Revelations from VENGER CON V

 

It came, it went, and it was an awesome time... a veritable blast, hoss!

Thanks to everyone who attended and chipped-in with all the aspects of organizing a convention - especially Game Mastering.  I did my best to GM as much as possible.  That translated into 8 sessions over the weekend.

I ran Cha'alt with Advanced Crimson Dragon Slayer four times, the Monty Python RPG twice, Paranoia once, and my sort of rules-light Call of Cthulhu RPG just one time.  In this blog post, I'll be rambling about my experiences, things that caught my attention, that I learned, stuff I thought about afterwards, and amusing things said at the table.

Opening with a lecture on "the riddle of Game Mastering," (and not Heccaeity, Part 2: Now, This is Thisness that was promised to Judd 10,000 years ago in the bathhouses of Ira'ad) the gathering masses chewed upon the fat of wisdom I bestowed upon them as sessions quickly formed, transmuting lead into gold... pure gold, Jerry!

Everyone seemed to have a good time.  I did ask, and unless folks were fibbing, they did, indeed, have the time that was good.  I had between 4 and 8 players each game, with the average being 6-7.

Some of the Cha'alt games were so gonzo that it was almost too much.  Those sessions tend to happen at night, which is why I've begun referring to them as "Cha'alt after dark."  They're usually far sleazier, wilder, and contain more improv than the regular Cha'alt sessions I run.  Drinking, spamming the Cha'alt X-Cards, and an unconscious (at least, I hope it's unconscious; Lol) desire to break the game.  Not in a bad way, but in a "let's just see how far we can go with this before the house of cards fall in an apocalyptic shambles of weeping Vengers kind of way."

Lucky for me, I remain unbroken.  But like taking LSD, a little goes a long way, and it can be extremely hazardous for your brain; microdosing is best, but of course every once in awhile, you need to let the tiger out of the cage and take a full hit.  Otherwise, how do you know what's too far?  Please don't try any of this in your home game.  Some play-styles are strictly for conventions or anywhere you'll likely never game again.

An all too memorable session of the "after dark" variety involved the PCs getting slightly rich from selling a plethora of zoth, and then going to the ultra-modern, skyscraper, cyberpunk city of Qada'ath to buy all kinds of high-tech weapons, armor, and other equipment.  Then, they went back to the subterranean tunnels and caves to fight literal godlike entities.  

I had 8 pre-gens for my Cha'alt games and 7 for the 1970s investigative horror scenario.  The rest were just random tables to get the basics.  I could have had more tables for the Monty Python sessions, and will go that route in the future, but the players did a good job of filling out the blanks by simply roleplaying their characters with whatever came to mind.  In other words... acting!

A single player from our in-person Cha'alt campaign was there Friday and Saturday.  In one of the VENGER CON Cha'alt sessions, he played Deacon Elijah Crane from the strawberry milk dimension.  That was fun seeing his established and lived-in character come to life in the same setting, but completely different circumstances. His interaction with the natives of Cha'alt was amusing.  I only wish there could have been more.  I believe that scenario was the one I ran at Gary Con earlier this year.  A really awesome adventure (appearing in Pulp-Drenched Cities of Cha'alt, softcover pod available on Amazon) that's fairly guard-railed in several places.  Not as much opportunity to cut loose and do whatever, but I still love it.

I also asked for player suggestions and dropped them into the Black Skull of Secrets, only using 2 of the 6 in our first game, and then I think I only asked for player suggestions one other time but forgot to draw any of them.  Oops.  So, it was a winning "mechanic," that I just didn't use as much as I should have.  And if I had to provide one regret for the games I ran at VENGER CON this year, it would probably be that.  It's just a lot of fun on many different levels - everyone's favorite, let's watch the GM squirm as he tries to shoehorn Sydney Sweeney's massive tits with the Kool-Aid man and an NPC who happens to be the Steven Seagal of Cha'alt.

A'amro the midnight-elf thief who toiled in darkness like his father and his father before him, as was the way of demons in Yeathcha'arvenyr.  Marty played that character to the hilt; he did a phenomenal job.  

After perusing the adult bookshop, he window-shopped until coming to a Chinese restaurant and bought some eggrolls... which, as it happens, was something that appeared in another game I, as GM, had never experienced (I tend to include a lot of Chinese restaurants in my sessions).  But it influenced this session to a degree none of us could have imagined.  I like the idea of imaginary realities affecting each other through the consciousness of humans who play these sorts of games.

While waiting for his eggrolls, the proprietor of the Golden Dragon Palace asked if he'd like to have his fortune read by the lady downstairs.  Not sure if that was a euphemism for something else, he took the stairs and found a half-woman, half-snake behind a screen (no Eddie Murphy, though).

