A few quick updates that are all completely unrelated to each other. First, I've completely finished my review of the Dark Fantasy X ruleset document and ensured that it was completely de-OGLed and de-SRDed. Honestly, there was very little that I changed to accommodate that need; a few word changes that were more about having an abundance of caution than actual need, to be honest. I did, however, use it as an opportunity to re-edit, clean-up and fix a number of errors, mostly small. I also got rid of the Hardcore Mode stuff, since I'll never use it, and got rid of my original magic rules, replacing them with what had been the alternate system. I've uploaded the new versions to my Google Drive, but I'll probably have one more pass after a few days, and see if I missed any more errors before I print it and stick it in my report covers. Once I do that, I'll consider it a finished product and will look to other things to spend my time on. Quite honestly, I've tinkered with the thing too long as it is.
Secondly, I've noticed that my views have dropped precipitously recently. A couple of months ago, I'd have posts that had hundreds of views, over a thousand even in some cases. More recently, I'm lucky if I get more than 20-30 views per post. Now, I don't care about this; I'm doing this blog more as a personal hobby stream-of-conscious journal for my own benefit than for anyone else, but it is a curious fact nonetheless. It's possible that someone removed my link from their blog roll that was driving a lot of the traffic, and it's also possible that I've somehow come to the attention of some SJW or AI at Google that is deprioritizing my blog in search results. Like I said, I don't particularly care and I'm not going to do anything to chase views, or anything like that, but it is curious nonetheless, and I'm not sure what it means.
Thirdly, as I've started to get serious about reading again, I'm mostly turning to older books in my collection that I haven't read in a long time. I'm in the middle of The Halfling Gem by R. A. Salvatore; the third in the Icewind Dale Trilogy (not a very good name for it, actually, since really only the first book takes place in Icewind Dale). When I was laid off but had managed to secure plenty of interviews and offers and wasn't feeling very stressed and had more free time, I read the first two. After starting work, hitting the holidays, and my daughter's wedding, I was really busy, so I hadn't picked it up in a good six weeks, or maybe even two months. I've now picked it back up again and am determined to finish it by week's end. It's only 315 or so pages, and I'm already on page 80 or so after picking it back up (and mostly re-reading whatever sections I had read, since my bookmark fell out somewhere in there too.) These R. A. Salvatore novels are in some ways better than I remembered, but in some ways less so. I've long had a complicated relationship with D&D fiction, and this current re-read after many years is doing little to uncomplicate it.
I started reading these again in part because I also bought an omnibus of the prequel Dark Elf trilogy a number of months ago that I'll want to read too. I have it off my shelf and on my little reading table, along with a decent-sized pile of other older books. Most of those I've read before, but not in a very long time. Also included are a new copy of The Lord of the Rings that my daughter bought me, a really nice copy of Dracula (again, that my daughter bought me), the original Riftwar books by Raymond Feist (in the originally published format, not the "director's cut" that's been released more recently in newer printings. The editor actually improved the product, in my opinion, so I'm glad to have been able to track down copies to replace my own missing ones here.) Anyway, there's more, but I'm trying not to let the pile get out of hand; I don't need to keep pulling stuff off my shelf and putting it on the reading table when I can just read what's on the table and get stuff down off the shelf later as needed.
Probably one of the reasons I've thought of that is because while looking at my 5x5 material, of course I'm constantly reminded that MIND-WIZARDS OF THE DAEMON WASTES takes its title format from one of the Callisto novels, Mind Wizards of Callisto. I've only read the first three Calliso books, and Mind Wizards is the fifth, so all that I know about it is based on scanty summaries I've seen here and there. My own work won't borrow anything from it, since I know nothing about it, except for the label of Mind Wizards itself. My actual inspiration for what a Mind Wizard is is also blatantly ripped off, but from another source. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, it comes from Cathulo, of Robert E. Howard's Skull-face. There are eight books in total in the Callisto series, with (according to the executor of Carter's estate) an additional seven planned volumes that had at least working titles. Sometimes these pulpy titles are inspiration enough in their own right, as the Mind Wizards example shows. So, for the heckuvit, here's the full list of books—the first eight were published and the remaining seven were never even written, as near as I can tell.
