Over the Garden Wall returns

 In case you missed it, last week was the 10th anniversary of Over the Garden Wall. They released this stop-motion short that was pretty cool:

80s Action Cartoons Were Very Gameable

I'm not just talking about the usual suspects like Thundarr the Barbarian or The Pirates of Darkwater; or ones that already have games like G.I. Joe, Transformers, or of course, Dungeons & Dragons. Even the deeper cuts are great too. Let's take a look at a sampling and the gaming inspiration they provide.

Sky Commanders (1987)

If you're a fan of hexcrawls or even pointcrawls, could I interest you in high elevation, feature-to-feature exploration? The premise is a new continent has arisen in the Pacific thanks to some weird energy source, and a multi-national group of mountaineering-specialist good-guys fight the baddies via flight, or by using "laser cables," a fancy rappelling line shot from combat backpacks. There are all sorts of environmental hazards to contend with too, and some monsters.

Spiral Zone (1987)

The high concept takeaway here might be G.I. Joe meets the Walking Dead. In the show, an evil scientist and his Road Warrior refugee have released a weird, bioactive mist (the Spiral Zone) that turns the people in it into mindless zombies. A crack team of agents and their tricked-out vehicles and protective suits do battle with the badguys. A twist is that both sides want to limit civilian casualties as the bad guys want to use them, and the good guys want to save them. 

Defenders of the Earth (1986)

While this team-up of several King Features Syndicate characters against Ming the Merciless might seem like a low-powered supers thing (and in some ways it is), the takeaway here, I think, is genre crossover. You've got a sword & planet guy, a pulp hero (or two), and a wizard who get together to take out a villain.

The Caped Crusader

Over on the Flashback Universe Blog I reviewed the new Amazon Prime Batman animated series, Batman: The Caped Crusader.

Fantasy Anime You Should Watch

I've been watching some fantasy anime of late, revisiting the classic Record of Lodoss War I hadn't seen since the 00s, but also checking out some new stuff. Here are some recommendations:

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Crunchyroll)

Frieren starts with a basically D&Dish world, but tells the sort of story most epic fantasy media doesn't really deal with: what happens after? The title character is a nigh immortal elven mage who realizes that she didn't know as much about her party members (the leader, Himmel the Hero, in particular) as she would like only after one of them passes on. She agrees to take on a child adopted by another one of her aging comrades as an apprentice and together they set out on a journey to retrace the steps of her original party's journey into the demon-haunted North to find the place where the dead can speak to the living. Along the way she picks up a warrior who is the protege of her old dwarf comrade and they meet other allies and get in adventures big and small on their journey. 

It's a nice combination of slice of life travelogue, magical duels, and character drama, with both humor and poignancy.

Delicious in Dungeon (Netflix)

Everybody knows about this one, I think, but it deserves the hype. A group of adventurers has a deadly encounter with a red dragon, and a few of the survivors plan to go back and save their cleric before she is digested to have her raised. They have no time to buy supplies, so they resort to eating monsters in the dungeon with the help of dungeon-dwelling dwarven chef. 

It's pretty funny, but despite the setup, it has surprisingly deep setting "lore" that is slowly revealed and helps it from being a single joke show.

Ranking of Kings (Crunchyroll)

This is the least D&Dish of the three. I've seen it described as "fairy tale Game of Thrones" which is probably a pretty reasonable descriptor, so far as it goes. In a world where the gods were defeated, a committee of some sort ranks the power of the mortal world's monarchs. The king that is awarded the number one ranking is entitled to a boon from the Divine Treasure Vault, a fabled trove brimming with riches and magical artifacts. Bojji, the main character, is the first born of one of these kings, the giant, Bosse. But Bojji is diminutive, deaf, mute, and weak. When the throne is given to his younger brother due to duplicity and a lack of faith in Bojji, the boy sets out to find a way to become stronger.

The fairy-tale type beginning and the cartoon art style which recalls Shotaro Ishinomori and Osamu Tezuka belie the hidden agendas and moral shades of gray of the story, as well as the level of world-building. The 1st season doesn't end as well as it begins (with some dragging out of the final fight to multiple episodes as you sometimes see in anime, and some abrupt story developments) but I'm still interested in the world and characters and want to see more.

Where'd the Grot Go?

Watching Delicious in Dungeon and Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (which are both great, so watch them), I've noted that both display very D&Dish world, but ones completely without even token gestures toward the gritty and grime of Medievalism. They are grot free, nothing like this to be seen:

This could be put off to the style of anime or cultural differences between U.S. and Japan, but I noted this same thing back in my review of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Compared the production design and costuming of that film to something like Excalibur (which is pretty gritty despite all that gleaming plate) or even Jackson's Lord of the Rings. 

