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

A True Relation of the Great Disastrum of Virginia

Since starting to work mostly from my home office the other year I watch a hell of a lot of YouTube. I have to be honest. I find it fairly distracting. All these 10 to 20 minute bits on all kinds of subjects I like or have interest in.

So every now and again a short, James Raggy video will pop up. So kind of more in touch with his stuff than i've ever been really. I had moments of fascination about some lotfp stuff such as years ago, hearing about the module, Death Frost Doom being a rip off of one of my old favorites, the Lichway from White dwarf magazine (as it turns out, only the ending gimmick was, but otherwise the Lichway was a far more approachable and gameable adventure module in general).

So, the other year he had a giant PDF sale with rock-bottom prices and I picked up a handful just to finally satisfy my curiosity about some things I didn’t want to spend more than a couple of bucks on. I still haven’t brought myself to read even the barest fraction of the stuff. There might be some tiny bits to steal, but overall a lot of the stuff just doesn’t fit with how I do things for my old school game world but I do believe that old style DND in itself is generally fairly weird unless you really try to make it not so. Back in the 80s I remember us playing albums with our games like John Michael Jarre’s strange Zoolook which is pretty weird and inspired lots of creep. But certainly not “your characters penis turns into a live eel” kind of creep. 

Over a decade ago in the early and chaotic beef-filled days of my blogging I remember messaging James regarding how he found players for his game in the city he was not native to. I got a quick reply and he seemed like a nice guy. I didn’t explore his stuff over the years because I generally don’t really purchase a whole lot of game material, again, I really don’t know how much use I would’ve gotten out of any of it. I supposed at some point, I’ll take a closer look at some of those PDFs bought for a song. I think I got Red and Pleasant Land and I'd like to see what the fuss is about. Vornheim just kind of baffled me. I run a lot of city stuff and certainly not how that is presented. 

So some time ago a Raggi Youtube video popped up. I always tend to pay a bit of attention. I kind of like the guy. I knew a lot of metal heads back in the day in Venice Beach, but he seems fairly harmless and amiable compared to those sketchy chuckleheads. It was mostly the metal loving surfers I got in to scrapes with in the beach parking lots (the movie Point Break had a lot of true to life bits in it). I mean there is some ick there. I mentioned in a previous post some time ago about his comments about "why would you bother cleaning the inside of your toilet"(uh...maybe cuz it is in the house, and maybe a girl will come over?). But fair enough. I don't think he drinks, but I could see having a beer and a shot with him and talking some games. Since I've been of a mind to leave the country in recent years I would probably also ask his advice on being a stranger in a strange land. 

But anyway, he introduced this...

“Being an Account of the Rising of a new Star to the West of the Virginia Colony,
And its Derangements of Space,
The Engines of a Second Creation,
Rains of Fishes and burninge Coales,
The Mazement thus brought to Heathen and Christian,
And the Prodigies, Sports of Nature, and invasive Creatures from Spheres beyond,
Now disportinge upon the Earth

After years of raids and massacres, the Powhatan Confederacy and the Virginia Colony find themselves in an uneasy peace. The people of Jamestown and outlying plantations again trade with Powhatan neighbors, and English planters again ship tobacco to markets across the Atlantic.

Then the land to the west of Powhatan territory seems to rupture skyward, a new star rising into the sky. Down the James River soon come reports of strange happenings, strange beasts, and stranger people.

The English were not the only ones seeking a New World.

A True Relation of the Great Disastrum of Virginia, 1633 is a campaign for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing and other traditional role-playing games. This set comprises a sourcebook for the Virginia Colony, rules for exploring an altered wilderness, keyed encounters both in Virginia and far beyond, new Magic-User spells and miscast tables, and more than eighty new monsters”.

So, a high-quality campaign set, some kind of prestige format, and very different it seems from his usual modules with titles like "The Whores Bloody Guts" or "Honey, I fucked the kids."

Super interesting, I think. Colonizer days? Possibilities there (probably triggering in our current soy-boy society. Inspired by "Annihilation?" Cool. Super high quality and something like 300 bucks? Yow. Do you get a pdf with it so you can wrap the books in lead and put them in a safe?

My first thoughts though when I heard about it was "how the hell would I get players for this?" Is there a LOTFP forum with a player search thread? Because its getting hard enough to get players for DnD in the Roll20 forums. I want to do some Runequest and am mostly afraid of being to find enough players for it. Or at least a mixed gender group. I hate sausage fests. But not sure how the ladies, or even dudes I guess, would feel about running characters in buckle shoes and big stove pipe type hats (also with buckles). Stuff usually associated with Thanksgiving. Though The Witch (VVitch?) film was cool. I might use that as an example. 

