If you play RPGs, you might be familiar with Travis Hanson's webcomic "Life of the Party: Realities of an RPGer".
From Travis' Weebly site, which last had an update in 2017.
Travis has had various outlets for his webcomic over the years, from GeekDad to his own website. He's also posted on that social media website that is basically Elon Musk's plaything*, but he now most regularly posts on DeviantArt. (He also has several books out!)
Still, to anybody who plays RPGs or MMOs, Travis' work can touch a nerve and make you laugh at the same time. In honor of Travis, here's a short selection of some of his single page comics:
Gotta watch out for that rabbit. Just sayin'.
Heh. Nothing more needs saying.
Sometimes tech makes things worse.
Playing Clerics as I do in pencil and paper RPGs, this tickled my funny bone. A lot.
This is what happens when you roll a one, kids.
And finally, one bonus meme, just for the Mages:
Oops. This is SO me.
*As much as people complain about that, it doesn't matter. It is owned by Elon, and all users of it are pretty much his plaything in the same vein as Earth was to Ming the Mongo from Flash Gordon.
EtA: Added the very first pic. Can't believe I missed that.
One of the things that I remembered fondly from my time in that Horde guild back in 2010-2011 was that on Fridays after work there would frequently be an impromptu 'Happy Hour' in WoW.
The guild was split between people in the Eastern Time Zone and the Pacific Time Zone, so at 5 PM EST and then at 8 PM EST we'd have people getting off work and getting online to relax and chat. Alcohol was optional, of course, but after a long week at work it was nice to grab a beer and chat online while I worked on dinner. There was no pressure to actually run anything at that time, although if you wanted to run a dungeon with guildies it was an option.
Even when that WoW guild imploded, I found another 'Happy Hour' on Lord of the Rings Online with the local band on the Gladden server playing at 5 PM EST in Bree.
I reached into the archives for this one.
The mini-Reds found the band first, but after they informed me of the Friday afternoon concert I became a regular as well.
I didn't often drink during these concerts, but there were weeks where a beer or a glass of wine felt like a good idea.
However, my participation in these Happy Hour concerts ended when the kids reached high school and they joined the marching band. That meant that in the Autumn, Friday after work was spent going to high school football games to watch the marching band.*
Eight years later, the mini-Reds aren't quite so mini, and they've all graduated high school and gone to college. It's been a few years since we last attended a high school football game, but of course it's also been a few years since the pandemic began as well.
And oh yeah, it's been a few years since my health was turned upside down.
***
When I returned to WoW Classic in 2019, I fully expected to remain guildless. It wasn't a desire to play solo per se, but when you've had enough drama within guilds --and being the parent of teenagers**-- you prefer to keep the drama to a minimum. That being said, I did kind of miss the old Happy Hour on Fridays: the ability to just kick back and relax where people are glad to see you.
From Cheers, via yarn.co.
I ended up joining a few guilds in my WoW Classic career, and with the exception of the one guild pivoting toward a truly hardcore raiding scene which directly led to my departure from it, I had an okay time. I say "okay" because being on a West Coast server meant there weren't a lot of people on when I got off work; that usually happened when it hit 5 PM Pacific Time.
But now, with my involvement in Classic Era with my Questing Buddy and a small cadre of friends --originally hers, but I kind of got adopted by them-- it feels... Good. While we're not part of the same guild, we have a chat channel that we share that keeps us all connected. We also use their old TBC Classic guild's Discord server for when we want to get in voice chat.
Today, being Friday, means that we'll likely get on voice chat and enjoy the company of each other for a while. It'll be later than the traditional Happy Hour, as some of them have kids that need to be put to bed, but it definitely qualifies as one to me.
Now, about that beer...
Yes, I can drink beer, but I have to ration my amounts. And yes, I know that means 'light beer' for the most part, and that probably sucks for a lot of people. But local breweries make light beer such as this one that taste much better than the big brands and I support the local economy. From the Braxton Brewing Company, Covington, Kentucky.
*To be clear, it wasn't to watch the football team. We were there to watch our kids, and the football team lost their games a lot. And by 'a lot', I mean that seasons where they only won one game wasn't that uncommon.