He asked for her to read the stars or tea-leaves or zoth drippings - whatever she did behind that screen - and I rolled on the d4 table I had prepared.  He rolled a 1, and she told him he would not survive this adventure.  Taking it in stride, he went back up, got his eggrolls, and met up with the rest of the party.  Later, almost at the end of the session, A'amro died from being burned, zapped, or squished by a tentacle... I can't remember the exact details.  So much was happening, one thing right after another.

Which brought me to a thought... it only happens rarely, but I should have something prepared for when a PC buys the worm-farm in Cha'alt.  A death soliloquy, if you will, to mark the occasion, singing sweet demons that carry a soul to rest.  It brings to mind that HPL story "The Hound," where the narrator mutters a demonic prayer which St. John had loved in life.  Let's see what I can do, shall we?  Perhaps a Cha'altian ha'aiku (4 / 3 / 7)...

Devil-seed spills
Foetid pits
Eternity mocks their gaze

Bill Allan, active and serious throughout the sessions he played, kept everyone on track and in character.  That was much appreciated.  His interplay with the other PCs, not to mention the various NPCs, was fun to watch.  I especially liked how he brought out the best of snake oil Sean in Paranoia who was absolutely playing the most paranoid character in any game that weekend.

Speaking of Paranoia, apparently I have a type of game or play-style that I prefer because I just keep heading in that direction.  Back in the 90s, there was a bunch of player vs player, everyone trying to blast each other in hopes of being the last traitor standing.  And maybe I'll go back to that "Zap!" mode at some point, but my instinct is to take the dystopian setting serious enough so that it does feel real and immersive, with plenty of dark humor to off-set the grim totalitarian absurdism that is Alpha Complex. 

I even dropped-in a little bit of "Backrooms: the RPG" that I had an interest in trying to write just after seeing the movie, as it had a D&D / survival RPG kind of feel, but never grabbed me to the point of writing a whole bunch of stuff for it.  Basically, the PCs wandered a series of different colored hallways and rooms, occasionally containing bizarre stuff, until it started to get a little bit boring, and then we switched gears again.  

I wanted it to end a little bit meta and with a distinct Cha'alt flavor... and that's what we got.  Incidentally, that's also how both the (identical) Monty Python sessions ended.  That kind of self-referential surrealist 4th wall-breaking insanity goes hand-in-tentacle with Cha'alt, so I leaned into it.

As for the running of Monty Python, this was my first time.  I read the rulebook a year ago, when first purchasing it, and glanced at the rules again in preparation for VENGER CON.  So many rules, mon dieu!  It's its own system, and so just one more thing to learn, fret over trying to get right, teach the players, hope they remember as the session continues, with so many bits that stop the game in order to note a mechanical thing-a-m'bob.

BTW, best "prop" I had ready at the table for Monty Python was a bit of music from The Holy Grail here.

As I tell anyone who asks, the game isn't here (pointing to a rulebook and dice and whole bunch of procedures)... it's here (running my finger back and forth between me, the GM, and whoever is in front of me playing).  Rules-light is the only way for me, as being in that moment of decision where the player is considering things from his character's point of view (and in terms of the genre, setting, etc.) eventually unfolding like a story being told in real time, is what it's all about.

That leads me to another anecdote from one of the Cha'alt games.  A rather quiet and careful PC who originally decided to wager a couple gold pieces in a potentially lethal game of chance soon decided to lay it all on the table, so to speak, once it became increasingly obvious that this was their moment to go all-in, actually and metaphorically, risking everything, or go back to being a safe and very reasonable, level-headed wallflower.  

It was a bigger risk for the player to not put themself out there than it was to play it safe.  Playing it safe is great in the real world.  That's kind of the golden rule of civilized people - play it safe whenever possible.  But for a game that's trying to create pulp-fantasy sword & sorcery stories, playing it safe means death.

BTW, gamers are bandying the term "Heavy Metal" around lately to describe that kind of big tits, eye gouging, strange fantasy aesthetic from the 1981 film (as well as the magazine, I suppose).  Its resurgence is partly because of Mr. Dungeon Tuber or whatever his channel is has that Deathbringer game currently crowdfunding.  Personally, I think that's great because I love Heavy Metal and it's heavily inspired my writing - especially Cha'alt.

But should we call it something else besides "Heavy Metal style," like maybe the boobs & sorcery genre?  Just a thought...

This player realized the coin of the realm was attention - being seen, "on camera," and in the spotlight where all eyes are on you and your decisions matter, not just to that player's character, but perhaps the party, Kingdom, or even the entire world.  And that meant doing things you wouldn't normally do if you were really there.  It's one of those eye-opening "A-ha!" moments where you realize that sometimes the player must be immersed in the metagame to get the most optimal outcome, rather than the character being immersed in the world.  And everything I just said goes double - nay, triple!!! - for one-shots and convention games!

