Bundles of Holding, Bellairs, and a Session Report

Firstly: the Bundle of Holding is running a Quick Deal for the Hydra Cooperative!

It's got the full Hill Cantons catalog (Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, What Ho, Frog Demons, and Misty Isles of the Eld), Weird Adventures, Strange Stars, and Mortzengersturm from Trey, and Zedeck's Lorn Song of the Bachelor. 

It's a heck of a lot of awesome stuff, available for $15 instead of the usual $75. Check it out here!

Next: To borrow Granny Weatherwax's phrase, "I ATEN'T DED." Been over a year since I've updated this! (I'd apologize, but we all know it'll happen again.)

I've started running Legacy of the Bieth again, which I'm hoping will help with both thinking about and actually creating RPG materials (and updating the blog with session reports). There's a golden zone somewhere out there, where social media interaction helps with brainstorming and creating but doesn't wind up taking away the energy for same. Maybe one day I'll find it. 

I did make a serendipitous discovery recently, though. 

Art by Edward Gorey for (presumably)
Bellairs' The Dark Secret of Weatherend,
via Brian Ashcraft

When I was a wee kid, I fell in love with the work of John Bellairs, a YA horror writer. He mostly wrote YA horror-fantasy, centering on kids in white 1950s-era US small towns encountering the eldritch. (One of his books, The House with a Clock in its Walls, got made into a movie a few years ago.) Bellairs wrote one adult fantasy/horror novel, The Face in the Frost, which is amazing -- wonderfully atmospheric and creepy, while also containing a great deal of whimsy and fun. The Face in the Frost made it onto Appendix N, and so has had a couple of folks discussing it in our scene (Appendix N Book Club, Dump Stat Adventures, and a surprisingly underpopulated Bellairs tag at Grognardia) Bellairs wound up passing away in his 50s or so from a cardiac issue, in 1991. 

A couple of weeks ago I found out that:

• Bellairs had gotten like 1/3 of the way through a sequel to The Face in the Frost, called "The Dolphin Cross"
• Ellen Kushner, who had worked as his editor, found a copy (perhaps the only copy) of The Dolphin Cross draft in like 2009
• This had made its way into a Bellairs anthology, Magic Mirrors, released shortly thereafter by the New England SF Association
• As a Real True Adult with Spending Money, I could purchase a copy of Magic Mirrors and cause it to be delivered to my home

So I immediately ordered a copy, and got to see a favorite author returning to a world I thought would never be touched again. It was a delight. 

The Face in the Frost is a charming novel, that reminds me in parts of T.H. White's Sword in the Stone, with its whimsical tone and complete and cheerful disregard for anachronism. At the same time, it's got scenes of strange magic and horror that absolutely stand out and grip the mind, and spots of quiet and incredibly evocative worldbuilding. There are two parts of the book that don't age well (no women characters at all, and a positive-intentions-but-awkward incorporation of a Kabbalah practitioner), so worth noting beforehand. If those two aren't dealbreakers for you (and very reasonable if they are!), I do legitimately recommend the book.

The fragment of The Dolphin Cross shows what might have been. It doesn't hold together quite as well as The Face in the Frost (which is to be expected, as a fragment of a first draft). But what little we do get, is more of the same: both in the charming and in the quietly creepy-as-hell. 

It's mixed feelings, reading through an unfinished manuscript of an author who you love. The last time I recall encountering it was coming upon the 21st (untitled) book of the Aubrey + Maturin series. Joy at seeing old friends, sadness knowing that this is the last time...but unlike many final volumes, a strange haziness of possibility. Less definite, perhaps, but more evocative of possibilities.  

Oh -- if you do pick up any John Bellairs books, make sure to get copies with the original art if possible (Marilyn Fitschen for Face in the Frost, and Edward Gorey for the YA books). Bizarrely, there are later editions that don't use the Gorey art. 

Another Gorey illo from a Bellairs YA.
Bellairs's description of the hooded figure
with tentacle was actually a slow-burn
inspiration for the Bieth...

Legacy of the Bieth Session Report, 7/15/23:

Three adventurers of Maaqil -- street urchin and aspiring assassin-poet Krim the Rat, Turanian lamia Sybaris, and nomad bounty hunter Uqab -- were on the trail of Red Mansur, a bandit who had stolen a box of anti-mutagens from local alchemist "the Whisper." Saleema the Sparrow, a local fixer who Krim knew, had hired the group to retrieve the anti-mutagens. Red Mansur's capture or death would be an added bonus.

The PCs tracked Red Mansur and his gang to the nearby town of Fara Yeni, where they found that one of Governor al-Hakam's cavalry patrols had serendipitously intercepted the bandits as they were striking a passing caravan. The cavalry troop had failed to take out the whole gang, however, and the PCs set off in pursuit of the escapees.

They managed to track the bandits into a cave complex, which the locals of Fara Yeni had informed them was once the redoubt of a dark sorcerer. As the PCs and their hirelings followed the bloodtrails, they discovered that the cave complex had been expanded at some point into an underground maze of worked stone. The corpses of two of Red Mansur's bandits lay abandoned outside the complex. 

After encountering a magical projection of a robed man that barked strange phrases and hurled a sphere of all-too-real energy at the group, the PCs entered a large room with four statues - three figures in armor (two androgynous statues wearing strangely jeweled armor and bearing maces, and a male warrior clad in chain with a shamshir), and a female figure wearing a robe similar to the magical projection's. Torches burned at the ends of the chamber, with a strange heatless green flame made out of crackling lines similar to an audio waveform projection. 

After briefly investigating the statues and torches, the group entered a door to their right, following a winding corridor to a partially flooded room, strewn with wrecked furniture and the body of another of Red Mansur's goons, this one with fresh wounds. As they investigated the body, the group heard a strange scraping sound approaching them from down the corridor. Electing to use the room's chokepoint and ambush any threat, they buckled down. A flash of green light from down the corridor collided with one of the walls, then resolved itself into a strange creature - leonine in form, but bearing two tentacles instead of a normal head, and the whole of its body defined by more green audio waveform lines. As the scraping sounds receded, the tentacle beast charged the PCs, but was dispatched in surprisingly short order by them and their hirelings. 

Behind the Curtain:

I'm currently kickstarting play by dropping the players at the entrance to a one-page dungeon, a resource I had forgotten about until relatively late last week. The One Page Dungeon Contest is seriously one of the best free resources out there for GMs who, like me, punted their prep until close to the last minute.

I'm happy with the hirelings setup I'm using, inspired by Gus L's start of play setup from Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier (which I used for the previous phase of the campaign). The players will have a pool of faceless hirelings back at base camp (guarding their communal resources), but can also take some into the dungeon with them (at which point the hirelings suddenly acquire faces, personalities, and quirks). If a PC dies or becomes incapacitated -- or a drop-in player joins up -- there's a fixed pool of hirelings (either established or faceless) for them to hop into (but a limited resource while the group is still away from their home base). 

I've got grand plans for the urban and factional side of play, but getting the bandwidth and time to do things the way I want is tricky. So I'm trying to find ways to move forward, and keep the dynamic of play going, while building the structure I want in the background. Having a really committed player who's only going to be available for a limited time will also provide an incentive! 

