Friday 2 September 2022

[REVIEW] Cha’alt

Cha'alt
Cha’alt (2019)

by Venger Satanis

Published by Kort’thalis Publishing

Low to mid levels

* * *

Knee-Deep in the Zoth 

Gonzo science fantasy has a high pedigree in old-school gaming. Wild genre-mixing has been with us since the campaigns of Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, the publications of Bob Bledsaw and David Hargrave, and has more recently produced such gems as Encounter Critical (2004, predating the earliest retro-clones) and the great, unfinished Anomalous Subsurface Environment. For something affectionately referred to as “retro stupid” (Jeff Rients), this odd platypus-like mutt of gaming history has produced some remarkably excellent materials, and the expectations have thus been set rather high. So we come to Cha’alt. The book has often been dismissed as a vulgar display of bad taste, the product of some fringe weirdo with bad opinions, or juvenile fetish material not worth playing attention to. It has a small but dedicated cult following who swear it has merit. More often than one might think, these small cultish groups are right, and everyone else is dead wrong. Sometimes, they are just deluded. And thus, we are here.

Cha’alt is a lavishly produced, colourful, 216-page hardcover printed on heavy-duty, slick paper, with gold leaf embossing on the cover, and a psychedelic dust jacket depicting something from a 1970s album cover. There is a generous amount of colour illustrations and photos from Deviantart, most of them in tremendously bad taste, from “photorealistic” fetish art to generic and soulless colour pieces. As far as I am concerned, the art budget is wasted, but production values do not really concern this blog, so we shall move on.

While layout is not packed (white space and squiggly “magical glyphs” are abundant), there is a surprising amount of material in the book. Where a significant portion of old-school gaming has succumbed to the idea of minimalism, this is a rich, extensive campaign book mostly focused on directly playable material. This is a pleasant surprise: say what you will about the subject matter and the execution, the book has its heart in the right place. It is not an exercise in creating avant-garde literature, but giving you a rich grab-bag of stuff you can run out of the book. More than that, it is actual, honest functional writing that balances the setting’s peculiar flavour with the idea that information should be accessible, easily understood, and of help to the tired GM. It does not go into the weirdo formal experiments of presentation which have become fashionable in recent years, but while the text will not win any writing awards, it is competently edited, and does its job efficiently and unobtrusively. There is even a functional, well-built appenix! In the realm of ease of use, Cha’alt scores above much of the gaming field.

* * *

The Shores of Cha’alt

Retro stupid rides again
Cha’alt’s setting is a blasted post-apocalyptic wasteland following a war between the awakened Old Ones, and the planet’s highly advanced civilisation. Various city-states and barbaric outposts inhabit the remaining land mass, while interstellar opportunists have arrived to cart off the valuables, especially the remaining pockets of zoth, the literal lifeblood of the defeated Old Ones, and a main component of the super-valuable spice mela’anj. Of the great dungeon-complexes that have risen over Cha’alt, none are as formidable as the fabled Black Pyramid, a massive structure that has risen anew from beneath the sands. This is a high-energy setting with a crazy and enthusiastic anything-goes approach, from sandworms to space sluts, and from shameless Cthulhu flogging to monster cults. Gonzo games live or die by the way they cobble together their seemingly incompatible influences; the internal tension is part of the appeal, and being a little crazy never hurts.

The supplement’s first section is taken up by setting background and setting-specific miscellany – a grab-bag of stuff for your Cha’alt campaigns. If you want a random, goofy mutation chart, you will find it in the desert survival rules, while the description of the Domed City has a cyberware table to juice up your characters. This is a fun integration of rules and setting, and the section where the supplement is at its closest to the fabled Wilderlands of High Fantasy – a high point of creative, haphazard, play-friendly content. Factions with their typical representatives, and desert critters are described, although there are no random encounter charts (which would be one of the most important things to have in a sandbox setting), and the monster roster is rather limited with only seven new critters (there are several more scattered over the subsequent chapters). The same is the case for some of the supplemental material or random charts and rules, which are found hidden later in the book – a table of simple psionic abilities, an NPC motivation chart, random ability score arrays... bits and pieces that come up during play.

