The Real Monstrous Matters: Oliphaunts in India

So this is pretty cool.  A pair of papers recently dropped giving a detailed analysis of a huge elephant skull that was found in India way back in 2000 (alongside a bunch of human tools).  And no, it isn't an Oliphaunt (or Mûmak)...but it is pretty darn big.

One of the papers focuses on the morphology and phylogeny of the skull (and thus the animal), placing it in the genus Palaeoloxodon, which has some of the largest elephants that ever walked the planet.  (There's a really good summary of this paper over at Discover Wildlife.)  It appears that this individual is a second example of a species previously named Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus, which in the range of 4 meters/13 feet at the shoulder (and around 10 tons) was certainly...well, mammoth:

P. turkmenicus and a human silhouette.  Image by Chen Yu; swiped from Discover Wildlife.

It's worth mentioning, though, that there's another species in the genus, Palaeoloxodon namadicus, that some estimates would place as the largest land animal ever at over 5 meters/17 feet, and up to 22 tons in weight!  Here's a nice little video on that one:

(The other paper, meanwhile, has more information on human interaction with the elephant, based upon marks on the bones and tools found nearby.  Both articles point to an age in the range of 300,000 to 400,000 years, which will never stop blowing my mind.)

Of course, even a 22-ton behemoth doesn't measure up to what we saw in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films:

From here

I'm not familiar enough with Tolkien's original works to know if that's the size we should expect based upon the books themselves, but man are they fantastic animals.  (What is it Sam tells Frodo?  "No one at home will believe this...")  They've got to be at least...what, 40 feet tall?  So if we assume, at the high end of Palaeoloxodon, a beast that's 17 feet tall and 22 tons...something roughly the same shape but about 2.35 times the height would probably give us an animal weighing about 13 times as much.  So...around 286 tons?  Did I do that right?  Impressive!  (The Mûmak, not my work...)

And the coolest part is that they're using them as war machines.  I'm sure there have been plenty of takes on Oliphaunts in RPGs over the years, but I think I'll just stat one out for Monstrous Matters purposes on the premise that it's a REALLY big elephant.  It looks like the flagship proboscidean has about 8 or 9 hit dice in a typical d20-based system.  Do I really want to make a Mûmak a monster with like 80 HD, or as I would play it in Monstrous Matters gaming, a Strength value of around 80?  (Rhetorical question...)

Considering the D6-based system I've been playing with, it probably makes the most sense to pull ideas from Mini Six (which includes elephant stats and some nice, simple scaling rules) and WEG's Star Wars Miniatures Battles (which has a nice way of handling creatures by not worrying so much about what humans consider intelligence, and instead giving them an Orneriness Code that's used to test how difficult they are to work with).

From here

Oliphaunt

Scale: +4

Handling Difficulty (trained): 7

20 HP, 11 Defense

Strength 4

Dexterity 1

Knowledge 1

Presence 1

Attacks: 2x Tusk (1D6+4 damage) or Trample (2D6+4 damage plus target is knocked prone)

EDIT:  And I realized I posted this without mentioning the most basic of courtesies...a Happy Halloween to everyone!

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.

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 Real Monstrous Matters: Microbial contamination or killer space ooze?

Fortunately for humanity...and unfortunately for those of us just wasting time until the day we make contact...it's probably just microbial contamination.

A paper came out on November 13 detailing the examination of rock samples brought back from the asteroid Ryugu during the Hayabusa2 mission of Japan's space agency JAXA...

Photo of Ryugu's surface; from the mission website

They got some rocks from the asteroid's surface?  COOL!

They succeeded in a number of microscopic analyses of these samples?  VERY COOL!

There appear to be bacteria there?!?  HELLA COOL!!

The bugs on the asteroid; from the paper

Oh.  The reasonable conclusion is that it's just contamination?  BOOOOOOOO!!

Yeah, so despite being processed at pretty much the abso-tippy-top level of contamination protocol stringency, one of the samples ended up with some microbes growing on it.  The authors suspect Bacillus, but who knows.  Unfortunately, they were unable to look at the bug's genome to see what it was (and it has since been polished off of the rock and hasn't regrown).  Considering that Bacillus includes bacteria that can cause anthrax, food poisoning, and probably a host of other maladies, it's at least cool to imagine that it might have been some killer space bug that came close to unleashing a Michael Crichton-style pandemic upon humanity.

