Open

Consensus between the liars and the lies for all to see
fake news implies the existence of real news
yellow journalism gave way to Watergate
and we got Bedtime for Bonzo and we got Home Alone 2

A commitment to honesty is dangerous
in an empire ruled whose hottest commodity is truth
as defined by the empire 
                             whose hottest commodity is truth

I hate the way my brain makes me feel
I hate my brain from inside my brain
                         from inside my body connected to    
                                            my brain
Is science our religion
Is god our witness
Is the demiurge really so cruel
Man is machine
Are we in The Matrix
Are we our thoughts or our actions or our politics or meat

This is not subjective. This is not active
This is not an argument. There are no sides. 
(though my higher hemisphere hurts me)
no object                                                         no objection
This is not a fact. This is a mandate. This is a call to arms.

Kinds of relationships I have been in

Strangers, brief exposure
Strangers, long exposure
Strangers who will become acquaintances
Strangers who will become friends
Strangers who will become lovers
Strangers who will become enemies
Acquaintances
Friends
Lovers
Enemies
Family
Strangers, famous
Strangers, internet famous
Lovers who will become friends
Friends who will become enemies
Enemies who will become famous
Family who will become strangers
Selves who have become strangers
Selves, former enemies, now friends
Selves, former enemies, now family
Selves, former enemies, now lovers
Selves who are lovers
Selves, brief exposure
(this is a complete list.)
Selves, long exposure

Tall Girl Shadow Self

I have never had access to poetry about the moon. I said
I was performing feminine because I wanted access
to oppression, my own corner of the margin, to use this
to explain why I am always in conflict with the world.

Then I came up to the edge and beat myself backwards
but you can only see a lie in the mirror so many times, 
           I can only see a lie in the mirror so many times,
before I get too angry to repeat it.

I am the kind of bitch Shirley Jackson would have called “dark”
pale, a six foot five princess, a heterodox paradox, Girl Atlas
holding up the world for the littles underneath me,
an asinine androgyne anodyne shooting for femme
sometimes I’m a pissbaby
sometimes I’m a bastion of wisdom

How to destroy a girl’s confidence in one innocent question:
“Do you know any dance moves?”
After I danced for hours.
After I looked and waited and checked my phone for them
for hours and hours. Before a reverse Socrates
(“I only know that you know nothing”)
welcomed me to womanhood after six months of me injecting it

walking woman, trying to talk woman, hair woman, hairless woman
soft skin, coquette gestures, sounding woman most on my way
to orgasm, clutching sheets, pulling hair
the clothes made the woman
push my tits together and make a line
look in the mirror and see square jaw, stubble chin
look in and see nocturnal lashes, lips, forest of locks

I will move well, like a secret hero, like a secret
British big cat, smooth, exact, deploy precision stride

so atomize me, persecute me, sentence me, force me out
look askance, look outraged, look
but don’t you fucking touch

I am fat, I am a pervert, I am perverse, I am weird, mad, I love me for it
I will not go back for cisgenderism, respectability, a manhood
things I could never quite hold, never quite want. I love me radically
and you can choke.

Pedophilia is NOT the Cardinal Sin

I know I’m endangering myself with the titles of my two latest essays back to back, but what can I say, I’m a provocateur. And this one is too topical to delay.

The Epstein Files have made their mark on politics by now, I would say. It’s an impressive bruise: livid and visible, but only skin deep.

No one in power has, to my knowledge, suffered for their involvement since their publication, and barely any had at any point previously, when Epstein was incarcerated and all signs pointed to what we now have in writing for all the world to see.

But people are angry. Disenfranchisement with our rulers and the disempowerment they have inculcated in us is growing more and more. But the public narrative is, unsurprisingly, weak to the point of derailing what could be a huge push toward a mass revolutionary movement.

Before I go further: child rape is indefensible. Human trafficking and sex slavery are indefensible. I haven’t said anything in this essay yet to indicate I don’t believe that, including the title, but trans women are never given the benefit of the doubt, even when we’re talking about banal things not connected to our dominant stereotyping as degenerate, deceitful rapists.

I would like now to lay some groundwork for the crux of the argument that my titillating title suggests.

First, I am a firm believer (even if I fail in practice in times) in the notion that people are not good or bad, but actions and systems can be. This is a principle I derived from Ibram X. Kendi’s excellent book, How to Be an Antiracist. In it, he makes a thorough and compelling case that, whether or not people are Racists, as a noun describing their moral character as an individual, it is more productive to addressing racism that beliefs, policies, and institutions are Racist or Antiracist (and anything “neutral” typically tends to be Racist because it is passive in the face of a Racist status quo). This is a framework that really aligns with my overall theory of change and ideal view of humanity; it can be applied outside of racism.

I also don’t think morality is the best benchmark to inform praxis. Morality in our current American culture is derived from Christianity; the good and virtuous go to heaven, the evil and sinful go to hell. Even when morality is a lens applied by people who explicitly disagree with and reject that judgmental paradigm, who have been personally harmed by it, I see a lineage underneath that goes, even if unconsciously, back to a need for a hierarchical religious institution to tell us right from wrong, rather than to do the messy and difficult work of deciding that for ourselves.

I do look at things through a moral lens, all the time. But I think effective critical decisions about where to spend our money, time, and labor, who and what to platform or criticize, should come from other values more than morality.

Who benefits from a policy or narrative, and at a cost to who else? What are the underlying motives? What could be done or said instead, and why have those not happened while this has?

These questions can be answered with morality: for example, two statements I broadly agree with: “Police are evil because they get off on killing and terrorizing minorities.” Or, more topically, “the ruling class are evil because they all frequented an island full of child sex slaves, or participated in covering that up.”

But the moral lens, while it feels good to look through (regardless of your political alignment), paints things in the colors of a crusade. “We are the good guys because we aren’t billionaires or cops” is a slippery slope toward “We can do no wrong because we aren’t the ones who hold most of societal power.”

Intersectionality and power dynamics can save us from falling prey to this black-and-white thinking. Yes, I think that choosing to hoard a significant portion of the wealth and power in the world just because you think you deserve it more, while people starve and die, is wrong. And it’s a choice billionaires are making every second of every day, which makes them (and those who are constantly choosing to enforce their rule) the only group that I can support framing in an “us vs. them” mentality. But if you start letting yourself applying that logic any further, you are doing a disservice to any kind of leftist or humanistic agenda.

I do understand and strongly empathize with marginalized people viewing those who uncritically support or enact their oppression as universally evil. It’s nearly impossible for me not to think cis people are evil when they gleefully insist on deadnaming me or using slurs, or leverage systemic power against me in ways most likely motivated by hate, or disbelieve me when I say these things are happening. But if I cave into the depression brain and start thinking of all cis people as evil for being cis, I am supporting the same logic they use to fear and hate me for being trans.