It has struck me that this might work for Call of Cthulhu, and couched with that in mind may be the easiest ways to approach players. I do have a thing for different historical periods for CoC. I see Drive Thru has the PDF for 25 bucks, and I'm thinking of getting that just out of pure curiosity. 

I sure as hell would love to see some live play of this. It has been out awhile, but I see nothing. Not even a review. So maybe this is so far just being bought in the expensive form by the faithful and placed in protective plastic on shelves. But Raggi himself, with his odd, grotty charm, should be doing videos of him running this for some people. 

Call of Cthulhu Wild West - finally living the Dream

 

I've run three major Call of Cthulhu campaigns Since I was a teen. Two set in 1930's Los Angeles, and two in 1930's New York. Ah, memories. that last one was about 10 years ago for my long running Santa Monica group. I ran a lot of 1st ed over those years, but also managed to get in campaigns (of various lengths) of a bunch of genres. White Box DnD, Metamorphosis Alpha, Runequest, Traveller. But that Cthulhu one, though only maybe a dozen sessions in length, was fun. I called it Fangs of New York, and the first session was set in a Times Square upper story banquet hall at a new years eve party. 

I recall though having fun with that little campaign, but even at that time I was sort of pining to run the system in other time periods. Ancient Rome, Ancient Sumer, maybe even the Old West.  I felt like I had my fill of the 20's-30's. 

Up until the recent holiday season I had a decent 5th ed DnD group going. A fun bunch. Everybody was from off the Roll20 forums, and by this time I had learned to vet prospective players. Heavily. There is a lot of chaff to shift through to find the goods. And everybody was very cool. The most fun for me was a young couple, maybe in their early 20's, who were very enthusiastic noobs and I had a lot of laughs with them. But of course if you have a couple in your group, you aren't just getting somebody who might leave the group for whatever reason. You are typically losing TWO. That is the nature of a couple. They usually want to play together. But whatever is going on with them, we have not heard from that besides one chime in last month saying the wanted to play one night, but it has been silent since. The way I figure it, the thing young couples do best is break up. So my assumption is there. 

As it was the holidays, I called a few weeks break mid-December. I had not taken vacation time from my job for months, and wanted to use some of it. 

By the time New Years Eve came around, I had gotten the notion to try and get a Western themed Cthulhu thing going. It just popped into my head. Hey, if the DnD campaign is done, I want to jump right into something else. 

 I tested the waters with a post in the Roll20 forums, and just like my expectations told me I did not get much reply. I tried a few spots in other places, and eventually was lucky enough to stumble upon a Call of Cthulhu Facebook page with a huge membership. My post there got a huge response. 

I did not vet that hard. This was a niche genre, but plenty of people were interested. I actually had to choose several from a dozen or so inquiries. I had a couple of shortish Discord chats. The only one who did not continue by the night of the first game was a guy who wanted to run a Paleontologist. He had been running Cthulhu for years, but not in the format I wanted to do it. He wanted to play with Zoom, with video, and with theater of the mind. Well, in face to face or online I use battle maps, mini's/tokens, and Discord for voice. And everybody else I chose were into it. 

Ultimately, I ended up with mostly folk from the FB page who had played CoC, and also some of the remnants from the D&D group. 

So three easy going sessions so far. I mean, this is not DnD, and it has been years since I ran CoC. So I had to get more into a narrative style. Not relying on constant combats. Though I had to look for balance. Unlike my usual old campaigns of CoC, this was a more violent environment, and almost every character had guns. I set this campaign in 1886 Washoe County, that includes Reno, Carson City, and Virginia City. Towards the end of the gold rush in the west, and towards the end of what could be called The Old West in general. I mostly picked the time because most western weapons and tropes were around, and also because it was the year the University of Nevada opened in Reno. 

So far the characters are A female Doctor, a teenage female Chinese carnival trick shooter (both from San Franciso just hours away by train; and of course I'll want some adveturing there eventually), a two-fisted banker (from Virgina City who has survived dozens of robbery attempts), A writer based on Beauchamp from the movie Unforgiven (Duck of Death sez I), and former nun turned entertainer/dancer. 

Jordan, from the DnD campaign, has been on a long Canada trip so has yet to make it. Not even sure what he would run. For both of the guys from the DnD, they were kind of noobish to DnD, so for sure had zero CoC experience. They were not very interested until they heard I would be doing old western theme, and also they saw it was an easy peezy system, so they were in. 

