Because it’s someone’s birthday today.

M.L. Schepps / August 6, 2020

At the break of dawn upon the beach, a thousand representatives of the “Female Planet”—ranging from white-clad Canbomblé, damp in honor of the ocean goddess Yemoja, to realtors from Anchorage—raised mirrors to the pallid sky, seeking to reflect the light of their hope towards the sprawling Riocentro Convention Center that was the focus of the world’s attention. Amid a sense of urgency, representatives from 178 nations gathered for what was the largest United Nations conference in history. Activists, scientists, prominent entrepreneurs, entertainers, and world leaders alike urged unity and immediate action, while one representative of the youth environmental movement emphasized that “we’re all in this together.” The year was 1992, and the Earth Summit was underway in Rio de Janeiro.

Over 40,000 delegates had flown in for this ambitious conference, which sought global cooperation in the face of rising pollution, global warming, and deforestation. Delegates and performers included the headlining Placido Domingo, the Dalai Lama, Shirley Maclaine, and a “who’s-who” of early ‘90s hotness, with River Phoenix, Jeremy Irons, and Edward James Olmos in attendance among what one British paparazzo referred to as “all the nutters in the world.” By the end of the conference, it was already considered a failure. President Bush’s refusal to sign on to the keynote agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity, had drawn fiery attacks by the presumptive Democratic nominee, Bill Clinton, who asserted that Bush had “abdicated both national and international leadership” in environmentalism, making the United States the “lone holdout” in a world that recognized the urgency of action. In response, Bush defended his record, emphasizing that “environmental protection makes growth sustainable.”

The world hinged on a great axis. The Berlin Wall had fallen only months prior and capitalism stood astride the global stage, triumphant. The American way of life had won, and all that remained was saving the planet. Bill Clinton would go on to be the first baby boomer president, setting the stage for that cohort to at last live up to the world-changing aspirations of their adolescence. It was to be a new and transformative era, one in which the mandates of capitalist economic expansion might be constrained in the service of sustainability. The Secretary General of the conference, Maurice Strong, acknowledged that the road ahead would be a difficult one, but “it will also be a journey of renewed hope, of excitement, challenge and opportunity, leading as we move into the 21st century to the dawning of a new world.”

And it was a new world—but not at all the one the organizers anticipated. 1992 heralded a significant turning point in the mechanisms that define our society: the neoliberal consensus became inviolate and fully bipartisan, with devastating consequences for the environment. Neoliberalism is a word that is often used—and overused—without explanation. George Monbiot has pointed out certain ideological hallmarks that can be taken as representative of the term: the primacy of the individual over the collective; that individual action should be expressed through consumer choices and consumerism; the exaltation of capital and a free market protected by the rule of law but unfettered via regulation; and reduced taxation, increased austerity, and governmental assistance for corporations instead of individuals, coupled with a devotion to  privatization of public goods and services.

It is this ideology, shared by centrist Democrats and “mainstream” Republicans alike for at least the last 40 years, that is responsible for unmitigated inequality, looming environmental collapse, and “our” complete inability—or refusal—to stop any of it.

Despite these realities, my childhood recollection of the early ‘90s is one of hope and determination. “Everyone” knew and believed certain truths, it seemed: global warming was real and an imminent danger, the Amazon Rainforest was being destroyed, dolphins were bloodily decimated to produce tuna. The corollary to this knowledge was the bone-deep conviction that, yes, these problems were real—but they were being taken care of. The good guys (Democrats) were now in charge, and the bad guys (Republicans) were in the rear view. Things seemed set to be sustainably tubular, organically rad, and bodaciously green.

Two pop culture artifacts from the era reflect this sense of optimism: 1990’s Captain Planet and 1992’s FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Both are products of the same “boomer ascendant” zeitgeist as the Earth Summit, full of laudable messages aimed at raising environmental consciousness. And both address the fundamental flaw in mainstream environmental movements—the neoliberal rot embedded at the roots. Their approach to this overarching issue, however, varies dramatically.

***

Billionaire futurist Ted Turner had a simple belief. He was “the second smartest thing on the planet” behind only one entity: “cartoons, because they speak every language.” Possessed of messianic leanings, Turner’s desire to “save the world” fit in nicely with his desire to increase market share through the acquisition of cartoon conglomerate Hanna-Barbera.

Turner and his “chief environmental watchdog,” Barbara Pyle, were both involved in organizing the Rio Earth Summit, and both left feeling disappointed. They felt that the conference had achieved perhaps “ten percent” of its potential due to the compromises demanded by the United States in its pre-conference negotiations, with Pyle going on to say that the summit was more of a “jazz funeral… a wake.” In the run up to the Earth Summit, Turner and Pyle collaborated on a cartoon broadcast on Turner’s networks with a simple if wide-reaching aim: “to arm a generation with the knowledge to find more sustainable ways of living on the planet.” The successes and failures of that cartoon can be seen as a metonym for the successes and failures of the mainstream Western environmental movement operating within the liberal, or neoliberal, paradigm.

The first image of the first episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1990-1992), “A Hero For Earth,” shows an idyllic, prelapsarian forest. Light shines upon a white rabbit hopping about, first in contentment, then in fear. The forest is being destroyed. Trees shatter, birds fall from their nests. A giant walking robot is the agent of this destruction. In the control room sits a grotesque, porcine figure in a pastiche of military uniforms. He snorts with glee and delivers exposition, in the curmudgeonly tone of Ed Asner: “Ha ha ha, with this giant land blaster I’ll be able to drill for oil anywhere!” His crony, Rigger, a wiry caricature of a “good ol’ boy” crossed with Salacious Crumb, responds affirmatively: “he he he, yeah boss, even in a wildlife sanctuary!”

The drill is extended from the walking machine. It penetrates the river below, thrusting through the water and into a glowing pink crack, smashing into a glass barrier. A single drop of liquid falls from the drill and lands on the face of a sleeping woman, draped in vaguely Medditeranean robes. She is awakened. She is Gaia, the living embodiment of the ecosphere.

This “subtext” is hardly sub. Captain Planet, the television show, begins with a rape—that of earth herself by the forces of industrialism. Gaia dismisses the invasion easily enough and repairs the fault, then remarks that she’s been asleep for a century and is now curious as to what those “silly humans” have been up to. We are treated to a flash of all the horrors of the 20th century’s environmental record.

Gaia decides that it is time to fight back. She summons adolescents from different regions of the world (with little more specificity for some beyond “Asia”) and includes a representative of the Soviet state. These are to be her soldiers: a diverse, multicultural coalition, speaking the international language (English with an accent), each one controlling a ring that corresponds to a different elemental control. The fifth team member from South America is given control over “heart.”

The Planeteers, teleported to Gaia’s base of “Hope Island” (the geography is very unclear), then fly north (in a carbon-emitting jet, despite Gaia’s proven ability to teleport) to confront the eco-villain. They are greeted by walruses covered in oil as the robot (now resembling an oil rig) drills. They fight the robot-drill but are forced to withdraw when the pigman threatens to spill his oil on the defenseless walrus. The team escalates, evoking the gestalt effect. By giving up their individual powers they can summon a greater warrior: Captain Planet himself, a mulleted superhero, the white, male, American leader of a diverse multicultural coalition. Again, the subtext is skin deep.

Captain Planet defeats the villains. Greedley escapes, though, and Rigger is given the equivalent of a slap on the wrist (dumped head first into a trash can) for abetting the destruction of a pristine ecosystem. In terms of semiotics, Greedley is the military-industrial complex and escapes any form of consequence; Rigger, just a “good-ol-boy” in search of a job, suffers no real punishment beyond temporary humiliation.

This first episode encapsulates the plot of essentially every episode: an “eco-villain” breaks the rules of conscientious capitalism and is confronted by the Planeteers, but ultimately defeats or traps them, after which they summon Captain Planet who, in turn, defeats the initial villain. The group then teaches the viewer, in an explicitly pedagogical segment, the ways they can help “save the planet.”

It is in this call to action (“the power is yours!”) that the fundamental flaws in the neoliberal approach to activism are most apparent. The Planeteers urge nothing but individual choices: encourage your family to drive less, carpool if you can, turn off the lights when you leave the room. In short: the problems are real but they are caused by consumer choices instead of systemic dysfunction, economic expansion, and unenforced regulation. It is this diffusion of responsibility that has proven a boon again and again to the system itself.

The effectiveness of this strategy is powerful. It can be seen in the way that disposable plastics manufacturers and soda companies devised the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign, absolving themselves of blame while shaming consumers for litter. It’s how 20 fossil fuel companies that have produced 35% of all carbon dioxide and methane released by human activities since 1965 have managed to get away with it.

Diffusion of responsibility is the voice that whispers, “Ah, the oceans are drowning in plastic? Should’ve recycled! Global warming threatens the vast majority of life in the biosphere? Well, it’s on you—should’ve carpooled!” It is the voice of the Planeteers when they tell us that “the power is yours,” but, crucially, not “ours.” There is no place for collective action in this conception of the world. The capitalist system itself is never questioned. The only role for the Planeteers is that of enforcing the “rules” of that system (“yeah boss, even in a wildlife sanctuary!”) and punishing the “eco-villains” (not Exxon or Dow, of course, but purposely exaggerated pigmen) that cause trouble. As a force, the Planeteers are reactive in response to pollution, never proactive in addressing the systems that cause and encourage these behaviors.

