Charlie Hebdo

I was going to post a larger summary of my Golden Age Campaign's final adventure; but my heart's just not into it right now.

If you haven't yet go read this again.  Or share it.  It's suddenly become more relevant now than it was 24 hours ago when it was first published.


RPGPundit

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EveryJoe Tuesday

Today on "Riposte Modernism" over at EveryJoe, I talk about how Free Speech has to be the way to go, every time.  If you aren't arguing for Free Speech, you are arguing for Might Makes Right, and while in the short term that may let you think that you can champion or project certain vulnerable people, in the long term, Might Makes Right has never been very good for minorities.  So it's not about whether the cause is left wing or right wing, it's all about whether you're Han Solo or Darth Vader.


An update on yesterday's blog:  So, amusingly, the RPGnet mod-clique has decided to remove the "topic ban" on me and Zak, in reaction to Zak's image and my blog, specifically to go on to misrepresent us as "gamergaters".  Absurd of course, since I don't even play video games (and have been neutral on that whole kettle of fish), and Zak and Mandy have both been strongly anti-gamergate.

But there you are, the RPGnet Modclique have never, ever let the truth stop them from character assassination.


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Know Your Swine Day; Also, Aleena Isn't Kyle Rayner's Girlfriend, She's Roy Fokker

So, Zak (or Mandy?) made this as a guide to the people who were harassing them, but it pretty much works as a perfect reference chart to all the major Swine of the RPG hobby today, where they're found and what their connections are:

You'll note they're pretty incestuous: you have a lot of the same people running Something Awful (or that is, the RPG section of SA) and RPG.net.  What's missing here is Evil Hat's connection to the Storygames site/movement, and the fact that a shitload of the mods and star-posters of the in-crowd at rpg.net's tangency are either current or past employees of Onyx Path/White Wolf.

So literally, for the last 15 years or so, we've had the same gang of assholes, with only a few people falling away and a few others popping up, but all the same places, orgs, and big names, being responsible for all the shit and damage to the RPG hobby.

Meawhile, Tracy Hurley has been trying to post blog entries expressing her disapproval of SA's persecution of Mandy, specifically seeming to focus a lot on their language rather than their actual terrible intentions.  But whatever, as you see here, half of Hurley's friends ARE Something Awful.  Her words ring hollow and hypocritical, not just because she's now feigning concern for brutal attacks on a woman who she just a day or two ago claimed was little more than a puppet for a man (because no real woman could possibly have an opinion that differs from Hurley's, don't you know?), but because she has regularly worked with people like Ettin, Kai Tave, Tom Hatfield, etc. and isn't likely to be denouncing them any time soon.  So the whole thing is just a farce.

Oh, and I hadn't noticed that a couple of weeks before all this happened, she posted a blog entry about how the evil male patriarchy should stop trying to pit women against each other.  Again, two weeks before she attacked another woman and all but claimed (and Fred Hurley did claim) that said woman hadn't actually even written what she wrote.

What's even funnier is that only a few days before all this, she posted a blog entry trying to clarify her stance on why she thinks Aleena the Cleric is inappropriate art in an excessively sexual pose.
Note, this picture:

In it, she tries to pretend that she always knew what a tabard was, despite her original diatribe against Aleena making it very clear she had no idea, and thought that the "piece of cloth between aleena's legs" was put there to make her less masculine (rather than to make her look MORE like a Knight) and that it was meant to 'sexualize' her by drawing attention to her genital area.  Yeah, that's the level of fucked-up we're dealing with here.

In this past week's second try of explaining why Aleena is sexist and  evil, she claims that Aleena is nothing more than an example of "girlfriend in the refrigerator" syndrome, because in the classic Basic Set adventure she appears in she serves no purpose other than to die, and there's no way to save her.
It's true that there's no way to save her, but as usual Hurley is wrong about everything else.  Aleena isn't Kyle Rayner's passive love-interest brutally victimized and stuffed into a refrigerator; Aleena is Obi-Wan Kenobi.
She's not the love-interest that exists to tempt the hero into thinking he can have a normal life, only to die (and, in some cases, serve no literary purpose other than to be doomed to die) and thus make it clear that life for the hero can never be normal; she's the Mentor that pulls the hero further into adventure, teaches him how to be a hero, and then is killed by the villain so that the hero must now avenge his sensei and have the chance to become the even-greater champion he was always meant to be.  Aleena is Roy Fokker, John the Baptist, or Mister Miyagi (yeah, I know, Miyagi doesn't die, but you get the point).

