If you want to use a tabletop RPG to engage in horror scenario gaming, chances are someone recommended Call of Cthulhu to you. That's a fine game, but there are others and you really ought to check them out to see if they're more to your liking.
Beyond the Supernatural by Palladium Books: This is more of an action-horror game, because most playable characters are empowered somehow, for those who want less Friday the 13th and more
Dead Reign by Palladium Books: This is their zombie survival horror game, Palladium's reaction to a game called All Flesh Must Be Eaten, lacking only in setting variety due to the other games in the catalog fulfilling this function.
Nightbane by Palladium Books: This is their reaction--long delayed--to White Wolf's World of Darkness, and also in the action horror vein. Yes, you play a monster, and you're fighting other monsters, but this is game embraces how WoD is usually played (superheroes with fangs and a side of soap opera bullshit) instead of being pretentious twaddle.
All Flesh Must Be Eaten by Eden Studios is long out of print, but it was the breakout zombie RPG when it was a going concern. The magic of the game was that it was a toolkit product that nonetheless ran your bog-standard Romero/Biohazard zombie survival horror out of the box due to that being the default setting for the way the rules worked. Without much trouble whatsoever, you could adopt a lot of setting conceits to work within this mechanical framework; other Eden games that used this system proved it.
Cryptworld by Goblinoid Games. This is a clone of a game called Chill, and it's akin to CoC in that you're playing investigators dealing with supernatural evils, so you're often ignorant of what's going on and what you're dealing with until the very end.
A while back, I wrote a guest post for the Castalia House blog on King Arthur Pendragon. You can find that here, the publisher page here, and its Amazon entry here.
It was only a matter of time before someone finally bothered to translate the concept behind that game to an analogous period.
Paladin takes the gameplay concept and formula of Pendragon and moves it from The Matter of Britain to The Matter of France. Everything I said about Pendragon applies to Paladin, with the major change being the source material and the timeline of events you're working with. This is not Dungeons & Dragons; it requires a different attitude despite some familiar-looking things on the character sheet, and making that jump away from today's Clown World to the pre-modern world of Charlemange's France or Arthur's Britain is the real challenge for most people to tackle- a challenge most of the Fake Gamers afflicting the subculture cannot surmount, if they even try to do so.
In light of the #BrandZero initiative, it's good to remember a bigger reason to participate in it: it's a direct Narrative Warfare counter-attack technique.
Anciently, when a conqueror completes a conquest one of the things done do cement control and establish dominance is to change the mythology of the conquered nation. Their heroes get degraded, their deeds defiled, and the conqueror's heroes supersede them in all ways- often with ease. To the generation surviving the conquest, this is insult added to injury, but left unchecked the generations that follow will accept this degenerate mythology as normal- and if the conqueror is wise, they leave an out for the subjects to go all the way and buy into their control. It's the mythological equivalent of killing a man, taking his wife for oneself, and slaughtering his children by her before seeding your own to both remove loose ends and make her accept the conquest as inescapable.
That was in the wake of a Big Brand's last big movie franchise release, soon to be followed-up this December. You know which one I'm talking about.
Friend of the blog Wolfman At Large is very good at making meme compliations. This one? Vikings.
Yes, this includes shots from Vinland Saga, which you should read or watch, and the names of many historical and mythical sagas- all of which are part of Western culture as much as the literature we received from ancient Greece and Rome. Those sagas are fantastic reading in their own right, filled with stories of heroes and struggles that still inform Western culture to this day- the obvious presence in the Metal and Gaming subcultures is merely the most obvious.
This is how we once were. If we are not mindful, we shall need to become like this again.
#BrandZero shall be extended to tabletop RPGs. After this post, I will not talk about Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, or Paizo Publishing because none of them need the free marketing that even negative coverage of their actions and products provides to their brands.
There are so many alternatives to the Cult of Current Year D&D that are far more worthy of any and all attention I can provide. Furthermore there are other non-D&D tabletop RPGs, and some of them are not only fun but they also aren't made by SJW Death Cult cargo cultists and I'll mention them here from time to time. Yes, this includes long-time publishers such as Palladium Books (despite my own love-hate affair), R. Talsorian Games, and Steve Jackson Games.
Finally, DriveThruRPG is a SJW Converged company and therefore depreciated at the Retreat in favor of Amazon or other alternatives for online storefronts and will not be linked to here unless there is no other option.
Friend of the Retreat Wolfman At Large threw this compilation together. Let's see if we can get Kanye to go full Crusader in the wake of releasing Jesus Is King.
This is how it's done. The late Andrew Breitbart said that politics is downstream from culture. We all know that the SJW Death Cult, a Satanic front, operates on the moral level to shape the narrative in order to seize the culture. This is a counter-attack at that level, and all you need to see that this is a massive Witch Test is to look at the reactions to Kanye's album.
