The Scooby-gang in Dark Fantasy X (Lvl 1)

So, I promised that I'd make up Lvl 1 Scooby and the gang iconics as the "pseudo-PCs" that are meant to be used in the opening sequence. Sadly, they're meant to be killed in the opening sequence by being faced with an overwhelming force encounter right off the bat, and then we switch to the "real" PCs that the players would have. I'll also make Lvl 1 iconics to represent them, but that'll come later. 

These can also be used for any other type of iconic or pregen needs. I actually like the idea of having these on the back burner as potential replacements for PCs that die, too, although I might need to have a level 2 and even 3 version for them, depending on how long I want ot keep them on the hook that way. 

I rolled them in order, Fred, Daphne, Shaggy and Velma. My dice got hotter as I went on, and to keep parity for the iconics, I actually downplayed a few of the rolls for Velma and Shaggy. Velma rolled, on a d8, a 5, 6, 7 and 8! I used the 5, 6, and 7. (Of course, for stats, you then subtract 4 from each, so they were 1, 2, and 3 out of a 4 max for human characters.) I might do just a tiny bit of shuffling stuff around; Daphne in particular comes across as pretty fragile, given that I didn't roll high for her, and didn't assign a high roll to STR. On the other hand, maybe that's the way it should be. It's not like its an unlikely result when actually creating a PC. I have a feeling that if I were to give these options to a player who's PC just bit it, that she'd be the last choice, however. 

"Scube" was also represented by cat stats rather than dog stats, since dog stats are 2 HD. Not that Scube is a small dog, but I like the idea that he's young and more of a puppy at this stage, until Shaggy levels up high enough to get a 2 HD animal and can convert him to wolf stats. Don't get too hung up on the fact that I'm using a cat statistically to represent him, though. That doesn't mean that he's a 25 pound animal that's only a foot tall. Cats aren't that bad in combat for a routine animal. Maybe the stats are better at representing some kind of wildcat like a bobcat or lynx than your typical lazy housecat.

Anyway, here they are, complete with character sheet and Hero Forge image.

The Reptile Cult

To finish off my work (until I'm actually ready to play) on CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER, I need to draw a new campaign specific map, and make up some character sheets for my pregen pseudo-PCs as well as for the iconics that I'm proposing to go along with that campaign. I haven't done either, but I'm going to set both of those tasks aside for a moment, and talk a little bit about my look ahead to the next campaign, CULT OF UNDEATH. I already came up with some draft columns. I wasn't quite sure exactly what to do with what I had as column #4; "reptile cultists and monsters in the Eltdown Fens." I mean, that's OK, I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with any of the columns right now, but for that one I had a kind of vague idea of it being like one of Lovecraft's better stories, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (here for text, here for audio) except with lizardmen and a swamp instead of fishmen (Deep Ones) and the ocean. A town on the edge of the Fens instead of on the coast works well. I also had the idea that maybe I'd borrow a bit (although not much, because it's not actually thematically or tonally appropriate) from the third Age of Worms adventure, which has lizardmen attacking a fortress. Of course, the lizardmen are misunderstood and need to be rescued from the Kyuss cultists as much as the actual people need to be rescued from the lizardmen. I hate this whole "the monsters are just misunderstood people who are obvious stand-ins for the freaks in our society who pretend like they're oppressed because they freak people out, even though that's the whole point of their attention-whoring pose is to freak people out." Blegh. 

It struck me, of course, that if I'm talking about a reptile cult, maybe I should look at the classic AD&D module N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God. It's got at least as much good info to borrow as the Age of Worms adventure, especially from the first half with the investigation in town. The second half, the "dungeon", I have little interest in, although the idea of the "reptile god" being a reptilian monster with a domination/hypnotization special ability is a pretty good Lovecraftian idea. I don't think a "spirit naga" really quite does the trick, but I can think of something else. Maybe a blinded medusa who—because she's blinded—has the hypnotization/dominate ability instead of the petrification. She can still see, because of all the snake heads which all have eyes on her head, she just has a visual uniqueness and a swapped out special attack, and she'd still be powerful enough to be sufficiently scary for 2nd/3rd level characters.

I should reprint that mini as a new image without the base, and call it "Reptile Goddess" (because the name from the module is not really very cool anymore, I'm afraid) and consider it part of the CULT OF UNDEATH folder. 

Another peculiarity of the Innsmouth populace is the bizarre "Innsmouth look" which is meant to indicate their horrific hybridization and gradual transformation into Deep Ones, the fish people of Lovecraftian infamy. As it happens, I already have a few "snake cultists" among my minis. After making a handful of additional "reptile cultists" I think I'm in pretty good shape to do this for them too. This works in other genres too, of course. Tolkien kept talking about sinister swarthy southerners who looked eerily orc-like, for instance, foreshadowing the Uruk-hai of Saruman.

I don't want to go all out and actually create the column now ahead of schedule, but this is coming together, and I want to document for myself what I've got in mind, so I can review it when it is time to do the actual column, and figure out how to draw the PCs to Eltdown, or whatever little town I end up using as a kind of Orlane stand-in.

As you can see, the "reptile cult" look is mostly just a kind of general sinisterness, a hunched look, lizard eyes, and some greenish tints to their color scheme. Only one of them is advanced enough to look almost like a lizardman, although he really looks more like Reptile from Mortal Kombat at this point.

CYOA: #6 Your Code Name Is Jonah by Edward Packard

This was absolutely one of my favorite books in the series as a kid. As the title implies, this is Cold War espionage James Bond spy thriller stuff, and you—as the protagonist—are a special agent, and an adult working for SIG, an organization that Packard seems to have made up. The tone is surprisingly adult as well, including references to specific gun models, helicopter models, some pretty violent moments, and some musing here and there about the morality of patriotism at all cost, or even participating in the espionage business—although luckily not in a shallow hippy type of way. It's deep stuff... even if it only touches on it briefly. As the back cover implies, you may wonder if you can trust your own government to do the right thing, to say nothing of the Soviets. While the Cold War is obviously over, I never felt like having it be a key component of the story made it feel dated. Of course, that might be partly my perspective; having grown up all the way through High School with the Cold War in the backdrop of my life, I just kind of intuitively get it even if circumstances across the world have changed. What has maybe not aged quite as well; or more likely it just always was kind of hoaky to begin with and I only accepted it because I was a little kid, was the idea of chasing down a mysterious new humpback whale song and trying to decode it. The idea that the Americans and the Soviets would make this a brief hotspot in the Cold War to find out... what humpback whales are trying to say? is kinda silly. Packard does give at least a somewhat better explanation than that; the whales go to a secret under-ice cavern that both the Americans and Soviets think would make a great submarine base, but you don't necessarily find that out in every branch. Of course, by having this hinge on whales—and as I mentioned a few reviews or so back, "save the whales!" was definitely what passed for a meme in the pre-internet days of the 80s during my childhood—it introduces a conservationist theme too. This is also handled relatively well; it could have been blunt and Leftist without any nuance; a precursor to the cult-like movement of modern environmentalism. Instead, it isn't—it does recognize the needs of people without dismissing them as irrelevant to the needs of the whales, but searches for a solution that makes everyone happy. For what its worth, in many endings where you aren't killed by KGB agents, or drown in the ocean, the Russians and Americans come together to sign a new treaty where the whales are protected and neither country gets to have a new submarine base smack dab in their habitat. Like I said, the themes and tone, with the exception of the idea of Soviets and Americans fighting over access to whalesong tapes being kind of silly, is surprisingly mature and has aged significantly well as a result. This continues my evaluation and reinforces my conclusion that these early single digit volumes in the series written by Edward Packard in particular are among the most classic titles in the series. Some of the subsequent ones are just as good; like Packard's #14 The Forbidden Castle, or his #16 Survival At Sea, but they also come along with a "been there done that" feel by this time. (Curiously, I feel like Montgomery's classic titles are a bit later in number; his early stuff isn't as good. His first really good one is #13, The Abominable Snowman. Also curiously, for years I had it stuck in my head somehow that Montgomery had written this one, which of course is not correct.) And, of course, by time we start to get to the end of the teens, we start to get some new authors in the stable, like Richard Brightfield and Julius Goodman, who went on to be relatively prolific within the series.

