Counter Monkey

This article or section is about a topic that is particularly prone to Skub (that is, really loud and/or stupid arguments). Edit at your own risk, and read with a grain of salt, as skubby subjects have a bad habit of causing stupid, even in neutrals trying to summarize the situation.

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail. Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

Noah Antwiler, aka the Spoony One. He is a cynical bastard and an old-school grognard. Though many of his older reviews fall under either /v/ or /tv/, he also runs a review series called Counter Monkey, which has become his unofficial secondary show.

Originating as a text-blog in the dark corners of the internet, in late october of 2011 he began making videos retelling his 2+ decades worth of experience with roleplaying games, LARPing and board games. His stories tend to be either recountings of games he was in on either side of the player chair (taking on Dungeonland, killing an entire LARP worth of vampires because they tried to railroad him into a particular Covenant, and the finer nuances of playing a Bard to being kicked out of the RPGA for killing players and having a guy in Thieves' World be royally fucked up) or advice and talks about games and settings he really likes like Vampire: The Masquerade, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2020, Planescape and more, as well as the fine art of DMing with how to guide your players without railroading and punishing stupid behavior. Spoony is a harsh but fair DM who is willing to give his players some leeway but will not hesitate to TPK a group of dumbasses or people who riff on his campaigns.

He also looks over weird shit from the history of the hobby, like the Book of Erotic Fantasy, Nymphology and that one time wresting was turned into an RPG for the d20 System.

But do note that he cannot help but ramble: he once went on for 3 hours straight about only a couple of subjects and took over an hour to tell an anecdote how he killed a number of Sith in Star Wars RPG. As such most of his videos are not quick watches: you'd be served best by taking at least 1-2 hours off for a video of his.

And there are some completely legit criticisms to be had about his extremely-narrow idea of how games should work. At the very least, his nostalgia goggles are clamped on so fucking tight that they sometimes impede the flow of blood to his brain, and he can't get past the idea that Second Edition-style D&D was an immaculate masterpiece and nothing about it will ever need fixing, changing, or updating ever. 3d6, down the line, no backsies (but rolling up and discarding several innkeepers until you get the stats you need for your iconic bard character is fine). If you disagree you're obviously a cowardly, pampered, boring crybaby whose opinion isn't worth shit.

Now get off his lawn.

Spoony is more well known for online drama, both on his streams and multiple twitter accounts as he struggles to find any excuse to avoid doing any sort of work. His career and life have both imploded, and Counter Monkey has ended for all intents and purposes. Hell, since many of the places it was viewable have also imploded, it's not easy to find anymore either.