I think it's even in the art of a number of 5e products, too, and in The Legend of Vox Machina animated series (at least the parts of it I've seen).

I'm sure there are counter examples, but these are fairly high profile works in the D&D world, some of them official, so I think we're in a moment where D&Dish fantasy worlds partake of more of a fairytale feel, perhaps, in regard to depict of their environments. Nothing wrong with that, really, just an observation.

Cowboy Bebop and the Faithful Adaptation

I've watched one episode of Netflix's Cowboy Bebop. so I could be wrong, but I think I already see how this is going to be. I don't think it's awful, but there are definitely things I'm not fond out.

Watching it brought to mind Rodriguez's first Sin City film. That film is a pretty faithful adaptation of the comic, down to the composition of shots, but my reaction on first viewing was very different from my reaction to the comic. It felt silly; I was vaguely embarrassed by it. It's not that I missed that Sin City the comic is over-the-top in some ways, and part of that over-the-topness is Miller's dialogue and narration. But when I read it, I get to decide how the characters deliver the lines, and the almost superhero comic level action scenes are just Millerisms to be translated to real world terms. (Much in the same way I know when reading a comic that characters don't have time for long discussion while they trade a couple of lightning quick blows. It's mere convention of the form, not something to be taken literally.) But on the screen their were actors not selling the clunky lines they were saying and all the action was taken all too literally.

Cowboy Bebop came from a cartoon not a comic so it's closer to film, but it's also the product of another culture (and honestly, another era) so maybe that all washes out. The show gets the details right in cosplay sort of way, but it doesn't feel the same. Gone is grubby future and much of the range in tone. The action is similar in prosaic description but what seemed dynamic in the anime feels fairly flat here. It may be less wacky than the cartoon, but then my tolerance for wacky is much less in live action.

Perhaps the biggest disappoint is some of the choices they made. The first episodes of the anime and the live action show have the same basic plot, but are otherwise fairly different. The anime opens with Spike's dream (enigmatic at that point) then goes into spare scenes of the solitary, early morning rituals of Spike and Jet, accompanied by blues harmonica. There is a lonesome feel to this sequence, and there is nothing like it in the live action show, which instead opens with quipy action. The cartoon returns to a bit of this somberness later with Spike's discussion with Katerina. This is also quite different in the live action episode. The show perhaps gets Bebop's silliness right, but misses the anime's mix of tones, except as absolutely requisite to the plot, and then it can't quite land it.

There's also the indication that we will be seeing hints of the Vicious-Spike conflict every single episode. This is no doubt to make a "season arc" fit for a modern streaming show. Cowboy Bebop the anime was structured like old school tv, with "stories of the week." Over-exposing Spike's arc robs it of any sense of slow reveal or discovery and has the potential to make everything else feel secondary.

Anyway, I'll keep watching. The wife likes it, and I've still got the animated series to watch when I want.

Elves Don't Do Magic!

My kid has become a fan of Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom, a British animated series about the comedic exploits of a community of fairies and elves. These particular elves are certainly more of the Santa's and Keebler's varieties rather than Tolkien's. While the Little Kingdom elves are likely unsuitable as a PC rave in D&D as presented, I think their adaptable. 

Unlike your standard elf, they eschew magic. They are practical, hardworking beings, largely responsible for keeping fairy society up and going by filling positions in most trades and using and repairing modern technology.

Adult male elves tend to have beards. All elves seen to favor pointed caps.

Note that these elves are capable of using magic. Some are artificers of magical devices. They just believe that using magic inherently leads to trouble and it offends their personal work ethic.

Elf traits:

Ability Score Increase: Intelligence score increases by 2. Any other ability score of the player's choice can increased by 1.

Size: Small. (Elves in the cartoon are actually Tiny, but we're adapting here.)
Speed: Base walking speed is 25 feet.

Industrious: An elf is proficient in one skill and one artisan tool or vehicle of the player's choice. Whenever you make an ability check with the chosen skill or tool, roll a d4 and add the number rolled to the check's total.

Technologically Savvy: Elves may add their proficiency bonus to any check relating to advanced

technology or mechanical devices.

Languages: Elves can speak, read, and write Elvish, Common, and another language of their choice.

