Everyjoe Special Edition: Donald Trump's Enemies List

You know, I'm not a happy Trump fan; that is to say, not happy about being one. But I have to admit I've become a Trump fan.  It's really really hard not to when he has the entire GOP, Democrat and Media elites up in arms against him, and he keeps showing them up for what they are.

My conversion, which is more reluctant than Saul at Damascus, has given me a lot of insight into what is really the fundamental driving force behind Trump's success. It isn't racism, or xenophobia, or small hands, or any of the other things the Media or the GOP bosses try to paint it as.  Find out what it's really all about in my new Everyjoe article: The GOP, Media and Regressive Left Are Proving Trump's Case For Him.

As always, please share, like, tweet, and get it out there any way you can!


And stay tuned for another one in a couple of days!


RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Solitario Poker + H&H's Beverwyck

RPGPundit Interviews: Brett Bernstein

The following is an interview with Brett Bernstein, RPG author and publisher, owner of Precis Intermedia. I should note that Precis has published my own Lords of Olympus and Gnomemurdered RPGs, and that Brett Bernstein is also the Tech Admin at theRPGsite. I don't think that really affects the tone of my questions, though.

So, with that said, here we go:


Q: who are you?

Just another asshole.



Q: What did you do?!I didn't do nothing, man!


Q: What do you have to say for yourself??Fuck off!


Q: What's the best game you wrote yourself?  What's your favorite game that you didn't write yourself?

I'd have to say the upcoming Bloodshadows 3E, but since it's my own writing mixed with rewriting what came before, I guess it's a toss up between EarthAD.2 and Treasure Awaits!

I've asked this question, but I guess I never really thought about it myself. It's really hard to pick a favorite game that someone else wrote, because it depends on my mood. The new D&D is probably the best iteration in a long time. I had the most fun with Star Frontiers back in the day. Mutant Year Zero is pretty cool.

Q: How would you judge your success in the hobby at this point?

Better than some, worse than others. Success is hard to judge. I'm either happy with it or not. There's always room for improvement. I guess it comes down to whether I've done everything I can do - the answer to that is no. I need to do more.

Q:What makes EarthAD.2 or Treasure Awaits so good?

EarthAD's setting grips me. Now it may just be that I can envision it better because I wrote it, but it's fun to me. Treasure Awaits is what I consider the epitome of old school dungeon crawling without an old school set of rules.

Q: What would you say is your least favorite game you've actually played?

It's got to be Age of Rebellion. I can't remember what the different dice and symbols do. It really detracts from what could be a great game.

Q:  You haven't gotten on board with the OSR. Do you just not like D&D?

I don't have any ideas that would benefit from the OSR. I also haven't found the holy grail of OSR rules - I have a specific concept in mind, but it doesn't exist and I don't know how to make it exist.

Q:  Is there any situation where you could imagine yourself publishing an OSR game, either your own or one someone else wrote?

Absolutely, but it needs to feel right

Q: What would make it feel right?  Do you have some kind of process through which you decide what to write or what to publish?

A unique and exciting setting. A thorough but simple rules set. I also want a D6 or 2D6-based system that is fully compatible with standard OSR mechanics - that's my holy grail. 

Q: You have famously published me, in Gnomemurdered and Lords of Olympus. What was it like to work with me?

You were professional, competent, insightful, and not at all full of yourself. What a refreshing change :) Highly recommended.

Q:You're also the Tech Admin for theRPGsite, and the site would literally not be able to exist without you. Why would you put yourself through that?

See the first question.

Q: What do you think is the worst trend in the RPG hobby of the last few years?  On the whole do you think the hobby is getting better, or worse?

Kickstarter bothers me. It's basically a pre-order and a way for people to create higher-end products. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the fact that it is often promoted as an investment is an issue. An investment implies a return on the money invested. The only return you generally get is a product - which is really just a simple transaction. Call me old-fashioned, but if I'm investing in something, I want to see a monetary return. But hey, to each his own.

