Cloak of the Dead
The Shroud
For more, go here.
For previous art assaults, go here.
Search Results for: art assault
Thursday Art Assault – Dark Materials
Thursday Art Assault – Wood Panel Warfare
At DragonCon 2017, I wandered the art gallery for what seemed like eons.
I encountered stunning fantasy art of all kinds. I found light, darkness, and everything in-between.
But then I stumbled upon something I’d never really seen before. An artist – I admit I don’t know her name or website – had created a large quantity of long, narrow paintings on slender wooden panels.
For me, a guy who has always focused his work on canvasses, gesso boards, and plain old paper, the idea of painting on peculiar-sized chunks of wood transfixed me.
I knew at once I had to try a few of my own:
I started with these:
Pieces of an old picket fence. About 20″ long – 4″ wide. Cut, dried, and sanded to a smooth finish.
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And I moved on to these:
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Here’s an up close shot of my favorite plank, The Sorcerer:
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After finishing a ton of smaller planks, I tried a giant plank. This one’s 6′ tall and 12″ wide. It was a true pleasure to paint:
Started with this…
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…and finished with this.
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I admit I loved making these so much, I’ve got another six planks drying on my deck right now. Meaning…more are soon to come.
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Want to learn more? Hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, or via email.
And…you might also like these.
Thursday Art Assault – Sketching Pretty Girls
We’ve recently ended our long-standing Thought for Every Thursday series.
It may one day make its return.
But for now, please enjoy the latest installation of Thursday Art Assault…
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For my latest round of short stories, I’ve decided to sketch my own cover art.
It’s a challenge.
…and I love it.
This next piece is a sequel to this.
Here’s a quick progression:
Nadya – or at least half of her. I started with strictly pencils, sketching her face on a huge sheet of watercolor paper. Surprise, surprise….watercolor paper is excellent media for fine pencil sketches, especially realistic pieces.
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I used a blend of charcoal, graphite, and dark pencil lead to deepen Nadya’s eyes and hair. Here’s my arsenal….
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Nadya, the Deathless is a character in the novel Hollow Empire.
Thanks for stopping by. More paintings are soon to come.
Prints are available here.
For art inquiries, hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, or via email.
If you like Nadya, you might also like these.
Thursday Art Assault – Shadow Art
On a lonely Friday eve, long after midnight slid by, I stood before a black canvas with the last drop of white paint clinging to my paintbrush.
Songs a bit dramatic, right?
Anyway, I made good use of the white paint.
And out came my latest painting, Night Emperor.
Night Emperor
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And of course, Night Emperor needs his bride. Here’s ‘Frozen’ sculpted and painted by artist (and lady of the night) T. Morrison:
Frozen
They make quite a pair, don’t you think?
For art inquiries, hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, or via email.
If you like Night Emperor and Frozen, you might also like these.
Thursday Art Assault – Sylvan Eternity
I’d just finished working on several highly-realistic sketches.
…and my pencil hand was tired.
To ease my mild suffering, I picked up a huge (24×48″) canvas and went after it with green, black, yellow, and white paint.
The result was…well…
Sylvan Eternity
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…big.
I enjoyed every second of painting this giant landscape. Now it’s back to cover art work.
Prints are available here.
For art inquiries, hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, or via email.
If you like this painting, you might also like these.
Thursday Art Assault – Big Dark Painting
I’m wandering in a strange artistic realm.
Somewhere between this and this.
On a rainy Saturday, with a glass of scotch in hand and Chris Isaak roaring in the background, I decided to consume my largest remaining canvas.
…and paint green clouds, dark terrain, and tall, hollow tombs.
Introducing the Grave Towers:
The final painting. Bleak and green. Were I a better photographer, you’d get the deep shading and details.
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This is the background, which I painted on a chilly Friday night. Some people have told me they prefer it without the towers. Meaning…I’ll probably paint a tower-less version soon.
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If you liked this painting, you might also like these.
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Kickstart the Comic – I Took A Hammer to Hell #3
Just a friendly reminder that I have a Kickstarter going right now for In Our Dreams Awake #2. Back it now!
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Sometimes there is a plotline/story idea that catches me just right. I’ll be minding my own business (definitely not planning on buying more comic books), and then they jump me out of nowhere. I And then I’m left only trying to figure out how quickly I can get the issue in my hands (or virtual hands as the case may be).
You had me at Deal with the Devil story.
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Cover by Mulele Jarvis
I TOOK A HAMMER TO HELL #3 (#1 & #2 Available too)
Writer – Matt Garvey
Artist – Mulele Jarvis
Colorist – Fabi Marques
Alternate Cover – J Francis Totti
The Kickstarter campaign ends on Friday, May 3, 2024
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The Pitch:
With nothing more than a MASSIVE hammer duck taped to his hand, Jake is going to kill the devil!
The Story:
Jake made deal with the devil for his eternal soul (original I know, but wait till you read it, this is VERY different) but instead of waiting till his time is up or trying to wiggle out of the agreement, he goes to Hell WILLINGLY!
Why on Earth would someone do this?!… Well, he has only one goal in mind.
With nothing more than a MASSIVE hammer duck taped to his hand, Jake is going to kill the devil!
This comic has action, it has gore…but it also has a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
So, F#@K REDEMPTION…EMBRACE VENGENCE!
You won’t be disappointed!
John’s Thoughts:
So many Deal with the Devil stories are about the person trying to find a loophole to the predicament they have put themselves in. You see, it is very simple: you do the crime and then your soul does the time. And don’t get me wrong, I love those types of stories. Heck, I have a book sitting on my shelf that pretty much focuses on just that.
I Took A Hammer To Hell makes an immediate detour, though. It takes that core premise and says “what if the guy made his choice and was willing to go to Hell when the time came”. And then tried to go kill the Devil.
At it’s core, that is an interesting idea. If you had 40 years to plan your assault on Hell, what would you do? Would you train like Neo in the Matrix? Downloading every bit of fighting skills you could. Would you study with all the religious figures you could find, hoping to find some weakness for the Devil?
Or maybe you’d just strap a hammer to your hand and say f$%# it.
A sampling of the Ultimate Digital Collection
The Rewards:
Matt Garvey does his best to keep his Reward costs low, so you can pick up the lastest digital issue for £2 ($3) or even a signed copy of issue 3 for £2 ($6). If you are just hearing about the comic and want to play catch up the digital will run £5 ($7) and phyrical versions of 1-3 are £12 ($16).
The best bang for your buck though is his Ultimate Digital Package (25 comics) which will get you caught up on I Took A Hammer To Hell and then continue to feed comics directly in your brain from many of Matt Garvey’s history for only £10 ($13).
(I actually did that level on his last Kickstarter: Gangsters Versus Nazis and am working my way through all the comic goodness.)
The Verdict:
I’ve already supported the two previous Kickstarters for Issue 1 and Issue 2, so I was ready to go when Issue 3’s campaign went live. If you can handle a story about Vengeance against the Devil (and who wouldn’t want to see that), you should back this comic so that they make 50 more issues!
Make sure you check out I Took A Hammer To Hell #3!
Covers by Mulele Jarvis
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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.
He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!
Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.
His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.
He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com
5 RPG Kickstarters Worth Checking Out – Iron Edda Accelerated, L’gat’s Tome of Amazing Creatures, Necrotopia, Confluence, and BLOODY-HANDED NAME of BRONZE
There are three ways I pick out the RPG Kickstarters that I intend to cover:
- They fall under a theme – Amazing numbers, all-5e, OSR, whatever
- They are ending soon and it’s cover’em now or never
- I’ve been pinged by someone (lots of fans, sometimes the creators) and asked to check out the work.
This week, it’s fan review and there are some excellent games to check out!
Iron Edda Accelerated by Encoded Designs
Ends on Thu, August 23 2018 9:00 AM EDT.
“A new version of the Iron Edda RPG, powered by Fate Accelerated™.
Ragnarok is here! The Dwarven Destroyers bear down on your holdfast. A cult dedicated to Loki foments deadly mischief within your walls. The local seer envisions young warriors throwing off clan ties, merging with the spirits of giants to save their holdfast. Fight, bleed, sacrifice, and save your people for as long as you can. Welcome to Iron Edda Accelerated!
Backers get access to the Early Release version of the rules (edited but not laid out) as soon as they back this campaign.
Iron Edda Accelerated is a roleplaying game about the heroes of a Viking holdfast during Ragnarok. They battle threats from outside and within for honor, glory, and clan. The game draws strongly from Norse mythology — although its focus on holdfasts allows for telling a variety of stories:
- Epic Norse Action. Pick up your axe and shield to fight the metallic hordes of the Dwarves as they come to raze the world. Look through the roots of the World Tree to the Lands of the Gods and find the most opportune place to strike. Bring together your people and lead them against threats both outside and within your holdfast. Be the blazing heart of a dead giant fighting the metal monstrosities. Stand against the Dwarves who come from below to reclaim what was once theirs…or so Loki tells them.
- Heroes of the Holdfast. You’re the heroes of this age, dealing with the chaos and glory of Ragnarok: a time for legends to be born. Fight hordes of Dwarven spiders, convince fractured factions to fight together, travel the planes to bring aid in the form of magical artifacts to save clan and loved ones. Ragnarok seeks to end everything, but you have the power to keep it from destroying your holdfast for a little while longer.
- Internal Holdfast Politics. While external threats are daunting, insidious ones from within are equally deadly. People look for opportunities to gain power, even as Armageddon approaches. Convince your Jarl to make peace with the other holdfasts instead of war. Rally your warriors and keep their spirits high in the face of terror. Root out dissidents seeking to unbalance the power structure of your holdfast. Stabilize your own homes if your Jarl loses control. Keep your community strong or the Dwarves easily overrun your holdfast.
The Dwarves of Svartalfheim invade the surface with metal machines, monstrous and terrible. The gods fight against the end of existence. Holdfasts burn. The seers foretell the coming of the Bonebonded: young folk who’ve thrown clan aside to merge with the spirits of deceased giants, providing the power to retaliate against the Dwarves in the form of skeletal giants. The Runescribed use their terrible powers to keep everyone alive a little longer. Other holdfasts seek any advantage in these desperate times. The world hurtles toward a chaotic ending, while a smiling Loki sits in the shadows watching Yggdrasil burn. What will your story be during the end times?
Iron Edda Accelerated invites a wide variety of stories against the backdrop of Ragnarok. The Holdfast Creation system lets you take the elements presented, ask questions about the holdfast, and uncover the rest through play. While answering those questions you also draw a map of your holdfast, providing a visual representation of your experiences. The map functions as a play aid and reminder of your holdfast’s environs, the problems arrayed against you, and the places you’ve decided are important.
Iron Edda Accelerated explores the problems of an oncoming apocalypse against a backdrop of mythic storytelling and Norse culture where clan is thicker than blood. The heroes of the holdfast feel pressure from everywhere as they solve the problems assaulting the holdfast.
To make that happen, Iron Edda Accelerated uses a variation of the Fate Accelerated™ system, by Evil Hat Productions. Fate Accelerated makes the characters instantly competent and dramatic through approaches and aspects. In addition, story stress tracks help the GM weigh and present various problems assaulting the holdfast.
Other mechanisms help promote the kind of play Iron Edda promises:
- Scale – Giant metal monstrosities, heroes larger than life, magical runes usable against enemies, and weapons of legend. Rules are provided to determine the weight of these elements in play.
- Destinies – A number of mythic Norse-inspired destinies, including the Bonebonded, Runescribed, Seer, and even the Farmer, help players make characters fit into the setting.
- Holdfast Creation – This system creates your holdfast through a series of questions and a hand-drawn map. When completed, the players have a series of problems that assail the holdfast and the characters’ paths are clear — and legendary stories unfold quickly.
The Iron Edda Accelerated book is planned to be 6″ x 9”, 140 – 160 pages, with greyscale interior art. The text is already done, and we have art assets. The Kickstarter pays the team for their hard work, purchases additional new art assets for the book, and puts money into creating additional content for Iron Edda Accelerated.”
Egg’s Thoughts:
Ragnarok: Fate Accelerated™ by Tracy, Barnett, Chris Sniezak, Shawn Merwin, Robert M. Everson, Tim Jones, John Arcadian, Phil Vecchione, and Matt Morrow. If that system and setting and those creators don’t move you, the gods will.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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Necrotopia: Handbook to the Apocalypse by Keenan Dunham
Ends on Sun, August 26 2018 11:02 AM EDT.
“Necrotopia is a pen and paper role-playing game. We are releasing a complete 30 page color rule-set book with original artwork. #RPG
Necrotopia is an Apocalyptic RPG where you and your friends battle through multiple Apocalypses. Faced with invasion of evil forces through portals, travel across worlds after you master use of portals. Original story and art with unique characters and settings.
Uses a D6 game system with move creation that is simple and highly customizable. Create a character in 5 minutes and play a session within an hour. Fun for veteran RPG players and new players.
Necrotopia is a role playing game written and developed by Keenan Dunham. This is an independent project of a combination of ideas and stories Keenan has created. Our goal is to release the first 30 page stand alone rule-set book, and expand the Necrotopia Universe after that with more campaign books.
With the limited time-frame of the first kickstarter we will only be releasing the 30 page rule-set book along with some special bonuses. Artists are being paid up front for original art used, not from promises of future money. Some art used is public domain.
The game itself is meant to be a beginners pen and paper role-playing game that can appeal to anyone. It is simple and highly customizable. Here is a sample of the story from book one: “Necrotopia’s story begins with sparks of an invasion of demonic and inter-dimensional forces attacking Earth, initiating a battle for survival and conquest. There is a battle between Heaven and Hell brewing and you and your friends are caught in the middle. What happens depends on you with one person taking the role of Game Maestro and the rest taking the roles of role playing characters.” We hope you and your friends have a ton of fun with this game!
Keenan Dunham is the writer and creator of Necrotopia: Handbook to the Apocalypse. The idea actually came from a book he was planning to write and the game will include many characters from those ideas. The book may get written if Necrotopia is successful. Other writing projects Keenan was working on got merged all into a greater world of Necrotopia, and it makes for a lot of fun. Expect a growing universe of characters and places to come. Thank you!”
Egg’s Thoughts:
I covered the first run of this Kickstarter here. In the new iteration, it has a higher goal and has raised more dollars towards it.
Check out the Kickstarter page. I didn’t copy it, but the pages shares a lot about the game’s mechanics so you can find out exactly what you’re getting with your pledge.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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Joshua A.C. Newman’s BLOODY-HANDED NAME of BRONZE by Glyph Press
Ends on Thu, August 30 2018 11:59 PM EDT.
“Bronze-Age Sword and Sorcery roleplaying, inspired by TORAH and ILLIAD, GILGAMESH and ACHILLES, CONAN and THE DYING EARTH.
Joshua A.C. Newman’s The Bloody-Handed Name of Bronze is a tabletop roleplaying game of those who speak the secret Language of Names that spoke the world into existence. When you portray one such Namedealer, you will make treaties with anything bearing a name — and you will thrive and suffer from the consequences of those promises.
…And it is a game of fated heroes, driven by their long-dead ancestors — and their own great passions — to pursue their destiny for the benefit of the dead, and to die bathed in glory.
It is a game of passions and cunning, of tricksters and hard-found justice.
It is a game of pursuing what you desire. It is a game of getting what you want from your companion characters when you have no reason to trust them, and about using those you don’t trust to aid you in your pursuits.
It is a game about flight from the consequences of your promises, and the power that comes from both lies and the truth.
It is a game about charging toward that against which you have been commanded, and the power one has to turn against an abuser.
The World of Names
Above the World is the Vault of Heaven, holding back the Waters of Heaven.
Beneath the World flow the Waters of the Underworld.
Between them is the World, and all in it is made of clay, given being with names, spoken into existence with the first breath.
All that has a name, has a will. Every child, every river, every constellation, every fang of bronze discovered in the rib cage of a storm-revealed skeleton, scoured by the desert. Seek and explore, for in the quest lies your destiny and your doom; your redemption and your failures.
Jabari Weathers – Not art from the game but a great example of Jabari’s work.
Egg’s Thoughts:
The game sounds interesting as an experiment. The Kickstarter is intimidating, meant to show its artistry and poetry to give a solid feel for the setting (I feel I get the setting based on the imagery that is shared in the art and writing). Yet, the campaign keeps its mechanics shrouded in mystery. As best I can tell, you’ll draw from two pools and roll them together to accomplish your goal. If the fantasy of these previews can be infused through the book, this will be a winner.
Add to that, there’s Jabari Weathers art! I met Jabari online, loved their art, and, ran into them at Gen Con 2018 twice (we happened to be in the same hotel). Jabari is an exceeding friendly individual and I wished I’d had time to sit in on one of their games at the convention. With this project, I’m eager to see all of Jabari’s work cause it will build this setting.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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L’gat’s Tome of Amazing Creatures – Volume 2 by Power Up Games (PUG)
Ends on Thu, August 30 2018 11:59 PM EDT.
“L’gat’s Tome of Amazing Creatures Volume 2 is Power-Up Gamer’s next supplement containing homebrew and reskinned monsters for DND 5e.
What are we doing here?
L’gat’s Tome of Amazing Creatures Volume 2 is the next release in a trilogy set of 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons supplements. Produced by Power Up Gamers Roleplayers for Accessibility, artwork will be done by the talented Jon Pintar.
What’s in the book?
Much like the first volume, we plan on releasing 26 homebrewed and re-skinned monsters with rich lore, culture, and history sections, several tables including a d100 magic item roll table, and a section containing 12 locations with sights, sounds, and sensations specifically designed to cater disabilities. Each Location will also have a trap, a puzzle and a riddle along with monsters from the series that might be found there.The Supplement will have a full color cover with black ink sketches of the monsters inside.”
NOTE – Cacticorn and the Crystal Golem are “pre-edits,pre-rewrites, and pre-playtests”.
Egg’s Thoughts:
This is “26 new, flavourful creatures for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, this time focusing on the fantastical non-hostile denizens of L’Gat’s Prime Material Plane.” So, you’re getting the nice creatures and you’ll need to see volume one for the bad folk. These are monsters by Disabled DM Jarin DND, who reached out, sent a press release, and has been very accommodating of my questions. One of the main ones I had was about the Writer’s Room Visit, a part of the $35 and up rewards that include PDFs of both volumes of L’gat’s Tome of Amazing Creatures and more. If you’re curious what the Writer’s Room Visit involves, Jarin from Power Up Games shared this:
“The Writer’s Room Visit is where our backers can sit down with our production team with an idea of their own and we will help them with the process of taking a basic idea and writing it out into a usable pdf format…of course with time being limited, we obviously can’t teach them all the ins and outs in one session but we will teach the basics of the process as well as give some guidance for resources etc. We currently plan on these sessions being between 2 and 8 hours per session depending on what the supporter needs.”
For $35 (or more), you’re getting 5e games, updates, and a chance to talk gaming ideas with individuals that have already taken the plunge and published their creations!
Over and above the gaming, PUG is on a worthwhile mission to create “ways of making their games more accessible to a wider variety of people, especially those with sensory impairments and learning disabilities. This is done by suggesting language and methods that evoke the senses as well as outright descriptions of the beasts and their habitats.” Their mission is inclusive and it’s done in a way that benefits all gamers – by offering more detailed monsters. This is product is going to be a win!
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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UPDATE – The Kickstarter for Confluence – Cosmic Mirror Games Core Rulebook by Cosmic Mirror Games has been cancelled.
Confluence – Cosmic Mirror Games Core Rulebook by Cosmic Mirror Games
Ends on Wed, August 29 2018 12:53 PM EDT.
“10 Worlds. 1 Game. Endless Possibilities. Confluence is the core rulebook for the Cosmic Mirror Games settings and systems.
Confluence is the 9th of 14 eras on the Cosmic Mirror, a flat world with 4 suns. Cosmic meddling has caused the world to collapse in on itself, prompting beings from the other 13 eras to pour into it. Now, their cultures, their races, their creatures are all colliding. This is Confluence.
10 Worlds, 1 Game. In Confluence, players will take up the roles of denizens who have come from these disparate worlds, thrown together into one world of ancient history and extreme technology. Each of the 10 playable races brings a unique experience from their own game worlds, and each comes with their own levels of difficulties, allowing experienced players to play alongside new players while facing different difficulty levels in character creation and management.
With 10 core races and 40 NPC races, as well as unique items, technology, equipment, and magic from each of the worlds, Confluence is a world made to be explored. You can play a horror game with the undead hordes of the 7th Era, engage in political intrigue with the beings of the 12th, and hunt down ancient relics of incredible power from the 13th. Will you fall into worship of the Fallen Gods, or will you find power from the being that resides within the world itself? Your journey awaits.
NOTE: The Worm The Early Birds Want is the tier you want to get– get a PDF at the 25$ price and get a FREE hard copy! Only 50 slots, get them while they last!
Promotion days: Day 1 (July 30th)- Free cover and world map posters to all who pledge at the $25 level or higher!
Day 15 (Aug 13th)- Bump your pledge by $5, and you’ll get a free PDF of Generations! Bump by $15 and you can nab a hardcopy! That’s half the price of a PDF on Drivethru right now.
Day 22 (Aug 20th)- Bump your pledge by $5, and you’ll get a free PDF of NuAEther! Bump by $15 and you can nab a hardcopy! That’s half the price of a PDF on Drivethru right now.
I keep good records, so don’t drop your pledge later to try and trick me into giving you the pdf at the end. I’ll tally it up when it wraps up! : )
Past Kickstarter: We want to be forward. Confluence had an attempted Kickstarter back in June last year, where it was paired up with two of our small book games. The Kickstarter failed, but we didn’t stop for a second. Work continued, art kept coming in, and we’re coming back stronger than ever.
Confluence is the core rulebook for a series of game books set to come out each year. It also acts as the core setting. Future books will rely on these core mechanics as expounded upon in the Confluence book, but will offer new worlds and settings, along with new races, items, magic systems, and much more. Because this core setting is made up of elements from the other worlds, each of these new setting books will be backwards compatible, all their contents usable in the core world. The book is slated to reach 650 pages.
The core of Confluence is built on a simple d6 dice pool system. To perform an action, you will add your relevant Attribute to any relevant Specialty your character has for the particular action. You then roll that many d6, and succeed on 5’s and 6’s. Unique race powers, character traits such as Talents and Abilities, and a wide array of item options from across the worlds enhance and enjoyably complicate the game for players, and help make each game new and exciting.
What’s in here?
This game book is actually at your fingertips to give a look over right now. The playtest copy contains all the elements needed to pick up and play right now, including all the information needed to create any of the 10 unique character races, unique character traits to help set your character further apart, as well as 20 pages of item options to ensure you are properly equipped for your journey. Information on combat and survival are here in their entirety as well, letting your group pick up and play from this playtest document alone. In addition, the book looks ahead at the variety of offerings still in store for World information, continent and city descriptions, additional NPCs, monsters, and more. There is a lot of info missing from this copy, over half the book, but that’s to make sure that there’s plenty of worthwhile stuff for you to still find ahead in the final version!
To ensure the world feels real, alive, and expansive, it has been beautifully mapped with the use of the Inkarnate program. Additional area maps are still forthcoming, ensuring that even a game that remains in one area or around one city will be able to find plenty to engage players for many games. Additionally, information on each city and area of the world, as well as towns and cities are described in the book that can be set anywhere in a particular region, ensuring your players always have a place to rest their head, or find a new story hook.”
Egg’s Thoughts:
By Dane Asmund, this game’s system involves adding “your relevant Attribute to any relevant Specialty your character has for the particular action. You then roll that many d6, and succeed on 5’s and 6’s.” It’s a simple system and they’re offering a playtest copy to try it out. Give it a go and if you like it, come back to the campaign.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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CREATE YOUR OWN FANTASY RPG ADVENTURE – RPG RESOURCES BOOKS by Dark by Dezign (DriveThruRPG or Open Gaming Store)
Ends on Fri, September 14 2018 2:00 PM EDT.
Disclaimer: I am a creator on this project.
“Contributing authors James Ward, Lenard Lakofka and more share some of their pro tips on how to create your first fantasy RPG adventure”
Looking for advice on how to create your tabletop RPG along with stock art to get you going? Learn from ” industry greats and legends James M. Ward, Lenard Lakofka, as well as exceptional talents such as Johnn Four, Rick Hershey, Lucus Palosaari, Kevin Watson, Bobby Nash and Egg Embry.” I’m excited to be a part of this project and offer my insights into the world of crowdfunding!
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here or at the OpenGamingStore here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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Disclosures: This article contains affiliate links.
Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer™
Freelancer for EN World, Knights of the Dinner Table, Open Gaming Network, and the Tessera Guild.
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Want to share news? Press releases? Rumors? Sneak peeks? Deals? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or on Facebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).
3 One-Hundred-Thousand-Dollar RPG Kickstarters You Should Back – The Expanse, The Fantasy Trip, and Your Best Game Ever/The Cypher System
On Kickstarter there are three RPG campaigns that have surpassed $200,000 in pledges with over a week to go as of this writing. Let’s look at the heavy hitters like The Expanse, The Fantasy Trip, and Your Best Game Ever!/Cypher System Rulebook!
Unfortunately, this goes live just a few hours before the $100,000 Atlas Games’ Over the Edge: A Roleplaying Game of Weird Urban Danger Kickstarter ends (Tue, August 14 2018 2:00 PM EDT) so I did not cover it, but the RPG is worth checking out.
The Expanse Roleplaying Game by Green Ronin Publishing (DriveThruRPG or OpenGamingStore)
Ends on Wed, August 22 2018 9:00 PM EDT.
“The Expanse Roleplaying Game brings James S.A. Corey’s award-winning series of science fiction novels to the tabletop.
Venture Into The Expanse!
The Expanse Roleplaying Game brings James S.A. Corey’s award-winning series of science fiction novels to the tabletop. Using the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) rules found in Fantasy AGE, Blue Rose, and Modern AGE, The Expanse takes players to a far-future solar system where humanity is divided: Martians, Belters, and the people of old Earth struggle for political power and resources, but even older, alien, forces are stirring in the universe, and human history is about to take an unexpected new turn. The Expanse applies the fast-playing and action-based AGE rules to spaceships, solar colonies, and adventure and intrigue in the far-future, where the actions of the characters may change the course of history!
As long time fans know, The Expanse was a roleplaying game campaign long before it was a series of novels or a TV show. We are delighted to bring it full circle with this game! And here’s the best thing about The Expanse RPG: we’ve been working on this for well over a year and rules are done! They’ve been through multiple iterations and playtesting, and we’ve worked closely with Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham (together, James S.A. Corey) throughout to ensure we are getting The Expanse right. Now let’s hear from Daniel and Ty themselves!
