Paphvul's Lair: 2019

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Sapphire Dragon

You know, one of these days, I'll pick an image size for these things and stick with it. Maybe. Probably not.

Anyway, this guy not only looks emaciated, but he’s also got a bit of what I assume is an acne problem.

Sapphire wasn’t my favorite Pokémon, honestly. The remakes, though, kicked ass.

Kidding aside, after the shitfest that I had to play for my last post, I needed something to detox from all that garbage.

Yes, I’m turning to this for comfort. Despite how much I continually rag on their writing, I actually love the 2e Monster Manual entries so goddamned much. They’re so fucking dumb, they’re endless fun to rip into.

Windows Shareware Disk Showcase: Ultimate House of Games for Windows, Part 2

Here we go again, back with more shareware games to tear into!

Klotz:

Ooh, “Klotz”, huh? Sounds like a puzzle game. I wonder what new and exciting concept this will bring!

It’s another motherfucking Tetris clone.

The hell is this guy smiling about? It’s less like the Amethyst’s “smug asshole” smile, and more like “I’m going to flay you alive and turn your skin into a jacket”.

They wanna play with mah ehmowuld? They playin' with the wrong guy! I wanted to make a joke about them being Chaotic Emeralds, but the spoilsports who wrote this made them Lawful. Boo.

Anyway, turns out I made a massive miscalculation in my NaNoWriMo wordcount, and realized I actually had way more done than I thought. Meaning, I had way more time to actually write this. And since I pop these babies out faster than EA popped out Madden sequels, this’ll be a cinch.

Well, Halloween has come and gone, and now we’re left with the rest of the Gem Dragons to cover.

Hopefully, the Amethyst dragon was the worst of them.

Crystal dragons are the friendliest of the gem dragons, always curious about the world. Though they seldom seek out company, they willingly converse with visitors who do not try to steal from them.

Okay, so friendly yet introverted. That’s… a massive step up from the Amethyst. Also, basically just me.

Get your "boner" jokes out the way, kids.

I know what you’re thinking “Paph, why the hell are you suddenly springing the Dracolich on us in the middle of the section on Gem Dragons?”

One, I needed something metal to purge all the bougieness from my system. Two, it’s Halloween, so what better time to bring in this fucker? Three, Dracolich’s entry actually comes before “Dragon, General”, so technically this whole order I’ve been doing things in was a sham from the beginning.

So, About Jareth's Backstory...

So, the internet being what it is, I see a lot of hypotheses on certain aspects of Labyrinth's backstory.

Or, rather, I see the same hypothesis popping up in myriad forms. You know the one, Sarah is the latest in a long line of Sarahs because Jareth is a lunatic who keeps going after girls with the same name because he has some bullshit tragic past involving a girl named Sarah.

After all, everyone acts like they expected Sarah, so surely this has happened before, right? No.

Look at this assclown. This is the face of someone who sniffs his farts and likes it.

What, you thought we’d be getting on to the Metallics, now that the Chromatics are done?

Well, so did I, but the Monstrous Manual had other ideas.

Amethyst dragons are wise and regal, with a detached air, and ignore what they consider to be petty squabbles between good and evil, law and chaos.
“Mmmm, yes, I see. A band of stalwarts out to vanquish Lord Mr. Kill. How trite. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to my readings of Orson. D. Olaf’s Aviagientienusybeleopatiearium Cycle. What, you haven’t heard of it? Of course you haven’t.”

When hatched, amethyst dragons have lavender skin with small scales of a light, translucent purple.
Good grief, they’re so bourgeois that even their underskin isn’t red, it’s lavender.

He looks like he’s wearing a shark mask. Also, this and the blue dragon pic are the most physiologically accurate dragons thus far.

White dragons, the smallest and weakest of the evil dragons, are slow witted but efficient hunters.

Damn, that’s cold. The other entries were quick to write off the other colored dragons as mean, puppy-kicking fucks, but this one flat-out calls them dumb. The black dragon’s page looks flattering by comparison, for frost sake.

They are impulsive, vicious, and animalistic, tending to consider only the needs and emotions of the moment and having no foresight or regret.

So, these guys are actual sociopaths. No, seriously, that fits the definition perfectly. Add a lack of empathy, and it’s right out of a textbook.

Despite their low intelligence, they are as greedy and evil as the other evil dragons.

They really want to ram home the fact that white dragons are so fucking dumb, they get fired from the M&M factory for throwing out the W’s.