As noted on my snapshot of the cover, the interior artist is—once again—Paul Grainger. In fact, he illustrated all of the books between 1-10, half of the teens, and many of the subsequent volumes as well. He's the most iconic CYOA illustrator, and to me, Paul Grainger illustrations are an important part of the proper "look and feel" of the series... although I recognize that some of the other artists do really good work as well, particularly Ralph Reese. Grainger illustrates the protagonist, as you can see, as an adult man with intense eyes, blond hair, a turtleneck sweater and tweed jacket, and many of the Russian agents are caricaturish thugs and criminals in appearance. There's a lot of interesting "action shots" among the illustrations, and I remember as a kid being particularly interested in finding paths that took me to certain illustrations, like the car falling off a cliff, your protagonist jumping out of an exploding car, the grappling hook snaking up to an attic window, etc. This book has some of Grainger's most exciting work, I think. My copy is a 6th printing from March 1981 and the cover price was $1.50. There are 114 pages, and according to the cover, 27 possible endings. Mine's in pretty good shape, but some of the spines of some of my books (including this one) are faded, and the red is now a pale peachish yellow. There were some printings that changed the trade dress on the spine, and rather than having the big Choose Your Own Adventure banner in a red balloon and a smaller title, they had the title and author in much bigger letters, without the CYOA banner at all. This seems to have only lasted for a brief time, though—my copy of Deadwood City is like that as well as my copy of Mystery of the Maya. My original copy of The Lost Jewels of Nabooti were like that too, but the one I bought to replace my missing original copy is the standard look instead.

We'll see as I do more of these if this still holds out, but for many years I'd say that this is definitely a contender, if not the leading contender, for my favorite book in the series. The serious tone, the action-based choices and the overall intensity of this one make it really quite good. Structurally, Packard hadn't yet settled upon doing the A-story and B-story approach; Jonah feels like there's one story, and you just explore different aspects of it depending on the choices you make, and how successful you are is also contingent upon your choices—but ultimately, there's only one secret of the whalesong, and only one real international outcome that's described. (I take that back; there's at least one detail that can change depending how which branch you're on; the identity of Double-Eye, your KGB rival, can be one of two different people.) You don't, if you make different choices, find out anything different about the whales, for instance. Because there's a single story with many avenues for exploring it, there's a lot of opportunity within the book to make one choice, and after exploring that branch for a bit, finding yourself exploring another branch that you had not chosen after all. This makes the book feel a bit longer, as an individual read-through that doesn't end badly or early might be extended by one of these loops. In fact, for years, I had a "preferred read-through" that I felt really extended it as long as I could hope for and saw some of my favorite illustrations and moments as I went through it, even though it didn't really have the greatest ending; I survived, but then it just kind of stopped with me washed up on a beach, waving to friendly whales, but not having found the whalesong tapes, the missing scientist, the underwater cavern, or otherwise been very successful at my mission. I know that there seem to have been pretty strict limits on pagecount, since all of these books are within a 110-120 or so page limit, but this kind of feels like we just stopped the story rather than finishing it, and I'd have liked to continue on. Some series, including one written by Packard like the Escape From Tenopia books, expanded on this fewer endings and more looping concept to its logical conclusion; they only had only one ending, and the challenge was finding the correct path that will eventually get you there; often with considerable repeat looping, like reading a maze or labyrinth. I'm not suggesting that I wish Your Code Name is Jonah was like this, but I do feel like many of the endings that are really just stops and incompletes would benefit from looping back into another branch that might take you to an actual ending, as opposed to the story just stopping.

One curious thing; there are two typos that I spotted. One of them isn't a big deal; the word computer is missing its first letter. One of them, however, is the page number associated with a choice, and it sends you to page 74 instead of 44 (which is easy enough to figure out if you're exploring all of the branches, because other pages give you the option to go there by making the same decision.) If you don't know that, though, you'll get a very strange and incoherent bad ending, where you're interviewing suspects of a letter theft in the White House and suddenly you're gunned down in a KGB safehouse.

Anyway, as is my style, let's explore the endings that I had while investigating the mystery of the kidnapped whale scientist.

• A Russian agent posing as a British agent gave away my position, and I was stopped from progressing, although unhurt. Mission botched.
• I was in a car wreck and had to recover; I guess I enjoyed some rest while someone else solved the case.
• It turned out that the mission was a test, and I passed it by doing what Obbard, the director, wanted to see me do. The agreement with the Russians happened in the background, and there's no more case to resolve.
• Or... in another ending, I failed the test and was fired.
• I rescued the missing scientist, DuMont, but was shot and killed myself.
• I caught Double-Eye, who was posing as a colleague.
• was killed by Double-eye, who was posing as a colleague.
• I rescued DuMont, took him to the President, and ended up on the news as a hero. Which I'm sure is meant to be a good ending, but seems like it ends my career as a secret agent.
• recovered the whalesong tape from the Russians and broke up the biggest enemy spy ring in the country.
• Got shot and killed when my bluff in the Russian safe house failed. Three separate times, actually.
• escaped a bad situation after rescuing DuMont by swimming away and getting picked up by a lobster boat. But the cold and shock made me sick, and I'm out of the action for weeks.
• me and another scientist tried to hand off a fake whalesong tape to some bad guys and we're shot dead.
• I fired at a bobbing life raft in an attempt to puncture it, but I missed twice. A gunman on the raft made a lucky shot and killed me.
• got run down in the water by a Russian submarine. Curiously, the full-page illustration for this is on the wrong page.
• I went with Obbard to see the President, and convinced him to sign a treaty with the Russians. Yay, me.
• after being kidnapped by Soviet thugs, I was killed for not cooperating.
• quit my job to become a marine biologist. 
• went out to see the whales, had my ship sunk by a Russian sub, but they told me and the Captain that our governments had made a treaty and we'd be returned shortly to America.
• while I was working one angle, the mission was resolved somewhere else and the Soviets and Americans made a treaty around the issue. This happened more than once, and in one, I'm spending two weeks on the beach on an impromptu vacation. I wish that when I met my objectives in my current job I was sent off for two weeks of vacation! Nice perk.
• successfully bluffed my way into the Soviet safehouse, and am credited for breaking up the biggest spy ring in the country. It's unclear if I kept the money that the Soviet agents gave me...
• had several endings where I was stranded out at sea off New England or even the Maritimes. In two of them, whales end up saving me, and in one I even consider quitting my job to work with whales. In another, I drown.

Next up is the classic space exploration adventure The Third Planet From Altair, which was an early favorite of mine, but which I suspect I won't look back on quite as fondly as I did when I was 9-10 years old. #22 Space Patrol is the more iconic space opera title; this one is more of a First Contact mission.

CYOA: #5 The Mystery of Chimney Rock by Edward Packard

We're on #5, and other than the first one, we haven't heard from concept creator Edward Packard yet, but we're about to go on a five book run of titles authored by him: The Mystery of Chimney Rock, a haunted house themed story, Your Code Name is Jonah, a spy themed one, The Third Planet from Altair, a space opera, Deadwood City, a western, and Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? a very classical whodunit style mystery with a house full of suspects. All five of them are considered real classics of the series; among the best. I admit that I hadn't read any of them recently (well, I just read Chimney Rock in preparation for this review), so we'll see if I think they hold up to both my own rose-colored memories and their reputation.