- Jandar of Callisto (1972)
- Black Legion of Callisto (1972)
- Sky Pirates of Callisto (1973)
- Mad Empress of Callisto (1975)
- Mind Wizards of Callisto (1975)
- Lankar of Callisto (1975)
- Ylana of Callisto (1977)
- Renegade of Callisto (1978)
- Sword-Master of Callisto
- Xara of Callisto
- Warrior Girl of Callisto
- Ice Kingdom of Callisto
- Kaldar of Callisto
- Lost Prince of Callisto
- Zamara of Callisto
My fourth unrelated update is that I've spent a fair bit of time working on iconic characters for Dark Fantasy X. The iconics were an idea that I hadn't ever seen before until the release of 3e. They represented the artwork and names in the PHB that were iconic (of course) for the classes and races (many characters doing double duty there, of course.) Artwork throughout the entire run of 3e and 3.5 often used these same characters, as did many of the little italic fiction vignettes that were a few paragraphs long that started many chapters in subsequent game books. On top of that, these iconics even got their own tie-in novels, although I don't believe that they are considered very memorable or good. Still... they did exist, which is something. Paizo also came up with a series of iconic characters, mostly for illustration purposes, back when they had the Dungeon and Dragon Magazines under their belt. When they split from WotC and started the Golarion adventure paths, they came up with all new iconic characters, which they still use. These were not only used for illustrations and vignettes, but they also had pretty extensive backstories written for them, and they were also included in many of the earlier adventures as pre-generated characters that you could play with. I'm not aware of them appearing in any novels (although it wouldn't surprise me to find that they did) but I do know that they appear as characters in the radio plays of the adventure paths.
I came up with iconic characters just because I thought it was cool to have them and have recurring characters that I could refer to if I never needed any. (Curiously, the characters from my examples of play in the game itself are not these iconic characters. Oh, well.) They'll work well as possible fiction characters if I ever get off my butt and write any of the fiction I've been wanting to do for years. I also find them useful for the 5x5 episode, so I'm glad that I went to the trouble of creating them. See, it's really a 5x6, because I do the equivalent of a whole column devoted to character specific plot hooks. I've actually come up with most of the work for this column, and I'll be posting it later today or tomorrow. But I've decided that because I have plenty of iconic characters, I'm going to have a different 4-PC group for each of the three 5x5s. The CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER group is done, and is probably the most iconic, of first among equals, maybe. For each character, I'll have a bit of backstory and context, a Hero Forge image, and an iconic nemesis, mentor, or other important plot-hook-like NPC associated with them, as well as a plot hook. This plot hook will be pretty high level, and it may be a while before I figure out exactly how it would play out.
Of course, I don't intend to insist that anyone else play my iconic characters, so they're given more or example purposes rather than to offer material that I'd actually use. But look for that to show up very soon. Still, I expect mine to have a bit more depth than the Pathfinder ones, since there are actually hooks associated with each that will force character development moments. The Paizo characters actually got a fiction treatment in the form of the radio plays, but they were still pretty shallow because nothing about the plots was related in any form to the actual characters themselves.
Fifthly, Clown World proceeds apace. While loads of people in the D&D sphere are running around saying that the developers and designers at WotC are good people, and it's the "suits" who are responsible for the OGL change, this is nonsense. I've seen the twitter feeds of most of those designers and developers. They are spiteful, hateful, toxic, woke people with very few exceptions (Jeremy Crawford, for instance, actually seems to have a professional twitter feed, and only occasionally mentions off-hand when it's actually relevant that he's gay.) Also, I notice that even in WotC's "backpedal" not only do they not retract the "hateful speech" clause—which everyone who's not a woke zombie already knows means that anything white, traditional, or normal will be harassed and deplatformed—but they've doubled down on it. And I also notice that Paizo already has a similar clause in their own "open" license, and while I don't know (yet) of any case where Paizo has disallowed any product, it's clear that that's a sword of Damocles for anything that isn't in lockstep with their SJW death cult. Long before the OGL crap hit the fan, I was already seriously over both Paizo and WotC for their delusional, offensive, anti-white hatred and SJW dogma. They are terrible, evil people, and not just in a generic sense; they have literally declared that normalcy is their enemy and they want to do whatever they can to eliminate it and anyone who practices it. (As an aside, "Linda Codega", the "woman" who wrote these i09 and Gizmodo articles, is actually a delusional man pretending that if he only believes it hard enough, he can be a woman, or at least force everyone else to treat him like one. His twitter feed is full of hate, spite, anger, and paranoid delusions about normal people.
These people are not your friends. Maybe (and that's dubious, honestly) they've got your back on the OGL issue, including Paizo, Kobold Press, even certain employees of WotC, including whomever it is that's leaking this stuff to the media. But the scorpion does not change its nature, and it is not fitting or prudent that normal people should play the role of the frog, allow the scorpion on your back, and make yourself vulnerable to them while crossing the river. For those who are happy to dash immediately over to the ORC license and start playing Pathfinder in place of D&D, you might want to think about doing something else entirely.
Personally, I've been frustrated with both WotC and Paizo for years. I only ever looked at the Pathfinder game on their PRD, and I only bought the books that I bought for 1) the monster art, mostly, and 2) reading the adventure paths to loot and plunder any good ideas out of them. The same with any of the 4e and 5e products that I've acquired or read, often from the public library or on Scribd so I didn't have to buy them. I haven't played any version of any of these games since 3.5, and frankly, I was irritated with 3.5 by the time I was done.