So yeah, so far so good. So far just sort of settling into their lives in Reno, and encounters with cultishness related to Yig (losta snakes!), and Yidhra. 

I was at some game shop many years ago reading through one of the books and saw her entry and was fascinated ever since. She was for sure not a Lovecraft invention.

"...where Yidhra walks, the hills do not forget"

So yeah, as a believer in positive visualization I finally get to not just use this Outer God, but in a Western Cthulhu game. Boxes checked! I hope this campaign goes awhile!

Cheers

Gaming Inspiration out in the wild 2

 

Gaming inspiration is where you find it. Last year after a lovely, almost spiritual weekend in the deep Mendocino woodlands I posted about the moments where my mind went to games that take place in natural places. 

Now to do it again. After a long year at work in my healthcare related job (mostly hybrid so work from home, hold the applause) and not taking much time off from it, early this month I drove the several hours to Mendocino. Not to the woods, but not far from it. Some of my oldest friends and some of their Bay Area music friends, couple dozen in all, rented an old 1800's farmhouse (in great condition) right near the stunning sea cliffs and coves of Casper, California; pretty much Mendocino.

I made it an extra-long weekend. Leaving on a Thursday even though we had the house until Monday morn. I spent Thursday night in a small hippy town called Willits ("Gateway to the Redwoods"), in a quiet hotel where both that afternoon and the next morning had the sauna all to myself.

With the area being cold and misty, the town itself surrounded by woods, it was a great way to relax and prepare for an extended party in a house chock full of musicians.

I'm so grateful to still be a part of a scene where once a year or so I get invited to these terrific and exclusive weekends. At least once a year. And for this one I got to the property first and got to check out the house.

nice Night of the Living Dead vibe

There is something very cool about being their first and watching folk roll in and greeting them, beers and other drinks getting handed around (we had to wait a while for the cleaning ladies to get the place ready for us). 

But before long the party was in full swing. Rooms assigned (I got my own little love room), friends hugged, and more drinks. Great conversations and catch ups, big laughs, and eventually full-on music sessions. 

To many little weekend misadventures to be included here, but on Sunday early afternoon I did a little solo walk to the seacliffs. And of course with some alone time and such great views, some gaming ideas came to mind.

What a great location for characters to explore sea caves. I'm even thinking of having the characters in my upcoming western themed Call of Cthulhu campaign, located in the Pacific Northwest, visit this area. Deep Ones no doubt need to be included!

But yeah, another great vacation weekend out in nature and filled with friends and music. Something like this seems to becoming a yearly think. I don't want to make time fly by, but cannot wait to find out where we will do it next!

Cheers!

So Lamentations of the Flame Princess had a PDF Sale

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Official" D&D vs "Folk"D&D and the pitfalls of playing with strangers

(this post may qualify as a rant. Take it with a grain of salt)

 I've recently been seeing a bit of this lately, the use of the term "Folk" over the usual "Old School" designation.

"Official" is of course the rules (more or less) as written, while "Folk" is a name for people who rely less on whatever the current editions and settings are, and "do what thou whilst" hodgepodge gaming. I like the word Folk for this. The term "Old School" is getting, well, a little old. 

As a D&D person myself, this is sort of hypocritical I guess, but I find gamers, D&D players especially to often be an odd lot. I suppose I always considered myself Old School, but maybe less so in recent years. When I got hipped to the OSR (sometimes derogatively referred to as the "blOwSR") around 2009 or so, I got involved a bit. I started this blog not long after starting a 10-year group where I ran a variety of genres, but mostly 1st edition. I'd say about 60% of that experience was great, and the rest, well, often when more or less unfulfilling, and often the drizzling shits. I feel this is because it was gaming mostly with strangers. Sometimes weird ones. And I found this to my experience with the modern crop of players, especially gained on Roll20 forums. Maybe chock full of more oddballs than Grognard places like Dragonsfoot. 

Most of my gaming life since I was a teen was about me running campaigns, of various genres, for friends I already had. People who often had no real D&D experience. They came in fresh, and just wanted to enjoy the play without a bunch of expectations. Open minded. In any genre I ran. And these were my most happy gaming years. Dungeons and Dragons, Champions, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Traveller. Kind of a bummer that this was 20 years and more ago. 

As a teen I knew that playing at game shops or cons was not for me. So many of the people turned me off. 