As mentioned, Chimney Rock is a haunted house themed story. In typical CYOA fashion, you're off visiting some extended family, in this case your two cousins Michael and Jane (who are sometimes referred to later as your friends; I suspect Packard forgot) doing things that you shouldn't be doing; in this case, daring each other to explore a spooky old house that's the subject of a bunch of local rumors, gossip and folklore. Chimney Rock has more structure than any of the stories we've read so far in the series; you meet recurring characters in several branches, like Mrs. Bigby, the old lady, or witch, or ghost, or whatever of the house, Lena her maid (who wears a French maid outfit, oo la la, although I expect that was just to signal clearly and bluntly that she was a maid, not that she's meant to be sexy. Sigh. I was too young when I first read this to appreciate the joke anyway. There's also Melissa, Mrs. Bigby's cat, or familiar, or alternate form, or whatever exactly she ends up being, according to your branch. There's Jervis, the unfriendly and menacing caretaker, who isn't necessarily actually as unfriendly as he appears, and in many branches, one of your cousins or the other brings the police along too. Gilliam Prem, the lawyer who dresses more like he's from the 1880s than the 1980s makes an appearance, who is a later recurring character in at least one other book that I remember, too.

The copyright on the book is 1979, but the first printing appears to be January 1980. My copy is a 14th printing from July 1982, and the price on the cover is $1.95, the most expensive so far. The ever wonderful Paul Grainger does the artwork, and the cover claims that there are 36 possible endings. My copy also has a stamp from my dad's book collection, if you remember when people used to stamp the inside covers of their books, and an inscription on the blurb page that says my younger brother gave the book to my sister. Somehow it's in my collection. Whoops! I guess if she ever wants it back, I can pick it up easily enough on Thriftbooks at a reasonable price. In today's money, of course—not for $1.95. Which, let me take just a moment here to comment on; while this is only two years later than my earlier books, the price has increased from $1.50 to $1.95, which is really quite a jump, especially for a 8-10 year old kid.

In many of the later volumes in the series, you end up splitting very early (usually on your first choice) into an A-story and a B-story that kind of both go their own way, often exploring two different facets of the theme of the title. There's a hint of that here; your first choice is either that you go into the house on a dare from our cousin Michael, or if you don't, your cousin Jane does instead, and you end up having to rescue her. However, this isn't quite as distinct an A-story and B-story, because both stories are extremely similar, and there is even the possibility of one leading you into branches of the other and vice versa. As also mentioned above, there is more structure, though—all of the branches offer similar explorations of the same theme. While in, for example, By Balloon to the Sahara, you might end up joining a submarine pirate crew who only hunts whalers, or you might end up dealing with aliens in a flying saucer in the desert, or you might be doing who knows what with desert tribesmen, all of the options here have to do with penetrating the mystery of a single haunted house and its surrounding grounds. While there are obviously many different things you can choose to do, the underlying premise is very similar in all branches. The one thing that does vary somewhat, however, is how true the supernatural rumors actually end up being. You could easily end up being the victim of a witch's curse, or you might end up discovering that Mrs. Bigsby was just an eccentric old lady who left everything in her will to her cat, and potentially you if you end up becoming the cat's new owner. 

While I say haunted house, it's not really a haunted house in the sense that there's ghosts around very often (unless Mrs. Bigby is one, which she might be.) Perhaps because I read it recently, I found that the premise reminded me quite a bit of Lovecraft's story "Rats in the Walls" which is also a ghost story that in most respects really isn't; its a story of interdimensional monsters (like Lovecraft's often are) and witchcraft and creepy animals with atypical behavior. This tighter focus and more consistent structure really is a huge part of why this book is considered one of the real classics. Along with, of course, the unusual theme; there really weren't very many other attempts at anything that even resembled a ghost story in the series, with a focus more on exotic adventure in most. 

The protagonists could be kids, but according to Grainger's illustrations, they look like teenagers of about 15-16 or so, which is probably appropriate given that the popular slasher flicks from the same era usually featured teenagers getting into trouble too. Even though this is way toned down from Friday the 13th or Halloween given that it's a kids book, I have to wonder if they didn't play at least a subtle subconscious influence on the book, or at least its illustrations.

If you're looking at checking out these old books, this is definitely one that I recommend; it's one of the true classics of the genre and series, and considered by many to be among the best in the run. As with many, it's been republished, sometimes under different trade dress, and the alternate title of The Curse of the Haunted Mansion. As always, I recommend getting it from the original Bantam run, with the original title, text, trade dress and artwork. This one has aged into a truly vintage classic.

I have to admit that when I was 10, the idea of exploring a haunted house wasn't as interesting to me as some of the more exotic adventure stories were. If my brother hadn't bought this as for my sister and it ended up in my hands somehow, I doubt I'd have bought it myself in its original run. I'm glad that I do have it, though. Of the five I've read so far in my modern re-read, it's by far been the best one, and I do appreciate ghost stories more than I did relative to space opera as a kid. That said, if you don't mind branching out into some of CYOA's competitor series, Twistaplot #9 Horrors of the Haunted Museum offers a similar theme and is even written by R. L. Stine before he got famous for writing the Goosebumps series, and Which Way Books #1 The Castle of No Return is another one from the same era that I remember reasonably fondly. No doubt there's more. 

Anyway, you get it. I like it, and it's aged on me over time, and I've come to appreciate it more. What are some of the things that happened to me while exploring Chimney Rock?

• I got turned permanently into a mouse. More than once, actually. I was also shrunk to the size of a mouse, and a couple times it's not clear if I became a mouse or just the size of one. At least two of those times, I was eaten by the black cat Melissa.
• I escaped the house, and ended the curse, according to the caretaker, because the old lady died. Not sure that I necessarily was responsible for that, though, although it beats dying by the curse. In true horror story fashion, just surviving reasonably intact is considered a pretty good ending.
• I ended the curse by walking out of the house with the cat, which was actually the old lady transformed into a cat, but since I took her out of the house, she was stuck for good as just a cat.
• I escaped, but poor Lena, the terrified maid, froze in place and dropped dead on the doorstep and didn't make it out with me.
• I got stuck in some kind of Sisyphus curse where I had to pick up pieces of a broken china cat, but there were always more pieces no matter how many I picked up. Amusingly, instead of saying The End like normal, this one says There Is No End.
• We all got out, even Lena, but the old lady was dead. The police called it a heart attack, but Lena knew better.
• I escaped the house, but unknown to me, a black cat as big as a T. rex followed me out.
• The cousins and I escaped, but the policeman that went in after us disappeared.
• In one where I actually didn't go inside, but tried to bust my cousin out from outside the house, Jane escaped out a window by jumping through the glass. The police say that they'd charge us with breaking and entering, but given that it's Chimney Rock, he's just glad we didn't permanently disappear.
• I escaped, and get read the riot act at the police station, but they end up letting me go because they've got bigger problems; my cousin Jane never came out of the house.
• I escaped, and Mrs. Bigley died. I again narrowly escaped prosecution, but given that Mrs. Bigley was supposed to already be dead anyway, I'm not quite sure I follow exactly. I visit again later, and the house has been torn down, but it's supposed to be creepy that the cat was never found (in my experience, if a cat doesn't want to be found in a big wooded estate, it isn't going to be.)
• I fell down the stairs trying to escape the house, and had a permanent scar on my head reminding me of my narrow brush with death.
• Mrs. Bigley was a ghost that wanted to be freed from her own curse. I managed it by shining the sunlight on her.
• Died in a basement cave-in
• Escaped the basement cave-in with Michael, but Jane somehow twisted her ankle, and a policeman told us to scram
• Locked in a closet which, I suppose, must have been airtight, because it only has a few hours of air in it.
• killed a policeman because he thought I was a ghost and died of a heart attack.
• broke out of Chimney Rock through a window, and got stitches and scars to always remind me of Chimney Rock.
• Got out with Jane, but got pneumonia, had to stay at my cousins longer, and would have died if not for antibiotics, I'm told.
• found Mrs. Bigley's husband as a stuffed mouse in a cupboard. Lost Jane.
• jumped out of a second story window and escaped with a broken arm for my trouble.
• escaped through a coal flume
• left, but some ghostly eyes and a voice told me to not even turn around and look again. Amusingly, I was given the option to do so anyway, and got turned to a page that just said Aaauuughthunk, except stretched out down the page.
• fell off the roof trying to escape through an upper window, and the police found my body in the grass later.
• left safely, with the cat who decided to follow me home.
• didn't keep the cat, but realized that if I had, I'd be the new heir of Chimney Rock, which I'm told is worth a quarter million. In 1979-1980, that was pretty darn expensive for a house.
• went home, the cat vanished somewhere and Chimney Rock was torn down and the plot of land to be host to new apartments
• escaped Mrs. Bigley from her bone room where the remains of all her victims are.
• died in the bone room
• Jane and Michael kept Melissa and inherited the quarter million dollar house
• I kept Melissa and inherited the quarter million dollar house