Probably for the better that it didn't, though.

(You can find a nice summary of the paper at Phys.org.)

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Now, what's cooler than a killer space bug?  A killer space ooze!  Can I get some cheers from the Blob Mob?!

Space Ooze

Image from Pixabay

Scale: --

Handling Difficulty: -- (uncontrollable)

25 HP, 9 Defense

Strength 5

Dexterity 1

Knowledge --

Presence 1

Skills: Detect (chemical) +3

Attacks: Pseudopod (+4, 1d6 bludgeoning damage + 1d6 acid damage)

The space ooze can move 10 feet per round, including up surfaces.  It is capable of moving through openings with a diameter of less than 1/10 of an inch, although its speed is slowed by as much as 99% while doing so.  The space ooze is capable of dissolving metal at a rate of up to 1 inch per round; this is often performed to overcome obstacles but will also impact any metal weapons used on it.

When reduced to 0 HP, the space ooze simply spends 1 round regrouping, then continues with the same task that was interrupted when it was "destroyed."

The Real Monstrous Matters: A Saber-Toothed Kitten in Siberia

I mean, poor kitty...but man is this cool.  A formal description and analysis has just been published for the frozen mummy of a saber-toothed cat cub that was found in Siberia in 2020.  The paper appeared in Scientific Reports on November 14 (open access, so it's free to check out!); the Science homepage also ran a nice summary article here.

Compared to a modern lion cub; from the paper

Radiocarbon dating places it at about 35,000 years old.  The fact that scientists are actually able to write, with experience, on the softness of the fur of an animal that lived that long ago is mind-blowing.

The coolest discovery?  Actually, no, I bet there are cooler ones here; this one just really struck me as something very basic and neat that can only be seen when you have soft tissue preserved like this.  This specific saber-toothed cat is missing a carpal pad (that fifth "toe bean" on your cat's front paws).

See there at the top?  It's missing a toe bean (#2 at the bottom)!  Although I do love that the authors describe the ancient cat's metacarpal pad as "bean-shaped"...so maybe it isn't missing one...?  Anyway...from the paper.

The authors chalk this up (along with the wide paws and the shape of their pads) to adaptation to walking on snow...which makes a ton of sense considering the cat's home, both geographically and temporally.

In case you're wondering, this isn't the famous Smilodon, the icon widely known as a "saber-toothed tiger."  This little tyke is actually from the genus Homotherium, which are more specifically designated "scimitar-toothed cats" (vs. the "dirk-toothed cats" of Smilodon).  Still freaking cool and I dare you to argue otherwise!

Anyway, here's a saber-toothed cat for Monstrous6.  I'm gonna try to convert directly from a 5e critter and see if it makes sense, as one goal with the system is to be able to do that pretty easily.  So here goes.  (Also, I find it a little odd that D&D hasn't changed to calling the Saber-Toothed Tiger a Saber-Toothed Cat...although I think it might have been called a Smilodon in 2e...?  At any rate, I'm going to take that liberty...)

From Pixabay

Saber-toothed Cat

Scale: --

Handling Difficulty: 14

35 HP, 12 Defense

Strength 5

Dexterity 4

Knowledge 1

Presence 2

Skills: Detect (smell) +3

Attacks: Bite (+6, 1d6+6 piercing damage) or Claw (+6, 2d6+5 slashing damage)

Special: If a saber-toothed cat hits with a claw attack after moving at least 20 feet straight in the direction of the target, the target must save [STR (Balance) 14] or fall prone.  If the target falls, the cat may immediately take a free bite.

The Real Monstrous Matters: Japanese scientists get us one step closer to Greenskins...or maybe just solar-powered humans...

This is one that was covered by a lot of mainstream news outlets, so you might have already seen it (you MSM zombie, you)...in a cool little biological trick that I'm honestly surprised hasn't been achieved before, researchers anchored by a group at the University of Tokyo have gotten chloroplasts to carry out photosynthesis in hamster cells.  Mammalian cells making food from light...pretty cool if you ask me.  You can check out the paper (from the Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B) at this link, and the university's press release can be found here.

