Meta Monday: Psychedelic wizards, living on Earth-Prime, and the D&D Cartoon

Fr. Josh has continued to indulge me in working his way solo through my first Monstrous Matters campaign.  At some point I'll probably get it in my head that other people want to read details about my game sessions and write up some specifics, but until then, I'll just say that it's gotten a little weird.  Which I think is something most of us would like to be able to say about our fantasy RPGs, so I'll definitely take it.  Eh...what the heck...as a small example, the MM team (Josh's character "Fingers" Watson plus less experienced agent and son-of-a-Ghostbuster Bobby Flech) found some scrolls while exploring part of a dungeon.  I decided to just let these scrolls be randomly assigned from among the full range of traditional fantasy spells, and...well, one of them turned out to be a Wish scroll.  And then it got used when Fingers was on the brink of death, but not just to get healthy, but also to fulfill Fingers' childhood dream (seemingly nourished by a healthy helping of Dungeon Crawl Classics) to become a psychedelic wizard.

So, not only did they succeed at the first mission (encountering goblins in the mountains of western North Carolina and seeking out the story behind their actions), but Fingers is now known as Tape Deck the Something, and is finding his consciousness progressively merging with that of the millennia-old spellbook for which he is the latest in a long line of psychic hosts.

It's pretty fun.

Along with thinking about the role of the Monstrous Matters team lately, I've also been reflecting on how many of my favorite comic book moments have come from those most "meta" of ideas, the ones that fully embrace the inherent silliness of superhero worlds but also acknowledge the powerful space they occupy in the human psyche.  I'm thinking about stuff like when Julius Schwartz helped Barry Allen build a cosmic treadmill to get back to his own universe, or when the Fantastic Four met God, and he looked like Jack Kirby.  And, of course, there's the story in what might be the greatest single issue in comics history (IMHO), Grant Morrison's "The Coyote Gospel," in Animal Man #5.  (The art -- by Truog, Hazlewood, and Wood -- and that Brian Bolland cover are also pretty badass, but hopefully it isn't TOO unfair that I usually think of it as G-Mo's masterpiece...)

From the issue's page at the DC Database

All in all, I'm wondering if I should take the premise of the Monstrous Matters team a bit more in this...for lack of a better term, I'll use this one a second time, complete with quotation marks once again..."meta" direction.  There are a lot of implications tied up in this.  I think there's quite a bit that changes if the monsters that are finding their way to our world aren't just similar to the ones in our stories and imaginations, but are actually shaped by our stories and imaginations.  It's one of my favorite aspects of superhero comics...and I'm wondering how it could play out at the gaming table.

And so, each Meta Monday, I hope to explore this theme a little bit, or at the very least take a look at some examples of this metatextual approach to RPG-style fantasy.  It's entirely possible I'll never follow up with a second Meta Monday, but right now, I'm feeling it.  And there's probably nowhere better to start looking than at what is in some ways the root of it all: Dungeons & Dragons itself, and its well-known '80s cartoon.  Remember, those kids didn't just haphazardly stumble upon some interdimensional portal; they took a D&D carnival ride there.  And they met a mysterious mentor/observer who happened to speak English...and they ended up with abilities they were undoubtedly familiar with from the tabletop game.  Whoa.  Meta!

Elphaba and Glinda freaking killed it

It's been a while since the Oscars have been very exciting to me.  I had a period in my youth when I was really into movies and tried to see all the Best Picture nominees that I could, and the show was an event that I even looked forward to (that and the VMAs, for some reason...!).  So, I didn't watch last night, but when I realized that Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande had performed, I checked it out ASAP.  And holy shit.  (Late edit: I'll try to keep this video updated as the ones I choose get taken down...)

 

I am a fan of Oz in general. It's quintessential American fantasy that I grew up with. I looked just now and was a little surprised that the only time I've even mentioned it on here is when I referenced it fairly vaguely in a discussion of the history of interplanar portals. But I dig it in a lot of the forms in which I've consumed it, and last year's first installment of Wicked is honestly one of the most immediately captivating movies I've ever seen. (It did win awards for costumes and production design last night, both for very good reason.)

