Appendix R: Counter Monkey

Staring directly into the void of chaos

My name is Ryan Howard and I am a Millennial. This means that in the halcyon days of 2009, I was active on the internet, especially YouTube. Like many other young men at the time, this meant that I was directly exposed to the swirling void of chaos and suffering known as Channel Awesome. The topic of Channel Awesome is too big for this article. The downfall of this site has been going on longer than their glory days lasted at this point and there are far too many details to cover in what should be a brief introduction. For those of you who don’t know any of this story though, Channel Awesome was a collective of video creators who covered nostalgic movies, video games, comic books and, of course, table-top games. For my generation of nerds, Channel Awesome was a nexus point of all of our interests and the place where many of us were introduced to new interests. It also is one of the biggest examples of how destructive ego can be. It turned out to be a collective of high-strung, thin-skinned, chaotic back-biters and none were more high-strung and chaotic than Noah Antwiler, AKA “The Spoony One,” or just “Spoony.” Spoony has more lore than Warhammer 40K and tracking his downfall has been a project of over a decade. This man is a walking disaster and a loathsome, miserable bastard who single-handedly torpedoed his own career. However, there was a time where he made some of the most popular content on the internet covering everything from obscure movies to professional wrestling. My personal favorite series of his though, was a side series to his regular content where he told stories about playing RPGs and working at a game store. This series was called Counter Monkey and it is the sole reason why I decided to play D&D. Not only is is formative to my early days of roleplaying, but I genuinely believe that there are nuggets of gold to be found throughout the 68 episodes made.

Unlike his regular content which involved a fair bit of production, Counter Monkey is a low-effort vlog-style series done in one take. The videos are rambling stories about RPGs. The name came from his days working at a Phoenix-area game store in the late 90’s and early 2000’s when people would walk up to the counter and shoot the breeze about gaming. He and his co-workers called those people “counter monkeys” and this series is Spoony taking on that role himself and talking to you, the audience, as if you were working the counter. These videos ranged from just under 10 minutes to just under 2 hours depending on the story and how many tangents Spoony went down. I didn’t know anything about RPGs when I was a teenager, but Spoony had this ability to make his gaming stories seem epic. The best example of this is his two-part series on the Thieves’ World RPG. I found his enthusiasm for the game infectious and I longed for the chance to participate in something as grand as one of Spoony’s campaigns. That was twelve years ago though. I was seventeen and stupid, susceptible to suggestions made by people who were, in hindsight, turbo losers. It brought me to the dance, sure, but is there any value to be found in the videos today? Surprisingly, yes. In fact, there are many things that Spoony discusses in his videos that you can hear from the likes of The BrOSR. There are episodes of Counter Monkey that strongly advocate for rules mastery, reactive GMing, descriptive roleplay, and even open tables.

A recurring theme of Spoony’s stories is an arms race between players and the GM over rules. The players would get a new splat book (the 90’s!) which would create a new meta at the table. As they began running rough-shod over his plans, Spoony would have to think on his feet, research the rules and resources available to him and craft a response that followed logically. More often than not, this was animated by a spirit of “I’m gonna get those bastards!” but, in practice, Spoony was creating a living campaign world where threats and tension escalated in proportionate response to the actions of the players. Thieve’s World is a good example of this, but he also illustrates this idea in the show’s first installment, Shadowrun: The Squirt Gun Wars. Spoony frequently describes himself as a harsh DM, steadfastly adhering to the rules. Knowing what we know about his thin skin for criticism, it’s fair to assume that he probably wasn’t as even-handed as his stories made it sound like he was. Still, the overall lessons you can mine from his stories are solid.

Spoony was also capable of giving truly good advice on purpose too. For my money, the best example of this comes in his video The Bardic Knock Spell in which he gives advice to players about better quality roleplaying. I rewatched this video just a few days ago, which is why I ultimately landed on this topic for the week, and it definitely holds up. The premise of this episode is replacing the phrase “I use x skill” with a description of an actual action. It’s the kind of thing you can hear someone like Crispy discuss in his videos these days, but here it was over a decade earlier. Something hit me while watching these videos that was staring me in the face the whole time; Spoony was not some kind of luminary of RPGs, he was just a veteran player dispensing common sense. He’s a product of a time before Critical Role and before the lifestyle brand overhaul of the hobby. These videos stand as a kind of archive of RPG common knowledge right at the end of the 4e era. It shows just how much was lost in just a short decade and also how much RPG discourse changed in the same amount of time. He’s not over concerned with replicating fantasy stories or what kind of voice his character should have. Instead, Spoony’s commentary is far more focused on understanding mechanics, keeping a world alive, and keeping the game moving and focused at the table. It’s refreshing after all this time and, even going back to when the content was new, it definitely inspires people to up their games.

The last thing to point out about these Counter Monkey videos is that they not only introduced me to D&D, but other games as well. Spoony was really good at pointing out the cool things that non-D&D games did. As previously mentioned, my favorite episode is focused on Green Ronin’s Thieves’ World. From him I learned about Vampire, Shadowrun, West End Games’ Star Wars and even GURPS. This is probably a product of the fact that 4e was the current edition of D&D at the height of Spoony’s output and the consensus on 4e was already settled by the time I discovered him so he had ample incentive to spread the word about alternative RPGs. As interested as I was in fantasy roleplaying, I was even more excited to discover that other genres were covered by these kinds of games. Again, this was one of my earliest exposures to roleplaying as a medium. I vaguely knew that a thing called Dungeons & Dragons existed and I saw all of the books in my local comic shop, but I had zero idea what any of it was. If I could learn to play these games, then I could have access to basically infinite games. No more waiting on video games to be made on topics I liked or having to deal with lame stories, I could make my own with a group of players. It was an exciting prospect for teenage Ryan and the fact that there was an element of performance to it all hit me right in my theater kid heart.

In a weird way, I owe it all to Noah Antwiler. That’s a profoundly weird and slightly shameful thing to admit, but that’s the reality. I was exposed to this profoundly odd but weirdly charismatic figure right as his star was starting to crash and, in the midst of his epic crashout, his videos inspired me to get started in RPGs. If it weren’t for these videos, there would never have been a Rollin’ Bones. There would be no Nighthaven and I would be doing something other than this on my lunch breaks. If you’re reading this, Mr. Antwiler, thank you. I realize that many of those videos were made during some dark times in your life and I hope it cheers you to know that they had an impact on someone. For everyone else, this should be a fun trip down memory lane or perhaps an exploration of content you never knew about. All of Counter Monkey is still available on YouTube right now, including a playlist that puts them in chronological order. Go check them out and see how much of it still holds up.