Army of the Dead and "The Job Gone Wrong" Adventure

I watched Army of the Dead on Netflix this weekend and thought it was pretty enjoyable. Briefly, it's the story of an eclectic group hired to get $200 million in cash out of a Vegas casino vault. The catch being Las Vegas is walled off after having been overrun by zombies, and the government plans to destroy the city with a tactical nuclear weapon in just a few days.

As a combination of a heist film and a zombie movie, it's heist aspect is probably most compelling. There is only mild inventiveness in its zombie aspects, consisting mostly of making that like the "vampires" in I Am Legend--and I don't mean "bad CGI" but instead fast, strong, and able to work in a group. As a heist film, it is less a caper film like Ocean's 11 or Kelly's Heroes, and more a "job goes wrong" film like Reservoir Dogs or Dead Presidents. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's not the first horror film or thriller with larcenous job and a group of competent professionals at its center.

Anyway, I think this sort of set up would make a good roleplaying game adventure, at least for a con game or one shot. A con game or one shot, because there's a very good chance that all the characters (or most) aren't going to make it out a live, so why plan for a future unlikely to happen?

In a con game, you could seed the pregens with hidden motivations that would goad them into derailing the mission, though I suppose you could let the player's make up the characters and just have a random secret motive table.

I think it could be a lot of fun with the right group.

The Monks of Gith

The city of Gith is dead and fallen, save for the walled monastery. The looming ziggurat at its center can be seen from some distance across the desert and surely accounts for most of the city's visitors. Some have come in wonder, having heard the tales that the ziggurat was built atop the grave of a vessel fallen from the void beyond. 

There are two people consumed by old hatreds and locked in an unending feud who claim the city and what is buried beneath as their birthright. Those left at Gith, built the monastery and devoted themselves to asceticism and contemplation. Those who went to dwell in the deep desert, became nomads and raiders.

The Gittite monks and nuns, who call themselves as a people yehirai, are ascetics and contemplative in their rites, it is true, but also seek to hone their bodies through martial arts.  They live off bland fare grown in underground gardens, perhaps within the buried vessel. They supplement their simple diets with a powder, invigorating to the mind and body, made from the ashes of their dead.

After the water has been reclaimed, the desiccated corpses of their folk are placed top the ziggurat and pipes are sounded to summon swarms of carrion insects for excarnation. The bones, save only the skulls which are stored in a subterranean ossuary, are then processed for the good of the community. 

Weird Revisited: In the Vicinity of the Unthran Wood

The tents of the traveling Carnival Mirabilis are set up on the outskirts of Worroth town. Its owner, Slytus Ompt (known to authorities in various jurisdictions as Feldsphur Zwand and Archim Greff) purveys the usual shabby wonders: ailing chimerical beasts in cramped cages and faded eidolons from damaged ieldra crystals—but he also boasts a free plasmoid duelist who will engage in a nonlethal prizefight with any takers. The plasmoid (its name is a gurgling something like Gwoothl Ploorl) is a thane of a subterranean freehold captured by Ompt and drugged with injections of thrall slime so that it is too weak-willed to escape, though it yearns to be free. It will promise to reveal the location of underground treasures undercovered by its coalescence for aid in making its escape.

by Wayne Barlowe

A roadside shrine draws more pilgrims than might be expected due to its living statue of the Trell mystic, Agakamunath who is said to have physical ascended to a higher plane from that very spot. The full-size statue depicts the giant at the time of Schizopurgation, wherein he split from the primal chaos burdening his soul. Nonbelievers are more fascinated by the artifice of the  Hohmmkhudhuk craftsmen--and the persistent legend that the motions of the statue's limbs in the performance of the mystery provide a clue as to the location of the sky castle Agakamunath also renounced and its treasures.

Half-ruined Maggot Tower, deep in the forest, is avoided by most folk, and not merely because its rugose and twisted spire appears unpleasantly like its namesake. The tower is a relic of the power of a rogue ieldri queen with an abiding hatred of humans. The tortures she inflicted on captives and the sacrifices to dark gods are said to have left her tower haunted. Some seekers after the magical secrets of the ieldra and willing to risk phantom horrors for power.

These locales are in the same world as these two posts.

Wednesday Comics: DC, July 1980 (part 2)

My mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around April 24, 1980.

Action Comics #509: A group of kooks garner media attention for their claims space travel is fake news and Superman is a big liar for claiming he's an alien. The twist: the kooks are actually aliens who have hypnotized themselves into forgetting their nature as self-protection. Clever plot by Bates, but no real action.

