GMBC ep15 Desert Dreams and Reality Distortions: TTRPGs Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Book
Transcript
Speaker A
00:00:00.240 - 00:00:00.560
Foreign.
Speaker B
00:00:06.240 - 00:00:34.380
Welcome to the Game Masters Book club where great fiction becomes your next great role playing experience. Today, Michael Sanier, Rick Steck and Mauricio Cordero take on the gonzo American classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
We digest, discuss and disagree about how this perspective bending novel can be brought to the TTRPG space. Serious content warning for drugs, violence against women and overall terrible behavior.
With that, let's head head into the desert and into the conversation.
Speaker C
00:00:36.780 - 00:00:44.060
Today we're going to be joined by three new game masters, but are all a bunch of awesome folks and I'm.
Speaker B
00:00:44.060 - 00:00:46.380
Going to have them introduce themselves.
Speaker C
00:00:46.540 - 00:00:56.340
This time we're going to be talking about what is your favorite way to twist reality in your game? Okay, we're going to start off with Rick. Rick, would you care to introduce yourself to the group and tell us about.
Speaker B
00:00:56.340 - 00:00:57.500
How you twist reality?
Speaker D
00:00:57.830 - 00:02:10.030
Hi. Yeah, my name is Rick. Rick Steck, known on the Internet as Dr. Lord Emperor.
And I. I gotta say, twisting reality is probably the most exciting thing about emceeing this little dance that we do in our minds. You literally play not just a God, but gods. And I would say that being able to manipulate the environment constantly, right.
That these people are going to be able to rage against and manipulate themselves. And so just. I love to tweak time. I like to tweak concept of space. Right.
One of my, one of my favorite things that Game of Thrones does to like create a very evocative atmosphere is this concept that like winter shows up when it shows up and it stays for however long it's gonna be. And that's just one of those elements that I just find so evocative. It is probably the manipulation of the fabric of reality.
As a godly power, I'm not as a deity because I play, wear all the hats. I am omnipresent, but I am not omnipotent. I am omnipotent, but I am fallible.
Speaker C
00:02:10.270 - 00:02:10.630
Right.
Speaker D
00:02:10.630 - 00:02:17.950
And it has this sort of very Norse quality to it. So I love just bending the fabric of time, specifically around time.
Speaker C
00:02:18.410 - 00:02:32.970
There we go. I can't agree more. One of the best things about being a game master is having that control over the environment and what's happening there.
Mauricio, we're gonna talk to you next. Give us how you like to twist reality.
Speaker A
00:02:32.970 - 00:02:42.010
Oh, preferably gin and martini. Definitely means gin martini or single malt scotch. And the peatier the better.
Speaker E
00:02:42.170 - 00:02:43.050
I'm with you on that one.
Speaker A
00:02:43.050 - 00:02:50.030
Tastes like a, you know, like I should exclaim like, who put a band aid in my Drink. You know that that's how pdi.
Speaker E
00:02:50.030 - 00:02:51.030
You like Laphroaig.
Speaker A
00:02:51.270 - 00:02:58.710
Oh yeah. Come visit Chicago. I. I know a place where we could get some really good blues and cheap shots.
Speaker E
00:02:59.030 - 00:03:00.030
I mean, do you want.
Speaker C
00:03:00.030 - 00:03:00.630
All right.
Speaker A
00:03:00.630 - 00:03:01.590
Or whole info.
Speaker C
00:03:01.750 - 00:03:09.390
Oh, how about. Okay, no, no, wait, wait. How about in your tabletop role games? Sorry, I was not. I wasn't clear. To be fair, do you still like.
Speaker D
00:03:09.390 - 00:03:12.070
Your tabletop role playing games to taste like diesel?
Speaker A
00:03:13.180 - 00:03:46.720
Well, after I've had a few tastes of my special diesel, that usually flips the script. But no, I really like defying expectations.
I love like macho kobolds and effeminate barbarians and just really playing against type against or assumptions and just throwing that out at players. And it's amazing when you defy their expectations, how curious they get about the NPC and how attached they seem to become.
So that's my favorite way to twist. Not reality so much as the status quo.
Speaker C
00:03:46.880 - 00:04:05.120
Excellent. Again, a fun thing to do. A common thing that I refer to often in my games. The Kobold Paladin that I threw out there a couple times.
Speaking of twisting and twisting reality, we are on to Michael. Michael, tell everybody about how you like to twist reality in your tabletop role playing games.
Speaker E
00:04:06.010 - 00:04:15.690
Lying to my players with a straight face. No, you did not find a troll.
Speaker D
00:04:16.490 - 00:04:17.210
Classic.
Speaker C
00:04:17.770 - 00:04:20.650
That's not a mimic. That's not a mimic. Not at all.
Speaker E
00:04:20.650 - 00:04:26.330
No, no, no. It doesn't appear to something. Nope. You didn't see nothing.
Speaker C
00:04:26.330 - 00:04:29.770
Sure, you can try that. That's fine. That's good. That's great.