***

FernGully was released in 1992,  the same year as the Earth Summit, and, much like Captain Planet, sought to instill a message of environmentalism to its viewership. Unlike Captain Planet, however, FernGully directly addresses the systemic issues responsible for unsustainability and places the blame fully on human agency and ideology.

In revisiting the movie, I was surprised by its maturity. I recalled a simplistic fable in which “fairies fight a pollution-monster with Robin Williams as comic relief.” The reality was far more complex and adult. The fairies are disconcertingly sexualized, with the protagonist Crysta seemingly modeled after a “Dancing in the Dark”-era Courtney Cox, her curves accentuated by crop-top and thigh-slit dress. Her romantic interest Zak is a bronzed-blonde, big-sneakered, mulleted-hunk with a Walkman and baggy jeans. They are both, as described later in the film, “Bodacious Babes.”

The part of the film I remembered most was Robin Williams’s Batty Koda. I recalled a character that was, much like Aladdin’s Genie, just an extension of his persona: a font of manic riffing and out-of-place impressions. Those aspects are there, of course, but the predominant trait of the character is the severe debilitation of trauma in the wake of torture at the hands of humans. Every aspect of the character is a testament to the fundamental evil of humanity’s relationship with nature. Batty (a bat) is a mauled escapee from a biology lab, the loose wires jammed into his brain depicted with pathos and visceral body horror. He suffers periodic seizures and dissociative episodes as a result of post-traumatic stress. He relates a trauma-rap (with that indelible early-’90s tone) wherein he describes being “brain-fried, electrified, infected and injectified, vivosectified and fed pesticides.” It is humor of the darkest kind, and the movie does not shy from it.

In short, this was not the trite, childish eco-fantasy I’d remembered, but rather one aimed at the kind of audience that might appreciate Tone Loc playing a hungry lizard and Cheech and Chong appearing as beetle-wranglers. This film was intended for a far wider and more discerning audience than Captain Planet and was the product of an independent animation studio adapting an original story with blatant environmental themes. Australian producer Wayne Young, enriched by the enormous success of 1986’s Crocodile Dundee, spent 15 years adapting the earnest environmental novel, which was written by his former wife Diane. The big-name stars of the movie worked for scale, forgoing significant payment due to the environmentalist message of what Young described in a 1992 issue of the Montreal Gazette as “a classically simple story… It won’t bend anyone’s brain to figure out what it’s all about.”

The plot of the film concerns a fairy society living in the lush Gondwana Rainforest near Mount Warning, part of what is today Wollumbin National Park in Australia. The fairies are tree guardians living in harmony with the natural world, and most have never seen a human. The movie begins with exposition from the leader, Magi, as she relates a story of long ago, when a primal force of destruction named Hexxus helped sever the harmonious bond between the tree fairies and the Aboriginal peoples of the region following a volcanic eruption. It is here that Hexxus’s identification with exploitative Western modes of thought is most apparent, his presence serving to separate the Indigenous Australians from FernGully itself. Hexxus was subsequently trapped in a tree and fairy society continued.

Crysta, her ‘90s bangs immaculate, is the protege of Magi and chafes under the restrictions of her society. One day she violates taboo by flying above the treeline. She sees a much wider world than she’d ever imagined, a vision of unending green marred by a plume of smoke in the distance. She then meets the aforementioned Batty, who seeks to warn the fairies of the horrors of encroaching humanity, his very body a testament; but, like Cassandra of Troy, he is unable to convince them of the impending threat. Batty’s presence as a victim of humanity is explicit and serves as an indictment of the original sin of Western environmental thought: humankind’s violent dominion over nature.

Crysta sets out to see the plume for herself, traveling through a defiled landscape to a logging site. She passes severed trees, their stumps marked with a bleed of red paint. The viewer is then introduced to mankind in the form of “the leveler,” a piece of forestry equipment based on a leveling track harvester but depicted as a horrific, smoking robot. It is this harvester that is most clearly coded as an abhorrence. The operators, Tony and Ralph, are depicted as bumbling slobs—but they are not evil. The machine itself—gleaming, fuming, jagged technology—is the force of evil. The act of technologically abetted forestry is explicitly identified as wrong.

Crysta sees Zak Young, a young forester, and rescues him from a falling tree, accidentally shrinking him to fairy-size in the process. The two return to FernGully, where Zak at first hides his responsibility for the encroaching deforestation and generally just bros out with the fae, introducing them to cassette tape jams and accompanying Crysta to a narrow aquatic cave for a moist make-out that fades to black.

The leveler, meanwhile, cuts down and processes the tree imprisoning Hexxus, freeing him. Hexxus manifests as sludge (voiced by Tim Curry) and is delighted by the “clever, helpful” humans and the technology they’ve developed, expressing his belief that they’re “destined to be soulmates” with a bump-n-grind burlesque extolling the pleasure of “Toxic Love.” It is his intention to use “the machine they have provided” to convert the natural environment into capital, visualized as animals and trees turning into coins and bills. He then exercises his sole agency throughout the entire movie: impersonating Tony and Ralph’s boss through the radio and directing them to head to FernGully. The mechanism for their coercion is clear, as they are both excited at the prospect of “beaucoup overtime.”

This is a rich scene and one very much at odds with Captain Planet’s depiction of a well-regulated system subject to the malice of rule-breaking “Eco-villains.” It is capitalist consumerism—neoliberalism itself—that is the “machine they have provided” for the spirit of destruction. Hexxus revels in the machine, but it is not his: it is a human invention. Hexxus is clearly identified as the nameless, faceless voice of capitalism, the invisible engine powering the machine. He does not destroy, however—he provides economic incentives and lets the system work for him.

Back at FernGully, the disruption to the ecosystem is apparent in the poisoned rivers and dying vegetation. Crysta investigates and sees a vast clear-cut above the treeline. When she questions Magi as to whether or not it can be healed, Magi responds that she cannot because “a force outside of nature” is responsible, further identifying humanity as aberrant. Zak confesses, acknowledging that “humans did it. Humans did it all.” Zak informs them that their threat is a machine, defined as a “thing for cutting down trees.”

The fairies seem to accept their inevitable defeat and appear to retreat to a sacred tree, with Magi sacrificing herself to provide Crysta with a magic seed. The leveler, ridden by a laughing Hexxus, approaches the tree at the sacred heart of FernGully, its saws whirring implacably. Zak attempts to confront the leveler but is knocked to the ground.

Batty rescues Zak and tries to flee. Zak repays the rescue by physically manipulating the wires inserted in Batty’s brain, inducing a rapid-fire set of dissociative episodes that play out as Robin William’s comic impersonations set to a cocaine cadence. Batty is coerced into confronting  the leveler when Zak triggers a “John Wayne”-type personality that charges the machine. Zak is thrown from Batty and lands on the windshield of the leveler, attempting to warn Tony and Ralph of his presence. They dismiss the warning until they see the actual physical manifestation of Hexxus and flee the cab, allowing Zak to enter and turn the machine off.

Hexxus is instantly diminished by the machine’s shutdown, wondering “what happened to the energy?” After a moment of audience relief, Hexxus rallies, now embodied as the fire from the burning fuel tank, growing as it prepares to consume FernGully after all. Crysta sacrifices herself by flying within Hexxus’s gaping maw, holding the seed. This is enough of a signal for the rest of the fairies to take collective action and “help it grow,” because “we all have a power and it grows when it shares.” This act sparks the regenerative power of nature to again bind Hexxus within a tree. Crysta is then reborn within a petal blossoming atop the tree.

Crysta is reunited with Zak, rapturous that “Hexxus can never harm FernGully again.” Zak disabuses her of that notion by countering that Hexxus might not, but “humans still could,” explaining that he must return to human society to protect FernGully from further encroachment. He is returned to human size and finds Tony and Ralph, telling them “things have gotta change.” The forest, aided by the fairies, regenerates as a farewell gesture, and the movie ends with a dedication: “for our children and our children’s children.”

FernGully’s depiction of humanity as an inherently malevolent force in thrall to consumerism is a powerful one, but it was not all that far-reaching. The movie itself barely made back its budget, either because of its overt environmental messaging or simply because it wasn’t Disney. Its $32 million box office gross was about six-percent of Robin Williams’s other animated release that year, Aladdin.

Unlike Captain Planet’s individualist-consumerist approach to environmentalism, FernGully depicts a world where trees and the ecosphere have fundamental rights, and where real change is possible only through collective action and sacrifice. The “machine” can be stopped, but not permanently, not as long as the system that built it and set it loose remains in place.

***

When surveying the wreckage of the natural world and the inevitability of devastating climate change, deep ecological grief (or solastalgia) is a reasonable response. But there must also be anger over the possibilities that were stolen from us by the neoliberal consensus. Nearly everything we know today about the effects of pollution and the reality of climate change was known in 1992. The past thirty years have been a concerted effort by the forces of capital to engage in predatory delay: ensuring that the longer we wait to make changes, the more disruptive and difficult (and unlikely) they’ll be. The distinction between the left and the right on this topic is meaningless; it’s one where an ostensibly progressive president can oversee a vast increase in American gas production through the environmentally devastating use of hydraulic fracturing and still be considered “green.”

Things could have been very different after the Earth Summit. The reforms we might have made would have been relatively painless compared to the societal transformation that is now imperative if earth is to remain habitable. The world of “might have been” and “if only” is a painful one to revisit. Now, in a time shaped by the nihilism of the international right, the future of environmental collapse feels imminent. Decades of carefully calibrated and incremental environmental “progress” have been gleefully jettisoned by Republican revanche with no greater justification needed beyond destroying the biosphere to own the libs. In the face of this catastrophic intransigence, the conscious consumer can do little more than swear off plastic straws.