Fluorescence microscopy image from the press release.  The chloroplasts are magenta, while cell nuclei are light blue.

This is one of those things that really gets the imagination firing, and most of us who are drawn to science fiction and/or fantasy have probably already thought about this possibility at some point.  And obviously, it brings to mind the green-skinned characters of fantasy lore, like Warhammer's...er, Greenskins...

It's also a fairly well-known "rule" of biology that mammals aren't green.  When those who craft fantasy fiction feel the need to justify green pigmentation in a humanoid species, the likely explanations are reptilian ancestry or some sort of photosynthetic machinery.  In Warhammer, for example, I believe the lore is that Greenskins, already an assemblage of fungal species, also have a symbiotic relationship with algae.  It's unclear, as far as I know, exactly what the mechanics of this symbiosis may be, but I don't think there's ever been an implication that the algae are inside the creature's cells (but please do correct me if I'm wrong!).

This new paper takes things a step further, with chloroplasts (the site of photosynthesis in plants and algae) being isolated from red algae and incorporated directly into the animal cells, where they kept on working away like all those other organelles you remember from high school biology...the mitochondria and Golgi apparatuses and all.  It's a very different result from the researchers' expectation that the little algae bits would be digested by the hamster cells.  Which, y'know, when in doubt, is probably a good idea for an animal cell to do when it finds it has taken up a random foreign organelle that resembles bacteria.

Also kind of fun: It appears that these hybrid creations are often referred to as "planimal" cells.  It sounds like a failed '80s toyline.

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As far as fantasy species go, orcs and goblins are probably the most commonly green characters, but elves occasionally get this treatment as well.  In Magic: The Gathering, for example, the well-known elf Glissa Sunseeker has been portrayed with green skin.

Image from here

I also think it's interesting to look back at the green elves in the group of MTG sets known as the Onslaught Block.  Over the course of those sets, various creatures were mutated to become purer expressions of the color of mana they represented.  The blue wizards, for example, basically turned into water.  Elves, meanwhile, came to resemble plants more and more.  In the second set, Legions, we see some green (or at least greenish) elves...

Card images from Scryfall

(This included at least one creature that arguably looks, to an outsider, more goblin than elf...)

And then by the third set, Scourge, the elves were even more plant-like:

Something tells me there are chloroplasts in those elves' cells.

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Now, a species for gaming...

Emeraldkin

Attribute Points: 12

Min/Max:

Strength 1-5
Dexterity 1-6
Knowledge 1-5
Presence 1-5

Skill Distribution: 3/2/1

Special Skills: Can use Nature Magic without allocating any skill points to it; if this skill isn't chosen, it is treated as +0, and Nature Magic skill rolls use the character's Knowledge value.

Abilities: Able to see in low-light conditions; resistant to hunger

Emeraldkin are found in many realms among the multiverse.  They appear very similar to Humans but are identified by their pointed ears and the greenish hue of their skin (due to the chloroplasts found in their skin cells).  On some worlds, they are referred to as Elves, while residents of others will call them Orcs or even Goblins.  They identify with none of these terms, however, and refer to themselves as Unliavel, broadly translated as Emeraldkin.  It is thus far unknown what species they are closest to genetically; in general, though, they will associate with all other groups who maintain a similar connection to nature.

The photosynthetic skin cells of Emeraldkin allow them to go much longer than other humanoid species without food.  While they cannot wholly abandon eating, in conditions of sufficient light and water, they can easily go up to 10 days in between meals.  This is rarely necessary; Emeraldkin are usually very knowledgeable about the natural environment and are capable of obtaining food in almost any situation, although the vast majority rely on vegetarian sustenance only.  Overall, their connection to the natural world and low need for resources make them ideal adventuring companions.

5 tips for running the Ghostbusters RPG (AKA another lazy post!)

Inspired by Adam Dickstein's killer Chapter 2 writeup of his awesome Ghostbusters + Tokyo Ghost Research idea in action over at his Barking Alien blog (seriously, check it out), I really wanted to get another Ghostbusters RPG post out into the world. BUT...I have to focus on real life a little too much today. Aha...BUT(!!!)...I did finally write up a little list of things I've learned along the way as I've run the classic West End Games RPG myself. I said I might get around to it, and then I finally did so in...another Reddit thread.

