100 Dubious Philosophies & Esoteric Aesthetic Movements
This is a list of dubious philosophies and aesthetic movements partially inspired by the novel Odile by Raymond Queneau. A free PDF of this list can be found on my itch.io page. May it provide you with some amusement.
001 The Polysystematizers
002 The Phenomenophile Co-Materialists
003 The Dialetical Telepathicans
004 The Unreformed Piatiletkian Fellow Travelers
005 The Revisionist Anthroposophists
006 The Discordant Anthroposophists
007 The Plurivalent Dyshamonists
008 The Contraceptual Believers
009 The Paralyrical Mediumists
010 The Unresolved Pro-Ultra-Gray Fanatic Front
011 The Incubophile Spiritualists
012 The Unadulterated Asymmetric Revolutionaries
013 The Intolerant League of Polypsychists
014 The Pro-Mayhem Anti-Violence Pacifist Brigade
015 The Contracorp Fruitarians
016 The Uncoordinated Metaphychists
017 The Disseminated Parachists
018 The Barbiturates League
019 The Psychoanalysis by Correspondence League
020 The Salty Eggs Luncheon Group
021 The Dissident Socio-Messiahs
022 The Non-Active Nihilistic Periphery
023 The Revolutionary Anti-Intellectuals
024 The Revolving Integral Nullifiers
025 The Initiated Anti-Esoteric Trade Unionists
026 The Thirty-One Deep Country Groups
027 The Non-Conforming Sycophantic Faction
028 The Three Times Removed
029 The Nullfidian Collectivists
030 The Choplogic Bloc
031 The Followers of Whannt
032 The Shrouded Brethren
033 The Exemplary Forward
034 The Walkers Beneath the Sea
035 The Esteemed Combobulators
036 The Mnenomancers League
037 The Fragmentary Sporadicists
038 The Wayward Syndicate
039 The Peripatetic Harmonizers
040 The Inscrutable Academics
041 The Polarizing Disassociaters
042 The Zoological Concrete
043 The Non-Technical Sublime
044 The Air Loom Operators
045 The Shaver Host
046 The Active Worriers
047 The Repeating Premagnetizers
048 The Grosbanal Insertion
049 The Lyrical Minimalists
050 The Linear Vorticists
051 The Anti-Clerical Papacy
052 The Bicamarel Psychoanalysts
053 The Aerial Expansionists
054 The Order of Erudite Metaphysicians
055 The Infernal Grammarians
056 The Consolidated Puzzlers
057 The Gaxmold Liberation Front
058 The Gary Moldvay Group
059 The Re-Incorporated Etheric Arrangers
060 The Variable Harmonists
061 The Coalition of Heretical Choirs
062 The Twelve Unorthodox Adherents
063 The Manifold Diligence
064 The Raving Urbanologists
065 The Arch Royal Brotherhood
066 The Driven Word
067 The Abernathy Wormwold Descriptivist Agenda
068 The Celestial Builders Connection
069 The Tuesday Night Climbers
070 The Osmosis Steel Circle
071 The Oneironautic Initiative
072 The Duoshulginist Tendency
073 The Button Club
074 The Left-Handed Chess Players
075 The Goldminer’s Children
076 The Underdwellers
077 The Raskrogan Realtors
078 The Sand Counters
079 The Erasmus Brigade
080 The Beyond Team
081 The Outsividisismists
082 The Scattered Seeds of the Exiled Regents
083 The Optimate International
084 The Perspicacious Exegetes
085 The Antediluvian Peoples Faction
086 The Resurrected Pyromantic Gang
087 The Smokewrights Order
088 The Stargazer Pie Supper Club
089 The Ascendant Bibliomaniacs
090 The Morganwig Shoutsmiths
091 The Pastel Winged Seraphim
092 The Free Shepherds
093 The Near-Sighted Sharpshooters
094 The Occluded Shadowers
095 The Occasional Witnesses
096 The League of the Long Afternoon
097 The 842 Club
098 The Sky Lighters Co-Dependency
099 The Twilight Minsters
100 The Mistaken
Cemetery of the Sepulchral Monolith
I’ve uploaded a new adventure to my itch page…
Somewhere near the edge of Bastion on the borders of Deep Country a monolith stands. A pockmarked slab of a strange mineral-like material, the monolith is in fact alive and it consumes ghosts to survive!
Cemetery of the Sepulchral Monolith is a brochure adventure for Chris McDowall’s Into the Odd, but can be used for similar games. In it you will encounter a monolith that generates ghosts in order to consume them, three factions, and a number of other interesting locales.
The price tag is 3USD, but feel free to download a community copy for any reason.
