twenty three reviews

twenty three reviews


new star wars:

the last jedi was how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. as in global warming. the exact connection is hard to tease out - I saw a dark sun behind the real one, riding my bike back home. actually it was a streetlight


neo turf masters golfing:

not much a game vis a vis gamefeel, it’s not Wii Sports Golf, but everything is narrated with a high-energy sounds like vietnamese woman and there’s the pixilated golf swings. it’s weird to see the direct ancestor of Mausland which you had forgotten about


Wii Sports Golf

The putting on this is insane. you have to hold the controller pointing down, it turns out. even then there’s this tiny band of sensitivity out of the whole controller’s movement that responds aggressively and makes you fling the ball off the green. other than that, this game is one of my favorite friend negging tools, for one, but there’s also a demure peace.


infinite jest:

the real “killer diller”, IJ, is like the only book I can read as if it were TV. I remember reading this four years ago and thinking “wow, I bet this is the first step I’m going to take into a world of talented authors” and like, noooooo. You’re gonna give me a reading recommendation for Neal Stevenson and my face is gonna drip off my skull. IJ is the only book I can read as if it were TV


DCC rpg (dungeon crawl classics)

sadly, the most beautiful book in the OSR (old school revolution-- the renaissance of tabletop role playing games) is also bland and sad, much like stonehell (see below). there’s sort of no surprises left


Stonehell dungeon

both this and DCC are written in like, boring fantasy prose (I already said this)


Black Books

I mostly watch Bernard Black to try and pick up on the psychopathic funny bits he does, yelling at people as a sense of humor, most british comedy shows like the IT crowd with just a touch of funny prop use make for good shit


the nintendo switch

the design of the switch is innovative to the point that the vocabulary of video game controllers hasn’t caught up yet. It’s “joy-con”, not “controller”and when I say “hold the controller like this and press this button” it can be confusing especially since the buttons aren’t labelled to work on the individual joy-cons, those are referred to positionally, a position which only fits if you hold the device the right way anyway. ok, so the main screen thing is the “console”, right. if you have the joy-cons attached to the console its the “console, with joy-cons attached”. If the joy cons are separate, they are “separated joy cons” or “individual joy cons” or just “joy cons”, there’s a sort of abstraction that bleeds from the procedure and is associated with the visual language on screen telling you which buttons to press- it’s the “left” button, when you hold the joy con up? down? you hold it in the seperated fashion.


Doll Doll Doll

odd when horror actually gets to the point of changing you emotionally, especially when it’s music. I think something awful got transmitted to me about killing children, like maybe the “cool” side of it? I was like, oooh, child killing is edgy and cool, ya know, like as an edge-of-society thing. maybe society’s edge is somehow linked up to our inner sense of passion? hell ya


Doki Doki Literature Club

odd when horror actually gets to the point of changing you emotionally, especially when it’s like a pop culture sensation jump scare game, but like I knew cute high school people who’s cuteness was a facade for intense psychological disorders, and DDLC does not really derivate from real-ass problems people have. Maybe also something like the snare of anime portraiture does me every time, psychotherapy


Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy

I don’t have anything new to say, except the throughline of frustrating drops away pretty easily and then it is just a tight mouse-platforming game, which will still insist that it’s about frustration. Especially of interest is Bennet Foddy himself playing Getting Over It, and him making the exact frustrated sounds f/x live that he put in the game.


it’s also fucking funny


Devil Daggers

Nice to see perfect things, in every way perfect, that do not assume and merely create a relationship, a weld

welds your brain to your hands, is conspicuous in perfect, as: every part takes up the exact minimum of space, has nuance, tesseracts, makes sense, is obvious, every part refers to every other part: a game about shooting skulls in hell on a stone ledge where if you get hit once you die, high score is 8 minutes 13 seconds, the instant of your death your score is submitted to a complete & international scoreboard.

what occurs to me is that sense of interconnectedness, every part taking up the exact minimum spare to approriate and flair every other part, with an overall vision that complements the thing, is in itself a seamlessness reminiscent of hell. which says good things for hell, honestly


yoon-suin: 

reading this book and oestensibly running it made me realize I shouldn’t use content that I don’t love, in my tabletop rpg games, because then I’m gonna be playing pretend about some stuff I’m not that invested in, and it’s all gonna seem trite. Despite the relatively strong prose and composition, I basically have no interest in the orientalist adventuring the book offers. as with DCC above


vornheim:  there’s a sense I get with a couple lamentations of the flame princess products of a greater project condensed and foreshortened, like I feel vornheim with all the praise it gets is only 64 pages long and the cover which you’re supposed to roll dice onto is pretty small. I feel the same way with Veins of the Earth, maybe, and probably with A Red and Pleasant Land both which I dunno how much I trust the terrain generators thereof. It’s too hard for me to launch a ARAPL campaign what with the geography and endless rooms-- I always imagine some huge procedural generation engine to handle it all for me

I usually want game books to provide, in easy reference, original, interesting content, which is easy to use, not work-intensive.  this is not true for AR&PL and Veins where it’s a campaign book where you have to assemble all the pieces; you have to manage a caves environment/ endless alice-rooms environment (both: dramatically different from normal terrain & therefore possibly much harder to describe), and provide some sense of direction, maybe. Both books are kinda bestiaries with a set of environmental goals added, and some tools. for other people that’s maybe enough but for me it’s a challenge to put it all together. I’m doing it right now with Veins and although it’s rewarding it’s also a responsibility.

but back to vornheim, what is there ?really?to recommend vornheim? a lot of people use it. there’s 2 dungeons, some rules for moving about a city, a bunch of nouns in tables, and a more general sense of what vornehim is supposed to be like. but uh “complete city kit” I don’t know I just don’t know what’s it’s like or what you need or even if my players would like a really high-concept city environment to work with. I feel like you can fit everything you need to know on a page. But I do use the noun list ofdifferent professions.