This is some Providence going down right here. Sure, these memes have kicked around for a while, but with each cycle they've memed more and more people into wanting the real thing. I'm not saying we're going to turn Kanye West into a Crusader King, but he may become like Saint Joan of Arc: a charismatic standard-bearer inspiring a people to do what needs to be done.
Book Two is now the focus of my writing attention. I want to get the manuscript written before the end of the year. I may throw together an ebook of that draft available for backers if they wish to serve as Alpha Readers. I will then get to work immediately on Book Three and get that drafted and ready for editing. At this point I will execute a crowdfunding campaign to finish them. This means raising the funds to hire Brian Niemeier to edit both books as his schedule allows, first and foremost.
Short stories will resume, playing the role of gaiden material. The first will be a revision of "Crisis at Garmil's Gate", the story that leads into Reavers of the Void and talks about how Red Eyes broke Azazel out of his prison. I want to place these stories in the magazines such as Cirsova if I can; those that I cannot place therein will be published at PulpRev first in serial format, and after enough of them are out there I will collect them into volumes and publish them in anthology form.
After Books Two and Three are out there, I will them write Books Four through Six back-to-back before I do another crowdfunding campaign.
But that's not all.
One of the Big Brands has a very good merchandise line consisting of licensed books that go over the fictional technologies and locations in that property that appears in said Big Brand's feature presentations. I think that there is a disruption opportunity for small folks like myself. The technology to publish novels via Print On Demand also allows for publication of far more, and to that end I want to collect the Lore Posts, clean them up, and put those together with the best artwork I can afford to produce Star Knight Technical Manuals.
At that point, I should have enough visual imagery to put up wearable/useable merchandise at a place like Cryptofashion.
If you want to be treated like a serious competitor, then you have to act like one.
Following Jon del Arroz, Rawle Nyanzi, and Brian Niemeier I'm also going totally silent on SJW-Converged IP and I'm no longer likely to talk big anime either because they don't need the help. Just read yesterday's post for my reasons for joining this course of action if you're coming in late.
Brian's post nails the Narrative Warfare component: the enemy is utterly radio silent on any possible alternative to what they control. They are completely aware of how vital attention is, and I've been foolish in not taking the hint. No longer. That line is severed here and now, as surely as my right foot got severed from my body, and I am done with it. As seen on Rawle's post:
That applies to every single pop culture complaint. I've gone on at length on the YouTube channels who would rather profit from complaining about the problem than actually do something useful to solve it; I won't repeat it here.
The audiences are just as intractable, and the above is why. They don't want a solution; they want to feel better about the brand not being what they want, so they mouth their discontent but play the paypig anyway. The channels give them their dopamine hits, so they reward it with donations. It's a cycle both halves are disinclined to deviate from, as it keeps them self-medicated enough to tolerate the pozzing instead of being disgusted enough that they're driven to actually solve the problem.
This is how they think, both those pushing the poz and these passive pussies whining about it.
"Why isn't (X) in D&D?" "Do it yourself. It's your game." "But it's not OFFICIAL!" "Then it's not about what you want. It's about making everyone else see that you got what you want, and making them accept it at their table, isn't it?" "Of course it is!"
They want the brand, that Mark of Officialdom, and no amount of telling them that they can find the entertainment they seek away from the brand can convince them otherwise. You can link it to them, show it to them, hand them copies, and they still won't listen or care because it's about the brand. They are, in truth, Fans of the Brand. That's why they remain loyal to a SJW-converged brand despite all professions of opposition, and getting them out is no different than getting them out of any other cult- right down to the depressive episodes many who do leave suffer until they recover. That bugman who cried at the Episode 9 teaser? He's a True Believer in a cult.
And now you see why SJWs leave alone things that--in old-time newspaper lingo--were "below the fold" (below the top half of the front page, the part you don't see before you buy a copy). They usurp the prestige of a brand to push their cult by using an existing cult as a front, exploiting one cult to advance another; it's also why business marketers push turning brands into cults, as cult adherents are far easier to push into doing what you want. Do the math, and see the results all about you.
This is a direct consequence of Christendom's collapse. There's one sure way to fix this mess.
World Class Bullshitters has documented the effect on the merchandise sales that the Devil Mouse's management has had, all for the worse, and now it's the Blu-Ray sales that show the sale. Rian Johnson's trashfire sold half of what Abrams' first outing. It's a massive trashfire there also. I would expect that other merch sectors show a similar tale, and the bean counters at Lucasfilm and Disney are aware of the collapsing merch revenue. The PR spin is as much a tell that they know of that as it is awareness of other reports showing this same effect.