It’s actually very easy to bring this back to pedophilia and the Epstein Files. Pedophilia is generally defined as a sexual attraction to children. If you are queer, and do not feel that you can just choose to stop being lesbian or bisexual or asexual or gay, because you can’t, then how can you hate pedophiles as a blanket statement?

It is VITAL to distinguish between an internal attraction one cannot control and the ways one does or does not act on it.

Please read the above sentence again and pause to think on it before you read on, especially if you are still rankled by any of what I’m saying.

Pedophiles cannot choose to stop being pedophiles. But they can choose not to rape children.

Now, in considering the above arguments in relation to the Epstein Files, I would like to explain why I don’t think pedophilia is the cardinal sin of the ruling class, as stated in the title.

Their cardinal sin is choosing to have unrestrained, unaccountable, absolute power over the entire rest of humanity. The vehicle for this power is the hoarding of almost all extant wealth and the deployment of it to safeguard their dominance and suppress any effort to challenge it, even potential ones.

If they lacked this power, then even if they wanted to rape children all day long, and own them as property whose purpose is their own sexual gratification, they simply would not be able to have been doing it for so long, on such a massive scale. They couldn’t have kept it a secret for so long, or controlled the media’s expression of the truth to dull and distract from public outrage about it, or prevented themselves from facing any kind of material consequences for their actions.

There is also an attitude among the ultrarich which is genuinely terrifying, despite its existence being logical if you stop to think. There is a reason they don’t think twice about buying up kids to sexually abuse to their heart’s content in the way that anyone else would, even if they had a desire to do so.

They believe they are straight-up better than the rest of us. That they are the most intelligent, beautiful, and good people there are, because they are voluntarily surrounded at all times by sycophants and only sycophants, whose motivation for ass-kissing ranges from delusion to opportunism. And because their purity and greatness is a prerequisite for the fact that they are all-powerful. If they saw themselves as any closer to the squalor and sin of the rest of us, they would have to question their status, and then the whole thing would come tumbling down.

So I say, when we talk about the Epstein Files, we should be talking about choices and the systems that support them. We should be calling attention to power dynamics on a global scale.

We should condemn billionaires and their supporters, not because they are intrinsically evil, or because they are pedophilic monsters, but because they wake up every day and decide to do nothing less than indulge their most destructive and harmful impulses, and reinforce their “God-given right” to do so, for no other reason than that they can.

Why I Don't Trust People Who Won't Roleplay Sex Scenes: On Attitudes Toward Safety Tools, Consent, and Predation in the RPG Hobby

Alright, first of all, let’s get this out of the way: the title is glib and exaggerated. This is intentional though, because I want to weed out people who will be scandalized by a line like that that. It’s not literally true as a blanket statement, but the sentiment has validity buried within, and that will be the subject of this essay.

Being a kinky, fat trans woman who does not think or experience sensation how “neurotypical”/”normal” society wants me to, I have a lot of thoughts on content/trigger warnings, safe spaces, and related conversations. I have never felt at home in kink spaces or most queer spaces. The more informed my opinions become, the less this surprises me. It shocks me in hindsight that I could ever let my guard down in game stores full of nerd bros, even when I thought I was one of them.

I’ve heard it said that RPG players’ conversations on consent and safety are light years behind those in kink. That is true, from what I’ve seen, but I also think kink communities’ conversations are light years away from anything I find relatable or safe to engage with. This is also true of queer and leftist spaces I have been a part of or observed from without. 

Pretty much the only cases I see my inner concerns and experiences reflected accurately come from the most marginalized people who might want to be allowed into these groups. Almost always these are BIPOC people, trans or genderqueer people, disabled people, and people with lived experience full of poverty and trauma and systemic discrimination. The people whose voices go unheard, if not actively silenced, in the places ostensibly most welcoming to them.

This is all background information, and what I’m getting at so far has been abstract. Let me start being more concrete.

I think that it is certainly good that things like session zero, the X card, and lines and veils have begun to be socially acceptable to discuss in the RPG hobby, and indeed included in the text of many games. But, like reformist derailing of workers’ movements, this being the extent of the progress for at least a decade and a half is a problem. It’s not enough. Not even close. And in the mobbish cesspool that social media discourse and echo chambers are, it’s a problem that the narrative is not continuing to progress.

As a side note, I assume that readers of this essay have already familiarized themselves with those safety tools. If not, google still works just barely well enough that you can find them and then read on.

In my personal experiences playing RPGs with various people, from my own queer friends and fellow leftist organizers to “apolitical” white male nerds, to uninvested teens at game stores, I have seen general acceptance of the specific safety tools mentioned above. There’s also a consent checklist of common lines and veils that uses a “red/yellow/green light” system familiar from kink (albeit much less useful, as I will get into), and a couple other things in the same vein. These all appear to be understood the same way across players, excepting those who simply haven’t come across them yet. This is also true in what I have seen in actual play fandoms, discord servers, Bluesky, Tumblr, and other online spaces.

What’s wrong with this? 

First of all, there is commonly an assumption that if you get through explaining all these things in session zero, assemble a list of lines and veils and share it with the whole group, that you’ve done your job and triggering or hurt feelings should be easily avoided unless there is a Bad Actor (TM) in the group. 

This strikes me as extremely shortsighted and also built on insidious assumptions that will cause harm to the most vulnerable people present. 

One assumption is that this conversation happens in its entirety at the formation of a group or the start of a new campaign. There’s a maxim from either kink or LARP (I forget which) that, if examined critically, debunks this assumption: “I need to hear your No before I trust your Yes.” Basically, people will say they are or aren’t comfortable with certain subject matter or triggering content when considering it in the abstract and act as though that’s going to usefully reflect how they feel and act when it actually happens. 

The only commonly used safety tool in RPGs that is explicitly intended to address this issue is the X card (or occasionally, the “red light/yellow light/green light” from kink), but there are a lot of questions left unanswered when this is your sole recourse. 

What happens when someone X cards the death of their character when death is the only meaningful consequence offered for failure by the game system being used, and the other players are interested in their characters’ actions having consequences?

What happens when someone X cards something that triggers them, but that they didn’t think to add to the list of lines and veils three months ago, but the triggering content is the main thematic motif of the adventure the GM has prepped, or the key clue that the mystery hinges on?

I think most of the time, either someone has to pretend they’re comfortable with something they’re not, or the game falls apart entirely. And there are ways to play that don’t make either of those necessary. They just require people to actually think and talk honestly about their feelings, rather than grab something that looks helpful off the internet that purports to make their game safe.