Speaker E
00:04:30.730 - 00:04:31.770
That's always a warning.
Speaker C
00:04:32.880 - 00:05:50.830
Sure, you could try that. That's great. As for myself, my main thing that I enjoy doing to twist reality for my players is to change where they are.
We talked about definitely changing the environment, but I like to move people around a lot.
And when I move them around, that changes not only the physical structure of where they are, which can be really interesting, but I also enjoy moving them between cultures that I have within my world so that they can do this. We can almost run the same plot, but it's a completely different story because we're talking about it in a different context.
As Rick pointed out, since I'm wearing all the hats, I can make up those things so they don't always know what the correct answer is, particularly if nobody's from that culture in the game. And that can make for really interesting discovery and bias exploration and all kinds of really fun stuff.
And actually I tend to find out a lot about my players as soon as that happens.
Present them with a situation and then usually they go at least 90 degrees off of where I thought they were going to go, which is I think the best part of game mastering is watching them do something I had no plan for. And now we will just move forward and we'll do our best. So that's twisting reality and the introduction of our game masters.
Speaker D
00:05:50.910 - 00:06:07.510
Not to pull the beaded curtain back too much on this, on our new listeners.
I've just gotten into the session, but we talked a little bit about what we were going to do before we actually did it the other day and twisted this initial question around. And I feel now a little underdressed, like I feel like you answered that question.
Speaker C
00:06:07.990 - 00:06:48.070
Well, we're here to talk to the folks and see what they have to say. And the best thing, as I mentioned the other time, is that there is no wrong way to be a game master. And that's the best part.
And there's no better way. So underdressed is just a state of mind, baby.
And let's be honest, underdressed is what is definitely a good part of this book that we're going to be talking about here today. So this is the part of the show where I give my brief summary and you guys get to tell me how off I am about my review.
And since I was the only one of this group who hadn't read this book beforehand, please bring the criticism. This is what we're here for. Okay.
Speaker E
00:06:48.870 - 00:06:52.390
It was 25 years ago, close enough to not have read it.
Speaker C
00:06:52.470 - 00:07:59.990
All right. A drug filled, gun toting, Americanized version of Waiting for Godot.
This extended series of even stranger and more disturbing stories about a trip to Las Vegas wields the disgust it generates to excellent effect against the American myth. Not to be confused with the American Dream, which is what the book is really looking for.
Written at a time before people spoke the quiet part out loud, this must have been a perspective bending literary event for anyone in the 1970s. Now I feel like it's just obvious given the current climate.
Serious content, warning for drugs, violence, violence against women, violence against apes, violence against lizards, more drugs, and lots and lots and lots of white male privilege. Other than that, what would you like to add about this particular story? Mauricio, why don't you start? You are technically the scholar among us.
Speaker D
00:08:00.070 - 00:08:00.550
Yes.
Speaker A
00:08:00.630 - 00:08:08.710
So what did you miss? It's a beautiful road movie. Road. Sorry, not a movie. I'm not talking about movies. Book.
Speaker C
00:08:08.710 - 00:08:09.670
It's also a movie.
Speaker A
00:08:11.110 - 00:09:32.200
It is a movie. Yes. I don't want to get too off track, but it's a movie, it's a comic book. It's been around in many different forms, I'd say.
One thing that a lot of people miss is the loving and close relationship that Hunter Thompson had with his doctor attorney. And that man is Oscar Zeta Acosta, who was a writer, a lawyer and contemporary of Hunter S. Thompson's.
And I've got one of his books here, the Autobiography of a Great Brown Buffalo. You guys can't see what I'm pointing at. Obviously, it's a podcast. Yeah, it's a show.
But you could almost see the COVID if you really close your eyes and imagine he's got a different account and a very interesting account. And I think Hunter Thompson was alluding to race in very in your face ways that might today even sound more racist than they actually are.
And it's kind of difficult as a funny person or as a serious writer to confront racism without taking a big old sledgehammer to it. And I think that's what he does in you. You mentioned the white privilege, but there's also, I call it the brown audacity happening in the background.
So for me, it's. It's an interesting counterbalance between the whiteness and brownness coming together.
Speaker C
00:09:32.440 - 00:09:44.500
I definitely are quite the pair. And the. The power of the lawyer is such a huge thing in this, like I said, in this American myth retelling.
Rick, do you have anything to add about the story?
Speaker D
00:09:44.580 - 00:09:50.340
I. I mean, I really would piggyback on Mauricio sort of address. Thompson wrote it. It's. It's got, you know, it's internal.
Speaker C
00:09:50.580 - 00:09:50.900
Right.
Speaker D
00:09:50.900 - 00:11:26.680
It's looking. It is a seminal, watershed moment in post modernist literature. Right.
It's kind of one of the first times that, like, the finger is pushing through the cellophane of modernism and it kind of snaps and is letting a little bit of air through from the future. Right. And so it's by him, about him. But in a lot of ways, that duo is like a Cerberus without those two heads.
That mythology really doesn't hold the same amount of water.
