Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise

Yesssss!  It's out.  GET IT HERE.

This isn't the tippy-top final version, mind you.  But it's farther along than a beta.  The bookmarks, hyperlinks, and index is coming soon.  Also, I'll be spotting and fixing typos over the next couple weeks.

What's in it?  So much, dude.  So much.  225 pages of the awesomeness you've gotten to know from Cha'alt.  Some of that page count is previously released PDFs, such as OSR Like A Fucking Boss.  That'll be in the fancy hardcover edition coming out this fall, so I wanted to include it in the PDF, as well.  Everything in one place for convenience. 

It took me almost a year to create Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise.  It's jam-packed with gameable content.  Some stuff you're probably expecting... the rest out of left-field.

I'm hoping to get some promotional boost from DriveThru, that's why it's ridiculously priced at $5.  If you'd like to help out, blog about it, mention it on social media, or maybe write a review. 

Thanks,

VS

Get Woke Go Broke

Sometimes, that brokeness isn't money, but something intangible... like character, respect, or not being a ridiculous laughingstock.

Kiel "problematic" Chenier may be the latest self-flagellating woke-soldier hip-deep in culture war bullshit, grovelling before the other intolerant leftists, but somehow his failure is more delicious than usual.  Perhaps it's something in the chocolate?

This is Kiel's apologetic post.  It's so cringe that you just have to read it for yourself.  I'm sure the social justice circle-jerk is ready to accept their soiled dove.  "So brave and beautiful."

Kiel appeared on my radar years ago when I asked him to review The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence. He's one of the few gamers who didn't like it.

Then a bit later, he agreed to review Alpha Blue, but then decided not to follow-through because it was too hetero-normative and sexist or some stupid bullshit (yes, hetero-phobia is real).  Yeah, I know.  I'm not allowed to love boobies because I'm a straight white male (actually, za'akier).

This is one of the many reasons why I have zero time for the ENnies.  It's a reflection of the near constant revisionism based on identity politics, virtue signaling, and victim-ology. The ENnies are like the "woke awards", and in my humble opinion, those same radical leftists are trying to ruin this hobby... and the USA.

Privilege does exist.  However, the privilege we have to worry about is entitled first-world busybody saviors and would-be authoritarians with more activism than brains, throwing themselves into perpetual revolution because they're bored, because they are too free, because their lives are too easy.  Deep down, they know they'd actually be more or less satisfied with everything... if not for the gaping void of meaninglessness inside, exposed for all to see.

I desperately hope that November's election is not only a referendum on the Socialist "utopia" ideology ending with the death of freedom and millions of people, but also gamers who believe in being offended on behalf of everybody else, cancel culture, and the destruction of traditional / old-school RPGs.

VS

p.s. That's why I didn't submit Cha'alt for the ENnies.  But you can still get a luxurious hardcover book of your very own.  Ordering details here!

HPL Statue Coming Down?

"Great men's errors are to be venerated as more fruitful than little men's truths." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but now the Providence Atheneaum is considering taking down a bust of H.P. Lovecraft. 

Here's the video, by Arkham Reporter, detailing the story...

As many of you know, Lovecraft is probably my #1 influence, creatively speaking.  Primarily the Cthulhu Mythos, but I enjoy all his stories, as well as the majority of weird tales by his circle of friends and admirers. 

Yeah, Lovecraft was racist in his younger days.  Some of that might have been due to society in the early 20th century or ignorance or mental disorder... but HPL never killed anyone or threatened to kill anyone - which makes him a thousand times better than the antifa/BLM thugs and terrorists who've been destroying property and taking lives in our cities simply because they feel disenfranchised, when in reality they live in the most prosperous, safe, and free era in the entire world's history.

If this last bit seems unnecessarily harsh, well... I just learned about the white woman, Jessica Doty Whitaker, gunned down in Indianapolis for saying "All lives matter."  Here's the article.  I'm sickened.  And the disgusting leftist media is complicit in this racial and political violence.  They fan the flames of revolution, tearing America's systems down, their one-sided narrative practically begging for another civil war.

While I believe HPL was too quick to judge or prejudge those unlike himself, most likely out of fear than hatred, the madness and degradation and cruelty of today's "peaceful protesters" is so much worse.  Before taking a statue of Lovecraft down, take a long hard look at yourself, your own shortcomings and failures to live up to this country's lofty ideals.

VS

p.s. If they do remove his statue, I'd be happy to give it a good home until this age of insanity is behind us.

WoTC Disclaimer - Sign The Petition

The Petition

Those commenting below, the undersigned, agree to not purchase another Wizards of the Coast product until the legacy content disclaimer is removed entirely.