Duncan Macpherson/Toronto Star, 1992

Barbara Pyle saw the failures of the Rio Summit in real time, and was correct in predicting the influence of Captain Planet upon a generation. Millennials, staring down the barrel of our second economic collapse, recognize the urgency of immediate action. It is a recognition that is, unfortunately, worthless in the face of the gerontocratic stewards of the Democratic Party. We have been told all our lives that our prime civic contribution is to vote, that through “our powers combined” we might channel a force that is truly bigger than all of us. This generational yearning, growing increasingly urgent as time narrows, is constrained by the limits of what is possible in a neoliberal democracy. The current so-called “progressive voices” of our desperation are the same millionaire centrist old guard (Pelosi, Biden, Schumer, Feinstein, et al.) that have been in power all throughout the unraveling of our hopes—and our biosphere.

As the inherent tensions of America’s rapidly decaying society are exposed via a pandemic response that emphasizes individual choices at the expense of public health—fueled by the environmental consequences of now-irreversible global warming—the limits of individual, consumer-oriented activism are laid bare. Attempts to reform the system from within through electoralism remain stymied by the hard limits of the system itself. There are no superheroes or tree-fairies that we can call upon to deliver us from impending disaster.

This does not have to be the prelude to despair, however. Civil disobedience through collective action (as separate from the feel-good parades that characterize a great deal of public protest in the United States) remains the prime lever by which grassroots societal change is achieved. Over the past several years both Extinction Rebellion and the Black Lives Matter movement have engaged in collective action that emphasizes disruption outside of the inherently constrained limits of “peaceful protest.” We are also seeing an activist movement to remove the entrenched politicians on the “left” that have sleep-walked through the destruction of the biosphere; more diverse and progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman have won primary victories and reflect a very real demand for immediate action and change. Proposed programs like the Green New Deal have the potential to mitigate the ongoing crisis of environmental and ecological collapse while also being broadly popular with a majority of the American public. However, elected progressives remain a small portion of the whole, and have the full force of capital, inertia, and predatory delay arrayed against them.

When the once hopelessly hopeful millennial, now approaching forty, surveys the ruins of the moment via the lens of their childhood pop culture, the gulf between the world we were promised and the world we now inhabit is dizzying. The challenges are overwhelming. We were raised to succeed in a society that no longer exists and—quite possibly—never did. But there are lessons to be found in the fables and allegories that shaped our worldview. We are not powerless. Widespread social change is possible, but it requires collective effort on a mass scale. The power was never “yours.” The power is ours.

M.L. Schepps lives in federally occupied Portland, where he takes many photos of birds. He spent the last year developing a deep appreciation of Kate Bush while also writing a book about 19th century Chinese immigration and Arctic exploration. Find more of his work at MLSchepps.com.

“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
From the primeval forests of our genetic race-memories to Sherwood to Mirkwood, to forest-covered moons in a galaxy far, far away.  The Forest has long been the boundary between what is civilized and safe to what is uncivilized, untamed, wild, and most definitely, not safe. 


The "Goblin" Forrest of HavenThe forested area outside of West Haven in the Haven Valley is an old-growth forest of ancient date.  The expanse westward left this forested area surprising untouched.  Located north-west of West Haven the forest has always had a reputation of being haunted by all sorts of unsavory creatures. In the mid to late 1600s when the Haven Valley was first settled, the local parish in what would become East Haven decried the forest, claiming it was the abode of Satan himself and set to burn it down.  A tree, that was by all claims to be healthy and sturdy, fell and killed three of the parishioners include the town's Calvinist priest.  Several other "bizarre" accidents and people began to claim that the forest was inhabited by goblins and other foul creatures.  It was here it earned the name "The Goblin Wood" or "The Goblin Forest."
Even when the Industrial Revolution hit in the 1800s and trees for miles around were fed to the Gods of the Furnace and Industry, the Goblin Wood remained untouched.  
Now in the 21st Century, the Goblin Wood remains but there is still an air of mystery and danger about it.  While the general population doesn't believe in goblins, ghosts or even witches anymore there are still plenty of strange occurrences.  
The local USGS office claims the area is rich in naturally occurring magnetic ore.  They claim that the particular features of both the forest and the Haven Valley, in general, disrupt cell phone coverage and GPS signals.  One surveyor even claimed he could see the laser he was using for measuring "bend," though no amount of ore outside one as massive as a black hole could do that.  People walking into the wood with cell phones or GPS devices will find themselves going in circles rather than a straight line.
While scientists, meteorologists, and geologists have all come up with interesting theories about why the Haven Forest is the way it is, the people of West and East Haven know the truth.  And staying out of the forest at night is the one thing both communities can agree on.


If you don't think I have witches guarding all my forests and wild areas in my games you have not been paying attention.

This is not the Greatest RPG in the World.  This is just a Tribute.

I have gone on record many, many times on how I feel that CJ Carella's WitchCraft is one of the, if not the, greatest RPGs I have ever played.  Yes. Even better than D&D.
I have also gone on record stating that my Ghosts of Albion game is really nothing more than an extended love letter to WitchCraft in Victorian prose.
Really, I would love to see an update to WitchCraft from Eden, but I am not holding my breath for it.
Another tribute is NIGHT SHIFT.
Night Shift is a tribute to the types of games Jason and I have been fond of playing over the years we have known each other.  So there are tributes here to Old-school D&D, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to Chill, to Call of Cthulhu and of course to WitchCraft. 

As much as I love Ghosts of Albion and Night Shift they can't take the place that WitchCraft has in my heart.  There are some things that both games can do better than WitchCraft, I did have the advantage of playing many games to add to my experiences, but still, WitchCraft remains.
Maybe one day some designer will write their tribute to Ghosts of Albion or to Night Shift!
And since we are talking tributes.


Which is, of course, a tribute to this, 

Michael Grasso / August 4, 2020

Ecotopia (The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston)
By Ernest Callenbach
Banyan Tree Books, 1975

Visualizing a better world has never been more important, or more difficult. The promise of utopia—or at least a world that places its values on health, happiness, and lovingkindness—has been an object of pursuit for philosophers, theologians, and regular folks since the dawn of human civilization. In the early 1970s, thinkers in the West faced the same existential problems that are tearing the world apart in 2020: environmental calamity, geopolitical chaos, racists and reactionaries in power tearing their societies asunder. While the revolutionary counterculture of the 1960s was in a position of retreat against the revanchist forces of reaction during much of the 1970s, plenty of thinkers, writers, and activists were still hard at work imagining a society that would resist and reject the mechanized death-impulse of the West, one that would try to thoroughly reimagine Western lives and lifestyles in the face of energy crises and rampant pollution.

In 1975, writer, film scholar, and University of California Berkeley Press editor Ernest Callenbach envisioned a new nation, born of separatist revolution on America’s West Coast, called Ecotopia. Synthesizing the many threads of cutting-edge ecological and social reformist discourse around him in his time and place—sustainability and recycling, re-wilding and re-forestation, anti-consumerism, educational reform, the elimination of the automobile, and countless other seemingly “pie-in-the-sky” reforms and revolutions—Callenbach created a believable imaginary society born of the contradictory Western (in both senses of the word) cross-currents of self-reliance and community living, all motivated by a societally-fundamental goal of doing the least harm to the Earth possible. Callenbach’s modest book—originally self-published under the aegis of “Banyan Tree Books”—would become an underground classic and end up influencing multiple generations of environmentalists and futurists. Ecotopia also offers to readers in 2020 a world that is simultaneously intimately familiar and deeply alien, one where social, ecological, and technological advances that the West now takes for granted (widespread recycling, renewable energy, video-telephony alleviating the need for travel) jostle shoulders with ones that are only dreamed of in our late capitalist dystopia (a twenty-hour work week, universally socialized necessities of life like food, housing, and health care, and an end to consumerist capitalism).

Like many other explorations of utopias, from Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626) to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), the conceit behind Ecotopia is that the book presents a record of an outsider encountering and being bewildered by an alien society for which they have very few bases of comparison. Our protagonist in Ecotopia, William Weston, is an American journalist (and apparent agent of American geopolitical interests) who is one of the first Americans to visit the breakaway nation of Ecotopia since its secession from the U.S. nearly twenty years previous. The narrative cannily switches between Weston’s private diary and his published pieces for the “Times-Post,” charting his initially-sober exploration of Ecotopia as he delves deeper into how the revolution has changed Ecotopians on a personal level.

Ecotopia seems to exist, even before its titular revolution, in a slightly alternate history that allows the stage to be set for the breaking away of most of three American states. France is seemingly a Communist republic (perhaps after the convulsions of 1968?) and the tendency towards devolution and the ethnically-based collapse of the nation state that occurred at the end of the Cold War has seemingly happened a decade or two early (Callenbach mentions that the success of Quebec separatism was an inspiration to the Ecotopians). Weston is clearly primarily on a diplomatic/espionage mission, despite his journalistic bona fides—his visit was in the planning stages for over a year at the highest levels of the U.S. government, including meetings with the American president himself. There is unrest in the remaining United States, thanks to rampant pollution, further separatist movements “in the Great Lakes region and the Southeast,” and, probably most direly for the American regime, “Ecotopian ideas are seeping over the border more dangerously” and there is “unrest… generated by Ecotopian ideas among our youth.”