Here kitty kitty
The core of Cha’alt is centred around four adventure sites: two smaller dungeons (Beneath Kra’adumek, 17 keyed areas; Inside the Frozen Violet Demon Worm, 23 keyed areas), a “home base” style location (Gamma Incel Cantina, 69 keyed NPCs), and a large, three-level “tentpole” dungeon (The Black Pyramid, 111 keyed locations). Unfortunately, it is the short intro scenario, Beneath Kra’adumek, that is the really good stuff, and the rest have a growing number of problems. But Beneath Kra’adumek is good, partly because it is designed as a real dungeon. There is a decent, meaningful layout combining caverns and passages; there are guarded sections to avoid or eliminate, prisoners to free, mysterious stuff to mess with, weird monsters (the centrepiece being the demon cat-snake) and duplicitous NPCs to kill, fool or befriend; and it has a sequence of simple, memorable setpiece encounters. Ways to poke at other dimensions and screw things up (including making 1/6 of Cha’alt’s population disappear forever). Fanatical demon-worm cultists absorbed in their evil activities. Cryogenic pods to awaken ancient pre-catastrophe sleepers. Individualised treasure. It is a dynamic scenario that could go a lot of ways due to the variety of NPC/monster/device interactions, and even feels like a goofy sort of Star Wars locale – great for an action-packed intrusion into the fortress-dungeon of an evil space cult, three “princesses” (well, big-boobed space sluts) included. This is top-notch, and unfortunately, as good as it gets.

Inside the Frozen Violet Demon Worm is a great concept – exploring the intestines of, well, you get the idea – but Cha’alt’s deeper flaws start to emerge. First is the degeneration of the maps. An arbitrary dungeon (Beneath Kra’adumek) offers good exploration potential, while the demon-worm’s interior is an enormous fleshy tunnel with a bunch off side-chambers in its folds. You approach the locations, you do the encounter. This is the Monty Haul dungeon in its original sense – a series of “doors” along a corridor to open for random stuff ranging from a young woman chained to a stone column crying out for help (concealed Ktha’alu spawn with some really god magical loot), a group of insectoids battling a flesh-sac detached from the slowly thawing worm, or an enormous stone head worshipped by savage brutalitarians (lazy Zardoz reference), a lost pirate ship, or a bunch of skeevy guys playing high-stakes poker around a scrap metal table. Why? Rule of cool, that’s why.

Retro, retro
stupid, retro utterly
freaking dumb
This is super-arbitrary, and unlike the cultist lair, has no good sense of place. Why don’t these encounters wander off a little? Why don’t they interact if they are right next to each other? What happens if the party runs deep into the worm, triggering them one by one (and how could the GM handle the logistical chaos of juggling 8-12 setpiece encounters)? It is a mess, with little to connect the random bits and pieces. It feels like a “ghost train” type deal from an amusement park, with dioramas of animatronic monsters leering at you from the sides. The structure is horrible, and whatever dynamism is present in the encounters is probably going to be wasted. They are still rather good on the individual level – the author’s skill for punchy, self-contained situations and setpieces lifts up the material. If these were spaced less tightly, and placed within a more interesting, better designed dungeon environment, this would be another good one.

Gamma Incel Cantina is the Mos Eisley cantina from Tatooine, but on Cha’alt. If you have an interest in gambling, whoring, illicit deals, information or odd jobs, this is a good place to visit if you know how to get in (it is behind a cloaking field). The presentation is questionable, but the content is good enough. Basically, you get a map, a brief description of the cantina’s main areas (from loos to gambling tables to its VIP lounge), then 69 (tee hee) NPCs keyed on the map in colour-coded groups to make things a little more accessible. This is, obviously, completely useless for anything other than hitting up 1d6 randos and interacting with them, and treating everyone else as a homogenous crowd. On the other hand, the paragraph-long NPC descriptions offer brief, fun profiles so hitting up those 1d6 randos is going to get you something. The list, appropriately enough for the author’s interests, starts with P’nis Queeg (“Pilot; just parked his starship; yellow skinned banana / penis headed alien with swollen ganglia. He’s holding a brand new plumbus.”), and includes people like Treena (“THOT, human; blonde hair, blue eyed space Muslim; smoking long, thin hookah; likes humiliation and spanking”), Halvern (“Sentient chartreuse vapor inside environmental suit; fake mustache painted on helmet visor; uncontrollable giggling – that’s why they call him “laughing gas.””) or Bolo (“Droid; bounty hunter; camouflage and rust-colored; spritzing WD-40 on plate of myna’ak wings; head of engineering on nearby space station.”) You get the idea. The sleazy truck stop/titty bar vibe is spot on, and it works decently as Cha’alt’s Keep to Cha’alt’s Borderlands.