Anyway, the fact that Elphaba and Glinda also perform songs from The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz makes this an even more interesting performance.  And they...freaking...killed it.  What's that?  Oh...no, I just have something in my eye...  (As did Michelle Yeoh at the end of that clip, which is really sweet.)

Honestly...and this might be hyperbole that I rethink once it's sat with me for a while...if you had to pick out a few things to show an alien species as representations of humanity's achievements, you could do a lot worse than showing them this clip.  I mean...the Einstein field equations probably have to be in there, and maybe a selection of different expressions of the Golden Rule or something.  But if you want to show that we're a beautiful species who made beautiful art?  This'll do.

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I don't think I've ever gamed in Oz at all, although I've thought a lot about it.  I backed Double Critical's Adventures in Oz Kickstarter and have enjoyed looking through the campaign PDF.  Unfortunately, unless something has changed or changes, it doesn't look like some (maybe any?) of us are going to be getting the physical rewards we signed on for, which is a shame but one of the hazards of taking part in crowdfunding.  So, I can't necessarily suggest picking up the book because there are creators who follow through who probably deserve your cash more...BUT it's a cool sourcebook, and I could easily see myself using it eventually.  Maybe the Monstrous Matters team will encounter some flying monkeys at some point...

2025 Pseudoscientific Blog Post #1 - Some history of interplanar rift detection

Oh man, it's 2025!  I guess I'd better get to blogging.  I hope the new year has been kind to all of you!

I have some reasonably concrete goals for the year regarding stuff I want to publish.  (And by publish, of course I mean put on the web so others can feed my vanity by downloading them.)  I want to finally nail down my my own fantasy heartbreaker (the Monstrous Heartbreaker).  I have a slash-and-dash fantasy racing game I'd like to solidify some rules for (playtest image below).  There's even a D&D-rules-adjacent baseball game that I might be able to present to the world.

Fr. Josh apologetically making a move.

And, of course, I want to continue the Monstrous Matters campaign, finalize a number of the rules, and bulk up the lore.  So that's what the rest of this post is...

I've previously written a little about the detection of interplanar portals and the etherealite and fissure glow often associated with them.  So...what are the some of the historical events that led to our current understanding?  Here's a (very) quick primer...

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It all comes back to quantum physics…which is obviously a statement that’s much easier to write than it is to understand.  The elucidation of quantum mechanics not only revolutionized the field of physics; it also gave rise to ideas outside of mainstream science that now allow the Monstrous Matters team to do their work.

In the 20th century, our understanding of interconnected planes, and the technologies associated with these connections, grew exponentially alongside research related to quantum theory.  Originating with Einstein and Schrödinger’s description of spukhafte Fernwirkung (“spooky action at a distance”) in 1927, attempts to resolve the seemingly counterintuitive implications of quantum entanglement (summarized in the famed EPR Paradox, proposed in 1935) motivated many great thinkers throughout the rest of the century.

While attention was drawn away from quantum theory to focus on the practical needs of World War II, many scientists continued to explore these ideas on the fringe of the physics establishment.  And just beyond that fringe, other physicists took on questions that they knew were unacceptable to the mainstream.  Among these groups, a series of very clever efforts to maintain entanglement with annihilated particles allowed a small set of researchers to recognize physical planes existing alongside our own.  For obvious reasons, these experiments have not been publicized.

While the history of recorded interplanar portals is quite extensive (and necessarily requires quite a few footnotes and qualifiers due to the disputed nature of many events), some of the most widely agreed upon breaches in the barrier between our world and others are noted here:

1904 - A series of atmospheric anomalies in and around Bloomsbury, in London’s West End, began to attract the attention of paranormal investigators. Many observers noted similarities to disturbances recorded around Oxford, England, in the 1860s. It wouldn’t be until 1991, however, that these were finally connected to etherealite and fissure glow (see below).

1930s - At the same time that quantum entanglement was gaining acceptance as a real phenomenon (although it wouldn’t be until the 1970s that the data supporting it would become unassailable through experiments on Bell’s inequality), paranormal researchers recorded a variety of environmental data in a rural area of Kansas, United States, where anomalies similar to those in the UK accompanied an extreme weather event.

