Starcrossed Friends of Pocket Monstering Islands

On a lark, I crossed my Stardew Valley Pet and Darkest Copperfield Dungeon Name generator with my list of "tragic gothic personality quirks" and Pokemon/Animal Crossing types and so, here you go. Abominations to the very last. I think the stats are in B/X order... that being STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, CHA as we used to do in the dim and ancient days. But you do you. I really liked the way the Stardew Valley name generator turned out and never found a chance to put it to good use. I even tried to steal the actual stardew valley code for a bit but lost interest

Maybe I'll pick a couple of these and draw them up for yinz or you could youse this like I did. there's a literal infinite combinations of these hellspawn awaitin' in the guts of my laptop

It goes: Name (obv Stardew, Darkest Dungeon, David Copperfield styles),stats (4d4 iirc because hey they are cute animals), Pokemon type (extended list I got from somewheres), Animal Crossing Animal (not exclusively), ACNH Personality Type, Quirk

"PLEASE END MY MISERY I AM UNCLEAN IN THE EYES OF GOD"

YOUR NEW BESTIE RANDO STARCROSSED FRIEND

Isidore Inkleenthorpe,7,12,7,9,8,13,Void,Dog,Cranky,Belongs to a heretical sect or religion

Hendry,7,9,12,11,11,12,Psychic,Cat,Jock,Low-voiced

Doba,7,10,10,8,5,11,Fairy,Rhino,Lazy,Gangly physique

Tirel,9,10,10,8,10,10,Crystal,Eagle,Jock,Corrects people when they use colloquial speech

Becdelièvre,11,13,9,13,10,9,Fission,Penguin,Big Brother or Sister,Is a compulsive gambler with heavy debts

Timidge,7,7,11,11,11,11,Vacuum,Chicken,Cranky,Deep-voiced

Musard,7,8,15,13,12,14,Dark,Monkey,Snooty,Twirls or Pulls or Plays with own hair often

Tolliver Snarflethwaite,12,10,11,13,4,10,Cluster,Hippo,Lazy,Is formal noble turned servant

Pertbi,14,10,9,12,7,8,Fusion,Wolf,Peppy,Becomes depressed unless given a steady stream of positive feedback

Guideville,13,13,8,8,11,12,Holy,Octopus,Big Brother or Sister,Was injured in combat and is a eunuch because of it

Hugonin,8,8,13,10,9,10,Rain,Mouse,Smug,Is a bastard of a prince

Timchers,6,9,10,13,5,10,Gory,Wolf,Big Brother or Sister,Shallow

Eveny Curfleby,13,8,5,9,13,12,Fission,Hippo,Jock,Is naive

Kilbi,12,13,11,7,13,10,Water,Ostrich,Cranky,Pale-skinned

Buymede,9,10,9,12,9,10,Crystal,Chicken,Jock,Is fickle

Mercier,5,10,12,8,9,10,Magma,Duck,Snooty,Is impoverished

Dookins,12,9,10,11,7,11,Rain,Chicken,Jock,Fatalistic

Vernold,11,11,4,8,12,11,Electric,Hippo,Smug,Plays the piano compulsively

Mesnage,11,8,16,11,10,6,Pure,Mouse,Hallucinatory Insanity,Likes music

Kulard,11,9,10,9,10,10,Flying,Octopus,Lazy,Firmly believes the lunar landing was faked on a North Dakota prairie

Pida,9,11,10,11,10,9,Fighting,Anteater,Cranky,Chatty

Bot,13,8,13,7,10,7,Fire,Octopus,Peppy,Jaundiced

Senarpont,11,8,10,8,9,10,Medic,Chicken,Peppy,Is without a family

Roger,11,11,7,12,12,11,Iron,Hippo,Snooty,Lovesick

Herbert Beckwith,6,13,8,12,8,8,Fungus,Ostrich,Peppy,Dark-skinned

Gueron,10,8,6,12,9,11,Gory,Bird,Jock,Is disgusted by the look of live fish, yet can eat cooked fish or sushi

Pertybert,9,11,14,14,7,9,Ground,Squirrel,Snooty,Lonely

Pister,13,11,11,11,13,13,Normal,Rhino,Hallucinatory Insanity,Black-haired

Faintree,7,11,12,10,7,14,Flying,hound,Manic Despression,Strongly dislikes the sound of chewing and hums a quiet song while eating

L'ile,11,10,12,7,12,10,Plasma,Monkey,Cranky,Sallow

Deency,12,12,14,11,8,7,Fairy,Bird,Peppy,Patronizing

Druel,9,10,10,7,7,12,Grass,Squirrel,Big Brother or Sister,Has escaped from the asylum

Paschal,11,8,13,11,9,10,Mana,Frog,Big Brother or Sister,School Bus Yellow (Yellow)-eyed

