Quantcast
Channel: Playing D&D With Porn Stars
Viewing all 1081 articles
Browse latest View live

"The Internet Is Screaming"

$
0
0
"The Internet is screaming with the harm caused, Zak; this very conversation wouldn't be happening if you'd not actively hurt and pissed off a great many people."

Well 'the Internet screams' when 2 boys kiss on TV. The Internet is dumb as butts.

But not always. Got a note from Zeea last night--a trans gamer (and now RPGnet mod) who often points out things she thinks are problematic in games, and whom, until recently, Sean might characterize as part of the "screaming" about the "harm" I caused by having the audacity to respond to WOTC's request to email them my thoughts on the recent edition of D&D and then collect a check for it.

Zeea said:

Zak S:

So, I've spent a few hours doing as much research as I can, and I've talked to folks some more.

I'm not going to equivocate. People made accusations against you without proof, the accusations got amplified and distorted and repeated through the Telephone Game effect, and I bought into it when I shouldn't have.

I can't find any evidence of you making broad transphobic statements. I can find evidence of you making trans-inclusive statements. Every transgender person involved in arguments with you was in an argument about something unrelated to being trans, with the exception of the "morphodite" thing, which was such an over-the-top obscure thing to say that I'll take you at your word that you were using it to parody a certain posting style.

Furthermore, in every one of those discussions, there was a lot of shit and toxicity flying around and everyone was hot-tempered. And finally, because all of the incidents I've found any public examples of were "person and an entire faction of people vs. person and an entire faction of people," even if there was cyberstalking aimed in either (or both) directions, there's zero evidence you instigated it or posted non-public information.

I don't think anyone I talked to privately is intentionally lying about this. I think they believe it. But perceptions color memories, as does hearing the same event discussed by multiple people, and some of things look a bit stretched by this point. I can't base an opinion on stretchy-looking facts.

So, I hereby apologize for and retract any implication that you're transphobic or have engaged in cyberstalking. I'm sorry. I'm going back to my original statement on the subject before I got all the private messages, which was, "As far as I know, neither Pundit or Zak S have said anything transphobic."

Furthermore, while I highly doubt that my opinion has _any_ influence on the subject whatsoever, and I wasn't the one who started this whole line of discussion (nor was I the person that got Mike Mearls involved*), I sincerely apologize if anything I said on this subject damages your industry reputation in any way. I disagree with you on plenty of subjects, but I fucked up here and let that influence me to believe and repeat something I shouldn't have.

Oh, bonus apology. I said you were disingenuous. Know what? I've reread a lot of stuff you've posted and then read it in the context of other stuff I've found in places I don't normally frequent. I retract and apologize for that, too. While you can be abrasive as hell and tend to accuse people of disagreeing with you because they're "conservative," it seems you're arguing based on a sincere belief and not intentionally strawmanning. Plus, you've displayed more nuanced opinions on the subject in some places, and if I'd seen those before, I'd probably have had a different opinion.

--Here

And, if you need it: further evidence of my innocence of the various fuckwadderies published about me this week. The most obvious one being: people were asked to send evidence of me being bad to WOTC, the D&D company, aaaaaand: they got nothing.

For the best shot the rest of the opposition has taken, here's a hilarious list they've made of my despicable crimes, including tagging a guy into a Google + conversation about his ideas in case he wanted to defend himself and making this awesome cartoon:

I'll be accepting apologies all week. Roll up.

ANYWAY:

Lots of other things going on in RPGland soon:

We are working on new episodes of I Hit It With My Axe (watch this one if you never saw it).

Outside-the-box genius RPG artist Scrap Princess and outside-the-box genius RPG poet False Patrick released Deep Carbon Observatory which looks to be exactly the kind of folk-art kludgewithchery the old school has been promising to make for years.

And Red & Pleasant Land is chugging along. Should be out this summer. Started working on a new edition of Vornheim and I helped James Raggi write a DeeeeeLuxe Death Frost Doom that'll be out soon.


-
-
-

The Teachable Moment From All This

$
0
0

...Now, then, is Mr. McNulty capable of having a civil conversation with Mrs. McNulty?
Yes, your honor.
And is Mrs. McNulty equally capable of having a conversation with Mr. McNulty? 
Yes.
Good, then I'm going to lunch. And let's see when I return if we can't busy this court with something just a little more engaging than the problems of the McNultys.

-The Wire, Episode 10

Court, blog, whatever.

I would like this to be my very last post concerning D&D 5th edition-related controversy. Let's see how we can do. It will be very inside-baseball, unfortunately, so if you don't care, skip to the pictures. I will still answer any questions, though because why wouldn't I?

Trigger warning, seriously, sexual violence ahead

This isn't sexual violence...
…these are just some pictures from my book to keep the triggery bits near the bottom



Rape In Games As An Example Of Stuff Nobody Usefully Talks About Because Everybody Wants To Get Along

So one of the people who lied about me this last week because they were sad that I was a Dungeons & Dragons consultant--Wundergeek--once wrote a list of things she was "tired of". Most of them were 100% legit and anyone would be tired of them--or, more likely, deeply alarmed and angry about them.

In the middle, there's this statement:

I am tired of game scenarios that feature rape.

I am tired of game settings that feature rape.
I am tired of men who write rape being praised for their “creative vision”.

I am tired of seeing people who speak out against rape in popular game material denounced as crazy fascists who hate freedom.

I am tired of gamers who complain when games that feature rape are banned, not translated, or otherwise not made available for English-speaking audiences.

Obviously there are lots of reasons to feel this way and many are not bad.

My point in this entry here is not to defend rape in games, I'm not somebody who's ever found much that was gameable in that particular area of human experience--my point lies elsewhere.

In the list of 5th edition consultants, there is at least one of these men who write about rape and are praised for their "creative vision".  Can you spot him?

Hint: It's not me and it's not the RPGPundit.

It's the very decent (and I mean that: he's cool, he stayed on my couch) and well-respected man who wrote this:

There are 40 naga-kin in Pralaj and about 200 villagers and revived corpses held prisoner while slowly being raped, tortured, and drowned into a susceptible state for transformation into naga-kindred.

….

From here, they prepare the coming of the Naga into her kingdom, and send naga-kin down the River to rape and drown the people into following her. 

Now one reason he (I'll call him Doc Respectable, I hope he won't mind) has not been called out by Wundergeek or anybody else in a coterie of people that, largely gets very het up about rape in games and about what is in the world's most popular RPG is because he is a professional. And by that I don't mean he maintains a responsible and professional demeanor (although he does) I mean that, unlike the RPGPundit (the other consultant who pissed people off) and I, Doc Respectable's daily bread relies on tabletop roleplaying games.


Professional Means Pretending Not to Have Opinions

While Doc Responsible will write about rape in a game, it is dangerous for him to mount his own defense of the practice in places where RPGs are discussed on the internet. He could piss someone off who he might have to work with later. It's just not advisable.

Me and theRPGPundit don't have that problem, which is one reason we can reach levels of say-whatever-we-think-all-the-time-about-games that elude many professionals and was probably one reason we were hired. We were folks with a track record of not pulling punches because of having no reason to pull punches.

But I want to emphasize this--the other consultants--they have punches. Here is Doc Respectable, in another game he wrote, almost punching:

Tediously Obligatory Disclaimer
This game simulates mental illness as seen in Lovecraftian and Lovecraft- inspired fiction and gaming. It should not be confused with real psychology, even the real (and mostly outmoded) psychology of the 1920s and 1930s. Although no disrespect is intended to those suffering the real-life effects of mental illness, we submit to those concerned by this issue that horror is meant to be irresponsible, disreputable, and upsetting


you would not want to get into an online fight with Doc Respectable about what is and is not acceptable in RPGs. He has as many or more facts more readily at his fingertips than anyone I've ever met. But you never will get in a fight with Doc Respectable online about anything ever and neither will anyone else. His job won't allow it.

And, frankly, neither will Shanna Germain's job, or Monte Cook's job, or any other top-level game designer who has written settings with rape in them.

Wundergeek's friend Vincent Baker--designer of Apocalypse World and the most important designer in a scene whose members came out in force against me and (especially) the RPGPundit, is perhaps the epitome of a Male Game Designer Who Writes About Rape (in both Seclusium of Orphone and Poison'd) And Is Praised For His Creative Vision.

But they don't talk about it--at least not publicly. Even if the professionals involved weren't skittish, the indie game community is conflict-averse because it is self-conscious about trying to build a big, inclusive community that avoids conflict--and, in some cases, build a customer base.

And so we get lots of trenchant Concerned Gamers re-posting Wundergeek's I Am Tired litany and re-posting Vincent Baker's latest project in the same day and there is no good public conversation about the cognitive dissonance and how to resolve it. Like: How you handle rape and why, in public, with examples from Respectable figures in the field given first-hand and input from affected groups.

Maybe they do talk about it in private: but these conversations don't help the rest of us. How does one navigate the minefield of issues?



Taking The Bullet

So when do Concerned Gamers put Wundergeek's very popular sentiment "I am tired of game settings that feature rape" side-by-side with a game setting that features rape? When is this cognitive dissonance addressed?

When someone who is:
-Not a major professional
...and who:
-None of Wundergeek's friends likes anyway

…shows up.

Like the guy who wrote CarcosaTo perhaps over-simplify: Carcosa is an Old School Renaissance game, most of the Concerned Gamers aren't Old School Renaissance people, so Carcosa is fair game to rip apart in public, over and over, unlike Seclusium of Orphone.

In short: Carcosa was written by an outsider.

My main aim is not to point out that this is unfair (though it might be--depending on whether you think there are important differences between the way rape is depicted in Seclusium, Carcosa, Qelong, Numenera, Cthulhutech and Poison'd) but to point out that the outsider, less-respected game takes the bullet for a discussion about rape that could and should have been addressed thoroughly years before within the community making the critique.

And so does as, in this case, the guy who sticks up for it. That is: me. Which I am loathe to do because the author of Carcosa is not  a guy I know much about. He might be sexist for all I know--but his game isn't. It's just a game about horror--or at least that's what the victims of sexual violence I have talked to it about that I know from the porn business say.

In the course of that discussion I linked, someone suggests Wundergeek is a standard by which to judge the morality of games. I point out Wundergeek's not exactly the most progressive voice when it comes to expressing the merits of creative freedom and I compare her to Tipper Gore, and Wundergeek decides I'm an enemy for life and attacks me.

Meanwhile the guy who ran the Story-Games site kicks me off it for having this conversation while telling me that he would totally play Carcosa.

Poor me--No. This isn't about that. If this whole controversy's not bigger than me or the RPGPundit and people being unfair, it is all pointless and dumb and of no interest to anyone else.

 But it isn't because there's a moral here: I may have been meaner than anybody on Story-Games, I dunno, but I also engaged more often on that site than anyone else outside the Story-Games community. You'll have a tough time finding a DIY D&D guy who was on there more than me. It's not about me: These incidents are the kinds of things that are going to happen when game communities that are basically isolated try to seriously talk to each other about anything important.


Disasters of First Contact

These are disasters of first contact.

Talking between RPG communities can be painful and dumb. Like here is me trying to learn  what the hate with Carcosa is all about from a bunch of pro-4e/social justice trolls. (Note that, to non-members, the word "rape" will display as "surprise sex" if you click the link.)

It sucked and they were jerks about it, but it was also probably the most comprehensive and useful conversation about how these people view rape in RPGs I have ever seen.

Are you interested in finding stuff out? I am. Are you willing to take the bullet for it? Maybe not. That's ok.

But I tell you this, pretty much every single group of people I pissed off talking on-line (and who, therefore, were willing to believe half-assed troll shit about me), I pissed off during one of these gruesome "first contact" conversations.

If you believe me, skip these blocks of text. If you don't, here's the evidence:

First Ever Contact With Indie Gamers
Zak (whistles, minding own business)
Indie Gamer: I think the women in your group have brain damage
Zak: WTF?
Worst Indie Gamers: Why are you so mean, Zak?

Did nobody ever explain to Eero Tuovinen and McDaldno and Johnstone and all these other Story-Games regulars that when someone calls a bunch of women "brain damaged" because they don't play the same game as them and someone calls out that misogynistic behavior out, that's awesome? Why are they bothering me with this shit?

First Ever Contact With Tracy Hurley and Filamena Young
Zak (whistles, minding own business)
Advocate for Inclusion In Gaming : The women in your group appearing in Maxim causes problems for women.
Zak : WTF?
Advocates for Inclusion In Gaming : Why are you so mean, Zak?

Did none of the women in corsets in the sexy vampire RPG writer community ever explain to Filamena Young and Tracy Hurley that some women don't like to wear a lot of clothes in public and that's their right and not bad for women? Why are they bothering us with this shit?

