Back in the 1990s and the Oughts, I loved conspiracy-based RPG settings and material. I devoured GURPS Illuminati, Delta Green, Kenneth Hite's Suppressed Transmission columns, and so on.

But in the last decade, I've moved away from them. Part of it may be that I realized that how many conspiracy theories ultimately originated in antisemitic slanders. Part of it might be their mainstreaming by the resurgent fascist right and their supporters. And, of course, the great villains of our day perpetrate all their villainy in the open, rarely even bothering to hide what they are doing.

So I no longer enjoy settings where "The Conspiracy" and their schemes are the main focus of the setting. While I don't mind having "small-c" conspiracies in a game, I don't like it when there is a secret cabal of conspirators running everything.

How about you? Do you still enjoy Conspiracy-based setting, or have you lost your taste for them as well?

Here is another German folklore with some rather Lovecraftian elements. It's a brief one, so I will quote it in its entirety, but it's so very juicy.

"The legend is widespread in the Holstein region that a rooster who has lived for seven years in the exact same house will then lay an egg. A strange animal will come out of this egg which people call by different names: Dragon, crocodile, and so forth.

A man named Swatkopf lived in the parish of Wewelsfleth. This man had a rooster which, since it had already lived within his house for seven years, laid an egg into the crib for his horses. But a strange thing crawled out of this egg. During the day, it always stayed in the crib for the horses. However, as soon as it became dark, it flew up to the owls’ gable in the house and made fluting noises. Now Swatkopf would have liked to sell his house, but he could not get rid of it. Then he had it torn down and built a different building on the same spot. The animal now moved away from him and to his neighbor Kasten Tumann, and in the evening sat in his chimney as a clump of fire. If Tumann was home, then the fluting thing always looked inside through the window, and caused him no little terror. In the end, Tumann took this so hard that he went to the sea and never returned home. But then the animal was also gone, and no one has seen it again."

While it is lacking in proper Lovecraftian words and phrases such as "squamous", it makes up for being very bizarre. The "Fluting Thing" has no clear appearance, but it drives the locals to madness and exile, and nobody knows what it wants. The notion that a bizarre creature can hatch from a rooster's egg is part of basilisk narratives, but the actual description of the creature is rather different.

(Note: I took the picture myself when I passed through Wewelsfleth last year.)

I just had an idea for a #CallOfCthulhu / #DeltaGreen scenario:

In a desperate gambit to gain a positive Return on Investment before their IPO, a multi-billion AI company turns to a Mythos source to power their latest AI model. Hilarity ensues.

So what precisely did they attempt, and how does it go horribly wrong? What are your thoughts?

When reading Cory Doctorow's recent essay "The tedious power of stroytelling", I had a breakthrough in my understanding of folklore:

A huge part of folklore is imbuing the environment with intent where there is none.

As a species, we humans want to believe that we live in an ordered (and perhaps just) universe, where things happen for a reason. That someone intended for things to happen as they did. As a trained physicist, I know that this very often not the case - but this assumption is hard to shake. Thus, we come across folkloric narratives like these:

• "My cattle have fallen ill. A witch must have cursed them!"
• "This rock formation is spectacular. It must be a petrified giant!"
• "I suffer from sleep paralysis. A night hag is tormenting me!"
• "My infant child has a disability. It's actually a changeling which has been switched for my real child!"

And before we dismiss such notions as the superstitious relics of bygone ages, we should remember that we haven't really changed - the folklore just takes on new and different forms. For what else are modern "conspiracy fantasies" than a particularly toxic subset of folklore? That "vaccines cause autism" is just another modern take on the changeling myth. We cannot accept that things often happen that are outside of conscious human control, and then we come up with new stories that add human intent.

What are your thoughts on this?

GURPS 3E had an amazing number of supplements on the most bizarre subjects, and I wonder what your favorite among them is.

My own nomination is for GURPS Y2K, which was published (of course) in 1999. It was basically a collection of essays on how to end the world (or at least human civilization) in style, and furthermore served as an introduction to survivalist/prepper communities.