These kinds of problem commonly come up in session zero, too, and it’s rare that it’s addressed well. I’ve seen groups fall apart because someone stayed quiet when a line or veil was made, or not made, that they weren’t okay with. I’ve been that person. Who wants to jeopardize this social activity that requires several people’s committed attention and compatible schedules, before they even get to start playing the game?

What happens when someone says a line for them is any kind of sexual content (one I’ve seen very often), but another player at the table is trans, and wants to play a trans character that draws on their lived experience, and we exist in a society in which trans people are sexualized whether we like it or not?

What happens when someone says a line for them is racism or discrimination of any kind, and the group is playing a Western-themed game or campaign, or a 1920s U.S. Call of Cthulhu game, and one player is queer or a woman or Jewish or Latino or any other identity that was defined first and foremost in those times and places by the ways they were systemically oppressed?

In my experience, people get bitter or feel alienated from the rest of the group, and they try to swallow it until they can’t, and then they leave or blow up with all their restrained hurt. Often this is a deathknell for the game, the group, or even long-term friendships.

Another reason this status quo for such content and conversations is harmful is the way it propagates and reflects a common and dire problem in “woke” spaces: that when these heavily flawed safeguards fail, individuals are blamed for it, and there is no pause to reflect on the safeguards or the norms that led to them being agreed upon.

This is exacerbated by the widely accepted idea that the worst thing one can be is an abuser, a predator, a transgressor, a Bad Actor in whatever way it can be explained to justify a mob mentality. Kai Cheng Thom has written a very compelling case against this accepted “wisdom.” 

Abusers and bullies are usually abused and bullied themselves. Addressing harmful behavior with punishment and judgment cements “Bad Actor” as an identity and self-fulfilling prophecy. The types of people that are most often vilified for transgressing are typically more marginalized. The types of people that are given sympathy or a more nuanced response are typically less marginalized. 

People and communities nominally committed to social justice and acceptance, or even abolitionism or anti-racism, regularly overlook these facts when it would shake the status quo to take a closer look.

One last reason I feel this essay is necessary is that it’s far from the first time in the hobby this argument has been made. We’ve had games for and by marginalized people for a long time, that explicitly ask us to talk about this issue, often through the vehicle of game mechanics designed to facilitate conversation and critical thought. But these games are either erased or appropriated and derailed. 

I cannot tell you how many times I see Monsterhearts recommended to queer players because it’s a game by a queer and about queer characters. It happens on social media, it happens in books (plural) by therapists on how to run RPGs for therapy groups. I have to assume a lot of the time, this recommendation comes from people who know of maybe five to ten RPGs that aren’t 5th edition D&D, and who have played maybe one or two of them. There are shitloads of queer RPGs out there.

Now, to be clear, I fucking love Monsterhearts. I think it’s probably the best game about queerness I’ve ever read. Many have read or played it (or vaguely heard of it) and tried and failed to cash in on its excellence. I think the reason we get games like Thirsty Sword Lesbians, that want to be part of the lineage borne from Monsterhearts, but that ring so hollow to me and people like me they almost feel like they weren’t written by actual queers, is that the imitators fail to understand what’s great about the OG. And if they did understand, I think many would no longer like it.

The real genius of Monsterhearts, as much as I love the way the themes are deployed and cute details like the seating chart, is the way the mechanics put you in the shoes of your problematic queer teen character, who is also a literal monster. You cannot control who or what Turns Them On (which is the name of the move that is the centerpiece of the game). 

If you try to play Monsterhearts to tell stories of untraumatized, well-adjusted queers, the game will fight you every step of the way. If you try to play it and retain full authorial control of any aspect of the game, including your own PC, it will fight you. This applies to the GM as much as anyone else. This is beautiful, and what makes it a great game, but also something that is hardly ever mentioned when it’s recommended. Usually, I just see it touted as a “queer game” or “queer romance game.” 

Admittedly, I think at this point the majority of the RPG “community” is adept at fighting and ignoring the explicit rules and intent of the game they play, if they even play at all themselves. We can thank actual plays and their fandom cultures for that. 

Whose ideal "UWU queer found family" system DOESN'T have extremely 

detailed mechanics for when you can and can't move in five foot increments?

Incidentally, my critical read of Monsterhearts is heavily informed by the RTFM podcast episode on it, although I am not unequivocally positive on that show as a whole. It’s also very interesting to me how Monsterhearts became, years ago, a “queer game” with a “queer author,” not a game with a “transfeminine author.” Both are true, but it bears consideration which term is more popular, and why.

The only other thing to talk about here is solutions. The obvious and least helpful thing I can say is, don’t engage in an activity like RPGs with the potential for extreme emotional vulnerability with people you don’t trust. This does no good for people who don’t have anyone they trust a lot (who also wants to play tabletop games with them), and it also creates the potential to damage that trust by not giving any more concrete support frameworks – the thing I’m criticizing in the first place.

I do have a bit more to add, but it’s still not super concrete. That’s partly because these kind of meaningful human interactions don’t have a quick fix. You have to engage with them thoughtfully and honestly, as best as you’re able.

So, here’s my advice: do not assume safety tools and session zero are all you need. Do not expect this conversation to happen once and be finished. Keep having it. It’s going to be part of the game as long as the group continues to exist. And accept that there will be times when you fail to use the safety tools when you should, or you misuse them, or you cause each other harm despite them. 

People aren’t perfect. We all fuck up and hurt each other. It’s vital to accept that will happen to you and that you will do it, too. This does not erase the harm itself, and it does not excuse a refusal to apologize, reflect, and do better. 

I often see people try to avoid “heavy” or taboo subjects in their RPGs to try and avoid this. It’s certainly understandable, and defensible to a degree, to want a gaming table to be a safe place where you can let your guard down. That’s perfectly fine to want and strive for. But this is the motivation that leads to people banning racism or sex or sexual assault wholecloth as subject matter that can be addressed in any way. And that will alienate and possibly even harm people who experience, or have experienced, those things. It’s erasure, even if well-intentioned. And it doesn’t actually prevent players from triggering each other. 

So yeah. I guess it boils down to saying you can’t control everything, and loosening your chokehold on life is necessary, even though risk is scary, and that’s something that applies in every context, not just RPGs. I have an extremely hard time living that truth myself. But we need to have grace for ourselves, not judgment. Respect, not hatred, and informed by acknowledgment of power dynamics and systemic oppression. It’s necessarily a work in progress, but one we should be honest about, rather than afraid to admit.­

Ode to the center of my universe

3333. 
Every three or two days, or sometimes one, I come to you. 
Fill my stomach with rice and chicken, my head with caffeine and words. 
A universe needs a constant and you are mine. 
There is a quiet. Understanding, mutual, I like to think, 
a transaction repeated into ritual, almost into law. 

