Broodmother Skyfortress by Jeff Rients - Review

Hârn Orcs are Wee Rascals

So I've been revisiting N. Robin Crossby's Hârn setting, a cool sorta low-magic medieval world that been around since the 80's. Hârn has its own system, HârnMaster, but no mechanics appear in the setting book. I know Jimbo Eddy Raga-ma-tazz numero 4 thinks early modern Europe is the ideal setting for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but I think lowkey gritty Hârn would work pretty well. So much so that I am currently converting many of the weird spells in HârnMaster to LotFP.

You can hardly do a medieval fantasy setting without some sort of kneejerk self-differentiation from Tolkien and one of the ways Crossby does this is with the orcs. Orcs are also called Gargun in Hârn and they are so, like, totally different from Jirrty Wirrty's bad boys. I will not give most of the details here, but one way they differ from D&D and Games Workshop orcs is that they are tiny little bastards. Here's the five subraces of Orc/Gargun in scale with (mostly) normal adventurers.

The second guy from the left is a Gargun Kyani, the second smallest of the five subraces. They are noted as perhaps slightly less malevolent and slightly more civilized than their cousins. So in my hypothetical LotFP/Hârn mash-up they replace the halflings, which Hârn lacks.

Patty Gurdy - Brighter Days Come (Official Music Video, Tavern Album)

a strange, strange journey

 

So this here is a Destroid Tomahawk. Destroids are land-based mecha used by UN forces to fight alien invaders in the anime Macross, which was release in the United States as part of Robotech.

This is the edition of BattleTech that I played back in the eighties. That is not a Destroid Tomahawk. It is a Warhammer BattleMech. As I understand it, the company that licensed Macross to make Robotech then licensed the rights to the images to some of the mecha to the nice people at FASA. Through the same deal FASA also licensed some mecha designs from other shows, particularly Crusher Joe and Fang of the Sun Dougram. I knew none of this as a kid. Some of my favorite mechs looked exactly like some Japanese designs, but I didn't know why. It didn't matter much to me and my gaming crew.

FASA approached Ral Partha to make miniatures for the game, which they eventually did to great success. But the folks at Ral were hesitant at first, like maybe they weren't sure if a license of a license of a license would hold up in court. This makes sense to me, as it was not long after Task Force Games was making a lot of money off of Star Fleet Battles, which existed off a sublicense of Franz Joseph Designs license to do the Star Fleet Technical manual book. Was their litigation over that or merely the threat of litigation? I can't remember. Either way, I would've been skittish at that time as well. But as I said, Ral Partha balked initially and instead released a line of Macross knock-offs. The figure above was listed as the BattleAxe. It preserved the two key elements of the Warhammer/Tomahawk design: honkin' big cannons where the lower arms should be and a shoulder-mounted missile pack. (Later the real deal Destroid designs were released by Ral.)

Things got tricky once BattleTech was a smash hit and they wanted to do a Japanese language edition. The cost to license the Macross images in Japan was undoubtedly prohibitive, as it is essentially a license to print money. So they redesigned all the mechs for the Japanese edition. I find many of the redesigns to be flat out gorgeous.

Which is why I was delighted to discover that a 3-D modeller is selling STL files of about a dozen of the Japanese redesigns. Check em out!

Garth Ennis & Jacen Burrows unleash BABS!

Garth Ennis sends up fantasy? Sounds like fun.

This is my husband, his name is Wife of Blacksmith

 

my favorite thing from MERP 2E

MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing) is one of my favorite fantasy rpgs that sits outside the "fully compatible with D&D" space. Don't get me wrong, you can introduce a MERP PC into a D&D game and make it work, or use a MERP module in your D&D campaign, but it requires more effort than something written for Castles & Crusades or HackMaster or other alt-D&Ds.