Protecting Our Spaces: A Response to Raggi

 Somewhere in the 2009-2011 range, when I was just discovering the OSR scene, I ran across a retroclone which stuck out to me and zoomed up into my favorites for quite some time. In contrast to most of the other rulesets I had seen at the time, it had a lot of referee advice -- and it had safety tools. 

No, seriously! They were perhaps a bit rudimentary compared to the codified tools that are out there today, but I didn't see many other rulesets (OSR or otherwise) including quotes like "The Referee shall realize that Rule 0 is for the purpose of establishing the desired atmosphere for his campaign, and not as an excuse to abuse players or a license to be a despot at the game table… The Referee’s role is to challenge players, not victimize them." or "Know your players. Communicate outside of the game, and find where the limits lie. Your job as Referee is not to shock, scare, scandalize, or assault the senses. Respect for the real person sitting before you playing the game comes before any idea for the game you actually have." (emphasis added)

The ruleset, of course/ironically enough, was the original Referee Book for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. 

LotFP Referee Book cover

LotFP has, uh, gone some directions since those days, to say the least. Raggi's outlook seems to have gone from "good art may sometimes be transgressive" to "if it's transgressive, it must be good art!" For years, I've had LotFP in its various channels muted, while I try to do my own thing. But a friend recently tagged me in a FB post of Raggi's, and I felt the need to respond. 

Raggi writes (FB):

Let me give all the people who hate me more and more reason to do so, because why the fuck not at this point:

People in my industry always seem to be shocked and horrified and "oh how can this happen here?" because Varg Vikernes is a tabletop RPG publisher. 

Well... every single store I buy metal from (not including label-specific webstores or individual band storefronts of course), from Amazon (and when I buy Amazon, I buy from Amazon Germany) down to my local record store chain, carries Burzum. He's also distributed on Youtube by a Sony subsidiary.

Somehow the metal world hasn't ended because a bad person has been an artist in public for thirty years, and it hasn't prevented good people or good creations from existing within metal. You have a popular (give or take at any particular moment) subgenre that attracts all sorts of people, and when something attracts all sorts of people, that means ALL SORTS of people.

And Varg (and a decent number of his contemporaries) has quite obviously been a tabletop RPGer for all that time before becoming a publisher, and somehow RPGs made it through the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s without being taken over by his type of thinking, and the 2020s will be fine as well.

This wouldn't be a thing to remark about, except there are people who think that there should be a just-so uniform way of thinking in the tabletop RPG world, and if you don't sign on to that thinking (or *gasp* you even disagree with it) then people either think that's opening the gates to the Varg types to take over, and/or want to try to associate you with Varg and/or his thinking to try to isolate you and drive you out.

Funny thing is, to me, it is their behavior that I associate with Varg's sort of thinking.

Ancestry doesn't make you a better or worse person. And people of different ancestries are all over the place and they aren't going back where they came from and "they" are not going to leave "your" women alone (because the "they" and "your" do not actually exist, and both the "they" and the women know this). You have to live with them, you are never going to "cleanse" the gene pool, so get the fuck over yourselves, racists.

Similarly, you're not going to purify the thinking pool. People will think differently and prefer different creative expressions and they're not going to go away or conform to what you think is the "right" way to create or express any more than you're going to conform with theirs. You have to live with them, so get the fuck over yourselves, conformist censors.

Well, I don't hate Raggi. But this post is bullshit. 

Well, that second-to-last paragraph calling out Varg's racism isn't too bad, and the comparison between the OSR and metal is actually pretty apt on multiple levels. (But that's not nearly as much of a vindication for Raggi as he thinks.) 

"Somehow the metal world hasn't ended because a bad person has been an artist in public for thirty years, and it hasn't prevented good people or good creations from existing within metal." 

Good people and good creations exist within metal, no question about it. But the presence of shitheels within the scene absolutely makes it harder for marginalized folks to exist within the scene, either as fans enjoying it, or as musicians creating their own work. It also serves as a deterrent from people getting into metal.

Similarly, the presence of shitheels within the OSR scene - and folks who normalize their presence - makes it harder for marginalized folks to enjoy it, either as fans or as creators. Let's go back to that LotFP Referee book for a second. Here's another quote, from the section on organizing a group: "If someone is homophobic or racist or sexist, you want to find that out before exposing a group of strangers (who may include women, gays, or ethnic minorities) to them – that will kill a group before it gets started."

Past-Raggi was right - having a poisonous person in the group will absolutely kill a group and cause it to collapse, and rightly so. Because people will conclude two things:

1) This group isn't safe for marginalized people, because of the presence of the shitheel in question. 

2) The person organizing the group thought that it was worthwhile to bring the shitheel along. 

Even if the shitheel in question leaves or is booted out, there may still be lingering questions about the organizer's decision-making and judgment. Marginalized folks will continue to wonder if the group is a safe place to be, because clearly the organizer didn't think this person was a problem when putting the group together in the first place.

Now think about those dynamics in a creative scene. It's not a 1:1 correlation, of course - there's no single central organizer or leader that folks can point to, no single Arbiter of Metal (or OSR) to control group composition and membership. But people do notice when there are toxic folks in a community, and it starts to become known for that.

I don't have the capacity to stop Varg (or Venger, or RPGPundit, or whatever shitheel of the week) from creating metal or gaming stuff. But I can absolutely protest and call out their grossness, and actively work to create proudly inclusive and welcoming materials. Because when people in a scene treat the shitheels as 'just another creator' who we have to all get along with? Marginalized folks will conclude (and rightly so!) that the scene in question isn't likely to have their backs. 

There is a distinction to be made here, though, between pushing back against abhorrent folks and launching purity tests. I don’t want everyone thinking the same way in a scene! Not every disagreement is something worth booting people out for. There has to be room for people to be wrong and maybe change their mind over time, and sometimes a tiresome Hot Take is just a tiresome Hot Take. But there’s a distinction to be made between someone being wrong, and someone making statements (or taking action!) to harm others.

Kim Kelly is a metal critic/labor rights journalist. Here’s an excerpt from a great piece of hers: There's No Room In Metal for Racists, Abusers, and Bigots. The translation and application of the principles espoused to, say, other scenes is left as an exercise for the reader.

To be perfectly honest with you all, I personally feel that, as metal fans, the practice of separating the art from the artist is no longer a luxury that we can in good conscience afford ourselves... Is buying a bigot or an abuser’s new album or going to see them play a show the same as participating in wide-scale ethnic cleansing? Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. However, is tacitly (or explicitly) supporting the violent ideologies they espouse, materially or otherwise, a dangerous, inhumane, shameful thing? Yes. Does purposefully ignoring or waving away the import of politics in art make you a coward? Also yes. Now is not the time to hand out hall passes because of fucking riffs...

It would be silly for me to write all this without acknowledging metal’s long history of creating space for and supporting the actions of bigots, abusers, and other scum. Some of our most cherished folktales center on violence and hate, and many rotten people have made indelible marks on the genre, from Varg Vikernes to that racist ding-dong from Malevolent Creation. For black metal fans, this is a particularly acute issue, as some of our most lionized figures are fucking terrible people—or at the very least, people who have done fucking terrible things.

