Blood, Death, Satan & Metal

In my experimentation with Vermis I was inspired by Parsely, a pseudo-RPG that emulates a text prompt based adventure games from the early days of computer gaming, such as Zork. Parsely is not an RPG as we would think of it, though it is an interactive, imaginatively evocative game. Jared A. Sorensen, the publisher describes Parsely thusly: Relive the glory days of floppy disks, dot-matrix printers and 128K RAM with this collection of party games inspired by the text-adventures of the 1980s. As the parser, you’ll take on the role of a computer game with a limited vocabulary. One by one, the players will give you commands like GO NORTH , LIGHT LAMP or GET SWORD , which you’ll follow to the best of your ability. There’s no limit to the number of people that can play and no limit to the fun you’ll have. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to unplug from your computer and plug into Parsely! If you're interested, you can try Parsely's free demo . Let's be clear, thi

Finding the right system: Systemless adventures are nothing new, many statless bestiaries and one-page dungeons exist. They are generally assumed to use some dialect of the OSR Rosetta Stone or simple NuSR game. There are definitely things to take into account, however: you will want a low-powered or dangerous system, with a magic and skill system that is either generic or highly flavored toward Vermis's tone. Having run it several times, here are some suggestions: Session 1: Lamentations of the Flame Princess, heavily houseruled Location: Pauper's Catacombs                         Party: 4 level 6 characters I ran the Pauper's Catacombs as a "side-shot" in my campaign (when too many players are absent for a "real" session), using our regular characters with the rule that characters won't die, but suffer consequences as a result of these semi-canon adventures (i.e. missing limbs instead of death).   Pauper's Catacombs was my choice be

Sorceress are (were) a 4-piece doom act from 2008-2011. They released this album in 2009, went on indefinite hiatus, put out 2 tracks on a split release in 2016, and then in 2023 we got this remastered reissue on King Volume records of Santa Fe. They also host Mizmor, the current band of Sorceress’s A.L.N. which is pretty fucking sick. But this isn’t about them- back to Sorceress! In 2009, doom was following in the footsteps of Electric Wizard and Sleep, and soon to bust open with Bongripper, Weedeater, and others’ classic releases. Sorceress preceded that mini-renaissance and took a more retro approach like The Sword and Witchcraft but with more of a psychedelic influence. To describe it briefly, I would call it a hybrid of Pallbearer and The Sword, loping along at a more measured pace. I’m coming to it after its top-notch remaster (“sumptuous” comes to mind), so I couldn’t tell you how it hit at the time of its first release. But 15 years later, it’s no bygone glory, it holds up. It’

The most hyped horror movie of the year! I always say that we get ONE good one per year (admittedly I'm talking about pretentious indie "Elevated Horror") and I am, for the most part right. Perhaps I'll make a list someday, who knows? I will talk only momentarily about the hype and how the film does in relation to it: I skipped the hype. I loved the first teaser trailer and when the second one that had more context and talking came out I tuned it out and avoided everything about the movie until it came out. This was the correct choice. Trailers are an art unto themselves and have a duty to do show and imply as much as they can while, crucially, not spoiling the movie, and the later trailers did not fully respect the film in that regard. The movie on its own merits is excellent. Not perfect, but satisfyingly creepy, immersive and dirty feeling. It channels Silence of the Lambs primarily, with Seven and Zodiac (more the actual historical events than the Fincher film) n