Wednesday Comics: The Clandestinauts

Comics don't get much more D&D than Tim Sievert's The Clandestinauts. There are, of course, others to mine this territory (including the Intrepideers, which Sievert also did some issues of), but the Clandestinauts has pretty much perfected a combination of random death, weird encounters, seat-of-the pantaloons improvisation, and  character casualness to the above that really feels like something out of a longrunning campaign.

The Clandestinauts starts in media res with an established group of adventurers in the thick of things in a dungeon. Things are not going well:

They manage to make it out of this predicament, but then the part gets split for a while, having encounters both dangerous and at times a bit farcical before coming together again. The characters are not particularly heroic, though they are competent enough to do this job--if not in a particularly elegant way.

Obviously not completely serious, but not a lampoon either, Sievert shows up the gaming dungeoncrawl as it generally is, not how D&D fiction (or some adventure designers) would like it to be. Check it out.It's free to read!

Strange Stars Reviews

I couple of Strange Stars reviews went up this week. One for the OSR Gamebook and the other for the sourcebook. Both of there are by that reviewing machine Endzeitgeist. Also, here's a review I recently discovered from back in 2015. Any news you haven't heard is still news!

Arriving on Gathox

In the short time I've been a member of the Hydra Cooperative, there have been a few products we didn't get to publish that we would have loved to do. Gathox the Vertical Slum was one of those that got away. It landed with Mike Evans DIY Games, who Youwasted no time getting it out, so now everybody can see the wonderful and weird products of David Lewis Johnson's imagination.

You may know Dave as a talented visual artist whose work has graced a number of small press publications--including my very own Strange Stars. The same creativity so on display in his visual work informs Gathox, which I will thumbnail for you as a locale like something you might have seen in the halcyon days of Heavy Metal magazine. More specifically, Gathox is a world-shambling giant with a ramshackle, multiethnic (and multi-species) city built on top of and in him. Dave spends over a 130 pages outlining the locations, people, and races of Gathox, plus he provides variant rules he uses in his campaign. 

To give an idea of the tone, let's take the Gongwarped Fishmen, one of the races/cultures thumbnailed in the book. They are fascist-fishheaded beings, who live underground and practice secret and forbidden pseudoscience. Even worse are the species-supremacist, chicken people called Vulzari who reproduce by transforming others into more of their kind. See what I mean about Heavy Metal?

The supplement goes on to outline locations in the city and interesting NPCs. There are pretty short and punchy: more detailed than the original Wilderlands of High Fantasy, but with an economy of words not found in the a lot of modern, major publisher books.

Next comes the section on house rules, which is substantial. Variant classes are given that again convey the flavor of the setting like cosmic doctors (Nne of several types of magic-users, or more precisely "mentalists.") and mutants (Complete with random mutant tables!). A simple skill system is introduced in the form of "wheelhouses" and there are new rules for health and healing. Gathoxian equipment is discussed--and in many cases illustrated. Finally the subgame of "gangland play" is introduced that does similar things in a loose way to some of Blades in the Dark's gang rules but with a thoroughly old school implementation.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, you should pick this up, because I'm only scratching the surface here. The only fault I can find with it (and it's a small one) is that it could have used more of Dave's art! Yes, there is a lot of it here, but their were some spaces in the layout that practically begged for more.

Anyway, you can get it on rpgnow. So go get it already!

Azurth Adventures Digest Review

Over at Enworld Chris Helton has a review of the Azurth Adventure Digest. Check it out if your still on the fence about purchasing it. You might want to hurry, though, I have less than 30 copies of the print copy left in this printing.

Mortzengersturm Review on Gnome Stew

John Arcadian at Gnome Stew has a positive review of Mortzengersturm up today.

Here's a shipping update on the original batch of print copy orders: All U.S. orders here shipped as of Tuesday. The last two foreign orders I plan to put in the mail today.

Kreature Kompendium

Threat N Ink Issue #7 Kreature Kompendium is a zine-size monster book compiled by Jethro D. Wall available via mail order here. It's for old school D&D mostly, but the stat blocks are variable and haphazard, and the mechanical description of special abilities nonexistent. In other words, if you're looking for a meticulously table-ready collection of creatures with novel mechanics, this isn't that book.

This, instead, is one of the inspiration fodder monster books, where the mechanical details come second to having something really interesting conceptually to throw at players. The Kreature Kompendium reminds me a lot of goofy fun bestiaries of old, like the monster book of the Field Guide to Encounters, but at times it has a more modern and knowing absurdist streak like something from the literary New Weird.