The Very Naughty Tetrahedron

We now come to the main attraction: The Black Pyramid rises from the wastelands, descending into an underworld most mythical, or at least moderately horny. This is obviously the campaign lynchpin not just from the size, but all the side materials. We get a rumours chart, and random encounters complete with specific monsters (from the dreaded night clowns to hunter-killer droids, fruit folk, pizza delivery and bat-winged eyeballs) and unique NPC groups (lost Romans, alien looters, suspicious hooded guys of all sorts). A “what happened while you were away” chart! A “leaving the pyramid” chart (travel 1d30 years into the past/future and wipe most of the campaign – woo-hoo)! Six new gods! A “you dumbass slept in the pyramid” chart! And so on. So far so good.

"Have we reached rock bottom yet, guys?"
"Not yet! Everybody, dance!"
"My anus is bleeding!"
But then... yes, the problems of the book come back in force, and are multiplied fourfold. The maps are chaotic gibberish. Any semblance of structure or order (or even inspired chaos) goes out the window, and what we get is a bunch of randomly shaped and sized rooms connected by short, randomly patterned corridors (these seem to have no distinct function, or the reference just fails me) between random clusters of colour-coded rooms accessible with special crystal keys. This childish mess does not look like a pyramid – even a severely corrupted one – lacks meaningful height differences or even connecting stairs (what you think are three dungeon levels are actually a single flat plain), has no spatial order to accommodate orienteering or exploration, does not feature actual dungeon navigation challenges (even less so than the frozen demon-worm), and it is overall very repetitive in its formal structures. The room descriptions have no relation whatsoever to the room shapes and sizes. To make it short, the map is really, really terrible, lacking any redeeming qualities.

There is something about the encounters that was grating. Maybe my patience was wearing thin, or maybe it is truly repetitive, but one of the reasons this review is overdue by several months is that I just could not press on with it. It is just one pop culture reference setpiece after the other pop culture reference setpiece. Now... this can work if there is some other kind of connecting material to add variety (say, an interesting dungeon map to navigate, or challenging combat/exploration situations and a few clever traps), but it is missing them altogether. The lazy content also shows its limits. Sometimes, recognition still elicits the Sensible Chuckle, but that well soon runs dry, and you start to scrutinise these encounters with a more critical eye. And many of them do not cut it – they are often static, convoluted for the sake of telling a lame joke, or don’t offer much interesting interaction. And those lame jokes, they are getting lamer and more one-note. Here is a room housing anthropomorphic fruit (#13). Here is a stereotypical podcast guy doing an interview (#14). Here is the Carousel room from Logan’s Run (#15) – all right, this is OK. Here is a room with a clone of Rob Schneider trying to convince a young woman to pay him for sex (#16). Here is a room with a statue of Gonzo, of Sesame Street fame (#17). “Inspecting Gonzo's nose reveals a tiny catch underneath, at the base. Manipulating it opens a compartment located in his crotch. Inside is a battered trumpet. Playing Gonzo's trumpet summons a Buddhist monk (appearing in 1d4 rounds) who walks into the room and sets himself on fire, providing enough light and warmth for several minutes before it goes out and what's left of the monk is carried away like sand in the wind.” There was an opportunity with the Black Pyramid to present some kind of otherworldly, metal-inspired, high-energy dungeon. If you’ve got a black pyramid in your game, you kinda owe something to your readers. Well, Cha’alt’s Black Pyramid is not otherworldly; it sells out all its potential at one tired joke a pop. It is all so tiresome.

