This isn't a stock or manipulated photo. It's a photo of me and the missus a few years back.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day
 

Aye, matey. This be the date all ye landlubbers and scaliwags be puttin on the odiferous airs of the darin' crews piratical. Gone be the halcyon days of yore when you could simple-like set yer book of faces to speak in pirate tongue all on its lonesome own. Now ye need to ponder hard, til yer eyes be squinty like facing the morning fire-orb and yer face all twisty-screwed like ye be shanked in the gut by yer best mate. The stories followin' in the wake of this glorious speechifying be in the common tongue, but mind, we'll be watchin' and listenin' as you go about yer chores and judgin' any pontificating ye do, whether in parlay or courtin', to sees if you gots the stuff to join our everlovin' loathesome crew. And, if ye be liken talkin' in secret tongues or hearin' the tales of doomed ships at see, ne'r forget Cap'n Bingle's lastest collection of terrifying tales, Morse Code Mysteries and Missives. 

The audiobook version of Morse Code Mysteries and Missives has about twelve hours of dits and dahs (dots and dashes) at a default speed of about 12 words per minutes, but is adjustable on most software from half to twice that default speed. Then a professional voiceover actor reads each tale in clear text. There are also print and ebook versions that include triple-spaced Morse Code text, the audio links to the dits and dahs, then clear text.

Ships aren't the only things that launch. The Kickstarter for Legends of Lornea, Volume 1, is now open for your perusal and support. Not just novelettes by Richard A. Knaak, Jean Rabe, Richard Lee Byers, Patrick E. Pullen, and me, but also available bonus levels with added stuff, like autographs and gaming with some of the authors. Check it out. You can grab digital copies of the book and/or the first gaming adventure in Darkworld, or you can buy codes which will allow you to use DriveThruRPGs print-on-demand feature to print a softcover or hardcover version of the book at cost. There's even a digital Braile version. Pick what you want. Pledge. Then tell your friends.

Dungeon & Dragons 50th Anniversary

It's been fifty years since D&D was created. The USPS is celbrating the role-playing game known by all by issuing a set of official US forever postage stamp with some of the iconic art the game has featured over the years. And, here for you is my blog about whether I played in the first rpg ever.

Did I Play in the First Roleplaying Game EVER?

No, E. Gary Gygax Was Not Involved

Despite the fact that I have attended GenCon for more years than you have probably been alive and that I was the world’s top-ranked player of Classic RPGA tournaments for fifteen years (1985-2000), I’ve never really thought of myself as an early player of Dungeons & Dragons and, by extension, modern roleplaying games. After all, my first Dungeons & Dragons experience was in a camper in the parking lot of University of Wisconsin Parkside the night before GenCon XII in 1979, after I had already graduated from law school. And I had passed by a few groups playing the game during my college and law school years. So, while I was not at the leading edge of first players, I just tried to do my best playing classic tournaments, playing around 600 different characters in 460 tournaments in a wide variety of different game systems and settings, and winning 235 of those tournaments.

My college history in parliamentary debate (where the affirmative/government team sets the debate anywhere they choose in time and space and, therefore, can be considered a roleplaying type of debate) set me up for my roleplaying and, later, writing, career. But it was when I was writing my story “Second Banana Republic” for Sarah Hans’ Sidekicks!, which is inspired by an event from my high school days, that I realized I may have actually played the first modern roleplaying game ever … predating the publication of the Original D&D by several years.

High schools, especially Social Science classes, are, of course, well known for their historical simulation events: The Continental Congress, Mock United Nations, etc. But I’m not talking about that kind of thing. I’m talking about something that had all the elements we all know and love about roleplaying games.

What’s my definition of a roleplaying game? A game in which each person playing plays a fictional, individual person (not a historical figure or a nation or an army) with a pre-established personality, skills, and items, interacting improvisationally with other fictional, individual persons similarly established who are played by other people, in a setting where events occur at pre-ordained times and places in order to prompt interaction, and where there are items and rules which govern non-verbal actions like fighting/attacks, etc., all moderated by a person who isn’t playing the game.

Historical simulations don’t fit this definition. Neither do strategy, war, or board games. Military simulations can come closer, but are generally based on historical figures or unit operations.