In the former category I'd put the Blignag Cocksparrer which we are told "prefer to ride sweet Nash skateboards into battle" although some "have looted BMXs from human victims or received them as gifts from relatives for Christmas." In the latter category is something like The Painting that Paints Itself and the associated random table to determine the PCs reaction.

As those descriptions might indicate, the monsters are a varied lot, other than they are all what you would call "nonstandard." A couple of my favorites: The Charming Tongued Snuggler that thinks it's the Snaggle Toothed Charmer, but its poor understanding of human frailty causing it to suffocate humans with its tongue while trying to drink their blood; and the Destroyer Bitch Goddess whose special attack generates a time loop where that attack is repeated 666d100 times.

It's a lot of fun. The artwork by various artists is evocative, sometimes crude, and always not the sort of thing that would be used in a modern, corporate monster compendium--which is exactly from what you want from a book like this.

If the above sounds interesting, then you should definitely check it out.

Strange Stars Video Review

For those few of you who read this blog and still haven't bought Strange Stars (and we know who you are), check out this video review by Questing Beast:

Mortzengersturm Reviews

A couple of reviews for Mortzengersturm, The Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak have come out, and they have not escaped the notice of the manticore wizard himself:

Jack Shear over at Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque
Gus L at Dungeon of Signs

Strange Stars Review Roundup

GusL over at the Dungeon of Signs wrote a thorough review of Strange Stars OSR yesterday that you should read if you haven't. You should also stay to check out Gus's blog because he does good stuff outside the bounds of bog standard Medieval fantasy.

I also ran across a couple of old reviews for Strange Stars that I hadn't seen before. They might be new to you, to:

Andy Slack's review at Halfway Station
A video review from Red Dice Diaries

You Fate guys need to to get the people some Strange Stars Fate reviews!

Doctor Strange

First a warning: There maybe be some mild spoilers for the latest installment in the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" in what follows.

I have to admit, that as excited I was that there was going to be a Doctor Strange movie when it was first announced, I have not had much enthusiasm passed on the teasers and early trailers. Some of the that might have been me just tiring of Marvel's house style, but for whatever reason, I was underwhelmed.

The actual film wound up being better than I had expected. The design aesthetic of Marvel's films when it comes to the really fantastic non-superhero elements (Asgard in particular, but also some parts of Guardians of the Galaxy) has always left me cold. Also, the relentless desire to de-mystify or over-rationalize all the magical elements of the Marvel Universe works passably with some things (like the Darkhold on Agents of SHIELD) but hollowed out the grandeur of Kirby's sci-fi Norse mythology from Thor.

Happily, Doctor Strange is not particularly de-mystified. (The Ancient One offers an explanation of magic similar to one of the options Kenneth Hite provided Rough Magicks.) In fact, they really play up the (unintended presumably) psychedelia of the Ditko-era stories, though they convert it to a more filmic approach. There are resonances with both 2001 and Afronosky's The Fountain.

How the magic is employed winds up being a bit like a combination of The Matrix, Inception, and previous superhero films. I like how they moved away from strictly super-powers, and you could see how they were reaching for Ditko and perhaps Starlin with some of it. The spells as mostly sputtering sparks drawn in the air didn't quite suit me, though I don't have a ready alternative in mind. It all worked passably.

The plot is a means to an end. The similarities to Inception and The Matrix at times made its mere adequacy more evident, but when you're a vehicle for elaboration of a shared universe, you don't have to shoulder so much weight yourself, I suppose. All the cast does a pretty good job with what they are given. Tilda Swinton, despite expressly being "Celtic," does the movements, stances, and cryptic comments of the "Asian Master" almost as much as Joel Grey in Remo Williams without the obivous yellowface, so I'm not sure not casting an non-Asian actor as the Ancient One really allowed us to avert all those stereotypes. Still, I liked her protrayal.

The Marvel fan in me exulted to see the Dread Dormammu (Though I was underwhelmed by his dread "we didn't think about this very much" CGI-ness. He was of the ilk of Parallax in the Green Lantern film or "The Absorbing Man" in Ang Lee's Hulk). Further fannishness: Instead of having Mikkelsen's baddie be named for a mook that worked for Baron Mordo in the comic, why not have him be Kaluu, the Ancient One's rival?

