DOG GOD Vol. 2 Rises to the Top!

 

Click here to download

Yes, it is true! The second DOG GOD has emerged into the light, shuddering and covered in amniotic fluid! It rises to join its preceding volume in the pantheon of cut-up zines that are made by me, that you can download and look at WITH YOUR VERY OWN EYES.

As before, this issue draws mostly from the Nov 99 and Jan 00 issues of Dragon, but it has been augmented by a collegiate alumni magazine, a 2018 issue of Counseling Today, and the Sept 2020 issue of Cosmo.

This one has an actual, functioning prose fragment in it, which I am immensely proud of.

More magazines will be required for the next one of this style, and so I might turn my gaze towards book recycling or Wikipedia redactions or so on for the next.

There's not much else to type here. Go read this dumb thing I made.

DOG GOD Vol. 1 is Live!

 

What

DOG GOD is a cut-up zine.

Why

Those old Dragon magazines weren't going to be of any other use and I was bored.

Who

It was me, I did it.

Where

Here

When

Now

In What Order

This is volume 1. Further volumes are dependent upon me bumming more old magazines off my friends.

***

In full seriousness though, this was a load of fun to make and I can't wait to make more of them. There is a certain therapeutic joy in cutting stuff up and breaking out the glue sticks. Collage does not get nearly enough play in this weird little rpg scene of ours, despite it being an art form with a barrier to entry so low that you have to dig to find it.

The magazines used for this zines were a pair of Dragon issues from the turn of the millennium (Nov '99 and Jan '00, I believe), which I had bought several years ago in a used bookstore.

They were pretty awful. Turn of the millennium D&D, right on the dying breaths of AD&D and the dawn of 3e, was awful. Modern D&D's milquetoast blandness is manna from heaven compared to the simmering stew of racism, sexism, mediocrity, and utter lack of humor that existed two decades ago. It is from an age before the development of self-awareness.

But at the same time, it is a fascinating archaeological look into the past of the hobby - ads for video games that no one has heard of by companies that no longer exist. Some actually really good art tucked away between pieces that can only can be described as "certainly an attempt". There is a certain personality here, even if it is an odious one.

I cannot believe that Knights of the Dinner Table was a comic that existed.

The Wizard's Fugue - December Patreon Post

Sam Carr

Anyone can become a wizard. Phenomenal cosmic power can be yours at the low low cost of being driven irrevocably insane.

This is fine. Wizards do not give a shit about safety.

The Wizard’s Fugue is a single-player game, of sorts. Maybe more of a writing exercise. Always start with FOOL. Choose randomly if you want, choose a limited number if you want.

0 FOOL

Property is bequeathed, goodbyes are said, affairs are put in order. From hereon, the initiate is dead to themselves and the world. You descend into the Fugue, where there is mad dancing and the droning of tuneless pipes.

• What did you give away? To whom? What parts of your life did you have to set straight? What are you leaving behind? 

I MAGICIAN

Here is created the book that will contain your spells and soul, built by your own hand. Without it, you are a madman.

• Describe your grimoire - its cover, its binding, its pages and contents. What part of yourself did you put into it, to form the necessary spiritual link?

II HIGH PRIESTESS

The art manifests in a mark on the wizard: a brand, an emblem, a sign, unique to each one.

• What have you been marked with? Does the sign have any meaning?

III EMPRESS

The wizard must live in the world, alas, and the world will push back at them.

• Who among the earthly powers will you have to deal with? What kings and ministers will you have to navigate?

IV EMPEROR

A wizard’s authority is made manifest in the binding of their familiar.

• What have you called up from places unknown? What is its nature, its temperament, its form and power?

V HIEROPHANT

A wizard must know the powers in whose shadow they play. The Fugue is too delicate a time to make contact

• What beings beyond the veil have you seen? Did one attempt to make contact with you?

VI LOVERS

The Fugue severs the past, but cannot erase it. Memories without context will haunt the wizard.

• What images float through your mind? Who have you left behind? What relationships did you burn and set to ghostly wandering in your unstable memory?

VII CHARIOT

No wizard’s retinue is complete without a mystic means of conveyance.