I wish there was kinda a more comprehensive understanding for how to run this just like AR&PL where there’s soemthing vital that remains unsaid. too vague of a criticism. “advice on running a city” too Idk. that all being said I actually feel yoon-suiin is an easier zone to run


maze of the blue medusa:

I’m glad this book has eclipsed into a “rare book”, it’s pretty suited up to be, and like a monumental breath of life into rpgs in general for the most part

like the writing and concepts and very especially layout are enough to present a pristine experience reading this

running it: I don’t like how glossy the pages are and the room shapes are impossible to convey that easily, then again if I just drew them out it would have been fine

also this crowded megadungeon doesn’t always have great dungeon ecology sense relative to zak’s pictures, and patrick’s writing, and the walls and secret rooms, these not always making sense  (maybe a plus, it’s supposed to be crazy). like a witch is supposed to be guarding a room with trapped rune-doors, but there’s another untrapped door off to the side away from the witch so...


edmund’s letters to nabokov:

bought this in the vain attempt to acquire nabokov’s writing re: lenin, at least more than the “bucketfull of milk with a dead rat at the bottom” remark. you’d think I have to read nabokov’s novels to learn what he thinks about communism but I just want the straight dope, son. anyway this book is mostly discussion of russian grammar.

it’s odd I think how hard it is to narrow in on that perspective of like post wwii thought on communism, or at least solely in my google search era capabilities


the killing of a sacred deer:

playful like “the lobster” but has more of a fire under its butt and is a little less dreadful. a sacred deer? the fun part is Barry Keoghan talking like a loon to distressed Colin Farrel


cuphead: Dont deal with the devil

fleischer bros animations have attack cycles if you look

I beat the robot boss with a hack

when I first saw this game I thought the huge, cartoony animations would blow out the gamefeel but playing it it’s tight, tight tight. there’s a certain versimilitude you get when all the sprites are the right size and have good rhythm and it’s especially impressive seeing this in like, the most expansive visual/audio project I’ve ever seen in a video game


caveblazers:

procedural roguelike jumpy games, spelunky, programmer art’s junky, arrows for arrows wasd but the double jump’s funky, mild and wild the game takes a while and I never beat it, seeing as I run out of steam about 45% of the way in, bombarding everything with my super powerful bombs

suffice to say it’s a good game, it’s got perks,probably every design trend since 2000, pretty well done, used to play it all night


hearthstone:

good and fun and yeah I got to hone my mana curve down to one stone, managed to get up to the point of facing combo decks before I went “oh, right” and turned that shit off


breath of the wild:

a series of overlapping & shallow resources, which have the advantage of being easy to refill, and easy to deplete. your horse can die, your weapons explode, but you can make about an infinite amount of food, but if you get in combats where you lose most of your heart meter in one hit, you’ll burn through it all quickly. so you can pick up up fairies at the fairy fountain without it feeling overpowered; sure, they’ll prevent you from dying but you’ll keep on getting hit.

that being said combat does sort of taper off in difficulty reltaively, fast but there’s still that consistent ability for it to surprise you with a couple different enemy types, or all your damage dealing weapons have been depleted, and you just wanna kill this 300h bokobkin for some reason, or you find yourself with an ice spear pushing frozen dudes off cliffs because you don’t wanna wear and tear your normal weapons. at this point in my game all I’m using is elemental arrows because normal arrows are too expensive

but it turned around when I realized hearts weren’t the only thing, it was also _navigation_, which the game takes seriously enough! there’s a couple points where you’d wanna use photos, or the map-stamps, or you have to look at photos and try to match it up and that all encourages wandering around, and thus more random encounters, and therefore more grinding up against the various resource-meters

90% of the art for the game though is not good, but oddly what it is that’s nice is the landscapes, “wild”, huh, which are gradually ruined by giant red laser beams that shoot across the sky the more you complete the game


super mario oddessy

main point of this game is the ass-end opens up like 900 more stars which you’re supposed to collect, it’s all in reference to super mario 64 albeit again it’s that fucking linerarity problem, in sm64 it’s like they didn’t know what level design was exactly so they just experimented and in oddessy it’s all boss battles with rabbits

fuck this fucking game man the colors are so bad and they got that dumb loop of music and like ⅗ of the levels are swimming levels damb… but you can pose mario and take HD pictures and share them and Peach has a different classy outfit for each zone


the relentless picnic podcast

in their earlier days there was the thought, bc of the election, that there was some boundary that had been crossed, and these were exciting times. but things kinda picked up in this wonky-no-worky fashion, all the crisis bled out. I remember the “id queen” episode of this podcast and it became clear that there was this sort of fascism donald was the head of. a feeling of stunned wakefulness in the company of learned friends. but then it kinda drifted off, like everyone did, there wasn’t something so super-insightful as you’d think there’d been, at least, not practically; I’m just worried/notworried/worried


la decimma vittima

the conception of sci fi maybe used to be philosophical and cooly so. what changed it I propse was an obsessive attention to detail, or any kind of fixation on reality. but really reality happens when you let go, when the guidance of things is allowed to exist and not hammered down; you can compare la decimma vittima to the star war prequels, or star trek original to the rest of star trek


overall conclusions: kiling children and satanic material has more to do with inner wellness, RPGS: pick two: [easy to run, good original content I want to run, consistent internal sense], the switch doesn’t have any good games, ultimately a life of pursuit of game-objects is unsatisfying and wears down your eyes

veins of the earth: roads

veins of the earth: what does a city looklike, anyway.

these are all tunnels.

the #1 rule is there is no visibility.

most cities have the thing where you can see them from afar. Well there's no sightlines in the veins. that being said there are many other signs, as much as you'd expect to see driving up to a city: institutions, travelers, smaller hubs, and most importantly, roads.

here's a question: what does a road look like in the veins? there's a couple kinds that occur to me

1. climbing routes, as in Blind Descent, or any supercaving: scratched rock, permanent pistons, rope maybe

2. heavily used climbing routes: handholds a combination of obvious and reliable and sometimes faulty, one obvious path that is different from everywhere else, loads of graffiti, ziplines

3. duerger were here: very different, travel is along whatever architectural fantasia duerger were into that week, in my game rn it's ziggarauts everywhere, also marks of perilous supermachines