This isn't about cheap pop-culture deconstruction, it's about mythology and archetype; but it's no surprise that Tracy Hurley can't get that.  If you're fetishistically obsessed with dinosaurs you'd find a reason to talk about dinosaurs at every opportunity; if you're terrified of worms then every piece of rice on the floor or speck of dust on the wall looks like a worm; and if you have been indoctrinated to assume a world where everything is just sexism (and you likely spent all your time in college studying critical theory rather than the classics), its no surprise you'll mistake a crucial part of the Hero's Journey for sexism and a radical step of a female character in a role historically played-by-males for a cheap shot at women.  And of course, people like Hurley by definition don't believe in the Hero's Journey, and hate it whenever they come across it, because it's all about the triumph of great individual rising above the world of the mundane and fulfilling their potential destiny, and rejects the collective (which is often even the villain of the story).  So it's no surprise that Hurley didn't figure out that Aleena the Cleric is radically progressive in yet another sense than just being a strong fully-dressed  fantasy heroine (head-to-fucking-toe here, but apparently even if you're covered in armor, you can have a fighting stance that's too "come hither" for Mz. Hurley) that no one in their right mind would have a problem with: in Aleena, there is also the choice to make a strong female character rather than a grizzled old man the Mentor figure for the rising Hero.

This explains a lot about Hurley, and about why she ultimately can never understand D&D.  She doesn't get the Hero's Journey, she'd despise it even if she did, she was 'educated' and ideologically indoctrinated in schools of thought that desperately seek to abolish it from our cultural consciousness; and D&D (and ultimately, all real Roleplaying Games) are ALL ABOUT the Hero's Journey.  These are the people who think they should get to be the shepherds and gatekeepers of this hobby, and decide for everyone else what the hobby should get to include and exclude, what should be blacklisted from rpg.now, which authors should never work again; and they don't comprehend and actively despise the very premise under which RPGs operate.

That's why the enemies' list above is important.  Look at it. Recognize those names. Understand when those people talk about RPGs, they are talking with utter contempt for everything that has made RPGs good.  Not sexism, but Myth, Archetype and Heroes. That's what they can never get, and would seek to destroy.

RPGPundit

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Golden Age Campaign: The End (Part I)

So, tonight we played the final session of the Golden Age campaign; those of you who have been tracking this game by the blog entries here know that we've been playing it for three or four years of fortnightly play.

Since in just a few hours I'm going to be running DCC, and need at least a little sleep in between, I can't give a full report at this time, but a full report will be forthcoming.  Suffice it to say for now everyone was quite satisfied with the final adventure (that went into overtime to cover everything), and that it put a cap on what had been a very decent campaign (if not with the highs, nor the lows, of my even longer Legion of Superheroes campaign that preceeded it).

Now, in two weeks that is, we'll be starting up a short campaign of Mongoose Traveller, something I've been meaning to run for quite a while.  I don't know if I'll be doing play reports of that one, but I'm sure I'll talk about it a least a little.

See you after my gaming weekend is over.

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RPGPundit Reviews: Dark Streets

This is the review of Dark Streets, a sourcebook and adventure for the Renaissance Deluxe RPG.  Its published by Cakebread & Walton (via Cubicle 7), and written by Peter Cakebread and Ken Walton.  The book is about 150 pages long, with a suitably-scary colour cover, and black and white interiors.  The quality of the design is very nice, with ample illustrations, but the real gem here is that there are some really marvelous maps: a spectacular two-page period map of mid-18th Century London, and some better detailed maps of the city center.  Really stunning!

Now, in December 2012 I did a mini-review of the PDF version of this book; at the time I'd been sent a free PDF of the book, but its my policy not to do reviews of PDFs.  Frequent readers of my (previous) blog will recall that I did a short review anyways, just because of how impressed I was.  So I suppose that the result of this review is a foregone conclusion.

There has been quite the Renaissance (pardon the double-pun there) of CoC-derived games and products in the last two years, something that I suspect has missed the radar of some gamers.  The Renaissance Deluxe "Clockwork & Cthulhu" game is just one of several, and it shows no sign of ending any time soon (with games like Achtung Cthulhu and Raiders of R'lyeh being among the others).  All of these have shown hallmarks of being really excellent products, thus far, not a clunker among them.  And, in the case of all of those working with BRP-derived rules, they're all basically compatible.  If you haven't been checking these developments out, you should, now.

Anyways, on to Dark Streets.  Perhaps some of you have seen the incredible TV series "City of Vice" (the one that featured the actor who played Emperor Palpatine as Henry Fielding); if you liked that series (and if you've never seen it, check it out!), you're going to love Dark Streets. 