Want to check the game out RIGHT NOW? Download The Expanse RPG Quickstart today! This is a 40-page PDF that includes stripped down rules, pre-generated characters, and an adventure you can play right away. The download is free.
The Expanse RPG Features
The Expanse is based on the exciting new Modern AGE rules-set, and includes many of its features, such as customized character building using Backgrounds and Professions, Drives for character engagement, and an abstract resources system. It also makes use of the Modern AGE approach to action, exploration, and social encounters, complete with stunts and systems for all of them. To get a closer look at Modern AGE, you can download the Quickstart here.
The following are some of the unique features of The Expanse in comparison to other AGE games:
- Fortune: Rather than Health, characters have a Fortune score that measures lucky near-misses, close scrapes, and trivial hits before the character takes serious harm. Fortune is also useful for modifying die rolls and offering players some narrative control but, watch out! Spend too much of it and your luck could run out when you get caught in a crossfire!
- Conditions: In addition to a running Fortune total, characters use various conditions to measure things like injuries and fatigue as well as tactical challenges like hindered movement or sensory abilities.
- Interludes: The interludes in between encounters are given their own treatment, allowing players to make use of their “down-time” (including long hauls between destinations in the System) to recover, do maintenance, build their connections with others, or pursue their own projects.
- Spaceships: The Expanse RPG features a system to model and create spaceships and its own system for space combat, including the assault on Thoth Station as an example of the system in action!
- The Churn: The Expanse also offers something for the Game Master with the Churn: A ticking counter that measures the crew’s progress through a story and just when things are going to suddenly go sideways and become even more complicated!
Two Editions to Choose From!
We are offering the core rulebook of the Expanse RPG in two formats:
The Standard Edition is now (thanks to unlocked stretch goals) a 224 page full color hardback with a poster map of the solar system. This is the version that will stay in print after the Kickstarter has been fulfilled.
The Special Edition is a deluxe version of The Expanse RPG. It features the same beautiful full color interior of the Standard Edition with a black leatherette hardcover and a ribbon bookmark. This version is a Kickstarter exclusive, so it will not be available after the close of this campaign. Thanks to an unlocked stretch goal, the Special Edition now includes a dust jacket featuring the game’s gorgeous cover art!
The Expanse Game Master’s Kit
This Kickstarter also includes The Expanse Game Master’s Kit, which will ship alongside the book. It currently includes the following, but may expand with the unlocking of stretch goals:
- A three-panel landscape format GM Screen with vital game system reference tables on one side and three panels of Expanse art on the player-facing side.
- A set of game reference cards, including an initiative tracker, stunt references, and action references useful for players at the table.
- Now includes pre-generated characters after a stretch goal unlock!
- Now includes an adventure after a stretch goal unlock!
Abzu’s Bounty
Abzu’s Bounty is the first campaign for The Expanse Roleplaying Game. This series of six linked scenarios will let you kick off your adventures in The Expanse in style. All six parts were unlocked as stretch goals so the full campaign is a go! Best of all, if you back the Kickstarter for $30 or more, you get a PDF of Abzu’s Bounty for free!
Design Team
We assembled a great team to design The Expanse Roleplaying Game. Steve Kenson is the lead designer. You may know Steve from our Blue Rose and Mutants & Masterminds RPGs, or from any of the dozens of RPG books he’s worked on over the last two decades. He had the able assistance of Seth Johnson, Ian Lemke, Rich Lescouflair, Rob McCreary, Jason Mical, Neall Raemonn Price, Zack Walters, Nicole Winchester, and of course James S.A. Corey!“
Egg’s Thoughts:
James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse, the book series and TV series [with poorer pacing than the books (call it what it is)] started life as a homebrew game. With this Kickstarter, it’s coming around full circle using Green Ronin Publishing AGE System (Dragon Age, Fantasy AGE, Blue Rose, and Modern AGE) as the engine (I enjoy the system overall). Add to that, there are stretch goals to let fans get their characters written up by James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) and even include a fresh short story (reported on here). This campaign is well worth checking out.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here or at the OpenGamingStore here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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THE FANTASY TRIP – Old-School Roleplaying! by Steve Jackson Games
Ends on Fri, August 24 2018 6:05 PM EDT.
“Help us bring back Steve Jackson’s first tabletop RPG.
In 1977, Steve started work on his first roleplaying game, The Fantasy Trip. It was published by Metagaming, and for a brief time it even rivaled D&D for popularity. The Fantasy Trip (TFT) was published first as a series of microgames and, later, expanded with full-size books.
Steve’s TFT works, published between 1977 and 1980, included:
- Melee (1977): A microgame of fantasy combat and the first release in the series. At $2.95,Melee was inexpensive and formed the core of the line.
- Wizard (1978): Spellcaster battles! Wizard, the second TFT game, was originally slightly more expensive at $3.95 and provided the line’s magic rules.
- Death Test (1978): Steve’s first solo adventure — ever! — and designed for use with Meleeand/or Wizard. To learn more about solo adventures, see “Writing a Solo Adventure” atthefantasytrip.game website.
- Death Test 2 (1980): A sequel to Death Test and a chance to explore a second dungeon using only the Melee and/or Wizard microgames.
- Advanced Melee (1980): Originally designed as part of the TFT boxed roleplaying game,Advanced Melee was split by the publisher from its planned format and released to a separate book of expanded combat rules.
- Advanced Wizard (1980): Also snatched from the never-released TFT box set, this title presented more magic rules for use with the series.
- In the Labyrinth (1980): The roleplaying rules for TFT and what would have been the core of the planned box set, In the Labyrinth included character rules, GM advice, monsters, and more.
- Tollenkar’s Lair (1980): An adventure for TFT.
Steve left Metagaming after completing his work on In the Labyrinth and the other titles that were planned as parts of a never-to-be-published TFT box set. After his time at Metagaming, Steve published The Space Gamer magazine and founded Steve Jackson Games.
The Fantasy Trip continued at Metagaming, under the guidance of line editor Guy McLimore (author of the excellent Grail Quest TFT solo adventure) and others. Several adventures were released . . . then Metagaming closed its doors, and The Fantasy Trip was unavailable for nearly 40 years.
Fast forward to 2017. Steve regained rights to his work! He’s now working on the Legacy Edition . . . what TFT should have been when it was first published 40 years ago.
The Fantasy Trip is an “old-school” RPG, with easy character design, realistic tactical combat, and an emphasis on story. It is unabashedly focused on dungeon crawls and arena battles. It’s a great introduction for your friends who are new to roleplaying, because it’s so easy to get started.
Egg’s Thoughts:
I was *briefly* GM’ed (in a round robin) by Steve Jackson at Dragon*Con in the 90s and met him again, briefly, at Origins 2018. Like that event in my life came around for me, Steve Jackson is returning one of his original properties to the players after decades. This is worth checking out for that old school nostalgia and a still-original game. Check out the philosphy of the game here – easy character design, realistic tactical combat, and an emphasis on story – then head to the campaign and back it!
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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Your Best Game Ever! [Cypher System] by Monte Cook Games
Ends on Fri, August 24 2018 8:00 PM EDT.
“A tool book for tabletop roleplayers. No matter what game you play or how long you’ve been playing–have your best game ever!
Your Best Game Ever is not your typical RPG sourcebook. It’s not a book with adventures, spells, creatures, or magic items. It’s not a book for characters at all, but a book for players! If you play or run roleplaying games, this book is for you. Inside this gorgeous hardcover book, suitable for your coffee table or your gaming table, you will find advice and suggestions for enhancing your RPG experience at the table and away from it. This is an insider’s look at everything that goes into the hobby—finding a group, making a character, running a game, creating adventures, finding all the right ideas, hosting a game…and that’s just for starters.
If You’re an Experienced Gamer
You’ve been gaming for a while now. Maybe even years. You get the concepts, and you understand the rules. No one needs to explain the dice to you. Your Best Game Ever embraces the hobby you love, and provides real tips, immediately usable advice, and hands-on pointers you can use at your game table. You’ll find everything here from enhancing immersion, tips for running games online, creating characters with depth, worldbuilding, designing rules, dealing with personality conflicts that arise at the table, and more!
If You’re Fairly New to Gaming
Your friends play RPGs. You’ve maybe watched some streaming games, or given it a try a few times. You get the general idea, but where do you go from there? How do you really get into this hobby the way so many others have? This book will give you everything you need to learn how to choose the right game, how to fit into your game group or start your own group, and get you going on the fast track to being a great gamer.
Not a Rule Book, But a Tool Book
Your Best Game Ever is divided into three major sections: general game topics, being a player, and being a game master. There’s even a section on designing your own game, and getting it published. And this isn’t just a stuffy book on theory, either. You’ll find actual suggestions you can use to create better characters with character arcs, real recipes you can make for game night (and even spruce them up for your genre of choice), specific suggestions for music and ambiance depending on genre, plot ideas, character ideas, and other ready-to-use material.
This 224-page book will enable you to become a better gamer. You’ll find ways to create and manage a great game group, tricks for game prep (and what to do if you haven’t prepared!), understanding and managing game balance, and taking everything around you and incorporating it as inspiration for your game.
Monte Cook, the principal author, has been playing RPGs for 40 years, and working on them professionally for 30 years. The MCG team, all of whom will be contributing, are an extremely seasoned group with a combined total of over 250 years of RPG experience. But we wanted to get an even wider and diverse set of experiences and points of view in this book, so we’ve recruited a team of folks that will provide feedback as well as their own contributions for the book. This dream team of consulting experts includes:
Eric Campbell
Matt Colville
Luke Crane
Stacy Dellorfano
Tanya DePass
Ajit George
Jennell Jaquays
Eloy Lasanta
Tom Lommel
Matthew Mercer
Susan J. Morris
Alina Pete
John Rogers
Monica Valentinelli
The book will also feature comics and cartoons from:
John Kovalic (Dork Tower)
Vickie Lee (Dungeons and Doggos)
Aviv Or (Up to Four Players)
Brian Patterson (d20 Monkey)
Len Peralta (Geek-a-Week)
Alina Pete (Weregeek)
Stan! (10x10Toon)
(Scroll down for more details on Your Best Game Ever)
In 2011, Monte created Numenera, and with it, a game system called the Cypher System. This game system has won awards and has been lauded by gamers everywhere as a wonderfully different way to play games of any genre. In 2015, we created the Cypher System Rulebook (CSR) to help gamers use the system for any type of game they wanted to play—fantasy, science fiction, horror, superheroes, and so on. You can get a copy of that book in this Kickstarter campaign, but we’re also Kickstarting a new version that will come out in 2019. The new version will incorporate lots of new options for players, but perhaps best of all it will take the concepts from Your Best Game Ever and apply them directly to the Cypher System. These two books will work hand-in-hand to create the best Cypher game ever!
(Scroll down for more details on the new Cypher System Rulebook)
If you’re new to the Cypher System and are curious about how it works, you can download the free Cypher System Rules Primer for an idea of how the game plays.
Now that the Kickstarter has funded, our stretch goals will focus on the development of various genre-focused books that will take the concepts found in the new CSR and take them one step further, with specific examples. Each of these additional books will include an entirely new and original campaign setting as well as lots of material and advice for making your own in the realms of science fiction, fantasy, and more.
You’ve read the effusive descriptions above. Is Your Best Game Ever really for everyone? More importantly, is it for you? Maybe it would be better to just show you what’s in the book. Here’s a brief listing of some of the topics we’ll cover:
Our goal with this book is to make every game your best game ever. But we know–as GMs, players, and designers ourselves–that every game and every experience is unique. What’s the hardest struggle you have with creating great games, either as a player or as a GM? Looking for some GM or player advice? Let us know at this link. (Once the KS is complete and we’ve started working on the book, we’ll look through your comments to make sure the book covers players’ biggest issues and concerns.)
When we were finishing the new Numenera books, Discovery and Destiny, one of the first things that playtesters asked us was, are you going to incorporate some of the cool new material in these books into the Cypher System?
A valid question. And it got me (Monte) really thinking about the Cypher System Rulebook as a whole. I didn’t want to change the rules—I love the Cypher System, and wouldn’t touch the mechanics. But developing Numenera Discovery and Destiny showed me that there was a lot we could add in terms of player abilities and flexibility, and what the CSR really needs is flexibility. The idea that you can create any campaign in any genre is fundamental to the whole idea. And I realized we could take some steps to push that idea a lot further.
So we’re Kickstarting a brand new, revised 416-page Cypher System Rulebook. Before I go any further, though, let me say right now, if you’ve got the existing Cypher System Rulebookand you’re happy with it, great! These new ideas don’t change the way the rules work. You still roll a d20, you’ve still got difficulties 1⎼10, you’ve still got characters with descriptors, types, and foci. NPCs have levels. PCs use effort to decrease the difficulty. Everything is still fully compatible with everything Cypher-related that we’ve ever published. You’ll be able to play a game with half the characters from the original CSR and half from the new CSR all at the table at the same time. The difference isn’t in how the game is played, but in the choices players get to create and run their characters.
What I’m most excited about are the ways I’ve thought about over the last few years to make things more customizable so that you could even more easily use these rules in any setting. To that end, in this book we’re dramatically streamlining the chapter on character focus, so that you can customize your character’s focus to perfectly match the setting and your character concept. So if you’re making a starship pilot, a superhero, or an occult investigator, you don’t choose the one that fits best from a list of foci—you take your character concept and tailor your focus so that it really fits what you want to do.
Based on player feedback, we’re also making what we call subtle cyphers—cyphers that aren’t tied to a specific object—the default for all genres, and we’ll be including way more of them. (You’ll still be able to have cyphers as objects too.) This will make applying the concept of cyphers, which is obviously core to the system, easy no matter what kind of game you’re playing.
And of course, there’s all those new additions from Numenera Discovery and Destiny that add a lot of new options that just make the game better. They’re not really changes, they’re additions—new character abilities, more choices, player intrusions in addition to GM intrusions, and more. These will all be incorporated into the new CSR. And let me say again, it’s still all entirely compatible with existing Cypher System material, whether it be from theCSR or one of our settings like Gods of the Fall, Predation, or Unmasked (and of course, Numenera and The Strange).
Further, we’ll also be incorporating suggestions from Your Best Game Ever directly into this book. So, for example, Your Best Game Ever will talk about creating character arcs to enhance play, while the specific material for creating Cypher System character arcs as a mechanic will be included in this book.
Lastly, we’ll include even more genres you can use, in addition to fantasy, horror, and so on. We’re going to break science fiction into hard sci-fi and space opera/science fantasy, and we’ll add coverage for romance, historical gaming, and more! Learn more about the changes we’re planning to make here.
Your Best Game Ever: This 160-page beautiful hardcover book is suitable for your coffee table as well as your game table! Decades of gaming advice and insight all in one tome. If you love RPGs, you need this book. Also available as a PDF.
Cypher System Rulebook: This 416-page, lavishly illustrated, hardcover corebook is fully compatible with the original Cypher System Rulebook, and all Cypher System products like Numenera, The Strange, Gods of the Fall, Predation, and Unmasked! It contains everything you need to play a Cypher System game of your own. Also available as a PDF.“
Egg’s Thoughts:
Your Best Game Ever! is going to be an epic tool dealing with something that is not always covered in gaming, philosophy. When the rules are covered, the setting is immaculate, the game is scheduled, then this book deals with the connecting tissue between those elements, what will take them from a checklist of needs to a fun night of dice slinging. And it is written by some amazing writers!
I’m a fan of the Cypher System. Over on EN World, I write reviews for the Cypher System Creator Program (Monte Cook Games crowd sourcing RPG option that allows creators to produce and sale original content for the Cypher System) so I am eager to see the changes/non-changes coming in the revised Cypher System rulebook.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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UPDATE 2018-08-14 2:00 PM:
CREATE YOUR OWN FANTASY RPG ADVENTURE – RPG RESOURCES BOOKS by Dark by Dezigns
Ends on Fri, September 14 2018 2:00 PM EDT.
“Contributing authors James Ward, Lenard Lakofka and more share some of their pro tips on how to create your first fantasy RPG adventure”
Looking for advice on how to create your tabletop RPG along with stock art to get you going? Learn from ” industry greats and legends James M. Ward, Lenard Lakofka, as well as exceptional talents such as Johnn Four, Rick Hershey, Lucus Palosaari, Kevin Watson, Bobby Nash and Egg Embry.” I’m excited to be a part of this project and offer my insights into the world of crowdfunding!
Check out the campaign here.
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Disclosures: This article contains affiliate links.
Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer™
Freelancer for EN World, Knights of the Dinner Table, Open Gaming Network, and the Tessera Guild.
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Want to share news? Press releases? Rumors? Sneak peeks? Deals? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or on Facebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).
4 OSR Kickstarters You Should Back – Secrets of the Nethercity, Grimtooth’s Trapsylvania, City of Brass, and SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City
OSRs [Old School Revival/Renaissance], they’re fun and, sometimes, controversial. Playing SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies! at Origins, and my last OSR article, put me in a mood to visit some new OSR Kickstarters. What follows is old school madness.
Secrets of the Nethercity by Autarch
Ends on .
“An immersive dungeon sandbox designed for the Adventurer Conqueror King System and other D20 OSR RPGs.
For three thousand years, the secrets of the Nethercity have been hidden. Now the delving of man has breached the ruins, and the lore and treasures of the ancients wait in the darkness below for those bold enough to seize them. But an inhuman evil slumbers in that darkness, and the time of the Awakening is at hand….
We’re excited to announce Autarch’s eighth Kickstarter project: The Secrets of the Nethercity™, an immersive dungeon for the Adventurer Conqueror King System™ and other D20 fantasy role-playing games.
With Secrets of the Nethercity you get:
- An epic “kilodungeon” with 240 location entries spread across 20 different dungeon sub-regions that can be explored in a nonlinear fashion over the course of your campaign
- 12 new monsters, including the chryselephantine statue, faewyrd, hydropian, and terror of death
- 30 new magic items, including the bag of faerie seeds, the funerary barge of the cults, horn of the eagles, scepter of sacred power, and shadowcowl robe
- 4 new character classes, including the elven cultist, hierophant, and warlord
- A special appendix providing step-by-step worksheets to adapt the Nethercity to your favorite campaign setting
- A home base (the city of Cyfaraun) for use by your adventurers in between dungeon delves. The city is presented in summary format in the adventure itself, and the city and the sewers below it are presented in more detail in a supplement called Capital of the Borderlands (available at $20 and above pledge level). With every bonus goal, we’ll expand the city and sewer levels!
The Nethercity, the city, and the sewer level in between are all beautifully mapped by the incredible cartography of Dyson Logos and Simon Forster. You get maps of the city, sewers, and Nethercity, as well as zoomed-in sectional maps of each major area. With every bonus goal we hit, we’ll add more maps.
We’ve tapped artist Michael Syrigos to create rich, gorgeous full-color art for the adventure. Not every image will be full color at the base level, but all of the backer-supported art will be.
Full color, you ask? Yes! This will also be our first product developed for and printed in full-color. We’re working with layout artist Todd Crapper to update our house style for full-color presentation. Below is a sample full-color layout he prepared as a demo for Heroic Fantasy Handbook. (The final layout for Nethercity is, of course, still being developed – partly through this Kickstarter!)
What do you mean by kilodungeon?
The Nethercity is bigger than an ordinary dungeon (like Sinister Stone of Sakkara) but not as big as a megadungeon (like Dwimmmermount). Get it? Kilo instead of mega… Let’s just read on.
What levels is the adventure for?
Secrets of the Nethercity is designed for a party of experienced mid-level adventurers and is stocked with sufficient monsters and treasure to advance them by four to six levels. As such it serves as a mid-level environment in which the adventurers can acquire the wealth and power they need to advance into high-level play.
Where is the adventure set?
The adventure takes place in the Auran Empire campaign setting, the default setting for ACKS. The eponymous Nethercity lies below the city of Cyfaraun, just fifty miles northwest of Türos Tem, making it a perfect sequel to our introductory adventure The Sinister Stone of Sakkara. But if you don’t play in the Auran Empire, don’t worry – a special appendix in the book offers advice on how to adapt the adventure for use with our Kanahu setting or with your own favorite campaign world. The Nethercity can be placed under any long-inhabited urban settlement that’s changed hands between law and chaos over the centuries.
How much detail is offered on the city of Cyfaraun?
In the tradition of classic TSR adventure scenarios such as The Keep on the Borderlands and The Village of Hommlet, Secrets of the Nethercity gives you the information you need to use Cyfaraun as a home base for adventurers in your campaign. The level of detail in the city itself will be similar to that provided for the city of Harat in our Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu supplement. But as we unlock Bonus Goals, Cyfaraun will get even more detailed, with the sewer level below the city transformed into a whole additional play area.
What are the Bonus Goals?
If we raise more than our target, we’ll expand the amount of information we provide on the city of Cyfaraun and flesh out the extensive sewers and ruins directly beneath it.
Egg’s Thoughts:
Are regular dungeons too small? Are megadungeons too big? Is your party looking for a size that’s just right? Well, Goldi, welcome to the kilodungeon of Nethercity! The map of the sewer level above, that’s a nice map, and its detail makes me want to try these old school challenges!
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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Grimtooth’s Trapsylvania (DCC Sourcebook) by Goodman Games
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“The legendary locations of Grimtooth’s Traps revealed! A DCC supplement that lets you confront Grimtooth himself in his own lair!
Listen up, puny humans! Grimtooth the Troll here. You sorry souls have been dying from my traps for decades. And in all that time, not one of you miniscule mortals has attacked me in my lair! Well, I’ve decided to take pity on you. For the first time ever, I’m going to show you my realm. You’ll finally get to see – Trapsylvania!
Updated June 24: We just cleared our first stretch goal! Trapsylvania will include fancy custom-printed endsheets!
This Kickstarter supports the publication of Grimtooth’s Trapsylvania, a 144-page campaign setting and sourcebook! It will be available in print (softcover or hardcover) and electronic (PDF) format. It is fully illustrated, with color cover and B/W interior art. The publisher is Goodman Games, under license from Flying Buffalo. The book is written in a systems-neutral style like all Grimtooth books, with DCC RPG stats compiled in an appendix at the back.
Grimtooth’s Lair
This Kickstarter also offers a rare collectible treasure: the “lost 8th Grimtooth book.” Flying Buffalo published a total of 7 Grimtooth books. At the Origins Game Convention in 1983, an independent publisher released their own unauthorized bootleg adventure called Grimtooth’s Lair. Today, only a single copy of this adventure is known to exist. Thanks to collector Bill Meinhardt, we have been able to scan the adventure for publication. It is being offered as an add-on for this Kickstarter (see below).
At last – the legendary locations of Grimtooth’s Traps revealed!
For over 30 years, Grimtooth’s numerous Traps books have horrified players and inspired game masters with hundreds of dangerous devices, deadly deathtraps and hilarious hijinx! Now Grimtooth (with a little help from kid sister Grimtina) will take you on a personally guided tour of his realm and the central hub of his vast Traps empire.
Run your own Grimtooth campaign, or pick and choose locations you can use in your own adventures. Explore Grimtooth’s caverns, visit his Inner Sanctum, escape the Deathmaze Testing Center, attend Warthog’s School for Trolls, take a ride on Grimtooth’s Airship, tour Grimtina’s Petting Zoo or get lost in many more gigantic places of doom, like the Infinite Corridor of Hallways. Each of these infamous locations includes maps, descriptions, non-player character details, scenarios, and lots of art. Plus there are more traps (of course) and plenty of things with which to endanger your characters.
Like all Grimtooth books, Grimtooth’s Trapsylvania is written in a systems-neutral format, and published in a way that it is fully compatible with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game (DCC RPG). A series of appendices at the back provide quick and easy stats for DCC RPG games, covering all the creatures, characters and items described in the book. It’s very easy to fill a graveyard with the corpses of your DCC player characters! (Because once you enter Trapsylvania – you won’t leave! Suckers.)
Trapsylvania is written and illustrated by S. S. Crompton, the legendary “voice of Grimtooth” who has been working on Grimtooth products for Flying Buffalo for more than 30 years. We’ve rounded up the entire roster of historical Grimtooth contributors to illustrate the book, so you’ll find art not just by S. S. Crompton, but also by Liz Danforth, Micheal Von Glahn, Scott Jackson Phil Longmeier, and Jeff Dee – all the artists who have contributed to Grimtooth products over the years! The new traps are written by Grimtooth alumni S. S. Crompton, Ken St. Andre, Bear Peters, Rick Loomis, Paul O’Connor and Debora Kerr. The DCC stats are provided by Terry Olson, with editing by Jen Brinkman.
Trapsylvania is chock full of useful gaming material! How much is there? Well, here’s the exact count!
- 1 whole country! (Grimtooth’s, that is!)
- 15 large locations, all described and mapped
- 48 scenario ideas
- 60 traps or trapped items
- 86 creatures (with DCC stats in the Appendix)
- 26 NPCs (with DCC stats in the Appendix)
- 23 items (with DCC stats in the Appendix)
- And loads of laughs!
What is Grimtooth’s Traps?
Originally published by Flying Buffalo, Grimtooth’s Traps is one of the most popular RPG accessories ever produced, with more than 250,000 copies in print since 1981. Flying Buffalo published seven Grimtooth’s books, all of them usable with any RPG. In 2015, Goodman Games compiled all of these into a massive hardcover compilation, and also published two additional DCC-compatible Grimtooth adventures. Grimtooth remains an eternally relevant character and his popularity has only grown since then.
The hallmarks of Grimtooth-style traps are wacky humor combined with deadly danger, plus, of course, extremely useful material that can be integrated into any dungeon-crawling RPG!”
Egg’s Thoughts:
I interviewed the trapmeister himself, Grimtooth, over at the Open Gaming Network. It was one of the most fun interviews I’ve ever done. Don’t waste your time here, go read it here!
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here or at the OpenGamingStore here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City Tabletop Roleplaying Game by Bloat Games
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“SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City is an RPG heavily influenced by the 90s cartoons Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men, Spider-man and TMNT!
Egg’s Thoughts:
At Origins Game Fair 2018, I played SURVIVE THIS!! Zombies! with Eric Bloat. After the game, Eric shared a preview of this Kickstarter and talked about what he hopes to accomplish with it – a street level superhero game using a system that you already know. He has plans to cover every type of grim and gritty comic book superhero archetype and I can’t wait to try it out. Add to that, one of the contributors is Alan Bahr of Tiny d6 fame (among others) who I got to interview some time back, and this is a lock!
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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City of Brass: Epic Adventure for 5e and Swords and Wizardry by Frog God Games
Ends on Tue, July 24 2018 6:22 PM EDT.
“City of Brass: A Legendary Adventure for 5e and Swords and Wizardry! Based on the 2006 Necromancer Games classic!