I played first edition MERP when it came out and greatly enjoyed it. In a test run with my buddy Dave as GM an ordinary cow kicked my first level elf's scrawny ass (which is totally realistic, if you've never pissed off lifestock). In a solo adventure I got lost in a cave and ended up merked by the first orc I encountered. When it was my turn to run, a combination of combined arms tactics and good die rolls allowed the the players to slay trolls and barrow wights by the skin of their teeth. Then they ran into a evil wizard that TPK'ed the party with a single fireball spell. Somehow, after that, I managed to convince everyone to play Call of Cthulhu instead. That campaign also ended in a TPK, following an encounter with Tsathoggua.

When the second edition of MERP came out I never bought the rulebook. A quick flip-through suggested that it was almost the exact same game, but with the order of the sections reshuffled. Certainly, the later modules seemed completely compatible with the earlier rules. However, a pirate electronic copy of the 2nd ed rules came into my possession recently and I was able to find a very cool addition to the rules, table ST-12, the Spell Use Risk Table.

The upshot of this chart is that every time a spell is cast, there's a chance that it results in the forces of the Enemy taking notice of the caster. The level of bad guy attention varies widely by four factors:

1. The relative safety of the location the spell is cast in.
2. The level of activity of the Enemy, as reflected by the Age the campaign is set in.
3. The riskiness of the individual spell cast. More on that below.
4. The die roll. Note that this is an "open-ended" d100 roll, meaning any result on the dice of 96 or higher prompts and additional percentile roll, which is added to the prior roll.

Every spell in the MERP 2e book is rated for RF (Risk Factor) associated with it. Low level, low impact spells can come with a RF as low as 1 or 2, but big flashy spells like firebolts and lightning balls come with Risk Factors as high as 40 or 50.

Riskiness in spellcasting is not new. In D&D, saving throws often ruin a wizard's scheme. Many systems, including MERP, require some sort of die roll for casting to succeed. Casting spells in Call of Cthulhu often costs sanity points. I quite like the overcasting and fumble rules that James Raggi introduced in Vaginas are Magic! Fellow fans of Douglas Bachmann's article "Believe it or not, Fantasy has reality" (Dragon #40) will recall that, in his system, every spell cast has a small chance of upsetting the World Balance, possibly resulting in things like blizzards, plagues, and earthquakes.

But a system where each spell cast has a chance of tipping off the bad guys? I quite like it. The only analog I can think of is the psionic rules in AD&D1, where every use of a psionic power or psionic-like spell has a chance of attracting the attention of something off the psionic wandering monster chart. A LOT of ordinary spells qualify as psionic-like and the chart is full of powerful monsters. Literally the first time the cleric casts Cure Light Wounds could result in Demogorgon showing up to kick everyone's ass. It has never, ever made a lick of sense to me.

But this MERP chart? I totally get it. The result is that the further you go into enemy territory the less you can safely rely on magic to save your sorry ass. Sending a couple sneaky halflings on the ultimate quest actually makes a lot of sense under this system.

FYI thydungeongal

As I get older and grumpier the tumblers is the only social media site I can stand to be on for any length of time. Tumblr has its problems (terrible interface, TERFy moderation, among other things) but I still find it entertaining.

Anyhoo, I just wanted to mention that if you are on tumblr and a reader of this blog, then you should consider giving thydungeongal a follow. Her recent analysis of % in Lair is super on point. She also has the rightest opinions on Rolemaster I have ever seen, in so far that all those charts increase the chances of any action to go horrifically, comedically wrong. Good times.

Gen Con Surprise Announcement!

Fight On! is back, baby!

 

 

I may be feeling grumpy about DriveThru lately, but you need to know that a new issue of Fight On!, the OSR fanzine, is out! Get it here. Back in the two thousand aughts Fight On! was one of my favorite parts of the scene. If you don't have the back issues you should check them out as well.

I am led to believe that work on issue #16 is already under way.

from Dragon #71

 With or without context, I find this quite droll.

A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633 Promo

Engines of Destruction

 

So, I'm back on my BattleTech bullshit. The construction rules in the original BattleTech rulebook included this handy chart.

