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Something Is Deeply, Deeply Wrong At RPGnet Today...

December 18, 2014, 4:48 pm
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Just screencapped the active topics on RPGnet's D&D board:
So, not only is dominated by 5e, Path and old-school stuff, but the Red & Pleasant Land thread has 6,000 some views and been up for two whole weeks, yet the RPGnet trolls haven't showed up once.

Don't believe me? Look at it--all smiles.

What the hell?

The owners still subscribe to a server that runs sexist ads, the moderators still include people who claim my publisher is the spawn of the devil, and people who openly launch misogynistic attacks on women in my group are still members in good standing, but they all seem to be too scared to say a word.

Maybe they got so completely embarrassed about how gullible they were during fracas about me consulting on 5th edition D&D that our long subcultural nightmare is finally over.
Which is awesome, because with the trolls dead it hopefully paves the way for some amazing stuff on the way to be seen and talked about without having to wipe foam from anyone's face:

Broodmother Sky Fortress (the world's best introductory D&D module) is coming soon and DIY D&D godfather Jeff Rients is working on something else, Noisms wild opium dream Yoon-Suin is out any minute, Chris Kutalik is working with some amazing artists for his Slumbering Ursine Dunes projects, and rumor has it Scrap Princess and False Patrick are working on something for Mr Toxic Influence On Our Youth himself, James Edward Raggi.

It is so cool to think that maybe maybe maybe enough billy goats have crossed the bridge that finally people new to the hobby can read about cool new DIY D&D stuff without having to wade through psychotic whining about how Jeff's a clueless nostalgist, Noisms is an imperialist cultural appropriator and Scrap must be hungry for your babies because she's trans.

But then I guess I shouldn't be that surprised--if you check your Chinese menu, 2015 is the Year of the Goat.

Oh, and there's still 120 copies left if you want one.


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My Advice To WOTC Now That 5e Has Been Rolled Out

December 21, 2014, 10:26 pm
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First thing to acknowledge:

People talk a lot as if Hasbro cares a lot if 5e does well: They kinda don't.

It's the same as how Disney doesn't really care that much if Marvel sells a lot of comics and Warner Bros doesn't care that much if DC does. They care about them as research and develoment and as intellectual property--the books don't make that much money.

As they used to say "DC can sell anything with Superman's face on it except the comic."

To the degree D&D might ever make Hasbro-Cares level money it'll be as a video game, movie or TV show--until then they just want WOTC to not embarrass them and if it spits out a few good ideas or people they can use later, that's awesome but not a requirement.

This leads to two rarely-considered effects:

-The independent RPG people are way more motivated to care about the state of the industry than the major players are. They don't even have to make that much money. Just exist.

-WOTC can afford to fuck around a little.


So what do you do? Let's take comics as an example:

The Avengers movie is like the third highest grossing movie of all time or something and Iron Man is right up there. Spider-Man is no slouch. The X-Men movie was a hit as were most of the Batman movies. This is some successful-ass IP.

But what was it built on?

1. Years of customer buy in from people who fans who are, by now, of all ages.

(For D&D? Check!)

2. Well-regarded filmmakers and media people who have a personal connection to the material--Joss Whedon for Avengers, Bryan Singer for X-Men, Tim Burton for Batman, etc.

(Check!)

3. A zeitgeist that was ready for the movie and ready to throw money behind it

(Check, these are the days of gambling on fantasy and sci-fi--even Pacific Rim got made)

4. Things that set it off from the competition in the genre

(No Check! The average viewer will, in 2014, see a D&D movie as a cheap and generic excuse for a Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie. The brand is not differentiated in the public's mind there.)

5. A relatively recent body of work in the original medium that explored the possibilities a movie could exploit and made older fans believe the material could be handled in a way that wasn't as cheapshit as the cash-in attempts they'd seen before. Burton and Nolan's Batman were made possible not by the 60s Batman show but by Miller's Dark Knight Returns, Singer's X-Men came from Byrne, Silvestri, and Lee's work with Chris Claremont on the comic, the Avengers movie (done as a banter-heavy ensemble piece) is clearly built on Brian Michael Bendis' work on the title with Leinil Francis Yu and others. 

(No Check! Despite D&D being much in the news lately with lots of genre-oriented sites talking about how cool 5e is and respected authors talking about how it influenced them, if you heard there was a new D&D movie out tomorrow, nothing WOTC has done in the last 30 years would convince anyone it was anything but another schlocky cash-in. When the Avengers movie came out, the fans were ready to believe it might be good--can D&D say the same? And perhaps more to the point: what would you show a studio exec to explain the possibilities of the franchise to a modern movie audience? Keep On the Borderlands? Fuck no. Maybe Monte's Planescape, but that's pretty far from the center of D&D.)

Put 4 and 5 together and what do you get?


D&D needs some modern classics.

If Bob Kane's Batman was the only Batman, there'd have been no Batman movies since the '60s. D&D, as a brand needs a Dark Knight Returns--something that says what--to savvy kids and obsessive grown-ups--makes what D&D can do different from what The Hobbit or Harry Potter can do.

Right now the buzz about D&D from mainstream authors and directors is based on D&D as a process and a tool--as something that sparked their creativity as kids, not D&D as a set of unique, cool ideas that stand on their own.

Now right off the bat I'll say this is a self-serving solution--what adult D&D fans, the kind who write blogs about D&D want--is exactly that: high quality auteurish content. And what I am saying is good for the company is that same thing.

So take it with a grain of salt. On the other hand: since WOTC can afford to fuck around--what have they got to lose?  They've tried everything else.

If we're in a cultural moment where Serious People are looking at D&D, why not make something Seriously Cool to show them how vital it is? When Maus made people look at comics in the '80s, comics could show them Watchmen. What can you show them?

But you can't just hit people over the head with it and expect us all to believe whatever you have planned next is totally the shit--you have to build to it.


How I'd Build Up To It If I Was The Boss Of You

The main reason to use D&D instead of another system has always been its flexibility and Lingua Franca status. Parlay that into creating some fan goodwill about what D&D can do now.

The first thing I'd do if I was WOTC is publish an awesome 5e Camelot supplement. Why Camelot? It's public domain, it isn't Tolkien, it isn't core D&D and you've got Greg Stafford right there ready to write half of it. Show whoever's paying attention that D&D can do knights and damsels and a classic story it hasn't ever done right before. And don't do a cheesy D&Dified version of Camelot with a different name (you can always do that later) just do Camelot with King Arthur and everything.  Just establish that you can put out cool stuff. This is low-hanging fruit. Get someone British and distinctive on the art and it writes itself: you have people who can write it, you have an audience that'll buy it, it won't cost any more than what you were going to do anyway. 

It won't get much mainstream press, but it will spark fan interest. Fans will go Hmmmm....

Second supplement is an awesome Wuxia supplement with Completely-Out-Of-Left-Field anime-influenced art. Do not worry about maintaining "the D&D look" establish that D&D Owns Fantasy Roleplaying. Period. In any style or genre. If it has a sword, D&D does it. This is The Game, we own the market.

Those are easy, right? The usual fanboys will buy them because everything from D&D right after 5e comes out is exciting and the snobs like me will take a look because they're so different.  So we've generated some good will and, by doing the Camelot supplement early and right, we've proven this D&D is dedicated to doing truly new things.

(And yeah, yeah, you do the things people always say to do: make plushie beholders and more board games and try to get decent actual-play films of people playing D&D. But that's obvious...)

Now this is a little harder and will cost a little more: Once those two supplements impress everyone, go ask Hasbro to snatch up some rights that've been floating around--put out a sword and sorcery supplement that shows how to make characters and stuff from Lankhmar, Conan & Red Sonja, Elric, and Jack Vance's Dying Earth. If you don't publish something about those guys every 10 years, someone else will.

After that--go for Bas-Lag and Tolkien if you can.

Ok, now you've done three things in a row that:

-Are as likely to be successful as anything else you were doing

-Didn't cost any more than what you were going to do anyway

-Didn't fuck with your core brand in any way

and

-Proved you really could do new things with D&D if you wanted

...NOW you go ahead and take a risk: you give your writers and artists (AND GRAPHIC DESIGNERS!) the same deal DC gave Frank Miller with Dark Knight Returns--you give them the money and the time and the freedom to go completely nuts with the core D&D IP. Let people with real talent loose on Dark Sun, Eberron and the Planes. Give someone the opportunity to make a beautifully intricate, beautifully illustrated Forgotten Realms sandbox with gorgeous cartography using every monster in the manual.  And for god's sake get someone to make a campaign based on whatever the fuck the world of Magic: The Gathering is.

Did you split the audience by creating 5 different lines of products? So what. You need to make compelling work, and let the licensing division worry about profit. Maybe it's easier to sell people one line of supplements than 5, but it's way easier to license 5 things than one--and that's where the money is anyway.

And these are the things you show to the studio execs to prove that D&D can be a compelling and original world for the average moviegoer. And we'll back you up and believe it and carry the signal, because we all now believe things are gonna be done in a new way.

The other option is to just keep on keeping on and let us out here in indie land do all the heavy lifting. But if there's a decent Numenera or 40k or Night's Black Agents  (or, god forbid, Red & Pleasant Land) movie before there's a D&D one, Hasbro is not gonna be happy.

TL;DR: Invest in real quality. Now is a rare moment where the market might actually notice and then do something about it.
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Goats, Bilbo's XP, Contest Winners, Toys, Frog Interview, Red & Pleasant Flip-Thru, Order Info

December 26, 2014, 9:01 am
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1. A Movie Review

So ok, everything you've heard about Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies is wrong.

First, you'll hear people being like "This movie sucks". They're dumb and wrong, as this short post-movie conversation with Connie reveals:

Zak: "Listen to this review: 'Bilbo Baggins is the only character capable of eliciting genuine reactions from the audience'."

Connie: "Uh, really? What about warpigs?"

Z: "What about wargoats?"

C: "What about trolls with morningstars for legs?" 

Who doesn't have a genuine reaction to wargoats? Nobody I wanna sit near.

Another thing you'll here is this is not a very faithful screen adaptation.

This is a totally faithful screen adaptation--of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Which is a way better thing to be faithful to than Tolkien.

At one point Gandalf is like "These orcs are bred for only one purpose: war" and then, in like the film-editing equivalent of a typo, like one scene later Legolas is talking to some Other Extraneous Elf about some bats and going "These creatures are bred for only one purpose: war".

Now you might think "Well I have heard the script is a little weak". NO. It's just this is how fucking metal this movie is.  In the grimdark screenwriting of the Fran and Filippa there is only war. And that's good, because, dude: war   goats. Yeah.

Now if you've seen it you're also wondering what's up with Bilbo knocking down like three or four 10' tall orcs in a row by hucking rocks at them. What's up is Bilbo is clearly doing ranged backstabs and must be doing x 4 damage (rock=d4, average 2.5. Times four = 10, which is respectable and could probably knock down even a tough orc if they'd already taken melee damage) and they don't see him because they're in melee with other guys and it's a frenzy.

But how did he get leveled up that far because he's definitely 1st level (or even 0-level) in the first movie.

Ok check it: assuming Jackson's giving xp only for monsters and treasure (SPOILERS below if you never read the books or saw the movies):

Session one: dwarfs clean dishes, contract lunch, all that, then the party kills 3 trolls. Session ends. Bilbo gets enough xp to hit level 2.

Session 2 starts: The party finds Glamdring, Sting and other weapons in the troll hoard, plus kill some orcs on wargs. Level 3.

Session 3: A bunch of social bullshit with elves and the moon. Then the party gets ambushed--Bilbo fights a goblin, most of the people playing the dwarfs and Gandalf have doctor's appointments that day so it's mostly solo and Bilbo does the whole riddle-game with Gollum. Scores the One Ring. You can't get more than enough xp to level up once in a single session, so Bilbo goes from level 3 to level 4 without anyone realizing this is an Artifact.

Session 4: Guy playing Gandalf gets back from the dentist, the dwarves fight a ton of goblins, and the Great Goblin. Lottttts of xp for the whole group, Bilbo gets an even share. He's level 5.

Session 5: The party is chased by the White Orc and his minions--during this sequence Bilbo kills a warg, then an orc. Then there's all the pinecone business and they're saved by Gandalf casting Summon Eagles I Keep Forgetting About. Level 6.

First movie ends--I suspect some carousing here.

Session 6: Buncha bullshit with Beorn and his flick eyebrows, then Myrkwood/Mirkwood/Murkwood and giant spiders. Level 7.
Session 7: Elves capture dwarves. Bilbo does a lot of Move Silently which he can because he's a level 7 thief. The wonderful, inappropriate Six Flags Magic Mountain barrel-fight happens during which the dwarves kill lots of orcs. Bilbo sponges his share of this xp: Level 8.

Session 8: Ok, a lot of sneaking and talking and negotiation and Lake Town at the beginning of the session but then Smaug. Clearly the deal here is--even assuming Bard is some dumb deus ex machina DMPC--the party gets a share of xp off Smaug for shaving some hit points off before Bard's called shot to the wyrmbelly.

This leaves Bilbo at Level 9 before the Battle of Five Armies even starts. Though he is still smart enough to avoid melee as much as possible.

P.S. Jackson's Gandalf is clearly Vancian--he's out of spells for the whole third movie.



2. Here Have Some Toys

The Winners of the D&D Widget Contest...

...are two people. Try the toys they made! Because both were cool:

David Coppoletti's Dungeon Remixer using pieces of my and Jez Gordon's Red & Pleasant Land maps. I can't wait to see what else he does with this in the future.

Alec Henry's LOTFP character generator which is not quite perfect yet, but is very good and edged out the other character generators on account of it picks spells
...these two can email me their mailing addresses to which I will send signed copies of Red & Pleasant Land.


3. Wait Have More Toys

Telecanter is on fire with the cool magic items lately.

  1. Silver Razor - Shaving a person with this silver razor will cause them to love you until their hair grows back.
..etc.

Highly recommended.


4.  I am interviewed by a frog.



5. If You're Wondering About The Book, This Review Has A Red & Pleasant Land Flip-Through.

6. If You Are Smart And Already Ordered Red & Pleasant Land And Want To Know Where Your Book Is...

Raggi lays out when every recent order shipped--RPL or otherwise over here.

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14 Things That Happened To Games In 2014

December 31, 2014, 3:46 pm
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Oh 2014, how will we remember you?
That'll probably help, if you don't have a tattoo gun handy, though here's a list of what happened in RPGs this year:

1. Last Gasp got an awesome free instant random generator thingie set up which is the most useful GMing tool I've seen in ages. Most of the rest of the planet can burn if I can keep that.

2. Contessa got a solid and big-tent crew of gamers together and shored up its position as the best and most important convention/event factory in online gaming. P.S. It also just happens to be completely run by women.

3. The only bad news: OSR blog veteran Huge Ruined Scott closed up shop on his once-beloved outpost of arch worldbuilding and early-onset curmudgianity...

4. ...though Basic Red ("So why, in monster manuals bloated with 14 different kinds of vampires, far too many interchangeable reptile men, mermaids, DOLPHINS, WATER WITH A MEANY FACE ON IT, and JUST REGULAR WATER all statted up as off the shelf options to murder your players, how absolute gold like the Kappas gets lost in the shuffle?") and Goblin Punch  ("They resemble huge, predatory cats with long necks (like an eel), no fur or eyes, and gelatinous flesh.  Visible in the center of their semi-translucent body is a football-sized egg, which contains a embryonic princeling (very valuable to the proper sorts)" stepped up their game mightily to attempt to fill the void.