So here we go. Written to a first-time Ghostmaster, and with pretty minimal editing here (like I said, another lazy post!). Maybe someone will find it helpful...? [This is where I shrug, but I'm not sure if I should put an emoji or just write *shrug* or what...]

5 Tips for Running the Ghostbusters RPG

1.  The more you set things in locations you're familiar with or can easily imagine, the easier it will be to improvise over the course of the adventure.  (I guess this really applies to any RPG...)

2.  Have a list of potential complications to turn to if nothing comes to you after the roll of a ghost on the Ghost Die. I have had a session before with so many ghosts rolled that by the end I was just like, "Okay, you miss hitting the demon and...uh...you fall down. Yes, you step on a well-placed banana peel!" (This may or may not be a precise example, but it ultimately helped me realize that you can put ridiculous stuff on a complication/fumble list, and it somehow seems to hold more weight among players if you randomly generate it from a list rather than just making it up in the moment. [NOTE: That's probably just my own assumptions showing through.] Although...I'm sure there's an effective GMing style that involves ridiculous ad hoc complication creation as well!)

3.  If you have the time, you can try prepping (to whatever extent you plan to do so) like three adventures, then have multiple calls come into Ghostbusters HQ in rapid succession. It gives a sense of agency to the players from the start. You'll just want to make sure they don't try to split up to cover all three at the same time, which would be pretty cumbersome. (Ghostbusters as a game lends itself to possibly humorous notes to players along the lines of: "Each of these calls seems really dangerous. You can just tell that you're going to need to take the full crew to whichever one you choose, for the sake of either Ghostbuster safety or Ghostmaster sanity...I'll let you know which in a little while.")

Obviously there's a good chance the players won't get through all of the adventures in one session, but then you're already prepped for a future game AND you have some security in case someone comes up with something that makes you think, "Yeah...that IS really smart and could potentially solve this case in about five minutes' time..."

4.  I've had good luck with the adventures written for the game Paranormal Investigators & Exterminators (P.I.E.), a Mini Six variant from Genius Loci games that works as a GB retro-clone. (Specifically, I've used versions of the adventures "Humble Pie" from the original P.I.E. release, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" from the Good-bye American P.I.E. supplement, and "Chocolate P.I.E." from its own individual module, all in the "three calls" setup above.)

(You can click HERE to head to the company's DriveThru page...)

5.  I'm sure this will vary by group, but I've always found it fun to zero in on a fairly specific time in the past to set things. Sharing some of the details of the world in general that you'll find with just a google search or two can help give the game a retro feel, which I think is often part of the appeal of playing as Ghostbusters. This can conflict with #1 a little bit -- you can set things in a location you're very familiar with, but you may not have much of an idea of what that place was like in, say, 1986 (not that it necessarily matters unless you have a player who will recognize and care about any inaccuracies) -- BUT a little touch like a certain song or sporting event playing on the radio is an easy way to add a little atmosphere.

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With the Monstrous Matters campaign in progress, I'm really interested in seeing everyone's approaches to the art of running a Ghostbusters-style paranormal RPG, so please hit me up with your own tricks and insights if you get the chance, here or elsewhere!

Light City: Hal Jordan

It might turn out to be Elemental Week here at Monstrous Matters!  Just statting out some characters that are on my mind or haphazardly transplanted from Clix bases to put on the table for Light City...

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)

Level 7 Elemental
First appearance:  Showcase #22 (1959)
Real name:  Hal Jordan (secret, I guess...)

(Hal probably doesn't need much introduction, but here he is at the DC Database.  Also, I snagged his stats from Taliesin's Mutants & Masterminds builds at the Atomic Think Tank...!)

STR 14     DEX 16(+1)     CON 14     INT 14     WIS 18(+1)     CHA 14
5 HD (20 HP)     Saving Throw 9     Flight (48 ft.)
AC 6[13] (green aura)

Attack:  Green Blast, +4 to hit, 1d6+1 willpower damage, range 60 ft.
Elemental Powers (7x/day):  Construct, Elemental Shield, Green Missile (a la Magic Missile), Hold.