The hobby is definitely more open to new publishers, which is good. I've seen the various cliques and "movements" put off newcomers to the hobby, making them either give up or it simply leaves a bad taste in their mouths.

Q: I agree with your pet peeve about Kickstarter; it should really be understood as a pre-ordering system.  Other than that though, it's clearly useful (and has made a few people amounts of money that one would never expect).  Is there any scenario where you can imagine yourself doing a Kickstarter yourself?

I almost used kickstarter for my 8in1 Dice, but ultimately decided to go with a regular pre-order. Shipping is what stopped me, because it complicates matters, as does their cut. And by the time the dice shipped, the post office raised international rates, which was not good - this would have been worse if I had used kickstarter.

Q:  Is there any genre you haven't done an RPG out of yet, but would really want to?

Cyberpunk. Some people have also been asking for a cyberpunk genreDiversion game. I've had an idea for years. Two authors started the work, but the direction was not right. I finally know where I'm going with it. It's got some standard cyberpunk elements, but it goes off in a slightly different direction, with more emphasis on psychics, genetically engineered folk, and hacking. While there is augmented and higher reality, there is no artificial reality.

Q: You have generally not been a heavy contributor to either political topics (when they come up on the RPGPundit's Forum on theRPGsite, for example) or to debates about the fight against the pseudo-activist "Outrage Brigade" Swine and their attempts to censor and blacklist people in the hobby.  What would you say your politics are? And what is your position on the what the Swine's adoption of alleged 'social justice' causes has done in the hobby?

Let's just say that I'm an independent. I don't like any organized political group, although I do lean to the right. I don't like extremism on either side. I'm very tired of the fascism and bullying of the left. I want to see less government interference, balanced budgets, and common sense laws. And I want to see politicians who want to tackle important issues, not just the ones that the extremists are calling to solve (that have already been solved).

I'm all for natural social justice in the hobby. That is, every group plays the way they want without being told they are wrong or imposing their own values on others. That's the only social justice that matters. The so-called Swine's social justice is about imposing their own views on other people -- they are basically fascists, which stems from the left's ideologies of everyone having to be homogenous in their beliefs. If you think differently, you are a heretic in their religion. And that's what it is -- a religion to them. Now I could be very wrong, because I'm only going by what I read online. There may be other instances of these social justice warriors actually doing good. I'm open to the idea, but I haven't seen it.

Q: Do you think the hobby will be doing better or worse 10 years from now? And will you still be involved in it, and how?

I don't think it will change much in terms of better or worse. It will likely change in terms of logistics though - there may be new internal and/or online sales laws. We'll find out. I may get tired of it by then, but who knows.

---

That's a wrap. Thanks to Brett! 

And let us know what you think, and who else you might want to see interviewed!

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking:  Lorenzetti Oversize + H&H's Beverwyck

Pictures from Uruguay

Today, just some little snippets from the Cordon neighborhood, Montevideo:

This is just another example of an entry/courtyard of a typical 'reciclaje'; which is a very standard type of housing in this neighborhood.  It's old houses, mansions or tenements rebuilt and redesigned into condominium houses or apartments.  I think most of them are really very pretty and really different from either ordinary houses or standard block apartments.

Here's a fairly fancy local restaurant, one of a ridiculous amount of them.

Here's the menu:

That's zucchini soup, eggplant bruschetta, roast beef with potatoes a la rosemary, pumpkin risotto, and the fish of the day with a lentil salad.

It's also got some very picturesque tables:

Finally, today some pictures from El Carioca; the very best coffee store in the city!

It's the one truly professional coffee outfit in the entire country. They're mainly a wholesaler; only people in the know realize that you can knock on their door, and suddenly there's this amazing retail front store hidden away behind it.  They do their own roasting and have fantastic product.  And the owner will all but insist you sample his blends for free while you're there.


RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Quiete + Gawith's Commonwealth

Wild West Campaign Update

In today's adventure, the PCs found Dodge City in a state of panic, as news filtered in of the Indian army of Crazy Horse defeating the U.S. army sent to fight them.  The town is practically on lock-down, some local farmers were abandoning their homesteads, and the local wealthy ranchers were hiring guns to turn their little manors into fortresses.  Among these was the Bar-T, where one of the PCs (Miller) was hired in an illegal cattle-rustling operation already; another PC ("Kid" James Taylor) was hired for added security.

To make things worse, reports came in of a nearby farmstead that was apparently massacred by an Indian war-band.  The farmer, his wife, and two young children were killed, and the teenage daughter apparently taken by them.

The town got in an uproar and formed a posse of amateur locals.  But Sheriff Bassett wanted to check out the site of the attack first, and took a couple of the PCs with him (a deputy town marshal and the local bullpen foreman who Bassett felt was good in a pinch). Meanwhile, Wyatt Earp will lead the posse along, which includes the Long Branch's Mormon Faro Dealer.
Poor Morgan Earp is left behind, always the neglected younger brother, to watch the town (along with the obese and corrupt town Marshal, Larry Deger).

Sheriff Basset's group quickly finds out that the attack was only made to look like it was Indian.  There were real Indian arrows used, but they were Comanche, not Sioux or Cheyenne.

Meanwhile, Earp's posse cuts through the Bar-T ranch, where they pick up Miller, and end up realizing that the way the "indians" got through the ranch's increased security was through an inside man (spotted by the "Kid" claiming to be fleeing the ranch out of fear of the Indians).  Earp leaves Mormon Gambler in charge of the posse, with strict orders not to ride north of the Pawnee river, and heads with the "kid" after the inside man, thinking he's figured it all out.

Bassett's group catches up to the Posse around the river, and they realize (thanks to some of the PCs' tracking skills) that the "war band" did indeed double back. They wanted to make it look like they were heading north to join up with Crazy Horse, but were in fact heading back south, toward the Red Hills. Bassett realizes that these aren't Indians at all, but Comancheros, renegade outlaws of mixed American, Mexican and Indian extraction that trade in guns, whiskey and women with the Comanches.  He gets the Mormon Gambler to lead the Dodge Posse around in circles so they don't get in the way or get themselves killed, and rides off with the other three PCs present to hunt these men down before they can escape.

Earp and the Kid catch up to the Comancheros' inside man just south of Dodge, and chase him down; catching him when a bullet from Earp scares the rider's horse into bucking.  After a fairly violent interrogation at Earps' hands, the guy spills the beans; and Earp has the Kid take the prisoner back to Dodge while he rides on to try to apprehend the other seven Comancheros, possibly all on his own.

As it happens, Bassett's group and Earp catch up to the banditos on the same night, and manage to catch them mostly unawares. A couple of the outlaws take a bullet, but the girl is saved and the rest are captured for hanging.

The PCs get themselves a bit of fame and reputation, and share a bit of reward money for outstanding bounties on the prisoners.


The group deduced a few things from the adventure today:

1) Townspeople are mostly useless. You generally don't want to have amateurs on a posse as they can be more trouble than they're worth.

2)  Morgan Earp sure is an unlucky bastard.

He actually got to Dodge earlier than Wyatt, and got a lawman job there before Wyatt did. But Wyatt was already a known lawman from Wichita, and had way more presence, and pretty quickly Morgan was relegated to a distant second banana to his older brother.

3) The general theory was that in the adventure, Wyatt Earp took the Mormon Gambler with him because he knows he's destined to have a gambler as his best friend at some point, and just doesn't know which gambler it is yet.

4) Charlie Bassett, Wyatt Earp, and Larry Deger are three main archetypes of what the Western Lawman is all about.

Deger is basically this guy:

Neutral Evil. Corrupt, lazy, self-serving, mostly cowardly, he'd be charging protection money from every business in Dodge if Bassett didn't stop him.

Bassett is this guy:

Lawful Good. Does everything by the book. He'd rather put himself in danger than risk the townsfolk. He'll take his man alive if he can.  Trying to always do the right thing, because the badge means something.

