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.

New SWN Backgrounds for Strange Stars

Work continues on the Stars Without Number/Old School Sci-Fi Game of your choice compatible version of Strange Stars (release date update, when I have good data to give you!) and heres an outtake: new character backgrounds.

Bureaucrat
Despite the ubiquity of nonsophont minds, there are still plenty of sophont middle managers, datapushers, administrators, and salarymen, in the ranks of government and corporations. Some of them get tired of jockeying a desk for substandard pay and give it up for something more exciting.
Skills: Bureaucracy, Culture/World, either Culture/Corporate or Profession/Legal, Steward

Businessperson
Small time entrepreneurs and up and coming junior executives exist on every civilized world. Sometimes they chafe against bureaucracy or make some bad decisions and decide to look for better markets.
Skills: Business, Culture/Any, Persuade, Steward

Data Prospector
There's a lot of valuable information buried in the depths of a planetary or system noospheres. Data prospectors mine the infospace for value. Sometimes they find things that make them decide to have a look at what's beyond their world for themselves.
Skills: Computer, Culture/Any, Perception, either Bureaucracy or Tech/Any

Entertainer
On every world, in every time, sophonts have wanted to be entertained. Many musicians, thespians, or courtesans, decide to become itinerants, seeing the galaxy as they make their living.
Skills: Art/Any Performing Art, Culture/Artist Subculture, Persuade, one other skill

Hacker
Everyone uses computers without even thinking about it, but hackers know the very soul of the networks. Some of them are criminals, some of them work to stop criminals. Either way, it can be easy to get on the wrong side of the wrong people and find it expedient to get out of the local jurisdiction.
Skills: Computer, either Bureaucracy, Culture/Corporate or Culture/Criminal, Persuade, Tech/Any but Astronautic, Maltech, or Medical

Journalist
News is everywhere and journalists are there to sift through the data and bring connection and context to their audience. Some get the idea to go gonzo and get in the stories themselves, while some others make enemies in places of power. Both sorts can be encountered among the Strange Stars.
Skills: Culture/Any, Perception, Persuade, and one other skill.

Law Enforcement
Beat cop, port authority security contractor, or corporate investigator, the law enforcer does a tough job, often for little reward. Is it any wonder some of them look for a way to put their skills to more lucrative use?
Skills: Combat/Any, Culture/World, Perception, Security

Medtech
Most actual medicine is before by expert systems and bots, but sophont beings usually like a friendly, sophont face on their healthcare. The medtech provides that. Occasionally, though they have an itch to really put their skills to use in situations where they can't rely on bots to do the real work.
Skills: Profession/Medical, Culture/World, Science, Tech/Medical

Psychtech
In an age of nanopsychotherapy to deal with serious mental illness, the "sophont touch" is still prized--particularly by the wealthy. An understanding of sophont psychology is a skill that has a lot of uses, though.
Skills: Culture/World,  Persuade, Profession/Mental Health, either Perception or Tech/Medical

Goblinic Slime

In the Land of Azurth, Goblins don't reproduce in the manner of humankind or humanish creatures, but instead they arise from pools of a viscious, green fluid, faintly luminescent in darkness. This fluid, which wells up from the depths beneath Subazurth, is called goblinic slime--or sometimes "goblin snot" in the vulgate of the Underfolk.

How many goblins and how fast they arise depends on available sources of energy and the volume of slime. Even a pool only a few inches dead and a couple of feet across, and in a cool, dark place can produce at least a few goblin larva. Deeper or larger pools, warmed by heat from the depths, can produce hundreds, even thousands. In ideal conditions, goblins wallow in their pools until virtually adult size, but where resources are scarce, they may crawl worth as tiny goblings only inches tall (1 HP) and are certainly a menace to others when their are a foot to two feet tall (2d4 HP).

Goblins are born sexless, but at apparent maturity (in terms of size), a slight majority develop male or female sexual characteristics, seemingly at random. While some goblins (regardless of sex) enthusiastically engage in sexual activity, reproduction never results.

There are rumors of remote places in Subazurth where slime pools are associated with strange machinery--hissing valves, wheezing pumps, gurgling pipes, and the like--attended by other goblins in great numbers. These are places the prudent avoid.

 Learned texts disagree on whether goblin slime is edible, if unappetizing [a Constitution save DC 15 is necessary to avoid vomiting] or toxic to the unwise ingester by means of internal goblinization. If the former sources are to be believed, slime causes a rumbling in the bowels and strange dreams, but also may confer the ability to understand the native goblinic tongue (40% chance) for 1d10 days. If the more pessimistic sources are take for true, at a failed DC 13 Constitution save, goblins will propagate inside the individual within 1d10 days leading to 2d4 points damage a day and a DC 11 Constitution save to avoid death as they try to emerge.