Wasteland Wednesday: Jack Kirby's proto-Kamandi

I think the topics I hit on this blog probably make it clear that I'm a fan of ridiculous anthro characters and settings, so I was pretty darned happy when I found this old SF anthology comic story.  (I had probably read about it, as it's even referenced on the Kamandi Wikipedia page, but I didn't realize it was in the public domain until I happened upon it here.)  Here's a Kirby story from way back in 1957 (15 years before Kamandi's debut!) that shows some clear roots for the later series.  Interestingly, this story also predates the novel upon which the film version of Planet of the Apes was based, so it's very cool to see that the basics of The Last Boy on Earth were laid out with no Apes influence.

The full story is below, and you should really check out all of Alarming Tales #1 (lots of free Kirby!)...but I don't think I'll give too much away by sharing a bit of opinion before continuing.  (But please feel free to skip to the good stuff below!)

The "resolution" to this story is kind of weird.  And I know that "weird" is a silly observation when the story is about time-traveling to the future to find a world of interspecific warfare among anthropomorphic animals, but I can't help but feel that this is one of those story seeds that would have really benefited from expansion beyond the short-story anthology setup of so many of these '50s SF/horror/monster/etc. comic series.  This panel toward the end of the story seems like it should have a lot of weight...

...but, just six pages into the world, it just seems silly.

Not that I mind all that much...it's still pretty awesome overall!  And in this future world of 2017, we get the benefit of Kamandi to expand the scope of the story.

Side note: This Wasteland Wednesday is also an appropriate time to return to "real" blogging on here, as I've left Monstrous Matters to be a bit of a wasteland lately as my life undergoes a soft reboot.  I hope to be back in the blogosphere to visit for a spell, now!

Affirmation of the Week: I do not have to succeed at this mobile game in order to prove myself to anyone

Eh...except myself, maybe.

So...I quickly became a big fan of the Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket mobile game that came out last fall.  As I've mentioned before on this blog, the Pokémon TCG is what really turned me into a gamer in the first place (despite my advanced age).  From there I discovered MTG, then D&D, then other RPGs, including the OSR community.  I write more about gaming than anything else on here, but if I had never discovered the Pokémon TCG (thanks to the kids I worked with at an after-school arts program), this blog would probably be primarily about comics, or music, or biopunk, or...I dunno, dogs or something.

The Pocket version is a great distillation of the physical card game into a quick and casual competition that works very well on a phone.  A few aspects of the game have been tweaked for simplicity (the elimination of Energy cards probably being the most impactful), but it's largely the IRL game, shrunk down.  Games are fast (around 5 minutes on average), and most of them feel like a little self-contained puzzle to be solved.  The app also keeps free packs flowing to you, so even without spending a dime, you get the constant "thrill" of opening up boosters, searching for rare cards and variants.  In case you can't tell, I dig Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket quite a bit, and it has definitely taken its place as the next in a line of mobile games that have been my go-to downtime entertainment.

And then, on March 28, ranked play debuted, and PTCGP become a much more serious matter.  In the months leading up to start of the ranked ladder, there was really no in-game measure of your success other than a running log of how many games you've won.  And that's cool, and it fits the overall casual feel of the app, but I had really been longing for something like this to give some weight to the games, like I used to have when playing Hearthstone and Auto Chess and Chess Rush.  Plus...and this is a side effect of the new mode that has played out somewhat like I anticipated...I wanted a reason for players to quit disconnecting as soon as they felt like they were going to lose a game (leaving me to wait for the fairly extended timer to count down before I could move on, unless I just conceded), which actually happens way more than I would have thought in unranked play.

Of course I wanted to see how I fared on the ranked ladder.  The point system is set up where you technically don't even need a winning record to advance, especially at lower levels where you earn bonuses for win streaks.  It became pretty clear once I got into the weeds of it, though...especially as I read others' takes on the math involved in the climb...that reaching Master Ball (the top rank, not counting placing in the upper echelon of those who reach Master Ball) would be a grind.  This wasn't unexpected...but it was really going to be a grind...hundreds of games even if you perform pretty well, and hundreds upon hundreds if you happen to be a solidly average TCG player like me (borne out by decades of experience in competitive formats).

