11/25/24

our new adventure for liminal horror has been released!

9/26/24

 



8/28/24

The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Smogg

Dr. Smogg is a rich bitch industrialist who made his fortune in heavy manufacturing. Still, his methods are wasteful and produce many toxic by-products, which he disposes of in environmentally irresponsible ways. His next scheme is to pump massive amounts of toxic smog into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of his factory. Once airborne, the pollution will condense into solid waste particles and rain down upon the unsuspecting countryside. 

Fortunately, Professor Rusty Sauernoggin is on the case! Rusty Sauernoggin has dedicated his life to finding ways to transform toxic waste into good and useful products. One blast from his rooftop "Smog-o-matic" ray gun and the cloud will rain down delicious sour candy balls... an outcome Dr. Smogg is less than pleased about!

8/4/24

unpublished blog post

in an attempt to declutter my ttrgp space at home i've decided to burn some old campaign books and transcribe some bits i may reuse. 

the following is from a small thousand thousand islands campaign. i'd link to their zines online but i'm pretty sure everything has been removed by the creators.

The zines require a lot of preparation to run smoothly so here's some shit I prepped for the sessions I ran.

Late Feather Scale Village NPCs:

1. Wet Beak (Snipe, Bird-folk) - red tattoos, avoids moonlight because it makes their feathers glow with cult like runes, they are here to establish bleaching hexes, they're a saboteur of the "Ingido God"

2. Paw Dew - dancer (Man-folk) - missing a hand, harassed by a trio

3. Twelve Roaring Tooth - artist (Monitor-folk) - toothless

4. Ear Wall (she/her) - girlfriend ran off with the drummer Paw (Man-Folk) 

5. Rum What - clammer (Man-folk) - covered in suck marks (like from octopus tentacles I guess, "suck marks" is straight from the zine), bleeding, wants revenge (this part was from the zine too, I guess they want revenge for the octopus sucking on them).

I started to write number 6 on the table here but then thought "i don't really care about any of this" and now I'm going outback to burn some notebooks.

7/29/24

the signalwave series part two: Top "Signalwave" Albums to "Liminal Horror" to (2024)

 

My best guess is that the album cover is a YouTube screenshot.

tracking by antenna decay (released February 21, 2024)

Is there a constant beeping in the background, or is it tinnitus? I take my left air pod out, and the beeping stops, but now track two is playing, and I still hear the beeping. I checked my surroundings and removed the air pod again, and I realized it was the album’s heart monitor.

The first two songs are piano and nice and short, but track 3, “found,” is where the album begins to shine. It sounds like a slowed-down oldie with a full band (strings, winds, drums, etc).

Track 4, “slow,” has big Weather Channel vibes (a staple of the genre) with its piano tones, electric guitar riffs, and jazz flute! It also begins what I’m going to call The Trilogy, which, if you put all the single-word song titles together, makes “Slow Days Fading.” The album is also tagged as “Sentimental Transmission.” I recommend that fans of the soft rock bands Chicago and Bread start here, as well as anyone limited to time. The album sounds like a tragic love affair, good times and bad. It felt like the pace of the beeping varied at times.

Track 7, “worn,” is a melody I know from somewhere, and research is still ongoing.

Track 8, “gone,” I recommend to fans of dunegon synth and cottagecore.

The whole time, I was waiting for the beeping to cease or remain in the steady drone of death you see in the movies, but it never came. Which is fine; you live another day.

The album description is like the gray text box from an adventure:

viewing the memories of a soon-to-be-gone tape.

---

you walk into the attic.

the dust dances in the air around you.

there it sits, in the exact spot where you once stood, sun-bleached.

you feel a sense of familiarity.

you walk into your bedroom.

the smell of your past greets you.

there it lies, as if it were waiting for you, wishing for your return.

you choose to face yourself.

you walk into the living room.

the carpet feels softer than usual.

there it lies, gone in a moment, never to be seen again.

you watch as it all passes.

Many artists will write some micro-fiction, or poetry.

I love that the artist is Floridian and works for a government space agency.