From his gleaming palace, the Sultan of Efreet turns his cruel gaze upon the Lost Lands …
Good folk have vanished. Those who were once disparaged and forgotten now wield power unlike anything seen before. Rulers and sages turn a blind eye to the disturbing events unfolding around them. In every corner of the Lost Lands, the Cult of the Veiled One spreads unchecked.
Prophesizing a cleansing jihad of flames and the coming of the Burning One, the cult has erected its brazen spires in every land. What follows depends on the wit and courage of mighty heroes who must rise to the occasion and take the fight to the enemy in its very stronghold. Will they succeed, or will they succumb to the temptations of the Veiled One’s court and join in the conquest of their home world? A fabled city of wishes on the edge of an eternal flame. The City of Brass is a rich combination of sand-box style role playing adventure, planar exploration, and twisted dungeons designed to test even the most seasoned adventurers.
Beginning with low-level challenges in the familiar confines of the Lost Lands, the adventure leads characters on a thrilling journey through multiple planes of existence culminating in the exploration of the City of Brass itself. The gleaming towers and floating platforms of the city hold terrors and wonders such as the Great Repository and the Minaret of Screams. Characters may choose to take a turn in the Circus of Pain, raid the floating Pyramid of Set, or join the resistance to the Sultan’s oppressive rule and lead an assault on the palace itself! A phoenix rises fully formed from the ashes of the past. The City of Brass is re-imagined for the new renaissance of fantasy role playing games, brought to you in the epic style of old school fantasy campaigns of yesteryear.
From the design team that brought you Bard’s Gate and Sword of Air, the City of Brass is an adventure unlike any other. With full color art and maps, new content and new organization, the City of Brass returns bigger and better than ever! An Adventure Sourcebook for characters level 1-20. New versions for Swords & Wizardry and the Fifth Edition of the world’s most popular role-playing game.
City of Brass 2018
So what’s new in this release compared to the original Necromancer Games Boxed Set?
This new release of The City of Brass includes all new color maps by Alyssa Faden and Robert Altbauer. Plus amazing new color art by Colin Chan, Adrian Landeros, Terry Pavlet, Michael Syrigos, C. J. Allan Marsh, and Artem Shukaev.
The original City of Brass was divided into 3 books and has been revised and reorganized throughout with 150,000 new words of adventures and material.
Section1: Cult of the Burning One – Now includes the following adventures:
- Lornedain the Secret Flame: An introductory adventure for characters Levels 1-3.
- Freegate: the Brazen Spire (For Levels 4-6), giving new details to the Lost Lands city of Freegate as the characters investigate the arrival of a new cult and its magical tower.
- The Sea of Baal: (For levels 5-8). Adventures in the Titian Isles, the Elemental Plane of Air and Beyond as they travel across the Sea of Baal to the continent of Lybinos!
- Numeda a Caliphate in Flames: (For levels 6-9). Arriving in Lybinos the characters discover that the city of Cirtius in the Caliphate of Numeda is over-run by the forces of the Sultan of Efreet. Help free the survivors or join the Sultan in his conquest of the Lost Lands!
- The Path of the Prophet: (For Levels 8-10). Rewritten from the original with new content.
Section 2: The City of Brass is now newly organized with details on factions, new locations in the Plane of Molten Skies.
Section 3: Tales of Brass
New Adventure Locations including:
- Ard’s Sanctuary: An adventure location for 11-14th level characters.
- Freeman’s Tower: An ultra-dimensional apartment complex and home base located in the lower city. Conquer the tower and live rent free under the Sultan’s nose! For 11th-14th level characters.
- The Apartment of Ra Po Jejh!: An old enemy makes a surprise return. Find his phylactery and finish him off once and for all! For 16th-18th level characters!
- Cathedral of the Lightbringer: The cathedral of the Lord of Infurnace’s minions serving as his consulate in the City of Brass. Steal the Sword of the Lightbringer if you Dare!”
Egg’s Thoughts:
Before looking at the game, let’s mention, and link, an incident from 2017 – Bill Webb has a history that includes at least one public, and disgusting, act of harassment, and he’s the CEO of Frog God Games, the company running this campaign.
That said, let’s look at the game. The book itself will be of a spin-busting size (hence it’ll be put together using “library binding“) with tons of amazing art and interesting ideas. The fact that you can get it for 5e or FGG’s OSR, Swords and Wizardry, makes this a versatile project that offers some options for your gaming table. The book will be nice without a doubt.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here or the Open Gaming Store here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or on Facebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to DriveThruRPG.com and Amazon.com.
* * * * * *
Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer™
Wanna-lancer™ Checklist T-shirt available at Cafepress
Interested in being a wanna-lancer? Start with the official Wanna-lancer Checklist t-shirt or wall clock or ice tea glass!
* * * * * *
Egg Embry wrote comic book short stories, edited comic book series, wrote and drew a webcomic, and contributed to comic book journalism across the 2000s. Now, he buys the opportunity to write for a variety of tabletop role-playing games in the tradition of vanity press. His purchases have been published by a variety of companies:
- Sasquatch Game Studio’s Primeval Thule for 5e available at DriveThruRPG.com – Writer
- Ember Design Studios’ Yrisa’s Nightmare for 5e and Pathfinderavailable at DriveThurRPG.com – Writer
- Ember Design Studios’ Rats in the Street for 5e and Pathfinder available at DriveThurRPG.com – Writer & Artist
- Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts for 5eavailable at KoboldPress.com – Playtester
- Kobold Press’ Deep Magic 9: Ring Magic (5e) available at KoboldPress.com – Playtester
- EN World’ Gaming at the Kids’ Table Column – Journalist
- Total Party Kill Games’ Slaughter at Splinterfang Gorge – Writer
- Total Party Kill Games’ Fifth Edition Fighter Folio – Writer
- Codex The Gauntlet’s Monthly RPG Zine – Writer
- MidCity Comics’ Soon-to-be-Announced Comic Book Mini-Series – Writer
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or onFacebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).
3 Savage Worlds RPG Kickstarters You Should Back – Freedom Squadron, Savage Tokusatsu, and The Dinosaur Protocol
Kickstarter has several Savage Worlds settings funding at the moment. Want to do your own 1980s-style GI Joe vs COBRA? Thinking you’d like to see giant robots versus monsters? What about post-apocalyptic dinosaurs? Right now on Kickstarter, Savage Worlds await you!
Freedom Squadron – A Savage Worlds Setting by SpyGlass Games
Ends on .
“Freedom Squadron is a high-octane “Love Letter to 80’s Cartoon Action Heroes,” featuring new rules and new options for Savage Worlds.
It is the year 2051. After the startling discovery of VENOM—a paramilitary organization and global conspiracy that’s been interfering in world events since the end of the 19th century—the United Nations and leaders of the free world have been shaken to their core. In the aftermath of World War III, which they started, VENOM’s clear goal is world domination, and they will stop at nothing to achieve it.
The world’s response? Choose the greatest hero of the war, General Abraham Steel, and charge him to recruit an elite fighting force to oppose VENOM and protect liberty for all. That force, comprised of the best-of-the-best from all over the globe, is Freedom Squadron!
Players take on the role of those who’ve heeded the call to action. They are new Recruits who must first earn their stripes to become Commandos. Eventually, if they live up to the expectations of trainers like Sandbar, Corporal Carnage, Preedatore, and Blindsight, they may earn their Code Names and carry the fight to VENOM anywhere in the world… and beyond!
“Savage Worlds was created to handle the kinds of games I often like to play and run, where you can be a badass fighter or wizard or whatever, but you can also be a leader. A planner. I’m proud of how the game accommodates that, and my friend Sean Patrick Fannon has added even more to it in Freedom Squadron.
I had a blast in the Plans & Operations phase riffing off the other players, figuring out how best to use our individual characters’ skills, and then watching it all come together in the adventures that followed. Sean isn’t afraid of big games and big ideas, and this may be his best yet. I can’t wait to back, buy, and run it myself!”
–Shane Lacy Hensley (Code Name: BUBBLES), veteran author and game designer, creator of Savage Worlds®, CEO Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Freedom Squadron has many new features for Savage Worlds® fans. Written and designed by Sean Patrick Fannon (Shaintar, Savage Rifts®), these are special rules both inspired by his previous work and brand new for this setting. These include:
-
- Plans & Operations: A unique combination of core Savage Worlds® game play elements that allows players to engage in multiple missions and actions in an “action cinema montage” style. Intelligence gathering, tactical positioning, investigations, covert insertions, computer hacking—anything and everything special ops Commandos might do between their epic battles with VENOM and other enemies. Fast-paced, inclusive, and designed to feature all of a hero’s skills, the Plans & Operations rules are sure to enhance any Savage Worlds® game.
- Vocation Frameworks and Specializations: Inspired and adapted from the character creation rules of Savage Rifts®, these allow the player to choose a starting package of skills and abilities that reflect their primary role in the team, while also gaining cool extra abilities rolled randomly from various interesting charts. This is all on top of the usual core Savage Worlds® character building process.
- New Edges: like Fighting Style, Operational Planning, Qi Focus, Strange DNA, and the innovative Zone Specialist (allowing heroes to truly shine in various environments like Arctic, Mountain, or Sea Zones).
- Skill Focuses, Gear Points, and much, much more!
Freedom Squadron for Savage Worlds®, is based on VENOM Assault®, the board game created by SpyGlass Games. Evil Beagle Games has worked with World Designer Michael Knight to not only bring the world to life, but to expand on it as well.
While VENOM Assault® is not required at all in order to immerse yourself in the world of Freedom Squadron, you can check out SpyGlass Games’ website to view many character bios and even purchase the game!
Pinnacle Entertainment Group has created one of the most popular game systems in the world with Savage Worlds®, specifically oriented towards pulp and cinema action experiences. Sean Patrick Fannon of Evil Beagle Games has worked with them for years, and is the mastermind behind Savage Rifts®. Creating Freedom Squadron for Savage Worlds® was never a question.
With Pinnacle’s new release of Flash Gordon™ the Roleplaying Game, featuring many new rules updates, Freedom Squadron® is completely up-to-date and represents the state-of-the-art for Savage Worlds® fans.
New To Savage Worlds?
If you’re new to the Savage Worlds® rules system, Freedom Squadron® does require the core rulebook to play. You can get it in print and PDF from Pinnacle’s website. Pinnacle Entertainment Group publishes and manufactures the Savage Worlds® rules book, and maintains this website.
“Freedom Squadron offers an RPG experience like no other. This game is bursting with nostalgic tropes and themes, added to the rock-solid gameplay of the Savage Worlds system. The Plans & Operations rules are an innovative mechanic that focuses the action right where it belongs: on your characters facing down VENOM. Freedom Squadron is the perfect way to take on the roles of an elite, highly-trained special mission force and go on exciting adventures in this fully-realized setting!” – Ross Watson (Code Name: SKIPPER), Product Line Manager Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Wrath & Glory; Lead Developer, Savage Rifts; Lead Writer/Designer, Accursed”
Egg’s Thoughts:
Let’s call this what it is – 1980s GI Joe! The setup, the execution, the names, the file card feel of the bios, the art that’s reminiscent of Tim Seeley’s GI Joe comic work from a decade ago, it’s the feel of my youth and one of my favorite toy lines/cartoons. But, there’s one difference, this is going to be the best version of that era of GI Joe, it’s going to be your version and your stories. This is not to say this is an officially licensed GI Joe product, it’s not; instead, this RPG is based on the board game, VENOM Assault. Regardless of that, the concept will put you back in your childhood and wondering if you should crack open eBay and buy some figures.
But will it be a good Savage Worlds setting? Well, I think the answer to that question is Sean Patrick Fannon. I had the pleasure of roleplaying with Sean at AndoCon 2018 (read about it here). He’s excellent at his craft and he’s the lead designer and brand manager for Pinnacle Entertainment’s Savage Rifts and I’d say he’s the perfect project lead for Freedom Squadron, an individual who loves the craft and the content. His presence as lead designer gives this a big stamp of approval. [By the by, Sean’ll be on this list twice.]
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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The Dinosaur Protocol (for Savage Worlds) by Battlefield Press International
Ends on .
[Disclosure: One of this project’s stretch goals is “$3850 – Stretch Goal #2 – One Sheet Adventure by Egg Embry“.]
“A post-apocalyptic table top role playing game of adventure and discovery in the jungles and plains of a world grown wild and strange.
65 million years have separated the ages of man and dinosaur. Until now.
“Some time in the 21st Century, something broke the world. No one knows for sure what happened. Solar flares, war, global warming, pollution and environmental collapse, or perhaps a combination of all of them. Perhaps it was something much stranger. All we know is that mankind fled the surface, retreating into vast underground shelters where they could wait out the centuries until the earth was habitable once more. But when we emerged from the darkness and prepared to retake our world, it was not as we remembered it. Something had happened to the world that once was. In the centuries without man, nature wound back the clock, returning the planet to an earlier, cleaner, more primal age. An age of dinosaurs.
Now humanity must choose – do we fight to reclaim our past, or do we make peace with the present and embrace a simpler future? Armed with the skills and technologies of our ancestors, do we struggle to recreate former glories, or will we use the second chance we have been given to avoid the mistakes of the past? Will human nature even give us the choice? Will we exterminate the reborn dinosaurs, enslave them, or something else? What will be our Dinosaur Protocol?” – From the journals of Archivist Roebuck
Written for the award-winning Savage Worlds game engine by Chris Halliday and Jonathan M. Thompson, The Dinosaur Protocol is a game of mystery, exploration, discovery and adventure. Players take the role of explorers, scientists, scavengers, hunters and traders, trying to survive a world whose first masters have returned. Will they stay at home and build their settlement, or blaze new trails through the saurian jungles of a World Reborn? Will they extend the hand of friendship to other settlements, or war for valuable resources? Will they hunt the dinosaurs, or study them? Where did the dinosaurs come from, and what other mysteries lie hidden in the ruined cities, dense jungles and empty deserts? Just who – or what – else is out there?
The Dinosaur Protocol presents a bestiary of prehistoric life, rules for encountering, battling and wrangling dinosaurs, details on how to carve your own settlement from the primeval jungle, rules for scavenging ruined cities and ancient installations, and a guide to the World Reborn… everything you need to create your own Dinosaur Protocol campaign.
A post-apocalyptic table top role playing game of adventure and discovery in the jungles and plains of a world grown wild and strange for the Savage Worlds Game Engine.
Alternate campaign frameworks will include:
Blast to the Past: Something went wrong the day they tested the weapon, and the sky tore open. Now your hometown is millions of years in the past, and you and your neighbours must survive a world you never thought you’d encounter.
The Broken World: Time has shattered. Imperial Rome has mingled with modern Europe. Blood runs down the step pyramids of Mexico, and at the bottom of your street is a jungle that wasn’t there yesterday. A jungle from which thunderous footsteps and distant roaring can be heard…
On Safari: Time travel has allowed humanity to retrieve extinct species from the past, and correct some of our worst mistakes, but it’s expensive. Chronos Corp allows universities and research institutes access to their Deep Time stations, while paying customers and their guides hunt the most savage and successful creatures in history. But something has gone wrong at the station. They’ve lost contact with home, the power is failing, and there’s a horde of hungry raptors gathering beyond the security fence…
Inside the Triangle: It was supposed to be a holiday, time off in the sun to recover from the stresses and strains of modern life. Only something hit the plane and now you’ve come down near an island that doesn’t show up on any map, populated by creatures that should have been dead for millions of years. Can you survive, let alone find a way home?
The New World: When scientists discover a crack in time leading to the distant past of a nearby timeline, it seemed like a gift from the gods, a means to escape an overcrowded world strangling to death on pollution. Now you and your family are pilgrims exploring a frontier like no other, building a new life in a primal land. But the factions and pressures of the old world may just have followed you here, and you no longer know who you can trust.
Cover Image is “Laelaps” by Charles Knight”
Egg’s Thoughts:
[Disclosure: One of this project’s stretch goals is “$3850 – Stretch Goal #2 – One Sheet Adventure by Egg Embry“. You have been warned twice now. 😉 ]
Per the disclaimer, this project inspires me. For this action RPG, let’s strip out the need for superpowers, mutants, supernatural monsters, aliens, gods, magic, and made-up weapons, and get back to the reason we build homes in communities – Humanity vs Nature [in this scenario, Dinosaurs]. The idea of co-existing with the Earth’s apex predators is going to be the fuel for great battles at the gaming table! With the focus on the thunder lizards, expect all of the tools you’ll need to make your table Jurassic role-play as you tell stories of living in a world where humanity is an appetizer!
Oh, and Jonathan M. Thompson, co-creator on this project, loves him some dinosaurs and Savage Worlds! This is your chance to partake in his dinosaur love and see how well it will fit with the Savage Worlds rule set!
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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Savage Tokusatsu: Kaiju, Mechs, and Heroes for Savage Worlds by BPB Games
Ends on Fri, April 13 2018 11:59 AM EDT.
“Transforming heroes, kaiju running amok, giant robots versus the monster of the week, and more built for the Savage Worlds rule set.
Tokusatsu is the Japanese word for any live action movie or television show that makes heavy use of special effects. The word’s literal translation is “Special Filming.”
Even if you aren’t familiar with the word itself, you are familiar with the works that fall under its umbrella. Giant, lizard-like kaiju that breathe atomic energy, quirky teens that transform into superheroes to fight against aliens from the moon, and giant robots going blow for blow with one another are all fundamental works within the genre of tokusatsu.
Savage Tokusatsu is a game built from the ground up specifically for the Savage Worldsroleplaying game. Within the pages of this softcover book are new rules and character options to help you capture the feel of any tokusatsu story in the collaborative storytelling experience that is tabletop roleplaying.
You can be the transforming team of heroes working together to control a giant mech simultaneously. You can play the desperate humans trying to halt the advance of an unstoppable monster that towers above skyscrapers. All this and more is possible with Savage Tokusatsu.
Savage Tokusatsu is a Savage Worlds supplement with approximately 100 pages of new content to help you take your game from mundane to kaiju-sized.
It contains:
- Frameworks to represent the diversity of the many transforming heroes genres of tokusatsu.
- New Edges that encourage an even greater degree of cooperation and teamwork amongst teammates.
- New Hindrances that capture the feel of youthful characters trying to find their way in the world.
- Multiple new Optional Rules to help you capture the specific feel of whatever genre of tokusatsu you seek to emulate. Lighthearted action and grim, pessimistic horror are all just as welcome as the next.
- An in-depth but highly intuitive system for designing iconic weaponry and suits of armorfor transforming heroes and special agents alike.
- An in-depth but not intrusive system for designing challenging monsters for our more mechanically-inclined friends.
- A simple Hero Tier system to help groups wishing to avoid Toughness Bloat work giant robots, kaiju, and normal-sized people into the same sessions.
- A streamlined way to approach high Toughness creatures for groups looking to capture the durability and desperation of facing down skyscraper-sized beasts with a column of tanks.
- Over 40 new statblocks including heroes, kaiju, monsters of the week, and big bads that give detailed examples for each type of playstyle.
- A full Plot Point Campaign for a light-hearted, transforming hero themed tokusatsu adventure with several Savage Tales.
- High quality printing fulfilled with DriveThruRPG. The book will fit right in with your other 6.625″ x 10.25″ Savage Worlds books on the bookshelf!
- A collaborative system for creating and controlling a shared pilot mech.”
Egg’s Thoughts:
Giant robots vs giant monsters using Savage Worlds! This is going to be big, dumb, action fun and I can’t wait for it! Want to test it out? They have a free test drive here. Add to that Sean Patrick Fannon’s second appearance on this list, this time as a guest writer for the project… which makes sense since he’s the lead designer for Pinnacle Entertainment’s Savage Rifts and he will bring the giant personalities this game needs to compete with its mechs and leviathans!
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
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Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or onFacebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to DriveThruRPG.com and Amazon.com.
* * * * * *
Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer™
Wanna-lancer™ Checklist T-shirt available at Cafepress
Interested in being a wanna-lancer? Start with the official Wanna-lancer Checklist t-shirt orwall clock or ice tea glass!
* * * * * *
Egg Embry wrote comic book short stories, edited comic book series, wrote and drew a webcomic, and contributed to comic book journalism across the 2000s. Now, he buys the opportunity to write for a variety of tabletop role-playing games in the tradition of vanity press. His purchases have been published by:
- Sasquatch Game Studio’s Primeval Thule for 5e available atDriveThruRPG.com – Writer
- Ember Design Studios’ Yrisa’s Nightmare for 5e and Pathfinderavailable at DriveThurRPG.com – Writer
- Ember Design Studios’ Rats in the Street for 5e and Pathfinder available at DriveThurRPG.com – Writer & Artist
- Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts for 5eavailable at KoboldPress.com – Playtester
- Kobold Press’ Deep Magic 9: Ring Magic (5e) available at KoboldPress.com – Playtester
- EN World’ Gaming at the Kids’ Table Column – Journalist
- Total Party Kill Games’ Slaughter at Splinterfang Gorge – Writer
- Total Party Kill Games’ Fifth Edition Fighter Folio – Writer
- Codex The Gauntlet’s Monthly RPG Zine – Writer
- MidCity Comics’ Soon-to-be-Announced Comic Book Mini-Series – Writer
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or onFacebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).
10 Ways to Start a Political Fight
Short of walking up to someone on the street and dumping a bucket of cold water on their head…
…the best way to start a fight is and always has been to launch a political discussion.
…
Is it Hypocritical to…
Denounce global warming while driving a gas-guzzling truck?
Complain about society’s addiction to social media via Facebook?
Talk poorly about social welfare programs while driving on government-paid roads which are patrolled by gov-paid police?
Complain about the government after not voting in recent elections?
*
Awesome! Malevolent! Superfluous!
Preferably in the company of at least one other person, use exactly three words to describe the current Congress (or Parliament) which exists in your country.
**
Death by Catcalling
In your own words, define what you believe Sexual Harassment means.
Do the same for Sexual Assault.
*
Up a Creek…
There’s been a terrible war overseas.
Your nation isn’t directly involved.
But…
Two-hundred thousand refugees have fled this war.
They speak no English.
Their skill sets are unknown.
They need a place to live, or else most of them will die of starvation and disease.
What percentage of these refugees would you invite to live in your nation?
*
Simplicity
In ten words or fewer, state what you want your government to do for you.
*
The Right to Arm Bears
You’ve been selected by your government to create a brand-new modern-day Bill of Rights.
In this bill, you’ll decide what basic rights are legally granted to each and every citizen of your nation.
What are the first three items you’ll add to the bill?
*
Juggle Three Flags while Kissing a Baby
List the top five things every potential immigrant should have to know or do in order to be granted full citizenship in your nation.
*
Word Smack
For each of the items below, say the first word that comes to your mind upon reading it:
Libtard
Fake News
Republitard
Snowflake
Communist
Leftist
Nazi
White Power
Black Lives Matter
*
The Wage Gauge
The national minimum-wage for full-time workers should be:
$ ______________
Zingers
Choose one word to describe each of the following people:
Hillary Clinton
Jimmy Carter
Abraham Lincoln
Adolf Hitler
Winston Churchill
Justin Trudeau
Hugo Chavez
Donald Trump
*
If you’re thinking these questions are biased, you’re wrong.
They’re not.
The author doesn’t give a rip about partisan politics.
But…
If you feel like arguing even more, go here.
If you prefer to keep the peace, go here.
4 Savage Worlds RPG Kickstarters You Should Back – Titan Effect, Frozen Skies, The Monster Hunters Club, Seven Worlds, and more
This week I’m focusing on four Savage Worlds Kickstarters (as well as a system agnostic offering). Why pick a specific system like Savage Worlds instead of considering every system? Well, for one week I want to see if shining a spotlight on a single RPG engine helps spark some discussion about it. Savage Worlds is one of the most versatile games out there and it covers a variety of genres and I want to see if these campaigns can reach a wider audience, to get an idea of what SW’s fanbase is like. Considering that, let’s countdown the campaigns.
Check out John McGuire’s The Gilded Age steampunk graphic novel on Kickstarter!
5) Frozen Skies RPG for Savage Worlds by Applied Vectors, ltd and Utherwald Press
Ends on Wed, November 1 2017 12:00 PM EDT.
“Diesel-punk post-war aviators fight to survive on the frozen frontier against the elements and the savage Wulvers.
Frozen Skies is a roleplaying game written by Stephen Hughes of Utherwald Press. It is being brought to Kickstarter by Applied Vectors Ltd.
The 120 page book is written, what we need is artwork that accurately brings the setting to life, and for this to happen, we need you! The funding goal gets you a combination of colour and black and white art. if we hit the first stretch goal, it will be a full colour interior!
The setting of Frozen Skies is the continent of Alyeska, the most northern landmass of the world of Darmonica and is often referred to as either the ‘rooftop of the world’ or ‘Darmonica’s Crown’. It is an icy frontier plagued by savage beasts, cut-throat sky pirates, harsh weather and eons old dark secrets. It is a barely tamed land where the most basic of utilities are hard to come by and tend to lie on the good side of unreliable at best. But despite all this there are opportunities for a man to make a name and, more ideally, coin for himself.
Alyeska itself is dominated by savage beasts known as Wulvers, wolf like creatures that’ve plagued Alyeska since its earliest Colonial days. The Commonwealth had troops stationed in Alyeska to defend its fledging colony against the beasts, though they were steadily whittled away to satisfy the Commonwealth’s war efforts. As the defenses were weakened the Wulvers gradually overran more and more territory, in the end the Alyeskans were forced to hide behind fortified walls and increasingly rely on air travel to maintain contact with far-flung outposts.
Despite the Wulvers the other great powers of Darmonica have their own interest in Alyeska, chiefly for the ruins and artefacts of the Ancient Terrans buried beneath the ice and for a mineral by-product of the Blast known as Glimmer Rock. Until it was altered by the energies released in the explosion it was a previously unremarkable mineral, now it is the fuel for a new Industrial Revolution that the world finds itself on the cusp of….but only if the new technology can be made viable.”
Egg’s Thoughts:
Lets lead this list with some diesel-punk for Savage Worlds. Frozen Skies is set on a unique continent where the great powers colonized the north pole and planes are the best way to keep the icebound colonies connected. Sky pirates, and wolves, and glaciers. The concept is interesting and I can see where it’d mesh nicely with the Savage Worlds ruleset. Do you want to try a sample of the setting? It’s a $1.50 for the Frozen Skies Setting Primer at DriveThurRPG.
You can see examples of the creator and publisher’s work at DriveThruRPG here (Applied Vectors, ltd) and here (Utherwald Press).
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
4) Titan Effect RPG for Savage Worlds by Knights Errant Media
Ends on Thu, November 2 2017 10:06 AM EDT.
“An espionage and science fiction setting for Savage Worlds, somewhere between Tom Clancy and the X-Men!