1980. 
Again and again. If it’s December, or I stayed long in a busy time, 
sometimes I deviate above. But never far. Most often, 
when you speak I cannot understand. The interchange of words 
is more or less the same regardless. More of it is in the little things.
A gesture to my place. Wrinkling laugh lines. Retraced steps.

If variety is the spice of life, 
consistency is its carbs. 

Inoculate / Indoctrinate

They are giving us autism.
Not like the fearmongers say. They are placing us in a template. The medical model.
They do not need to bother tying cause to symptoms to treatment. They offer no cure.
Like a pack of zombies, they have to make sure you’re dead the same way they are. 
Unthinking conversion.

It’s all very PC; all the horrors are past. 
We don’t call people insane, no, no. 
It’s a disease. This is how we treat it. 
Don’t worry. All the numbers are in this little book. 
We can print the label off and stick it right to your forehead. 
It’s for your own good. 
Are you struggling? 
Are you having a hard time? 
That must be so hard for you. Here: come into our cage. 
Don’t mind the door sealing you in. 
It’s for your own good. 
Poor thing. We know you 
want to be just like us, think just like us. 
It’s only natural. The numbers tell us 
what you have to be, of course. 
If you can’t be at least a 3.5
then we’re afraid you may not be cut out for this. 
These things happen. 
They have happened before. 
But if you keep your head down, and you put in the work, 
and repeat after me, F60.3
you can get through this. 
All the others have. 
Now you see, now you understand. 
It’s for your own good. 

Danger boy

Danger boy. He crashed, we laughed.
Plastic “C” hands opened and shut,
glowing in the dark, my first cosmic encounter.
A clown snuck the runes to a mark in a book.
We used the paper wrapping of disposable chopsticks,
hid the runes in a pocket. He found them, we laughed.

Danger Man. He resigns, I relate.
I try to inform my friends and my comrades that
he means the world, but I can't get it across.
I uncover voices once inscribed on black plastic
before me. There are more than he remembers.
I relate a living inheritance. 

Guns and cars

I’m an American so I have an obsession with guns and cars. But 
I’m fucked or insane and I think, but I’m not sure, but I think I got it all 
messed up. I hate guns and I hate cars. I 
think they ought to be abolished and they might be the worst two things, 
even before the a-bomb, to come out of our ilk. Or wait. Maybe 
not because there are Leftists that like guns and there are Car 
Girls and I’m a Girl and a Leftist so maybe I need to make room for some nuance. 
But I don’t know. I think maybe they’re the wrong ones but I’m fucked or insane 
so who can really say. I wish there weren’t all these categories and I 
wish they weren’t always fighting each other at the throats. Or wait. But I think, maybe, 
wait. Hm. I think I got it all messed up. I think I’m Bad. I know I’m 
fucked or insane so I think maybe I’m also Bad. And if I’m Bad then that comes
even before Girl and Leftist and 
American. I think. I might have that messed 
up and maybe I’m Really Good or Fascist or Boy but I don’t think so, but I might be wrong, 
which has definitely happened before unless it hasn’t happened but if 
you’re never wrong you’re a Saint or a Genius and I’m fucked or insane so it can’t be that. 
I can’t be that, I think. I’m going to get in my car and shoot my gun and go 
drive to McDonald’s or Burger King and cast a ballot, which I can do even if I’m 
fucked or a Girl, I think, I just can’t vote for a Leftist or Bad or insane. Yeah. 

Firebrand

Tucking my dress inside my pants for anonymity, and bringing it out, 
unfurled like a flag. I grab the cord connected to the megaphone. 
Channeling the movement, I am a mouthpiece and a medium, spouting the message. 
A girl, a symbol. I stand for rightful indignation, leftist fury, raising my voice, stepping forward
at the front of the broken floodgates. Trans, a leader, a member, outstretched. 
I want to live my life like I’m an allegory, black and red. 
I want to be allowed to be a person, in crisis, part of a struggle in the heart 
of a poisoned body that takes, takes, takes, enshittifies, represses, surveils, 
that only opens one eye when the white bodies start to drop, the other forever asleep.
I am mad. I will not stand by and watch. I am climbing to the top of the pole, 
flying the colors with pride, insisting. I will be heard and there will be a reaction. 
The movement propels me over the edge, past taboo. I can look back 
but the shaft of salt is there either way. I am coming to a climax.

The Bitter Taste of Vengeance (Unknown Armies scenario)

Proof that I still do RPG stuff on here!! This is a scenario I wrote for the latest game jam on the UA fan discord, which is themed around death, rebirth, sex, and other things associated with early Spring holidays/traditions. Also cannibalism (CW for that, and also references to nazis.)

No idea if yall will read this, but thanks to my playtesters for your feedback! One last note before the scenario - I could only include the stats for Schuyler in the jam entry due to the word cap (which I met exactly; it was meant to be.) I'm adding some for the other characters I had hoped to stat out here, as well as a generic stat block that may be useful in the climactic scene (which is kinda weird to do in UA, where stats are so personal to a character's psyche. But I tried to account for that.) 

Anyway, here it is!

 

THE BITTER TASTE OF VENGEANCE

The Premise

A “reverse investigation,” if you will. Your pony/street-level cabal has made the mistake of hiring a real occultist to hex a loathsome cop against whom they all hold a grudge. They wanted him scared, maybe food poisoned; instead he nearly dies, and soon HE wants revenge, and is more than capable of getting it. Play will focus on the PCs’ efforts to avoid consequences for their actions.

Have each player define what Officer Stirling has done to earn their enmity.

Opening Scene

• Schuyler has gotten a job as a waitress at Ray’s cop hangout, Walt’s Bar and Grill (she magickally blackmailed the manager to speed up the hiring process)

• Ray has been drinking with a couple buddies, both cops and both nazis. They order dinner. Other than that, the owner tends bar and an elderly couple eat quietly at a booth.

• The PCs are in a secluded corner of Walt’s watching as Schuyler brings Ray his hexed stroganoff. She can’t help herself, smugly telling Ray that “he deserves a bloody good meal.” Then she winks at the PCs, subtle as a brick, and returns to the kitchen.

• The PCs watch as Ray eats, and as he’s waiting for his check he doubles over in pain. Then a jet of animate menstrual blood bursts out of his gut and slithers away like a crimson snake. Schuyler has deployed a blast spell of her own invention.

• For all PCs: Unnatural or Violence (5) check. Ray’s friends shout “nobody leave!”, botch a first aid attempt, and call in: Officer down.