And I would say that to move the titanic amount of information that is sort of being pulled out of the ether and brought to bear by this pretty small little book, you got to know your shit. And so he's writing in this almost Homeric way. It has a very Odysseus quality to it. So it's like foundationally, it's pretty beautifully written.
You can pull a page out of it and sort of speak it aloud in public in a profound Tone. And it kind of carries its own outside of the context of the greater narrative.
But when taken as an arc, he's somehow managing to make this jumble of psychotic substance riddled word salad into this really evocative and moving arc. People talk about the sparks and how uncomfortable it can make you in some elements, but it's just a really fucking well written book.
Speaker C
00:11:26.760 - 00:11:59.250
It definitely makes me feel uncomfortable. And as I said during our preview when we were talking about this, it did feel like someone was hitting me in the face over and over and over again.
And the first couple times was surprise and shock and almost laughter at how much it was happening. And then it was painful, and then it was clarity. I don't know, you know, like, you get to that point where you're just, I'm getting hit in the face.
And this is what getting a hit in the faces. So if art is making you feel things, this book succeeded. Like, no question. Michael, what are your thoughts on the book?
Speaker E
00:11:59.490 - 00:12:35.180
I'm gonna be the standout here or the dissenting opinion, maybe because I grew up with permanently fucked up parents, and I mean that in the. They were drunk and on drugs most of the time that they were raising me, but I found it trite, boring, and, oh, look how much I can do.
Look what I can get away with. I did enjoy the relationship between Hunter and his attorney, Duke, Duke and his attorney in the book.
But it took me a month to read 157 pages because I disliked it.
Speaker D
00:12:35.340 - 00:12:39.900
It was a chore for me second time around. Or like right out the gate second time around.
Speaker E
00:12:39.900 - 00:12:41.740
I read it when I was like a teenager.
Speaker C
00:12:41.820 - 00:13:06.190
I have a parent who was an alcoholic, and, like, the alcohol was just so casual. So it was very excessive. And like I said, once again, getting punched in the face a certain number of times is about where I could go with it.
But as much as we are literarily looking at this book, that is not what we are here to do today. We're here to tell people, hey, you know, this is good fodder for your tabletop role playing game.
Speaker E
00:13:06.190 - 00:13:09.070
Rip the meat off the bones and feed it to our fiction.
Speaker C
00:13:09.070 - 00:13:09.830
That is the plan.
Speaker B
00:13:09.830 - 00:13:10.950
Because that is what we do.
Speaker C
00:13:10.950 - 00:13:11.980
We take in art, we take.
Speaker B
00:13:12.050 - 00:13:16.930
We internalize it, process it, and put it back out into the world with our own perspective.
Speaker C
00:13:17.330 - 00:13:47.200
So if that's what we're going for, then our next step is to talk about if we wanted to tell this story, if I wanted to tell the story at a tabletop, if I wanted to evoke the best possible version of this story among the people who I play with, what system would I use to make that happen? Rick, we're going to start with you and have you tell us how you might construct a Fear and loathing event or campaign or game.
Speaker D
00:13:47.520 - 00:17:25.189
Sure. I guess when I started thinking about running an actual Fear and loathing campaign, I think it's where I kind of chopped it off.
I didn't use the colon right in Las Vegas. I kind of thought, what's the vibe of this? If you don't have, like, Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula, you don't get Curse of Strahd.
And so I was thinking of, like, what's the feel of this game? And already, you know how the GM brain works.
You get this kernel and you think you're putting it off to the side, but it actually just starts putting down roots and starts to bloom and starts creeping towards the light. And so I was kind of envisioning a thing that had, like, how do you get the feel of My name is Earl? Plus, no country for Old Men, right?
You get this kind of, like, gritty, very American. There's sort of an irreverent quality to it, but it's always walking this kind of dangerous line.
And so I had really three factors that were starting to mesh in my brain, which was Blades in the Dark, very heisty sneaky. The players kind of say, I'm going to do this.
And it creates this desequencing of the narrative where you kind of have to spool it back in time and go like, well, how did you get that done? Well, I bribed this guard or, you know, I palmed the 20 into the hand of the bellboy when we rolled in drunk the night before or whatever.
So Blades in the Dark carry a lot of that mechanic. But Call of Cthulhu also sprung to mind because of the sanity meter. And there's a sort of.
There's this thing throughout the totality of this book that is about maintenance, right. Maintaining an abv, but also keeping it together. You know, like just maintaining a party line.
And, like, there are a lot of moments where you could see almost in the text of that, the NAT ones where, you know, he's freaking out about the. The blood, you know, needing the golf shoes and the. The reptile, et cetera.
So Blades in the Dark for the heistiness, decentralizing of the narrative player agency. Call of Cthulhu for the, like, maintenance madness, over the top mechanic.
And then I thought, one of the things that's central to this is the hedonistic quality of it. And so I thought make it a drinking game or take in some elements from drinking games.
I immediately thought, I can't remember what the name of it is, but there was a game that we played in college where like, if you made a bad player, you fucked up, the table would like put a restriction on you.