Now, keep in mind...I really don't have especially onerous responsibilities in life.  I don't have kids, for example...ones with fewer than four legs, at least.  BUT...I do have fairly normal adult responsibilities, along with that persistent little daemon in the back of my mind telling me that I'm too old and ostensibly responsible to spend this much time trying to earn a little digital emblem that doesn't even necessarily mean I played the game with a winning record.  It'll definitely make you question if the time spent is worth the reward, especially when you know the reward doesn't even indicate that you're actually good at the task involved.  (Honestly, it's sort of a microcosm of getting a PhD...)

In the wee hours of this past Saturday, however, I got that final win necessary to put those all-important letters (MB) after my name on official documents.  I reached the mountaintop...or, at least, the plateau where you can rest while the real go-getters are up there aiming for the peak.  I probably used around 15 different decks in total to get there, including (but not limited to...and if you don't play the game, this is just going to seem like a bunch of gibberish): Gyarados/Manaphy (with Dewgong because I don't have an Origin Form Palkia...played this one pretty significantly, actually); Gyarados/Greninja/Druddigon; Rampardos/Hitmonlee; Rampardos/Lucario/Sudowoodo (both Ramp decks got played a fair amount); at least two different versions of Circle Circuit Pikachu; Arceus/Exeggutor; Arceus/Skarmony; Pachirisu/Zebstrika; Giratina/Darkrai (the bogeyman of the format, so my deck is named "Sellout"); Giratina/Mewtwo; Giratina/Greninja/Druddigon; and one or more decks using Wigglytuff, since the Jigglypuff line is my favorite group of 'mons.

Wigglytuff was actually kind of crucial, as a Wiggly/Weezing/Darkrai deck helped me rebound from a slump that sent me crashing down out of the Ultra Ball rank.  I basically replaced Wigglytuff with Weavile to end up using the following deck (with tiny tweaks here and there) for a majority of the rest of my grind.  I know it isn't the best, but I was able to play it A LOT without getting tired of it.

I'm pretty happy that I had Weezing in there, as it isn't a common 'mon in competitive decks these days, although I'll fully admit that the deck may be stronger overall with something else in those slots.  As mentioned above, though, I was fine playing this deck for a lot of games.

How many games, exactly?

Well, since most of the people who will read this are friends that I don't expect to judge me for it, I'll give the real answer...

674.  I went 338-333-3.  At somewhere around five minutes a game (thankfully, often less than that in ranked mode, as players are ready to move on to the next game in the grind as quickly as possible)...well, I'm good enough at multiplicaton to know that I don't want to think about that math at all.  Perhaps it's good enough to give the total amount of time as: pretty much every minute that could be spared from real life, and some that probably shouldn't have been, for the 15+ days I was caught up in the grind.  My overall winning percentage as calculated by the game (so ties count the same as losses) was 50.1%.  And if you take away the "gimme" wins when you're matched up against bots at the early levels, I may not have even had a winning record.  But y'know what?  I'll take it!

(And then...just so the world could have a little extra fun with me, I guess, I accidentally clicked back into a ranked game -- intending to just rest on my current points and not risk falling out of the Master Ball rank -- with a silly Golduck/Wigglytuff deck that was not exactly prepared for competitive play.  So I did drop back out, thankfully winning my way back in with a two-win streak -- after losing my first "serious attempt" to recoup the lost points.  So...you can add an extra four games to that total because I'm kind of an idiot.)

So where does this all leave me?  Well, I intended to just care about it this one time, to prove to myself that I was capable and get the emblem for the first ranked season, and then go back to the casual enjoyment of the game that most players had been experiencing since it launched.  But...apparently, having hit Master Ball, I may start next season already just a few ranks away from hitting it again (although still where most of the grind is found).  And in playing casual games now, I do have to admit that I kind of miss having something riding on the outcome of my games.  I'm honestly not a very competitive person in general...but I think I might be drawn back in...

And so, I'm telling myself this over and over: I do not have to succeed at this mobile game in order to prove myself to anyone.  But man, is this game good at what it's designed to do.  It hasn't managed to get any cash from me (yet), so I guess it's failed at its primary function (although it has raked in oodles of money from players around the world)...but as far as making me feel like there's always time for one more game, it's about as good as it gets.  You might even say The Very Best.