***

I’ve battling a bit of scope creep with finishing the next draft of my submission to the Liminal Horror Twisted Classics Jam.

Writing and sketching the writing and sketching writing.

I drew this after writing, “Her Bible is white, and she holds it in both hands, like a big sandwich.” When I need a break from the writing and frustrations and it's too hot to skateboard, I’ll draw the writing.


7/16/24

i ran the chair by zach hazard vaupen ask me anything!

Play reports are so exhausting to write. This will be brief.

Two friends and I met up and played Liminal Horror the last two days for about an hour each session. It was my first time running Liminal Horror, and it was their first time playing. I didn't prep anything and hadn't even read all of the rooms prior, but I invited Bolt Neck Possum to play, who joined the call but just as a listener while working and answering a few questions I had on rules. 

They both rolled the same result on the "What Brought You to the House" table: "Greed made you into a fugitive, and you needed a place to lay low." 

At one point, Jason went into the air duct, which led to a heated room. He sat in the chair and teleported between the bathroom walls. He lost all control and became an NPC that started to break through the walls. 

Peyton heard the thuds and went to investigate and help their friend, but after using the rock hammer to break the drywall, they saw their friend's eyes were solid black and abandoned them.

In the end, Peyton drove off, but curiosity took over, and he turned around to dig up that grave he saw in the garden. 
The Chair is easy to run and incorporate into your ongoing campaign or a great start to a new one. I think it took us 2.5 hours to complete the scenario. If I were to run this again, I would change the NPCs into something else—another type of creature, perhaps, or at least reskinned. The creep factor in this one is easy to achieve, and it has a few things players who like puzzles or problem-solving will enjoy. 

If I run Liminal Horror for the same group again, I hope we can continue where we left off. 

Thorn: I didn't realize the fallout card for this game wasn't included in the pamphlet pdf, even though I downloaded and read the card a few days before the game and had the card open in a window during the game. So we didn't roll on the new fallouts in The Chair, which is kind of a bummer. I just totally spaced. 

Rose:  I pulled a few things from Gonin that I used in the sessions. Like starting the players off sitting in a car in the rain. Turning the whole fugitive hook into a heist gone wrong, as well as using the film to add more to the recent grave in the garden in the adventure.

Other news: I've been reading a lot of manga this summer (I recommend Hideout [short and more traditional horror and psychological] by Masasumi Kakizaki, and Paranoia Street [a more twisted slice of life and the first story was my favorite in this collection] by Shintarō Kago). 

 
The night before the game, I watched Gonin. It's a yakuza film from 1995 directed by Takashi Ishii, who began his career making outlaw comics. Beat Takashi is awesome in the movie, as he always is. 


7/4/24

Top "Signalwave" Albums to "Liminal Horror" to (2024)

 Warning: reading this post may result in spending money on cassettes, vinyl, CDs, and MINIDISCS.

“Signalwave” and “Broken Transmission” are subgenres of “Slushwave,” which has been one of the best musical discoveries I’ve made this year.

They’re the soundtrack to decay.

I think of them as concept albums portraying memories of good days long gone.

It’s what Liches listen to when playing Second Life online to feel human again.

These artists have their entire catalogs hugely discounted on Bandcamp.

On the other hand, the Liminal Horror Twisted Classics Jam has begun.

So what’s so great about “Signalwave?”

Look at CT57’s discography.

Their album art is a ready-to-go d10 table you can insert into whatever “Twisted Classic” you’re working on. You even got an NPC in the top right corner.

All of their albums are amazing.

My favorite release is “Distant Sounds of Desolation.” Released March 22, 2024, It sounds like what I picture corpse dance lessons to be. May the track list be your spark table. You can purchase any of their albums for $1 or their entire discography for $6.

The songs aren't too short but aren't too long, and the pace is great. The tracks blend smoothly into each other to give you enough time to "meditate." I like that there are no commercial ads. The melodic vocals in "Weeping Willow" are haunting. I feel like this album has a lot of up-and-down movement, like the lovely pipes in "Memories of Good Days Long Gone." Maybe it's not even pipes; it's got chimes or wood blocks. 