First Ever Contact With Something Awful Goons
Zak (whistles, minding own business)
Something Awful trolls : You play AD&D & that's fucked, and that Carcosa supplement leads to rape and your girlfriend has electrical cords on her Amazon wishlist & that's fucked.
Zak : WTF?
Something Awful trolls : Why are you so mean, Zak?

Did nobody in the Concerned Gamer community ever explain to these people that they don't get to call lgbt women of color names because they play some other elfgame than them? Why are they bothering me with this shit?

First Ever Contact With Wundergeek
Zak (whistles, minding own business)
Wundergeek : Hyun Tae Kim should be pushed to the margins of the industry because he paints fetishy art and hentai is disgusting!
Zak : WTF?
Wundergeek : Why are you so mean, Zak?

Did Jessica Hammer or anyone at Gaming As Women or anybody else that Wundergeek worked with or talked to never explain to Wundergeek that other peoples' taste in porn is not her business and pin-up art is not the problem, art gatekeepers areWhy is she bothering artists with this shit?

...all this culminated in the fake-rape-threat incident, where James Des was punished by Ben Lehman and other indie gamers for defending a position Ben Lehman ally and indie game archangel Vincent Baker very likely may hold and agree with: the alleged usefulness of rape as a device in fiction. And then, apparently nobody before had told anyone in the Concerned Indie Gamer community that when you publicly endorse criminal accusations against some dude without proof, and then find out it's fake you then go and apologize.

Seriously--didn't these people have moms?

…I could go away tomorrow and James D could go away tomorrow, and James Raggi and the RPGPundit every other polarizing figure and this will just keep happening, because of all the nice people in gaming who don't ever want to get to the bottom of anything they consider important and divisive like how to deal with sex or race or violence or rape culture in games, until they have someone they don't already know to talk about it with (or, more likely, at).

All these people were pretty excited to get mad at me about 5e because I was the focus for a lot of repressed, unworked-ot ire that should've been bled out through dialogue long before I ever met them.

I'm not saying they're being hypocritical, I think this is all motivated by a sincere desire to get along with friends and an apathy toward outsiders. And an outsider is going to be called "mean" or "graceless" or "bullying" for mounting a self-defense in a way that someone you already know isn't. It's an odd sociological fact that if you're looking to call someone "ableist" it's easier to pick on the guy you don't know with the girlfriend in the wheelchair than the guy you do know who is just the guy you do know.

I don't want to silence them. I want them to talk more. They might get better at it.

Old School D&D has trolls, too, but we don't believe them and retweet them and advertise their stuff If Gleichman was like ROBIN LAWS FUCKED A GOOSE ON MY LAWN AND MADE A PIE FROM MY MOM'S BUTT! We'd be like, whatever, relax, Indie Gamers, that's just Gleichman, ignore him, and we'd tell him to shut the fuck up a lot--sorry Robin. But for some reason they haven't evolved this behavior. Something Awful goons like Andrii Erlingsson and Brandon Schmelz start smearing shit around and the indie gamers are all like "Hmmm…mayyybe…he did say 'problematic'..."


So You Have A Choice

So you have a choice, would-be-responsible RPG people with communities around you:
Fred Hicks at Evil Hat
Gaming As Women
RPGnet mods,
Jessica Hammer, Cam Banks, Lyndsay Peters, Rob Donoghue and all the rest:

A) Have some real dialogue about divisive stuff with your peeps

or

B) Know that you'll all basically be playing Whack-A-Scapegoat forever, because people from outside who cross your peoples' path will get whaled on by half your friends while the other half hide in the corner glad it isn't them

And I'm not saying that choice A is obviously right at all times--there are fantastic reasons why people might not wanna talk about rape with each other.

But, really, when a Vital RPG Issue comes up: would you rather have a conversation about the Issue or about me?

If it has to be me, I'm cool with it: your friends' outrage sells books, which aren't a big source of income for me, but Raggi seems to like it. However: I'm guessing it doesn't always serve your best interests and it probably makes you feel kinda like a jerk.

"But we're not a monolith! How can "we" have a conversation, we're a diverse group!"

No, dudes and dudettes, you totally can. If you can gin up a Zak Hate Thread on Google + or on Twitter, you can also talk about all the goddamn issues you people need to sort out. If you have more than 1000 people following you or any kind of moderation capacity: the next blow-up is on you for not having sorted it out before it happened. Trolls will be there forever--the fertile ground their bs needs to grow can only be provided when everybody is running around with a head full of anxiety about Who Is Good And Who Is Evil. And hey: come talk to me, come talk to DIY D&D, we are nothing if not here to help.

Like I told Mike Mearls when 5e hit: if anyone doesn't like it--you can always blame me.
-
-
-
-
-
-
And now, some more fucking awesome pages from my fucking awesome D&D book that is coming out this awesome summer. Because why not:
Click to enlarge


Mandy Morbid Interview, Hatter, Random Stupid Tax Table, Actual Play Report

$
0
0
There's still a lotta drama in the wake of 5th edition D&D being released with me credited as a consultant.

But since all the drama just makes my publisher money, it's kinda stupid and the people involved do seem to slowwwwwwwwly be realizing that. Anyway:

Here's the group getting shot for some magazine….
Heads clockwise from top left: Laney (halfling ranger and viridian knight, Connie--half elf thief, Charlotte Stokely--tiefling wizard, Mandy Morbid--tiefling cleric, make-up by LaneyBabes)



Here's an interview (with a lotta barelySFW pictures) that Mandy did. It's mostly about Mandy and her illness and how smart she is, not D&D, but maybe people wanna know, so there it is.

----
We're rolling tomorrow, here's what happened last weekend:

The Hatter is a guy with a cylindrical hat in which he has a hare. An Al'Mi-Raj actually. It has a horn.

They are agents of The Pale King, and like all his agents, they collect his taxes.

Roll D20:


1. Leg tax--d100gp per leg.

2. Pie fee--d100gp per pie. If the party has no pie, 4d100 fine for pielessness.

3. Motion levy--d100gp per foot moved in tax agent's presence.

4. Picture toll--d100gp per image carried, tattooed on skin or inscribed or sewn on the party's clothes or armor.

5. Smile tithe--d100gp per happy party member.

6. Consumption tax--d100 per party member with tuberculosis, or anyone looking wan and withdrawn.

7. Smuggling toll--d100gp per non-local item.

8. Pulchritude fee--d100gp per point of charisma.

9. Confiscatory tax--d100gp per gp taken by party from any defeated foe.

10. Inherit ants tax--Pale agent smears honey on party members, demands d100gp per ant attracted.

11. Cap and hole gains tax--d100gp per piece of headgear in party and for every opening or hole in equipment or clothing carried by party.

12. Poor tax--d100gp for each member unable to produce d100gp.

13. Knuckle fee--d100 per knuckle.

14. Income tax--d100gp from each party member for entering any interior.

15. Sails tax--d100gp per party member able to pilot a watergoing vessel.

16. Proper tea tax--d100gp per party member unable to produce a decent cup of tea. The Tea Party strenuously objects to this tax.

17. Valuable adder tax--d100gp per party member carrying a useful snake.

18. Ex-eyes tax--d100gp per missing eye in party.

19. Pole tax-d100gp per pole arm.

20. Lie sensing fee-d100gp per time the party notices anyone lying.

I was hoping the Hatter and his weird watch would get to reign some chronal havoc on the party, but they played it cool and made a deal: in exchange for an "intercepted" message allegedly sent by the Colorless Queen, the party made 10,000gp. They then had to pay 10,000gp in consumption taxes (the Hatter had some big scales). However, since the payment was new it got them xp. Which, hey: Wonderland, ok?

They retrieved a rusty box with a face inside, an old lady used it to fix a skin condition Laney'd managed to acquire.

They spoke into the ear of a corpse to summon The Pseudoturtle and give it another copy of the "message".

Then some overland travel and an encounter with a Pale Rook: (think big hydrocephalic tweedledum) he demanded a Motion Levy.

The best part was:

Ok, last time Laney rolled a 1 to hit a vampire and hit Tyler, then the Mome Rath she was riding also rolled a 1 and knocked him out. The exact same 400-to-1 shot happened again today.

They kept trying to throw a shrinking cake into his mouth, it didn't work--but eventually he did get ganked. Mandy--playing a shrunken Alice--did take a lot of falling damage, being an inch tall and all.

Then it was off to Castle Poenari to seek the Red King and deliver him another false message from the Colorless Queen. One of his three red brides received them--and offered the players a mountain of gold to kill him for her.

I think she ended up sounding like the dwarf's whore (Shae?) from Game of Thrones.

GMing Principle

NPCs with who look players right in the eye and talk verrrrry slowly freak players out.


Anyway they were like about 45 minutes worth of uncomfortable with her, trying to figure out what to do and who to trust. 

After much argument, they remembered they were D&D PCs and so walked into the vampire king's palace where he waited with a bride, 4 vampire pawns and 6 vampire knights, said hello, negotiated with the doddering and beardo weirdo, then tried to kill him and take his stuff.

The wizard had a clever plan to trap the king in with them in a wall of force.
Ok, would-be-clever because the king just turned into a bat and flew right through it, leaving the party surrounded.

Which is perfect, really--it's so hard to engineer that "archvillain gets away" moment. And there we left it.
-
-
-
For more pictures and stuff about the girls and the group, click the tag "players" for more actual play reports hit the "actual play" tag, for more about the unending 5E D&D consultant drama just scroll past the last few entries, for more random tables hot the tag "New Random Tables/Charts", for more about the RPG book the Hatter is from, hit "Eat Me"
-
-
-

Actual Play, Actual Cake, Actual Princess Testimony

$
0
0
Good Morning

Editing new I Hit It With My Axeepisodes...
Connie left Mandy right
…plus running an online game where like the players are sailing and ran into a floating libraryship and chaos pirates simultaneously, so it's hard to keep adventures straight in my head, so I might be writing this short actual play report more for me than you but here goes…

Actually Playing Reportage From The Red & Pleasant Land

After teleporting away from the vampire, Charlotte cornered a local woodcutter in a hidden village and--after asking about his woodsmanship and how good he was with wood and generally just doing that a lot because that's how Charlotte it, got a hot tip that the Red Knight of Tiamat had been seen menacing a nearby poet.
The ladies decided hey why not fuck with that, right?

So after putting the woodsman and some villagers to work making catapults, they headed to the Gardens of Garvalde--in the center-right here:
Count the fuckups on my map...

They hunted about and found a passage through a door that lead beneath the earth, then saw a vasty murky pool  in which floated what appeared to be and was not leopard-printed, giant, moist ravioli. It was stinging giant jellyfish floating and the the wizard incinerated them because lightning does double damage to submerged creatures.


Beyond was a sitting room, with all the furniture on the backs of old, slow turtles, happy to see anyone after thousands of years of unacknowledged service in the deep and cushy dungeon. And happy to help.

(Turtles, by and large, make poor villains--turtles are eager to help, and grateful for love. Think of Mario--the idea of an evil turtle is just funny.)

Anyway, luckily for the dramatic arc there was a demon-summoning room beyond. And luckier, the players decided to sleep in the turtle room, instructing the turtles to warn them if anyone approached.

Mandy, still playing an Alice and an inch tall due to a diminishing confection consumed a day before, slept in a drawer and got awoken by a rattling sound. "Pardonnn," said an old reptile, "there appearrrrs to be an individ-u-allll skulll-kingg abouuuttt…"

The skulker turned out to be a summoned demon--it grabbed the party cleric and demanded the others go fetchquest the poet.

Who wants a poet? I don't know. Fucking random tables. I'll think of something. I think I have two days to think of something. I know the Red Knight is very pro-censorship as is the Red Church's wont.

Anyway, while the cleric and entrapping demon flirted via parts of Mariah Carey songs (what the fuck, This Session?) (Long story: basically the cleric kept trying to entertain herself without rolling any dice) the wizard and the Alice found a bridge, with three Red Rooks.

…here represented by big dice
They froze Stokely's wizard with a riddle about something found in a mine and entombed in wood and never comes out and but everybody uses it anyway. Luckily the Rooks didn't notice the inch-tall Alice so couldn't riddlefreeze her.

After Many/Alice pulled an aborted backstab attempt and getting knocked off a bridge this unbelievably goofy fucking day was looking like a possible total party kill:

Alice was an inch-tall, had fallen 40 feet, and was a bad die roll away from zero hit points. Stokely's wizard was paralyzed by a riddle she couldn't answer and the cleric was far away in the 9-armed embrace of a nameless demon who scalded her with unholy water whenever it couldn't think of an awkward R&B reference to counter her only slightly less awkward R&B reference (Moriah is her patron goddess. Which I suppose I need to get to work on. Still smarting from having to work Captain Beefheart into the theogony.)
Luckily at that point Laney showed up...
…I think actually just to help Mandy with some stuff but everyone was like Holy fuck laney help!!!!! So she did. She ranger-sneaked through the grass on her Mome Rath and made off with the poet, just as Stokely managed to figure out her riddle (Highlight to see the answer: pencil) and quickly fended off the next one (the answer was the letter M, can't remember the question).