Now we're getting reports of massive reshoots of the final sequel film. That's never good news; it's going to be worse than a trashfire, and that's in the hands of someone that can construct a proper ending- something we know J.J. Abrams cannot do without help, help he doesn't have here. Eight possible endings shot are not a good sign, especially so close to release. Only the shills and bugmen are going to not dump on this good and hard, but those same folks are going to be as loud as possible to drown out the rest of us.
At this point, if they wanted a controlled demolition then they got it and now they're looking to atomize the rubble so nothing remains. This is not accidental anymore, and I doubt it ever was. This is deliberate, and far beyond cynical amoral corporate exploitation; this is malevolent cultural manipulation, a deliberate demolition of a powerful piece of popular culture, so that whatever void is left is filled with SJW Death Cult stuff.
This is what happens when you play the paypig. They kill what you love anyway, wear it as a skin suit, make you lie about it in public to humiliate you, and then replace it with their own woke bullshit when the suit falls apart at last.
STAR WARS IS KILL!
Walk away. It's done. You can't save it, but you can find something else that isn't pozzed that does scratch that itch. Besides my stuff, look below.
If your local library doesn't have it, Amazon or your local used bookstore likely does.
Veteran author David Stewart talks about the practical limits of SJW Death Cult bullshit in tabletop RPGs, focusing on the juggernaut that is D&D.
The argument here is a familiar one. The claim, which is true, is that the Wokeness has practical limits because the user is in full control of the game. Users can, and do, change the rules of the game. They do this to the current edition. They do this with older editions. They do it with hybrids of editions. They do it with hybrids of one or more editions with another tabletop RPG entirely. Yes, this is a practical limit, and it is useful to act as a filter to keep out the Wokeness and the poseurs that push it.
The problem is that this argument relies on a category error. The error is the identification of what the problem is. The category is control over the narrative surrounding the game, not the category of how the game itself is played. What David correctly identifies as the undesirable influence of videogame thinking on tabletop RPGs is merely a means of achieving that narrative control.
Wizards of the Coast wants to turn D&D--and, by extension, all tabletop RPGs--into lifestyle brand extensions. To that end, they have to change how D&D is perceived, and that's what all the changes with 5th Edition is about. The rule changes correspond to changes in the game's brand narrative; Critical Role and other well-publicized Let's Play series such as every single one on the Official D&D Channel are as much a part of this scheme as the rules changes themselves.
They want D&D to be seen as a long-form party game that's all about storytelling and expression with all of the threat of a Nerf bat; they want it to be a theme park where the freak show is on full display all the time and victory is assured so long as you follow the rules--that's the videogame influence--so if something goes wrong it's because the GM is a crypto-Nazi that changed things.
That's right. The SJW Death Cult wants tabletop RPGs to be a reflection of r-selected psychology, with all the stupidity and degeneracy that entails, and manipulating how the normies see D&D is meant to change the narrative of D&D. Control of the narrative is control of the culture, and culture is downstream from politics. As Seattle, Washington is a Woke Capital center we see how what goes on in a seemingly inconsequential subsidiary of Hasbro has outsized influence when you realize that these people have friends that work in Microsoft and Boeing as well as in local and state government- in addition to many other gaming companies in multiple media.
It's also a play that works the long game. As gamers who aren't woke enough are attrited out of the visible scene, either by design on their part or otherwise, that influence wanes and their persistent presence grows accordingly. Once a critical mass is reached, and it is a low threshold, they gain that control and hold it with a white-knuckle grip. This is how SJW Convergence works, and why it is done. This is why Narrative Warfare is a thing and why it matters.
Yes, the future belongs to those that show up. If they show up believing their enemy's narrative, they will embrace the enemy's culture and enact the enemy's politics. The enemy knows this. THAT'S WHY THEY DO THIS! That's why they don't care about breeding their own replacements; they just steal yours.
This past week I got the paperback copies of Reavers of the Void from Amazon's POD center, got them sorted out, and then sent them into the mail. Backers who put in for a paperback copy should get them before the end of the month- subject to Customs delays for my backers outside the United States.
I have now done it. I took a novel from concept to fulfillment. I knew nothing when I started, and this was quite the process along the way. I'm taking a victory lap before I do it all again. This weekend should suffice.
But Monday? Back to it, with my full attention given now that these matters are sorted.
And if you aren't one of them, but you want a paperback, click below.
It's Canada's best export, The RPG Pundit, talking shit about the BBC pushing poseurs in tabletop RPGs while making coffee.
You can fault the Pundit for his rhetoric, but he's not wrong.
What's key here is identifying what's going on--and he touches on it--and that is seizing control of the narrative around tabletop RPGs. Successful seizure by poseurs relies upon this to maintain effective control. Why? The Narrative controls the Culture. Narrative-->Culture-->Politics. Controlling the perception of a thing is that narrative control being exercised.