At this point, I'm just going to bullet-point weird random words and phrases that I feverishly wrote down in my notebook before they vanished forever on the cutting room floor.  Perhaps, one or two will jog a player's memory and they'll chuckle over that time we really shook the pillars of heaven.  VENGER CON, baby... VENGER CON.  

• Hookah whores
• 18 vermilion talons
• Science-fantasy strap-on laser dildo battle to see who gets to violate the head concubine (who looks like like that voluptuous redhead in the not-official Odyssey behind-the-scenes).
• Red sphere pimp
• Morale majority
• That time the chaos magic fuchsia after-effect gave the sorcerer the power to manipulate reality four times in a row, he chose... making all girls topless, making all the ooga-booga natives understandable, making magic stuff glow so it's easily seen, and giving every member of the party a turkey leg.
• Apparently, there's a system of tunnels and caves far to the south and deep underground named Zemucha.  Who knew?
• A monstrous godlike entity named A'abshaq-Vethyk made his first appearance. Also, I was surprised (maybe I shouldn't have been) that Will remembered the entity's name from yesterday when they first encountered him.  I was just trying to quickly think of a name, and looked back in my notes from the day before, glad to recycle something cool sounding I improvised.  
• A PC bought a lizard-dog to occasionally bleed when it was a spell emergency.
• "I have an alien artifact... in my pants!"
• A sorcerer used so much zoth to fuel his spells that he developed zoth saturation (where his eyes glowed chartreuse), the stage coming right before zoth poisoning.  
• Porn-hub grown sentient
• That time the Q'rull got stuck in a gigantic creature's butt, his anal sinuses cleansed. 
• Infernal sex panther tattoo across his body
• In a parallel universe, there's a book similar to The Necronomicon called something or other that translates to The Book of Dead Demon-Worm Shadow Names.
• When you finally arrive at Taco Bell and order some tacos, bell, and nachos, but then the guy who took you out to lunch brings lobster, french fries, and a roll of quarters (or nickels) back to the table. 
• "Do you know what maps are...?"  "No, do you?"
• Mordor sounds close enough to Morgansteins department store for all your home needs.
• Dude thought he could just grab a floating orange and start eating it - Ha!
• The old teleportation glyph drawn on the underside of a cantina toilet lid and another drawn upon the outside of a pylon so the pilots find themselves in the bowl, and now you can loot the matrix table's dimensional crystals scheme... yes, of course.  Oh yeah, I also determined that pylon crystals are super-charged dimensionally attuned energy crystals.
• This sword is known as the bastard-maker.
• "Tell me of your English volcanoes, Usul."
• Star-69 navigation system
• The French winning their saving throws on dark-elf poison gave them the best cheese soup and women's prison orgy of their fucking lives!
• "Bitch better have my full XP."
• When you add dry ice to the cheese soup, you get a cheese fog.
• As long as there's more tentacles than spam, you know that Cha'alt is winning (and thereby the Monty Python RPG losing).
• Potato famine skins
• Spelljammer is already the French version of D&D in space.
• Keeping Sybil Danning on a leash with her magic vagina, an artifact unto itself.
• The nacho sombrero 
• The color orange has not been invented yet in medieval Europe.  Instead, it's called reddish-yellow.
• Each iron spike must have its own character sheet... and you must track your item's experience points.
• When a PCs gambling problem is so bad that the anxiety-triggered GM pleads for another PC to hold his money for him.
• Some fantastic names (that I had no part in creating) appearing in just one Monty Python session... Saxon Mangold, Archduke Sir Rodney Sea Montbollery, Vanilla Token, Pees Blossom Pete, Durny Knickerbottom, and Flintstaff.
• Canadian pesos & Turkish lyra (wait... lyra or lira is already Turkish?)
• The opposite of scantily clad nymphs in your sex dreams is lumberjacks, obviously. 
• As'Nas Satanis the vengeful... tempting the heroes of Camelot to ruin the adventure by making it more like Cha'alt, thus proving that it is superior to the Monty Python RPG.  So diabolical - m'wuahaaha'aha!
• And as a joke (since this was the last con), VENGER CON VI: Resurrection... The Quest For More Venger!!!!!!

Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment with anything you wish to say... questions, comments, critiques, etc. 

VS

p.s. Want some hardcover Cha'alt?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  Almost forget, we're still doing the half-year online convention that shall henceforth be known as VENGER CON V.5 : The Beast Awakens from Friday, January 8th - Monday, January 11th... officially sponsored by the Red Room.  

