Cute, awesome, or disturbing? You make the call!

You've probably heard of otherkin and otakukin, but my nephew is the first of a new race of mutants, the ninjakin. He sometimes says things like "God made me a ninja." I absolutely swear I did not put this idea in his head, despite the fact that I know all ninjas are totally sweet. Here's the little dude in the traditional outfit of his people:Part of me feels like discouraging his exploration of his ninja identity would be the equivalent of telling him there's no such thing as Santa Claus. Another part of me is afraid that if this phase isn't nipped in the bud he'll turn out like a character from one of Al Bruno's old rants.

Kid Skull remembered

Posting old crap has become a bit of a theme lately around here. Below the line is one of few instances I ever attempted to roleplay online. Back around the turn of the millenium I got into e-fedding, a.k.a. the online wrestling role-playing scene. I was most active in the first e-fed I joined, the LWA. If those three letters stood for anything I was never told.

E-feds are chock full of people interested in playing huge grunty, musclely guys. No surprise there. Most roleplaying posts by these people involve either showing off bling and bitches or establish that the character is the ultimate badass. So for my guy I decided to do something totally different. I played a comedy character called Kid Skull. He was basically a clueless fan with a skull mask and some pink trunks (he got them on sale). Kid Skull had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he could ignore a wide range of injuries based on sheer stupidity. His younger brother Stewart served as camera man for all of the Kid's utterly amateurish promo videos.

Kid Skull wrestled most of his matches in the Cruiserweight Division, where little high-flyers really came into their own. The promo below was written right before a big cruiserweight battle royal to determine the new Cruiserweight Champion. His two big threats were Leroy "Bad News" Brown, the villainous owner of the fed, and Nightwing, another rookie whose first promo was a total emo gothfest set in a ruined cathedral. Hence the themes and settings of the piece below.

---

Oh my! That's scary!
by Kid Skull

[Cut from static to another crappy home video. This time we are in an abandoned building of some sort. It's a dilapidated, rain-soaked mess. Vaguely boarded up windows allow moonlight to peer into the room. Broken, unidentifiable bits of furniture are scattered about. The wind howls as some rainwater drips from the ceiling into a large puddle on the cement floor. The lighting in here is rather poor and flickery.]

Boo!

[Kid Skull leaps into the field of vision, menacing the camera. He's wearing his ring gear: wrestling boots, pink trunks, and skull mask. To this he has also added a black cape, a cheap vinyl job like you can get with bad dracula costumes.]

Are you scared? Well, you should be! For you have found Kid Skull, scary goth vampire wrestling guy, in his Lair of Doom! Before I suck your souls and crush your blood--no wait. Before I suck your blood and crush your souls (Yeah, that's it.) I will enlighten you as to my dastardly master plan! Come with me!

[Kid Skull makes a beckoning gesture as he moves across the room, stumbling over some of the debris and possibly his cape. The camera pans amateurishly/ We come to a card table. On it are a dozen tiny colorful birthday cake candles and three of the larger ones each shaped like the number 6. These candles barely illuminate Kid Skull's spiral notebook, which is open to a section entitled 'Winning the Belt' with lots of stick figure sketches. Laying in the middle of the table is a checkerboard.]

From this dark crypt I plat my opponents' downfall! Here, watch the game of human checkers unfold! [He points to the single black checker on the board.] This piece represents the People's Corporate Champion, yours truly. These other pieces [motioning to the red checkers] are the other participants in the upcoming battle royal, while the board represents the ring. Behold, my master stragedy!

First I'll chokeslam King Gangster right out of the ring.

[Jumps one red piece and discards it.]

Then I'll slap a Dimaond Stunner on Scarface and hoist his fat mafioso butt over the top rope.

[Jumps another piece and flicks it off the board.]

Native uprising eats a jackass powerbomb to the floor!

[He continues his checkers game, taking another red piece off the board.]