Civil War

Captain America: Civil War (or as my friend Matt Penn insists it must be called "The War of Superhero Aggression") manages to transmogrify the 2006 crossover even that made me virtually stop reading Marvel into an entertaining film, though it is inferior to its predecessor, Winter Soldier.

Civil War plays with interesting thematic elements: individual freedom vs. control, dealing with consequences of well-intended acts, the destructiveness of vengeance, Iron Man vs. Captain America (ok, not a theme)--but mostly it's about superheroes wailing on each other, and it doesn't think a whole lot about what it has to do to get there. So we get an unelected monarchy lecturing the Avengers about accountability after a handful of civilians die when the Avengers prevent the release of a toxin into the city of Lagos that would have killed who knows how many, and the U.S. secretary of state rushes headlong into putting American superheroes (several of whom were super-secret agents of the U.S. government just a film ago) into the hands some sort of UN committee.

Now, even if all that can be made since of with the pat "the Marvel Universe is different from our own," we also get former soldier Captain America being the staunch "we can't be under someone else's control!" guy, which for most of the translates as "my friends shouldn't have to face consequences for their actions!" The film has to have those who oppose him behave stupidly and heavy-handedly to make his position justified.

The villain in the film seems to have accounted for all these things, because his plan hinges entirely on people performing very specific actions that there's no way of knowing they would do. He and Batman vs. Superman's Lex Luthor must have take the same super-villain prognostication classes.

All this, though, is in service of a superhero punch 'em up, which is a sight to behold. We get all of Marvel's crew and sees some great tricks pulled out including one big reveal I won't spoil, but also the classic bit of Ant-Man riding Hawkeye's arrow. This battle is probably the best done multiple characters battle in a supers film-- it beats any of the X-men films in that regard, I think.

We also get the intros of Black Panther and Spider-Man. I'm ready for that Black Panther film now. This Spider-Man is probably my 3rd favorite cinematic portrayal (though I have no doubt there are many places where Marvel Cinematic Universe adherents are proclaiming he's finally "done right" now that he's in the "Universe.") but I don't blame the actor as much as the writing and the use he's put to in the film.

All in all, it's a solid superhero film. I'd put it above Age of Ultron.

Superman v. Batman is Just Ok, But It Made Me Hopeful for Justice League

I saw Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice last night, and while I don't agree with the degree of negativity in a large portion of the reviews (some of which I suspect were at least partially composed before the movie even came out, given the hate it got and Zack Snyder gets in some quarters), a lot of the specific criticisms aren't without merit. The movie tries to do a lot and at times making this particular movie good in this particular moment seems to take a backseat to setting the dominoes in place for later scenes or future films.

The good: It's generally shot well and well-acted. Ben Affleck is both a good Bruce Wayne and a good Batman. The fight scenes in general are good, but particularly in the area of "Batman vs. normal folks" which have suffered in previous Bat films. Amy Adams as Lois Lane (though she doesn't have as much to do as I would like). Lawrence Fishburne as Perry White. The rationale and structure for how the Justice League sequels are established. The fact that Gotham and Metropolis are across a bay from each other (as suggested by numerous Silver and Bronze Age comics). The result of the battle with Doomsday (which I would not have done but is an interesting way to move forward). And Wonder Woman--pretty much everything to do with her:

The not good: The choppy nature of the first half of the film; I realize "show don't tell," but showing too much makes your film a series of vignettes. Some of that could have been handled as exposition. Batman is far from the world's greatest detective here. Luthor has a nicely set up super-villain ridiculous plan (I mean that to be complimentary) in many ways, but his final push that makes Batman go into a reason-abandoning, anti-Superman frenzy is elementary school level subterfuge. Superman standing or floating majestically instead of--well, doing something--too many times; I realize less-active-Superman is a tactic other media has often engaged in to deal with his power level (even in the DC animated stuff, Superman moves awful slooowwww at times for a guy with super-speed and super-reflexes), but it just makes you mad at him. Here his passive broodiness is suppose to convey emotional conflictedness (I guess), but they didn't sell you on that with dialogue. Lex is sometimes perfect in his manic-ness and other times overdone; my biggest complaint regarding him is that no one in story comments on his clearly mentally ill behavior until he reveals his villainous plan.

A Weird Adventures Review

It's been a long time since we had one of these, but Corey Ryan Walden has done a review of Weird Adventures on his blog. Check out his other reviews, as well!