The State of Cha'alt

 

VENGER CON is going great.  First day down, two to go.  The hyper-gonzo game at the end of today was just as out-there and fucked up as last year's.  I ran from 4pm to almost 10pm, and the first death didn't come until an hour before we finished (though, it was prophesied to happen in the middle of the adventure).  But once that dam broke, one or two additional PCs died.  Shit was flying so fast, it was insane just trying to keep up with everything.  

The Ghostbusters pulled up to the PCs investigating The Necronomicon inside a gargantuan violet-worm which was full of porn that got caught in a dimensional instability field resulting in witch-sex and demon-tentacle fucking inside the worm's cave-like violet cavity.  Spamming those Cha'alt X-Cards worked their improv magic.

It reminds me of when I was GMing as a teenager.  The PCs would start out as normal mutant-opossum martial artists with machine guns and end with Satan getting blown-up by the Ko-dan armada.  But Cha'alt is that on steroids... it goes to eleven, hoss. 

Anyway, the reason for this blog post is my sharing the Cha'alt opening.  This is the background vibe of what's going on.  Even though some of this didn't affect the actual adventure, it's still a good idea to lay the foundation.  

The State of Things

These are dark times.  It’s been 6 long, difficult years since the O’Bannon Accords which resulted in a cease-fire between the Federation and native governments of Cha’alt.  Factions at home along with a thousand alien cultures have splintered into a pot where nothing melts and no one assimilates… everything is competition; hostilities range from micro-aggressions to genocide to jiha’ad, depending on region, local authority, and socio-economic status.  You could go to sleep in a stable and prosperous settlement of the deep desert and wake up in a warzone. 

In the end, nothing has changed… the Federation wants your resources and will destabilize as much as they can to end export restrictions, non-Federation aliens want many different things – some want to invest, others want to exploit, there’s surging tourism along with smuggling, graverobbing, and running from the law.

As adventurers, you’ve been force-fed multi-culturalism even before the cease-fire.  With a swig of artificial water, an A.I. navigational system ported into your reptilian riding-spider, and the names of 37 different gods (some openly antagonistic to the Old and New Gods of Cha’alt) chanted during daily public prayer, you thread through streets and boroughs of demons, Kha’alestinians, droids, replicants, so many shades of elves you need a color-wheel just to identify them all, humans, humanoids, alien off-worlders, and various other creatures on your way to the next job.

No matter how bad it is out there, the Gods must be paid in blood.  Priests demand ritual sacrifices – the blood of one-hundred-and-eleven humanoids is spilled every month.  The saba’ath continues no matter how much civil unrest.  The poor, infirm, old, diseased, criminals, and non-believers are much more likely to be put to the sword than able-bodied mercenaries.

While this sounds like a sorry state of affairs – because it is – remember, this is all pretend.  So, feel free to go Grand Theft Auto in this dark paradise; balls-out, no remorse, fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.  Remember what Robert E. Howard said about Conan as a protagonist vehicle for throwing off the shackles of civilization.  Back and forth extremes of colonization and decolonization have resulted in disastrous policies such as defund police, abolish immigration enforcement, universal healthcare (fun-fact… once you fill-out the paperwork and pay the 50-talon fee, the online correspondence course to become a fully licensed medical doctor takes a fortnight to complete), there is no border security, and prisons vacated all their convicts. 

Laws still exist, but they only protect those who can afford it.  Adventurers (especially of the 3^rd level variety) are several cuts above the average citizen, as the vast majority are too weak from hunger and thirst to fight back.  Get rich or die trying… or, you know, don’t worry about riches – go after fame, power, retribution, pussy, or whatever your personal goals happen to be. 

Surprise, motherfucker… and welcome to Cha’alt!

VS

"The Ruin of A'agrybah" - CHA'ALT Campaign 4.12

 

While we didn't have all 5 players for the mid-season finale at this point in our 4-year Cha'alt campaign, we had almost that many.  If you are a math major, then your assumption is probably correct... we had 4 players (but not who you might have assumed).

Missing the human sorcerer Strum due to a family vacation, we had human priest Bishop Crane, The Neza'akul human thief, Ug the lizardtaur warrior, and Tinker the pixie-fairy thief / sorcerer.

After some leveling - oh, that reminds me - we got to try out the recent game mechanic I blogged about not too long ago.  Neza'akul had missed the last 3 sessions, I believe, so he was ripe for telling us what he'd been up to during that intervening time...

Scavenging through the big ship blockade; monologuing on the rocks, threating all who would oppose him into the fuchsia heavens, and hiring cantina prostitutes to act as his "henchmen," moving heavy rocks around and shitting into paper bags that would eventually be set on fire and thrown at enemies.  As was expected, one of his suggestions / contributions, that last one, got some creative juices flowing and we riffed on that idea, expanding it.  