To explain, the setting of the book is London in 1749.  With no professional police force, the famous author and magistrate Henry Fielding looked at the horrific crime and social conditions and felt he had to do something.  Along with the help of his brother (the future Sir) John Fielding (who was quite a remarkable human being, becoming a lawyer and later one of the greatest English lawmen in spite of being completely blind), he campaigned and obtained funds from Parliament to form the first proto-police force.  This organization came to be known as the "Bow Street Runners" and were dedicated to stamping out crime and vice in the dark streets of the city.

That much is history.  Where Dark Streets picks up on that is by introducing the idea of Georgian London's society being infested in both its slums and its decadent high-society by Cthuloid influences.  The PCs are members or allies of the Fielding's Bow Street Runners, and get caught up in investigating and combating the dark secrets of the city.

Its a great premise, but its in the execution that Dark Streets goes from being just a great idea to a truly magnificent product. 

One thing I for one find very important in any historical game, but especially in any historical Mythos game, is a wealth of setting detail. Its that mix of historical depth with the supernatural/occult terror of the Mythos that make for a perfect combination.  And Dark Streets provides this detail in spades. In the first chapter alone you get 51 pages worth of setting details about the city of London; this is ostensibly the "setting chapter" but of course there's further setting information pouring through every chapter of the book.  Even if someone had no interest at all in the Mythos, but wanted to run a straight-historical "Bow Street Runners" campaign, they'd have everything they need here.  You get loads of information; on the city in general, in a timeline from 1701-1749 (the present day of the setting; though a timeline of future events could have been quite useful), the aforementioned incredible period maps, information on the economy and prices, on the political situation (with details on the Georgian crown, the Jacobites, foreign policy, etc), information on fashion, art and culture, on religion (and the age of enlightenment), transportation, science and medicine, poverty and welfare services (scant as they are), entertainment (and a list of London newspapers and journals of the time), and of course significant information on crime and the law. On the latter note there is information about vice and immorality (the sex trade and the epidemic of gin-drinking being the great public concerns of the age), on societies for moral improvement, on what the law-keepers of the time were like before the Bow Street Runners came on the scene, on the law codes, trials and types of punishments (in the era of the "bloody code" and its brutal penalties), and finally on the Bow Street Runners themselves. 

But that's not all!  There's also a guide to the streets of London, an explanation of its various districts, information on the taverns and bawdy houses (as well as a Georgian sex-shoppe!), hellfire clubs, the docs, the river Thames itself, London Bridge, Westminster, Whitehall, St.James' Palace, Grub Street, the Foundling Hospital, Fleet and Newgate Prisons, the Gatehouse gaol, The Bow Street offices, and the Old Bailey.

Then you have biographies of prominent individuals in London: the Fielding brothers, the Duke of Newcastle and his brother, the Earl of Sandwich, Sir Francis Dashwood (of Hellfire Club fame), His Majesty King George III, their Highnesses the Princes Frederick and William, Sir John Gonson, James MacLain, the famed lover and magician Casanova, the famed composer George Handel, William Pitt, and about a dozen others. 
There's also details of a prominent street gang: the Black Boy Alley Gang; and the chapter closes with a gigantic two-page list of London Cant (slang). 

Again, one could very easily use this material alone for a ripping Historical Campaign. Its awesome. 

The second chapter, in contrast, is tiny at only 3 pages; it is "character creation", and of course the reason for this brevity is that Dark Streets is a supplement and not a full game.  This chapter just gives details on those modifications used in this supplement from the regular character creation process found in Renaissance Deluxe. Three new advanced skills are provided: Thieves' Cant, Lore (Cthulhu Mythos) and Lore (Occult).

The excellent resource material continues in chapter 3, "Factions", though the material in this chapter is framed around the structure of the faction rules from the Renaissance Deluxe RPG. Even so, should you not have that game you'd still find the material here useful, as it talks about the nature, motivations, allies, and enemies of different groups in the setting: gangs, guilds, The Association ("a secret society dedicated to the art of murder"), the Bow Street Runners, The Bullingdon Boys (a club of aristocrats who like to hunt the poor for sport), The Church of the Red Trinity (a cult of Nyarlathotep who's been tainting the Gin supply in London), the Cthulhu Cult, the Hellfire Club, the Jacobites, lawmen, the Mohocks (a gang of vicious libertines), the New Puritans, the Paradisians (an ecstasy cult), political radicals, the Society for the Reformation of Manners, the Tories, and the Whigs. 