Let’s look at another release from this year. Dead Hues by Localdecay. Released April 3, 2024, are you starting to see a pattern of the genre yet?

The first song is a fucking banger. It just rips you right into the rhythm. Pulsating piano with saxophone and fucking railroading drums. Just all drenched with reverb. You could work out to this one. Then it ends with a raven-sounding synth that caws, and I fall into the track "Analog Decay." I feel like this is what it sounds like to be in a hot spring in Iceland. With the mud. If you see foggy power lines on a cover, it's a banger.

街灯 by ビリヤード場 (Street light by Billiard Hall) Released February 2, 2024, this one is great because not only does it introduce UFOs (or whatever the government refers to them as now) to our countdown, but we finally get some vocals sampled. Sampling is mostly all “Signalwave” is.

The track titles are listed in Japanese, so I’d like to translate them here to use as a spark table after you purchase their album.

  1. i'm still wearing the shirt you gave me

  2. a midnight walk in the middle of nowhere

  3. the streetlights shine a subtle blue

  4. don't look at me

  5. i shouldn’t

  6. bird

  7. starlight / city of light bulbs

  8. it’s getting late…

I recommend viewing your “Twisted Classic” through multiple lenses, like a copy of All Dogs Go to Heaven on VHS. However, the VCR is connected to a projector, and there’s no screen. It’s playing on a garage door, being filmed by a Sony Nex 6 camera that’s had its sensor converted to infrared and streaming to the internet.

Next week, we’ll sink our brain fangs deeper into “Signalwave” and “Liminal Horror.” I promise to challenge your tastes.

Until Next Time, Consider the following inspiration:

Outlaw Comics:
Battalion: The Return of the Living Dead, or more recently, Junji Ito’s adaption of the Lighthouse, among many other “Twisted Classics.” Battalion is a bootleg manga released in a Japanese magazine at the time of the American Film’s Japan release. This blog takes a deep dive into it. Manga has filled my summer reading.

Vacuum Decay. All five issues of this horror comic by various artists are free to read online or can be purchased via their website. It’s worth reading each issue for the overarching “Twisted Classic” take on The Simpsons, “Shadows Over Springfield,” which is also available to purchase standalone.

Literature:
The Sword-wielding Statue of Liberty in Franz Kafka’s novel Amerika. Kafka never visited America, but he saw many pictures and wrote his own twisted version. The ebook is free to read, and it’s hilarious.

7/1/24

codex r review

I recommend reading high. 

The attention span is shrunken, but the focus is heightened and very intense. 

For me, the reading experience becomes more vertical. 

In this case, I like to read books of a certain depth. 

You want to avoid reading something you've seen before because you're absorbing things more sentence by sentence. It will be a smooth ride down if you do, and it will lead to no exciting experience.

You want an experience where there are a lot of hand and foot holes, but some of them are jagged, some will cut you up, and some will require you to leap from one spot to another over the chasm, and you have to trust it, but you may also die.

Codex R is among The Top 5 OSR Zines to Read When You're High as Balls.

When I first read this zine, it was hard to position myself because I was utterly mystified. 

Its page on Itch.io describes it as:

"A kaleidoscopic excursion in space-time, cataloging headless farmers, party deities, apocalyptic critters, bad hair days and totalitarian practices." 

It doesn't take many pages to excite and activate some unused neural pathways in the brain when reading Codex R.

It's a catalog of an entire culture in an alternate reality. It has 46 objects or beasts (I consider this zine a bestiary), each with its own full-color illustration that invites you to understand them. They pull you in and lead you around with their descriptions, like a tour guide (sometimes it's like encyclopedia entries). The people, the objects, the places, but still familiar enough. 

I think it's intended to be used as an "in-game" artifact. 