4. a climbing route good enough that essentially no checks are needed. requires a decent amount of upkeep

probably most important is quality of climbing path, the closer you're to civilization the better it'll all be, plus the more likely you are to see other travelers, plus the density of other travelers to each other

you can measure this in days of travel for both: distance from civilization, = bonus to climbing path quality = likelihood of travelers = density of travelers to each other

so this is a random encounter chart for a road. check daily. roll 1d10 per table and add +1 per day's distance from civilization.

quality of path:

10+ no established climbing path whatsoever
7-9 traces of a path: direction discernible, no bonus
5-6 poor quality path: +1d4 to all climb checks needed
1-4 quality path no checks needed

if there's some sort of special situation going on, like duerger carvings, use that instead.

likelihood of travelers: 

8-10+: no group encountered
7: fresh traces of another group
6-1: group encountered

if you roll a 1, you always encounter a group.

density of travelers (roll if you encounter a group)

7-10+: no other groups detectable
6: you _think_ someone might be nearby
5: there is another group within ear/smell/distant light range (not detectable constantly, inconstantly)
3-4: 2 groups are encountered instead of one.
2: crowded at a block.

self-defense on the veins-road:

the rule for travelers in the veins is that generally everyone expects that if you can be taken by force with little damage incurred you will be; it's considered magnanimous if you don't kill and eat the vulnerable on your travels.

so, everyone tries to guarantee to do more damage than they're worth. they'll be prepared to defend themselves against things more powerful than you; but remember, it's not an even matchup most can afford, but rather a threat.

(the threat is, if you're damaged=weakened, you're likely to get eaten by a whole host of other travelers. this is something pretty well supported by LOTFP's rules on hp recovery.)

forms of self-defense: (these aren't mutually exclusive)

1. weapons

2. explosives. bad idea underground. but some do carry: suicide jars full of poisonous gas. guarantees of a curse are ever popular, and some do actually work; it's unpredictable. rarely there could be actual explosive devices.

3. incompatible value; the food we have won't suit you. can be achieved alchemically or with those poison pills duerger-actually-derro sell. (y'know, the ones who say their dwarves, but you can really tell...)  sort of comparable to #2 above with the addition that some races really aren't edible to each other. you have to be pretty different for that to be true, as even poisonous food has way of getting digested. esoterically you might find a group of travelers disguised as a different race not edible to anyone, which I guess would be archeans or cambrimen (both impossible to disguise as, I should note)

4. screaming really loud, like really loud


the state they're in: roll1d10, don't add bonuses

1-5: full strength
6-9: less than full but they appear pretty much full (-1d4 HD, d4 explodes)
10: it can be readily perceived that they are not at full strength (-1d8 HD, d8 explodes)

their goal: roll 1d10, no bonuses, note that travel is fantastically expensive in the veins.

10-7:trading (well protected)
6-5:refugees (will probably lie about it)
4:pilgrimage (large group, well protected)
3:carrying a message (small group, well protected)
2:migration (large group)
1:a group of adventurers (well protected)

number travelling:
1d4 small group
1d8 normal group, d8 explodes
3d10: large group

HD values: 1/number travelling + 2d6/if well protected (or more, depending)

noncombatanats: anyone who can't fight is either a baby or a child too young to fight (very young) or like an otherwise extremely useful old person and are virtually treasure, so tack on a few maybe

racial makeup: in my game I think I'm going to have it be somewhat vague, but everyone is pretty much human with some built in other genetics and mutations mayb

travelers from the more exotic cultures of the veins:

derro: because travelling is such a vulnerable activity derro will zero-deny their own state of travel to the point of not ever travelling. nonetheless they are found on roads, unfortunately. derro travelers are just a standard derro encouter with the improv paranoia

olm: sole travelers, nearly all, 3 or 4 olm travelling together would be the equivalent of an entire army in terms of resources being marshaled. that being said 3 olm are not an army in terms of strength so when olm have to travel its one olm trying to avoid trouble, up to something like a vision quest (an example borrowed from the random encounters table)

gnonmen: gnonmen caravans are an absolute thing, they'll absolutely help anyone that they can detect as good, which is rarely anyone down here. a caravan looks like just a bunch of walking gnonmen maybe dragging something, no vehicles. 3d10 gnonmen +2d6 HD protection

duerger: duerger travel in titanic war-construction-crews so they're almost never encountered solely, except as the reaching fingers of the mass, so if you see some they're the scouts of the swedish army so to speak.  duerger scouts: 1d12 duerger of like d6 hd each, each interested in information, not food or lumes. conditions of the environment more important than the people. wandering around, thumbs in the air, squinting. one hand may be idly carving

deep janeen: the main impression deep janeen want to give their travelling servants is a bandit's score so apparently rich that it goes beyond being obviously a trap.

some deep janeen travelling servants:

1. a single weathered man carrying a pack 4 times his size completely covered with hanging and glittering emeralds. the emeralds sing and scrape, it's like a love song to bandits, they reflect all light as if its their light. any route with a squeeze would be impossible, these travelers take their time.

I think if you kill the servant (not easy, they have HP in their reality like we do in our abstraction; they just sort of soak up damage for a while [10HD] ) and they'll defend themselves after lowering the pack down, with an old and large knife ([1d8]) ....or take the emerald (it just rips away in your hand, like an overripe fruit or else it hangs really strongly and cuts your hand) you'll find the meat of the body wiry, and the emeralds not as valuable as you thought. They certainly won't reflect light like they did... or try to lift the pack: immeasurably heavy, as if one solid superdense object. inside: things, many things, none of them treasure exactly.

2. a curious, girllike servant, always asking questions, wearing a silk smock, carrying nothing. wandering and crawling on her bare feet and hands. people avoid her, even monsters. she is not trying to get anywhere. she can't climb, she asks for help.

3. a bunch of migrating penguins, carrying an i-beam (from the ironic deep janeen)

4. a thing that burns everything within .75turns with fire, you start feeling the heat approaching at 1 turn. if you get to the center somehow it's a superhot boy struggling and carrying a heavy magic-ball-sized orb

5. {sound of a regiment of cavalry, moving through the veins, will hail other travelers as appropriate, can inflict harm}

6. rival substratal machine reduced to carrying messages. has blade arms and not enough limbs, covered in muck, pathetically scrabbling at walls, will try over and over again.