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Alright, time to tie this all in with the stuff I normally like to post here on Monstrous Matters.  I also happened to recently catch a Koffing in Pokémon GO, so to celebrate my little TCG achievement, I evolved Louise into a Weezing and decided I'd stat her out for OSR games, as I've done at times in the past.  First of all, here she is with Tulip:

And here's the PTCGP card she'll be based on:

For this as a final result...

Weezing

HD 3 (11 HP), AC 11

Type: Darkness

Weakness: Fighting

Ability: Gas Leak - All creatures near Weezing (including other active Elemental Beasts) must save vs. poison (CON) each round or become poisoned by its noxious gas.  Until healed, the poisoned creature takes 1 damage at the end of every round.

Attack: Tackle +5 (1d6 darkness damage)

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Showing some appreciation for 'generic' character classes...

Because I'm really starting to appreciate them.  Quite a bit, actually!

I can remember when I first came across NPC classes in the 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide (Warrior, Expert, Adept, Aristocrat, Commoner) back in...hmm, like 2003...?  I thought they were such a good idea that I immediately wanted to start making characters with them.  The Expert class, especially...I mean, why wasn't it already a widely used option?  It just seemed so versatile, and (personal side note, skip to next paragraph if that sounds terrible) it matched up with what I had as a sort of lifelong dream, to earn the right to be considered an Expert in one topic or another.  (It's why I eventually pursued a PhD...I was levelling up myself(!)...and arguably became just that, for one specific thing.  One beautiful, very narrow, practically worthless, conversationally tedious thing.)

I also liked that the DMG specifically highlighted the Expert class as one that may be worth promoting to the big leagues...to pull a quote from the SRD:

The expert could make a PC-worthy class choice, but only for those players willing to create a character focused on something other than a traditional adventuring career.

As someone who was pretty new to the ways of D&D and enjoying the chance to immerse myself in whatever class ideas I could get my hands on, this sounded awesome!  And then...I thought it was pretty cool when I happened to open the Sage miniature in a Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Game booster and realized that they had actually made him an Expert, according to the full RPG stats that were found on each mini's card (on the opposite side from the skirmish game stats).  (I think, anyway...)

The Sage, from an eBay listing; I can't wait to see the other side of the card and be proven right.  Someday.  Maybe.

When I eventually realized (via the SRD) that the 3.5 book Unearthed Arcana also included so-called 'generic classes' (Warrior, Expert, Spellcaster) that served as amped-up versions of the NPC options...and I found out that the True20 system, right from its start in the original Blue Rose book, sorted every character into a similar tripartite taxonomy...I started to really take an interest in this approach!

I think that part of the reason I've become so drawn to these classes is that they're a fairly clean combination of aspects I like in some of my favorite RPGs.  I love D&D-style class-and-level gaming because of its history, its implementation of genre archetypes, and its interesting 'stories' that are told without any dice being rolled, just by internalizing the abilities of a specific class.  And I love West End Games' Ghostbusters (maybe my fave RPG ever) and many of the games it has inspired, as their straightforward attribute + skill mechanics are easily grokkable and contribute to a freewheeling tone where it seems like, somehow, 'normal' people fit in and anything goes when it comes to the adventure.

Dr. Peter Venkman's Ghostbusters stats; from the very helpful collection at Ghostbusters International

I like where generic classes sit in between these two approaches and have had them in mind a lot lately while considering the setting that shares a name with this blog, especially since I typically think about the Monstrous Matters campaign as some variant of 'Ghostbusters + D&D.'  And to a lesser extent, I like applying the generic classes to thoughts on UNLTD/POA/whatever I end up calling this 3.75-inch action figure skirmish game thingy I'm kind of working on...

So, let's see...

I have one spot in my home where I actually display action figures (other than the Lego minifigs that topped our wedding cake).  The lineup changes based on whim and convenience.  Here's a pic I took a few months back; I figure that eventually, I'm going to want to have all of these characters statted out for playing war, so I guess I'll start with that parapsychologist down in the lower right (next to Tars Tarkas) since I already have some 'official' numbers to base him on.  Seems like a good testing ground for an Expert class (and I certainly have no issue treating the Venkman of the first film as a Level 1 character!)...