And like, the one that pops in my head is Little man, where you'd have to like, every time you took a drink, you had to put the Martian from the table onto your like take. It was always on your drink. You had to take it off, put it on the table, take your drink and put him back.
And I love the idea of having like maybe a stack of, you know, cards that are pre generated by the players where if you're playing and you want to like push your luck, you get to like get advantage on this thing, but you got to pull from the deck. And now like you're playing this scene and you're hallucinating that you got a live cobra in your pants or everybody is got side.
You can't hear it, but you're reading the subtitles of the character.
Just sort of things like that, that add without trying to create the actual story of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, this sort of unhinged quality that kind of builds over time as things become more soaked with booze and narcotics and you know, the center doesn't feel like it's going to hold as well. That was sort of my amalgam of parts that I would make into this Gollum Homunculus of a ttrpg very similar to the book.
Speaker C
00:17:25.189 - 00:17:26.869
This Gollum Homunculus of a.
Speaker A
00:17:26.869 - 00:17:27.349
Of a book.
Speaker C
00:17:27.349 - 00:18:44.810
For sure. I'm gonna jump on and do mine next.
Because you were talking about capturing that, that living on the edge, trying to get things unbalanced, as if you were perhaps intoxicated already. And that's why I'm. I chose Fiasco. The Fiasco game is based around the idea that you're gonna simulate a caper game of a caper that goes wrong.
Like that is the. The whole point is that you start off with an introduction and then there's a tilt, which means something starts to go.
And then there's the aftermath because eventually things fall through. This is represented by a Jenga tower.
So every time you're making a move, you're pulling a brick from the tower and you're stacking it up higher and it's getting more and more uncomfortable and you're. As you continue to move Move through the story, it gets stacks higher and everybody's being really careful about where they're going to put it.
And you can feel that edge of what's going on there, which is really part of what I felt from this book. As you said, this, like, trying to maintain this. This balance, which surprisingly held through the whole book.
I kept waiting for it to spill over and to become the thing that exploded and it never did. But. So I think that maybe Fiasco is what I wanted the book to be. I wanted that final. Like that just kind of spilled everything out.
Speaker D
00:18:45.290 - 00:18:46.370
Piggyback on that.
Speaker C
00:18:46.370 - 00:18:47.930
Yeah, sure. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker D
00:18:48.170 - 00:19:05.170
Because I think something that really stuck out to me as well, when I was trying to port this over the idea of taking literature and then making it into a game is that in this world, the presence of violence is a conceptual and not physical act.
Speaker C
00:19:05.170 - 00:19:13.830
You're not rolling dice for initiative in combat. It's a resolve action kind of a thing. Not a I hit you, I do 10 points, you hit me, I do five points kind of a thing thing.
Speaker E
00:19:13.830 - 00:19:27.830
The end is always there, but it is never actually there. So there's never any punishment for what you do. But the threat of being how you are is always over your head.
Speaker C
00:19:28.790 - 00:20:29.020
The good news for folks who might want to do this for Fiasco is that there is a awesome website that has playbooks for. Basically, for any movie that you can think of that that has this kind of setup. You can play a fiasco game based on pretty much anything.
I didn't find one that was specifically Fear and Loathing, which was a little surprising. But there are hundreds of free ones throughout the web. I did get one from one of our other GMs, Petra Jackal, who's been on the show before.
She is a fiasco expert and she sent me a link. That link will be in the show notes.
And there is within that link a playset called Vegas Baby, which I read through a little bit of what I could see on the free. I didn't buy it, I just read it and I was like, oh, yeah, this is probably pretty close.
So I guarantee you can find a playbook for Fiasco that's going to fulfill your needs on this. Let's jump over to you, Michael. What is your mechanic?
Speaker E
00:20:29.180 - 00:21:13.370
I'd probably do some weird homebrew of paranoia and a game no one's ever heard of called Hole Human Occupied Landfill. It was first published by White Wolf's adult imprint called Black Dog.
And literally the premise of the game is that you have been incarcerated on a Landfill Planet. So you pick up things and make them work or not.
And then paranoia, because that game did an amazing job of keeping the players wondering just what was actually happening over their heads.
Speaker C
00:21:13.930 - 00:21:33.700
You said Landfill Planet, Mauricio. I thought Planet, because I know you talk a lot about graphic novels all the time.
And I was like, oh, Pitch Planet would be a perfect combination to play in that. Okay, but we're getting off topic, but it is you, Mauricio. Who is next?
Mauricio, what is the game mashup thing that you might pick in order to bring Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to your table?
Speaker A
00:21:33.700 - 00:24:13.370
First of all, if you do bitch plan it, please invite me back. I would love to gamify that. And it's a book I've taught to my students for years. And speaking of books, plural.
So I think I'm leaning towards Murk Borg by Ellie Nielsen and Johan Noor as the root of my adaptation of the book to a ttrpg.
But I'm also thinking about Beyond Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter's other books, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign, Crayole 72, which covers that train wreck of a campaign of Nixon, the Curse of Lono, Hell's Angels.