7. avalanche of pure crystal which moves quickly through the veins, crushing all it passes (should be rare, terrified of salt)

aelf adal: i don't fucking know, probably use skerples's thing, although I believe they describes a regional situation.

knotsmen: groups of knotsmen already well detailed in the book.

also you can use the encounter table on p 269 instead.

3d mapping veins caves

I used a draw.io and the "veins of the earth" tables to generate a cave system

then I illustrated it in paint

then I put it together in 3D Paint with microsoft remix models and the 3d doodle tool

...then I colored it and added a knight for scale

"the shape of water" 2017 review

it is edited badly. sally hawkins is enchanting as the reverse end of a monster-human relationship. the score is cornball. Octavia Spencer is good, but a little cornball. Then we have the white guys- Michael Stuhlbarg, Michael Shannon, and the indomitable Rich Jenkins. This movie is insane, it gives the three white guys SO much screen time, some of it is good like the Rich Jenkins relationship with a pie counter clerk but a lot of it seems intent, laser-focused-in on exploring a white supremacist’s background life, & this boring scientist guy, and even Rich Jenkins talking a lot reveals this movie has very little to say

Also it’s a mild whitewash with Elisa Esposito/Sally Hawkins

I think it’s ‘cause Guillmero thought he could bring out some of the sharp edge out of the white supremacist dude, like he did with that Spanish General in “Pan’s Labyrnith”, that we spend so much time with the antagonist’s home life, buying a car, the pressures of his job. But, thankfully, there’s just nothing there, the dude is a fascist and you can see the vein popping out of Michael Shannon’s forehead TRYING to bring some sort of a humanity to the position

when you think there’s something there but there’s nothign actually there

“Crimson Peak” was another less successful long-scale experiment in trying to convert golden age horror into, like, a soft-focus modern feminist drama with f/x, Crimson Peak was also _very boring_, it seems Guilmerro really loves and wants to take his time with the individual swimming details of the set and the ornamental character personalities. It’s like a Studio Ghibli film, like if it were all Spirited Away, with 90% less detail (more lke, 200% less) and less characters etc, and it’s slower because there’s -less stuff-

THAT BEING SAID that kind of joy that made the original Hellboy good rears its head a couple times like with the dream sequence near the end, but uh there’s still a lot of deliberation on “glassy green water” looks

THE FEMINISM OF MONSTER DICK:

movie does a VERY GOOD JOB of encapsulating a male sexuality as the target, something to be contained and fought over, with 1 (one) phallic object and a bunch of yonic objects in the mix, just the idea of a captured/vulnerable sexual monster that ppl fuck, as a male figure, it is definitely a male monster rescued (spoilers) by a female main character and they have empowering consensual sex

its badly edited tho but it makes it seem half-awkwardly like Elisa Esposito is like, from the start, zoomin in, super into this monster man. I’m being unfair, at the start its clearly curiosity, the film does a good job of revealing Elisa’s attraction to the monster-man in retrospect, like all along she was in it to win it... Which is kinda a thing, right? In the space in my little brain it doesn’t have enough room to process upfront that Elisa would be immediately attracted to The Thing From The Black Lagoon, but she totally is

it still has this sort of throwaway sexual harassment subplot which is brief but not brief enough and I think is simultaneously too much and doesn’t go far enough, not meaning “there isn’t enough sexual harassment” but rather I mean it ends up in easy movie characterization territory, vile

vis a vis Elisa’s status as a mute character: the film is pretty good at going the distance with this one, but it’s still an uncomfortably central dramatic theme, like the ability to talk/not to talk, its pretty bald at times

I mean I’d push for a movie with a mute main character where the preponderance of the film isn’t squarely on their muteness about 20-30% of the time

the white supremacist’s journey actually is a little interesting, he’s kinda swirling down the toilet bowl of materialism, pop psychology, he actually makes a break for it but gets reeled back in, it’s half-sympathetic, and at the end he realizes “ooh there’s actualy NO LIMITS” and he gets his throat cut

which, again, is Guilmerro Del Toro’s half-decent attempt to try to soft bush a villain but it comes off as too generous in my opinion, we have already been informed about what’s going on

'deep carbon observatory' review & lamentations of the flame princess diary

 THIS REVIEW is mostly inward-facing to people who have already read or indeed, written the product. To those who haven’t, suffice to say that even if you don’t play RPGs, the text of “Deep Carbon Observatory” is notable literature, being serious and well-written and not fucking stupid like every other piece of rpg material under the sun.

 things are good:

• the opening scrawl with the village worked servicably for me, imparted a sense of interconnected chaos
• I played the rival adventurers a little corny 
• the deal with the eel in the tree was resolved well
• the wizard’s duel was truly chaotic, with a miniaturized flying 8ly mirrored little wizard flying around, the players got a canoe and were introduced to the pike, and also backstabbed a wizard after the spells wore off; that was pretty good
• the windmill with the crabs was the source of enormous energy and fun due to the creative problem solving revolving (literally) around the crabs… also the gore of like 19 murdered ppl inside the windmill was horrifying
• the squid, the hill, and the farm animals trapped on it was also pretty much the above; a lot of fun, creative and risky problem solving getting past the squid, a little sense of peace and hope from the animals including one pc getting a (second) dog, and then a messy escape from the island with squid-fishing and -towing and -wrestling and deaths of the two dogs and a PC
• the golems were the source of some hints on the mystery, a constant source of mercurial intimidation, and good tools ultimately as the pcs used the golems to destroy Snail Shell Zarathustra’s ship
• Snail Shell Zarathustra was professional, and relatively no nonsense, and he had a doctor onboard. As the PCs began to lead him astray he grew more suspicious, but was still betrayed by them when they lead a golem to his ship. 
• gruta was just a weird sight that I forgot to capitalize on
• the scratch-built dam didn’t make sense w/r/t hydrophysics 
• I was too afraid to use The Crows, much. They mostly dickied around with a zombie horde, before forgetting about the retreating pcs and completing the adventure themselves. I shouldn’t have played them as a truly independent force and instead should’ve used them entirely in relation to the pcs (but I was afraid)
• the scrolls in the crypt that the family was burning was good because the scrolls were the proper fire-making tool that the pcs needed to burn down the windmill to get the gear to get the gold boat. Also they figured out that one of the scrolls they got was the very powerful Time Stop but they lost this when the crab smashed them when they got the boat.
• The gold boat was good and complicated and incurred the crabsmash and got the party 50,000 sp and the two surviving party members a level each (like +1 and +2 hp each, and 2 skill points) and allowed them to buy a river galley and hire 30 soldiers and a crew for the galley and a cannon and 3000 rations to feed the starving villagers, well, those who survived. It also provoked a deep and physics-knowledge-intensive puzzle of how to dredge up a sunken boat using a pulley, which we tested using a real tub of water like it was science class
• the crabsmash was a philosophical moment: a giant crab dropped out of the sky and killed half the party. no warning, just a save. philosophical bcuz I asked 

