The Dungeon of Depression - Good Riddance to 2018

This is a bit of a slog, maybe. So if you want, like, CREATIVE shit, maybe not for you today. Disclaimer. Spoiler alert!

I write a lot. A lot of stuff that I don't particularly put out into the world. I put out a lot of stuff that just kind of spills out and it feels right, and I don't playtest, or worry about it too much. I don't try to make money from it. I just want to get it out of me. If somebody else can amuse themselves for a spell with something I wrote, then terrific. I wake up almost every morning to RPGNow telling me that some unwitting person is taking a chance to download something I put on there, and maybe that's a good way to start the day. Also, coffee. I hope they don't see the flaws I see and that their fun continues relatively unabated without clarity or insight.

I feel a little adrift without G+ and the people in there. I struggled a lot with the commercialization of it. I'm a little anti-capitalist, I guess. I'm not saying artists shouldnt eat, I'm saying that turning play into art into a job is a regretful process. Play can be art. Art can be play. They don't have to be work. They ought not to come with a price tag, maybe. I don't know. I'm sure someone will lean in and give me a hard time about it but fuck it.

I'm glad I said it. For a while, it seemed as if it (Google Plus) was a perfect storm of people being creative and supportive, playing for play's sake. Then within the past 4 or 5 years or so, shortly after my kid was born, it seemed mostly like a thing to share Kickstarters on, and shelfies. Like conspicuous consumption. I read and erased a digital bootleg of R&PL, and you know, I don't think my impressions of it are, uh, impressed. (edit: unnecessary shit talking, sorry bros, left in for historical accuracy and taking a poke at capitalism felt good in the process) I don't get into discussions of what OSR is/isn't, but it's sort of like porn. I don't know the definition but I know it when I see it. I'm losing my thread here, but the reason why G+ died was because it became exactly what it was, namely a thing to sell stuff on instead of a place to share great ideas on. Promote, then publish. The promotion is the game instead of the Game Itself.  I look back and see that buying my way into a legit standing in the G+ community with a published product was what killed the thing for me. The fun. It killed all the fun. Don't get me wrong, I sort of dig wrestling with InDesign, but that's not the same as laughing hilariously at a game table with pals, or having that full-body thrill when you read an electrifying idea. Gus and Jarrett and Wayne and even Gorgonmilk (goblessim) and Emmy and Gavin and Ram and Kiel and Reynaldo and all those G+ people they gave me that brain-thrill and I been chasin' the tail of that dragon since maybe 2014 or '15.

I don't know where I'm going.

Every year around this time, I gotta slog out of the winter gloom. I found myself actually sighing in discomfort today. Not like exertion, I mean my back hurts a little from all the weight I put on during the holidays. But like legitimate existential ache. Like FUCK THIS IS WHAT A DEPRESSION FEELS LIKE. I been shaking my head about it since I was 9 or 10, crying about some girl whose name I can't even recall, her leaving the school, or that other girl that was mean to me. The fuck her name was? Who knows? Then, at that time, it was nice to hang my depression on the intricate social blunders and losses that every kid undergoes. But now, I see that my fascination for dungeons arose in tandem with my depression: correlated (I hope!) and not causative, but now I'm getting suspicious. At what point do you shrug off the internal mythology of the Archetypal Darkness, find The Treasure, and call it a day? Hang your gear on the wall and be like I USED TO BE AN ADVENTURER LIKE YOU BUT NOW I AM AT PEACE? I'm not saying I'm AT PEACE, what I am saying is that the filthy grime down here, and trying to delve it and conquer it, does not have the same appeal as it did when I wasn't seeing the connection clearly. I SAW THINGS YOU ... HUMANS WOULD NOT BELIEVE

You know when I want to think about D&D the most? After listening to the news. I mean, at least in an imaginary fantasy realm, I can come up from the depths and be like FUCK YEAH I BEAT THAT SHIT. Biweekly, on Fridays, I can really and truly say WE KICKED THE SHIT OUT OF THOSE EXISTENTIAL DEPTHS and get back to the day-to-day business of living and breathing and making sure my kid doesn't succumb to the same sorts of problems that have ridden me. Like, the spectre of depression flits around my house like a snarling dog inside a cute puppy and man I don't want her to be bit. Man, when we are all out of this collective dungeon of history, it's going to be nice to get to the tavern and be like FUCK THOSE DRAGONS WE FUCKED THEM UP GOOD

