Weird Revisited: The Conquered Setting

One of the dangers of writing a long-lasting blog, is that you sometimes can't remember what you wrote about versus what you just thought about writing. I wrote two posts on a "Conquered Setting"--one in 2020 and one over a year later in 2021--because I forgot I did it. Here's the first one again.

 

It's widely understood that the D&D is generically post-apocalyptic, but seldom is this fact exploited other than the existence of dungeons and treasures, or possibly some science fantasy stuff in old school games. I think more could be done with that idea.

Maybe the apocalypse involved conquest? This could have been a long time ago, explaining a decline in technology (if you wanted to have a decline in technology) or maybe some degree of pseudo-Medievalism is enforced by the conquerors. (This is the case in Divide And Rule by L. Spraque de Camp, and The Tripods series by John Christopher.) The technology level could be more mixed due to temporal proximity to the apocalyptic event like in Killraven (Thundarr appears to be close, though canonically it's been 2000 years!) Another possibility is a society that was not really that advanced when it got conquered, like Lord of the Rings if Sauron won or there was some sort of faerie apocalypse.

There are at least couple interesting elements to this sort of setup. One, is it would set up a world where humans weren't the dominant culture, which would be fairly novel for D&D. Too, it would provide background for PC adventures beyond just treasure hunting. Vance's Planet of Adventure would be instructive with this last part.

Wednesday Comics: DC, April 1982 (week 3)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around January 21, 1982.

Brave & the Bold #185: Kraar and Gonzales/DeCarlo throw Green Arrow into the mix. It's a fun pairing because, despite the characters' not dissimilar schticks, their personalities are very different. It almost has a bit of "buddy comedy" feel. Batman asks Green Arrow to play the role of Robin Hood during the party of a millionaire, and Ollie reluctantly agrees. The Penguin crashes the party--and who knew he had robots at his disposal? The portrayal here of Penguin's menace and competence isn't what I expected. 

Legion of Super-Heroes #286: Levitz and Broderick/Tanghal have the Legion enjoying some time off when Dr. Regulus shows up on R. J. Brande's private planetoid for a death match against Sun Boy. It takes more than Sun Boy to defeat Regulus and stop the destruction his sabotage will cause. Also, Brande tries to connect with his son, Chameleon Boy, but Cham takes the espionage squad off on a mission, apparently to avoid his dad. 

In the backup by Levitz and Giffen, Princess Projectra is crowned Queen of Orando after her father's death, but her cousin challenges and defeats both her and Karate Kid in a trial by combat for the crown.

Green Lantern #151: Wolfman and Staton detail Jordan's last 24 hours on Earth before his space exile. He's got a lot to do. He tells the Flash to tell the League he's going. He goes to Carol's house and winds up in another fight with Gold Face and his goons and defeats them. Gold Face reveals he's been working with Bloch. Jordan flies off, arriving just in time to save Carol and Bruce Gordon from Benjamin Bloch and his men. 

Green Lantern also arrives in the desert just in time to save Carl Ferris from Ted Bishop. Bishop manages to burn some of the papers than prove Bloch's guilt, though. Still, there's enough to exonerate Ferris even if it doesn't convict Bloch. Lastly, Jordan professes his love for Carol again and leaves.

House of Mystery #303: Here is the carnival story promised last issue. Jones and Sutton have Bennett infiltrating the show which is controlled by agents of the Blood Red Moon to stop their plans and rescue a woman. In the end, the woman is killed, and he appears to get a stake through the heart from Mary. Next up is a two-pager nonhorror thing by Wein and Spiegle about a primitive couple in a post-apocalyptic, swamp Los Angeles area.

"Hellride" by Mishkin/Cohn and Infante has a jack-o-lantern headed fiend riding after an outlaw biker, but the biker's skill wins out in the end. Jones and Tlaloc round out the issue with some EC-esque ridiculousness about a man with such a fear of bugs, he goes into pesticide synthesis to eradicate it. He marries a woman who is an insect enthusiast, but eventually he can't take it anymore and hatches a murder scheme. The insects he hates so much make sure he's the one that dies instead.

Phantom Zone #4: Gerber and Colan/DeZuniga's epic concludes. Superman challenges and escapes from Aethyr, but only after the death of Charlie Kweskill/Quex-Ul. Meanwhile, Earth's heroes have rallied. Superman and Supergirl smash the giant, Phantom Zone projector the criminals are menacing Earth with, knocking out the villains, and restoring Green Lantern's power battery to him.