And if you start to expand the book a little bit beyond just Fear and Loathing, I think there's makings for a larger world that would go well with Borg rules, because there are mechanics, but there is no game balance. Right. They are up against attorneys and, you know, often they're reminiscing about like, what's going to happen if we get caught?
And there wouldn't be any balance. But there could be a lot of interesting gameplay if you had certain character traits.
Like, well, just, just as a little thought experiment, I thought, well, what classes would we bring to a game like this?
And I thought, you know, journalist, attorney, photographer, illustrator and thug biker might be some good starting classes and just seeing how their different roles in Fear and Loathing. But also the other books operate.
The journalist is getting by on his per diem and trying to milk as much money from the publishers as he can so he can go on spending sprees. The attorney trying to maneuver things, the illustrator capturing the moment. And just a great opportunity for some baddies too.
You've got the leeches, the bats, the lizards, the Manson family, the menaces always pulsating somewhere in the background there. And a lot of territory for great NPCs as well. Hitchhikers, hop longs, and all these things I think would make a very interesting Mirkborg adventure.
And I thought of like this Duyzek Smokina that kind of comes up now and again in Hunter's books where he just gets saved at the very last moment. You know, whether it's a dwarf bringing a pink telephone out to poolside or him getting another assignment.
And those could operate much like the omens do in Mert Borg. Buying you an extra role, extra time, hope where there is none.
Speaker C
00:24:13.820 - 00:25:40.910
Yeah, and we've got a big, huge thing that we're putting together here. I'm like, hey, build a world. You have five minutes. Go ahead. So no, it's, it's a great place for our GMs to start.
The thing that I wanted to bring up that is related to this.
It's clear that Fear and Loathing has had an effect on the gaming community as a whole, because I went looking to make sure that there wasn't a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas role playing game, because one of the conceits of the podcast is that we won't do something that already has its own role playing game. But it turns out that there are a lot of titles that have Fear and Loathing in it that clearly reference Hunter S. Thompson's work.
Like fear and loathing 77 by the White Wolf Group. It's part of the vampire series. There's a whole thing that is a take on that. But vampires.
Fear and Loathing is the title from a supplement for the aberrant superhero game where the anti superhero group is described through an example of gonzo journalism, which is obviously, you know, again, Hunter S. Thompson. And then there's a whole Fear and Loathing in Blooseven, which was a hackmaster take on a D and D attempt at this.
But it wasn't specifically the elements. I think it just stole the name to make it sound cool.
Because I think a lot of gamers have either read this or at least have heard of it and like this kind of aesthetic, this reality warping part to, to this story.
Speaker D
00:25:41.390 - 00:25:50.150
It's like you imbibe the sacrament and go on a spirit journey, you know, that's kind of the core of this thing. It's, you know, it's the Green Knight.
Speaker C
00:25:50.150 - 00:26:11.320
There we go. All right, well, speaking of imbibing, what are some things that you would like to take in to your own games?
What sort of portable individual items as opposed to like trying to run the whole thing? What would you like to steal from this and put into your own game to make it, to make it richer, to make it better?
Michael why don't you start us off with an example.
Speaker E
00:26:11.400 - 00:26:24.280
The concept of the iguana. The thing you can't quite shoot. You're not sure if you should. That would just tickle the little bones in my brain.
Speaker C
00:26:24.520 - 00:26:26.840
Just the idea of these little Technicolor.
Speaker D
00:26:27.160 - 00:26:27.800
These little.
Speaker E
00:26:27.880 - 00:26:34.750
These little things that the players see but don't know what to make, what of.
Speaker C
00:26:34.750 - 00:26:36.430
And never giving them an explanation.
Speaker E
00:26:36.510 - 00:26:37.150
Exactly.
Speaker C
00:26:37.470 - 00:26:43.870
Just leaving it out there. Amazing. Amazing. Mauricio, would you like to take the second chair again? And was a portable.
Speaker A
00:26:43.950 - 00:27:26.390
Two things that I would do. I can't remember now I'm spacing out one. Urge their players. Or it was. It was an essay or something. It might have even been from scum and villainy.
To run your PCs like you'd run a stolen car, you know, run it to the ground. And I'm thinking car rentals, right. You know, get wonderful merchandise that they're like, oh, I better not use it this time. It might break.
Or I don't want to use this up. Screw it. Let them rent stuff. Right? Let them rent an ox or whatever and just drive it to the ground. You know, they've got the car insurance, right?
Speaker E
00:27:26.630 - 00:27:27.990
Paying the $7 a day.
Speaker A
00:27:27.990 - 00:28:14.950
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. One extra gold piece a day ain't gonna kill you. I think the hallucinations. I think it could be a lot of fun to really.
Again, you know, we started off talking about how we twist reality.
And narratively speaking, if we were to twist the entire environment, that sort of circus circus moment in the novel where everything they see and touch is not as it seems. And I. I think I played an Eberron at one point that was similar. Where everything we were interacting with was not what it. We thought it was.