5. John Peterson--author of Playing at The World and the only actually trying RPG historian started putting out articles over at Medium featuring, y'know, research and, like, looking things up and, like, sourcing.

6. The Google Plus RPG community got awesomed-up to the point where you can pretty much generatecoold100 tables to order by just asking for ideas and letting them sit there over night.

7. Kelvin Green showed people a new and better way to put out basic adventure modules with Forgive Us.





8. The 9th World Bestiary gave everybody some cool new monster pictures and sci-fi ideas to play with, even those of us who aren't playing Numenera yet.

9. Tired, angry indies Burning Wheel Headquarters and Onyx Path put out overwrought, derivative bullshit that tanked because everybody who wasn't in the credits saw right through it.


10. The fifth edition of something called "Dungeons & Dragons" came out and exceeded expectations, rapidly becoming almost everybody's second favorite edition.

11. Over here, we played a lot of games, Marilyn Manson talked about playing D&D and his guitarist came over to play. And I wrote a lot about stuff including art history for D&D people and the Churches of Tiamat and Demogorgon.


12. In July the RPG Drama Club finally slid all their pieces onto "Mess with Zak and Mandy" and failed and fucked up so hard they made a rule against saying my name on RPGnet...

13. ...despite or because of which Red & Pleasant Landcame out and kicked ass and grossed enough in a week to pay rent in downtown LA for years and more than Vornheim did in its whole run and more than most RPG products make, like, ever.


14. And finally, here at the end of all things, Topless Robot announced 2014 was the best year ever for tabletop games. As the only person to have worked on both of the products in the top two, allow me to say: you're welcome.


So: 2015, Year of the Goat--bring it. I'm gonna finish rewriting every monster in the Manual, watch my players take on a tournament of the Knights of Tiamat and write an adventure about black metal viking amazons. What are you doing?


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First Good Idea of 2015 (Jub Jub Cockatrice Basilisk)

January 1, 2015, 9:57 pm
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So thanks to Rachel Ghoul for giving me my first monster idea of 2015--over here she says:

The basilisk is the female of the species. The cockatrice is male. To stumble upon them as they mate is not a pleasant experience.

I love this because I kinda hate when monsters are similar but not related--it gets monotonous (crow-head guy, goat-head guy, pig-head guy...). So even though the cockatrice and basilisk have total trad monster cred going back centuries, it always kind of rankled that one was just a bird that stones you and basilisk is just a lizard that does (and trying to dress up the basilisk much more than that makes it too much like a dragon).

But here's what I like even more...this makes them just like a jub!

If you haven't got Red & Pleasant Land, a jub is this thing...
...which is derived from combining Lewis Carroll's Jub Jub bird from Jabberwocky...
...and Marge's sister's hilariously inert pet iguana, Jub-Jub, from The Simpsons...

So, ok, here's what your party's ranger or druid could tell you (with a hard or medium check respectively):

When the Wrong Kind of bird meets the Wrong Kind of iguana, they form a jub--which behaves as described above.  They eat all kinds of meat but prefer the flesh of serpents. This occasionally means they'll try to eat a medusa's head--if they do manage it, they transform via primordial bioalchemies and go their separate ways--the lizard becoming a basilisk and the bird becoming a full-fledged (no pun intended) cockatrice.

Thanks Rachel!
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Best Tolkien Blasphemies

January 4, 2015, 4:42 pm
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Winter. 1953. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien knocks on your door, frantic again, hair awry, stressed and staring. You make coffee. He has this massive manuscript--three books worth, he can't make head or tail of it.
His publisher wants a sequel to The Hobbit, and he
just
can't 
do it.
It doesn't work, he's sick of it all--The characters don't like him, the plot dribbles off the paper time he picks up a notebook. He is moving on.
"Here," he says, shoving the files and stacks of what would, in an alternate Earth, become the Ring Trilogy "you're smart: you take it. Do something good with this mess, use whatever you need. It's a collaboration now."
You go "Ok, no problem" and you set to writing--what do you do with it?


I asked this on G+ and got way better answers than I expected.

At first there was lot of the expected handwringing about how Tolkien is Tolkien and you can't mess with his vision or it all falls apart, but eventually everyone got over it and came up with some gameables...



My first thought is to make Skeletor be in it somewhere. My second thought is that is prob terrible. My third thought is him saying "QUIET YOU FOOL MIDDLE EARTH WILL BE MINE AHAHAHAH"

So Skeletor is in it now. Instead of whoever was in charge before. Let us call this new dark lord Skeletoron. He will do that eye thing but he will then appear and belittle the fellowship. The Fellowship is much the same with the hobbits being scared little good hearted fish out of water. Legolas will keep talking about the elves and their importance and grandeur and everything. His stories keep changing and he doesn't acknowledge this. Sometimes the hobbits wake up and he has been watching them sleep . He sometimes smiles like he is the only thing that is real. He rarely makes eye contact. He does all that cartoon kung fu stuff that showed up in the hobbit and it's terrifying . He eats people. Well he cuts bits of things he kills and puts them in his mouth and chews them thoroughly and then delicately spits them into a handkerchief and throws it away and tells everyone how elves do not need to eat. And smiles. Strider/Aargorn is a large dog that has been made crudely into a man like Moreau thing. Gandalf is cheerful and appears and disappears and makes plans that makes little sense and the hobbits hate him more than burnt cakes. The Dwarf is cheerful and hearty and sings but refuses to acknowledge the insanity of anything around him. He occasionally recites utterly grim dwarven ballads about people being buried alive or eating rocks until they die in barely controlled muttering frenzy.

The forces of evil are factionalized between various scheming warlords like the guy with a skeletonal elephant head or the guy who is a vase of blood.

It's a little bit Frank Baum and bit Masters of the Universe

Everyone sane is petty, and everyone looking at the big picture is insane and it's the wrong picture and it's the wrong building and they broke in and set it on fire.

There is never any talk of any culture without talking about what bizarre monsters they breed with , what implausible war machines they have , and what giant insect they go forth on.

At some point the hobbits murder gandalf out of desperation and start standing on each others shoulders and pretending to be him.
They try and make things better but succeed in uniting a collation of forces against the Shire at which point they give the ring to Skeletoron in exchange for him saving the Shire. He instead uses the ring to sculpt the moon into a likeness of his own head and then claims that everyone will be forced to follow him now. No-one does , but the collation breaks down under complicated age old grievance  anyway. The hobbits go home and spent the last 4 pages discussing cakes. 
Three Sauron-Virus Host Shells

And Nate gave us this (which is just a cool idea for giants and liches even if you don't want to read this book):

Sauron is a dragon and the Doom Mountain vomits his flame. Sauron is an intelligence that moves from wraith to wraith and has no settled form or place. Sauron is a deity worshipped by the Mordorans who have created an immense heirophantic quasi-Catholic religion and is curated by the Pope of Mordor, but he's also a real moldering dead thing on a throne in Bara-dur, and maybe the Pope is unsure whether they should allow Sauron to find the ring and place it on his dead finger, because it would challenge his power.

I still just love the idea of Sauron as a giant because then when Frodo and her wife Sam make it to Mordor they have to hide from the wandering gaze of a malicious colossus silhouetted against the fires of the Doom Mountain. And then you're allowed to imagine all the things a giant Sauron might do - sing unholy hymns to himself / anti-hymns to remake the world as he wants it; sit quietly with eyes open for several months; eat anointed elephants and stitched together groups of captive slave-elves and drink lava and foul water; bathe; piss; have the Weavers of Mordor create him godly raiments and wear them for a day and then rip them off his body and go naked for a while; etc.

This was probably my best one:

Rewrite it almost exactly the same only it all takes place in a Gigastructure-like universe with no actual exterior spaces or hallways. So the hobbits are just crawling from parlor to parlor for the first 50 pages.
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Mandy on the Anatomy of A Harassment Campaign

January 5, 2015, 11:05 am
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So Mandy wrote a thing about recent events--if you do tumblr and retumbl things, the original post is here. There's a handy diagram at the end if it's TooLong;Didn'tRead for you.

If you're all Oh Screw This Drama I Wanna Read About Elves. Here's some monsters and stuff, don't say I never gave you nothin'.

With that out of the way, here's Mandy...




I’m A Chainmail Bikini Feminist And I’m Fucking Sick Of Being Harassedby Mandy Morbid

(Got this response a few hours after the post went up)