Although as you can see there's some mythos material mixed in among the Factions chapter, we only really get to the hardcore Mythos stuff in chapter 4, "The Mythos". The chapter begins with an introductory delineation of Lovecraftian Themes, and then with information about what is known about the mythos in 1749, as well as setting details like the 1740s perspective on witchcraft (ie. they were over the whole 'witches are real' thing).  Then you get an outline of the basic Mythos spell categories with information about how they'd work. There's also details on three Mythos tomes; one is the old familiar Necronomicon, but the other two are novelties: "Discourses on Druidism", and Sir Isaac Newton's "Secrets of the Temple".

The bestiary presents some very commonly recognizable mythos creatures, but in some cases gives a new perspective on them relevant to the setting; the illustrations in this section are really fantastic as well.

After that we get to the section on Adventure seeds.  A total of 16 different seeds are provided, each of them provided with a summary, a description of the central "job", details of important events, locations, and some suggested NPCs (complete with statblocks!), related mythos themes, and further potential adventure hooks to follow the situation.  So this is more than just a couple of short sentences.  Instead, you have the information needed to set up a complete campaign. The final page of this section is a 2-page table of statblocks for typical generic NPCs (barmen, beadles, beggars, watchmen, doctors, laborers, gamblers, highwaymen, judges, merchants, military statblocks for redcoats and cavalry, etc).

The last 33 pages (plus a few extra pages at the end for sample PCs) are dedicated to a full-blown adventure to get things going: "Gin & St. Giles".  As is my typical policy, I'm going to avoid revealing any specific details about the adventure so as to assure that I don't end up spoiling it for anyone, but suffice it to say that its a rollicking ride with evil gin, street gangs, and a dark mythos cult. 

So yeah, there really isn't much to sum up here; if you like the sound of absolutely anything in this review, get Dark Streets.  You'll love it.  And while I don't want to disparage the Renaissance Deluxe system (I can't say much about it one way or the other, not having the game), but its very obvious to me that this book can just as easily be used by most any other BRP-derived game, or indeed by any other system you'd care to use (as the book itself has a very favorable proportion of setting-material vs. stat material).

RPGPundit

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(originally posted October 5, 2013)

New Year, Same Old Bullshit

So, the first big conflict between the pseudo-activists and actual women who game has already happened.  Well, it was a nice peaceful 24 hours or so we had there of conflict-free 2015..

Anyways, here's the thing, unlike the pseudo-activists I don't pretend to speak for women, so I'm going to let a woman, a feminist, and a gamer, do the talking.  Go, out for yourselves, and read Mandy Morbid's post about how she has been harassed and by who (hint: it's the pseudo-activists).

The above would be a very interesting read but not newsworthy in and of itself; but her post got an immediate response from Tracy Hurley, who believes that Aleena the Cleric (the Basic D&D Box Set heroine who is dressed in head-to-toe armor) is a little too sexy to be allowed, shooting back with this lovely piece of bullshit:

Note Fred Hurley's comment.  So the response these alleged "feminists" made to Mandy's post was to claim she didn't write it.

But it gets better! After catching flack for it, the Hurleys tried to hide the evidence, deleting Fred's comment.  AND, when people started posting the above image, Tracy Hurley started claiming she was going to "file a police report", because in her world, what happened to Mandy Morbid isn't harassment (because feminists she approves of can't possibly harass anyone, or harassing people she disagrees with doesn't actually constitute a wrong, take your pick), but people posting something Fred actually said and then tried to cover up apparent DOES constitute harassment!  Hilarious!

Note that she's since deleted her threats to go to the police; I look forward to her claim that reporting on her threats will also constitute harassment.

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Anyways, well done Mandy, you beat me to the punch: you got to piss off the Swine in 2015 before I could! I must be getting old.

RPGPundit

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2015 Goals: Personal and Gaming

I'm off today to hang out with The Wench at my friend Rafa's apartment, eat some great food, and watch some movies; but as yesterday was a retrospective on the past year, I figured today I should leave a few notes of my quasi-resolutions for the coming year:

(in no particular order)

-To finish writing Dark Albion: The Rose War, and see Dominique Crouzet through the process of publishing it.

-To run a successful short Traveller campaign (Mongoose edition).

-To figure out just what the hell I'm going to do after that.

-To keep considering this setting idea I have for a potential 5e campaign, in a classical sort of S&S setting where the major empire is not human but Dragonborn.

-To keep getting more Gonzo (if that's possible) with my DCC campaign

-To eventually start fitting all the setting stuff from my "Last Sun" DCC campaign into some kind of viable setting book.

-To continue thinking about the possibility of writing some kind of "modern occult RPG"

-To keep producing articles that are to the satisfaction of The Overlord over at EveryJoe.com

-And of course, to keep chuckling at the tears of impotent rage my haters cry every time I get more successful year after year.

RPGPundit

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