Windows Shareware Disk Showcase: Ultimate House of Games for Windows, Part 1

It's been a while since my last vidya game post, hasn't it? Well, that's what happens when you write a blog where anything goes. You know, I think I should make that my blog's subtitle: The Blog of Anything Goes.

By now, I’m sure any 21st century Earthlings reading these posts have a few questions. Like, why do I have such a nostalgia for all this crap that became obsolete centuries before I was born? Let me explain.

See, in the aftermath of the Fusion, one of the ways the two worlds started getting to know each other was by trade. The most vital commodity we traded was knowledge.

As we grew to learn each other’s languages and cultures, we taught each other what we knew. It started, of course, with things like what was safe to eat, how to prepare it, and how to make antivenom for that nasty yophakhi sting.

Once we got that part down, we got technological. Earth taught us about things like electronics and rocket science, and we taught them what we know about medicine, biology, and how to use the Art of Change.

One convenient stepping-stone in our wrangling of Earth tech was to buy older, simpler examples of it and the documentation thereof in order to dissect and reconstruct it with our own methods.

Thus, over the next few decades, we began our climb when it came to melding the arts of electronics and transmutation. Our climb was much faster, for we had the shoulders of giants as footholds.

And that’s why my first computer was one of these fucking things.

Even the art of transmutation can’t make this thing less shitty. Photo belongs to one Clicsouris (CC BY-SA 3.0). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Musee_de_l'Informatique_-_Exposition_25_ans_du_Mac_16.jpg

Back in the days when they were still replacing the old infrastructure for the internet, shareware disks got a new lease on life. Only ones I remember personally having as a ‘net were the eGames Galaxy ones, though.

Thankfully, since Archive.org’s servers weathered those decades like a champ, I can dig around and find some more of that good ol’ late 20th century crustiness. With a VM in tow, let’s take a trip back in time.

You’ve seen the Silver Surfer, now witness the might of the Silicon… uh, Sucker.

The one we’ll be looking at today is called Ultimate House of Games for Windows.

8 Outrageous Things Cracked Would Say if it Were a Person

“Wanna hear a joke? Everyone hates you because of 5 little things you do every day.”

“The all-lesbian Back to the Future remake isn’t even out yet, and people are already whining that it looks bad. They’re only saying that because it deals with serious social justice issues, and anyone who criticizes the trailer is a whiny incel Nazi baby.”

“Oprah Winfrey fucks pigs. This is fact.”

“The all-lesbian Back to the Future remake is a shallow film full of empty pandering to social justice without actually grasping the principles behind the things it claims to support.”

“Thomas Edison’s first lightbulb was powered by kicked puppies.”

“The Little Mermaid is bourgeois propaganda made to appease the working class.”

“In the future, we’ll have mind-reading implants, and find even more reasons to hate each other.”

“Wanna hear 7 totally disgusting things people in the 1700s did with miscarried babies?”

Alt Text

Alt text, the one feature we all love to hate. Or maybe we just hate it. It's an anal-retentive's worst nightmare, to say the least.

It'd be such an aggravation, if I included it.

And yet, on the other hand, the feature is just there, taunting me.

"Use me, you coward!" it cries out.

"But, I don't dare betray my readership!" I protest. "Were I to include alt text, my readers would have a moment of crisis. I've hidden something from them, and now that they understand this, they'll be compelled to go back and find every single alt text. And Gosh help them if I do it inconsistently. Like, if I only put in one Alt Text every so often, and then they check them only to repeatedly find there's nothing there. Then, they stop checking, only for me to finally include one. AS A CONSCIENTIOUS PERSON, I CANNOT CONDONE THIS!"

"Paph, that's an entire paragraph you wrote in quotes. Please get help."

And that's why I'll now list every Alt Text I ever write for this blog here in this post, from now on.

[None yet. Watch this space! ... Or don't.]

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Red

This guy looks less like a red scaled dragon, and more like a scaleless with a really bad sunburn.

So, let’s be real about this one.

Red dragons, in D&D, are just Smaug.

There’s really nothing else to it, they’re just Smaug, right down to the fire-breathing, greed, and ego.

After we’ve explored dragons that have the power to control BEES, desert dragons with camouflage that makes more sense than I thought it did (see my amendment to that post), and nature-loving dragons who literally enslave their natural enemies, just plain ol’ Smaug is gonna seem a little dull by comparison.

Red dragons are the most covetous and greedy of all dragons, forever seeking to increase their treasure hoards.