Durerie,15,13,12,11,9,10,Rock,Squirrel,Snooty,Forbidding

Clara Twitchitch,9,5,11,13,9,10,Cluster,Frog,Snooty,Gravel-voiced

Bibotchers,11,5,9,8,10,12,Grass,Bird,Smug,Frustrated

Gael,11,12,13,12,10,12,Glass,Monkey,Cranky,Is a vampire

Vane,13,13,9,13,15,10,Void,Gorilla,Lazy,Is overfed

Puduridge,10,14,9,13,6,9,Magic,Bear,Lazy,Fleshy physique

Kukin,9,5,13,10,9,10,Gory,Eagle,Cranky,Masked

Boneth,13,12,11,9,8,12,Vacuum,Bull,Peppy,Fashionable

Nelly Quiderny,8,9,10,8,11,14,Steel,Lion,Smug,Sanguine

Joss Jaggoiss,7,10,12,10,9,8,Wind,Cub,Megalomania,Gangly physique

Thibault,9,11,10,5,11,12,Mana,Cub,Weirdo,Is of noble blood but not noble heir

Juson,13,8,13,7,10,9,Dark,Mouse,Cranky,Xanadu (Grey)-eyed

Conard,9,13,9,13,10,13,Stone,Goat,Snooty,Elongated

Dootte,11,6,12,14,8,10,Fairy,Wolf,Jock,Practically gives money away, knowing it will come back manyfold

Libi,10,7,12,9,10,14,Positive,Tiger,Peppy,Long

Mustel,12,11,8,11,9,12,Dragon,Lion,Cranky,Is a hermaphrodite

Maunsell,7,6,11,10,11,11,Sound,Horse,Snooty,Goes barefoot whenever possible

99 Random Vancian Spells +1 of my own devising

A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated--though rumor said that demons whispered at gus ear when he wrought magic. Pontecilla the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandall to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man. Of these, Mazirian had access to seventy-three, and gradually, by stratagem and negotiation, was securing the others.

In response to a Reddit post the other day, I finally remembered to flog the daemons I have in my bottle of containement in the Level 4 sublaboratory and here is 99 Vancian Spells generated Pseudorandomly. There is some Maze Rats in the code, not the current one but the alpha version, and a couple of different name generators of my own devising and contorting. I add an ultimate capper to the end of the list since 99 seems to me an unseemly number, at least to my Western and Post-modern sensibilities

