stonefisting | Recent Entries

Blessed be! And well come to this latest development of my social media presence.

Whether you're here for hard-hitting libertarian commentary, the tough-love witchy side or just here to bask in an advanced understanding of the inner teachings of E. Gary Gygax and Len Lakofka, you'll get it all here and more!

  Also stay tuned for news of my latest kickstarter and other crowd-funded publishing projects.  What you will NOT get around here is posthumanism, classical recreationist LARP, liberal secular humanism (LSH), DC comics, Living Greyhawk, pornography, "story games," racial mixing, gun control, single-payer healthcare, false apostrophes or other jetsam some illusionist pulled out of a hole and the sheeple don't have the INT to disbelieve.

The fire that melts butter strengthens Oeridian steel, my friend.  

And refines gold.

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: smashmouth

Sam Webster is at it again, this time taking a cheap shot at those in the spellcasting community who dare to take one of the most fundamental implicit assumptions of our hobby seriously:

Yes, Sam Webster, the species of your parents (Oeridian, mixed human, Flan, elf/dwarf/miscellaneous) does indeed determine whether you have a soul, spirit or neither. If that's "biological determinism" to you, I don't want to be right.

Only humans and some mongrels have souls and can be raised from the dead. Only humans can cast seventh through ninth level magic-user spells. Only humans and mongrels have normal clerics. These are facts. These are the rules of the game.

The mud races, despite their apparent similarity to pure Oeridian stock (ten toes, no feathers, milk teeth, belly button) and pernicious ability to pass, are clearly not the same thing. Flan and half-orcs cannot be raised -- period.

Culture is not the rules system, Sam Webster. Culture is what class you can play in a particular realm of Greater Oerik, whether you are a plain magic-user or a shukenja for example. It is things like social class, which nobody uses anyway because race and normal class (adventurer profession) should be enough for 99% of the characters out there.

Rules system is whether hobbits can actually hold jobs or whether they are content to simply be hobbits riding the coattails of people who can actually progress to a decent class level. Sometimes they can. Sometimes they can't. In the clone I prefer, hobbits are restricted to only a few jobs and can only progress to an unlimited level in the criminal arts of thievery.

That should tell you everything you need to know.

I can't imagine a world where Oeridians would want to worship deities that aren't marked with an "O" or at least an "OC" in the Glossography. I'm not saying the "F" gods and the "S" gods and the "U" gods don't exist or that they don't fill a useful "placeholder" position for people unlucky enough to be born in that part of the world. I'm just saying that given the choice, who would want to dabble in those pantheons?

Current Mood: irritated
Current Music: imagine dragons

I am on top of all the controversies in our community but this was more important.

The old gods of the Oeridians had a "type." To this day their faithful priests have to spend a lot of time in front of the mirror living up to it. If you don't like it, heal thyself is not on the spell list so you are going to have to suffer.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Scars on 45

I have been busy with other projects but this post could not wait.

Hugin and Munin tell me a low-level cleric known as Jan Augustus Gies has been writing unauthorized Mystara fan fiction. This is a serious crime up there with race-mixing and treason to the Crown.

Like any real Keolander I have a fierce passion for protecting corporate intellectual property and especially fantasy rules and settings developed by other people.

To this end I have informed the Gygax estate that Heer Gies has been stealing his intellectual property and getting away with it for years. I hope you will do the same.

You can contact Gail about any attempts to use her late husband's IP or profit from his legacy via her Linkedin account.

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Kings of Leon

So now that I know important people are watching I guess it's time to reveal a little more about the brain behind STONEFISTING and the "Keep Keoland Keoish" blog. We will be conducting this Q&A format but if you want to interview me on your podcast or blog that's what the comments are for!

Why have you started blogging and why is this blog important?

I felt it was time. There are so many blogs out there now and so many perspectives. It's not like CYE 578 any more when all you had was the folio and your imagination to work with. You need a differentiator -- some kind of edge -- to stand out. Mine is that this is Oeridian blog for people of Oeridian blood and you nellie "Suelo-Oerid" mutts can take it or leave it.