So that's good--next week I suppose they'll hunt the Red Knight in earnest. Or some other thing I have no idea it's not like players ever do what they're supposed to.

In Other News

It's my birthday this week...
...Mandy and Connie made a cake with a cherry and Dr Pepper reduction sauce...

...it was good.
...I also got a 3d pen, some legos, the Book of Vile Darkness (I think the actual one), and Kirin of Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor got me Hawaiian chicken and Connie won first place in a stripper contest and I got a nice note from Scrap Princess:

Just for the record Zak Smith is a friend of mine and I am trans.
I have not found him to be transphobic or anything he has done to be transphobic.

People are calling him transphobic or passing on that other people are saying he is transphobic without checking that out.
 Which is shit because
a) It's a fucking lie
b) Transphobia is something that is bad and important and as a transperson I fucking hate you if you are using it to shore up some shitty argument you are having. Show me why you are saying this so I can know and make effective decisions or all you are proving is transphobia means fuck all to you

In the category of Birthday Presents For Everybody that link also goes to some other Scrap inventions which you should check out if you like Vornheim, there's

Duels
Weird dungeon morphologies
Wizard gimmicks
Warrior elites, and
Kinds of spies, like...

8.  Agent Provocateurs , misdirectors and sowers of vast suggestions of conspiracy. Editors of history and archeological vandal, defilers of vaults and tombs. What for? To always confuse the actual history of the world. They do not know the true history,but just know it never should be known. The possibility of It gnaws at them. The founder knew but took his own memory before starting the guild. This is one story. Others are told. Like post-modernist but even more neurotically driven.

Also, y'know the release of 5th edition has made Jeff start blogging again and Deep Carbon Observatory is the probably most avant-garde RPG product since ever and you should buy it to encourage the brave and spite the wicked.

Rock.
-
-
-

Help Make The Ennies Not Suck!

$
0
0
The Ennies, EnWorld's annual RPG awards, are weird. Remember that year Vornheim lost best supplement to a bunch of dungeon tiles?

I have no idea how that works, but here's the link to vote for the judges for EnWorld's annual Ennie awards.

Personally I've seen Annah Madrinan, Harald Wagener, Kiel Chenier and Doyle Tavener all be pretty fair- and broad- minded about game stuff. So that's how I'm voting, but you should vote how you like. Put a 1 next to whoever you like most, a 2 next to your next fave, etc etc…

Here's a picture of a weird puppet you should make into a monster:

They Should Be Put In A Pit With Wild Dogs

$
0
0
Still editing new I Hit It With My Axe episodes...
Connie's video editing notes
Here's some…well you wouldn't call it mainstream press I guess but literary world press--me getting interviewed for Fanzine.com about the new edition of D&D.

I think it does a little better than hit the usual notes.
Here is a frog that has Mandy's dice.


Mandy Morbid on the D&D 5th Edition Consultant Thing

$
0
0
From her Tumblr….


More Reasons People Found to Hate Me

So, a long time ago I started playing Dungeons & Dragons. Well really I started playing Warhammer 40K first, and painting the minis while I was recovering from surgery. I wasn’t healing properly and I didn’t respond to my post op pain medication—in fact it made me so sick I stopped taking it less than 48 hours after my surgery—so I was on my own basically as far as recovery was going. Zak was taking care of me. He had bought me a Wii to play during recovery but I was too sick to sit up long enough to play and in too much pain to manage the controller. I was also getting cabin fever being so sick and stuck in bed. So Zak then brought me some minis to paint, Daemonettes and Sisters of Battle and Harlequins for homebrew Warhammer 40K games. Our nerdier friends came over and I could play from bed, or sitting on the floor—we spread our terrain out over our studio apartment floor.
image
Warhammer 40K lead to D&D when my friend Satine Phoenix heard about my interest. She had been playing since she was in high school and she missed it—so D&D With Porn Stars was born. I first played a thief but this only lasted one or two sessions. I quickly abandoned my (to me) boring thief and rolled up a half-demon (abandoned on the steps of a cathedral) cleric of Vorn—grim god of iron and rain. I also quickly started recruiting my friends to play with us. I wasn’t well and I missed hanging out and this was an activity where my physical limitations didn’t matter at all. My friend Kimberly Kane (AVN best actress winner and Feminist Porn Director award winner) started playing with us—probably the most unlikely D&D player out of all my friends—then my friend Connie—we danced together at Cheetah’s a bikini bar in Hollywood. Connie is shy and has social anxiety and so I was well enough to go back to the club and tell her about our games backstage between our sets before she finally joined in. Then our friend Frankie who, like Connie and I, was a Suicide Girl model. And my siblings started playing with us whenever they were around, on the rare visits to LA and back home in Canada during the holidays.
image
image
image
Our campaign had been running for a year when the Escapist contacted us, Zak’s blogging about our adventures interested them, and they wanted us to film our games for a weekly web series, so that’s when we started filming I Hit With My Axe.
image
image
Awhile before IHWMA went online Zak had already had to defend me & my girls on an internet forum after someone on a podcast called us “brain damaged”. The guys involved in the podcast apologized to us—well to Zak first as he was the one most tuned into this stuff at the time—when Zak called them on that bullshit—but the forum reaction was appalling and the forum pretty much discriminated against Zak for years after. And what I saw, as a woman gamer, on that forum was pure hatred for anything different. For someone like me daring to play a make believe elf-game and for someone like Zak to post online about girls like me and my friends playing tabletop role playing games. I saw how they hated Zak for sticking up for us, I saw how no one EXCEPT Zak stood up for us, and then I saw how some of them decided to hate Zak for calling them on their bullshit loudly and aggressively. 
So before Axe went online I already had a certain degree of trepidation about exposing myself as a gamer to masses of mostly white male hobbyists. We talked about it. I am not one to let fear stop me from doing something I want to do. I knew parts of Axe were going to be challenging for me, and they were.
The hostility I had glimpsed on that one forum (StoryGames) had made me feel like I wasn’t at all wanted in the hobby but my reaction my whole life to nonsense exclusion like that was to fucking rebel. So you don’t like girls playing your boy games? Oh we’re not playing the games YOU like? We’re not playing exactly the way you like to play with the rules you like? Well I don’t give a fuck what you think. I give a fuck about what I like, and I fucking know what I like, and I am going to show you all how much fun we are having. I got a lot of my porn friends to come play with us as guest stars on Axe, and many of them continued to play with regularly outside of the filmed gamed sessions. I wanted all my friends to come play with me. 
So Axe went ahead and got made.
And the misogyny washed over us. In a series of tidal waves after the first few episodes aired. You wouldn’t…well women would…believe the awful stuff people said ( example:”I don’t feel like watching hookers make noise”). Satine and I got on the Escapist forums and started defending ourselves, we engaged with the people not being total dicks. Connie and Frankie joined in too. Eventually more and more people started shouting the idiots and their sexism down and Axe hit it’s stride and became quite popular. We had a lot of fun making that show but we really got shit on for doing it. 
Anyway, Zak’s blog got more popular. He also started working on Vornheim: The Complete City Kit, for running D&D type adventures in a city setting. When Vornheim was published it sold out and won a bunch of awards, including the IndieCade award (usually a video-game award) for technology of all things.
A friend of ours knew a guy who’s a writer who wanted to write about our group for Maxim. So we were in Maxim, a sweet and friendly article, a little bit about us personally, a little bit about the game session that night where we had the reporter playing with us, a little bit about how people who do porn are really just normal people, and some nude photos of us sitting around our game table with a lot of colourful snacks and dice and everyone’s nipples cleverly hidden behind limbs or copies of the Monster Manual.
image
(Different photoshot ^^ with me, Connie, Laney Chantal, Charlotte Stokely, shot by Paradox Productions/D23)
And we got hated on more and more. And Zak went on doing what Zak does when people say fucked up shit about me and our friends: he defends us—loudly and aggressively. And he went on doing the same thing when people said fucked up shit about him too. Or anyoneelse, even people he doesn’t know—if they are being attacked unfairly too (read the comments in that last link). 
Have you seen the youtube video about Phil Fish? You should. Especially if you, like me never heard of Phil Fish. It’s relevant. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w 
Meanwhile, offline, and elsewhere online we went on with the non-gamer parts of our lives. I was getting sicker, not better, over the years. That’s become a pretty massive part of our lives. Zak has always always taken care of me when I needed it, and our other friends as well. For nearly all of 2011 we were in Montreal trying to use my Canadian health care to find out what was happening to me. (Originally I was going to start university there—where I’m from—and split my time between LA and porn, and home and school, but my health was rapidly degenerating and I am still not in any shape to attend classes, get around campus and cope with the work load.) We started playing a lot more games on Google +’s video chat during this time since we were away from our friends.
image
image
image
It was Satine’s idea to use G+ group video chats to play games and Zak started this thing called ConstantCon up, where people are running tabletop rpgs on G+ all the time and lots of people from all over can meet up and play, which is pretty great for people having trouble finding cool people to game with in person or for people who are far from their usual group.
image
image
I was in Montreal drowning in a medical system not designed to care for someone with a rare and poorly understood chronic and degenerative and difficult-to-identify genetic syndrome, waiting for the next test, the next appointment, trying not to despair as I lost my ability to walk and no one could help me, and more wouldn’t even take me seriously, when our issue of Maxim came out. G+ got pretty noisy about it for awhile. Zak was defending us again because some people were saying us being in Maxim was bad for women, and bad for women in gaming. I joined in to speak for myself. It was messy and stressful. Lines were drawn in the sand at that point. I’m currently trying to work things out, move past that notorious argument, with one of the women involved. So I am not going to link to that mess. 
image
But, in general, the hate kept coming…..
There was a horrible incident where I, some gamer women friends tried to articulate a different opinion about sexism in gaming than the typical anti-chainmail-bikini "ladyism"and tried to speak up about the “white knighting” we were experiencing in the online hobby community: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?624898-5e-Dragon-s-Eye-View-Sexism-in-Fantasy/page53
And Zak keeps defending people, me, my girlfriends, people he doesn’t even know, online friends, and he keeps getting seriously mischaracterized as a troll or some horrible ethically unacceptable thing just, basically, for asking people honest questions. He keeps calling people on their bullshit and so he’s seen by some people as being the bad guy. He’s not a bad guy.
He is a guy in an unusual place: he has one of the most popular blogs in tabletop gaming but doesn’t make his money in the gaming industry—so he has the ability to reach people without the same fear of making waves that a full-time RPG designer would. He is in the rare position of being able to tell the truth and be listened to, so he feels an obligation to stick up for people.
image
Here’s an example of an event involving Zak that pissed a lot of people off. It’s recounted on someone else’s blog: Trigger warning here, for sexual assault, threats, etc, and I don’t agree with the tone or language used in the post linked:  http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2013/12/for-pseudo-activists-lying-about-rape.html …but it’s all true. Someone made up a lie, 80 people endorsed it, Zak told everybody not to trust those people, some apologized and that was great—most got pissed and even more self-righteous.
Fast forward to now:
There’s a lot of talk online in some places recently about some “controversial" consultants on Dungeons & Dragon’s 5th edition. 
My boyfriend Zak is one of the consultants.
I’ve dealt with a lot of bullshit online when it comes to gaming myself but it’s culminating in death threats and boycotts and smears and a lot of generally creepy and disturbing stuff.
Since the 5th edition came out Zak’s been accused of ableism and homophobia and transphobia and a few other nasty things too, sexism, trolling, etc. It’s all basically libel and I’ve posted about the nonsensical “ableism” accusations already. (Do you know how many disabled people are in my home group? 2 regulars, and one irregular.) When the people responsible for these accusations are questioned or asked for proof they invariable fail to provide any. Some claim to fear for their safety. Some claim they don’t have the time. WOTC—the company that runs D&D—has asked people to email them proof and got nothing at all damning on Zak. It’s pretty atrocious behaviour, going all the way to creepy-as-fuck threats and posturing.
The most active group started life as a weird militant pro-4th-edition D&D (it sounds stupid, I know) Something Awful thread that attacked me for having electrical cords on my wish list. These people still bear a grudge to this day for Zak catching one of their members openly lying.
What distinguishes the online RPG business from others is the trolls are actually professional game designers—the Something Awful veterans cluster around something called Funhaver Games, headed by someone variously credited as Brandon Schmelz or Alyssa Schmelz when designing games, “Smartmonkey” “Mikan” or “Brandon Mikan” when trolling, and “Tablehop” on twitter. They also keep active on RPGnet where Schmelz’s friend Paul Matijevic is a moderator under the name Ettin.
Meanwhile people like me, Connie (my black/mixed race girlfriend—yes THAT kind of girlfriend), Scrap Princess (trans- gamer in Zak’s group and longtime friend), Satine (another friend, gamer and woman-of-colour who’s spoken (TW) publicly (*some minor factual errors in that article*) about the abuse she survived as a child, Izzy (who is my friend and a fellow gamer but also suffers from the same genetic syndrome as I do and uses a wheelchair like me) and many gay people, trans- folk, women and people of colour, many of whom have never even met Zak keep getting ignored whenever we try to speak up about this or about Zak.
image
Connie and I
image
image
image
Our opinions, our experiences, don’t count. We’re harder to target and make shit up about than Zak, who’s white, cis, straight, able bodied and male. The people attacking Zak continuously pretend we don’t exist because it makes their argument easier. They are trying to smear Zak for “silencing LGBT people” by, literally, ignoring voices of LGBT people in the discussion.
One white cishet guy even decided we all have Stockholm syndrome.
All this upsets me, more than it upsets Zak I think. All the libel and negative attention, even on the tiny scale of the tabletop RPG community (which is nothing compared to the bullshit you read about yourself in the porn world, but somehow hurts more because it’s from people pretending to be responsible). I’m Canadian, I don’t like conflict, I don’t like being involved in conflict. But I do feel morally obligated to stand up for what I believe is right. I was raised on Star Trek TNG—as an educational tool. So that’s what I’m doing. Zak’s pissed some people off yeah. But he isn’t the devil he’s been painted as. He’s fucking awesome.
image
These are some of my negative experiences as a girl gamer, as a fairly high profile girl gamer. People have always attacked Zak because he’s an easier target, because he is brave and bold and unflinching when it comes to standing up to bullies, because he’s out there watching out for people like me, Satine, Connie, Charlotte Stokely, artists, creators, performers, and gamers, anyone who the gatekeepers are trying to shame and intimidate out of the hobby. 
image
image
image
image
image
image
image
If there is any such thing as an online tabletop RPG community, and I think there is a bit, I think we need to be questioning people’s behaviour, and I think it’s only fair to warn people about those who talk a big game about inclusivity and tolerance and who in practice are doing just the opposite, and have been all along. 