Here is another one for free

Zothferno

Your dungeon is offensive!
As the post may suggest, Cha’alt is not an easy thing to review. It is a giant collection of the good and the bad, mixed in with the happy medium of “questionable”, and it is not easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. At its best, it is high-energy gaming with a lot of personality, and a very specific flavour (space/Cthulhu sleaze). It would be a mistake to write it off on the basis of this content – like it or not, this is what it intends to do, and what it intends to be. Those who call it skeevy or sexist are only doing the author a favour, since this is what he wanted to do. To cite the late, great József Torgyán, head of Hungary’s Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party, “A lawyer with litigation, and a fine lady with a hard instrument, cannot be threatened.” But does Cha’alt succeed on its own terms?

As far as I am concerned, one of the supplement’s main draws is something that some may identify as a flaw – it is not a thoroughly polished product, but something that shows its origins as a bundle of the author’s home campaign notes. It preserves the enthusiasm, and does not reduce the material to a dry treatise. It invites questions and engagement. There is a definite sense of a dog-eared folder of faded printouts, scratch paper, and session notes behind the book. It is charming, and ironically, more conductive to actual use than many books that look more smooth, but are not presented with table use in mind. It is as accessible as a slightly cleaned up collection of GM notes, and a fun glimpse into a madman’s mind.

There is also something to be said about the modules’ ambitions. They are deeply flawed in multiple ways (as detailed above), but they are not gated by level and do not pull punches. You can easily meet enemies who are way more powerful than you are. You can also beat them up and take their high-tier loot or obtain powers beyond your meagre abilities. You can find yourself bargaining with major demons, inadvertently unleashing planetary devastation, or pull off major campaign-altering victories. Some of this is lolrandom stuff that depends too much on die rolls or (un)lucky encounters instead of player skill or meaningful choices that lead to logical consequences, but it is there nevertheless, and it can be glorious even in this flawed form. It is writ on a large scale, and allows the players to win big or lose big.

Third, it shows variety and imagination on the encounter level. Things on Cha’alt are unpredictable (to say the least), but they are always colourful, and feature fun interactivity – NPCs and plotlines sketched up willy-nilly with a few broad strokes, there are knobs to mess with (some of them blow up half the world, but that’s OK), and a lot of the material is hand-crafted, specific – although the magical treasure is also too plentiful; you can barely take a few steps without finding a javelin +1 or a freeze-ray. Many of the pop cultural references are lazy, but at least many of them make for a compelling set-piece.

Here is the problem, though. Cha’alt is cursed by a curious sort of laziness that’s apparent even if you consider this is a 200+ page hardback crammed with gameable content. It falls apart on the levels above the encounters, and has little discernible structure to it. Things are sometimes connected a little (albeit haphazardly), but mostly, it is just throwing things at a canvas to see if it sticks. Is there a pattern behind the random ideas, or is it just you? It is probably just you. The trick works in the comparatively small and tightly designed starter dungeon, but it increasingly becomes apparent Mr. Satanic is bluffing. The lack of structure and the utter scattershot randomness of the material makes it hard to apply player skill to the modules, to treat them as challenging, complex problems or even real places. This is where the diorama/animatronic monster issue comes back to take its revenge. The environment cannot be known and mastered because there is no environment, only an illusion of one. The amount of interaction obscures this problem, but never fully resolves it.

Your Dungeon is a Cancerous
Growth of Intertextuality and
Postmodernism. REPENT!
And it also suffers due to the sheer excess of pop culture citations. Any conceivable part of cult/geek media is digested and reconstructed in Cha’alt to form the majority of its encounters. While surely one of the greatest collections of genre and pop culture references, Cha’alt does little to integrate its disparate influences into a greater whole, or at least give them its own spin. The approach it takes is disappointingly literal, and often falls flat. When Anomalous Subsurface Environment draws from He-Man, it adapts the material to its setting, the Land of a Thousand Towers, and the result is always a great fit which transforms the spoofed material just enough to stay recognisable, yet add a new angle or a clever gameplay twist. Say, “Monsator, Lord of the Stalks” is obviously an homage to Evil Megacorporation Monsanto, but he is also a fully developed, compelling villain of a wizard who is interesting beyond the quirky reference. Monsator is also one idea among many, most of them original.