• How are you carried along. How might you make your appearance? How did you make it, buy it, steal it?

VIII STRENGTH

The Fugue grants power, and the means to taming it.

• What arcane art has the Fugue granted you the greatest power in?

IX HERMIT

The wizard’s lot is isolation. They must raise their sanctum by their hands and arts alone.

• Where will you make your hermitage? What shape will it take? Who will you permit entry? How will you defend your solitude?

X WHEEL OF FORTUNE

The Fugue is not without its favors. It will grant a vision of a further power: an artifact, a sacred place, the grimoire of a dead wizard.

• What did the Fugue show you? Where is it? What must you do to attain it?

XI JUSTICE

Wizards have rivals. This is how they do not destroy everything - they are too busy overthrowing each other. The Fugue will bind you with another, a second half to resist and oppose you.

• Who is your rival? Who challenges your power and overturns your schemes, and whose schemes do you overthrow in turn? What was the first interaction you had with them.

XII HANGED MAN

As the initiate is born into wizardry, they must witness a death. Not from a distance, nor from the intimacy of the connections they must burn. A complete stranger, breathing a last, shuddering moment

• Who did you watch die? How did they die? Where? What have you learned?

XIII DEATH

Within the Fugue, a wizard catches a glimpse of their own death. Just a glimpse, an image, an impression. Neither day nor hour is known.

• What did you see? Can you make out anything at all? What image are you left with?

XIV TEMPERANCE

The Fugue will destroy an initiate utterly if they cannot maintain their center. Great energy is given to maintaining

• What chain have you placed upon yourself, to prevent complete dissolution? What principle binds you?

XV DEVIL

The Fugue reveals all, everything that lurks in the dark corners of the initiate’s mind. These demons must be dealt with.

• What demons of your mind has the Fugue dredged up? Did you submit to their power over you, did you suppress, did you synthesize, did you cling to denial and ignorance?

XVI TOWER

In each wizard’s spellbook is an ars magna, a most terrifying and powerful spell that may only be uttered once.

• What great art has been formed from your Fugue-broken soul? What would make you use it?

XVII STAR

Without ambition the wizard is nothing.

• What shall you strive for, when the Fugue is done? Why did you grasp at power in the first place, if not for some hoped-for goal?

XVIII MOON

The dark night contains greater fears for the wizard. The last test is to be confronted by that which will haunt you until death.

• What did you see in the moon’s dim light? What will be the grim terror of your life?

XIX SUN

Dawn is here. You have survived the Fugue.

• How do you feel? What changes have been wrought on your mind and body?

XX JUDGEMENT

Surviving the Fugue is the first step. Surviving the judgement of your peers is the second.

• Who served upon your Council of Three? What did they say to you? How did they treat you? What was their verdict of your transformation?

XXI WORLD

It is done. All complete. You are an initiate no longer, but a full wizard of the arts of mastery.

• Where do you go now? What goes on in the world around you? What revelations have clicked into place?

Lighthouse Rules 0.1

This idea has been percolating for a while. Not just a hack, but an actual ruleset.

Everything here is subject to change according to foppery and whim. 

Premise

Players are members of Lighthouse, a civilian volunteer organization that serves as an intermediary between the public and the paranormal, be that investigative, protective, interpretive, diplomatic, or scholarly.

• The first notes for this idea are dating to the summer of 2012. Let it never be said that I am not terribly patient with my ideas.
• Surprising no one, I am straight mainlining a whole lot of SCP influence on this one. More on that down the page.

Pithy Elevator Words

• A game about the paranormal, poverty, and holding on to hope in a fucked up world.

What is the paranormal?

• There is the 'normal'- the world defined by the laws of coherent cause and effect. The paranormal is everything that violates and bypasses this - paracausality. It shouldn't work, but here it is.
• The world is anticanonical - fluff will be provided as starting points and leading questions, the reader will draw the connections between points.
• No real-world folklore or esoteric tradition carries over into the setting. There are no fairies, vampires, werewolves, etc. If it ever looks like something like that, you ought to be suspicious, because it is definitely not the truth.
• The paranormal is absurd, as well as terrifying and often beautiful.

