#AtoZChallenge2022: B is for Bermuda Triangle

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: B is for Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle might not be one of the big conspiracy theories, but it is an important one for me. 

The Bermuda Triangle was a gateway drug for me for all sorts of quasi-normal, pseudo-scientific ideas.  I think it was a set of "documentaries" I saw in the late 1970s.  The one that comes to mind most often to me is 1978's Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle.  I remember watching it at the Times theater in my old hometown.

The movie was presented as a documentary and to my 8-9-year-old mind that meant that it had to have had some scientific rigor to it.    The movie was a collection of "true stories" like the loss of the Navy's Flight 19 and other tales.  Many that still get repeated today.  It also included a lot of conjecture as to why this area had so many disappearances.  My favorite was one about a malfunctioning energy collection crystal from Atlantis that would zap ships and airplanes and either destroy them or send them to alternate dimensions.  Like many documentaries of this time it tries to make connections to Egypt and even to the Maya and Aztec cultures. 

Statistically speaking, the waters of the Bermuda Triangle are no more or less dangerous than any others given the number of ships.  In a 2013 survey of the most dangerous shipping areas, it doesn't even rank in the top 10.

I have been through the Bermuda Triangle twice now.  Once while flying home from Jamaica (our flight was not allowed to fly over Cuba) and once on a cruise ship.

For NIGHT SHIFT

I am going with the crystal idea for NIGHT SHIFT.  The Triangle was the site of some ancient alien base that later had to be abandoned. There is indeed a giant crystal that charges "Vril" (more on that on V day) from sunlight.  Periodically it releases its built-up energy in a blast that discorporates whatever is in its path. Does it destroy the object or, as some scholars believe, does it transport it to somewhere else?

Some even believe that these crystals are pyramid-shaped and have the same dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza. 

The remains of the Bimini Road are also part of this base, but so far no one has figured out how they are connected. 

The biggest problems here are 1.) discovering the crystal and it's nature and 2.) getting down the crystal and turning it off. 

I would say that there are smaller crystals that are connected to it.  This can give the PCs some clues.  Especially if the crystals glow and pulsate in time with the larger one.  Someone would need to correlate the brightest flashes with disappearances.   

Given that reports of missing ships seem to have dropped off (that darn GPS!) and the height of the reports peaked in interest in the 70s I am thinking of setting this in my Spirit of 76 campaign. Another chance for me to use some ideas from "The Fantastic Journey."

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

#AtoZChallenge2022: A is for Ancient Aliens

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: A is for Ancient Aliens 

Let's kick this A to Z challenge off right and dive right into Ancient Aliens.  This will be one of my bookends for this challenge since I plan to use Zecharia Sitchin as my Z entry.

Now while there is a ton I could say about these theories today and the rest of this month, I do want to make it 100% clear that I do not buy into any of these notions.  They are good for RPG material though.

Ancient Aliens is the notion that ancient people were visited by aliens (extraterrestrial advanced lifeforms) and not only did these ancient people regard them as gods they shaped the cultures of these people and even, in some theories, shaped their DNA. 

I want to address the biggest issue with ancient alien ideas.  They are all notoriously racist.  There is an underlying notion that "white people couldn't figure it out, so brown people must have had help from an advanced species."  Which is pure bullshit.  We do have better ideas on how the pyramids were built and why.  We know how the stone heads on Easter Island were transported. We even have better hypotheses on how places like Stonehenge were built. None of these involved magic or alien technology.  Renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass has been particularly critical of these ideas saying they take away from the ingenuity of the Egyptian people.  I agree.

Once you start reading into this (and I even found a couple of questionable documentaries) it opens a whole rat's nest of crazy topics.  I am not going to go into any of these topics in detail. No room here and way off scope. But I am going to link some of the more *interesting* ones and the ones that had the most effect on my work here.