Cowboy Bebop and the Pulp Solar System

The anime series Cowboy Bebop may not seem to have much in common with the sort of stuff you'd find in the pulp magazine Planet Stories in the period around World War II, but I feel like there are more similarities than one might think:

• The action occurs in version of the solar system where a number of bodies are habitable. Sure, Cowboy Bebop says that were terraformed, but the story takes place in the 21st Century and the terraformed versions of the Galilean moons and the like are as fanciful as anything from Planet Stories.
• Jet is a former cop and Spike and ex-gangster. These sort of hard-boiled backgrounds certainly wouldn't be out of place in pulp fiction of the 40s, and not unheard of in science fiction.
• Both draw on influences like Noir and Westerns.

Sure, there are also a lot of differences, as are bond to happen when two works are the products of two different cultures and half a century. But it does some to me you could do something resembling Cowboy Bebop that fight squarely in the pulp context (in the era where bebop originated), or say pull Eric John Stark into a world more like Cowboy Bebop.

Weird Revisited: The Hanna-Barbera Superhero Universe

This post originally appeared in December of 2014. After I wrote this DC did a big crossover series Future Quest with some of these characters...

Art by Carlos Mota

I have, at various times, considered a supers campaign set in the universe of Hanna-Barbera's superhero cartoons.

One unusual thing about Hanna-Barbera's supers characters is that, when you leave aside the licensed properties (Super Friends, The Fantastic Four) and the completely comedic ones (The Impossibles, Atom Ant), very few of the characters follow traditional superhero conventions. For example, few are set on modern day Earth, or have a stable base of operations and supporting cast. The only one that does (Birdman) is unusual because he's a superhuman agent of a governmental organization, not unlike the THUNDER Agents.

Despite this different in focus and presentation, I think many of them could be adapted to a more traditional superhero mold. Call it "Ultimate Hanna-Barbera," if you will.  Let's run the list:

Art by Alex Ross

Space Ghost: A very superhero-y and well realized character as-is. Perhaps like the Legion of Super-Heroes he is a futuristic character in the same universe as the others? A future Phantom/Batman in the same way Captain Future is kind of a futuristic Doc Savage. The other option would be to make him sort of Green Lantern-like. A space cop assigned to protect earth. Or some combination of the two?

Young Samson: (Also known as Samson & Goliath) A teen with a Captain Marvel schtick who wanders around Route 66 or Incredible Hulk style, getting into adventures, works pretty well as-is. As suppose, it would be better to have him settled down and become more of a Peter Parker.

Shazzan: The cartoon has two kids transport to an Arabian Nights fantasy-land after finding their genie, but they could have just as easily stayed in the modern day. Two teens sharing a genie to fight evil would be an interesting concept.

Mightor: A Stone Age Thor, essentially. There isn't any reason a worthy successor couldn't find the magic club and become Mightor in the modern day. Of course, the character is a bit on the silly side and would probably work best for a Silver Age vibe rather than a Modern Age one.

Herculoids: In a comic book universe, the Herculoids could be sort of Ka-Zar type characters where their Savage Land is a world in another dimension, or they could be treated like a primitive Forever People and have them arrive on Earth to be super-powered fish-out-of-water.

Art by MarioPons

The Galaxy Trio: These teen heroes are probably better candidates for Forever People stand-ins. You can transport them to the modern day and have them be alien heroes stranded on Earth for some reason.

Go to Very Distant Lands

Art by Steve Ellis

 Adventure Time ended its original run in 2018, but there's a now series of single episode stories on HBOMax. Watching those reminded me how a lot of rpgers were excited about Adventure Time, at least in its early seasons. It's sort of gonzo, post-apocalyptic setting seemed very much cut from the same cloth as a lot of rpg worldbuilding.

No official AT rpg has ever appeared in English, and in the end the show is a kid's cartoon, perhaps more character driven, than exploration based, but I think it would be pretty easy to derive inspiration from the form of AT's Land of Ooo, as opposed to exact content. In other words, if you wanted a D&D campaign for adults to do D&D stuff that was just in some ways reminiscent of Ooo, this is how I would go about it. (If this thread gets comments someone will no doubt mention the Far Away Lands rpg. Let me preempt that by saying that it has slightly different goals. It's more doing an AT but not AT rpg. I'm thinking of "if you want D&D to have more of a resemblance to AT" without going full cartoon.)