Go your own way. Don't rely on any license. Don't rely on any grace that they "grant" to you, which they can (and have shown that they will) rescind as soon as it is no longer convenient for them. Don't build a livelihood on expecting it to be there. It's a foundation of sand. The essence of the hobby has always been DIY anyway. Gary Gygax famously said, "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." Whether he really said this or not, and in what context he did so, I don't know. But the sentiment is correct nonetheless. Not that you don't need rules to play the game, which a lot of midwits seem to think that means, but that you don't need TSR to publish official rules to play the game; creative Gamemasters can do all of this on their own, and they can do it better than some corporation. If it was true when Gary was at TSR, it's even more true when we're talking about the bloated mess of rules that's come out of Paizo and WotC, and the complete change into SJW dystopian fantasy that they're trying to promote, from traditional Eurocentric fantasy that Gary made the game famous on.
I've gone completely DIY for a long time, and although I started off using the OGL as a courtesy and a "just in case" I don't need to and I no longer do; especially since I'm not publishing my game anyway, it's just sitting out there in my personal Google Drive as a homebrew project. I know plenty of people will not want to do that, but there are so many options for how to play already, and so many things you can find in print or make up yourself, that you literally don't need anyone to ever publish anything ever again and you'd still have a lifetime of gaming material to use. And, again, whether or not Gary actually ever said that, that's certainly a "secret" that WotC isn't going to popularize anytime soon. Quite the opposite.
Sixthly, although I've run plenty of games before without having this stuff, my "elite" GM's kit is about done. Oh, I'll keep tinkering with it as I acquire bits of pieces of stuff over time, but I've got more than I need—or at least I will when my final delivery of something that I've wanted for a while comes in tomorrow sometime. The full kit includes:
- A vintage canvas backpack large enough to carry all my stuff. Keep in mind that I don't play with a battlemat or minis, although I do still have a battlemat and a number of minis tucked away somewhere here in the house. But I've moved on from a paradigm where I'd ever use them again.
- A homemade dice tray, using a shadowbox I bought at Michael's, some pleather, some Minwax wood stain and some runes created with a sharp-tipped roller ink pen. Because the shadowbox was a very soft wood like balsa or something like that, I didn't have to to anything but press down while writing them and the runes came off great.
- A whole ton of dice. Seriously; probably fifty sets, in several bags. I actually have one more set arriving tomorrow too, but I've got way more dice than I should ever need. I even have a bunch of sets of metal dice, which is why I needed a dice tray. Don't want to damage my kitchen table!
- A fancy dice cup to roll with, made of solid wood bound with brass.
- My pirate coins to use as Heroism Point tokens.
- A whole bunch of cool leather-bound journals to keep notes in. I even bought these cute little buggers to give one to each of my players to take notes in, although I'd keep the journals with my gaming stuff myself. I have bigger nicer ones for myself, including two that I bought at Spirit Halloween that are actually D&D branded journals. I know, I know... I haven't played actual D&D in years, and I'm not happy with the brand right now. But I still recognize the place that older D&D has in the hobby overall even so.
- This cool GM screen. I will need, however, to create inner panels with exactly the material I want to be able to look at on it. I spent some time this afternoon digging up my older homemade GM screen from years ago (just laminated cardstock with nice printouts, and taped together with clear packing tape. This new one is much nicer.)
- I actually need to buy this to be complete. I do have some portable options, but they are either too big and too entrenched in my set-up on my computer desk for me to want to move them, or they're older and not blue tooth enabled. It's pretty cheap; I should just pull the trigger already and buy it. Although I've mentioned it before, I should probably do a more dedicated post to music and the gaming session, and my favored philosophy. There's a lot of ideas that folks have out there, and I've got my philosophy too. I'll talk about pros and cons and why I settled on how I prefer to do things. In any case, I mostly run at my house, where having a portable speaker isn't as important anyway; I actually put my music on the stereo and let it play. But a blue tooth speaker near the table and my phone as a remote would be even better.
- Of course, I've got plenty of pens and pencils, but how cool would it be to have some really nice pencils in a nice pencil case for writing notes and stuff?
- I always want more dice, but I won't link to the sets on my Amazon wishlist, and I wouldn't mind buying another dice cup option just for the heckuvit, or if I wanted to let everyone at the table have their own cup.
- Something topical to drink out of? Is that too much? I haven't bought this yet, but one of these days I will...
- I don't have these yet because I just found them today, and they wouldn't be part of my kit anyway, because I'd wear them, not bring them in my bag, but did you know you can get Amazon brand t-shirts that have the actual Larry Elmore Basic and Expert covers from the BECMI set on them? Professor Dungeon Master may like to run with a button down shirt, tie, and tweed vest or jacket (although I suspect that that's his "costume" for his videos, not for his games) but I'd love to run the game wearing a t-shirt with shirts that have two of the most iconic D&D images on them. I'd love the vintage AD&D players handbook cover too, but it's monotone orange and black rather than full color, and frankly, I have more nostalgia for the Larry Elmore BECMI covers anyway. Which is weird; I've never played that edition. But seeing those boxes in the hobby store in the 80s—nothing screams D&D more to me. Sadly, they only have Basic and Expert. I'd have loved to at least get Companion too. That was always my favorite cover of the set.
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