So in the Dungeons & Dragons/tabletop gaming community right now there’s a lot of people and groups of people who talk about about harassment of women on-line. How it’s terrible, and what should be done to stop it and who’s doing it. 
Right now I am being harassed. And I’ve been harassed about being a gamer for years at this point. And the people in the RPG community who talk about how to stop harassment aren’t doing anything. This is because it’s much easier to talk about harassment from anonymous strangers than from a member of your own community. A group of trolls is harassing me and my game group, and they are connected to important members of the RPG community.
Here’s the most recent example, from a few days ago:
My boyfriend Zak called out someone for being sexist—largely because me and the other women in my gaming group agreed they were being sexist and told Zak so. We all agreed. Some trolls on the for-profit Chan-like site Something Awful had this to say:
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(link here)
How silly of me, it’s been a few years I should have remembered that women who choose adult entertainment for their occupations have absolutely no agency or opinions apart from our work do we?
I am apparently paid to agree with my boyfriend because I have no mind of my own of course.
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Sounds like this person got their information about day-to-day workings of the industry from a radical fundamentalist anti-porn website.
This kind of thing is no surprise when you see:
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So, my boyfriend who has never hired me to do anything, “exploits” me how exactly? The main people making money off my porn movies right now are me and Kimberly Kane (director)—winner of a 2011 Feminist Porn Award—and a giant porn company called Vivid Entertainment. In fact Kimberly Kane hires Zak to perform in the films she directs, not the other way around.
Now I don’t know the people writing on this forum and have never talked to them. All I know about this person “moths” is they started harassing me on this forum in this same thread in August of 2010, along with lots of other people…
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Then they got ahold of my Amazon wishlist, complaining that I wanted electrical cords and a tattoo kit…
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Go that? I’m fat and a 5 and Connie is a “stay at home scratcher” because we wanted to tattoo my pre-existing conditions on Zak’s arm…
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But this is run-of-the-mill on Something Awful—a forum where you run into things like the following all the time (trigger warning, racism, censored by me)
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So, yeah, Something Awful is—unsurpringly—awful. But the internet is full of chan-style troll forums, right? Why care about this one?
Because as I keep reading through the thread referring to me, I see I know someone involved: “Rulebook Heavily” aka minor RPG-scene jerk Andri Erlingsson who shows up on the next page to join in the harassment. And then I notice someone a few pages earlier attacking Zak—“Kemper Boyd” aka Jussi Marttila. And I know someone who could’ve done something about it and chose not to—the forum moderator, another RPG scenester named Paul Ettin.
So now I can actually report harassment by real, identifiable people to a real person. Paul (and fellow Something Awful alum Winson Paine) take this harassment complaint oh so seriously…
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These aren’t loose cannons taking advantage of a lax moderator to wreck Ettin’s forum—they’re his friends. 
What does Andri “Rulebook Heavily” have to say for himself? And why do we know he’s full of shit? 
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So, straight up there’s Andri butting into a (friendly) conversation I’m having to harass me—then lying about it. And being backed up by troll friends from—you guessed it—Something Awful.
And what does the larger RPG community—which has been so up in arms about harassment of women—say about this?
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Hi Tracy.
Because harassment isn’t real when it happens to porn actresses.
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Let’s talk about this deadnaming accusation then. I have nothing to hide, trolls. Let’s dissect this shit, so I can move on to my real point about how all of this works, where this comes from and how it’s been allowed to go on so long. And how come the people who supposedly care so much about sexism in gaming have never ever stood up for me and my girls.
Also “claming they’re fake” Andri-Troll? Let’s see you post some evidence of that. 
I can however provide evidence about what happened and why these trolls are trying to use a real serious issue to bolster their pathetic personal grudges. 
Here is where the deadnaming supposedly took place—it’s was edited as soon as someone pointed out to me that the person using multiple online names was trans—I did not know this beforehand and there are quite a lot of different pseudonyms being used by this one individual. (Because chan-style trolls do that sort of thing.) 
It’s the part about Mikan aka Schmelz aka tablehop aka something else now. Who is Mikan? Surprise surprise—a troll from the same Something Awful subforum that’s attacked us on and off for 4 years. Mikan hates anything connected to tabletop gaming’s Old School Renaissance or “OSR”—that is, Mikan hates people, like me, who play old versions of Dungeons and Dragons and (like my boyfriend) have the temerity to blog about it.
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These are the kinds of brilliant contributions to game theory you can read in the complete log of Mikan’s trolling here. (Note: some of that is Mikan, and some of it is stuff Mikan posted just to make fun of it.)
So, as you go through what’s below, remember: this is a troll who paid money to join a troll forum and hang out with people who call random porn stars fat, rate their appearances on a scale of 1-10 and allege they are drug-bound mannequins with no opinions of their own all because they play the wrong kind of Dungeons and Dragons.
Let’s be clear here: I do not know or have ever spoken to this person. All these various names were used and still IN use when I posted my blog. I made no assumptions about nor did I refer to gender in my post. The names were not private—Both the supposed “dead name” and the new name were in use online. This was changed just hours after it was pointed out that I had posted about the ongoing harassment I was getting. 
So what really happened?
Trolling—courtesy of Mikan’s friend and fellow forum member Tom Hatfield.
Zak has explained before:
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(for the rest of that person’s testimony see this and this.)
Mikan apparently claimed (through an intermediary) that she’d contacted me before I wrote my blog post. But that makes no sense—we don’t talk and never have. And, as Kirin (author of Old School Hack and curator of Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor tumblr) and Gareth (of Adamant Entertainent) explain here…
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So, yeah, this is the situation. We play D&D with transfolk, we support them in the community, we have never said or done any different. And, of course, what do I gain from outing someone? Nothing. I want to discredit her trolling (which the rest of Something Awful will pick up whether she is around or not), not her gender expression (which is local to her). What do Mikan and Mikan’s troll friends have to gain by clinging to a debunked lie? Sympathy and attention—because the only attention these “game designers” have ever gotten is from harassing us.
I’ve never hung on on troll forums and talked shit about people who play different editions of games than I do. I happen to be an adult performer who plays D&D, we also made a webshow about it. That’s it.
If I have a history of anything but defending myself when people attack me and my gaming group I want to see it.
The accusations about me and my gaming group have been thoroughly refuted at this point. We’re past that yet the harassment won’t stop. They just will not leave me or my group alone.
 And what do the alleged activists in the RPG scene do about this harassment?
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That exchange there happened while I was hospitalized due to my stomach and intestines being paralyzed. Poor me.
Oh yeah, ignoring anti-porn misogyny sure helps you make gaming more inclusive doesn’t it?  These people, who often call themselves advocates of inclusion. have personal (and petty) problems with my gaming group which I’ll remind you is mostly comprised of LGBT women, women with disabilities, and women of colour. 
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Connie, Satine Phoenix and Kimberly Kane—half-elf rogue, elf rogue, half-elf barbarian.
So why don’t gaming gadflies and big indie designers like Fred Hicks (at Evil Hat), GeekyLyndsay, David A Hill Jr (Machine Age Productions), Ryan Macklin (Paizo), Bruce Baugh (Onyx Path), Elizabeth Sampat, Wundergeek, Christopher Allen and Shannon Appelcline (who employ Something Awful members Ettin and Kai Tave at RPG.net) and Tracy Hurley care that these attacks and the people inflicting them originated in a troll forum?
Because long ago we irritated them by playing a different game than them and refusing to let them lecture us about how we’re wrong and because we wear chainmail bikinis on Halloween and aren’t ashamed. Because, for example, Wundergeek and David Hill have real problems with tentacle hentai—and I made a live action tentacle porn because I wanted to. So who cares if I get harassed? I’m the wrong kind of feminist.
And whenever I’ve tried to reach out to them, like when I was in the hospital and I asked a mutual acquaintance to help me address some of this built up hate with GeekyLyndsay, nothing comes of it. I reached out to an intermediary because I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. They’ve done nothing.
So when Tom Hatfield (“wordmercenary" on the Something Awful and twitter) wrote his article full of totally disproved accusations about us, they just sent it along and spread it around, because for them it’s a small leap from “Had a different opinion about sexy art, or what kinds of games to play, or made us feel bad” to “is guilty of hate crimes”. They piled on it and shared it and now that everyone knows it was a lie straight out of this misogynistic troll factory of a message board, they still refuse to apologize or admit they did something wrong.
If, unlike them, you’re interested in where it all actually got started, you can watch the major memes of the witch-hunt form over the course of 40 pages in the Something Awful forum right here, in response to the news of Zak working on the 5th edition of D&D. Few if any of the forum members ask each other for evidence, of course, and they trust each other completely as they begin to spin sickening violent fantasies:
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"Let’s find out where a disabled porn star lives and attack her caretaker.” 
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Here you can watch more known personalities—see Paul Ettin’s fellow RPGnet moderator Kai Tave join in the harassment as well as Alex Norris aka “Lemon Kurdistan”—one of the first people to take the harassment to twitter in the day following the announcement. As the days go on in thread, you can see members also attack Dungeon World designer Sage LaTorra and D&D lead designer Mike Mearls for not believing them.
They searched for months to find anything anything over the line any of us ever said or did so they could send it to Wizards Of The Coast (the company that publishes D&D) or even to post on-line and couldn’t find anything incriminating. Just a lot of arguments about games and art that they were sore about not winning instantly—and a lot of random bad things that happened to them that they try to (and can’t) connect to us having vocally disagreed with them. Anon sent you a mean email? Must be those porn people. Your dog ran away? The porn people “incited” it to. As if no-one would ever have a problem with UK-porn law style kinkshaming like “harem anime is pathetic and disgusting. Fetish anime ditto. Hentai ditto.” or straight up idiocy like “OSR people smell their own farts” unless we told them to have a problem with it.
And, on top of that, we’ve repeatedly told anyone reading us not to harass anyone. Somebody “found” Zak asking his friends to help stop someone on Twitter naively spreading Tom Hatfield’s post (“tweet at him, send him links”)—that’s about the extent of our horrible conspiracy.
Meanwhile we’ve got mountains of evidence of trolling and sexist attacks against us going back years and they don’t care. Some of them still disingenuously pretend Tom’s article’s true (and refuse to discuss it or give any evidence):
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…”extremely established journalist” who never sourced anything and couldn’t get the article published by any real news source. A Something Awful troll with friends and a blog, in other words.
Of course, most of this is phrased as attacks on Zak and “his” opinions. When you attack Zak’s positions as if he’s the only one who holds them, you intentionally pretend we don’t exist, aren’t intelligent, and don’t back him up 100% or that we’ve “internalized the patriarchy”. Pretending our opinions are a result of Zak pulling the strings is one of the most sexist thing I can imagine and the holier-than-thou RPG community has been comforting itself by doing it since we showed up. 
I want to stress this: You have a problem with that man, you have a problem with me. You have a problem with all the girls I’ve played D&D with. When you ignore his questions and concerns, you ignore ours.
Which is nothing new: You always have ignored what I have to say, what Connie has to say. You ignore any woman gamer who doesn’t buy into your white knight bullshit excuses for harassment. Most of the time when Zak is attacked by white knights he’s QUOTING me saying something pro-sex feminist. Or Connie or KK or Karolyn or Laney, or Stoya or Molly Crabapple, or Charlotte or Scrap (trans) or Contessa’s Stacy Dellorfano (who’s super fucking clever and should be listened to) etc etc etc. 
If there’s these little ” ” symbols that’s a direct quote. Those symbols exist for a reason. So I am speaking for myself. Which is exactly what these trolls hate—-and do their best to discredit and ignore. It’s disgusting and disingenous. What Zak’s doing that’s being labeled so often as sexist is REPORTING what I and my friends actually say. But nobody wants to get in a fight with an lgbt feminist in a wheelchair about these ideas, so they take the extremely sexist step of assigning my words to him.
It’s a dodge to pretend that Zak’s using a “but my friends are black” type argument when he isn’t. That’s a pretty nasty way to twist what me and my game group’s other women are saying. We are women speaking from experience as much as any other woman. 
So what happens when women who have opinions and beliefs like mine go online and try to engage directly? I’ve posted about this before but it looks like I’m just going to have to repeat myself until the end of time. We get White Knighted. Here’s a bunch of people doing it, with moderator Paul Ettin helping. 
These guys think Frank Frazetta art keeps women from interacting with the rest of the hobby online? No—it’s the behavior of real-life men, like this shit on the forums that keeps women away from gaming. 
This sexism is unsurprising considering RPGnet still runs ads like this on its front page and claims it couldn’t possibly change ad servers:
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This is nothing new—long before all this, if you read through the comments here you can see another anti-sex White Knight (the Greg the post is addressed to) who later became a Men’s Right’s Activist….yeah ‘cause they’re not sexist at all right?
None of the people in the hipster gaming scene helped out with Greg. They also didn’t help when we were kicking the conservatives out of the old school community (which worked very well, thanks) after we were attacked on the blogs for doing I Hit It With My Axe. None of them showed up to defend us from sexist harassment on the forums when the show went live and the internet exploded with accusations that we were being paid to pretend to play D&D. We were being called Fake Geek Girls before Fake Geek Girls was a thing and where were they? And where are they now?
They only care about their own.
And let’s address this “marketing strategy” bullshit. Zak is an artist. He has work in the MOMA and the Whitney. I dare you call up his gallery and ask how much a painting of his sells for. Go on, I’m waiting. Our livelihood, it doesn’t come from gaming. This is our hobby. We play to enjoy ourselves and when we make a webshow or Zak makes a gaming product it’s because we want to share our hobby and our fun with other people. There’s no marketing strategy here. Perhaps you were confused by statements like “if you’re going to attacks us it only benefits us so you should probably stop”. Or “If there’s gonna be controversy, may as well take advantage of it” but Zak and his game publisher aren’t the ones on forums making people constantly talk shit about me or my friends.
And because these people are upset by the fact that women won’t fall in line they will overlook any fact you put in front of them. This is our “original sin” as far as they’re concerned:image
Oh, really? Zak discovered your forum because a podcast was “snickering”. Actually Zak came and had a talk with your forum because the people on the podcast were being sexist, condescending fucks and he came to ask for an apology—which he got.
This kind of “support” from the indie rpg community almost made me want to stop doing I Hit It With My Axe altogether. They could not have pushed the women of DIY D&D away harder. We were playing our game because we wanted to, not because we didn’t know any better.
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Bradley’s explanation is completely accurate and fair—but when it’s time to attack someone, these indie gamers never go back and check anything.
So, what are you going to do—keep complaining that you got in a fight about dice once and we were mean to you, or stand up and apologize for enabling these harassers over and over and over?
These Something Awful trolls are harassers.
Paul Ettin is a harasser.
Andri Erlingsson is a harasser.
Jussi Marttila is a harasser.
Alex Norris is a harasser.
Kai Tave is a harasser.
Tom Hatfield is a harasser.
Everyone who forwarded the attacks on us is enabling and supporting their harassment. And you need to go beyond ”Well we don’t support harassment of anybody” and stand up and admit you were wrong and you’ve been ignoring it and these are the people who have been doing it.
If you mean what you say about inclusivity in gaming and not supporting harassment or trolling then accept and respect the fact that we want to be left alone to play our game and be ourselves. We don’t deserve to be subjected to years of ongoing misogynistic attacks and bizarre speculation because of our gender, occupation, or choice of fucking game or because you can’t relate. And it adds insult to injury to continue to deny my experience of these attacks just because we happen to be different.
Maybe you’ve made some mistakes.
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EDIT:
Here’s the reaction so far…
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So a woman didn’t actually write the thing she wrote about being harassed —her boyfriend wrote it for her? Classic sexism guys, classic.


TL;DR? Here:



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Smart Campaign with Intrigue And Relationships And Also Lava Babies

January 7, 2015, 1:34 am
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When last we left our heroines, they had just defeated a massive Decimator in front of the Pale King.
Impressed, the Pale King offered the group a round and kingly sum if they could hold off a force of Nephilidian vampires approaching that bridge up there until he had time to rally reinforcements.

The ladies agreed, contacted the approaching Nephilidians, told them that if they'd hold off their assault for one day and pay them off, the girls would sabotage the bridge for them so it'd crumble after the first thrust. One persuasion roll and...hey look at that.

(An interesting effect of converting from my 3e/1e hybrid to something more like 5e is people are better at stuff and worse at stuff than they used to be. Connie's thief is now very charming.)

Then everybody took a cigarette break and then fuck yeah our Red & Pleasant Lands came!

(That bridge on the table is one of those 10$ wooden model kits and comes in handy a lot. I like the look of that sailing ship, too.)

So anyway after a lot of flipping through the book being like "Oh fuck those guys, I hate them!" the PCs proceeded to get day-drunk and have a bridge-trashing party to make it look like there'd been a savage battle there.

Since the session up 'til then had been a lotta skulking and negotiation, almost everybody took the opportunity to carouse for bonus xp.  This resulted in Connie getting into a brawl with three Nephildians Alondra and Laney had offended during the ad hoc reception for Stokely's drunken wedding to a Nephilidian bishop.
Sorry folks--she's taken. Married off to Lady Orchid of Nexis, Priestess of Slime
...so that was weird. Stokes told the wife to meet her in two days at the Heart Palace while the party tried to get as far away as possible from the angry in-laws and from whatever was going to be left of the probably-going-to-be-pretty pissed Pale army.

So 2 hours in and all we've had is weddings, double-crosses, and breaches of etiquette. And all because why? Giving experience points for gold and for getting drunk.

Anyway after buying three dogs they went dungeoning away until there was room 5' deep in some kind of lubricating oil.

Then there was a hatch.

Then a noise like GooOOOOooogoowooIhiHikittoooo! behind the door and then Laney was like That sounds cute I open it and then...
(painting from this series)
...4 lava babies actually, luckily I have a bunch of these...
When I show he picture Laney and Mandy both immediately go "Oooooh, weird babies!" and Stokely Alondra and Connie all go "Eww, weird babies." Which I'm gonna say is the mark of a quality monster--good job Fiend Folio.

Anyway so the thing about these lava children is they aren't very tough but as soon as you see them you have to save vs charm or...



That's 2d30 damage per hug right there. ProTip: if you're running a 5th edition D&D where the players are like level 13, invest in d30s.

Now lava children are creatures of the Red Hand of Tiamat (or, more precisely, the Red Hand are creatures of the Lava Children) and Laney is, through a difficult-to-describe-series-of-events and not wanting to be fat, a creature of the Jade Claw of Tiamat, so Laney actually manages to take half damage from this and is spirited away to safety.

Though nearby, just above the room full of (now boiling because lava) oil, newlywed Stokely is spider-climbing round the room's rim when she locks eyes with the incendiary infants gurgling through the goo and begins to creep down, fascinated.

Then we all stopped playing to go to a party and there was famous people and cake and a big Hollywood house and a rockstar gave me a hat and Mandy almost punched a rapper but didn't. Got home at 7.

 What Will Become Of Stokely? Will This Be The Shortest Wedding In Voivodjan History? Does Lady Orchid Like Her Brides Well Done? Will the GM look good in this hat? Find Out Next Time On Playing D&D With Porn Stars.
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Search

MadLibMount--You Now Own A Megadungeon

January 12, 2015, 11:55 am
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"By an agreement negotiated between James and Autarch, we are proud to release the entirety of Dwimmermount as open game content under the terms of the OGL, a great contribution to the OSR effort that was suggested by cartographer Robert S. Conley."
-Dwimmermount, p. 17

Once upon a time there was a blog called Grognardia. Everybody in the Old School D&D Renaissance read it. (Some of them complained about it and read it, but whatever--it was free.)

Grognardia was really important--it was the go-to place for reviews of cool new DIY D&D products and retrospectives on old ones, introduced tons of people to great D&Dish authors like Jack Vance, and was occasionally wonderfully insightful.

So when Grognardia author James Maliszewski announced he would be crowdfunding the publication of his homemade megadungeon (did he coin that term?) Dwimmermount a gajillion people were eager to hand over tens of thousands of dollars.

To make a long (and much argued about) story short, although most of the levels were sketched out, James had a personal crises midway thru and stopped blogging and Dwimmermount got all messed up and the guys at his publisher had to finish up the project.

Anyway, it is out. And it is big and it is a dungeon and, as it says above, cartographer Rob Conley made sure there was one very special thing about it: it is the only colossal dungeon released on the Open Game License.

What this means in practical terms is anybody can make their own version of Dwimmermount.  The blog that brought so much of the Old School D&D scene together has, after a lot of bad blood, spawned a dungeon which we can all share. Dwimmermount is all ours now.

Which is fucking awesome because it allows us to take it and do stuff like this...

MadLibMount

MadLibMount is a project which transforms the huge ruined pile that is Dwimmermount into a search-and-replace dungeon. Basically allowing you to re-skin the dungeon to fit your own campaign in just a few minutes.


Directions:

Step 1
Cut the entire text below the map and paste it into a word processor--without reading it first!

Step 2
Use the Find-Replace function on your word processor to replace each of the descriptive terms below in parenthesis with one that fits your setting in the text throughout the entire document. So, like if you were running an Egyptian setting you could replace (MainVillain) with "MummyLich" or ~(InterestingSubstance) with "blood from the sun".


Step 3
Pick or make a map--the maps in Dwimmermount are open-game content but you can use the map I made (which is totally different but has the same number of rooms and the important connections are in the same areas), or you can draw your own 68-room map (with rooms anywhere). I have marked rooms which need to be connected in order for the dungeon to make sense in bold below. 

Step 4
Enlarge the map and read your new dungeon. Report any bugs here. Add in any stuff you like (the Uncommon Perplexities table in Red & Pleasant Land is good for making things weird fast). Note that since only level 1is shown here, obviously references to other levels lead off the map to stuff I haven't done yet.

Step 5
Pick an entrance and run it.

Step 6
Repeat and alter method as needed.

