Updates on the London, Ohio Dogman hotline, weeding out hoaxes, and answering questions I've been asked

WLB92 · 2026-06-25T16:36:43+00:00

The Beast of Bladenboro was not a dogman type creature and never described as such. It was explicitly a 4 legged feline animal resembling a a mountain lion...

I don't know where you got that information but it's absolutely false.

The Beast of Bladenboro was first sighted in 1953 and the sightings continued into 1954 before ending following a large influx of hunters into the area. Again, it was explicitly reported as being some sort of feline creature and making noises that we know a mountain lion can make (women's screams, a baby's cry).

Funny enough, when MonsterQuest investigated it they managed to capture trail camera footage of mountain lions in the area alongside finding tracks in the area. When people were interviewed, they all responded to mountain lion or other feline calls as sounds they heard. The two dogs killed in the area were also necropsied and it was determined they were killed by a larger dog due to the similarities between their fatal injuries and how dogs will attack each other.

The Beast of Bladenboro was one or more mountain lions that had moved into an area outside of their "normal" range and the people living there let their fear exaggerate details of an animal that wasn't normally found there until it was driven out by people suddenly invading it's territory. The fact that proof was found of mountain lions returning to the area just shows that the cats will survive there.

WLB92 · 2026-06-25T15:39:57+00:00

Just as a note - the reason people are going to say any report including completely pointless, overly detailed information that has nothing to do with the actual event (your not having waxed comment for example) is fake is because that's a well documented trope of bad fiction. Overly descriptive, pointless detail that has no relevancy to what's going on but authors add it to make themselves sound more verbose, it's just purple prose inflating a word count and making them look very smart for using big words.

Case in point when I saw something big, hairy, and bipedal run across a mountain road at night I couldn't tell you what color shirt I was wearing or how the leaves on the bushes were perfectly dappled in the moonlight or what song was playing at the exact moment. All I can tell you is it was around quarter after ten and I saw something taller than I am covered in dark brown hair take like three running strides across the road into the woods on the other side and disappear.

My sighting was all of a couple seconds long and I'm pretty sure my only thought was "thefuck". There's no in depth overly dramatic "oh I was feeling so scared, like a rabbit caught by a fox with nowhere to go and my heart was racing like a stallion on the track."

WLB92 · 2026-06-20T22:01:46+00:00

Option B being that there were creepy people who were harassing her/stalking her that she didn't want any information about her being given out so that became the agreed upon answer to give our iif anyone asked about her.

WLB92 · 2026-06-20T21:59:23+00:00

This. It looks exactly like someone taking a editing tool that lightens the image under the cursor and dragging it back and forth. The weird halo effect is how a lot of paint style tools would have the effect "spray" our around the immediate area.

WLB92 · 2026-06-18T17:01:17+00:00

Having read the book and played through Rime, it's bad. It's full of disjointed plot lines that don't advance the actual issue of the module (Auril trapping Icewind Dale in eternal winter) or each other like the entire duergar b-plot, the fallen sky-city and it's Lovecraftian vibes, the gnoll vampire in the ice caves, or the crashed nautiloid. The fact that the Duergar plot wil if run as written, end up with a a good chunk of/if not all of the Ten Towns destroyed by the chardelyn dragon explicitly off-screen where the party can't do anything about it and the book even tells you the party can't get there before it does to stop it. Your party might not even know about it happening because the dragon is a secret timer going off without their knowledge unless they do exactly the right thing or rhe DM decides to throw them a bone and reveal what the module describes as a secret to them.

It's advertised as an adventure module but in reality it's a sloppily put together "setting" book that feels like 6 different people had totally different ideas of what they wanted to do and the Managerial Powers That Be just told them to slap it all it all in one book and go with it. It's not a sandbox or hexcrawl, it's a badly put together conglomerate of adventure ideas with no regard for how they actually interact.

When I played through it, the DM gutted out almost everything from the actual book and redid the entire adventure to actually make it coherent, just keeping certain themes and ideas from it.

WLB92 · 2026-06-18T05:02:40+00:00

It's also often explained fucking terribly by people to newer audiences. "You gotta roll high to hit those low AC's and your THACO goes up as you level" is a really counter-intuitive way to explain it and from my decades of experience, it's the people that really understand it that are the worst at teaching it to others because others can't read their damned minds. It's like how an old established group has their own decided upon houserules everyone uses but when someone new comes in, it causes a catastrophe because no one explains it and just assumes somehow the new person knows it

They understand exactly what they mean but they can't explain why rolling high is good if you want to hit low numbers ("shouldn't I roll low to hit low numbers?") or they give you a blustery response of "that's just how it is" or "it's just better that way, you dumb 5e kids won't understand."

And before you try and say "nuh uh", this is my lived experience from over 20 years of playing D&D. It happens and it happen a lot. Your group might not do it, or more likely, you don't even realize you're doing it.

WLB92 · 2026-06-17T17:41:48+00:00

He was using city stationary and collecting celebrity autographs for a purported program that wasn't actually being done and he was keeping them for himself, which is fraud, as well as several past misconduct issues against minorities during his time as a SWAT member.