So, that was definitely a success.  I proposed that Strum opened a portal for some unknown reason (perhaps, he can come up with the why, when he returns), walked into it... a few seconds later, Neza'akul walked back out, rejoining the party after he bullied a wizard into creating a portal from wherever he had been.

Neza'akul also picked up a new feat as he went from level two-and-a-half to four.  Browsing Cha'alt Ascended, he eventually chose being able to retrieve any non-magical thing from his bag, once per day.  I also reminded the table that Divine Favor can also be spent to get an additional go at a limited ability - just like that once a day pulling something useful from your pack.

Exploring, talking, and preparing to fully investigate this new system of caves and tunnels beneath and only a quarter-mile away from the Crimson Rock of Sacrifice, they eventually headed out.  Ug realized this would be the perfect place for a bed & breakfast, and so marked an X on the stone wall with his magical sword Orin.  Neza'akul took the lead, scouting around after picking up some pocket-sand for later use.

The human thief found a young woman using a silvery wand or baton with buttons on the side who was sucking all the energy from glowing crystals in the wall.  It appeared as though she was possessed.  After Ug directly confronted her as an official crystal inspector, she replied with a deep, male, and alien voice that he was the watcher of the pylon (yes, this idea was ripped right out of the 70s show Land of the Lost), and was gathering enough power to break free of his pylon prison.

The watcher also wanted to "see" Ug's magic sword after she had zapped the magical sheen from the lizardtaur's gourd.  Orin told his wielder absolutely not - "Don't unsheathe me until that crazy bitch is gone." 

Tinker cast sleep on her and then they tried putting her into the purple labyrinth (which broke the psychic connection), and when Neza'akul picked up the wand to fiddle with it, eventually putting all the crystal energy back where it originally came from, he was also possessed by the watcher.  So, they tried putting him and soon the wand in the purple labyrinth, as well.  That place cut off the connection, so they stashed the high-tech wand behind some purple drywall they smashed a hole through, and made their way to the nearby pylon.

On the way, I decided that this rather large cave was the perfect place to pick-out 3 suggestions from the Black Skull of Secrets!!!  While it's not the easiest thing in the world to shoehorn disparate ideas into an existing scenario, that's what improv is all about.  

So, the PCs saw a whole bunch of freezing mist on the ground, not realizing it was covering a gigantic in-ground bowl of cereal with strawberry milk [gag reflex], and various half-frozen fruities bobbing up and down along with soggy pillows of shredded wheat.  As the PCs were swimming, just trying to stay afloat, an equally giant hand came down, picked up Tinker and Neza'akul, and brought them into a mass of undulating tentacles that may or may not have been surrounding a gaping maw, ready to swallow them.  Tinker told whoever was about to eat them that he was friends with Iggy Azailia (meaning Igg-Yig Yatha'ak) and helped him out of a jam awhile back.  

This Great Old One paused his breakfast to psionically check-in with Igg-Yig Yatha'ak to make sure this pixie-fairy was telling the truth.  Sure enough, he was, and this Ancient One let them go, so they could swim to shore or fly out of the cereal bowl to safety.  Also, the PCs were cloned during this whole thing, and there's now a strawberry-milk set of PCs running around... perhaps in the strawberry-milk dimension?

Further down the tunnel, they saw the gold pylon.  Throwing ideas around like just leaving it, tipping the pylon into the strawberry milk (I must confess, I really liked the sound of that), or laying it face-down so no one could access the door, they eventually went with having the girl open the pylon door, throwing a thermal detonator, retrieved from Neza'athul's pack, and quickly closing it back up.  Dimensional ripples expanded the pylon's exterior for a second as black smoke soon poured out of the door cracks.  Opening it back up, they found the matrix table destroyed and glowing crystals scattered on the black floor.

Bishop Crane had been trying to feel if the watcher of the pylon was an infernal force.  It was not, but he did sense a large demonic presence elsewhere in this system of caves.  Shortly, the PCs' scout discovered a massive cavern containing a 100-demon army.  A shadow-demon general named K'xoksan was giving useful exposition, such as they were going to sacrifice the King of A'agrybah who was right there, hog-tied on top of a stone altar, and then this army of demons would reunite with Channa (who had recently married the King and was now eligible to perform her own Ascension ritual at the Crimson Rock of Sacrifice).

The party hatched a plan.  Crane was invisible to demons and had that scepter that could teleport a humanoid 30-feet.  Tinker addressed the demons after turning the shadow-demon general into a turkey, and then lassoing it, while dragging it back through the tunnel the PCs had just traversed.  The demons followed, many of them falling into the cereal bowl.  Meanwhile, the other PCs snuck out along with Crane and the King, as the priest also used the scepter to create a glyph of demon-warding to keep them at bay.