So as far as 1st ed D&D was concerned, there was no arguing over rules or rulings, whereas in the groups of strangers that I ran for years later that was often the order of the day. So much of 1st was open to interpretation, it was an easy in for power gamers and rules lawyers to work their shitty magic. People who if you gave in to, would, like classic bullies, feel they could do more of it until you were worn down. They were so proud of how they viewed how things should be run.  It was one reason I treasured doing games like Champions or Call of Cthulhu. The rules were fairly clear. But eventually it would be back to D&D and "D&D People" and their particular peccadillos. It was often hard to feel like these people were friends.

When I moved to a new state it was a chance to sort of renew. I adopted 5th edition and had a couple of decent face to face campaigns, the first one was me being tapped to DM by my current beloved besties B and L. I was happy to more or less be turning my back on my old school roots. But my experiences going mostly online with Roll20 the other year was also decidedly mixed. It was mostly with strangers. Because of this I decided to hew close to the rules, but still, no matter the experience or age range, D&D players still seemed to have particular expectations, rather than just going with the flow of whatever the DM had in mind. 

 So, call them old school or new school, call them official or folk. The only main difference to me is that one wants rules as written, and the other ones want something more creative and distinct. But they still often seem to be odd people (yes, I am very much generalizing) with particular expectations. Such as "I want to run a cyborg minotaur gunslinger!" People under 40 on Roll20 are full of this kind of "hey, look at my cool character!"

But even if I stick with 5th ed, it will soon be a "folk" edition. One DnD is going to change everything. WOTC recently and very blatantly announced that the players are an untapped resource to be monetized, so part of their plan is microtransactions that themselves are well known as the drizzling shits of the video game industry. To play it is no longer the DM's who will need written material. Players will need to create online minis for their characters, and I can see a couple of dozen microtransactions for every aspect of it. Face, hair, clothing, every weapon or piece of armor. The colors. What the cost of this stuff will be is what interests me the most. In the past you could buy some paints for about 10 bucks, and a mini for about 5. Will your online mini cost you 30 bucks? 50?

But that is going in a direction that I am not at all interested in otherwise. 

Mostly it turns me off as there will be a lot more work for DM's, and likely a lot more costly for them. They will need to invest a small fortune in DND Beyond, as will the players. And as usual, you will be dealing with fickle players you often do not know along with the cost and time investments. For me, based on my hit or miss Roll20 experiences with the community at large, will it be worth it?

Nah, I will stick with Roll20 and 5th ed for now. Or maybe just try to get a campaign of Call of Cthulhu or a Superhero thing going. A break from D&D people. I think I am maybe starting to head towards being done doing RPG's with non-friends. I have a campaign of infrequent games I run for my local besties B and L, and my old player Terry, which is just great because it is just like those games of old for my friends. No weird expectations. Just D&D. A D&D game once or twice a month with true friends, with my favorite video games in between (this was a super banner year for video game), is starting to seem just right to me. I'm really kind of fed up dealing with strangers in gaming. 

So yeah, this will now be old school or "folk" gameplay for me. Until WOTC buys up Roll20 and other platforms and it is no longer supported. The time is maybe coming when if you don't want to invest in the official stuff, it will have to go back to face to face tabletop. Somewhere you don't need WOTC or their bullshit. That will be the true Folk RPGing. 

Maybe unfortunate for me, as I still feel I want to be retired from face to face. I have boardgames for that.

YMMV

Cheers

 much of 

The True Enemy of Game Groups - Attrition

 

Player attrition. It happens. It happens to all of us who put a group together. No matter how long it lasts, it will eventually fall apart, either by losing players faster than they can be replaced, or the GM moves on and nobody else wants to take the mantle. 

It can start slow. A player or two has life events that make them busier. They still clearly want to be a part of things. But missing every 4th game will usually lead to missing one out of three, and soon its "sorry, I just can't play on a regular basis anymore because this and that."

Or maybe they just out and out have to quite without a slow bleed out. Its extra tragic when its one of your best players. 

Back in my teens and 20's we seemed to have long campaigns that saw little in the way of lost players. Mostly it was friends I was playing with though. This was most of my experience from childhood up until the late 90's. I played with friends I already had. That is what usually made up my groups. We played as friends. We had long campaigns that at some point just fell apart fast because two or more of us were getting hit by life stuff. Though it often started as only being able to play one day a month. Then longer and longer between games. Momentum loss is a great foe of regular groups. Go a couple of months without a game and that group is likely through. Though I should say that by the late 90's some campaigns I had with regular life friends might seem done for, then after 3 or 4 months a long since flaking friend who kind of helped slow things down will be all "hey, when are we going to play D&D/Call of Cthulhu/Champions again?" Uh..whenever you are available.