As I said, I didn't always love this one, because when I was 9-10 years old, I was much more interested in the space adventures and stuff like that. This one seemed a little quieter, and for a ghost story, was surprisingly lacking in ghosts. But I'm more mature now than I was 40 some odd years ago, and I appreciate what this one does much more than I did then. This book has actually aged significantly better than Montgomery's Space and Beyond, which I now consider one of the worst of the original run of adventures, even though thematically it seemed to be more up my alley. We'll see as I go through them, how I feel about the rest of this little Packard run I mentioned earlier. Next up is Your Code Name Is Jonah, a spy thriller that I always liked a lot, then Third Planet From Altair, a space exploration story that again I remember quite liking. Then Deadwood City, which as it sounds is a Western. I don't remember being terribly impressed by that one, but that's because it was a Western, which in 1981 or so when I read it would have seemed like an old-fashioned genre that I had little interest in. I've since come to appreciate Westerns considerably more, so I hope to like that one more now too. And finally, Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? which is a classic mystery where you solve a murder that takes place in a mansion from among a list of suspects who were all hanging around looking guilty. I mean, almost by the numbers mystery. I remember considering this one kind of a classic too, in part for its unique setting and the exploration of a genre that nobody else explored in any other volume. This batch, volumes 5-9, are really kind of the real core of the series as I remember it; the absolutely most classic. A few of the early teens also qualify, but by the later teens and early twenties, although I was still into them, and some of my favorite volumes will come from that range, the series felt established already, and we all knew what to expect. It was the novelty of the 1-9 or so that I really fell in love with at the right age.

CYOA: #4 Space And Beyond by R. A. Montgomery

In 1977, Star Wars came out and space opera jumped from an obscure genre that had been popular decades ago when Buster Crabbe made Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials to serious mainstream entertainment. In 1978, Battlestar Galactica was out, and in 1979 Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. On Memorial Day 1980, The Empire Strikes Back came out. 

R. A. Montgomery jumped into the trend with a very early entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure series, Space and Beyond which had its first printing (by Bantam, at least) in January 1980. My copy is a 6th printing from March 1981, and has a cover price of $1.50; and I bought it new. It's pretty old now; quite yellow, and somewhat brittle and stiff with age. The cover says that there are 44 possible endings, out of 117 pages. This book, along with Montgomery's Journey Under the Sea Packard's The Cave of Time and Terman's By Balloon to the Sahara were all published by Montgomery's Vermont Crossroad's Press before even the series was picked up by Bantam and became mainstream. It's a real vintage part of the series, and it... unfortunately, really shows.

It was one of the very first ones that I picked up when I discovered the series. I was drawn, as I was to the similar-themed Third Planet From Altair, by the space opera vibe of the book. However, I wouldn't really suggest that Space and Beyond delivers space opera. Rather, it delivers a bunch of really hoaky concepts set in outer space... sometimes. This is probably the most primitive and poorly written of all of the books that I've managed to still hang on to. Some of that is Montgomery being Montgomery. Some of it is the newness of the concept still, probably needing some polish before it became really good. 

Paul Grainger is the iconic illustrator once again, showing you a protagonist character who's a full grown adult with a big chin, a manly cut to his figure, and an odd bowl cut with black hair. Montgomery mentions that you're three days old, but because of the speed of your spacecraft, you've aged 18 years. OK. I always like Grainger's illustrations; they're whimsical and yet also sometimes dark and edgy, and always iconic. Like Montgomery's earlier outing in the series (#2 Journey Under the Sea) he gives you a protagonist that is an adult, not a kid and throws you into situations that seem adult-like. 

But the flaws in the writing are noticed almost immediately. You get very little exposition—not that you need much, but maybe a bit more context would be nice—before being asked to make a choice. In fact, on almost every page that doesn't have a full page illustration or an ending, you make a choice. You're making probably too many choices too quickly without having any time to digest the results of your choices.

Which, actually, seem to matter very little. You may make a choice to head for the planet Phonon or Zermacroyd on page 1, the planets of your father and mother respectively, but at no point in the book do you actually arrive at either destination, and in fact almost immediately you are put into situations where your goal of reaching your native planets are cast aside and forgotten. This makes all of those choices seem really quite arbitrary and pointless. In some cases, it's even worse than that; you'll go to a new page after making a choice, and it makes almost no reference to your choice at all, or even the situation that you were in. You might even feel like you've accidentally turned to the wrong page and ended up in some other plotline. 

While certainly a crippling flaw, this isn't even the books' worst. No, the biggest problem is Montgomery's hippy moralizing and philosophizing. Why is it that in the better part of a dozen branches do you somehow end up on earth criticizing modern culture, human nature, or noodling with idle thoughts of socialism and communal living? And that's only the times when you're on earth; there's at least another 100-150% more content where you do the same thing on some other world or scenario. It's funny that I used to think of Montgomery as the more "just throw gratuitous fun stuff in there" guy relative to Packard. That may yet turn out to be true as I continue this review of the series and remember stuff that I haven't read in decades, but holy cow is Montgomery's idle philosophizing just terrible in this book. It's almost the anti-space opera; instead of ever doing anything cool or fun, you just stop and think about how terrible human nature is and why can't people just all get along and stop polluting, or whatever other moral crusade Montgomery wants to hammer in the narrative?

I had kind of remembered the first flaw, but not the second until I re-read it. I'm pretty sure that this was a significant low point in the early wave of the series, or maybe even among all of the ones that I still own. I've you're looking to collect these, only the strong draw of nostalgia (and maybe the flipping through Grainger's evocative art) would make this one worth picking up. I don't recommend it.

Anyway, let's take stock of some of the bizarro-things that happened to me as the protagonist through the course of re-reading this one:

• made the incredibly stupid decision to land on the surface of a black hole and was treated to a neat Grainger illustration and simply the text that I was never heard from again.
• went through a black hole to find it was a strange hollow prism inside with a Luddite hippy commune that I settled down in
• joined a circus and no longer cared about trying to find dad's world
• inexplicably suddenly ceased to exist. I'm not even kidding. It's entirely possible that Montgomery was high when he wrote most of this book.
• tried to boost the signal of my SOS and somehow caused my own ship to blow up. lolwut
• ditched the trip to mom's world, joined the academy, graduated top of my class, and joined a 12 year exploration voyage on an experimental new ship
• sat with a strange hippy guru and project my mind back in time to the big bang
• escaped from a close encounter with a black hole, and resumed my journey to Phonon. This is the closest I actually ever got to arriving at either destination
• traveled back in time to a war on Mars, but I didn't do anything except muse about the nature of war, and how I am part of a new way; a way of sharing. Gag.
• traveled back in time to Olduvai Gorge and the Lucy skeleton, and decided to hang around meddling in the formation of early humanoid society. What a self-righteous wanker I am!
• travelled to Earth, got a brief lecture about pollution, wars and the energy crisis, and decided to join the United Nations to make it a better place. Retch.
• travelled back to Earth, and had vague reports of all kinds of catastrophes that were supposedly caused by nuclear explosions. I guess I was stuck there, though? Not even sure why this was the end, except that after the delivery of that nauseating pitch for globalist Babelism, Montgomery just had no idea what else to say.
• Blown up by the people of Lodzot. This ending was shown in the choices, so of course, nobody actually chose it unless you were just sick and tired of reading and wanted an excuse to bail out of the narrative, though.
• Became a military commander of the rocket force, but immediately second-guessed my choice because war = makes Montgomery sad.
• took command of some alien expedition and was treated to the most surreal, incoherent couple of paragraphs I've ever read before being told that the narrative was at an end without anything happening.
• tried to fly into the sun with an alien scientific expedition, with predictable consequences. Seriously; who would choose this except someone looking to make sure that they see all of the branches?
• traveled too fast and somehow just disappeared or disintegrated or something
• chose to travel to the future, but inexplicably spent a page discussing the past
• chose to travel to the past and got a paragraph of incoherent something or other. It didn't sound like a good ending, but I also have no idea what was happening other than that I didn't appear to be happy about it.
• traveled to the past, looked at space, and thought that it's beautiful
• got radiation sickness along with the population of a whole planet. Presumably, although I don't know for sure, I died of it.
• escaped a space war, and then I was back alone in space, the end. Hey, what about trying to find the planet I was originally looking for instead of just ending the narrative, Montgomery?
• Brokered a peace treaty between two warring factions that comically didn't even know what they were fighting about.
• led a military group in a retreat, but my opponent also retreated and everyone just stopped fighting. I presume this is the kind of guy who voted for Jimmy Carter, since he clearly believed that bad guys will just leave you alone if you suck up to them enough. Betas gonna beta, I guess.
• destroyed an alien craft that attacked me, but then second guessed if it was a good thing to blow it up because violence even in self defense makes Montgomery sad
• escaped a war only to have all of my energy give out and my civilization revert to stone age technology
• surrendered instead of retreating and then... the end? What happened? Dunno. That's too much trouble for Montgomery to figure out.
• had an ending that had no bearing on the choice that took me here, but had something to do with a space version of the UN declaring that instead of capitalism, we're all switching immediately to a system of sharing. Whatever that is supposed to mean.
• The other choice from the same branch had the space UN announce, with no reference to the choice I made, that energy all throughout the galaxy is draining like a battery. I'm on my own. Uh... Oookay?!
• became the leader of an alien expedition that I just discovered. For some reason, I didn't lead it to the planet that was my original goal!
• became the leader of yet another military revolution, complete with finger-wagging about militarism. Got captured, but the war went on.
• visited a planet that inexplicably turned into Earth although it had a different name earlier. Interviewed a student, but then he captured me and made me some kind of research experiment
• same thing, except this time it was a politician and I was a feather in his cap at rallies and stuff
• suddenly had a secret weapon that was never mentioned ever before, stopped time briefly during a fight, and when it restarted, everybody was a peaceful hippy.
• became a pirate. Immediately got captured and put in prison
• became a pirate. Was successful, but then money was outlawed, everybody became a communist, and for some reason there was no reason to pirate anymore. Huh?
• while on Earth, join a ship leaving because pollution and war has made the planet unlivable (again.) Implied that this may be the genesis of the ship that I was born on.
• Didn't like Earth. Montgomery gave me a brief lecture criticizing Earth, and then suggested that maybe I should just start over. Really, that actually happened.
• zapped a planet to dust to eliminate a plague
• while looking for a cure for a plague, only found a reference to human sacrifice (uh... what?!) and therefore, couldn't go through with it, so people are all still sick, and the narrative just stops.
• had two or three sentences about the hopelessness of getting people to care about pollution. Uh... what?
• tries to go to the galactic court about the plague on Axle. They decide not to interfere. Story stops.
• police do interfere on Axle. No cure. Now everyone has the plague and a police state. Prescient for 2020, I suppose, except presumably the plague was meant to be real in the narrative here, rather than just an overhyped version of the flu.
• apparently sitting out under the moons and drinking liquids is the cure for the plague. Amazing!

There are some good space opera themed books in this series, including Third Planet From Altair and Space Patrol, both of which were pretty early. There was another whole series called Star Challenge that had nothing BUT space opera titles, and every single one of them (at least the ones I had; I don't have every single title) were better than Space and Beyond. Like I said earlier, except for the nostalgic art, or to be a completionist collector, or maybe if you can get it cheap to be amused by how bad it is like a terrible b-movie, you should avoid this title.

Phase 5

So, in spite of my desires, my wife bought Antifa-Man and the Wasp: Commiemania tickets for us to see last night. We don't go very often on opening weekends, even to movies that we want to see, because we don't want to contribute to the all-important opening weekend metric, plus we get half price tickets on Tuesday evening. I would have missed it altogether, but my wife loves seeing movies and is desperate to be in denial of how bad Hollywood in general and Disney in particular are as companies. After we watched it, I allowed her to convince me to binge the Loki show too. Now I'm kind of tired.

In spite of all the hate and anger from the angry anti-Disney pundits, the reality is that neither Loki nor Ant-man were really that bad. In fact, although hardly even close to brilliant, they were relatively fun. Although I did notice the things that the anger-pundits pointed out, they were neither as egregious, or blatant as they claimed, and many of them (like heroic black action women who are as physically capable as any man among the extras and minor characters) we'll just have to deal with until the zeitgeist changes. Scott Lang wasn't made to be an idiot constantly upstaged by all the women around him. His daughter was kinda bratty, but not nearly as terrible a character as I'd been led to believe. She can't carry a movie, like Ant-man kinda can.

Don't get me wrong. In both, there were certainly woke elements. But neither were flat out propaganda films, like we have had in the past from Disney. Nothing was as on the nose as "You've got to do better, Senator" Falcon & the Winter Soldier. Nothing was as subtly insidious as The Batman.

If you don't want to see these movies at all, I hardly blame you. If you want to do like my wife and I did and see the movie while still managing to not really contribute to their "success" because of our timing and discount tickets, on the other hand, I hardly blame you for that either. They really aren't that bad. They're forgettable, mostly. They're not going to be classics. But I don't regret seeing them, and I'm actually a little excited about seeing the next season of Loki, believe it or not. Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd and Tom Hiddleston are sufficiently charismatic and have sufficient charisma to carry the current crop of stuff, and hopefully the next wave. That doesn't mean that anything in the pipeline other than the next season of Loki looks promising. Iron Heart? No way in hell. Anything Wakanda related? Absolutely not. For that matter, within Ant-man itself, anything with Janet, Hank, or Hope or Cassie? I'd rather give all of those characters a pass. Sylvie and Loki and Mobius, on the the other hand—they can actually carry something worth watching with their chemistry and charisma.

Jonathan Majors, or whatever his name is, as Kang? He's been getting a lot of praise from the critics as if he's the next big thing who's already the biggest big thing. I'd never heard of him at all. I have a mixed reaction to his casting and performance. For one thing, I don't think casting Kang as a fairly normal looking black guy with gigantic lips and huge spreading nose was the right look at all for the character. I also don't think that the character he portrayed had any resemblance to Kang as a character as I know him. That said, I've never thought Kang was really all that engaging of a character, and other than his blue face (with narrow lips and nose) with the lines on it, his look was neither memorable nor exciting. He's even more boring than Galactus, who's another character who's actually way cooler in many ways than he looks to be. 

Plus, were they trying to set up a joke where the "Council of Kangs" all gathers together and says "We wuz kangz?"

So, didn't look right, the character was all wrong, but the character wasn't all that exciting to begin with? Majors did, I'll admit, do a good job portraying the character that was written for him. That's certainly true. He wasn't as charismatic on screen as people are making him out to be, because he honestly came across as kind of goofy, though. Especially in the Loki show. His face is nearly as overly dramatically expressive as Jackie Chan's. And honestly, there was a slightly uncomfortable undercurrent every time I saw him of his casting being a result of some ESG wanker saying, "We've gotta cast a black guy here". That said, his performance showed some real talent. Just not sure that this was really the role for him or not.