...but I think crabsmash as written sorta functions as a violation of that principle. Sometimes random instadeath, fersure, if you think that you’re exempt then look sometimes rocks actually fall and everyone actually dies in real life and if you’re using save vs. death as common as it is in most lotfp products isn’t that “random instadeath”? But really, the entire thing makes me uneasy, in a way that I like.

• the giant platypus was good
• the dam: the interior of the dam was probably the most “tight” part of the whole adventure, that being said my players managed to find a way to both make impassable the secret door to the right as well as lure out all the Canoptic Guards to bombard them with cannon fire. But the red-herring trap room worked well, they never relaxed about it. 
• the valley: was good, although I removed many of the elements from it, mainly the battle between the reed people and the kapeks, the kapeks had already won, and the bacterial mat had turned solid brown. The light defense system was creepy and good. The golden boats were another red herring, the chieftain kinda pointless maybe because the reed people had already died. 
• The eel forest was funny because our suicidal player kept getting 1dmg eel bites and an eel got a critical and bit out her eye
• The first descent into Nightingale hall was good and creepy and the players picked up the evidence to deduce a horrifying slave-culture 
• The cave giant’s long fierce fingers were creepy and deadly, I wish I remembered that it didnt kill by squeezing but by slamming u into a wall and chewing
• The cave giant served as a territorializing force, although for most of the dungeon crawl everyone was too preoccupied with internal strife and with the many strange things in the observatory to notice it was there. It came into focus only when it first snatched up a child PC who stayed alone in the dungeon and later when the monster was blocking exit from the dungeon
• The chem-plant-bomb room killed everybody but also they had fun roleplaying not knowing what an electric light was
• The Cervit was cool because it was like something you’d find on a factory floor, the value thereof was not obvious, everyone was really anxious about transporting this mysterious industrial material
• The hall of silks was o.k., the monsters terrifying, and they used a chem-plant-bomb to kill these 
• The silks in the hall of silk was a fine note of color
• The hall of shells didn’t capture their attention and the hall of core samples was too much detail for anyone’s good
• the overall shape of the Observatory tripped me up vis a vis describing it and simultaneously not making it too obvious that it was “two giant stalactites hanging in an abyss” but the depth and darkness of the abyss was good
• the metal boxes full of gear was good, everyone was really happy to find like, equipment
• the little elevator/scale setup in the lower lefter hall was too hard to describe compared to its relative interestingness, but i did describe it and the pcs did ignore it
• the azimoths and reflectors remained a mystery but a good one, there was disappearing vomit
• I fucked up describing the world-clock and honestly seems like a mouthful
• the sheer craziness and utility of the tables for the Tektite Lens made the whole procedure of generating and saying the results fascinating for everyone, it exactly hit the note of “peering into another world? but how? what’s going on? what is this… madness??”
• I actually wish I would have limited the use of the Lens to d6 uses in retrospect. Why? more cthonic…
• Climbing down the chain in retreat from the Cave Giant was the pretty much “transcendental cliffhanger” which will serve as the perfect transition into a campaign of Veins of the Earth, especially since I get to emphasize the sheer starving darkness of climbing down an infinite chain, I’ll get to lead off with new character sheets and a new inventory system saying “due to your infinite climb downward, you’ll have to discard anything too heavy or too cumbersome that you can’t make fit on your body” and emphasize food and water as resources and start everyone off in a place of desperation. This ending also gave a beautiful, dark bow on the whole geographical narrative of the adventure. There were only 5 soldiers left, descending into the deep…

 Biggest overt issue is the geography of the flood not being too clear, even one sentence like “the flood extends for miles before turning into pseudo-swamp” would have cleared everything up.

 The other issue is the practicality of everyone starving. "The water of the river is ripe with life, over-full with predators and fish of every kind." Players pointed out this was ideal fishing, which seemed kind of obvious.

Also to stop all the villagers from just becoming refugees I had to say some stuff about how the village was 2 weeks of travel away from the rest of civilization, or any source of food, which was odd, because there was a river right there

 Minor issues that maybe are just the referee’s responsibilty: figuring out relative speeds in flooded areas, translating the Crows’s AD&D stats, figuring out the geography around the dam (mountains, thanks to the authors for help on this), the physics of the scratch-built dam, and yes, the clearness of the maps. 

 THE EMOTIONAL LOAD OF LAMENTATIONS 1ST LEVEL:

 I posit: that if the referee is gratious in their warnings, and if the players are -all- trying to stay alive and are somewhat good at it, you can run a game of Lamentations of the Flame Princess where everyone starts at 1st level AND there is extremely lethal shit everywhere AND if you die you restart at level one AND some player characters survive and level up.

 My actual experience with LOTFP is that there are 1d4 deaths per session, it’s really frustrating and depressing to some people, and it’s really frustrating to everyone at some point. And yes, some players take a liking to it.

When I first started writing play reports for this system ‘lanir’ on the forums was talking about how I was basically gonna burn through players until I found some who liked my playstyle. I really was trying to create a roleplaying game where:

1. combat was deadly and pretty simple & quick, and kinda realistic
2. no railroad would reign
3. NPCs mostly acted realistically, in their own self interest
4. a lot of the fun came from figuring out how to survive 

...and with a handful of other values which I enforce more or less conciously, like “no fudging”.