And as this is a Narrative Warfare campaign based on the moral level of Rhetoric, this puts the SJWs pushing it literally as heretical Death Cultists pushing a competing religion to Christianity. Listen to the language used; it's all based on moralist positions that presuppose Christian morality while actively denying Christianity. That's why they're heretics, and the proper counter-attack goes one step higher to religion itself.
They don't get to use Christendom to attack it. Flushing them out as heretics is making them out-group themselves, something the r-select psychology of the SJW Death Cult is pants-shitting terrified of experiencing- especially if they find themselves among potential hostiles. That would be YOU, and it had better be if you want this to stick.
Make them clown themselves, then brand them. Watch them flee, especially the males--one cannot call them "men"--who are always Gammas and should be dealt with accordingly.
Thanks to JD for the review. It was a great read, and I think all of you will enjoy it also so go there and read it.
Here's your money quote:
One thing about the Pulp Revolution and its offshoots such as this has proven to me is that something has been missing in mainstream fiction for awhile. Whether it be the romantic adventures, the red-blooded action, the weird horrors contrasted with normality, and the wondrous sights beyond our Earth, stories from the old world of publishing aren't interested in that so much these days. Not when there are more boring inward subjects such as "identity", modern day political preaching, and demonizaton of certain crowds to cover for their dwindling base instead. Audiences don't want what they offer, but that doesn't mean it isn't going to be crammed down their throats regardless.
In short, I wrote the Science Fiction that we got when Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars in serial format over a century ago. Just with giant robots, laser swords, and a very explicit Christendom.
Observe the Death Cultist playing the Poseuer infiltrating tabletop RPGs and pushing his Satanic agenda.
If you GM or DM at a con, your table *will* sooner or later have players whose apparent gender does not match that of their PCs. I realize this can be a challenge to track.
If it's difficult for you, it's ON YOU to find a way to make it easier.
— Dan HELL-K, Annelid Industries Intl intern (@2ndLevelBard) October 15, 2019
Let me put this bluntly:
When you run into poseur faggots like this, you give them a Plato o Plomo ultimatum: Shut up and play, or ship out for good. They knock that shit off, or they're permanently banned. Tell everyone else about this poseur, and don't let him--or anyone like him--pull this shit; run him, and his fellow travelers, out after you tar and feather them. Then shut the gates down behind them. That's how you purge this plague, one table at a time and one event at a time, until the scene is scoured and scrubbed clean.
It is necessary, but not sufficient, to stop giving money to people who hate you. You also need to give that people to people on your own side, and that's been one of the big contributions against Globohomo that Vox Day has done with his building of alternative institutions to those pozzed by the Death Cult. Now he's aiming for the real deal: alternative education means. Below is his post on the new offering from Castalia House, the Junior Classics.
The purpose of The Junior Classics is to provide, in ten volumes containing about five thousand pages, a classified collection of tales, stories, and poems, both ancient and modern, suitable for boys and girls of from six to sixteen years of age. The boy or girl who becomes familiar with the charming tales and poems in this collection will have gained a knowledge of literature and history that will be of high value in other school and home work. Here are the real elements of imaginative narration, poetry, and ethics, which should enter into the education of every child.
This collection, carefully used by parents and teachers with due reference to individual tastes and needs, will help many children enjoy good literature. It will inspire them with a love of good reading, which is the best possible result of any elementary education. The child himself should be encouraged to make his own selections from this large and varied collection, the child's enjoyment being the object in view. A real and lasting interest in literature or in scholarship is only to be developed through the individual's enjoyment of his mental occupations.
CHARLES ELIOT
PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
1918
This is an essential action to help preserve the hard-worn knowledge of Western civilization. To back the campaign to revive the Junior Classics by REDACTED PRESS, please visit the crowdfunding campaign page.
All print editions will ship to the USA, Canada, Europe, and Australia. The shipping cost is included. The digital editions - EPUB and MOBI formats - are included with all of the print edition sets.
That's the post in its entirety. You can read the comments here if you like.
If you have children or grandchildren, or you've got family with such, getting in on this and adding it to the family library--You have one, right?--is well worth the expense because you're getting the Classics in their proper form and not in the pozzed form that pervaded the last few printings before being discontinued.
And if that excites you, then get on board the hype train because Vox Day wants to do more projects like this in the future in addition to continuing Castalia's mission of bringing the best available without interference from the Death Cult. Because politics is downstream from culture, and the Narrative controls the culture.
The leading Hispanic voice in science fiction, Jon del Arroz, did the world a great public service today by devoting his Lunchstream to the topic of the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy in the context of reviewing a cringy book.
In the YouTube chat, Edwin Boyette had a great comment: "I've gotten to the point where I'm just muting or blocking early and often." He's right. If you can't exploit any such interaction to show others what Gammas in the wild are like, then just shut them out and be done with it. As for in-person interactions, whenever possible be like Bright Noa.