And if you’d like, you can support me on patreon. You get glimpses of WIPs, early access to anything I make, and a weekly post of morbid introspection!
Doesn’t that sound fun?
Balloon Tomb of the Ancient Aeronaut
Remember all those UFO and “spy” balloon shenanigans from a month or so ago?
They got me imagining a whole upper atmosphere region populated with lost kites, desiccated corpses of early aviation pioneers, and strange creatures like in that old Arthur Conan Doyle story “The Horror of the Heights”:
“A visitor might descend upon this planet a thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet if he chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are jungles of the upper air, and worse things than tigers inhabit them.”
Anyway…dare you enter the Balloon Tomb of the Ancient Aeronaut?
Balloon Tomb of the Ancient Aeronaut is a brochure adventure for Chris McDowall’s Into the Odd and similar games. In it you will explore an ancient airborne bouncy dungeon tomb. The price tag is 3USD, but you should feel free to download a community copy.
Find it here: https://yesterweird.itch.io/the-balloon-tomb
Some GM tips from the playtest:
- Don’t sweat the getting there. An experimental Researchery airship dropped the party off and would pick them up when they wanted to leave.
- To describe the tomb builder’s culture I said: “Imagine the ancient Egyptians except all their jewelery is made from balloons.” “Inflatable ancient Egyptian stuff” went a long way when giving descriptions.
- I didn’t require any movement checks to move inside the tomb, but I maximized the bouncing. For this I used a d8 to determine direction then rerolling if they hit something before moving the full amount. Maximize the bounce!
- The first encounter was turbulence. This bounced characters apart and split the party. I recommend throwing that at them right away. It’s likely you won’t have to contrive things to do this because if they land at the top they will definitely be tempted to investigate the pilot balloons, thereby disturbing them, and making the whole tomb veer towards turbulence.
- The monsters might or might not be tough, but the fear of falling out of the tomb was a lot stronger.
Some Yesterweird Books
I make it a habit to check new uploads to Project Gutenberg.
Some recent highlights:
Freak Trees of the State of New York by Gurth Adelbert Whipple. Gurth Adelbert Whipple is a great name. Here people send Mr. Whipple pictures of freak trees and Mr. Whipple decides the freakiest! “Treebeard, you so nasty!”
Was It a Ghost? The Murders in Bussey’s Wood : An Extraordinary Narrative by Brent. This is about this awful murder case in Boston that features a criminal named “Scratch Gravel”. The Jamaica Plain Historical Society has an informative write up of the case.
Early British Trackways, Moats, Mounds, Camps, and Sites by Alfred Watkins. I love the cover. Leylines come from this book but it’s likely Mr. Watkins would not be happy to know what the New Age Movement has done to his theories,
Meanwhile on the Patreon, I’m doing a read through of JK Huysmans Against the Grain. It’s a novel about a guy who doesn’t leave the house and is great fun. You can join here to follow along. You’ll also get access to the game stuff I make before it shows up on itch and elsewhere. (Or while it’s a WIP that hasn’t come together yet. Looking at you Champion’s Mark, my Orlando Furioso inspired fantasy supplement.)
Later this month I’ll be releasing an adventure inspired by all the UFOs and “spy” balloons the USA has been shooting down lately: Balloon Tomb of the Ancient Aeronaut. It’s designed for Into the Odd and has players exploring an ancient airborne bouncy castle. Join my Patreon and you can grab that now!
INTO THE MYSTS
So after that TPK I mentioned a few posts ago, I switched my game over to Into the Odd.
We’re still using Mysthead 4 and going for a sword & sorcery vibe. I’ve added things like Cairn’s spell list and Weird North’s corruption into the mix. I’ve put links to all these games below. I also really like the idea of archetypes from Weird North and have made bespoke archetypes for my players. I’m not sure if this will be at odds with the initial semi-disposable nature of ItO characters as presented in the book*. It’ll be an interesting experiment.
Here are the archetypes and their abilities if you want to use them in your own game. Yes, some of them riff off the archetypes in the Weird North book. Also as you can see I use some other house rules like a refresh die and letting players burn a stat to get a bonus or recover an ability:
TRIBAL BEAST SINGER (AKA the Bard/Ranger)
GEAR: D8 hand weapon or a D6 missile weapon and D6 hand weapon, 2 random spell flutes, tribal clothes (armor 1), small net (can hold 1 medium sized or smaller creature), rope, Pack (3 days food, bedroll, torch)
ABILITIES (pick two, gain another when you trigger prestige)
- Wind Carver: spend a week carving a flute to gain a random spell
- Endless Tune: your spell tunes refresh on a 6. Take again to lower by one point. Other refresh rules apply.