Cover made by Vargasni
Titan Effect RPG is a licensed campaign setting for Savage Worlds. Titan Effect is set in a contemporary world where psychic spies clash with genetically enhanced soldiers in a secret war in which the future of human evolution is at stake.
Take on the role of a trained operative gifted with psychic abilities. Perform dangerous missions all over the world for the international clandestine organization known as the SPEAR, and fight against dangerous creatures and organizations. Survive long enough, and maybe you will be able to make a difference.
Titan Effect RPG requires the Savage Worlds Core Rules and the Super Powers Companion (2nd edition).
The world of Titan Effect is like ours but darker and stranger. Psychics and augmented humans are used as spies and soldiers on behalf of criminal organizations, private military companies, and secret societies in a secret war that has been raging for decades. Some are fighting for control and power, while others seek to shape the future of human evolution.
In the middle of this conflict, stands the worldwide clandestine organization known as the Special Executive Assault and Recon or SPEAR. Its mission: to track and neutralize eugenics and psychic threats, and to prevent the world from falling into chaos. To succeed in its mission, the SPEAR hires people with unique sets of skills and possessing powerful psychic abilities. Its agents come from different nationalities and backgrounds.
Players take on the role of psychic operatives trained in black operations, and working for the international clandestine organization known as the SPEAR. They have the task to perform dangerous missions all over the world and fight against dangerous creatures and organizations. Some are there to make a difference, others for the thrill or because they have no other place to go.
Titan Effect RPG combines biopunk, spy thriller, and superhero elements. Imagine Tom Clancy meets Metal Gear Solid meets the X-Men. Titan Effect RPG plunges you into a world filled with conspiracies, secret organizations, dangerous biotechnologies and psychic phenomena. A world where the boundary between “good” and “evil” is blurred…”
Egg’s Thoughts:
Let’s move from diesel-punk to biopunk. It’s a secret war for humanity’s future in which you can play a supersoldier. Based on the write-up – “Tom Clancy meets Metal Gear Solid meets the X-Men” – this is going to be action meets action meets action. But, hey, you gotta ask yourself if there’s enough action for you? To answer that, try their free demo kit and see (I think you’ll be happy with it).
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
3) Beneath, the Spire and the Sound (Beneath book 2) by Severed Books
Ends on Sun, November 5 2017 8:05 AM EST.
NOTES:
- This link is NSFW
- System agnostic
“Beneath, the Spire and the Sound – book 2 of the Beneath series, a system-agnostic RPG module.
Beneath, the Spire and the Sound (book 2)
Salt of the stars and salt of the earth — the critically acclaimed series is back! The armies of Seven Walls and the armies of Leaf have set their weapons aside — mid-battle — and cast off their armor and clothes. They walk hand-in-hand, naked, laughing, as friends, into the UnDungeon. Hannah has been captured. Now Baron Lennox beckons for you to return from your dark decent, rewarding you with The Perseverance [a tavern]. Beneath book 2 begins.
“Beneath challenges the conventional idea of the ‘Dungeon crawl’ in so many ways and succeeds in them all. It is radical yet well crafted, it is shocking yet thought provoking, it is familiar yet intensly Alien. If roleplaying is a Tree with all the various games and genres spreading out from it, then ‘beneath’ is one sick and twisted branch that waits for all brave travellers who dare to tread their foot upon.” Jay of Colosseum Rex (U.K.)
“Beneath as a series is doing so much to reinvent what it means to be a prewritten adventure module. But Beneath isn’t just a few module books, it’s a living document full of unexpected messed up stuff and amazing artistic expression. You’ll feel like you’re talking to real people when you’re talking to the NPC’s. So strap in, and let’s get salty.” Zach Benge of Tabletop Radio Hour
“Beneath is a return to that thing that made gaming cool in the 80s, it’s dangerous and brutal, yet modern in it’s approach to subtext. A unique, grotesque, disturbing work that is entertaining and well crafted. A horror crawl that examines the topics of self absorption and the dangers held within. Your table deserves this experience and the sequel that follows.” Emanuel James Miller, Owner, Crit Hit Conventions
“Beneath masterfully blends narrative, adventure, combat, and character involvement. A dark tale that left our group massively satisfied.” The Inner Gamer
“I’ve never seen anything like this on an RPG level and I think it’s f*cking rad.” Full Metal RPG / Podcast
Players will venture back to CragLee to claim the rewards they earned from book 1, including The Perseverance (a large tavern). Your party will even manage a “character sheet” specifically made for The Perseverance: name a bar manager, track profits, store items, and customize the property.
Players will also meet Emily, a “Game Witch” who will share Hannah’s secret and also provide valuable support throughout the second half of the campaign. She can take an apprentice and teach them to imbue animal and human organs with powerful magic.
Horrors compound as the party returns to the UnDungeon and “The Vert” to face the more inverted abominations. Player’s decisions affect the outcomes of Hannah and many of the townspeople who have been seduced by the Inverted Cupid. Players will discover what The Invert actually is–a living, breathing cultural catalyst (a “Vert”) summoned with only the best intentions.
THE BOOK (Beneath, the Spire and the Sound)
- 200+ pages
- Matte cover
- Perfectly bound
- 8.5″ x 8.5″
- Original illustrations by Scott Buonchristano and Justin Sirois
- 50+ maps
- Emily (NPC) and Suit of Salt character sheets
- The Perseverance (tavern) management sheet
You will need Beneath book 1 to play Beneath book 2. If you need book 1 now, you can get it on Amazon (free shipping with Prime).”
Egg’s Thoughts:
Let’s take a short Savage Worlds-pause to look at Beneath, a system agnostic adventure. Reading the pitch, this is an adventure that’s going to turn your fantasy preconceptions on their ear. It has some rarely utilized ideas – your tavern has its own character sheet – and enough twists to keep everyone guessing. If you’re looking for a unique path, this may be your cup of tea.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
2) The Monster Hunters’ Club RPG for Savage Worlds by CCS Games/Fabled Environments
Ends on Thu, November 16 2017 9:02 AM EST.
“The Monster Hunters’ Club is a setting for the Savage Worlds RPG about kids coming of age and fighting monsters in the 1980’s.
The Monster Hunters’ Club is a licensed setting for the Savage Worlds Roleplaying Game set in the 1980’s and inspired by kids’ adventure and horror films, television, and novels like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, The Goonies, The Monster Squad, The Lost Boys, Fright Night, It, Super 8, Stranger Things, and many more. Players take on the roles of children, growing up in the 80’s, who become heroes.
The Monster Hunters’ Club is an officially licensed Savage Worlds product, and requires the Savage Worlds Deluxe Core Rules to play.
A preview of The Monster Hunters’ Club is available on DriveThruRPG. Please click on the link in the text, or click on the Preview button above to download our FREE preview from DriveThruRPG.
Something strange is happening in the town of Gulf Haven. Horrible creatures are coming to life. The adults seem blind to the entire thing. It’s up to you to find out what is happening, and stop it before it’s too late!
Growing up in the 1980’s…
You’ve got Saturday morning cartoons, a tree fort, a boombox, a fast bike, and oh…
Monsters are real.
You heard me.
Don’t bother telling your parents. Grown-ups can’t see ‘em. When something gets smashed up, they blame us. When somebody goes missing, they blame someone from out of town, or maybe the Russians. The monsters are real though, and it’s up to us to do something about it.
That’s right, between babysitting your little sister, dodging bullies like Scotty Mangrum, and surviving middle school, you also have to figure out how to fix the monster problem.
You can’t phone home, and there’s nobody you can call. It’s up to you to save the town, and maybe even the world!
Egg’s Thoughts:
The kids on bikes subgenre (Stranger Things, Stephen King’s IT, Tales From the Loop) expands to Savage Worlds. This is a fast-growing niche filled with, at a guess, fans about my age that are looking for a window back to their childhood. Do you want to see if this has the feel of Amblin Entertainment before you buy? The Monster Hunters’ Club is available on DriveThruRPG for free, so grab it and then you can decide if this is the RPG for your childhood memories.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
Monster Club art by Veronica V. Jones
1) Seven Worlds – realistic science-fiction for Savage Worlds by Intellistories
Ends on Thu, November 16 2017 9:08 AM EST.
“A unique hard Science-Fiction setting for the Savage Worlds RPG. An epic campaign, 2D/3D starmaps for most platforms, and more!
Welcome to Seven Worlds, a new Epic Science-Fiction Setting and Campaign for the Savage Worlds role-playing game!
Seven Worlds is a unique, epic hard(ish) Science-Fiction role-playing campaign and setting. In the year 2217 humanity’s greatest achievement is the colonization of the nearby star systems now known as the Seven Worlds, where humanity lives, thrives, and prepares for the next great wave of space exploration. But when the unexpected threatens humanity, only an unlikely band of heroes can unravel a deadly conspiracy and try to avert the Fall!
“This isn’t the usual Firefly-meets-Star Wars space opera, it’s more like The Expanse… Overall rating: 5 out of 5.” – Halfway Station
What makes Seven Worlds special? Do we need yet another science-fiction setting and campaign for Savage Worlds? We believe there IS a niche for a new, unique setting, and here are some reasons why:
The Campaign is Epic: The core of Seven Worlds is its awesome, world-shattering campaign! The setting was designed around the story, rather than the story around the setting, making for a rich environment where everything fits together. Inspired by classic science fiction books likeThe Expanse series and TV series like Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5, as well as by such grand episodic RPG campaigns as the original Dragonlance saga, this is a story arc the players will never forget!
The campaign will be available as seven PDF-only modules and (after the modules have been released) as a single-volume 253-page Campaign Book. For more information on the campaign, check this Designer Diary on our blog site.”
Check out my interview with Luis Enrique Torres about his Kickstarter for Seven Worlds here.
Egg’s Thoughts:
You know what I like best about Savage Worlds? There are four Kickstarters and four unique settings/genres. Diesel-punk, biopunk, kids on bikes, and, now, hard science fiction. As I’ve mentioned before, 2017 feels like the Year of the Sci-Fi RPG.
- Starfinder sold out at Gen Con 50.
- Star Trek Adventures debuted.
- Alternity returned.
- Traveller’s expansion did well on Kickstarter.
- The Stars Without Number: Revised Edition Kickstarter blew away my expectations..
With that in mind, this is going to be a good Savage Worlds setting. As with the other Savage Worlds RPGs on this list, you can try before you buy – Seven Worlds Test Drive for free.
You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here.
You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.
* * * * * *
Signal Boost:
Design Camp 2 – The Conversion! with Ben McFarland, Jason Sonia, and Brian Suskind
We’re planning a short winter project to showcase the process of converting a D&D3.0 adventure to 5E & PFRPG while updating the design.
Ends on Wed, November 1 2017 4:53 AM EDT.
Why signal boost this? This is wanna-lancer college! Take out a student loan and join in because Egg Embry will be there!
Check out the campaign here.
Gilded Age: Vol 1 – A Steampunk Graphic Novel by John McGuire
Made up of magicians and actors, freaks and gunslingers, The Gilded Age reveals everyone’s desires and secrets.
Ends on Fri, November 17 2017 11:59 PM EST.
Why signal boost this? This is from the Tessera Guild’s own John McGuire and he’s hitting on all cylinders with this story! Steampunk circus touring across Victorian Europe! Carny robots! Stage wizards! Tricksh00ting cyborgs! Check out the link to the campaign for a free copy of issue one!
Check out the campaign here.
* * * * * *
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or on Facebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to DriveThruRPG.com and Amazon.com.
* * * * * *
Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer™
Wanna-lancer™ Checklist T-shirt available at Cafepress
Interested in being a wanna-lancer? Start with the official Wanna-lancer Checklist t-shirt or wall clock or ice tea glass!
* * * * * *
Egg Embry wrote comic book short stories, edited comic book series, wrote and drew a webcomic, and contributed to comic book journalism across the 2000s. Now, he buys the opportunity to write for a variety of tabletop role-playing games in the tradition of vanity press. His purchases have been published by:
- Sasquatch Game Studio’s Primeval Thule for 5e available at DriveThruRPG.com – Writer
- Ember Design Studios’ Yrisa’s Nightmare for 5e and Pathfinder available at DriveThurRPG.com – Writer
- Ember Design Studios’ Rats in the Street for 5e and Pathfinder available at DriveThurRPG.com – Writer & Artist
- Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts for 5e available at KoboldPress.com – Playtester
- Kobold Press’ Deep Magic 9: Ring Magic (5e) available at KoboldPress.com – Playtester
- EN World’ Gaming at the Kids’ Table Column – Journalist
- Total Party Kill Games’ Slaughter at Splinterfang Gorge – Writer
- Total Party Kill Games’ Fifth Edition Fighter Folio – Writer
- Codex The Gauntlet’s Monthly RPG Zine – Writer
- MidCity Comics’ Soon-to-be-Announced Comic Book Mini-Series – Writer
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or on Facebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).
Repost – Free Short – So What’s He Going to Buy With All That Gold?
I saw all the Hobbit films in the theater, and while I’m not the biggest fan of the book, I find I’m watching bits and pieces of the movies here and there as I flip through the channels again and again. Some more than others. However, there is one scene that I must turn to and watch in its entirety every opportunity I get:
Smaug.
Smaug slowly reveals himself from under a treasure trove that would invoke Dragon Sickness on Thorin. Smaug talking with Bilbo, toying with him, showing him exactly how impressive he might be. And the extremes he goes to prove that the dwarves will never retake the mountain.
I love every minute of it.
Yet, the other night I was watching these sequences and a strange thought popped into my head:
Why does Smaug (or any dragon) need all that gold? And it isn’t just him – so many of these creatures throughout our myths are guarding a treasure horde. It is a staple such that in Dungeons and Dragons it is not questioned. The only questions anyone has any real concern to answer are: how much is the horde worth? Are we powerful enough to kill the beast guarding it?
But I feel like there is more to this idea.
***
So What’s He Going To Buy With All That Gold?
***
The cavern shone whenever the tiniest glint of light broke through. In those instances, the gleam would bounce from coin to coin, making them sparkle. It would illuminate the lighter colored gems so they became tiny lanterns dotting the golden mound. Under this light the true spectacle could be seen. Appreciated. Gold and diamonds and coins and gems and… a myriad of skeletal forms cooked to a crisp inside their metal armor.
That same treasure acted as a beacon to some. Bands of adventurers who wove odd stories about how the dragon claimed their birthrights… their home. How every coin buried there was theirs to recover. Indeed, all of it would be restored to its rightful owners.
Yes, the cavern might have once belonged to dwarves or mountain men or even an orc herd, but it was the dragon’s now and had been for decades. It was his home. And more importantly, so were the riches it used as a bed.
For while the previous owners certainly contributed to its girth, not everything was from a singular conquest.
***
Krench moved into the cavern. Ever a creature of habit, he made sure to bring along a lantern, even if the act was worthless. At the outer chamber a familiar warmth ran down his leg. Long gone were the days he might have made excuses for such an action. How it could have been explained away as an involuntary response to the immense fear coursing throughout his body.
If his nephew smelled the urine, he did not show it. For that, Krench was grateful. There was far too much left to teach the lowly creature for them to become bogged down in such a trivial thing.
“The thing that no one understands is exactly what the Great Wyrm does with all his riches. The outsiders believe he simply slumbers on them. They make up superstitions where he extracts some form of nourishment from the metals in the coin allowing him to generate his awesome flame. They suppose he is vain and loves the way the gold and silver flicker in the darkness.
“Does that even make any kind of sense? It is up there with those who claim he stole the entire amount.
“Lies! And I have the numbers to prove it.” Krench patted the large book tucked under other arm. “A quick reading of this would inform everyone that of his original horde, only thirty percent was from what the dwarves possessed. Then there was the twenty-five percent in tribute from the lizard men. Another ten percent from random caravans he assaulted when bored. The last thirty-five percent an investment with the orcs that paid him quite well upon their successful campaign against the elves.”
The tunnel tightened enough that they both were forced to duck. His nephew passed through the narrow opening first and took the lantern and book from him while he made his way. Holding the items, the younglings resembled him decades earlier. His mind would be a swirl, a jumble mass of expectations, questions, theories, and who knows what else. To his credit, no questions were posed, but Ketch knew the sermon was far from finished. There was just too much to prepare him for. To explain how the world really worked.
“Once a week the Dragon’s Accountant must journey here to give a full account on all his holdings.” That got the boy’s attention. “I know your question: how would his horde ever change? He’s sleeping on the lot of it.
“And that’s the secret. He’s not. That’s small level thinking. For a creature such as this, who counts his life in decades or even centuries, you must expand on all of that. And this one has holdings as far east as Silverpool, as far north as the great seas… where ever money might exchange hands the likelihood is very high some of the coin originated here.”
“That inn located at the crossroads of Madras and Danan. Where all the caravans stop. Where lords and ladies and even princes have stayed… he owns a fifty percent stake. The blacksmith shop in Butte has worked out a nice living for himself because of a certain anonymous investor.
“A fleet of ships supporting the Merchant Guild in Silverpool.
“And the latest Duke of Parthan, who somehow found enough of a foreign inheritance to afford the new title and the lands which come with it.”
Krench let it all sink in.Watching his nephew’s eyes dart back and forth, a mind at work. After a few moments, a toothy grin emerged.
“Not to mention the coinage itself. Think about it, most of the coinage will be old. Then after a time it will be very old. Then ancient. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall in the blink of an eye (well, from His point of view). They mint new coins, phase out the old ones… and no one wants to have worthless coins. So periodic exchanges have to occur. In small enough amounts not to arouse suspicion, but in enough transactions so that you actually gain some ability to pay for what you want to invest in.”
The first of the outer doors appeared at the end of the tunnel. Remnants of the previous owners. A loose stone along the right side of the door, halfway down, provided the opening mechanism. Krench pushed until he heard the click and the engraved doors shifted open.
“What people don’t understand is dragons are ancient creatures. On a long enough timeline, barring random adventurers stumbling in and murdering them in their homes, they might well live forever. Even the ancient elves appear to wither in the eyes of dragons.
“But forever is a long time. And while they may share more in common with cats in their sleeping habits- they still wish to be entertained. And with the level of money they possess… well, pulling the strings on some of the humanoid peoples is a pleasant distraction.
“More than anything else, he knows history will repeat itself if you let it. So he can push and pull. Nudge things along for the better. Well, for his better.
“You see, dragons have gotten a horrible reputation as being evil. But what no one will tell you is the word is made up. They simply don’t realize have the perspective to appreciate everything as it moves and twists and turns. The elves… yes, they might, but the lower races, the dwarves and humans and halflings and gnomes and orcs… the lot of them just don’t live long enough. So they make up new stories to explain the world around them. And more often than not they only have the vaguest of memories as to what came before. The devastation, the wars, the armies… evil.”
They were getting lower now, the tunnel’s slope increased to the point Krench had to hand the lantern over to his nephew. They both stumbled a bit, but neither lost their footing. A hundred feet or so later things flattened out once more, and he took the burden back.
“Of course, they don’t know about the art. Creatives need funding as well. Ancient dragons need songs and maybe stories to be written about them. To be retold for the next generation. And who’s going to pay those bards to make such beautiful art? He is.
“Exotic animals? Seems strange, but my father explained it to me. Some days you want beef and some days you want Minotaur. Nothing wrong with either. And when you exist at the top of the food chain and have this level of wealth…”
Richard Caton Woodville, Jr. [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
“My great-grandfather realized one undeniable truth: wars cost money. Conquests. Paying armies to conquer the world. It’s a terrible business plan. First you outlay all of that money on the mercenaries. You pay to feed them. To forge weapons for them. To build the forges. To build the siege equipment. And all of that work and gold guarantees absolutely nothing.
“Up to that revelation, the Dragon’s Accountant merely handed out the sacks of gold to the mercenaries and kept a log of it all in the book. But it was a drain on the coffers, and no amount of caravans would cover the loss. That pile he sleeps on will surely drain until he’s sleeping on stone like some commoner. No! That would not stand! So he dared to pose a single idea: if the Great Wyrm really wished to take over the kingdom, then why not buy it instead?”
Careful to turn the key two times to the left and then once to the right (no one wanted a face sprayed with acid from a trap set to keep the undesirables out), Krench led them into the cavern proper. Pausing to let the younger of them take the sight in, he pushed his spectacles back up his long snout. Long ago the glitter was enough to nearly blind him. Too many restless nights were spent trying to determine exactly how one might extract such a mass from the mountain. When his own father passed the Book onto him, he spent more than enough time to understand how moving even one coin was as important as the whole of it.
Later, when he took a full account of the book, Krench realized some of the investments had gone sideways. A small war between human kingdoms, a great flood, and suddenly there was a loss to report for the fifth year in a row. Such a glorious day filled with fire to signify the passing of duties to the next Accountant.
“Krench…” The Great Wyrm stretched out his name so that it appeared to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
The two of them moved over to the large platform where he would deliver the latest news. As they climbed the steps, crafted so long ago by rough dwarvish hands, he pushed the book into his nephew’s arms. There was no need for it anymore.
Dragons were patient creatures, but above everything else they did not like to lose money.
Free Chapter – Hollow Empire – Vadim
Vadim
The splintering door shattered Vadim’s peaceful sleep. A booming voice ripped through the early morning tranquility.
“You slept with my wife!”
His instincts took over, and he threw himself to the floor beside the bed in an effort to avoid the oncoming blow… that never came. Furniture exploded, a man roared again, and yet Vadim’s room lay seemingly undisturbed. Daring himself to peek at the carnage, he raised his head up so that his eyes were above the lip of the bed, just over the edge of the sheets.
And saw only his guest from the previous evening…
Hilda? Rayne?
She met his blue-eyed gaze, “Is there something amiss, milord?”
“I thought…,” Vadim caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror along the wall beside him and observed his predicament; his manhood exposed and him cowering on the floor. No way for one of the King’s Men to behave. He stood up allowing his six-foot frame to come to its full height. It was not the nudity that brought awkwardness, but his stumbling and fumbling about on the floor. In fact, he never had any complaints about his appearance. The other Long Riders often teased him for his boyish grin, his bright, blue eyes, and his shaggy blonde hair. All of which resided on an untouched face, somehow free of any scars or wounds in his years journeying the Circuit. “This is rather embarrassing. I thought perhaps that which is happening next door was instead being visited upon the two of us. It’s not occurring in this room though, is it?”
“No, milord, it is not.” The freckled young woman stifled a giggle and ran her hands through her long blonde hair attempting to excise any tangles she found there. Vadim paused and stared into her deep green eyes trying to light a candle, which would be her name.
The wall behind the bed shuddered. Pieces of the ceiling flaked off and fell to the floor. Next door, a woman screamed.
Vadim searched for his trousers and found them tangled with his tunic and his consort’s skirt and blouse, all of it abandoned in a pile the night before. As he pulled up his trousers, he heard another crash, this time away from their shared wall. Then came more shouting from the hall and additional voices joined the chorus with the first.
Vadim glanced at… Sara? Trianna? and raised a finger. “One moment.”
Tightening his belt, he moved towards the door. Through the wood, he heard the shouting continue. There were calls for blood, pain, and then a slur of unmentionable deeds described by someone who must have been the original injured party. Vadim ran fingers through his blonde hair before gripping the handle. Preparing himself for the carnage, he took a deep breath.
When the door opened, he bore witness to sheer chaos. How the inn’s hallway could support the volume of patrons who watched, cheered, and shouted at the two combatants, he could not be sure. They crowded each end of the corridor, some stood just inside their open doorways, but all wanted to see these combatants duel. However, the word duel invoked images of two men squaring off in agreed-upon combat. This stank of something else entirely.
Vadim caught glimpses of the two men, flashes between arms and legs of the mob until he made himself a place in the crowd. It was only then that he could see the fight for what it was. Spittle erupted through the barrel chested man’s full black beard with each roar. A giant of a man, but not one someone might call attractive. His eyes appeared a bit too close to each other while his forehead seemed to slope until it gave way to a receding hairline. He appeared to have a full foot on his opponent giving him the reach advantage, but it seemed the smaller was adept at using his quickness to slip under the devastating blows. The two stumbled, the sea of bodies parted, and they crashed to the floor in front of Vadim.
“Jericho, how goes your morning? Rest well?” Vadim shouted above the din of the crowd hoping to catch his oldest friend’s attention.
Jericho looked up from his assailant. His red hair clung to the side of his face. Blood leaked from various cuts and lacerations on his head. In fact, red appeared to be the only thing that covered him.
Vadim smirked and shouted again. “Did you notice you don’t have any pants on?”
Jericho struggled to keep the large man’s blows from colliding with his body. “Perhaps you’d like to lend a bit of help?
His assailant bellowed, slamming a fist into the floor, just missing Jericho’s head, denting the wooden planks. “My wife!”
The two twisted and scrapped, each trying to gain some kind of advantage. Jericho managed to regain his feet and pushed away.
“He says you slept with his wife. Is that true?” Vadim asked the question through the din of noise, but did not give Jericho time to answer, “Tsk, tsk.”
A wild swing and another dodge.
“Vadim! I promise you, that was never my intention.”
“This gentleman would beg to differ on that point.”
“She never spoke anything of having a husband,” he spoke first to Vadim and then shouted it again at the large man, “I didn’t know!”
“It was our wedding night!”
Vadim whistled at the revelation, “Doesn’t seem like this man is all that eager to issue forgiveness. And even if he was, your explanation is not going to cover it.”
Jericho awaited the oncoming charge and slipped to the side under the brute’s undisciplined swings. The giant rammed into some of the crowd, toppling them in a mass of arms and legs.
“Even so, a little help?” Jericho screeched the last before sidestepping another missed blow.
Vadim nodded, “Right. Uhm… one moment.”
He turned back into his room and shut the door, muffling the roar slightly. He strode towards the partially dressed… Pia? Selene? … woman sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Terrible thing, my mate is out there getting his head bashed in by a rather large, angry fellow. Something about sleeping with his wife. A pity. Still, it now falls to me to save the… wait; you’re not married, are you?”
She blushed and shook her head. “No, milord.”
“Right. Brilliant. Wouldn’t want to have a similar exchange as those two out there.”
Vadim scanned the room for the remainder of his belongings. Sunlight glinted off the small emerald gem sealed inside the pommel of his sword, which was resting in the corner alongside his pack.
He fastened the weapon around his waist before sliding his cuirass over his head. With one hand, he reached into his small pack and fetched a silver coin from a pouch within.
“You were a sheer delight, and I would love to spend another glorious evening with you when I return from the Long Ride in…,” his brain struggled with the length of time he would be away, “a few months’ time. If that would please you?”
A smile appeared as she blushed again. “Indeed, milord, it would.”