Weston begins his journey through Ecotopia as a chauvinistic American, dubious about Ecotopian progress as compared to America’s industrial might and even a bit credulous of bizarre rumors of human sacrifice and sexual license. But ultimately Weston is a journalist; Callenbach’s canny decision to split the book between Weston’s dispatches for publication and his private diary allows the reader to watch Weston’s reactions to the alienness of Ecotopia change over time. And Callenbach has a real eye for the kinds of things that would immediate hit an American visitor’s own eyes: the alien details of everyday Ecotopian life. On the high-speed maglev train from the border town of Reno to the Ecotopian capital of San Francisco, Weston first notices the differences in material culture in Ecotopia: cushions and beanbags instead of hard-surfaced chairs and benches on Ecotopian transport and in homes; the patchwork motley assemblage of Ecotopian clothes, most of which are homemade; the eerily prescient vision of separate recycling bins for metal, glass, and paper.

Callenbach cares deeply about the minutiae of how such a society would work (one of his primary inspirations to create Ecotopia was an article he’d researched on the failures of contemporary sewage processing), and he treats us to paragraph upon paragraph on the dirty details how Ecotopia actually works: treatises on steady-state sewage processing, Ecotopian forestry and logging, the breakdown of industrialized agriculture into a localized and organic food-cultivation, and the science-fiction advances of Ecotopian biodegradable plastics and extruded structures, all made from plant matter. And it’s not just tangible material goods that get this unceasingly detailed treatment: Callenbach also has Weston observe the minutiae of Ecotopian tax policy and localized politics, the Ecotopian legal system’s focus on punishing citizens who burden the community with poisonous externalities, and Ecotopian economic policy (the inheritance of private—not personal—property is prohibited).

It’s only when Weston sinks a little deeper in Ecotopian society that we the readers begin to grasp the even more stunning social and philosophical revolution that’s taken place in this new world. The citizenry is united in professing to Weston how much better their quality of life is; one of the revolution’s very first proclamations was the establishment of a twenty-hour work week. The American obsession with production and economic growth was deemed anti-social. In one of Weston’s early dispatches to America, the psycho-emotional motivation behind the Ecotopian revolution is clear:

What was at stake [in the revolution], informed Ecotopians insist, was nothing less than the revision of the Protestant work ethic upon which America has been built. The consequences were plainly severe… But the profoundest implications of the decreased work week were philosophical and ecological: mankind, the Ecotopians assumed, was not meant for production, as the 19th and early 20th centuries had believed. Instead, humans were meant to take their place in a seamless, stable-state web of living organisms, disturbing that web as little as possible. This would mean sacrifice of present consumption, but it would ensure future survival—which became an almost religious objective, perhaps akin to earlier doctrines of “salvation.” People were to be happy not to the extent they dominated their fellow creatures on the earth, but to the extent they lived in balance with them.

The Ecotopians are much more cagey about whether their society is “socialist” or not; certainly, the seizure of corporate capital in the first months of the Ecotopian revolution qualifies as classically socialist (“the forced consolidation of the basic retail network constituted by Sears, Penneys, Safeway, and a few other chains,” Weston notes), but Ecotopia is more properly classified as a mixed economy, as a private market and currency backed by a central bank does still exist. But it’s clear that at its base, Ecotopia is an essentially syndicalist-socialist state, with self-determination regarding labor being its organizing principle. Small groups of people numbering in the few dozens spontaneously form communes, farms, factories, educational foundations, and research facilities based on their common interests and goals. In addition, work assignments change depending on need and demand; students spend more time in university trying out different occupations, and every Ecotopian inevitably ends up owing service to their society outside their own job. The nuclear family has been largely upended by the Ecotopian revolution, with Ecotopian children raised by their “village.” On the larger scale, Ecotopian living communities are smaller and more self-contained. Along with the nuclear family, the commuter suburb has been destroyed in favor of self-sufficient “ring towns” surrounding larger urban conurbations, all linked by low-pollution high-speed trains. These basic changes in living structures have, within a generation, altered the Ecotopian psyche deeply. There is a greater openness to experience and to emotion, a greater sense of the interconnectedness of all Ecotopians.

Weston’s biggest culture shock during his first few days is just how publicly Ecotopians laugh, love, cry, fight, and criticize each other, all while presenting very little of the simmering resentments and lingering neuroses seen in America. American consumer culture has been completely rejected, and that is clear in the changes to Ecotopian mass media: small newspapers and news organizations of all political stripes flourish, and television (brought to Ecotopian households via hard-wired cable and not over-the-air broadcasting, another of Callenbach’s startling predictions come true) is profoundly participatory, with advertising heavily regulated and consumer products made without the needless variety (and deleterious environmental effects) seen in the States. There is also a profound instilled sense of social responsibility among the Ecotopians. In Weston’s examination of logging and forestry policy, he notes that any individual wanting a large amount of lumber (for building a home, for example) must undertake a couple of months of forest service, cutting down the trees needed and replanting new ones. Weston grudgingly accepts that “it may make people have a better attitude toward lumber resources.”

In his examination of the politics of Ecotopia, Weston, as an individualistic American, notes this tension between responsibility, individual desire, and group dynamics, which rears its head everywhere in Ecotopia from economic policy to psychosocial roles. Even while Ecotopian society is profoundly localized and quasi-libertarian, a definite state exists, with clear economic and military responsibilities. And yet it’s clear that this state would not exist but for the clear consent of the governed and their mutual defense of the Ecotopian way of life. In its early years as a breakaway republic, Ecotopia fought a secret “Helicopter War” against the United States that Ecotopia handily won. How did this tiny nation manage to fight off the largest military in the world? The same way the Viet Cong did in Southeast Asia (and, startlingly, in much the way that the Afghan people would repel the later Soviet invasion a few years after the publication of Ecotopia): with individual members of Ecotopian guerrilla militias destroying high-tech American weapons of war with well-placed rockets, sabotage, and other innovative strategies targeting American weaknesses. Granted, not all of these technologically-advanced weapons were developed in Ecotopia; it’s clear that the material support of both Russia and France helped the new nation achieve this victory. Callenbach also describes a slightly more unrealistic nuclear gambit exercised by Ecotopia, telling America that they had secreted nuclear devices in major American cities and would detonate them upon any further attempt at invasion. But the lesson of Ecotopia is the same as anti-American revolutions in Cuba and Vietnam in the 20th century: with a little societal solidarity, outside support, and innovative methods of waging war, David can beat Goliath.

Over the course of Ecotopia, Callenbach shows us Weston’s slow acceptance of even the most alien aspects of Ecotopian culture. In gender relations, Weston demonstrates a quiet chauvinism about the ruling revolutionary party of Ecotopia, the Survivalists, which originally grew out of pre-revolutionary West Coast feminist-environmentalist politics. It’s clear that Callenbach invests the Ecotopian revolution at its foundation with a distinctly 1970s second-wave feminist flavor. Weston, a roving reporter used to participating in exotic conquests on his various overseas trips, finds himself disarmed by the sexual autonomy and confidence of liberated Ecotopian women. Weston falls in love with a forester, Marissa Brightcloud, who comes to represent to Weston everything about Ecotopia that he finds initially alien and even detestable (after one of their first encounters, Weston sees Marissa giving a word of thanks to a tree and remarks, “this incredible woman is a goddamn druid or something—a tree-worshipper!”), but eventually profoundly liberating. As their affair matures, Weston “realize[s] the relation (sic) with Marissa is changing my whole idea of what men and women are like together.” As Weston tries to comprehend these shifted gender relations, he observes (and eventually participates in and is wounded in) Ecotopia’s ritual war games, its anthropologist-designed method of channeling and diffusing the violent testosterone-fueled impulses of young men into a small-scale series of formalized (and ritual-drug-aided) skirmishes.

It’s in moments like the war games where the dated elements of Callenbach’s novel begin to be seen. For Ecotopia (much as with a good deal of the white counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s), ham-handedly emulating what is perceived as a monolithic “Native American culture” is considered a key to creating a more ecologically just society (Marissa’s surname is an example of this tendency, which Weston coolly appraises as “a self-adopted, Indian-inspired name—many Ecotopians use them”). Weston also notes that the Ecotopian’s respect for their tools, food, and inanimate objects also has an animistic tinge to it. But it’s not just in these broad white stereotypes of the diversity of various indigenous American histories and cultures where Callenbach fails to imagine a non-white ecology. He also shows Weston slightly shocked at the racial segregation and nationalism present in the Bay Area’s various ethnic communities. Black and Chinese urban populations have largely rejected working within Ecotopian systems, taking advantage of Ecotopian community-based social organization to create their own enclaves, which white Ecotopians believe may eventually break away completely to form their own sovereign nations. (Even more cringeworthy is Callenbach’s decision to use the section on the “Soul City” enclave as a method to expound upon Ecotopian crime and punishment.) Weston, in a high-handed “egalitarian” American manner, calls this system “apartheid,” although it’s really more akin to Black separatist and nationalist traditions long-represented and respected in our own timeline’s history. But this treatment of race is a rare but striking sour note in Callenbach’s imagination of a better world. One sees the author struggling to untie the Gordian knot of the legacy of American racism to visualize a better, more peaceful and unified ecological utopia; given the miraculous social revolutions that are taken as a given throughout the novel, this elision of race is odd and off-putting to contemporary eyes.