I'm saving an Outsiderazor's Edge for you, Viper Armed.

[Another red checker gets jumped and tossed.]

Nightwing, ah, Nightwing. So you think you're superbad, eh? I haven't seen a decent fight out of you since you and the Batman split up! You spent your entire Teen Titans career being saved by run-ins from frickin' Wonder Girl, fer chrissake! You thin I fear you? [Jumps the checker.] I'm just gonna scoop you up [picks up red checker] and slam you into the crowd!

[Throws checker in the direction of the camera.]

Ow!

Oh, sorry Stewart. Anyway, that leaves just you and me, Mr. President Bad News, sir.

[Kid Skull looks down at the board, somewhat confused as he realizes that the two remaining pieces are nowher near each other.]

Uhhhh. Hmmmm. I guess we'll meet in the middle of the ring. [He quickly rearranges the pieces.] Two mighty titans on the world of professional wrestling sport entertainment industry. Unfortunately, only one of them can be Hardcore Intercontinental Heavycruiserweight Television Champion of the World! So then-

[Loud banging can be heard. Kid Skull looks off-camera.]

What are you kids doing in there?

Oh crap, Mark! I think it's the cops!

[Kid Skull looks around, panicked.]

Run!

[Kid Skull flees off camera. Cut to static.]

---

Kid Skull was surprisingly successful, primarily because none of the other players were doing anything like I was. I held that cruiserweight strap for a while and got a couple David & Goliath victories off of some serious heavyweight heels. All in all I had a good run with this character. When I purchased Legends of Wrestling II for the X-box I was thrilled to discover that the character creator menus included both a skull mask and pink ballet tights. Nowadays Kid Skull holds the Legends Tag Team belts with this Chyna-like amazonian grappler.

Free words for the taking

Every once in a while I rummage through old files on the harddrive on my computer at home. It's kinda neat. I found some stuff from the earliest phases of my current D&D campaign, such as stats for a half-dragon monstrous spider and the first four members of the Red Claw Cult the PCs encountered. I had forgotten that I had gone to the trouble of giving individual names and equipment to four first level warriors. Nowadays not even hill giants with 10 levels of barbarian warrant assigning a name; they're too disposable. I also found a list of faux words constructed by pulling apart English words and randomly reassembling their components. I almost certainly got these words from Chris Pound's awesome name generators page. Here's the list, if you're interested:

inreng, bipe, jitt, jashive, liveness, maiss, unless, unine, neth, fow, klozz, yeatchment, boyp, yaiben, tow, jip, yigeing, exline, deure, can, si, nupation, li, tip, cuspition, yotade, muffable, thoxin, inage, unell, incosh, que, fowff, thege, soubive, russing, le, chiss, kleaff, exyatt, wip, the, rasc, despep, gowshness, caw, girotion, exete, reeze, paw, dekloll, sux, chate, mottab, statt, liex, li, qui, theme, sciche, reep, chowp, lipetion, di, ineme, rejen, dattam, theng, socotion, gixill, cer, klailfing, tipition, keith, hexeme

I think it's neat that several real words came out of the blender.

a small item of future history

I just found a note I wrote many moons ago when I was researching the history of the Successor States setting, the background fluff for BattleTech.

Here's what it says:

2305-2309 War between the Sian Supremacy and the Capellan Hegemony.

2449-3049 The BattleMech Era

It's the second item that floored me a few moments ago. That's exactly six centuries of giant robot slugfests. Hot damn!

RIP Basil Poledouris

This morning I found out that Basil Poledouris passed away yesterday, a victim of cancer. Mr. Poledouris was responsible for one of the awesomest musical recordings ever created, the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. I'm not familiar with the rest of the man's work but the Conan soundtrack is so amazing it was actually the first CD I ever purchased. And I bought it years before I ever owned a CD player. It's one of the few pieces of music I'll play at my game table, as it never ceases to be inspiring. When it distracts me from the game with its pure over-the-top pomposity, I just don't care. If it's wrong to briefly pause from smashing orcs to listen to "Anvil of Crom" then I don't want to be right.