And... well, multiverse alternate realities, parallel timelines, and time travel in general have never been my favorite plot devices, unless the point is to go see dinosaurs. 

All in all, I'd say that my reaction here has been a variety of "Yeah, OK, I can see what you're going for here, and you're actually trying to be entertaining, and you're trying to tamp down the wokeness to a level that it isn't literally pissing off your audience non-stop... but I suspect the damage has been done already." It's a little too late to suggest that, "OK, OK, we're going to tone down the wokeness (but not eliminate it entirely) and try to be fun again" after you've already gone all in on grooming little kids and telling white people how much they hate them. On top of that, I think that people are just a little over Marvel now. Few of the characters that the audience love (Paul Rudd and Tom Hiddleston's characters being a notable exceptions) are still around, and even when they are, they're saddled with often playing second fiddle to new characters that aren't likeable. The "Ant-man family" could all take a hike except for Ant-man himself, and nobody would miss any of them. The vague references to socialism and antifa from Hank and Cassie were designed to make them unlikeable, and poor Hope just has literally nothing to do, no chance to show any charisma or charm, no chance to even really do anything at all. And Janet comes across as an obnoxious, entitled princess who makes no apologies for 1) sleeping with other men while in the quantum realm, 2) not telling anybody anything about the quantum realm, and 3) generally being high-handed and self-important and insufferable. Sadly, I think the writers think it makes her look like a strong girlboss, an insufferable trope in its own right, but it doesn't; if anything, it highlights her weakness.

CYOA: #3 By Balloon to the Sahara by D. Terman

https://darkheritage.blogspot.com/2022/02/choose-your-own-adventure.html

Douglas Terman has a much more interesting biography than either Packard or Montgomery, having spent time in the military as a fighter pilot and as a sailor. He also wrote military novels, and helped open a Caribbean resort. His Wikipedia biography suggests that he met Montgomery and Packard (as well as other writers) while living in Vermont, and may have been asked to help write this one to meet demand as a favor to his friends. In any case, it's the only one he wrote, and it has a few quirks as such.

Terman wrote his choices a bit more wordy than either Packard or Montgomery, and put more emotion and description in them. Whereas Packard may write "If you choose to turn right, turn to page 61","If you choose to turn left, turn to page 78" Terman would have you flip a coin, and give you the following options: "If it's Heads, steer your rowing boat into the right-hand passageway and hope for the best on page 61.","Tails it is. Well, let's hope that the coin was really lucky. That rumbling of falling water sounds awfully close. You guide the boat into the left-hand passage and float downstream to page 78."

Terman also had a lot of bouncing back and forth. He makes individual read-throughs stretch out longer than the book might indicate (117 pages) by having multiple entry points into certain branches; there are, I believe, three different entry points to the choice of a red, white or green door in a cave, and several other branches have multiple entry points as well, lending the book a kind of looping feel. There are, according to the cover, 40 possible endings, which is quite a few for this kind of book, honestly, meaning that each read-through would normally be fairly short. However, because of the looping and multiple entry points into some of the same content, the individual read-throughs may be longer than you'd think, but repeat read-throughs will send you into a sense of deja vu, even if you make different choices.

I have a 1982 8th printing, and the cover price was $1.75. It was illustrated by the ever illustrious Paul Granger. He illustrated the second person "you" as a blond kid, who looks to be about 14-16 years old, but you are also with your two best friends Sarah and Peter, who look like twins with dark hair, and of course your little dog Harry. Again; the idea that young teenagers could hop in an old-fashioned "Around the World in 80s Days" style balloon in France and cross the Med to gallivant around north Africa is kind of absurd, but in kids adventure books, you don't think too hard about that kind of stuff. It is interesting that at almost every single moment, your two friends are with you. You really are a triple protagonist ensemble rather than a single protagonist like you are in most of these books.

The theme of the book isn't as tight or strict as some, either; while you start off in a balloon heading south across the Mediterranean from France, you may not even end up in the Sahara at all. There are some branches that have you simply out at sea doing stuff. In addition, the Sahara is built up as a place of impossible mystery and exotica. You've got secret government labs (who's government, I wonder? I guess as a kid I probably didn't think that), pirates, bandits, and quite a few aliens, and even an analog to Captain Nemo, as the submarine on the cover art hints at. 

Foolishly, this isn't one of the CYOAs that I kept from my childhood, and I had to buy it a few months ago on the used market. I remember thinking very fondly of this one and missing it quite a bit as one of the better titles, but now as an older, middle-aged man revisiting his childhood and nostalgia-baiting himself, I'm not so sure. I found that the breezy and playful writing style was kind of refreshing, but the bouncing around to unusual themes, like aliens who need salt, and pirates who only hunt whalers because of ideology less compelling than I guess I did when I was younger. I shouldn't be too hard on it; at my age and with my reading experience, none of these books is going to win me over with its brilliance, even those that honestly were my favorites, but somehow I'd built this one up in my mind as somewhat better than I thought it to be here. But because of that relativeness, maybe it's more fair to compare it to the other three titles in the series that I've reviewed recently: Cave of Time, Journey Under the Sea, and Space Vampire. And I suppose compared to all of those, it fairs fairly well. Under the Sea strays into Montgomery's weird hippy acid-trip Stanley Kubrick's end of 2001 weirdness too often, but when it's not, it's providing much more exciting red-blooded boy's adventure; shooting lasers at Atlantis, leading revolts against tyrant kings, getting eaten by giant fish, sharks or squid, etc. Cave of Time is a bit less trippy, but the idea of traveling in time, seeing dinosaurs, weird Brave New World futures, Medieval knights, the Thirteen Colonies, etc. is pretty exciting on its own. And Space Vampire also offers a more exciting sci-fi concept, right up my alley when I was a kid, but also sometimes messes it up with the "be safe and do what you're told" moralizing. Although I really like the gonzo sci-fi concepts, and always have, I do also appreciate the more down-to-earth types of adventure; like flying a hot air balloon over North Africa. Except that we get the gonzo sci-fi concepts anyway. And the idea of three friends and their dog just going on a road trip of sorts of exploration is kind of chill and cool without it having to be two-fisted action all of the time. Granted, in the late 70s and early 80s when these were written, they weren't watered down and mommified too much, but they weren't really all that into two-fisted action either. Half of the time, you're portrayed as a kid in a world of adults.

Come to think of it, there aren't really a lot of more down-to-earth concepts in my collection. There's probably some selection bias, but at the same time, I have (or at least had, in the case of #12) every single title between 1 and 25, and most of the rest of them up into the 30s, and then even a few beyond that. There's a haunted house story, a classic mystery, a spy thriller, and a western... but most of the rest of them either have a science fiction or fantasy-like concept, or heavily introduce those concepts anyway as major options within the book. 