Unfortunately, this blocked the PCs from the secondary exit the demons were going to use to go back up to the surface.  But there were a few caves left to explore at the back-end of the system, so they continued to explore.  Suddenly, they heard the screech of a bald eagle as it swooped down, grabbed the turkey (dropping the infernal opal that K'xoksan had), and soared away... because America!  

Minutes later, they heard a feeble voice asking for help, and went to see what was the matter.  They found Karl, complete with tie-dyed shirt and wonky eye, laying on the cave floor, dying.  

"Dudes, you probably don't recognize me, but I'm your friend from another dimension... a parallel universe, man, it's like [weird gestures]... hard to explain and shit, you know?  Anyway, my name's Karl.  I'm too far gone, but need to tell y'all something.  In my timeline, we fought these bastards... all of them.  I witnessed the final battle in my home dimension."  

Dramatic pause as he waits for the PCs to ask what happened.  Tinker did just that, "Did we survive?"  Karl solemnly shakes his head in the negative.

"But this time, I've prepared for... you to have this."  He pulls what looks like a metal whistle from the front of his pants, as if he'd been keeping it in his underwear for a really long time.  "We're in the end-game, now..." as his voice trails off, Karl gets that far-away look in his wonky eye, letting the PCs know that he's dead.

I asked Grok to make Doctor Strange from the Infinity War movie saying that we're in the end-game, now, but replace Strange with Karl from Workaholics and Grok created a weird hybrid of the two characters... which I'm keeping and is now canon because sometimes A.I. knows best.  Lol

Not wanting to actually put their own lips onto the metal whistle, they devised a plan - put the whistle to Karl's lips, and then basically stomp on his stomach, forcing any last bit of air through his mouth.  Sure enough, that worked.  The whistle sounded.  

Meanwhile, they found another exit and met the fresh air of fuchsia sky and suns-blazing desert.  Just then, a psychedelic painted school bus pulled up with Lyssa and company (who had been waiting at the original entrance), the banana-men and other NPC servants and hirelings, along with the 17 demons that they captured, as directed by Crane a session or two ago.  The psychedelic bus was driven by a different Karl from yet another dimension, telling them to climb aboard - "We're going to the Crimson Rock of Sacrifice, ja'abronis!"

They reached the appointed place, but also saw that several armies were already waiting - the Kha'alestinians, the Federation, Channa and her personal demon and A'agrybah royal guards.  The PCs conceived of yet another plan (that seemed to be the theme of this session, no actual combat but lots of plan-hatching for dealing with overwhelming numbers of foes).  

Crane, being invisible to demons, went over to the Federation side, stood next to a hover-tank, and used his eldritch beam to blast the demon side, which made it seem like the Federation was firing on them.  So, they started attacking each other.  The demon side also opened an enormous portal that released a demonic creature the size of King Kong that the Kha'alestinians began to attack, and then everyone was slaughtering each other, leaving the adventurers a chance to help Lyssa perform her own Ascension ritual.  

This was also the time that the metal titan guarding the backside of the purple priest temple beneath Kra'adumek arrived.  It had been summoned by the metal whistle, and the PCs directed it to destroy whoever was left over, mopping-up the survivors.

Lyssa spoke the words and made the gestures as a portal of her own manifested and a Lovecraftian abomination exited and hovered above her.  The bastard-princess Lyssa told the PCs that she must consort with this entity to fulfill the prophecy.  

As that was going on, two silvery and shimmering humanoid beings appeared, one male and the other female, both idealized versions.  Time froze for everyone but the PCs as the shimmery man spoke...

"You have a choice - slit the bastard princess' throat and be assured that no apocalypse or cataclysm or planetary destruction will result... the Old Ones who are awake now will go back to sleep and the ones currently sleeping will continue to slumber long and peacefully.  However, this will assuredly result in the Federation taking over Cha'alt, turning it into just another colonized world raped of its precious resources."  

The shimmering silver female continued, "The other option is to allow Princess Lyssa to live.  The Great Old Ones will be rejuvenated.  This ritual would be like a shot in the tentacle for the Old Gods, and they will awaken faster and in greater number... potentially bringing about the ruination but also, with hope, prosperity to Cha'alt.  With the Great Old Ones at full strength, the Federation will be repelled for at least a generation, and Cha'alt will have to face its own trials at its own pace.  Decide what you will do, and choose wisely, adventurers."

The PCs unanimously chose to let Lyssa live and Make Cha'alt Great Again with the Old Ones' help.  So, the Lovecraftian entity finished having sex with Lyssa, impregnating her.  It left the way it came, through the portal... this time smoking a cigarette.  