1940s - Similar phenomena were observed in the English countryside, not far from London. Attempts to connect these events to previous observations in the UK, and the more recent occurrence in Kansas, were hampered by a hasty but unfounded determination that they were indications of Nazi efforts in physics or the occult (depending upon who you asked).

1985 - Radiation later determined to likely be fissure glow was detected in Brooklyn, NYC. Officials were limited in their ability to investigate due to the distraction of a rash of plumbing emergencies that occurred around the radiation's appearance.

At about the same time, mysterious events in Battersea, London, involving strangely dressed travelers in search of “The Mace of St. Cuthbert” were correlated with glow detected in the region. This occurrence begins the time period many refer to as the Golden Age of Interplanar Exploration.

1991 - Further observations in London, nearly identically matching those from early in the century, prompted portal researchers to put recent discoveries regarding the nature of etherealite and fissure glow to the test. Many of those involved would claim this to be the first case of interplanar connection to be confirmed soon after its occurrence. The success of paraphysical theories developed over the previous decade would hook many fringe researchers who had held out skepticism up until this point.

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As always...hopefully more to come...!

The Monstrous6 Magic System

From the PDSH wiki entry for John Force, Magic Agent

Well, I had a "Real Monstrous Matters" post that I was working on, as I've been enjoying putting one of those together each week if I can.  For some reason, this one started morphing from my established pattern of "this is some cool science, now here's a monster" into speculation on the subjective experiences of starfish.  So, that one will wait until next week when I can get a little bit of a handle on what the heck I'm trying to say with it.  In the meantime, as I've been building the "Monstrous6" rules system, tiny piece by tinier piece, with my posts on here, I figured I'd go ahead and lay out what I'm imagining as the default magic system for the game (and for the Monstrous Matters campaign).

I want something that will feel at least a little different from Vancian spellcasting.  Shadowdark and Dungeon Crawl Classics have given us some nice variants that keep a lot of the Vancian bones in place, so I looked to them for inspiration but tried to give it a little spin that would feel unique to this 2d6-based system.  Here's what I came up with; I've only been able to test it once so far but hope to get more under my belt soon...

The Basics:

1)  Monstrous6 is essentially a skill-based system, so Magic is a skill and is given a value just as other skills are.  Different types of magic are connected to different skills and potentially to different underlying attributes.  The spells cast by a wizard, for example, might use the skill Arcane Magic (or perhaps a different skill for each school) and use the Knowledge attribute, while those of a cleric are resolved with Divine Magic (or specific domains) and Presence.  Christmas Elves have Holiday Magic (Presence).  Rudies have...Rudeness, I guess...?  (Also Presence...)

2)  Starting characters can learn one spell for each point they have in the attribute that governs their specific type of spellcasting.  More may be learned as play progresses.

3)  Spells are roughly the power of those found in most OGL games.  So, OSR spells will work, or 5e spells with some adjustments to the dice used.  (I like to use d6 in the place of both d6 and d8, then have the other die sizes represented by d6 +/- the appropriate value.)  Also, advantage/disadvantage will need to be turned into bonuses or penalties.  Spells still have levels, just as they do in d20-based games.

4) To cast a spell, make a magical skill roll [2d6 + Attribute + Skill] vs. the spell’s difficulty, which is found by adding [10 + (spell level) + (number of times you’ve attempted to cast a spell today, including the current one)]. If you meet or exceed the difficulty value, the spell is successful.

5) For spells requiring a saving throw, those difficulties are calculated by [8 + Attribute + Skill]. (For both saving throws and the magical skill rolls in #4, as with most rolls in Monstrous6, a 12 is always a success, and a 2 is always a failure.)

6) If your magical skill roll results in both dice landing on the same face (rolling doubles), you can feel the vibrations of magical power escaping your grasp for the day. You may continue to cast spells on the current day by “paying” 1 point of your magical attribute. You may do this as many times as necessary but may not drop below a value of 1. This loss impacts all rolls for that attribute until the point is regained. All of these points in the attribute, along with the daily spell counter, are reset after a long rest. (Alternatively, you may choose not to pay the attribute point after rolling doubles; in that case, you are simply unable to cast further spells of that type until you take a long rest.)

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More to come on this.

The first/new look of Monstrous Matters

I'm too stoked about this piece of art to sit on it anymore!  Just had to share...