• The owner enters the fetal position under the table. The old man gets agitated; his wife tries to calm him down. By the time the blast triggers, Schuyler has already fled out the fire exit.

• If the PCs obey the order to remain, they are suspects, questioned accordingly. If they sneak out while the cops are distracted, one cop notices radios in about them, unless they use magick or a very clever plan.

What Happens Next

The PCs can do whatever they want, until they can’t; GMC agendas are on the timetable below. The scenario ends when the PCs either clear their names or at the probably bloodbath three days later.

Within Hours:

• Barring PC intervention, Death Ray survives, but is hospitalized. He has a ruptured lower intestine, severe internal bleeding, and will need a colostomy for life.

• At the crime scene forensics finds a second person’s blood mixed in with Ray’s.

• Police requisition security footage from Walt’s; full cooperation from the owner.

• Schuyler blocks the PCs on Etsy and any other platform they communicated through, and tells her wife they need to lay low for a while and be ready to skip town. They pack.

One Day Later:

• While lucid between morphine doses, Ray speaks to two friends: Detective Pope and Max De Ven

• Pope gets himself assigned to investigate the attack and calls each PC, Schuyler, and the old couple (though they’re irrelevant) from an unlisted number to get their statements, ideally in person and ASAP. He legally can and probably will lie to get them to talk – promise they’re not suspects, claim he has proof they’re guilty, or anything in between.

• De Ven makes a couple calls to bring in professional muscle from out of town.

• Schuyler lawyers up and meets with Alaina.

Two Days Later:

• Schuyler’s blood is ID’d and she is arrested before Alaina can get a coherent case together. Under duress, she names the PCs as accomplices, and later pins the blame on them entirely.

• Nick Sangster hears about the incident through the grapevine. He messages at least one PC a vague Sleeper-y threat and then blocks them once it’s marked “read.”

• The nazi thugs arrive in town. Detective Pope sneaks them the PCs’ addresses, names, etc. that night.

Three Days Later:

• The cops arrive to arrest the PCs at the same time the nazis come to kneecap them. If the PCs have tried to get ahold of Sangster again or been obviously magickal, he comes too, with an unregistered gun and no real plan. This is liable to end messily.

Counter-Investigation Leads

• Schuyler has minimal online presence aside from her Etsy page (reviews show she is effective but a bad communicator.) Her wife, however, shares her surnames, has photos of them together on Instagram, and works at a local occult (mainstream) shop.

  • If the PCs get in touch with Olivia, they can reach Schuyler (if she’s yet to be arrested), who can be pressured or guilted into explaining basically everything.

• The owner of Walt’s is around and trying to find out what the fuck is going on herself.

• If the PCs decide they want a lawyer and are broke or not willing to do much research, it’s likely they end up hiring Alaina, too.

Dramatis Personae

• 
  

Schuyler Burroughs-Sokol (the witch)

• Early-thirties white cis woman. Medium-length curly hair dyed dirty blonde. Short and scrappy.

• Menstrual blood exesusurge (see the RITE fan sourcebook), but she does other workings too; note her missing nostril.

• Intends to feed her reproductive organs to her wife once she hits perimenopause; still working on getting consent.

• Bloody_Sundae1 on Etsy. 4.2/5 stars.

• Helplessness: Hardened ***** / Failed

• Isolation: Hardened ** / Failed **

• Self: Hardened ****** / Failed **

• Unnatural: Hardened ***** / Failed

• Violence: Hardened *** / Failed *

• Obsession: the menstrual cycle as a mystic power source.

• Fear: abandonment by loved ones. (Isolation)

• Noble: I can get myself out of any jam.

• Rage: misogynistic men in positions of power.

• Exesusurge 80%*: casts rituals, casts gutter magick

  • She has 3 minor charges after the opening scene.

• Etsy Witch 40%: subs for Knowledge, evaluates Helplessness, coerces Unnatural

Olivia Sokol-Burroughs

• Mid-late twenties white theyfab (she/they specifically), short black hair, chubby. Kind, prematurely aged face.

• Schuyler’s wife.

• Has aura sight; straddles the occult underground and mainstream.

• Half terrified for Schuyler (and herself), half hoping this’ll be the end of their troubled Uhaul lesbian marriage.

Raymond “Death Ray” Stirling (the target)

• Mid-thirties white cis man. Square jaw, close cropped black hair. Mean little eyes.

• Semi-secret neo-nazi cop; he had it coming.

Herman Pope

• Mid-late-forties white cis man. Mostly grey hair, mostly bald on top. Scrawny for a lifelong killer.

• Police detective. Another nazi.

• Lazy and unimaginative, but loyal to his “brother in arms” and thus committed to finding his assailant, despite the confusing security footage.

• Helplessness: Hardened * / Failed

• Isolation: Hardened * / Failed

• Self: Hardened ****** / Failed *

• Unnatural: Hardened / Failed

• Violence: Hardened **** / Failed **

• Fear: Being cornered in a firefight. (Violence)

• Noble: "Putting the world to right."

• Rage: Whiny minorities and woke-ists who fill up his day with busywork.

• Cop 50%: subs for Pursuit, evaluates Violence, coerces Helplessness

• Hateful 60%: subs for Struggle, provides firearm attacks, coerces Violence

Max De Ven

• Mid-fifties white cis man. Styles himself after his deluded concept of a viking. His goons look the same but younger.

• Fixer for a couple neo-nazi gangs in the region. Well-practiced and cold-blooded.

• Softspoken but terrifying

Mary Walther

• Mid-seventies white cis woman. Angular face, conservative clothes and attitudes.

• Owner and sole full-time employee of Walt’s Bar & Grill. Her dad was a footnote to Operation Paperclip, immigrating as a favor to his hotshot rocket scientist brother.

• She has become convinced that Schuyler made her into a vampire, even though the spell that made her crave blood wore off days ago.

Nick Sangster

• Early-twenties white/Latino cis man (Mom’s Argentinian. They don’t get along.) Semi-incel scarecrow. Has a hollow, hungry look.

• Closest faux-sleeper to the area.

• Buys into a lot of mundane conspiracy theories; not very smart.

• Wants to channel the Executioner but isn’t sure how yet.

• Tries to buddy up with the local cops on a regular basis, but they think he’s too overzealous, and probably crazy.
  

• Helplessness: Hardened *** / Failed

• Isolation: Hardened ***** / Failed *

• Self: Hardened ******* / Failed **

• Unnatural: Hardened * / Failed *

• Violence: Hardened ** / Failed

• Obsession: Protecting America from the evils of shadowy cabals.

• Fear: any kind of magick he's never encountered before. (Unnatural)

• Noble: I am destined for something great.