Giants of Azurth

The Giants of Azurth are a varied lot, not strictly fitting into Gygaxian categories. The giants in the country of Yanth are typically primitive and almost certainly not very bright, though they are not necessarily evil (though they're likely to be). This:

And this:

Would reflect your typical Yanth giant. There is some evidence that was not always the case and that in some remote time (maybe before Azurth became Azurth) there were floating cities of blue-skinned, giantish folk, who enjoyed a life of science fictional splendor as only mid-century America could correctly imagine. They looked something like this:

They all disappeared and their cloud cities are mostly abandoned, except perhaps for a few degenerate examples.

Beyond Yanth, in the countries of Sang and Virid, giants are often less human looking and more uniformly hostile--though still not exclusively. This would be a giant you might find in those lands:

What I Want Out of It

There was some discussion this week (instigated by this guy and this guy) about what the OSR was and what different playstyles were in an out with what crowd. It got me to thinking what I like in a game and what I like to have in games I run.

As a player--or more accurately, as a potential player--my tastes are pretty broad in fantasy. I can see the appeal of bleak "no one here gets out alive" horror fantasy but also absurdist/gonzo stuff and a lot in between.  I think in what I tend to enjoy most in play might be a bit more specific. I have something of a preference where the characters are roguish to one degree or another: Cabellian wags, Vancian scoundrels, Taratino-esque hoodlums--it's all good. Not that I am averse to more noble protagonists, but this is more the default. I'n fine with hearts of gold, beneath the tarnished exterior.

I like a rich world with clever bits in it. It does not have to be super-detailed or require deep knowledge like a Glorantha or a Tekumel. It doesn't have to be coherent or particularly realistic. It just needs to show some imagination and inpsire me to use my imagination within it.

I prefer city adventures or relatively brief explorations/excursions to long dungeoncrawls or gritty hexcrawls. This may be my most heretical opinion, but there it is. I'm not saying I don't like them at all--there are just other things I prefer.

I also like to roleplay a bit, and I like for the roleplaying moments to matter rather than outcomes being strictly decided by rolls. I want to hear my DM do some funny voices. I don't want to roleplay every single interaction, though. Some things can be narrated or elided.

I GM the sort of game I like as a player, though it may be that I like to run adventures for somewhat more heroic parties than I typically play in. I'll have to think more about that and see if that's actually the case.

My NPCs tend to run to comedy relief and I do funny voices (not always well). Whatever else is going on, this tends to lighten the mood so even what I initially conceive as horror doesn't come out quite as horrific at the table.

I tend to be fairly low mortality and unashamed. I'm not opposed to a character dying if they seem to have a deathwish and persist in an unwise course of action, but I never set out to kill them in my approach or in my design. Player's suffer complications and setbacks a plenty, not often mortal ones.

So that's me. How about you?

Unusual Denizens of the Land of Azurth

Only perhaps a little more unusual than many of Azurth's regular inhabitants, but still.

Art by Sveta Dorsheva

His Excellency the Ambassador from the Land Under the Sea (possibly the frox homeland) and his Kaleidotop hat, capable forming a tunnel to transporting him to his homeland and almost anywhere else.

One of the "daughters" (perhaps automata creations) of Father Time. She and her sisters hop comets to ride them to Earth. They can bend the flow of time in limited ways to suite their whims, but not so much their father notices.

Art by Edouard Guiton

An officer in the ranks of the windup soldiers invented by Mirabilis Lum to form his army. Few of these soldiers remain, and fewer still are in working order. They are highly sought by wealthy collectors of military memorabilia and more than a few would-be conquers hoping to build an army of their own based on Lum's genius designs.

Strange Stars Art Inspiration: Not All Retro

I wrote a post a few weeks ago for the Hydra Co-op Blog about the aesthetics of the Strange Stars. It led some one to ask if there were any more recent design stuff (post-80s) that influenced the look of the Strange Stars. There certainly are. Here are just a few:

Tron Legacy represents what I call the sort of  "iPod futurism" (clean lines, curves, white, chrome, etc.) that takes older ideas of futurism and gives them a consumerist sheen. This look definitely influences the Phantasists, but also creeps in elsewhere.

Art by Giorgio Baroni

Modern concept art design ideas for mecha, robots, and exoskeletons definitely play a part, though I didn't really dwell on gear in the setting book. Droid designs from the Clone Wars animated series figure in there, too.

Clothing isn't all retro, either. I particularly like modern takes space opera classics and the continued advances in the "lived-in future" aesthetic of Star Wars and Alien--particular in its more global/multi-cultural version. Travis Charest, Simon Roy in the comic Prophet. and films like Pitch Black, The Fifth Element. and Dredd do this in different ways.