When Cha’alt does something similar, it mostly just plops down its direct references randomly, and tries to skirt by on the strength of star recognition. Sure, Mr. Satanic betrays an encyclopaedic knowledge of late 20th century cult stuff and esoterica, but a Videodrome reference next to a Logan’s Run reference next to a tiki bar next to a movie theatre showing Escape From New York does not start living together without some effort to make a coherent whole out of them. The city of “A’agrybah” is plainly Agrabah from Disney’s Aladdin, “just on Cha’alt” with some surface details like a spaceport and a human sacrifice tradition. Sure, there is supposed to be chaos and wild leaps of imagination, but that is just part of the work. Here, the other part is very often missing, and it is all just a post-modern mish-mash of citations upon citations. Is this because the author knows no better? Far from the truth! When he makes an effort to tie things together, as with the setting background, he succeeds fairly well. It just doesn’t happen often enough, or I guess well enough to bring out the sort of transformative quality which makes for a truly great gonzo setting.

Ultimately, these two central flaws are what makes Cha’alt only “good enough” and not actually “good” or “great” – they are omnipresent through the book, and cannot be easily fixed. There is something really good in the setting, and with better structure, the basic concept could excel. Where Cha’alt is good – the starter dungeon, many of the individual encounters, the no-nonsense campaign-friendly presentation – it is deservedly good. As it is, though, it is a deeply flawed book, although never without charm, or generously endowed space doxies, bless ‘em.

No playtesters are credited in this publication. It has apparently been very thoroughly tested, although often in a fairly peculiar manner, as text chat-based random pickup games over several of Mr. Satanis’ lunch breaks.

Rating: *** / *****

43 comments:

  1. Thanks for taking one for the team

    ReplyDelete
  2. May I offer you my OSR dungeon as a palette cleanser?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Would that be Purging Woth nrld Oekwyn's Muddy Hole? I recall I wanted to review that when it was never released, but never got to it. I will endeavour to do so - but as you can see, I can make no promises of a deadline. This one is four months or so late.

      Delete
  3. Obligatory "how much did Venger bully/pay/sex you" comment, because you can't have a Cha'alt review without that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It cost 1d6/2d6 Sanity points. Not horrible, but at this age, it is starting to add up.

      Delete
  4. Very good review.
    I was in a few of these playtests... specificially Beneath Kra'adumek and the Purple worm thingy... great fun, but very random and... Vengerlike... which does not mean bad I have to say.

    You could also take a look at my adventure: Cistern of the three-eyed dwarves. Would love to hear your thoughts on it... if you have the time of course.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Will do - but as above, no promises WRT when!

      Delete
  5. Never thought I'll ever see Mr. Torgyán's words of wisdom in a rpg review, but there's a first time for everything. Also, Gamma Incel Cantina is a hilarious name.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I can see how this must have been a hard review to write. The quality of the maps alone would have kept me from purchasing Chaalt, but now that I've read this I'm even less interested. I don't like modern pop culture references , especially when they are on the nose, in my D&D.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are VERY on the nose, so if you don't like that, this is clearly not the book for you.

      Delete
  7. Can you imagine running this thing, and your players not getting the references? Because I can.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. With a young audience, totally. Then again, playing with people who have never seen Zardoz or Logan's Run? There's an increasingly alien thought.

      Delete
  8. I might write more about this, but for now I'll just say thanks for the interesting review... and it's spelled Satanis. 😉

    ReplyDelete
  9. A bit harsh, but fair. Cha'alt isn't for everyone, but some of your criticisms have been addressed and improved upon in the two Cha'alt books released since the subject of this review.

    ReplyDelete
  10. You've hit the nail on the head regarding Cha'alt. Bad Maps, over-reliance on MSTK-on-amphetamines Easter eggs, no real depth of plot. Also, most of the tables in Cha'alt were too short (mostly d6, IIRC), though that seems to have been rectified in Venger's later books. Interesting that you mention ASE, it's an admitted influence on Cha'alt, and there are a some rooms/encounters that are... suspiciously similar. Overall, I do not understand the hype surrounding this one. For the price, there are too many other, superior, products out there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cha'alt reaches out, gently brushing its fingertips against your pineal gland... smiles. "It's afraid. Its afraid!"

