awkwardly

Friday

Smurf: the smurfing- a really smurfy rpg
Play proceeds like any normal role-playing game, except there is no game master. Every player has a part in smurfing the game. Just smurf the die. Whoever smurfs highest gets to start the Smurfy Adventure by describing the opening of the Adventure in less than 1 minute. Whoever got the next highest result goes next, and so on. Each player gets 1 minute to describe what’s happening. Only when someone yells “Smurf that!” and smurfs some dice does the clock stop.
Metal Öpera
Heavy Metal Roleplaying by Zak Arntson
Metal Öpera is a game of blunt passion given an electric voice. You play an angry Rocker fighting against the oppression of the State with violence both musical and physical. A Rocker is typified by the leather-clad bad-ass weilding a smoking shotgun (with a broadsword bayonet), sparking guitar slung over his shoulder. He stands atop a pile of downed foes, a rumbling storm approaching from behind lit within by fierce lightning and without from the hellish fires below.

Tuesday

Blues Walkin Like A Man
Songs for Cthulhu campaign: "Preachin Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)" -- describes Robert Johnson's battle with an avatar of Nyarlathotep. "God Moves on the Water" -- Blind Willie Johnson's alternate theory on what brought down the Titanic (GODS move on the water). "Dark Was the Night" by Blind Willie Johnson, or "Hellhound on my Trail" by Robert Johnson -- atmosphere music for a bluesy campaign.

Monday

Scenario idea for Call of Cthulhu:
"I think we're property.
...That once upon a time, this earth was No-man's Land, that other worlds explored and colonized here, and fought among themselves for possession, but that now it's owned by something:
That something owns this earth--all others warned off.
Nothing in our own times--perhaps--because I am thinking of certain notes I have--has ever appeared upon this earth, from somewhere else, so openly as Columbus landed upon San Salvador, or as Hudson sailed up his river. but as to surreptitious visits to this earth, in recet times, or as to emissaries, perhaps, from other worlds, or voyagers who have shown every indication of intent to evade and avoid, we shall have data as convincing as our data of oil or coal-burning aerial super-constructions.
...I suspect that, after all, we're useful--that among contesting claimants, adjustment has occurred, or that something now has a legal right to us, by force, or by having paid out analogues of beads for us to former, more primitive, owners of us--all others warned off--that all this has been known, perhaps for ages, to certain ones upon this earth, a cult or order, members of which function like bellwethers to the rest of us, or as superior slaves or overseers, directing us in accodance with instructions received--from Somewhere else--in our mysterious usefulness.
But I accept that, in the past, before proprietorship was established, inhabitants of other worlds have--dropped here, hopped here, wafted, sailed, flown, motored--walked here, for all I know--been pulled here, been pushed...have visited periodically for hunting, trading, replenishing harems, mining: have been unable to stay here, have established colonies here, have been lost here; far-advanced peoples, or things, and primitive peoples or whatever they were: white ones, black ones, yellow ones--
I have very convincing datum that the ancient Britons were blue ones..."

- Charles Fort, The Book of The Damned

Sunday

Horror on the Strait - Home
An 1890's Call of Cthulhu Campaign set in Detroit, Mich. [updated as recently as April 2002]
Every time I get an automatic email telling me that someone has signed my Fuck Texas guestbook, I get a sensation like butterflies in my stomach. Diseased butterflies. About one out of every ten responses there say they laughed and enjoyed reading it. The other nine tell me to keep the hell out of Texas if I know what's good for me. The one that stuck with me is the person who said I got some funny jokes across, but he'd still cut my face off, with a follow-up post saying, No, really, I will cut your face off.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to take down the site soon, because it's not worth the pain to those people and the intestinal difficulties they give me. In place of the actual article text will be a link to the guestbook to show why I took it down, and maybe a list of the emails you should contact to complain about it (the email addresses some shitheads actually posted to the guestbook like "fuck@you.com" or "nonyabusiness@suckme.com" etc.). Some highlights from the guestbook would help, such as: You sorry excuse for a worthless motherfucking human. This is the best fucking state there is and if you don't like it that's fine with us. We don't need your sorry ass stinking up our state. Come on and visit us sometime and make your next visit to our wonderful state your last you piece of shit. [Reply: Yes, thank you, Tim. When I think of "Texas Friendly," I think of someone telling me, "make your next visit to our wonderful state your last, you piece of shit."]