- Naturalist: spend an hour listening to nature to learn a truth
- Nimble: advantage on DEX saves
- Animal Companion: an animal like a hound, hawk, snake etc. accompanies you. You can communicate with it.
- Friends in Small Places: pick a small type of creature (mice, rats, songbirds, spiders) – you can command them to perform simple tasks for you
- Keen-Ears: never surprised
- Tracker: can track a single quarry across any terrain
- Pathfinder: pick a point on land, you will always know which path to take to reach that place
PRESTIGE: recover a treasure …. And ??? (everyone has two: recover a treasure is the same for all… but the other one is more bespoke and I don’t remember what we decided here. Tame an animal?)
Refresh: roll a D6, on a 6 you regain the ability. Refreshes automatically after a night’s rest. Can be refreshed after a short rest in lieu of HP.
***
THE CULTIST’S CHILD (AKA What if Tieflings were less sexy and more like something from John Carpenter’s The Thing?)
GEAR: 2 daggers (D6) 2 spells (random) Leather armor (1) Grappling hook 1 random item Pack (3 days food, bedroll, torch)
ABILITIES (pick two)
- Grow a random boil for a random spell effect (refresh 6 or spend D6 DEX to auto refresh)
- Third eye: can see spirits and invisible creatures (usually closed and unseen)
- Vomit blast (D6 blast, refresh 6)
- Scales (+1 armor)
- Poison Immunity (ingested)
- Toxic Immunity (environmental)
- Rubber joints – can slip out of bonds and squeeze through narrow spaces
- Iron mind: makes will saves with advantage
- Quick Recovery – reduce refresh by 1
- Physical modification (gills, wings, hooves, tail)
PRESTIGE: recover a treasure, defeat a planar being
Refresh: roll a D6, on a 6 you regain the ability. Refreshes automatically after a night’s rest. Can be refreshed after a short rest in lieu of HP.
***
The Botanist (AKA the Botanist)
GEAR: D6 Weapon, 2 random potions, Armor 1, Sample Pack, Tea set: (Kettle, Mortar/Pestle), Pack (3 days food, bedroll, torch)
BASE ABILITY: Brew tea (spend an hour to collect and brew a healing tea that heals 2D6 single stat damage from one person, or 2 points single stat damage from multiple [max. 6])
Bonus abilities: (pick one now, get another when you trigger prestige)
- Naturalist: can craft potions and objects of minor power from salvaged monster parts.
- Plant speech: sit for an hour in silence communing with nature to learn a truth
- Call plants: you can command plants to grow faster (refresh 6)
- Survivalist: Can always find the safest path forward while on land.
- Forager: can always find an herb or ID a plant.
- Soothing Balm: can heal D6HP from self or another if you are not moving or attacking
PRESTIGE: Recover a treasure, make a discovery
***
Right now they’re stuck between menaces along with a researcher and a hapless mercenary. You can see them all up there in the picture at the top of this post. Deviltoads one way, magic portal to an alien hive the other.
Maybe they’ll escape…
* When I played Electric Bastionland part of the fun was that random character matrix of failed careers you could be. So if your character died the loss was blunted by getting the chance to play some other weirdo. The way I’m running things the characters are still as squishy as EB characters, but it took two days to come up with their bespoke archetype abilities. I suspect this will likely bite me in the butt eventually.
LINKS:
Mysthead #4
And here it is…
Mysthead #4, a system neutral micro-setting for seafaring fantasy adventures.
Inside you will find multiple generators, a local region and the many peoples who live there, several unique curiosities, a hexflower encounter matrix for seafaring events, and more!
You can find it at DrivethruRPG (affiliate link) or here at itch.io: https://myxomycetes.itch.io/mysthead-4
Enjoy!
Scarecases and more…
Have you ever wanted to wander an endless staircase at the intersection of realities and populated by horrors?
Well, now you can!
Over at itch.io, I’ve posted a trifold brochure outlining this scarecase environment. It’s written for Old School Essentials but can be easily adapted for other games.
Link to itch.io. Or look for “Myxomycetes”.
And over on my Patreon, I’ve posted a game called Perils & Procedures and a bit from a WIP I’m currently calling Champion’s Mark.
Perils & Procedures is the journaling game of perilous procedures you play online! But really it’s me poking fun at a certain variety of TTRPG blog posts. On one hand, I love them. On the other hand, I hate them. Unfortunately, I can only navigate this tension with ironic detachment.