But, you know, drop them in an attorney general speech or meeting of marshals or what have you and just have them hallucinate their butts off and see what trouble they get into.
Speaker C
00:28:16.000 - 00:28:24.960
Who doesn't like a good hallucinogenic event in their campaign? I mean, absolutely. A trippy moment is definitely always on the menu. Rick, will you bring us home on this one?
Speaker A
00:28:25.280 - 00:28:25.640
Sure.
Speaker D
00:28:25.640 - 00:30:42.990
You know, I'd been thinking about it sort of in the. A little bit in the overarching structure of the mechanics of a way I'd run a game.
And one of the things I like about the book itself is it's very chapter oriented. Pick it up.
It just grabs you by the scruff, pulls you out of somewhere, lifts you up into the stratosphere and kind of plops you back in and you're already in the thick of something and so running it so that there are all these sort of seemingly unconnected events that are happening and treating every bit of a session. Like you do a thing and then once you've like, reached any form of resolution, it's like, done.
And then when you drop into the next thing, it's like you're in a totally different place. You're on the casino floor, you're by the pool, you're in the desert, you're in the back of a cop car. There are a couple of games that I really dig.
Troika and the Bastion Land Duo Electric and the Fantasy one. And I just love the idea of just super small inventories.
You know, you roll a die at the beginning of whatever little session segment and like, you got a crowbar and you've got a tape recorder and two batteries having it so that your resources are not throttled. But there's so much in this story about these guys having that knife, right? The knife that like, appears and is this menacing character.
And it's not continuous through. It's not like when you're playing, you know, 5e, you've always got your long sword by your side.
It's, you know, it's sort of an omnipresent thing that you anticipate having it so that characters are adult people tend to do lose their phone, lose their keys. They're just kind of like putting stuff down and discovering that they now have something else as well.
You've got a hotel key card that you don't recognize and a press pass to another event that's across town.
So maybe less so about what the specific thing is, but the methodology of aggregating that stuff, taking stuff and giving new things to players that can give this sort of sense of like, irreality.
Things are just kind of like a cartoon pulling a hole or a hammer from behind your back and suddenly you are the proud owner of this inflatable banana suit.
Speaker C
00:30:42.990 - 00:30:44.230
There you go, Mauricio.
Speaker A
00:30:44.230 - 00:31:43.280
Yeah, Rick is inspiring me to think about items a little differently. Last week I ran Eat the Reich, which is just a beautiful book, a fun system, really quick.
And who doesn't want to drink Nazi blood and see them cower funny, ya, as you turn vampire all over their asses. But they do have a mechanic that encourages you to use up your equipment. You get a bonus dice at the final usage of that equipment.
And combining that with what Rick just described so eloquently. You just have like a shelf life for that thing, that knife. It's going to fall out of your hands.
It's going to whatever you're going to mistake it for or papaya, whatever and just get those characters to dump stuff and pick up new stuff and make items matter. Make items that aren't plus one swords but have stories and interactivity and fun.
And that was the big takeaway from Eat the Right for me was just making items fun again.
Speaker C
00:31:43.600 - 00:33:47.210
And to continue to piggyback off of what you said, Mauricio, when you were talking about using up the items like really like running them into the ground.
The thing that I liked and went down the rabbit hole on is in this for the portable was the Mint 400 rally that happened and I think it'd be great if you didn't give the characters an item but you like rented them whatever the particular traveling machine that they were going to be on and how they could just hammer all of those into the ground and have that constant running event that would happen. I think that as a one shot thing that you could drop into a game, that rally would just be really fantastic.
And even more so if we could use both the run into the ground method and also while you were in the middle of it, this sand and smoke and diesel fumes and all this stuff, all of a sudden you'd be randomly remembering you had a thing that would continue to add to that irreality of the situation. We're on to media recommendations.
So if you enjoyed this book or even if you didn't and you wanted to get a similar vibe from a piece of literature, I'm going to ask you guys to make some suggestions.
I know Michael said he was the outlier, but I definitely feel like I was perhaps the most uncomfortable with this book and I have read the least about this. I'm probably just going to make some recommendations that you would find on the Internet.
So and I'll let you guys hit it with a little bit more interesting things. But my recommendations are Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett. I mentioned it already.
I think Waiting for Godot is an excellent way of going with this and to a certain extent, the Boys by Garth Ennis. This idea that there are no consequences continues for a very long time in the Boys.
So those are my three main recommendations to get the closest to this feeling that Hunter S. Thompson has presented us with. But I'm going to ask Mauricio to go first and give us his recommendations.
Speaker A
00:33:47.210 - 00:34:43.029
Yeah, definitely. More Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels, Curse of Lono I think I mentioned all these and Oscar Zeta Acosta, he has a very similar style.
So he's referred to as the Samoan attorney, but actually was a Mexican attorney in Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo is an excellent choice if you're into Beckett. I'd also pitch Endgame as a very interesting post apocalyptic thing. And yeah, just too many things to reference.