Glassine Shard of Dale Dugpiss

Bilious Vitalisation of Golonar

Flensed Tentacle

Gerontification Spiral

Drenal's Creeping Chocolate Tongue

Ithaugha's Pendulous Earth Heart

Tsaonac's Bony Servant

Devastating Oil of Armael

Boorish Intimidating Pattern

Crislan's Dripping Elemental

Intransigent Boffola Bolt of Ciloldenense

Fungal Assassin

Insidious Hanging Storm of Phalros

Abi-Dalzim's Egregious Summoning of the Incendiarism Mephit

Bellicose Summoning of the Imparting Devil

Maximillian's Stitched Coil

Melf's Charm of Histrionic Enrapturement

Goloazash's Soothing Chaos

Mist Rotten Monolith

Minor Ashen Defilement of Felojun

Gossip Gate of Sabga

Lesser Awakening Echo of Rary

Nahal's Scaly Elemental

Bezoar Inflammation

Serten's Silent Disencarceration

Shambling Rimed Nexus of Nyaothoa

Halbel's Charm of Parsimonious Trampling

Saruel's Elemental of Serpent

Abhorrent Summoning of the Seismism Elemental of Rasaz

Zelmir's Sickly Hand

Saramin's Warding Moss

Affronting Necrosis of Nahal

Ashen Elemental of Maximillian

Greater Taciturn Vengeance Gaze

Charm of Black Commingling of Mordenkainen

Salty Steed

Daedsisulpg's Oracle of Deflecting Flame

Ingurgitation Stream of Yshisa

Azathotep's Legendary Charm of Arcadian Manducation

Bankel's Adroit Wooden Sigil

Thrushing Elemental of Otto

Conducting Elemental of Turjan

Elegant Web of Cthathotep

Recalcitrant Teetering Lock

Serendipity Marshalling of Simgri Erelian

Nystul's Minor Abstraction Stream

Charm of Pernicious Soporiferousness

Serpentine Water Wave of Saint Anastasia

Belmerplen's Golden Elemental

Egregious Plastic Coil

Pollen Steed of Braaren

Turjan's Gerontification Field

Legendary Reptilian Elemental of Tenser

Flowery Gathering of Otto

Moldy Disencarceration of Seraphael

Narach's Summoning Night Touch

Greater Placid Torrent of Futhagath

Mordenkainen's Phantasms Tree

Drawmij's Greater Living Pugnacious Column

Sella's Tunnel of Condemning Lightning

Damarvyr's Ropy Golem

Abi-Dalzim's Dead Sewn Tunnel

Caustic Summoning of the Concupiscence Beast

Saint Horace's Trampling Disk

Kheaat's Greater Feathery Tree

Haludiah's Lesser Poison Word

Nithlas's Lesser Charm of Mendacious Envisioning

Bigby's Flatulent Elemental

Kandive's Minor Gaze of Wine

Charm of Trenchant Concupiscence

Touch of Transposing Rust

Genosh's Thrushing Prism

Larbyrdua's Flatulent Shroud

Venomous Scream of Otto

Numbing Pyramid of Drenal

Annaara's Lesser Creeping Fungal Voice

Nybor's Slashing Ghost

Gad Leis's Rotten Elemental

Charm of Puckish Transportation of Rary

Gad Leis's Febrifacience Assassin

Cobabihish's Kibble Fabrication

Ramonmosnen's Dead Woolen Prism

Major Brilliant Elemental

Sickly Burst of Drenal

Bigby's Pestilence Elemental

Pervasive Summoning of the Arriving Elemental

Judicious Bilious Beast of Rary

Kandive's Spray of Rebounding Earth

Futhamir's Legendary Roaring Incendiarism

Tenser's Greater Vengeance Artifice

Elder Crystalline Call

Vidagan's Wilting Mouth

Damela's Sickly Elemental

Legendary Ropy Elemental

Lesser Path of Silver

Roaring Burst of Tenser

Otiluke's Intermuring Pulse

Charm of Mendacious Expunging of Surlim

Sotjutepkheher's Voluble Summoning of the Aeriality Daemon

100. (mine own) Haon Dor's Greater Entropic Daydreams

On Politics in [Noun]

So listen. Black Lives Matter. Trans Rights are Human Rights. Racism is Fucking Bad. Injustice is Fucking Bad. Oppression of the Other is Really Fucking Bad. Stay with me, here. If you don't agree with this first line, then this post is for you, but maybe the whole blog is not. Don't @ me, bruh. There's some gaming stuff at the bottom of this, but you have to wade through the screed first. I ain't even trying to change your mind even. Only Free Market Jesus can change your mind.

I hope you have read up to this point, and are about to retort (clever boy!) something like "Keep Politics Out of My Tabletop Roleplaying Games!" Because, you Clever Boy (probably almost always a White Dude) of course, of course you are about to say it. You are merely an antibody in a vast system, a White Blood Cell, so to speak, so to stretch a metaphor. Wargames are an offshoot of War, always (in the UK and the US) the province of the Dyspeptic Old Rich White Men who send the poor and disenfranchised youths off to die. To die with a funny dream in their heads, that the cause of the Wealthy is also the cause of the Poor. In the beginning, the hobby's roots in Wargaming, Kriegspiel, Violence and Suppression of the Hideous Other for Riches... Well, how did it give rise to a population of people quibbling about the niceties of nipples in Officially Licensed Projects?

Man, you gotta understand that for the most part, the business end of the Industry upon which the Discourse thrives. It's extractive. It eats your good ideas and it shits money into some guy's pocket. It's colonial in the sense that it goes into your brain and stays there taking up space like all memes do. It takes the clever ideas of the people who use it, gussies them up a bit, and sells it all back to them and makes them think that they (The Users) are not in charge of things. If there wasn't a whole thriving industry of Desktop Roleplaying Publishers making awesome, free, and easily distributable products, WoTC would not now be selling 60 dollar full-color glossy-paper tomes of whatever it is they sell these days. WoTC would have died 10 years ago and RPGs would be a pleasant and hilarious memory made fun of on what is left of network television.

So: it depends on this monolithic industry, protected by legions of vocal fans who want New Stuff, but don't want Things to Change Too Much. So like: Ravnica and Sword Coast stuff, because for example Mystara and the old D&D stuff that were attempts at diversity were (A) shitty (because they didn't really go to the people they needed to go to to find out about the real history of stuff) and (B) not well received because at root, the hobby has almost always been until relatively recently about the Dumb Hero Fantasies of proto-fascist White Guys. Thanks, Tolkien! Thanks ER Burroughs! Thanks, I mean the list and the Road Goes Ever On, dig? Even Dune was some misguided shit, as forward thinking as it may appear in retrospect. You're seeing the tension of Everybody Wanting to Play Their DnD vs. the Party Line, is partly where the problems' are arisin'. I told somebody the other day that shit-heel that he was, Zak at least Head Cultist Cabbage, uh, Savage, uh whatever, at least he had an interesting notion about beating the Corporate Guys at their own game. I mean, he's a total shit heel, but anyways.