• Rage: the forces that have conspired to make my life hard and miserable.

• Conspiracy Theorist 45%: subs for Secrecy, evaluates Unnatural, evaluates Isolation

• Wannabe Vigilante 20%*: subs for Notice, subs for Struggle, provides firearm attacks

   
• Sleeper 10%: supernatural identity, see Book 2: Run, p. 76 

 

Alaina DiNatale

• Late-thirties white cis woman. Caked in makeup but sleep deprived. Frumpy fashion sense.

• Public defender. Well-intentioned, but easily flustered and exceedingly skeptical of the unnatural, even when shown proof.

Nazi Bruisers (stat block)

Failed notches are irrelevant as these guys are likely only going to get used in a combat situation.

In the climactic disaster outlined above under "three days later," they arrive with shotguns and machetes (+6 damage.)

• Helplessness: Hardened *

• Isolation: Hardened *

• Self: Hardened *******

• Unnatural: Hardened 

• Violence: Hardened *******

• Fear: something to do with their paranoiac relationship with their lives of violence.

• Noble: something to do with the master race.

• Rage: something to do with the kind of "degenerates" they beat on.

• Nazi Bruiser 65%: subs for Pursuit, provides firearm attacks, provides wound threshold

Dead End

Disappearing into the woods never to be seen again
doesn't work: I have to be wherever I end up.

Musings of a Troubled Seeker

I have felt adrift recently. A few late nights, aimless drives, uneasy daysleeping. This is on the heels of some tumult in my life, and, I think, on the cusp of change.  One thing to come of this is a reexamination of my relation to magick. 

I decided to take up chaos magick a couple months back as a way to challenge my powerful tendency toward cynicism. I have always been a skeptic; attending Hebrew school as a child, and sitting in temple, I was never convinced. Not only that, I couldn’t understand how others believed in God. Not when it smacked so obviously of something we wish was true, that we invented ourselves to satisfy our existential fears. And of course, if God were real… Which one?

I still don’t think I have within me the capacity for belief in a higher power. But I also recognize that rationality is the product of imperialism, motivated and blinded by white supremacist egotism and greed. Empiricism is real, of course, but still limited by the blind spots inherent to the human condition.

So when science tells us that once we die, we simply cease to be people, become meat, to rot and feed worms, I think it’s reasonable to be untrusting. How can we be so sure? Isn’t it hubris to assume we can?

Hence chaos magick. I love Unknown Armies; it speaks to my soul as a weirdo, heterodox, out of alignment with the way society tells me I should be. In being a part of the game’s fan community I’ve learned how it draws on real modern and postmodern occultism, and moved through respect for it to curiosity on a personal level. 

A friend sent me some online reading to get me started, and I started with sigils. There was a clear step-by-step process to follow, and follow it I did, in good faith. Although I don’t think I quite believed at first, and so it didn’t work. And then, worse, it became a pattern, a thing I did because I Practice Chaos Magick, I Cast Spells By Burning Sigils. Surely any power that might have been present evaporated then.

But as I’ve been unmoored, or depressed, if you like, I have tried more honestly to open myself to chaos. No more trying to understand, only to allow it in, and to allow my will out. Last night, I upped my sigil game, driving the pattern I had drawn into the road and letting it fly out my wound-down window when I finished. I asked only for “new direction”, and let chaos fill in the rest. I believed that time. It remains to be seen if it worked.

Tonight’s experience, again in the dead of night, was sufficiently personal that I don’t wish to describe it outside of this: I came in contact with what I think of as a ghost. It was personal for us both. 

What I didn’t expect, but perhaps should have, was that this was not a good experience. Important, I think, but not pleasant, not spiritually enriching, even though I think that’s what I was hoping for. 

I’ve long been skeptical of “Lovecraftian horror”, not only because Lovecraft was an unbearably bad writer and, of course, sickeningly racist by the standards of any time, but because the whole concept strikes me as reactionary. Things beyond the “natural” world of humankind are impossible to understand and those who try are doomed to gibbering madness. Thus avoidance or destruction of the unknown (the unknown to characters who are sheltered, rich, cishet white men like Lovecraft saw himself, or wanted to) is the only reasonable course of action. Burn down Innsmouth. Run away from the cemetery. Don’t look back.

Because of this, I’m all the more unsettled not to find solace now that I find myself in touch with things I cannot explain in rational terms. In writing this, though, I’m reminded of my first time feeling something spiritual.

During the lowest point in my life, another member of the UA fan community sent me an MP3. This was an extremely obscure track, cited on the first page of the 2nd edition core book, from a band that must have been defunct for at least twenty years by the first time I heard their music. They were called Alpine Valley Mystery School. 

I couldn’t find the song whose lyrics Stolze and Tynes quoted online. Not even the name of it, nor of the band. After all, they must have heard it live in some dingy bar or club while drafting the book, somewhere in one of their hometowns. 

The lyrics quoted in the game book are fucked up, and the song is melancholic. Listening to it fed into my sadness at the time. I remember that I had just begun reconnecting with my mother while still homeless, miserable, and unmedicated. I tried to explain to her what this all meant to me, broke down crying, and genuinely scared her. But amid all of that, it was spiritual, to have gotten ahold of this song when I went out looking for it, to feel the emotions it brought me, to have it given from a secret source because I cared enough to seek it. And there was beauty in that for me, then and now.

Tonight’s experience had a little of that, too, even though I came home cold, just as anxious and confused as when I went out, and sadder than before. It’s quite possible I’m trying to wring a note of hope from another dark time in my life (albeit, thankfully, a rollicking celebration compared to the earlier anecdote). But even then, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

I’ve found some tension in trying to be open to forces beyond my control while still angling to get something specific out of the process. I haven’t got the hang of it, certainly. But I have at least had a spiritual experience, on purpose, and I think that’s something I should hold onto. At the very least. 

Psychology is Complicit in Capitalism

Originally written for the September 2025 issue of Rochester Red Star.

 

As socialists, we must be critical of capitalist thought and systems. Even ever-present concepts like free will, intelligence, and mental health cannot be taken for granted. None of these are innate to humanity any more than jobs, money, or socioeconomic class. Psychology, as a scientific discipline and a way of describing human nature, is a product of capitalism. Furthermore, it is a pillar of capitalist and imperialist oppression.

Psychology is defined by the American Psychological Association (APA) as “the study of the mind and behavior.” It is meant to be objective and scientific, and thus above cultural influence. However, deeply ingrained assumptions shaped the field from its inception, and still do. As elsewhere in Western civilization, psychologists put individualism and self-determination on a pedestal. Since Freud, talk therapy has assumed that, with the aid of a formally trained therapist, anyone can identify and manage or resolve the problems in their life. This is by nature incompatible with recognizing systemic factors beyond the individual’s control.