• 5000 BCE
• Anakim
• Nephilim
• Reptilian conspiracy theory
• Serpent gods/worship 
• Serpent symbolism
• Serpent Seed

This all makes one think about the movie and TV series "Stargate."  And it was looking into all of this that made me realize how much stuff I can use here.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Most ancient alien/god "theories" are centered around Egypt and the Pyramids.  But many also pull in myths, legends, and stories from ancient Babylon, Sumeria, and the Fertile Crescent.  Others also involve American cultures like the Mayans, Aztecs, and the Toltecs.  While Egypt and the Fertile Crescent certainly had interactions, the Central and South Americans had no contact with them. In fact, that is a central thesis of these theories; "They had no human contact but there are similarities, therefore they must have had divine/extraterrestrial contact."  Ok, technically that is not a theory but more of a poorly worded research position trying to move to a hypothesis.  I am going to suspend my years of doing and teaching research design though for now.  This is for a game, not a grant.  

In NIGHT SHIFT Ancient Aliens DID exist, but they did not give humans high-tech materials or help them build the pyramids.  Humans were slaves and many times they were food.  To quote Dr. Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters II, "And that is the whole problem with aliens, is you just can't trust them. Occasionally you meet a nice one: Starman, E.T. But usually they turn out to be some kind of big lizard!"

The ancient peoples feared them, but I am going to say they mostly tried to fight them.  There were organizations created then to combat this alien invasion and some still exist to this day. 

These ancient aliens were those lizards.  They invaded ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and gave gods like Set, Apep, and Tiamat.  Then they went over to Central America and gave Queztcoatl.   The world of NIGHT SHIFT is absolutely overrun with alien lizards and their genetically modified lizard people.  

The ancient alien theories claim they are "reptoids" and are from stars in the constellation Draco. IT doesn't matter it seems that some of the stars in Draco are only 20 ly away (σ Dra) and others are as far as 7,000 ly away (V571 Dra) and everything in between.  But for NIGHT SHIFT let's pick Thuban (Alpha Draconis) as their homeworld.  It is 303 ly away, so a good distance.  It could explain the gap in time between visiting Ancient Egypt and Meso-America, they had to go back home.

I will get into the details of these lizards and what they can do.  But this is a start.  They have been here since the beginning and are still here now.  Maybe they are connected to the dinosaurs and responsible for all the myths about dragons.  

Who knows. 

I guess we all will soon.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

Be sure to visit all the A to Z blogs this month at the Blogging from A to Z blog.

April 2022 A to Z Blogging: The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories

I can't believe that April is nearly here.

For many years now I have participated in the April A to Z blogging challenge.  Blogging every day is not really a challenge for me anymore; 15 years into this and I still have a lot to say.  For me is to find something that I want to talk about for a month straight AND provide you my reader the same sort of content you are used to.  That's the real challenge.

I debated on whether or not to do it this year.  But I came up with an idea and told my wife. She thought my idea was dull (it was) and instead suggested the topic I am going to do now.

So allow me to present to you, 

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories for NIGHT SHIFT Veterans of the Supernatural Wars.  

The idea here is present to you a conspiracy theory and then how to bring it into your NIGHT SHIFT games.  I have my list ready to go but I do reserve the right to alter it as the discussions here take me. 

A few notes.

1. I, generally speaking, do not believe in ANY of these conspiracy theories.   I have spent the last month reading about them in earnest and while many are fun, some are downright racist and/or dangerous.  

2. I am not supporting any of these conspiracy theories.  Quite the opposite. They a fiction of the same level as my own "Generation HEX" or "Weirdly World News."   So while none of them seem to stand up to real scientific scrutiny, they can be fun for an RPG.

3. YES there have been some conspiracies that have turned out to be true.  The plot to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was one.  But I am not convinced that the people doing that (the Black Hand) had WWI as their goal.  The suppressing of dangerous chemicals in cigarettes and the plot to keep the exploding tanks in Pintos by the Ford Motor Company were others.  JFK was killed by a lone gunman and 9/11 was a plot by Al-Qaeda and not the US government.