(KindOfSculpture)
(BodyParts)
(EvilHumanoidFaction)
(SymbolsOfAuthority)
(RelictArchitectFaction)
(GoodHumanoidFaction)
(InertSubstance)
(NastyGreedyUndead)
(LocalDeity)
(SacredConstruct)
(LuckyDeity)
(HorriblyCursedMagicItem)
(WarDeity)
(Blessing)
(MundaneItems)
(ExoticMaterial)
(EvilOutsiderSpecies)
(OrdinaryMetal)
(MinorLocalConstructs)
(CharacterClass)
(ProtectionSpell)
(TechnicalSubject)
(WimpyHumanoidFaction)
(MinorDemonBoss)
(wandering monster check)
(ActivatableTrap)
(InconspicuousRoomFeature)
(AnimalIntMonster)
(MagicLiquid)
(PrettyBadCurse)
(PrettyGoodBoon)
(Curse)
(Boon)
(MinorBoon)
(ReverseOfCurse)
(ReverseOfBoon)
(ReverseOfPrettyBadCurse)
(ReverseOfPrettyGoodBoon)
(AlarmMonster)
(UsefulMundaneLiquid)
(UsefulMundaneSubstance)
(NameOfADerangedMemberOfGoodHumanoidFaction)
(MinorHolyRelic)
(ScaryMagicLiquid)
(he rules those creatures)
(MinorDefensiveMagicItem)
(MinorOffensiveMagicItem)
(Shape)
(MinorDefensiveMagicItem2)
(NonMagicTrap)
(FungoidMonster)
(GiantVerminMonster)
(Or make up another effect)
(IntimidatingMonster)
(UsefulMagicItem)
(HungryAnimalIntMonsters)
(GiantVerminMonster2)
(CleverDeity)
(SpookyObject)
(BalefulEffect)
(AnyCreatureWithAMouth)
(MinorUsefulMundaneItem)
(AHostileAct)
(StealthyMonster)
(OozyMonster)
Click to enlarge--you can use this map, it's part of the
Dwimmermount Open Game License

An alternate map--Click To Enlarge

MadLibMount Level 1 

Wandering Monsters

1. 4d4 (WimpyHumanoidFaction)s
2. 2d4 (EvilHumanoidFaction)s
3. 3d6 (SacredConstruct)s
4. 3d6 (GiantVerminMonster)s
5. 2d4 (GiantVerminMonster2)s
6. d4 (AnimalIntMonster)s
7. (StealthyMonster)
8. d8  (HungryAnimalIntMonsters)s
9.  d6 (GoodHumanoidFaction)s
10. 4+d4 member NPC party
11. (OozyMonster)
12. Roll twice, with 2nd result coming to investigate d4 turns after 1st result

Key

1. (KindOfSculpture) , (BodyParts)s are not original. Replacing (BodyParts) w/(BodyParts) in dungeon grants boon appropriate to deity.

2. Fuck all.

3. 6 (EvilHumanoidFaction)s, w/leader. Scouting area, from Level 2A.

4. Dusty. Save or sneeze/cough for d4 rounds. Wandering monster check for every sneeze.

5. 5 (SymbolsOfAuthority) on wall. One on floor. Save or die (-2) gas-trap behind ones on wall. (SymbolsOfAuthority) give a bonus to reaction roll from creatures traditionally subservient to (RelictArchitectFaction).

6. 2 (GoodHumanoidFaction)s turned to (InertSubstance). Weapons usable if bodies smashed. 3 dead allies of theirs in Rm 16, 1 survivor in Rm 68, 2 survivors in Level 2a, Rm 22

7. Door locked, pickable or key in Rm 25. 8500gp of treasure, treasure map worth 16000gp. 3 magic random items. (NastyGreedyUndead)

8. Chapel to (LocalDeity) 3 (SacredConstruct)s attack anyone not bearing symbols of (LocalDeity). Secret door to 9 behind altar.

9. Approx 700gp worth of treasure. Head of (LuckyDeity) usable in Rm 1. (HorriblyCursedMagicItem).

10. Fuck all.

11. (KindOfSculpture) (WarDeity), head is (LocalDeity)

12. 70gp scattered around.

13. Fuck all.

14. Murmurs in ancient language of (RelictArchitectFaction), bones of same. Burying bones outside dungeon results in (Blessing) of (WarDeity).

15. Stairs down to level 2B Rm 1.

Six (MundaneItems) in (ExoticMaterial) touching them releases memories of this place:

1st: Battle between (RelictArchitectFaction) and evil creatures controlled by (EvilOutsiderSpecies)
2nd: Fighting in the dungeon between (RelictArchitectFaction) and chaotic defenders
3rd: A visit from (RelictArchitectFaction) emperor.
4th: Wizards being interrogated by soldiers.
5th: Wizards commanding soldierd.
6th: Soldiers around an (OrdinaryMetal) head of (LocalDeity)

16. 3 (GoodHumanoidFaction)s turned to (InertSubstance). Weapons, mundane adventuring equipment. Wineskin is printing cylinder--if inked and rolled reveals map of this level, worth 880gp. All the  (GoodHumanoidFaction)s listed in Rm 6 know how this cylinder works.

17. 10 switches. 1-9 activate (MinorLocalConstructs) and seal door to room. 10th deactivates all switches.

18. Fuck all.

19. Library. Useful texts:
-Text on subject specialized in by (CharacterClass). Member of (CharacterClass) reading it gains 500gp.
-Map to birthplace of (LocalDeity) worth 500gp to a sage.
-Partial wizard scroll: 50% of (ProtectionSpell) 50% of erasing lowest level spell of user.
-A book about (TechnicalSubject)

20. Storeroom. Lair of 11 (WimpyHumanoidFaction), sent to patrol by (MinorDemonBoss). Approx 1gp treasure total.

21. 3 small machines. Messing with them triggers d4 rounds of noise (wandering monster check) and gust of scalding steam d10hp save for half.

22. Eastern 2/3rds of room is (ActivatableTrap). Defends room 23.

23. 10 (WimpyHumanoidFaction)s possess means of activating trap in Rm 22. Approx 2gp treasure.

24. Many (InconspicuousRoomFeature)s one is hollow, containing 110gp.

25. 3 Murals of (RelictArchitectFaction). Carefully examining one reveals key to Rm 7.

26. Dead victims of (AnimalIntMonster).

27. 3 (AnimalIntMonster)s.

28. Concealed shaft on ceiling up to surface. Pool of (MagicLiquid). If drunk, save vs spell. Failure=no effect and can't be affected by pool for # of days proportional to degree of failure. Success=effect that lasts for # of days proportional to degree of success.
Effects (d10)
1-4 (PrettyBadCurse), (PrettyGoodBoon)
5-7 (Curse), (Boon)
8-10 (MinorBoon)
11-15 (ReverseOfCurse), (ReverseOfBoon)
15-20 (ReverseOfPrettyBadCurse), (ReverseOfPrettyGoodBoon)

29. 3 (AlarmMonster)s

30. Stairs up to surface. Fresh adventurers corpses--gear, weapons, lantern.

31. Freshly gnawed bones.

32. Ambush--10 (WimpyHumanoidFaction)s. Less than 1gp total. They will retreat to RM 33 and then 34.

33. Storage used by (WimpyHumanoidFaction)s containing 5 barrels of (UsefulMundaneLiquid) and 2 barrels of (UsefulMundaneSubstance)

34. 27 statues of (GoodHumanoidFaction)s. An insane (GoodHumanoidFaction) named (NameOfADerangedMemberOfGoodHumanoidFaction) in Rm 40 has been animating them into  (WimpyHumanoidFaction)s . 8 (WimpyHumanoidFaction)s w/ less than 2gp treasure.

35. Search reveals alcove in which is hidden reliquary containing (MinorHolyRelic).

36. Shrine to (LuckyDeity). 82gp in hands. Adding coins grants donor blessing of (LuckyDeity) for 24 hrs. Only may be received once. Take coins: rocks fall 2d6 damage, save for half. Resets. (WimpyHumanoidFaction)s avoids this room.

37. Spring of (ScaryMagicLiquid) . One gallon. If you travel down the tube to the source, there's a chart which I haven't got here yet.

38. 16 (WimpyHumanoidFaction)s, zealously guarding area leading to 41 and (MinorDemonBoss) about 2gp between them. They have flaming oil.

39. Between Rms 38 and 41. 4  Negligible treasure. (AnimalIntMonster)s which attack anything that isn't a (WimpyHumanoidFaction).

40. (NameOfADerangedMemberOfGoodHumanoidFaction), a deranged  (GoodHumanoidFaction), protected by 6 (WimpyHumanoidFaction)s (he rules those creatures) and a pet (AnimalIntMonster). (NameOfADerangedMemberOfGoodHumanoidFaction) has 60gp and (MinorDefensiveMagicItem) (MinorOffensiveMagicItem).

41. (MinorDemonBoss)--will attempt to seduce PCs with promises of power. 110gp and (Shape)-shaped, runecarved item that operates the elevator in Rm 56. Can only be entered from Rm 39.

42. Fuck all.

43. Crates. One contains (MinorDefensiveMagicItem2)

44. Door toward stairs down to level 2 (Rm 45)  is locked and trapped. With (NonMagicTrap).

45. Stairs down to Level 2A Rm 1. (FungoidMonster).

46. 9 (GiantVerminMonster), 1050gp worth of treasure 2000 of which is in copper coins. Lawyer tears.

47. Mosaics depicting area outside dungeon. 6 (EvilHumanoidFaction)s  2375gp.

48. Fuck all.

49. Clean, untouched-looking room. Detects as magic.  Time does not pass here. (Or make up another effect).

50. Secret doors from Rms 52 & 48 lead here. Illusion of (IntimidatingMonster) fights as 4hd creature until hit (AC 9).

51. Can only be entered from  50. 450gp of treasure, (UsefulMagicItem).

52. Fuck all.

53. 7 (HungryAnimalIntMonsters)

54. Crack. 6 bubbles of (ScaryMagicLiquid) . Do d6 damage to anyone coming w/in 5 ft and failing a dex check. Each exploding bubbles has a 2 in 6 chance of setting off another bubble.

55. Access to rat-sized water pipes.

56. Contains an elevator. Symbol matches (Shape) from Rm 41. Leads to Level 4  Rm 13 and Level 0 Rm 1. Elevator doors can be opened with the(Shape) or by force. Only using the (Shape) and restoring power in Lvl 4 Rm 14 or Lvl 6b RM 40 allows you to operate the elevator but there's a 250 ft shaft full of slime you could climb thru.

57. 6 (GiantVerminMonster2)s

58. Access to rat-sized pipes.

59. Voices debating (TechnicalSubject) . Placing a book about it on table makes voices disappear and grants boon of (CleverDeity).

60. Fuck all.

61. (SpookyObject) carved with runes decipherable to those who learned the language in Lvl 5 Rm 19. Touching it causes (BalefulEffect) to a creature for d6 turns. Roll wandering monster check every turn PCs are here.

62. Fuck all.

63. 6 (EvilHumanoidFaction)s. 1000gp. Door here to Rm 65 is locked.

64. Metal face of (AnyCreatureWithAMouth) emits unintelligible sounds. Lubricating it will make it say, in the language of (RelictArchitectFaction) : “Ask a question, if you have one. I’ll answer truth- fully, but then you’re done.” It answers one question per day in the language of (RelictArchitectFaction) . Only knows that language, only knows out of date info about this dungeon.

65. (MinorUsefulMundaneItem)

66. Secret door to Rm 68.

67. 7 (EvilHumanoidFaction)s.

68. 4 (EvilHumanoidFaction)s performing (AHostileAct)ing on a (GoodHumanoidFaction)--an ally of the (GoodHumanoidFaction)s in Rm 6 and elsewhere on this level. The (GoodHumanoidFaction) will pay 500gp if rescued and brought back to his/her nearby home. Secret door to Rm 66.

The words “Autarch” and “Dwimmermount” are product identity in accordance with section 1(e) of the Open Game License version 1.0a and are trademarks of Autarch LLC and Dwimmermount is a trademark of James Maliszewski
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The Demon Prison of MadLibMount

January 14, 2015, 12:33 am
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So on Monday I wrote about how--since Dwimmermount is released on an Open Game License--you can make your own dungeon by MadLibbing it using content from your own campaign.

I used level 1 as a proof-of-concept. Today, instead of plodding ahead to level 2, I skipped ahead to level 8 which is the second to lowest level--because the actual lowest level has a lot of empty space to be filled in by the GM. 'Cause I figured variety is cool, y'know?

Directions for how to use the Search-and-Replace function on your word processor to instantly make a MadLib dungeon are here. Ready? Go:

(WeirdConstruct)
(StrangeKindOfWizard)
(SeriouslyScaryGreaterDemon)
(DifferentKindOfBadassDemon)
(MostEpicKindOfMajorDemon)
(GrossConstruct)
(ScaryMindlessUndead)
(SummonedFireCreature)
(DecayingUndead)
(RelictArchitectFaction)
(GoopyMonster)
(CrazyDangerousAnimalIntelligenceCarnivorousMonster)
(AutomatedConstruct)
(EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity)
(MessageDeliveringDevice)
(ValuableItemOrBodyPart)
(StigmatisingMark)
(MeansOfAccessingThisArea)
(Demon'sName)
(KindOfBadassMajorDemon)
(EsotericName)
(MethodOfPreventingEntryToARoom)
(ThreeBadassMagicItems)
(MinorMagicItems)
(CommonIntelligentLifeform)
(ACoolMagicItem)
(IntelligentHumanoidSpecies)
(Artwork)
(Alignment)
(SomeKindOfEnergy)
(AwesomeMagicWeapon)
(KindOfWarrior)
(OtherAlignment)
(ThirdAlignment)
(ThreeGoodMagicItems)
(LawDeity)
(WiseDeity)
(BodyPart)
(KindOfFurniture)
(PerformingOrdinaryButNonSurvivalEssentialActivity)
(DeviceThatProtectsYouAndServesAsABadgeOfOffice)
(KindOfIngestivePoison)
(AmbientDisturbingEffect)
(ArchitecturalFeature)
(SweetMagicWeaponForClerics)
(SweetMagicWeapon)
(MagicItemForClerics)
(VeryCoolMagicWeapon)
(DemonPrince)
(TwoNeatMagicItemsOneOffensiveOneDefensive)
(ItemFunctioningLikeAKey)
(PrettyGoodArmor)
(PrettyGoodMissileWeapons)
(GreaterDemonOfSomeSort)
(NegativeEffect)
(SpellcastingClass)
(CursedItem)
(HeavyButMundaneObjectHere)
(MagicalPunishment)
(LocalDeity)
(ArtificialBattleConstruct)
(FemaleName)
(MaleName)
(NameOfIndeterminateGender)
(KindOfBoon)
(ExoticTortureDevice)
(Device big enough to climb into)
(AngelicCreature)
Click to enlarge


MadLibMount Level 8

Wandering Monsters for this Level

1 (WeirdConstruct)
2 d2 (StrangeKindOfWizard)
3 (SeriouslyScaryGreaterDemon)
4 (DifferentKindOfBadassDemon)
5 (MostEpicKindOfMajorDemon)
6 (GrossConstruct)
7 d8 (ScaryMindlessUndead)
8 (SummonedFireCreature) 
9 d4 (DecayingUndead) 
10 4+d4 (RelictArchitectFaction) cultists
11 (GoopyMonster)
12 (CrazyDangerousAnimalIntelligenceCarnivorousMonster)


1. Fuck all.

2. (AutomatedConstruct) attacks anyone without (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity)

3. (MessageDeliveringDevice) says to place (ValuableItemOrBodyPart) into a niche.
-If someone performs the action and makes a save vs device, a (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity) appears
-If they fail a (StigmatisingMark) is placed on the (ValuableItemOrBodyPart) and also d4 (AutomatedConstruct)s come from Rms 8 and 9 and attack.
_If--after 2 minutes--no-one places their (ValuableItemOrBodyPart) into the niche, d4 (AutomatedConstruct)s come from Rms 8 and 9 and attack.