This is something I’ve dealt with personally for years now, as my politics have evolved and I’ve worked to figure out my view on the world....We all fuck up sometimes—the most important thing is how we clean up the mess afterwards.

So how do we do that? There’s no one answer, and even though I know where I stand, it took me a long time to figure that out, and I’m still actively working on it (and still dealing with my mistakes). It comes down to personal responsibility, and your own politics, and your own level of willingness to engage with, and interrogate, and sometimes abandon the things you love in pursuit of greater understanding, and lesser harm...

There are a lot of metal bands in the world; asking yourself, “are these riffs really worth it?” is a small step, but a crucial one.

It starts with us. It starts with you.

That old Referee book is actually not too bad, on a reread. But where Raggi’s at these days? That’s not a position I can support. Calling out and vigorously criticizing those who would contribute to marginalizing others is crucial for our, or any, scene. Because that’s how you make sure that you actually keep as diverse and broad a scene as possible, with as many different perspectives and interesting ideas as you can: by making it safe for the most vulnerable. 

It starts with you. It starts with us. 

Metal, elfgames, and "defiantly anti-fascist":
Bolt Thrower has it all!

Further Reading:

Metal’s Inclusive Future Looks Like a Zeal & Ardor Show:

The thought that I keep coming back to this week is that representation matters so, so much—especially in a scene like this, where racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry remain rampant, and any scrap of progress is still looked at askance by gatekeepers or shouted down by reactionaries.

Back when I was a teenager, I’d go to shows and look out for other girls and women. In my 20s, as I got older and grew into a more informed, intersectional perspective, I’d look out for other marginalized people, especially those who reflected my own experience as a physically disabled person. Walking into a place and seeing a face that looks like yours is an immediate relief, whether it’s a bank or a job interview or a black metal show. For me, it came via those first early crowd scans, when I’d light upon another girl in a Morbid Angel shirt standing across the room, and feel my heart swell.

Later, it came in seeing women like Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow or Bolt Thrower’s Jo Bench onstage, in seeing Liz Ciavarella-Brenner edit Metal Maniacs, in reading Jeanne Fury and Zena Tsarfin’s work in magazines, and in working with Paula Hogan at Candlelight Records. Since then, a lot has changed for the better, but those early role models and fellow fans gave me the reassurance I needed that I did belong there; it gave me permission to be who I was, to be a metalhead sans caveat.

Fuck Nazi Metal Sympathy:

"Barnes explained his justification to allow known fascists to play the venue he personally owns in familiar terms. “You get put in a no-win situation in whatever you do here,” he told NorthJersey.com. “Being an owner of the club you look at it as freedom of speech. When does the censorship issue come in and where does it escalate from here?” Because apparently, the Founding Fathers were extremely concerned with the future “right” for some subpar black metal jagoffs to be paid to play in front of a paying audience in a privately-held venue. By now, “free speech” has become a right-wing dog-whistle for “I want to be an asshole without suffering any consequences for my actions,” so that seems to cover his view here quite nicely."

What Covering Heavy Metal Taught Me About Spotting Nazis (aka the social-media-review dance that I, and others, find ourselves doing when checking out previously unknown OSR folks)

By combing through album lyrics, parsing interviews, and inspecting tattoos, journalists covering black metal—and even casual fans—become adept at rooting out bigotry. Doing so has, by now, become a conscious part of the wider black-metal experience: for leftist fans, a familiar ritual involves poring methodically through all available information to decipher an exciting new band’s political position. It’s kind of like playing a heavy metal version of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, except the locus is invariably a Polish neo-Nazi or racist death metal guy from Florida, and winning is really losing. The thrill of discovering a killer new record is attended, always, by anticipation as you scour the lyrics and artwork and member lists and touring history—and then, all too often, you discover that (dammit!) the guitarist has a racist side project, or their label has released anti-Semitic material. But metal is too good for Nazis. Surveilling black-metal artists’ activities and exposing any associations with violent far-right networks is a means of defending a community I hold dear.

Why I Booked An Anti-Fascist Metal Festival:

Metal and its acolytes have many sins to answer for—but that shouldn’t overshadow all the brilliance, positivity, and joy that this genre and its culture have brought to millions of people around the world. Sometimes we forget to see the forest for the trees, and that the vast majority of metalheads are good, caring people who want to listen to their favorite music without having to worry that they’re enabling poisonous genocidal rhetoric.

I also think that it’s very easy to get caught up in the constant, punishing feedback loop of rediscovering over and over (and over…) that racists, neo-Nazis, bigots, abusers, and other trash people walk amongst us when we’re at a show, or in a record shop, or just trying to walk down the fucking street. Burnout is real, and I understand why some metal folk would rather just ignore the whole thing and burrow into their record collections. I used to be the same way when I was younger and more blind to my privilege (and as a result, made some mistakes in terms of supporting or covering bands that now I’d never touch); however, as I’ve grown up and become more politically active, I’ve realized that—for me, at least—that approach is just not going to cut it anymore. Zero tolerance is the only approach that makes sense when it comes to cleaning up our scene, and it’s been incredible to witness more and more metalheads standing up to say as much, online and in song.

Productive Scab-picking: On Oppressive Themes in Gaming

Preamble -- On Helicopters and Hugos:

Last year, an author named Isabel Fall wrote an amazing milSF story in Clarkesworld magazine, now titled "Helicopter Story," but previously "I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter."

 Fall took a ugly transphobic 'joke' and turned it into an amazing, provocative, and thoughtful story. She also suffered a great deal because of it. People reacted badly to the title - which makes sense, given the incredibly hurtful associations the phrase has. Unfortunately, this also led to Fall receiving a lot of harassment herself. She pulled the story from Clarkesworld about two weeks after it dropped, and was also forced to out herself as being trans, in part of responding to the accusations of transphobia leveled at her.

Helicopter Story is not currently available online anymore, but if that changes, I'll edit in a link here. It recently became a Hugo finalist for best Novelette. (Disclosure here: I'm one of the people who nominated it, and I'm really happy that it's up for a Hugo.)

* * *

Fall's Hugo nomination generated a Twitter thread here from Elizabeth Sandifer: 

One thing that I don’t think has been discussed enough around Isabel Fall or in general is that there are two diametrically opposed visions of how to write queer literature. Let’s call them hugboxing and scab-picking, and do a quick thread...

The basic divide between hugboxing and scab-picking comes in how they engage with queer oppression. Hugboxing imagines its absence, creating safer, better worlds. Scab-picking probes its wounds in deliberately painful and uncomfortable ways. 

This got me thinking about the way that this is treated in the games we create and play. Sandifer's discussion of hugboxing and scab-picking (loaded terms! but ones I'm going to continue with for now) is centered in queer literature, but I think that the two poles have resonance for treatment of other axes of oppression (racism, sexism, imperialism, and colonialism for example). In games, it's a bit trickier than the binary state that Sandifer proposes -- instead of a single creation being put forth to be taken on its own merits (with an audience able to take or leave it as desired), you're dealing with a shared group interaction, often iterated over multiple instances. People's thresholds and goals are going to vary, both between people and sometimes within the same person from session to session.