Psychopathology—the categorizing and diagnosis of mental illnesses under a disease model—adds a patronizing, accusatory layer to this already flawed premise. Studies have shown for decades that simply receiving a mental health diagnosis, especially a highly stigmatized one like schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder, often adds stress to a person’s life. And stress is a known factor that exacerbates many such diagnoses.

Besides stigma, psychology concretely reinforces oppression. In addition to the commonplace and horrific racism of medicine in general, concepts such as IQ, the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory and other intelligence and personality assessments have been leveraged to deprive people of color from opportunities such as academic scholarships or occupational support. Many such tools cannot be defended as meaningfully “scientific” when they fail to account for cultural differences, and usually involve subjectivity on the part of the person interpreting them.

Similarly, historical diagnoses such as hysteria have provided justification for misogynist oppression. Records from the nineteenth century often show women were institutionalized for speaking out against their husbands or refusing to have sex with them. In an era where divorce was frowned upon, locking one’s undesired wife up in a sanitorium was a useful way for men to protect their status.

The diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) sometimes gets invoked to sway court cases, and leaves harsh labels on people in its wake. For example, the “battered women syndrome” legal defense in cases of domestic abuse is strengthened by a DSM diagnosis. The “insanity defense” is rarely invoked because it only leads to a lifetime locked up in a psychiatric institution, rather than a prison.

“Homosexuality”, or later “ego-dystonic sexual orientation,” was listed as a disorder in the DSM until 2013. “Gender dysphoria” remains today, and is a prerequisite for much gender-affirming health care, despite the fact that many transgender people do not actually experience anything like its symptoms.

Again calling into question the objectivity of this discipline—how are such decisions made? Why is it now unacceptable to pathologize a sexual orientation, but acceptable for a gender identity? It’s very hard to argue this has nothing to do with shifting societal tolerances for different queer identities.    

Caffeine addiction is acknowledged as real by the scientific community, but omitted from the DSM because it is simply too common. Meanwhile, “process” addictions such as gambling addiction or pornography use addiction are included, despite research so far not substantiating the idea that they actually qualify as such. Chemical addictions have been proven to rewire a user’s brain over time, hence withdrawal. This is not the case for process addictions.

The broadening of autism and its merging with Asperger’s syndrome has helped many people who identify as neurodivergent accept themselves and find community, but it also means the vast majority of available services go to those most high-functioning, and people who qualified for the earlier definition of autism, with serious developmental disabilities that necessitate constant care, are now often deprived, forcing the burden onto their families.

Most changes in new versions of the DSM are influenced far more by corporate drug spending than genuine scientific research. Studies from the last several decades “demonstrating” the efficacy of many medications, such as antidepressants like Lexapro and Zoloft and stimulants like Prozac, have increasingly been found either to improperly follow the scientific method, or to omit, misrepresent, or outright lie about their findings in ways convenient for the sale of psych meds. Doctors’ careers benefit from ghostwritten academic papers and financial deals for giving out free samples. Even the legality of advertising these medications directly to consumers is specific to America.

Related to psychology’s role in the carceral system, it is also important to note that the prison labor industrial complex yielded $11 billion in 2023 in goods and prison maintenance services, according to the ACLU. Other massive industries benefit from psychology as well: for-profit health care insurance companies and weight loss and diet-related industries, to name a couple.

So, as socialists, how should we respond? Several lenses can prove useful. Critical psychology, like other critical theories, calls into question failures to recognize the cultural biases psychology is built on. Critical psychologists believe we have much to learn from collectivist cultures, a commonality with socialism.

Antipsychiatry is another way those who have suffered at the hands of the psychiatric system organize their thinking and activism that has had great success within the disability rights movement. Descendant groups of the consumer/survivor/ex-patient (C/S/X) movement still educate and endorse peer-based interventions, rather than relying on police and medical systems. Peer support is built on the idea that lived experience can be as useful a qualification as formal education.        

If you are a client in therapy, work in health care, or catch yourself making judgments informed by psychology in your daily life, consider all of these facts. Don’t blindly accept reality as presented to us by the ruling class and the systems that uphold them. It is only by collective solidarity, not premised on the profit motive or discipline of labor, that we truly become free and well.

The Big Rebrand

Going forward, this blog is Moonglum Media, not Moonglum Games, because I will be posting my political writing, fiction, poetry, and occasional other stuff all in the same place. I bought a custom domain to commemorate this! That's all.

The Slaying Stone (D&D 4e): Review + Alterations

I realize this module has gotten a lot of attention online as D&D 4e has been having a bit of a (much deserved) renaissance. I don't necessarily think I have anything revelatory to say about it, but I will be running my own adaptation of it at a local game store starting in about 2 weeks, and I see no reason not to put my thoughts in writing.

Adventure Summary 

This is an adventure that came out in the middle-to-late days of 4e's run (which was roughly '08-'13; not as short relative to most prior editions as the haters would have you believe, despite their best efforts at the time.) It's designed for level 1 characters, although by my math a 5-player party would hit level 2 about 2/3 of the way through. The increasing levels of the last few encounters would support this.

The setup is that the PCs are hired to retrieve the eponymous MacGuffin from a fallen human city that has been overrun by goblins. The Slaying Stone is supposed to be some big-time scary magic weapon that can't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands, or whatever. I have some thoughts on this conceit and its execution that I'll get to later.

This is a faction-driven adventure. The biggest and most frequently encountered faction are the goblins. There's also a smaller group of kobolds that have beef with the goblins and an orc mercenary group that are also looking for the Stone.

I have seen this described as a sandbox, which I don't think is accurate, although I also object to false dichotomies and I don't think any two D&D players will ever agree what "sandbox" and "railroad" mean. The encounter structure is linear at the beginning and the end. You're supposed to run encounters 1-3 first, no matter what, and then wrap up with encounters 10-13. The middle chunk is flexible.

 

Check it out, I made a whole diagram and everything!

What I Like

Faction Play Done Right: Not that it's rocket science to pull off, in my opinion, but I think the factions are well-executed in this adventure.

The three factions are designed to be easy to play off each other. They're fairly distinct in motivation and the resources available to them, although I have ideas about how they could have gone further with this, specifically with the kobolds. Narratively, the goblins are the bread-and-butter enemies, the kobolds are underdogs who can be swayed to the PCs' side, and the orcs are the Big Bads and don't directly show up until near the end. 

I anticipate this element working well with minimal changes, and it's a core part of the adventure, so I'm happy about that.

 

Creative Use of Skill Challenges: Skill challenges are a divisive element of 4e, even amongst its own designers. This shows through in how much the chapters on them evolve between the DMG1 and DMG2. 