Vadim moved close and pulled her off the bed into him. Their lips met and she engaged his tongue with her own. His free hand explored her exposed right breast with one final squeeze before relinquishing its touch. He felt the familiar stirring in his trousers. He heard her moan softly and the bed creak as she lowered herself to engage him elsewhere. Yet it was what his ears did not pick up that troubled him. Only muffled sounds of the fracas filled the air to the point he could not be sure there was a fight left. He released his grip on her and slid back to the entrance to the room. A quick turn of the handle and an empty hallway greeted him.
“For your breakfast,” he turned and flipped the silver to her, “though I might wait until the festivities ran their course. Farewell…” Rachel? Miranda? “milady. Until I return!”
The hall was in disarray. The door to Jericho’s room hung lazily from one hinge. Shards of broken wood lay scattered, marking the path of destruction, a trail of crumbs leading him downstairs into the main area of the inn.
Vadim took the stairs two at a time. Jericho was the one man in the company he did not want to see injured. Of all the King’s Men Vadim had ridden with, Jericho was the only one who always had his back, whether it was when they were under fire from bandits or dealing with the strangeness of the infected. The man knew no fear, and never hesitated to rush in alongside Vadim. His other brothers never showed that kind of loyalty.
Now he hoped that he had not misjudged the threat his friend was under. As he made his way around the last corner, a mug exploded on the wall near him. Remnants of someone’s coffee leaked down the paneling. Those patrons from the second floor filled the dining area. They had pushed the tables and chairs up against the walls and out of the way. Their faces contorted in a frenzied desire to observe more pain.
“Kill ‘im!”
“Break his face!”
Each time Jericho tried to cut a path through the crowd they held fast and did not part. Instead, they tossed him back into the center. Vadim watched another tankard fly through the air, but this one found its mark and glanced off Jericho’s forehead. While not an incapacitating blow, it was enough to stagger the naked man. Jericho reached out to steady himself against a nearby spectator who shoved him down. Tree-like arms slipped around Jericho’s throat. It would take only one quick snap and the fight would be over.
The large man raged, “Most of you know me, but for those who do not, I am Otto Wilmot. My family has lived in Racein since before the Lichy. When everyone else fled to the larger cities, the Wilmots protected them and theirs. And when the plague had run its course, they helped rebuild with the rest of the survivors.
“Yesterday I married a woman before the town center. Under the statue of Rowan, we proclaimed our love as truth. The party which followed last night was a grand one indeed.”
The crowd bobbed their heads in agreement.
“And I must confess that both myself and my dutiful bride managed to imbibe much of the fine ale provided. I fear, in my drunken stupor, I failed to realize that my new wife did not return to my bed last night. She stumbled throughout this inn, clearly beyond her mind and this man… no, this wretch… he chose that moment to strike. He charmed her, brought her upstairs to his room, and defiled her!”
Jericho wheezed trying to explain but his captor tightened his grip.
“So I ask you, good folks of Racein, how do I answer this affront to the sanctity of my vows? Should I be content to extract my vengeance in bloodied knuckles and broken bones?”
Many in the crowd murmured amongst themselves. The early morning fog must have gripped them still, as they did not seem to understand the sermon’s purpose. Vadim understood all of it. Otto was not merely asking whether it was acceptable for him to kill Jericho, but asking the crowd to demand that satisfaction.
Vadim slipped through the throng, who had parted in an attempt to get a better look, and slid behind the combatants. Another stein, long since emptied, sat on the table beside him. He reached out and gripped the makeshift weapon. Otto continued,,, oblivious to the presence behind him.
“What say the lot of you? What judgment for this sinner?”
Vadim could see a few of the men did not care what the outcome was, but more of them were starting to realize the stakes presented to them. They might be a mindless lot, but they would never condone murder. But it only takes one…
From the rabble someone yelled, “Kill him! Teach a lesson to all the outsiders that our women are not their receptacles. We show them our hospitality and they abuse it for their own base needs.”
“Yeah!”
“Split his ‘ead open!”
Otto nodded. “Thank you, brothers. I am grateful you see the truth of the matter. If you deem it to be righteous and just I will act as your implement of destruction.”
Otto looked down at Jericho, whose face was tinted red as he groped and gasped for release. The enormous muscles flexed and seized around his neck.
“The Lichy may have spared your whore mother, and may have allowed you to enter this world, but I shall be the instrument that forces your exit. This insult will be met with righteous just-.”
Vadim brought down the large stein and shattered it on the back of Otto’s head. The blow was not enough to fell the giant man, but it did cause his grip to loosen. Jericho slipped out and crumpled to the floor, gasping for breath.
Vadim stepped out of the shadows, and pulled Jericho behind him. “This has gone on for long enough.”
The mob, for their part, did not know how to respond. They stood in shocked silence.
Otto did not possess that problem. He unleashed a guttural roar and spun around. In the same instant, Vadim released his sword from its sheath and placed it just under the man’s neck, freezing any further movement.
“My friend is sorry.”
Jericho had coughed his voice hoarse. “So very sorry. It was a misunderstanding.”
The giant rubbed the back of his head and took a step back. “You think you are going to stop me from exacting my vengeance?”
“Well, not only me, but this sword in my hand. Yes, I believe that changes the currency of this situation.”
“There is an entire room of men seeking justice here. Each willing to strike you down with a word from me. How is your sword going to stop them all?”
Vadim took a long look at the group still in the main room. Most of them had cleared out with the change of fortune, but he still counted eight, no nine including the lumbering hulk in front of him. Otto Wilmot might not understand what justice or consummating his wedding meant, but he was not so far wrong in his analysis of this situation.
Jericho’s legs were still a little wobbly, but he held a tankard as his weapon. The two of them, one naked, made for a laughable sight.
Perhaps, if we manage to escape with the better parts of ourselves intact, we could use this as great fodder for many a story in the future. For now, though…
“This sword does not need to stop all of them, only you. And do not doubt my word in that. You will be dead, gutted like a fish, before the first one of them reaches me. That is my promise to you.”
Traces of fear shifted through Otto’s features, but were gone just as quick. Vadim caught sight of it, and watched it vanish. His entire body steeled for the fight.
Emma! That was her name.
“Come on then.”
An ear-piercing whistle penetrated the room. Each and every man, including Otto, Vadim, and Jericho found himself wincing in pain.
“Hold!”
In the doorway of the inn stood the Watch Commander, his King’s armor glistening in the morning sunlight. His wiry frame doubled in size under its weight. The grays in his beard were the only thing that betrayed his apparent age. No one in the company knew his exact age, and none ever felt the need to ask. Around his neck, a bronze chain held the instrument that caused their mutual pain. He let the whistle slip from his lips.
“I believe that I must be witness to some kind of elaborate competition. For that is the only reason I could possibly see citizens squaring off against King’s Men.”
Vadim stared into Otto’s eyes. Even with the Commander’s appearance, he did not dare lower his weapon. The entire room held its breath, waiting to see which way the winds blew this day. When there was no immediate answer, the Commander spoke again.
“Mayhap the patrons are deafened by my device as well?”
Otto spoke through gritted teeth. “I demand justice from this one.” He pointed at Jericho. “He defiled my wife.”
“Is this true?”
Jericho opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and nodded.
“It appears you have taken the measure of this man through your fists. He is bloodied and he is beaten, what else must you have for your sense of justice to be satisfied?”
“His death,” said Otto.
“Tis treasonous to assault one of the King’s Men. The answer for such a crime is death. You have already committed one crime this day. Yet I am an understanding man and am willing to forget this event in its entirety. Make no more trouble and be content in the knowledge that this man is on his way to the Long Ride, and as such, you will not see him again for many moons.”
The Commander stepped closer to Otto, and Vadim thought it strange that even though the larger man stood at least a head taller, he seemed to shrink when he gazed into the Commander’s eyes.
“Do we have an accord?”
Otto forced the words reluctantly past his lips. “Aye.”
He then began to move towards the inn’s entrance, “Come on, lads. These King’s Men are needed to protect the land from all sorts. Let’s let them get to their business.
“Though, there will be a day between you and I, naked man.” Otto never took his eyes off Jericho until he was out the door. “Believe in that.”
After Otto and his gang were gone, the Watch Commander turned his gaze on the two of them. “All this… the two of you are going to be the death of me, you realize that don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” they spoke in unison.
“The squad is set to leave. Get your asses outside and on your horses.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Commander moved to leave, but paused and turned back to look at Jericho, shaking his head.
“And for God’s sake, put some clothes on!”
***
John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.
He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!
Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.
His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.
He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com
Sustainability Tour of South America – Riders with the Storm – Volume 3
Here’s the third entry in a series of blogs from writer, rider, and environmentalist explorer, Michael Kristensen. He’s a native Dane riding through South America, exploring opportunities and cultural challenges to sustainable environmental practices.
His Facebook page is here.
The original blog appears here.
Every week (possibly more often) Michael will be riding through South America, remarking on his experiences, and blogging at length. We at Tessera Guild will follow him every step of the way. This week marks the third leg of his journey. His second week is here.
Please note: these blog entries are direct from Michael. No editing. No proofing. As raw as any blog you’ll see.
Sustainability Tour of South America, “riders with the storm” volume 3
Challenges, not a day without challenges:
The purpose of my trip is to report about sustainability, which I haven’t been too successful with yet. Admittedly I have also been way too ambitious, my goal was to find 3-4 projects per week to report about. I must realize that it’s close to impossible, the daily tasks of finding projects, doing the necessary research, finding accommodation, planning my route, getting something to eat is way more than a full time job. I will in the future try to report about 2 projects per week. That seems a bit more realistic.
I am in Argentina now, and it has been a somewhat challenged marriage, I am in love with the bird, but damn this Latina woman makes me work hard every day, and I have little or no time to do the necessary research. Well I will tell more about my challenged marriage later in this blog.
The challenges I have experienced here reflect the challenges the great people of Argentina are going through daily. I have had the privilege to live close to a very big family for 5 days, a mother and her 10 children and all their family and friends coming and going, it has given me an of course limited insight in how an Argentinian family live and which challenges they are facing and fearing.
I interviewed some of the younger people I have met, to get their view of climate change and sustainability, it’s not a big surprise to me, that it’s not a topic they are hugely engaged in, its not to say they don’t care, because they do, they are just having other more basic stuff to deal with.
The economy here is not at its best. The pesos has been devalued 53% within a year. For the younger generation this fact has made it hard for them to get a place of their own, or for that matter to get a job, the youth unemployment rate is close to 26%, the interest rate is at an astonishing high of 62% initiated by the national bank to try to control the inflation, so no wonder that the youth has other priorities than sustainability and climate change.
The young women are also dealing with a more present problem “gender equality” (SDG goal 5) they feel discriminated and targeted, can’t walk alone after nightfall without being afraid of being assaulted, feeling a lack of opportunities and fighting for free abortion. Latin America is a very male-dominated region, with that in mind it’s very understandable that especially the young women have other priorities.
When talking to the older generation I get the feeling that they have given up, they don’t trust their politicians. Everyone I talk to say that corruption had taken hold of everybody including them self, corruption has become the norm, especially among the politicians. (SDG goal 16) one of the men I talked to said “we only live try not to think”. Most of them don’t feel represented politically, they don’t feel they have a voice, and when asking them what they think should be done regarding sustainability, they don’t know what they as individuals can do, they are well aware of the problems we all are facing, but find it hard to give me answers to what they can contribute with.
When I drive through the Argentinian landscape, it’s obvious that ranching is an extremely important part of the economy (third largest meat producer in the world), there are cattle and horses everywhere for miles and miles it’s what dominate the rural part of the countryside. Gladly the thousands I of livestock I saw were all free grazing. The sad story though is that huge areas of the famous pampas has given way for crops, Argentina is now one of the worlds largest soybean and corn producers which ironically mostly is exported to meet the demand of the rapidly growing Chinese cattle production. In short terms the cow production has gotten pushed out of the pampas and in to feedlot staples, subsidized by the government using corn as the main source of feed. Some estimates say that 80% of the production now is feedlot cattle. There are strong movements trying to move the beef back on grass, but it’s a hard battle between the crop farmers and the ranchers. One of the solutions could be having free grazing cattle on the fields, letting them fertilize the area for 5 to 7 years, them letting the farmers grow crops for a short 2-3-year period, in a way more sustainable circle.
On the positive side in regard to sustainability, I saw thousands of birds driving thorough the countryside, and plentiful of them were birds of prey, falcons, Eagles, hawks and much more, I have never seem that many birds of prey anywhere. And the cities are full of trees and have parks on abundance, Especially La Plata the capital were very green with a park each 6 blocks and trees everywhere. On the negative, As everywhere else I have been recently, the absence of insects is obvious.
The Good, the unbelievable friendly people of Argentina, I have met so many giving warm people, they have been absolutely fantastic. I am met with curiosity and open arms, I have been invited to dinner, beach volleyball, tango, doing my laundry, beer and friendly talks about all and nothing. I highly recommend visiting this great country just to meet and talk with the people. Mate, the special herbal tea of this region, is here there and everywhere, its cute how the carry their thermos and cubs of Mate around like small babies, young and old are sipping Mate on every street corner. The list of health benefits this tea is supposed to grant you is as long as the plains of Patagonia. I have gotten to like it in its raw bitter form, so well maybe I will arise as a new healthier version of myself.
And they really like motorcycles, they like to ride them and admire them, there are lots and lots of bikes here. I have gotten so many compliments on my bike and numerous pictures has been taken by all from Policemen to small kids. It’s been a great way to start a conversation.
The present exchange rate is not bad either, things here are very affordable. Beer prices one LITER (a quart) domestic beer cost 100 pesos (1.80 $) in the shops and 200 pesos in a bar an import 150 pesos and 250 (5,50$ equal 1.80 for a normal serving) in a bar. I like that they serve Liter beers without asking.
The Bad (surprise) wauw Buenos Aries rush hour traffic, that’s was kind of a surprise. I arrived late afternoon by ferry from Uruguay, to my luck I had met a local on the ferry and we got to talk about where I was heading. He told me to follow him through customs he was also driving a Florida reg. bike, so he had to go through the same process as I was including getting a TIP (temporary import permission) waiting to the customs to do their thing, which by the way was fast efficient and free it took less than 15 min. he asked me where I was going, he laughed you better follow me I will show you through rush hour traffic. Wow I am glad he offered that, I mean I have been driving in south east Asia, and its crazy there, but I tell you Buenos Aries beats Asia, mostly because of the speed they travel at, in Asia at least things are moving slowly and organically like one big organism. To be honest it was not the cars that was the worse, there was unbelievably many cars, but they mostly drive ok, it was the Motorcycles that swarmed around me as irritating mosquitos, small stinking MC’s coming from everywhere crisscrossing in and out of all lanes form left and right. To skiers, it was like having thousand snowboarders passing you from all angles not obeying any of the “rules” we skiers follow 😊. Well my new found friend he was a local and he drove as one, I suddenly found myself riding on the freeway shoulders passing the slow moving cars with 60 miles an hour, crossing in front of cars mingling in between them from left to right, I decided to stay on his tail because I wouldn’t have been able to find my way without him, looking at my GPS and navigating through the hell was not an option. I managed to stay close and only lost sight of him a few times, he didn’t wait LOL. But thanks, my friend for guiding me to my first accommodation in Argentina.
The Ugly, being robbed is never an experience you grace and wait for to happen. I was aware of the possibility of having things stolen, somewhere/sometime throughout my trip of 6 months, but being robbed only spending 3 days on the road was not what I had dreamed about.
I had carefully planned my next move on day 3, downloaded off line maps, booked a place to stay for the next couple of days, and was well un my way beating Buenos Aries traffic without problems before 12, it started out as planned but an hour into the drive I lost my phone, it was a stupid move by me driving 70 miles an hour trying to correct position of the phone in my gas tank bag I flew out of my hand, there was nothing I could do but swear at my self for being so idiotic, well the phone was gone and I had a spare. I found a place to stop and got my spare phone out, I only had one problem with that, I had no charger cable, it’s an iPhone and it won’t hold a charge for long. So I decided to make an unplanned stop in La Plata hoping that stores in the capital would be open on a Sunday, to my surprise was the city almost shut down, Not a single store open driving down the main avenue, once more swearing at myself I did another stupid thing, there was a bunch of street salesmen probably illegal since all their stuff was on blankets, easy to pull together and get out of there in seconds, I knew they would have cheap shit copy charger cables, so I stopped a bit desperately hoping to buy a cable, since I needed a charged phone to GPS my way to my accommodation. Sure, enough they had a shit copy charger cable, and shit as it was, I couldn’t let my phone charge on my USB outlet on the bike. I thought “let me find a café and charge the phone for an hour get some coffee and a bit to eat, and then back on the road” hey it was 2 o’clock midday in the capital of Argentina what could possible go wrong, as an answer to my prayers not even a block away from the street sales guys there was an OPEN café, I considered very carefully how I would park my bike on the sidewalk, right in front of the café in plain site not 5 meters away from where I could sit at a table that had e plugin for my charger, watch my bike and relax for an hour, I didn’t get to that, before I knew it my sissy bar bag was gone , I didn’t even see them taking it, it was tied with straps to the back seat and quite heavy, not an easy steal , but it was gone just like that I lost most of my belongings, computer, iPad, rain clothes, sleeping bag, hammock,700$ cash credit cards, my Green card and more than half of my clothes.
I was in a state of total disbelief, how that hell could that happen, me being so damn careful, I really didn’t think I had been reckless or naïve, I truly felt I had taken all necessary precautions, and yet here I stood like an idiot robbed blind in the middle of the day on a busy street in the Capital. I of course called the police and they wrote a report, well knowing that this was all they would ever do, they were very nice and pretty efficient, maybe because they couldn’t wait to get pictures taken with an on my Harley.
One thing is to loose a lot of stuff and having to deal with that heartache, another thing is to regain control of your life, seriously it took me 4 days, and I am not done with the insurance yet, I had to close cards, order new, offset all passwords and create new ones, buying a new computer and a phone isn’t easy because there are limits on how much one can charge on the one credit card that wasn’t stolen, then setting up phone and computer again, not to mention downloading all the damn app’s that we need these days, damn it I was near giving up on the whole thing and just go home where stuff wasn’t so complicated.
Nothing is so bad that’s its not good for something. I have had a wish to travel lighter, but couldn’t get my self to get rid of the stuff I had brought along, especially to many clothes, well now that was taken care of, and it was WAY easier to pack my bike when hitting the road. When things like this happen the most wonderful people enter your life, a couple og days later I got an email from a total stranger, writing me if I had lost a Green card, driver license and some clothes, I couldn’t believe that he had gone through the trouble to pick up my stuff he found on the road, finding my email on one of the flash drives that was part of the lost items, getting in touch with me and delivering it back to me with a big smile on his face, refusing to let me pay him a reward for his help, all he took was a picture of my Harley LOL.
I am back on the road, Argentina she didn’t turn out the way I had hoped for, I spent way to much time dealing with the robbery, making it impossible for me to do the research I had planned.
Hollow Empire – Free Chapter – Vadim
Hollow Empire exists as this experiment between Jeremy and myself to see if we could build this medieval post-apocalyptic world together in a serialized format. And I think the set up of him choosing a pair of characters and me doing much the same worked really well. It is a story and characters I’d like to get back to soon. In fact, I have part of what could be Episode 9 completed (assuming my co-writer doesn’t drop another chapter before then.
But, in order to get in the right mind-frame, I need to go back and reread… so here’s my first chapter from Season 1:
Vadim
The splintering door shattered Vadim’s peaceful sleep. A booming voice ripped through the early morning tranquility.
“You slept with my wife!”
His instincts took over, and he threw himself to the floor beside the bed in an effort to avoid the oncoming blow… that never came. Furniture exploded, a man roared again, and yet Vadim’s room lay seemingly undisturbed. Daring himself to peek at the carnage, he raised his head up so that his eyes were above the lip of the bed, just over the edge of the sheets.
And saw only his guest from the previous evening…
Hilda? Rayne?
She met his blue-eyed gaze, “Is there something amiss, milord?”
“I thought…,” Vadim caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror along the wall beside him and observed his predicament; his manhood exposed and him cowering on the floor. No way for one of the King’s Men to behave. He stood up allowing his six-foot frame to come to its full height. It was not the nudity that brought awkwardness, but his stumbling and fumbling about on the floor. In fact, he never had any complaints about his appearance. The other Long Riders often teased him for his boyish grin, his bright, blue eyes, and his shaggy blonde hair. All of which resided on an untouched face, somehow free of any scars or wounds in his years journeying the Circuit. “This is rather embarrassing. I thought perhaps that which is happening next door was instead being visited upon the two of us. It’s not occurring in this room though, is it?”
“No, milord, it is not.” The freckled young woman stifled a giggle and ran her hands through her long blonde hair attempting to excise any tangles she found there. Vadim paused and stared into her deep green eyes trying to light a candle, which would be her name.
The wall behind the bed shuddered. Pieces of the ceiling flaked off and fell to the floor. Next door, a woman screamed.
Vadim searched for his trousers and found them tangled with his tunic and his consort’s skirt and blouse, all of it abandoned in a pile the night before. As he pulled up his trousers, he heard another crash, this time away from their shared wall. Then came more shouting from the hall and additional voices joined the chorus with the first.
Vadim glanced at… Sara? Trianna? and raised a finger. “One moment.”
Tightening his belt, he moved towards the door. Through the wood, he heard the shouting continue. There were calls for blood, pain, and then a slur of unmentionable deeds described by someone who must have been the original injured party. Vadim ran fingers through his blonde hair before gripping the handle. Preparing himself for the carnage, he took a deep breath.
When the door opened, he bore witness to sheer chaos. How the inn’s hallway could support the volume of patrons who watched, cheered, and shouted at the two combatants, he could not be sure. They crowded each end of the corridor, some stood just inside their open doorways, but all wanted to see these combatants duel. However, the word duel invoked images of two men squaring off in agreed-upon combat. This stank of something else entirely.
Vadim caught glimpses of the two men, flashes between arms and legs of the mob until he made himself a place in the crowd. It was only then that he could see the fight for what it was. Spittle erupted through the barrel chested man’s full black beard with each roar. A giant of a man, but not one someone might call attractive. His eyes appeared a bit too close to each other while his forehead seemed to slope until it gave way to a receding hairline. He appeared to have a full foot on his opponent giving him the reach advantage, but it seemed the smaller was adept at using his quickness to slip under the devastating blows. The two stumbled, the sea of bodies parted, and they crashed to the floor in front of Vadim.
“Jericho, how goes your morning? Rest well?” Vadim shouted above the din of the crowd hoping to catch his oldest friend’s attention.
Jericho looked up from his assailant. His red hair clung to the side of his face. Blood leaked from various cuts and lacerations on his head. In fact, red appeared to be the only thing that covered him.
Vadim smirked and shouted again. “Did you notice you don’t have any pants on?”
Jericho struggled to keep the large man’s blows from colliding with his body. “Perhaps you’d like to lend a bit of help?
His assailant bellowed, slamming a fist into the floor, just missing Jericho’s head, denting the wooden planks. “My wife!”
The two twisted and scrapped, each trying to gain some kind of advantage. Jericho managed to regain his feet and pushed away.
“He says you slept with his wife. Is that true?” Vadim asked the question through the din of noise, but did not give Jericho time to answer, “Tsk, tsk.”
A wild swing and another dodge.
“Vadim! I promise you, that was never my intention.”
“This gentleman would beg to differ on that point.”
“She never spoke anything of having a husband,” he spoke first to Vadim and then shouted it again at the large man, “I didn’t know!”
“It was our wedding night!”
Vadim whistled at the revelation, “Doesn’t seem like this man is all that eager to issue forgiveness. And even if he was, your explanation is not going to cover it.”
Jericho awaited the oncoming charge and slipped to the side under the brute’s undisciplined swings. The giant rammed into some of the crowd, toppling them in a mass of arms and legs.
“Even so, a little help?” Jericho screeched the last before sidestepping another missed blow.
Vadim nodded, “Right. Uhm… one moment.”
He turned back into his room and shut the door, muffling the roar slightly. He strode towards the partially dressed… Pia? Selene? … woman sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Terrible thing, my mate is out there getting his head bashed in by a rather large, angry fellow. Something about sleeping with his wife. A pity. Still, it now falls to me to save the… wait; you’re not married, are you?”
She blushed and shook her head. “No, milord.”
“Right. Brilliant. Wouldn’t want to have a similar exchange as those two out there.”
Vadim scanned the room for the remainder of his belongings. Sunlight glinted off the small emerald gem sealed inside the pommel of his sword, which was resting in the corner alongside his pack.
He fastened the weapon around his waist before sliding his cuirass over his head. With one hand, he reached into his small pack and fetched a silver coin from a pouch within.
“You were a sheer delight, and I would love to spend another glorious evening with you when I return from the Long Ride in…,” his brain struggled with the length of time he would be away, “a few months’ time. If that would please you?”
A smile appeared as she blushed again. “Indeed, milord, it would.”
Vadim moved close and pulled her off the bed into him. Their lips met and she engaged his tongue with her own. His free hand explored her exposed right breast with one final squeeze before relinquishing its touch. He felt the familiar stirring in his trousers. He heard her moan softly and the bed creak as she lowered herself to engage him elsewhere. Yet it was what his ears did not pick up that troubled him. Only muffled sounds of the fracas filled the air to the point he could not be sure there was a fight left. He released his grip on her and slid back to the entrance to the room. A quick turn of the handle and an empty hallway greeted him.
“For your breakfast,” he turned and flipped the silver to her, “though I might wait until the festivities ran their course. Farewell…” Rachel? Miranda? “milady. Until I return!”
The hall was in disarray. The door to Jericho’s room hung lazily from one hinge. Shards of broken wood lay scattered, marking the path of destruction, a trail of crumbs leading him downstairs into the main area of the inn.
Vadim took the stairs two at a time. Jericho was the one man in the company he did not want to see injured. Of all the King’s Men Vadim had ridden with, Jericho was the only one who always had his back, whether it was when they were under fire from bandits or dealing with the strangeness of the infected. The man knew no fear, and never hesitated to rush in alongside Vadim. His other brothers never showed that kind of loyalty.
Now he hoped that he had not misjudged the threat his friend was under. As he made his way around the last corner, a mug exploded on the wall near him. Remnants of someone’s coffee leaked down the paneling. Those patrons from the second floor filled the dining area. They had pushed the tables and chairs up against the walls and out of the way. Their faces contorted in a frenzied desire to observe more pain.
“Kill ‘im!”
“Break his face!”
Each time Jericho tried to cut a path through the crowd they held fast and did not part. Instead, they tossed him back into the center. Vadim watched another tankard fly through the air, but this one found its mark and glanced off Jericho’s forehead. While not an incapacitating blow, it was enough to stagger the naked man. Jericho reached out to steady himself against a nearby spectator who shoved him down. Tree-like arms slipped around Jericho’s throat. It would take only one quick snap and the fight would be over.