One of my innumerable ongoing nerd projects is to finally put together the bits and pieces I've gathered to play a campaign based upon the paranormal research and protection organization known as Monstrous Matters, whose members investigate the intrusion of extraplanar creatures upon our world.  It's sort of my take on Ghostbusters meets D&D...maybe my own version of a fantasy heartbreaker...and I'm hoping to have a rules-lite yet suitably evocative document to share with the world by...well, I guess I should just say the end of the year at this point, since I move so slowly on everything hobby-related.

I knew that the incomparable Kelvin Green would have some excellent ideas for representing this type of adventure in a single picture, so I hit him up for it, and he did not disappoint.  Quite the opposite, actually...I kind of can't believe how much I enjoy looking over the details he put into this piece!  Without further ado, here is the first official image for Monstrous Matters, the organization:

I'm probably gonna have to make some version of this into a header for the blog eventually.  Until then, I'll keep fighting through my gamer ADHD* to chip away at the game, while undoubtedly getting distracted by a variety of similarly inconsequential projects along the way...!

(Thanks Kelvin!!)

* FWIW, I'm not ashamed to mention that I have received this actual diagnosis...not "gamer ADHD," that would be weird...but regular old ADHD.  I say this not to brag (ha!) but to make sure it doesn't look like I'm taking a legitimate hindrance on others' lives and turning it into a joke.  For some reason, people seem really comfortable making jokes about having some of these alphabet soup disorders -- ADHD, OCD, PTSD, probably more -- and while I threw in a flippant mention of one of them, I figured:  Why not pull the mood down a bit by making something into a more serious issue than it has to be?  But hey, that's probably just the OCD at work, eh?

Comparing task resolution difficulties across RPG systems (D6 + d20 + more)

I'm hoping someone out there might find it useful to see the side-by-side comparison of skill resolution target numbers/difficulty classes for a small variety of RPGs that are of interest to me right now.

If you just want to see the tables, you can skip on ahead to the figures so you don't get bored by my introductory rambling.  If you want more detail, possibly along with a small word salad, read on.  Either way, please let me know if you see any errors on these charts.

So...when I was beginning my deep dive into RPGs around 20 years ago, I was really intrigued by mechanical systems that lent themselves to covering modes of gaming outside of just crunchy campaign play, like miniatures, card games, or even just more casual roleplaying.  The D6 System from West End Games (WEG) really caught my eye, especially once I realized that it was implemented in such diverse forms as Ghostbusters (its genesis), Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game (perhaps its best-known form), DC Universe (altered to handle superpowers), and Star Wars Miniatures Battles and Live-Action Adventures.

These last two might have been the most intriguing, as they shifted the typical WEG D6 mechanics from a dice pool to [D6 + Attribute + Skill].  And somehow, using pretty much the same values as the standard WEG Star Wars RPG, that shift seemed to work in play.  It almost felt like I didn't know at the time that this kind of adjustment was even allowed in RPGs. :)

As I've looked around lately for a system that I might be able to use for a variety of gaming projects, I found myself looking really hard at Ghostbusters...and liking what I saw, a lot.  Also remembering a message board post where someone pointed out the similarity between the target numbers of the D6 System and one of the major iterations of d20 (I think it was already 5E at the time), I decided to take a look at how some of these systems stacked up in terms of difficulty classes for skill rolls.  Here are the systems included:

1.  Ghostbusters -- The point of the exercise and maybe the greatest RPG ever written

2.  Spooktacular -- A retro-clone of Ghostbusters with an associated OGL-friendly SRD (Sixtacular)

3.  FIE, I SAY! -- A traditional fantasy take on the Ghostbusters core rules, from Tim Snider; clearly constructed with love, humor, and an eye toward old school cachet

4.  The D6 System -- A generic toolkit for RPG system construction, published by WEG in 1996 and often called "the Cookbook" by fans

5.  Mini Six -- The clever and concise universal D6 ruleset released by AntiPaladin Games under the OGL

6.  Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, Second Edition -- The WEG one, not the WotC one...although the numbers are probably pretty similar considering...