In late summer, maybe the fall of 2015 when Orange Hitler announced his thing and came down the Golden Escalator, I ran a couple of games that was a fun and booze-fuel'd joke about the Never-ending Presidency of The Orange Emperor - the Google group for it was named "Twilight of The Orange Emperor" and it was about a ragtag group of drug-abusing, hot-rodding mutants on the way to Grammas' House but like there was a Quarantine and you wasn't supposed to travel and the deathbots and the foot soldiers and jackboot thugs of the Orange Emperor's forces was tryn real hard to stop youse. And the real magick was the friends we made on the way, and also high levels of radiation and environmental pollutants. The end of the first session there was a giant chrome Ivanka combiner-bot because who the fuck knows or cares who that asshole's current wife is (I think if I were to refactor the thing it would be The Sinister And Long-Suffering Mother of The Barron, Freemarket Jesus Bless Her Heart). At the time, I thought of the thing only as a sinister joke in Poor Taste. Don't Blame Me, I Voted For The Other Guy is the age-old refrain, yes?

SO: What does the current Winning Empire of The Orange Emperor look like?

Well, The Imperial Cult of Free Market Jesus, a sort of friendly, blood thirsty, avaricious talking head - that's the base. There is nothing He wont say to keep you in the chair, sending money, hoping for some far-off savior to come and make things right. Every GP sent to his spokespeople ensures the hurrying-up of the Happy Apocalypse so don't worry about fixing things here on the Aeurth.

Under that, there is a Deep Death Kult. A cult of fire, of hatred, of child sacrifice, of strange and insidious sexual proclivities. The DDKists have various mutations - gills, wall-eyes. Cork-screw tails beneath their robes, man-faced rat things nipping at their heels and whispering agendas into their ears while they loll in post-frenzy bliss.

Together, these two march The Military across the globe in immense battle vessels, where they abuse each other and literally itch for a fight, ingesting combat drugs and engaging in sex-violence riots.

Well-meaning but totally inept unelected officials run the infrastructure of the Imperial Continent and Territories (including the Moon). They are under-funded . The Law is the most notable and has resorted to seizure of citizens' assets and they promote the myth that (although they have access to cutting-edge weapons of war handed down/cast off from the Military) that they are under Intensely Dangerous Circumstances at all times. They mostly crack down on the Poor, The Mongrel, The Clever, The Curious, not Elves because of course elves are conservative in their cruelty. Nipples are not permitted on men, of course, but nipples are permitted on succubi and sorceresses if we may have our 50% cut up front and you can't get a permit anywhere else. If the whole system fails, then they too will be without a job and then who will buy The Products? The gizmos? The expensive dice and glossy books? So they wittingly or unwittingly work to keep the thing propped up. The Emperor you know is better than the stark terror of trying some new thing that might not work, even if the thing is really and truly not working.

There is a plague afoot, of course, of Nurgle or Orcus, or Apollo, or the Handsomest Talking Head. If you catch the plague, of course you die coughing blood, but it does make you very interested in what Charismatic People on TV have to say, which fits in nicely with the Cult of Freemarket Jesus. Millions dying but it's okay, because they are The Poor, The Tired, The Downtrodden and their utility for the Empire is limited and FMJ and Nurgle have agreed to split the benefits.

Everywhere there are tiny enclaves of Regular Old People of varying colors and creeds, trapped in their houses and villages. Most don't want to die, but some catch the thing going around and of course don't stand for living in fear when it's very likely you're going to die coughing up blood soon.

Other games sort of depend upon the Hubris of the Ancients, and how they fucked up, and let's get their treasure through Sword and Wits, but of course no savior is coming, no kwisatzhadderachs are permitted anymore (the permits simply not issued since infrastructure will not support it)

Everywhere there is promise, but there is no more hope, techonology is abundant but it's never put to good use, unless of course it will make some cultist Even More Wealthy. The guiding hand of The Market is guiding everyone into a crypt, or a tomb, to commodify what is there or die trying. Imagine all the best ideas that early Star Trek had, but like IN REVERSE. More like a funny Rogue Trader (not the recent one the one in 1986). Like if Thatcher and Reagan had commingled their ichors and gave birth to an insipid Orange Fart in a cheap mobster's suit, spread thinly over a frothing war machine. things have gotten so stale on Earth that the emperor has even declared the whole of Space an enemy so as to point The Miltary's ire skyward, and to spread The Plague out to the Stars and Beyond

All right, time to roast some meats. Drink some distilled liquors and avoid heat.

Fuck Trump. Fuck all charismatic narcissists with their hands in your pockets. To say that politics don't belong in games (or therapy, or any other human endeavor) is laughably stupid, short-sighted, and in the interest of the status quo of which we may or may not be a part.

See you in the gulags. Wear you goddam masks.