4. If the (MeansOfAccessingThisArea) has been available for more than a day: 8 guards from (RelictArchitectFaction)
If it has not, the rooms contains (Demon'sName) a (KindOfBadassMajorDemon).

5.(EsotericName) a (StrangeKindOfWizard) is here and, if (Demon'sName) isn't in Rm 4, (Demon'sName) is here, too.
(EsotericName) is trying to deactivate the (MethodOfPreventingEntryToARoom) that cuts off access to Rm 41from this room and Rm 27 and will try to cajole the party into helping. (EsotericName) has (ThreeBadassMagicItems) and two (MinorMagicItems). If (EsotericName) must flee, it will be to Rm 7 or, if that fails, to Rm 6.

6.  Preserved but violently mutilated (CommonIntelligentLifeform) corpses--failed (ScaryMindlessUndead) from
Rm 24. If you ingest the substance coating them you have to save or become (ScaryMindlessUndead).

7. (DifferentKindOfBadassDemon) placed here as a guard by (EsotericName). Will attack any mortal on site and do little to protect (EsotericName) if they appear here.

8. and 9. Each contains 4 (AutomatedConstruct)s that attack anyone with (StigmatisingMark).

10. Locked--can be opened with (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity). Contains bones of the dead.

11. Storage. Contains (ACoolMagicItem) however it's cursed so if it is used by any but (IntelligentHumanoidSpecies) it will have a 50% chance of backfiring and hurting the user.

12. Damaged (Artwork) representing actions characteristic of (Alignment) any cleric of (Alignment) praying here for 10 minutes will have their spells refreshed.

13a-13b Cell off of 13a can only be opened with (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity). Otherwise touching them results in 8d6 (SomeKindOfEnergy) damage--save for half. Inside there is (AwesomeMagicWeapon) belonging to the (KindOfWarrior) in Rm 49.

14 Area at 14a controls cell at 14b. If two (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity)s are used here, a (MessageDeliveringDevice) will ask if 14b should be unlocked. Answering 'yes' will release a (CrazyDangerousAnimalIntelligenceCarnivorousMonster) from suspended animation in 14b which will try to eat whatever it finds. Closing 14b also requires two (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity)s--whatever is locked inside will be placed in suspended animation.

15. Two (AutomatedConstruct)s attack anyone without (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity).

16. Door to this room is visible and usable by creatures of (Alignment), invisible and impassable to those of (OtherAlignment), and visible but impassable to those of (ThirdAlignment). Contains fallen hero with 3270 gp and (ThreeGoodMagicItems).

17. Shrine to (LawDeity) and (WiseDeity), their statue (BodyPart)s are here. 30% chance of containing d8 (ScaryMindlessUndead).

18. A (KindOfFurniture)--using it prevents the user from (PerformingOrdinaryButNonSurvivalEssentialActivity) for 3o mins.

19. Contains 600gp, (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity) and (DeviceThatProtectsYouAndServesAsABadgeOfOffice). If (MeansOfAccessingThisArea) has been available for more than a day there are three members of (RelictArchitectFaction), one of whom is a wizard.

20. Four (AutomatedConstruct)s attack anyone with (StigmatisingMark). Any (AutomatedConstruct)s summoned by alarms trig- gered on the southern half of the level will be drawn from this room and/or from Rm 28.

21. Mostly empty. Clear liquid marked "In case of emergency" in (RelictArchitectFaction) language. Contains (KindOfIngestivePoison).

22. (AmbientDisturbingEffect) save or be disoriented. 4 (ScaryMindlessUndead).

23. Door to RM 24 is locked from the inside. Sign reads, in (RelictArchitectFaction) language "In case of emergency, activate (ArchitecturalFeature) . Out in the hall, there are 4 nooks, instructing the reader to perform the same action as in Rm 3.
1: If the user is a cleric of (LawDeity) or (WiseDeity), the northwest (ArchitecturalFeature) reveals a (SweetMagicWeaponForClerics). Otherwise, the (MessageDeliveringDevice) says “Intruders! Intruders!” to summon 1d4  (AutomatedConstruct)s (Room 28) to slay them.
2: If the user is (alignment), the southwest  (ArchitecturalFeature) reveals a (SweetMagicWeapon). Otherwise as 1
3: If the user is a cleric of (LawDeity) or (WiseDeity), the northeast (ArchitecturalFeature) reveals a (MagicItemForClerics) otherwise as 1
4: If the user is (alignment), the southeast (ArchitecturalFeature) reveals a (VeryCoolMagicWeapon). Otherwise as 1.

Make  wandering monster check each time a(n) (ArchitecturalFeature) is activated. It's loud. 

24. Any failed attempt to unlock or force open the doors alerts the room’s occupants. Prison containing (DemonPrince)--who is fucked up from being imprisoned. There are six (RelictArchitectFaction) hooked up to the prison being transformed into (ScaryMindlessUndead) in d6 rounds unless cure disease or neutralize poison is used.
(StrangeKindOfWizard) inside holds the keys to the doors and oversees this process, protected by 4 (ScaryMindlessUndead). The (StrangeKindOfWizard) has (TwoNeatMagicItemsOneOffensiveOneDefensive).

(StrangeKindOfWizard) will flee to Rm 26 if things go poorly and will immediately flee if (DemonPrince)'s prison is shattered. It will shatter if successfully struck (v. AC 0/20) with a deliberate attack from an enchanted weapon that deals at least 5 points of damage, or if the tube sustains 25 or more points of damage from being in the area of effect of spells.

If the holding tube is shattered, (DemonPrince) will begin to return to its former state, gaining 10 hit points per round until it reaches 100 and has full powers and intelligence, fucking everyone up.

25. 13625 gp worth of treasure.

26. 6 (ScaryMindlessUndead). Complicated barrier to next level down having to do with what happens in Rm 40 level 6B.

27. Area controls (AutomatedConstruct)s. Anyone with (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity) and (ItemFunctioningLikeAKey) can change the (AutomatedConstruct)s with a successful Int check at -4.   Each successful check allows a user to command them to attack a specific type of target or stop targeting a specific type of target as the user wishes—but not both. 
A (StrangeKindOfWizard) is here along with 2 (AutomatedConstruct)s. If the (MeansOfAccessingThisArea) has been available for more than a day there will be 4 (RelictArchitectFaction) guards, if it has not, the rooms contains the (MostEpicKindOfMajorDemon) from Rm 34.

28. Four (AutomatedConstruct)s attack anyone with (StigmatisingMark). Any (AutomatedConstruct)s summoned by alarms trig- gered on the southern half of the level will be drawn from this room and/or from Rm 20.

29. The hatch to this room is locked and barred from the outside. If a character presses themself (or is pressed) into one of the niches, they must immediately make a saving throw or become (alignment). The alignment shift is a zealous one, meaning that anyone who uses a pillar will no longer associate or cooperate with anyone of a very different alignment. The effect can be reversed through the use of remove curse or similar spells.

30. The hatch to this room is locked. Inside one of desk drawers is a(n) (EmblemOfRankInChurchOfLocalDeity). Books worth 5000gp.

31. Pieces to make (PrettyGoodArmor) and two (PrettyGoodMissileWeapons).

32. Angry (GreaterDemonOfSomeSort). Scent of burnt wood coming from Rm 33.

33. Brazier burning incense which causes (NegativeEffect) if a (SpellcastingClass) tries to regain spells within. 4 more blocks of incense.

34.  (MostEpicKindOfMajorDemon) 

35. Remains of dead creature wearing (CursedItem)

36. Scorch marks leading toward Rm 37.

37. (SummonedFireCreature) bound to remain within 100 feet of (HeavyButMundaneObjectHere) unless that object is destroyed.

38. Fuck all.

39. Mural of individuals suffering (MagicalPunishment) anyone observing the windowlike structure on the far wall must save or suffer that punishment.

40. Wreckage-fixable using tools from next level down.. (ItemFunctioningLikeAKey).

41. Barrier to entry has 3 states:
A-Impassable. It starts this way.
B-Anyone may enter, but only (Alignment) characters may leave. Achievable using mechanisms in Level 6b, Rm 40.
C-Passable to all. The bad guys on this level are trying to do this.

41a. Roll:
1-6 (LocalDeity) in (ArtificialBattleConstruct)
7-24 (StrangeKindOfWizard) with (FemaleName)
25-42 (StrangeKindOfWizard) with (MaleName)
43-60 (StrangeKindOfWizard) with (NameOfIndeterminateGender)
61-00 Empty

42.  (StrangeKindOfWizard) with (FemaleName) 25% here if not encountered in 41a, 33% Rm 45, 32% Rm 49, would die before allowing harm to come to (LocalDeity).

43. (StrangeKindOfWizard) with (MaleName) 25% here if not encountered in 41a, 75% Rm 45. Despairs of ever escaping open to possibility of mutiny against (LocalDeity).

44. (StrangeKindOfWizard) with (NameOfIndeterminateGender) 25% here if not encountered in 41a, 75% Rm 45.  Would sacrifice (LocalDeity) if it meant they could escape this prison.

45. (LocalDeity) if not encountered in 41a, 30% of being here, otherwise Rm 51. If here, (LocalDeity) will not be alone.  Whenever outside this cell, (LocalDeity) wears a (ArtificialBattleConstruct). Within his quarters, however, it is just a head.

46. Door to here is locked, (LocalDeity) has key. Bones of martyr. If an (alignment) worshipper of (LawDeity) carries a bone fragment it grants a (KindOfBoon) vs opponents of distant alignment.

47. Fuck all.

48. Circle on floor--any being not native to this plane who passes over its edge will become imprisoned and powerless until the circle is broken by someone not bound by it.

49. Locked; the key is kept by (FemaleName). An heroic (KindOfWarrior) is kept here and periodically tortured with (ExoticTortureDevice). If freed, the (KindOfWarrior) will ask for a weapon and help the party.

50. Stasis-(Device big enough to climb into).


51. Locked (the key is kept at all times by (LocalDeity). Circle on floor--any being not native to this plane who passes over its edge will become imprisoned and powerless until the circle is broken by someone not bound by it. Inside the circle is (AngelicCreature) trapped and opposed to (LocalDeity) who'll help anyone who isn't (ThirdAlignment).
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Want More Women In Gaming? Make Better Shit.

January 16, 2015, 1:13 pm
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"No school due to ice today. My six year old daughter spotted Red and Pleasant Land on the table and was drawn in by the blonde girl in a pretty dress and also the possibility that that might be blood dripping down in the background. 

I don't usually share my gaming books with her because of all the murder and horror. But I spent a short while this morning telling her all about R&PL. She loves vampires and Alice in Wonderland, she was very happy to see all the girls in interesting dresses through out,


...although equally interested in the green pigs....

....I realized just how perfect this book is for her. the contents are what she is all about. It all makes sense to her, crazy gravity, inside out rooms, lakes of blood on the ceiling. Best of all it inspires her. Which is what a good DIY D&D book should do. So we spent awhile this morning drawing vampires. 

Her vampires are a mother and two daughters, although the one with the ears is secretly a gremlin. They had to move out of the small castle (which is far away) and move into the large castle (which is close up) because "That place got all jacked up by gremlins". The squiggly lines are roads and or roller coasters that move people around and it doesn't matter if the vampires fall off the roller coasters because they can fly.

I'm going to tell her about the Vampire Brides who can change into kittens when she gets home."
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Stacy Dellorfano--Building The Best Online Con in RPGs

January 27, 2015, 9:47 pm
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At D&D With Porn Stars women in gaming is a subject that comes up a lot and playing RPGs on-line over Google Plus also comes up a lot, too.

Since it just so happens that the best, most has-its-shit-together on-line tabletop RPG convention is one that anybody can be part of but that's run entirely by women. I figured I'd talk to the lady in charge: Stacy Dellorfano of Contessa. 


So what's Contessa?

ConTessa is a year-round virtual convention and community where women execute all the games and events. 2015 is our third and most exciting year so far. In 2013 and 2014 we ran annual conventions over long weekends. In 2015, we've turned into an 'always-on' convention, and will be running several events over the course of the year. 

We've run contests, tournaments, panels, games, seminars, art jams, board game sessions, and just about anything you can do via Google Hangouts or the greater internet. 

Aside from the difficulties anyone faces trying to squeeze a hobby in between real life stuff, what have been the hard things about running Contessa?

I'd have to say that learning how to ignore the haters has been the most difficult thing about running ConTessa for me, personally. I can make the technology work when it fails, herd the hell out of cats, figure out how to do what we want to do on a budget of nothing, deal with flaky game developers who don't answer their emails, and still run my own events while juggling all of those balls, but I sucked at tuning out the negative and focusing on the positive. 

ConTessa has largely changed that for me. It's still a bit of a struggle from time to time, but I have a much better perspective now than I've had since the convention's inception in late 2012. I and/or the convention have been attacked for not being political enough, being too political, using a word that people didn't like (apolitical), choosing graphics and a design theme that was 'too cutesy', being 'part of the problem', ignoring women's issues, whitewashing women's issues, making too big a deal out of women's issues, excluding women we don't agree with, discriminating against men, not allowing men to be members of staff, run games, or run panels, and we got attacked for not saying certain things. 

I've been threatened with blacklisting more than once, my staff members have been told by people several times not to talk about ConTessa in their space, people have refused to work on projects if they're connected to ConTessa, and I got yelled at by a previous-year sponsor for allowing a 'competitor' to also be a sponsor. 

On top of that, I got severely ill at the beginning of 2013 while simultaneously dealing with a job layoff, and the fallout of a lot of very damaging personal shit brought on by my family. I sank into a depression so deep there were days I thought it would never, ever end. I wanted to die. I didn't want to kill myself, but I wanted to die. While the attacks didn't cause all of that, they certainly didn't do anything to make me feel better about myself as a human being. 

When I thought for sure I was going to give it up, something amazing happened. People showed up and told me stories about how ConTessa helped them get into GMing online, then in-person, then at conventions, then writing their own material, publishing themselves, and getting freelancing jobs for some of the best publishers out there. They told me about other women that they, in turn, inspired with their stories. They told me that their daughters couldn't wait until they were old enough to participate, and they kept asking me when the next convention would be. 

There were days during the worst of the depression when getting out of bed and getting ready for work seemed too hard, even seemed not worthwhile at all. On those days, I had a steady mantra that went through my head. One foot in front of the other. Keep moving forward. You may not see the end of the tunnel, but it's there. Keep walking. I made sure that stuck for ConTessa, too, and I've become a stronger person for it. 

I think the turning point was when a prominent blogger took an offhand comment I made and blew it up into an entire lie about our policies while trying to make the point that if I wanted success, I needed to invite men to run games. I corrected him in the comment thread of his post, but he ignored it and never even responded to me... then, the very same people who attacked me for being 'part of the problem' were suddenly on my side because a guy with MRA tendencies was attacking me. 

It was absurd. After both crying and screaming in frustration, I finally sat down and started laughing. There were all these people getting all worked up over a convention they did not have to attend or participate in wherein people were mostly going to sit in front of their computers and play pretend. 

Now, I'm on a much more even keel. I've finally found some much-needed perspective, and I'm glad for it. While talking about this interview with my husband the other day, I said, "You know what? I should probably thank all those people for giving me perspective." 
Eyes courtesy of D&D W/Porn Stars' very own Mandy Morbid.

How do you see Contessa fitting in to the larger game scene? The larger discussion about women in games?