Perhaps Mark Lehner tooth imprints on a corn dog or my cousin, my gastroenterologist. The book John Dies at the End, the movie didn't capture it at all. And I've just been, you know, have it.
I know you already did this on your show, but I've been having a great time going through the Dinnerman series, Dungeon Crawler Carl, which has a lot of this book in it, I think as a kindred soul.
Speaker C
00:34:43.349 - 00:34:52.629
I just finished book five and my wife is on book six waiting for her to wrap that up so I can steal it. And we don't overlap each other. Michael, you want to tell us your recommendations?
Speaker E
00:34:52.869 - 00:35:24.950
Sure. I mean, I've got two, so. The first would be the Illuminatus trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. They are a mind fuck imprint.
You will not walk away from that series of books being the same person. The other, although it is not connected in any way, shape or form, except maybe some of the writing style. Is the Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelenzi.
Speaker C
00:35:24.950 - 00:35:26.190
Roger Zalami.
Speaker E
00:35:26.190 - 00:35:38.760
One of those words you've never heard, but only seen. Especially when talking about going through the shadows. There's a certain style of the prose that really fits in.
Speaker C
00:35:38.840 - 00:35:42.120
Awesome. Rick, you can do it. You want to wrap this up here?
Speaker D
00:35:42.600 - 00:37:49.700
Sure. I would think the most nail on the head because they are definitely trying to not just channel him, but literally recreate him in the future.
Is Trans Metropolitan by Warren Ellis just Spider Jerusalem is just like, what if you, you know, pluck him out of the 70s and put them in, like, postmodernism, late capitalism taken to its absolute zenith. People in the street are being crushed by the corroding dongs falling off of Atlantic mech bots that have rotted into the coastline.
And like every form of nasty, virulent, digitized nanobot corruption you can possibly imagine, and then some you haven't encapsulated in a beautifully rot. Like, I love cracking open a book. I feel like I ingest more of the concept out of it. But like, images and text together when they're meshed.
The way that, like, you get that Byzantine lace that is woven out of pubic hair, that is Hunter S. Thompson's writing style. But then actually Seeing it represented incredibly in the images of the artist whose name escapes me and. And I suck for that Trans Metropolitan.
Great, great graphic series. I think it's also by Image and Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. I felt like the book was great. It doesn't have the same sort of floweriness. It's.
It is a little bit more like staid but sort of that drug fueled. Very introspective looking coming out of darkness to an internal truth. If you are going to read it. There's also a movie that came out in 2014.
Joaquin Phoenix was the lead in that and there's a whole Josh Brolin's in it. Martin Short's in it. It's kind of a star studded cast. It was a pretty awesome movie.
And lastly I'd say the soundtrack for all that Dead Kennedy's Fresh Fruit for Rotten Vegetables.
The oldie but a goodie but it kind of carries that irreverence and just like shaking your fist at the powers that be throwing change in the face of a cop. It just kind of has that. That got that vibe.
Speaker A
00:37:50.610 - 00:37:56.970
Lean towards the Butthole Surfers. I think that definitely dead cat 8 if you're.
Speaker D
00:37:56.970 - 00:38:01.570
If you've got, if you've got a tape, make them an A side or a b side. Choices, Mr. Bungle?
Speaker C
00:38:01.570 - 00:38:19.740
Okay, so we've, we've talked about the book and we've talked about you guys. But let's talk about the future and things that are going to happen in this reality or the next. We'll start with you Rick. Have you go forward.
Is there anything that you want to plug or recommend recommend to folks that we haven't done here. Tell the people what they need to know.
Speaker D
00:38:20.140 - 00:39:55.580
So on the surface I am a totally legitimate businessman and one of the co founders of a business that's part of an amalgam of other businesses that is coming together in downtown Lowell under the banner of the Hive Public Market which will be taking over the first floor of the old Hildreth building which was a old structure in downtown Lowell that was built to be commercial from the heyday department stores and is getting restored. And we're bringing 14 shops and community events and cafe and it's going to be pretty hot.
And it's all folks who are tried and true players in the Lowell social scene and established small businesses all throwing their hat into the ring to go do something rad in downtown Lowell. And that, that's my day job behind the scenes.
I'm working on a project with my friend Josh ready And Sam Laszlo called Antarctica, which is a hex crawl that takes place in the thawed remnants of Antarctica after the world has collapsed.
And then all the powers that be that get trapped in that little fishbowl at the bottom of the world try to undo the damage they've done and just double down and fuck it up even more, Tearing a rift in reality. And now the old gods and magic are pulling, pouring into this little petri dish of the last remnants of humanity.
You know, it's a game world, but it's also a story and a game system that we're working on. That is what I'm doing when I'm not running three D and D tables.
Speaker C
00:39:55.819 - 00:39:58.540
Gotta have. Gotta have something to do, you know, three.
Speaker D
00:39:59.340 - 00:40:00.540
Yeah. I don't get bored.
Speaker C
00:40:00.540 - 00:40:01.260
That'd be terrible.