Codex R is an endless source of fascination. Definitely buy yourself a copy and check out what else the creators have made: here and here




im a fucking thrill mimic btw



Audubon Zoo

i feel like a rundown dog

useless

and poor

so i call my friend megan

ask to borrow her children

so she can do the things she doesn't have time for anymore

i take the kids to the zoo

we get pretzels, hotdogs, and icees

we find the monkey cages

but the monkeys are asleep

"sorry" i tell the children

i bang my head against the glass

one of the monkeys cracks an eye open

the monkey signs to me "taking a nap"

the kids don't like this

they begin banging their heads against the glass

i educate the children on disappointment

they rub their foreheads

i drive them home

megan and a man answer the door

looking like a gunshot had gone off

they just finished having sex



6/30/24

1d4 levels of greatness a ttrpg writer can achieve in america



1. giant centipede in the darkness:

Has published seven books. One on Lulu, two on their personal blog, and four "self-printed" via Mixam. Gets more hits on their blog weekly than has sold zines in five years and makes enough money off their zines to get drunk once a year. Will likely die alone of something easily treatable if they'd had money or motivation to go to a doctor. Will be forgotten in 20 years (while they are still alive) when they lose the ability to blog after getting second-degree burns on both hands while boiling potatoes at work, but will be rediscovered 60 years after their death. Their blog will be published as a hardcover in 2270 on Mars.

2. one dollar feeder fish:

Has been reviewed by Questing Beast and quit their adjunct teaching job because the cast of Critical Role was invited to speak at their college. Receives up to three e-mails a day from centipedes in the darkness wanting blurbs. Will not be forgotten easily even after they are dead and their books are out of print because of how easy it is to talk shit about them. Will then be forgotten very easily, completely, and forever a few days after I type this when there's someone easier to talk shit about. 

3. $9.99 petco gerbil:

Has won an Ennie and other major awards but is thought of by most critics, writers, and journalists as primarily a romance author. Makes enough money to not have a blog or their email addresses on the internet. Considered as "I really, really want to stay away from this person and their books" by people who like Mork Borg.

4. pony on a pony farm of a child billionaire:

Considered "important" and "serious" by most online reviewers and writers but are held back from further greatness by an inability to make a dungeon that conveys the tone of "I am very smart and this is serious." Held back also because they sometimes publish smaller zines, some of which don't even contain adventures; because some of their e-mail adresses can be found on the internet; and because they would never consider writing from the perspective of someone in a terrible event that they did not experience. 


5/21/24

I’m talking game prep this week.

Prepping session one...


hOw AbOuT wE pReP a TaVeRn / InN


XD


but let’s do it with RUTHLESS EFFICIENCY


“Margaritas & Parrots” 


Boom, we’re done.


I bet you can envision the tavern.


What it smells like inside.


The texture of the floor.


In two words you can prep most of your session needs.


Now go forth and write with purposeful ruthless efficiency.

4/17/24

Crapland is a game. (SPEED-RUN) Session twoo.

✿.。.- ☆-. during this actual play I listened to the album .-.☆-.-。.✿

(catch up on the previous session here)

1.

Shark-8 caries Tela under an arm. He thinks about how Mel will beat his ass. He says Mel is good to kick our asses. 

Mok doesn’t say anything and then says let’s just get home already.

Shark-8 wonders if the rumors about Mok are true. 

Supposedly, whenever Mok dies, they ascend, and another is born identical to the first. 

Shark-8 wishes Mok ascended instead of Tela. 

(From the last session, the party was going to have an encounter in the 9th hex. They traveled, but they only traveled 7 hexes. As Shark-8 and Mok walk home, I will roll on the encounter table to see what happens. I rolled two bad dogs and rolled napping for their mien on the CRAPPY ENCOUNTERS table.)

“Stay quiet. Look.” Shark-8 points with his free hand to two bad black dogs asleep in the grass under a tree in the front yard where a car is still on fire. 

Mok thinks Crapland is single-handedly fucking this sphere into climate change. 

(Their house is four hexes away now, so let’s roll 2d6 again to see if they have another CRAPPY ENCOUNTER before then. Oof, I rolled snake eyes. In two hexes, they will encounter… roll on CRAPPY ENCOUNTER table, two bad dogs napping again. I'll cross this encounter off now and write something new later if I roll the same encounter again.)  

Further down the street, the party passes by another burning car with two bad dogs sleeping in the yard. The dogs fail a skill test to sniff the party out from their dreams as the party turns the corner and makes it home safely. 