I think I fall on the scab-picking side of the spectrum, by and large - but I reiterate that it's a spectrum, and that operating on one side doesn't mean that the other doesn't have very valid outlook and uses. The gaming projects I'm most proud of (Lorn Song of the Bachelor and the forthcoming Haunted West adventure "Home is the Hangman") both fall on the scab-picking side regarding colonialism and racism...but I've veered away from the most recent editions of Paranoia, a game I have significant history with, in part because the decision to rebrand Alpha Complex's enemy du jour from "Communists" to "terrorists" felt a bit too on-the-nose for me, given what it felt like going through high school post 9/11. Everyone's got a different line that they will draw.

* * *

First, some perspectives from other thoughtful folks regarding the valid role of presenting oppression in a gaming context.

Another Twitter thread here from Chris Kutalik (creator of the Hill Cantons and my longtime GM): 

@ChrisKutalik: I sympathize with the motivation, the need for a clean bright shiny place for our brains to go when we roll weird shaped dice. One that doesn’t have women treated as chattel and the layers of racist projection...

 But I also think it’s an ironically reactionary impulse, the need to project heroism and romanticized ideals of stabbing living things with sharp things...I do draw the world of the Hill Cantons in a society I wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—want to live in. A rich one (I hope) with the pervasive weirdness, ugliness that the European medieval world was along with a more complicated society than many give it credit for.

And this discussion from Pam Punzalan (TheDovetailor) and TrooperSJP (Academic Foxhole):

@TheDoveTailor: The Philippines was colonized four times, and has a long history of trans-cultural exchange with upwards of three nations via trade prior to the Spanish coming around. If you're saying we should not deal with colonialism in our stories, you're telling us we have no story.

@AcademicFoxhole: Everytime I hear: No POC wants to read about racism I think: Toni Morrison? Everytime I hear: No woman wants to read about sexual assault I think: Margaret Atwood? No Queer person wants to read about homophobia? Quentin Crisp? There is power in being able to define my own story.

And of course, Zedeck Siew's thread here:

@ZedeckSiew: Firstly: "D&D is colonialist" is similar to "the English language is colonialist".

If your method of decolonising RPGs is to abandon D&D- some folks abandon English; they don't want to work in the language of the coloniser. More power to them!

...[I]t's an error to "decolonise D&D" by scrubbing such content from the game. That feels like erasure; like an unwillingness to face history / context; like a way to appease one's own settler guilt. Remember: if you -white or PoC- live in the West, or in an Asian urban centre (say), you are already complicit in colonialist / capitalist (they are inextricably linked) behaviour.

Removing such stuff from RPGs might let you feel better. But won't change what you are. 

I think it more truthful *and* more useful, to not avert one's eyes from D&D's colonialism.

The fact that going forth into the hinterland to seek treasure and slay monsters is a thing and *fucking fun* tells us valuable things about the shape and psychology of colonialism.  

Finally, a quote from Chris Spivey's Harlem Unbound:

Harlem Unbound is built on the concept of tackling issues head-on. Some say Lovecraft was 'of his time,' but we know that his racism was even worse than that... So what does the popularity of his work, built on racism, say about our current society? And, how do you address the popular work which is so tethered to his reprehensible world view? We can't change the past, but we can tear it down and rebuild it into something that focuses on bringing us together. This can only be done by facing ugly truths. 

* * *

So. How do we, as creators, responsibly deal with and tackle those ugly truths Chris mentions? How does one pick at those scabs in a productive manner? A few of my takes:

1. Stay Fluid

As mentioned, people's thresholds and goals re: the level of oppression that they are willing to deal with in gaming are likely to fluctuate. Sure, one can have a Session Zero where some baselines are hashed out, but those can change on even a session-by-session basis. The real-life people around the table come first, and sometimes that means further check-ins or even rerouting session plans because of a spike in player discomfort. Make space for that, and make space for people to voice discomfort.

"The Feral Shore" - section of the HC campaign
where this story went down

Personal example: I had a really bad time with a Hill Cantons game session a few years back, triggered by one player's actions in particular but rooted in discomfort with some of the colonialist facets of play that were being brought to the fore. It's not a thing I would have thought to flag when joining the campaign or even when the domain-game-heavy phase of play began, and I didn't realize how uncomfortable I was feeling or why until I had some time to unpack it afterwards. This led to some tough-but-clear conversations over G+ regarding what each of us was willing to play through and deal with at the table, and how we, as a group, felt comfortable progressing. The individual session was rough, but ultimately led to a better perspective on where we were at as a group. 

Folks may move from being down to pick at scabs to needing to strongly divert away, and back again. Listen to where they're at, and try to accommodate. What that accommodation looks like may vary! If you as GM are preparing a heavy scab-picking session and a player needs something more hugboxy (or vice versa), maybe change the dynamics of the session...OR hold off on the session for a while, or maybe change the player composition for the session so that both parties can get the gaming experience they're seeking. There's no one right answer here, and the answer definitely isn't always "change your intended work." 

Using safety tools may help for this, but those are generally something for after things have gone sideways, not a replacement for fluidity in terms of game approach. Further, not all safety tools are going to match with all tables. Just saying "oh, we have these tools, we're fine" isn't enough; you've got to think about these things before problems occur at the table.

2. Work with Intentionality

"Broken Blade," Evlyn Moreau

One of the critiques often levelled at works reproducing systems of oppression is that it's all fictional - so why include these elements that serve to remind folks of real-world oppression? I think there's certainly some truth to this; our imagined worlds aren't limited by the scars of history, and don't need to go down those paths and recreate those pains in-game. But if one wants to engage with those issues in game, then they are going to have to come up in some form. 

So, if you're going to bring in those elements of oppression into your setting or your game, fine -- but make a deliberate choice to do so. Think about the implications on a societal level, and what dealing with those means for players. Have some thought beyond "oh, things were bad in (Renn Faire Fantasy Times), let's put it in that way, it'll add atmosphere." You're making a conscious choice to include this material in your setting. Is it being presented in a meaningful way? Is there personal experience that you're able to draw on when including this material? 

3. Know Yourself, Know Your Audience

Are you creating material for your home table, or planning on publishing this for others to interact with? If you're tackling material that's outside of your personal experience, have you thought about how you're going to make sure you don't hit some of the pitfalls associated with that? If you're planning on publishing something that's centering on experience outside of your own, are you the right person to be tackling this work? 

And even if you're just focusing on something for your home table, are you sure that your crew is on board with the material you're bringing in? If you can, try to touch base beforehand and make sure folks are on the same page. 

4. Take Your Lumps -- But Know Who's Talking

If you're going to put issues of oppression in your work, you have to be willing to listen, sincerely listen, if and when folks call you out about the treatment of a given issue. And this is hard! It's even harder if someone calls you out in an angry fashion, because it can feel like they're coming after you and your work personally. 

