2020 Year in Review

    I set a goal at the beginning of the year to do 48 posts this year, up from the 24 of 2019 and way up from the 3 of 2018, but less than half of my most loquacious year, 2014 where I posted 117 times.  The old Blog Carnivals helped that year.

    With this post I'll have posted 46 times this year, and have been looked at a bit under 20,000 times.  Probably my most visible year ever, as I came in with less than 100,000 views since I started on October 7th, 2012. For that the RPG communities of MeWe have been a great source of exposure, but an even better source of ideas and I'd like to thank everyone who has been interested enough to click on a link and read my musings.

     My most read post this year was the Real Life Hexcrawl Manual concerning Captain Marcy's guidebook for prairie travelers during the settlement of the West.  Right behind it was one of my Wilderlands posts working out the size of a barony.  The whole Wilderlands series, where I'm working out how to set up a Chivalry & Sorcery kingdom using the Wilderlands maps and doing some soloplay with C&S has been very well received.

    On a personal note, made it to Colorado to see one son in January, Belize in February for our regular winter vacation and that's it.  Had to scrub the fall trip to Scotland for obvious reasons, perhaps next year, but more likely 2022 I think.  Have a new granddaughter in Colorado who we haven't been able to meet yet, that's going to happen in 2021 for certain.

    Other than that, we've come out of the pandemic to date much better than many people.  I no longer have to commute thirty seven miles each way, so I have less stress in my life.  My oldest brother and his third wife, along with her son have come through COVID successfully.  And we did manage to meet them at our other brother's cabin on the lake this summer, where I also got to drive a jet boat.  Probably won't bother doing it again, poor visibility at high speed.  I also managed to step off a raised deck and bang up my legs, spending a good month wearing the boot of shame.

    If you see a silver Jeep Gladiator with with a 1st Navy Jack grill insert, wave  - it's probably me.

A Happier and More Prosperous New Year to Everyone

100,000 Page Views - Achievement Unlocked

Over seven years and two hundred sixty three published posts.  Thank you everyone who has read my posts and a big shout out to the Russian and Ukrainian bots that trawl the web everyday!

When I started blogging in October of 2012, I wanted a place to publish my gaming based musings and had visions of building a following.  Life and work sometimes get in the way.  I still use it for my gaming musings, but realized that I don't have the creative energy - or self-discipline - to write everyday.

My high point was 2014 when I posted 117 time - forty of them in February, because I did a post a day Blog Carnival.  My low point was 2018 when I only posted three times - deaths in the family take a lot out of you.

Here's a some of my older posts that don't get looked at much, but which I think contribute to different aspects of our hobby.

Teddy Roosevelt and the Orcs - where I look at Orc society through TR's history of settler and Indian relations in the Old West (South of the Ohio, West of the Appalachians and East of the Mississippi).

The Dead Orc Scale - classifying difficulty of RPGs by how many orcs you need to kill to advance to 2nd Level. 

Using GIMP to generate campaign maps, especially the older posts where I show how to bring in Google Map screen shots and turn them into hex maps for a Roman era fantasy campaign.

Fishers - a race I created for Adventurer, Conqueror, King to replace hobbits - whom I despise in a fantasy setting.

This is not me

Very strange to see my name in the Google feed.  I had no idea there was another one of me running around playing D&D.  Of course, the other me got to work on RPG's rather than driving ships and writing code.

Goodbye Rodney Thompson

Star Wars Night

Watching the Twins and A's play what should be baseball, but seeing the As booting the ball around the infield (can't believe they've only been charged with one error), it's obvious that the Twin's starting pitcher Phil Hughes is using the Force to keep the home team in the game.

They even gave away a Hughes the Force bobblehead.

Three Thoughts on Carcosa

I've been aware of the unofficial Carcosa supplement for some years, but never saw it in the wild.  A couple weeks ago I picked up the version put out by and for Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

1.  DriveThruRPG keeps it behind the Adults Only barrier due to it's disturbing nature.  Well, if you're a 13 year old with an over-active imagination it might be disturbing.  The fact that almost of of the magic in the book involves sacrifices of sentient beings, some with very specific requirements as to sex and age - well it's not something I would have come up with but nothing nightmare inducing.  It will make SJWs howl, so keeping it where you have to log in and look probably saves them some bad press.  And the names given to the rituals ate fantastic, who doesn't want cast "Geometries of the Labyrinthine Spaces" instead of Maze?

2.  If my players came to me and asked to me to run it, I would.  But contra my thoughts in 1. above, I wouldn't do it around kids.  I don't need blow back from the players spouses - or my own.  Also, the villains would always be working on a ritual demanding a sacrifice that could be fulfilled with one of the players.  Players characters with real skin in the game with a vengeance.

3.  The mashup of Cthulhu Mythos background with space aliens and their weaponry is like the love child of Sandy Petersen and Dave Arneson's imagination.    Very cool and if I don't run it directly, I'll certainly incorporate pieces in my gaming.  You could very easily incorporate as written in RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu or any other BRP derivative.    Other Old School systems would require more work, but nothing too extensive.

Spock is dead, long live Spock!

RIP Leonard Nimoy.  Here's a link to to Leonard singing the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins

Deep Ones in Puerto Rico

These native drawings provide pictorial evidence of Deep One presence and inter-breeding around Punta Escambron, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Je Suis Charlie

A first hand account from someone who happened on the scene after the massacre. Freedom of expression is everyone's fight, there was a minor movement to suppress D&D in the 80's on religious grounds. That was a picayune argument with groups who played by civilized rules; this is an act of war between cultures.  Because of the cultural divide, both sides will claim deceit and treachery in course the fight, as the cultures do not share norms of behavior.