I'm going to use this video to talk about a game design matter going back to the '70s.
World of Warcraft is to MMORPGs as Dungeons & Dragons is to tabletop RPGs. Therefore much of what afflicts WOW afflicts D&D, and that's because WOW is a direct inheritor of D&D despite being in a much bigger medium.
Back in the old days, when we kids got into D&D in the late '70s and early '80s--yes, we were the same age as those punks on Stranger Things--we weren't stupid; we wanted to maximize our odds of succeeding because we knew what we wanted the game was about: getting the best gear and slaying the baddest monsters. To that end, we went with the most powerful character options we could get our hands on and could get the Dungeon Master to allow.
Races are Character Options. Of course many of us went--especially once we dove deep into Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition--with playing Elves for that sweet Fighter/Mage synergy, followed by playing Dwarves for that sweet Fighter/Cleric action. Most of us didn't play in campaigns that lasted long enough, and so never got high enough in level, for the Human benefits to kick in; Level limits, slowed XP gains, etc. were not felt properly due to the short campaign lengths we had so we got the power boosts without the pain ever being felt.
That's a tabletop RPG environment, and we were kids who weren't that up on playing as a team so we weren't thinking in terms of group utility. We quickly figured out what races, classes, spells, etc. were best and ranked the rest in descending order of usefulness by our success metrics. Meta-gaming was there from the beginning. This did not go away. It only got worse over time as RPGs spread to other media. Especially so in MMORPGs, "having something to bring to the table" matters because groups of all sorts are no different about maximizing success odds and minimizing risks of failure.
So you get videos like Kelani's here, talking about the racials for a new pair of playable races. The developers know that one race isn't as desired as another, so they put in those powerful racial abilities as flat-out bribes to get players to pick it; they took what TSR did by accident and made it work as deliberate design policy, and they are not the only design team--in any RPG medium--to do so.
It does matter. In World of Warcraft, the meta-game is defined by the top streamers on Twitch and the top raiding guild: Method. Everyone wants to top the meters, so they follow the lead that this cohort--we're talking less than a dozen people for a scene with millions of players--sets, as put down in video and written guides hosted online at places like WOWHead, MMO-Champion, or Icy Veins. Once a guide is down and generally accepted, it becomes hard to deviate from it in any group situation where the play is meant to be challenging: the metagame state for World of Warcraft's Mythic Dungeon Invitational demonstrates this to a tee; all but a few groups Night Elves with a class composition of Warrior/Druid/Roguex3, and that is THE composition because of the maximum useful synergy of class and race abilities to minimize risk of failure in a competitive environment where real money is on the line.
Gamers are people. People want to trivialize challenges whenever possible, especially if the risk can be removed while the gains are unaffected. This is a process that might as well be an application of the Pareto Principle in another context. If there is a best option, that becomes required if it possible to turn that best option into a hard requirement; "Best Or Benched" is a thing.
Which means that the way to deal with it is to make certain that the meta is consistently disrupted. For a tabletop RPG this is best handled by the Game Master at the table, making use of the liminal quality of the medium to ensure that playable character options--class, race, gear, powers, etc.--are constrained by the natural outcome of the actions players take during play. (You can't play (X) if you're not where you can recruit (X), and so on.)
Videogames can't do that. It's on the developers to make those calls and execute those duties, and that requires a ground-up design that facilitates disruption as a mechanic; Mark Kern's Mecha-v-Kaiju game Em8er has at least one of these as a way to govern access to gear, and if Kern's the savvy man I think he is he'll do that. This is not the case with World of Warcraft and many other top MMOs; other factors conspire to make metagame disruption difficult, and deliberately making stuff overpowered as a means to break up a metagame status that's not good for the business of the game is the best they can do.
If you get into game design, remember to murder the meta.
Now that I've got backer copies of Reavers heading out, I can finally take a moment to reflect on this entire process.
I came into this a complete noob, without any resources to speak of, and just enough of a plan that I had something to work from going forward. I managed to get Reavers written, edited, and--in ebook form--to my backers before I went down and had to be hospitalized. That's nothing to take lightly. Once I was well through rehabilitation I began figuring out how Amazon's KDP systems worked, which proved to be not the issue I thought it would be, and got both Kindle and Paperback versions out.
For a first effort, I did well. Time now for the follow-up.
I will do a crowdfunding campaign, but I'm unsure if this is the time for it; I'm thinking after New Year's may be better. When I do, I'll put in Perk options that I know worked for Brian Niemeier. If you have any guidance on this question, drop a line below. In any event, I will focus on getting Book Two written before the end of the year.
Someday I'll get the real Gabriela to make real the music I hear when I write her doppleganger.