Marilyn Manson On D&D--Live From Laney & Twiggy's Wedding 2014

$
0
0

Our party's intrepid halfling moves from strength to strength--last week she saved everyone from a total party kill after narrowly escaping being fat and she spent this weekend marrying a rock star.

Your humble correspondent was given a great deal of whiskey by some ladies on the catering crew that he suspects were fans of his movies, got to tell Kerry King that Slayer changed his life, and discussed with the Best Manson a lot of things on a great number of topics that are best left unrepeated and a few things I can repeat about his relationship to Gygax and Arneson's baby, the World's First and Finest Role-Playing Game on this Day Before Gygax's birthday.

I could insert a long essay here about how music industry people all inevitably turn out to be weird involuted hobbyists about something very private and how talking to people at Laney and Twiggy's wedding reveals most of their friends are people who make things and collect things and how much of what was at the wedding like the birdcages and dresses and whatever was actually put together by the folks involved and then somehow loop that around to how Laney herself became a special-effects make-up person on account of Gwar and the late Oderus Ungus is such a D&D guy he wrote a module for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and how metal and D&D and special effects and performance are all kind of locked together in exactly the kind of way you'd expect despite frequent attempts to pretend otherwise because the best way to play D&D is after a long week of being out in the world drunk in the dark and really really really not playing D&D the same way it's nice to take a bath, alone, after 8 hours of soccer and then maybe talk about the double standard where everybody takes it as read that it's grown-ups-run-amuck-conservative lunacy for parents to try to police what's in a Slayer or Manson video but some third party D&D product it's like Watch Out OMG Problematic if there's a boob but either I'll save that for another day or I just wrote it.

Anyway, here's Manson on the game:

(Note for the record lately he's taken to talking in a speeded-up True Detective accent)

Zak: Laney comes over to our house and plays D&D.

Manson: Is it advanced D&D?

Zak: Sorta, it's actually kind of a hybrid.

Manson: I had AD&D, I got DMG, I gots Monster Manual, I got pewter figurines.

Zak: Did you color in your own dice?

Manson: I didn't color in mah own dice, but I painted the pewter figures.

Zak: Did you do a base coat?
(Why did I ask that?)

Manson: I did a base coat, did a overall coat--I put the paint on all wet so it went down in the cracks.

Zak: You did a wash.

Charlotte Stokely: Should I call you Brian or Manson while you're here?

Manson: Call me God, call me Overlord, call me Boss, call me…well I guess you can't call me Dungeon Master because you the dungeon master. I like that tattoo son, it's like Carcosa--I got that Carcosa tattoo too right here.
The pair of tattoos in question

(I take Manson by the glove and hold both our spirals up to Stokely's face in an attempt to hypnotize her. It doesn't work.)
Left: Charlotte Stokely, (level 11 tiefling wizard). Right: Manson

Zak: You probably haven't heard about the Carcosa D&D module--but you'd probably like it.
Carcosa
(brief pause for Laney and Twiggy to get married)

Zak: You were an elf wizard weren't you?

Manson: Nah, I was the dungeon master.

Zak: You didn't ever play a character?

Manson: I was into the drow.

Zak: Were you an elf thief?

Manson: Yeah.

_

So there you go. Everything they say about Dungeons & Dragons is true.
Brian before D&D
Brian during D&D
Brian after D&D


And congratulations to Laney and Twiggy….

Weird footnote: the same day I did this thing on Manson, his ex did a thing on me.
-
-

George RR Martinism In This Hex

$
0
0
This was the most entertaining image I could find to go with this table.
Paste your own NPCs' heads over these guys and make your own relationship map! 

D100

1, Sword's hilt emblazoned with a rampant stag
2, Coward and inbred woman sitting by a fire
3, Arrowhead of black glass (of disruption)
4, 700' structure made of ice, its head buried in cloud
5, Venison stew with onions
6, A song sung about a cruel father
7, Two women arguing about how to skin a rabbit
8, A crippled and fugitive heir
9, A blonde prophet who suffers seizures
10, Steel climbing claws
11, A royal bastard, skilled in cunnilingus
12, Ranger/Barbarian, female, level 7, red-haired, jealous
13, Snow that falls in reverse
14, A straw effigy used for target practice
15, Robin hood rip-offs served by a drunken monotheist
16, Ambitious priestess of the flame goddess
17, Scarred and one-eyed warrior, unable to die
18, Faithless moron, scion of a sailing house, being tortured
19, Lord arranging for a vassal to marry blindly
20, Vermeerish light falling on a blue-scarfed matron
21, Non-lovers about to be wed, discussing their wedding by a pre-Raphaelite pond
22, Halfling scheming with his sister
23, A steel artifact with a lying legend attached.
24, A bald spymaster with a fear of chaos and a vendetta
25, A prince playing St Sebastian with a concubine
26, Fur-clad barbarians assaying an icy peak
27, Lovers boring everyone
28, A compass rose whose spiked teeth spin
29, The least pleasant man you've ever met, and boss of a bridge
30, A generation of northern men, all raised beneath the same roof, all possessed of the exact same facial hair
31, A war map with chunky and symbolic wooden pieces
32, A letter to a mother, or a letter to a spy-handler disguised as one
33, A jealous and moustached lunatic
34, A sad idiot on a sun-drenched veranda, regretting past naivetes to a shrewd friend
35, An efficient and heartless mercenary who dispenses sound advice
36, A throne room filled with columns and flames
37, A woman beloved by young monsters
38, A walled city, threatened by an army of eunuchs
39, Solid gold chains given as a gift to a scorned woman
40, A bastard in a harbor strewn with wreckage
41, A noble raiding party--of no more than 20
42, A maimed swordsman, held for ransom
43, A pair of teasing girls in the house of a sadist
44, A stone windmill, much discussed
45, A learned man tending to a gruesome stump
46, Horsemen escorting a prisoner down a slope
47, A woman in a dress fighting a creature in a pit with a wooden sword
48, A ziggurat city, crowned by a dominating and heraldic statue
49, A deformed mercenary on a black horse, eating apples
50, A rolling green moor by a fork in a calm red river
51, A queen attended by a pair of Charlton Heston-like generals
52, 3 swaggering mercenary lords in who act like Spinal Tap
53, A prisoner reading a genealogical history
54, A lord who fears an endless night
55, A god sends an utterly convincing supernatural event
56, A great round window with a star in bar tracery
57, An immensely powerful snotrag
58, You're never safe in a room with that many candles
59, A cleric with a permanent Neutralize Poison cast on her tongue
60, Unattractive women, eager to undress
61, A spell powered by the blood leeches suck
62, An awkward wedding feast made yet more awkward by an angry dad
63, A collonnaded balcony overlooking both a great hall and a spreading blue sea
64, Drunk halfling vomiting
65, A lone wight, portended by a plague of shrieking birds
66, A row of spurned daughters, their heads downcast
67, An obscene old man in fingerless gloves
68, Two servants who do not trust a third
69, A castle with a secret entrance, known only to a steward
70, One old man with 8 good horses, protected by rangers
71, A cart laden with supplies, bound for a feast, accosted by a merciless killer
72, An outlaw with a flaming sword
73, Six young travelers trapped in a tower with a giant and a level 1 wizard
74, Two wolves: one white, one black
75, A vicious eagle
76, The greatest whistler in the land
77, Three 12th level fighters set upon by 20 first-level ones
78, A gift of both a bride and her weight in silver
79, A cake frosted in a pale and inauspicious green
80, Minstrel assassins
81, A camp full of drunken soldiers
82, A civil ceremony used as a trap
83, A season that lasts 100 years
84, Rivals join in civil war against a mad king
85, A city that provides a refuge for escaped slaves
86, A demon-haunted city destroyed by a mysterious doom
87, A wall rumored to have been built by giants
88, Towers linked by arches and rope bridges
89, A name that is the default name for illegitimate children
90, A hall with a hole in the middle
91, A great ditch which can be flooded during sieges
92, A castle immune to magic
93, A fortress that is a statue
94, A dark-eyed lenscrafter
95, Guardsmen who marry their axes
96, A city full of men with dyed, forked beards
97, A city where a bloodthirsty tribe are forbidden to shed blood
98, Blue-lipped warlocks
99, A plaza reserved for punishment
00, 8 scheming bastard daughters

___
For best results, combine with ThorismTolkienism and He-Man/She-Raism

Like:
Hex 4556:3 trolls arguing with a queen half-living, half-dead and an obscene old man in fingerless gloves with a hand of steel
-
-
-

How Dungeons And Dragons Is Totally Not Endorsing The Darkest Parts The RPG Community At All Even Though There's Some Tumblr Panic That It Is

$
0
0

Courtesy Matthew Adams
So, conservative game blogger Tom Hatfield ( @wordmercenary on twitter ) wrote a lot of things that aren't true
He looks familiar, right?
Why didn't an actual news site take your story, oh Mercenary? Probably because ofall the ways you fucked it up. Let's count them--but, in counting them, let's also take this opportunity to look back at a great many years of posts in D&D With Porn Stars that Tom The Word Mercenary clearly did not.


Why This A Win-Win For You, Reader

If you've read all of the posts from this blog I'm linking to below, you already know Tom the Word Mercenary is talking from deep betwixt the pressing and fleshy sanctum of his or some friend's butt--and you can skip this post entirely. Go grab some tables off the Dozen.

If you haven't, it's almost as if these links to old but relevant posts are me writing a whole bunch of new posts about something other than embarrassing the hell out of a terrible writer today and you get to read it.

So, let's romp!

Special Note For RPGnet: Now the biggest complaint against me is that I made a list of people who endorsed a lie about rape threats. The stupid theory is that I did this to shame, embarrass or bully people into rescinding their endorsement. I had no such hopes: I did it to warn my friends that nobody on that list should be trusted because they just will endorse shit without evidence.

Let's watch Tom the Word Mercenary turn this into a conspiracy...

It starts with a simple fact-checking embarassment I would've gotten fired for back when I was an unpaid intern:

Dude. Seriously.


(4e stands for "Fourth Edition". Like, of D&D. Also a big 5e fan--having worked on it. Those are the two newest editions which, to be fair, Tom The Word Mercenary may not have known since he apparently doesn't know about Google.)


#3 "Zak S is famous for two things: Playing D&D with pornstars, both on his blog and for a little while in a web series for the Escapist, and being banned from half the major RPG communities on the net for derailing any and all discussion about diversity and discrimination."



