Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Wednesday Comics: DC, February 1983 (week 1)
Monday, November 4, 2024
Kiss of Blood (part 1)
We had our first session of They Came From Beyond the Grave! last night adapting the Call of Cthulhu adventure, Kiss of Blood.
The cast:
- Tony Kovac - San Francisco cop whose vacation in the Old Country is anything but relaxing. (Jason).
- Jess Barrow - Half of the occult folk-rock duo, Fata Morgana, gifted with second sight. (Andrea)
- Dean Starkey - The other half of Fata Morgana. A guy used to gettin by on his wits.
The three Americans arrived in Karloczig, Wystdovja Vale, (in Slovenia, on the Adriatic) for different reasons. Kovac was going to get a vacation and help local cops out on a case as a favor for a friend. Dean and Jess had been booked to play the local festival around Walpurgis Night. None of them imagined they'd wind up working together to find a missing girl. Well, the players did, the characters, not so much.
While Kovac discovered Inspektor Hochmair wasn't exactly overjoyed to have his help. Jess and Dean met Gustav Homan, the father of the missing girl, Matilda. They also heard that there were a lot of disappearances around the village of Karloczig, but the local Burgomeister doesn't take them seriously. There are legends about the castle Heidenstein up on the hill. It's cursed, it's said.
That night at the festival, Jess sees an eerie, mysterious woman, perhaps watching her, but the woman disappears before she can point her out to Dean.
After a night of attempting to out-drink Hochmair, Kovac is awakened early by a knock on his hotel room door. There's been a body found. Hochmair takes him to the office of the coroner (and doctor) von Kluge. The woman is young and brunette, but she isn't Matilda, but someone from out of town. She has been mutilated, as if by some animal, her throat ravaged and her body partially exsanguinated.
Friday, November 1, 2024
They Came From Beyond the Grave!
This weekend, in the spirit of Halloween, I plan to run a one shot (well, probably two shot before it's over with) of the Onyx Path game They Came From Beyond the Grave! It's part of their series of They Came From games, each made to sort of emulate some cinematic genre from 50s to monster movies, to Italian Sword and Sandals pictures, to (in this case) 60-70s horror films of the Hammer, Amicus, or AIP variety.
All these games use the Storypath system which is basically a descendant of the old White Wolf d10 dice pool system, but lighter and with some mildly narrative mechanics, like Rewrites which players can use to change the results of bad rolls or get a bit of narrative control. One of the things Rewrites can be spent on (though this is an optional rule) are Cinematic Powers which imbue the game world with the elements of the low budget films it's emulating. For instance, there's Dangerous Liaison wherein a player can pay for an awkwardly inserted scene (utterly free of danger!) to romance an NPC.
Players have other, less game-reality bending extras to employ like Tropes, Trademarks, and Quips that lend bonuses in specific situations. In fact, if I have any criticism, it's that the system is perhaps a little overstuffed with options for an otherwise "at the light end of rules medium" game.
Anyway, I plan to run to run Cthulhu Dreadfuls Presents #1 - Kiss of Blood, which is a very Hammer Horror flavored scenario. It seems easy enough to adapt.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Wednesday Comics: DC, January 1984 (week 4)
Friday, October 25, 2024
A 10th Azurthversary
This week marks the 10th anniversary of our Land of Azurth campaign using 5e. While nothing's for certain, I suspect we will "finish" in this year as the big conflict with the Wizard of Azurth that simmered in the background for several years and finally boiled over the last two will come to a conclusion.
I wrote a post on the last anniversary which felt necessary not only because nine years is a nice run (though it is), but because we had faced adversity due to the pandemic and the loss of two members of our group--Eric due to burnout on tele-anything and Jim to cancer--and I felt like our perseverance needed to be commemorated.
I don't want to just repeat what I said there, so I won't. Instead, I will say that 10 years of a an elfgame with a group of friends which now includes a new addition, Kathy, who plays the Mortzengersturm pregen, Zabra, gives me completely different insights and perspective on gaming than my nearly 15 years of blogging or the latest wisdom dropped on social media.
Games are a social activity. While rpgs are fun to theorize, write, or argue about, the real alchemy comes in the playing of them. And, for me at least, the playing of them not mainly in pickup games with strangers, though I don't discount the fun in that, but with the same crew, repeatedly.
Thanks to Andrea, Bob, Gina, Kathy, and Tug, for still being here, and to Eric and Jim who came most of the way. Azurth wouldn't be the same without you.
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
Wednesday Comics: DC, January 1984 (week 3)
Monday, October 21, 2024
Weird Revisited: Middle-Earth in Blacklight
It's well known that hippies were into Tolkien's work. Some of its themes appealed to them, certainly, but like with Lee and Ditko's Dr. Strange comics, there was also the idea that the works might somehow be drug-influenced. The author, it was assumed, might be taking the same trip as them. This was, of course, a false belief, but it was one that existed.