And now for something completely different...

I don't usually talk about my work here on the Gameblog, mainly because I want all my readers to think I'm an awesome dude and not the blackhearted villain I play during work hours. You see, I handle residential foreclosures for a bank. I could try to smooth over this hard fact by telling you all about the ridiculous lengths I go to in order to not take someone's home away. But that won't erase this brutal truth: somedays it's my job to take people's homes away. Based on past experience that last sentence will no doubt drive at least one of my regular readers away. Some people will never believe that I can do the job I do and not be an unrepentant bastard.

The above paragraph is meant to set-up today's weird work story. This afternoon I was in an abandoned home with my friend, Tom. He's a great, talented guy and a true friend. Tom was with me because he's my go-to guy for a lot of dirty work a desk jocky like me farms out to others. He inspects properties I may have to foreclose, changes locks, repairs damage, mows lawns, and pretty much anything else I need done to a house. He also repossesses cars for my organization. If I'm the guy that pulls the trigger, that makes him the bullet I guess.

Anyway, we bust into this abandoned house that my customer had rented to a relative. The relative stopped paying rent and rather than sell the house or work something out with me the customer decides to just let the property go back to the bank. The inside of the place was about average for an abandoned property: filthy and smelly, with a mish-mash of bric-a-brac strewn about. The smell was so powerful I had to go outside and spit a couple times to get the taste out of my mouth. And I used to have a job cleaning pig pens. (Note to self: Maybe I should try getting a nice job for a change.) So we're looking over the place and we see the usual collection of filthy old couches, broken cabinets, and miscellaneous trash. As I move into the back bedroom, I see a dildo laying on the floor. I'm hip to the existence of such things, having an internet connection and all, but I don't see sex toys laying around as part of my everyday experience. So I call Tom's attention to it. He seems completely unphased, which I found a bit strange.

Tom's a straight shooter of the old school variety. He doesn't drink. He doesn't smoke. He spends a lot of time over at his crazy fundy church. (I call it that to his face and we both have a bit of a laugh, so I'm not speaking behind his back here.) We spend a lot of time talking about politics. Somewhere along the way he got the idea that I was one of the few good liberals, probably because I think the right to bear arms is as important as the rest of the Bill of Rights. Meanwhile I tell him regularly that he's one of those wrongheaded conservatives, so he's probably a better man than I in this regards. Either way, if I'm the kind of guy who doesn't see sex toys very often, I figured that made Tom the kind of feller who I could almost believe didn't know such things existed.

But later back at the office we get talking about the incident with my co-worker Laurie. She posts in the comments section from time to time and will probably get a kick out of this story. Laurie points out the strangeness of abandoning a dildo in a house you were leaving. I totally see her point. If you're going to own a sex toy, wouldn't you value it? It's not like the broken printer or ripped mattress across the room. As far as I could tell (not that I inspected it closely, mind you) the phallus in question looked intact and functional. Why leave it behind? I wouldn't leave my game collection if I was leaving my house for good and while I enjoy the hobby I wouldn't exactly call orc-smashing an orgasmic experience. I would guess that a dildo owner would have a greater sense of attachment than I would to some books and dice.

As I'm pondering the deep psychological ramifications of discarded faux weeners, Tom pipes up. "You'd be surprised how many abandoned homes contain such things." He reminds me of a house he had a while back where he literally had to shovel a pile of dildos into a dumpster. Tom deadpans "Apparently women treat them just like they treat their men. When they're finished they just discard the things." Tom's single. Can you tell? Given his political and religious allegiances, I didn't have the heart to point out that not every plastic wang he's encountered in his career necessarily belonged to a woman.

