Random Name Creator for Mystery Cults, Magical Orders and Secret Societies

Minor Update:  fixed a problem on the Name Structure Table

The below is old content that I generated for a former D&D campaign and posted to a former blog.  I'm re-posting it because it remains useful to me in my current endeavors and I just think it's a lot of fun.

It should all be pretty self-explanatory and can be used as-is with dice.  Alternately, it's easy enough to put this in excel or even a web based app if you're inclined that way.  Feel free to use and modify the entries for local flavor, and note the CC license below.  I have to say there are more hits than misses when rolling the dice if you can live with randomness informed a bit by the whimsical, weird & bombastic.  

Step One, determine the structure of the name:

Roll d10	Name Structure
1 to 2	The A + B
3 to 4	The B of the C
5 to 6	The B of the A + C
7 to 8	The A + B of the A + C
9 to 10	The B of A + B (2nd B is optionally plural)

Step Two, roll a d100 for each of the letters (A,B & C) above and refer to the table below.

Example, on a d10 I rolled a 6 just now, The B of the A+C.  Rolling three d100's for each of the letters B, A & C I get:  43, 30 and 67 for...

The Enchanters of the Fecund Owl

Not crazy about that one?  No worries.  Three more dice: 50,77,97 and we get...

The Gathering of the Sciapodous Wind

Still not for you?  Go back to the d10... 2.  The A+B... 42, 61...

The Intangible League.

Maybe something grander...

The Malevolent Gongoozlers of the Miasmic Eye

You get the point.  

Roll	Column A (adjective)	Colum B (name of order)	Colum C (another noun)
1	Acerbic	Academy	A deity from your campaign world
2	Amazing	Accomplices	A location in your campaign world
3	Arcane	Acolytes	Abacination
4	Artful	Adepts	Agerasia
5	Asyncronous	Advesaries	Arm
6	Benevolent	Affiliation	Ascension
7	Bizarre	Alliance	Asphyxiation
8	Black	Antagonists	Basilisk
9	Blasphemous	Apprentices	Bastard
10	Blue	Array	Benefactor
11	Bombastic	Assemblage/ Assembly	Beyond
12	Cloaken	Associates	Bicone
13	Cogent	Astrologers	Bitch
14	Coherent	Attendants	Blood
15	Compelling	Autohagiographers	Cachinnation
16	Convivial	Autolatrists	Cat
17	Cosmic	Brood	Catechism
18	Curious	Brotherhood/Sisterhood	Charientism
19	Drunken	Cabal	Claw
20	Eccentric	Children	Colossality
21	Eldritch	Circle	Conquest
22	Engorged	Clutch	Cosmos
23	Enigmatic	Coalition	Crystal
24	Esoteric	Cohorts	Cyclops
25	Esteemnable	Collaborators	Day
26	Exceptional	Collective	Decrepitude
27	Extraordinary	College/ Collegium	Drake
28	Fallen	Combine	Earth
29	Fantastic	Community	Emptiness
30	Fecund	Company	Emunction
31	Fraternal/ Sororal	Concilliabule	Exsibilation
32	Gibbous	Concordance	Eye
33	Gluttonous	Confederacy/ Confederates	Feather
34	Golden	Congregation	Fey
35	Green	Conjurers	Finger
36	Gregarious	Consortium	Fire
37	Honorable	Conspirators	Forest
38	Hooded	Coterie	Fox
39	Incoherent	Court	Hand
40	Inconceivable	Coven	Harpy/ Siren
41	Indigo	Covenant	Heavens
42	Intangible	Daughters/ Sons	Hells
43	Invincible	Enchanters	Hydra
44	Invisible	Enemies	Illusion
45	Jumentous	Faculty	Key
46	Kyphorrhinos	Fellows	King/ Queen
47	Learned	Fellowship	Lake
48	Leering	Flock	Leg
49	Locquacious	Fraternity/ Sorroroty	Leucrotta
50	Luminous	Gathering	Leviathan
51	Macabre	Gentlemen/ Ladies	Liripip
52	Magnificent	Gongoozlers	Malefactor
53	Maledicent	Hadeharians	Mandrake
54	Malevolent	Heirs	Masquerade
55	Mendicent	Host	Maw
56	Miasmic	House	Member
57	Mighty	Incorporation	Mime
58	Nameless	Initiates	Monolith
59	Omnipotent	Institution	Moon
60	Omniscient	Kinship	Mountain
61	Orthodox	League	Mumpsimus
62	Paternal/ Maternal	Library	Nelipot
63	Peculiar	Lyceum	Night
64	Phenomenal	Magicians	Oblivion
65	Roll a number on any die: add "-fold" to the number shown )i.e. "7" becomes "sevenfold"	Magisters	Octopus
66	Roll a number on any die: use the adjective form of the result (i.e. "7" is "seventh")	Maladroits	Orb
67	Polished	Members	Owl
68	Preeminent	Necromancers	Owlbear
69	Profound	Neophytes	Pentacle
70	Prolific	Roll a number on any die, use it as a noun	Petrichor
71	Puissant	Order	Phenomenon
72	Pyknic	Pack	Phoenix
73	Red	Pact	Portal
74	Ruined	Party	Prince/ Princess
75	Ruminating	Philosophunculists	Prophet
76	Scarlet	Prodigies	Puissance
77	Sciapodous	Progeny	Rendevous
78	Secret	Protagonists	Reverberation
79	Shining	Pupils	Riddle
80	Singular	Ring	River
81	Skillful	Savants	Sepulchre
82	Sovereign	School	Shadow
83	Stalwart	Scions	Sphinx
84	Steatopygic	Seers	Stars
85	Stoic	Seminary	Stipulation
86	Supreme	Senate	Stone
87	Thelemic	Society	Sun
88	Ulotrichous	Sodality	Tentacle
89	Unclean	Soothsayers	Tongue
90	Unknown	Sorcerors	Tooth
91	United	Stalwarts	Transcendence
92	Unlevened	Swarm	Tree
93	Unorthodox	Thaumaturgists	Unicorn
94	Veiled	Theurgists	Wanweird
95	Ventripotent	Thralls	Water
96	Vigorous	Throng	Weirding
97	White	Tribe	Wind
98	Wilting	Union	Wolf
99	Yellow	Warlocks/ Witches	Wyrm
0	Zealous	Wizards	Wyvern