7-8.  Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and 5E SRDs -- Probably the two most-referenced RPG System Reference Documents

9-10.  Mörk Borg and Shadowdark -- Some darlings of the old school RPG crowd over the past few years (well-deserved reputations, I believe); both d20-based, with toned-down expectations for stat bonuses

11.  Star Wars: Live-Action Adventures -- A system for LARPing in that galaxy far, far away; uses essentially the same stats as the tabletop game but relies on a single D6 for task resolution (same scale as the WEG Star Wars minis game)

12-14.  Live-Action Adventures, +4 and +4/adjusted -- Having found 1D6 resolution to give a narrower range of results than I would like (relative to the possible spread of attributes and skills in the system), I'm looking at using 2D6 instead; +4 accounts for the added die, and the "adjusted" values shift the typically 2-point difficulty bands for 1D6 rolls to 3-point or 4-point bands (shifting "Moderate" downward in order to move toward a standard of 10 as the target number when attacking an average, unarmed human)

Here's the full table:

Here's a quick reference on how closely Ghostbusters and the WEG Star Wars RPG actually line up with target numbers in the d20 System (which would come along around the turn of the millennium and dominate roleplaying for years):

And finally, here are the tracks for FIE, I SAY! and Shadowdark, along with the table that I'm leaning toward as the eventual model for my ongoing Monstrous Matters campaign and its associated endeavors.  I like this scale quite a bit, and it's interesting to me that a dice-pool approach (FIE!) might match up so closely with both 1D20 (Shadowdark) and 2D6 resolution mechanics in terms of skill difficulties.

Thanks for checking these out, and please let me know if you have any thoughts on improving or adjusting these!

The Monstrous Matters Campaign, Part 2: So this is how goblin genocide starts.

A little while back, Father Josh threw me another tabletop bone by playing as the sole PC (with a supervisory role over the other protagonist) in Session 2 of the Monstrous Matters campaign.  (For my Session 1 ramblings, check out the post HERE.)

The high points of this session:

    1.  The first pieces were planted to tie into what might turn out to be a meta-narrative that makes its way through multiple adventures.  I say "might" because I'm committed to not railroading this thing...BUT I can have the overarching story in the back of my mind that MAY become obvious to the game's player(s) over time.

    2.  We returned to a more "standard" dice pool resolution mechanic for the D6-based system we're playing with.  I see this being The Way going forward, but I've honestly never determined what I find to be the optimal approach to the Wild Die/Ghost Die in these games, so I'll probably still play with that over the coming sessions.

    3.  The importance of player motivations with respect to the goals of the game itself came to the forefront, as one of the characters shifted into murder-hobo mode in a game that is, ostensibly, very much not about murder hobos.  The thing is, it really worked narratively, so it's drawing our attention to the value of determining the PCs' ethical views of creatures that have made their way to our world via connections to magical fantasy realms.  I'm sure there's also some political commentary that could be dropped into this exploration, but I'm going to do all I can to avoid that because (1) it seems cheap and exploitative, and (2) this is very much meant to be escapist entertainment.

So, here we go...

To begin the session, the team (Fingers Watson and Bobby Flech) move down the staircase from Level 1 to Level 2.

From the free and excellent Dyson's Delve mega-ish-dungeon...check out this level HERE.

Moving east, they peer into a room with six goblins; none notice them outside the cracked door. Five of the goblins are dressed in tattered rags, while one is in much nicer attire (including some fancy brass-ish goggles). He seems to be in the middle of a chemistry experiment. (When questioned, he says that he is “just trying to make it explode.”) He looks something like this:

On his wrist, there is a striking signet:

When asked, the goblin says that the signet is the symbol of his guild, the Izzet.

It doesn’t take long now for Watson’s long-harbored hatred of planar outsiders to show itself. He first tricks a few of them into falling into a carefully deployed portable hole. As they attempt to recover, he kills one with a dagger thrown into its eye. He then pulls out his sidearm and shoots four more dead. Finally, the chemist – by now the dozing victim of a scroll of Sleep – is strangled by Flech at Watson’s direction.

The protagonists have now shut themselves in the goblin den. There are other dungeon inhabitants outside, alerted by the noise and trying to get in. It doesn’t look great for the Monstrous Matters pair. There is a wildcard here, though: Fingers would happily kill every last one of them...