The large man raged, “Most of you know me, but for those who do not, I am Otto Wilmot. My family has lived in Racein since before the Lichy. When everyone else fled to the larger cities, the Wilmots protected them and theirs. And when the plague had run its course, they helped rebuild with the rest of the survivors.
“Yesterday I married a woman before the town center. Under the statue of Rowan, we proclaimed our love as truth. The party which followed last night was a grand one indeed.”
The crowd bobbed their heads in agreement.
“And I must confess that both myself and my dutiful bride managed to imbibe much of the fine ale provided. I fear, in my drunken stupor, I failed to realize that my new wife did not return to my bed last night. She stumbled throughout this inn, clearly beyond her mind and this man… no, this wretch… he chose that moment to strike. He charmed her, brought her upstairs to his room, and defiled her!”
Jericho wheezed trying to explain but his captor tightened his grip.
“So I ask you, good folks of Racein, how do I answer this affront to the sanctity of my vows? Should I be content to extract my vengeance in bloodied knuckles and broken bones?”
Many in the crowd murmured amongst themselves. The early morning fog must have gripped them still, as they did not seem to understand the sermon’s purpose. Vadim understood all of it. Otto was not merely asking whether it was acceptable for him to kill Jericho, but asking the crowd to demand that satisfaction.
Vadim slipped through the throng, who had parted in an attempt to get a better look, and slid behind the combatants. Another stein, long since emptied, sat on the table beside him. He reached out and gripped the makeshift weapon. Otto continued,,, oblivious to the presence behind him.
“What say the lot of you? What judgment for this sinner?”
Vadim could see a few of the men did not care what the outcome was, but more of them were starting to realize the stakes presented to them. They might be a mindless lot, but they would never condone murder. But it only takes one…
From the rabble someone yelled, “Kill him! Teach a lesson to all the outsiders that our women are not their receptacles. We show them our hospitality and they abuse it for their own base needs.”
“Yeah!”
“Split his ‘ead open!”
Otto nodded. “Thank you, brothers. I am grateful you see the truth of the matter. If you deem it to be righteous and just I will act as your implement of destruction.”
Otto looked down at Jericho, whose face was tinted red as he groped and gasped for release. The enormous muscles flexed and seized around his neck.
“The Lichy may have spared your whore mother, and may have allowed you to enter this world, but I shall be the instrument that forces your exit. This insult will be met with righteous just-.”
Vadim brought down the large stein and shattered it on the back of Otto’s head. The blow was not enough to fell the giant man, but it did cause his grip to loosen. Jericho slipped out and crumpled to the floor, gasping for breath.
Vadim stepped out of the shadows, and pulled Jericho behind him. “This has gone on for long enough.”
The mob, for their part, did not know how to respond. They stood in shocked silence.
Otto did not possess that problem. He unleashed a guttural roar and spun around. In the same instant, Vadim released his sword from its sheath and placed it just under the man’s neck, freezing any further movement.
“My friend is sorry.”
Jericho had coughed his voice hoarse. “So very sorry. It was a misunderstanding.”
The giant rubbed the back of his head and took a step back. “You think you are going to stop me from exacting my vengeance?”
“Well, not only me, but this sword in my hand. Yes, I believe that changes the currency of this situation.”
“There is an entire room of men seeking justice here. Each willing to strike you down with a word from me. How is your sword going to stop them all?”
Vadim took a long look at the group still in the main room. Most of them had cleared out with the change of fortune, but he still counted eight, no nine including the lumbering hulk in front of him. Otto Wilmot might not understand what justice or consummating his wedding meant, but he was not so far wrong in his analysis of this situation.
Jericho’s legs were still a little wobbly, but he held a tankard as his weapon. The two of them, one naked, made for a laughable sight.
Perhaps, if we manage to escape with the better parts of ourselves intact, we could use this as great fodder for many a story in the future. For now, though…
“This sword does not need to stop all of them, only you. And do not doubt my word in that. You will be dead, gutted like a fish, before the first one of them reaches me. That is my promise to you.”
Traces of fear shifted through Otto’s features, but were gone just as quick. Vadim caught sight of it, and watched it vanish. His entire body steeled for the fight.
Emma! That was her name.
“Come on then.”
An ear-piercing whistle penetrated the room. Each and every man, including Otto, Vadim, and Jericho found himself wincing in pain.
“Hold!”
In the doorway of the inn stood the Watch Commander, his King’s armor glistening in the morning sunlight. His wiry frame doubled in size under its weight. The grays in his beard were the only thing that betrayed his apparent age. No one in the company knew his exact age, and none ever felt the need to ask. Around his neck, a bronze chain held the instrument that caused their mutual pain. He let the whistle slip from his lips.
“I believe that I must be witness to some kind of elaborate competition. For that is the only reason I could possibly see citizens squaring off against King’s Men.”
Vadim stared into Otto’s eyes. Even with the Commander’s appearance, he did not dare lower his weapon. The entire room held its breath, waiting to see which way the winds blew this day. When there was no immediate answer, the Commander spoke again.
“Mayhap the patrons are deafened by my device as well?”
Otto spoke through gritted teeth. “I demand justice from this one.” He pointed at Jericho. “He defiled my wife.”
“Is this true?”
Jericho opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and nodded.
“It appears you have taken the measure of this man through your fists. He is bloodied and he is beaten, what else must you have for your sense of justice to be satisfied?”
“His death,” said Otto.
“Tis treasonous to assault one of the King’s Men. The answer for such a crime is death. You have already committed one crime this day. Yet I am an understanding man and am willing to forget this event in its entirety. Make no more trouble and be content in the knowledge that this man is on his way to the Long Ride, and as such, you will not see him again for many moons.”
The Commander stepped closer to Otto, and Vadim thought it strange that even though the larger man stood at least a head taller, he seemed to shrink when he gazed into the Commander’s eyes.
“Do we have an accord?”
Otto forced the words reluctantly past his lips. “Aye.”
He then began to move towards the inn’s entrance, “Come on, lads. These King’s Men are needed to protect the land from all sorts. Let’s let them get to their business.
“Though, there will be a day between you and I, naked man.” Otto never took his eyes off Jericho until he was out the door. “Believe in that.”
After Otto and his gang were gone, the Watch Commander turned his gaze on the two of them. “All this… the two of you are going to be the death of me, you realize that don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” they spoke in unison.
“The squad is set to leave. Get your asses outside and on your horses.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Commander moved to leave, but paused and turned back to look at Jericho, shaking his head.
“And for God’s sake, put some clothes on!”
***
***
John McGuire is the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. The Trade paperback collecting the first 4 issues is finally back from the printers! If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!
Want to read the first issue for free? Click here! Already read it and eager for more?
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His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.
He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com
What’s 1 Little Japanese Maple Worth?
It’s the summer of 2016, and I’m poolside.
I’ve been living in a swanky apartment for a few months now. It’s about as close to Atlanta one can live without technically leaving the ‘burbs. I’m across the street from a high-end bar. I can hear the highway traffic roaring by.
But look, there’s still trees.
And no smog.
Life is pretty good.
The pool is packed today. Since the G Man and I started swimming here, the water has never been this populated. I count at least thirty kids and forty adults. Both poolside grills are smoking. It’s sizzling hot beneath the sun, but no one seems to mind. I’m lounging beside a girl, observing our sons as they splash the day away.
It doesn’t get much better than this.
The G Man and I love swimming so much, we come here every day. Sometimes at night. Sometimes even when it’s raining.
As the afternoon deepens, I’m enjoying conversation with my pool-companion. Her son and mine have hit it off well. So well, in fact, they’ve been splashing, water-blasting, and half-drowning each other for the last three hours. We’re waiting for them to tire.
It’s not looking promising.
And so we sit, relax, and soak up the rays. We may look like we’re talking, but our eyes never stray far from our kids. Everyone else in the world can drown if they want, just not these two.
As it turns out, no one’s drowning today.
Whew.
But there’s still trouble.
A crowd of kids has gathered in the shallow end. They’re all several years older than the G Man, and they’re packing all kinds of heat – in the form of giant water guns. One kid has a pump-action shotgun blaster. Another has a water gun as massive as a military-grade RPG launcher.
At first, I think maybe they’re planning an assault on G Man and his new friend. I’m no helicopter parent, but if their plan is to bully my boy, I’m ready to dive in and fight everyone to the death.
Nope.
They’re not gunning for the G Man.
Their target: the red Japanese maple growing just outside the pool. It’s in a huge ceramic pot, and the kids are hosing down its leaves.
Thing is – our perfect little pool is filled with saltwater. Too much salt, and the Japanese maple will wither. And at the rate these kids are blasting it, the little tree doesn’t stand a chance.
Should I stop these kids?
Or would intervening precipitate an argument with more dads than I can handle?
I’m in my lounge chair, taking too long to decide. This is G Man’s moment. When his dad waffles, he steps up.
“Stop!” he screams at a pitch no one else in the world can match.
The kids all look at him. He’s a small guy, just forty pounds. Most of them are twice his size. He’s got no chance if it comes to blows.
They keep shooting.
“Stop!” he shouts again. “That’s salt water. You’re killing it.”
Ok. I’m kind of impressed.
I don’t remember teaching my son about the dangers of salt water to terrestrial flora. It may be that I once mentioned it offhandedly, that we grazed the topic during one of our epic-length scientific discussions.
Doesn’t matter.
He knows, and he’s pissed.
“Take your guns and go to the other side of the pool,” he instructs. The kids look at him like he’s just slapped them. They don’t know who they’re messing with. They don’t understand how one little kid could seek justice…for a tree.
I sit up, but I don’t intervene. Not yet. I want to see how far he’s willing to go to protect this lonely little tree.
“Water won’t kill it,” one of the kids says. “Trees like water.”
“Not salt water.” G Man glares. “The salt will get into the roots. It’ll kill the tree.”
He’s not calm, but he’s not shouting anymore. Standing his ground, he stares the tree’s attackers down. They’re still not sure what to do.
And while they stand in the shallows, pumping water into their guns, but not yet firing, one of their moms comes over. She takes G Man’s side and redirects the ruffians to the pool’s far side.
As suddenly as it began, the standoff ends.
The tree is safe for now.
When I wade into the water to console the G Man – and commend his bravery – I expect him to be angry at the other kids. They tried to kill a tree, after all. He and I have had a thousand talks about protecting nature whenever we can.
But he’s not mad at them.
He’s angry with me.
He tells me I should’ve, “Kicked all the kids’ butts.”
And maybe he’s right.
Maybe I should have.
The tree, just one life among the many at the pool that day, was worth protecting.
Someone had to stand up for it.
And so he did.
We may think we’re teaching our children.
But often they’re teaching us.
* * *
For more stories like this, go here.
A Tale of Two Concerts
So there are two big concert experiences (with regards to song choices):
One is play only your hits. Maybe you sprinkle in some of the old stuff, the deep tracks, but you’re playing the big songs and the newest songs from your latest album in order to support it.
The other option is when maybe this is a tour where you don’t have a new album to support. Maybe you don’t have to be beholden to a strict set list. Or perhaps you are working on a new album, but nowhere near close enough on most of the songs.
This is a case where the catalog really opens up and you can truly reach back and plat those songs older fans haven’t heard in a long time and newer fans have never heard in concert.
Last week I got a taste of both…
An aside – With Pearl Jam being my favorite band, the idea of a unique set list is not strange. In fact, with their shows I’m normally the asshole who wants to hear some random track 10 from one of the lesser known albums. I want the deep cuts more prominently than the more casual fan is not going to have heard or understand.
Night One: A Perfect Circle
This is a band situated firmly in my top 5 bands, but it’s been 13 years since I’ve been to see A Perfect Circle. Life, tour dates, and them not really existing for a good portion of a decade were all contributing factors. That time they were indoors, with people hanging from the ceiling, and other oddities that are somewhat commonplace when you’re dealing with a Maynard related band.
This time around they were at the Verizon Amphitheater in Alpharetta, Georgia, where after having been to only two shows, is fast becoming a household favorite. Great sound, relatively easy to get into the venue (getting out is a little more sketchy, but so is just about every other venue I’ve ever been to), and there is just something about an outdoor show as the sun goes down.
We arrived in time to hear one song from the opening band… which I didn’t catch the name of. I normally don’t mind trying to get in a little early just to catch those bands. So many shows over the years have introduced me to some solid music.
Our seats were about 7 rows behind the general admission orchestra area (which was probably about 10 rows deep if full). Around us were a handful of empty seats… probably another symptom of not putting out music in so long. Strangely, we were told repetitively that the band did not want any pictures taken. In 2004, that might have been something you could control with cameras not installed in every phone (maybe? I honestly can’t remember), but in 2017 you can’t really put that genie back in the bottle. Still, ushers did stop a few people, and I’ve read about others being asked to leave.
We’re rule followers, so no worries there.
The show itself was amazing. APC is one of those bands where I don’t have tracks I skip. As to their set list, I use my wife as the go-by, and she commented after the show she was surprised by how many songs she recognized. Overall, they played their hits, a couple of covers (John Lennon’s Imagine making an appearance – an always welcomed addition), and even sprinkled in a pair of new songs.
The only odd thing about the new songs was the placement of one of them to close out the show. Normally I’d think you’d want something to bring down the house – a song everyone knows and has been waiting for. Instead, we get a song that maybe a handful know and the rest just get to experience. Just an odd choice.
Though, I do think once I get to hear it enough, I have no doubt it will be a quality track to use in that capacity. It certainly had that feel.
Night Two: Soundgarden
Lollapalooza 1996 is the last time I’ve seen Soundgarden. Again, helped by the dissolution of the band for over a decade, I missed the tour they did with King Animal back in 2012/2013. And I might have missed this one had it not been for the venue.
The Fox Theater brings an assortment of memories for me beginning with seeing Top Gun there with my parents and being astounded by the audience interaction with the film. Catcalls during any of the numerous guys with their shirts off scenes, cheers whenever Tom Cruise did anything great, and more clapping when the movie ended. The Theater is topped off by seeing Pearl Jam back in 1994, which I’ve talked about here.
Yet, I’ve only seen one other band at The Fox and it happens to be Soundgarden over 20 years ago. Now here was a chance to see them again in the same venue… a no brainer.
We actually arrived early enough to see The Pretty Reckless open. Given XM Radio and the Octane channel, I recognized a couple of songs. Courtney mentioned actually wanting to download some of their stuff. I’ll be interested to see how the album fills out past the release songs.
As to Soundgarden, you couldn’t ask for a more different pair of shows. Where APC’s light effects were more colors and mood based, Soundgarden is a rock band with their influences spanning from arena rock bands to DIY punk rockers – so the lights were an assault at various times throughout the show. But the biggest difference was the song choice.
Apparently, their 1st full album was rereleased in the last couple of months. It makes for a perfect excuse to dust off those old school songs. And I gotta think if you are a fan from waaaay back in the day, your song bucket list managed to get a lot shorter as they opened with 3 straight songs from that era. Which is great… except I don’t own that record. I start with Badmotorfinger and continue from there.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the hell out of the show. They pretty much hit upon everything I’d have expected them to play, but it was a little unexpected.
Though there is nothing like hearing Fell on Black Days live. It’s my favorite song of theirs no matter what form it takes.
***
Two bands. Over 4 hours of live music. Great venues.
Extremely tired come Thursday morning.
Worth it.
***
John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.
His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!
He also has a short story in the Beyond the Gate anthology, which is free on most platforms!
And has two shorts in the Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows anthology! Check it out!
He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.
The Metal Bowl
The Metal Bowl
by anonymous
*
It was the voice of the untreated sickness in her head that had us convinced she was the midwife, the prophet.
She was our salvation in a world conspiring to take our children away. She was the woman with multiple names and a dozen more roles. This day, as the tiny blood-soaked rocks hit the metal bowl, she was the doctor. I felt her needle nose pliers dig deep into the gnarled folds of skin and hair, the hot extraction of rock and infection from my partially scalped head.
Through the slits of my swollen eyelids, I saw a glint of my brother’s long hair fly past the window and disappear in a mischievous blur. I didn’t need to see where he went to know what he was doing. His rapid movements and wicked laugh painted the rest of the scene outside the walls.
I knew the pack of javelinas would be resting under the apple tree in their usual gluttonous fashion, getting drunk off rotten fruit scattered in the yard. I saw my brother’s tiny body contorted in a bush just out of the pigs’ sight, waiting for the right moment to assault the enemy beasts with the stray apples. He never got more than two hits in when the pack would come rushing at him with murderous intent.
I would be out there too, screaming and dodging death if not for my wounds. It had been a week, but I still couldn’t walk. My knees and face had taken most of the impact on the dirt road. When I’d flown out of the truck bed and onto the gravel road, it had felt like my body had rubbed across a giant cheese grater, stripping my flesh with unforgiving ease.
It was nobody’s fault.
Just a case of poor circumstance.
We’d chosen the wrong day to hitchhike. The old truck they picked us up in hid the secret of its faulty brakes until it reached the top of the most treacherous of winding mountain roads. When the dust settled and bodies were accounted for, it was the fear in my mother’s voice that convinced us to make a getaway before the ambulance could come.
Her sickness painted stories of evil-doers disguised as government workers. Her hushed warnings to muffle my groans were far louder than the sirens approaching and leaving. She cradled my crumpled body in her arms as we hid in a steep ravine in the thick California brush.
Seven days.
Seven days of hot ‘healing’ baths and prayers failed to heal my wounds.
Cool comfrey cloths and home remedies on my raw flesh had no power against the deep infection brewing in the dermal folds of my forehead.
The pliers dug deeper as I gripped the chair seat hard. Another ping resounded as a pebble dropped into the metal bowl. The pain brought me outside of my body and delivered me back to the dripping summer days of chasing wild pigs and shooting pretend bows at majestic peacocks. I soared above my own body, shaking and weak. Away from the pain and into a summer breeze winding through the Chiricahua Mountains, smelling of honey and blooming chamomile.
* * *
My Mother: The Horse Diver
Another month, and a little more insight to my own family’s past. I only wish that I had an actual picture of my grandmother to show along with the following…
***
My Mother: The Horse Diver
By: Mickey McGuire
My mother was the best cook who ever lived. I also knew her to be the most critical person whom I have ever known, and, in her later years, one of the most fearful and paranoid. On her good days, she liked to laugh and joke. She loved to fish- both salt and fresh water; she was the first to drop her line and the last to leave. She wrote short stories, poetry, and a book about life in the Okefenokee Swamp.
She tried to be a good mother- nurturer to me she was not. In all fairness though, I saw her warm and fuzzy side as a grandmother to my children. Although our relationship was complicated at best, I never doubted her desire to see me succeed at a level which surpassed hers.
On the days her demons rose to the surface, she drank vodka- sometimes a weekend binge a month, other times many months would pass without any drinking. The realization of her drinking for the day assaulted my nose and sensibilities as soon as I opened the door in the afternoon after school- Momma asleep/passed out in the bed and the rest of the house a cold vacuum where sadness and pain lived.
I never saw her take a leisurely walk or do any form of formal exercise. Does pulling a wagon with fishing equipment count? She smoked two packs of Kent cigarettes a day, ate fried Southern food on a regular basis, drank off and on her whole life, and still lived to be 79.
That was the mother I knew. Married already for twenty years, my parents adopted me in their forties. I was the baby who would surely fill that void in my mother’s life.
***
But there was another person I never knew. Families have their share of stories and legends, and my mother had a crazy one- she was a horse diver in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the summer of 1933 when she was seventeen. At that time, the diving show on the Atlantic City Steel Pier had been in existence since 1928. The horse diving show had been the creation of William “Doc” Carver in the 1880s. Originally a traveling diving show, it had become the primary attraction of many carnival acts on the Boardwalk.
This was a show not for the faint of heart or spirit. A pretty girl sat on the back of a huge horse and dove 40-60 feet into a 12 foot pool. That depth was just enough for the horse to reach the bottom of the tank and push-off to swim to the surface. Different horses dove four times a day, seven days a week for the price of a one dollar admission to see this remarkable feat- definitely meeting the criteria of an extreme sport by the standards of that time. Divers made $50- $125 per week, a fortune compared to the normal $15 per week in a department store.
How would a seventeen year old girl from Waycross, Georgia, ever be a horse diver in Atlantic City, New Jersey, you might ask? That summer my mother had gone to stay with her older brother and his wife in New Jersey, a place where my uncle had found better job opportunities as a welder in the shipyards. My mother’s cousin Marie was already a temporary diver for the show. The star diver Sonora Webster Carver- also a Waycross girl- had been blinded on one of the dives in 1931, and, according to her autobiography, had needed rehabilitation and time to learn Braille. So the summer of 1933 could have very well been a period of transition where many different divers were used in the shows. According to Sonora’s sister Arnette French in the autobiography A Girl and Five Brave Horses, “If you rounded all the riders up, we’d fill Convention Hall- we were the stars of the Boardwalk.”
circa 1955: A diving horse and her rider disappearing in to a swimming pool with a splash. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)
According to Momma and Sonora Carver’s autobiography, you had “to keep your head tucked to one side, so that when the horse raised his head as he jumped up at the bottom of the pool, you wouldn’t get smacked in the face.” That would have been the least of my worries. How would you have the nerve to jump on the back of that gigantic animal and then jump off a stand 40-60 feet in the air into 12 feet of water? What about being thrown off or kicked in the head under water? There were documented bloody noses, black eyes, broken cheekbones, collarbones, and teeth. Amazingly, no diver fatalities ever occurred. Sonora Carver’s blindness was the worst of the injuries, and she continued to dive despite her blindness for many years.
***
How does one person meet adversity and thrive despite it while another is haunted by her/his demons? How did my mother evolve from having this courageous spirit and complete recklessness of youth to being beaten down from the disappointments in her life? If she could be a horse diver, she could have accomplished anything. I do believe life is about choices and consequences. She could have taken that job with Western Union and had her own career. She could have moved to a big city. She could have divorced my father. She chose to stay in the marriage, to live in the small town, and be a housewife. The life she chose would eventually lead to her becoming my mother, all the good and the bad of it. She was the mother I was supposed to have. I am who I am because of it.
I wish we could have had a different relationship… but we did not.
Instead of thinking about what might have been, I love to think about my mother dressed in that sequined bathing suit, waiting for that nearly one ton animal to reach the top of the ramp- her red hair flying- fearless and carefree- her future ahead with so much promise.
Credits: Carver, Sonora. A Girl and Five Brave Horses. Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2016.
***
Mickey McGuire is the mother of published author John McGuire, a registered NICU nurse, retired high school teacher, an artist, and passionate student in this game of life.
How to spot and ignore fake news stories
Can we talk?
Look…
I don’t know whether or not fake news influenced the election.
I don’t know…and I don’t care.
But what I do know is this: an incredible amount of otherwise intelligent-seeming people have started a trend on the internet: posting (and believing) news stories that are so obviously false, it injures everyone’s eyes to see. They’re doing it at a higher rate than ever. It’s gone from one fake story per week to several every day. It’s obnoxious. And more than that, it’s sad.
No, Conor McGregor didn’t retire due to some random scandal.
Will Smith didn’t assassinate Trump.
The President didn’t ban the Star Spangled Banner at all sporting events.
All the stay-at-home moms in Connecticut didn’t rake in $20,000 per week using some ‘weird trick.’
It’s getting exhausting. And embarrassing. And by embarrassing I don’t mean for the people and sites who post the fake drivel. Those people, classless as they are, are just trying to earn money. No, by embarrassing I’m talking about the people who believe in clickbait and fake news stories. The people who click on it. The people who share it and try to spread it as though it were gospel.
It feels like some of us are able to spot fake news at a glance, but others have no idea that they’re getting worked up by stories that aren’t even close to being true. People are gobbling this stuff up. And while it’s not as if lies and propaganda are new things, the existence of the internet changes the game. It means everyone is exposed. Always.
More importantly…
Facebook and other sites aren’t going to meaningfully crack down on fake stuff. See, Facebook gets paid to run these ads, and the content doesn’t appear to matter. For example, I sponsor business ads on Facebook and Twitter to promote my books, art, and other materials. But when I flip over to my personal page and glimpse the kinds of ads that appear, it isn’t cool, creative stuff I see. It isn’t interesting at all. It’s spam. It’s how some douchey guy made millions because of his non-existent genius. It’s how some celebrity died tragically (they didn’t) or some congressman murdered his dog (his dog is fine.) It’s fake news, usually some politically polarizing junk or straight up scammy garbage designed to get a click, spread a lie, and earn the offending website cash.
It kills me that people believe this stuff. It hurts my human sensibilities. How are we this dumb, this unable to see through super transparent BS? How is it people aren’t able to distinguish between satirical articles and maliciously fake trash? I think I secretly know the answer (some of us want the fake news articles to be true, particularly the political stuff) but I’m willing to reserve judgment.
No. Actually I’m not. I’m totally judging.
Here’s just a splash of recent fake news headlines people actually believed: (These are the actual headlines, some of which have 10,000 or more Facebook ‘shares.’)
“BREAKING: Hillary Clinton files for divorce.”
“Remember the voting days: Republicans vote on Tuesday, 11/8 and Democrats vote on Wednesday, 11/9!”
“Tens of Thousands of Scientists Declare Climate Change a HOAX!”
“President Obama Signs Executive Order Banning the Sale of Assault Weapons!”
“IT BEGINS: Watch Cops Drag Girl out of NC Bathroom for not Looking Like a Woman.”
* * *
Presently, there’s an article out there listing 130 sites that either promote fake news or use misleading, clickbait-ish headlines. Whether or not every single site listed is actually fake or not isn’t important. What’s important is that from several of these sites, dozens or even hundreds of articles are poured into the internet every day. Misleading articles. Biased articles. Editorials masquerading as journalistic truth. Fake stuff that people you know have read and consumed as if it’s 100% factual.
Here’s what’s up:
You can’t rely on the internet to week out fake news.
It’s not going to stop. It’ll probably get worse before it gets better.
It’s on you to stop it, not Mark Zuckerberg.
There are several articles out there (here’s one) discussing methods of outsmarting fake news. They’re good articles in spirit, but ultimately they’re not simple enough. The kind of people who need to learn how to spot fake news aren’t going to read an ad-riddled, image-filled epic novel about the topic.
It’s really not that complicated.
It’s actually pretty easy.
To eliminate fake news from your consciousness, what you need to do is:
Stop getting your news from Facebook and Twitter. Just stop. Right now
Be automatically skeptical of anything (not just news) you read anywhere on the internet
If something is obviously inflammatory toward a public figure, assume it’s BS until proven otherwise
Especially when using social media, assume anything other than cat pictures and cute photos of your friends’ kids is fake
*
Being an honest, conscientious citizen in the modern world involves more than just basic knowledge of how to click through the internet. You need to step up your game and double down on your critical thinking skills. It isn’t being pessimistic or paranoid. It’s not cynicism. The skills you need to defeat fake news are skills you probably already possess.
