Tonight as I was taking my cousin to drop her off at a singles Halloween dance, I had the idea to share a little something Halloweeny with all of you.
Well, who does Halloween like Danny Elfman? Nobody, that’s who.
So Here’s a selection of his rather Halloween-y tunes for your delectation. Enjoy!
Those first few are pretty widely known even to folks that aren’t all that familiar with Oingo Boingo, but here are a few more that might be less so… Read the rest of this entry »
There’s a recent hit song on the radio from the rather talented band Muse that has been kinda bothering me. Not because I don’t like it (I actually rather do) but because it has struck me from the very first time I heard it as reminiscent of something else…
Something that begins with the phrase, “It is the Nineties, and there is time for… Klax!”
Here’s the muse song’s video.
Now, the Klax music was from an 8-bit NES game rather than a modern, highly produced piece so of course it’s in a different league, but its vibe still feels quite related to me. Specifically the “Ledfut” song from the game. Maybe I’m crazy (or maybe there’s no maybe) but still, every time I hear that song I remember Klax and the maddening sound (from which the game got its name) the horrible flippy little tiles made as they ramped down looking to make a distinctive “Hwaaah!” scream as they plummeted to their demise.
I played a lot of Klax in my time.
So here’s some of the Klax stuff too. And yeah, I can totally make the Klax hand gesture, even though I’ve never understood whether it has any other significance than just being a logo for the game.
The second one is the title song and ends with that horrible 8-bit scream. 
It isn’t the song that reminds me so much of Muse, but it’s still distinctive.
In early October, France’s Royal de Luxe street theatre company came to Berlin to perform a several day street theatre spectacle dubbed “The Berlin Reunion” celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As part of this event, a pair of huge marionettes known as the Big giant and the Little Giantess (an uncle and his niece, long separated by a wall that the gant himself has finally succeeded in demolishing) searched the streets of the city for one another and finally being reunited. Check out the full article from Boston.com. There are many more pictures to be seen. Totally worth checking out, and an inspiring piece.
This one above is beautifully shot.
I love how expressive the marionette’s eyes are even though they’ve got limited eyelid movement.
You can never go wrong with aviator goggles.
These are the coolest puppets ever.
This one of them embracing is actually quite touching.
Allrighty, I haven’t added as much content to this recently as I’d have liked, but that’s msotly because my other projects are humming along pretty quickly and distracting me.
However, it has come to my attention that the fellows behind Diaspora (hard scifi FATE system) have made their space combat rules available for free download at their website.
If you’re interested in FATE, check out this variant. It’s pretty interesting. I’m more of a fantasy/steampunk guy right now myself, but this is still cool stuff.
In the SteamHammer world that I’m working on putting together, a number of things will have changed a great deal in the past 5-600 years since the time of WFB.
One of those changes is that the New World is no longer dominated by the elvenfolk: Naggaroth and the Asur colony of Arnhelm have fallen to invading forces that originated in the Old World. Ulthuan itself has apparently become as lost as our own world’s fabled Atlantis Read the rest of this entry »
I have a deep and abiding fondness for Theodore Roosevelt, and so it was inevitable that sooner or later I would make one of these.
Teddy!
Also, since I’ve been on a pulp/steampunk/late 1800s wackiness kick lately, I just had to make a pulp nod in this one. Besides, I am quite convinced that if anybody were to encounter a dinosaur, then that man would be TR. Also, I’m sure that someplace in the SteamHammer world, there is a man modeled after the man who would eventually become the 26th president of the United States.
I’ve meant to post this idea for a very, very long time.
Back when I was still running games using the old World of Darkness and its Storyteller system, I had an idea for a series of pickup scenarios to run a very blackly humorous game.
This idea came from creatures that I found in the sick and satirical yet awesome supplement Freak Legion: a Player’s Guide to Fomori and the far superior and more serious later supplement Possessed, which detailed not only Fomori but Gorgons, Drones and Kami (creatures possessed by wyrm spirits, wyld-spirits, weaver-spirits and Gaian forces respectively). While I use the term fomor in my blog a lot, this is a very different concept than the one found in my Legend of the Archons game.
The creatures that I found that inspired me so? Why, the Fomor Families of course. What are they? I’m glad that you asked. They’re a distinctive form of Fomor that operates in groups that are notable partially because their taint is passed down family lines and also because the Bane spirits that possess them are elemental in nature rather than emotion-oriented banes like those that create most Fomori. They flourish in backwoods areas like the everglades, Louisiana bayous, deep in Appalachia and similar places (tiny New England towns work too, hint hint). They’re actually one of the more dangerous types of fomor too, not because of individual power but because they cooperate with one another and they don’t tend to stray far from territory with which they are intimately familiar. Also, they’re frequently Kinfolk to the Black Spiral Dancers.
So what have we got here? We’ve got degraded and inbred mutant hillbillies, more or less. It’s The Hills Have Eyes, the hillfolk family from the Simpsons and the guys from Deliverance all at once but they’ve got grotesque spiritually-based powers on top of their misanthropy and ignorance. These guys are literally the Hillbillies From Hell!
And that is where I got the name for this potential series of one-shots. I figured that I’d do a series of them but put them in no particular order and without any real attempt at continuity. They’re stand-alone scenarios using the same characters, more or less.
Instead of having the titular Hillbillies From Hell(!) as antagonists, we’d more them front and center to being a dysfunctional, despicable and blackly comedic protagonist group. Picture something like a film directed by the team of Rob Zombie, Quentin Tarantino and Terry Gilliam. PCs would have to include some or all of the following:
I am just doing this to toss ideas out there and to help myself remember this. I’ll probably never run it, but I’d love to at some point. Maybe somebody cut put it together for a convention game.