If someone's calling you out? Try to listen. Because that's often someone who legitimately wants to see you do better. And even if you don't agree with their takeaway and you still think you did it right, you might have a better feel for how you want to handle a similar issue in the future. But at the same time, also pay attention to who's critiquing you, and the substance of those critiques. Most are going to be in good faith, but there are folks who thrive on call-outs for Internet clout.* Listen to what people are saying, but don't assume that they're automatically correct. 

Fall's example is on point here. Many of the critiques she faced were good-faith critiques, understandably on edge from the (original) title and the red flags that it raised for people. Some critiques went a hell of a lot further than that. I think that while the critiques may have been made in good faith, the story was legitimate and should not have been pulled; she was right to pen it and publish it. 

* * *

These are not easy things to do. But I think they are necessary if we're going to create thoughtfully. It can feel like a lot - particularly when the context for folks reading this is likely far more towards "RPG as fun group problem-solving game" instead of "RPG as deep raw emotional catharsis" or "RPG as art piece." 

At the same time, I think that even games focused on the fun problem-solving side of things have the potential to tackle painful material in a thoughtful way, whether it's in a satirical or direct format. We can walk and chew gum at the same time here. If the fictional worlds we're envisioning are to have axes of oppression within them, then the least we can do is put time and effort into making sure those worlds are thoughtful and deliberate, that the scab-picking is productive. One of the strengths of the people I hang with has long been the compelling and fascinating settings that folks have put together. I see this as just taking the next logical, necessary step. 

Y'all with me?

(Special thanks to Yoshi and Momatoes for providing feedback on this post.)

*Call-outs can be necessary sometimes! But they can also be a pernicious thing, because you feel like you're doing the righteous thing and you're getting positive attention and reinforcement. If you're going to call someone out on bad behavior, think about it, make sure you know why you're doing it, and make sure you're centering the folks actually harmed by the bad behavior. I've tried to keep this framework in mind, and I think I've done a decent job on this front? But it can be tricky. 

Renewal and Inspiration

The past few months have had me in an odd place re: gaming and publishing, and I've definitely been feeling burnt out. But stepping away from Twitter to get away from The (gaming) Discourse has been extremely refreshing, and last night's session in the Hill Cantons has helped a lot to rekindle my excitement about this hobby.

Along with slugging away on the Slumbering Ursine Dunes omnibus and the sequel to Lorn Song of the Bachelor, I'm also starting to get some wind back in my sails for my own projects.

I've started working on the Gygax 75 challenge, a framework for putting together one's own campaign setting. It's a way for me to channel the big inchoate Feelings about Legacy of the Bieth and put them into a gameable format that other people can actually use to run their own games. Unfortunately, I got stuck on the hexmap side of things. I've had trouble with creating hex setups on my own that felt well-designed and realistic, but part of me balked at using in-depth creation of the sort that Rob Conley has presented. (No slight against Rob intended by any means! It's a great series, but my heart quails at the full process.) 

I thought about using something like Chgowiz's Three Hexes but that framework also doesn't quite fit with part of how I've already conceptualized Legacy of the Bieth. Much to my surprise, I've found that an AD&D 2e product, the World Builder's Guidebook, is hitting the sweet spot for my design needs. It's still pretty top-down design, but presents enough of a scaffolding that I think I can abstract the highest level components, drill down to regional setup, and still get something that will make it easier for future development and design. 

I'm immensely proud of my existing editorial work on Hydra Coop products, but it's a separate field of excitement to move forward on my own creations. Relatedly, my first adventure for publication, "Home is the Hangman," will be coming out with the release of the upcoming Haunted West RPG by Darker Hue Studios. Chris is doing an amazing job on HW and I'm really glad to have contributed to the project. I will also be appearing in a Haunted West livestream starting later this month.

Finally, I spoke with Paco over at GMS Magazine about the OSR a few weeks ago - take a look!

So a question for all y'all - what are you working on? What's been tricky for you, and what's been flowing well?

A Spectre (7+3 HD) Is Haunting the Flaeness: Towards a Leftist OSR

Special thanks to Kazumi Chin, Fiona Geist, Camilla Greer, Michael Lombardi, and Robert Parker for their feedback and guidance.

The design space associated with OSR games is often assumed to be inherently reactionary, an interest in classic games coinciding with a desire for social regression and oppression. Setting the incorrect nature of that assumption aside, I started wondering what an explicitly leftist OSR framework might look like. This pondering was accelerated by a query on the same topic that Mabel Harper* raised on Discord a while back.

This isn't untrodden territory. Some past must-reads from others: Marx + Monsters: A Radical Leftist Fantasy Sandbox, City of Brass "West Marxes"

Inspired by Marx + Monsters, I concluded that a leftist OSR framework would move away from a simple advancement through gold route, and instead work through improving the community that PCs reside in. The approach I list below is strongly influenced by Mayfair Games's 1993 RPG Underground, a game centered around superhero-veterans attempting to improve their communities as the world around them went mad.

This is a potential new framework for experience gain that a GM can use to frame a social format for their campaign. It assumes that PCs are still taking on adventurous projects, but seeks to present greater ties to the communities that they are a part of.

Communities and Experience

1. PCs start out as members of the same community. While they may have wildly different origins and backgrounds, they're all united by current location and ties. (This can be a city or town, or even a neighborhood. For higher powered games, a province or nation might be apropos.)

Figures outside the tombs of the caliphs, Cairo, Egypt.
Coloured lithograph by L. Haghe after D. Roberts, 1848.
Credit: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain

2. This community is assessed on six stats:

Identity - How strongly the community identifies as a group together, with a shared culture. Identity 4 or 5 might be a newborn boomtown, Identity 14 or 15 might be a longstanding ethnic enclave in a larger city.
Prosperity - Whether the community is economically stable. Are folks able to get by comfortably? Are folks living hand-to-mouth?
Safety - Are people physically safe in this community? Is their security under threat?
Governance - The breadth and scope of government function. How well do governing institutions respond to the requirements of the community?
Legitimacy - Is the government regarded as representative of the community's people? Are these seen as interlopers or leaders?
Sustainability - Is the community's usage of resources sustainable in the long run? Is support infrastructure properly available for the residents?

These stats are rated on a 3-18 scale, just as character stats are. The GM may either work with the PCs to collaboratively generate a community, as in Beyond the Wall or Dream Askew/Apart, may assign stats to a pre-existing community setting, or may roll 3d4 (not 3d6) for each stat.

3. During downtime, between adventures, PCs may place money and time into raising one of the categories. They must describe how they are using their resources and time to combat problems or improve conditions for their community.

Ex: Shaghab and Arslan live in a community with Legitimacy of 6. They decide to improve this stat by ousting the famously corrupt qadi, or chief judge, and seeking to install someone a bit better. Shaghab describes how she'll be spending three weeks organizing street protests against the qadi as he attempts to rule on cases, shouting out the stories of those he's screwed over, while Arslan will try to force the local governor to be confronted with this evidence of the population's unrest. They hope that through this, the governor will consider removing the qadi and replacing him with someone new. While the replacement's unknown, Shaghab and Arslan believe that they'll be able to influence the selection and pressure the governor to find a more virtuous replacement.