And Wyatt Earp is, well, this guy:

Chaotic Good, at best. Will gladly bust a few heads to get his man.  Wears the badge more than anything because its the one thing he's good at, and he's amazing at it. But when the badge is on him, he is the law.


Stay tuned in a couple of weeks for more!

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking:  Lorenzetti Volcano + H&H's Beverwyck

10th Anniversary Classic Rant: Geek Hypocrisy

You know, the recent reposting of my old "Aang Ain't White" thread to the RPGPundit's Forum over on the theRPGsite and the responses that thread originally got and still gets now has got me thinking: geeks, like everyone else, have an urge to be in the "In Crowd". And it turns out that the "In Crowd" for the geeks are basically PC douchebags as much as anywhere else. 
And as a result of this, you will have cases of blatant hypocrisy; where whole herds of geeks will squawk on and on about how great something is because it fits the List of Geek-Approved Themes and how horrible something else is because it Reminds Them of Their Traumatic Childhood; at all times failing to catch the moral/ethical paradoxes that underlie this remarkably shallow thinking.

Take the Aang issue for starters: Geeks tend to be anti-racism, which is a wonderful thing. Thank goodness. But really, I think the reason that there is such a great emphasis on anti-racist sentiment in Geek culture is not because geeks are so wonderfully cosmopolitan (though they like to believe they are, most geeks I've met in person tend to actually carry lots of personal biases and petty prejudices), but because this falls under the larger spectrum of the major Geek Social Fallacy of "TOLERANCE". Geeks were picked on once, so now anything that seems to involve picking on or insulting anyone is BAD, except of course if you're picking on or insulting the guys that remind you of the jocks who beat you up in high school.
Add a dash of White Guilt, and you have the recipe for a major Hypocrisy among geeks: Geeks will rage against the decision to cast little white kids as the supposedly Asian characters from Avatar: the Last Airbender, but they will gush with feigned excitement (because they believe this is what they're supposed to do) at the proposition that some white male literary character be forced to either not be white or not be male anymore ("An Asian actor as Superman?? That would be awesome! No, I don't even have anyone in mind, it doesn't really matter who played him, does it? As long as Superman weren't white!").

Now what really got me writing on this today was the epidemic of threads and reviews on geek forums for the new movie, The Book of Eli. In case you haven't heard much about it, this is a post-apocalyptic action-adventure movie starring Denzel Washington. I think it originally caught the attention of geeks everywhere because stylistically the movie is supposed to look extremely similar to the Fallout series of computer games. And of course, "Fallout" is on the list of stuff Geeks are Supposed to Love, so any movie that looks like Fallout will automatically be the Most Awesome Movie of the Year, even if you don't know anything about it, until some other evidence comes to light that moves the film over the List of Things Geeks Aren't Supposed to Like.

And indeed, that's what happened. Because we have since found out that in the movie, Denzel's character is trying to protect a book. And he goes all kung-fu-machete on people's asses trying to save this book from an evil bad guy, because that bad guy also desperately wants that book. Because both of them are convinced that the secret teachings in that book will be able to transform post-apocalyptic civilization. The bad guy wants to use it for evil, and Eli wants to use it for good. 
And the kicker in the story is that the book... is the Bible!

Now, this is in many ways an extremely stupid movie. People have pointed out that the movie is set only 30 years after an apocalypse, and that the Bible is the most printed book in north america, so the idea that Eli could have the LAST bible left is pretty ridiculous. I don't think this is going to be a very intellectual film. I'm quite willing to believe that it will be full of lame Hollywood-preaching and Christian-conservatism.
But what bugs me is that legions of Geeks have collectively been shitting on the movie, since they found out that the book was the Bible, only because "Christianity" is on the Big List of stuff Geeks are Supposed to Hate. Its a mindless herd reaction, made all the more ironic and all the more annoying by the fact that the geeks who act this way also tend to loudly and proudly proclaim how they're different from the sheep that are the non-geek world, how being a geek makes them smarter than "normal people" and "different" and "special". Special as in "special ed.", sometimes. But "special" as in "actually applies critical reasoning and has a moral framework to one's aesthetic choices that avoids hypocritical behaviour"? Clearly not.