As mentioned, Weston falls in love with Marissa and then eventually Ecotopia itself. His dispatches about Ecotopia sent back home grow less snide and judgmental and more accepting and fascinated. In the final chapters of the book, Weston gets his long-awaited interview (and diplomatic mission) with Survivalist Party leader and Ecotopian president Vera Allwen. During the meeting,  Weston finds his skills of persuasion leaving him; in Allwen he has met a towering personality with whom he is “mysteriously outclassed.” “She is powerful as a person, not as a bureaucrat or the head of an institution. Difficult to express. (Have heard that some of the old-time communist leaders, Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse-tung, had this quality too.)” Allwen outright rejects any overture at reunification with the United States. “You cannot be serious,” she says in response to this proposal, firmly, twice in a row. Weston leaves the meeting dejected and soon develops a strange illness that seems at least half-psychosomatic (perhaps triggered by Allwen’s relentless psychological probing).

Trying to decide whether to stay in Ecotopia longer to tarry with Marissa or return home to his sometime wife and children, Weston is soon confronted with a group of mysterious Ecotopians who essentially abduct him. All throughout the novel there have been hints that Weston is being followed by the secret police; a meeting with a group of Ecotopian capitalist dissidents early in the novel leads to an explicit warning from some presumed members of state security. But these Ecotopian agents do not take him to some dungeon or black site; instead, they lead him to a mountain retreat full of regular foreign guests enjoying the hot springs. It’s very reminiscent of Esalen, and even more so as Weston’s captors begin to lovingly interrogate him, subjecting him to long soaks in hot-tubs, sweat lodges, and, it seems from the description of his continuing physical ailments, psychedelic drugs. Weston says to himself that he’ll leave for the border city of Los Angeles (still in the U.S. proper), and dons his American “uniform” of suit and tie, but as he looks in the mirror, he says, “The ugly American me was almost sickening—I really thought I might have to throw up.” In the midst of what sounds like a sensory deprivation tank within one of the deep hot tubs, Weston has a sudden “conversion” moment. “I am going to stay in Ecotopia!” he shouts. He has won the victory over his American self. His captors embrace him, love-bombing him as Marissa suddenly appears from where she was hidden on the grounds, ready to accept the newest liberated Ecotopian citizen to their society.

During this final chapter I couldn’t help but think of all the strains of the human potential movement abroad in California at the time of the writing of Ecotopia and how many of them ended up being used for sinister purposes by the rising technocratic consensus, unscrupulous cultic charlatans, and even by the U.S. government and military. What may have seemed to the 1970s readers of Ecotopia as a liberatory experience rife with self-actualization and a rejection of American “squareness” looks, with the benefit of hindsight, like a training manual for social control in our current age of a hippie-derived technocratic power structure that seems to have systematically quantified and manipulated all our emotional responses for the purposes of further solidifying capitalism. One could argue that the Ecotopians’ weapons of defense and war—cobbled together as a mix of both primitive ecologically-friendly defenses as well as innovative biological and social systems of control—are their way of defending their hard-won state and that these reservations are merely around means instead of ends. If the CIA and U.S. military relentlessly used psychological warfare both at home and abroad to solidify American hegemony, what is wrong with turning those same weapons back against them for the benefit of a new republic dedicated to opposing American and corporate imperialism?

But to our contemporary eyes, it’s this slightly ambiguous ending and all the other profoundly ironic moments within the narrative that make Ecotopia so interesting a document. As mentioned earlier, Ecotopia in some small way successfully predicts what the future will look like, for both good and ill. Ironically, after reading it, I find myself interested in a sequel that would take Ecotopia twenty years into the future, to match up with our own year 2020. Would Ecotopian ideals conquer America and lead to a worldwide acceptance of Ecotopian steady-state living? Or would America decide again to try to take back its breakaway republic by force, this time using more brute force than in the Helicopter War? Or would America, facing the implicit rebuke of Ecotopia’s success, fall apart into a series of squabbling balkanized republics? The world of Ecotopia in a lot of ways is an achievable paradise, but one wonders if, given two or three decades, it would end up looking more like our own timeline’s collapsing America than an egalitarian ecological paradise.

Michael Grasso is a Senior Editor at We Are the Mutants. He is a Bostonian, a museum professional, and a podcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @MutantsMichael.

"I was raised by witches boy, I see with more than eyes and you know that."- Frigga to Thor in 2013, Avengers Endgame
Call me biased, but I have always liked the idea that witches see things that other character types don't.  Not just in terms of "infravision" or "dark vision" but in just "other vision."
A couple of house rules that I always use are witches can see ghosts, spirits, and other sorts of magical creatures that are typically invisible to others.  They can see magical auras which they can tell something about the person they are looking at.  Most importantly they can recognize other witches on sight.

Mechanically it really doesn't add much to D&D.  I argue the kinds of ghosts and things the witch can see are harmless to everyone.  But if you can see them, then they can see you.  So they are not always harmless to the witch herself.
In Ghosts of Albion, this type of vision is known as "Lesser Sensing" and it is something all magical creatures, including magicians and witches, have.   
Witches and Warlocks in NIGHT SHIFT do this as part of their class.
I have extended it to my fantasy games where it is just called "The Sight."
In D&D3-5 or Pathfinder1-2, it could easily be a Feat.  For my Basic-era witches an Occult Power.
The SightUsing the Sight requires a moment of concentration but then the witch can See.  She can see magical auras that will give her some basic information on what she is looking at.She can See:- magical effects such as active spells, charms, curses or compulsions on a person- magical lines of force (ley lines)- whether or not a person is a spell-caster* (she can always detect another witch)- undead
With more concentration (1 round) she can See:- Invisible creatures- alignment - polymorphed, shape-changed or lycanthropes
The subject of the witch's Sight knows they are being Seen. They get an uncomfortable feeling and know it is coming from the witch, even if they do not know what it means.
That's the rough version, it would need to be tweaked for the respective games.  For example it would work with D&D 5's perception skill. 

If you are feeling tired, lethargic, or otherwise drained then you could have been attacked by an Astral Spider.  

As their name suggests these demonic creatures are native to the astral plane, but they are attracted to people with psychic or empathic abilities.  The spider, which is normally invisible, attaches itself to a victim and drains Wisdom at the rate of 1 point per day. The Astral Spider stays attached and draining until it's victim reaches 0 Wisdom. Magic that can detect a curse or detect evil creatures can let you know that an Astral Spider is attached to someone or attacking. 
The Astral Spider is immune to physical attacks, including magical and blessed weapons.  They can only be affected by magic.  A specially worded Remove Curse spell will remove an Astral Spider.  A banishment or exorcism will also remove the spider and force it back into the Astral.
Astral Spiders only move in the Astral plane. The only time they are manifest in the real world when attached to a victim and then they do not move. 
Astral SpiderVermin (Demonic)Frequency: Very RareNumber Appearing: 1 (1)Alignment: Chaotic (Chaotic Evil)Movement:  SpecialArmor Class: 9 [10]Hit Dice: 3d6+3* (10)Attacks: 1 special Damage: 1 point Widom per daySpecial: Immune to physical attacks, affected only by magicSize: SmallSave: Fighter 3Morale: 12Treasure Hoard Class: NoneXP: 125
Astral SpiderNIGHT SHIFTNo. Appearing: 1AC: 9Move: Special (Astral only)Hit Dice: 3Special: Wisdom drain. 1 point/dayXP VALUE: 120

August started in North Texas with its usual aplomb: hot and sunny, and so much hot and sunny that the only thing that keeps most of us sane through the month is the promise of Halloween decorations at the local … Continue reading →

Over the weekend two game-related thoughts kept going through my head.  Frist Gen Con and how we were all missing it and the adventures I was going to run for my family and the theme of Thread.
Since D&D 5 had come out I have been running my family through the "Gygaxian Classics." while we technically started with B1 In Search of the Unknown with AD&D 1st ed, we quickly moved to D&D 5.  From here we did B2 Keep on the Borderlands and moved through the Great Greyhawk Campaign.  We have been calling the group The Order of the Platinum Dragon. 

