The Satanic Rules of the Con

As you may know, the Satanists have their Eleven Rules of the Earth. These were written in 1967 by Anton LaVey, excusing them from the charge that they just wanted to make the Commandments "go to 11"  (Spinal Tap, 1984).

Being that Satanism is mostly run by Nietzschean atheists, I can fully believe that the Rules were dreamed up just to give the ACLU something to post up in Boss Hogg's courtroom. Indeed, they present a loophole-riddled life morality that only a Cormac McCarthy villain trying to write a parole statement would mistake for the real thing.

But ... at the same time they're a nearly ideal set of rules for behavior at gaming conventions, substituting "game" for "home" and "munchkinism" for "magic". They come with an anti-harassment policy (#5), an anti-theft policy (#6), and a solution to the strolling bard problem (#11).

What, I ask you, does this say about gaming cons?

One Page Dungeon Entry: Forbidden Steam Tunnels of Emesh Yuu

Hey, I got my One Page Dungeon Contest entry out of the way early this year.

When Random Wizard made public a map of the infamous Michigan State steam tunnels -- implicated in the sad case of James Dallas Egbert, later fictionalized in the novel and TV movie Mazes and Monsters -- I had my raw material, and my inspiration. The dungeon map reconstructs them circa 1980.

Click to enlarge; edited from first post.

Mazes and Monsters provided the adventure hook (inverted in the fantasy world), a couple of the encounters, and the name of the dread Ack Oga. Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons, of course, makes its appearance, and I fit in a few very quick and obscure references to other works of the 1980's moral panic. The colorful mascots of the Big Ten athletic conference fit right in. Telecanter, as usual, provided a couple of bases for the silhouettes.

Remember, it's not satanic if they're not called demons and devils! (I always liked Knights of the Dinner Table's take-off on that - "we'll call them ne'er-do-wells.")

Mithril Steel In The Hour of Chaos

As much as I can understand the moral counter-panic about the "no D&D in prison" story, and the stupidity of the reasons actually advanced in the court case...

How can I say this? It just doesn't look good to have convicted felons playing a game where they cooperate on strategies to break into lairs, past locks and security systems, carrying off anything that isn't nailed down and killing anyone who tries to stop them.

The funny side of this irony was well worked out in the Knights of the Dinner table comic book. One of the gamers, Crutch, is an ex-con trying to go straight. In one of his less successful tries at this, he let a shadier friend egg him on, and talked one of his tablemates into unwittingly devising a plan for a real-life burglary,  presenting it as an adventure scenario in another game he was playing in.