Have you ever done a map using a GIS (Geo-Information System) framework?

And if so, what would you tell someone who is contemplating such a thing with no prior practical experience of such systems?

I love the setting of Brancalonia. I love the humor, I love the folklore, and I am currently learning Italian in evening classes to boot, so this is basically a perfect mix.

But I do not love that the authors picked D&D 5E as the rule system for this setting. Don't get me wrong, I find D&D 5E perfectly acceptable for heroic fantasy campaigns (and, in fact, I am running such a campaign right now). And I can understand this choice from a business perspective - it makes a lot of sense to tie your setting to the most popular RPG system out there.

However, Brancalonia PCs are not supposed to be great heroes, but fairly unimpressive never-do-wells. The rules deal with this by capping character level at 6, but I feel that this leaves the PCs with too little room to grow and removes much of the proper D&D experience. I'd rather use a rule system that was intended for weaker protagonists, rather than trying to distort D&D into something that is not.

So, what alternate system would you use for Brancalonia?

While GURPS is still one of my favorite RPG systems, I have to admit that I haven't paid much attention to it in the last few years - my local gaming group is absolutely uninterested in using this system, and my new side business of translating German folk tales has left me with far less time for recreational RPG reading.

But I am curious - what new and exciting stuff has come out for the system in the last few years?

That things rarely go according to plan is part of running an RPG. The players will surprise you, and often this is entirely fine - in fact, it might result in a more memorable experience and a better game.

But sometimes, things go off the rail in a bad way - and you, as a GM, did not see it coming until it was too late, resulting in disaster and a non-fun experience for all concerned.

And contemplating some of my past mistakes, I am curious about your biggest GMing regrets. What went wrong, and what would you have done differently if you had the opportunity for a do-over?

Is it just me, or is the "Pass without Trace" spell widely overpowered?

I mean, D&D 5E is generally constructed in a way that even small bonuses to rolls make a huge difference. Proficiency bonuses start with +2 and rise to a maximum of +6, while magical weapons give a maximum of +3.

So what in Avernus possessed the designers to allow a second-level spell to give a whooping +10 to Dexterity (Stealth) checks? For a group, no less (as long as they stick close to each other)? This is going to be extremely hard for guards and lookouts to match.

The PCs are likely are going to try to get into a safehouse of the local thieves' guild in the next two sessions. The setting is Ptolus, using the D&D 5E rules.

The safehouse in question is in a lower middle class region on the surface, but it has another entrance to the vast dungeon systems beneath the city. This, in itself, is not unusual - the bedrock on which the city stands is filled with tunnels and long-forgotten vaults. But while most house owners just try to brick those passages over, the thieves' guild actually uses these passages for their business dealings.

And I need some ideas on both what might be inside the premises, and what kinds of systems they use to secure the safehouse. The PCs will likely be coming from the "dungeon" side, and this is the kind of city where criminals expect inconvenient adventurers to pop up in all sorts of places.

I've already determined that the location includes:

• a vampire ally of the guild
• some cells for prisoners who get interrogated for information
• a bunch of drugs for resale

Any other ideas? The party consists of four 8th level characters, if this helps.

Okay, I am going to say it: What's with all the Nazeem hate?

I mean, sure, he is a slightly obnoxious snob. And I am not going to judge any Skyrim player too harshly who decides to pickpocket him.

But when you search for him on YouTube, there is a sheer endless list of videos where players kill him. Is there any other NPC in the game who gets murdered by Skyrim players as often as Nazeem, and so enthusiastically? Outside of the Dark Brotherhood questline, that is - and I am not so sure even about those.

Maybe, just maybe it's because he is the first "uppity black man" the player is likely to encounter who doesn't worship the ground that a scruffy adventurer who just entered town walks upon.

Contemplate this, and maybe don't murder Nazeem on your next playthrough. Just a thought.

#racism