Time Keeps on Slippin' Into the Future

Art by Brian Despain

While I'm celebrating passing another 0.03155 Gs on planet Earth today, I'm looking forward to further updates from Con of the North where John Till, Jay over at Exonauts, and others have played a couple of sessions of Fate Strange Stars. They've been teasing a few pics, but the whole report is still pending.

If your a reader here and still on the fence about buying Strange Stars (surely there must be somebody) you might want to check out a couple of reviews from last week: here and a mini-review here.

5e DMG First Impressions

I just picked up the Dungeon Master's Guide from the local gaming store last night (paying twice as much as I would have paid on Amazon, but the twin desires to support local business and have it right then won out), so I have had a chance to get into it any any detail, but on an initial flip-through, a few things are apparent:

• The contents are nice in the abstract, but their development isn't quite what I would have liked in several places. It's all well and good to say you can give XP for things other than killing monsters, but more robust guidelines would have been nice. Likewise with new race creation, since the races in the PHB seem to be built with some ideas of balance in mind, more specific guidelines would have been nice. I don't need a book to tell me I can make up stuff beyond what's in the book--but I'm probably not the audience for that sort of advice.
• In contrast to the race creation "rules," the monster creation stuff seems to be well done and reasonably detailed without going overboard.
• I like the sections on playing D&D in different genres of fantasy, but neither the genres nor the audience is served by having all of the examples be from D&D tie-in novels. I'm not against including those for commercial reasons, but having those be the only ones given seems a bit crass.
• I like the number of variety of variant rules, though I don't know that I'll use any of them.

Smaug and his Desolation in 48 fps and 3-D

I saw The Hobbit II: The Legend of Smaug's Gold this weekend (in faux-IMAX, high frame frate, and 3-D for the full Jackson). There are no doubt a number of negative reviews out there and a number of positive ones, so you can mix and match or pick what goes with your preconceptions. Rather than trying to persuade you one way or another from an overall perspective, I'll just say: 1) it is not (as you're already aware if you saw the first one) Tolkein's Hobbit, particularly; and 2) it's got  swashbuckling action set-pieces in the Pirates of the Caribbean or Lone Ranger (2013) vein.

That out of the way, I'm going to talk about things I like about the movie that might be worth stealing for gaming.

Overall, Mirkwood and the fortress of the wood elves made me wish that Guillermo del Toro had directed, as I think he would have given them both a fairy tale-ish feel that would have been visual interesting and perhaps more in keeping with the book. However, Lee Pace's haughty and fay King Thranduil is pretty much spot on. There's a part where he let's his glamour slip and allows Thorin to see the scars he bears from fighting a dragon that does evoke elves of fairy tales or legendry that was a really good bit.

My another nice bit was Laketown. It evokes a very different feel from the Laketown of the book, but it's given a look sort of like a ramshackle Medieval Russian version of Venice. It's people are multi-ethnic and have clothing styles mixing the vaugely slavic, Tibetian, and even a bit of Mongol thrown in, but blended pretty well. It's Master is a rather Terry Gilliam-esque bumbling noble, equipped with a suitable obsequious assistant. The coldness, squalor, and police state ubiquitous informer culture the Master oversees, seems to be meant to evoke Soviet era Russia. The whole evoke is utterly un-Tolkeinian, but very interesting as a potential gaming locale.

After all of that, the movie finally arrives at Lonely Mountain and a solitary dragon. Smaug is menacingly portrayed (vocally) by Benedict Cumberbatch. The cgi design is nice, too; there's a little bit of Dragonslayer there, I think. Smaug's treasure horde is ridiculously large. There most be no more gold in all of Middle-Earth. As Dunsany would say: "Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it." The encounter with Smaug in this treasure den does remind one how frightening dragons ought to be, something that has been lost a bit with their perfunctory appearance in fantasy games.

Desolation of Smaug isn't a book brought to life or even a great achievement in cinema, but there are things is in it to like and nice details to appreciate.

Another Review

If you're still sitting on the fence about picking up Weird Adventures (and I'm sure there's still somebody), check out a new review over at the excellent blog Daddy Rolled a 1.

Stay a while and look through Martin's other interesting posts, as well.