For those people who shall attend BlizzCon this year, and want a deniable means of protest, consider the following. I'm aware it's short notice, but I suggest that you engage in some cosplay and LARPing. Specifically, cosplay as Pandaren.
And your LARP scenario is that you're protesting the imperialism of the Mogu. That's these guys.
It's deniable. You're LARPing something that actually happened in-game, and would again if the Mogu could do it. Add some additional Horde characters, especially Zandarlari Trolls, for additional deniability. When challenged, refer to Mogu incursions into Zuldazar and the attempt to reunify under the Thunder King; they can't kick you out so long as you stay on message. Nonetheless, all present will get the message; you'll know you're seen properly if the Virtual Ticket crew goes out of their way to cut you out of the feed and you're cut off at Q&A panels.
Blizzard Entertainment has not only sanctioned a Chinese Hearthstone player based out of Hong Kong for supporting the protests, taking his prize money and banning him, but has also fired the sportcasters who interviewed him. This has not gone over well with gamers in the West. Even Mark Kern's upset about this, and he's been one of the most sober-minded people in the business about these controversies.
The reality of the situation is not a good one, in practical terms. Terror House Magazine sums it up in this Twitter thread:
The only way this could be stopped is if the federal government bans the Chinese from investing in American companies.
But they're not going to do that.
Nor are they going to force social media companies to stop basing their Terms of Service on what Angela Merkel wants.
The most you can do as an individual is to stop giving Blizzard Entertainment your money. To do more than that requires gathering into a group, forming a team, and organizing effective political pressure upon your government to kill everything that makes it viable for a corporation like Blizzard Entertainment to do this. That is a grind worse than any in any Blizzard game, and it's an opposed effort because the Chicoms actively monitor their efforts to literally Pay To Win- and that's what this is.
This is how the Chicoms exercise soft power: they finance foreign industries, cultural especially in the West, until they have a critical mass of dependency. Then they use that position to exercise leverage over the foreigner, turning them into de facto agents of the Party. As Terror House notes, the European Union uses its bureaucracy and courts to achieve the same end via gatekeeping access to the European Common Market.
And yes, both are already deeply influencing politics in the Anglosphere via these tactics as well as more common plays such as surreptitious financing of political campaigns and purchasing regulation favoring their ends. How in the hell do you think Aussie, Kiwi, Yankee, Maple Leaf, and Brit policies enabling this scheme get put into place? Clown World may have its roots in the Enlightenment, but that doesn't mean it isn't exploited by others for more immediate ends that are nonetheless congruent with the Death Cult's objectives.
And if this doesn't piss you off, go read Anonymous Conservative. The Chicoms would've financed far worse if the God-Emperor had not won, and the EU would've supported it.
This is not an isolated incident. This is a clear follow-on from the Diablo Immortal cockup from last year, revealing the extent of Chinese influence over Blizzard Entertainment due to Chicom financing via their agent Tencent. Expect more of this leverage being exercised over Western gaming before it's expunged, and don't be a retard thinking that just closing your wallet will fix it; it won't. Only wielding the Sword of the State will do it, which is why abstention from public affairs is no longer an option, and the God-Emperor--for my fellow Americans--is fortunately willing and able to do just that.
It's been a far more interesting year than I anticipated, and not for all the right reasons. Spending a third of it either in a hospital bed or in a residency to rehabilitate, learning I had chronic medical condition, and losing part of a leg was not part of the plan. However, getting knocked down that hard did reveal to me who my friends and allies are and who are but ephemeral passers-by with no concern for me whatsoever.
As for what I did plan to do, I did get my first novel out this past year. Later than I would have liked, but it got out; paperback delayed about as much. Reviews have been positive, and it's done as well as I expected; I am encouraged and will continue with this series, and I will talk about another crowdfunding campaign for it soon. I want to see this become the first Western SF series in Super Robot Wars, and be made into an anime series with music by the Living Goddess of Music. That ain't gonna happen if I don't follow through.
And I emerged from all this into a changed world a changed man. Not all change is for the better; the idea that all change is progress and that all progress is improvement is a one-two punch of lies. The changed world is not changed for the better, but degraded from what it once was, and that it happened along a well-known and well-worn path demonstrates that the Whig View of History--which SJWs embrace without even knowing the name as fundamental dogma--is a Satanic lie.
And I am diminished. Make no mistake about that. Losing part of your body irrevocably changes everything about your life, permanently handicapping your capacity to act in the world, even if it's as so small as part of your pinky finger- and I lost more than that. The adaptations I am forced to make closed off paths for me, and having a prosthetic leg doesn't restore access to them; I need the prosthetics technology science fiction--especially cyberpunk fiction--once fantasized would be accessible by now to do that. Yet I do not complain; it's done, it's lost, and it ain't coming back so there's nothing gained by crying about it. Far better to work with what remains to walk--and I can yet walk, thank God, with some difficulty--what paths are still open to me.