Do your homework.
Trust your gut.
Seeing is believing.
*
I don’t know what else to say. While I’m aware there are plenty of people who either don’t care about fake news or actually think it’s cool to spread lies, I want to believe in my heart most of us want it to end. If that’s true, if that’s really true, people need to stop looking to others to solve the problem. Crushing this problem isn’t the internet’s problem. It’s not Facebook’s fault, nor Twitter’s.
It’s on YOU. 100% on YOU. Always has been. Always will be.
Now…
Go forth and click less. I’m counting on you, yes YOU, to never share another fake news headline again.
🙂
* * *
I usually never write about this ^^^ kind of stuff. I write about this kind of stuff.
And stuff like this, too.
Star Wars : My Thoughts Before We Wake
featuring art by the late great Ralph McQuarrie
I’m writing this from the past.
All the way back on Tuesday, December 15, 2015.
Because today, Friday, December 18, is a big day. For me. For a lot of us. I wanted to write this post ahead of time. Before today. Before it happens. Before we see it. Before the Awakening. Before the results of all this hype and hope and speculation and excitement are known. Will we be disappointed today? Will we be thrilled? Will our prayers be answered? I don’t know and for the purposes of this post, I don’t want to know.
So I’m writing this from the past. 
Last night (for me, here in the past), The Force Awakens had its premiere at the Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Which means that people have seen it. A large group of people, a lot of them famous, a lot of them on Twitter. And, while I trust that none of them are going to run and tweet “Oh my God! Han Solo is just Dexter Jettster wearing a Mission Impossible Mask!”, I have deleted Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and any other social media app off my phone; deleted the bookmarks in Google Chrome. From Monday until Saturday, I am in as much of a media blackout as is possible in this day and age.
Because I don’t want to know.
I’m not a spoiler-phobe. I actually find that trend more than a little annoying, as I wrote about a while ago HERE. Do I want to know the story? The surprises? The ending? Fuck no. But mostly, I don’t want to know what people think about the movie. I don’t want to read Kevin Smith tweeting “HOLY SHIT STAR WARS IS SO GOOD!” or Patton Oswalt saying “Bad news guys…”. I don’t want to know what the critics have to say. Not a single fucking one. Not because I don’t like critics, but because I have no interest in what other people think about the movie.
I only care about what I think about it.
Two reasons for this:
1. There are at most a dozen people in this world whose opinions on film I actually respect. Who I can talk movies with in a way that satisfies me. Whose praise or condemnation of a film can actually sway my desire to see it. Does this make me a snob? Fuck yes. I embrace being a snob. I don’t care what most people think because I think I know better. It’s an ugly truth about me but a truth all the same. I feel that way about all movies; with Star Wars I feel it tenfold.
2. Knowing the general consensus on a film’s quality undoubtedly taints your experience in watching it for the first time. If the praise is effusive, often times you are disappointed by what you see because it was merely “good”, not “amazing” as every keeps saying. For me, I call this the Something About Mary effect. Conversely, if the word on the film is bad, if people are ripping it, if the cursed Rotten Tomatoes (boy do I hate Rotten Tomatoes) rating is low, you go into it expecting bad and you look for the bad. All you can see is the bad. And you don’t want to feel like an idiot for liking something that everyone else hates. Or you can go the other way. You’ve heard the film is bad, you go see it, enjoy it, and think “That was much better than everyone is saying. I don’t get it.” That happened with me on The Dark Knight Rises. The word wasn’t great on it but when I saw it I enjoyed it. Looking back, I realize those low expectations inflated my opinion of the film. I bought it on blu-ray the day it came out and haven’t been able to watch it all the way through even once. I find it mediocre and disappointing.
I don’t want to walk into the theater today with that baggage.
I’m bringing in enough with me as it is.
Because, well…
I love Star Wars more than you.
Since I don’t know who you are, dear reader, it’s understandable if you find that statement laughable.
But I love Star Wars more than you because Star Wars is my thing.
And it has been since 1980.
When I was four years old, my parents let me stay up to watch the network television debut of Star Wars. It was hosted by Billy Dee Williams (which is how I know it was around 1980), from a badly mocked-up version of what I would later learn was the Mos Eisley cantina. (Did you know it was owned by a Wookiee named Chalmun? Of course you didn’t. No reason you should. But I do. Because Star Wars is my thing.)
Like so many people, the first time seeing George Lucas’s Star Wars changed my life. I was never the same after that. I had, at the age of four, fallen truly, madly, and deeply in love.
I obviously don’t remember every detail of that night, but I remember enough. I remember the opening shot of the Blockade Runner (the Tantive IV) and the Star Destroyer (the Devastator) coming over the top of the screen and thinking the child’s equivalent of “holy shit!”. Being terrified of Darth Vader. I remember the cantina, obviously. Ben cutting off Ponda Baba’s arm. Meeting Han Solo. Seeing the Falcon for the first time. I have very strong memories of the trash compactor and, after that, the image that probably stuck most in my mind: Luke and Leia swinging across the chasm in the Death Star. Of course, the getaway fight with the TIE Fighters was amazing (“Don’t get cocky!”).
But what left an indelible impression on me was the final assault on the Death Star, later known as the Battle of Yavin. It enraptured me in a way I had never experienced. Starting with the scene in the briefing room where they break down the plan (I have this thing. Don’t know what it is, but my favorite scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is when Indy uses the chalkboard to explain to the guys, one of them the actor that played Jek Porkins in A New Hope, how the Staff of Ra worked. Don’t know why that is.) and then of course the visuals, the action. It was so damn exciting and tense. I had no idea what was going to happen next. I had seen very few movies, so it never occurred to me that of course the hero was going to save the day. I was four. I didn’t know that it was an automatic thing in movies like this. I was terrified for Luke every step of the way. He’s just a kid from a farm! This is so dangerous! How is he going to make it out alive?
Ships crash. People die. Darth Vader starts mowing down Y-Wings in his funky looking fighter (TIE Advanced x1). It was all too much.
Then Luke switched off his targeting computer.
I stopped breathing.
Then, it happened. The moment that brings me chills every time I think about it, let alone see it. Seriously. Right now, seeing it in my head, I’m getting that feeling.
Just when it looked like Vader was going to shoot Luke down. Just when the Rebellion was about to be blown to oblivion, a miracle happened.
“Yahoo!”
The Falcon came down out of the sun and saved the day.
They came back! Han and Chewie came back! If you were an adult, you probably knew it would happen. Because that’s how movies work. The cynical loner always grows a heart and comes back to help. But as a child? I had no idea it was coming.
And when it did, I felt it for the first time.
The jolt. The shiver. The surge.
For all I knew, at that moment, 35 years ago, it was The Force Itself.
That feeling, you know? The potent injection of emotion that seems to shoot up your spine when you see, hear, read something that just hits you in a place you never knew you had. It’s the white soldiers cheering “give ‘em Hell!” to the 54th Massachusetts as they leave to die attacking Fort Wagner. It’s a brave vampire slayer leaping to her death to save both her sister and the world (“She saved the world. A lot.”). It’s the “Ode to Joy”, when that damn chorus comes in and the bliss crackles like electricity under your skin.
I was paralyzed with… I don’t know what that feeling is. It’s a cocktail of emotions, universally known but undefined. Just that… rush. That feeling.
It was the first time I had felt it.
It was riding my first roller coaster.
It was losing my virginity.
Drinking my first beer.
I have George Lucas to thank for that. And I thank him, as all fans should, for giving us this gift.
I also wanted more.
The first Star Wars trilogy was an enormous hit. Millions and millions of people are fans of the films. Made Lucas a brand of his own, the most successful independent filmmaker in history. The original trilogy is beloved the whole world over. Especially The Empire Strikes Back, nearly universally considered the best of the films.
But my love affair didn’t stop in 1983 when Return of the Jedi was released. I didn’t think “Well, that cool thing is over. On to the next thing.”
I was in love. I still wanted more.
And to get more, I had to dive deeper. And there wasn’t a whole lot there.
I’ve seen the two pretty-awful Ewoks TV movies more than a dozen times each. Why? Because they were Star Wars. Same with the “Droids” and “Ewoks” cartoons. I read the seven available Star Wars spin-off novels, including the very enjoyable Han Solo and Lando Calrissian series. I read the lackluster Marvel comics.
But between 1983 and 1991, it was slim pickings for a kid who wanted more of his favorite thing.
But in ’91, a novel was published. Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire. It took place 5 years after Episode VI and 
starred all of the original characters, and introduced a few new ones, including one of the great Star Wars villains (hell, characters) of all time. Soon after, in the world of comic books, Dark Horse got the Star Wars license and released “Dark Empire”, which took place a year after Heir to the Empire. It was a bleak story about Emperor Palpatine rising from the dead to take one last stab at conquering the galaxy.
With those two pieces of fiction, the entity that would eventually be called the Expanded Universe was born. It would live and grow for almost a quarter of a century.
And I experienced all of it. Every novel. Every comic book. Every video game. Every role-playing game. Every encyclopedia. Star Wars became much more than three movies for me.
Even through the Special Editions and the Prequels, the Expanded Universe thrived. The novels and comics kept coming. Some were great. Some sucked. Most were in the middle somewhere. But the Star Wars galaxy continued to grow outside of the movies. In the case of the prequels, it often times eclipsed it in terms of quality. When 2005 was over, and Revenge of the Sith had come and gone, Star Wars wasn’t over for me like it was for so many others. I hadn’t abandoned it because of the quality of the prequels. Because to me it was so much more than six films. The movies were the most important aspect, sure, but I enjoyed the prequel era. While Lucas’s movies were bad (at times horrible), with several great moments, they spawned so many interesting stories between the cracks. In comics. And fiction. And in the spectacular “Clone Wars” television show.
I can imagine losing faith in Star Wars if all you know is the films. I don’t begrudge anyone for being done with the franchise after the prequels. Nor do I blame people for hopping back on in hopes that The Force Awakens is awesome. Please, come back to Star Wars. But also understand that some of us never left. Not out of blind loyalty, but because we’re fans. Not fans of the Star Wars movies; fans of Star Wars as a whole, the entire multi-media giant it has grown into.
Now George Lucas is out. Disney, Kathleen Kennedy, Lawrence Kasdan, and J.J. Abrams are in. The Force Awakens takes place 30 years after Return of the Jedi.Everyone is excited to see what things are like, what’s happened, what’s going, three decades after the death of the Emperor and Darth Vader. So am I. Except, I’ve already seen it. The novels hit “30 years later” a long time ago. In the (now defunct) Expanded Universe, a lot happened in those years. Weddings. Births. Deaths. New villains. New heroes. Wars. Adventures. Tragedies. Triumphs. A fully fleshed-out timeline that has been built upon that first wonderful Timothy Zahn novel.
None of this has any bearing on The Force Awakens. This is a new timeline. A new vision. One that only includes the films and animated TV shows as “canon”. And I’ve come to terms with that. It’s fine. It’s all make-believe bullshit anyway. But it will be impossible for me to not bring all that (fictional) history with me. That knowledge is in my DNA. It’s part of what makes me me.
J.J. Abrams is without a doubt a Star Wars fan. But, if I had to guess, not the same type of Star Wars fan as I am. He loves Star Wars and I think he is going to make a film that represents it well. Except, his Star Wars is not my Star Wars. My Star Wars galaxy is so much bigger than most people’s. The question is really going to be, for me, is “is what J.J. loves about Star Wars the same thing I love about Star Wars?”. Maybe, but maybe not.
What do I want this new movie to be?
I want it to be a good story.
I want it to feel like Star Wars.
I want the Kurosawa screen wipes between scenes instead of dissolves and cuts.
I want Harrison, Mark, and Carrie to be Han, Luke, and Leia.
I want Rey and Finn and Poe to be great characters that I will enjoy watching carry on the saga.
I want it to feel old and new.
I want someone to say “I have a bad feeling about this.”
I want John Williams to make me bawl like a baby.
I want it to pay homage to George but not be an homage to George. There’s a difference. Ask Bryan Singer.
I want Kylo Ren to be badass.
I want Captain Phasma to be badass-er.
I want it to be its own movie but also earn the title “Episode VII” and feel like part of the greater saga.
I want it to be good.
I want it to be great.
I want to love it.
What do I not want?
I do not want Luke Skywalker to be evil.
That is the one thing that could turn me off of Star Wars for a very long time. Make me lose faith in the new regime. I think it would betray the original films, the films that everyone behind The Force Awakens say they are trying to do right by.
“Where’s Luke?” has been the refrain as the hero of episodes IV through VI has been absent from the poster, the trailers, the TV spots, and the toys. “Where is Luke?!?”
There could be many reasons why they haven’t shown Luke Skywalker in any of the promo material. Maybe he’s not in it that much. Maybe he’s only in scenes that are later in the film and they don’t want to spoil anything. Maybe his entrance into the movie is so motherfucking Orson-Welles-in-The-Third-Man-awesome that they want to hold onto it. Make us wait for it. Because when I see Mark Hamill playing Luke Skywalker, 32 years after he did it last, I’m going to cry. The quality of his reveal will determine whether I just get misty-eyed or curl up into a sobbing ball on the floor of the theater. I want his entrance to floor me. I want to feel like a kid again.
He could also be a bad guy. That would be a legitimate reason not to reveal him until we see the film, as some have speculated. I really hope that’s not true.
Because I don’t know what I’d do. They would have to do it REALLY well to keep me watching.
They could have Jar-Jar and Wickett talk about midichlorians for two hours and I’d still be there for Episode VIII. But making Luke the bad guy…?
Let’s hope not. 
As this posts, 1:20 pm, EST, I am sitting down with my father and brother at the Regal Cinemas Atlantic Station theater in downtown Atlanta to watch The Force Awakens in IMAX 3D. The last time I saw a Star Wars film in the theater with these two people that I love: 1983. So that, in itself, will be special.
If you are reading this within two and a half hours of me posting it, I am currently sitting in a darkened theater with an appropriately StarWarsian mix of hope and fear. I don’t need this movie to be good. If it’s not, I’ll still be a Star Wars fan tomorrow. I’ll be sad Star Wars fan, sure, for a while, but I’m not walking away. When my baseball team has a bad game, a bad season, even a bad decade, I don’t stop wearing their caps. I don’t stop rooting for them, watching their games, going to see them when they come to town. And even if the last year was horrible, I still start the next season with hope that they’ll get it right this time.
I feel the same way about Star Wars. In all of pop culture, there is nothing that is nearer to my heart. That’s why I wanted to write this before seeing the film. To express my undying love. No matter what I am experiencing at this very moment, I will be a Star Wars fan tomorrow.
As for my opinions on The Force Awakens, I will express them. On Saturday I will be recording another episode of the NEEDLESS THINGS podcast where we will have a round table discussion about the film. The episode will be available online soon after the film comes out, if you really want to hear me talk about it. I’m sure I’ll have one or two or five hundred things to say.
I may even let the other panelists talk. If I’m feeling generous.
Thank you, George.
Good luck, J.J.
It’s time. You psyched? I’m psyched.
Let’s do it. Here we go.
Punch it, Chewie.
May the Force Be with You,
Chad J. Shonk
December 15, 2015
The #NothingMatters Movement
It’s funny the things we decide to care about.
It’s curious the flow of socio-political liquid through the masses.
Do you ever wonder if, a thousand years ago, the hashtag causes would’ve been #SanitationMatters, #PeasantsMatter, or #ArrowsDon’tKill but #ArchersDo?
During World War II, if Twitter had existed, the Allies’ causes would’ve been obvious (Sadly the Axis’s would’ve been, too.) But what about during the American Revolution? Would it have been #IndependenceMatters, #RedcoatLivesMatterToo, or simply #FuckKingGeorge?
Well?
Nearly every day of our lives, we see someone or some group expelling causes across the internet. Seems everyone has an interest in telling everyone else what should be important. ‘You should care about this,’ they shout. ‘This is important, #TheseLivesMatter,’ but, ‘That shit over there doesn’t matter.’ These days anyone with fingers and a computer has a soapbox. Some folks choose not to stand on it. But a crap-ton of other people are happy to jump on and start talking/typing.
But talking ain’t the same as doing.
And while a hundred-thousand people might appear to agree with a common cause on their Facebook pages, ultimately they’re all just individuals. With their own lives and problems. Most of whom don’t actually give two shits about the cause beyond clicking ‘Like.’
If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, did it make a sound?
Yes.
If shit goes down and no one’s there to care, did that shit matter?
Hmmmm…
Every day globally, thousands of humans die. Some from sickness, others by accident, still others by war, suicide, and foul play. Every hour, people are wronged. People are robbed, kidnapped, assaulted, maimed, and abused. Now imagine all these terrible things if no one reported them. No news. No weather channel. No 60 Minutes specials. No hashtags made up to gather attention. Without media coverage, the only ones who’d know about localized suffering would be the survivors, the perpetrators, and a handful of observers.
Compared to the way things are now, the world would be quiet. It might even seem peaceful, even though it wouldn’t be.
Because…without the media storm surrounding the modern world, we’d never know about all these terrible things. Not even the good things. We’d never care. #NothingWouldMatter because we’d never hear about stuff. We’d be the same as most people were a few hundred years ago. The only things that would matter to us would be those affecting our village, our clique, our small sphere of stuff we could actually see, hear, and touch.
Now, I’m not going all nihilistic on you. To say #nothing has any value at all would be a tough sell to most people, especially those with children, lovers, amazing friends, close family, or even pets. However…if we peek just outside our bubble of people and things that matter, what’s out there? What’s really out there? Good stuff. Bad stuff. But mostly just stuff. Stuff that doesn’t affect you. Or me. Or anyone other than the people directly involved in it.
Now let’s take a #DoesItReallyMatter quiz:
Pretend you and everyone you knew got really pissed off at how refugees in a faraway war were being treated, but none of you actually went out to fight the bad guys oppressing these refugees. So. Did the refugees matter to you? As in really?
Let’s say you actually did get up and fight the bad guys, but that one generation later, the refugees formed a country who started doing the same terrible things that had been done to them. Did your involvement matter?
If a city a hundred miles away vanished overnight and all its people were lost, but no one you knew had ever lived there, would it matter to you? Honestly?
If a nation (population 1 billion) you’d never paid attention to were invaded and destroyed tomorrow, would such a catastrophic loss matter to you? Other than maybe make you afraid for your own nation? Other than maybe make you crap your pants? Is it even possible for one person to care about a billion other individuals?
What I’m saying is; for all the things a person really, really cares about in their life, they’ll fight like lions to defend. They’ll make huge sacrifices, they’ll go to war, they’ll spend all their money, they’ll invest their heart and soul. They’ll die to see it done. It’s that important. #ItMatters.
But for everything else, they’ll just go online and ‘Like’ it.
…or talk about it at the water cooler.
…or catch in on the news right before watching their favorite tv show.
Because, just maybe, #ItDoesn’tReallyMatter
No matter how much we like to tell ourselves we care about all the crazy stuff going on the world…
…most of the time, we don’t.
We can only really care about the things closest to us.
And that’s just the way it should be.
#NothingMatters
#Well…AlmostNothing
* * *
Want to start a few hot debates with all the guys and gals in your life? Click here and here.
Want to sit in the shadows and read about people who have it way tougher? Right. Here.
Love,
So What’s He Going To Buy With All That Gold?
Currently in rotation on HBO are all the Hobbit films. And while I’m not the biggest fan of the book, I find I’m watching bits and pieces of the movies here and there as I flip through the channels. However, there is one scene that I must turn to and watch in its entirety every opportunity I get:
Smaug.
Smaug slowly revealing himself from under a treasure trove that would invoke Dragon Sickness on Thorin. Smaug talking with Bilbo, toying with him, showing him exactly how impressive he might be. And the extremes he goes to prove that the dwarves will never retake the mountain.
I love every minute of it.
Yet, the other night I was watching these sequences and a strange thought popped into my head:
Why does Smaug (or any dragon) need all that gold? And it isn’t just him – so many of these creatures throughout our myths are guarding a treasure horde. It is a staple such that in Dungeons and Dragons it is not questioned. The only questions anyone has any real concern to answer are: how much is the horde worth? Are we powerful enough to kill the beast guarding it?
But I feel like there is more to this idea.
***
The cavern shone whenever the tiniest glint of light broke through. In those instances, the gleam would bounce from coin to coin, making them sparkle. It would illuminate the lighter colored gems so they became tiny lanterns dotting the golden mound. Under this light the true spectacle could be seen. Appreciated. Gold and diamonds and coins and gems and… a myriad of skeletal forms cooked to a crisp inside their metal armor.
That same treasure acted as a beacon to some. Bands of adventurers who wove odd stories about how the dragon claimed their birthrights… their home. How every coin buried there was theirs to recover. Indeed, all of it would be restored to its rightful owners.
Yes, the cavern might have once belonged to dwarves or mountain men or even an orc herd, but it was the dragon’s now and had been for decades. It was his home. And more importantly, so were the riches it used as a bed.
For while the previous owners certainly contributed to its girth, not everything was from a singular conquest.
***
Krench moved into the cavern. Ever a creature of habit, he made sure to bring along a lantern, even if the act was worthless. At the outer chamber a familiar warmth ran down his leg. Long gone were the days he might have made excuses for such an action. How it could have been explained away as an involuntary response to the immense fear coursing throughout his body.
If his nephew smelled the urine, he did not show it. For that, Krench was grateful. There was far too much left to teach the lowly creature for them to become bogged down in such a trivial thing.
“The thing that no one understands is exactly what the Great Wyrm does with all his riches. The outsiders believe he simply slumbers on them. They make up superstitions where he extracts some form of nourishment from the metals in the coin allowing him to generate his awesome flame. They suppose he is vain and loves the way the gold and silver flicker in the darkness.
“Does that even make any kind of sense? It is up there with those who claim he stole the entire amount.
“Lies! And I have the numbers to prove it.” Krench patted the large book tucked under other arm. “A quick reading of this would inform everyone that of his original horde, only thirty percent was from what the dwarves possessed. Then there was the twenty-five percent in tribute from the lizard men. Another ten percent from random caravans he assaulted when bored. The last thirty-five percent an investment with the orcs that paid him quite well upon their successful campaign against the elves.”
The tunnel tightened enough that they both were forced to duck. His nephew passed through the narrow opening first and took the lantern and book from him while he made his way. Holding the items, the younglings resembled him decades earlier. His mind would be a swirl, a jumble mass of expectations, questions, theories, and who knows what else. To his credit, no questions were posed, but Ketch knew the sermon was far from finished. There was just too much to prepare him for. To explain how the world really worked.
“Once a week the Dragon’s Accountant must journey here to give a full account on all his holdings.” That got the boy’s attention. “I know your question: how would his horde ever change? He’s sleeping on the lot of it.
“And that’s the secret. He’s not. That’s small level thinking. For a creature such as this, who counts his life in decades or even centuries, you must expand on all of that. And this one has holdings as far east as Silverpool, as far north as the great seas… where ever money might exchange hands the likelihood is very high some of the coin originated here.”
“That inn located at the crossroads of Madras and Danan. Where all the caravans stop. Where lords and ladies and even princes have stayed… he owns a fifty percent stake. The blacksmith shop in Butte has worked out a nice living for himself because of a certain anonymous investor.
“A fleet of ships supporting the Merchant Guild in Silverpool.
“And the latest Duke of Parthan, who somehow found enough of a foreign inheritance to afford the new title and the lands which come with it.”
Krench let it all sink in.Watching his nephew’s eyes dart back and forth, a mind at work. After a few moments, a toothy grin emerged.
“Not to mention the coinage itself. Think about it, most of the coinage will be old. Then after a time it will be very old. Then ancient. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall in the blink of an eye (well, from His point of view). They mint new coins, phase out the old ones… and no one wants to have worthless coins. So periodic exchanges have to occur. In small enough amounts not to arouse suspicion, but in enough transactions so that you actually gain some ability to pay for what you want to invest in.”
The first of the outer doors appeared at the end of the tunnel. Remnants of the previous owners. A loose stone along the right side of the door, halfway down, provided the opening mechanism. Krench pushed until he heard the click and the engraved doors shifted open.
“What people don’t understand is dragons are ancient creatures. On a long enough timeline, barring random adventurers stumbling in and murdering them in their homes, they might well live forever. Even the ancient elves appear to wither in the eyes of dragons.
“But forever is a long time. And while they may share more in common with cats in their sleeping habits- they still wish to be entertained. And with the level of money they possess… well, pulling the strings on some of the humanoid peoples is a pleasant distraction.
“More than anything else, he knows history will repeat itself if you let it. So he can push and pull. Nudge things along for the better. Well, for his better.
“You see, dragons have gotten a horrible reputation as being evil. But what no one will tell you is the word is made up. They simply don’t realize have the perspective to appreciate everything as it moves and twists and turns. The elves… yes, they might, but the lower races, the dwarves and humans and halflings and gnomes and orcs… the lot of them just don’t live long enough. So they make up new stories to explain the world around them. And more often than not they only have the vaguest of memories as to what came before. The devastation, the wars, the armies… evil.”
They were getting lower now, the tunnel’s slope increased to the point Krench had to hand the lantern over to his nephew. They both stumbled a bit, but neither lost their footing. A hundred feet or so later things flattened out once more, and he took the burden back.
“Of course, they don’t know about the art. Creatives need funding as well. Ancient dragons need songs and maybe stories to be written about them. To be retold for the next generation. And who’s going to pay those bards to make such beautiful art? He is.
“Exotic animals? Seems strange, but my father explained it to me. Some days you want beef and some days you want Minotaur. Nothing wrong with either. And when you exist at the top of the food chain and have this level of wealth…”
Richard Caton Woodville, Jr. [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
“My great-grandfather realized one undeniable truth: wars cost money. Conquests. Paying armies to conquer the world. It’s a terrible business plan. First you outlay all of that money on the mercenaries. You pay to feed them. To forge weapons for them. To build the forges. To build the siege equipment. And all of that work and gold guarantees absolutely nothing.
“Up to that revelation, the Dragon’s Accountant merely handed out the sacks of gold to the mercenaries and kept a log of it all in the book. But it was a drain on the coffers, and no amount of caravans would cover the loss. That pile he sleeps on will surely drain until he’s sleeping on stone like some commoner. No! That would not stand! So he dared to pose a single idea: if the Great Wyrm really wished to take over the kingdom, then why not buy it instead?”