Our order of games has been:
T1 Village of Hommlet (forgotten by the characters, played as a flashback after I6)B1 In Search of the Unknown (Gen Con Game)B2 Keep on the BorderlandsL1 The Secret of Bone Hill  (Gen Con Game)X2 Castle AmberI6 Ravenloft (Gen Con Game)C2 Ghost Tower of InvernessA1-5 Slave LordsC1 The Hidden Shrine of TamoachanG123, G4 Against the Giants  (Gen Con Game)D12, 3 Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Vault of the DrowQ1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Gen Con Game)
I wanted my family to have the "Classic D&D Experience) with this.  Communities are often defined by the stories they share. These are the stories we all share.  How did you defeat Strahd? Did you shout 'Bree Yark'? What did you do in the Hill Giant's dining room?   Did you survive the Demonweb?
One of the things I have been doing differently than the original narrative is thread everything together with a massive conspiracy.  Someone, or something, killed all the Gods of the Sun.  The characters (and the players) have come to the conclusion that this something is the Elder Elemental Eye.  But they don't know who or what that is.They have learned that Eclavdra betrayed her Goddess, Lolth, and has incited a civil war within the city of Erelhei-Cinlu.  The followers of Lolth vs the followers of the Elder Elemental Eye.
What they don't know yet is who has been manipulating these threads.  Behind the scenes, the Demon Lord Graz'zt has been scheming.  In my world Graz'zt has always coveted the Drow. He wants their devotion and is jealous of the iron hold Lolth has on them.  So he has been stirring her up into more and more desperate attacks on the Prime Material.  He is using Eclavdra and her devotion to the EEE to get to Lolth.  Eclavdra thinks Graz'zt can free the EEE from his prison in the Temple of Elemental Evil.  To this end Elcavdra has been using what is left of the EEE former followers, or rather their descendants, the Giants.  Titans and Primordials followed the EEE back in the Dawn War.  Graz'zt thinks he can control the EEE once he has the worship of the Drow.
What Elcavdra doesn't know is Graz'zt has no intention of releasing the EEE from the Temple of Elemental Evil, save as far as he wants that power too.  Graz'zt is not a demon at all, but rather a devil sent by Asmodeus to infiltrate the demon hierarchy and discover the source of pure evil for Asmodeus.  Graz'zt has gone too deep into the cold though and now he thinks like a demon lord. Asmodeus suspects this of course.  Both of these powerful evil creatures will betray each other on the first chance.
Graz'zt has long suspected that the Temple of Elemental Evil is the key.  Centuries ago he sent the Demon Lady Zuggtmoy into the Temple. He discovered she was essentially absorbed by the power of the EEE. Now her cults worship it. 
What none of the evil lords and ladies know though is that the EEE is really Tharizdûn. He is manipulating Graz'zt and Asmodeus to free him.  He tried with Graz'zt before and Graz'zt sent in Zuggtmoy.  Tharizdûn quickly overwhelmed, overpowered, and destroyed Zuggtmoy's form and spirit.  This gave Tharizdûn enough power though to put his final plans into action.  He needs the Temple of Elemental Evil open. Only Lolth has the keys to unlock the Temple.
And in my next adventure with the family, Graz'zt is going to get them.
That was supposed to happen this last weekend, but Gen Con shut down due to Covid-19 we did not get to do this.
One thing that never sat well with me, and many others, is that after this epic adventure of Giants and Drow and going to the Abyss the end antagonist is Lolth and her Spider-ship?  It seems a little anti-climatic. 
Instead of that my last layer of the Lolth Demonweb will be Skein of the Death Mother.  


The spider-ship will still be used in my ill-defined Q2 adventure, likely piloted by Eclavdra to invade the surface world, but starting with the houses still loyal to Lolth in Erelhei-Cinlu.
I am going to pull all these threads, and more, together with the grand finale, The Temple of Elemental Evil. 
Then I am looking forward to running my War of the Witch Queens.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—


What is it?
Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd presents an odd, even whimsical creature for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a thirteen-page, full colour, 1.49 MB PDF.

Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is well presented and decently written.

Where is it set?
Dolorous Edd, the subject of Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd,  can be encountered anywhere in Dragon Pass, or even in Glorantha.

Who do you play?
Anyone can encounter Dolorous Edd. Hunters might want to track him, Lhankor Mhy might want to clarify know facts about him, and a Shaman might want to dedicate a cult to him!

What do you need?
Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, but RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary might be useful. 

What do you get?
Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd details ‘Dolorous Edd’, a singularly strange creature who wanders Dragon Pass seemingly at random and is known to a multitude of different people across the region. He is a tall and looming  beast, long, but with skin wrinkled into folds, tiny feet, and constantly weeping eyes. He is seen watching folk and tends to run—or leap—away if encountered. There are lots of rumours and tales about him, the likelihood being that the Player Characters will know something about him, such that if they do encounter him, they will not be completely unaware of his existence.

As well as providing the full stats and personality of this beast, Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd a rumours table suggesting what both Player Characters and NPCs might know about him (there is much to be learned over a pint), three scenario seeds, a complete description of the cult dedicated to Dolorous Edd, and the folklore about him. Actually, there is no cult devoted to Dolorous Edd—at least not yet. Instead it is up to the Player Characters to do so, especially if one of them is a Shaman. Full details of such a cult is given should a Player Character decide to establish one, including appropriate Rune spells. A good third of Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is devoted to the folklore surrounding his appearances and activities. If there is an issue with this, it is that it is not really designed to be read by the players, so the Game Master may want to adapt it so should the Player Characters want to do a little more research into Dolorous Edd. That said, the folklore will instead work as inspiration for the Game Master in presenting the rumours related to him and perhaps in creating further encounters with this great, fantastically quaint creature.

Is it worth your time?
Yes—Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd epitomises ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’ in presenting a “Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie” who may be simply encountered, hunted, be made friends with, a mystery to be uncovered, or even worshiped!
No—Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is perhaps ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’ a step too far, a silly creature more Douglas Addams than Greg Stafford.
Maybe—Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is strange and whimsical, but its weirdness is easy enough to bring to your Glorantha with relatively little preparation.

Artwork found at Archive.org

Change, they tell us, is good. 
It is good in life and in games.  I feel in order to be good at running or playing any RPG you need to change your style of playing every so often and the best way to do this is to change your games.
It is no secret I really enjoy D&D.  But it is also not the only game I play, not by any stretch.
Mark Twain once said "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."  The same can be said of "travelling" to other worlds.   
Want to make your D&D games scarier? Play Call of Cthulhu.  Want to give it more of a historical feel? Play Pendragon. Want to give your games a more magical feel? Play Ars Magica or it's half-sister Mage.  Occult conspiracies? Play WitchCraft and Conspiracy X. 
I honestly get confused when people tell me they only play D&D. Or even, just one version of D&D. That's like only ever reading one book your entire life (and yes I know those people too).

My interests in RPGs are horror, magic, Celtic-myths and legends, and Victorian-era gaming.  I bring these into my games when and where I can.  Ok, so Victorian era not so much in D&D, but there are ideas I like to bring over. 
My games are better because I have had these other experiences.  My game writing is better because I have had these other experiences.
So maybe when you need to improve your own games, try changing it out for a little bit. 

The format of One-on-One roleplaying—one Investigator and one Keeper—is not new to Lovecraftian investigative horror. It goes all the way back to the scenario, ‘Paper Chase’, originally published in the Cthulhu Companion from 1983 and most recently included in the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, and more recently explored in Cthulhu Confidential, published by Pelgrane Press for clue-orientated roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, Trail of Cthulhu. Chaosium, Inc. returns to the format for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, with Does Love Forgive? One-to-One Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, its special release for the ‘Virtual’ Gen Con of 2020. Originally published for the Polish version of Call of Cthulhu by Black Monk Games as Miłość ci wszystko wybaczy? for Valentine’s Day 2020, the two scenarios in Does Love Forgive? are set in the USA, one in 1929 and one in 1932, one in Chicago and one in New York, and both can be played through in a single session or so. Does Love Forgive? is also notable for its all-women writing team and for being one of the few non-English language titles for Call of Cthulhu to be translated and developed for the English market.

From the outset, Does Love Forgive? addresses two difficulty factors related to the format and the subject matter. The first is the difficulty of playing the two scenarios and here it introduces a pair of indicators to show the Difficulty Level and the estimated number of gaming sessions necessary to complete the two scenarios in the anthology. These range from ‘Very Easy’ to ‘Very Hard’ for the Difficulty Level and one, two, three, or four sessions for the play length. The first scenario, ‘Love You to Death’, has a Difficulty Level of ‘Very Easy’ and a play length of one session, whilst the second, ‘Mask of Desire’, has a Difficulty Level of ‘Easy’ and a play length of one session. Both are clearly marked at the beginning of each scenario. Overall, this is a useful addition to Call of Cthulhu, and hopefully it will be used in more scenarios. Both scenarios though, can be played using the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set or the full Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition rules.

The difficulty is with the subject at the heart of Does Love Forgive?—and that is love. Being focused on the one player and the one Keeper, the format of one-on-one roleplaying is potentially more intense and potentially more intimate, which when combined with as emotional a subject matter as ‘love’, means that the some of the situations in the two scenarios have the capacity to make player, Keeper, or both uncomfortable when roleplaying their romantic or highly emotionally-charged scenes. The authors suggest both player and Keeper discuss any potentially problematic plot elements that they might be uncomfortable with and set the parameters for themselves, and that certainly the Keeper should take care in handling the emotional scenes throughout both scenarios. Overall this is good advice and definitely worth reading as part of preparing both. Other advice for the Keeper covers the use of NPCs to provide support to the protagonist and the use of Luck to modify most rolls during play.

The first scenario is ‘Love You to Death’. This takes place in Chicago on Friday, February 15th, 1929—the day after the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The Investigator is a Private Eye—either one of the player’s own creation or taken from the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set—who grew up in an orphanage where he was very good friends with two girls, Hattie and Ellen. It has been years since he has seen either, one being now married and the other having been adopted years before. Then on the morning following the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Hattie knocks on his office door. Her faithful dog has been picked up by the police and is due to be put down. Fortunately, the Investigator has a friend at the police station and not only will he be able to learn how the dog came to be picked up, but also more about the terrible events of the day before. However, by the time the Investigator returns the dog to Hattie, she has disappeared… Could this be related to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre?

‘Love You to Death’ is of course a love triangle, but one coloured by both other emotions and the Mythos. Being the simpler of the two scenarios, ‘Love You to Death’ should be a relatively easy mystery to solve, and in fact, experienced players of Call of Cthulhu may find it a little too easy. This is unlikely though if the player is new to Call of Cthulhu or he has played through the scenarios in Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. At times it does feel as the player and his Investigator is being dragged around—in some cases literally—a little. There are suggestions if the Keeper wants to add a complication or two and these are probably best used if the player has plenty of experience with Call of Cthulhu. This is a nice little investigation, adroitly framed around the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but without miring it unnecessarily in the Mythos.