The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises ends Christopher Nolans Batman trilogy and presents the most coherent story arc in a series of superhero films so far.  While the Marvel and previous DC efforts have mostly been isolated adventures with a few through lines, Nolan and his collaborators have crafted something a bit more novelistic.  This culmination of the trilogy reaps the harvest of seeds sown way back in Batman Begins and (if perhaps only in a subtle and incomplete way) challenges the very notion that “being the superhero” is actually the best thing the protagonist could be doing with his life.

TDKR begins by dealing with the consequences of the previous film.  The ending of The Dark Knight, I had interpreted as just a set-up for further adventure, but instead has led to a Gotham with increased police powers and no need for Batman.  This victory is hollow for its two architects (Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne) because it’s based on a lie.

They don’t have to fret too long about that though, because (as Selena “Catwoman” Kyle) quips to Bruce: “a storm is coming.”  That would be a bulked up Tom Hardy as Bane: a bruiser with a needlessly complicated plan and a weird (but engaging, to me at least) mechanically altered voice.  Pretty soon, the Dark Knight returns, but only to face a beat down at Bane’s hands and a Knightfall. Then, Bane isolates Gotham and makes it a No Man’s Land, that the U.S. government fears to intrude on.

TDKR weaves a lot of elements from various Batman storylines (more than I’ve mentioned above) into a coherent enough for a superhero film whole. There are Nolan twists along the way that are not really surprising if one knows the comic sources, but are still dramatically satisfying.  The only quibble with one of them is that Batman’s world’s greatest detective skills are hardly in evidence.

The film isn't without problems.  The villain’s plot is pretty convoluted and has some logic flaws,which may bug some people. It is a looonngg movie, and there are some things that could have been trimmed.  The Bale scratchy Bat-voice is still in evidence--though I’ve gotten use to it after three films.

It doesn’t offer the “fun” of the Avengers or The Amazing Spider-Man, and it probably isn’t as genre expanding as the film proceeding it, but TDKR delivers on the promise of The Dark Knight by giving a dramatically solid payoff to that film and a strong ending to the series.

If You're Just Joining Us

Art by Adam Moore

I'm still on vacation, but I noticed I picked up a couple of followers in the last few days and got a nice review over at Grognardia, so for new visitors I figured I'd point you to where you can get more information on Weird Adventures or the City.

Here's the link to an index of Weird Adventures related posts.  I haven't indexed all the back catalog, though, so it's worth perusing the previous posts.

I've got a Google+ game going in the City, though it's on vacation, as well, at the moment.  We've been using Lorefinder (Pathfinder/GUMSHOE mashup).  You can read about the whole weird affair beginning here. The first teaser post for their next mystery is here.

If you want another Weird Adventures review, the Gibbering Mouther has written a recent (and cogent) one here.

Regular programming will resume soon.  Stay tuned.

John Carter and a Princess of Mars

...Should have been the title of Disney's new film other than just John Carter.  I saw the film last night and recommend it.  It is good exactly in the way sci-fi spectacle adventure films generally are; in other words, its entertaining, but not something you're going to go see for sparkling dialog or deep characters.  If you've read the books, you'll like it.  If you haven't, but you enjoy the aforementioned sort of film, you probably will, too.

The film takes Burroughs's more rambling (if such a short novel can ramble) and episodic novel and weaves it into a more linear plot, which is largely to the good.  Likewise, the script-writers update of Dejah Thoris to an action and science heroine is well done.  She winds up definitely being the "smart one" in her relationship with Carter.  The Green Men (a term never used in the film; they only refer to themselves by their tribes, leading many reviewers to think they're race is called "Tharks") are pretty well-realized and surprisingly true to the books in terms of culture without the film be exposition-heavy (in this regard).

There are a lot of thinks I would have liked to see done different.  The opening prologue/introduction with convoluted layers of narrative, is the clunkiest part of the film.  It winds up having a flashback within a flashback/framing sequence.  They could have gotten all those elements in, but streamlined it.  Dialogue could always be a bit punchier in these sorts of things, and the mean of some terms could have been better conveyed to the uninitiated.  While the costume design or the design for the Green Men aren't exactly what I would have wanted, they turn out okay, and are really just different choices.  The design of the Martian cities, though, seems to be a bit of a misstep as it's rather plain and block, and exhibits no particular sense of wonder. Faithful woola hit the right notes, but the comedy doggishness of the character could have been dialed back from "11" to a "8-9."

Still, some of my quibbles can reasonably be seen as those of a fan who would never be completely happy with any adaptation.  My main point is, if your on the fence because of the negative press, you shouldn't be.