We believe its removal will remind everyone of the truth - that D&D is not, and has never been, prejudiced in regards to race, ethnicity, or gender.  Furthermore, America is not systemically racist, and does not need to apologize or make excuses for its existence. 

The values of self-reliance, self-determination, and personal responsibility are worth infinitely more than the feelings of social justice warriors, virtue signalers, woke-scolds, and those desperately clinging to their intersectional victim-hood. 

Awake!

Venger As'Nas Satanis
High Priest of Kort'thalis Publishing

Dystopia, Totalitarianism, and O5R

God damn, we're living in some fucked-up times!

Sure, there's the pandemic; lockdown house-arrest with accompanied domestic abuse, boredom, depression, and suicide; racial tensions with riots, looting, arson, shootings, vandalism; the proposed de-funding of police... take your pick.

But right now, I want to focus on social justice warriors taking aim at our beloved hobby.  From orcs and drow to disclaimers disavowing legacy products such as Oriental Adventures. Can anyone guess where they'll strike next?

Ironically, a contingent of SJWs are boycotting WotC and D&D because the company isn't woke enough, not far-left enough for the screeching radicals on twitter.

Well, finally some of the old guard are taking notice and putting their foot down.  For instance, This post from the Greyhawk Grognard.  The top illustration of Daenerys Targaryen is apt.  We're in a cultural war and the opposing side won't accept anything less than total submission.

The far-left fascists won't stop there, either.  Eventually, they'll take everything old school away.  If they had their way, the OSR would be nothing but a reminder of the horrible, oppressive, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, colonial, alt-right, no good past that must be annihilated in order to bring a new age of peace and prosperity.

Never mind the Socialist & Communist horrors of mass death, imprisonment, poverty, starvation, and loss of freedom.  After all, you can't make utopia for the very few who truly deserve it without breaking millions of eggs along the way, right?  That's by design, only we're the eggs.

Here is an interesting article from The Hill.  From a Democrat perspective, Judd Gregg will tell you these new progressives want power.  Their ends justify any means - that means darkness, evil, corruption, oppression, and terror for those unfortunate enough to be under their iron fist.  Think I'm exaggerating?  There's a lot of things the "trained Marxists" never told you... but that's a blog post for another day.

What to do about the SJWs coming for our Isle of Dread?  Well, speak up for one thing.  If the silent majority made their voices heard, we'd be out of this mess, instead of sinking deeper into the quicksand of resistance-is-futile totalitarianism.

Cancel culture is real.  This is the open-letter by celebrities.  I've suffered from its affects in both greater and lesser quantities, everything from censoring crybabies telling me they'll never buy my books to being from certain social media platforms.  Nevertheless, I'm thriving.  As Ben Shapiro recently said, the dirty little secret is they can only cancel you if you allow yourself to be cancelled.

I don't care which side the of the political aisle you're on or who you vote for in November.  That's your business.  But I love this hobby/industry/community and don't want to see it destroyed.

As much as I love being a lone wolf, it may be time to organize.  Is some kind of organization to push back against the takeover of our gaming culture warranted?  If so, I see it as 5th wave OSR.  Years ago, I and a few others started using O5R to mean a combination of OSR and 5th edition, but it never really caught on as I'd hoped.  So it goes...

After due consideration, I think it's time to remodel O5R to mean the 5th wave of the OSR - forces openly and actively opposed to disclaimers, sensitivity readers, consent checklists, tradition shaming, attacking the fandom (remember when they called us straight white male terrorists?), shoehorning racist stereotypes into fantasy humanoids, banning or outright burning their own books, and so forth.

The O5R is dead... long live the O5R!

Venger As'Nas Satanis

High Priest of Kort'thalis Publishing

p.s. Only 74 luxurious hardcover Cha'alt books remaining.  Ordering details here!

p.p.s. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a petition.

Interviews With The Za'akier

I've been fortunate enough to be interviewed TWICE this past week.

I'm linking to both here on my blog.  This is the first and here is the second.

As for Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise, the PDF release has been slightly delayed.  We're trying to get the layout just right and there's some reinventing the wheel since Glynn Seal of MonkeyBlood Design and I are no longer working together.

Obviously, the whole pandemic / lockdown didn't help the schedule.  My writing slowed a bit with having to stay at home.  5 kids isn't the same as a nice quiet office.

But it's not all setbacks, I think this second book will be easier to read (less going on in the background behind the text and slightly larger text).  Plus, new little flourishes that should delight readers.  David Guyll and his wife Melissa have made tremendous progress over the last few weeks.

Anyways, I'm hoping the PDF will be ready by next weekend.  We're trying to get it as close to perfect as we can, so that deadline is not set in stone.

VS

p.s. I have less than 100 luxury hardcover Cha'alt books left to sell.  Ordering details here!