  After about 2 years of play I think I found some players entirely willing to play in the above frame of mind, where stupid mistakes in lethal situations are usually lethal. I did have to burn through a bunch of other players to find these couple players. But then again the burned ones have their own group now, which I’m apart of, we’re playing GURPS…

 (I might ease off the difficulty in the Veins campaign, because I’ll be writing it all myself.)

 --

 When I first started LOTFP dming and I ran “tales of the scarecrow” I was laughing in the faces of my frustrated players. This sounds bad and is bad I guess but also that was kinda how it was in that group of people. And then there was the time where I did just the heart puzzle from “Fuck For Satan” for my brother and his girlfriend and how they were hounding me for the answer for hours after.

 One night after a roleplaying game I was walking with my friend Dave and I had a little broken buddha statue in my pocket. I said, here’s a riddle, what’s in my pocket? Dave couldn’t guess, even after 20 questions, and I was like, O.K., you lost, I won’t tell you. This seemed essentially unfair to Dave. What was I gaining? (I did tell him)

 I sort of thought that way of the grinning game master who has the knowledge that you don’t have and the allure and the power-mystery was kinda something to bring to my friends’s tables back in 2014-5. These days I still do it, but with a subtler hand, and with plenty of warnings beforehand: this game is going to be super hard, you’ll probably all die… and although it’s still frustrating at times it also gives out some thrills:

fifteenth post

this isn't criticism, it's more of "fanfiction", "fan rpging", which in the trpg community is cool bc:

• it is in many ways necessary to creatively collaborate with the rpg writers, in the sense you are using their writing in a creative process which also includes your players
• you have to fill in the gaps left in any rpg text

the process of contributing to the "canon" of your favorite movie setting or whatever by fanfictioning yr way into a headcanon is the normal method of consumption for most trpgs. The canon of rpg settings and stories foremostly exists to aid yr "headcanon" so to speak.

also the rpg/fan/writer community is pretty small. there's an air of collaboration. Matt Colville said people used to call Gygax up to ask him rules questions, it's nothing new I guess. I would link it to the general wackiness of playing trpgs with your friends, a kind of magic circle frenzy where you're collaborating while also not stepping on each other's toes. stuff makes me anxious but it's also like the main thing I'm into rn

***SPOILERS AHEAD FOR PLAYERS***

from "Veins"

VEINS OF THE EARTH: POST 2

In "Veins of the Earth" Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess have done the necessary work to outline a unique vision for the "underground world" so common to dnd-style fantasy. Nominally I think the universal undergound is appealing because dungeons, the underground, caves sort of are the basis for a lot of the hobby-- you go in a dark place full of monsters and come up with gold. In the "Veins" you don't come back up, tho.

"Veins" though lacks some critical elements which I think the book explicitly tells you to fills in yourselves, in a aside: "(Yes it would be great to have a settlement generator in here but the book was already HUGE and I needed all that space for madness generators, darkness types and insane art works. You can probably make up your own using the monster section. We will put one in a sequel if this book doesn't bankrupt the publisher.)" -pg 352 (italics mine)

Being a person who wants to run "Veins" I sketched some city ideas when I started thinking about the logistical and cultural structure of the various races of the Veins as well as what I would need to run them. Bc I have all the "canon" developed by Patrick and Scrap I got a lot of momentum sketching so I have these below to share: (all illustrations clipped from the book)

RACIAL CAPITALS IN THE VEINS:

A Gnonman.

Gnonmen:  their culture around their capital: intense, exhausted nationalism. basically racism/nationalism with zero ego. the stakes are real: anything but the utmost and they will lose everything to the very real and very awful forces just beyond and spidering into their domain. there is no opportunity for diplomacy, it is very clear, and what the insane forces want is actually just a brief taste of sustenance, the source thereof they will immediately destroy via infighting. They really are the only sane ones fighting a world of darkness.

Any detractors within their ranks are rightly regarded as irrational, and most likely defective. To the budget efficiency and a small but very real margin of goodwill will allow, they are treated. Beyond that a tightly efficient and sacred-for-the-point-of-preserving-efficiency caste-system disposes of their soul and their meat is recycled.

players can be apart of gnonmen society in equal proportion to their real and provable goodness. The gnonmen's causes, institutions, and trade always fall along such an exacting and efficient line that only the PC's desire and ability to be intelligently and righteously benevolent will involve them at all.

a knotsman

the knotsmen capital, "Foreclose"-- (knotsmen are highly legalistic people covered in knots of flesh) (this segment already published via g plus post)

there is no city, only rooms, it's like The Trial, and at certain point you may realize that you are in something like an endless series of bureaucratic rooms and at that point you are fucked. whatever thing the players wanted to do; it's now over, it's a game over screen, forever, up to and past the point that the players realize it. Even if the holy god sent his angels to pluck you out of the queue and delivered you back to green earth you would not be free, you would be a liability to all those around you, and by hook or crook the blue sky would become so much papier mache and you would be back underground.

all the memories of what goes on in Foreclose are owned by the Knotsmen, probably. Knowledge of the location of Foreclose is sort of a catch 22 bc knowledge of where it is immediately implies that you are wholly owned by the Knotsmen, because foreclose is not immediately identifiable, and because "a large gathering of Knotsmen" usualy means full control of whoever knows about that. I know where foreclose is --> I have visited foreclose --> I am owned by the Knotsmen, they try and have to almost all extent succeeded in climbing those arrows all the way back.

The thing to get is that Foreclose is the center of Knotsmen proprety technology. Think about intellectual property rights today and advance those under a microscope with magic and in the context of the Veins. There is almost certainly a convoluted partnership with the DeR0, and the fact that this can be easily surmised given the information above is a current crisis to Knotsmen.

the only warning you get is one, maybe two or in the final jaws of three rooms of bureaucratic processing before it is all over. Like I'm saying literally only continue to describe bureaucratic procedures until everyone wants to stop playing

the other thing to remember is that Foreclose is, in the logic of the Veins, a knot.

But that's obvious.