I started ConTessa specifically because I want to see more women get into the creator side of the hobby. I strongly believe the best way to get more diverse content is to have more diversity in the people who create that content. While there are women out there creating games, there aren't nearly enough. We want to add more women to the pool, which will benefit everyone in the long run by giving us a more well-rounded group of creators who add their own unique perspective and identity to the work they produce. 

That doesn't just help women, that helps everyone. With the rise of independent game publishing, we're seeing more and more new games and supplements coming out that challenge our preconceived notions of what a game can and should be. Adding more voices, more perspectives, and more lives to that mix can only improve what we're already doing. Diversity helps everyone, hands down. 

The hurdles that women face getting into game design are different than the hurdles that men face, but instead of actually addressing that fact, we keep shoving women into the same box that the men have been partying in since wargaming's origins in the late 19th century. Or, we do something really stupid and lower the hurdles that men have to go over, thinking that helps women. It isn't that we need the path to be easier, it's that we have completely different hurdles to jump over. 

ConTessa addresses the hurdles that women face more often than men, and we do it better because we are women. We've either already jumped those hurdles, or we're in the process of jumping those hurdles, and we're more than happy to share the secrets of our success and the things we've learned through our failures with one another. Support networks are absolutely crucial to any creative environment, and doubly so when facing an environment where you feel so very underrepresented. 

Women come and GM at ConTessa because they feel more comfortable knowing that they're not the only woman there. They then take all of the confidence built up doing that and they funnel it into creating some magnificent things. ConTessa makes the entire community better by giving women what they actually need to succeed instead of just dumbing everything down. 

You said that women in games have a distinctive set of hurdles to jump over-- what are these? Or some of them?

Navigating male culture. I'm not talking about harassment or anything to do with sex, either. Most women are raised to communicate in a passive manner, while most men are raised to communicate in an aggressive manner. That has a lot to do with the fact that girls are raised to be nice, and boys are raised to (or at least given permission to) be aggressive. It's great to talk about and think about an ideological world where both sides come closer to the other, but we have to deal with how people are now in order to get more women playing, running, and creating. 

What that looks like in many gaming groups is one or two super aggressive neckbeard-types talking over, interrupting, making decisions for, mocking, and just plain disrespecting the one or two women at the table who get quieter and quieter, then eventually don't play at all. I don't see this addressed. Ever. Worse, I see men making excuses for their overly-aggressive players, and doing nothing to prevent the women at the table from getting walked all over. This, more than anything else in gaming, is what has to change. 

Experience. Many men my age started playing Dungeons & Dragons when they were children. They were either given it to them by a parent, or they learned of it from a friend. In that era, girls were given dolls, and boys were given war toys. D&D is a war toy. Plus, a lot of us had segregated play when we were young. We played with only other girls, so we didn't hear about this nifty thing called roleplaying games until we got older and started to develop male friends. 

As a result, a lot of women get started in gaming when they're adults or near-adults. That's usually a minimum of a decade worth of experience the guys have that the girls don't, and that's an important distinction. 


Permission to act like a kid. I've always felt weird being around a group of male friends with wives who don't game. They always say things like 'my wife won't let me play', 'thank goodness my wife pulls me away from gaming', 'my wife reminds me to spend time with the kids', etc. The default assumption seems to be: Boys can continue playing with toys well into their adulthood, but girls have to grow up and leave their toys behind so that they can 'mommy' their husbands. 

When I was working in the video game industry, I even encountered situations were women managers either had to act like mommies to their direct reports, or they chose to act like mommies. Many of the women I met who managed men (and there were very few of them as it was) kept toys, candy, and other kid-like things in their offices not for them, but for their men they managed. 

Women need permission to keep their toys throughout adulthood and play with them whenever they want without judgment. What this ends up looking like in our world is a reluctance by women to do anything that involves 'play' lest they be considered immature. 

Risk-taking and bouncing back from failure. As a result of that whole passive vs. aggressive communication style thing, a lot of women are also risk-adverse. Competitive sports, video games, and even roleplaying games given to children at a young age teach them the value of perseverance. That play didn't go as well as intended? Try again! Died fighting the zombies on level 23? Start over! TPK? Roll new characters! 


Zombies of Walmart--Stacy's very own attempt to kill you with zombies on level 23

Girls, on the other hand, are subtly and not-so-subtly told over and over again that we're not competitive, which is really a chicken and egg thing. Liking or disliking competition isn't a personality trait that's ingrained into your being. If girls played more sports and games at a younger age, they might not be quite as adverse to competition, which then translates into having less fear of taking risks, and a greater ability to bounce back from failure. 

You see it in imposter syndrome, women who are terrified of self-promotion, women who are afraid of GMing, women who insist they don't have the talent/skill/etc... to even start making games, and a whole laundry list of things that keep women out of leadership roles whether we're talking the boardroom of a huge corporation or as the GM at a D&D table. 

Here's another thing about that... women are much more likely than men to attribute their successes to outside forces (luck), and their failures to internal forces (I didn't work hard enough). Men are much more likely to attribute their successes to themselves (I'm awesome), and their failures to outside forces (I'm still awesome, there must be something wrong with everyone else). I see this all the time... 

Woman GMs a game that goes south, she blames herself not doing enough prep, knowing the system well enough, or creating a compelling enough story. 

Man GMs a game that goes south, he blames the system, the players, the adventure, the time of year, anything but him. 

There's good reason to believe that even when dudes are totally wrong about where the failure lies, it works as a shield to protect them from having constant drops in confidence when things don't go well, and choosing to try again. 

None of this is going to be changed by showing fewer scantily clad pictures of women in gaming books, adding harassment clauses to conventions, or changing the subject matter of adventures. Rather, all of those things will start to resolve themselves once we take the time to address the actual things preventing more women from getting into - and staying involved with - gaming. 

How have things gone recently?

Really well. I mean, really well. I have three fantastic staff members who have been cranking out some awesome content and coming up with great ideas. We just re-launched the website for the third or fourth time, now (I've lost track), and we've got a great group of staff writers putting out some great posts about gaming, interviews with game developers, and some round tables that have been really fun to write. 

We've got some new events coming up and a lot of momentum to keep putting out new events very nearly monthly. We've been refining the process as we go, so setting up events is becoming less and less about the logistics and more and more about the actual events. After the last annual convention, we decided to get rid of a lot of the extraneous goodies that were taking up too much staff time and taking away from our ability to produce events. Sponsors, door prizes, and contests were eating up all of my time. Now that we've dropped those aspects, my time is freeing up so I can do more events like the random dungeon tournaments I like so much. 

I'm really forward to what we have coming up around the bend. We've learned so much in such a short amount of time, and I feel like we're just beginning to hit our stride. 

What are some examples of events that went really well?

Both of the random dungeon tournaments went phenomenally. My only regret is that I don't really have a link to a page that describes them in detail. That should change with this round of tournaments. The first year saw two teams going head to head in different hangouts, but the same randomly generated dungeon. The second year saw two pick-up teams on one day and two organized teams on the second day. I'm now to the point where I want to have them every few months, starting with the elimination bracket tournament on Valentine's Day. 

Back when Rachel Ventura was still with Frog God Games, she held a panel for our first ConTessa on marketing your RPG that had a rather large viewership and quite a bit of interaction. I was watching it live while I watched the comments came in, and loving every minute of it. 

Lastly, the I Hit it With My Axe reunion panel I ran was probably the most fun of all the panels I've run. And no, that's not kissing ass. That panel was one of the really rare intersections where the people involved actually did a really good job drumming up interest in the panel and gathering a live audience that asked a lot of questions. That also happens to be why Rachel's panel was so successful. 

Come to think of it, maybe we need a post on how to be a good panel participant. 



What's an example of an article that went up that you really like (yes, you have to pick one)?

Ariana's in-depth look into forum roleplaying from her perspective: Typing in Character: All About Play-By-Post. While I've done some freeform roleplaying via MUSHes and MUXes, the Play-By-Post phenomena has largely passed me by. It's great to get a peak into something I don't do (and likely won't start doing anytime soon). That's the biggest benefit of bringing on more writers. 

I know you said one, but there's another one coming up that Sarah wrote about how she preps for Dungeon World games that I also think is great. It's not scheduled for release until 2/10, though, but I think it makes a pretty good example of the kinds of things we're going for. There are many different ways to do all the things we do, and I value being able to see through the eyes of others. 


What kinds of games or ways of playing games has running Contessa introduced you to?

Convention gaming as a whole, and running one-shots. In 20+ years of GMing, I always thought that one-shots served no purpose for me. It was a full-blown campaign or nothing. Plus, running for a group of people I only meet once seemed too intimidating to actually do. It tends to take me a little bit of time to warm up to people. 

Then, I ran a one-shot of Precious Dark for the first ConTessa, for a group of people who I didn't know, in a convention setting (even if just virtual), and followed that up by building one-shot dungeons for the dungeon tournaments. 

Now, I'm sold on one-shots, and have started building all my games to be modular in that fashion. One of the adventures I ran for the last Precious Dark campaign I put together 'Zombies of Walmart', I've now run three times, and I'm thinking about doing it again for Gen Con. It's great fun to see what different ways people approach the exact same adventure... and, well, I added my own touch of uniqueness to each experience by using a shit ton of random tables. 


How can women participate?

Now that we run year-round, we've got several different ways that women can participate: 

  • At larger ConTessa events. We're planning a handful of mini-convention gaming weekends and panel days throughout the year. The exact dates will be communicated on our blog, and at the ConTessa community. You can check our submissions page for the events we're currently taking submissions for. 
  • By writing for the ConTessa blog. We've got about a half dozen women currently writing for the blog. We like interviews, gaming materials we can share, how-to articles, regular columns, and pretty much anything that has to do with gaming. If you'd like to be a staff writer, drop an email to stacy AT contessa.rocks, and I'll get you hooked up. 
  • By running and participating in one-off events. We're just beginning to roll out some one-off events. These might be games, panels, or interviews... they're mainly opportunity events that we pull together whenever someone has a good idea. If you'd like to run one of these events, drop an email to stacy AT contessa.rocks, and we'll talk about getting it done. 
  • By creating your own recurring event / recurring series. For example, I'm currently running a campaign weekly of the game I'm developing, Precious Dark. It ties into a series of blog posts about developing the game as well. Ariana and Sarah are running a series of events where they ask the developer of a game to come and run the game for them, and the ConTessa crew all together is working on a monthly podcast complete with guests. We're up for anything like that. If you've got an idea, and you think it'll encourage more women to create, we want to hear about it! Again, drop an email to stacy AT contessa.rocks.
We just moved into our new website, and we're just getting rolling with events this year. As we get going throughout the year, we'll be adding more to what we have to offer and how best to get involved.  


How can everyone else participate?

Signing up for events involves going to the event in Google+ and leaving a comment. GM's then confirm their groups before the big day, and keep track of who might be an alternate. We're listing all of our events on our events page at the ConTessa website, where you can find a link to the corresponding sign-up event on Google+. If you want the news of new events as we set them up, follow the ConTessa Page and/or join the ConTessa community. It also doesn't hurt to follow myself, Sarah Richardson, Ariana Ramos, and Solange Simondsen. The four of us make up the staff that runs ConTessa, so we share events and talk about ConTessa frequently. 


Are there any upcoming events?

Yes! Here's what we have coming up virtually: 

  • Wednesday nights at 6PM Pacific, I'm running Precious Dark live, on air, as I develop the game. I'm joined by a group of women who are eagerly jumping into the campaign. Their first adventure has so far involved befriending a group of psychedelic snails. I'll be recording the sessions live, then blogging the session notes and my development notes. 
  • On Sunday, January 25th at around 12PM Pacific, some of our staff will be playing Liz C's new game, WITCH in a ConTessa exhibition game. (Zak's note: sorry, this already happened before I could get the interview up--maybe Liz C has another event coming though?)
  • On Saturday, February 14th, I'll be pulling out the random dungeon tournament for the third time. This time, I'm shooting for 20 players so we can run a 4-team elimination round, break for dinner, then come back and run the winners of the first events through one more dungeon for a championship. 
  • Saturday February 21st, and Sunday February 22nd will be our first Game Weekend. We're currently accepting submissions from any women who want to run events on that weekend at the ConTessa website. This will be similar to the annual conventions, but instead of running both games and panels, we'll just be running games. 
  • Then, on March 14th, we'll be having a Panel Saturday. We'll do our level best to shove as many panels into one day as we possibly can. The same submission form above can also be used for panel day as well. 
We've got a pretty aggressive schedule lined up already, and we've barely gotten started. We're also spreading out to face-to-face conventions, starting with Gen Con. We've submitted one event already, we're getting our ducks in a row for the second, and we're planning on throwing a party. 

At Gen Con, we hope to do the following: 

  • A panel on creating and running virtual gaming events. I've asked Gen Con if we can get an internet connection, and we're renting a projector. If all goes well, I'm going to put up a hangout while we're at the panel for a live demonstration, and so that people not there can join us. Hopefully, it'll all come through! 
  • A ConTessa game night. We're pulling together GMs who want to run games with ConTessa. For this first time, we're planning on one four-hour block where a number of ConTessa GMs all run their different games in the same basic area. 
  • An Meetup. A group of us are renting a house in Indy for Gen Con large enough that it can handle social events. So, we're going to have a ConTessa meetup away from the noise of the convention. Depending on how many people we have, it may just end up being an informal game night. 
I can probably only afford the time and money to do Gen Con and possibly some local SoCal conventions. We're hoping that as we go, we'll be able to find women in other parts of the country who want to run ConTessa events at other face-to-face conventions.

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Time Golem

February 4, 2015, 5:34 pm
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It hits you once and you are Slowed, it hits you twice and you go unconscious. Once unconscious it will steal away your time--in the form of levels, one level per round.

Its head is full of time-sand--after taking half its hit points worth of damage (i.e. when blooded in 4e terms), each hit on the golem sprays time-sand around. Everyone within 10 feet must save vs spell or fall unconscious.
It's unclear whether time-displaced alternate universe versions of the PCs are actively summoned by time golems or whether time-displaced creatures seek out time golems because the golems themselves represent confluences in space-time where alternate universes meet.