Channa was on top of the Crimson Rock, about to perform her own ritual, but the Metal Titan blasted her, then turned its attention to the demonic Kong who was kicking everyone's ass.  Tinker's player rolled a d6 for the Metal Titan, and I rolled for Demon-Kong.  He rolled better, and the Metal Titan sent a cow-puncher arm of steel right through the gigantic demon's skull, killing him.  

After that, the King of A'agrybah and his daughter were reunited, everyone went back to A'agrybah for festivities and rewards, and to guard the Kingdom from infernal forces as Lyssa's belly swole with the expected child.  Parades, dancing in the street, and Jar-Jar Binks shouting "Meesa gonna put his dick in the mashed potatoes," or some such.

Bishop Crane talked about plans for his church, how he intended to incorporate the Great Old Ones into the Lords of Light as these Ancient, godlike entities kept proving themselves intelligent and beyond good and evil at the very least, rather than being entirely malevolent like infernal deities, nor cruel and callous towards their worshipers, such as the New Gods.

Hours later, I was thinking about the consummation between Lyssa and that Lovecraftian entity, deciding to send the players the following text message (which I posted on X, as well)...

"You couldn't help sneaking a peek.  Its weird, alien penis, greenish-tangerine with purple highlights and lavender veins, extending like a tentacle holding a fat, juicy plum... into her nether regions!"

T'was a strange and satisfying session, concluding what had been happening on Cha'alt.  I'm sure the PCs felt, at times, swept-up by the chaotic shenanigans of all these forces playing out.  As previously stated, this was the mid-season finale.  On the other side, after VENGER CON V: The Will To Power happening this coming weekend, we'll continue the campaign and see what happens with everyone.

Thanks for reading, everyone!  Feel free to comment your thoughts, feelings, criticisms, and celebrations below...

VS

p.s.  Yes, weekend badges are now available for July 2026's VENGER CON V: The Will To Power.  Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  

The Venger Satanis Method of TTRPGs and Game Mastering

"Consciousness is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known." ~ Roger Penrose

Here it is, my narrative manifesto.  It's a revolution, y'all. 

While the narrative part is just that, part of the greater whole, it's usually the sticking point for many old-school, OSR, and traditional gamers... supposedly the VENGER CON crowd.  

Some bad GMs decided to write an awful fantasy novel and now the players are trapped in that Hell, their PCs moved around like pawns and told exactly what to do and how to do it.  No thanks!

And there are some who bristle at the idea of roleplaying games being both a game and story, where the game is about collaboratively creating the story that's lived, rather than simply watched as a spectator.  Those damn theater kids - get off my battle-maps!

After many, many rounds of argumentation on social media (lots of great tweets where I use Star Wars and The Matrix, among other things, to defend my positions), I've decided to clarify and codify my approach to the TTRPG hobby, in terms of running the game.  

While there are instruction manuals for Game Masters, the rule-books give you generalized advice and a few "best practices," but it's all fairly subjective.  This, too, is subjective.  I'm telling you what works for me based on what I want out of the game.  If you want to do something different, even the opposite, cool - go for it.  I wish you luck, hoss!

And what do I want out of the game?  That's the million-dollar question, because if you don't know what you want, how are you going to get it?  For most of us, you know it when you see it... and when you do see it, you grab hold, gaze, ponder, dissect, try to recreate, fail, try again, and somehow fashion exactly what you want.  Then, you have to be careful it doesn't get corrupted or thrown in the trash on the way to exalt the shiny new thing full of promise, hope, and novelty...

"You've had the entire universe explained to you and you're bored with it.  So now you want cheap thrills and plenty of them, and it don't matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it's new, as long as it's new, as long as it flashes and fuckin' bleeps in forty fuckin' different colors." (Naked, 1993)

I want to simulate, emulate, and immerse myself in a - allow me to bold and all-cap this description so there's no subtly, no obfuscation, no hiding the ball whatsoever - PULP-FANTASY SWORD & SORCERY ADVENTURE.

The kind found in literature, TV, and movies.  Allow me to help you visualize - it's going to include plenty of action (Arnold as Conan decapitating people), skulking around temples and tombs (Indiana Jones seeking golden idols), and amusing banter (epitomized by the "jam scene" in live-action Aladdin).  Bottom line, that's what I'm looking for.  

Without further ado, let's proceed...

What am I calling this?  I can't think of a name or term that wouldn't require an in-depth explanation.  I was thinking about holistic gaming, then leaned towards esoteric; prior to this week I'd been using storygame-adjacent.  Also, people have liked narrative approach or narrative shift.  Maybe it's just the Venger Satanis method?  I don't know.  Yes, we're off to a rocky start.  Not great.  Hopefully, this is just a hiccup on the way to gold, glory, and great big... tracts of land!