So this is what I think:

• Make the setting more expressly post-apocalyptic. Not in the usual Tolkienian way that D&D usually is, but in the Gamma World way.
• Avoid the standard versions of standard monsters. You can use names like "dragon" if you want, but avoid the standard fantasy dragons of D&D. Ok, maybe goblins or giants can stay, but no orcs. My suggestion: borrow a lot of monsters and races from Gamma World, and lean heavy on the AD&D Fiend Folio derived monsters.
• Elementals are important, but maybe not the standard Greek ones. They seem to be part of a fundamental magic structure of the universe, but Fire, Water, yada yada may not be where it's at. Luckily, D&D gives us para- and quasi- elementals that are weirder.
• Don't be afraid of the player's getting ahold of more advanced tech, but not weapons so much. Let them freely pick up a bit of the 20th or 21st Century here and there, but don't make weapons or combat related. Let them find record players (or ipods), or gameboys and the like.
• Mutagens and weirdness. While AT doesn't dwell on it, it has decree of weirdness and even body horror that seems drawn from the most fevered of post-apocalyptic or atomic war fiction. The zones of Roadside Picnic have more in common with it that you might think.
• Negotiation is always an option. Very few creatures should be attack on sight sorts. Most of them have got the same sort of troubles and aspirations as the adventures, just a different point of view.
• Don't be afraid of humor. The first edition of Gamma World embraced the silliness of its premise and with something like this, you should too.

The Thundarr Roadtrip

I ran across a podcast yesterday that is reviewing the the episodes of Thundarr the Barbarian in way that sensibly traces Thundarr and crew's travels across post-apocalyptic North America and beyond. It's called appropriately Thundarr Road.

Another Visit to the Alex Toth Casting Agency

Need a different look for an NPC or a weird monster of some sort? Check out the model sheets and concept art created for Hanna-Barbera by the late, great Alex Toth:

Cyclops:

Dragon, Four-eyed:

The rulers of the cat people:

A wizard and his pets:

A wizard with a nose piercing and fairy lackeys:

The Art of Over the Garden Wall

I've talked about my love of the 2014 Cartoon Network limited series, Over the Garden Wall. Last week I got the gorgeous The Art of Over the Garden Wall put out by Dark Horse Books. It's 184 pages and covers the show from initial concept up through the comic book spinoffs.

The Nerdist had an exclusive preview, so head over there to check out so of the pages, or just take my word for it and buy it. Not convinced yet? Ok, here's a picture of a bunch of frogs, many of whom are playing musical instruments:

Let Alex Toth Illustrate Your Monster Manual

I've posted some Alex Toth animation model sheets before for their inspirational value. Here are more in that same vein:

This one could be a salamander:

Dogheaded? Junior dragons? How about insectoid kobolds?

If you ignore the heights given, these guys could be frost giants:

Adventure Environments

Here are some animation backgrounds and concept art from the He-man and She-Ra  cartoons suitable for game inspiration:

An almost Seussian forest:

A cave with loot:

This statues sword has a starway up it. Interesting twist on the PHB Demon idol:

Rocky castle:

Treasures from the Sectaurs

These are model sheets for the Sectaurs cartoon. The items depicted here should had a little post-apocalyptic strangeness to any treasure haul:

Find more here.

The Hanna-Barbera Multiverse

With the news that DC is doing a crossover with some Hanna-Barbera characters, it got me thinking about applying a DC style multiverse to their diverse stable of characters. This might be useful for a Hanna-Barbera Supers Universe game. Here's what I've got so far:

Earth-Anthropomorphic
Description: Anthropomorphic animals capable of speech exist side beside with humans and have humorous adventures.
Series Examples: Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Magilla Gorilla, Peter Potamus, Quick Draw McGraw

Earth-Familia (or Flintstone)
Description: A world where humorous family adventures take place. Civilization was very advanced in the Stone Age and dopplegangers of famous people in the 20th Century recur in various eras. By 2062, there is at least one city in orbit.
Series Examples: The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Roman Holidays

Earth-Quest
Description: A relatively (in comparison) mundane world of pulpy heroics. There are no costumed heroes and no talking animals, though pets may display near human intelligence.
Series Examples: Jonny Quest, Clue Club, Jana of the Jungle, and Valley of the Dinosaurs and (in the future) Sealab 2020. The unadventurous There Are the Days may also take place in this world, if anyone cares.

Earth-Mystery
Description: A world with a inordinate number of meddling teen mystery solvers and their unusual sidekicks. Some animals here have human-level intelligence and limited speech, but this may not be a universal condition and they are still treated as animals. There is at least one costumed superhero on this world, possibly more. By the 2070s, there is extensive undersea settlement. Astro and the Space Mutts may also take place in this world, meaning the Jetsons's dog has a counterpart in this universe.
Series Examples: Scooby-Doo, Funky Phantom, Captain Caveman, Galloping Ghost and Buford, Speed Buggy, Dynomutt, (in the future) Jabberjaw.