All the lights in the house are off, but the TV screen is giving off a faint glow through the front window. 

(Since the Dream_Bod encounter from the last session turned into more of a boss fight, I’m going to give the party some crappy items that might not even help them on their quest to unlock each ending. Let’s say 1d6 packages arrived before they were ordered from the online shopping CRAPPY APP that somehow distorts the time-space continuum. I’ll roll randomly to see who the mail is for. It’s for Mel.)

Mok grabs Shark-8 by the shoulder and says let me go in first. They walk up the porch steps and find 4 packages with Mel’s name on them. 

Mok opens the door and says, “Melyougotsomemailwe’retiredandgonnacallitanightseeyallinthemorning.”

Shark-8 follows Mok straight to his room while keeping a neutral facial expression and trying to hide Tela’s face from Nope, Mel, and Riff. 

(Using the Fallen Oracle, let’s see if they noticed what happened to Tela. I’ll say they likely notice. They don’t notice anything weird, and since both d6 aren’t less than the d8, we don’t alter the scene.)

“Cool. Peace.” Riff says while giving the peace sign. 

(Roll on the CRAPPY T.V. SHOWS ON YERCRAPP T.V. table to see what has them so enamored they don’t notice anything different about Tela.)

On the T.V., cars drive around while people greased up in their underwear say “VROOM VROOM” loudly.

Mel says she had put some items from the Troikan Apparel online store in her cart but hadn’t purchased anything yet.  

The end credits of the “Vroom Vroom” show roll on the screen as drum-and-bass liquid neurofunk dark-side music plays. Riff turns the volume up. Mel gets up to collect her packages.

(Let’s roll for a random event on the Fallen Oracle to end the evening. I rolled a faction. I’m going to add the F.B.I. as a faction. I feel the F.B.I. are Crap.)

A blacked-out Crapillac Escrapade is parked illegally across six bike lanes across the street from the player’s house. 

(Does Mel notice? Let’s say the odds are even; it’s a 50/50 chance. We need an 8 or greater on 2d6 for Mel to notice. 2D6 = 4, 5, and 1D8 = 4. Mel definitely notices.)

She raises her flaming eyebrow, grabs her 4 packages, and heads back inside the house. 

“There’s some fucking FBI agents watching us from outside,” Mel says. Her flaming eyebrow sputters.

“Maybe they’re trying to find out who or what is causing all the cars to blow up in our hood,” Nope says.

“Don’t you think it’s strange? I’ve never seen the fucking FBI in Crapland before. Have you?”

“Nope.” Says Nope.

“It’s not like one of us is secretly an alien infiltrator operative from Mars,” Riff says, biting his nails. 

Let’s ask Witch Piss if Mel is going to do anything about the F.B.I. agents outside. 

“We stood around drinking, listening to the swish of rush hour traffic in the rain.” (I rolled page 145, paragraph 4, sentence 1).

I feel it’s obvious what happens. The party spends the rest of the evening chilling and watching T.V. before falling asleep. (Everyone heals 2d6 stamina and luck.)

Mel sits in front of the T.V. on the floor and opens her packages (quest items):

1. A bag of Crap Chips - These either heal you or make you unable to shut up about how good they are.

2. Portable game console - Requires a plasmic core, casts games as spells

3. Bucket of fish - 3d3 fish. Good for frying or fighting. Damage as a club.

4. Craptors-only jacket - It makes people think you’re a Craptor.

Mel says it’s bullshit that the portable game console doesn’t come with any games or batteries.


2. 

Mel, Riff, and Nope wake up in the living room with the T.V. still on. 

(OH NO A COMMERCIAL PLAYS! Everyone tests luck. Mel failed XD. ROLL ON CRAPPY COMMERCIALS TABLE)

A crappy commercial selling action figures from a new R-rated alien movie plays. It has a subliminal message about spit. Mel is enamored. Water (ACID) sprays from her face. Her eyes shoot into the back of her head. There’s a hard crack of thunder outside, and it begins to rain.

(Let’s roll a random event focus for the morning; it's a new plot.)