Multiply the tonnage of your mech by its walking speed in movement points. That gives you the engine rating needed for you mech design. Look at this table to find how much the requisite fusion engine weighs. And the manufacturer of that engine, which has never had any impact on play, in my experience. But it is kinda funny to discover that your giant robotic killing machine is powered by Nissan or General Motors.

But what finally struck me the other day, nearly thirty years after first encountering this chart, is that this chart has more entries than it needs. 

Mechs are always designed in tonnages divisible by five, between 10 and 100 tons inclusive. Walking speeds are always positive integers, generally between 2 and 10. That means that there are some engine ratings that appear on the chart but are mathematically impossible to achieve. My math suggests that, under the rules as written, there's no combination of tonnage and movement that will produce the following engine ratings: 115, 145, 155, 185, 205, 215, 230, 235, 265, 290, 295, 305, 310, 335, 345, 355, 365, 370, 395. Feel free to double check the numbers on that.

Is there anything to be done with this information? I dunno. Maybe someone should write a scenario where the attackers are raiding a stockpile of fusion engines, only to discover they are a bunch of Vlars that won't do a damn bit of good in any mech chassis in the whole damn Inner Sphere.

I don't need DriveThru. Does DriveThru need me?

Below is the message I just sent to DriveThruRPG via their contact page: https://help.drivethrurpg.com/hc/en-us/requests/new.  I encourage you to do the same. Feel free to cut and paste from my letter if that helps you to get started. Note that copying and pasting my draft into the text box screwed up the formatting and I ended up re-entering the paragraph breaks by hand.

Dear DriveThruRPG, 

I have been a customer of yours since October of 2004. I don’t know if the 512 items in my DriveThru library makes me a big, medium, or small customer. But I wanted to make sure to let you know that I am a fan of your service before I took the time to complain. 

I honestly do not understand what the hell you are doing with James Edward Raggi IV and his Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) products. 

I purchase most of my LotFP books as pdfs via your site, as I just don’t have that much shelf space any more. I would like to give you money to buy last month’s new releases, including Don't Fuck the Priest, The Butchery of Agnes Gooder, and Orgasm, but James reports that you will not list these three products for sale. 

Do you not want my money? 

Your site possesses adult content features. If you find the material objectionable, why not list them with the other adult content? The idea that there is a level of content beyond “suitable for adults” is the fairytale stuff of secret societies, conspiracy kooks, and prudes. 

Personally, I find lots of stuff in LotFP products objectionable, were they to leap from the page and manifest in the real world. But I reserve the right to read the books and make that call for myself. Why are you trying to do that for me? Are you concerned that I am an unsophisticated reader lacking in proper analytical skills? Do you worry that I cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, an absolute minimum requirement for anyone who enjoys the rpg hobby if they are to function in larger society? 

This situation is no longer tolerable to me and I am seriously considering taking my business elsewhere, even if that means locking myself out of many future rpg products. I’d rather make that decision for myself than allow a middleman to make that call for me. Even for one book. 

Please explain yourselves. 

Sincerely, Jeff Rients

LotFP: Introducing the New Weird Crushers

more settings should do this

N. Robin Crossby's Hârn setting included a beautiful poster-sized hexmap that allowed for all the hexcrawlery an adventurer's heart could desire. Here's a thumbnail of the map:

Here's a close-up of one region:

(click for an even bigger view)

This is one of the all-time great fantasy campaign maps, but, like so many such maps, it is ultimately a referee's map.

But Hârn also has a player's map, what it calls the "poetic map" of the realm:

"The map is not the territory," as ol' Al Korzybski used to say. Without a "poetic" map, there's no gap between the world-as-it-is and the PC's view of it. That gap is something the referee can exploit.

gamebook glossaries are weird

From Sprawling Wargames by Paddy Griffith.

 

Presenting... Professor Power!

So this guy came to me in a dream last night.