**There's also drama in our neighborhood that I definitely try my damnedest to avoid but don't always succeed. In a way, not sending my kids to Catholic schools --which is where most of the kids in our neighborhood attend-- has been a boon in the end. It sure didn't feel like it at first, but once the kids grew up I realized I'd successfully avoided most of the parochial school/church related drama (and there tends to be a crap ton of it, from what I can see).
Maybe it's because it's that part of Winter in the Midwest, where you might see the sun once every couple of weeks, that's got me feeling this way. Or maybe it was my little medical scare last November, which I can safely say has passed after my latest blood test. Or maybe it's because of all the layoffs that have been happening in IT, video games, and other portions of the tech industry for no real good reason other than making the profit line go up for faceless investors that never have to deal with the consequences of their rabid, insatiable demands for more more more. But yeah, this has been a gloomy kind of weekend.
This was on Mike Ybarra's LinkedIn page as of this morning. I took the screencap just in case this post gets deleted sometime later.
If you can guess, judging by my comment above, I was rather disgusted by the tone deafness inherent in the post. 1900 employees (at minimum) lost their jobs from the Microsoft Games division*, and that included ex-Blizzard President Mike Ybarra. In typical LinkedIn fashion, he posted a perpetual sales-type upbeat spin on his own departure; if he never worked another day in his life I'm sure he'll be perfectly well off. If he could handle living a middle class lifestyle, that is.
I'm sure that Mike Ybarra will cope with using Kroger brand peanut butter and coffee; just think of all the money he could save! From Boredpanda and Elon Musk's private dick-measuring exercise with his billionaire buddies.
Still, that did get me to thinking about a variety of things, not the least of which is grappling with the concept baked into the American work ethic as defined by H.L. Mencken as "Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
***
Having done my share of genealogical research, I've seen a lot of census entries for my ancestors as variations on "laborer", "housewife", or "maid". Sometimes you see them progress to "machinist" or "carpenter", but I've also seen pictures of the houses/apartments they rented --many of them merely rented rather than owned a home-- and I saw how they kinda sorta eked out a living over the past century and a half.
And now there's me.
Where I am is the culmination of their work --and their luck or lack thereof-- and I've made a living in a field that has seen its share of ups and downs. I'm no Puritan by a long stretch --my kids will tell you that-- but that Puritan work ethic has manifested in me over the years to an uncomfortable degree. I simply can't seem to relax and enjoy myself.
Of course, what I find enjoyable is not what a lot of people do.
A few months ago I had a conversation with a coworker about a variety of things, but he mentioned he was going to go on a cruise in a week or two, and that is one thing that I simply can't examine and find enjoyable.
No, this is not Bobby Kotick's yacht; it's two of Royal Caribbean's cruise ships. From cruisecritic.net.
Even before my dietary restrictions, being in an enclosed space around that many people --and the associated conspicuous consumption-- just made me shudder. Even if I did find being on an oceangoing vessel enjoyable in itself, I would know that the places these ships docked at were tourist traps that presented a false impression of the localities themselves. It's kind of like going on what is called "exotic travel" and ending up at a resort somewhere; I can't enjoy that at all because I feel like I'm participating in some holdover from nineteenth century colonialism.
It's not white guilt per se, but the feeling that I'm still taking advantage of a situation when I recognize that a past I never had any control over still influences things today. I could choose to be willfully blind and try to enjoy myself, but that's not me.
To put this in perspective, my family once went on a road trip vacation that ended at the Outer Banks, North Carolina.** One evening, my ever-budget conscious parents decided to go to a "family restaurant" on the strip near our motel. You could tell the restaurants there wanted tourists because a lot of them had "AAA Approved" signs***, and so did the one we chose. The place had late 70s/early 80s decor, and the food was good enough (think of a local version of Perkins or Denny's), but what made me profoundly uncomfortable was the fact that while the management was white all of the staff were black. Okay, it was more than just that: the mannerisms that the staff exuded were extremely formal in a "this is how the serving staff of a duchess/plantation owner would behave" sort of way. In one of those rare occasions where my brother and I saw eye-to-eye, we both commented on later when we were alone at how damned icky that made us feel.
Yes, it was the South and only 20 years removed from the Civil Rights Act, but still I was shocked that in the mid-80s this sort of thing still existed. At a "family restaurant" no less.