So, what was the game I played?

I was in a Social Sciences class at Naperville Central High School (formerly Naperville Community High School) in Illinois. My best guess is that it was 1971 or spring of 1972, but it might have been a year or so earlier. The class was taught by Mr. Stephens, but he had an aspiring student teacher whose name I can no longer remember (one classmate says it was Mr. Dilley (spelling?), but I have no idea if that is right).

In any event, this student teacher had to do a special project of some sort for his classwork, so he created a simulation-type game, except that it wasn’t a historical simulation, it was a game based on a fictional South American country run by a dictator, except that the dictator had a personality description–all of the characters had personality descriptions and indications of what they thought of the other characters. One for every kid in the class. Mrs. Olson was the owner of a coffee plantation. The dictator’s wife, Boom-Boom, was having affairs with a significant percentage of the male characters (and a minority of the female characters). The Archbishop had an illegitimate kid. The natives smoked peyote in the mountains, and on and on and on. Some of this information was not public, but some of the private information had been gathered by the dictator’s brother and kept in a little black book. The characters had “influence” scores that could be combined to overthrow the dictator (but if their entry from the little black book was read out loud, their influence was cut in half.)

Desks were re-arranged to represent various locations in the country (marked with little folded index card tents with the name of the location), some with special rules (e.g., you couldn’t attack in the sanctuary of the cathedral, unless you were a member of the clergy, etc.) and there were slips of paper representing various kinds of weapons/attack (poison, gun, knife, etc.) and various defensive slips. You just had to hand someone an appropriate slip for combat to occur.

I helped a bit on some of the character stuff, for which I got to pick the character I wanted. (I picked the dictator’s brother, the guy with the little black book.)

The day of the big game some representatives of the student teacher’s college came to watch his big project unfold. Events were announced and player characters reacted improvisationally. I quickly overthrew my brother by way of assassination in collaboration with Boom-Boom, but the masses were against me, so I plotted an escape. First off, I decided to read the entire black book, so to halve the influence against me.

The student teacher blushed as I began to read about all of the scandals and affairs in the book, telling me I could just skip the reading and he would adjust the scores, but I insisted on reading it all aloud. This, of course, incensed my opponents and caused a few raised eyebrows among the college officials. While I had a lot of defensive slips, I knew I was more likely to be killed than overthrown and none of the limited sanctuaries (the cathedral, the mountains, etc.) was safe from all my opponents. So I made up a tent that said Switzerland and surreptitiously dropped it on the teacher’s desk. When it was announced that the United States had delivered millions in foreign aid to the central bank, I went there and stole the funds (giving most of my defensive slips to the bankers as a bribe), then jumped up on the desk for the bank and leapt from desk to desk across the room while the crowd surged toward me to deliver attack slips. I arrived on the teacher’s desk with only one attack having been successfully delivered (for which I had one “good for any attack” defense slip), grabbed the tent and claimed sanctuary in Switzerland.

A raucous good time and, I would say, a genuine roleplaying game experience. Interaction with player characters, pre-ordained events by time and space, combat items, attacks, and events occurring that the gamemaster never, ever planned for.

This scenario could never be played in a high school today. But it inspired a story more than forty years afterwards.

Happy to hear your thoughts on whether this was a true roleplaying experience or not. Also happy for any leads on that student teacher, if you know him and/or could find him, because I would love to get a copy of that scenario.

People Make Bad Spies

(a blog from yesteryear)

I am not a spy.

Of course, if I was a spy, I would never tell you I was a spy--unless, of course, it would somehow be helpful to me for your to think I was a spy in order to convince you to do something you would not otherwise do, like help me flee the police, bad guys with guns, of femme fatales wearing poisoned lipstick (don't lick you lips, sweetie) or bearing paternity suits. Of course, if it was helpful to me to tell you I was a spy, I would tell you I was a spy whether I was or not, so you never know.

Spies are like Schrodinger's cat that way. You can't really know for sure until the cat is out of the box and then you, not it, are either alive or dead.