Earth-Superhero
Description: A world of costumed and non-costumed heroes across multiple eras that take on super-villains.
Series Examples: Birdman and The Galaxy Trio, Space Ghost, Mightor, Teen Force, Shazzan, and The Herculoids.

Earth-Impossible
Description: A world of superheroes that are more cartoonish in nature. This may also be the world of the child heroes without adult involvement.
Series Example: Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles, The Powerpuff Girls, also possibly the Space Kidettes.

Wednesday Comics: Over the Garden Wall

Over the Garden Wall #1 & 2 (2015), Written by Patrick McHale; Art by Jim Campbell.

Boom! Studios is in the midst of a four issue limited series expanding on the 2014 Cartoon Network mini-series (whose virtues I've extolled before), Over the Garden Wall. The series presents additional adventures of Wirt and Gregory in their wandering through the fairy-tale like Unknown as they attempt to find a way back home. It manages to well-capture the series' feel--not surprising since the writer is the show's creator.

Issue #1 is set between episodes 3 and 4 of the mini-series. Wirt, Gregory, and the bluejay Beatrice are trying to get to the house of Adelaide of the Pasture. They wind up attending a tea party and performing odd chores (which Wirt can never get right). It all ends in tears--a house's tears, in fact--and the trio moves on.

Issue #2 takes place between Episodes 4 and 5 and features the backstory of Fred the horse who joined our protagonists when they left the tavern at the end of Episode 4. It features the foibles of over-honesty, and a strange encounter with a perhaps-ghostly Highwayman (the same one who sang the song in Episode 4) in a covered bridge at night.

Two more issues are to come.

Own Over the Garden Wall

The great  Cartoon Network mini-series by Patrick McHale (previoualy of Adventure Time!) is now available on DVD (no blu-ray, unfortunately). I wrote about it when it aired, but I'll give a pull-quote from that post here:

"It's part Grimms' fairy tales, part Wizard of Oz (and maybe a bit Sandberg's Rootabaga Stories), imbued with great deal of folksiness. Where Adventure Time has rap and chiptunes, OtGW has parlor music and ragtime. Where Adventure Time has non sequiturs and weirdness, Over the Garden Wall has whimsy (not that it isn't weird at times)."

Check it out.

The Hanna-Barbera Superhero Universe

Art by Carlos Mota

I've played superhero rpg campaigns set in the Marvel and DC Universes and even considered one set in the Atlas-Seaboard Universe (that never happened, unfortunately). Recently, though I've given consideration (probably not seriously, though, but as a thought experiment) to a campaign set in the universe of Hanna-Barbera's superhero cartoons.

One notable thing about Hanna-Barbera's supers characters is that when you leave aside the licensed properties (Super Friends, The Fantastic Four) and the completely comedic ones (The Impossibles, Atom Ant), very few of the characters follow traditional superhero conventions. Few are set on modern day Earth or have a stable base of operations and supporting cast. The only one that does (Birdman) is a bit unsual because he's more of a superhuman agent of a governmental organization.

Despite this different in focus and presentation, I think many of them could be adapted to a more traditional superhero mold. Call it "Ultimate Hanna-Barbera," if you will.  Let's run the list:

Art by Alex Ross

Space Ghost: A very superhero-y and well realized character as-is. Perhaps like the Legion of Super-Heroes he is a futuristic character in the same universe. A future Phantom/Batman in the same way Captain Future is kind of a futuristic Doc Savage. The other option would be to make him sort of Green Lantern-like. A space cop assigned to protect earth. Or some combination of the two?

Young Samson: (Also known as Samson & Goliath) A teen with a Captain Marvel schtick who wanders around Route 66 or Incredible Hulk style, getting into adventures, works pretty well as-is. As suppose, it would be better to have him settled down and become more of a Peter Parker.

Shazzan: The cartoon has two kids transport to an Arabian Nights fantasy-land after finding their genie, but they could have just as easily stayed in the modern day. Two teens sharing a genie to fight evil would be an interesting concept.

Mightor: A Stone Age Thor, essentially. There isn't any reason a worthy successor couldn't find the magic club and become Mightor in the modern day. Of course, the character is a bit on the silly side and would probably work best for a Silver Age vibe rather than a Modern Age one.

Herculoids: In a comic book universe, the Herculoids could be sort of Ka-Zar type characters where their Savage Land is a world in another dimension, or they could be treated like a primitive Forever People and have them arrive on Earth to be super-powered fish-out-of-water.

Art by MarioPons

The Galaxy Trio: These teen heroes are probably better candidates for Forever People stand-ins. You can transport them to the modern day and have them be alien heroes stranded on Earth for some reason.