Etherealite, fissure glow, and interplanar connections

Breaches of the barrier surrounding this material plane lead to a number of detectable forms of radiation in our world.  These similar but distinct waves are used by Monstrous Matters scientists to piece together details related to each planar portal.

Fissure glow is the radiation that seems to emanate from the gaps between our realm and connected material planes.  For the Monstrous Matters team, this is often the best indication of a portal requiring investigation.  While it is unclear whether the radiation actually originates from those other worlds, or rather from the tearing of interplanar barriers, fissure glow has been found in the vicinity of most of the organization's most important research sites.  As noted previously, many common Earth minerals can block the detection of these waves, creating an additional challenge for Monstrous Matters operatives seeking the doors of the multiverse.

A similar signature, often called penumbral radiation, remains within all organic beings that cross the threshold of an interplanar portal into our realm.  Scientists from Department-7 spent a great deal of time in the 1980s zeroing in the detection of these faint rays surrounding the beings they referred to as Shadowkind, improving the sensitivity of their equipment to the point that handheld imagers are now quite reliable.  Penumbral radiation has been further harnessed in the operation of the uncertainty gun, used to return outsiders to their own realms; most researchers believe that it is the critical connection that leads many outsiders to simply fade away away (and presumably return to their plane of origin) upon death.

Penumbral radiation indicating an interplanar visitor

The radiation that remains the most mysterious to parageologists is that emitted by etherealite, the mineral associated with regions hosting planar portals.  Somewhat ironically, etherealite has been studied in more detail than either fissure glow or penumbral radiation; while scientists have become very good at identifying and describing it, its actual relationship with interplanar travel is so far unknown.

Etherealite's chemical composition varies somewhat from one region to another; it is distinguished from surrounding objects by a special feature of the electrons associated with various metals and metalloids found within its structure (notably aluminum, magnesium, and silicon). These electrons consistently appear to be entangled with particles that exist outside the immediate and obvious physical realm in which we live...described by some Monstrous Matters scientists as if they are paired with with points beyond our four-dimensional existence. Amazingly, mapping these realms based upon our known physics has at times led to physical reconstructions of worlds that have seemingly existed only in the imaginations of the researchers involved. It’s all very meta and is best understood with a wink, a shrug, or a bong hit. (Maybe all three.)

A future pseudoscientific blog post will cover some of the spots around the world that have served as significant sources of these forms of radiation, as well as the extradimensional realms connected to these sites.

Dragonfyre: I'm guessing you haven't seen it, and I'm guessing you're gonna like it

A recent Reddit thread about movies that play out like RPG adventures got me thinking about one of my favorite films matching this description.  While I plugged it on that thread...and I know I mentioned it when Pun discussed something similar over at Halls of the Nephilim (and have probably shared my love for it elsewhere on the internet)...I realized that -- criminally -- I have never discussed this very-discussable movie here on the blog.  And now that I'm working on a campaign involving fantasy monsters encroaching on our world, it's time to talk a little bit about...

Dragonfyre

AKA DragonFyre: The Worldgate Sentinel.  AKA Orc Wars.  (I don't know why it has a second, completely different name, but there ya go.)

From HERE

From HERE.  Yep, this is the same movie.

Very minor spoilers follow.  I think it's mostly stuff you won't be surprised by anyway.

There's a pretty simple premise here:  An American veteran struggling with PTSD buys some property out West to get away from everything.  Then he has to fight a bunch of orcs who trespass on his land trying to kill an elven princess.  He uses guns.

I think the film probably surprises a lot of people with its quality.  I mean...it's definitely a B-movie, clearly ambitious beyond its budget.  The thing is, with many such films, there are things that I (not a filmmaker) can point to and say, "I don't think that should have ended up in the final cut."  Maybe a line needs to be re-cut more believably.  Maybe a goofy FX shot needs to be tossed.  It could be anything and is usually a lot of things.  However, Dragonfyre really doesn't have many (if any) of those moments.  It was clearly produced by skilled and detail-oriented creators.