And, no. I don't play a spy on TV, but I have watched my fair share of spy shows and movies. In fact, back in the 80s, I arranged a back-to-back video screening of all (then) seventeen James Bond movies from Friday evening to midnight Sunday night one weekend to charge me up for writing a Bond-spoof role-playing game with my brother, Rich. Let's be clear you don't get a lot of practical spycraft in a Bond movie. Not even billionaire Bruce Wayne has as much non-credible tech as the average Bond movie. Not to mention that everyone's AK-47 (the weapon from hell) must hold at least a zillion rounds, but everybody's aim is crap. All you end up with watching Bond is a lot of spy cliches and trivia--quick, do you know in what Bond Film a heroin-flavored banana appears? The Bond film festival was fun and funny, though, and the spoof rpg was fun, itself. (Perhaps the funniest thing about it was when we tried to sell it to Victory Games--the publihers of the James Bond RPG--and were informed that the James Bond RPG was a "serious" role-playing game (with seduction rules!?!) and that they only intended to support the system with adventures based on existing Bond movies. You know, adventures where all the potential players already knew the entire plot. Hysterical.)

As you may have guessed from all of this, I have played a few spies in role-playing games--mostly in TSR's old Top Secret RPG, but also in a few Bond scenarios written by gamemasters more creative than the folks at Victory Games. I've also played or written scenarios for a few rpgs that involve covert activity--like Pacesetter's old Timemaster RPG ("I've seen the future and I'm here to fix the past."). In the course of those games I've done or seen a lot of interesting stuff--some of it clever and subtle and lethal, and some of it clueless and stupid and, well, lethal. But I learned a few things along the way.

Just for the record,I don't think real spies forget their cover I.Ds, their mission objectives, the names of the bad guys they are trying to catch, or their code phrases. I don't think real spies talk about their mission out loud in public spaces or, worse, just a few steps away from a bad guy. I don't think real spies use C-4 to enter a compound that a FedEx driver can walk into unobstructed. I don't think real spies can't charm, bluff, or ad lib their way past a store clerk or a doorman. I don't think real spies posing as Canadian commandos blurt out that they can't remember if Alaska is part of Canada or pretend to be a deaf-mute to avoid questioning. Deaf-mute commandoes!?! Way to go, Rich. At least we know why Canada is not a super-power.

All of this has led me (and my wife, who has played plenty of spy rpgs, too, but is not--as far as I know--a covert agent) to the conclusion that people are bad spies.

I'm not sure why people are such bad spies. The most basic skill a spy needs is lying and goodness knows people do that all the time. They lie to their spouses (those jeans look great) and to their friends (I have other plans) and their bosses (wow, it seems like I get a summer cold every August (during GenCon)), and to the anonymous all-knowing, all-seeing, and semi-deranged internet (yes, that's a recent photo--don't I look buff?). They even lie to the government, whether it's fudging on their taxes, carrying undeclared tchotkes back from vacation without declaring them, or feigning innocence when their downspout is connected to the local sewer line. They somehow even manage to lie to themselves (this year, I really am going to lose weight or write a novel or move out of my folk's basement or stop stalking Jennifer Anniston, or all of the above). Yet, somehow, when faced with a passing question or minor probing about skullduggery, the stammering and the sweating and the uh, um, ers begin and the most fantastical and ridiculous things are said in attempts to lie.

It can't be because people can't lie. They do. It must be becaue people don't like to make--and, in fact, are terrible at making--big, important decisions.You know, like who to marry (not you, honey) and who to work for and what house/car to buy and which college to go to. People avoid these decisions when they can (let's just live together) or change their minds (new wife, new job, new house) or make them based on bizarre and unimportant criteria (nice rack, free cookies in the lunchroom, awesome chandelier (in the car), or great party school). But everyone assumes that spy decisions are important, save-the-world decisions. And, you don't want to make the wrong decision when the world hangs in the balance. Well, at least not very often--it's bad for the supercool spy image.

Yes, spies get all sorts of training (or so I hear) and have all sorts of knowledge (that I know nothing about) and are psychologically screened to get just the right kind of un-emotive loner with a need for the adrenaline rush of covert activity, but the ability to control that rush and direct it into problem-solving and lethal action (so I'm told).

But, most importantly, spies are decisive

At least I think so. I could be wrong. Maybe I am. You never know.