For these, I am keeping an eye on the Conspiracy Chart as created by Abbie Richards.

I am going to avoid some topics for various reasons.  My first requirement for anything here is "will it be good in a game?"  So if you are wondering why I pick some topics and not others that is usually the case.   For example right now "P" is a toss-up between "Phoenix Lights" and "Paul is Dead."   Phoenix Lights have more game-related uses, but the "death" of Paul McCartney is an old favorite of mine. 

My goal is to try to include NIGHT SHIFT stats and rules as I can.  I want to get the word out on my favorite RPG.  I will try to situate them in the various Night Worlds when and where I can.  So many of these ideas can be great fodder for Weirdly World News or even my Valhalla, AL setting. 

This could be very fun!

Gary Con 2022

I had a great Gary Con this past weekend.   I spent all my time in the Elf Lair Games / Troll Lords Games booth.  I spent my time selling copies of NIGHT SHIFT and Castles & Crusades.

I also got the chance to run into so many people I only get to chat with online.  I stopped by the Goblinoid Games / James Mishler Games booth to finally say hello.

I picked up some print versions of books I previously only had in PDF.

They were also selling copies of a new RPG, ShadowDark by Kelsey Dionne of the Arcane Library.  It looks rather good.

I also stopped by Bloat Games booth and got the chance to see Eric Bloat and Josh Palmer and grab a copy of their game What Shadows Hide.

Again this looks like a lot of fun.

I am not an autograph hound, but there were some signatures I wanted.  Top of the list was Darlene.

I also got to stop at Jeff Easley's booth and got him to sign his art from the 25th Anniversary Boxed Set.

 

And of course, I HAD to pick up the tribute/homage covers of the new Castles & Crusades covers.

 They do look really nice.

I didn't play any games or run any, but I had a great time.  

Looking forward to next year!

Monstrous Mondays: The AD&D 2nd Ed Monstrous Compendiums, Part 7

The Monstrous Compendiums would eventually move over to an annual format of perfect-bound soft-cover books.  These followed on the footsteps of the combined, hardcover Monstrous Manual, which people liked much better.  The idea was to publish a collection of all the published monsters from other products in a Monstrous Compendium style format.  But the days of perforated and loose-leaf pages was over and the Annuals and the other books that followed were all bound collections.

To my knowledge, there were four of these in total.  I never owned the print copies, at this time I was getting married and moving into a new house, though I have been able to get the PDFs from DriveThruRPG.  Curiously, Annual Vol. 2 has not made it to PDF yet.

Monstrous Compendium Annual - Volume 1

PDF 128 pages, Color cover art, color interior art, $9.99.  129 monsters, Aballin to Xaver.

This first book took on the trade-dress and style of the early AD&D 2nd Ed line and was a companion piece to the hardcover Monstrous Manual. 

There are a lot of monsters here I have seen in later editions of the game and some are completely new to me.  There are a surprising amount of dragons for example. There are few I recognize from 1st Ed that I guess had not made it over to 2nd ed yet (Gibbering Mouther as one example). There are a also a few I recognize from Ravenloft, given a more "generic" or general approach.

It is a good collection of monsters, to be honest.  While the page are formatted to fit a book and not really a Monsterous Compendium (the left or right justification of the text on titles) you can still take this PDF and print your own page to fit into your Monstrous Compendiums.  I am going to do this with the dragons for example.

Monstrous Compendium Annual - Volume III

PDF 130 pages, Color cover art, color interior art, $4.95.  131 monsters, Alaghi to Zhentarim Spirit.

This third annual takes on the trade dress of the later printing AD&D 2nd material when the "2nd Edition" subtitle was removed.  The formatting looks transitional. That is I see here the original Monstrous Compendiums eventually morphed into the style I associate with the last years of 2nd ed (and TSR for that matter).

The volume includes a lot of monsters I had seen in various Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms publications at the time and a few that I assume got their origins in the Dark Sun and Planescape product lines.  There are some that also first appeared in the Creature Catalog from Dragon Magazine (Lillend for example).