My First Savage Worlds Setting: The Lost Continent

These are the broad strokes.  I'm using the Deluxe Explorer's Edition, the Fantasy Companion and will sprinkle in bits from the Horror Companion for flavor.

 Elevator Pitch

Post-cataclysmic homeland of an extinct but sophisticated culture of sky-faring magic-users is re-discovered a millennium after their fall in a pulpy mash-up of medieval fantasy and lost world genre fiction.  

Movers and Shakers

The Luminous Church of the Prophet:  Or more commonly “The Church”, a dominant, world-spanning, monotheistic religion instructs human society on moral and cosmological norms and attenuates the influence of paganism, magic and the occult. (arcane background: miracles)

The Society of Cartography: Multi-faceted adventurer’s guild sponsors map making, treasure-hunting, resource-finding and other expeditions upon Eld*.

­The Order of Cerberus:  The ancient order of magi credited with the rediscovery of the Lost Continent and the secret of making sky-ships. They have a keen interest in magic artifacts and sites. (arcane background: magic)

The Merchant Houses: Multi-national cartels who control prices, production and availability of various goods and services.  (arcane background: alchemy for the Alchemist’s Guild)

The Mystery Cults:­   Semi- secret, sometimes fraternal and sororal orders that were revitalized in the wake of rediscovered Eld*.  Looked at with suspicion, skepticism and even hostility by the Church.  (arcane background: ritual magic)

The Shadow League:  Underworld syndicate interested mostly in smuggling contraband & defying governments, the Church and the Merchant Houses for fun and profit.  

The Free Kingdoms:  The collection of independent but culturally similar nations (mostly human monarchies) upon the continent north and east of Eld who were once the remote provinces and tributaries of the Ancient Empire and now jockey for influence and riches upon the Lost Continent.  

The Caliphates of Khadesia:  Confederation of theocracies south and east of Eld who share the broad strokes of a dogma that diverged from that of the Luminous Church some 500 years ago.  

Denghai Empire: Distant, centrally-ruled & militaristic realm upon a far-eastern continent who have founded a trade and exploration center analogous to Beacon upon the Lost Continent.

Playable Races

Humans:  Multi-cultural “default” race

Descendants:  Spirit-creatures physically similar to the Eld* who materialize amidst re-occupied ruins for unknown reasons. 

Saurians:  Lizard people native to the river lands and swamps of the Lost Continent.