Table madness

One of my favorite things to find in a game text is the Stupid Random Die Chart. Whether we're talking about treasure tables or wandering monster charts or potion miscibility or whatever. I love the simple magic of rolling a die to produces non-intuitive and even non-sensical results that I can then fold into my game. The amazing Doctor Rotwang blogged on this very subject a couple weeks ago.

Back in '98 or '99 I discovered a program called TableSmith, written by a fellow by the name of Bruce Gulke. Bruce has a nifty campaign world website and a fairly active blog. Anyway, TableSmith allows you to code your own random tables and generate volumes of results. Similar programs have been done before and since. The only thing that made TableSmith stand out was that it was the first time I had found a free-to-download version of such a thing. And it was super easy to edit tables or create my own.

1998 was also the year my Bandit Kingdoms campaign probably peaked and I got deep into using TableSmith in support of my kludged "1.5" AD&D hybrid. At the time TableSmith wouldn't hold any variables, but you could have one chart to call another for output, allowing you to build some very sophisticated results nonetheless. Nearly any chart in the DMG that I might need a lot got turned into a customized TableSmith file, allowing me to generate scads of results. I had 20 of every treasure type at my fingertips, with gems, jewelry and magic items all detailed. Also at the ready were twenty complete bandit camps, with 100 or 200 bandits apiece, and similar quantities of patrols and castle garrisons. My buddy Pat and I found my 27 page bandit printout this last weekend. (Thus precipitating this post.) The first five bandit mobs were all crossed out; Pat's wizard had set them all on fire.

My henchman generator was by far my largest TableSmith project, as it incorporated every race, class, and multi-class combination I allowed in the game. And that was a lot. We're talking half-satyr ranger/thieves and moutain dwarf deathmasters here. And each potential henchman had a random name from an incredibly diverse random name generator I put together over the course of several weeks of work. And each magic-user had a randomly generated spellbook incorporating nearly every AD&D spell published in Dragon.

But my favorite TableSmith projects were my random book generator and the tavern tables. The random book generator would produce a title and subject matter for a book. "On the History and Genealogy of the Duergar by Denro the Gentle" would be a typical result. I had a hundred of these ready should any player be silly enough to start browsing in a wizards library. I even had a chart that would give a brief sketch of the usefullness of the work in question. "A shallow treatment of the subject" or "Excellent info, but some parts are dangerously out of date" or somesuch. So guess what happened? No one ever even glanced at a book for the rest of the campaign. (Except spellbooks, of course.)

The tavern tables were glorious, in their own quirky little way. The tavern name sub-table actually produced a place called The Bee's Knees without any rigging of the results. And thanks to the results generated I can tell you cool things like The Lazy Wolf is the place to go if you like chess and the drink to get while playing is the imported Furyondian wine. Meanwhile The Salty Boar is famous for its pickeled chicken in wine sauce and for the nightly swearing contests. And The Swaying Lady has cheap ale, brawls, and naughty girls. What else do you need to know?

The latest version of TableSmith supports a whole lot of new features not available back in '99, including the ability to use variables. (People with no programming experience will have no idea what that means, but trust me when I say its important. I'd try to explain but in truth I'm barely computer literate myself. I once showed my programmer friend Don some of my TableSmith output. He said "You'd be dangerous with just a little Basic compiler." At the time I couldn't quite bring myself to ask him what the hell a compiler was.) Also cool is the fact that TableSmith is supported with a metric buttload of pre-made tables. Mr. Gulke also has some other little gamer utilities here. I've used his Wilderness Mapper a couple of times, for my 3E "Greymoor" campaign and for this re-draw of the Outdoor Survival hexmap. Nowadays I think I prefer Ar-Kelaan's HexMapper, as it's designed to look like the various maps of Mystara, but Wilderness Mapper still gets the job done.

I really ought to download the latest version of TableSmith and type in all the various random charts from Basic/Expert D&D. I wonder if it's robust enough to support Clasic Trav chargen? That'd be cool.