Sounds interesting! I understand you think the standard alignment chart is, as you say, "bunk." How does that play into your economic and social stance?

Great question. I won't bore you with the details, but I think that if Pluffet Smedger had remained in control of his intellectual property, the overly simplistic "two axes to grind" alignment system would have been replaced by something more complex and realistic. You would have been able to identify as "heathen conservative," for example -- chaotic but not some kind of granola eating druid. Many, many people would actually radiate "lawful parasitic" instead of what the savant-sage originally had to roll under the euphemistic "liberal" or "chaotic good" moniker. Maybe most people. At least a 47% throw on percentage dice.

Super! You've evidently put a lot of thought into this.

You bet your sweet bippy I have.

And this new alignment, "heathen conservative," it ties right back to the Old Gods who led us Oeridians out of the plains of Laban, all that brazen sacrifices to LEUK-O and Lum the Mad stuff we learned about as kids but nobody seems to take seriously any more?

It does. Part of the goal here is to get people in what I call the Oeridian Stonefist Right (OSR) to get in touch with the original ways of doing things, the original system if you will. Maybe we need to have a grand awakening in this country and throughout Eastern Oerik, remember who we are and what we used to be. Remember, Keoland once ruled the entire Sheldomar Basin from the Crystalmists to the Pomarj -- and speaking of the Pomarj, don't get me started on what happened to our embassy in Stoneheim last year. That was a crime. It should be followed up. People should be outraged.

Sounds like the seeds of another undoubtedly controversial blog post! Aren't you afraid you're going to offend people or make enemies of people who, you know, don't want the truth to come out?

"Let them come," as Gimli says! I'm not afraid of hurting people's feelings on all sides of the alignment wheel in my quest for the truth. I will tell you that some people on the left and even a few on the right think I'm some kind of illusion / phantasm, maybe a mirror image of an actual person. To these people I say: which of my views are most like yours? What would ever possess someone to confuse me with you or to get us mixed up?

Sorry to interrupt you two, but we're out of space for this installment! Thanks to everyone for reading!

Current Mood: productive
Current Music: "call me maybe"

It appears I have some enemies in the liberal media. Let them stew! They may be clever but my will is strong and I will not be silenced!

Current Mood: giddy
Current Music: "jimmy olsen blues"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/20/us-feds-bernanke-idUSBRE93J0HG20130420 

  "Absolutely NO danger of an expansion in inflation?" When you've pumped the equivalent of 2.3 freaking trillion g.p. in phony letters of marque into the Keoish economy since CYE 608?  

Maybe "the Gradsul gang" is cooking the books again but I fail to see how this kind of massive expansion of circulating specie won't generate massive hyper-inflation and reduce the value of the Keoish gold plate to zero.

  I think the possibility of the most vulnerable members of our society -- urchins, street drots and hags -- having to lug a wheelbarrow laden with ingots to the baker's to buy a few sticky buns should fill all you gentle readers with dread. In that kind of grim doomsday scenario we would be like slaves to Perrenland or any other foreign power cunning and ruthless enough to buy up our debt.

  It's why, for example, the original "white box" only cost 10 g.p. back in the 570s but my deluxe Whitey Box (still on sale) now carries an impressive 75 g.p. price tag and I am barely paying the bills.  

"Think of the situation in Alaskan boom towns during the gold rush days, when eggs sold for one dollar each and mining tools sold for $20, $50, and $100 or more! Costs in the adventuring area are distorted because of the law of supply and demand -- the supply of coin is high, while supplies of equipment for adventurers is in great demand."  

That's E. Gary Gygax talking, Ben Bigby. I think he knows a lot more about how economics in the real world of Greyhawk works than you. You never worked in the private sector, you're just some ivory tower savant. And you know the word most often paired with savant is "idiot."

  I don't know about you but my firewood and carrot costs sure haven't gone down one bit. That's hyper-inflation. They should just demolish the Royal Bank and let the market do its work.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "hips don't lie"

The Otiluke brothers weren't too happy with me talking about them like that. I guess I'll need to find other ways to fund my publishing activities.