Adventure Comics #473: More Plastic Man and Starman! I have to say, it's a struggle to read this one every other week. I'm just not in to either of these.

Brave & the Bold #164: A Hawkman/Batman team-up by DeMatteis and Garcia-Lopez. It looks good, but the story about extradimensional aliens didn't really grab me, possibly because my copy is missing half a page of crucial exposition near the end.

Detective Comics #492: Burkett and Newton resolve the Batgirl story from last issue in a team-up with Batman. Mostly it's a story of Batgirl re-dedicating herself to crimefighting, which is a nice resolution to the uncertainty she seems to have been feeling since losing re-election. It's weird that her father who also happens to be a cop, seems to really want her to risk her life as a costumed vigilante. We get a somewhat charming slice of Gotham life with a heroic bridge painter in a story by Haney and Oskner. Then there's a unmemorable Man-Bat tale by Rozakis and Tanghal. The issue ends with another Robin at college story, but the Penguin's in the this one.

Green Lantern #130: I've read this issue before, and the lead story by Rozakis and Staton involving shenanigans in Modora with the villain Sonar isn't bad, but the backup Tales of the Green Lantern Corp strip by Toomey and Saviuk, "The Trial of Arkkis Chummuck" is great! Chummuck becomes a Green Lantern after killing--and eating--his predecessor, and some Lanterns are unhappy about it. 

House of Mystery #282: Several issues this month have the comics equivalent of an infomercial brought to you by Tandy's TRS-80, where the "Computer Whiz Kids" somehow help Superman defeat Major Disaster. It was written by Bates and drawn by Starlin. Anyway, in the comparatively less horrifying House of Mystery, de Matteis and Talaoc deliver a tale with an EC level of twists about a writer who's secretly a vampire pursuing a lover's lane serial killer who murdered his wife, then killing himself when he realizes the monster he's become. Then there's a very silly story about a guy who has his near-death body shot in to space because he's creeped out by the idea of cremation or burial, but he winds up burning up in re-entry. The last story involves a wealthy businessman who makes a deal with the devil for the sun never to set in his town for no good reason. The townsfolk murder her to get the sun to go down, thus forfeiting their souls too--and making it eternally night.

Legion of Super-Heroes #265: Conway/de Matteis and Janes/Hunt have Dawnstar and Shadow Lass (the other people of color on the Legion) wind up in Tyroc's Brigadoon-esque island homeland of Marzal. Marzal's origin is revealed (or repeated), and the ladies go home, so it all seems contrived to write Tyroc out of the book. Nice Dick Giordano cover.

New Adventures of Superboy #7: Some aliens trick Superboy into coming to their world, where he natural absorbs radiation that would harm the alien populace. But if Superboy leaves to go home, the return of the heavy radiation will kill them. Luckily, an comment by Ma Kent suggests Kryptonite is the solution to Superboy's dilemma. 

Sgt. Rock #342: Kanigher phones this one in. I'm not fond of it for two reasons. One, it posits Sgt. Rock as some sort of celebrity that would get interviewed: "the sargeant generals want to be." Two, it is based on members of Easy Company telling stories of "six different sides" of Rock, but all of them are really just he's a badass who's a good leader. It's just the one side!

Super Friends #34: This is like an all alien creature issue. The lead story has the Justice League trying to capture this lamb-tofu-squid hybrid looking thing which I assume is suppose to be cute but gets creepier the more you think about what it would look like if it was real and not drawn by Fradon. The backup involves the Wonder Twins, crooks, and a Kryptonian metal-eater.

Unexpected #200: Johnny Peril is back, having not appeared since 1969, courtesy of Barr and Tuska. Peril (at least in this story) in skeptical of the supernatural, and it turns out here he's right. The supposed supernatural disappearance of a wealth man, is really due to the actions of an extradimensional alien. In the next story by Kashdan and Abel, a young witch falls for a guy she's suppose to seduce and kill for her coven. In the final story, DeMatteis and Patricio take us to Summer Camp where a campfire monster story turns out to be true--despite being completely made up.

Unknown Soldier #241: Haney and Ayers send our hero to a Greek Island to find a German listening station and call in allied bombers. The problem is, the German's have built it under an ancient Greek oracle, that the folk of the island are still very much into. The Soldier comes up with a clever solution, then tricks a kid who helped him into believe the oracle said his father would definitely be coming home, which seems like it could set the kid up for disappointment, but oh well.