There are few more dragons here too and, in a surprise, two demons / Tanar'ri.  So something here for everyone.

This book also includes the Ondonti, the Lawful Good Orcs. So don't try to tell me that "Good" orcs are a new thing.

Monstrous Compendium Annual - Volume 4

PDF 98 pages, Color cover art, color interior art, $4.95.  104 monsters,  Ammonite to Zombie, Mud.

This fourth and last Monstrous Compendium Annual was published in 1998 by Wizards of the Coast, though the TSR brand is still on the books.  Additionally, this book also indicated where each monster came from whether Forgotten Realms or the pages of Dragon Magazine. There are some that I think are original to this volume. There is even a monster from Alternity here, which is a big surprise!

I would also like to point out that this is the first of these Annuals that acknowledges that it is based on the original D&D rules created by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

There are quite a few new-to-me monsters here and few I have seen in other places before.  It is nice to get them all into one place.  

These annuals certainly represent the widest variety in monsters I have sen in any of the other compendiums.  If I were to play AD&D 2nd Ed again, I think I would start with these as my sources for new and different sorts of creatures.  I am sure that people that were still playing at this time (I had gone on an AD&D sabbatical from 1996/7 to 2000) might be more familiar with these books and these monsters, but it is a joy to open a book, even one 20-25 years old, and see something new.

I am now at the point if I print these out I am going to need a third 3-Ring binder.

Gary Con 2022 Bound!

I should be in the car headed to Gary Con as you read this!   

 Not running any games, not playing in any as far as I know.  But I will be at the Elf Lair Games booth next to the Troll Lords.

So if you are there come by and pick up a copy of Night Shift!

Random RPG Thoughts

Have a bunch on my plate at the day job right now and I am headed up the Gary Con tomorrow and the weekend.  The best part of Gary Con?  I can drive in, drive out, and sleep in my own bed every night!

Unnamed Victorian/Rural Gothic Mini-campaign

I want to run an adventure/campaign set in Victorian times and combine "Little House on the Prairie" with "True Detective" Season 1 and Carcosa.  Essentially you are all a bunch of gritty detectives and have chased this dangerous "End times" cult to the US Midwest in the 1880s.

This cult had a member that is a bit clairvoyant and saw World War I and decide that it is better to end the world.  She went mad (naturally) and this is how the PCs discover the cult's activity and connects them to a string of grisly sacrificial murders.

Why Little House?  Well I did enjoy the show growing up and it seems so idyllic, even with their hardships, and some cult trying to draw down some horror beyond the stars is so incongruous to the setting that it makes for its own first level of horror.

Originally this was called "Ghosts of Albion: Carcosa"  but today I could use pretty much any Victorian-era system for it.  I have all of them. 

New Gaming Gear

My youngest is now in college and has built a new computer.  So I just got a "hand-me-down" Alienware.  With this and my other gaming computer, I am thinking about getting some new PC games to play.  All of the old AD&D "Gold Box" games are coming to Steam.  I never had the time to play them when they were new but I am hoping they might scratch that AD&D 2nd Ed itch I have.

ETA: Just found another hard drive to put in it!

Sci-Fi RPGs

I have been in the mood for a sci0fi RPG for some time.  Now my oldest is too.  Though he wants something that is compatible with 5e so he can continue playing in his world and doesn't want to go the Starfinder ("Featfinder") route.  Ultramodern5 has been suggested to me as has Esper Genesis. 

This is only quasi-related to my Star Trek games. Though it will inform my choices when I do Sci-Fi month in May.

Spell Database

Not for publication, just my own use. I am putting together a database of every spell I have written for all my witch books.  While I am not expecting to share this out, you will likely see the products of the labor one day.

Monster Books

With the day job, I have not had much of a chance to really work on any of these.  In fact, my last edit was early February according to the file dates.   Hope to get back on these.