But today, today's a day for cake and pizza, and I already had the pizza. Cake's coming with dinner. I've been dodging the Sandmen for 24 years, and despite a close call they haven't gotten me yet. If you're inclined to give me a gift, check below for the Lists.
Oh, there's sadness to be had here, but it's not Mouse Wars.
Well there we go ladies and gents. #StarWars. The granddaddy of the Space Battle. After four decades of innovation, creativity and merchandising. Brings it's saga to a close with.... an A-Wing with a green stripe on it.
The sadness is the fact that a channel with the reach that Spacedock does is still whining about the Devil Mouse's successfully leading the Vermintide against Star Wars.
The same applies to World Class Bullshitters, Geeks & Gamers, Templin Institute, Midnight's Edge, and far more fan channels who should know better than to keep chasing after these things once the poz takes hold. No, they're zombified now; blow their heads off and be done with them already. You can't save what is already lost! What you can do--what you channels should be doing--is using your incredible reach to find their replacements.
Why in the hell are you not bringing your audience's attention to perfectly viable replacements? Is it that hard to go to Amazon, browse the Space Opera section of the book and Kindle stores, and pick a handful to present in a video or podcast? Is it that hard to look through what's available in Amazon Video? Do you want to solve the problem, or do you want to profit from it?
Here, have some leads.
The reason the Devil Mouse is right to ignore you is because you still act the paypig- you give money to people who tell you TO YOUR FACE that they hate you. That does nothing but breed contempt, and rightly so, because it shows that you have no integrity, no dignity, and no self-respect. You're nothing more than a cuck whining about the bull fucking his wife without doing a damned thing about it.
Star Wars is Dead. GET OVER IT.
Your money is better spent replacing Star Wars with something else that isn't shit, but scratches the same itches. I'm aiming right for you with Star Knight. Nick Cole & Jason Anspach want all you guys who loved the Clone-focused episodes of Clone Wars, and Jon del Arroz has your laser swords and space magic powers handled with his Nano Templar series. Stop whining and start promoting. Your audience will thank you.
If you ever needed to see a full-blown Gamma faggot going all Secret King, here's your video example.
This is a clip from Asmongold's livestream on Twitch from earlier today. The Gamma here isn't Asmongold. It's the smarmy faggot who stalked the man relentlessly, deliberately singled him out, specifically configured his character to beat Asmongold, and then cuts a video with extra smarm to brag about it.
Caveat: Asmongold's stream persona is a persona, so take his reactions with a grain of salt. Ditto the enabling Gamma here, McConnell. Therefore it's entirely possible that smarmy boy here is also a persona, but nonetheless this is a perfect display of Gamma Male behavior.
Now, ask yourself this: why does this boy care?
Because without the notable figure to stalk and harass, this boy would have nothing at all. He has no value of his own; it's all derived from the figure he's bothering, and he knows it- the tells are all around. The very fact that he cut this video proves he's trying to leech value--validation--from Asmongold, and Asmon doesn't do anything more than any other shock jock would.
Now translate this to real-world behavior, where the very same pattern expresses in a far more subdued manner, and you get the typical Gamma in the wild. No wonder Vox Day hates them and wants them all run through a woodchipper; if this is the sort of shit he's talking about when he talks about how bad Gammas are, then yeah he's right to despise them.
And, as is so obvious to those of us who've done this dance, we know this: Asmongold can, and will, just ignore this faggot and lose nothing. Smarmy boy, on the other hand, goes back to being a nobody faggot without Asmongold around to validate his existence. Well done, Secret King. Enjoy your crown of ashes and dust.
Yesterday the team behind Super Robot Wars did a livestream. No new game for the main console series got announced. Instead, we had confirmation of a Switch and PC release for Super Robot Wars X, some stuff for the DD mobile game, new Soul of Choukugin stuff for Mazinkaiser and Yamato, and an anniversary crossover event for X-Omega. It's that crossover that had me going "You brilliant bastards!" Let me show you what they're doing.
In spirit of Cross Omega's fourth anniversary, Popuko and Pipimi from Pop Team Epic will be showing up in the game. Masami Obari was in charge of designing the mecha version of Pipimi which showed up in the OP for the special episode of Pop Team Epic.
I'm not gonna lie. I'd watch that if it were a legit series, or even a recurring bit in a second series of Pop Team Epic. While I'm not into X-Omega, being a mobile game with all that entails, I'd be down with Pop Team Epic showing up in a console game as a special crossover stage (as V & X does in T).
If you didn't see this coming after the Age of Sigmar fiasco, you weren't paying attention.
