In a late and desperate attempt to shore up my
‘relevance’ I have been scouring the internet for evidence that I exist, and
have stumbled into the tragic gap left by the lost ‘Great Crystal Debate’ DOES
ANYONE EVEN HAVE A COPY? If you would like to find out more, scan down the
following chronological list of text, video and audio discussions, down to
2018…
2015 – Podecast
Back in 2015 Scrap and I played around with a ‘Podecast’
(i.e. each was at the antipode to the other), and ended up recording a brief
run of unedited ‘conversations’ about a rather wild range of subjects which
ranged from 2015 into 2016
Podecast 1 - the Experiment
I honestly have no idea what is even in this. Its eleven years old!
Podecast 2 - MONSTERS
https://archive.org/details/ScrapAndPatrick2a
Contents include; Rhiannas new video.
Ghosts and why they hold candles. Skeletons and skeletor - egyptian theories of
the dead. He-Man. Gas-Spores. Nazi Aurochs. “I’ve been around some pretty
smelly subcultures.” Eating living things. Godzilla. Forbidden Planet.
Imperialism and microbiology. Scrap fades in and out around this point for
mysterious reasons. Possible collaborations. Natasha Allegri. Stephen Pyne. The
state of modern poetry. The Art of Not Being Governed.(He wasn’t a poet.)
Contents; http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/72404517/judges-take-a-shine-to-wow-winner.
Zak hates nature. Snails. “The child of love and war is sex”. A thick silky
coffee with cardamon. Crepuscular Rays. kelvin helmholtz.
http://www.pncc.govt.nz/media/32138/citizensadvicebureaulogo.jpg
http://www.firstlighttravel.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Maori-Rock-Art.jpg
Contents; 1.20 Scrap starts rambling about
chromosomes. - (seriously, think about skipping this part). 4.26 Gives up on
that and starts again. Begins a very dark story about Bees. 8.00 King Arthur
and Bees. 9.55 The Demiplane of British History. 13.25 Brief ramble here. 13.40
Other Planes, verticality. 14.50 Hook Birds. 15.25 Dinosauroids -
http://povorot.deviantart.com/gallery/9348116/The-Dinosauroids. 15.35 The first
few issues of Prophet. (I think these are in fact the same guy.) 16.35 “Bees,
have to get this back to bees..” 17.20 Evolution of pollen, and therefore bees.
17.45 Exploiting colony organisms. Pretending to be ants. 20.10 We are colony
organisms. 21.20 The nihilism of not cleaning your room. 21.45 Emergency coping
mechanisms. 23.09 Sudden change in conversation due to girlfriend interruption.
The Death of Avril Lavigne. 24.24 Schizophrenia. The voices are probably real.
Believing you are in the matrix. 26.13 “That’s kind-of like a hive..” 26.45 In
stories no-one can ever be competent. 28.15 Destroying a city with super-speed.
30.15 The delay between conception and creation. 31.00 Cut-Up
2016 - Doom of the Podecast
https://archive.org/details/Podecast5
Contents;
1.30 - Dark gods. 5.00 - FotVH Images.
8.30 - Please buy my fucking books. 9.30 - Making relate-able and insightful
points about a variety of role playing related conversation things. 10.30 -
Alchemy. 15.15 - First impressions of the OSR. 19.30 - Motivations are monsters
from inside you. 21.30 - Choices in char gen. 31.30 - Cognitive silence. 33.30
- Traditional originality, fire, hirelings and dogs. 37.30 - Ten minutes on
dark AI’s & nightmare futurism. 46.45 - Language, objects & baby
psychology. 51.30 - Lard, the currency of agency. 55.00 - Stories, memory and
experience, the grand conflict. 58.30 - Fail states.
The Wonderful Kererū appears only once in this Podecast
but exemplifies the spirit of both participants, a fat, pompous, ridiculous
animal snatching a whole twig from the tree of thought, eating a single flower
and then throwing the rest away.
Contents;
0.07 - VotE. 2.38 - Weightlifters with
no penises. 3.37 - Do you want to talk about pre-history? (We do not do this.)
4.36 - I cut a huge amounts of blathering out here. 5.00 - Scraps game. 7.10 -
Complexity and depth. 9.30 - Scrap has a moment of clarity about the nature of
Complexity. 11.10 - Where it actually starts to get interesting. 11.50 - The
capacity of a post-apocalyptic world to create its own context. 13.10 - A new
place to put adventures. 13.45 - “What’s his face? The guy who does Udan-Adan?
We’ll probably never know his real name.” 14.15 - Our regular obligatory
mention of Zak. 15.50 - Who did invent ‘the dungeon as a living thing? 17.28 -
A Ghost in my house. 18.30 - The ‘blank slate’ game world & identity. 20.43
- Eve as the first D&D player, Adam as a Storygamer. 22.28 - Rachel
Pollack’s ‘Unquenchable Fire’ I got the name wrong in the podcast. 24.26 - Our
other regular segment on colonialism. 26.16 - Mention of Potatoes causes
internet to drop out. 28.10 - It’s ‘Henry Moreton Stanely’ and I may well be
wrong about Cortez. Have fun with Wikipedia. 31.45 - “You’re treating those
children like subhumans.” 33.41 - Scrap is confused by the moral exchange
inherent to Government. Sarah Horrocks would probably agree. 38.15 - “If only
one culture has reliable deep-water navigation, that culture is effectively
playing D&D with the world.” 39.45 - Cowboys on Mars. 41.53 - We expand our
mentions of Zak to include his sister? Anyway, X-Men school-style Character
Gen. 47.39 - Communicating on a Meta-Level. Maybe our players are friends.