      Delete
    2. No one's afraid of a two-bit plagiarist hack like you. That you couldn't even attempt a retort without referencing "From Beyond" shows (again) how unoriginal you are. For anyone who thinks I'm being too harsh, here's a long, hard look at Venger's plagiarism (with receipts). He'll try to say "It was just a couple of lines", "I forgot to attribute my sources", or some similar B.S, but even a cursory glance at this link will put the lie to that. And that's not even going into all the stuff he ripped off for Cha'alt. https://danharms.wordpress.com/darrick-dishaws-cult-of-cthulhu-bible-and-wikipedia-the-similarities/

      Delete
    3. I'd be interested in what rooms you mean in ASE. I did work for Venger on Cha'alt and I have a review blog so I'll take this seriously. Do you have page numbers?

      Delete
    4. Sure.

      ASE, pg. 25: a random table of city rumors contains the following entry: "I saw a green fellow, with spines like a cactus. Tried to wear robes to hide it, but I saw."

      Cha'alt, pg. 141, "This room contains ten humanoids trying to hold on until the apocalypse (one is green with cactus-spines all over his skin). They wear white robes..." [Note: these cactus-people, with this description (green skin and spines), appear several times throughout Cha'alt.]


      ASE 2, pg. 46: Laser Attack, a room with a laser trap.

      Cha'alt, pg. 151: Laser Security System, a room with a laser trap.


      ASE, pg. 79: Malignant sphere, a type of spherical hazard/monster with a stabbing weapon. "A preferred tactic of the malignant sphere is to hover close to the ceiling near doorways, waiting to drop down on unsuspecting adventurers."

      Cha'alt, room 93: Silver Spheres of Death. "Once someone steps into the room far enough to
      investigate or loot the corpses, silver spheres drop
      down from the ceiling and start cutting, drilling,
      and eviscerating anything that moves."


      ASE 2, pg. 22: The Anomalous Subsurface Circus

      Cha'alt, pg. 148: The Clown Quarter


      ASE, pg 6: The Cult of Science. "Scientists take a dim view of other gods. They consider them all subservient to Science. "

      Cha'alt, pg. 162: Science Knows Best. "Various elitist phrases enhance the walls of this room, such as "As intellectual superiors, it is our right to rule.""

      ASE, pg. 9: The Cult of Science (cont.). "Temples of Science have a 10' tall black pyramidal structure within. These structures have ladders built into one side, and at the top have a small screen with glowing red numbers ticking down" [also worth noting here is the presence of a "black pyramid", which is the centerpiece of Cha'alt]

      Cha'alt, pg. 162: Science Knows Best (cont.). "In the center of this odd-shaped room is a 60" TV screen displaying vintage 1970's colors in a fractal
      pattern with certain words and numbers displayed
      over the top."

      There are also common references to dinosaurs and plasma rifles. There may be more, I haven't read Cha'alt cover to cover.

      Are some of these a stretch? Maybe. But, given Venger's documented history of outright plagiarism, I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt here.

      Delete
    5. It's good that you see these are not very convincing. Cactus people aren't exactly unique to ASE (tvtropes provides a nice oversight of their appearance in pop culture), lasers and plasma are also pretty generic, the science cult and the dinosaurs are all common sf tropes and have been around since the 50s. Black pyramid imagery, also pretty common (I mean, it's probably easier to claim he ripped of planet Algol). It's not like it's questionable that Cha'alt is pure pop culture references, but direct plagiarism is another matter, not to be taken lightly. If you'd find something like the Saquatchtron or some sort of peculiar creature or encounter unique to ASE this'd be another matter.

      The only thing that is mildly sus is the sphere thing. A common ancestor, or did he take mild inspiration from ASE? I guess you could just ask him.