Click to enlarge the actual awesome thing I said that got me banned from RPGnet
…and I got banned from Story-Games for pointing our Wundergeek was a repulsive bigot

#4 "Zak...spends all his time derailing conversations on sexism"


#5 "...defending sexists…."



STOP LAUGHING ALL OF YOU I AM YOUR DUNGEON MASTER!!!
"Whatever could be the matter with this door?" said Alice.
"It is being held shut by Zak. He has no other entertainments." said the Mercenary
"Wait, the Zak that drew me?" said Alice
"Uhh…"

Click to enlarge the extent of Tom Hatfield's failure.
And get a preview of Red & Pleasant Land.


#7 "...anyone who criticised the pair found themselves subjected to harassment, abuse and real world stalking…"
This is an unrelated bat picture from a book I'm doing.



So: anyone but Zak stepping up to defend Zak is "harassment". 
Keeping score?
Obscure + lying: not harassment.
Famous+ typing true things: harassment.
Famous+typing fake things: not harassment.


#8 "What they do is point out targets and refuse to admonish their fans when they step over the line."


#9 "...it the choice of victim that is the most telling. These attacks nearly alwaystarget women and LGTBQ individuals…"
Targeting for hugs, maybe?






The sole documented incident of Zak S harassing a trans person


#10 "...his girlfriend attempted to out a trans designer…"
"The years of trolling I did before I changed my screen-name don't count!"


#11 "...Zak’s business model revolves around publically being a jerk. He is, quite literally, a career bully…"
…also a porn actor, but I figured that was implied. And it is the Post so, y'know….

#12 "...Zak was publicly speaking on Mearls’ behalf,…"


Do you see "On behalf of Mike Mearls?" I don't see that. Tom The Word Mercenary, do you see that? Tom The Word mercenary what are you on? Are there secret drugs given only to Mercenaries?



Maybe eating a sandwich before we take Mandy her new wheelchair is a "run-in"? I dunno, ask Tom The Word Mercenary.



In 2013 I discovered the secret best way to destroy homosexuals is to help them snuggle.
Soon, my pet…

ProTip: Best way to keep women out of the RPG hobby is to invite any woman reading it to take over your blog. Three times. The fourth time, they will turn into an apple tree and furnish only bitter fruit.



I do apologize for how gauche it is to trot out the LGBT and POC players in your game group to defend yourself against hating them, but there's only one person I've personally introduced to D&D who isn't LGBT or a POC or both so, y'know, I have nobody else to trot out.

Like seriously: what are you supposed to do when you're accused of being racist by a group, dozens-strong, that has less people of color in it than your actual home game group (5)?

Maybe I just hate secretly everyone. Except Adam, the white guy who plays a wizard. 
(Meet me behind the boathouse Adam.)

_____


And, in the end you may be wondering, what exactly do Tom the Word Mercenary and the Something Awful goons and monocle-droppers he sourced his article from have on me after 3 weeks of looking for dirt?

If you have something, I urge you: go to the police. Go to Wizards of the Coast. Please do unmask and reveal my empire of hate and crime. It will be a pip for us to hear all about it.

Y'know what'll be cited as "evidence" of harassment? This. The fact that I took Tom the Word Mercenary's public post and publicly pointed out the public mistakes he made publicly. Which is like what Tom did to me, only true and documented with links quotes and pictures to back it up.

When people claim to be "victims of harassment" that's usually what they mean: "Zak typing my name because and after I typed his name".

And what, pray tell, do we have on Tom The Word Mercenaries friends? Well this dork stalking Kiel, for instance...
Empathy means never asking if maybe you're just one of the statistically inevitable percentage of trolling dickwheels 6 years of talking about D&D and pornography simultaneously will stir up.

Luckily Tom the Word Mercenary is not the world's sole source of news. Here are some people who actually did their homework before posting it where people could read it:

Janis Lily
and
Shea Kauffman on how Tom the Mercenary is weaponizing marginalized people...

Jeff Rients

Annah Madrinan (now getting mansplained at by some pro-Tom Hatfield douche)

Bleeding Cool

Rob Monroe

Kat Fisher

Stacey Dellorfano

James Raggi

Ms Kamikaze Kitten

Trollsmyth

Alex Mayo

Tom K

Andrew Tran at 8cn.tv

Jeff Russell

Wild Die

Patrick Stuart

Gary Mengle

Kirin Robinson

Doug Anderson

"Rusty"Pierce

Noisms

John Austin

Richard G like whoa

Seebs like triple whoa

And, as always, actualreal journalist and fellow thief, Molly Crabapple:

You want the truth? Right there. The whole mess.

UPDATE!

Goalpost-shifting scoreboard so far--

Start:
-Zak is a bigot and harasses all LGBTS and POCs in the hobby
(disproved, moved to…)
-Zak is not a bigot but harasses all LGBTS and POCs in the hobby
(disproved, moved to…)
-Zak harasses like maybe some LGBTs and POCs in the hobby
(disproved, moved to…)
-Zak incites people to harass some LGBTSs and POCs in the hobby
(unproved, moved to…)
-Zak quotes some LGBTs and POCs in the hobby which makes other people harass them
(unproved, moved to…)
-Zak quotes some LGBTs and POCs in the hobby which might've made some other people harass them
(unproved, moved to…)
-Zak quotes people who troll and attack him and insults them which might've made some other people harass the trolls and never said don't do that
(disproved, moved to…)
-Zak quotes people who troll and attack him and insults them….aaaand that's unprofessional
(vague, moved to…)
-Zak treats people who claim to be professional game designers who attack him out of nowhere better than they treat him but...that's still unprofessional because…ummm…because…..
(ineffective, moved to)
-Zak doesn't care about trolls' feelings
BINGO.
-
-
-

Apologies Plus Jerryrigged Sandbox Dungeon Construction Notes

$
0
0
First, to people who are e-mailing in apologies--

Since Mandy's still in the hospital we may not be able to answer every e-mail coming in immediately--but, in general, folks sending apologies for supporting, retweeting or otherwise signal-boosting Tom Hatfield's now-discredited smear job on us:

We appreciate that you are apologizing, that's big of you and provides an all-too-rare example of these dumb online things resulting in a little self-examination. However, we do ask that if you're making an apology you make it public.

We realize that most of this is down to people just wanting to reflexively back up their friends and that's not entirely a bad thing to do--but the mistake was public, so the attempt to fix it needs to be as well.

A situation where dozens or maybe hundreds of isolated trans- kids on Tumblr think their favorite game hates them just because of Tom Hatfield is not ok. And you can make that right--but not with a message that just sits in my or Mandy's inbox and doesn't go out in the world.

Thanks.

P.S. For those who asked: Mandy's doing alright, second feeding tube in, in less pain today but still under observation. We've been able to pay a few games via G+ and watch some movies so it's been alright. Thanks to everybody who ran those. Also: the new wheelchair did finally show up and is awesome.


And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Program…

As much as possible I try to hand-draw dungeons for the home group--but for the online game I use alotta tricks.

Chris H (human monk) recently out together a list of all the dungeons and fortresses that've come up in that online game in the past couple years. Since it's a sandbox game and most I thought it might be fun to run through them and how I threw them together.



Jackalman Fortress in Cobalt Reach
*gnolls, actually

Construction: Exterior was from the random fortress generator--inside was like a circle with a handful of squares in it based on one of those sketchy "fortress with (number) (kind of dude) lead by a (number) level (alignment) (sorcerer/fighter) descriptions in Carcosa.

Result: Full on siege--successful


Fortress of the guy we turned in to a Lich*--(Baron Vorgus)
*demilich, actually

Construction: Ditto, exterior was from the random fortress generator- then made a tiny 3 level sketch map that connected to the Echo Palace (see below). Like 3 rooms had a special stuff, the rest was just whatever monsters were in the warband.

Result: Joined besieging army, then took over.


Library of the Snakemen

Construction: This was barely a place--just the idea of a vertical shaft library with Librarians/serpentmen/reptile women in it.

Result: Went down a few runs, then ran out.



Dungeon Under Baron Vorgus' Fortress

Construction: Actually just a portion of the Echo Palace (see below).

Result: Took it over.



Dungeon Where Mandy Helped Us Fight Lots Of Bad Guys

Construction: North end of Search-And-Replace Dungeon

Result: Went about 1/4 of the way in, got some treasure, fought some dudes, left.


Echo Palace of Omnithroxia

Construction: Heavily modified Caverns of Thracia. I went through and modified it by hand for weeks before for use in my home game.

Result: They did about half to 3/4 of it then it got destroyed during the Slow War. They were there forever.



Bellet Osc (Hex King's Palace)

Construction: Mostly index cards--the laid over an image from the Book of Kells, which provided the layout.

Result: Halfway finished, then got driven off by run-ins with white orcs and cannibal mermaids


Giant's House 

Construction: One giant upstairs room, one giant downstairs room

Result:Squishing


Salamander Cave

Construction:Random rooms from the DIY D&D community's megalist, re-themed to match salamanders

Result: 3 rooms in, then fled


Island of Warring Goblins Tower Defense & Dungeon Assault

Construction: Random rooms, re-themed

Result: Pretty well scraped



Witch's Isle Dungeon

Construction: Random rooms, re-themed

Result: They never did find the beholder...


Battle of Nornrik

Construction: Basically Doctor Doom's castle from the Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP Dr Doom supplement with a few oddities thrown in and the eye of a god in the tower.

Result: A long battle but a total victory in the end.


Half-Orc Knight's Castle (where Sir Ward died)

Construction: Sarum Castle from the Great Pendragon Campaign

Result: Eventually saw all of it after getting Sir Ward killed in a hostage situation.


Naga's Dungeon

Construction: Random dungeon

Result: Success


Inside Vorn

Construction: An old dungeon from the I Hit It WIth My Axe era, literally inside the body of a god.

Result: Went a few rooms in, then fled.


The Glass Tower

Construction: From an old Al Qadim supplement

Result: Flew up, stole a thing, ran.
The Arcology of Cyanotica Bast

Construction: Heavily modified Seclusium

Result: Saw about 80% of it, largely on account of a demon refusing to let them leave.


Arcology of Nithrinn Poxx

Construction: Another Seclusium

Result: Saw about 25-40% during a siege, managed to replace the owner with a mind flayer


Abu Zin Zeer

Construction: Doctor Doom's palace again

Result: Searched until they found a horrible mechabeholder



The Castle of those Asshole Elves That Kidnapped Malice

Construction: The outside was the random fortress generator, the inside connected to the Echo Palace.

Result: Malice managed to escape his captors & hook up with the rest of the party in the Echo Palace.


Temple of the Winds

Construction: Top level--index cards, lower level: random dungeon

Result: Lost a cleric of Manpac but otherwise most of it got seen. Except the door with the thing screaming "daddy" behind it.
-
-
-

Fucking Save Goats

$
0
0
You know what's a big problem in the RPG industry? You people aren't saving goats.

Look at them:
We're goats
Save them!

They're the Icelandic Goat ok? Specifically. The Icelandic Goat is an ancient species of goat that's Icelandic, and if you aren't saving it, you're probably a fuck.

Ok that was mean but anyway save a goat. They're badass.

There's like, what? Almost no Icelandic Goats left. Like there's 8 or something. I don't know, not a lot.

Look, here's a goat. And it's majestic, ok?
See? Ma Jes Tic. Goat.

From Ice. Land.

Check how fucking metal:
My name is Lu Ci Fer PleaseTakeMyHand
He's a metal goat. And endangered as fuck.

You know what's Old School? Goats. Goats whose lineage predates the settlement of Iceland over a millennia ago(at).

Soon a farm in Iceland's gonna close and that's gonna be like half the goats there were. Right there.

Seriously: save goats.

As of last count here was less than 600 of this majestic and imperious, and fleecey beast. There isn't enough goats, ok?

So skip that splatbook and save a goat, you got it?

"But wait," you may be saying "I'm an indie gamer, I'm not metal enough to save goats!"

Don't worry, they also make them in NewWave:
Ground Control To Major Goat
Check it:
We'll kill you inna alley because of the devil we're goats
For 1000$ you can even adopt and name a baby goat.
I'm yours and fucking name my ass. 
Goats rule, ok? And there isn't as many goats as there's supposed to be.

So go. Serious. Goats, man.
This is Mandy with goats

-
-
-

Dear Angry Gamers, I Am Calling Your Bluff

$
0
0
Basically the charges against me and the women in my group have been totally debunked.
Thank you, Molly.

However, some liars are still lying and pretending they didn't lie or defending their right to retweet lies and it's boring everyone. Aren't you bored reading this?