Rakhashani:  Cat people native to the jungles and forests of the Lost Continent.

Gnomes:  Former slaves (constructs?) of the Eld*, naturally gifted in the ways of ancient magic artifice.

Monsters

 

Any “large” or “dire” versions of mundane creatures (wolves, spiders, beetles, crabs, etc…)

Anything fantastic but not explicitly Tolkein (no to orcs, yes to re-skinned trolls, no to hobbits, yes to gnomes, no to elves, yes to rat-men, no to ents, yes to wyverns, etc…)

Lots of centaur analogues (spider-men, scorpion-men, snake-men, etc…)

Undead

Dinosaurs?

Places

Beacon:  Once a ruined city of the Eld* at the northern extreme of the continent, now a trade and exploration gateway to the Lost Continent ruled by the Order of Cerberus. Campaign starting point.

Ruins of the Eld: Ubiquitous, millennium-aged, yet-to-be plundered ruined cities, towns and fortifications provide endless dungeon-crawling fun.

Eld Itself:  The Lost Continent is DENSE forests & jungles, BIG mountains, LONG rivers and ENDLESS deserts all surrounded by TRACKLESS seas. 

* = Eld is both the name of the continent and the people/ culture.  I know the term has made the rounds already within Old-School RPG circles.  I'm not ashamed to steal the things that work.  :-)

Five Things I Hate Most About Savage Worlds

Number One: The Benny: Admittedly this is a fear of the unknown and a vague sense that we're "cheating" as much as anything.  I think its important that a game presents failure as a reasonable outcome and in its purest implementation this means rolling and abiding by the dice.  Any system that subverts this in the name of achieving "fun" or a desired "narrative" I look at with skepticism.  In fact, it was the ubiquity of the benny that made me really struggle with bothering to learn and play Savage Worlds at all, as my first instinct was to remove them but I balked at home-ruling before having practical, first-hand experience with how the system plays at the table.  In the end, I decided  to start playing the game as designed, bennies and all, until I feel strongly otherwise. 

Number Two: Lack of Randomization During Character Creation:  The idea of players being able to custom build their characters through a point-buy system is not uniquely Savage Worlds.  Implementing hindrances along with edges balances that customization out some, but it's still subject to the plague of min/maxing and  the rut of ideally synergized character builds. What's lacking is some good old fashioned randomization.  I've always felt that there's no reason why the game shouldn't begin prior to meeting in a tavern... that is, character generation should be part of the game and not just something done in preparation for the game, and therefore subject to the meaningful influence of dice.  One of my favorite character generation systems is Traveller's where a potential character may not even survive their own back-story.  Lacking a class-system (and not wanting to implement one) though, means players have to pick something.  I've pointed out in the previous post that chargen in Savage Worlds is pretty quick and easy, so I'm going to accept this one for now, too.  If we keep choosing the same old hindrances, though, I'm apt to at least randomize those.

Number Three: The Paradox of Choice:  I tend to do better creatively when working within a narrow framework. I find, for instance, the technical writing I've done in my professional life to be far easier than any of the creative writing I've done outside of it.  Hand me a schematic or interface drawing, a technical spec and a deadline and I might purr like a kitten.  Hand me a blank piece of paper (or a blog) and either my head swims in paralytic euphoria with the possibilities or I break out in a cold sweat over them.  The utility and flexibility of SW means it can really enable my tendency to lack focus when left to my own devices.  I have no answers for this other than listening to any advice others may have and guarding against it.  For my first full-blown SW campaign I'm going for the familiar and narrow "vanilla fantasy" I grew up in after the unfamiliar and narrow zombie apocalypse game I briefly ran as an experiment. I'm sure in a year or two it'll be post-apocalyptic far-future science fantasy... with hedgehogs.

But the players will need some guidelines too.  I foresee a problem when looking over the power descriptions, for instance, which are intentionally generic and reliant upon player and DM for genre flavor.  Quick and easy character generation just ground to a halt.  To remedy this I'll be pre-generating novice-rank spells as a list to choose from during character creation.  After that, the payers can go wild tweaking their own spells with trappings and trade-offs, but I think the baseline needs to be established.  This will probably be the most actual prep work I do for the game, writing out 20-30 spells. 