Current Mood: crushed
Current Music: "(you can't read my) pokerface"

  Beta Ray Bill gets his freaking powers from the deities & demigods of Gladsheim -- not the Oerid pantheon but still recognizably divine-class entities -- so you would think he'd know better.

Obviously those skrulls are just goading that poor Korbinite fool on a course to confusion.  

No, Beta Ray Bill. Worshipping the old gods isn't the idea that's truly "obscene." What's obscene is your blind acceptance of mainstream communitarian principles over healthy self-interest.

  If I had that hammer I would hammer in Bissel. I'd hammer in Geoff. All over greater Keoland!

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: "hey soul sister"

"They say that he got crazy once
 and he tried to touch the sun."

The story of Stonefist may be simultaneously described as anachronistic and timeless. The pattern of industrial organization appears to be that of the late 400s -- the mood seems to be close to that of the depression-era 530s. Both the social customs and the level of technology remind one of the 550s.   

(All dates Common Year Era.)  

The sanitized PC histories call Vlek Vlekzed -- "Stonefist" -- a monster. They discount the realm he forged as some kind of perversion of some fantasy "innocent" Barren Rovers culture built on some "genocide" of the peaceful Coltens Feodality. They officially classify his manly successors as somewhere between Neutral and Chaotic Evil.

  I say the hallmark of the second-rater is resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own, they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal, for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes bitching for their 2,000 c.p. Kickstarter refunds, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them while you'd give a year of your life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity.  

Some might call Vlek Vlekzed "evil." I would simply point out that his stern mandate is no worse than free market politics in action. Stonefist and those who follow him act as their consciences direct them with little regard for what others expect of us. We makes our own way. We believe in goodness and right but have little use for laws and regulations. Stonefist hated it when people tried to intimidate others and told them what to do. He followed his own moral compass.  

Stonefistism is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit. It can be a dangerous alignment when it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who rely on the weakness of others to survive, or simply refuse to stand up for themselves.  

Who do they worship in Stonefist? Erythnul, the brutal god of DO AS YOU PLEASE, the creative destruction that rises when the "many" wake and break their chains.

  I know the savant-sages in Cryllor think Erythnul worship originated among the Scattering Tribes when some of our own ancestors, savage and driven in advance of the humanoid hordes, fell away from their true gods to imitate the eiger, kell and other towel-wielding bullies of the old locker room days.

  I say Erythnul is as old as any of the Oerid gods and now it's our turn!

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: "cobrastyle"

Being in an adventuring party is a lot like running a lantern shop or any other small business.

We earn a decent living and have for several years now. Even though we make a very good living, we're also terribly in debt to our Kickstarter backers and other patrons. The cleric tells me we have a spending problem, but I think we simply have a revenue problem. Sure, we spend more than we earn, but that wouldn't be a problem if we simply earned more money.

  In the past few years, I've become a magical early adopter, that is, someone who likes to buy all the latest miscellaneous gizmos and OSR tchotchkes that come up. I haven't always been this way, but since our income has gone up, I've bought more of the things I want when I want them.

  In terms of numbers, we net about 50,000 g.p. from the combination of the Kickstarters, my miscellaneous scavenging and the cleric's IT job. That's a very good living and, one might argue, more than enough to cover daily living expenses, training costs and a few extravagances like single-deity healing magic. Nonetheless, our lifestyle exceeds our income and we still haven't paid the printing elves for that last boxed set we promised the backers we were going to send them.

  (BTW The Whitey Box is still available even though the Kickstarter has closed. Send 75 g.p. to the address on my info page. Free shipping in Keoland only.)   

The cleric argues that we're spending money on things that we shouldn't, and if we could reduce our annual spending and pay down our debt, we would be much more stable financially. He's worried about what this is doing to people new to the hobby, and he's afraid that when we're gone they'll still be paying off our debts.  

My answer is that we need to collect more loot or somebody needs to take a second job selling dungeon modules or something. If we had more income, we could afford to pay off our debt and continue in our current lifestyle. That would give the whole community more financial security.  