Professor Power

Thaddeus Bauman, a.k.a. the Amazing Thaddeus

• Fighting: Good (10)
• Agility: Good (10)
• Strength: Good (10)
• Endurance: Excellent (20)
• Reason: Excellent (20)
• Intuition: Excellent (20)
• Psyche: Excellent (20)
• 
  
• Health: 50
• Karma: 60
• 
  
• Popularity: 4
• Resources: Excellent (20)

Staff of Power: Taking the form of a golden cobra-headed rod with a ruby in mouth, Thaddeus is still figuring out how to tap into its awesome powers. He regularly uses its forcefield power, which provides Remarkable protection against physical attacks and Amazing protection versus energy attacks. This power only works against attacks Professor Power can anticipate or see, rear and sneak attacks are not affected. A FEAT allows him to extend the protection to adjacent allies.

The Professor can strike foes with the staff, fighting at Excellent level and inflicting Remarkable bludgeoning damage.

Once per session, the Professor can attempt to use the staff to achieve nearly any power effect at Remarkable level. He must make a FEAT roll at Green level if the referee agrees that the specific power usage advances the plot of the adventure. If the power would end the adventure prematurely or otherwise spoil the fun for other players, it requires a Red result. Any other usage requires a Yellow result for success.

Snakes: The Professor fights crime with two large constrictor snakes, named Past and Future, that he rescued from a swamp witch named Angurboda in one of his earliest superhero adventures. The Professor often refers to them as his "lovely assistants".

F:Gd A:Gd S:Rm E:Ex R:Pr I:Pr P:Pr H:70 K:12 +1 shift for grappling and escaping

Although these slithery pals are mostly just slightly clever ordinary snakes, once per session they can attempt a Strength FEAT to do something silly and cartoony such as serving as a lasso or coiling into a spring to superleap somewhere.

Talents: The Professor is a stage magician, appearing under the name the Amazing Thaddeus. When appearing as Professor Power he usually has a trick or two up his sleeves as a means of distracting his foes.

Origin: Stage magician who bought a magic staff in one of those storage locker auctions.

Costume: Black luchadore-style mask with red paste gem on forehead, deigned to look like the ruby in the staff. Disco collar Dracula cape over Seinfield-style puffy pirate shirt. Rockstar type black leather pants. Vintage 70's zebra striped high heeled boots. Well, high heeled for a dude's boots.

PS: I know that Professor Power isn't an original comic book moniker. But that's what he was called in my dream.

Draft Two-Step Status rules

Hey, we're trying to remove a saving throw penalty in here!

The basic deal here is that the first status of each pair has no direct mechanical effect. Gaining that status is a warning to the player that worse things are to come. If you have the first status and trip the conditions again, you move to the second status. That's where the real hurting begins.

Tired/Exhausted

Characters become Tired after 6 turns of serious dungeoneering (exploring, searching, sneaking) or 12 turns of casual dungeon travel (tromping through previously explored, mostly cleared areas), and after every combat that lasts more than one melee round.  Doing nothing for a turn will remove this status, assuming no wandering monsters or anything like that bust up your smoke break.

If you are Tired and you get Tired again, you are now Exhausted. Exhausted PCs are penalized -1 on all die rolls, except percentage rolls, which are -5%. Exhausted spellcasters have a 1 in 20 chance of fumbling every spell they cast. These penalties stack with all other status penalties (see below).

The only non-magical way to remove Exhausted is to take 1d4 days off with only light activity and a lots of naps.

Every time someone becomes Tired or Exhausted, roll 1d6. On a 1 they are Hungry as well. On a 2 they are Thirsty as well (see below).

Hungry/Starved

A Hungry status can be removed by eating half of a day's rations or the equivalent. If you are Hungry and you need to eat again but lack food, you become Starved. Starved PCs are penalized -1 on all die rolls, except percentage rolls, which are -5%. Starved spellcasters have a 1 in 20 chance of fumbling every spell they cast. These penalties stack with all other status penalties.

Starved status can be removed by eating a whole day's rations or equivalent.