Number Four: Predetermined Narrative as a Goal: It's hard to escape this nowadays when not playing anything decidedly "Old School" and while its more overtly acknowledged by participants (i.e. popular podcasters and vloggers) of the game then its designers as far as I have seen, it is still implicit in the rules.  What else are bennies, wild dice and power trappings but means by which the game's participants enact or exert control over a desired storyline.  I understand that it's RPG's narrative elements that separate it from other games, but in practice I like for story to follow the game-play and not the other way around.  To me a good game is about the outcomes of the choices the players made and not about the player's making the right choices.  Randomness within the context of predetermined odds should ultimately determine outcomes.  The DM must create the opportunity for choice, the players should fiddle with the odds through preparation, planning and inspired thinking but the dice must have their say. There's still plenty of randomness already built-into SW, we still roll dice after-all, so in practice this one isn't tough to overlook or mitigate, but it still must be acknowledged. 

Number Five: "Everybody Gets a Trophy" Experience Point System:  I said in the previous post that I really liked both the system for character progression and it not being tied to something as specific as D&D's "murder hobo" sensibilities.  But... lacking implicit or explicit goals, and objective rewards derived from them, what we're left with is an XP system where everybody seems to get a trophy.  Every five experience points gets you some advancement and players should be earning 1-3 experience points per game.  The danger here is that once players figure out that the rewards are pretty much already doled out and all they have to do is show up and wait for them, they're going to risk less.  They're going to feel less enabled, because no matter how brilliantly or terribly they do they're pretty much looking at the same 1-3 expereince points.  What's worse is that whether they get 1, 2 or 3 experience points seems to rely solely on DM subjectivity and, frankly, a player's ability to play up to the DM's sensibilities.  This won't do.  I haven't figured it all out yet, but I'll be overhauling the manner by which XP rewards are given to make it more transparent, specific and objective for our game. 

Five Things I Love Most About Savage Worlds

Number One: It's Lean and It's Mean:  I flirted with using GURPS sometime back in the late eighties/ early nineties and still have several source books tucked away somewhere.  In practice it ended up being a tad too fiddly and bloated for our group, but I loved the concept of a universal RPG that could be plugged into and played in a variety of settings with a minimal learning curve.  Savage Worlds achieves this with elegance and panache.  You can literally teach all of the important rules of the game, which essentially boils down to a universal task resolution system based on what the game calls traits, in minutes.  You can roll up a character in slightly more time.  Flexibility is built right into the game's DNA if you can live with the sort of abstraction that doesn't require a different set of skills, powers/ spells, classes, etc... for every game and genre.  If you can't, it's not necessarily a deal-breaker.  Just use the rules as a tool kit and make as much of that stuff explicit and setting-specific as you like.

We ran a short, zombie-apocalypse survival game as our first foray into SW.  It began with me handing out pre-generated characters and reading a few lines that amounted to what anybody who watches The Walking Dead already knows and we were off and playing in minutes.  For maps I used Google Maps and for descriptions I just used the Google street views and pretty much described the burnt-out, riot-damaged and zombified version of whatever was there on the laptop screen.  The gang ended up reaching West Philly from a barricaded hotel near Rittenhouse Square with a bag full of guns, a double-digit zombie body count and a car trunk full of Dunkin Donuts coffee within hours of learning the game.   I've never gotten from purchase of new game to running it by the group to memorable adventure that quickly.  I think my prep time was the about the same amount of time character generation took.

Number Two: Easy Character Generation That Still Provides Quite a Lot of Choice:  I've already mentioned easy chargen, but it bears repeating.  As a player, I used to love elaborate character generation and I suppose given enough time, I still do.   As a DM I have 5-6 players who range from "Let's play already!" to "I'm torn between choosing the bec de corbin or the military fork for my henchman's secondary weapon, what do you think?"  We have limited time to play.  I want to account for all approaches to making characters and still get a game in. With SW you can literally take a pre-defined "class" like fighter or thief and run with it or tailor-make your staff-wielding, thief-mage with meaningful choices that can still be made in the time it takes for water to boil.  Character advancement further allows you to easily change or modify your concept as the character evolves. 

Number Three: No Implied Purpose:  D&D is great.  I love D&D. I'm not here to trash it.  But if you choose to not kill things and take their stuff, the tangible rewards of D&D are zero.  Some will argue that great role-playing is its own reward. I'm aware of and can even tell the sea story where "...we sat around the table barely picking up the dice and had a transcendent moment of pure role-playing magic."  It's either the exception to the rule or the sort of regular game experience as a whole my group is generally not interested in having.  My players want to progress.  They want to earn power and agency within the context of the game.  I like a system that can provide tangible game rewards to players for pursuing the group's goals in varied ways.  Since character advancement in SW isn't tied to killing things and taking their stuff, the intent of the game can be other things and there can be a tangible reward for almost anything.  This subjectivity admittedly poses its own problems that I'll cover later in Five Things That I Hate About Savage Worlds, but on balance the flexibility is a good thing.