(He came from the awesome Plasma Pack set featuring the entire 'busting quartet in 3.75" form, btw...a pretty awesome 48th birthday gift from the parents this summer...!)

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Peter Venkman, Ph.D.

Expert, Level 1

Human, 34 years old

Affiliation: Ghostbusters (the 'real' ones)

STR       DEX        CON      INT       WIS      CHA

10 (--)  13 (+1)    10 (--)   11 (--)   19 (+3)  19 (+3)

HP 4   Move 30 ft.

Attack Bonuses: +0 melee (expertise with unarmed attacks), +1 ranged

Proficiencies (Expertise***)

Saves: Dexterity, Intelligence

Weapons: All simple weapons

Armor: Light armor

Languages: English

Skills: Investigation, Insight, Perception***, Deception***, Persuasion***

Tools/Talents: Parapsychology

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The first annual Monstrous Matters year-end awards...

...because I may as well pretend like my opinions are that important!

2016 is about to close out.  Here are some random reflections.

First, the non-gaming stuff:

WTF Event of the Year - The United States Presidential Election

I get that some bad stuff went down this year.  The entertainers who died got a lot of coverage.  On the world stage, the situation in Syria is pretty depressing.  And on a personal level, there was a tragedy in my hometown that people in a community that small aren't used to dealing with.

But when people around here talk about 2016 just needing to end, I can't help but think that a lot of it comes back to the U.S. election.  For what it showed us about American politics.  For what it showed us about lingering division in the country.  For what it showed us about the power of media (which we'll be sorting out for a long time to come).  And from my perspective (although certainly not from the perspective of a number of people I know and love), for the outcome.

Seriously, America.  What in the actual fuck.

There's really not much to say that hasn't been said many times over.  From where I stand, this was clearly the event that dominated the year.

From @DungeonsDonald.

New Song of the Year - Michael Bublé's "Nobody But Me"

Now, on to a happier note.  I'll admit that I don't really hear enough popular music to make a truly educated choice here, but when I hear a song that blows me away like this one did (and in such a genre-agnostic way), it oughta be recognized:

I couldn't find an easy link to the performance on The Tonight Show, which is the one I first heard, and which actually got to feature Black Thought of The Roots in the rap breakdown (rather than the trumpet solo above, which is also great), as on the album.  If you can find that one, it's definitely worth checking out!

Song That Would Have Been New Song of the Year, Hands Down, If It Had Been Released Several Months Later - Kendrick Lamar's "Alright"

Thank you to Atlanta community radio for letting me hear this song.  I make no claim to the emotions expressed therein, but I know they held a lot of power in the political climate we experienced this year.  It's also just a great song.

And now, for the games!

New Game of the Year - The Black Hack

In the OSR community, new games drop on a pretty regular basis.  It's kind of what we do, and it's a trend that lends itself to spreading one's attention all over the place.  So, when a game like David Black's The Black Hack comes along and gets people brewing and buzzing with such a central focus, it's worth paying attention to it.  Heck, I couldn't resist hacking it myself.

It also works as game, and it's a lot of fun!

RPG of the Year - Lamentations of the Flame Princess

James Raggi's game of Weird Fantasy is one of the real success stories of the OSR.  My buddy Ted has been running an awesome campaign using a bunch of the published LotFP adventures, which has helped to keep me connected to roleplaying in a busy year and given me a pretty good feel (I think) for the game's themes.  Check it out (you probably already did, long ago)!

Non-RP Game of the Year - Bohnanza

Yeah, these are just personal awards, so this one takes the prize by sitting idle in my game collection for about 15 years before making a leap to family favorite when it was pulled out of the closet on a whim this year.  I think this one has great potential as a "gateway game."  You gotta love "The Bean Game!"

Bohnanza on BGG

So...there we are!  Despite some struggles earlier in the year, and the stresses of the fall (as noted above), I have to say that I've actually had a pretty outstanding end of the year, and I hope you have, too!

Big thanks to all who have stopped by this little blog and become friends over the course of 2016.  I really appreciate being a part of your community.  Best of luck to everyone, and I'll see you in 2017!