Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Wednesday Comics: DC, January 1985 (week 3)
Monday, October 13, 2025
The Funhouse Crawl
This past weekend, I visited my mother's family's old hometown of Panama City Beach, Florida. I got a chance to show my kid one of the landmark's I remembered from my childhood, the kitschy miniature golf course known as Goofy Golf. The firebreathing pink dinosaur that once demanded your attention at the roadside is, alas, no longer there, but the sphinx, giant ape, statue of Buddha, Asian dragon, Easter Island head, and assorted more mundane dinosaurs are still in evidence, along with rockets, windmills and the like.
I feel Goofy Golf is good inspiration for a point- or hexcrawl. I don't mean in its specific set-pieces (not necessarily, at least) but in the way it's basically a spread out funhouse dungeon. I like a good, well-thought out setting as much as the next guy, but I also enjoy the kitchen sink weird lost worlds. I'm thinking of things like Ka-Zar's Savage Land or the world beyond the Bermuda Triangle Skull the Slayer gets sucked into. Hollow World has more than a little of this vibe with cavemen, Rip Van Winkle still dwarves, and gaucho orcs, but there isn't as much of this done in gaming as there could be.
Making it a bounded location to be explored like a pocket dimension or lost world frees it to strain seriousness and consistency in a way than might not work in an entire setting.
Friday, October 10, 2025
Old Time Radio for Halloween
Jason Sholtis and I have been listening to some old time radio horror stories as we get ready for Halloween and posting about them over on the Flashback Universe blog. So far, we've done:
"The Thing on the Fourble Board" from Quiet, Please.
"Three Skeleton Key" from Escape.
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Wednesday Comics: DC, January 1985 (week 2)
Monday, October 6, 2025
Weird Revisited: Spelljammer 1961
"Thinking beings of earth planet. This message was sent subsequent to the bravery of Yuri Gagarin and the achievements of the Soviet Union, but its intended recipient is every individual of your species. We are the Esoteric. We are now honored to admit you into the interstellar society. Many things we have to show you will definitely shock you and cause confusion. We have regret in that our policies mean you are living in a controlled environment where your understanding of physics has been restricted. We guarantee that this was done to protect you. Now, you are graded ready to have the safety guard removed to more fully experience the universe. We look forward to meeting with your government representatives and giving you a menu of offered services."
The poorly translated message broadcast to the entire planet was from beings who called themselves the Arcane. They revealed the image of the solar system taking shape from modern observations was an illusion. The real solar system was teeming with life, and ships powered by something more like magic that rocketry sailed through the heavens.
Once the principals were understood, humanity was able to get impossible, physics-defining things to happen even deep within Earth's gravity well, but it was always easier the thinner the atmosphere was. Humanity wasted no time in establishing orbital colonies and bases on the Moon, though they were ultimately more fantastic than anything science fiction had dreamed since the Victorian era. Once trade started with Mars and magical wood was imported, even private individuals were able to build all manner of spacecraft.
The Space Age had truly begun.
One thing that would have to determine with a setting like this is how technology Earth's technology would work in the Spelljammer type space. Could guns (or nuclear weapons) be exported into space. Spelljammer ships look much like sailing ships, but I don't know that the setting requires that as written. Could a C-47 cargo plane fly through "space?" What about a nuclear submarine, if it could get there?
The answers to these questions would perhaps take you further afield from trad fantasy, potentially moving things in a pulpier (and I think) more interesting direction, but it would make it harder to implement with D&D rules.
Friday, October 3, 2025
From Azurth to the Moon
After a bit of a hiatus, we weren't to our 5e Land of Azurth game this past Sunday. We left our heroes with the shock of finding the princesses of the four countries, the leaders of the rebellion against the Wizard, turned to stone.
A council of important secondary leaders was quickly assembled. In addition to the PCs, it included some familiar names and faces from the party's adventures: Mapache Took, alleged head of the Raccoon-Folk Crime Family, who's brother's vault the party robbed; Black Iris, Pirate Captain from the Motley Isles who they rescued from the Candy Isle; King Gheode of the Earth Fae, who helped them get passage through Subazurth beneath Noxia; and Freedy, frogling ambassador from Under Sea.
Princess Viola's gnome techs have done a lot of analysis and report that have a high degree of suspicion that the Wizard used the power of the Shadow Elves focused through a crystalline power-purifier, likely one of the original heavenly crystals from the Sapphire City was supposedly grown. Some of the council favors sending a group in stealthily to perhaps still this supposed crystal from within the Wizard's palace. Others feel it's the time to strike with the giant robot the party recovered from Sang.
While they were discussing it, a representative from the Mysteriarchs of Zed appears in the room from a glowing orb. He is perhaps the same one they met previously. The representative tells them that a crystal such as they seek exists on the Moon!
As everyone knows the Moon is the home of the Bright Lady and the Thrice Hundred demigods revered by the Rabbit Folk. It's reasonable to think they might be willing to help the heroes of Azurth. But how can the party get to the mood?
Well, they have a ship, the one they took from the Domed City of Yai, and a pilot in the person of Irwin-37. They don't know anything about the Moon or how to get there, but they recall that Jaka Oloap, who they met originally in the Hybercube prison and met again in Sang, had boasted of going there.
After a quick flight to Sang to recruit Jaka, the group takes off for the Moon. They're enjoying the strange vistas of Azurth from far above, when they are approached by shantak-riding women bandits calling themselves the Night Sisters. The party refuses to surrender their vessel and a fight ensues on the hull (the party has to tie themselves to the ship with rope). When Tura, the leader of the Night Sisters, is killed the others break off the attack, but promise revenge.
Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Wednesday Comics: DC, January 1985 (week 1)
There's another "humorous" Hukka backup by Kupperberg and Manak/Giffen.