Anyway, I read—I believe—every single page of the adventure in a read-through, and had some of the following endings happen to me:

• drowned in the Mediterranean, but if I didn't want that, I could go on and have someone come save me (odd structural way of doing things)
• all three of us drowned and then by implication were eaten by sharks
• drowned again when our raft smashed on a reef
• eaten by aliens
• became an infamous whale-saving pirate
• became a regretful whale-saving pirate who spent time in prison, but then wrote memoirs that prompted the governments of the world to save the whales (it's worth pointing out that save the whales was definitely what passed for a meme in my childhood.)
• became an unsuccessful whale-saving pirate who sank my own ship and everyone on it
• chopped down by desert nomads with swords
• somehow found my way into a rich sheik's private amusement park, and got sent back home to France
• got stuck in a cave with a mummy who wanted me to recount thousands of years of history to him because he's bored and lonely
• thrown in a dungeon where its implied I'm eaten by something with scary eyes that shine in the dark
• got worshipped by a primitive desert tribe because of Peter's flashlight, but I wonder what will happen when the batteries die...
• we get turned invisible by absent-minded mad scientists, but there's no reversing it. The three of us friends became invisible detectives
• figure out how to communicate with whales and I became a world-famous scientist
• buried under a snowy avalanche in the Atlas Mountains (which aren't exactly known for all of their snow, I might add...)
• found my doppelgangers in another balloon and got shot down by them to die screaming when I crashed to the ground
• found my doppelgangers in another balloon and shot them down instead.
• crossed the desert to the savannas beyond, and found some weird temple where they're expecting me and tell me the wonders of the universe.
• killed (BLATTED) by aliens
• got sentenced to ten years of filling out government forms, but died of boredom before I could serve out my sentence
• broke the valve on my balloon so that it continued to rise until I died of cold and asphyxiation
• settled down with some simple natives and enjoyed the simple life in a desert village
• almost drowned in a cave, but then escape at the last second
• got lost in the desert and died
• escaped the desert, had a movie made about our adventures, but secretly wished to return and have more adventure.
• discovered a lost city and became a famous explorer/archaeologist
• discovered a lost treasure, but then got trapped in a cave-in with the treasure. Whoops!
• found a stack of gold coins, but when I returned home, they'd turned into useless gray pebbles
• made three more friends who look human enough but are actually aliens, or people who have lived among aliens, or something. There's the promise that I can visit their planet when they finish growing up.
• trapped in a cage trap. Unless I decide that I want to let my dog rescue me, in which case it isn't really the end after all. Terman did this twice, as noted above.
• somehow fell from a cave passageway into outer space where I fell forever, I guess.
• discovered a gigantic freshwater lake underground, and brought news to all of the desert tribes.
• brokered a peace treaty between aliens and desert men, where they trade freshwater for salt. Became a famous negotiator for the UN.
• brokered the same peace treaty, but the aliens are a little disappointed not to go to war. They take us on a cruise around the solar system, but I have to travel coach, so it's uncomfortable and the food is terrible. (This one made me laugh.)
• My dog becomes a famous movie star, instead of me, and he buys a mansion and feeds me bones, because why not? He likes them so assumes that I must too.
• got buried in a cave-in
• joined a foreign legion analog, and became fabulously wealthy after writing a novel about my adventures
• enslaved to years of hard labor by the foreign legion
• escaped the desert and got funneled into what sounds like a lead-in to Journey Under the Sea. That was a fun touch.
• found a weird tribe of blue people in the mountains. They wouldn't let me leave, because they don't want to be found, but I liked living with them after all.

Overall, the tone of this book is a bit more playful and whimsical than some of the others. As a fan of red-blooded boys' adventure action stories, that wasn't necessarily what I was always in the mood for, but it's nice because it's a bit of a contrast to most of the other titles in the series. Revisiting all of the endings for the bullet-point list above warmed me up all over again on this title. It is a fun one. It may not be one of the real classics; I tend to like the ones with stronger themes as real classics, but it's one of the better ones nonetheless. And if nothing else, it's nice to see a one-and-done author put out an entry early on. Later, as the two main authors presumably struggled to keep up with demand, they invited some others to write books on a more regular basis, like Richard Brightfield or Julius Goodman, but at this point, they were still experimenting, and the series still had just a bit more of a garage band feel to it rather than a very regular and corporatized series, as it became later.

After this long break, maybe it's not fair to assume that I'll continue shortly to #4, but if I do, it's Space and Beyond by Montgomery, and has a lot of the Montgomeryisms you'd expect. This was in the wake of the initial Star Wars success, so the concept of space adventure was highly in demand, but because Montgomery wrote it, it was often very strange...

Some scattershot updates

I've got three things to talk about briefly, and all of them are relatively small, so I'll combine them in a single post, even though the topics have very little to do with each other.

First

I had said earlier, on the date it was released, that Depeche Mode's new song "Ghosts Again" was a contender for being a top tier DM song. I played it for my wife last weekend, and she said it was "Ok." Am I overvaluing it? Not sure. I'm kind of in a weird situation with Depeche Mode. After many years of being disappointed in their output—since Violator honestly, which I know is very popular, but which I thought was overall a step down from Music For the Masses and Black Celebration which I still consider the best DM albums. This trajectory of disappointment has fallen off precipitously. While Violator was a weird style with lots of hoaky steel guitar, and relatively fewer good songs (admittedly, the good songs are quite good, and "Enjoy the Silence" is the most iconic Depeche Mode song of all time) most later albums are considerably worse. Exciter, Spirit, and Delta Machine are the bottom tier albums. After this more extreme disappointment, I was probably in a position where even a halfway decent song was going to make me happy. But over time, how well it stands next to other top tier songs will be more apparent. It is possible that I've overvalued it because relative to what it could have been, it didn't disappoint me. But it's not going to fall from being a top tier contender to being part of the mediocre pack. It'll just not push over the top into the top tier, and will remain in the "second tier" if it is less than I found it initially. I'm still optimistic that with more time and more to compare it to, it'll remain a favorite. 

One of these days, I'll have to decide what I think the complete list of "top tier" songs is, and how many can actually qualify. By my count and utilizing the b-sides and other rarities, there's about 263 Depeche Mode songs currently, including "Ghosts Again." We don't have a tracklist for Memento Mori yet, so I don't know what that will expand to but somewhere between 270-275 most likely. If I consider that Depeche Mode's top tier output can't be more than about 5% of that, or about 13-14 songs. But that's when Memento Mori comes out; today, I have to keep it at 12-13. 

For my first pass, let's include: "Just Can't Get Enough", "Everything Counts", "If You Want" (yes, that's a very personal and esoteric choice), "Blasphemous Rumours", "Stripped", "But Not Tonight", "Never Let Me Down Again", "Behind the Wheel", "Enjoy the Silence", "Precious", "Shake the Disease", and "Wrong."

I could have maybe fit one or two more, but let's save them for the Second Tier; songs like "Oh Well", "Strangelove", "Somebody", "People Are People", "World Full of Nothing", "Personal Jesus", "Blue Dress", "The Sun & the Rainfall", "Leave in Silence", "New Life", "Photographic", "Sacred", and maybe "I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead."

Second

I think my latest post is probably as close as I need to get to preparing to run the lead-in to the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER game. There's some minor "director's commentary" or GM's notes I should add, just to explain how this works. I have three low-level human entries in the monsters and foes section. All of them are low level threats; a human commoner, a human warrior, and an elite warrior. Still only about a 2nd level character, or the equivalent of one, more or less. Throwing a few spells on him is sufficient. 

I probably don't need much more in terms of NPC stats that this for much of the entire run of CIW. I'm really starting to believe that the entirety of the campaign would have the PCs at only 1st and 2nd level. If I use the same characters for a second campaign, it would be 2nd and 3rd (CULT OF UNDEATH?) and if I use the same characters for MIND-WIZARDS OF THE DAEMON WASTE, which would be remarkable, that campaign would be 4th and 5th, and maybe just for the heckuvit, I'd let them do the last few sessions as 6th level. 

For those higher levels in the next campaigns, I probably want to have some more difficult threats, but I'm largely not too worried about them for quite a long time. I'm also not very concerned with replicating anything at all like CR matching; if monsters are difficult, then players should be prepared for that. In fact, they'll very specifically be ready for the servitor daemons, because they will have killed the pseudo-PCs already. If that doesn't inspire the players to find some kind of strategy to be successful more involved than "I attack it with my sword", then it's on them if they TPK early on.

Third

I don't believe much of what I hear in the Hasbro earnings report. I don't believe that the D&D Beyond cancellations haven't had a notable effect on earnings, or if they haven't, it's a timing issue and it'll hit in the next quarter. Maybe its true, but if so, that just suggests that D&D in general isn't a huge earner for WotC, nor does it have the potential to be. I also believe that Baldur's Gate 3 is going to underperform relative to their projections. It's been in early release for three years already; how many people really want to play it that haven't yet? Plus, the black woman main character having a lesbian kiss with a surprisingly kind of not  all that attractive elfin the trailer is a major turnoff. I don't think that the D&D audience, or the video game audience is all that woke, really. We'll see. Last of Us 2 doesn't seem to have been all that successful ,and got a lot of bad press. Not all of that was from the wokeness of the game, but a lot of it is.