Mok places Tela’s dead body in his closet and wakes up Shark-8 by saying he’ll make breakfast.

In the kitchen, Mok opens the Fridge. There’s 1 canister of anise quick action whipped cream, a half-eaten chocolate cake, rotten bananas with a roach crawling on it, wilted greens, a half-eaten sandwich, and a jar of spicy pickles. 

Mok uses Tela’s ending to make a sandwich. (He tests luck and fails. He tries again but fails.)

Mok tries to make something remotely edible from this crap and fails. I mean, Shark-8 COULD eat this crap, but it wouldn’t provide any bonus.

“We’re out of bananas. Who wants to come with me to get some?” Mok says.

(I rolled, and Mel is the only one who doesn’t want to go with Mok.)

Shark-8 and Nope say they will go with Mok, but they must unlock their endings today. Riff just wants to get out of the house for the day. 

Wait, Mel says. She hands over the Craptors Only jacket, the bucket of fish, and a bag of chips. 


3. 

Inside Nope’s car, Shark-8 says he needs to go to the beach. Nope says he needs to go to the beach! Mok says that’s fine because the banana tree is near the beach, but they get the bananas before all the good ones fall off the tree. 

They head to the Wave-Brick Cove, unaware in 5 hexes, they will have an encounter:

1. Local odor

2. Bad dogs Giant Banana Slugs

3. Jerks

4. Dog Head Guys 

5. Omega Craptor 

6. Hissing lizards 

7. FBI

8. NONE

“Did you feel that?” Riff says.

“It’s just the car engine taking a shit. I’ll fix it later,” Mok says.

“You’re the worst mechanic. It’s raining, and I don’t even have wipers. This blows,” Nope says.

Shark-8 has his head out the window, and his mouth is wide-the-fuck-open. 

“GUYS GUYS!” Shark-8 yells. “It’s SHIN UNCHI TOKAGE!!!” 

(an Omega Craptor 3+ stories tall.) 

“He looks big mad!”


(START THE initiative)

Shin Unchi Tokage shoots a beam from its mouth at Nope’s car.

Everyone runs out of the car as it blows up.

The party is frantic, and the Omega Craptor tail swipes Shark-8 for 4 damage. 

“Guys, I forgot I could have restocked the fridge earlier,” Riff says as he gets kicked into the air by the Omega Craptor for 16 damage. 

(I will start letting the characters roll under their base skill to run away on their turns.)

Nope tries to run away but gets hit for 18 damage.

Omegacraptor goes again, and this time for Shark-8, dealing 8 damage.

Shark-8 eats the bag of chips Mel gave him and fully heals. 

Riff plays a nasty riff and gets hit for 4 damage.

END OF THE ROUND!

"Over here!" Mok lifts a manhole cover and jumps underground. The party follows without thinking twice. 

Riff puts his mask over his head.

Shank-8 says, “That’s not a mask; it’s a plastic bag.”

“Same thing,” Riff shrugs. “Follow me, I used to play shows down here when the band was underground.”

(let’s roll again to see how many hexes until the next encounter, 9 hexes, that actually will bring the party right across the street from the beach by that weird portal!)

(Let’s consult Witch Piss to see what the sewer is like. “Back at Danny’s, I gave everyone a beer - except Danny, who wouldn’t drink anything except his watermelon-flavored malt liquor.” I think this means there is a soda machine down here.)

Shark-8 pulls out his Crappy Phone and opens a Crappy App, but it’s just a Loud Ass Dub Siren. 

Riff grabs the phone from Shark-8 and opens another app. “It’s not party time, Breh.”

“BIKE MESSENGER ON A PIKE DAMNIT!” Riff drops the phone immediately after opening the messaging app, unencrypted. 

The phone hits the damp floor. (roll on the what did you slip on table) It’s covered in a red substance. 

“Did you just open the messaging app unencrypted” Nope asks. “Breh, you just sent all of Shark-8's nudes to the government.”

“Wait, what? Breh are you serious?!” Shark-8 picks up his phone using his mouth. The red substance tastes like sweet blood. “Oh, this is blood.”