Thirsty/Parched

A Thirsty status can be removed by drinking a half of a skin/bottle of wine/water or equivalent. If you are Thirsty and you need to drink again but lack water or a beverage, you become Parched. Parched PCs are penalized -1 on all die rolls, except percentage rolls, which are -5%. Parched spellcasters have a 1 in 20 chance of fumbling every spell they cast. These penalties stack with all other status penalties., i.e. if you are Exhausted, Starved, and Parched, you are -3 to do everything.

Parched status can be removed by drinking a whole wineskin/bottle of wine/water or equivalent.

Dirty/Filthy

The referee can award any character Dirty status for falling in mud, wading through murky waters, fighting ooze monsters, getting blood splattered, wrestling orcs, being swallowed whole, etc. Taking a turn to do your best to get the gunk off of you removes this status, but the time spent tidying up does not count as resting for purposes of getting rid of Tired status (above). If this is not done and additional Dirty activity occurs, the status is promoted to Filthy.

Anyone who is Filthy is -1 to reaction rolls and saving throws except against fellow smelly creatures, such as ghasts, troglodytes, and fart demons. Furthermore, any standard rations carried are ruined. This penalty stacks with all other status penalties.

Only a full bath and cleaning or replacement of clothes and gear will remove this status.  

Scratched/Wounded

The first time a character takes more than one point of damage from a single attack, they become Scratched. To remove the Scratched status, the character must be healed back to within one point of their full hit points.

A Scratched character who takes another hit worth more than one point becomes Wounded. A Wounded character is penalized -1 on all die rolls, except percentage rolls, which are -5%. Wounded spellcasters have a 1 in 20 chance of fumbling every spell they cast. These penalties stack with all other status penalties.

Wounded status is removed by fully healing the character.

Dim/Dark

The Dim status is applied to the whole party any time the referee realizes that once again the players have been getting away with exploring the dungeon without a light source. It can be removed by one character per six party members lighting a torch or lantern or a single character casting a light spell. The torchbearers/lantern carriers will fight at disadvantage and can only use one hand to do so.

If the players get busted twice for lax lighting discipline, they find themselves in the Dark status. There torches and lanterns will not function; some eldritch force has ruined their capacity for illumination. All activities done in the Dark are at disadvantage.

Dark status can be relieved by using magical light or returning to the surface.

Bear Wiseman's Gathering of Geeks ft. James Edward Raggi IV (S02E02)

I saved the timeline!

One of the other participants in the game jam I joined produced a Game Boy adventure called OuttaTime. You can try it yourself in your browser here: https://jhample.itch.io/outta-time.

It’s a short game—only two levels—but given the jam was only a month long, that’s still quite an accomplishment. I finally completed the second level and this the game this morning:

The story line is that the Time Crystal has been shattered into six fragments, which you must reunite. Each level is split into two half levels, one half a dinosaur-infested past and the other a high-tech future. A simple press of the B button slides you between the two half levels. The trick is that the two half levels are similar but not identical, requiring carefully timed B presses where you jump in the past and land in the future or vice versa. Very cool.

My biggest concern with the game is the same problem I have playing any platformer on my phone: I have been unable to get used to virtual controls on the screen. The lack of the tactility of physical buttons throws me off.

Bro! Beowulf!

At last year’s Philly Zine Fest I bumped into a cool Temple University faculty member who recommended Maria Dahvana Headley’s newish (2020) translation of Beowulf to me. I had heard that she was a bit of a troublemaker, so I was already inclined toward checking out her take on ol' Bee Wolf at some point. Then my friend dropped this on me:

“She renders the initial Hwæt as 'bro!'”*

Sold, my dude, sold.

So here are my favorite lines from Headley’s version.

Old grudges recrudesce.

Bro, fate can fuck you up.

Any season is a season for blood, if you look at it in the right light.

not living, but living on in legend.

…through perilous passageways, places off-map, paths too slender for company, where sea monsters sang and cliffs called for suicides.

