Episode 521: You Can’t See Atlantis for All the Cheese Curds
November 4th, 2022 | Robin
In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Neil Barnes dons his lovingly constructed Benjamin Disraeli costume to ask how to best portray historical figures at the roleplaying table.
The Cinema Hut looks at the flattening of cinematography in the streaming era, asking the question that is on all of your lips. Is Netflix the new Natalie Kalmus?
Finally a Powell’s sales clerk in Portland breathes a sigh of relief as Ken’s Bookshelf shudders with the weight of his most recent acquisition event, undertaken porely for our vicarious enjoyment.
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Godsforge, Atlas Games’ fast-paced game of battling spellcasters, is now on Kickstarter. Grab wizardly first dibs on the new 2nd Edition of Godsforge, and two new expansions, Return of the Dragon Gods and Twilight of the Great Houses, from November 8 to December 8th.
Track down foul sorcerers in a corrupt city, clamber through underground ruins and investigate the intrigues of your decadent rivals in Swords of the Serpentine, the GUMSHOE game of swords, sorcery and mystery, now available from Pelgrane Press.
The treasures of Askfageln can be found at DriveThruRPG. Get all issues of FENIX since 2013 available in special English editions. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, along with equally stellar pieces by Graeme Davis and Pete Nash. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish. While you’re at it, grab DICE and Freeway Warrior!
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Delta Green Iconoclasts, a campaign of horrors modern and ancient, brings a team of Agents to a scene of horrors all too real: Mosul in 2016, held by the self-styled Islamic State in a reign of depraved brutality. From a small base at the Kirkuk airfield, the Agents must research the horrors to come and prepare for a harrowing infiltration. Terrors and new supplementary material await, now in PDF, hardback now in preorder.
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I’m disappointed that in his brief aside on “Frank Joseph,” Ken seems to portray him as a harmless, fluffy fringe writer. Frank Joseph is the pseudonym of Frank Collin, a convicted child molester, and a literal Nazi. He was a prominent member of the American Nazi Party and the founder of the National Socialist Party of America. After his conviction for child molestation and subsequent parole, Frank Collin reinvented himself as “Frank Joseph”, New Age and hyper-diffusionist writer. In that persona, he’a been very careful to keep his distance from blatant white supremacy, but as far as I know, he’s never publicly repudiated his Nazi past. He isn’t merely “ridiculous”. And it’s almost certainly no coincidence that when he attributes great voyages of discovery, exploration, and colonization to “Africans”, he means (light-skinned) North Africans, not sub-Saharan Africans. Just as it’s almost certainly no coincidence that his brand of hyper-diffusionism gives the credit for the achievements of the “high civilizations” of the Americas to North Africans, Kelts, (Aryan-allied) Japanese, Atlanteans, or literally just about anyone other than the actual indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Thanks for the intel! It’s a good thing I’ve only ever bought his books used!
I’ve got to admit, I’m surprised you didn’t already know that. In both of his personas, he’s intersected with a lot of your areas of interest.
As Frank Collin, he wasn’t just an American Nazi, he was a Chicagoan, the organizer of the infamous planned Nazi march in Skokie in the ’70s, and the direct inspiration Henry Gibson’s “Illinois Nazi” character in “The Blues Brothers”.
His association with Burrows Cave, which you alluded to in the same segment, also has a sordid background. Collin apparently met Russel Burrows, the eponymous “discoverer” of the cave, in prison, while Collin was serving his sentence for child molestation and Burrows was working as a prison guard. The purported discovery of the cave in 1982 roughly coincides with Collin’s release from prison. Not long thereafter, Collin reinvented himself as “Frank Joseph”, and began promoting Burrows Cave, writing articles about it with the “Frank Joseph” byline, and branching out into various other New Age and hyper-diffusionist works.
I know you’ve written and talked about the fact that if you dig past the surface of “fun” fringe works, you often run into genuine nastiness, especially anti-Semitism. In the case of “Frank Joseph” (and the Burrows Cave), the reality below the “fun” fringe element is truly repulsive.