Either way, roll d100:

1, One PC duplicated, same level as original
2, One PC duplicated, as original -1 level
3, One PC duplicated, as original -2 levels
4, One PC duplicated, as original +1 level
5, One PC duplicated, as original +2 levels
6, Two PCs duplicated, same level as original
7, Two PCs duplicated, as original -1 level
8, Two PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels
9, Two PCs duplicated, as original +1 level
10, Two PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels
11, Three PCs duplicated, same level as original
12, Three PCs duplicated, as original -1 level
13, Three PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels
14, Three PCs duplicated, as original +1 level
15, Three PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels
16, All PCs duplicated, same level as original
17, All PCs duplicated, as original -1 level
18, All PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels
19, All PCs duplicated, as original +1 level
20, All PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels
21, One PC duplicated, same level as original, gender(s) changed
22, One PC duplicated, as original -1 level, gender(s) changed
23, One PC duplicated, as original -2 levels, gender(s) changed
24, One PC duplicated, as original +1 level, gender(s) changed
25, One PC duplicated, as original +2 levels, gender(s) changed
26, Two PCs duplicated, same level as original, gender(s) changed
27, Two PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, gender(s) changed
28, Two PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, gender(s) changed
29, Two PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, gender(s) changed
30, Two PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, gender(s) changed
31, Three PCs duplicated, same level as original, gender(s) changed
32, Three PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, gender(s) changed
33, Three PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, gender(s) changed
34, Three PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, gender(s) changed
35, Three PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, gender(s) changed
36, All PCs duplicated, same level as original, gender(s) changed
37, All PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, gender(s) changed
38, All PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, gender(s) changed
39, All PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, gender(s) changed
40, All PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, gender(s) changed
41, One PC duplicated, same level as original, race(s) changed
42, One PC duplicated, as original -1 level, race(s) changed
43, One PC duplicated, as original -2 levels, race(s) changed
44, One PC duplicated, as original +1 level, race(s) changed
45, One PC duplicated, as original +2 levels, race(s) changed
46, Two PCs duplicated, same level as original, race(s) changed
47, Two PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, race(s) changed
48, Two PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, race(s) changed
49, Two PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, race(s) changed
50, Two PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, race(s) changed
51, Three PCs duplicated, same level as original, race(s) changed
52, Three PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, race(s) changed
53, Three PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, race(s) changed
54, Three PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, race(s) changed
55, Three PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, race(s) changed
56, All PCs duplicated, same level as original, race(s) changed
57, All PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, race(s) changed
58, All PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, race(s) changed
59, All PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, race(s) changed
60, All PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, race(s) changed
61, One PC duplicated, same level as original, race(s) changed
62, One PC duplicated, as original -1 level, race(s) changed
63, One PC duplicated, as original -2 levels, race(s) changed
64, One PC duplicated, as original +1 level, race(s) changed
65, One PC duplicated, as original +2 levels, race(s) changed
66, Two PCs duplicated, same level as original, race(s) changed
67, Two PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, race(s) changed
68, Two PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, race(s) changed
69, Two PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, race(s) changed
70, Two PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, race(s) changed
71, Three PCs duplicated, same level as original, race(s) changed
72, Three PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, race(s) changed
73, Three PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, race(s) changed
74, Three PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, race(s) changed
75, Three PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, race(s) changed
76, All PCs duplicated, same level as original, race(s) changed
77, All PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, race(s) changed
78, All PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, race(s) changed
79, All PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, race(s) changed
80, All PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, race(s) changed
81, One PC duplicated, same level as original, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
82, One PC duplicated, as original -1 level, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
83, One PC duplicated, as original -2 levels, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
84, One PC duplicated, as original +1 level, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
85, One PC duplicated, as original +2 levels, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
86, Two PCs duplicated, same level as original, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
87, Two PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
88, Two PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
89, Two PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
90, Two PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
91, Three PCs duplicated, same level as original, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
92, Three PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
93, Three PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
94, Three PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
95, Three PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
96, All PCs duplicated, same level as original, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
97, All PCs duplicated, as original -1 level, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
98, All PCs duplicated, as original -2 levels, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
99, All PCs duplicated, as original +1 level, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed
100, All PCs duplicated, as original +2 levels, gender(s) changed, race(s) changed

When they die, everything dissolves except the time-sand in the upper half. Usually about d4 rounds worth (or d20+4 seconds). Eating this sand will freeze time around the diner for the appropriate number of seconds.
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Viking Amazons of the Metal North

February 13, 2015, 2:35 am
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"A witch dwells to the east of Midgard, in the forest called Ironwood: in that wood dwell the troll-women, who are known as Ironwood-Women. The old witch bears many giants for sons, and all in the shape of wolves; and from this source are these wolves sprung. The saying runs thus: from this race shall come one that shall be mightiest of all, he that is named Moon-Hound; he shall be filled with the flesh of all those men that die, and he shall swallow the moon."
-The Gylfaginning, Snorri Sturluson

From my search history today...
-Gray wolf#Behavior
-Canis lupus
-Wolf reintroduction
-Eurasian wolf
-Arctic wolf
-Nominate subspecies
-Canis lupus albus
-Subspecies of Canis lupus
-Holarctic
-Tundra wolf
-Gray wolf#Subspeciation
-Gray wolf
-Decoction
-Angelica archangelica
-Garden Angelica
-Angelica
-Abortion in Norway
-Mentha pulegium
-Anise seed
-Acorus calamus
-Mugwort#Medieval Europe
-Mugwort
-Artemisia absinthium
-Wormwood
-Self-induced abortion
-Darkthrone#Change in direction: 2005.E2.80.93present
-Darkthrone
-Anti Cimex
-Nidhöggr
-Jex Thoth
-Dimmuborgir
-Dimmu borgir
-Emperor (band)
-Viking era
-Bog iron
-Gut
-Wire
-Spruce
-Whitewood
-Blackwood
-Acradenia euodiiformis
-Volcanic eruption
-Effusive eruption
-Volcano#Active
-Volcano#cite note-esa-10
-Volcano
-Caldera
-Wolfbrigade
-Tumuli
-Norse funeral
-Koelbjerg Woman
-Bog body
-Population genetics
-Spelt
-Porridge#Varieties
-Porridge
-Tiger#Social activity
-Tiger
-List of English terms of venery, by animal
-List of English terms of venery, by animal#cite note-sdzoo-1
-Tennessee Walking Horse
-Landrace
-Horse breed
-Fjord horse
-Kvann
-Sled
-Sled#Types of sleds
-Piophilidae
-Maggot
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Skin DIamond, Death, Resurrection, Time-Eating Spiders, Another Decimator

February 20, 2015, 2:00 pm
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Skin Diamond--2012 Urban X Award Female Performer of the Year, 2014 AVN Best Oral and dragonborn (blue) druid) lives around the corner 
So she came over to play her first game--she got Godzilla because, y'know,
dragonborn. 

We had a full house. 
She brought Heather and they kicked impressive ass--especially for first-
time players. Heather (tiefling paladin) killed a giant-de-aging-web-
shooting spider, and Skin turned into a spider with druid powers and tricked the
another one into running
off after a big juicy imaginary fly.

But then the decimator showed up... #druidlife

It killed Connie (left) after she tried to sneak past its death aura in an anti-magic shell
and rolled a 1. That is Connie's "Fuck I'm dead after 14 levels and 6 years" face.


Connie's drawing of her character Gypsillia, with her famous last words and pig helmet.

Luckily the party has some high level blonde clerics.
One had Resurrection prepared.
So, once the party got an hour's worth of peace and quiet to cast the spell, all good.
It gave Connie more time to draw.
This required casting Reverse Gravity on the decimator--which pretty much
aced it. 300 hit points don't help much when you are just floating 100'
off the ground for 10 rounds. Again. I gotta stop using that monster...
…also, must remember to go after the cleric first.
You'd think she'd be easier to kill.

Anyway, with the Decimator out of the way, next week the party's
free to bring in the Heart King's food-taster. Who's rumored to
be in that tower on the far end of the table...
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We're Not Playing D&D With The Escapist Ever Again

February 23, 2015, 11:52 am
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Hi everybody,

As many of you know, we've been working on making new episodes of our D&D documentary series "I Hit It With My Axe" for the Escapist website.

The first time around they gave us a shoestring budget and we figured we'd do it anyway for the fun of it, but this time they gave us a lot more and we were looking forward to doing the show exactly the way we wanted this time--lots of interviews, in-depth looks at the players and how we played games, and lots more jokes. We've been working with the Escapist and combing through the footage since the summer.

But then this week they hired this douche:
So, to put it simply: we refuse to work for the Escapist or its parent company any more.

Why? Well this is us:
Left to right, top to bottom:
Wizard, Druid, Wizard
Thief, Cleric, Wizard
DM, Thief, Druid
Thief, Ranger, Ranger






Without comparing anybody's struggle to anybody else's, you don't need a degree in social science to figure out that since one of the people in our group is a Jew, six are people of color, two were born handicapped and like someteen are bisexual women it would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we were, hypothetically, to make money for a company that would then give that money to an actively anti-semitic, racist, ableist, sexist or homophobic person. 

So the D&D With Porn Stars crew working with the Escapist under those conditions would be as hypocritical and self-defeating as supporting Think of the children!-anti-sex conservatives like Fred Hicks or Fox News. Here: we let you film us playing D&D, you make money, then take the money, buy a bullet, and shoot us each in the foot with it. 

Well, every monday I log on to Google Plus and run a videochat campaign where Scrap Princess plays an awesome wizard and we're happy to have her. We owe her the same protection we owe all our friends. I'm not gonna shoot Scrap (or Sarah or Ana or Natalie) in the foot just so we can have a TV show.*

The most cutting-edge game-designer in the early tabletop hobby and a major force in early video games--Jennell Jacquays--is trans, as well as some of the most innovative folks working today. Jennell wrote Dark Tower, did the arcade conversions for Pac-Man and designed the Quake levels. If the girls in our group get shit on by conservative gamers and conspiracy theorists just for showing up to play and telling trolls to fuck off--I can't imagine what she and other transfolk go through having to actually work in the business.

And, for what it's worth--and many of you may not understand--I'm a porn performer, and so is most of the rest of the group, and you can't get too far in the adult industry without realizing the hours that trans people like Sarina Valentina and Buck Angel put in on their sets are as real as the ones we put in on our sets and the stigma they face every day is real.

Maybe we'll put the new episodes of Axe out somewhere else, maybe not. The Escapist wants to give us a lot of money--but nothing is worth this compromise and any new gamers the show brings into the hobby are not worth the damage the Escapist does by telling people you can be openly transphobic and still get paid to talk about your dumb ideas.

Sometime maybe we'll get to see Stoya fight a manticore, but not today.

-Zak S.

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*Yes, I checked with Scrap before linking to her page here to make sure she was cool with this post. She was. I put her official response in the comments below this post if you want to read it.
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"Cool Cool" and Other Wisdom From The Escapist

February 24, 2015, 2:10 pm
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So yesterday we announced we weren't going to do our D&D show, I Hit It With My Axe, with The Escapist website anymore because they hired a transphobic dickhead.

So that's that. People in general seem to be really wondering What Is Going On At The Escapist? so I am going to do my best to say what I can tell you from the inside about how something this fucked up happens. And maybe under what circumstances it might happen again. This summary was written quickly--and poorly.

So who are these guys over there? We had meetings, some in person and we talked many times.

From the first phone call I got the impression I get is that these are very much people for whom The System Had Worked. Not necessarily the school system or the government system or any institution, but the broader dork version of the American dream where you are smart and ambitious and so eventually by hook or by crook you get what you are due--that had worked for them. "We're smart so we win." They had respect for technocratic smarts. They do like games, for what it's worth.

Yeah, there was a libertarian vibe which I was really not into, but I've heard Daily Show writers say they were libertarians, and that place seems alright. In the beginning I wasn't paying much attention. It was inside baseball video games and that's mostly pretty boring.

The most common comment you'd get when you said something outside their experience was "Cool cool". Mandy might do a column about feminism and gaming? You want this metal band to do the music? "Cool cool".

"Cool cool" was a way of saying "I don't know what you're talking about, but I like that you are thinking and therefore smart about something so I trust you, I am not going to think about this any more, go to it".

You could show them things and they would appreciate that a thing was being shown to them, but lacked curiosity about it. Like your dad when you talk about some band you liked covering a Hendrix song.

I think a lack of genuine curiosity is one of the most dangerous things a person can have on the internet.

Like the women on the show would go "We are getting a lot of hate on your forums and it's fucked up" and they'd go "Ok, we'll see what we can do" but, like, they didn't get it. They had a Keep The Talent Happy attitude but it took a while for it to sink in that this meant that Tons of their users were abusive assholes and this had to be dealt with constantly and you need someone on it. It seemed like they kinda overall did not have a lot of experience dealing with women with strong opinions who weren't in their same line of work.

What did they have a passion for and what could they talk about with passion? In the cases I saw--history. Particularly military history. I don't mean to suggest that they were crypto-fascists, more just that this was something the dudes could wrap their heads around: a clear foe, tactics and strategy, total victory, total defeat, Clausewitz, the greater technocrat wins.

The most common compliment you'd hear was "____ knows more about ____ than most people in the world so _____". The idea was: you divide things up, and you put an expert in charge of each thing. Which makes sense when you're fighting a war.

It reminded me of that Killing Joke line: Business, lawsuits, market forces - No philosophy courses

Here's the problem: the current argument the Escapist is embroiled in requires philosophical thought. And they don't have a guy for that.

I think they're not the only ones. People--especially dorks--like to set aside thinking about whether to do something and just set their minds to doing it. Just assume Bowser is an asshole and the Princess needs to get saved and get to work on the jumping and fireballs.

So to apply this to the current situation. So here's Brandon Morse talking about calling trans people what they wanna be called:
Here's his defense:

Now what you notice right off is this sounds like an evasion:

You can say whatever you like. People then can decide you're a dick based on that. Every human in the history of the planet has had that experience and is ok with it. When they go "You can't say xxxx" or "You shouldn't say xxxxx" what they mean is just a shorthand for "You say that and I will decide you're a dick and maybe take action based on that".

I don't think Morse thinks this is a dodge, though. I think he actually believes that. I think the emotional logic of "I do what I want!" is as far as he's thought about it.

Like so many people on the internet, he wants to get what he believes out of the way so he can get on to sickburning people for not believing it.

When I went to The Escapist about this dick, the response was basically pretty libertarian: we don't tell people what to think, his ideas are his own, the market will sort it out etc etc. They didn't have a defense of his ideas, just a defense of their right to slather them in money and slide them across the Internet.

The obvious question is like, Would you use the same logic to employ--ok, this is nerddom so we're not allowed to say a Nazi but fuck it, my dad was Jewish--a very polite Nazi?

My honest-to-god read on The Escapist is they're so libertarian it's a 30-70 shot they'd say something like "Well so long as they weren't advocating violence and were putting out great content, why not?" Not because they hate Jews, but because they just believe that hard in the Marketplace of Ideas.

Or maybe they'd go "Well that's different."

And I'd go "How?"

And at that point, no matter what they say textually--it'd be a desperate cover for the fact that we'd just crossed beyond their experience. Because they never thought "Ok, what if we set up rules at our company to make ourselves money harmlessly and it doesn't work and makes the world genuinely worse for people during our lifetime and theirs and you could've stopped it and didn't because greed?" Their whole lives there has literally been no reason to ask a question like that, so it's never seriously occurred to them.

Just like when you ask people how any 140-character life rule they just made up for themselves breaks down.

I'd like to pretend this is just The Escapist, or just libertarians, but it's really really not. It's a pattern you see over and over with people online when push comes to shove.

Most people don't actually have very clear rules about when to take action or what the words they're throwing around mean. They just have loyalties. That's why you can go "Brandon Morse is a bigot and so is that guy Ettin" and the same people will be like "Yeah Brandon Morse is a dick" and "Calling out Ettin in public like that for something he said months ago? Not cool, dude! You don't go starting drama like that."

Not unless it's, like, important.
What counts as important?
I'm not here to debate you.

(Why do people feel ok about saying that? Just so you know: I am always here to debate you. Ask me whatever.)

But if you're on the internet to announce ideas instead of talk about them, you end up basically using those ideas as a kind of faceless fuel to gather steam for a much larger enterprise and one with more certain rewards: fighting on behalf of them. Tactics, strategy, a clear foe.

And the impression I get is that even if they don't agree with Morse, they like that he's offensive about something even they don't approve of because it somehow in some weird realm proves the macho robustness of their libertarian ethic.

I think the level of Nope Not Gonna Think About It dismissiveness here is hard to wrap your head around if you don't share the mindset. Morse's take on trans issues has been consigned to a certain bin of Less Relevant and there it will stay.