Many of the costumes and props seem to be LOTR leftovers, or maybe commercially available replicas.  This obviously has the effect of giving the fantastic elements of the movie a look we've seen before, but considering the premise of the story, that might be more positive than negative.  They look pretty darn good.  FX-wise, artists clearly knew when to back off.  The cheesiest effect of the film is probably the CGI dragon (spoiler!), but even that is pretty solid, especially when you consider how dated CG effects from even highly regarded films can look today.  (I'll save my unpopular opinion of never really embracing the look of Gollum for another day.)  The most important effect in the film is probably the dark cloud-splosions of orcs getting shot in the head, and they definitely got that one down.  (It is a fairly violent film, btw, in case that's something you wish to investigate before taking the plunge to watch this.)

If I had to pick one thing to change about Dragonfyre, it wouldn't actually be anything related to production quality.  While the character of Whitefeather is portrayed very well by Wesley John, there's just something off-putting about having another Magical Native American (he's also blind!) character so central to the plot.  It isn't a dealbreaker for me, but I imagine some viewers might take enough offense to want to skip it altogether.  (I know, I know, I hear you...I need to get out of here with all of that woke shit.  I mean, if that's what you're thinking, Whitefeather definitely won't bug you...but I know I'm not the only one who cringes when we notice these stereotypes.)

Overall, I feel pretty good about dropping this one into the grand headcanon of my imagination, and it holds up really well as a film as long as you can accept the low-budget caveat.  (And as I make this edit, it's available on Tubi...free to watch if you don't count those pieces of your soul you give up as you watch commercials!)  Coming up...I think I need to stat out John Norton (the Worldgate Sentinel...oh, another spoiler!) to be an NPC in the Monstrous Matters campaign...

Monstrous Matters: Detecting intrusions on our material plane

You may be wondering: How do Monstrous Matters operatives locate beings that have entered our realm from parallel physical planes? And how do they know that these creatures aren’t just regular inhabitants of our world, somehow hidden for much of humanity’s existence?

The answer, of course, is that “it depends.” Sometimes, the MM team is tipped off by the investigations of other organizations that study paranormal events. Sometimes, Monstrous Matters is directly contacted by residents of our world seeking help in understanding mysterious happenings. (MM is a public-facing organization.) However, there are two main operations that Monstrous Matters strategists carry out regularly in order to monitor the appearance and disappearance of planar breaches.

The first is that worldwide news reporting is scoured as completely as possible for any leads. In the early days of Monstrous Matters, this was a rather tall task that required a lot of time from interns and hourly employees reading newspapers from around the world. This task has been made much easier with the expansion of news on the internet and the development of artificial intelligence platforms capable of executing this screening very quickly and fairly accurately.

Since the 1980s, however, detection of interplanar visitors has often been achieved thanks to the convenient fact that breaches from other material realms usually have a detectable radiation signature, often called “fissure glow.” With the proper analysis tools, this radiation can even be detected by satellite imagery. The Monstrous Matters IT team actually spends a lot of time hacking into government servers to access informative satellite data. The discovery of a potential rift is usually followed up with direct investigation near the source of the radiation.

Unfortunately, fissure glow is easily blocked by fairly common sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, including those found in many of Earth’s mountain ranges. This has led to a number of cases in which entire dungeon-like complexes are established on our world and remain undetected for many years (and potentially centuries or more).

Many interested scientists believe there is a connection between fissure glow and another phenomenon associated with interplanar travel: the regular appearance of a specific mineral, known as etherealite, near planar breaches. This material, along with the implications of fissure glow for interplanar visitors, will be covered in upcoming pseudoscientific blog posts.

Evidence of a planar portal in or near Orlando, Florida...

Just in time for the recently publicized Monstrous Matters team to investigate...it looks like there may be a new breach in the veil of our material plane.  And of course it would be in Florida.

I was tipped off...by this article from the website Inside the Magic showing up in my Google news feed...that a dragon was recently spotted (and filmed!) over Universal Orlando.  Here's just one of multiple first-person views to be captured:

Totally unconnected to the How to Train Your Dragon world coming to the Epic Universe theme park set to open next year.  Totally.  Unconnected.

Everybody keep your eyes peeled and your phones ready.

(Now, if you're wondering why Google thinks I want to read articles from InsideTheMagic.net...well, wouldn't you?)