The Zoners turn on each other. Az-Rel burns Faora to settle a score. The fanatic Jer-Em kills himself and Nadira with kryptonite. In her dying moments, she uses her power on Az-Rel, who loses control of his power and burns himself to ash. The surviving villains are sent back to the Phantom Zone created by Green Lantern.

Sgt. Rock #363: Easy Company is lured into a trap in the town of Boileau. While they are holed up, the men are convinced they are going to die and carve their names on a wooden post by way of memorial. Rock isn't ready to give up yet and gets them out in the end. Mandrake joins Kanigher on a story about a pilot so haunted by dreams of dying in fire, he chooses drowning instead. The last story has G.I.'s overthrowing the commander of a sadistic Japanese P.O.W. camp after the war has technically ended. It's marred by the carcicaturish coloring of the Japanese skintones, somehow made worse paired with Truman's somewhat crude art here.

Superman Family #217: No Private Life of Clark Kent story this month which is really just as well. In the Bridwell/Schaffenberger Mr. and Mrs. Superman story, Metalo (one "l" on Earth-2) weakens Supes with a ray, so he's got to do an exercise program to regain his strength for the fight. In the Kupperberg/Mortimer Supergirl story we're treated to an amazing display of her powers (following radio waves visually back to their source, memorizing a fingerprint then perusing police files from miles away to find a match) as she brings to justice a bomber bent on revenge in the 2 minute break of TV interview.

Kupperberg is back again with Delbo for Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy has to solve a mystery when his lunch with Inspector Henderson is interrupted by a writer who confessing to a murder he didn't commit. Finally, the O'Flynn/Delbo Lois Lane story has a famous country singer performing a song stolen from Lois's old college roommate, now a struggling songwriter (who's so Western-dudded out, it makes me wonder where Lois went to college), and Lois sets out to find the guilty party.

Warlord #56: I detailed the main story in this issue here. The backup continues Kupperberg's and Duursema's Arion. Arion heads out into the frozen wastes with his companions/protectors Wynde and Chian to find his former master. They get in a fight with a primitive tribe dwelling in a cave. Ultimately, Arion is captured and about to be sacrificed. 

Science Fantasy Knights

I feel like knights in a post-apocalyptic setting is an under utilized setting in rpgs. The sort of thing where in the mid- to far future, human civilization has gone back to something more like the Middle Ages. Often magic will have returned or old science will seem like magic. There is some pretty good source material out there, but the only game I think can think of is Mutants in Avalon. 

Fiction-wise, we've got: Moorcock's History of the Runestaff, Christopher's Sword of Spirits trilogy, and Harrison's The Pastel City (less so the sequels), at least. Comics-wise there isn't an exact fit (beyond the adaptations of Moorcock's work), but Camelot 3000 is close. There is even an 80s cartoon and toyline in the form of Visionaries.

Stephen King's Dark Tower series does a bit of this, but also leans on Western aesthetic and tropes and does that a bit more. Into the Badlands likewise has an Western element, but also wuxia.

Wednesday Comics: DC, April 1982 (week 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around January 14, 1982.

Batman #346: Two-Face escapes from Arkham by hypnotizing the guards with a special coin. While Batman searches for him, Gordon worries about Mayor Hills promise to get rid of him, Dick frets over his mysterious new girlfriend, Dala, and Vicki Vale becomes ever-more suspicious that Bruce Wayne is Batman. Conway is juggling a lot here! In the end, Batman tracks Two-Face down and overcomes numerous traps but is captured anyway.

In the Catwoman backup by Jones and von Eeden/Marcos, Catwoman discovers that the detective who hired her is really an ex-Nazi searching for an h-bomb formula hidden on the train. H wants revenge on her because her father killed his father. He ties Catwoman to the railroad tracks and he explains how he made the trains disappear with an underground tunnel and made everyone believe in ghosts with holographic images. Catwoman gets free and uses his own holograms against him.