“The government is going to rate your nudes and ensure they adhere to public decency rules,” Nope says. 

“Hol’ up, that’s why the FBI was outside the house last night, collecting nudes?” Riff says.

Mok says, Let’s just get to the beach so we can unlock all of our endings.

The party sees a light at the end of the tunnel.

They all start running towards it. 

“It’s a miracle,” Riff says. “Look.”

Conveniently placed next to the ladder leading up to the street is a Saint Refreshness machine.

Mok pulls 4 coins out of his pocket and hands one to each friend.

Riff says they have Elderberry Mindfuck and sheds a single tear. “They haven’t made that in like weeks!”

He inserts his coin and selects Elderberry Mindfuck.

Mok and Nope insert their coins and push the Marrow Rush button.

Shark-8 inserts his coin and selects Elderberry Mindfuck, but nothing happens. He has his own coins but holds his palm up towards Riff.

Riffs feels terrbile, that the FBI agents saw his nudes, have to rate them, make sure they adhere to public decency rules, feels terrible again, and hands Shark-8 a coin.

Shark-8 tries to get a dark star cola, but a nope cola is dispensed from Saint Refreshness.

They each climb the ladder and crawl out of the manhole in the middle of the damned freeway and back into the rain. They see the beach and the banana tree. All of it is only 100 feet away.

“Is that normal?” Shark-8 points at an Open Interdimensional Portal, Letting Forth Another World That is Decidedly Less Boring and Much Cooler, where Movies are Decent, and food tastes Good.

(I roll on that table and get a result that states roll again twice on the table.)

Plants near the schism start growing and growing and growing until they tower over the skyscrapers that don’t exist in Crapland. 

A Sports Car skids out of the schism. The action hero driving it shouts “Get in.”

Shark-8’s jaw drops. “Woah. That car looks like it's never blown up before.”

”That’s right!” The action star says. “I always drive away from explosions in slow motion.”

(Let’s ask Witch Piss what happens. pg 136, paragraph 2, sentence 1. “Felt a painful excitement in my chest.)

It’s obviously a red convertible with a set of longhorns across the grill. Riff calls shotgun, and the rest of the party hops into the back seat. 

(gonna ask Witch Piss what the heck is going on now, pg 68, paragraph 3, sentence 4. “Something. Something. Bussy.”)

(I will roll 3d8 on the quick NPC section of the Fallen oracle. I get the words Soldier, Drunk, Obtain.)

“I’m a drunk solder from the future sent to obtain Shark-8’s nudes from the FBI before they can take them to the white house to be rated by the president.”

Nope asks what the future is like. The action hero describes grim scenes where everyone is literally pawns in a game of chess played by corporate executive gods with giant stone faces. 

“I have a surf competition today, and I can’t be late,” Shark-8 says.

“I’ll get you there, but it is paramount I obtain your pictures and destroy those FBI agents."


Notes:
1. During this actual play, I listened to the album 召喚 by 妖女 · 天火見.

It was released on June 6, 1995.



This album is tagged as "80's," "90's," "ambient," "adult contemporary," "devotional," "dream," "funk," "jazz," "light," "love," "mountain," "new age," "temple," "traditional," and "world."

This album is a peaceful journey in your inner self. I'm happy to own this album.

Sometimes an atmosphere can only be captured by a song. This music makes me feel an indescribable emotion.

Imagine mooning through a psychedelic jungle under a holographic disco ball moon. That’s not even close to how fantastic this album is.

2. Witch Piss is a novel by Sam Pink
3. Crapland is a game by Orbital Intelligence 
4. I used this oracle by Perplexing Ruins



4/14/24

Guest Blog 1 With Evey Lockhart

Evey Lockhart has one of the coolest TTRPG blogs (Index Cards in the Rain). Each new post eats its predecessor.  If you haven't checked it out, her latest post just dropped. 

It's about an evil cult selling powerful weapons in the name of a vile lord. It's gun pr0n, Evey style.

Evey also recently released an adventure called "The 2nd Annual Goblin Singles Weekend at the Nice La Quinta across the River." I love seeing adventures like this getting released. Truly unique. 