The Vermintide comes for you, Warhammer fans. The Devil Mouse has its claws and put the bite into Games Workship. They're going to do to you what they did to Star Wars--and you have seen what they've done, don't deny it--and they are doing to Marvel. Everything you find sacred about 40K will be defiled and violated and paraded before you as a humiliation ritual to mark their conquest and destruction of yet another IP friendly to men and boys. They will do this with glee and abandon; they know what they're doing, it's not at all an accident.
And you're going to lose what you love unless and until you get off your asses, form ranks, and start bullying the hell out of these ratlings like you're actually playing Vermintide with all the cheats on. The Vermintide fully intends to seize the gates and force you out of the very fandom YOU CREATED. They want to consume it utterly, caring not if they destroy what hosts them, and then--like the rats they are--they flee when the collapse hits only to rally and swarm another healthy culture.
Welcome to the Culture War. Time to defend your Imperium from the Vermintide and their Black Crusade.
Full credit for this goes to the Supreme Dark Lord, Vox Day, for the following. He quoted the below from Neon Revolt's post, which you can read here.
Last week at work I traced a massive subcontractors mysterious source to someone who is currently running for President.
The company produces nothing, I found it because we gained access to an area of this company that no one has been given access to before by a new employee not fully in the know. What we found were 165 items each individually valued at over $1,000,000 missing, all ordered in quarter 1 of 2019.
Our audit further lead us to investigate quietly and trace back over $10 Billion of undelivered, but paid for, Navy equipment and materials, and it all goes through the same subcontractor.
The subcontractor is fully owned by a shell company which shares a physical location with it but with two different street address, which are actually on two different street because it is a corner facility, very smart. During this process of tracking the missing items we went to the subcontractors facility to find it........completely empty. The two companies have a single office with some desks in it and over 400,000 square feet of empty warehouse in the middle of nowhere West Georgia.
Further tracking the shell company we found that it is owned by another shell company, which in turn is owned by a company which owns 5 luxury car dealerships, a big four professional American Sports Franchise, a VERY liberal movie studio, all of which have been noted as being unprofitable, and this single Navy Contractor.
The family that owns this company has a current Senator and a Current Presidential Candidate in it.
To which the SDL offers this commentary:
Translation: Amy Klobuchar, the Pohlad family, the Minnesota Twins, and River Road Entertainment, which produced 12 Years a Slave and Brokeback Mountain, among others.
I have to admit, it's a little bit bizarre to read about this, especially in light of the way I could still probably drive River Road, which connects the North campus to the South campus of the private school I attended, while wearing a blindfold.
But it certainly stinks of Deep State satanry. Do what they tell you to do, say what they want you to say, and even if all the world will not be yours, you'll be very well compensated for your obedience. And it also explains why, despite spending more money on the military than most of the countries in the world combined, the US military keeps falling further behind the Russian military in terms of deployable technologies.
This makes the revelation that a former 60s Leftist radical of the Symbionese Liberation Army went underground here, turned herself into a respectable middle-aged society matron with a husband and children, who fully expected to live out her days hiding in plain sight without ever seeing any consequences for her actions, far more interesting that was previously the case.
As as spook stuff tends to be a family business, it's interesting to see what became of her siblings and children as a result of her own spook activities--and make no mistake, the radical Leftism of the Boomer Youth in the West was spook stuff--and to no one's surprise we have a daughter making a reasonable go of it as a singer. Just like how Jim Morrison went into entertainment on the back of his father's spook career, waiting for the right moment to be fixed into stardom.
And you thought it was just Bob Dylan who made the deal at the crossroads here in Minnesota. Nope.
Backer copies are expected to arrive a week from today at the earliest. I will turn them around and mail them out as fast as I can.
And that is what you can expect more of this year. By this time next year I want Star Knight to have three books on sale and Books 4-6 in active development, a process I intend to be as transparent as I find practical via this blog. I won't post about it all the time--plenty of other things to talking about, like gaming--but more writing stuff will be here. One of those things, however, is another crowdfunding campaign. More on that later.
That brings me to another change. I'm going to shut down The Study temporarily. Blogs readers are like genre readers; they stay in their lane. The way writers who work in multiple genres handle readership has applicability here, and until I know what to do with The Study I won't post there. It remains up as an archive for now; all posting that would have been done there moves here, where it'll be seen. When I decide what to do with it, I'll announce it here.
Empire stays active. It's got a substantial readership of its own now, despite being on a weekly schedule, and that makes it worthwhile. I want to figure out what else I can do for that readership, but right now maintaining course while I build out here in the genre fiction end of the culture front seems to be the best use of very limited resources.
So that's overall what to expect here: more talk about Star Knight, more talk about building up Star Knight, more commentary on everything informing Star Knight. The backer copies are on their way to me, so I'll be getting ready to turn those around when they arrive and get them on their way to my backers. For the rest of you, you can buy your own paperback copy here and Kindle here.
