bards, did not deliver. You can go in and read the comments from angry donators going years back now. Though I have heard there has been some movement in fulfilling some things, but there will be no full boat. Satine pleads poverty to a degree. See below about her trips to Bali.

Before mostly going into the shadows, Satine began her main excuse of her own mental issues making her not the best person she could be (and making her be mean to peons). 

In the couple of years since I was not much aware of Satine stuff. Jamison certainly went away. 

Well, not away from Satine. Long enough that Satine emerged a year or two later with revelations that she divoced her husband, who she claims was mentally and physically abuse. Most harrowing sounding was multiple chocking's which she claims changed her voice. Yow. 

When Satine started popping up more and more the last year or so, she was still involved in stuff. Back to life coaching. Apparently she was claiming to be a professor of human anatomy, though I can't really find citations on that. And twice in the last year or so, the second time very recently, she has gone on extended trips to Bali.

She claims Stone took the money and ran. But going to Bali and doing yoga and eating high end food and all that would cost most of us several thousand dollars at the very least. I read somebody postulating that Satine had some "benefactor." and consider some of her background I suppose that could be the case. She has also apparently gone on fantastic vacations to Aspen. But what cost mental wellness, right? 

Satine most recently is clearly trying to get back in the lucrative gaming space. She has appeared on some podcasts and such talking about her experiences, mental health, and getting back in the space. 

She did a couple interviews for this (not very highly viewed) podcast. And it is clearly about making her look good. There are many edits. Also , after some light convo, they ask her about the controversies and she is all "Oh man I really didn't want to talk about this" when c'mon, this shit was about talking about this to get the redemption train moving. It's hard to tell the sincerity of self-improvement. I try and often fail. We all try to be better people. I guess being happy is the best way to feel improved. I hope Satine is happy, and truly is trying to be better to not just herself but to the people she has some kind of power over. Assuming she gets back in that space. 

Jamison "Light" Stone is still into life coaching in Colorado. Apparently far away from the gaming space. There seems to be less glitter and eye shadow, and those trademark bicep ties are gone (though the pythons are still properly pumped). 

Human Excellence Coaching — The Stone Protocol

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

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. 

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.