Anyway, now that I've vomited this out, maybe my brain can be at peace for the afternoon while I listen to peoples' awful emotional bugbears and minotaurs. I'm safe, emotionally, and sound. No need for worry. I am writing and programming and noodling with the guitar. Thinking about music. Watching my kid grow. Taking pleasure in my marriage.

It's good to write and share. If you choose to make a buck off it, God Bless You. I made some really cool Tablesmith stuff last night, which maybe I will share it or not, but fuck it was fun to make it and see it do its thing. The mere creation of the dungeon seems more a thing than to beat it into submission. I guess I'm an Evil Wizard or something. I used to be an adventurer like you. Maybe still am.

Sounds in the Distance - Whatre Those Hepcats Up To?

Riffing off my pal Anne H.'s great post about signs of an upcoming encounter

Anne is one of my favorite players, bar none, and she's a terrific thinker in terms of DM side stuff. In our exchange on MeWe (yuck, btw, still not a fan of the UI or ease of finding conversations)...

excuse me - in our exchange I pointed out that Moldvay has the DM determine the distance until the encounter happens with a 2d6 times 10', the direction as she or he might wish. That's what all those empty rooms are for in the Moldvay stocking process: to have free spots to put random encounters.

I also have a "Gang Names" generator that's pretty amusing

 I guess one part of the artistry of being a DM is knowing and conveying what those weirdos are up to. Luckily, I've done a miniscule part of that for you. I play with Tablesmith a great deal and I like to do this sort of thinking a couple of times and then not again... So I made a "What Those Folk Up To?" thing in Tablesmith that helps me stock nefarious weirdos and their strange and inscrutable motives. HOW you convey those things they are doing is up to you, I suggest with sounds and smells since (hopefully) the party won't see those creatures if they are more than 30' or so (so out of lantern light).

Here's a list. You could use a d100 and keep rolling until you got something. All this stuff might lead to combat, I guess, or probably (in my game, at least) more likely to get into a roleplay thing. I stick with gibberlings because of the swords, hair, and chicken feet lets me use my Greaser voice from The Outsiders or maybe Grease or some Jersey variant.

#

# NMS_HumanoidMotives

#

1. searching for food
2. eating food
3. searching for mates
4. mating
5. gambling
6. squabbling about betting
7. in a war party
8. in the midst of battle
9. trading
10. squabbling about trading gone wrong
11. scavenging
12. hiding food stores
13. digging a hole
14. painting glyphs
15. painting historical scenes
16. painting mythical scenes
17. dancing around a fire
18. engaged in a religious ritual
19. burying their dead
20. entombing their dead
21. building a funeral pyre
22. cremating their dead
23. disposing of evidence
24. caring for their young
25. instructing their young
26. building a shelter
27. building a fire
28. healing their wounded
29. telling tales
30. telling jokes
31. on the lam
32. recovering from a battle
33. building a shrine
34. building a temple
35. capturing livestock
36. hunting game
37. in a courting ritual
38. gathering supplies for a shelter
39. preparing to hibernate
40. escaping from persecution
41. escaping from imprisonment
42. capturing prisoners
43. looking guilty
44. looking unsettled
45. looking anxious
46. looking terrified
47. fleeing a powerful enemy
48. dismembering a large carcass
49. cooking soup
50. bickering
51. wrestling
52. carousing
53. drinking liquor
54. drinking hallucinogens
55. consuming drugs
56. passed out
57. recovering from illness
58. suffering from illness
59. dying of some plague
60. laughing uproariously
61. tittering
62. hiding
63. hiding badly
    64. to 75 (roll twice - included for your ease and merriment)
    76-100 Getting ready to mess you up, interloper (this isn't in the original Tablesmith thing)