And even that is all good, really. In that case above I was indeed having infrequent games with about 3-4 players at the time, but those games were 6-8 hour affairs that let me throw in everything and the kitchen sink in that one day. Hell, in those long D&D games a character might level up twice in that single day. But that too finally had to end. And it was the last time I would have a group made up of real life, long time friends. 

So in later adulthood, well into the 2000's, it was less groups of my friends and it became maybe one longtime friend, and a handful of strangers. It was not just a huge dynamic shift in general, but now it was folks who were devoting time to strangers, away from their usual life. After decades in the workforce, and relationships/marriages, people just place more of a value on their leisure time. Often not even in a hugely conscious way. But there are important things in life. Sure, go to a forum like Dragonsfoot.net and you'll find a bunch of older people who seem to want D&D to be the be all and end all of life. But for most folk hitting or going beyond middle age free time gets sucked dry by a million things other than tabletop gaming. I'm personally not ready to retire from my professional life; and even if I did I'm not sure how much of that I would want to be spent on tabletop. 

Yeah. This. 

My longest group went from around 2009 to 2019, but that group saw a lot of players coming and going. The entire time the long-time host was always there, then there was my long time friend "T," and then players who stuck around for a couple years, and those that played for some months before a life thing got in the way. That dynamic kind of worked for me. There were enough people who stuck around here and there that lead to nice year long multi-genre campaigns with 4-5 players. That all ended when I moved out of my native city, though I often think about how I was fairly burnt out towards the end. For me running campaigns on a weeknight, running out of work at a fairly professional job and driving 15 minutes in rush hour traffic, wore me down. Getting to the hosts house, eating fast food as I drove, then slamming a couple beers and puffing a doob to get the day shrugged off so I could get into a fantasy mood wasn't all that conducive to a peaceful DM persona. All that week in and week out made me fairly easily annoyed by dumb player things during a game. And an annoyed DM is the last thing a party wants. 

In my new town I ran for a new group, started by my soon to be local besties (B and L, a younger couple who kind of adopted lonely old me because I didn't know anybody in town. I bring them up in every boardgame post I make because I mostly play with them and sometimes a couple others). But after several months they decided to take up a somewhat nomadic existence that only had them in town a few short months of the year and that group fell apart (I didn't mind, one of the other players, a female no less, was a cheat and I think on opiates or something). 

I then discovered Roll20 and did around a 12 game campaign with Los Angeles Bestie "T" and a couple of folks I met in the local game shop Facebook page (it was a couple games before I learned one of them worked at the same hospital I did). It was going really well, but one of the guys had a new baby that was taking up a lot of time, and the other guy was going back to school. They would still be able to play now and again, but with the precious momentum going the way of the dodo I more or less nixed things. 

Most recently, for a few months last year, I was tapped by yet another local couple, plus a couple other folk they found on local meetups. We had several games, and things were sailing along and all seemed to be having fun, but then the male host messaged us saying that his elderly mother had been found to have a severe illness and were having to move her in. We were going to be starting up again when the mom got settled in, but it has been awhile now so that may not be back.  

I certainly have long since learned to manage my expectations with game group longevity. And to be honest, I love to GM games, and often get into a zone where the hours just fly by. But it can also be a bit of a hassle, even with long since losing my habit of putting hours into game prep. Setting things up then being the center of attention for three or more hours has lost a certain amount of its luster. 

I forgot the battlemat..

So, with no current RPG group, and most of my boardgame pals out of town for months now, I think I'll be settling in for a Spring where the majority of my gaming will be on my XBOX. Grand Theft Auto 5, Elder Scrolls Online, and some other games new and old (Jedi Fallen Order, Dead Rising). It can be super relaxing to just let yourself get immersed in those worlds. Don't have to go anywhere. Don't have to set anything up. Don't have to worry about being down a player and cancelled sessions. Nothing to do but work on my carpel tunnel and zap my eyeballs from sitting too close to the big screen. 

But then again, I'll be chomping at the bit to run games before long. And even if something doesn't come up locally, "B and L" want to check out Roll20 gaming when they settle into where they are going for the summer (to manage a high-end RV park halfway across the country). If they got the internet for it, LA pal "T" will want to jump in, and the gaming will be on again. And the highway of gaming will be as it always has been, for me anyway. On again. Off again. On again. Off again.