I also don't think that the movie is going to be a big success. It has the look of a made-for-tv movie with an aging star, who only is cast to be made fun of anyway.

Screw you, D&D, and screw you WotC, and screw you Hasbro.

Chaos in Waychester First Sessions supplement

Master of the Pack's .... pack daemons.

DAEMON, SERVITOR: Defense: 17 Health Dice: 3d6 (12 health) AT: claws +3 (1d6) STR: +3, DEX: +0, MND: +0, SPD: +5, S: regenerate 1 health/minute unless attacked with silver weapons.

The pseudo-PCs won't have any silver weapons, of course. For that matter, neither will the regular PCs until AFTER it's over. But I'll let any attacks that go to -5 HPs call the daemons dead-dead even so.

The Master of the Pack himself will be a human veteran from the monster list with a few spells added.

MASTER OF THE PACK: Defense: 14 Health Dice: 3d6 (12 health) AT: weapon +3 (1d6), STR: +2, DEX: +2, MND: +2, SPD: +0

Cackling Breath of Moloch: A fan of flame shoots from caster’s mouth, doing 1 damage/caster level to all targets in the target area.

Withering Blast of the Lliogor: Creates a magical attack which automatically hits its target for 1d6+1 damage.

Breath of Cthulhu: Creatures within 20 foot cloud must succeed on a STR + level check or be unable to act for 1d4+1 minutes. Those unaffected must save every round they are within cloud.

Grip of the Bloodspawned: Allows the character to cling to walls and ceilings and crawl across them as easily as he can walk.

If for some reason you get involved in doing something non-combat with the Master of the Pack, you could also give him several non-combat spells, like Binding of the Poltergeist or Eyes of the Mi-go, etc.

The nuzzle-rat familiar with be represented by a cat with modified MND stats.

NUZZLE RAT: Defense: 12 Health Dice: 1d6 (4 health) AT: bite +1 (1d4) STR: -3, DEX: +4, MND: +2, SPD: +5, S: +3 to Subterfuge

Any additional people that the PCs might fight can just come off the basic human list.

HUMAN, BANDIT/SOLDIER: Defense: 12 Health Dice: 1d10 (6 health) AT: weapon +1 (1d6) STR: +2, DEX: +0, MND: +0 SPD: +0

The stats for a regular fighting man.

HUMAN, COMMON MAN: Defense: 11 Health Dice: 1d6 (4 health) AT: weapon +0 (1d6), STR: +0, DEX: +0, MND: +0, SPD: +0

The stats for a regular civilian.

HUMAN, VETERAN: Defense: 14 Health Dice: 3d6 (12 health) AT: weapon +3 (1d6), STR: +2, DEX: +2, MND: +2, SPD: +0

The stats for a more powerful fighting man, or captain.

The Third Cryptical Book of Hsan, which the Master of the Pack has, has the following stats:

Study Period: 1d6 days

Difficulty 19

MND damage: 1d3

Contains the following spells: Benevolence of Timar, Dormius Major, Sickly Illumination of Tuma, and Voice of the Ghost.

Yeah, those aren't combat spells, except for dormius major. But it's a great place to start if anyone wants to start collecting spells.

Upcoming Presidential election

I sometimes think that the Z-man's cynicism is a strength, but often a little bit of a good thing is good, while too much isn't anymore. I think one of the clear lessons of the Trump presidency is that the voters who represent normal Heritage Americans' interests are not quite so ridiculous as he claims them to be. Sometimes, especially when haunting the comments section of places like Breitbart, I'm not so sure, but Trump wasn't a popular president with normal people because he was likeable—although sometimes he was—but because of the issues and where he was willing to take the discussion on them. I also think that his equivalency analysis of Ron Desantis as Ted Cruz from a few years ago might be a facile and shallow interpretation that isn't really very useful. We'll see. Here's portions of today's post:

That leaves the Republicans to put on a show for us. Of course, we know Trump is running and is the favorite at the moment. Mike Pompeo lost a bunch of weight to look better on television, so he is running. John Bolton says he will run as the blow up the world candidate. Nikki Haley has thrown her panties in the ring. Tim Scott is now preparing to announce soon. Amusingly, the yesterday men of conservatism think Scott and Haley provide ideological diversity.

The guy everyone is waiting on is Ron DeSantis. He has put on a good show in Florida, especially with regards to the cultural stuff. He gave Disney the business over their grooming stuff, so he has won over a lot of normal people. He recently stepped in to halt the AP Afro history stuff that amounted to little more than an antiwhite lecture, so he is not just picking low hanging fruit. In another age, DeSantis would be the ideal candidate to lead the Republican ticket.

What we see shaping up is a repeat of the 2016 primary. You have a collection of zombies that have no business in politics, but they are acceptable to the people who actually run things. Then you have Trump and DeSantis, who will be filling the Ted Cruz role in this performance. In 2016, the party could have rallied early to Cruz and maybe had a shot at stopping Trump, but they waited too long. This time many see DeSantis as the key to preventing Trump for a third time.

The wild card is whether the party will fortify the process for democracy. Politics is monkey see, monkey do, so the Republican party leadership is no doubt working on a way to fortify the process for democracy. Joe Biden was made the nominee when the party stepped into to fix the process and get around all of those voters who thought anyone was better than a senile old man. You can be sure the most devious rats in the GOP have been working the problem for 2024.

For all his faults, Trump is the prohibitive favorite. Tim Scott may be diverse, but his trophy case is empty. He sold insurance for a few years until he signed on to be a political performer and he has spent the last three decades being the diverse Republican at various levels. Nikki Haley is a strong diverse female, who spent eight year criticizing the South as the governor of South Carolina. She will go over well in Silicon valley and New Delhi, but nowhere else.

The only plausible challenger to Trump is DeSantis, but boring people tend not to do well in national politics. That and the uniparty does not like him. He has the same trouble as Ted Cruz, in that he exists somewhere between the populist base of the party and the elitists leadership of the party. Leadership sees him as a potential threat, while the voters see him as a potential fink. Given his personality and Trump’s name recognition, it is a tough spot for DeSantis. [ed. I disagree here. I don't think Desantis has the same kind of fink vibe on him that Cruz had. He may yet develop it, but he doesn't as of yet.]

None of this matters all that much. If you look at the map you can see right away the problem for the Republicans. When you tick off all of the states that the democrats have fortified for democracy, they start with a lock on the election. For any Republican to win in 2024 it means flipping states like Pennsylvania that have already cast their votes for Joe Biden, whether the voters know it or not. Many do know it now, so they will not bother showing up to play make believe.

This election presents the people in charge with a dilemma. On the one hand, Trump losing in the primary would let them claim that the popular unrest has been quelled and it is back to the old ways. The trouble is, they have fortified the general election for democracy and there is no way to explain it. If DeSantis is selected as the nominee and loses to Joe Biden, who is going to think that is legitimate? Even the people at National Review will start to question the result.

On the other hand, if they install their dream ticket, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, the voters will be too busy laughing to bother voting. Worse yet, they will get smoked in the general election thus discrediting the diversity scheme. The New York Times will demand that the Republican Party disband because its voters are so racist, they would not vote for diversity against dementia. It would be a hilarious result, but it feels too ridiculous, even for the Republicans.

You can see the problem. Having a vegetable atop the Democratic ticket when the election has been fortified for democracy quickly leads to absurd results. Once they started down the road of fortifying elections for democracy, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the pretense of legitimacy. In the fullness of time, the robot historians will say that the great mistake was in not coopting Trump. Reckless fury led to reckless actions that have made elections into absurd spectacles.