49.15 - MY SPECIAL SETTING!! 51.00 - We cycle back to, or around, different
contexts in which to place adventures.. 52.00 - The ancient civilization of
Dan. 55.09 - The Halfmen of O by Maurice Gee. 56.55 - The Changeover by
Margaret Mahy. 58.45 - Does the Conspiracy Theorist have a D&Dish world?
No, not really. 60.01 - Pre-apocalyptic D&D. 60.03 - Stealing & faking
art throughout history. 60.05 - Dirtbag Greys. The Burke & Hare of space.
60.07 - Changes in scale. Insect wars. 60.08 - The Author was ‘William Tenn’
and the book is Of Men and Monsters. 70.45 - Giants would be very vulnerable,
and likely peaceful. 72.55 - The wonderful Kererū or New Zeland Wood Pidgeon.
(A bird that flies through the glass in your window is also playing D&D).
76.00 - “Birds would be good D&D characters.” 81.00 - Evil Dolphins.
2017 - VotE!
The Secret DM — Veins of the Earth Interview with Patrick Stuart and
Scrap Princess
A text interview about the original ‘Veins of the Earth’.
2018 - Crystals!
What Would the Smart Party Do? — Episode 80
I am not even sure what we talk about here but hopefully
Dirks art for Silent Titans gets a mention!
Direct MP3:
If anyone out there has any records or copies of the Great
Crystal Debate, please let me know in the comments. The world deserves to hear
my (assumed) victory, and how crystals were defeated for All Time.
2019 - The Worm!
Ignite Liverpool — Talk on the Wapentake
I am slightly embarrassed to see myself physically
incarnated in maybe my only physical in-person talk.
https://youtu.be/nr4KKZMpf6Q
Those of you familiar with ‘Silent Titans’ will know
about the ‘Wapentake of Wirral’ from that book, based on a real historical
incident in which a corrupt lawyer got his hands on the medieval documents
giving ownership of a dark age court and used them to form a criminal gang and
extort the people of the Wirral.
The Worm Orouboros with Tom Fitzgerald
In this interview the beloved creator of ‘
Middenmurk’, sits down to talk with
me about the excellent and under-discovered ‘Worm Ouroboros’ by E.R. Eddison.
(One day I will read the Zimiamvia trilogy).
Loco Ludus — "Interview with Patrick Stuart"
Part One show notes (full version at the link); Deep Carbon Observatory (Remastered!), Patrick's talk on the Wapentake at Ignite Liverpool, Silent Titans, The world is a spell, Fear of a Black Dragon (DCO episode), Arnold's "Goblin Punch" blog and time traveling dinosaurs, Veins of the Earth, Fire on the Velvet Horizon, A Night at the Golden Duck, The audio starts to overlap in the second half of the episode, Time travel in RPGs, Continuum RPG.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-conversation-with-patrick-stuart-first-course/id1506689162?i=1000470707137
Part Two show notes CGP Grey's video about why your timeline is infuriating, Is the loose collective of RPG fans online a "community"?, A Distant Mirror, The Gods Must Be Crazy, Patrick's letter writing game (a literal play by post), FLAILSNAILS, Chris McDowall's conversion advice, TROIKA!, Half-Life Alyx, Tom Francis' games, Heat Signature, Tactical Breach Wizards, Deadliest Warrior Yes, there really was an IRA vs the Taliban episode.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-conversation-with-patrick-stuart-second-course/id1506689162?i=1000470707139
2021 - Groan!
Appendix N Book Club
I actually remember this one and it was fun! I finally got
to talk about something other than my own books! This is all about Gormenghast.
Zock Bock Radio
-
Apparently I am, (or was?) the Townes van Zandt of the OSR. I don’t know what that means but I will assume its good! Show notes in the link!
Monsters and Manuals (Noisms), Video Interview
Archons March On
Thanks to the commenter below who managed to dig this one up!
Whose Measure God Could Not Take
This one covers the Demon-Bone Sarcophagus Kickstarter,
Gawain and the OSR community.
2022 - The End!
"Art" with Her Christmas Knight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOpKlStShCs
Then, Silence
Or at least, no interviews or appearances from 2022 to
2025 where I popped up in the ‘
Weird Hope
Engines’ zine fair.
Looking back on it, some of these bursts of extroversion
were to help with Kickstarters, but it looks like the relative failure of
‘Demon-Bone Sarcophagus’ and the hangover from Covid really fucked me up more
than I realised. I may have brought books out but I really didn’t leave the
house for
years. Damn.
Now, once again, I fitfully stumble into action, to prove
to myself and the world that I exist.
(Seriously if anyone has a copy of the
Great
Crystal Debate let me know.)
2025 - Fantasy Art History
A sock resembling me did appear on the Abelard and Joe Fantasy Art History show;