‘Mask of Desire’ shifts to New York and 1932. This is a much less tightly plotted scenario, requiring a slightly more complex set-up. The Investigator lives with two close friends, Anna, a wouldbe singer, and Lucas, a reluctant lawyer. The player is free to decide the nature of the relationship between his Investigator and Anna and Lucas and also what his actual Occupation is, both of which needs to be done before play begins as it will very much influence the interaction between the Investigator and his housemates throughout the scenario. The three have been invited to a party hosted by Madame de Tisson at her swanky apartment on the Upper West Side. The wealthy, and notoriously louche socialite is known for her libertine attitudes and her interest in objects d’art, so it seems odd that Lucas is seen talking to her discreetly, especially since he is concerned about Anna and her worries about her audition the following day with Nancy Turner, the famous jazz orchestra conductor. 

The scenario very much revolves around a nasty MacGuffin which promises a lot, but at a price—and who has it and what they are doing with it. Like any good MacGuffin it quickly falls into the trio of friends’ hands and as the friends learn more about it and what it can do, it is likely to drive a wedge between them. They are not the only ones with an interest in the object—an interest which could turn deadly. The scenario is again quite linear, but being more complex, there are more options to take into consideration, there being quite a lot of ‘If this happens, then this happens’, ‘If the Investigator does this, then this happens’, and so on. In many ways, not that different from any scenario for Call of Cthulhu, but it is more obvious in its format. ‘Mask of Desire’ is, though, far more of a character piece than many Call of Cthulhu scenarios, focusing on the friendships which the player will have helped build during the set-up phase prior to play. That does bring the MacGuffin’s malign influence and what it drives men to do much closer to home than in many Call of Cthulhu scenarios and mean its impact will be all the stronger and more emotional.

Physically, Does Love Forgive? is well presented and well-written. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is decent. If the anthology is missing anything, then perhaps a few more NPC portraits would not have gone amiss, though the Keeper can remedy that with some images taken from the Internet, and perhaps for ease of play, a ready-made Investigator, at least for ‘Love You to Death’.

The presence of the Mythos in Does Love Forgive? is quite mild by comparison, but it need not be overly Eldritch given that the two scenarios in the anthology are for a single player and his Investigator. Which makes the anthology more than suitable for play following the Cthulhu Starter Set, not necessarily using the same Investigator, of course. Of the two scenarios, ‘Mask of Desire’ is the more sophisticated and will thus be appreciated by a wider audience—‘Love You to Death’ possibly being a bit too straightforward for experienced players. Then there is the question of the title’s anthology, to which the answer is with some Luck and good roleplaying upon the part of the player, then certainly, otherwise the last thing the Mythos will do is forgive. Overall, as the first release in English for Black Monk Games, Does Love Forgive? One-to-One Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, is a very welcome addition to the way in which Call of Cthulhu can be played and hopefully the format will be supported with further scenarios, if not a campaign!

It is August.  Where did the Summer go? Plus I should be at Gen Con now getting my kids to breakfast for a day of gaming. 
It is an August tradition for David F. Chapman of AUTOCRATIK to host the month-long #RPGaDAY. Like last year, this year we are given one-word prompts for our reflections.

Here are this year's prompts.

1. Beginning
2. Change
3. Thread   
4. Vision
5. Tribute
6. Forest
7. Couple
8. Shade
9. Light
10. Want
11. Stack
12. Message
13. Rest
14. Banner
15. Frame
16. Dramatic
17. Comfort   
18. Meet
19. Tower
20. Investigate    
21. Push    
22. Rare
23. Edge
24. Humour
25. Lever
26. Strange
27. Favor
28. Close
29. Ride
30. Portal
31. Experience

Some jumped right out at me with ideas.  Others might take a me a bit more to come up with a good idea.
So let's go with today's word Beginning.
I have told the story here of my beginning in D&D and RPG many times. So no need to go over that.
Instead, I want to talk about the beginning of my blogging.


Back in 2007 I had no real intention of starting a blog, let alone one based around old-school games.  My website, The Other Side, was dead and I was working on my 2nd Ph.D. and working full time.
I started the blog after reading online about some old-school games and thought it might be fun to try. There were not a lot of blogs in the old-school scene yet. I started in 2007 but did not get going till 2008.  Grognardia didn't get started till about a year after I did, but built up more steam.  Most of the blogs from then, like Grognardia, are gone. Tenkar's started soon after Grognardia and is still around and has become the hub of the Old-School and OSR movements. 
I did not really plan to get into the OSR even as it was rising up around me.  I just wanted a place I could talk about D&D one day, WitchCraft the next, maybe talk about some horror movies or comics and then go on a little about Mage or other World of Darkness books.
Well...that was over 4331 posts and 13 years ago.
Since then I have spilled a lot of words here. I would like to think this writing has made my games better or at least my own books better. Will I be doing this for the next 13 years? No idea. But it has been a great ride so far!
Make sure you check out all the #RPGaDAY posts at https://twitter.com/autocratik.

Since 2013, Goodman Games, the publisher of  Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic has released a book especially for Gen Con, the largest tabletop hobby gaming event in the world. That book is the Goodman Games Gen Con Program Book, a look back at the previous year, a preview of the year to come, staff biographies, and a whole lot more, including adventures and lots tidbits and silliness. The first was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book, but not being able to pick up a copy from Goodman Games when they first attended UK Games Expo  in 2019, it was actually the second to be reviewed after the Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. Fortunately, Reviews from R’lyeh manages to return to the correct order for Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book.

The Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Guide is a vastly bigger book than either the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book or Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. In fact, it almost double the size of the first two volumes in the series combined! Its pages contain a mix of interviews, art, scenarios, game support, fiction, and randomness, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book starting off with some of the latter with a series of dice-themed articles. The first of these—and the first of the articles in Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book—is Dieter Zimmerman’s ‘Tables For Thieves’, a set of tables for things such as places to meet in secret and buy on the black market. Its companion piece is themed not along one subject matter, but the type of die rolled, ‘Twenty Funky Dice Tables’ by Ken St. Andre offering up tables such as ‘D2: Random Monster Encounters’ and ‘ D7: Random Dungeon Name Generator’. All of which use the various shapes of dice also used in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Of course, even if the Game Master is not going to roll the dice on these tables, they are will at least serve as inspiration. The various non-standard dice used in Dungeon Crawl Classics come under the spotlight in Terry Olson’s ‘Cranking Up the Funk in DCC Dice Rolling’ which examines the probabilities and mathematics of the Dungeon Crawl Classics—and now Mutant Crawl Classics—dice. It is unfortunately the driest article in Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, but doubtless it will appeal to some gamers who like both dice and the numbers behind them.

The highlight of the dice section though is ‘An Interview with Colonel Lou Zocchi’. As the title suggests, this is with an interview with Lou Zocchi, best known for his dice—in particular, his one-hundred-sided Zocchihedron—and his long involvement with the gaming industry. The lengthy interview goes into this and his development of dice for the industry, how to roll dice, and more. It is an absolutely fascinating piece, but only hints at some of the stories which the interviewee could tell. It would certainly be fascinating to read more of his tales from the industry and have them in print.

The Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book includes not one, but four scenarios. All four have in common the danger of using big magical items—all the more so because two of the four scenarios are for Zero Level characters. The first scenario, ‘The Black Feather Blade’ by Daniel J. Bishop is for First Level characters who are sent to recover the Black Feather Blade of the title, the famed sword of the infamous Bran Corvidu, Feast-Lord of Crows, who was devoted to the Crow God Malotoch and ravaged the Northern Kingdoms a century ago. They may be doing this for greed, or because they are devoted agents of Law or Chaos. The ‘dungeon’ consists of a number of barrow tombs, the Player Characters needing to determine which one belongs to the infamous warlord is buried and giving the dungeon a slightly dispersed feeling. Another difference is that the scenario includes two rival factions also after the Black Feather Blade, which adds some roleplaying opportunities and a bit of friction to the scenario.

Jon Hook’s ‘Evil Reborn’ is for Fourth Level characters. Although this is a standalone adventure, it can also be run as a sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics #13: Crypt of the Devil Lich. Since the events of that scenario, the devil-lich Chalychia has been trapped for centuries, but that has given the time to devise a means to escape. The Player Characters will have come to the town of Cillamar which has recently been beset by a series of raids that have seen the town’s children stolen. The Player Characters are asked to both rescue them and stop it from happening again, which will take them into frozen stygian wastelands and Chalychia’s tower refuge. This is a good mini-scenario with some fun twists on classic monsters.

The other two scenarios in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book are definitely its highlight, presenting as they do variations upon the classic Zero-Level Character Funnel which is a feature of the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game. In the classic Character Funnel, each player roleplays not one character, but four! Each is Zero Level, hoping to survive an adventure and acquire the ten Experience Points necessary to go up to First Level and gain a Class. Both ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’ and ‘The Hypercube of Myt’ are different in that they are Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Funnel Tournaments. In these, each player is given a single Zero-Level character and when the character dies, they are out of the tournament and another player takes his place with his own newly created Zero-Level character. Success in the tournament is measured in the number of encounters a Player Character survives. Advice is given on running such tournaments.