In my opinion, the first two skill challenges in this adventure (Encounter 2 and Encounter 3) are excellent. They showcase the strength of skill challenges as a piece of design: mechanizing non-combat parts of the game that still need to have stakes, in a way that integrates well with the combat mechanics that make up 95% of the game system. 

Encounter 2 provides the players three options on how to sneak into the city. The options' pros and cons are immediately obvious and mechanized in ways that make sense with the narrative details. Straightforward, but not to its detriment!

Encounter 3 is the one that really has me itching to design weird storygame inspired skill challenges, though. It progresses between fights throughout the entire rest of the adventure. A sidebar suggests it may be better not to even announce it as a skill challenge to the players, which kind of reminds me of the whole debate in the OSR about how much of hexcrawl mechanics should be made visible to players. 

I could see this encounter forcing a GM to improvise if the players fuck up a lot near the start of the adventure, but I will withhold judgment on that until I run it myself. 

The one other skill challenge, Encounter 10, is kind of boring; a bog-standard negotiation with a dragon too powerful just to fight head-on. It feels likely to chafe at players if you keep it firmly within the skill challenge framework, but whatever. There's nothing stopping me from replacing it or sprucing it up so that players have more meaningful choices to make.

  

Narrative Flexibility: This is pretty minor, but I like that the adventure explicitly advises the GM to alter the overarching questgiver framework according to what will be fun and interesting. For example, if the players start to suspect their employer and that of the orcs are in cahoots, it says that you should feel free to make that true. 

I don't think the questgivers and their motives are likely to cross the players' minds during the adventure, because it's very much a narrative bookend thing, and as written they are highly unlikely to compare notes with the orcs, rather than just fighting to the death. But I appreciate the sentiment.

 

What I Don't Like 

Linearity: As stated above, I don't care about debating "railroads vs. sandboxes." But I do care about giving my players meaningful choices, even in games as prep-heavy as modern D&D, where respecting those choices can mean throwing out a whole session-long fight I spent time designing, bought minis for, etc etc. 

There is a balance to be struck, and I realize prewritten adventures are going to skew toward forcing their setpiece encounters, but I wish some of that advice to be flexible applied here as well. 

The most egregious case of this is that the final battle with the orcs is set up such that they ambush the PCs after they acquire the Slaying Stone, and there is nothing players can do to prevent this from happening.

I have a few ideas on how to fix this. One is to have two versions of the final fight: a harder one where the players fail to prevent the ambush, and an easier one where they come prepared. Or, I could have the orcs discover the stone at the same time as they do, and either have a three-way fight with the dragon as its own side, or ditch the dragon altogether. Or combine the two: maybe the default is they fight at the location of the Stone, but clever planning could mean they beat the orcs there. There's a lot of options I prefer to the prewritten version. 

Not Enough Magitech!: One of the things I really fuck with in this module is the whole "lost magical weaponry" aspect... Except there's almost nothing to it. One fight with the cool-ass robot dogs from the cover, and the Slaying Stone itself, which... See the next section for why that's not enough for me.

I plan to run this in a way that really emphasizes the Roadside Picnic Zone-iness of the city. It's dangerous, it's full of hostile factions, but there's also uniquely cool magitech weirdness to harvest, even if some of it will try to kill you for your trouble. One change will be to have more construct fights. 

The MagGuffin is Boring: So yeah, all the Slaying Stone does is kill one creature within the city, AFTER it gets a full turn of combat. And there's just one stone and it can only be used once. Even if, as GM, you BS some implications it could be turned into something more powerful, that's lame. And the adventure explicitly tells you to hype this thing up whenever possible.

My fix? It's basically a one-use Death Note. It can kill any one person as long as you have a decent Arcana bonus and know their true name. That's strong enough they're unlikely to waste it on this encounter. It also makes the Stone, and by extension the party, focal to future adventures rather than just getting destroyed by the questgiver upon retrieval. What will the PCs do with it? Surely they don't trust some old wizard guy who paid them 100 gold with this kind of power, right? These are more interesting questions to me. And I'm never afraid to upset the status quo of a campaign this way. Many of my favorite moments in RPGs result from giving the PCs this kind of dilemma, and power.

The Kobolds Don't Actually Use Traps: This is pretty minor, but one of the things the module says makes the kobolds distinct from other factions is that their territory is full of traps. But there are no encounters where this get used (nor any trap stats for during exploration.) They do have a secret passage in one fight, at least. 

Anyway, this is dead easy to fix. I'll poach some of the low-level traps from the DMG and slot them into one or two of the kobold fights.

Racist Fantasy Game is Racist: This is by no means unique to this module, but damn, it's always jarring to see everyone that's not a "civilized" (playable) race get described as if they're barely smart enough to speak. And of course they're ontologically evil and thus OK to kill. I dunno. It's just weird and boring and gross. 

One change I plan to make around this, besides roleplaying people as people with survival instinct, real motivations, not monocultures, etc. is to replace the orcs with a mercenary faction that aren't all one race, and that have more sophisticated methods than "torture goblins until we ambush the PCs as scripted." I'm thinking probably having a tiefling spellcaster in charge, since they're supposed to have been the ones to create the Slaying Stone (and presumably the Iron Defenders and other, undescribed magitech weirdness).

Some of the Fights are Kind of Boring: I do feel like I should spend more time on this, because it's really the important part, and the main reason to buy a module rather than run your own story off-the-cuff. But here's the gist of my thoughts.

Overall I think most of the fights are fine. I really like Encounter 6, which is not only the one with the iron defenders, but also a kobold that summons an ankheg halfway through the fight. The only ones that really strike me as underwhelming are Encounters 11 and 12. This is kind of a shame, since Encounter 12 is the boss fight with the leader of the goblins. His only gimmick is that he has a mount and he can deflect damage to it. 

I'll probably redesign that one, and just scrap Encounter 11 altogether. That one has a lycanthropic noble NPC who gets ambushed by a bunch of goblins. I find his whole subplot half-baked and uninspiring, so I will be cutting him altogether. I'm not really big on the whole "reclaim the city for humans" thing they set up in general, between the fantasy racism as mentioned above, and the fact it detracts from the Stalker-y "overrun magitech city" vibes that I think are a lot of fun.

I also feel like there are slightly too many fights with all or mostly Skirmisher enemies. I get that they're kind of the "default" monster role, but variety is the spice of life.

 

Okay, that was a lot of words! I'm curious to see how many of them I take back and/or eat after actually running this. Stay tuned on that, and also maybe on some posts about the DIY mini substitute I'm thinking of trying since I gave away all my miniatures a couple years ago.