Meanwhile, Beowulf gave zero shits.

Living has killed us all.

Both he and his enemy had seen the edge of existence, tripped and fallen over it.

bro, nobody changes God’s mind.

now they were custodians of the bloody mud. [referring to the winners of a battle.]

He was our man, but every man dies.

  

*How to convey the proper tone and meaning of the first word of the poem, Hwæt, is a long-running problem among translators and adapters. Seamus Heaney's otherwise much-admired version stumbles out of the gate with a bloodless "So.", while Roy Liuzza's more scholarly translation manages to be both unimaginative yet strong with "Listen!" Tolkien opts for "Lo!", which I quite like. In grad school I vigorously argued for "Yo!" But since everything I know about the Anglo-Saxon language fits neatly into a single lecture suitable for undergrads, no one listened. Headley goes all-in with her choice of "bro!", turning the bleak landscape of Dark Ages Scandahoovia into a romping ground for braggy jocks.

Dennis Mize's Beowulf & Grendel (Ral 01-189) figured into my Beowulf slide deck back when I taught this stuff on the regular. The parallel poses helped me make the case that in some ways the two characters are apposite as well as opposite.

 

a pretty clever alternative to 3d printing

In the Star Fleet Battles facebook group there's a guy named Larry who has been using a laser cutter to make pretty decent looking flat minis. Dig it:

The hexagons are custom bases, presumably the two will be connected by some sort of dowel rod.

Jim Stevenson's Starship Schematics Database ought to be chock full of image files that could be used for this sort of thing.

And of course you could do flat upright D&D figures this way, rotating the view to the front or side rather than top. You'd just need good black and white art.

Joe Bob Briggs thoughts on Censorship and Physical Media

I tap my BFG 9000

So the other day I stumbled across a paper in arXive called "Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete." I don't know enough about either MtG or computer science to get more than 11% of the gist of the piece, but some of you might be interested in the cards needed to turn a game of Magic into a Turing Machine:

Of course, if you can use MtG as a Turing Machine, that leads me to ask the obvious question: Can you run Doom on it?

Opaque Mechanics

There are plenty of times when transparent mechanics are good for roleplaying games. For example, I generally like to give the dice chances for any escapade not encompassed by the rules. I also usually prefer single die throws over bunches of dice for a lot of resolutions mechanics because there are plenty of players who find it difficult and/or tiresome to estimate their chances of rolling a 14 or lower on 4d8 or whatever. Mechanical transparency is one of the key virtues of many universal resolution systems. (But not all such systems. James Bond 007 from Victory Games has a pretty robust universal mechanic but it baffled my high school rpg group.)

But I think that opaque mechanics have their uses as well. The other day I was re-reading White Box, a perfectly serviceable little retroclone that I briefly reviewed here. One of the mechanics I can’t make my mind up about is the default single saving throw mechanic. On the one hand, I generally believe that simpler is better where basic resolution mechanics are concerned. On the other hand, saving throws are one of those places where a little mechanical opacity adds to the frisson of the game.

There have been plenty of times when a situation calls for a saving throw and I say something super explicit like “44 points of fire damage, save versus breath weapon for half.” But other times, when I want to ratchet up the tension for an extra beat or when I am just feeling ornery, I say “I need you to make a saving throw.”  The inevitable response is “versus what?!?”, often as the player scans their charsheet to see what category they save best against. A single save system tidily eliminates that extra moment of terror in the face of the unknown; the momentary opacity of the mechanic serves my agenda of making the players fear for the lives of their precious PCs.

I think this issue is why, after all these years, I still prefer Dave Hargrave’s Arduin critical charts over later, arguably better crit charts. Dream Weaver Dave’s disordered charts flummox players who ask “Is high or low good?” before rolling on it. Additionally, the results are sometimes nonsensical, like the preposterously high chance of slicing off someone’s butt cheek. I don’t want a more organized, more realistic crit chart, as this semi-broken old junk from the dawn of the hobby does a superior job scaring the bejesus out of the players.