That does not make them equal nor equivalent.

Western civilization, with all of it's faults, has a history of self criticism and increasing freedoms that Islam only approached in it's Spanish rump states.  Such criticism can be counted on to offend those being criticized, but curtailing the right to criticize must lead to the curtailment of those freedoms.

So if you're offended, sucks to be you.  Go ahead and offend me back, being offended is the price of maintaining and expanding freedom.  Freedom is cheap at that price.  The staff of Charlie Hebro just paid for it in blood.

Honor them,do not let their voices be silenced. Your freedoms depend on it.

Vikings in the Arctic

Medievalists.net has an article about determining that a 1000 year old Inuit stone pot found on Baffin Island was actually a crucible Viking traders used to melt bronze for casting ornaments.

Makes the Alexandria Runestone  less implausible, but still fake

Old School Isn't Just Fun and Games

Spotted on the web -

The Old-School Cassette Player That's Connected to Spotify

Now I don't stream music, (I will admit to cruising with a Walkman in college, but hey, you're stupid then, that's why you go to school), and the Sailor, the Marine and their brother will snort beer out their noses if anyone calls me a hipster.

But hats off to Matt Brailsford for a cool case mod re-purposing a piece of kit that was new with D&D.  My only question is where does he get the cassettes to record his playlists?

Epic Safety Video & Viral Marketing Campaign

The Troll Dens has the Air New Zealand safety video.  Go watch now.  Then see if you can afford to book a ticket.

Oddest Places

I was searching for information on Zverts - my search term was 'monster zvert' - and Mr Google threw up this a link to this document.

What's odd about it is that it's from USAF SAMSO TR 78-57 on GPS Navigation Algorithms from May of 1977.   I don't remember seeing the Navy including footnoted myths in technical documentation, but then I was a ship driver, not a wing wiper.

Navy Commissions First Death Cultist Chaplain

The Sailor,  my eldest,  sent me this link from Duffel Blog this morning.  Fortunately,  I didn't receive the text until after I had finished speaking at my own local chapter of the Esoteric Order of Dagon; otherwise I don't think I'd have been able to deliver my talk without laughing.

Good Reads

Saw these over lunch today and thought I'd link out and give a big Bravo Zulu to The Mad Adventurers Society.  They're postings on handling prejudice against gamers that you might run into out in what we laughingly call 'the real world'.  It's not something that I've run into much in the last couple of decades, of course I was out of gaming for awhile due to life and duty stations, and since I came back in I've been in a stable albeit infrequently meeting group for the last fourteen years.

I do remember the newspaper articles from the early 80's, may even have been the fall of '79 about D&D and devil worship.  When I was stationed out in Virginia Beach, I recall that the controversy was getting so much press that I wrote a letter to the editor myself debunking some of the BS that was being spewed.

So here's  Gaming In The Wild: Culture Shock about people's reaction to gaming based on their past as being addicted to or knowing some one who was addicted to gaming.

And here's The Mad Cleric: Dealing with Intolerance about dealing with people who's religous world view prejudices them against gaming, you know the D&D = Devil Worship crowd.

The recommendations they impart go beyond dealing with prejudice against gaming to general ways to deal with people who don't agree with you due to differing past experience or philosophical assumptions.

Of course I'm a crusty old salt, so my advice is always listen to people with respect for their beliefs and don't expect them to return the courtesy.  They'll appreciate you and you won't be disappointed that way.

Paranoia - more of a rant than a gaming post

Swords and Stitchery linked to a free comic 'Atomic War #1' from 1952 as a resource for post-apocalyptic RPGs.  Now, I'm not a big fan of the genre, although I've played Morrow Project, nor am I into comics at all.  But I leafed through it online, and it followed the classic good, smart, American vs bad, stupid, Communist story lines I remembered from a stash of old post-Korean War comic books I had found as a kid.  I mean you're not talking high brow complex plots or incredible art here.

But what struck me in the article was a a quote from Scott Shaw at Oddball Comics: “This is one of many comics that reflected our national paranoia during the Cold War of the 1950s and early 1960s."

Why is 1950's America always described as paranoid [about Communists]? It has occurred to me for quite a few years now that that description shows a remarkably anachronistic - and patronizing - view of history.  Anachronistic in that in order to understand why a decision was made you need to evaluate the information available to the decision maker at the time.   And the information at the time was pretty grim, The UN (not just the US, the USSR had boycotted a Security Council meeting and so was unable to veto the resolution that brought whole organization onboard in resisting the North Korean aggression) was at war against communist North Korea, armed with modern Russian jets.  The Republic of China had been toppled by an internal Communist insurgency in '49.In '48, the Berlin Airlift had kept West Berlin free after the Russians had cut all road and rail links between the Western Occupation Zones and the city.  Word was slowly filtering out about the effects of forced collectivization and the Gulag. All of Eastern Europe was being set up with their own one party Communist states.  In Greece, Communists had fought a civil war against the government from '46 - '49; everywhere you looked communism was advancing and the modus operendi was perceived to be internal subversion.

Now I'm not defending Senator McCarthy's inquisition here; that was an exercise in group think and suppression of dissenting opinion - which we see enough of today.  What I am saying is that childish characterizations of an entire era are as shallow and vapid as the comic book was.

BTW it occurs to me that a pre-apocalyptic RPG, where the characters have to run around in a milieu of fear, uncertainty and doubt, to stop the nukes from dropping might be a blast with the right group.