Champion’s Mark is a chivalric TTRPG supplement based on Orlando Furioso. It’ll be a mix of NPCs, Tables, and Adventure Seeds that I hope will let players embrace some of the weird hallucinatory wildness of chivalric romances. This is a real thing, not a gag like Perils & Procedures. I’ll likely share bits and pieces as I go along. Current deadline for that is January 2023. If you want to help make that happen, please consider supporting me on Patreon.
Welcome to Static Clearing!
Welcome to Static Clearing Station, gateway to the Tseiling Ice Plateau!
Static Clearing is a 2-page brochure length science fantasy setting for tabletop role-playing games such as Mothership, Into the Odd, and others. Besides the station itself, the region houses a monastery devoted to the study of ancient creatures from the depths of time and a storage facility where cold chaotic matter is kept in isolation.
The brochure includes:
- An introduction to the Tseiling Ice Plateau
- A map showing the region around the station
- Brief descriptions of four locations: Static Clearing Station, the Feedback Palisade, the Monastery of the Mystic Starfish, and the Chaos Cold Storage Facility.
- Assorted gear and curiosities
Static Clearing was made for the the Weird Satellite Jam using names from the Weird Spy Satellite tumblr. The pictures are from places where I’ve lived.
You can find it here on my itch.io page.
Deadbolts Map
Here’s the map to the Into the Odd game I’m running. Their base is the little domed house at the center of the map and the circles in the cube icons are artifacts that they have been tasked to find. Other icons are various things they have encountered or stumbled across. It’s science-fantasy and riffing on all of these:
- Electric Bastionland
- Numenera
- Those Who Came Before
- Weird North
- Golgotha
- Iron Sleet: The Primogenitor
- Anna X-66
- Sudokar’s Wake
- Trash Planet Epsilon-5
- Ultraviolet Grasslands
- Vaults of Vaarn
So far it’s been fun. The premise is that once a century a vast alien megastructure passes through the system and various factions send teams across to plunder and investigate the structure. The players being among the latest to do so, but the whole structure is dotted with ruins from earlier expeditions and civilizations along with the structure’s indigenous inhabitants.
Things I like about Into the Odd… 1) It’s fast, a lot of adventure can be had 2) Combat is scary because everyone is so squishy 3) It’s easy to port simple rules on to the system (for example: usage dice).
Things I don’t like…? I think it’s easy to slip and remove player agency. One thing I’ve noticed about TTRPG players, especially those who enjoy OSR games, is that they pride themselves on player ability and smoother systems like ItO can remove some of that. I feel like there’s something here to elaborate on, but I haven’t thought deeply enough on it yet.
Maybe someday.
But that’s not to say I don’t enjoy it! Between ItO and Beyond the Wall/Through the Sunken Lands my game itch is being most pleasantly scratched.
An Into the Odd Character’s Tale As Depicted in Tokens
I’m playing in an Into the Odd/Electric Bastion game. It’s fun, but has required some rejiggering of my escapist expectations. With D&D or Blades in the Dark you generally play someone with panache from the start. That’s not the case so much with Into the Odd as the below will show.
To start we made two characters and picked the one I liked the most. One of the options was an out of work animal tamer and I thought it would be fun to play as the shepherd kid accosted by the players in the game I ran (it’s the same group and would’ve been a funny in-joke), but in the end I opted for the other character: an out of work canal lock keeper with a robotic eye.
Now to me that sounded like a swashbuckling river pirate type:
And that’s what I planned on playing, until I looked again at my character sheet and saw DEX: 4. Now a DEX: 4 is not something that says swashbuckling pirate. It says more bookish and uncoordinated, so from swashbuckling river pirate I shifted to local canal crime boss’s in too deep accountant.
And that worked! My nebbish accountant has found himself stranded with strange companions on a very strange island. He’s diffident and not at all a fighter. Or wasn’t at first. Two adventures in and that’s changed.
Early after his arrival on the island he came into possession of a stuffed cat and now refuses to part with it. Not only that, but the statue has the power to turn him into a man-sized cat at night. This is okay, but not great because there’s a chance when he changes he’ll attack his companions. Thank god, he has the 4 in DEX and not WILL. More to the point of this post, my initial token for his cat-form was this:
But again, under all the fur and teeth and claws, he’s still a nebbish accountant who got in too deep with canal gangsters. Once more my expectations had to be changed (and I saw a tweet of some awful 19th century tiles), and so:
Let’s see if this remains his final form!
But there’s a notion when discussing Old School RPGs that your character is what happens to them and that’s proving true here. From a collection of numbers (DEX: 4!) to a personality to a history accumulated through play, this character is fun for the simple fact that the whole experience has been unpredictable. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but it certainly feels refreshing and liberating to me. Stuff is happening and not only has it changed my character, but also my character was never who I thought they were in the first place!
That’s neat.
Yesterweird 