Brandon Morse says something transphobic--4 people retweet it and 11 people favorite it--and that hugging fuels Brandon to say the next thing. And the next thing. That is The Job. That stuff beneath where people, like, question the ideas? Addressing that is not the proper work of Brandon Morse. Or the Escapist or anyone else who ever used the "I was just giving my opinion on my blog jeez isn't this a free country any more?" excuse. You are here to advertise ideas, not use them.

And Brandon makes money somehow, I guess, so it's ok--the same reason RPGnet won't just get rid of the ad server that keeps sending them sexist ads.  Dudes Need To Make Money.

Long ago someone at the Escapist decided that We Hire Whoever So Long As It Makes Us Bank--and, moreover, they decided that decision wasn't a secret, cowardly compromise, it was What They Believed and they were proud of it. So, cool--now they have something to Fight For. And the rest is just tactics.


p.s.

If anybody at The Escapist has a problem with what I just wrote:

Hey kids, buy my new D&D book! It's the fastest-selling and best-reviewed indie RPG book of the season!

...if I follow your logic, if I make even a dollar today, everything I wrote up there was totally justified. Because, like, money's the most important thing, right?
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Thirteen Ways Of Looking At The Terrible Thing You Just Made

March 2, 2015, 11:25 am
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When you say a thing is bad, you are usually using it as a shorthand for one of these things.

There are 13 of them.

So, instead of just saying "bad"…maybe say which one you mean next time?
They wanted it to stay up. It didn't.
(1) The Hindenberg

What you really mean:
It Fails to Do What The Author Wanted It To Do
This is a poorly crafted game. People say "broken" a lot here. This also covers things like typos and literal math errors (like the author expects one outcome but it inevitably produces another, things meant to be weak are strong, etc). It is the kind of "bad" where a designer (if they were honest) they'd agree they missed the mark.

Example:
Mythus
"I co-wrote Mythus with Gary….One of the first things I did when I started playing was to throw out half of the rules we wrote…."
--Dave Newton, co-author of Mythus)

What's a helpful thing to do? 
Show the author saying it does a thing, then demonstrate that it can't, under any circumstances, do that. Then you're right. After that you then might have to prove that that thing is important or outweighs all the good things about the game, but you have proved--at least--a failure of craftmanship.
They were lying
(2) The X-Ray Specs

What you really mean:
It Fails to Do What The Advertising Said It Would Do
People also call this "broken", too. This is a dishonestly made or poorly-tested product.

Example:
Seclusium of Orphone says you can make a Seclusium in half an hour (or an hour? Can't remember. Anyway:) You really can't. If you can I haven't heard anybody say you can. You might say Mythus is this, too, if you assume Dave and Gary knew they'd throw out half the rules they wrote before they played.

What's a helpful thing to do? 
Point out the advertising says one thing and demonstrate it's impossible to do that thing. If the advertising is ambiguous and you're railing against it, you're back at (10).



(3) The Left Handed Scissors

What you really mean:
It's relatively unpopular
Not very many people like it. Often conflated with (4).

Example: 
Torchbearer. All RPGs ever, really.

What's a helpful thing to do?
Explain why anyone should care whether a game is popular or not. I mean: what's wrong with left handed scissors? Left handed people need scissors, too.



(4) The New Coke

What you really mean:
The Thing Is Underperforming in Terms of Popularity
Less people than you'd expect like it, considering everything it had going for it in terms of advertising, licensing etc. More of a big deal than (3) above--but only if somebody claimed it was supposed to make money. If part of the designers' goal was to make lots of money and sell lots of copies (true in the case of Marvel Heroic, not true int he case of many DIY D&D products) then this is a bit of (1), as well.

Example:
Marvel Heroic RPG

What's a helpful thing to do?
Explain why anyone not working for the company should care whether a game is making as much money as somebody expected it to. Are you evaluating the ability of the designer to guess the public taste? Sometimes that's important, sometimes it isn't.
In case you had any doubt, Dave Sim's comics had
loooooong text pieces in the end telling you in the
first person that he's sexist.

(5) The Cerebus

What you really mean:
The Thing Accurately Reveals the Author Is A Douche
The words or images in the RPG reflect attitudes on the behalf of the author that only douchebags have. Games called racist or sexist are often this.

Frequently conflated with:
(6), (7), (11)

Example: Those dumb novelty RPGs people make that just make fun of other peoples' RPGs

What's a helpful thing to do?
Explain how there is no possible way anybody but a douchebag could've written what's on the page . The easiest way is to find some nonfiction piece the author wrote which echoes the bad ideas in the piece. The most tortured and fraught path is to assume that whatever the author depicts it's something they like--that's almost always wrong and very hard to prove. Ask yourself: are you guessing the author of Ghostbusters hates ghosts, or just assuming?

(6)  The Garfield

What you really mean:
The Author Chose To Do Less Than Their Best Work
A variation on 5. The particular douchebaggery in question being the author clearly could've done better. A lot of stereotypes are supported by this kind of bad because stereotypes are easy to write.

Example:
Ruins of Undermountain.

What's a helpful thing to do?
Prove the author knew a better way to do a thing--or grasped that finding it would've been useful--and then show how what's there isn't that.

(7) The Russian Roulette

What you really mean:
Harmful
Literally the world outside the game gets worse because of this game existing. Games called racist or sexist are often this.

Example:
DragonRaid (an '80s Christian D&D alternative)

What's a helpful thing to do?
Prove it with facts. Like DragonRaid for instance made money for some shitstain who had a problem with D&D on Christian grounds, plus maybe granted legitimacy to bigoted attacks on the RPGs that made a lot of peoples' relationship to their hobby (and parents) pretty traumatic when they were young. I'd probably have to do some more research to confirm all this if I really wanted to go after DragonRaid, plus prove that this wasn't balanced out by the fact that it probably introduced people to RPGs who otherwise would've had nothing because their parents were fundamentalists.

If a thing is, objectively, Russian Roulette and will causes harm and the author's knows it and agrees with that and puts it out anyway, you have a clear case of (5).
(8) The Offensive Thing

What you really mean:
The Thing Upsets You (When extreme: Triggering)
Games called racist or sexist are often this but it doesn't necessarily mean they are racist or sexist because culture offends people, period. Like any game with gay guys in it will offend someone but whoever it offends doesn't count. People taking offense usually implies they believe it's bad in some other way, too.

Frequently conflated or combined with:
(5), (7)

Example:
Blue Rose--the setting purports to be an egalitarian paradise but sweeps class issues completely under the rug. I'm offended. I have no evidence that the authors were classist (5) or just didn't think through egalitarianism very much (1) or that RPG people became any more classist because of it (7), however. It wasn't exactly a popular game (in which case (3) may have led to it not being (7)).

What's a helpful thing to do?
Make a case for whether the people who are offended are just offended alone (in which case who cares?) or whether the offense might indicate (7) or (5). Here's a thing: are people offended by two guys kissing actually not harmed even though they think they are or are they harmed but who cares because fuck them they suck?

(9) The Bad Influence

What you really mean:
It's A Harmful Influence On Other Games

Example:
Caves of Chaos, most other early adventure modules--companies realized that authors paid by the word could bulk out 5 pages of ideas to 15, 30, 100, or even 200 pages of text and people would buy it. Thus leading to a lot of (10) and arguably (2) and undeniably (6).

What's a helpful thing to do?
Point out how the tendency didn't exist until that thing came along and make a case the new tendency was some kind of bad.
(10) The Thing You Just Don't Like

What you really mean: The Thing Is Not To My Taste
Like the game is broccoli flavored and you hate broccoli.

Example:
Apocalypse World

What's a helpful thing to do?
Describe what kind of person you and/or your group are, what you like, and why that game doesn't do those things or doesn't fit. It's as much about you as it is about the game, acknowledge that, it'll help people who are like you and who aren't decide what to do with the game.

(11) OH GOD NOT ANOTHER...

What you really mean: Not To My Taste Plus It's Part Of A Whole Trend Of Things Not To My Taste (Aka "I'm so sick of these games like…")
You like pizza, this game is a hot dog, plus it seems like every ten seconds there's another hot dog.

Example:
Apocalypse World Engine-games

What's a helpful thing to do?
As (10) plus describe why you think anyone else should care that there are a lot of these games that you don't need to buy (if you are). Are you arguing (9)? Are you arguing that a critical mass of (11)s result in (7)? Are you just sort of irritated at not being a majority? If it helps: you play RPGs, you're not and never will be.

i.e. Are you saying "less of this, please" when the problem could be just as easily solved with "more of that, please"?
(12) The Game For Douchebags

What you really mean: Not To My Taste Plus It's Only To The Taste Of Shitty People
This is like (10) on overdrive: You don't like it and can't think even imagine a worthwhile human being enjoying this thing, nor have any such people come forward.

Example:
Bliss Stage. Maybe it does what it's supposed to and what it advertises and does it to the best of the author's ability and hurts no-one but what it's supposed to do doesn't seem to appeal to anyone who isn't a moron.

What's a helpful thing to do?
Describe what shitty characteristic of a person links to the shitty part of the game. If someone you like is into the game, then you have to revise your opinion. Like so even thought tons of terrible people like Monsterhearts, so does Shoepixie and I like Shoepixie and don't begrudge her entertainment, so I guess that game is ok.

(13) The Chew Toy

What you really mean: One or More Of The Above Plus the Author is a Douche
It has flaws that may or may not be objective. But the author is pretty objectively terrible.

Example: FATE

What's a helpful thing to do?
You can keep calling the game "bad" because the only person it's unfair to is the author and they're a douche. But if someone asks then you need to point out what made you decide the author's a douche.
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So this simplifies life. Most critiques are 10 dressed up with other stuff to make them seem more objective, like

The standard knock against White Wolf is a lot of mechanical (1) with either (10) ("I'm not a goth") or (2) ("I am a goth and it wasn't goth enough").

The 4venger attacks on Old School D&D were a lot of (1) and (2) with, at least on some sides, some (7) leading to (3).

etc.
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Amazons of the Devoured Land

March 4, 2015, 2:10 pm
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The Devoured Land

The Devoured Land is distant, unfathomed. They say the cleft peaks are the uneaten half left torn when the first Cannibal God bit the world.  Things there are as things were in the day before all days, when all that is now knew a common tongue and a young, smoother moon hung pearl-like in a black bed of stars yet unborn.

The ice is clearer, the wind sharper, every sound echoes, and all time unravels with a clear and open order. The ancient tolerance with which each contemporary thing regards and gnaws at the thing adjacent in our sensical and passive-aggressive world is here undone, and all struggle is known. The shadow falls across the rock, and the rock despises that. The oldest witch is here, the proudest stag, the most vicious wolf, the fattest hog and most lustful goat, the most avid crow, the most resentful of rats, and worms so lazy they have been here since "here" began.

There are trees that grew in first rain, and horses that have never seen a rider, stones cut by the hand of the first women and recut by thousands after, parasites grown from the guts of the first men, there are fortresses buried since the first battle. It's said time started and will end in this place.


The Amazons

Who says this? The Amazons. But then: they will say anything. To you, anyway. I know because you can read this and I wrote it and I wrote it in a language of cities and so if you can read it you are not one of them. So they will lie to you. Or tell you the truth. Whichever is more likely to frighten you away. If their knives, their war animals, their bacchanals, their cultured exotoxins, their enmity, cuisine, enigmatic gods, complex obstetrics, and internecine warfare have not frightened you first.

These are the daughters of the she-goat and they have chosen another path.

The Frostbitten Moons

The Amazons of the Frostbitten Moon are the major human presence in the area surrounding Mount Hellebor. They are known by the patterns of yellow pigment that stain their skins, made from the venom of a strain of cross adder--to which constant contact and/or low necromancy provides them a contact immunity. They wear jewelry cast from the frozen tears of their foes.

Their current concern is the infiltration of their territory by the Maggot Sisterhood and the Ulvenbrigad.

Jexthoth

Jexthoth is the currently elected warmistress of the Frostbitten Moons, her nails are long and poisonous. Guarded by elk-hunting dogs named Taunter and Taker, she also sleeps on a bed of black snakes which she claims are trained. They aren't really but since she's immune to their venom and you aren't, it kind of doesn't matter. Their leader is named Sermon and, aside from occasionally being thrown at people during raids, he leads a pampered life, with which he should not-, and cannot-, complain.


Cold Banner

The Cold Banner is a secret society within the Frostbitten Moon tribe that carries out targeted assassinations. Each member wears a mask of painted bone. Their esoteric ceremonies are more disturbing than any ritual conceived in the civilized world. 


The Maggot Sisterhood

The Maggot Sisters are burners of churches, slovenly and bold, and notable for both the trained warpigs that serve them and the intricate record of slain foes tattooed on their bodies. By decree of their mad queen, Rindr, they strike first at clerics, nuns, and members of holy orders, ignoring everything to bring them down. Her other eccentric edicts include a policy of stealing or burning wizard spell books and beheading enemies as soon as they fall, mid-battle, rather than leaving the unconscious to attend to nearby allies. If a Maggot Sister kills you, she makes sure she kills you.

Rindr

The mad queen is known for her appetites, as well as her obsession with hidden knowledge. She has led her tribe into the territory of the Frostbitten Moons in search of the entrance to the fabled Dim Fortress, from which she hopes to liberate the ancient wyrm, Nidhoggr, for reasons unknown.

The Ulvenbrigad

Compared to the poisonous Frostbitten Moons and the cleric-mobbing, decapitating Maggot Sisters, military historians and ethnographers might be tempted to consider the Ulvenbrigad the least dangerous of the major factions of Amazon in the Devoured Land if only it weren't for the trained wolves. And the necromancy. Any party of Ulvenbrigad will include at least one spellcaster and at least one wolf. In deference to Belphegor, Master of Beasts, and in exchange for concord with his creatures, the first attempted attack of any Ulvenbrigad sister will always be a bite. They are ruled by Kylesamara and Marakylesa, the lychewives, in consultation with the sacred bastard known as Choard.

They are currently pushing north into the territory of the Frostbitten Moons, hoping to take advantage of the chaos caused by whatever the Maggot Sisterhood has planned.

Kylesamara and Marakylesa

When a powerful witch wishes to extend her life beyond its natural span, she calls for two things: an immaculate, unwilling cleric and a bone saw. Witch and virgin are divided down the middle and the halves are fused to their mismatched twins with baleful arts and catgut. This produces two lychewives--one lyche-sinister one lyche-dexter.

Kylesa was the witch, and Mara the virgin. The Mara halves typically do nothing or scream and beg for  death--being totally physically subservient to their Kylesa halves, who have led the Ulvenbrigad for 400 years.

Choard

The sacred bastard is a wallowing malformed quarter-dead thing fathered on Kylesamara by a drunken king some 80 years ago. Its thrashings and inchoate utterances are interpreted as portents by the lychewives. Maybe they are?



The Thirteen

By far the least organized and most opportunistic of the Amazon clans in the Devoured Land, The Thirteen number only twenty five. More a gang than a clan, they used to number thirteen--but when Malicia Orgen found a way to synthesize a powerful hallucinogenic powder from the scatter-rag lichen, she was made leader--and membership nearly doubled.

They are currently spying on the Maggot Sisterhood, whose presence near Mount Hellebor is both provocative and mysterious.

Malicia Orgen

It is rumored that Orgen has eight eyes scattered across her body. It is certain she has one on her left palm, and an extensively informed curiosity about psychoactive plant life and the uses to which it can be put.
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My Favorite RPG Covers

March 7, 2015, 2:50 am
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Pretty sure this was originally commissioned for something else


(Carcosa)




This was originally the cover of a sci fi novel, I believe, so also cheating

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