Speaker D
00:40:01.500 - 00:40:06.900
So Antarctica playtesting will start in the future. You know, we'll be looking for people to. To run the demo.
Speaker C
00:40:07.220 - 00:40:17.380
Excellent. And we will make sure that we get links to both the Hive and to any site that might have your game stuff on it. And we'll put that in the show notes.
Michael, do you want to go next?
Speaker E
00:40:17.700 - 00:40:32.740
Firstly, Rick, thank you for doing the Hive. I, through Mauricio, was part of mill number five when it first got started, and I love the whole concept and I will be there as often as possible.
Speaker A
00:40:33.450 - 00:40:33.850
Thank you.
Speaker D
00:40:34.010 - 00:40:37.290
Thank you for your support for being there through and through. We appreciate it.
Speaker E
00:40:37.290 - 00:41:13.730
For me, most of the people that might find me know me because I put kilts on people. Around the time of this episode being released, I'll be at New Hampshire Highland Games, but I am at nerd events throughout New England.
I am also really looking for the right blend of people to run Tales from the Loop. So shoot me a message if you're interested. You already know I'm in because I saw the art.
I saw the art, I watched the show, found the RPG and went, and I need to do this.
Speaker C
00:41:13.810 - 00:41:21.490
Awesome. Also just a sort of side plug. Michael was the sound engineer when we did our live broadcast. So if you have sound things.
Speaker E
00:41:22.290 - 00:41:30.430
That is true. If you want to do a live podcast recording anywhere in New England, shoot me an email. We can make it happen.
Speaker C
00:41:30.670 - 00:41:36.750
And we will have Michael's deets in the show Notes. Mauricio, tell us all the things you're doing.
Speaker A
00:41:36.750 - 00:43:05.720
Oh, many, many things. So when I'm not teaching, I have a small publishing concern called Nagild Publishing, and we do TTRPGs and really anything we feel like doing.
So we've got a Kickstarter that was funded successfully in about 29 minutes. And now I've got to fulfill it. And it's Borg again.
So four flavors of Borg, which were inspired by chick tracts, you know, those little religious pamphlets. We figured their side had enough publicity with those pamphlets. We wanted something for the darker side.
And so we've got four just really cool, really gnarly look adventures for Mirk Borg, Pirate Borg Cyborg and Vast Grimm. The four main flavors of Borg there. I also have a piece coming out in Limit Thrawn, the publisher of pirate boards.
They just did a huge Kickstarter for Down among the Dead. And one of the extra books in that set is called Cabin Fever. And so I have a little piece coming out in that.
And Ohio University Press is putting out a book called Cocina Si Bucca Libre. And that will have, I think a 6, 7 page. I can't remember. That was so long ago when I finished it.
Comic mine in that anthology collection with a bunch of amazing people like Raoul III and just on and on. It's just a who's who's of Latinos in comics.
And check out, you know, guild for a bunch of other smaller projects that we're putting out between now and fulfilling the Kickstarter.
Speaker C
00:43:05.960 - 00:43:19.220
Nice. And you will send me the links so we can put them in the show notes. That goes for everybody, right? You guys send me links and we'll be all set.
Anything last minute. You guys want to tag in, talk about that we haven't put in. You want to say hey, Eric? Hey. What?
Speaker E
00:43:19.220 - 00:43:22.900
Thanks for this concept. I've been enjoying it immensely.
Speaker C
00:43:23.300 - 00:43:37.940
It's a ton of fun. These are the things I like to talk about and I like to talk about it with very creative people. And you guys are amazing.
So thank you very much for bringing all of the wisdom, charisma, intelligence, whatever stat you feel is your best. Thanks for bringing it all because you.
Speaker B
00:43:37.940 - 00:43:38.780
Guys brought your best.
Speaker C
00:43:38.780 - 00:43:43.060
This was best one yet. Each one's the best one yet. It's fantastic.
Speaker B
00:43:44.350 - 00:44:18.550
We emerge from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas changed and ready for our next long, strange trip. Thank you to our gaming spiritual guides, Mauricio Cordero, Michael Sanier and Rick Steck for keeping us safe while we roamed that desert.
Be sure to tune in when these three return to the book club to discuss Bitch planet Kelly, Sue DeConnick's award winning dystopian sci fi graphic novel. And check out our first graphic novel episode.
And our next episode is in two weeks when three new game masters explore Kurt Busiek's Astro City and discuss how best to bring this unique comic book.
Speaker C
00:44:18.550 - 00:44:20.110
World to your tabletop.
Speaker B
00:44:20.350 - 00:45:20.570
You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts@k squareproductions.com GMBC.
You can learn about upcoming episodes on our social media on Bluesky at GMBookClub, Bluescreen, on Facebook at GameMasters Book Club, on Mastodon at GameMastersBook Club, and on Instagram at Gamemasters Book Club. If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and comment on our episodes in your chosen podcasting space.
Be sure to share those episodes with your gaming community. Thank you so much for listening. You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music. Later gamers and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising apartment.