***
I guess you could say that I'm uncomfortable with what I consider to be ostentatious displays of wealth and privilege.
I realize that Lexus as a car brand isn't truly a "luxury" car brand in the same vein as, say, Bentley is, but the "I could get used to this" tagline caught my attention when I first saw this commercial back in 2015 and I instinctively thought "No, I couldn't." For me, it's as if I'd gotten dropped into the middle of The Prince and the Pauper, and I know instinctively that I'd never feel at ease knowing what life is like for people who have less.
So, at this time of year, when you watch sports and there are tons of commercials for cruises, destination vacations, financial products, and luxury items**** and sporting events that the rich (or wannabe rich) go to, it really starts to affect me. (And that doesn't even touch on the fact that in the US there's now a ton of commercials for legalized betting.) I suppose it's a good thing that my social media imprint is minimal, given that I'd see a lot more of this stuff, and I'd really rather not be a party pooper.
Was there a point to this rant? Not really; I just have had it building inside me for a very long time now and I wanted to get it off of my chest. Well, that and that I'm tired --really really fucking tired-- of extremely rich people trying to proclaim how they're just "a regular guy" while hobnobbing with other extremely rich people, and trying to enact policies in business, politics and elsewhere that only favor themselves.
*Mostly ex-Activision-Blizzard employees, but also some from Zenimax (Bethesda) and other areas.
**Luckily for me we visited Kitty Hawk, the site of the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers. Yes, I'm an aviation nut.
***Now THAT is a blast from the past. I doubt businesses give a rat's ass about the American Automobile Association's seal of approval these days, but back in the 70s and 80s you were at least guaranteed a minimal amount of quality if that stamp of approval were given to a business.
****Given the price, I consider an iPhone or a top model Samsung Galaxy a luxury item, no matter if the wireless company gives it to you "for free", because you end up paying the $1400 cost for the phone. It's just hidden in the cost of the service itself, that's all.
Back when I was in high school, my Geometry teacher ran a club called the Rail Baron Club. Until I actually had him for Geometry my sophomore year, I had absolutely no idea what the hell Rail Baron actually was, much less why a club existed for it.
As it turns out, Rail Baron was a game produced by The Avalon Hill Game Company*, and since my Geometry teacher was a railroad fan, he'd fallen in love with the game and shared it with the students. A few of us bought our own copies of Rail Baron, and I joined their ranks sometime late in my sophomore year.
Imagine Monopoly but using rail lines, although that's a bit of an oversimplification. I'm nerdy enough that I laminated the destination chart to protect it long term. "I swear, Bill, if you buy Seaboard Air Line AGAIN I'm gonna scream!" --Me
Inside the box for Rail Baron was a postcard you could send in to Avalon Hill, requesting a game catalog, and of course I did just that.
I couldn't find any of these old cards, where the air of superiority was very strong, so I had to go to the Internet Archive to find this one. The cards I found from the late-80s onward were... much more polite toward prospective players.
When the catalog arrived, I would spend hours perusing the various board game titles, imagining what it'd be like to play them. But in the back, there was an ad for this:
Something I did not know was that SFF author Kate Elliot and her husband were the models for this artwork by Jody Lee. From Bill H from RPGGeek.
RuneQuest? I'd never heard of it before. Given that I was a couple of years into the RPG ban in my household, I just didn't draw any sort of attention to the fact that an RPG was right in a board game catalog. Still, the image that Avalon Hill tried to project --they were a "thinking man's company"-- meant that their Mensa-esque "superior" image rubbed off onto RuneQuest. I kind of knew about the game, but never played it, and I figured it was pretty highbrow as far as it went.
Oh, I had no idea just how bonkers the game could be.
***
Okay, let me back up a bit.
As I have since learned over the decades, RuneQuest was created in 1978 as an RPG for the world of Glorantha, a setting created by the late Greg Stafford back when he was in college in the 60s. Greg co-founded Chaosium to publish his first game based on Glorantha, a board game titled White Bear and Red Moon, and RuneQuest came along a few years later. D&D was experiencing its first huge burst of growth, and people who liked the Glorantha setting in White Bear and Red Moon wanted an RPG for that setting.
Hence, RuneQuest.