[This last thing has nothing to do with F-Tx, but here's an ASCII art signature I saw representing Cthulhu:]

/|\_(@jjjj@)_/|\

Saturday

Latest original piece on Awkwardly
Episode XXVI: The Phantom MEEsa
(or "The Force Is Strong With This Jub-Jub")
Adventure for Dark Side players of Star Wars RPG, featuring Jar-Jar and Ewoks as your opponents.
Possible Call of Cthulhu scenarios:
1) Dude murdered while updating his blog. His ghost messes with people who visit his site. Players have to solve the murder to stop the ghost from attacking more people.
2) "For The Love of Y'golonac." There's no point speculating whether the hungerlust started in raccoons, rats or monkeys before infecting humans. It's not a mutation of AIDS like some fools believe, and it wasn't sent by Jehovah to punish sinners. More likely it was sent by Y'golonac as a reward for those who sin creatively. At least, that's what some of his followers believe. Picture a rabid dog humping your leg while it tears filets mignons out of your thigh. Now picture Alan Greenspan trying to do the same thing. Players have opportunity to catch the disease before it gets loose. Within a few days of contracting the disease, its victims are too hungry to care what they eat, and usually begin self-cannibalism. Genetically engineered from captured trans-dimensional beings? Government or cult spreading the disease?

Wednesday

Nicodemus' Free RPG's (includes "Mexico 1970"!)
http://members.fortunecity.com/nicodemus2/freerpg/

octaNe
http://memento-mori.com/octane/index.html

Palladium Books
http://www.palladiumbooks.com/

The Forge - The Internet Home for Independent Role-Playing Games
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/

The Gaming Outpost
http://www.gamingoutpost.com/

DNDResources.com

Mass combat resolution
http://www.efn.org/~bstoner/mass-combat.html

online DND3E programs and calculators
http://edara.dyndns.org/Programs.html

The Underappreciated Homonculous
http://roleplaygames.about.com/library/weekly/aa042598.htm

Tales of Terror
http://www.flar.demon.co.uk/terror/welcome.htm

Disinfo.com

EatTheState.org

http://flag.blackened.net

Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-books/chomsky/

subSitu.com

Subvert the Dominant Paradigm
http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~baitoven/

the anarchy organization (canada)
http://www.tao.ca/

ZNet
http://www.zmag.org/

Conversations with Durito (by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos)
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/guilfoyl/durito.html
Backup bookmarks:
Exquisite Corpse, http://corpse.org/

George Herriman's Krazy Kat
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/crocker/

Ataxx, http://www.ec8.com/Games/Ataxx.html

KRAZY KAT'S INDETERMINATE GENDER,
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.194/pop-cult.194

LeisureTown.com

Monthly Review, An Independent Socialist Magazine.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/

No Media Kings, http://www.nomediakings.org/

Obscure Store, http://www.obscurestore.com/

Salon.com

The Smoking Gun, http://www.thesmokinggun.com/

Michigan DNR website, http://www.dnr.state.mi.us/

Mich. DNR Conservation Officers
http://www.dnr.state.mi.us/SubIndex.asp?SubLinkID=431&sec=main&parent=92&imageid=3

Boblo Island Amusement Park: The Story Continues
http://www2.uwindsor.ca/~carlone/boblo.html

excellent links to ruins of detroit
http://www.mich.com/~ttyler/DETROIT/Detroit.htm

Fabulous Ruins of Detroit, http://detroityes.com/index.html

Great Lakes and Seaway Shipping (Vessel Passage), http://www.oakland.edu/boatnerd/

Nicholson Terminal and Dock Company, http://www.nicholson-terminal.com/

RoadTrip - Detroit 1996, http://www.goodfelloweb.com/detroit/roadtrip/index.html

Steamship Historical Society of America, http://www.sshsa.net/

The Steamer Columbia Foundation, http://www.steamercolumbia.org/

Cat collector
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/05/25/MN29596.DTL

Wisconsin man living out of airport hanger
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wauk/dec01/4374.asp

Tuesday

Do people really read blog archives? I'm not sure if anyone else will bother reading this, but it seems like a quick, easy way to keep an online notebook, if nothing else. I tend to write articles or suites of webpages, and anything shorter than those gets saved on a text file and usually forgotten. This will let me post ideas and notes to myself easily, plus makes a nice backup set of bookmarks in case Backflip.com finally sinks.

Would you believe I just got the d20 Call of Cthulhu core rulebook about 3 weeks ago? Go figure.

I love Melinda! Go read The Basketcase.

Monday

I don't know how they found it, but the main administrator dude at Memepool linked to my h2g2 article on Furniture Whores and Debit Card Toilets (The Lowlights of Avatar Chat and Selected Virtual Societies). Melinda was jealous.