Here are the following tenets of my Game Mastering philosophy according to the Venger Satanis method (sure, why not?)...

The Venger Satanis Method

"A Game Master can feel the force flow through him."

"You mean it controls your actions?"

"Partially, but it also obeys your commands." ~ Obi-wan and Luke Skywalker discussion on Game Mastering

1) Living World and Living Story - The Living World involves everything physical and mater-of-fact.  The Living Story focuses on the meaning and purpose behind what's there - emotion; how it feels.  Living Story deals with the anima mundi or soul of the world, the animating spirit that breathes life into the campaign setting.  It's like the force, "a mystical, invisible energy field created by all living things which binds the universe together." 

The TL;DR version is this - the Living World is the body; the Living Story is the soul.  Body and soul.  One without the other is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without either the peanut butter or jelly.

2) Narrative Structure - This is not a script, nor a railroad.  Nothing is set in stone; everything is malleable.  Surprises will inevitably happen.  However, the GM should have plot-points helping to guide the player-determined path towards something gameable that makes sense in terms of the story.  The story is happening as it's being created, moment to moment, encounter to encounter.  GMs should also be concerned with all manner of narrative tools such as pacing, Chekov's gun, the rule of 3 (including clues), call-backs, dramatic irony, comedy relief, characters talking about their emotions, spotlighting the PCs, montage, negative space (breathing room), climax, and so many things!

I wasn't sure where to include Unifying Theme because it could stand on its own, or be included in either the Living Story or Aesthetic-Keys, but since stories have themes, I'll put it here.  Vibes, basically.  What's the game about, the central idea?  If you can't say anything about the tone, atmosphere or mood, the motif, then you probably don't have a unifying theme, yet. 

3) Aesthetic-Keys - What's the genre?  What are the conventions, expectations, and tropes appropriate to that genre... the milieu-nodes?  Furthermore, pay attention to what makes this campaign setting, the one you're using, special, unlike the others.  Why Cha'alt and not World of the Last Sun or Forgotten Realms?  I like to call them aesthetic-keys.  If the GM isn't constantly pinging the world's milieu-nodes (if you don't have a specific campaign setting, these are even more important) and aesthetic-keys throughout campaign, then why bother having a campaign setting at all?

The 8 aesthetic-keys for Cha'alt are eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, post-apocalypse, humor, sleaze, pop-culture, and grindhouse exploitation.  Each one is like a slice of eclectic pie that makes up the whole.  If I'm neglecting a player's favorite aesthetic-key, they can nudge the GM by stimulating a Cha'alt X-Card.

4) Demonize Masculinity - I hesitated to include this one, but we're no longer in the 20th century. We were spoiled in the 70s and 80s with pop-culture entertainment.  If we keep fighting back, those days shall return!   

Men have been robbed.  In the times we're living in, you can see it plain as day.  All the stuff that was made by men for men has been feminized, softened, weakened... sharp edges sanded down, adapted for modern audiences.  Everything that's inappropriate, problematic, and way too gory, pornographic, offensive, horrific, sexist, funny, etc. has been removed until all that's left is pink, plastic mush with child-safety locks, ensuring nothing awesome ever happens at the table.  

Well, fuck all that!  Cha'alt is a middle-finger to the woke scolds who'd love to parent-teacher conference our hobby after letting a DEI committee of sensitivity readers decide how much raw masculinity we're allowed to have?  Spoiler alert - none!  Reject modernity; embrace tradition.  

Not only should we create for the male gaze, but adventures should focus on the masculine experience because this is a hobby for men (of course, women who like what we like are more than welcome to join us, assuming they aren't doing so in order to change TTRPGs from within).  If your session has more shopping than exploring, start cramming sizzling gypsies, tentacle-wrestling competitions, fighting cosmic battles for supremacy, and journeying to strange lands to conquer them!  

Celebrate your masculinity, don't shrink from it.  "There is a beast in man that should be exercised, not exorcized." ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

____________________

Well, there you have it.  4 tenets of the Venger Satanis method.  While I'm not the first to incorporate these principles into their Game Mastering, perhaps the way I put all of it together is unique.

Regardless, now they're here.  I can point to them... or, more likely, post a link to this blog post, and let people know my play-style before they try ripping it to shreds.  While I've been GMing since 1982 with the Erol Otus / Tom Moldvay "magenta box" set of Basic D&D, the full extent of my TTRPG philosophy or school of thought hadn't coalesced until 2018.

Thanks for reading, critiquing, supporting, sharing, commenting, and all that good stuff!

VS

p.s.  Yes, weekend badges are now available for July 2026's VENGER CON V: The Will To Power.  Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!