The initial two editions of RuneQuest, published by Chaosium, were integrated with the Glorantha setting, but by the time the third edition was published, publishing had since been picked up by Avalon Hill.*** The biggest change from the previous editions of RuneQuest was that the third edition became divorced from the Glorantha setting; sure, there were plenty of Glorantha supplements published for RQ 3rd edition, but the "official" setting was Fantasy Europe****, which is just as it sounds.
Avalon Hill published RuneQuest up until the company imploded and was sold to Hasbro*****, and when the rights to RuneQuest became available once more, Greg Stafford grabbed it and got Mongoose Publishing to create a version of RuneQuest.
In typical Mongoose fashion, they ended up with two versions of the RPG. And let's just say that Mongoose's version of RQ had.... issues. Unlike Mongoose Traveller which continues to be well received, there were a ton of issues with RQ, and in the end a RuneQuest 6th Edition was created by The Design Mechanism.
Fast forward to 2015 and Chaosium was on the verge of collapse, and the founder, Greg Stafford, was brought in to save the company. (Apple fans, tell me if you've heard this scenario before.) When Greg came back, he helped to get Chaosium on good financial footing, and began work on a new version of RuneQuest. The Design Mechanism's version of RuneQuest was no longer needed per se, so that 6th Edition morphed into a setting-agnostic version of the game called Mythras. (Which still exists to this day.)
Greg passed away in 2018, but his vision for the current version of the RPG was realized with the publication of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, in 2018.
Got all that?
Oh, and I haven't even mentioned Greg Stafford creating HeroQuest, which also uses the Glorantha setting in a rules-lite fashion.
No, not this HeroQuest:
This is the current version of the Milton Bradley game, published by Hasbro. Pic is from all over the net.
But THIS HeroQuest:
Yeah, it's complicated, and I'm not done yet! From Moon Design Publications.
In a bizarre sort of way, the history of RPGs based on Glorantha is as complex as the Glorantha setting itself is.
***
Remember when I mentioned that RuneQuest was a bit bonkers? The RuneQuest system itself isn't bonkers per se, because it is a skill based RPG with a lot of crunch to it; if you think Pathfinder has crunch, let me introduce you to my little friend here.
No, it's the Glorantha setting itself that is bonkers.
When you first hear Glorantha and "Bronze Age Setting", your mind immediately leaps to, well, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Or maybe Ramses II of Egypt, or Hammurabi. Or maybe even the Hittite city of Watusa, the Nubian city of Meroë, the Elamites of Anshan, or the Indus Valley and Harappa.
Somebody should have told the Hollywood
execs that these should have been bronze weapons.
But The Rock's gonna Rock...
But Glorantha is... Well, it's kind of not what you might be used to.
For starters, the world of Glorantha is known by its inhabitants be a gigantic disk, with an underworld and a sky above:
I should mention that the artwork and the rules themselves do have an adult approach toward sexuality. I mean, I'm an adult so it's no big deal, but be aware of it in case you don't want kids asking uncomfortable questions of you. This is from writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com
There are also a veritable ton of gods out there in Glorantha, and none of them really fit into the standard Greco-Roman --or even Egyptian-- Pantheons. The gods aren't good or evil either in the standard Fantasy sense either, despite what the Chaosium rep tried to explain to me at Gen Con back in 2023. There are gods and goddesses of Nature, the Sky, the Underworld, etc., but whether they are good or evil is purely dependent upon the point of view of your cult.
Oh yes, the cults of Glorantha.
No, not this Cult...
but these types of Cults. Have I mentioned the adult themes? From Chaosium.
A Cult in Glorantha isn't what it means in our own terminology, but is closer to an extended tribe that embraces a god or goddess. If you roll with that, you're about 90% of the way to understanding cults. Your cult gives you identity and camaraderie, and a ready made community to fall back on for support throughout the game. You betray your cult at your own risk.
The player characters in Glorantha embrace their position as heroes by going on what is in-game referred to as Hero Quests# --if you think of the Hero's Journey as a template, you've got the right idea-- for the glory of your cult and your chosen deity. If you complete your Hero Quest successfully, you may take your place in the upcoming Hero Wars, where the great heroes across Glorantha gather to fight for the future of the world.