So, let's finish this like the gamers and do-gooders we are:

Here's the game--I ask you a question about things you did or said to create this controversy. You answer the question clearly. Each straight answer you give I donate 10 US dollars to the charity of your choice.*

No religious, anti-porn or other conservative charities allowed. Anarchist, feminist and LGBT ones recommended. Personally I am a big fan of the Downtown LA women's shelter since our party's thief works there but the lgbt center's good too. I cap out at 1000$ or when I run out of questions, whichever comes first. Multiple comers welcome.

Formal rules:

You have to answer. No rhetorical questions, no grandstanding, no "I can't believe you would ask that question", no bullshit joke answers for the crowd, no "oh come on, you know the answer to that." You answer the question, you answer seriously and succinctly. Then you wait for the next question.

You may ask one of your own, that is permitted. No dumb troll questions and you still have to answer mine. No money for my questions, but I'll answer because I'm a good person.

Beyond that, you try not to make any other statements (so do I). This is hard (and asking a question often involves making a statement), but the point is to understand that which is not understood.

If you feel the question is leading or unfair, you can clarify and I will reformulate.

This is not a debate--this is an attempt to understand where the real, base-level differences are between whatever you think is going on and what everyone else does.

No interjections from anybody else.

The venue is this blog or Google + (public thread or private thread (to be moved to the blog when it's over)) whichever you prefer.

If you think a question is leading, say so and explain why and I'll rephrase it.

If you are afraid to reveal a source, we'll try to rephrase to get a plausible scenario out of what you're saying.

This offer is only good for a certain list of people, but you guys hate to be listed. So I'll just say: if you are Tom Hatfield or retweeted the Tom Hatfield article some time before Aug 9th and have over 1000 twitter followers you are eligible to win some cash for your favorite charity. Also, Ettin, Wundergeek and Schmelz are eligible regardless of how many followers they have, considering their roles here.

Questions you don't answer or evade get no cash. Personal attacks or insults disqualify you immediately.

So: do you care about not admitting you're wrong or do you care about the marginalized people in the community?

If you would rather just call me names, donate money yourself and then go about your business, that's fine, too--someone has been helped by this gesture and that's what's important.

Do let me know.

I have no doubt this will be called "grandstanding" by bitter jerks, but there's the money. Take it or leave it. Are you more afraid to answer questions than you are eager to secure aid for your favorite cause?
-
-
-
_
*One of the liars involved has recharacterized this game as saying you have to "agree" I'm a "good guy" (instead of "answer questions") which, if nothing else, is conclusive proof he is a bad guy. Seems like a lot of bending over backward to avoid truth or generosity, but there you go.
-
-
-

"…and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes"

$
0
0
--Daniel 8:5


Animals are the most common monster in your setting.

Yes, your druid can talk to them, but what do they say? Oh I want to pull your sled, hippie? No.

Animals are political--flies hate toads and frogs and toads and frogs hate my Monday group, because they killed a Slaad, one of their gods, which in turn hates the Chasme, or demon-fly.
…and in Carcosa it's even worse.

Point being there is, even before the new Monster Manual arrives, a great deal of nascent animontrosity nascent in your world. Dormant hates, waiting for a moment to bray and bite. Yes, your honey badger Animal Companion will help you, but if you tell it to kill snakes--it might not stop.

Which brings us to the goat. We imagine animals are us and imagine their inner world is the world we'd have had we that face.

By and large, our ancestors seem to have looked at goats and seen a sharp-featured male face, whose beard made him old, whose hollowed cheeks spoke not of softeing age but of having been harrowed, shriven and shrivelled and whose side-slit half-open eyes made him sly and drunk.

We aren't complete idiots, though--and once dealt with domestic animals daily--so much of what we decide is based on what they actually do. So we can add in that this particular senior citizen is omnivorous, tenacious, and difficult.

At some point, most of Europe decided this was the worst kind of man you could be. He, like, the serpent, had been too far and taken in too much.
Might've been the horns
People say goats are lustful, serving Baphomet, a duke beneath Demogorgon, but then, people say a lot of things.

What is known for certain is that the goat is contemptuous of the sheep, which obeys, that two goats--Toothsnarler and Toothgrinder--draw the chariot of Thor, that they give milk, meat, cheese and hide, that sin may be invested in a special goat to purge a community of it, that they possess a two-breasted udder, that they whisper lewdness into the ears of saints, and that the Cathedrals of Tittivila used to be built inside the bodies of massive, 8-legged black goats.

While it is not true that goats may eat anything, they have been known to ruminate on a wide variety of topics. Those casting Speak With Animals and consulting a goat on any topic will likely be confronted with a well-developed (if not always well-conceived) treatment of the subject.

Beastmen are chosen of Demogorgon, and possess goat heads, but they lack the gimlet calm of their goat parents. It is said among goats that two-legged blood makes beastmen lustful.

War-goats have 2+2 hit dice and attack as wardogs, save they do +2 damage on a charge and are much harder to train. If you ask a wardog to fetch something it might work, your wargoat will probably eat it.

Halflings, dwarves and both tribal and witchwood goblins are known to ride wargoats, and it is claimed gnomes have a great affinity with them, but no-one gives a fuck because they're gnomes.

The goat's greatest foe is, of course, the troll. Trolls lurk beneath bridges, for they are places which connect, by civilized means, loci which Demogorgon--in his wisdom--preferred to conceive separately.

Typically, trolls will menace each goat that passes a bridge (to quote the Monster Manual) "unceasingly", until gored by an unusually large, pugnacious, skilled or lucky goat. Such a goat (known as an Escape Goat) then acquires the trolls' regeneration abilities. If, like Toothsnarler and Toothgrinder, they are slaughtered by their master and eaten in a goat's head soup, they will return healthy the next morning.

Another variety is the Night Goat, which is a kind of crime-solving goat. It has no special abilities, but murmurs in the darkness.

As the Icelandic Goat nears extinction, it requests your help.
-
-
-

Converting To Type V?

$
0
0
I made my first by-the-book (ok, kinda by the the book, I rolled stats 3d6 in order just to see how that'd go) 5th Edition D&D character last night. Trullvenly the Slav, half-orc barbarian, noble background.

Thinking I might convert my current home game (AD&D/3.5 hacked mash-up) to a hacked version of 5e. Things to consider (and I freely admit I may not know what I'm talking about here, but that's why there's a comment box)...

-Conan can be easily charmed by a 1st level wizard
Unless your class specializes in a save, it doesn't improve as you level up.
Because of the nature of the format, this kind of thing actually happens a lot in serial fiction--the epic hero is laid low by a clever low-level loser who gets lucky. Because Thor's been around for 400 issues fighting epic threats and it's nice to have an ironic reversal once in a while.

-Robin Hood and Gandalf are equally likely to hit the bullseye (sorta)
Robin Hood will do more damage and probably get multiple attacks and Gandalf would have to use a light crossbow but if they're the same level all classes have the same chance to hit. Ok but then Robin Hood probably has a feat that makes him even better with bows and has a better dex. But still, it's a little bit of a thing.

-Gandalf should be using a staff, not a sword
…since one of the things left that separates the fighter from the wizard is the fighter's using better weapons, or at least the fighter gets to add a level-based bonus to a sword attack.
An easy hack around this is to just use class-based damage unless a weapon is specialized. Wizards=d4, Rogue/Druid=d6, Cleric=d8, Fighter/Ranger/Paladin=d10, Barbarian=d12

-Hit points aren't old school
That's super easy to hack, though.

-Adam doesn't get Limited Wish
There's no Limited Wish and he was all expecting to get it next level

-I have no practical first-hand experience with the global effect of the spell system at high levels 
…on the other hand, the same could be said for the current spell system I'm using, which is totally experimental.
Might let people grandfather-in old spells.

-Random unattached stuff I don't like/care about
This is a catch-all for stuff I can just ignore, so whatever. That's what I do with every other edition.

-Players have new shit to remember
Everybody gets abilities they didn't have before which they need to keep track of. Like my half-orc has the ability to pop up to 1 hp when he's knocked down to 0 hp because he's a half-orc.

-I have to rebalance monster hit points and weapon damage
I usually build monsters from scratch so this is no big deal.

This, by the way, is how I do it at high levels: I want a relatively high-armor, short-combat game.
The unit of damage is The Fireball (an unavoided, average-damage fireball from a caster at 10th level. That's 35 points of damage in D&D Type III or D&D Type V if the caster uses a highest-slot fireball).
A backstab should be roughly equal to a Fireball.
An average successful melee attack from a 6th level fighter should be 1/2 fireball. So if both attacks from a high-level fighter hit, that guy might as well have just gotten fireballed.
A 10th-level fighter-type monster should have about 2 fireballs worth of hit points.
-
-
-
To see how it'd work, I converted Connie's character over to the new system.

It took about an hour of working together and wasn't totally boring. Trying to retroactively decide what background and archetype you have is a thing.
Asterisks indicate things Connie's going to have to learn how they work.

Gypsillia
Half elf
Rogue
Background: Urchin
Level 12

Prof bonus +4
XP 70,660 100,660

Wis 10 14 (+2)
Dex 15 (+2) (+6 save) 16 (+3) (+7 save)
Cha 13 (+1)  16 (+3)
Int 15 (+2) (+6 save)
Con 15 (+2)
Str 11 14 (+3)

Close combat +9/+4 +7
Shooting/throwing/finesse +11/+6  +7
Melee Damage bonus +0 +3
Armor: Chainmail (no proficiency) Studded leather 15
Hit points 51

Reflex
Fort
Will

Bits:
Improved Uncanny Dodge *Uncanny Dodge see p 96
Defensive roll *Evasion see p 96
Sneak attack: +4 to hit(you'll usually have advantage) +6d6 damage
60 ft Darkvision
+2 vs enchantment & sleep Advantage vs enchantment & sleep
*Urchin stuff (items, mouse, city movement, etc), see p. 141)
Archetype: Assassin
*Cunning Action see p. 96
*Assassinate see p. 97
*Infiltration see p. 97
*Reliable talent see p. 97

Sleight of Hand (Expertise +11) 
Stealth (Expertise +11)
Bonus to listen search spot for being a half-elf  Perception (+6)
Acrobatics (Expertise +11)
Insight (+6)
Deception (+7)
Intimidation (+7)
Animal Handling (Expertise +10)
History (+6)

Notes:
Reliable talent plus existing bonuses means a thing has to be like 22 difficult before our thief even has a fail at her specialties.
Gypsillia is about a fireball and a half worth of hit points tough but uncanny dodge takes a huge bite out of that. So did the old version of Improved Uncanny Dodge.
Gypsillia is a little better at animal handling and a little worse at forgery than the previous version
She can't really climb anymore because she didn't go for athletics and chose the assassin archetype instead of thief
She's averaging something like 7.5hp (a little over 1/5 fireball) on a successful hit, but will be doing more than fireball damage on a backstab thanks to sneak attack plus the Assassinate ability. Without that assassinate ability, she's quickly outstripped by any high-slot fireballs.
I currently add the d20 roll to the damage for every non-spellcasting class, as a Fireball-offset. It adds 10.5hp to every damage roll. I may just keep doing that.

"Because of the urchin thing I now have the song from Aladdin stuck in my head"
"That's another emergent effect of switching over to the new system. I'll have to note that on the blog."
-
-
-

Quick 5e Character Generation Reference Thingy

$
0
0
I can't be the only one who wished, during character creation, these were all in one place for reference. So here you go, in the approximate order you need them…

All the 5e Races (p17)
Hill Dwarf
Mountain Dwarf
High Elf
Wood Elf
Drow
Lightfoot Halfling
Stout Halfling
Human
Dragonborn
Forest gnome
Rock gnome
Half-elf
Half-orc
Tiefling

All the 5e Backgrounds (p125) (it helps to pick background before class because then when you move to class and pick skills you don't pick skills you already have)
(Variants backgrounds in parenthesis)
Acolyte
Charlatan
Criminal
(Spy)
Entertainer
(Gladiator)
Folk Hero
Guild Artisan
(Guild Merchant)
Hermit
Noble
(Noble Knight)
Outlander
Sage
Sailor
(Pirate)
Soldier
Urchin

All the 5e Classes (p45)
Barbarian
Bard
Cleric
Druid
Fighter
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Sorcerer
Warlock
Wizard

All the 5e skills (p 174)

STRENGTH                WISDOM
Athletics                       Animal Handling
                                     Insight
DEXTERITY              Medicine
Acrobatics                    Perception
Sleight of Hand            Survival
Stealth

INTELLIGENCE       CHARISMA
Arcana                         Deception
History                         Intimidation
Investigation                 Performance
Nature                          Persuasion
Religion

Trinket table: p 159
Starting money: p 143
Armor: p 144
Weapons: p 146
Other gear: p 148
Spells: p 207
XP Table: p15


And here's a Random 5e PC Generator it doesn't roll and crunch the numbers but it does pick race, class, background, etc. The race and class has two versions--one that leaves out bards and gnomes because they suck and one that leaves them in because I am merciful.
-
-
-




Vorn's Domain Path for 5e Clerics

$
0
0
5e Clerics pick a path based on their god's domain, which gives them bits as they level up. None of them quite fit Vorn--Grim, grey god of iron and rain, so I made this custom path.

