Let’s get to the point: Cocaine Owlbear Deluxe Edition – A minigame for 5e RPGs, is live on Kickstarter right now. It’s been live for a few days and will finish in only a few days. You have to be quick to catch this Cocaine Owlbear.
Geek Native readers will be familiar with the Cocaine Owlbear. They have had a chance to win a copy of the game, so this time around, Mike Lafferty agreed to be interviewed.
Should we call him the Cocaine Owlbear Whisperer? Perhaps but we also get dangerously close to being heavy with some reflections on TTRPGs, drugs and society.
The phrase “Deluxe Cocaine Owlbear” might sound like the weirdest phrase ever to readers who have not encountered it before. Can you please quickly recap the saga?
One day, I was chatting with artist Jacob Blackmon about geeky stuff. I think we were joking about licensed properties we could do RPGs for (since that seems to be all the rage the last few years) and one of us suggested Cocaine Owlbear – and a legend was born. We did the initial Cocaine Owlbear game shortly thereafter with a hacked version of the Honey Heist rules. It took off like wildfire and garnered a lot of online attention from various geek news outlets and various Youtubes. For reasons I am still not clear on, Cocaine Owlbear has an evergreen popularity with Eastern European gamers and it has shown up a lot in slavic language actual plays.
Naturally, with the popularity of the concept – we received many requests for a 5e version of Cocaine Owlbear. This campaign is for that.
How and why did Bloat Games get involved?
We’ve been friends with the crew at Bloat Games for some time. They are good guys – and also quite handsome with strong singing voices. They offered to help us market Cocaine Owlbear to the 5e fanbase as they have inroads into that market and we gladly took them up on it.
I’ve created three more D&D movie/culture portmanteau monsters. Can you add another three?
- The NeverEnding Displacer Beast
- The Succubus Bride
- The Lord of the Rust Monsters
Let me suggest
- Three Mimics and a Baby
- The Gelatinous Cube Club
- Weekend at Vecna’s
It’s sometimes said that sci-fi movies reflect cultural concerns. For example, when the United States was worried about secret Communist infiltrators, we had films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the original Planet of the Apes was about racial justice and concerns of nuclear war and The Matrix was about the invasion of technology. Do TTRPGs and their adventures do the same?
Alan Moore has posited as we head into times of uncertainty and social upheaval, the public yearns for power fantasies. That is one explanation, perhaps, for the enduring popularity of TTRPGs over the last several decades.
On the other hand, I think people crave laughter, and good times with friends on a basic level. In a time when both of those things can be harder to find, TTRPGs can be a conduit for that.
I was asking, of course, because despite all the comedy in both the Cocaine Bear story and Cocaine Owlbear, drugs, addiction, and societal impact can be fairly intense topics. Do you think TTRPGs shy away from this, or do we escape to fantasy worlds in which magic potions wash away all our challenges?
We’re in the grips of a painkiller epidemic in the US. It’s a grim phenomenon, brought on by corporate greed that has had a terrible impact on tons of people. I’m not sure acknowledging the problem in escapist entertainment would be a net positive. Escapist past times are intended to help us, well, escape some of those worries for a time.
There’s been lots of positive news and academic interest in how TTRPGs can help with education and social skills. Do you think this is overblown, and do you have any tips?
I’ve personally seen TTRPGs help awkward kids and teens come out of their shells a bit. It’s easy to see how it could be beneficial for many people.
Why do you think the ‘Cocaine Owlbear’ has been a lasting hit? I’m asking this now, rather than an early question, because I wonder if ‘Cocaine Owlbear’ does present as a game with a welcomingly low social barrier to entry while hinting at a safe space to go wild… but perhaps you disagree?
I think you’re correct. And – also – we’re an explicitly silly choice that also has a “Hard R Comedy” tone. We’re sort of the Harold and Kumar of TTRPGs right now (if only I could get Neil Patrick Harris to agree to do an actual play with us).
Is this the last and final form of the Cocaine Owlbear and, if so, what next for Fainting Goat Games?
Until someone approaches us for a video game version, this is the last roar of the Cocaine Owlbear. Fainting Goat will continue to focus on indie and Savage Worlds games supplements.
Thanks, Mike. If readers are curious and swift, then there’s that special version of the Cocaine Owlbear over there.
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