Flash #308: Bates and Infantino/Smith have actress Daphne Dean seeking out the help of her childhood friend Barry Allen. It seems she's been getting increasingly more creepy letters of love from Lance Basilla, their childhood bully. Lance has been participating in some sort of sleep study and while he has dreamed his fancies are given physical form. A mummy monster from his mind challenges the Flash in an attempt to get Daphne. In the end, lightning thwarts the monster, and Lance seems to give up his obsession.

In the Dr. Fate backup, The Lord of Chaos Malferrazae (who has masqueraded as the god Totec) has sent a creature to destroy Fate. Only after the combat has gone on for sometime, does Fate discover the creature is borne of Inza's jealousy. If Fate manages to destroy the monster, Inza will die, devastating Kent Nelson's and destroying his will to serve as Doctor Fate, allowing Malferrazae to cause the fifth massive extinction on Earth! But if he doesn't destroy the monster, Malferrazae still wins.

G.I. Combat #240: There's a note in the letter column of this issue that they've had to cut back on pages. In Kanigher's and Glanzman's first Haunted Tank tale is more fantastic than most, with our heroes going up against a robot tank crew. When they are defeated by quicksand, Hitler executes the inventor in a fit of pique in true super-villain fashion. Kashdan and Matucenio deliver an ode to a hardworking truck. In the O.S.S. story, the metal plate on an agent's head gives a signal for the bombers to follow to destroy a German radar installation. Kashdan and Redondo present a story about a really by the book sargeant--who ultimately uses that manual to leave a paper trail for rescues to follow when he and his men are captured. 

The issue is rounded out as always by the Haunted Tank. With his tank busted and his men injured, Jeb has to go for help, but runs into a German death squad. His crew comes to the rescue at the last minute in a captured German armored car.

Jonah Hex #59: DeZuniga's cover for this issue is completely misleading because it just depicts the events of a nightmare Jonah has. Meanwhile, Wu Gong Phat, who claims to be a merchant from Nanking, sets a trap for Hex. Mei Ling receives a mysterious letter and rides off. The issue ends with Hex apparently being loaded on a boat in the San Francisco harbor.

The El Diablo backup by Cohn and Ayers has a traveling hypnotist arrive in town. After a seemingly innocuous show of his abilities, he gets the subjects he demonstrated on to rob a bank. All except Lazarus Long who becomes El Diablo and brings the wrongdoers to justice. Something El Diablo does leaves the hypnotist a jibbering madman.

New Teen Titans #18: Wolfman and Perez bring back the original Starfire. When his son is killed by Americans in El Salvador, a Soviet official seeks revenge by sending his secretary, Maladi Malanova, to America ostensibly as a courier--but she's also carrying a deadly disease. Learning of the plot, the Soviet government dispatches Starfire (the Russian one) to the U.S. to stop her. This being a superhero comic, the Titans mistake Starfire for the plague-carrier, and they fight. Then, they fight some more when they find out he intends to kill Maladi who is incurable. The Titans fight Starfire to a stalemate and Maladi is finally taken to a hospital to die in peace. Kid Flash condemns Starfire for his callousness, but the hero ultimately reveals that Maladi was his fiancée, and he had only volunteered for the mission to spare her the pain of a tortuous death.

Superman #370: Wein and Swan present "Better Living Through Chemo-stry!" Chemo returns to Earth and somehow merges with a laid-off factory-worker whose animus for his old employers drives Chemo to attack their factories. Superman succeeds in separating the two.

In the retro-topical "Superman: The In-Between Years" backup by Rozakis and Schaffenberger, Clark Kent learns that his roommate Tommy Lee's parents in South Viet Nam are endangered by the Communists and goes to help them as Superboy.

D&D Icons

Thinking about the 13th Age Icons this weekend, I think it would be fun to replace them with these guys. Really, it wouldn't take much modification of the official 13th Age crew. 

Caruso the Bard probably wouldn't make the cut, though.

Games I Liked in 2022

The pandemic led to more gaming, and that continued in 2022. In addition to running my long-standing 5e Land of Azurth game, I ran a few other systems:

Broken Compass: I really like this rules lite pulp game, and so do both the groups I've run it for. It makes for a great palate cleanser when you might get tired of a longrunning campaign in something else. I hope to run it more in 2023.

Marvel Heroic: I ignored this game at the time it was released, but I really shouldn't have. After running it for a short-time, I think it will become my go-to supers game in the future. There are somethings I don't like about it, but it runs quick and has a comic book feel. I might "update" a game to Cortex Prime (the latest iteration of the basic engine) if I was to run it again.