The traditional starting location for a RuneQuest game is Dragon Pass, where there's a ton of action and activity, and there's clearly defined "Good Guys" (Kingdom of Sartar) and "Bad Guys" (The Lunar Empire). Like I mentioned above, they're not "good" and "evil" in the traditional sense, but the Lunar Empire is definitely the aggressors as an occupying empire that the Kingdom of Satar has recently ejected from the area; like the Galactic Empire in Star Wars, the Lunar Empire is plotting to return to power in Dragon Pass, so they're not going away any time soon.
***
Okay, one thing I do have to address about Glorantha is that while humans are the current dominant race, there are lesser races that had their time in the sun. Such as the Elder Races.
Elves are not like what you typically find in RPG fare, but are akin to that found in Guild Wars 2: they are sapient plants.##
There are also spirits that reside within everything, which is very much an ancient way of looking at the world:
From RuneQuest: The Coloring Book, available for Print and PDF from Chaosium, page 15. If you buy the POD version, the PDF is free. Again, yes, adult themes, but the art is really fantastic.
They're formally known as the Durulz, and kinda-sorta fill the spot in a Fantasy RPG normally populated by Halflings or Gnomes. As for their creation, the most common explanation is that they were created by a curse, but I've also seen goofier creation stories. Still, they're a part of what makes Glorantha a bit nutty.
***
Okay, nuttiness aside, why am I so fascinated with Glorantha and RuneQuest?
Because it's a classless, skill based system that acknowledges that combat is dangerous.
Unlike MERP or D&D 3e or other skill based hybrid systems, RuneQuest has abandoned the level concept and gone full tilt into skills. If you want to 'get gud' at something, you have to actually do it. You know, like real life.
But RuneQuest has also abandoned the class structure as well, basically allowing you to do whatever you want as long as you actually work at it. It's like an Elder Scrolls game without even the pretense of a class structure.
There is magic, performed through the use of Runes that grant you access to spells. Runes are also intrinsic to Glorantha, and their in-game use is that they also allow you to augment your skill checks and your resistance rolls.
Combat is, well, not something you enter into lightly. You can quite easily be maimed or die. It's not quite the "you die on character creation" that Traveller has, but it's not the handwaving of the danger that you find in a lot of other RPGs. There are real consequences to combat, and even the best battle plan and warriors can be laid low if the gods do not favor you. True to the ancient world, you want to attack when the gods favor your success.
Yes, RuneQuest is crunchy; there's no denying that. But it also provides you with extraordinary freedom within all that crunch.
And yet...
RuneQuest can be dense. The reason why it never took off the same way D&D did is due to the denseness of the rules and the zaniness of the game world. You kind of need a RuneQuest evangelist to help you embrace the game and overcome it's quirks. For some, that's the video game The King of Dragon Pass that is set in Glorantha. For others, YouTube can come in handy, although I've found the official Chaosium videos on Glorantha to be somewhat lacking. If you've lived through a class at a university given by a boring professor who obviously knew his stuff but couldn't communicate effectively, you'll understand what I mean.
However, Chaosium has put out a truly high quality starter set for RuneQuest that is worth checking out. The Starter Set has premade characters --and the set doesn't teach you how to create characters, strangely enough-- but they stuffed just so much material into the box that it's frankly amazing how they were able to pull it off.
From Chaosium. You can find it at their website or at your local game store (which is where I bought my copy).
I've often wondered how RuneQuest would work in a rules-lite system. I've never played HeroQuest so I couldn't comment there, but adapting RuneQuest and the Glorantha setting to the FATE or, say, Burning Wheel systems would definitely pique my interest.
Still, if you're up for something definitely different, RuneQuest is a rabbit hole worth going down. I mean, where else can you create a character who is a Bison Rider?
This is Vasana, Farnan's Daughter, one of the iconic characters of Glorantha. From Book 3 of the RuneQuest Starter Set.
*3M --yes, that 3M that created sticky notes and various forms of adhesive tape-- was publisher of Rail Baron before Avalon Hill bought all of their board game assets, including Acquire and Facts in Five. The original Facts in Five (which is what we have) is kind of dated these days as far as trivia goes, although there was a reworking of the trivia part back in 2007 or so when University Games put out a version. As is usual, my wife tended to win those games we played in the 90s and 00s.