The cleric insists that we have more than enough income already and we just need to reduce non-essential "social welfare" expenses and live within our means. We don't know how to settle this argument. I'm positive our problem is on the revenue side, but he's just so sure that our family has a spending problem. I feel like I'm missing something that's staring me right in the face.   

Who am I? I am His Peerless Majesty Kimbertos Skotti, and "the cleric" is me!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "the roof is on fire"

Newbs often ask me how they can contribute to the cause.

  Of course you can don a uniform and fight for our nation, but there are other ways.

  One can fight in the memetic war, support organizations that overtly work against the Baklunofascist threat, etc. I personally only download music originally released on labels like EQVILIBRIVM, for instance. That way I can be sure that my entertainment budget helps defend Keoish memes because I am spreading awareness of pure Oerid bard acts like Leidungr, Arditi and Lustmord and the pure Oerid culture they are working so hard to transmit.  

But you must fight. A live coward is not necessarily better than a dead brave-heart, if the live coward has given up everything that makes his life worth living.

  Or more to the point, if you roll over now, you abbrogate the right to complain when a country like Ekbir declares that longevity potions, stat pumps, free alignment shift, and everything else that defines a modern Oeridian values-based political stance is "offensive" and thus it becomes impermissable. They've already got it within the Baklunish lands. Now they're trying to make it so everywhere.

  If you don't fight now, you won't have the chance to fight later.

 You can also petition a Rich Uncle Pennybags type like Otiluke to bring you in as a "consultant" and get a piece of the pie that way. Having access to old copies of Dragon magazine with Gary Gygax columns helps.  

What I would not do is dabble in pornography because this debases our fine Oeridian women. Put some clothes on, Stancha!

Current Mood: flirty
Current Music: "down" by 311

This is not funny.  

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/295102457/rpgs-are-evil-dark-dungeons-the-movie?ref=city  

Do I raise money to crusade against your religion? Remember, there have been times when the Cuthbertists and Raoists of the north burned our shrines and sent our priestess-dancers grabbing their skyclad.  

We will not forget and we will not go so easily next time.  

Let's tear into these points one by one:

  *Playing RPGs can make you gain real life magic abilities

  Yes! Any claim to the contrary is laughably offensive. Any raw OSR Acolyte with zero -- I repeat, ZERO -- X.P.s can cast spells, turn undead, &c.  

*If you gain a high enough level you will be invited to join a secret cult  

Again, this person doesn't know what he's talking about. The Temple of Diana is a real and vibrant part of modern Keoish society, although we would actually pronounce it "Wenta."  

* Gamers whose characters die are in danger of committing suicide.

  I don't know what this one means. Black Leaf was weak. It's that simple.  

* That DM's are vile temptresses that are out to corrupt their players to the forces of evil.

  The law of our faith is that we can do anything we want "an' it hurt none." Like any of our priestesses, the Ms. Frost character is simply acting from that knowledge, and besides, the last I heard her freedom of religion was guaranteed in the Keoish constitution of 453 CYE.

This challenge only indicates how close we have come to a "PC police state" in this kingdom.  

I don't know how many times I have to say this. "Fans" should not support activity like this. It is distasteful, it is offensive and it is just wrong. There are plenty of better Kickstarters out there.

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: "bye bye bye"

Still steamed from that hippie running his mouth off this afternoon so I did some more viking sword drills with my sparring partner. It will never be a proficiency weapon for me but even at -6 I would have shredded that addled parasite.  

I've had people write in and tell me that "liberal" cities like Cryllor and Gradsul pay more specie into the royal exchequer than their 47%-oriented social welfare programs cost, whereas relatively bucolic regions like Sterich and Monmurg that support more economic freedom are actually a drain on our economy.

  These people are misinformed. Helping Sterich fight the troublesome giants of the Jotuns is a strategic necessity when it comes to protecting Keoish interests throughout the Sheldomar Valley and across Oerik.

Likewise the subsidies we pay to Bissel to keep the Baklunish out. If you don't like it, you'd better be prepared for...  

  ...TOTAL WAR. By the way, I admire every second of the professionalism on display in this video. Now that's bardic skill!  