Number Four: Incremental & Varied Character Advancement:  This is happening on two separate but related scales in SW.  Every few sessions or so characters should have gained enough experience to choose some small benefit/ upgrade.  Earn enough experience and make enough of these small improvements over time and one day the character gets bumped in rank from  Novice to  Seasoned. Rank advancement opens up access to more advanced abilities.  I haven't played long enough to say yet, but these incremental choices on the whole should provide for some unique character progression.  One so-called "fighter" can be very meaningfully different from another without fiddly sub-systems, sub-classes, etc...  it's all built right into the baseline system.

Number Four: Combat is Quick, Deadly & Swingy at all Levels:  While advancing through ranks,  characters will become better equipped to survive combat, but it never seems to lose its deadliness.  Opponents must be treated with respect.  A lucky arrow shot or hit from a dagger can kill your mid-rank character.  Hit Points don't exist in SW, instead characters other than common mooks (called extras) accrue wound levels. Each wound level carries increasing penalties to trait rolls.  As you get hurt and therefore closer to death, you become less effective.  Get hurt enough and you die.  A parallel fatigue system does the same thing without killing you.   One's ability to avoid getting wounded is a combination of their fighting ability, their toughness, the amount of armor they wear and their opponent's ability to hit and do damage, but "exploding" dice make the (un)lucky hits possible and keep the players honest.  This is all accomplished in a tidy, quickly managed combat system that doesn't require a lot of record-keeping of hit points and doesn't bog down even with combats involving tens of participants.  Players love the exploding dice.  Who doesn't love to roll dice?  

In the above-mentioned zombie-apocalypse game (our first ever) we ran about 3-5 separate combats per session (we had two sessions). Most of these included the use of firearms, and none of them took more than 20 minutes of real-time to resolve.  Player-characters received wounds from buckshot, shattering glass and maybe one bullet from a roof-top sniper. There was also a van crash, a foot-chase through a block of row homes and a careful approach to an overrun military checkpoint at the South Street Bridge.  Things moved quickly and in cinematic fashion without being a cake-walk. 

Honorable Mention, Big, Community with Lots of Support:  If you've got or want an idea for a setting feature or rule  there's a big, friendly, well-supported community of players and publishers out there to help you. 

Ruminating on Risk, RPG's, Religion and the Need to Meddle with Rules

A (DM) has no (game) who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's (game) is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.

- Me (with help from and apologies to D. H. Lawrence)

I don't remember when it first occurred to my friends and I to draw a line from Australia to Central America on the Risk board, but if not a first step it was certainly a representative one.  We were figuring out that we humble few could improve upon the rules of cherished, published and OFFICIAL games.  As obsessive players we had put as much or more time into playing the game as its creator(s).  We understood why capturing either of Australia or North America early 9 times out of 10 meant an ultimate victory. Europe was a blood bath.  Conventional wisdom regarding land wars in Asia proved true, here on the imaginary battlefields of a two-dimensional Napoleonic world that never  existed.  Africa and South America were sometimes viable, sure, but results could vary.  No, the savvy player in our group knew that Australia and North America were where it was at.  

To the two players who each managed to possess one of these cherished continents, the game amounted to a linearly progressive movement toward their ultimate showdown, the fate of the world hanging in the balance.  For up to five other players the game was a brutal slog through the blood-soaked fields of their collective demise. An early but unsatisfactory solution to this problem, the snarf, involved one player sacrificing their armies in an ill-fated, full bore frontal assault into the maw of the North American or Australian forces with the intent of assuring mutual destruction.  The primary beneficiary of this act was usually a third (or fourth) player who would swoop in and take the desired continent.  It took a special kind of nobility or pettiness to be snarf.    