**Now most well known for the Call of Cthulhu RPG.
***Hence its presence in the 1985 Avalon Hill catalog.
****Not to be confused with the Mythic Europe setting for Ars Magica.
Last Thursday, I got pinged at work by my a coworker who'd I'd worked with for the past several years. He was alternately a friend and mentor, and was my boss for about 3-4 years.
"Hey Red, when you get out of that meeting you're in, call me."
"Sure," I replied.
"Good. If I'm in a call, ping me. We need to talk."
I began to get an uneasy feeling about the directness of his words. I knew that one of his grandkids had childhood cancer but had finally beat it after a few years' worth of chemo, and the first thing I thought of was that her cancer had returned. Then I thought that he'd been canned, but I figured that he'd just retire at that point.
My meeting ended, and I pinged him.
He called me immediately.
"Hey buddy," he said. "Kristy* died yesterday."
I believe I blurted out a "What??!!"
"Yeah, I said the same thing when I heard the news. Since you and her had been really close over the years, I wanted to make sure you heard it from me."
You see, Kristy had been my boss for a decade, and before that we were coworkers on different teams and frequently worked together when there were security related issues. Even after she'd moved on to another position, we'd chat every three to six months just to catch up on how we were doing.
I'd known her for close to 20 years.
My friend informed me what had happened. She'd been in a Teams call when she suddenly became unresponsive**. At times like that, my company has procedures if people think there's an emergency, so her boss called for a life squad and tried to reach her husband directly. By the time the life squad had arrived and gotten into the house, however, they found her slumped at her desk by her laptop.
She'd suffered a massive heart attack. The life squad had attempted to revive her without success.
My friend was going to reach out to some of our other old coworkers, but the emails had started making the rounds already. I reached several of my old teammates --some had heard and some hadn't-- and some of them were really torn up over it. I had to just console them as best I could, on a Teams call with some of them a half a world away. As of now, there's still one member of our old gang that I've not been able to get a hold of, but that's because he's apparently out of town.
***
As for me, I'm just numb.
I kind of just unplugged this past weekend and crawled up inside my head for a while. Kristy was nine years older than me, and was already looking forward to retiring after a couple of more years.
I've already buried a parent, and I know that other parents will be following soon due to their age, but this is different. She was a friend and coworker, a contemporary of mine. We both grew up in the same part of town, so we had similar experiences, albeit hers were in the middle of the Disco era and mine was Hair Metal. Working for global teams like we did, it was like we were the only people who got our jokes. She was also good at giving me advice, and if you were ever in trouble or something, she had your back.
On Sunday night I tried logging into WoW for a while, but I just wasn't feeling it so I logged off and curled up on the couch until I finally drifted off to sleep. Last night I logged in, found my Questing Buddy, and we had a long chat. She was patient and read my messages, and was simply there for me.
***
I found Kristy's obituary, and the family isn't having a service, so I'm using this as an attempt to say goodbye. I'll miss you, kiddo.
*Not her real name.
**No, we don't put our cameras on for almost all of those meetings. I'd rather not end up on the wrong end of a viral video clip.
In my mind's eye, I see her in the same vein as how Henrik Stavnem drew this warlock:
Only with dark hair, of course.
Maybe she needs a slightly more insane look to her face, but still, it'll do.
That graphic inspired me to pull together some disparate Warlock memes --from both MMOs and tabletop RPGs-- and create today's Meme Monday...
In World of Warcraft, Warlocks use Lifetap to replenish mana at the expense of their health. And then they expect that healers will heal them back to max health. HA! I say... From Pinterest.
Speaking of using Lifetap, I'm pretty sure Amidala is supposed to be a healer. From imgflip.
Although this references D&D's version of Wizard/Mage vs. the Sorcerer and Warlock, it fits Zarg to a tee. From iFunny.co.
The lure of power is strong in Warlocks. From owlturd. (Yes that is a thing.)
And finally, one bonus meme:
Yeah, I'm like that Paladin. A lot. (Honestly, I feel like I should know where this graphic came from. Can't place it for the life of me, however, but the "Warlock" is a dead ringer for a girl I knew in grade school. Which is kinda awkward, seeing someone you had a crush on appear here.) From feedthejar.