Tizemt lives in the same community, but they think that trying to replace the qadi is merely supplanting one outside leader for another. Instead, they decide to spend a month organizing a community council that will resolve disputes outside the scope of the qadi and avoid having to appear before the corrupt pustule. Tizemt sees this as improving the community's Governance rating (conveniently, also 6), but it might also apply to Identity or maaaaybe even Legitimacy as well. Tizemt plans to support this council through holding meetings and determining who among the community will have sufficient stature to be seen as legitimate decision-makers.
4. The GM assesses their plan, mentally considers counterarguments and forces that will operate to protect the status quo, and places it in a matrix framework to assess how effective this is at addressing the issue in question. (See: Matrix Games.)

Strength of Argument	Adjustment to Roll
Very Strong Argument	Roll 5d6 against stat
Strong Argument	Roll 4d6 against stat
Average Argument	Roll 3d6 against stat
Weak Argument	Roll 2d6 against stat
Very Weak Argument	Roll 1d6 against stat
Abysmal Argument	Roll fails!

Ex. The GM thinks that Shaghab and Arslan's plan isn't too great -- aside from trusting in the benevolence of the governor, they also don't know that the governor and qadi have been working together to feather both nests, and that the qadi has some compromising information on the governor. But significant enough street protests might be able to sway the governor, if it becomes clear that the city won't quiet down until the qadi is removed. It's not the best thought out and there are hidden factors, but it's not completely unreasonable - the GM considers it a weak argument. They get a 4 on 2d6 against the community’s Legitimacy 6 -- the plan fails.

The GM thinks that Tizemt's plan is more likely to receive results, since there isn't any hidden information in play, the scope of the change is enough to merit increasing the Governance stat, and Tizemt's player has identified prominent NPCs who they think have established a solid community reputation, even in the cynical Vancian atmosphere of the setting. While it's more likely to get off the ground since there's no particular opposition, having an alternative dispute structure may not necessarily take off and gain community support. It is considered an average argument.  They roll 3d6 against the community’s Governance 6 and get an 11 -- the plan succeeds!
5. After the time and resources have been invested, the GM rolls against the stat as above:

a) If the roll is above the stat in question, the PCs' effort is successful. The stat is raised by one, and all PCs who contributed to this effort gain experience: Firstly, each PC gains 1500 x the number of times the stat in question has been raised (so, 1500 XP for the first improvement, 3000 for the second, etc.) Secondly, they gain 1.5x the GP value of resources that were contributed as XP. Finally, the GM makes an explicit note of the method that the PCs have used to shape the community, to ensure that its effects continue to be remembered (and leveraged) as play continues.

b) If the roll is under the stat in question, then the PCs have failed to improve conditions. The stat remains unchanged, and no experience is awarded. The GM keeps a tally of how much resources have been put into improving the stat in question; if the PCs manage to improve the stat later, then all PCs who have contributed (past or present) gain both the stat-raise experience, the benefit of 1.5x the resources of the successful attempt, and 0.5x the value of all prior resources put in, combining failed attempts with the most recent success. Long-term campaigns may not succeed at first, but they continue to build the foundation for subsequent success.

Sao Paolo General Strike, 1917
Unknown artist. Source: Wikimedia

Note: Application of extra resources beyond the base requirements can grant rerolls on step 5, allowing a second chance at a failed increase: When a stat is 3-8, putting in an additional 3000 gp grants one reroll. When a stat is 9-12, this amount increases to 9000 gp. When a stat is 13-17, the amount increases to 27000 gp. Resources spent towards rerolls do not grant additional XP.

6. After a stat has been increased successfully, the GM determines another stat to be tested against, and rolls 3d6 against that stat. (The statistic is either determined randomly, or emerges naturally from the nature of the improvement.) If the GM rolls under, that stat decreases by 1, to a minimum of the lowest stat present (if the two lowest stats are both 5s, one cannot lower to a 4 through this method). Decreases represent additional challenges that have begun facing the community; the GM should generate new adventure hooks from these.

Ex. Tizemt's plan to create a community council as an alternative to the qadi was successful. Given that the community council now serves as an alternative form of governance to the incumbent, the GM chooses to decrease Legitimacy by 1, since there is now uncertainty over who really rules the neighborhood.

7. This process can be used on its own, but ideally it would also take into account dynamic shifts in the campaign from the actions of other parties. The next steps would be tying additional shifts to a Chaos Index (reflecting further changing dynamics outside the control of player characters) and ensuring that adventure hooks can also present opportunities for changing a community's stats, or at least laying the groundwork for doing so.

As a community improves, it will become harder and harder for PCs to improve its stats. PCs may choose to expand their focus (working to improve a city instead of a neighborhood, a province instead of a city). If PCs elect to expand, they begin working to improve the larger polity's stats (which are likely worse than the smaller area PCs have been focusing on). Multiply experience gains by 5 each time a player group chooses to expand. Multiply reroll resource costs by ten (and adjust costs for open-ended resource allocation accordingly as well).

Emma Goldman
T. Kajiwara, 1911 (Wikimedia)

Note: Players may try and solve some of the problems that their communities are facing through violence -- their PCs are likely still adventurers or revolutionaries, after all. GMs should be cautious with this. In some cases, violence may absolutely be necessary - but it is not enough, in and of itself, to generate long-term systemic change. There must be positive action taken in order to create a sustainable improvement in a community.

Design Notes

XP as Central Driver

Much has been made about 1 GP = 1 XP as the core gameplay loop driver of TSR D+D. But XP for gold retrieved also winds up being something of a de facto capitalistic outlook as well. Success is driven by accumulation of individual wealth -- by an adventuring company, even! So what's a new framework that can be used for underpinning a leftist OSR campaign?

Marx + Monsters raises two proposals: XP for direct redistribution of wealth, or XP awarded through communal questions (a la Dungeon World). I found neither of these satisfying for my purposes. Direct redistribution of wealth is basically a slightly tweaked version of "XP through spending," and communal questions seems too far at odds with the mechanical framework of OSR games. Admittedly the system proposed here is still related to "XP through spending," but ideally generates a bit more  thought and focus regarding how people attempt to help others.

Campaign Framing

"Standard" OSR gaming is focused around the pulp-inspired picaresque. James's bullet-point list of what that entails (assumption of PCs at the margins, a corrupt/venal society) can fit well into a radical framing. The change is that instead of focusing on the individual rise of a small group of people (PCs), this proposed campaign explicitly looks at how a community or society changes (through the actions of a small group).

Community Creation and Interaction

Beyond the Wall features group creation of the party's starting-hub town, and ties the player characters together with each other and the shared NPCs they've created. (See also the communal creation of Dream Askew/Dream Apart, which focus even more tightly on communal setting as play center.) I don't know that group setting creation is a necessary part of this framing, but it can help to provide players with a strong connection to the community they are a part of, combating the detachment with which PCs can sometimes view their surroundings.

"You Know Nothing, Jon Snow"

Obligatory pop culture references aside, I recognize that this is a game system that's discussing social resistance and community building: areas which are pretty important at the moment, and areas which which I don't have a full grounding in. While I'm slowly learning more on these topics, I also recognize that I have LOTS of blind spots regarding these areas. If I've said something boneheaaded here, please do let me know.  