Isn’t that all of us?

13 Game Print Ads Nobody Else Talks About

So, I read Cassidy’s Top Five Worst Games Print Ads, and my brain said “Paph! You’ve gotta do a post about print ads!"

I told my brain, “But everyone does that! Between bad video game covers and commercials, print ads are the most commonly-mocked target on the internet. If nothing else, I strive not to be redundant. There’s nothing new I could add to the plethora of 'Top Worst' lists out there.”

My brain said “Oh. But, Paph, you’ve gotta write about print ads!”

Well, I couldn’t argue with that logic. So, I started digging to see if there were any interesting ones that nobody’s talked about. Note that these aren’t the “top” of any kind of ads, nor are all of them bad. As long as they’re remarkable in some way, they belong here.

Many of these scans come from VGMuseum (http://www.vgmuseum.com/ads). Special thanks go to Oli, AnakinVdr, gfrankwick, and Mek.

* Cuthbert Enters the Tombs of Doom (Commodore 64)

Ahhhh, C64 video game box art. The fun thing about computer games back then was, anyone could make them; the only barrier to entry was finding a publisher. There was also no barrier of entry when it came to package art.

This one kind of looks like a screwed-up crocodile. Not nearly as funny as the 1e illustration I found.

Look at what a happy dork this guy is. "A-hyuck, howdy there, adventurerers! Imma swallow you whole, now!"

So, for this episode, I have a guest! Introducing my bro, Marky.

Marky: Hey, there!

Paph: So, today’s entry is the Green Dragon. Insert your Kermit the Frog jokes now, kiddoes. Let me begin this shitshow.

Green dragons are bad tempered, mean, cruel, and rude.
Paph: What did I tell you about using a thesaurus, writer? You just said the same thing four different ways. It’d be like if I called someone “smelly, odious, stinking, and putrid”.

They hate goodness and good-aligned creatures. They love intrigue and seek to enslave other woodland creatures, killing those who cannot be controlled or intimidated.
Paph: “GRRRR, HOW DARE HE DONATE TO CHARITY AND FEED STARVING ORPHANS! JUST TO MAKE IT WORSE, HE RESOLVED A CONFLICT WITHOUT KILLING A SINGLE PERSON! I NEED LIES AND DEATH TO SUSTAIN ME!” — A Green D&D dragon, aka your average Republican

Marky: Marky approves.

Web 1.0 Pages about Dragons - S.W.O.R.D.

Ahhhh, the 90’s and early 2000’s.

A mythical golden age of the internet, before it was consolidated to 5 or 6 platforms.

Back when content wasn’t a homogeneous stew of nonsensical memes, assholes running around in traffic, performative outrage, and manchildren screaming at video games. When the internet was a wild frontier, where anything and everything went.

This bygone internet was not unlike the biblical Garden of Eden, except that it actually existed.

I figured I’d take a break from dissecting D&D to talk about a particular page from this bygone era.

By total coincidence, it happens to be about dragons.

If you wanna browse along with me, here’s a link:

http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/dragonpaws/

The name of this website is:

S.W.O.R.D.

Special World of Regal Dragons.

Y’know, opposed to the commoner or the bourgeois dragons.

Alright! It’s time for me to dispel any stereotypes these chucklefucks had about my kind. I guarantee you, no matter what they spout, it’s alllllll gonna be bullshit.

Blue dragons are extremely territorial and voracious.

I mean, I don’t eat that many people, come on.

They love to spend long hours preparing ambushes for herd animals and unwary travelers, and they spend equally long hours dwelling on their success and admiring their trophies.
*looks at his well-polished hoard of handsome males and intruders he’s turned to gold*

Oh, dammit.

Crappy gif quality, because that's the only scan I could find of this damned thing!

So, to ease your concerns, I’ll try not to get too offended on other people’s behalf. But, hot diggity damn, is this one a real hot mess.

Black dragons are abusive, quick to anger, and resent intrusions of any kind. They like dismal surroundings, heavy vegetation, and prefer darkness to daylight. Although not as intelligent as other dragons, black dragons are instinctively cunning and malevolent.

*facepalm*

I should’ve expected no less from the same book that has drow in it. Gotta love that they specify “not as intelligent”, in addition to them being angry and violent.

Also, “resent intrusions of any kind”? That’s, uh, basically everyone. I doubt you’d be all that chipper, either, if someone broke into your house with the intent of killing you and stealing your shit.