Harley Stroh’s ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’ presents just three of the pits and can be run as intended or be played using Third Level Player Characters. The Player Characters are unwitting agents of the warlock Sezrekan who seeks to avert his doom by bringing an end to the multiverse. For this he requires three artefacts—the Crown of the Seraphim, Tyrving, the cursed foebrand, and Tarnhelm, the dragon-helm. Anyone brave enough to wield them gains access to great power, capable of defeating the enemies and servants of Sezrekan, but courts disaster in doing so, for the weapons are terribly dangerous. In terms of traditional fantasy roleplaying adventures, ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’ lacks a conclusion, the point of it being survival rather achieving a particular objective. This makes it difficult to run, even if using Third Level Player Characters, and then there is the logistics of setting up and running a Funnel Tournament—the playing space, the number of players, and so on. Yet there is something amazing in the scope and scale of ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’, supported by a wealth of detail and grim sub-hellish atmosphere, which just makes you go, “Woah!” Sadly, what is included in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is just a snapshot of ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’. It would be brilliant to see the complete version.

The other Funnel Tournament in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is a group effort from ‘The DCCabal’ and unlike ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’, complete. It also has a Science Fiction element. ‘The Hypercube of Myt’ takes place in an artefact of the same name, a tesseract—or hypercube—which is the last remnant of the Keep of Myt, once the estate of grand vizier of the Kingdom of Morr, the chaotic mage Mytus the Mad. The door to the Hypercube opens once a year at the annual Festival of the Fatted Calf. The festival is famous for drawing the curious, the foolhardy, and the incautious from far and wide to ponder the mysteries of the Cube. Inside is a vast space of a limited number of highly detailed locations and there is plenty to be found and interacted with throughout. The rooms and artefacts are weird and wacky and the Judge should have a lot of fun both describing them and what happens as the Player Characters interact with them, as well as portraying some of the actions of the NPCs—including a religious schism between the Player Characters! Unlike ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’, there is definite way of concluding ‘The Hypercube of Myt’ and of getting out of it—there is a definite exit—but perhaps getting to it may well not be quite as obvious as it should be, leading to frustration upon the part of the players and their characters.

Goodman Games’ ‘World Tour’ is a staple of the Gen Con Program series and the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is no exception. Since it covers the previous year, this is ‘DCC RPG Worlds Tour 2014’ which has been upgraded into a full colour insert of photographs taken at Gen Con and other events throughout the year, showcasing not just Goodman Games’ Road Crew, but the players and winners of various sessions and tournaments. It is a nice snapshot of the year past and from one year to the next, tracks the doings of the team at Goodman Games. The last few pages of the colour insert showcases the art of both Doug Kovacs and William McAusland. Both of their portfolios are given full space later in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, but in black and white rather than in colour. Both ‘Classic Dungeon Crawl Art Folio: Doug Kovacs’ and ‘Classic Dungeon Crawl Art Folio: William McAusland’ are accompanied by interviews with both artists. Doug Kovacs in ‘D20 Questions: Doug Kovac’ (which originally appeared in Level Up #2, September 2009) and ‘An Interview with Dungeon Crawl Classics Cover Artist Doug Kovacs’ (which originally appeared in Meeple Monthly, July 2014), and William McAusland in an interview new to the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book.

Naturally, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book focuses upon the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game, but it pays plenty of attention to other titles published by Goodman Games as well. This begins with Brendan Lasalle’s Xcrawl, the roleplaying game of gladiatorial and tournament dungeoneering campaign setting receives attention with a couple of pieces. First with ‘Xcrawl Apocalypse: The Athlete’, a preview of a Class for the post-apocalyptic version of the setting. This is a very physical Class, all about their Strength, Agility, or Stamina, getting in close and grappling—the latter supported by a full table of critical results for grappling attacks and holds. More entertaining is ‘Best Possible Combination’, Lasalle’s short story set in the standard setting for Xcrawl which captures some of the perils and worries of being a participant in the Xcrawl games. This is not only his only piece of fiction in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, the other being ‘Journey to the Hole in the Sky’, which captures the flavour and feel of a Character Funnel in a story rather than in play.

‘Appendix F: The Ythoth Raider’ is ‘An expansion of the Purple Planet Author’s Edition Glossography’ by Harley Stroh for his Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne inspired Perils on the Purple Planet setting. It describes what is essentially a Prestige Class for the Player Character who succumbs to the power of ythoth mushrooms and becomes a gaunt, blue-skinned raider who searches the multiverse for more of the mushroom. He is an addicted Thrall to the Bloom—and so this piece is more William S. Burroughs than Edgar Rice Burroughs—and will gain mental powers skin to the Magic-User’s spells, though if the powers fail there is the chance that the user’s head will explode!

The post-apocalyptic genre receives a fair degree of coverage in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book. This includes two articles for Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship, the post-apocalyptic captive world set aboard a massive colony starship, both of which do what their titles say. So Robert Payne’s ‘New Devices for the Starship Warden’, which adds lots of mundane objects like adhesive, musical instruments, and utility belts, whilst ‘Even More Mutations’ by Dieter Zimmerman gives new mutations such as Omniphage which gives the mutant the teeth and digestive tract needed to eat almost anything and Apportation, which enables the Mutant to teleport objects he wants or needs from anywhere within a mile. Both articles are useful additions to Metamorphosis Alpha as more objects and more mutations are always welcome. The coverage of the genre in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is accompanied by a lengthy preview of the forthcoming Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic. Of course, a bit redundant in 2020, but in 2015, this would have really effectively showcased the then forthcoming roleplaying game.

2020 has seen the publication of The Cthulhu Alphabet, but in 2015 it was merely a suggestion. Bradley McDevitt’s ‘The Mythos Alphabet’ was its forerunner, a series of tables such as ‘D is for Deep Ones’ and ‘M is for Madness’, along with ‘A Dozen Demonic Deep One Plots’, ‘Six Fearsome Fanes’, and ‘Six Grisly Decorat ions for a Temple’. This is not the normal sort of thing you see for Lovecraftian investigative horror, but it works as list after list of ideas and suggestions, which a Keeper (or Judge) can grab and add to her game. Again, fun and something to pull off the shelf and consult for inspiration.

Of course, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is not without its silliness and its fripperies. The silliness includes the advice column, ‘Dear Archmage Abby’, in which the eponymous agony aunt gives guidance on life, love, and the d20 mechanics in an entertaining fashion, whilst the fripperies includes artwork for the ‘2015 Mailing Labels’, which capture a bit more of Goodman Games in 2014. The last thing in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is both a frippery and bit of history. This is ‘Judges Guild 1977 Fantasy Catalog’, a complete facsimile of the publisher’s mail order catalogue from 1977. This is a lovely addition to the volume, providing a snapshot of gaming as it was forty years ago, a bit history that nicely bookends the interview with Lou Zocchi at the start of the book.

Physically, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is a thick softback book, which due to the colour inserts in the centre, does feel a bit stiff in the hand. Apart from that, the book is clean and tidily presented, lavishly illustrated throughout, and a good-looking book both in black and white, and in colour.

On one level, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is an anthology of magazine articles, but in this day and age of course—as well as 2015—there is no such thing as the roleplaying magazine. So what you have instead is the equivalent of comic book’s Christmas annual—but published in the summer rather than in the winter—for fans of Goodman Games’ roleplaying games. There is though, something for everyone in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, whether that is lovers of history of the hobby, fantasy roleplayers, devotees of Lovecraftian investigative horror, and more. Some of it is gonzo, perhaps bonkers—the two Tournament Funnels in particular, but overall, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is a bumper book of gaming goodness.

Copies of NIGHT SHIFT: VETERANS OF THE SUPERNATURAL WARS have ALL been delivered to the Kickstarter backers and people are also getting the Kickstarter special Player's Guide.

You can order your own hardcover version at the publisher's website, at https://www.elflair.com/nightshift.html.
You can also buy the PDF at DriveThruRPG.

One of the things that really motivated Jason and me while working on this is music.  Spend any time here and you know I am a big music fan.  

So I thought it might be great to share some of the music that reminded us of the stories we were telling with NIGHT SHIFT and the games we have run.
Up this Friday Night Videoes are songs from my playlist.  Tonight, songs from The Ordinary World!

Thanks to a shoutout from Dallasites 101, i welcome all of the new folks coming across the Triffid Ranch for the first time, and welcome you all to the Porch Sales running every Sunday from 7:00 am to noon. And … Continue reading →

It's #FollowFriday and I thought some online Trolls would be good to follow.
Not the typical online trolls, but the people that have given us the products I have enjoyed all week!
ChaosiumThe publisher of TrollPak (and RuneQuest, and Call of Cthulhu)@Chaosium_Inc, https://twitter.com/Chaosium_Inc
Tunnels & Trolls
Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls Team @DeluxeTnT, https://twitter.com/DeluxeTnTKen St. Andre @Trollgodfather, https://twitter.com/Trollgodfather Liz Danforth @LizDanforth, https://twitter.com/LizDanforthSteven S. Crompton @StevenSCrompton, https://twitter.com/StevenSCrompton
Troll LordsI didn't talk about them, but they were always on my mind this week.
Troll Lord Games @trolllordgames, https://twitter.com/trolllordgamesStephen Chenault,TLG @TrollLordSteve, https://twitter.com/TrollLordSteve Chuck "BABOONSKI" Cumbow @BABOONSKI_, https://twitter.com/BABOONSKI_Jason Vey @ElfLairJasonTLG, https://twitter.com/ElfLairJasonTLG
ImagesAnd here are the resources for the images of my Trolla Witch Grýlka.Overhead Games @OverheadGames, https://twitter.com/OverheadGamesHero Forge Minis @HeroForgeMinis, https://twitter.com/HeroForgeMinis