Olm

  olm-sump --  an example of an Olm settlement, maybe the capital why not:

(olm are amphibian grey humanoids who hibernate for extended periods underwater)

  

  the whole thing is traded around a single (secret) patch of land, which grows something like a cucumber plant inside of it. This plant grows without light, for some reason, and for that reason its genes are fantastically valuable. However, no one down here really knows about the secrets of agriculture, at least the Olm don't, so they're unwilling to share the produce/seeds of their fantastical singular plant/fortune. The food produced by the plant is enough to keep one Olm family alive, 1 parent and a 1 child. Once the child reaches adulthood and a mate is found the parent retires to the sump where some 1,000s of Olm float.

  

  because the Veins are what they are, occasionally force is needed; however, applied force requires calories so: Olm will only be awakened in direct proportion to near-guaranteed calorie return rates. Only if the entire basis is threatened, i.e. the food-plant, will Olm be awakened in starving numbers.

  

  If the Olm gain windfall they will awaken some relatives and have a party, and information-share, and refresh the gene pool. Visitors who bring windfall get to be a part of all that.

  

  Outside appearence: hidden, ofc, but the less hidden part is where the awake Olm live (the more hidden part is the singular patch of mud with the cucumber plant, that is maybe deep within the sump itself. The sump isn't that hidden on the assumption that invaders will quickly find themselves surrounded by like a million Olm warriors in their prime environment-- they'll be instantly awakened by the gene-presence of intruders in the water. However it's a matter of common courtesy like going to the bathroom to not be seen going into and out of the sump so players may be continuously surprised at the growing # of olm.)

  

  the olm-settlement itself: a hollow, carved, and obviously ancient place, much bigger than it needs to be: like an abandoned amusement park that someone is camping out in. Obviously an army could be staged here, and there's a rather large altar with an auditorium that looks like it could fit a lot of people. The active settlement though is one or two people in one verrrryyy worn living space, like, carved by walking around in for centuries worn. there's only one person in there, and one child, but when you come by another one shows up shortlyh, and if you have trade another, and if you bring sustenance, a bunch more, its a party, best place to store calories is their bodies

dEr0

the der0 capital. 

There isn't one. Or is there?

that being said:

der0 society is anonymous on a large scale and over-intimate on a small scale. The largest unit of organization is a cell. Sometimes there's an ostensible clandestine organization but in reality it is doubted that any der0 society could be above 3-4 members without dissolving into total anarchy-- which is what most of der0 civilization is.

THAT BEING SAID there probably could be a large scale city of der0 mostly but the inner workings therein would be like if Voivodja was pulled inside of itself.

Isolated der0 are hard enough to trade with as it is, normally it is something people only do when there are no other options available, which in the Veins isn't exactly uncommon, especially since der0 have the disturbing skill at eliminating competitors, more or less any situation wherein they are the last worst option and yet the only option is what der0 are driven to create. (because they can only see clients as enemies and are always, always jumping the gun)  As a result they hold a perilous middle ground between Veins cultures, you can imagine if North Korea was also the intelligentsia/CIA of our earth.

another way to think about it: der0 are literally incapable of allying with anyone, so: they are useful. but also not.

trading with der0: "trading" for der0 is "attempting to trick people who are going to betray you" so if you can accept the bait of a trap in exchange for involvement in *the der0 conspiracy*... you can play ball (but you shouldn't)

other rules of der0:

-they will only kill you by accident

-der0 will always talk to you and at length. this talking is a form of attack actually. they are involving you in *the der0 conspiracy* which is very real despite being composed whole cloth of assumed falsehoods.

-all der0 desires are disposable by virtue of the der0's unceasing tendency towards paranoia. the only non-negotiable desire is the der0's own self-preservation, their beyond-hyperactive sense thereof being the cause of their tao-like state of never having problems. Everything is a problem.

-Everything is a problem.

-nothing the der0 ever do works, it is always sabotage. they are like little mobile units of self- and universal sabotage. they have always been (rightfully) sabotaged.

-they always misunderstand the situation, and their misunderstanding veers eerily close to alternate understanding of reality. or, that is to say, der0 continuously understand and interact with reality only through continuous misunderstanding which in its multiplicity acts like an alternative to truth.

-the intentions of der0 can be recorded but only as snapshots bc the der0 in question will change its intentions at the slightest provocation in an attempt to sniff out a trap. thus u can record der0 intentions but mostly as a starting point for improv

"water? why go ahead and drink this invisible water all around! or no... don't drink it! you're going to drink all our invisible water aren't you?? no! you've poisoned the water! (flees)(comes back) I know that you have drank the water... you know like me its secrets (desperately trying to figure out what those secrets are) we both know what they are, so tell me, it is poisoned, is not? (goes on indefinitely)"

-the means of support for der0 are never visible. der0 don't eat or drink but they do consume resources. this is likely because the acts of eating or drinking are of such an obvious vulnerability that somewhere in the evolutionary chain leading to the modern der0 eating drinking or sleeping were phased out. nor do they procreate. What has come to replace those activities is *the der0 conspiracy* which basically gives der0 enough energy to forgo all of the above, and also consumes all their time and attention anyway.

yeah- asking where do der0 babies come from is non gratis in the Veins.

-der0 actually do not participate in anything morally untoward, despite all. nonetheless they generate intense amounts of bad things.

involvement in *the der0 conspiracy*:::

exposure: if you are made to believe in the reality of another player's der0 encounter, you go up a level yourself.

levels of inundation: 

1) you have talked to a der0. the amount of bullshit in your life increases tenfold. everything around you is a trap, or a mind control device, usually both. these things are true, these things are not true. monsters have secret motives and give you sidelong glances. do you know each other? is this a set up? why are you so distanced from your "companions"? is this the tradeoff? my god, is it actually happening? all along?

**at your option, you can induce der0 encounters. you do this by telling everyone at the table that you are doing that and then you roll on the der0 encounter table. you can do this once with no consequences, but if you do so a second time, you move on to the next stage of *the der0 conspiracy*

2) you have participated in *the der0 conspiracy*. arguably a bad idea. all der0 instantly recognize you and know that you are one of them. you will be accepted, even trusted, at some times. however, there is much to discuss. things will begin happening. you will be presented with sheafs of dossiers stuffed in your pack. inside will be a time bomb. which will release poisonous gas. which allows you to see everything happening laterally in the next room over, and above. You think.