Geeks are no more rational or consistent in their choices as 99% of the rest of our society. They are driven by their Subculture's dogmas, and one of those dogmas is "Christianity is bad because my summer camp counselor was a Christian and he said I'd go to hell/forced me to pray/didn't let us play D&D/took away my comic book/touched me under my shorts".

It's asinine, intellectual immaturity of the worst kind, and allows for those with an agenda of pushing certain thought-control in the subculture (the Political Correctness apparatchiks, who of course also hate Christianity because it was a product of Western Civilization and Western Civilization is the ultimate evil to them) to promote their agenda and create a repressive environment.

Do you think all of this can't possibly be so? Well, go back four paragraphs, and re-read that section where I talk about Denzel's kung-fu-machete-awesomeness, and how he and the bad guy both want to use the Book for its Power. Now just imagine that the Book is some kind of Secret Lost Teaching of the Buddhist Sages, or something written by the Dalai Lama, or Tolkien or the Lost Gnostic Gospel of Dan Brown (because of course Gnosticism is ok, since it was the "geek" of the Christian world, given a massive "wedgie" by the rest of Christianity) or James Cameron's Script for Avatar, or any number of other things besides a Christian Holy Book. Suddenly, the premise shifts over to anywhere between "Acceptable if a Little Silly" to "Freaking Awesome" in most geeks minds, instead of "Burn It With Fire!" on account of said holy book being Christian. If I took a group of geeks and described the Book of Eli to them but I lied to them, saying that the Book was any number of things other than the Bible, it would suddenly be much better received, through little to do with what that "other book" might be, and everything to do with the fact that it would not be on the Forbidden List of Things That Are Bad in Geek Culture (Christianity being on there).

So don't get me wrong: there can be plenty of good, valid, well-thought out reasons for taking issue with Christianity. I can't stand most of modern Christianity. But that's not what geeks do. They have the most shallow, sophomoric, irrational, and often hypocritical ideas, about Christianity and a dozen other things, and let themselves be manipulated by a group of self-serving quasi-Marxist wankers to boot, all because of the Geek Herd Mentality.

The ultimate hypocrisy of all this being, of course, that Geeks look at the "conformism" of "normal society" and hate them for it. In fact, the Geek Culture is at least as conformist as any other, and made worse due to being blinded to this truth by the fact that one of the things on their List of Concepts to Conform To is that being a Geek means you're a hip non-conformist.

RPGPundit

(Originally Posted January 16, 2010)

My Favorite Emperors

Seriously, with people like this, how could anyone say that historical roleplaying is dull? How could you come up with stories like theirs (except maybe because you have heard their stories)?

"I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble"

"Only the Gods can know who will become a God"

"Fuck, I can feel myself becoming a God"

"Optimus"

"Little soul, wandering companion of my body, where will you go, numb pale and undefended, now that this joke we shared has ended?"

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which arm you today against the present."



RPGPundit

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RPGPundit Answers YOUR Questions: Old School and "New School"

So, I have an earlier blog entry where I've told my readers that they can post questions and/or requests for rant topics from me. I will periodically respond to any of these I think I can do a good job at answering.  So if you have something you want to ask me, or ask me to write about, go to that entry and put your question/request in the comments!

Today, we have a question from Omer G. Joel:  "I'd like to read your opinion about "new school" D&D, that is 3.5E/4E, as I got the impression (am I right?) that you are closer to the Old School in your tastes and views."



Thanks!  And yes, if you've read my blog, and especially if you've read my RPGs, it's no secret at all that I am an old-school gamer, and I always have been.

That doesn't mean that I have a dislike for new-school, just that I prefer Old-School a bit more. Well, OK, a LOT more.

I started playing D&D with B/X/C/M/I and 1st edition.  When 2nd came out in '89, I followed along with it.  As much of a bad reputation as it has today, in its early days and to a teenage gamer, it looked a lot like the old edition only with a few slight improvements. It incorporated a lot of stuff that a lot of us were already doing.