At birth, a black dragon's scales are thin, small, and glossy. But as the dragon ages, its scales become larger, thicker, and duller, which helps it camouflage itself in swamps and marshes.
Huhhhh…

Grumpy asshole who lives in a swamp, can’t stand intruders…

It’s official, anyone playing a black dragon is required by law to do them in a Scottish accent.

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons! - General, Part 2

Welcome back to Let’s Dissect D&D 2e’s Dragons!

After bearing witness to some truly severe anti-draconic stereotypes, we’ve reached the halfway point of this hella long entry. Let’s see if it can get any worse from here.

Dragon Hide: Dragon skin is prized by armorers with the skill to turn it into shields and armor, valuable because of its appearance and the protection it affords. Dragon armor grants its wearer an Armor Class of 4 less than the Armor Class of the dragon it was taken from, for a minimum Armor Class of 8.
Yes, it sure can.

Who the fuck wrote this, Ed Gein?!

These are sapient beings you’re talking about skinning and making clothes from! I don’t see you talking about making elf-hide purses, or using dwarf skulls as ashtrays.

For example, armor from a juvenile brass dragon (AC O) grants its wearer AC 4. Dragon armor is supple and non-bulky, weighing only 25 pounds.
Who fucking statted up the properties of armor made from children? And they don’t even get the “oh, it’s an EVIL colored dragon, so it’s okay” excuse, since they clearly mention a brass dragon.

Are we going to talk about how to harvest dragon fat for lamp oil, next? How about tips on what spices go best with braised dragon tail?

I get the feeling the only reason these degenerates stopped just short of talking about how to make stuffed dragon heads into waterspouts is because they were running out of page le—

Hang on, Mikks is yapping about adding something… Dragon Magazine #332? Page 49?

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons! - General, Part 1

After reading a few entries from Your Dungeon is Problematic, I felt compelled to write my own take on a few entries. Namely, the dragons.

They’re what the game’s named after, after all (though it’s bizarre that it took them so many editions before they finally made them a standard player race)!

I’ve reached out to the author of that blog through the same crazy mojo that lets me post shit back in time in the first place, and maybe, MAYBE we’ll get ourselves a crossover post. Who knows!

As a heads-up, this will be referencing real-world racism, simply by necessity, so… there’s your warning to back out if you’re not interested. I promise I won't be too preachy.

At any rate, I’ve rarin' to tear into the AD&D 2e Monster Manual, myself.

Why 2e in particular? Because 2e's MM has so much content that's just hella fun to riff on. I blame noisms' 2e MM thread for making me love it. You can pick a page at random from that massive fucking tome, and the chances are high you'll strike gold.

While later editions have a lot of the same problems, they're presented in a tidier, less cheesy format. Without 2e's cheese, you're just pointing out problematic elements in an otherwise solid work. And frankly, that's not fun. And if it's not fun, it doesn't belong on this blog.

Meanwhile, the 1e MM is rather terse and non-judgmental with its descriptions. Oh, sure, it’ll tell you Black Dragons are “Chaotic evil”, but it won’t slander them any further.

2e, however, makes no bones about how exaggeratedly eeeeeeeevil its “evil” monsters are, describing in hateful detail everything from how they love kicking puppies and not showering to how they lust after yo’ elf women.

Well, I ain’t letting that shit slide!

You listen here, Mr. Tim Beach, Doug Stewart, Slade Henson, Thomas Reid, Jeff Grubb, Wolfgang Baur, Jon Pickens, John Rateliff!

You appropriate our image and name, you cast us as the bad guys, and now you slander us with your blood libel?!

Well, COWBOYS, I ain’t gonna take that!

It’s time for this dragon to sass your asses!

Let’s do this!

First up, we have “Dragon, General.”

Sadly, the MM doesn't have an illo of a dragon in this section, so I'll just use this public domain stud, courtesy of LadyofHats.

This entry is long, and not really structured like the other ones, so think of this as the prelude to the massive roast I’m about to dish out.

DRAGONET Mini-Reviews

So, while my other articles have been gestating, I noticed that the ones that seemed closest to realization weren’t game-related.

Two consecutive non-game-related articles in a row after joining Game & Love didn’t seem right, so I figured I’d throw together a few quickie reviews for pre-Fusion Earth games starring dragons in a new bit called:

Same rules as my “Dragons as Protagonists” (Prodragonists?) series apply:

1. The main player character must be a dragon (with exactly one exception I'll be getting to later). No dragon riders allowed.

