Moe Lane

Full caveat in place, of course.

If this is accurately reported, this is insane. Charged for failing to register her relief effort as an animal shelter. https://t.co/rqlsx4NwPg

— Brian Faughnan (@BrianFaughnan) September 23, 2018

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I’m not getting it, because I don’t play board games.

But the Machina Arcana ~ From Beyond steampunk horror game looks gorgeous.  Three scenarios, four players, sort of a cross between an RPG and a video game and a board game, and the aesthetics are top-notch.  I’d play this, if I knew anybody who had it.  I just don’t have the room in the house for a board game that I won’t be able to play.

Four days left on the Kickstarter, so check it out now.

A Little Less Conversation (JXL Radio Edit Remix), Elvis Presley vs. JXL

Crystallized Seasons – Google Docs

Crystallized Seasons

Cost: $25 to $250, depending on the supply

The seasons of the year have occult significance in mana-rich worlds, of course: and in some places (typically, high-mana areas) the change from one season to the next can cause the old season to more or less crystallize out of the air.  This turns them into limited-college Manastones (GURPS Magic, pg 70), with the caveat that mages cannot actually create Crystallized Seasons: they’re the equivalent of a renewable resource, like bat guano.  And, like bat guano, if somebody wants to collect the stuff regularly they’re going to have to be careful about it. Over-mining the areas where Crystallized Seasons occur can wreck it for further exploitation.

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It’s getting towards October, and the weather’s cooling down, which makes me like to read things like Something Wicked This Way Comes and Our Lady of Darkness.  And I will, obviously, but I’d like some suggestions for spooky books.  Not horror, per se — certainly not cosmic horror, although of course I do read that.  For this, I want books that are evocative of the cool October breeze twirling leaves in the moonlight, or the smell of the furnace as it gets turned on for the first time this fall.  Mysteries dark and perhaps even dangerous, but ones that can be faced and foiled by folk of good heart.  Books that have a good, if not always superficially reassuring, heart.

So, suggest away.

Beliar – Google Docs

Beliar
Calabite of Dark Humor

Corporeal Forces: 5 Strength: 10 Agility: 10
Ethereal Forces: 3 Intelligence: 6 Precision: 6
Celestial Forces: 4 Will: 8 Perception: 8

Vessel: Annoyed looking male/5

Skills: Dodge/4, Fighting/6, Large Weapon/6 (Chainsaw), Ranged Weapon/6 (shotgun)

Songs: Fire (All/3), Entropy (Corporeal/3, Ethereal/3), Might (Corporeal/2), Numinous Corpus (Acid/3, Claws/3), Shields (All/2)

Attunements: Calabite of Dark Humor, Prank, Farce of Mistaken Identity, We’ve Secretly Replaced

Discord: Angry/3

Beliar is like a clown, really: he only smiles on the outside. Inside, he cries. Admittedly, said crying is usually along the lines of “Will those God-damned talking monkeys please stop BOTHERING me?!”, but it still sort of counts. (more…)

It was good!  The second half of The Tick was a little smoother than the first half, and I liked the first half just fine.  I also liked everybody’s character development and how the show never devolved into self-parody.  The message was, I think, “You never know when somebody will turn out to be awesome.”  I even ended up liking the guy who was kind of a jerk*, because the thing was he knew that he was kind of a jerk, and he was actually doing a better job than I credited him for in trying not to be. (more…)

The Boys of Summer, Don Henley

Code Monkey Run – Google Docs

Code Monkey Run

Superficially, Code Monkey Run is yet another mobile runner game; the player directs a running monkey down an endless road, dodging the usual obstacles, acquiring the usual power-ups, and so forth until the monkey hits an obstacle.  The general theme is computer-related (hence the name), and the game is free-to-play. It’s mildly dull, though; and having your code monkey dodge computer chips and whatnot quickly palls. Most people download it, play it a couple of times, then stop.

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The Laundry, of course, is the RPG based on Charles Stross’s Laundry Lovecraft-spy series*; and based on this blurb at their website the company is in the process of converting everything to a new rules set.  Which is interesting. I mean, it looked like they were using a variant of an older version Call of Cthulhu, which is pretty standard for horror gaming (particularly Lovecraftian gaming).  Are they switching to a newer version?  Converting to GUMSHOE or one of the other, more recent systems? Creating their own?  I have no idea, but I look forward to seeing what they do. (more…)