      Delete
    6. I didn't say that these "are not very convincing". I said that MAYBE some are a stretch. Though I think even that's being too charitable. When you factor in more specific commonalities such as the spheres' attack method ("dropping down" from the "ceiling"), the numbers on the screens in the science cults' lairs, or the supremacist attitudes of the science cults themselves, it becomes a lot harder to handwave. Especially when Venger tends to just add apostrophes to everything from Klingons to Pee-Wee Herman, and then add them to his dungeon. On their own, these are similar. When taken as a whole, along with Venger's undeniable and blatant plagiarism of his "Cthulhu Cult Bible" (see link above for lengthy side-by-side comparison) and his constant stream of pop-culture name drops, one has to wonder how much of Cha'alt actually consists of Venger's own ideas. Not very much, from the look of it. Yes, a lot of these ideas are common SF tropes. But many creators are capable of using them in a way that doesn't invite unflattering comparison, or the appearance (at best) of imitation or plagiarism. Patrick Wetmore, author of ASE, for example. The fact that Venger has specifically cited ASE as an influence on Cha'alt makes it harder to believe that these are independent, organic ideas that just sprang from Venger's own imagination. Besides which, I'm not seeing anything in Cha'alt that isn't done better elsewhere, and usually for a lower price. But, hey, if you'd rather play the OSR equivalent of a Family Guy episode, you do you.

      Delete
    7. No the numbers on the screen are very weak, glowing red numbers ticking down vs letters and numbers on the screen with a fractal pattern is not convincing either. A cult based on science supremacy is also old hat, done unironically since the Golden Age of SF and used thousands of times.

      If there is an intimation of plagiarism I'd be happy to see it, as you have yet to make a convincing one. There is a massive difference between citing something as an influence (which he, by your own admission, apparently did), making something that is inspired by something else (which happens constantly in RPGland) and ripping off encounters or things without attribution wholesale, which would constitute plagiarism.

      I am starting to suspect a sort of prior enmity? That's between you two, I don't really care, but as far as cases for plagiarism goes, this is very weak.

      Delete
    8. Looks like we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm comfortable with people reading what I have written, seeing the material in question, and judging for themselves. I am curious, though, do you deny that Venger plagiarized large swaths of his "Cthulhu Cult" book, as shown in this link? https://danharms.wordpress.com/darrick-dishaws-cult-of-cthulhu-bible-and-wikipedia-the-similarities/ And, if so, why is it so hard to believe that he would extend his plagiaristic habits to his other "creative" endeavors? If, on the other hand, you can look at that link and still believe that Venger is not a plagiarist, well, that would be good for people to know who may happen upon this exchange. As for prior enmity, not so much, I just have a low tolerance for frauds, and those who would steal from fellow authors. Patrick Wetmore is not WotC, he is a hard-working indie author. What Venger has done is disrepectful at best.

      Delete
    9. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    10. ASE 2, pg. 35: The Ball Pit. "The center of the room appears to be a ball pit, full of brightly colored plastic spheres"

      Cha'alt, pg. 177: The Ball Pit. "This room's floor is entirely covered in colorful
      plastic balls"

      Ah, yes, the ball pit, that staple of classic SF...

      Delete
    11. ASE 2, pg. 25: "A bronze gong hangs from the ceiling, near the northeast wall of this room. There is a large padded hammer leaning on the wall next to it. When
      struck, the gong will be heard throughout the second level. The gong is used a signal that a prisoner has been left in the cells of room 3.

      Should players hammer on the gong, roll a d10 on
      the following table to see who comes to investigate..."

      Cha'alt, pg. 35: "All rooms within the complex have a gong near the door, suspended from the ceiling. Clanging a gong will alert servants of the Demon-Worm
      that intruders are in the complex... or that something has gone wrong and assistance is needed. 1d6 rounds elapse before help arrives."

      Delete
    12. A gong? Shocking evidence. Gary Gygax seems to have ripped off ASE also. He should also be implicated in this gradually increasing plot.

      A ball pit. My god. This unique invention, just taken without proper attribution. Venger had better start making up his Last Will, this seems ironclad.