Shortly after, the Rules Cyclopedia had come out.  By that point I was just starting to get to the level of maturity where I realized that more rules doesn't automatically mean 'better game', and having always had a great liking for the old basic sets and for Mystara as a setting, I got totally hooked on the RC.  It would be my de-facto D&D ruleset for many years to come, though I still played 2e when someone else was running it.

Of course, over the next few years, TSR started to fall into the sinkhole of its destitution of good ideas and allowing White Wolf to steal the 'vanguard' of the hobby from them (and being completely reactive by just trying to steal style and concepts from them).  In other words, TSR started to suck.  For a period in the late 90s I pretty much stopped buying RPG products altogether, though I kept running games.  Eventually, the 'White Wolf' effect had so altered the hobby that it was becoming hard to even interact with players who hadn't fallen for the whole 'storytelling' bullshit and expecting that from their game experiences.   There was a while there where I was only running Amber, and then when the Amber campaign ended, there was a period of six months where I didn't play/run RPGs at all.  This was, by the way, the longest period of my entire life since starting in the hobby that I went without gaming.

Then 3e came along. And at first, it was great! People tend to forget just how strongly it was a repudiation of the "storytelling" pretentious White-Wolf nonsense.  The 3.0 DMG was all but explicit about that, calling it a "kick in the door" style of gaming, in contrast to the storytelling stuff.  It felt, in those very first couple of years, like it was a return not mechanically but conceptually to an old-school style.  I got back on the horse, and ended up running a D&D campaign.  I also got into the D20 system as a whole, running various other D20 campaigns (including a very long Star Wars campaign). But by around 2004 I was back to running D&D old-school (mechanically old school with the RC, I mean; I had always been running it with an old-school style), and I think my last D20 game (Star Wars) ended in 2008 or 2009.

So anyways, the thing is that there's more than one 'new school'.  Old-school is pretty definable; though you could divide it into games that are MECHANICALLY old-school and games that are old-school in style.  'New School' has several different forms: there was the 'new school' of 90s games, totally affected by White Wolf's style. There is the new-school of the 2000s, which started with 3e/D20, and which is pretty much continued in many games today, including 5e.  There's even the possibility of incorrectly defining the Forge/Storygames as yet another kind of 'new school', though in fact it is best defined as "a totally different hobby".  Even so, you can still say there are new-school games that are RPGs but have allowed themselves to be influenced by Forge/Storygame thinking in some way.

If you like Old-School, you can pretty much just say "I like old-school".  On the other hand, you can't just say "I like new-school" and take that to mean anything at all; the most likely reason to say "I like new-school" is if you're really making the statement that you don't like Old-school The second most-likely is as a statement to say that you like some games other than Old-school. New-school has no positive definition, it is only defined by what it isn't (old-school).

In terms of D&D, I think the differences between old-school and new-school (that is, what isn't old-school) became apparent over time with 3e, when it was obvious that things like the emphasis on balance, rules-mastery, and character-engineering gradually took away a lot of the old-school style from 3e and turned it into a very different thing.  Something that to me seems bloated and far less effective at immersion than OSR games.

4e obviously doesn't count, it was largely a forge-influenced hijacking of gaming, and failed miserably.

5e has tried to keep a lot of the better elements of 3e, but pushed even harder back toward the old-school style (I helped a little with this). It is simpler, less dependent on rules-mastery (that is, the player who has read every page of every D&D book is not going to have an insurmountably better-designed character than the one who hasn't), and leaves a lot more room for the GM to maneuver.    It isn't an old-school game, but it's design is very strongly old-school influenced (by myself, among others).

I liked 3e in its very nascent period. I like 5e today, and hope it won't eventually follow the same (flawed) evolution that 3e did.

There's a lot of other new-school games I like a lot.  Amber is obviously one of them, and Lords of Olympus is proof enough of that.  More recently, I've run a couple of different FATE-based games (Starblazer, and ICONS).  When you take out the more storygame-influenced junk from the system, FATE isn't bad at all.

RPGPundit

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