Vorn's Domain

1st Level

-Bonus proficiencies w/martial weapons & heavy armor.

-When you get hit with a melee attack from a (non-magic) metal weapon, the attacker must make a Dex check or their weapon rusts beyond use. You can use it once per point of Wisdom mod until you rest.

2nd Level

-You take half damage/effect from storm, lightning or thunder of any kind.

6th Level

-Rain cannot touch you.

8th Level

-Rusting Grasp a number of times per day=Wisdom mod.

14th Level

-You can intensify any rain into a torrential downpour.

17th Level

-You may ignore the damage from a metal weapon a number of times per day = to your Wis mod. Other rust abilities affect magic weapons on a failed item save.
-
-
-

Rock Stars play D&D. Rock Stars Play Fifth Edition.

$
0
0
In retrospect, it should have been obvious.
Oh dark oracle which type of D&D will rock the most?
Mmmmm….Vrock is close to rock….what else you got?

Uhhhhh…nope.

Pinching dog? That's kinda rocknroll...

Ummmm...

…oh there we go.
___
Two firsts today: I ran full-on 5th edition for the first time today, and cat-lover and Marilyn Manson guitarist/bassist Twiggy Ramirez came over to play for the first time. Because, as we all know: The Manson Family rolls.

So what PC did Twiggy pick?
Zak: So when was the last time you played?

Twiggy: The last time it was like the 90s in Florida. We were playing ironically.

Zak: And Manson was DMing?

Twiggy: Yeah.

Zak: That's hilarious. Alllright--so you gotta pick your race, these're probably familiar like Tolkien: Elf, Dwarf, Half-elf, Gnomes suck, Half-orc,  Human, Halfling and then there's also Tiefling which is like half-demon…

Twiggy: What don't we have?

Zak: Well the girls are really into tieflings and elves…

Twiggy: Ok, let's see…

Zak: Oh and there's Dragonborn which is kinda…

Twiggy: It's not so old school.

Zak: Yeah like some people think they're a little cheesy. They breath fire and shit.

Twiggy: I wanna be old school…hmmm… (much debate)…y'know what? I like this dragon guy, it's cool. Is that alright?

Zak: Hey I'm not here to get in the way of your dreams.

Twiggy: Alright I'm this guy…
Zak: Ok, so then you pick your class…they're probably fairly familiar but there's some new ones…

Twiggy: Assume I remember nothing.

Zak: Well y'know a fighter fights, it's not rocket science…Ok, from the bottom: Wizard, Witch slash Warlock

Twiggy: Can I be a witch, like a dragonwitch?

Zak: Well y'know 5t- edition doesn't judge. Like in the old one it was like "Dwarf wizard--no way!" but now it's like you do whatever you want. In practice the way it works is you pick something like half-orc druid multiclass thief and then I like judge you for ten minutes and then you play it and you're cool and make it work and then it's fine and I stop judging you because you made it work.

Twiggy: Alright I'm a witch.

Zak: Sold.
Zak: Now you gotta pick a witch patron--this one is kind of like the Morgaine Le Fay Camelot-witch choice, this one is basically Satan, and the Great Old One is pretty much Cthulhu…

Twiggy: Cthulhu.
Zak: Now for stats you can roll 4 six-sided dice and pick the three highest or you can be hardcore and roll just roll three and you get what you get.

Twiggy: Gimme 3.

___


So the players went crawling through a dungeon from the upcoming Red & Pleasant Land
There were several messages in bottles in the fountain. One said:

To Whom It May Concern,
I have been captured by the Red Bishops! Free me and you will be rewarded!

 Laney's ranger was able to use tracking to figure out the note had been written by a mouse. 

"Oh my god! We have to save the mouse!"

And off they went.

They found the jailer's kitchen (manned by one Meister Heincz, cooking weaselflesh and mustardcake--grateful and confused to be rescued from a life of toil) and fought a few weird Red & Pleasant Land vampires.
Now the thing about these guys is unless you stake them, at 0 hp they just turn into a lizard or something, crawl off, turn into little invulnerable chess pieces and start regenerating until they come back.

Twiggy summoned some fire elementals to burn the kitchen down looking for one of the escaped chess vampires, which worked, but actually bumping one off was kind of a pain and I don't think Twiggy hit anything with his lightning breath all day. After about an hour they had all these invulnerable wooden widgets and no xp to show for it--plus Twiggy got level-drained.

Twiggy:"These fucking things…Can I order the chef to eat the chess pieces?"

Everyone:"No!!!"

Twiggy:"Fuck it, I'm doin' it."

Zak:"Hey you worship Cthulhu--you can tell him whatever you like. Whadda you got for intimidation?"

Twiggy:"+6"

Zak: "Roll it."

Twiggy: "20."

Everyone: "No!!!"

Zak: "He's terrified of this lightning-breathing lizardwitch that talks and just throws them into his mouth."

Mandy:"They're gonna explode out of his stomach and kill him!"

Zak:"Hey maybe."

Twiggy also rolled all his spells randomly and brought donuts and sour-cream-and-cheese-ruffles.

Point is: Twiggy clearly understands how this game is played.


As For The New System….

As for the system:  After a bit of converting, 5e worked like a dream. Combat's fast, the character sheet is comprehensible, you're always rolling high but the numbers are relatively small and the fast-at-math people don't have to do everybody's math for them and there isn't that 3.5 thing where you're like "+6…is +6 good?".

The big test for us was whether Mandy liked it--since:

A) Mandy hates everything
and
B) Having a 17th level character, she was making the biggest transition.

That went well:
So far so good, though in the interest of having some time to play I short-handed a few spells. I'm gonna try to take a closer look at the magic classes and iron them out. Gotta make sure that Cthulhu-lizard-witch really feels like a Cthulhu lizard witch.

So yeah, I'm into this.

Project: Hack Marilith is go.
-
-
-

D100 Witch Traits

$
0
0
If you're playing a witch or warlock, you can roll on this table instead of taking the usual level-up extra. Spells known, spell slots, saves, proficiency and combat advance as usual.

To make a witch/warlock out of an old system that doesn't have one, make a cleric, druid or magic-user and just give up one 1st-level spell each level for a witch trait.

I only wrote the first one--the rest was crowdsourced here . I erased 50-odd entries to pare it down to a clean 100, leaving out ones that seemed least likely to be useful in play. However, some of them were fun, so it you're in my Google+ circles, you might want to take a look.

I've made a few suggestions in parenthesis to make some more gameable. If you think of anything to make one more concrete, put it in the comments.

1, By concentrating, you can cause any sleeping creature you have observed before to open its eyes and look around for 3 rounds, during which you can see through its eyes.

2, You may talk any domestic (Or ordinary--including wolves, bears, etc) animal into suicide (in a number of rounds=its hd).

3, You always spoil milk around you. You can't choose. 

4, You can smell emotions. It's 70% accurate.

5, Your spit burns the holy. (d4 per holy class level?)

6, If you prepare a corpse, crows will come and tell you news.

7, Domestic animals hate you (can't think why).

8, healing spells still work on you but replace portions of your flesh with tattooed holy scriptures/tracts, which the cleric's god hopes you will read and thereby learn the error of your ways;

9, If you eat something, you can cause someone else to vomit it up. This could be used in odd ways e.g. sending an ally in prison a key. Or you could just make paladins disgorge huge quantities of blood and spiders etc. etc. 

10, Your fingernails grow long and hard, and are excellently suited to digging in unconsecrated ground. (Claw attack.)

11, When you laugh (or cackle, really), your true nature is exposed through any disguise or illusion. The upside: this also causes Fear (act at -4 or run away) in living creatures that hear it and fail a saving throw.

12, You ate your twin. It gives you advice sometimes, in dark places.

13, If you bring a statue an acceptable gift it will tell you about something it has seen.

14, one of your hands is a chickens claw. If you let it scratch idly in the dirt it writes down the secrets of those close to you. But sometimes it writes down your secrets and you never know which secret belongs to who.

15, You know a secret demonic process to turn the fat of children into a skin cream, rubbed on furniture, it can bring the furniture to life (although the ambling desk or wardrobe is no smarter than a child).

16, By talking to anyone for about five minutes, you somehow come to know their deepest childhood fear.

17, Can cause miscarriages or deformed stillbirths by staring at people and blinking in certain patterns. 

18, You can spontaneously cause really innocuous mishaps. If you pin them on someone else the mishaps suddenly become a much bigger deal.

19, Teeth will not stay in your mouth for longer than a day; everyday you must implant teeth other than you already wore in your mouth. The teeth may tell you secrets or give you a bite attack.

20, They tried to execute you once, but somehow it didn't work. Roll 1d6 to determine the method of your almost-demise : 1 Burning  2 Drowning 3 Hanging 4 Pressing with stones 5 Beheading 6 Poking with brands You still bear the marks/scars of your execution. Depending on how you survived, this may be minor or may be e.g. you are literally carrying your own head around. 

21, Trigger local epidemics of infectious disease by humming lullabies in the garden of someone who's offended you. At night of course.

22, Guilt makes people weak to your magic. If someone commits a crime or a sin, they have a saving throw penalty against you; if you can trick a good person into doing something awful, you can rewrite their destiny. 

23, Your tongue splits like a snake's. You gain bonuses to telling lies and casting suggestion spells, but when you tell the truth people might not believe you. 

24, If you make a man cry you can discover what he truly fears. 

25, You become diabolically attractive - probably in a very lush, sensual way. Unfortunately, someone powerful becomes stalkerishly obsessed with you. You might be able to influence them, but then again they might try to have you judicially murdered for rejecting their advances. 

26, Cats spy for you.

27, Your bodily fluids can bring shadows to life as your servants. 

28, Insects will guard you while you sleep.

29, Birds will steal small items for you.

30, Demons cannot resist dancing with you.

31, Uncanny ability to quickly learn foreign languages, written or spoken, lip read, sign languages, codes.

32, Can mimic precisely infants crying or the sounds small animals make. 

33, Cold skin, slow heartbeat - excellent at feigning death.

34, Occasionally sucking on boiled bones will turn you invisible.

35, Propensity to break into saccharine and uplifting musical numbers. Ability to present self as the real victim in all circumstances, regardless of actual state of affairs. 

36, Your appetite becomes enormous and almost insatiable. Fortunately, you can now dislocate your jaw and distend your throat, which will help when you try to swallow that cow. 

37, Can only step through a threshold when walking backwards.

38, You have a single, detachable eye.

39, You have two "sisters" - not necessarily female. Perhaps you were both reborn at the same initiation ritual. Whatever the reason, you know everything they are doing, feel a sympathetic twinge if they suffer pain, death or love, and can cast more powerful spells if you work together with them. Unfortunately, they are ghastly people, of a sort you would never otherwise want to know. 

40, Extraordinary sense of smell.

41, Deeply narcissistic, will watch yourself speaking if a mirror or reflective surface is within sight rather than looking at whoever you are speaking to.

42, You can shape shift into an appropriate animal. In the absence of other cultural contexts, choose one of the following: hare, fox, deer, cat or owl. 

43, Eyes in the back of your head. They work.

44, If you can get a sexual partner to submit to you, you can transform them into a useful animal under your control - a horse, for example, or a guard dog. They are aware, but in a kind of dreamlike state. They do not age. When they are killed, when you are killed or when they are touched by a holy symbol, they will revert to their original form. 

45, Extra fingers, they smell like exotic spices and the fumes can intoxicate people who's faces you stroke. 

46, Perhaps you could repel water, like magnetic repulsion. You could never touch water again (or drink it). It would roll away from you. Maybe you would be thirsty a lot. You would need to take sand baths. You could not pick up things in puddles or pools. Sailors might try to capture you, put you in a cage and use you to create a bubble or bathysphere for deep sea exploration. 

47, While you sleep, your hands autonomously scratch writing onto your belly.  The writing has a 40% chance to be blasphemy, 40% chance to be mere insults (against you), and 20% chance to be a warning about something you are likely to encounter tomorrow.  When possible, combine these categories.

48, You can't cross running water, or enter sanctified grounds

49, Clerical turning works against you as if you were undead

50, You can only enter religious establishments or sacred ground with the intent to fornicate within. 

51, If you incubate an egg over two weeks, it will hatch into an intelligent, mean-spirited rooster that will nevertheless be completely loyal to you as long as it in the same room as you.  However, if you are ever dropped to 0 HP, the rooster will rush over to you, suck all of your blood out of your eyes (killing you) and turn into a 6' anthropoid cockatrice hybrid-thing with no allegiance except its own.