The Monstrous Matters Campaign #1

Life's a little weird right now.  I have to admit that the inescapable, fever-pitched, hyperbolic-yet-genuinely-worrisome media coverage of this year's presidential election is bringing me down a little.  Pretty much every day.  And I see it a little more than usual now that I'm spending more time at home, having declined to follow my previous employer to another state in order to keep that job.  So now I don't have that job.  (And it always seems to end up catching up with me psychologically when I'm "in between jobs.")

Luckily, I still have a love for losing myself in fantastic worlds (a passion that never really lets me down)...and so, a few weeks ago, my buddy Father Josh indulged my delusions of storytelling grandeur by playing in the first session of what will hopefully be a lengthy campaign, and one that is kind of important to me...

Because it is THE ONE™.  The Monstrous Matters campaign.  This is what it's all been building toward.  (All of what, you ask?  All of all of it.)

I mean...that is...until I get bored and move onto THE (NEXT) ONE™.  When it comes to dumping a lot of heart, soul, and brainpower into an obsession, this ain't my first time around the block.  But for now...

In this campaign, Monstrous Matters is an organization that investigates and facilitates protection from the fantastic forces that enter our earthly realm through portals leading to and from other regions of the multiverse.  We are familiar with many of these beings...from mythology, folklore, fairy tales, and games with weird dice.  The work of Monstrous Matters overlaps quite a bit with the operations of Department-7 in that "Ghostbusters + Urban Arcana" game that I ran with Josh about...oh man, four years ago...?  (The time.  It flies.)

Rules and Such

The system for the game is probably best described as just "houseruled Ghostbusters."  I went with a set of "Big 4" stats (Might-Dexterity-Knowledge-Presence) and am using +2 bonuses for all Skills/Talents.  Defense/armor value is static.  Health is tracked via Hit Points.

For the first session, we just used 1d6+Attribute+Skill (if appropriate) vs. target numbers (as seen in the old West End Games Star Wars miniatures and LARP rules), although I think I want to go back to the dice pool system.  Rolling a handful of dice is arguably a big part of the D6 System experience, and it was probably a mistake to move away from it so quickly.  (That initial choice was partially inspired by wanting to see how well the stripped-down, just-roll-a-humble-d6 approach works with stats at this scale.)  We also rolled for attributes (d6-1, minimum 1 for each stat [EDIT: We actually used 1d6, treat sixes as fives; my bad.])...which is how we ended up with some characters that are VERY capable stat-wise.  Here's Josh's guy...

I also wanted to have an extra character (controlled by me and/or Josh, doesn't really matter) to make the Monstrous Matters operatives into an actual team, as well as provide strategic options and an extra avenue for exposition.  Who would step up to this challenge?  Well...there's a slight chance that those who read this post will remember a character that was used in that earlier Department-7 game...a gentleman by the name of B.J. Flech, who moved on from a brief career as a Ghostbuster to defend the Earth from fantastic multiversal villains (and giant ants).

B.J. Flech is now retired...but his son Bobby is a new member of the MM team who is partnering with "Fingers" to pick up whatever...uh, pointers...he can.  (Harhar.)

For the opening adventure, Fingers and Bobby were dispatched to the Craggy Gardens area of western North Carolina to investigate a breach in our plane's veil.  The team began the operation with a single, fully charged Uncertainty Gun (to be detailed in a future post) and a selection of magical scrolls.  A level of connected caves and halls has been mapped using advanced radar and sonar (and some AI data compilation)...this gave me an in-story reason to go ahead and introduce the full, unkeyed map of the level, simplifying dungeon-crawling via Zoom.

For the dungeon itself, I'm using Dyson's Delve, which is an amazing free resource and one that you should absolutely consider using for your own dungeon-crawling needs. (Seriously, how many of our lives have been made both richer and simpler thanks to Dyson's work? He's one of the most luminary figures of the OSR, as far as I'm concerned.)

Check this level out HERE

And...well, I guess I should just summarize by saying that Session 1...was a success!  By my standards, anyway.  I had a blast!  Some rats and goblins and a ferret were sent packing with the Uncertainty Gun (yeah, it sends creatures back to their plane of origin; I really do need to write this up at some point...).  The session ended as Fingers and Bobby headed down some stairs to Level 2...

Hoping to have more to share on this soon, as the adventure continues and the specifics of the organization known as Monstrous Matters are established...