**at this stage, the referee should introduce one der0 encounter per session.

3) your sanity collapses as *the der0 conspiracy* enfolds your waking life, too.

roll the der0 encounter table for every combat or social encounter you have. social encounters include general discussion with players. for every level above level 3 simply add another roll per encounter.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

der0 encounter table:

the player realizes:

1- der0 are secretly here

2- der0 have secretly modified one object here

3- der0 have seized the minds of one person or beast here

4- the player is recieving messages from the mind of one other person or beast here

5- two members of two different groups represented here are secretly allied

6- information here is in code.

7- this entire situation is a trap built to kill the player character

8- one person here is not who they say they are, or is in disguise.

9- the subject of this situation has been you all along. if it already was, treat as 7

0- roll again and once more and advance one level in *the der0 conspiracy*

their realization is real, with the caveat that if any other player characters are made to believe in the reality of the realization, count them as exposed to *the der0 conspiracy*

In each case it is up to the referee to furnish the specifics.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

aelf-adal

drow (aelf adal) (evil elves):

If the capital is the most unbridled form of the people it represents then the adal capital would be beyond what thoughts can think in terms of removed from human vision. I think if you glimpse the streets of {the aelf adal capital} the streets themselves would turn to you; it would be considered one of the greatest disasters in their history if a {person who has even seen humans, etc.} walked the street, and the ruination of everything if even the existence of non-drow was mentioned in the {what couldn't possibly be claimed to be a cathedral}. Essentially, to a visitor, the aelf adal capital is pure, terrified liquid hate, things will crumble, sure, there isn't any substance behind for which to glimpse: hate, the makeup, is all there is. itll be come clear pretty quick that its something like hell.

imagine a crying person, ashamed of who they are, who you are viewing. They are crying at you, because you are seeing them, they are mad at you. Their crying transforms bursts their mask and shows you the person really under there. ... take out the shame, take out the person really under there

round by round description by what happens if you somehow (and every imaginable and beyond imaginable step has been taking to prevent you) somehow appear in the aelf adal capital:

1. beyond the height of the beauty arts

2. you are noticed

3. all nearby aelf adal nearby commit suicide

4. everything nearby begins to turn back into nightmare juice or whatever, catch on fire, etc.

a note on the dvargir (work obsessed dwarves, even more so than usual):

dvargir actually represent the exact minimum of work ethic alone to succeed in the veins. to the extent that you can be a wealthy farmer in the veins you have to work as hard as a dvargir. otherwise it's all gig economy and starvation. that being said the dvargir don't spend their excess wealth on food they spend it on the giant empty cities they are always creating, so they are, indeed always starving.

duergar in force are moving work camps, and they are always churning out new capitals.

THREE CITIES DERIVED FROM PROMPTS FROM PATRICK'S POST ON VEINS SETTLEMENTS:

Prompt:"7. City is inwardly ontologically shattered like a schizophrenics dream. Golems and child slaves sent into its fractured core to scavenge food appearing from 'nowhere' i.e. dropped or created by people who don't exist."

another situation where it's a really desperate population crowded around a central life-giving source. situation is, though, that the realities of whether its heavily populated or a new settlement or everyone is dead isn't stable. the changes mostly happen if you head into the central core.

there's a lot of paranoid planning about who sends who where, people mapping out a landscape which is continually changing, windfalls of cash or food. like trading with alternate reality people for food, and coming back to a (slightly different) reality.

the closer you live to the core the more insane you are meaning "more socially isolated and easy to prey for meat" beyond a certain point. basically it's bandits, organized resistance to intruders, and rarely philanthropic orgs doing work (maybe evil demons giving out poison or demon eggs tho)

so its basically a circle (or semicircle) around a non-shape of intensifying overcrossed realities, populated by factionally different levels of hungry people trying to trade steal or maybe even share food with each other. The only constant is change, meaning (in most versions of the reality) there is no stable amount of food to feed the population.

the above is actually too close to the der0 to appeal to them, der0 strive at bringing more insanity to situations, harvesting sanity, there's very little sanity to go around here, so they mostly don't show up.

1. Ourouboros city engaged in 'Paradox' farming,  feed off their own past, sending forces back along their own loop to take resources and slaves. They must keep growing more powerful so they can defeat their own past but the cultural and physical destruction of their own history forms unstable paradoxes and cripples them in many ways. They live in fear as they never know when their own future will arrive to consume them.

city has to grow more so they are always accepting new recruits, basically everyone avoids them for this reason, its a thing where you'll condemned to an eternal war against yourself, which is probably better than being a demon in the demon/devil war but sorta existentially similar

to make this more clear: if you are protecting the food, you have to fight a future version of yourself, if you are raiding, you have to fight your past version. however you can't kill your past self, but you can kill your future self.

ppl are encouraged to kill your future self bc it guarantees your future employment.

you can still get killed by people who aren't you if you're defending or raiding though.

this whole setup doesn't make sense, like it shouldn't work, but it does anyway

2. City feeds on literalised psychic emanations from below - likely eating the dreams of a mad god or chthulu-esque entity. Reliable supply but drives everyone even more insane than usual.

see here

fourteenth post

  Ai Weiwei: Overrated?

“Without freedom of speech there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.” 
― Ai Weiwei

“I was in jail 81 days, but after 20 days my brain became completely empty; you need information to stay alive. When there’s no information you’re already dead. It’s a very, very strong test – I think more severe than any physical punishment.
All I wanted was a dictionary, even the simplest one.” 
― Ai Weiwei, Ai Weiwei



“The natural desire to save a cat is what it means to be a citizen.” 
― Ai Weiwei



“When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development.” 
― Ai Weiwei



“If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?” 
― Ai Weiwei



“An artwork unable to make people feel uncomfortable or to feel different is not one worth creating. This is the difference between the artist and the fool.” 
― Ai Weiwei, Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009

This one's good imo.