PS: You really want to scare some players via mechanical opacity? Put hit points in a black box. Track HP and damage secretly and only vaguely describe how wounded the PC feels.

Enter Era Four

There's a newly-formed gaming/education group at work and they recently hosted a game jam on itch.io. Although the organizers of the jam were mostly interested in video games, board games were also accepted. So I made a science fiction strategy boardgame thingy for 6-16 players and a referee.  Assuming it works as intended, it ought to make a decent convention game for cons with 4 or 5 hour slots.

You can download the board, components, and rules here.

New edition of Starmada! Huzzah!

So Daniel Kast's Starmada has a new, 30th anniversary edition out. You can get the pdf from WargameVault (the wargame store of the DriveThru people) or print, print-with-map-and-counters, or pdf from publisher Majestic Twelve Games. 

This is my favorite spaceship combat wargame. If you like hexed-based space combat with just enough complexity that running multiple ships is challenging but not overwhelming, then give it a shot.

Maybe the best part of the game is the ship construction system, which is a tad more complex than BattleTech* or Car Wars, but still easy enough that when I bought the Starmada Compendium (the 2nd print edition of the game) I immediately converted the ships in every other spaceship game I owned.

If you own a fleet or two of minis and the rules they're made for are too wonky for your tastes, consider Starmada. Or if you want to fight wars between factions in your own sci-fi universe.

*Does anyone even make their own mechs in BattleTech anymore? When I was a kid it was a common activity, with whole ass zines devoted to homemade mechs. 

Last Day of the Big Sale: Why YOU should publicize it!

A thing I need to do better

by Jon Hodgson

You know what rules? Sections of the dungeon where bigass party-wrecking monsters roam, but smaller places where the PCs can escape them.

James Raggi on Gaming, the OSR, the origins of LOTFP and his upcoming pr...

egghead reports research, weirdos pissed off

So if you haven't heard, last week a researcher named Dr. Clio Weisman published an article on Medium called "The Worst People You Have Never Met, or, What I Learned During A Four Year Academic Study of Online Harassment In The Dungeons & Dragons Community." It was up for about 14 hours before the author pulled it for reasons to which I am not privy. But it was preserved here, so you can read it for yourself. Becami Cusack archived the referenced audio clips here. I look forward to reading a formal, peer-reviewed version of her findings when they are published.

Apparently a few people think the article is some sort of hoax and Clio Weisman isn't real. These people must not have access to Google, as it is pretty easy to verify that she exists. And her other academic work isn't that hard to find confirm either, though you'll need access to specialized data bases to actually read the various pieces. Brian Yaksha, Olivia Hill, and Patrick Stuart have all confirmed talking to Dr. Weisman, though they aren't exactly fans of the article. Curiously, none of those three tweets complaining about Weisman and her piece bother to deny any of the allegations in it.

Dr. Weisman interviewed me for a couple of hours, several years ago. In addition to the Zak situation, we discussed her other research into bias. This was a topic of interest to me professionally, so she later sent me a draft version of an article she was working on. I assume I don't appear in her Medium article because my interview was boring compared to incestuous hate-mob she shines a light on. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about all the fuckos mentioned in the article, but since last week I've been going back and forth between sincerely hoping they get the help they need and sincerely hoping they rot in hell.

The other thing that some people are claiming is that Dr. Weisman has some undisclosed reason to slant her article. If she has any skin in the game, I have yet to see any evidence for it. As far as I can tell, she came to the project from outside the game scene and did her best to figure out what the hell was going on. Truth isn't always easy to determine in complex situations. That's why we have institutions like academia and the courts, to help us suss the truth out. These institutions are imperfect, but without evidence to the contrary, the people poo-pooing her work sound exactly like MAGA election deniers to me.

Some folks are probably going to give me the business in the comments. That's fine. Just expect to be asked some simple questions like, "Did you read the article?" and "Did you listen to the audio?"

updated Snail Quarter map for Dillhonker City campaign