* Also check out Mabel's new music video!

Bibliography:

Leftist Design and Community Interaction

• Alder, Avery and Benjamin Rosenbaum. Dream Askew/Dream Apart. Buried Without Ceremony, 2018.
• Cocking, John and Peter Williams. Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. Flatland Games,  2014.
• Dray, Adam. "City of Brass: A West Marxist Campaign." Obsidian Portal, 2017.
• Karlman, Judd. "Make Your Own New Crobuzon." The Githyanki Diaspora, 2009.
• Kutalik, Chris. "Occupy Greyhawk." Hill Cantons, 2011.
• Kutalik, Chris and Robert Parker. Fever-Dreaming Marlinko. Hydra Cooperative, 2015, p. 52-53 (Hireling Reputation Chart), 59 (Wobbly Giant)
• Maliszewski, James. "Picaro and the 'Story' of D+D." Grognardia, 2008.
• Parker, Robert. "The Ginger Star by Leigh Brackett, Pt. 2: Class, Civilization, and Rugged Individualism in Hardboiled Gaming." Rogues and Reavers, 2012.
• TheLoneAmigo. "Marx + Monsters: A Radical Leftist Fantasy Sandbox." Rocket-Propelled Game, 2012. 
• Winniger, Ray. "Underground." Mayfair Games, 1993. 

Alternative Experience Takes

• Allen, Emmy. "Decoupling XP and Treasure." Cavegirl's Game Stuff, 2019.
• Kutalik, Chris. "Pendragon D+D: The Matrix Method." Hill Cantons, 2011.
• L, Gus. "Gold for Experience in 5th Edition D+D." Dungeon of Signs, 2017.
• Rients, Jeff. "eXPloration." Jeff's Gameblog, 2009.

Dungeons + Dominion II: The Domain Game

Firstly: a salute to Evlyn M, an artist who was formerly a vibrant part of the online OSR community, but who has since withdrawn as a result of toxicity in the scene. Evlyn does some absolutely charming work, and we are made much poorer by her departure.

Secondly: a shoutout to Stuart Robertson, creator of the ubiquitous "OSR" logo, on taking a stand re: the usage (and misuse) of the logo.  I haven't spoken out as forthrightly about misuses of community position and power in our community as I should have, and I'm glad that I've got another good example here to try and live up to.

* * *

This post was inspired by a query on the /rpg subreddit, where someone asked for a simple way to generate a domain setup for his kids' game, and asked if it were possible to use the cardbuilder Dominion as a framework.

I've written about using Dominion as a setting generation element before, but I think that this new query is a way to set up an evolving domain framework without too much back-end work. It's pretty abstracted, but if you had to do something in a pinch I think this could work.

This post assumes a decent knowledge of the mechanics behind Dominion. If you're unfamiliar, it might read a bit gobbledygook to you (you can check out the rules from RGG here)

Martin Hoffman, Dominion

Setup

Play a 3- or 4-player game of Dominion. At the end, pick one of the decks to determine what resources the players' domain has - victory point cards mean territory, treasures mean fiscal resources on hand, and action cards mean buildings or resources within the fiefdom.

Feel free to abstract meanings from the cards present - having a Golem in the deck might mean that the domain has a construct or warforged present...or, drawing upon the the original Golem of Prague story, it might mean that the polity has a strong and unflagging defender.

Gameplay

Each month (or other 'domain turn'), the domain can expend resources to take on new projects and keep growing and improving. The victory point cards present at the end of the setup phase serve to increase the number of potential improvements and projects that a domain can seek to take on as a card draw from the randomizer deck for the next month - the players can choose what they want the fiefdom to try and construct/purchase (adding to the deck). They'll have to keep gathering gold and resources to get what they need for the fiefdom, though (unrelated to the money cards acquired in playing the setup game).

Resources acquired through standard play sessions (treasure, magical artifacts, alliances) wind up being translated into cards for the fiefdom deck. The game text doesn't matter too much - villages don't give you +2 Actions, +1 Card on the domain turn, but just symbolize that there's a village associated with the fiefdom that's significant in some way. You're using the deck to generate opportunities for randomization, NOT playing a game of Dominion anymore.

Example:

After playing an intro game of Dominion with three AI players, I win. My deck contains: 8 Estates, 4 Duchies, and 3 Provinces (Victory cards), 1 Cellar, 1 Village, 1 Remodel, 3 Markets, and 2 Mines (Action Cards).

Matthias Catrein, Dominion

Translating the Action cards into domain resources: well, the two mines are simple, as is the village. 3 Markets suggest strong mercantile connections (as would make sense with two extant mines). The tricky ones are Cellar and Remodel, which have no easy direct analog. I might render Cellar as a series of storage vaults untouched through the various ages by the previous domain-holders (strange new swag for the PCs?), and Remodel as the presence of a new builder who's able to start new construction projects right away.

Now I need to translate the Estates, Duchies, and Provinces into draws from the randomizer. Each Estate is worth a quarter of a card (round down), each Duchy is worth half a card, and each Province is worth a card. This gives us 7 randomly selected cards that the domain will be able to choose its next upgrade from.

The draw is: Shanty Town, Bridge, Mining Village, Spy, Masquerade, Caravan, and Laboratory.

Mining Village suggests that there's been expansion around the mines and they're going to be more productive; Shanty Town suggests that the largest settlement in the domain has expanded, Bridge suggests that roads and infrastructure are developed further. Spy would suggest either the creation of an espionage network, or just developing information on one of your neighbors. Masquerade might be hosting a major social event, Caravan a greater focus on inter-domain trading, and Laboratory the creation of a wizard's or alchemist's sanctum.

Some might (reasonably) suggest that the things listed are all things that a domain should be able to do anyway - why should mercantile expansion be limited by drawing a single card? Well, if you're looking for a very light overhead system, then that's just the random event that's available to you. If you want something that allows for a bit more player agency in the domain turns, then make these random events a bit more powerful -- the caravans here might be higher payoff, or reaching out to farther destinations, or the like.

Landsknecht Link Roundup, Aug/Sept

I did one of these in late July - seems overdue for another roundup. Here's a curated list of "Some Stuff I Thought Was Cool," and discussing what I liked/found interesting about them.

Ba Chim Seal of Approval!

(art by Dreadbeasts)

• Hydra buddy Trey Causey continues to be a freakin' machine over at From the Sorcerer's Skull. I particularly liked his thoughts on how Adventure Time's setting design can inform campaign construction, and his thoughts for using Operation Unfathomable as the core for a '50s monster movie setting.
• While you're looking at Trey's blog, check out the ICONS writeup for Girlgantua, another teaser for the forthcoming Armchair Planet Who's Who. (My favorite bit so far might be the quiet Trek nod in the Tempus Fugitives.)
  
• David Perry released Principia Apocrypha, an alternative to the venerable Old School Primer that discusses 'core OSR principles' from an Apocalypse World-influenced standpoint. This one has some charming art by Evlyn M.
• Continuing on with core principles, Into the Odd has some thoughts on the trio of Information, Choice, and Impact in centering player agency in campaign play.
  