Careful to turn the key two times to the left and then once to the right (no one wanted a face sprayed with acid from a trap set to keep the undesirables out), Krench led them into the cavern proper. Pausing to let the younger of them take the sight in, he pushed his spectacles back up his long snout. Long ago the glitter was enough to nearly blind him. Too many restless nights were spent trying to determine exactly how one might extract such a mass from the mountain. When his own father passed the Book onto him, he spent more than enough time to understand how moving even one coin was as important as the whole of it.
Later, when he took a full account of the book, Krench realized some of the investments had gone sideways. A small war between human kingdoms, a great flood, and suddenly there was a loss to report for the fifth year in a row. Such a glorious day filled with fire to signify the passing of duties to the next Accountant.
“Krench…” The Great Wyrm stretched out his name so that it appeared to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
The two of them moved over to the large platform where he would deliver the latest news. As they climbed the steps, crafted so long ago by rough dwarvish hands, he pushed the book into his nephew’s arms. There was no need for it anymore.
Dragons were patient creatures, but above everything else they did not like to lose money.
***
John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.
His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!
He also has a short story in the recently released anthology Beyond the Gate, which is free on most platforms!
He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.
Second Star to the Right and Straight on ’til Compton
I think every young filmmaker has a handful of dream projects in their back pocket. Not only dozens of original ideas but also ones based on preexisting content: an adaptation of a novel or comic book, someone’s life story, a sequel to a beloved franchise, a tale from history, a (gasp) remake of a classic film. Projects filed away under the “When I make it big, I’ll use that clout to get one of these things made” category. Some of these projects you are sure will rock the box office; others, that you don’t really think will make any money but, if all goes well, will net you some critical acclaim.
The two big dream projects for me could not have been more different in tone and subject matter:
I wanted to do a live-action, semi-serious, sticking-to-the-book version of JM Barrie’s Peter and Wendy…
…and a biopic about Eazy-E and the creation and dissolution of legendary hip-hop group N.W.A.
And they both got made.
But not by me.
It’s weird seeing these films come to fruition; it’s even weirder watching them. You can’t help but think about what you would have done differently, what they did better than you, what they fucked up entirely. It’s not a crushing feeling; I never got close to making either one a reality. But it’s… strange.
What attracted me to JM Barrie’s 1911 novel Peter and Wendy was that it was a version of Peter Pan I had never seen, knowing only the Disney interpretation. The book was darker than the animated film. More violent. More powerful. With a bittersweet message about childhood, both celebrating it and recognizing our need to shed it. Peter himself was full of contradictions: he was charming, fun-loving, sometimes feminist (“Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.”) optimistic and brave, but also selfish, mean, forgetful, and super-duper violent.
Which all made sense to me. Little boys are terrors. When I was a child, I may have used a stick or wooden sword to fight pirates (or Darth Vader. Let’s be honest here.) but I was imagining a real blade. I wasn’t knocking people over. I was running them through. Cutting off their heads. Killing bad guys. In Barrie’s novel, that’s what Peter does. He kills bad guys. It’s not the bloodless, G-rated action of the Disney film.
The novel has several other dark tropes that few Peter Pan adaptations have yet to explore. Peter’s role as an Angel of Death, tasked with holding children’s hands on their way to heaven. His hatred of adults, parents especially, and how he genuinely wanted them dead. The slaughter of the Indians, an aspect of the story that I admit feels racist here in the 21st Century. And the famous Peter Pan quote, when stranded on an island left to die, a line that has forever stuck with me as probably the most positive outlook on death I’ve ever heard:
And then there’s the end. I’m not going to get into it, but the last chapter of Peter and Wendy is sad and beautiful and a real reminder that Pan is a boy who will NEVER grow up. Which is the main reason why I hate Spielberg’s Hook. I know it’s beloved by the generation after me, and that’s fine, but it’s a bad film, hands down, my Peter Pan purist proclivities aside. But more than anything: Pan doesn’t grow up. He isn’t a child. He’s a demigod, an angel, an imp, maybe even a devil. He will live forever, as the final lines of the novel tell us:
“When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”
Gay and innocent and heartless. That is Peter Pan to me. I have yet to see him on screen.
I’m not going to offer a full review of PJ Hogan’s 2003 adaptation, Peter Pan. I have only seen it once and did not care for it. It got a lot right, especially in the first half hour or so. But then it fell apart for me. And, while it did incorporate a little bit of the adult edge I was looking for, it didn’t go far enough. But when that film came out, I knew my chances of making a film out of Peter and Wendy had just been cut drastically. And then when it failed at the box office, it showed that maybe a big-budget Peter Pan movie wasn’t commercially viable.
We’ll see if Joe Wright’s film, simply called Pan, will be different when it comes out this year. It’s apparently a prequel or something which we know ALWAYS bodes well, right? (see: Prometheus, The Thing, Star Wars, Hannibal Rising). But I doubt it’s the film I would have made.
And, man, the film I would have made is so good. It’s still there, in my head, scene by scene. I could still write it, legally. In 2007 the rights to the novel basically became public domain, leading to a series of disparate book series’ that I have not read. And maybe one day I will. Or maybe one day I’ll come up with a different take on one of my favorite stories, a new way to bring it to life.
“You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.”
In the late 80’s, when I was 13 years old, I got hold of a cassette tape I shouldn’t have. It was called Straight Outta Compton, by a band called N.W.A., which I soon learned stood for “Niggaz wit’ Attitude”. It scandalized me, excited me, educated me, and, quite frankly, scared the shit out of me. Especially the song “Fuck tha Police” and the shit storm that came with it.
The group’s frank and often gratuitous depictions of life on the street in a city I had never heard of called Compton, a place so far removed from suburban Atlanta that I couldn’t imagine ever going there, was eye-opening, sure, but it was also dirty. The non-stop assault of profanity, violence, and sex was exceptionally titillating to my white, sheltered, adolescent mind.
Just the use of the word “nigger” (or “nigga” or “niggaz”, technically), which my parents had raised me to strike from my vocabulary forever (“Forever. Forever? Forever ever. Forever ever?”), was scandalous. And, I admit, intriguing. This was a bad word used to describe black people. Why would these guys talk about themselves that way? I sort of understood it, but not really. Not for a long time. But I knew it was controversial and adult and, in the back of my brain, powerful. I just couldn’t tell you why.
O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson. Lorenzo “MC Ren” Patterson. Eric “Eazy-E” Wright. Antoine “Yella” Carraby. Andre “Dr. Dre” Young. These are guys whose faces and voices I’ve known since puberty. I can recite all of Straight Outta Compton (the album, not the movie. I guess we have to differentiate now) as well is its companion piece, Eazy-E’s Eazy-Duz-It, word for word. Still, to this day.
“See you at the crossroads.”
When (SPOILER) Eric Wright died of AIDS in 1995, it shook me. I was mostly listening to heavy metal and grunge, but I had never forgotten N.W.A. and their 5’ 5” superstar (“Niggaz [his] height don’t fight.”) . I knew the group had broken up and there had been bad blood. If you were alive in the early 90s and remember Dr. Dre’s The Chronic coming out, it was impossible not to know. But Eazy was a part of my adolescence and he was gone.
I wanted to make a movie about Eazy-E and the formation of N.W.A. I did some reading and found that there was a lot of drama to be mined. The music would be center stage, of course, but there were also political, financial, racial, sexual, and societal themes to be explored. Were these men artists pretending to be gangstas or gangstas who stumbled into being artists? I wanted to explore that question.
And, morbidly, films about actual people are more satisfying if they have a definite ending. And by that I mean death. It’s fucked up, I know, but it’s true. And the more tragic that ending, the more drama you can conjure. And (SPOILER) Eazy’s death was tragic, to be sure. He was destroyed by his own reckless behavior, sure, but dying of AIDS made Wright an icon of the 1980s. He not only helped birth a style of music that rules the airwaves over 25 years later, but he was struck down by the 20th Century’s Black Death, just at the point where we were starting to understand it. As Eazy said, from his hospital bed, after being told he had AIDS: “But I ain’t no fag.” That was the attitude then. For a lot of people.
I tried to pitch this movie to anyone who would listen. Every one of my L.A. friends knew about it. But I was never able to get through any doors of consequence. People I did get to talk to weren’t interested. Plus, there was the matter of clearing the music, an incredibly expensive process that meant the film could never be made independently. I still held out hope for 15 years. Just like with Peter and Wendy, I had the whole movie in my head and “damn, that shit was dope!”
Right now, for the second straight week, F. Gary Gray’s film, Straight Outta Compton, is on top of the box office charts. I was both excited and nervous to go see it. I mean, the subject matter is obviously attractive to me, but, motherfucker, I wanted to make this movie. And I was weary that the film was produced by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. That meant that rough corners were going to be sanded down. Certain less-than-flattering things would be omitted. I was especially worried about how the film would depict Eazy, who would have been my protagonist.
I really liked the movie.
It’s odd. It’s not at all the movie I would have made but it’s also exactly the movie I would have made. It doesn’t look like the movie in my head. Doesn’t feel or sound or flow like it. But it covers the exact story beats I would have. Its Point A is my Point A and its point Z is my Point Z. It told the story I wanted to tell, just not in the style I wanted to tell it in.
And that’s fine. Because I liked it. And a lot of people seem to feel the same way.
(Especially after the mind-blowing clusterfuck that was the Biggie Smalls “movie”.)
I do wish it had explored a little more of the dark side of things, especially the famous incident involving Dr. Dre and Dee Barnes, an omission that is getting a lot of press over the last week. It should be in the movie. It really should. The first step to atonement is to acknowledge what you’ve done. Dre has done that in the press this week, releasing statements that seem genuine. But it would have been much more powerful to explore these themes in the film. Let it all hang out. Show your ugly side. The movie has to stand on its own and Dre’s history of domestic violence isn’t something that should be discussed in a press release.
But the performances are great, especially by O’Shea Jackson Jr, who not only looks like his father but does a spot-on impression. The music is of course awesome. The cinematography interesting. The script could be better and sometimes the “bio-pic-ness” of the thing hurts it, with its need to make sure you understand who all these people coming in and out of the story are. Hey guys? I’m at a movie about N.W.A. I know that guy is playing Tupac. I am aware of his music. No need to point him out to me.
Surprisingly Eazy, the drug-dealer turned hip-hop mogul and star, comes across as the one of the biggest heart. He’s actually the soul of the movie. This makes me happy. Because that was going to be my way in, too. Through him. And when (SPOILER) Eazy dies, I was shaken, teary, even though I knew it was coming.
The only thing that pisses me off about the success of Straight Outta Compton (the movie) is… its success. It’s making BANK. All those years I was told no one wanted this movie. That it would be too expensive to get the music rights. That who cares about some gangster who died of AIDS? And now it’s ruling the Summer box office. Beating the crap out of more traditional Summer movies. I TOLD YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS.
Do I have more dream projects in my head? Of course. Novels I want to adapt (not telling you which ones). Life stories I want to tell. Historical incidents I’m dying to recreate. And I will hold onto them, along with the countless original ideas I have in my head, until the next one gets knocked down by someone who got to it before me.
One of my favorite books, well, ever, is Erik Larsen’s Devil in the White City. I would love to make it into a movie. Recently, it has been announced that Leonardo DiCaprio will be starring in the adaptation, with our greatest living filmmaker, Martin Scorsese, behind the lens. I will defer and gladly give up that dream. Because while I think one day I could match the talents of PJ Hogan or F. Gary Gray (both accomplished, not taking anything away from them), I will never-ever come close to Mr. Scorsese. So make that movie Marty. I can’t wait to see it.
I don’t know how interesting this has been. I just had this gut reaction to seeing Straight Outta Compton (the movie) that made me sit down and write my first blog post in forever. Sitting there, watching a movie I have dreamed about a thousand times, not looking at all like the film I would have made but enjoying it all the same.
Now that I think about it, that’s probably how I’m going to feel about The Force Awakens, too, because I know I have at least 3,263,827 Star Wars movies in me.
And I’m not giving up entirely on Peter and Wendy. Some dreams die harder than others.
A Writer’s Late Night Rant
Hi folks. Mind if I just ramble a bit?
::silence::
I’ll take that as a yes.
I’d planned on writing about a camping trip from hell that’d I’d experienced as a young lad. Gripping stuff. Hilarious now, though at the time not so much.
I’ll save that one for later.
I decided instead to talk about writing. Not a “laying out the tools/ tips of the trade” post, but more so about my personal experience with the craft. A little “ranty”, but not obnoxiously so.
To understand my love of writing, lets first start with an early obsession of mine: reading. Reading, and I’m not exaggerating, was my drug of choice. Books were, and still are, my narcotic, and libraries and book stores were my corner dealers.
I sucked up everything I could get my hands on. The Hardy Boys. The Righteous Revenge of Artemis Bonner. Nancy Drew. The Phantom Toll Booth. The House of Dies Drear. Choose Your Own Adventure books. Encyclopedia Brown. John Bellairs. Mark Twain. Stephen King. Octavia Butler. Christopher Golden. The list goes on and on.
If I added comics to this, we’d be here all day.
Let me give you an example of how deep this went with me: I had the route to my lunchroom in elementary school so ingrained in my little noggin’, that I could walk the path to the cafeteria, nose deep in a book, without bumping into one of my fellow classmates.
I was that far gone.
In a good way though.
As I continued to read, and read, I found myself wanting to create my own stories. Take my own characters to these fantastical, adventure filled worlds, and just have fun. I knew I wanted to do it.
So I did it.
There was “Robert’s Time Machine” 1 & 2 (the less said, the better), then came the Double O Dwight series. We even put on a skit at my school based on the adventures of Dwight and company.
Maybe I got a little playwriting in at an early age? That might be pushing it a bit.
Point being, I wrote a lot. This ran into short stories in middle school, joining my high school’s literary magazine, my college newspaper/ web magazine, freelancing on a regular basis once I got out of college, and now working as a comic book author.
Writing’s been a huge blessing for me, it’s something that I don’t ever see myself not doing.
It’s the thing (my marriage coming first) that I’m most proud of in life. Its something I do well. Its something that gives me a sense of sanity in a world where I’m assaulted by all sorts of B.S on a weekly, if not daily basis.
That’s life for you.
It’s something that, if you commit to it, deserves to be treated with the utmost respect, and love. And sometimes that doesn’t happen, just being truthful. I’ll admit there have been plenty of times where I’ve come home from a long day at the 9-5, and have just thought “no writing tonight. I just want to let my brain rest after dealing with the B.S of the daily burn”.
And believe me, there’s always gonna be B.S.
I will never say that this hasn’t happen, because it has, and it probably will again.
The best advice that I can give in this regard is to Just Do It, as difficult as it may be. Sometimes I’ll write a page, and that’ll be it for the night. And then I’ll write another the next, two more the next day, three more the next day, etc.
But what really gets me back in front of the computer is that same love and desire to tell stories that was sparked in the little kid reading at a library in Dolton, IL. It’s what drove me to break out of my shell and chase stories for the Atlanta Voice Newspaper. It’s what got me to approach the fine folks of Terminus Media at Dragon Con.
I have so many damn stories that I want to tell. Some of ‘em might be great, some duds.
Some folks will love them, others won’t.
What I’m finding though is that at the end of the day, who can care less about what other people think? I’m still working on staying strong to that line of thinking.
But when such doubts crop up, what I tap into, as it was when I was younger, is that I’m doing this for myself. And to have fun.
Screw what anyone else thinks.
Ok, I wasn’t saying “screw” as a kid, but you get the point.
I wrote for myself. I had fun. I just did it.
It’s time to write.
A book is a book (Right?)
New week. New skull. I’ll try to make it relevant at some point during the post. But probably not.
Years ago, after I’d finished the first draft of my first book, I took a respite from writing. It didn’t last long, but I needed it…badly. I’d just completed a novel spanning a half-million words, and my fingers were tired. You think I’m kidding. I’m dead serious. I was bone-weary in the way only three years of living in a word-dungeon can produce. For a span of a few weeks afterward, I thought, “I’m done. I’ve finished it. I need do nothing more.” I didn’t understand that my journey had only just begun.
During my miniature exile, I didn’t lie in bed with a stupid, self-satisfied smile. I had no laurels, and even if I would’ve, I wouldn’t have rested on them. I wasn’t really content with having finished a book. My brain thought I was done, but my heart knew better. So rather than sleep on my small success, I found other ways to pass the time. I did homework, so to speak, searching the web and pestering my already-published friends for tidbits of wisdom. How am I gonna get this damn thing published? I asked anyone who would listen. What about editing? A half-million words is way too many; how am I gonna fix that? What? Why? When?
Thus began my first assault on the realm of publishing. I gathered my troops (me) and started researching in earnest. I would finish this thing I’d started, the world be damned. I decided I’d sooner become the mummy in this week’s pic (see, told you) than give up. And so, after two weeks of learning, unlearning, and sharpening my sword for the world’s throat, it all came down to: What the hell have I written? How am I planning on marketing this thing? What category is my novel? What neat little box does my life’s obsession fit into?
Well, the publishing world asked, what’s your answer?
Did I write fiction? (Yes)
Is it epic? (Yes)
Fantasy? (Mostly)
Sci-Fi? (A little)
Romance? (Maybe)
Young-Adult (How would I know?)
Chick-Lit (WTF is this category anyway??)
Bisexual Vampire Steampunk (Huh?)
Before I began answering these questions, I’d no idea about all these categories. A book was a book was a book. The only two divisions were fiction and non-fiction, or so I’d believed. The concept that I needed to refine my work into a neat little genre box was foreign…and mildly offensive. I didn’t understand. I was confused. I was angry.
Fiction? Non-fiction? Allegory? Or maybe a YA Vampire scroll?
So…
After being clobbered with the inevitable: We like your work, J. But it’s too long to publish, especially for a rookie. Define it into a clear genre and carve about three hundred-thousand words out, and we’ll talk, I decided to crawl back into my cave. I rewrote my first book…twice. I tapped out one sequel, then another, and then a prequel, and…you get the idea. I took a long hiatus from caring about categories, blurbs, agents, double-agents, and query letters. I stopped giving a rat’s ass about the notion of genres. I allowed myself to be as free as I had been while writing Down the Dark Path. And soon enough the words began to flow again.
When asked what they like to read, most people will give you a few authors’ names or a short list of their favorite books. Most won’t sit down and say, “I only read YA Dystopian novels with surfing sub-themes, and nothing else.” Even so, I know a lot of writers who decide what genre they’re going to write in before they actually write it. Maybe it’s just me, but that approach feels manufactured. Readers might benefit from cracking open a book whose genre they’re oblivious to. Writers will definitely benefit from letting the words flow sans inhibition. While it’s true eventually every published book will end up in a tightly-defined category, I believe it’s in readers’ best interest to ignore these categories, and writers’ to write without worrying about what the publishing world will call their masterpiece.
Because, let’s face it, most of us don’t write because we want to make tons of money doing it (Hint: we’re probably not going to.) We write because we find it compelling, tortuous, wonderful, terrifying, and everything in-between. It’s the same experience readers go through. Don’t try to define it. Don’t put shackles on it and lock it in a box. Let it be what it is: beautiful. Agonize over the details afterward.
Love,
Dear _ _ _ ,
Dear _ _ _ ,
I hate writing you this letter. A decade ago, five years ago, it would have been unthinkable. I would have never thought I’d be writing these words. But the last few years have been hard for me, and I can no longer deny it:
I’m not in love with you anymore.
It happens. To everyone at some point. You fall in love. Hard. The object of your affection becomes the only thing you can think about. You can’t sleep. You can’t eat. You want to know absolutely everything about your love, inside and out. The time you spend together, well, it’s electrifying. Comforting. Glorious. You invest your emotions so wholly that if anything goes wrong, you feel it for a week.
Because for every cheer there is a rolling tear; for every pleasure, there is lingering pain.
But without the droughts, the showers wouldn’t be nearly as sweet.
You and I have been in this relationship for a very long time. To be honest, it’s been hard on me. You have not been kind. Sometimes you’ve been flat-out mean. There have of course been some amazing times, but more than anything you have been a cruel tease: every time I felt as if magic was going to happen, you yanked it away from me.
But it’s not the pain that brings me to write this letter. As a wise and dashing dread pirate once told us: “Life is pain…anyone who says differently is selling something.”
No, the reason this long-overdue letter is being written now is simple.
We’ve changed.
It’s not you.
It’s not me.
It’s us.
I’m a guy that likes to arrange my thoughts in bullet points. I know that seems rather formal and cold given the delicate nature of this communication, but it’s the best way to explain how I feel. So the following is an itemized list of why we cannot be an…item…anymore.
1) You are both too violent and not violent enough.
You are by your very nature a brute. A rampaging, violent freak that smells of blood and sweat. You thrive on carnage, and whether it’s broken bones or crushing blows to the head, you know how to throw down. And every year you get stronger and you get faster and you get more intense and every time I watch you I’m afraid someone is going to get killed.
That shit used to turn me on.
But you’re starting to change your behavior. And I appreciate that. You’re doing things to curb this facet of your personality. You will never be a pacifist, but at least you are trying to be safe. More responsbile. You don’t want anyone to get seriously hurt.
It’s happened before. Remember Joe? You hurt him bad. Sterling, too. Poor Mike from Detroit was never the same. And what about Bo? Everybody knows about Bo. Especially Bo.
You are going to hurt people; that is unavoidable. But you are making great strides in stemming that tide. There’s only one problem…
It makes me less attracted to you.
I never thought I was into bad boys, but I guess I am. The less dangerous you get, the less interesting. Less fun. That edge was such a thrill and now you’re doing everything you can to blunt it.
And I hate myself for thinking that. You’re not doing anything wrong. You are being responsible. My brain knows that. But my heart…
My heart wants what it wants.
And, to my shame, it wants blood.
This one’s on me.
2) You’re kind of a thug.
I’m no saint but I’ve never been arrested. A few traffic tickets but the only time I’ve ever been detained was in elementary school for talking in class.
But you, you’re trouble. Way badder of a boy even for the likes of me.
Theft. Drunk driving. Drugs. Domestic assault. Rape. Murder.
Remember that time you put a gun in your sweatpants and went to a club and accidently shot yourself? So, so, stupid. Who wears sweatpants to a club?
And the dogs? Really, man? Those poor dogs.
It’s hard to keep making excuses for you. To defend you to my friends. I have to accept it.
You’re a fucking thug. And I don’t think that’s going to change.
3) The Man upstairs.
This may not seem fair, but your religious views bother me. Not the fact that you have them, but that you display them so ostentatiously. How you thank the Lord for everything that goes right but never curse His name when things go wrong.
If there is a God, do you really think He’s your personal good luck charm, your magic genie you can rub for wishes? Do you think He gives a He-damn about these trivial things you pray about?
You probably do. Humility has never been one of your strong suits.
4) You’re kind of a racist.
5) You’re such a cheat I can’t believe Miranda Lambert hasn’t killed you in a song yet.
Posted by Mike Florio on May 1, 2013, 7:02 AM EDT
The NFL bans HGH use. The NFL still has no test in place to determine whether players are complying with this rule. Not surprisingly, players still ignore the rule.
Dan Patrick mentions from time to time that a starting NFL quarterback privately told Patrick within the past two or three years that 60 percent of the league uses HGH. Tyler Dunne of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that HGH use is “rampant.”
Everybody knows it but no one wants to talk about it. We all look the other way, myself included.
Sure, other guys cheat. Barry, Alex, that dude Lance. But while we’ve condemned them, no one ever accuses you, even though, by all accounts, you’re the worst of the bunch.
You’ll do anything to get what you want. The law, honor, and your health be damned.
It’s become obvious that you can’t even function without cheating. And no one seems to care. It’s disgusting and I can’t just sit idly by and perpetuate the illusion.
As someone who loves you, it has hurt so much to learn about how chronic your cheating has been. I feel betrayed. It’s almost enough for me to take a Louisville Slugger to both of your headlights.
6) You’re stuck in a fantasy world.
I played Dungeons & Dragons in high school. I have logged over a 100 hours on my copy of Skyrim and have started over so I can log another 100. I know what an owlbear is.
I know fantasy.
But your entire life has been taken over by fantasy, like a guy who just discovered Game of Thrones and now runs around draped in furs calling himself ‘King of the North’ (I do kind of wish I had named my Siberian Husky ‘Ghost’). You’ve built this alternate self that may resemble you, but it’s not you. It’s a twisted, Bizzaro version where it doesn’t matter what you do but how you do it. In this world, the means are king and the ends don’t mean a thing.
I used to visit this fantasy universe with you and I have to admit I enjoyed it for a while. But it really started affecting the actual time we spent together. I couldn’t tell which one of you I was with at any given time and you became a lot less enjoyable to be around. When I was playing in this fantasy, I did things, said things, thought things, cheered for things that I never would have in real life. It changed me. And I didn’t like it.
Some people only like the fantasy you. Don’t you get that? They don’t care who you really are, not in your heart. They only care about your measurements, reducing you to a set of sexy numbers. Do you really like being objectified like that?
I guess you do, because you have so embraced it as part of your personality that every year the line between fantasy and reality blurs a little more. Who cares why they love you? You’ll take any attention you can get. It doesn’t matter to you how you get it, does it?
Whore.
7) You drive people crazy.
And I don’t mean in a Fine Young Cannibals sort of way.
I mean in a life-destroying, brain-swelling, personality-changing, driving people to suicide sort of way.
I don’t have any jokes about this.
You know what you’ve done.
8) THIS.
I mean, what the fuck?
9) There’s someone else.
I have a confession. This whole time I’ve been with you, I’ve also been in love with someone else. A friend of yours, actually. Well, more of a rival. And while my love for you has waned over the years, my passion for the other has grown and grown to the point of eclipsing you entirely.
Look, me and this other guy, we’re just a better fit. He’s more laid back. Takes his time. He brings me the same ups and downs as you, but, while every bad day with you seems like a catastrophe, with him you just brush it off and try to be better the next day. He is a marathon and not a sprint and you know, deep down, I’m not a sprinter.
I just love him more than you. When he’s around, I don’t pay one lick of attention to you.
I know that must hurt to hear, but it’s the truth.
I’m sorry. It’s not me. It’s not you.
It’s us.
————
Don’t be so sad. Look, we can still be friends. We can still hang out on Sundays, but I can’t promise you the whole day. Our Monday night date will stand, but I probably won’t wake up looking forward to it. I don’t want you out of my life. I’ll still come to your party in February, but I won’t be on your arm. I just don’t feel that way about you anymore.
And don’t worry. There are literally tens of millions of people out there who will love you more than I ever could or did. You will never be alone.
This is not good-bye, but I am sorry.
I just don’t love you anymore.
Best wishes,
Chad
P.S. If you’re worried I’m going to hook up with your little brother, don’t worry. He’s more screwed up than you. At least all of your bullshit is above-board. Who knows what’s going on with him behind closed doors? Well, we all know. We just don’t talk about it.