One line (okay, technically two lines but that's only because we play on a flat board) diminished what was a problematic advantage.  Take the small, isolated fortress of the south-eastern corner and the army-generating machine with only three borders that dominated the north-west and put them in direct conflict.  Simple, elegant and game changing.  Of all the rules modifications and game variations and special die rolls and "automatic sixes" that came about both officially and unofficially in an attempt to improve or enhance the game, the two lines applied with red marker to our boards was always my favorite. It was the best because it directly addressed two problems at one stroke without fundamentally changing the intent of the game.  Never mind that nobody could actually stage an effective attack on Mexico from Indonesia during the 18th century.  Realistic simulation was never the game's intent, after all. 

Obviously our small group was not unique.  Others drew that line.  Some drew it to Argentina for some reason, but they were on the right path. The point isn't that we invented anything on our own, but that we saw a problem with the way the game functioned and we sought a solution beyond anything the game's publishers were giving us.  We were the sorts of people who wanted to improve the game.  But Risk and games like it, being limited by their narrow scope, offer few chances for meaningful change before the game itself becomes something else.
   

Looking at RPGs, though, the opportunities seem limitless. Note the numerous rulebooks, revisions and editions to just D&D; the sheer amount of other role playing games that exist beyond D&D and the countless DMs and players who each constantly fiddle with, ignore, overturn or add to the rules so that the end result is an unaccountable number of personal variations all existing within the loose boundaries of RPGs, often still called by their original names despite the catalog of rule changes that could make up their own rulebooks.  For the sorts of people who draw lines on boardgames, this was the next logical step. 

D.H. Lawrence seemed to know something about RPGs 100 years or so before their relevance.  These games  "... must always be undergoing modification."  Note the very personal nature of the modifications, the sheer number of individual RPG variants and the inherent contradiction of one claiming to play and adhere to a specific game's rules while giving no thought to adding to or deleting from them;  to picking and choosing the rules that one likes, embracing rules from other games entirely; making up one's own rules where no game's creators have provided a satisfactory guideline;  all while happily claiming to play D&D or whatever else. What else but religion, RPGs and maybe art provides such a widely accepted dichotomy?  Maybe they're all three the same thing, or pieces of the same sort of thing important about the human condition.

But just what am I getting at?  I'm circling around an idea, sword drawn and shield up. I'm about to take a whack at it. For all the legion of variations and changes, what has really changed in RPGs in 40 or so years?  What has fundamentally improved?  Sure, creative DMs, game designers and bloggers have shown us that collectively our tastes have grown varied and maybe even refined from the mish-mash kitchen sink of original D&D, but what fundamentally evolved about the game as a whole?  What is objectively an improvement vs. simply a choice informed by taste and preference? 

The truth is that objectively speaking nothing has improved except maybe the skills of the participants and the quantity of choices.  There is no ongoing dialectic.  We're not narrowing down, we're becoming dispersed.  Five editions of D&D, all seemingly as active and relevant as the other demonstrate that easily enough, let alone a thousand other games.  There has been no measurable progress with the game because we have no way to really measure it.  What's the ideal?  What's the intent? Do all RPG's have the same intent?  Could they?  What are the rules?  Why this rule and not that one?  More direct and meaningfully, what actually makes for a good game?    

There are as many answers to that last question as there are players of the game.  There's no wrong way to play the game because there doesn't seem to be any right way to play it.  Those striving to find the "right" way who have been writing about it for any length of time seem to find agreement on only one admission: we are not arriving at the same place because we are on different paths.  It's more about the process, the journey, than the destination.  You find your own way.  You find your own meaning.  Not helpful.


I don't know if there's really any meaning in playing, designing and modifying these games.  I worry that I seem to spend 100 hours or more thinking about or fiddling with RPG's for every hour that I actually get to play. Why?  Why, with so many other things I could be doing to entertain myself, create art,  further my career, enhance my education or improve my family do I re-write spell descriptions and wring my hands over how many coins a coat of mail should actually cost?  I often worry that there is no point and I'm merely a case of arrested development or midlife crisis;  some weird 40-something lab rat pulling a lever to recall a sensation I felt when I was 12.  The only comfort in that thought is looking around and seeing all of the other lab rats cranking down on their levels.  I fiddle with rules, I obsess over RPG's because I have to.  The fiddling with rules gives me pleasure.  That almost sounded dirty.

For whatever its worth I guess I'm just the sort of person who draws lines on Risk boards, draws maps of imaginary places and has decided I don't need to rationalize a whole lot over it, other than to say I like it.  Future posts will be more gamey stuff, existential crisis on back burner.  I hope to soon write some less diary-confessional content about my ongoing love affair with Savage Worlds.