What about the poverty?

• You are neither rich nor powerful. You aren't playing as an organization with bottomless military black budget and cool toys. You have to make do with what you have.
• Rich and powerful people do not have your interests in mind and they will do everything they can to fuck you over.
• Humza Kazmi's community rules have a high priority of getting adapted in some way.

What's up with the fucked up world?

• Police brutality, the surveillance state, voter suppression, catastrophic climate change, insulin rationing, ultranationalists in the streets, pick an expression of systematized oppression and it will fit here.
• Because it is anticanonical, whether or not it is our own fucked up world is preferential. I prefer it as our own through a mirror darkly.
• Players have to navigate, survive, and resist the course of the fucked-up world.

I love myself some new-weird-modern-paranormal-conspiracy-horror, but (and I am certainly not the first person to say this) conspiracies aren't particularly fun anymore. They are something to be resisted.

Really Though, What Do You Do? 

• Weird shit is going down, go investigate it and try to keep everyone relatively safe.

Preliminary Rules

Corewise, this is a whole lot of GLOG and Black Hack, but for Esoteric Enterprises

• I love me some EE for it's compatibility with basically everything else I own, but I want to experiment with making a rule set more directed to the theme I have in mind.

Core mechanic is roll-under stat on a d20

• Straight from Black Hack. No need to change what works. It's nice and clean and I like it more than modifiers.

Stats are generated by rolling 4d4.

• Pulled directly from GLOG. I like the range this gives, as even at the absolute minimum you still have a 20% chance of success, and at highest you end up with 80%. 

If for whatever reason a stat would go above 16, you get Advantage.

• The only competition to advantage in my books is boons / banes from Shadow of the Demon Lord and since this is roll-under there's no simpler option than

The stats are (names subject to change) Body, Reflex, Mind, Spirit, Violence, and Thaumics

• The Tough / Fast / Booksmart / Emotional Intelligence quartet is solid as hell and sells itself. It works in Shadow of the Demon Lord, it works in Disco Elysium, it just works.
• Combat and magic get their own stats because they are separate disciplines. Just because someone is strong doesn't mean they are necessarily good at committing violence against other people, and just because someone is smart doesn't mean they can figure out the ontological knot of paracausality.  
• Thaumics is absolutely getting a different name, probably an acronym because "applied paracausality" is a mouthful.

Skills, I'm not certain about skills.

• Option 1: Skills work kinda like how they do in Troika!
• Skills are added to the appropriate stat when you try to roll under. 
• Minimum of 1, maximum of 4. Freeform, no set list.
• Any skill can be used for any stat, if you can swing the reason why halfway well.
• Skills that raise a stat above 16 just give you advantage vs 16.
• Option 2: Skills give you advantage on that thing.
• Can still be used for any stat if you can swing the reason,

Things That Are Definitely Going to Be Involved

• Lateral Advancement -You will be able to spend Insight gained while out to unlock new abilities, learn new spells, purchase items, upgrade your hideout, or unlock changes to the world around you. Think of it has your carryover currency in a roguelike.
• Armor negates damage - Straight from Black Hack. Since weapons will not do traditional damage in points, having typical damage reduction isn't needed.
• Spells for everyone - Magic is fun, everyone gets to use the fun things.This is what the Thaumics stat is for - spells have a cost, and if you fail your roll, you get a fun backfire table!
• Violence will fuck you up - Explanatory on its own.

Things That Are Definitely Not Featured

• HP - If the hit is successful, there shouldn't be 'not getting hit points" to make it a technical miss. That's boring and I don't like it.
• Levels and Traditional XP - Busywork. Toss it all.
• Money - The only time money has ever been fun for me was a Unicorn Meat playtest where the players had to budget out their rations and decide how much they could afford to spend on supplies, if they could risk hunting for more meat, and how much was to be kept to eat and restore HP. I want that. Any currency (Demon Liquor, likely) will only be in single digits.
• Worrying about food or light - Modern day game, these are irrelevant outside of special circumstances.
• A traditional bestiary - No stats, just descriptions of how they interact with their environment.