2. NO SHIFTERS. Shifters do not count as dragons. To define a shifter: a shifter is a dragon that can take on human or mostly-human form. Dragons taking anthro form is fine, so long as it's an anthro dragon like in real life. Exceptions can be made for games where 100% of the actual gameplay loop is spent as a dragon (a la Dragon Spirit).

3. I must finish at least one round of gameplay before starting the review.

4. Given that these are video games, I'm not going to knock them for being inaccurate. Back then, there was no "inaccurate". As long as the game itself is solid, I will look over any breaks from reality.

For each of these, I’ve adapted The CRPG Addict’s [link: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/] GIMLET system, in my case called DRAGONET.

Categories 1-6 are given a score from 1 to 10.

My Incident in the Krassartha Tundra

Even dragons get tired of lying around in our hoards, soaking in the endless praises of our beloved kobolds.

My jikhri wasn’t a problem today, either.

I just felt like seeing the world, flying off into the wild teal yonder. One of my favorite places to fly, from time to time, is the Krassartha Tundra. The way the light plays through the ice, the clarity of the night skies letting you see the stars brighter than anywhere else…

All in all, it’s nice to get out of your element, away from civilization (yeah, yeah, me, Mr. Lives-in-a-Mountain talking about being away from civilization).

After spending the day sightseeing, stopping to take a quick nap wherever I found shelter, and munching on just enough rations (read: Mr. Kindle bars and a thermos of homemade kobold egg soup, courtesy of my roomie Mikks) to refuel my fire, I stopped to get a drink from the river.

Big mistake.

What happened next was almost instantaneous; in that moment, a massive chunk of ice chipped off, and before my reflexes could let me dart away in time, it fell into the water, sending a huge wave of water right at me, freezing me in place as the water flash-froze.

My artistic impression of how I must've looked. Click here for full size.

Literally only one thing on this cover ever actually happens in this game.

I've always felt a kinship with Sonic the Hedgehog, and I think it has more to it than both of us being blue, impatient, and autistic (okay, maybe I'm just projecting that last one).

The confidence this guy exudes, his unflinching can-do attitude in the face of impossible odds, and his free-spirited nature always resonated with my soft-scaled, awkward self ever since my hands first formed.

It only makes sense, then, that the second post on this blog would be about the 8-bit game that calls itself Sonic 2! Except it isn't, because it has nothing to do with that game apart from having the same name.

None of the improvements Sonic 2 introduced to the series are in this game: no Spin Dash, no Super Sonic, no Death Egg. This is as barebones a sequel to the first game as you could imagine.

As a first outing from Aspect, who later went on to create the beloved Sonic Chaos and Triple Trouble, Sonic 2 8-bit is... lacking. Yet, it's always stuck in the back of my mind, ever since I got my paws on a Game Gear as a hatchie (those scratches and minor scorch marks were there when I got it, I swear).

This game has a bizarre quality to it that I've never been able to pin down. It keeps me coming back to it every so often, soaking in its surreal, now-comfortingly hostile atmosphere.

Somehow, by virtue of sloppy game design, a few half-baked ideas, and bizarre decisions on the part of the development team, this game accidentally becomes a powerful nihilistic pantomime.

Reviewing Pre-Fusion Earth Lit with Dragons as Protagonists

In what I'm assuming will be the first in a series of posts, I'll be reviewing some pre-Fusion Earth literature wherein the main character is a dragon. I have a bit of a fascination with pre-Fusion Earth fantasy and its history.

The reason I'm doing this is, in any list of "dragon books" or "books about dragons" from that time period, you seldom see us as the main characters. We may be a crucial plot point, but more often than not, the protagonist is a non-dragon, or worse.... a shifter.

So, I have taken it on myself to write reviews of books from the era wherein we're the protagonists.

If nothing else, it might be enlightening to think about how humans envisioned our fantasy counterparts at the time.

An Introduction

Rawr!
This is Paphvul, dragon extraordinaire, and this blog is where I'll be posting anything I can think of, be it reviews, rambles, or random ideas.

One topic I love to write about is Earth's pre-Fusion pop-culture, particularly the strange and obscure, as looked back at through a queer, draconic lens.

As for me, IRL I'm a Flesh mage who does body mods for a living, and I like my men the way I like my steak (juicy and swimming in gravy).

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Sapphire Dragon

Windows Shareware Disk Showcase: Ultimate House of Games for Windows, Part 2

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Emerald Dragon

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Crystal Dragon

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Dracolich