• Wizardthiefighter Luka completed the first draft of the Ultraviolet Grasslands recently, and I've started the editing process. Members of Luka's Patreon can check out the first draft, and of course there's a free preview available here.
   
• The Lizard Man Diaries's Infinigrad Suburb Generator is a nice set of tables for jumpstarting some weird fantasy neighborhoods. I'm also interested in checking out Jack Shear's treatment of the same idea in the upcoming Umberwell supplement (demoed at DIY & Dragons).
  
• While the Odious Uplands churn towards completion, Jason's fired up The Dungeon Dozen once again. As someone whose campaign fits the bill, I particularly appreciate his investigations into why There Are No Dragons In This World.
  
• Rey & Grey continue to chug away at Break!! - here's some exciting art from the intro adventure, Trouble in Sprocket. I've played through Sprocket, but didn't interact with large parts of the adventure (including some of the groups seen here) and now I want to play through that again.
  
• Emmy Allen wrote Dolorous Stroke, an Arthurian myth wargame inspired by GW's Inquisitor. Focus on small objective-based skirmishes with a premium on narrative construction. Very cool stuff. (I'm biased, I suggested the name.)
  
• Evan, at In Places Deep, has a guide to sandbox construction up. As someone who often stalls out in the procedural side of setting generation, this sort of framework is extremely handy (and one I'm recommending to other folks interested in sandbox generation).
  
• Against the Wicked City has just wrapped up a nine-part series looking at the books of WFRP 2e, but my favorite part is his discussion of Renegade Crowns. This book is one of my favorites, and I'm glad to see it getting a bit of recognition in presaging some of the OSR's fortes. (I think Joseph undersells some of the utility that RC still provides, including a sandbox construction kit of its own, some nice random tables for generating opposing factions, and an excellent Trouble Index system that keeps PCs dashing between internal and external threats to their petty fiefdom.)
  
• Bad Wrong Fun is previewing Offworlders (Traveller by way of World of Dungeons). I'm not 100% sold on WoD, but I appreciate the rules-minimalist approach and am curious to see where Offworlders takes that fusion. Alas, no rules for PC death in chargen (yet).
  
• Skerples is teasing Magical-Industrial Revolution. In contrast to the OSR aesthetics of ruin, MIR is focused on the time just before decay...right before everything goes to hell. I tend to steer away from high magic games and frameworks, but I've been grooving on the Revolutions podcast recently, and am extremely interested in seeing game examination of how building social pressures and unexpected catalysts can start things spiralling out of control.
  
• A bit out of timeframe, but I liked Beyond Formalhaut's discussion of the purpose of RPG books (creativity aid and supplement). Melan's part of the OSR that I'm not really in touch with (I came in late). At this point I'm not particularly enthused about 'calls to arms,' but I definitely appreciate Melan's urging towards a culture of experiential play. (Not to mention a focus on discussion - which is part of why I'm trying to share these out!)
  
• Give 'Em Lead investigates solo campaign construction in a wargaming setting - combining WFB matches with event-table solo play to create a campaign narrative focusing on one army (rather than the traditional duelling forces of a narrative campaign, or free-wheeling all vs all multi-player campaigns).

So. What'd I miss? What posts have had your brains buzzing?

Ghuleh, Ghuleh

Putrefaction
A scent that cursed be

Crawler from The Descent (2005)

Under cold dark dust
From the darkness
Rise a succubus
From the earthen rust

- Ghost, "Ghuleh / Zombie Queen"

Ghul
No. Enc.: 1d8 (1d6x10)
Movement: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 6 (hide)
Hit Dice: 2+2, or 6 (rais)
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d8 (claws) or weapon
Save: F3, F6 (rais)
Morale: 9, 11 (rais)
Exp: 58, 820 (rais)

Hoard Class: IV (individual), XIV (group)

Hideous Regeneration: The first wound a ghul suffers in a combat will cause the ghul to take an additional 1 hp damage each round. However, if the the ghul is struck again, its jinn heritage will begin healing all of its wounds with diabolical speed; it will regenerate 1d10 hp per round for the rest of the day.

Rad-touched: Ghuls are immune to the effects of anomalies and other features of the Zone. 

Ghuls are mutants of the jinn - descendants of those trapped in the Zones and twisted by the horrid magicks of the Bieth. Twisted faces (always sporting twisted tusks), never-healing radiation burns, and withered limbs distort their forms. Confined to their warped and twisted physical forms, they are disdained by their jinn brethren, and feared by human city-dweller and nomad alike. Cast out from all society, pushed to the wastelands and ruins, ghuls regularly turn to banditry and slaughter to survive. Given their residence in the ruined and hollowed cities of the Zones, and the inhospitable nature of the wastes, many believe that they subsist on the vast necropolises and the corpses stored within. 

Despite their ill reputation, many ghuls dream of leaving their blasted homes and joining the societies they have dimly heard of. Given their immunities to the deleterious effects of the Zone and the perilous anomalies, ghuls will occasionally strike up relationships and even alliances with those striking out into the Zone. However, they are wary and paranoid, and many an alliance has been riven apart through betrayal and fear on both sides. 

Ghul bands of 20 or more have a 4 in 6 chance of being led by a rais (boss), a 6 HD ghul who can polymorph self (AEC 73) into any humanoid form three times a day. They are known to ride in great bronze chariots drawn by ostriches or eyeless dogs. 

O who will bear my news to the young men of Fahm
     of what I met at Riha Bitan?
Of how I met the ghul swooping down
     on the desert bare and flat as a sheet?
I said to her, 'We are both worn with exhaustion,
     brothers of travel, so leave my place to me!'
She sprang at me; then my hand raised
     against her a polished Yemeni blade.
Then undismayed I struck her: she fell flat
     prostrated on her two hands and on her throatlatch.
She said, 'Strike again!' I replied to her, 'Calm down,
     mind your place! For I am indeed stouthearted.'
I lay upon her through the night
     that in the morning I might see what had come to me.
Behold! Two eyes set in a hideous head,
     like the head of a cat, split-tongued,
Legs like a deformed fetus, the back of a dog,
     clothes of haircloth or worn-out skins!

-Ta'abbata Sharran, "How I Met The Ghul" (Irwin 24)

Notes:

• Apparently ghuls eating the dead was an invention of Antoine Galland in his translation of the 1001 Nights (Al-Rawi). There certainly seem to be several tales and instances of MENA folklore where ghuls are shown eating corpses, but those tales postdate Galland's translation. This is honestly part of why I'm making Legacy of the Bieth in the first place - drawing upon MENA folklore and myth that tries to step away from The Arabian Nights (TM) and its dominant presence as the touchstone for "Islamic fantasy." 
• This is my first entry in Dan D's #DIY30 challenge. Despite this post running on 8/2, I wrote it the night of 8/1, so it counts dammit. We'll see how long I can keep up.

Sources:
The Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture, Ahmed Al-Rawi, Cultural Analysis, 8, 45-65.
Night & Horses & The Desert, Robert Irwin
"Zerendac," Feminist Folklore
Folklore of the Holy Land, J.E. Hanauer (source here)