Untold Legend of Batman #1: This story by Wein and Byrne and Aparo is basically an excuse to tell the definitive Bronze Age origin of Batman--which really has a lot more to it than the modern version (or at least the last modern version I read). It covers the origin of the bat costume with Thomas Wayne's costume party outfit, and the fate of Joe Chill and Lew Moxon. All of these things were Golden Age stories, but I wonder if they had appeared since that time before this?

Warlord #35: Read more about it here. 

Weird Western Tales #69: We find Scalphunter still in Pennsylvania, serving as a scout for a Union Army company. He befriends a young soldier who turns out to be a woman in disguise. The story ends on a cliffhanger as her identity is revealed by a sadistic sargeant after a fight with Scalphunter.

Sentinel Comics RPG Session 4: "The Heart of Darkness"

Roll Call:

Blur: Amnesiac Speedster!

Fibbit: Manic Pixie Extradimensional Dream Girl!

Infranaut: IR-Powered Celebrity Hero!

Il Masso: The Rock-Solid Hero of Little Italy!

Supporting Characters: Moonshadow

Villains: Dark Duplicates (Mindfire, Warhead, Sub-Zero, Talon, Robrute); The Void Crystal, Silver Orb, Gold Orb.

Synopsis: Our heroes enter combat with the five villains, and after a couple of exchanges to gauge their powers, find them surprisingly easy to defeat. Moonshadow, via psychic link, tells them that these are merely "dark energy shadows" of a group of young heroes from alternate futures: The Legion of Alternity. She believes their presence here means they have been captured by Anachronus.

With the duplicates defeated, the group sets out to find the location of the evil energy with the Never. Fibit manages to locate but also draws strange, translucent wasp creatures to them. Their presence shakes our heroes resolve but doesn't cause any real damage. They also have to face dark duplicates of Talon and Sub-Zero again, before they reach their destination: A sinisterly pulsing crystal in which they see scenes of other times, perhaps other worlds. Flying around it are gold and silver orbs that attack the heroes.

The team is confronted with their most difficult battle so far. All of the duplicates are recreated, and they quickly re-appear when destroyed. The orbs work against them and protect the crystal. Il Masso shatters the gold orb and Fibit twice creates duplicates of her own to make attacks on all the dark duplicates. Eventually, Infranaut makes a massive attack that shatters the weakened crystal and destroys the silver orb.

My Less Popular Setting Ideas

 Not ever post is a winner, particularly in these days where blog-reading is at an ebb, but some ideas seem to garner more approval than others. It's not uncommon for a single, dashed off post not to attract an attention, but occasionally there are ideas I write multiple posts on that just don't seem to make what readers I have here and on other social media as enthusiastic as they make me. Admittedly, none of these I've actually tried to play, so maybe they just don't have what it takes despite my blogging interest in them. Anyway, here are three of them:

Scavengers of the Latter Days

Far future, rationalized ("hard"). science fantasy. I've written several posts on various permutations of this. The comments often suggest this appeals to me more than it does others. In fact, after my various riffs on uses of the the Great Wheel, this may be the D&D idea that seems to appeal to my readers the least. 

Planet of the Elves

Here, maybe it's about the presentation. I got a bit more positive reception when I presented the same idea but de-emphasized the post-apocalyptic nature and didn't mention elves in the name (and to be fair, the initial post garnered better comment than I remembered on the blog). Anyway, this is Ploog/Bakshi/Wood sort of stoner, fairytale fantasy.

Ways & Sigils

Ok, this one is admittedly a bit weird because it is really a science fiction or science fantasy thing, that just happens to borrow some elements from some classic D&D settings. Anyway, the idea is that in the future, essentially the Great Wheel is discovered via hyperspace, so it's a bit sci-fi Spelljammer+Planescape. I wrote a follow-up post, then sort of did a slightly different version of the same idea later.

Wednesday Comics: DC, July 1980 (part 1)

I'm continuing my read through of DC Comics output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis. This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around April 10, 1980.

All-Out War #6: Kanigher and Evans pull an unexpected Buck Rogers (original version) riff, with Viking Commando transported briefly to a post-apocalyptic future with Yellow Peril Asians who revere Hitler trying to kill a girl with an outfit like Shakira in Warlord. After that, there's a really grounded story of the Seabees. Black Eagle and crew take on a submarine. A WWI doughboy runs away to hide in a cave for years, but comes out to kill some approaching Germans in WWII. The best story here is the Force 3 yarn. It's not Grandenetti's best art on the strip, but istory-wise it feels like a capstone, with brief origins presented for the three--and then they get to kill Hitler! And this story is a capstone, given this is the final issue of All-Out War and the last appearance to date of Force 3 and Black Eagle.