Thus it was when I got asked to write a spy novel, I dithered for months and months before deciding to do so. (See, I'm not a spy.) But when I did write my novel, Net Impact, I wrote a spy novel about a guy who is not Hollywood supercool, who does not have a bimbo in every port (or a port in every bimbo), and who does not wear tailored Italian suits. (I swear, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. could have brought down the entirety of MI-6 just by purloining the customer list at an upper-end bespoke tailor on Saville Row and figuring out which Brits bought an excess of suits--which are so quickly ruined by gunfire, blood, sweat, and over-eager bimbos.) My guy, instead, has a wife, a kid, a mortgage, and problems at home and work. Oh, and a fondness for explosions, which he's smart enough to duck down for when they occur. He also has a few gadgets and a partner who needs to be trained on the job. But, most important, he is decisive. He does whatever is necesary to get the job done and lives (or dies) with the consequences.

That makes him supercool to me.

That makes him a spy.

I've decided, and I'm sticking with my decision. (Hmmm. Maybe I am a spy and I'm just good at lying to myself.)

Now you can get the entire

Dick Thornby Thriller Series

in one ebook.

Blood River: A supernatural survival horror novel (Nightmare Vacations)

The journey up Blood River was easy. Coming home is a killer.

In the heart of Borneo, a group of dedicated volunteers embarks on a journey to save the endangered orangutans. What begins as a noble mission quickly spirals into a nightmare. The dark mystery of twelve missing volunteers is revealed by a collection of battered diaries.

Team leaders Tara and Rendy must protect their remote camp against ruthless outlaws, freak weather and failing supplies. They soon suspect that the greatest danger is among them: a lost soul with a savage bloodlust.

Alexander Lane's masterful storytelling blends tension, mystery, and fear, drawing readers into an immersive nightmare where every rustle of leaves could mean danger.

Will you survive the horrors of Blood River?

IN THIS SECOND EDITION: Alongside great new cover artwork, this second edition of Blood River comes with a preview of the new Nightmare Vacations novel: Blood Point. Folklore meets contemporary horror as an Irish escape becomes a Midsummer Night’s terror.

Revenge Island: A Gripping Psychological Thriller

by

Axl Blaze

What began as a lavish private island getaway for a group of wealthy thrill-seekers quickly descends into a waking nightmare of psychological terror.

As a group of friends is brutally slaughtered one by one, the remaining survivors find themselves forced to confront not only their sadistic tormentor's depravity but the yawning inner darkness threatening to consume their own fragmenting minds.

Trapped between a desperate struggle for survival and a shadowy force determined to shatter their sanity, they spiral deeper into madness with every calculated torment. Allies become threats, truths mutate into lies, and their only certainty is the island's ever-tightening grip.

Can they escape this inescapable hell with their psyches intact?

Or will the killer's sinister games claim their souls for the abyss, dragging them into a point of no return where even the greatest of horrors await? In this battle for survival, the greatest enemy may be the darkness growing within themselves.

Donald J. Bingle is the author of seven books and more than sixty shorter works in the horror, thriller, science fiction, mystery, fantasy, steampunk, romance, comedy, and memoir genres. His books include Forced Conversion (near future military scifi), GREENSWORD (darkly comedic eco-thriller), Frame Shop (murder in a suburban writers' group), and the Dick Thornby spy thriller series (Net Impact, Wet Work, and Flash Drive). He also co-authored (with Jean Rabe) The Love-Haight Case Files series (a three-time Silver Falchion winning paranormal urban fantasy about two lawyers who represent the legal rights of supernatural creatures in a magic-filled San Francisco. Don also edited Familiar Spirits (an anthology of ghost stories). He also put out the oddest book you've ever seen. Morse Code Mysteries and Missives has three tales (two stories by Don and a relevant piece of non-fiction) presented in Morse Code text, then via links in audio dots and dasher, then in plain English.

Many of Don's shorter works can be found in his Writer on Demand TM collections.

Get the audiobook version of Net Impact at Audible.com, Amazon, and iTunes and the audiobook version of Wet Work at Audible.com, Amazon, and iTunes.

Full disclosure: Various links in my newsletter or on my website may include Amazon Affiliate coding, which gets me a small referral fee (at no cost to you) if you purchase after clicking through.