i've been thinking about megadungeons lately, reading through andy's excellent blog posts about his dungeon23 project (CAVERNS OF CARLAX) and listening to INTO THE MEGADUNGEON by benjamin laurence. i admit to not really understanding the appeal of a tabletop megadungeon at first? although i LOVE a computer game megadungeon: NETHACK, DIABLO, ETRIAN ODYSSEY, etc. but the idea of writing and keying a megadungeon seemed, like why would i want to do that, i barely play multiple sessions of an rpg as it is. but then i was writing these B/X stats for TUFTY and reading through tanner simpson's VERMIN VOLUME and it kind of clicked, that if i had a whole table of these funny creatures and a good generator (i have been obsessed with level generation for many years, from back in the day when i made computer games more often and a good auto-tiling procedural generator was THE THING i wanted to make more than anything. i kind of got there with my first VERSNOOF prototype but that's a wild tangent and probably best as a different post) then stocking a megadungeon would feel kind of the same as playing a solo rpg, which i love? (SHOUTOUT 12 YEARS) and turns out i already started mapping a fairyland megadungeon anyway, it's just not mega enough yet. so, because none of us have enough projects, and least of all me, i am working on a fairyland megadungeon generator, which you can expect...probably years from now. or next month. YOU NEVER KNOW.

what else? january was a time of fell portents and bitter portions, anguish and malaise, AND YET, cthulugans returned to vomit forth the long-awaited key to the ABYSS OF HALLUCINATIONS, STAY FALSE: our third album and i think our finest work yet. max and i stayed in a cabin on whidbey island for a few weirdly snowy days, we saw one cougar, one massive jellyfish, one coconut, and many deer, we played DIMENSIONAL DEMONS and TONKS and FORBIDDEN PSALM and RUMPUS*. max had been building a modular synth for awhile and we used it on a few songs, which was very fun and mysterious (for me, i would describe my understanding of synthesizers as "magical" or maybe "superstitious"; max built all our patches). we used dice to choose between the 93 chapters of the book of lies and each song is in conversation with those chapters. they are:

Steeped Horsehair
The Glow Worm
The Cry of the Hawk
The Battle of the Ants
Twig?
Sic Transeat
The Star Sapphire

the j-card for the cassette has two d66 tables for altars you might find in the abyss.

SPEAKING OF CARDS, ever since we started playtesting RUMPUS** in tabletop simulator i have been eager to try it out with cards for items, treasures, spells, what-have-you (THIS IS A LIE, I WOULD BE USING LOOKUP TABLES FOR EVERYTHING IN THE GAME IF MAX DIDN'T REPEATEDLY ASK, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS), and whidbey was the first time we did! and it was great! having cards that we could draw and discard for items made it VERY FAST to play and removed a lot of bookkeeping. picking a card up, and then? putting! it! down! is so hard to beat. i would forget all the time that i had certain items when they were notes on a roster, but having a card that says "screaming chalice" is a constant reminder that i am carrying a screaming chalice and maybe i would like to eat it (eating items is very important to fairies). we ALSO tried just playing a battle royale type RUMPUS*** with no objectives and just SMASHIN and it turned out to be just as rambunctious and weird as playing with objectives, which is HEARTENING. so now i'm in the middle of testing various permutations, tuning specific items and spells, playing with 2 fairies? 3 fairies? 1 fairy? it feels NICE to slow-cook a game until it is Super Fun. "WELCOME TO THE RUMPUS**** WORLD!"

HWHAT HELSE, HWELL, i have of course been painting some things for warhammer fantasy battle 6th edition, which i am enjoying very much. it's funny that last time i posted i was trying to get more comfortable with milliput, because in the mean time i have made so many milliput things. i think i prefer it to green stuff at this point! i made some muldottir, and this cosmic cat slug, and i started a slight, clawed fairy for my next troupe*****.

it was a few episodes back that sssooommmeeeooonnneee on HIVE SCUM mentioned having ONE ARMY that would be for a bunch of different games and i realized i wanted to do something similar with WFB, except i have TWO ARMIES that are kind of eternally opposed. on the one hand, there are fairies and weirdos ("orcs and goblins", "cauldron", "skirmosh II"), and the other, cosmic horrors and weirdos ("chaos") and i think i am good with having these two buckets to put minis into! i guess on the THIRD HAND, we have turnips. and on the fourth, skeletons. and there is, hmm, a tonky hand too. but it has been so nice to have the constraint, of "build everything for wfb6e" which handles like, the base size, and what goes on the base, etc., so i can just prep a bunch of dudes and paint them whenever and then they all look so nice standing next to each other.

and that is the entire point of wargames, to make a bunch of weirdos who look nice standing next to each other, and to send a message to lewis to say "look at this ding dong" and then we talk about the next ding dong we are hoping to paint soon, and someday when all the ding dongs are painted we will put them on some astroturf and make them fight. but! and here is where maybe i disagree with some folks who might have some podcasts, just a little bit, just a respectful bit, the entire point of wargames is also that they are rules, and that if they are good at being rules they also turn into generators for thematic situations. this is why turnip is the best wargame, the rules are extremely good at generating turnip situations, and so you think "aha of course my bravest warrior has fallen backward into a swamp. how fitting. how just. that's turnip bay-bee." if you have to discard some rules to make a thematic situation happen better (or even, shudder, a "narrative"), you better be careful!! this is also why so many people write their own tabletop games. we are all just writing thematic situation generators.

LEWIS WHY DON'T YOU HAVE A BLOG.

- DAN BURGER

* fairyland
** salt & pepper performance, hagstone, elphame
*** jiggery-pokery of the trouping fairies
**** POWER STONE 3!!
***** actually the first fairy in the second SET of fairies, but the first one is not finished yet, right now it is a SECRET but you can probably tell what it is