Batman #325: There's a fill-in writer, Roger McKenzie, but weirdly they let him tie up the storyline with the challenge to Gordon's leadership of the GCPD. The title page suggests Batman is trying to kill Gordon, but in Silver Age style, it's a lie. It is actually a scene from the story, though, which is a bit unusual. Not a bad issue, but nothing notable.

DC Comics Presents #23: This one has a lot going on, which is par for the course for Superman titles in this era. O'Neil and Staton set up Dr. Fate as trying to find a cure for a generational curse that is turning his wife into a monster, but he needs the corpse of her ancestor, and that guy isn't in the grave. Meanwhile, on Earth-1, a physics experiment brings a flying pirate galleon from the past of Earth-2 to Earth-1--with Inza'a ancestor as captain. Superman discovers an imp with a grudge against the pirate is involved. Dr. Fate arrives in time to wrap it all up.

Flash #28: Another pretty good one from Bates and Heck. Doctor Alchemy is back, despite Al Desmond's supposed reform. Has Barry Allen's friend reverted to his criminal ways?

Ghosts #90: This issue is weaker than most (and that's saying something), or maybe it only feels that way because the cover story "Phantom of the Disco" doesn't really do much with that intriguing title. The Kashdan/Nicholas yarn has a murderous heroin addict hiding from the cops in a disco, but the ghost of the girlfriend he killed makes him reveal himself to the police. The lead story has a weird, elemental monster and a cursed ship captain, but no actual ghost. The middle story is one of the standard "a ghost can't hurt a person but can make them do something stupid" tales. It's sort of a staple for this comic.

Jonah Hex #34: I like Spiegle's art, but he definitely isn't the definitive Jonah Hex artist. The scar doesn't quite work. He does make him look a bit like Josh Holloway, which is interesting. Anyway, this story--about a gang after gold in a hidden valley sacred to the Cree--is pretty good, if fairly standard stuff.

Justice League of America #176: Conway doesn't beat around the bush. This issue starts with the whole JLA busting in on the Satin Satan's sanctum to rescue Firestorm. The final battle occurs at a roller disco called Hell on Wheels. There's the suggestion that the Satin Satan was possessed by the a demon, but the last panel casts doubt on that. We never find out, because this is her last appearance, which is too bad.

Secrets of Haunted House #26: The cover story is a EC riff by J.M. DeMatteis and Nicholas and Gil about a boy with an imaginary friend and a horrible foster family. Spoiler: the friend's not imaginary and the foster family dies one by one. The other two stories are kind of dumb: A guy kills his twin for a heart transplant and dies in the same elevator shaft due to his brother's ghost, and a forcibly retired conductor gets to drive Merlin's toy train forever.

Superman #349: Pasko and Swan have Superman returning from a trip into space to a gender-switched Earth--and the various superfolks think he's a notorious criminal! Turns out it's all a trick by Mxyzptlk, which is telegraphed in a couple of clues early on. It's a nice story of the Superman type.

Superman Family #202: The jerk Supergirl is crushing on apparently isn't cured of being accidentally super-hypnotized by her into becoming a superhero. He causes all kinds of trouble until she can recreate the accident and un-super-hypnotize him. A Bridwell/Schaffenberger Mr. and Mrs. Superman tale reveals when the Earth-2 Superman first encountered Kryptonite, and how he found out about Krypton. Rozakis and Calnan give Clark Kent jury duty, where (on the sly) he helps one Angry Man convince the other jurors to acquit. Lois helps a ballerina to defect from Russia by impersonating her in a Conway scripted tale with nice art by Oksner and Colletta. In the final story, Jimmy Olsen gets rescued from criminals by a high school journalism student.

Weird War Tales #89: The cover to this issue has Nazi Gorillas. If you know Bronze Age comics, you will already have a suspicion the story doesn't live up to the cover. It doesn't, but Kashdan and Landgraf do give us gorillas. The best story this issue is a perhaps goofy but affecting tale by Kanigher and Rubeny about WWI soldiers rising from their battlefield graves to save their sons from dying at the same spot in WWII. Rubeny's mood and sometimes gruesome (for the Comics Code) art sells it.

Wonder Woman #269: Stressed out over all her recent life upheavals, Wonder Woman decides to pack it in and return to Paradise Island. There's she's got a giant monster to fight. I've read beyond this, so I know, but on the basis of this issue, I think you'd be hard-pressed to guess where Conway is going with all this.