Like I've said before, if you like someone's writing, tell them or put it on the internet somewhere that you like it, and they will live longer and write more.

I think Evey's books are calming to me. It might be due to other factors like where I read these books or what I ate while reading them, but I remember feeling very calm after and while reading them.

I think I read so many of her books because she merges real life into fiction while remaining open to the actual experience of life.

I invited Evey to write a guest post for my blog.

03/11/2024 11:42 AM me: you wanna do a guest blog post on my blog?
03/11/2024 6:00 PM Evey is a filth gnome: sure
it'll probably be a while before I could though

Here's what she sent me...


I played you wouldn’t last a minute on the creek, and this is my one-word review: harrowing.

It’s hard to explain exactly what this solo adventure is. Just roll up a troika character and play it. Engage with it honestly and be harrowed, hun. 

The evil creek doesn’t hate you; she’s just disappointed --which is worse. The creek is your mom. The creek’s also some kind of deep, abiding fear of criticism or failure. It’s maybe mostly a fear of capitulation/capsizing.  

The creek is going to school in your underwear and all those wasted years.

I imagine the creek as muddy. There’s no textual reason for this. Maybe the cover, but nah. The creek in my heart has always been orange-gray and green with mud and life. So many things to remember: small, flat yellow rocks, thick clay, oak branches, snakes, beavers, and sandstone of all sizes. I imagine, now, it’s filled with only the memory of water and the smell of achingly hot willow trees.

I think the creek might be a dying side-channel of the river Lethe. It slurches and burps up half digested memories mixed with gall and ick.

The creek consumed two superheroes and a ghost.

What the fuck is the creek?! I wish I could tell you.

YWLOMotC is equally absurd, earnest, relatable, and relentless.


Space Goblin, the First Death

Berrie lived as a lasersword superhero in the Longshot City sphere for some time. Whilst deeply meditating, she discovered the creek. What could it be other than a psycho-spiritual challenge from the Universe herself? 

The creek overtook Space Goblin in her 10th second on the creek, via a humiliating frisbee to the face. Her final moment subsumed in wet embarrassment.

Fash Hunter, the Second Death

Jullianne Troy, an old warrior, had dedicated her life to liberating everyone for decades. Long ago, the CIA captured at her very first anarchist meeting. 

The government shoved a cybernetic ROM chip full of military tactics into her skull and tried to brainwash her. The brainwashing didn’t take as it relied heavily on emasculation, leaving Jullianne’s trans ass mostly unaffected. She’s been fighting for liberation from that moment forward: stalking and killing prominent fascist thought leaders and paramilitary nazis.

Jullianne was not prepared for the creek. Guns and grit cannot kill memories so perhaps her failure was inevitable. She was swallowed on second 21, pulled below by a swarming of lost souls.

Deadheart, the First Oblivion

Deadheart was the ghost of jilted plesiosaur. What could the creek be to the dead, other than some sort of vicious purgatory?

She began the creek suffused with ennui. However, with each new attack by memories not quite her own, she grew angrier. She determined that though she had wasted her afterlife thus far, she would  not flinch away from this.

The creek took her into oblivion 28 seconds in. She simply couldn’t quite handle the love septagon that echoed too closely to her own pain. (She lost the roll by 1… so close and yet, after millions of sad bitter years, she ceased to be. Could that be an accidental kindness from the creek?)

You know what, I was going to run another character through, but I’m just not in the mood.

So, in conclusion, buy this adventure and run a few characters through it. It’s a powerful piece of design, slightly elided by fact of its silliness. Take the silliness seriously and you’ll find the pain and artistry the wicked creek is so desperate to divulge.

But, I bet you won't last not one single solitary goddamn minute on the creek.

... Thanks for reading. You Wouldn't Last One Minute on the Creek is currently on sale for 75 cents and definitely go check out Longshot City as well.

If you blog, I recommend inviting your friends to guest post on your blog. If you do this or post reviews of books and zines on your blog, you will not fear the horrible meaninglessness of life because when you feel it you know that nothing matters, that 'good' or 'bad do not exist, etc.