Stress and Keeping Your Shit Together

• Stress is player-directed. No interruptions from the referee calling for rolls breaking up the flow. When a player sees something that they would expect to freak out about, they make a Spirit check. On failure, they are forced into a fight/flight/freeze scenario, which might have an additional die roll (weighted according to the likeliness of outcomes)

Character Creation

• As of now it seems to be a choice of three "cards", essentially - archetype, background, and occupation. Each of these will have a trait and 3-4 points of skills (if that is indeed how skills will go.)
• It is very Troika! at the moment but I won't lie Trophy Gold is a fine piece of chargen too.
• This part is the most up in the air at the moment. I might even choose to forgoe it entirely and just lead with a bunch of premades.

Other Things

• Players will have input on creating the City, their hideout, and Delvers' the underworld hub-bar.
• The scope is tightened to the City, the surrounding environs, and the Underworld.

 And that's where we are so far. Tell me what you think!

The Therefore Game

I was incredibly, absolutely, unreasonably bored at work, so I came up with a solo game.

The Therefore Game

This game has only two parts. Both of which are stolen. The first part is the FU Freeform/Universal RPG. The second bit is a nifty piece of writing advice that apparently comes from the South Park guys (whom I have no particular fondness for) that goes something like this: instead of "and then", events in a story should be chained with "therefore" or "however".

How to Play

Start with a character statement: "X, a Y, wants Z."

Then, add a "therefore..." and make a follow-up statement, presumably the first step in X's attempt to acquire Z.

When you have written that, roll a d6 to determine how that therefore statement turned out.

1. Negative / Failure, with a malus or just huge.
2. Negative / Failure
3. Negative / Failure, with a bonus.
4. Postive / Success, with a malus.
5. Positive / Success
6. Positive / Success, with a bonus or just huge.

If you are at work and can get away with it, just type "d6" into Google.

If you are dealing with two parties in competition with each other and want a change of POV, you can just reverse your outcome.

Repeat until X has achieved Z, or you feel a good place to end.

Example: Sir Percival, the Dragon, and the Princess Pat

• Sir Percival, a knight, wants to slay a dragon.
• Therefore, he begins his preparations by reading about them in the scriptorum (5)
• He learns that they love treasure and devouring maidens.
• Therefore, he plans a way to bait out the dragon with gold and one of the princesses. (5)
• He's able to get a chest of gems from the king and the Princess Par is on board with the idea
• Therefore they ride out to where the dragon lives. (6)
• They are able to set up an ambush outside the cave. Percival takes his position, Pat takes hers with the chest of gems and calls out to the dragon.
• Therefore, the dragon emerges from his cave to investigate the sound and smell. (2)
• The dragon pick's up Percival's scent and stays by the mouth of the cave, on guard.
• Therefore, Pat gives Percival a signal to back off and let the dragon come out. (2)
• Percival doesn't pick up on it and gets closer to the edge of the cave mouth.
• Therefore the dragon tries to sweep him off the cave lip with its tail. (4)
• Percival is knocked off, but manages to land on top of the dragon's back.
• Therefore he tries to plunge his sword into the dragon (3)
• The sword bounces off the dragon's scales, but Pat has thought of a recovery plan!
• Therefore Par begins to sing a magic song (4)
• The dragon falls asleep, but so does Percival.
• Therefore, Pat undoes the rope tying her to the tree to solve the problem herself (2)
• Unfortunately, Percival is really good at tying knots.
• Therefore, Pat tries to grab the pocketknife she always keeps with her (3).
• It falls from her hand, but it looks like Percival is waking up! 
• Therefore a terribly embarrassed Percival runs over and unties Pat (2)
• But the dragon wakes up before he can get there!
• Therefore it tries to roast them with its fire breath (1)
• The fireball gets caught in its throat and explodes! The dragon is wounded terribly! Pat is untied!
• Therefore Percival and Pat go in for the finisher! (5)
• With vorpal blade and Rigabamboo (it's red and gold and purple too) they chop off the dragon's head! Victory!

The story could, of course, keep going from there, but I think this is a suitable example. If you end up trying it out, let me know!