      Delete
    13. A gong that specifically hangs from the ceiling, and summons enemies if hammered? Which AD&D module is that in? I think you're being deliberately obtuse. It would seem that you're the one whose prior relations with Venger is coloring your perception here. And why do you refuse to answer whether or not you think Venger plagiarized his "Cthulhu Cult Bible?"

      Delete
    14. There's a gong in B2, among others (G3?). What does a gong do if not sound the alert? It's not uncommon in dungeons. Used countless times. It's why most of your examples are so incredibly weak. These examples are generic. The spheres is at least something. There's references/ripoffs in Cha'alt from anything to B4, Lovecraft, Dune, numerous 70s-80s sf series etc. etc. That's not plagiarism. Admitting you are drawing inspiration from something beforehand is also a good indicator that something is not plagiarism.

      I was unaware of any controversy relating to the Cthulhu cult that took place two decades ago (and why should I?). I refuse to answer because a case two decades ago in a completely different field is not particularly relevant in a case now, and because this form of argumentation is generally employed by dishonest rhetorical shills and concern trolls to apply emotional pressure to shore up an otherwise lame claim.

      I suggest you write up your accusations, and if you consider them particularly egregious, take mr. Satanis to court.

      Delete
    15. It was 15 years ago, not two decades, and it continues to be relevant because Venger continues to lie about it. And, while there is a gong in B2, it's not hanging from the ceiling. Sure, there are some commonalities with other dungeon tropes, but the fact that so much of what is in ASE appears again in Cha'alt, with some of the same descriptive wording, is enough to paint a very unflattering picture. The fact that Venger, in your words, uses "rip-offs" in his work is not exactly exculpatory, now is it? "Inspiration" is when you are spurred by someone else's work to create something new and unique, not when you just re-use it yourself, even if you add apostrophes.

      Delete
    16. As I've previously stated, we can agree to disagree. I don't think either one of us is going to change the other's mind here, and I'm happy to have others judge my statements on their merits.

      Delete
    17. The silver spheres were a reference to the Phantasm movie franchise. ASE is a gonzo, science-fantasy megadungeon with nods to the fun house sub-genre, so similarities are inevitable. I assume we were both influenced by the same source material.

      If you look at the beginning of Cthulhu Cult, you'll see that I cited Wikipedia as a source - especially for the section titled Conventional Lovecraft scholarship... as in, not my own. However, I did some of the writing and editing on the Lovecraft entry for Wikipedia, before Cthulhu Cult was published.

      Additionally, I neglected to put Lovecraft's quotes in my own words.

      Delete
    18. And I'm pretty sure I got the red numbers or symbols ticking down from the TV show LOST. 🤔

      Delete
    19. BTW, I mixed From Beyond with Starship Troopers... who else would do that but me? Who else would dare? Nya'ahahahaaahaahaaa!!!

      Delete
    20. Who else would do what? Combine 2 existing IPs that aren't their own and then act like they've done something clever? Besides Chris-Chan, you mean? Well, you, I guess.

      Delete
  11. While walking along in desert sand, you suddenly look down and see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach down and flip it over onto its back. The tortoise lies there, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over, but it cannot do so without your help. You are not helping. Why?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Spoiler alert: you should have worn your bulletproof codpiece today.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Jewtax, I am sorry to say you are the only one who does not know Venger Satanis is an imbecile indulged by the "reviewing elite".

    Melan, and the other idiots who still Review degraded AD&D material think they can make beer money by shitting on what little was good in what came before.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Melan is one of the better authors in the OSR, in my opinion. Castle Xyntillan, despite being basically a first draft of the revised Tegel Manor, has its own unique vibe and personality. It's basically the antithesis of Cha'alt. Personally, it's nice to see someone outside of Venger's circle of friends review his work honestly and objectively.

      Delete
  14. This "Cthulhu Cult plagiarism" thing is very old news, and not particularly relevant to Cha'alt's utility as a gaming supplement. I've never heard of "ASE" and find it pretty annoying that "Jewtax" assumes we should know all about it and care. If you're going to use an acronym, at least spell out the full title the first time you mention it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anomalous Subsurface Environment, a megadungeon published in 2011-2012. Venger cited it as an influence on Cha'alt, and apparently mined it for ideas. Sorry for any confusion.

      Delete