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.
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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.
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| 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?