Below are the titles of some of the possible scenarios I came up with to run the Hillbillies From Hell(!) through:
Since dreaming up this concept, I have reviewed it and thought that it could run very well in a number of other game systems. Apart from the assorted universal systems, a game like this would work really easily and entertainingly in Capes or FATE/Spirit of the Century, and would also make for a hysterically awesome game of octaNe.
Gaming/Fiction Geektude Alert: The following is a bit for the longstanding and very strange Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign The Legacy of the Gods. I’ve posted a number of other things from this campaign to this blog, and here’s another. It’s not especially polished, but such it is.
It’s a letter written by herr Uhlrik Gunderit der Größerdrache to Finubar, the 11th (and current) Phoenix King of Ulthuan, regarding certain aspects of the war that they are engaged in. This letter was written during the passage back towards Naggaroth from Marienburg and given to Ludwig before Uhlrik departed on his possibly suicidal quest into the wastes, for eventual delivery to Finubar or his representative. It also helps highlight an important shift in relationships between the Phoenix Throne and the Dragon Brethren.
Anyhow, let the geektude commence…
So, I have decided that my poll has gone on long enough, and the results are ones that I can work with. At a commanding plurality of 44%, the winner is Steamhammer. I really liked Warhammer: Age of Steam and Rune Engine also, but I’ll go with the results of the poll on this one. I do think that is a good title and I’ll run with it.
Also, I’ll give a little tidbit of one of the ideas that is going in to this game as well. Note that any wiki links below are to items and persons that as they were in 2519 IC, not as they now exist some 500 years or so later.
One of the distinctive features of this setting is that, not only is it in an industrial revolution/age of steam type tech level, but also that certain enterprising factions have also begun fairly serious explorations of the possible integration of magic and technology, leading to some steam-powered wonders of rune and steel known to modern science as Rune Engines. The first pioneers into this area of knowledge were of course the verminous Skaven with the insane warlock-engineering of Clan Skryre, and the Skaven remain on the bleeding (and extremely explosive) edge of this technological wave.
However, outside of Skavendom, the field of magically-empowered technology owes much of its current state to experiments and concepts pioneered in the New World rather than in the old. Cultural factors such as the influence of elvish views on magic and an eagerness to recruit engineers that were willing to innovate beyond the bounds and restrictions of the dwarven engineer’s guild in the Old World combined to create an atmosphere that was more receptive to this sort of endeavor. Indeed the civilized nations of the Old World have been slow to adopt or pursue this area of knowledge and remain far behind due mostly to their distrust of magic at large.
The greatest of the early innovators in this area were the Get of Oroboros, the magical society operating out of Schloβ Drache as part of the Dragon Brethren. Their leader, the immensely powerful Liche Cedric Enric, along with his closest collaborators Derelek Caravan the dwarven alchemist/engineer and the intuitively gifted Rahann Magritte Gunderit, pioneered most of the early work in this field and much of what stands today is based on their body of innovation.
One particular area into which very few other than Enric have been willing to delve is a sub-type of rune engine that has immense yet eerie and ethically worrisome promise. This is arguably Cedric’s greatest invention: the Wraith Engine. Using mysterious necromantic arts both of his own devising and derived from ancient nehekaran texts, the master Liche has learned how to bind the spirits of the restless dead into arcane machineries to provide them with motive force and even the ability to operate with a guiding albeit often malevolent intelligence.
Since the fall of the original Schloβ Drache into the harbor at Kalterhafen, Cedric has turned the partially-submerged fortress into his own personal workshop and field for experimentation. Few mortal beings are permitted (or would desire) to enter now, and no living men patrol its crooked battlements though their position commands a highly strategic point for defense against any naval assault on this critical port city. Mortal defenders are unnecessary, for Enric has filled the place with spirits, undead beings and wraith engines in the form of both automata and artillery.
Around the ancient fortress, sunken ships litter the bottom of the harbor. These ships have been visited, partially repaired and imbued with wraith engines of their own by Enric and his minions. He has several times deliberately scuttled captured enemy vessels to add to this number. Should any hostile fleet dare to sail on Kalterhafen, they would have to contend not only with the mortal navy stationed there and the formidable gunnery of Cedric’s tower, but also would have to contend with a flotilla of ghost ships rising up from the deep in their very midst to wreak havoc.
We shall further examine Rune Engineering, the Wraith Engine and other subjects of interest to Steamhammer at another time.
Also, because I’m a dork that enjoys creating these silly little electronic paper dolls, I’ll post a pic of a possible character idea that I had – I haven’t named him yet, but I envision him as a descendant of Rahann Gunderit who has continued to pursue advancements in rune engine technology.
Young, well bred and a mad sorcerer-scientist. What's not to love?
So, I’m not going to close the poll in my most recent post until it’s been open for a week, but at the time of this posting, SteamHammer has a fairly commanding plurality going on.
While I’m not a slave to this poll, I do think that I get where people are going with that title preference and it does make a certain amount of sense to me.
It’s slightly silly sounding, which suits the longstanding Warhammer aesthetic of combining silliness with absolutely pitch-black grimness in a somewhat over-the-top fashion. Also, it retains the references to iconic bludgeoning implements that are so prevalent in GW’s work. They really like hammers, for some reason. Do you reckon those oversized hammers and war machines are compensating for something?
My personal favorite of the titles in the poll based on how it sounds on its own would be Rune Engine. Run engine, however, has the fairly serious disadvantage of not having an inherent thematic link with the Warhammer universe since the word “hammer” doesn’t appear anywhere in it.
I’m just musing over trends on the poll. Don’t mind me.
|