52, You are not beautiful. Yet. Every so often, you will become obsessed with a particular feature of some stranger. Perhaps they have an aquiline nose or a striking eyes. They may not be conventionally attractive at all. You will stalk them, incapacitate them, cut off that feature using a special knife, then cut off the corresponding piece of your own face and, with careful motions, stitch your new acquisition into place. (It will work--you'll appear to be them.) For some reason, the brief period of elated self-contemplation that follows deliquesces, inevitably, into dissatisfaction, envy and further crimes. 

53, But if someone paints an eye on it, so that it stares back at you, your powers will not work on it until the eye is defaced. You know when you have entered the country of witches by the omnipresence of eyes. 

54, You are linked to the last person who drank some amount of your saliva (or other bodily fluids).  At will, you can cause the linked person to vomit leaves and dead crows, but this terminates the link.

55, You can transform harpy eggs into "disaster eggs". http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/01/dungeon-mistress-mandy.html?m=1&zx=2b5a5eb063d414e

56, There is a small creature living in your stomach.  (Rat/octopus/unborn twin/beetle, rolled randomly).  You must feed it a live mouse (or equivalent) every day or it will begin to gnaw on your liver, but in exchange, any poison you would normally suffer is delayed for 1d6 hours.

57, You radiate an aura of spiteful informational decay. That is: stories in books start to change to have unhappy endings; actors performances become clumsy or clownish in tragedies, inexplicably heartbreaking in comedies; messages in letters twist subtly to warp the intended meaning and sew division. Everything around you is in a perpetual state of Chinese whispers, with the worst possible outcomes. 

58, Babies spontaneously cry around you.  However, if you make a Charisma check, you can subtly influence the babies to speak whatever words you want (even if the baby hasn't learned to talk yet).

59, You are two people (physically, not just mentally, like a were-human human).  They have the same stats/race/class but are opposite genders.  They have separate names, and you switch between them whenever you sleep.  They hate each other, and will often try to inconvenience/embarrass the other via traps or subtlety.

60, By stripping naked and killing a goat, you can pass through its body into another LIVING goat within 1 mile.  You make a bloody exit from the second goat, killing it.

61, Whenever you and you companions are well and truly lost (i.e. you don't know where you are AND you don't know how to get back to safety/destination), you become hirsute, horned, and incapable of speech.  You get +2 to hit and are incapable of getting un-lost, although your allies can lead you out.

62, Whatever you gift to a corpse cannot be found by others, but the corpse may not want to give it back to you, either.

63, You may suck sickness from the skin of an innocent, but you suffer the effects until you can spit it on a child.

64, Whenever you are enclosed in a coffin and buried at least 6' underground, you can speak with any corpses within 500'.  Treat this as speak with dead except that the dead all speak to you at once, and are very talkative and frequently hostile.  Requires a save to avoid some bad-but-not-lethal mishap.

65, Magpies gossip to you about the petty jealousies of local villagers. If you bring them new gossip, they might consent to stealing something for you.

66, If you stuff a live frog's mouth with hair and throw it into a fire, the owner is rendered mute as long as the frog burns.

67, You can induce seizures in holy people + clergy + paladins by kissing them.  Lasts 1d6 rounds, but if you spend at least a minute making out with their twitching body, they will lie there enervated and frothing for another 1d6 hours.

68, If you smoke someone, you learn their secrets.  This usually requires an enormous hookah, big enough to shove a living person inside, that would normally cost 1000g to construct.

69, If you fill your mouth with virgin tears, you can either spit out a few ounces of acid or a black arrow, as if fired from a bow (treat as a +1 arrow vs angels).

70, Any spell you cast is brought into this world by vomiting blood.

71, As long as you spend 1 night every week hanging from a gibbet by your neck, you cannot be strangled or suffocated.  (Must be a legitimate gallows, where criminals have been hung.)

72, Whenever you are in a marshy or swampy area, toads will flock to you in reverence.  They will lick your body, groom you with their clumsy hands, and eat any skin/hair parasites that you have.  They will also vomit out gifts for you.  These gifts are mostly gross, but there is a 10% chance that they give you a small piece of jewelry or something.

73, Venomous creatures that bite you are also poisoned in return, and suffer the effects of their own venom if they fail a save.

74, You have 6+1d6 molars at the start of the game.  By throwing one of your molars in the fire, it will hatch into a 1 cm tall imp.  The imp cannot fly and moves about a 1'/min, but if it crawls inside someone's ear, it can implant itself in the womb (or large intestine, if male).  The imp-fetus grows quickly and painfully over 6+1d6 hours, hatching forth into a full grown 1d6 HD demon if it is not removed.  Females survive the process, but menfolk must save or die, due to the more traumatic nature of the exit.

75, You cannot tell the truth to a child, but deep down they believe everything you say.

76, Hanging yourself from a tree puts you into a death-like sleep until someone cuts you down or the rope rots away.

77, Cats, royal fools, and children under 5 cannot see you. These last become extremely distressed when confronted with proof of your presence.

78, You have scary-starey Aleister Crowley eyes (http://www.energyenhancement.org/aleister11.jpg) possibly as a result of hours spent practicing your glaring in a mirror. You gain a slight (+/-1) bonus to seduction attempts and spells of charm, domination, fear or suggestion. You suffer a slight (+/-1) penalty to first impressions, attempts to placate or avoid scandal and anything connected with a lawsuit. 

79, Eating a bird's eyes allows you to view everything it saw for the past 24 hours.

80, You can heal the most horrid internal wound if you can make the victim swallow some thread, needles and a razor blade.

81, You cannot enter a door if its threshold has a pentagram painted with salt or blood.

82, You must do 7 evil things each month or the devil will come to get you. Sacrileges, incitement to a deadly sin or murder count but stealing or fornicating with animals do not.

83, You can sleep only on a sack of rancid hay. Everything else feels really uncomfortable and drives you nuts.

84, Once a day, you must redirect the blame for something bad that happened on the day before to yourself. This can be anything, an unfortunate death, spoiled milk, the weather or a poor decisions made by an otherwise reasonable person. Failure to do so means the GM gets to pick, at their leisure.

85, If a enamoured woman, an orphan or a widow in distress ask for your help in a desperate matter and offer you a single gold coin then you cannot reject them and must act up to three times towards that cause. You can however interpret the problem to your taste...

86, You can enchant a severed tree branch of your height to have it, at night, carry you through the air to the nearest witch or hag coven.

87, To you, hot is cold and cold is hot. You stride naked in the snow but must bundle up ridiculously in heat.

88, You can read anyone's aura. It tells you how gullible they are. You may make a Charisma check to sense their Wisdom penalty, if any.

89, With an overnight ritual, you can weave any spell you know into the flesh of an apple still on the branch. It retains the magic for 24 hours or until eaten.

90, You can peel footprints off the ground and place them wherever you want.

91, You can punch, kick, & grab other people's shadows as if they were their physical bodies.

92, Your are a name thief. You may steal one victim's name at a time. The victim is normal in all respects except that no one will remember their name, even if it is written down. No extraplanar entity or spirit will be able to do business with the victim. Also, any curses or demonic contracts are transferred to you.  To cast a spell, eat a letter from your victim's name. Once all of the letters are consumed, the victim gets a pile of random Scrabble tiles, as many as their name had, to build a new name. Obviously this process can be interrupted, but the name is still missing any letters you ate when you give it back. 

93, You cannot die during an eclipse, but suffer all harm inflicted upon you when it ends

94, When you dance, so do the dead.

95, You are completely invisible to domesticated dogs, house cats think you're three feet to the left of where you really are, and swine always act in your presence as if under the influence of a charm spell.

96, You can ensure that a willing supplicant's unborn child is later born healthy and free of physical flaw. If the fool who promised fails to carry out the favor when called upon, you can call their debt due, resulting in a turn of bad luck that results in the child being maimed in mind or body. (e.g. Paralyzed after the parent attacks them in the night due to mistaking them for a burglar.) If the original supplicant dies before the debt is called due, the debt is inherited by the child.

97, Areas where you have often trod develop a fungal growth under the surface that sometimes erupts in mushrooms at night.  A pig can be used to trace you back to your home, but the pig must wear a muzzle, as consumption of the mushrooms or fungus by any creature may (1 in d4) cause d6 random minor spells to go off, plaguing or injuring the pig and any handlers nearby. The witches who develop this trait would also like to know more about how and why the fungus is sometimes harvested by unknown creatures burrowing up from deep under the earth in small tunnels.

98, The many scabs under your hair may be picked at, releasing thousands of small ant-like insects that seek out and form a trail to drink from the eyes of sleeping children and virgins.

99, By sewing your lips together, none may speak in your presence. 


100, Your footprints are those of the last thing you have killed.

Entries contributed by: Reynaldo Madriñan , Jason K , Logan Knight , Anthony Picaro , Chris H , Matthew Adams , Mandy Morbid , Arnold K. , Reece Carter , Courtney Campbell , Brian Murphy , Daniel Dean , Ryan Silva , Mateo Diaz , Enzo Garabatos , David Sánchez and , Anders Nordberg , Evan Edwards , Joshua Macy , Lucien Reeve , Timothy Franklin , Cole Robotshenanigans , Adam Silkey , Lior Wehrli , Eric Nieudan , Axis Mundi , Bennet Akkerman , David Pretty , Simon Forster , Jack Mack , Marcus Tsong , and Scrap Princess
-
-
-


Castle Psychedelic Panic Dracula

$
0
0
There are two Draculas.

One is the proper Dracula. Proper gothic:
Cobwebs, corridors, decay. Darkness relieved only by torchlight.

There is (barring the occasional wolf or wife) only one real monster. This is classic horror--there's tension and the fear of anticipation. Suspense. Depression. Mood. Eerie quiet.

This Dracula is fine for a book or a movie or a short story. Or a night of Call of Cthulhu. And a very good GM can manage to make one work in D&D.

But more often in serial fiction, when you have to stretch it and do it again and again and provide variety and detach the character from the tale they were designed to live in, this Dracula starts to go cheesy: Ravenloft and Hammer Horror films and Marvel's Tomb of Dracula comics all spin Dracula out with as much extra gothic as they could stuff in--werewolves and zombies and revenants and chains and floating armor and set-pieces and…

…and it loses something. Because one is the Gothest number. The Count loses his loneliness--and his story isn't about him any more--it's about the next thing you put in the frame with him. It can be fun, but its a series of moments that work or don't, and make you forget yourself or don't, rather than the long terrible dream of the true unified gothic.

But there's another Dracula who is quite at home with the genre addict's voracious need for novelty, with video games' need for 500 foes, with the gore movies' need for endless weird new deaths, with the comic book that just keeps going and going until it gets cancelled and the RPGs' need to fill weird places with even weirder places.

And that Dracula is Psychedelic Panic Dracula.

In Castle Regular Dracula you might find, like, an eyeball in a teacup. But it'll be in black and white and won't do anything and you'll look away right away and go back to being scared. In Castle Psychedelic Panic Dracula there's like a whole eyeball-in-teacups-wing and each one induces a different kind of fever.

The House of Psychedelic Panic Dracula is lurid: vivid, harsh, lacking utterly in taste and above all artificial. This is a Dracula detached from the mottled soil. Folklore can just fuck right off: there is no organic connection between the gnarled trees and superstitious peasants and the tenor of the horrors within. Count Dracula is just sort of a signifier floating over and classing up a funhouse, lending it some kind of evil legitimacy and a flexible layer of content.

The horrors surrounding Regular Gothic Dracula are intimations that He is coming--foreshadowings of him, a clue that his personal drama and wickedness is coming, whereas every fucked magical thing in the House of Psychedelic Panic Dracula is just evidence of how much madness Dracula is lord of. He's a figurehead and they are his only real content.

Castlevania is very Psychedelic Panic Dracula, as is Barovania, this guy is definitely a Psychedelic Panic Dracula, Psychedelic Panic Dracula's interiors have fewer obvious antiques than Proper Dracula's--he shops less--couches and pointed arches comfort him less, the key is a kind of timeless abstraction. Less wolves, less woods, less of the earth, more of the mind.

There's no suspense in Psychedelic Panic Dracula's House. It's just freaking out all the time. When you get to Regular Dracula's tomb he's asleep or else smug as a fuck, drinking from his stupid chalice. When you finally meet Psychedelic Panic Dracula he's not drinking wine, he's just laughing at how emotionally drained you are after knowing all the things you believed in were eaten by nested recursing nth-dimensional echoes of themselves while you watched and drowned in insect milk.




























In Red & Pleasant Land, there's a little of the creepy-literary and a little of the total abstract freak out. Like Lewis Carroll.
-
-
-

Viewing all 1081 articles
Browse latest View live