Anyway, the point is that it's different when we send money to modernize the cotton plantations in places like Monmurg whereas the guilds of Gradsul truly are NOT "too big to fail" and should never have been bailed out in the first place.   

Keoland needs that cotton for XXXL turtlenecks and ritual cloaks. What we do not need is more trade with elves and other "people" who do not share our basic Oeridian values. When you put it that way, it's the moneylenders in Gradsul who are the parasites

Current Mood: ditzy
Current Music: neofolk hits of the naughties (mix)

"Keoghtom was a legendary friend of the kind bud, what do you think the active ingredient in the ointment is?"

  I wanted to smack that hippie so hard but didn't have my wand readied and didn't want to alert the Watch. I'm all for legalizing everything but there's no reason to bring our eponymous national quasi-deity Tom Keogh -- one of the freaking Founding Fathers -- into their sordid drugged-out 47%.

  Must repeat: it isn't worth it. But I'm still steamed like a macchiato of scalding

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: scars on 45

The sheeple will tell you the gods marked (C) on the deity list are the foundation of our "Suelo-Oeridian" civil society and actually the entirety of the Prime as well.

  Your humble narrator knows better.

  While it's true that worship of many of the Old Gods the Scattering Tribes brought with them has become popular across Oerik (don't call it the "Flanaess"), that's more a matter of natural selection and the inexorable progress of free markets than anything else.

  Consider a loser entity like Zuoken or even the syncretic "Beory" people like Sam Webster keep promoting. Once upon a time it might have made sense to pray to some poorly developed abstraction like that -- sure, if you're a cowering savage who thinks produce flame is impressive enough to rate as a first-level spell!

  But it is still possible to throw the Blerred out with the Boccob, so to speak. You can innovate too far away from the root principles that made the Oeridian volk proud and took our mighty ancestors from our semi-legendary "Plains of Laban" (now Utah) all the way to the Sea of Yar.  

Over the centuries so much degenerate Flan crap has adhered to the Old Ways that they would now be almost incomprehensible to those conquering ancestors. It is practically impossible nowadays to celebrate a Traditional Brewfest because all the merchants are too busy selling "Ozzie Pippenger" dolls and oak leaf candy to stock the fermented galda fruits and live slor pigeon -- and that's assuming your condo board doesn't write you a hate-speech note for beheading the bird on the hearth as your religion requires!  

If Gygax didn't know where a god came from, I don't celebrate those feasts. If he marked the box "O(C)", I hit wikipedia to see if I can scrape off some of that C and find the O face underneath.

  So that's why I don't go in for the "normal" Pelor holidays. That cult has degenerated from the pure solar-phallic cult of the Oeridians into one of 3E's sample clerical paths good for any "homebrew" campaign. Cut through the crap and you're actually worshipping the golden bull (actually more of a dragomera) found on the famous archaic depictions of the Velaeri, the sacrificial father of the Twins who roasted the cities of Slor back in O.R. 181.  

That's the feast that interests me. And don't get me started on the myth of Rao.

Current Mood: flirty
Current Music: "skater boy"

Note to self: it's time to crowdfund a game based on Atlas Shrugged. Must be "old school" -- no non-weapon proficiencies, racial quotas or single-deity healing magic. Can I claim I found idea in Gary's old columns? Research.

Current Mood: mischievous
Current Music: "baby hit me one more time"

http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article/92086/us-rep-nate-bell-criticized-for-boston-manhunt-tweet  

"I wonder how many Cryllor liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had a wand of magic missiles with 100 charges?"  

Sage words, Cottar Bell. It is not enough to point out that universal wizardly training and the right to keep and bear high-capacity damage sticks are protected in the Keoish constitution. They are sacred components of what we might call Oeridian masculinity, the true Oerid man.  

When the Scattering Tribes fled the cataclysms the texts make clear that their gods (more on this later) instructed them to purchase "weapons of fire and fragmentation" with which to put the lazy Flan under the boot.

  The simpering population of Cryllor could take a page from that book, if they weren't too busy getting gay married to Baklunish and worse.

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Music: backstreet boys