Rocket Age 5e: I only ran one session of this. I don't think it's a bad system, but 5e just doesn't seem the best to me for pulpy, retro-sci-fi. I think if I tried to run this setting again, I'd likely do it in Broken Compass. I would still recommend Rocket Age (both 5e and otherwise) for the setting material, though.

Wednesday Comics: DC, April 1982 (week 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! Today, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of January 7, 1982. 

Arak Son of Thunder #8: Continuing the story from last issue, Valda and the Pope are captives of the subterranean Black Pope and his people and Arak is forced to fight in the arena to try to save their lives. He succeeds, of course, but a kidnapped woman from Rome above saves the day by knifing the Black Pope from behind. There's a Viking Prince backup by Kanigher and Duursema, but I feel like this is a bit of recap from what's gone on before with that character.

DC Comics Presents #44: Rozakis and Irving/McLaughlin resurrect Dial H from Adventure Comics. Superman goes to Fairfax to investigate why the town has become a hotbed of new heroes, just as Chris King pulls a boneheaded move. He turns himself into a monster called Beast-Maniac by dialing H-O-R-R-O-R instead of H-E-R-O. In the course of solving this problem, our heroes discover the mysterious Master is behind all the super-villains.

Ghosts #111: In the first story, Mishkin and Texiera present a doctor who has figured out a way to both analogize and present psychological pathology and sort of a virtual reality game--except when he's confronted by his colleagues over his methods it doesn't stay virtual, and his own deathwish does him in. In "The Last Kung-Fu Movie" by Kelley and Giffen, Bruce Lee appears to have been the inspiration for an Asian film who gets his revenge from beyond the grave on unscrupulous Hollywood types. 

Mayer and Ditko present "Shrieeeeek!" a mildly (perhaps intentionally) humorous tale of a man brought to ruin by th ghost of a mouse he had killed. It's really kind of an Atlas Horror sort of story, actually.

Justice League #201: Conway is joined by Heck for one of his lesser outings in this run. A down-and-out, one shot super-villain, Joe Parry (not Perry!), encounters Ultraa living as a normal guy in Atlantic City. He befriends the superhuman lug and manipulates him into turning to crime. When the Atom alerts the Justice League to a bank robbery perpetrated by the duo, Flash deliberately brings Hawkman in on the case, hoping to get his friend back in the game post-separation from his wife. Ultraa battles Superman, Flash, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Atom, and Hawkman to a standstill in a board-walk casino, until Hawkman convinces him give up the fight. Parry is taken into custody, and Ultraa goes to live with a tribe of aborigines like those who raised him back on Earth-Prime.

Weird War Tales #110: When surgeon Myrra Rhodes is able to restore Shrieve's damaged face after an accident, the Commandos are hopeful she can make them human again. When she tries to explain to them why that won't work, they throw a tantrum and break stuff. Rhodes gets exposed to a random combination of experimental gasses and is rather improbably transformed into a snake-haired freak. She joins the team, because being a creature is apparently the main requirement for being a Creature Commando.

Allikas and Zamora follow that up with a story of Germans being psychically lead to a new British supr-weapon, only to discover they had come to ground zero of the test of that weapon. Kanigher and Trinidad have a sailor adrift aided by mermaids against Japanese frogmen. Finally, there's a story of flag-bearer during the Crusades which I guess is "war" but nothing in it is particularly "weird."

Wonder Woman #290: The fight with Silver Swan continues. Just as the tide seems to be turning in Wonder Woman's favor, Dr. Psycho, smitten with Silver Swan, enters the battle as Captain Wonder using ectoplasm from Steve Trevor. With Wonder Woman defeated, they plan to take her and kill her in front of President Reagan. Trevor awakens, though having realized he isn't a native of this Earth. With him conscious, Captain Wonder is no more, and Psycho crashes the plane. Mars has had about enough, and takes Swan's powers away in disappointment, turning her back into regular old Helena. When Psycho and Helen see each other as they truly are, they are mutually repelled and run away from each other. Trevor and Wonder are reunited, though.

In the Huntress backup by Levitz and Staton she finally defeats the Crime Lord, though after this thing being dragged out for three months, I've sort of forgotten what the point was.