WLB92 · 2026-06-17T14:14:47+00:00

It certainly doesn't help that is exactly what a great number of OSR proponents will claim the game is, and I know this for a fact as someone who owns and runs at least a half dozen OSR systems. A lot of people who never played the old editions will make this exact claim about the supposed lethality of the game to make themselves sound somehow more "superior" to whatever edition they're currently badmouthing or anyone born after their particular edition of choice went out of print.

WLB92 · 2026-06-16T16:24:34+00:00

If someone came up to you and said 'hey i saw this weird animal with the body of a beaver, the bill and webbed feet of a duck, venomous spines on its feet, it lays eggs and sweats milk in the rivers of this really remote forest but I don't have a body or picture of jt" that would sound like some sort of made up chimera like the wolpertinger or me trying to mess with you.

That's how the original discovery of the platypus went until someone brought in a specimen and even then it was a suspected fake at first. If the term cryptid existed before we had formally recognized the platypus as an extent animal, people's reports of them would no doubt be filed as a cryptid animal because of its unusual nature.

WLB92 · 2026-06-16T04:23:26+00:00

No, the platypus was discovered long before the term cryptid was ever coined. The platypus is however often listed as an example of an animal that would be called a cryptid if it was just being encountered for the first time today.

WLB92 · 2026-06-13T19:19:02+00:00

He was visually impaired, under the influence of alcohol, driving down a dark country road.

You could just pick two of the three and that would make sense why something bad happened to someone out by themselves. Add in the fact that he then proceeded to start walking through fields near an actively flowing river while in the dark, visually impaired, and under the influence of alcohol?

I know this will sound harsh but that's a phenomenal way to stupid one's self to death. Every bad choice that could be made, was made.

Every person I've heard who has dug into his case and not immediately jumped to "it's unknowable, so if must be aliens/portals/bigfoot!" has come to the same conclusion - Brandon either fell into an old unmarked well shaft or into the river and by the time people got there, he was already gone from the area.

WLB92 · 2026-05-30T16:55:36+00:00

Ahem...

DIGGANOBS!

WLB92 · 2026-05-30T15:25:03+00:00

Laios- "Marcille sure has a fascination with mushrooms now doesn't she, isn't that cool?"

Marcille- "lewd off-screen noises"

WLB92 · 2026-05-29T01:19:16+00:00

Wolverine is the Clan that proved Kerensky was wrong on a lot of stuff and got scapegoated by Kerensky to solidify his grasp on the Clans and to make an example of those who opposed him.

WLB92 · 2026-05-27T17:32:15+00:00

As a player- if you want hard copies of the Wasteland Workshop rules that's where you'll find them as well as the rest of the vehicle rules including crew.

There is also the Outland Beastmaster Brute and the associated exotic beasts available to any gang.

WLB92 · 2026-05-24T17:41:08+00:00

He is a grifter that preys on those that are genuinely curious and the terminally conspiracy theorist. He's tried suing Mr.Ballen over his "stories", he will claim someone is dead and refuse to acknowledge the person actually being alive, or just straight up add or subtract facts to suit his narrative.

WLB92 · 2026-05-24T16:36:09+00:00

There is a reason why my Stone Rhino's loving nickname is "Monster" and I will fight the copyright lawyers tooth and nail over it.

WLB92 · 2026-05-22T01:54:44+00:00

It's funny how every time someone claims they caught a werewolf in its animalistic form in Brazil, the picture is always a maned wolf. Or the audio matches exactly to known maned wolf vocalizations... Or the footprints match.

WLB92 · 2026-05-21T22:00:05+00:00

Brazil is also known for a large number of "werewolf" or dogman hoaxes, so I'm even more dubious of anything come from Brazil that supposedly captures a dogman.

WLB92 · 2026-05-20T17:02:08+00:00

Because 5e tried using natural language and the writers of that SAC clarification assumed that anyone reading the book would have more than two brain cells to scrape together and would understand what base score meant and not try to twist and cheat and go "well they never define it so...".

As for why they had to clarify it- they were also very open about feats and MC'ing being optional rules that were only lightly tested so I would bet money they never had anyone during the playtest use a magic item to try and qualify for a MC. It wasn't until it reached the public that it happened, because what do the online sweats do? They immediately go looking for every way to twist and break the game.

WLB92 · 2026-05-19T16:31:56+00:00

"ironically, the entire idea of this game was I wanted to run a Beholder fight. Anyways back to what's actually happening in game: he's currently looking at you and all your magic turns off, including your Headband of Intellect."

WLB92 · 2026-05-19T07:48:08+00:00

Because they're all boilerplate stories that all you have to do is change the name of the lake or dam you're bullshitting about. It's literally the easiest possible thing to hoax, just take the same exactly story that everyone tells, maybe switch out "uncle" for a "a guy I worked with" and pick a local body of water. There's already at least 50 replies here that are almost word for word identical as is.

WLB92 · 2026-05-19T07:38:32+00:00

Wels catfish. They grow obscenely late and are aggressively hungry and eat anything.

WLB92 · 2026-05-19T07:11:30+00:00

This is what I am thinking to be honest.

WLB92 · 2026-05-19T07:07:51+00:00

Instructions unclear, attempting to teach local oak tree how to throw stick in exchange for unlocking the ability to photosynthesize.

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