Movie #826: Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight

Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight is the first Tales from the Crypt film, starring Billy Zane, William Sadler, CCH Pounder, Thomas Haden Church, Jada Pinkett (pre-Smith), Brenda Bakke, Gary Farmer, Charles Fleischer, and Dick Miller. 

In the tiny, desolate town of Wormwood, New Mexico, a mysterious drifter named Brayker (Sadler) rolls into town looking for a place to hole up. Amiable sot Uncle Willy (the inimitable Dick Miller) guides him to a "hotel" (formerly a mission), run by Irene (Pounder), and Brayker immediately makes everyone there a little nervous. 

Rightly so - he's being pursued by the Collector (Zane), an absolutely yummy menacing figuring looking to get a strange, blood-filled key from Brayker. But no sooner is Brayker handcuffed and being led away than the Collector reveals himself as a demon, punches a goddamn hole through the head of the sheriff (John Schuck), and summons up a bunch of gross-looking flunkies. Barred from the place by the key's magic, he sets about psychically seducing the others. 

Turns out that the blood in the key is a mixture of the protectors' that have come before and also Jesus, and if the demons get the key back it'll spell doom for the universe. No pressure. Brayker and company fight through the night but eventually all of the hapless folks in the hotel meet their grisly ends, except for young thief Jeryline (Pinkett), who becomes the new demon knight and goes on her way. 

So, I don't know how it happened, but Demon Knight is actually a really solid action-horror movie. Some of that is the fantastic ensemble cast - sure, Thomas Haden Church has always been a good actor, but CCH Pounder and Gary Farmer are both solid in their roles, too, and Brenda Bakke and Charles Fleischer get some nice scenes as lovesick postman Wally and hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Cordelia. The best part of the movie, however, is Billy Zane as the Collector, by turns frustrated, impatient, and absolutely giddy at the prospect of killing these people, and that voice, oh my days. William Sadler is a character actor, but he's actually the perfect choice for Brayker, because while he's nominally the star he's quite practiced at fitting into an ensemble cast (see also The Shawshank Redemption), meaning he knows how to step back and let other folks have their moments.

Some nice camera tricks to avoid having to spend money on effects, and some cool gore that was clearly done practically - it's just a really fun movie and actually manages to have some moments that are, if not scary, then a bit unsettling (Sadler's monologue explaining the situation is a good example). And the movie opens with "Hey Man Nice Shot," which is one of my favorite 90s songs, so that's cool, too.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: Tales of Terror

Character Creation: Stingers & Spores

It's a bug-eat-bug world, princess. 

The Game: Stingers & Spores
The Publisher: Twitchy Butcher Studios
Degree of Familiarity: Haven't played this, but it's SWADE and I know that pretty well
Books Required: Stingers & Spores and SWADE

It's not the only RPG where you played a bug - there's Cuticorium and Infestation, offhand - but I think it's my favorite so far. There's a pretty tight mythology describing how the Arthrogods created the world and life within it, and the game casts vertebrates as the horrifying, unnatural creatures with internal bones and red blood (ewww). Likewise, you play insects; other arthropods are animals at best and monsters or demons at worst. It's a pretty compelling game, actually. 

So let's make a bug. Let's see. My Cuticorium character was a dragonfly, so I don't want to make one of those. How about a cricket? But what shall we do conceptually, then? Let's say my cricket is a paladin, a devout worshipper of Ensifra the Lucky, the mother of crickets and grasshoppers and goddess of good fortune and charity. 

So right off the top that gives me the Carefree Hindrance (I'm easily distracted), Leaper (I can jump twice my Pace), and Hopper's Song (I get the Work the Room Edge for free, which does...what exactly? Oh, neat, I can sing and give my companions a support die!). 

Next up, we choose Racial Abilities and Size. And...huh. I don't know if I get any new racial abilities or just the ones listed in my Archetype. Let's assume it's just those, because the pregens don't seem to have extra ones. Size, let's assume I'm a field cricket (Gryllus bimaculatus), and that makes me Size 1. 

Hindrances! I feel like he should have a Vow to serve the precepts of Ensifra, to be charitable, and to be the good fortune his spiritual mother wants in the world. Let's call it a Major Hindrance. For my minors, I'll take Call of the Light (I'm fascinated by light and suffer Smarts penalties around bright lights) and Stubborn (like many true believers, he doesn't change his mind much).

Attributes! I think Strength and Spirit are going to be my higher ones. Let's put those at d8, Smarts and Agility at d4, and move along with our lives. But actually, since I've done Hindrances, I'll spend two my Hindrance points to up Agility to d6. 

Skillz! I get a d4 in the core Skills (Persuasion, Stealth, Common Knowledge, Notice, and Athletics) plus 12 more points. Well, let's go ahead and put a d6 in Fighting. I want to bump Persuasion up to d8, I'll put Athletics up to d6, and let's buy Shoot at d6 and Faith at d8 (so I can take the Miracles Arcane Background). Only two left, I'll take a d4 in Intimidation and Performance. 

Edges! I get a free one, which I will use to take Arcane Background (Miracles). I get Linguist for free, so I know two languages. I'll say I know Skitteree (the closest thing to a common tongue) and Divinal (the holy tongue used by gods and clergy).

Oh, wait, looking at the Miracles section, I actually serve one of the elemental powers, not an Arthrogod. That's fine, we'll say that he serves Iliofos, the god of the sun, but expresses that worship through Ensifra. That also means I have to tithe 10 percent, and that I have to provide light in the darkness. Sounds good! 

I get 3 powers, and I feel like they should be mostly beneficent. Let's give him Arcane Protection, Burst and Healing. 

And then I still have two more points; is there an Edge I want? Nah, let's bump Vigor up to d8. 

And now we just need name and description. Let's call him Ilio Gryl (named after his patron god). Ilio is a big black field cricket, typically clad in a white robe over armor. He carries a sword on his back between his wings, but leaves it sheathed unless he needs to protect someone. He's perpetually broke - even when he has money he either gives it away or tithes it. 

(Man, the fillable sheet is messed up here; the Pace and Toughness fields mirror each other, so do Player and Character names.)

Movie #825: Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood

Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood is a horror/comedy starring (ugh) Dennis Miller, Erika Eleniak, Corey Feldman, Chris Sarandon, Angie Everhart, Phil Fondacaro, Aubrey Morris, and Kim Kondrashoff. 

A bordello (of blood!) opens up at a funeral home, run by a creepy necrophiliac (Morris) but staffed by beautiful vampires and madame'd by Lilith (Everhart), the mother of all vampires, brought back from South America by Vincent (Fondacaro), apparently on the orders of a televangelist named J.C. (Sarandon) on a quest to killer sinners. The vampires, however, are about as subtle as, well, the rest of this movie, and the missing persons cases mount. Katherine (Eleniak), J.C.'s devout assistant, hires down-and-out investigator Rafe Guttman (Miller) to find her delinquent brother Caleb (Feldman). Vampire shenanigans ensue.

I watched this movie back-to-back with Demon Knight, which came out first but is second alphabetically, and I've been thinking about why Demon Knight works while this one kinda doesn't. Conceptually, everything above should have led to a campy vampire flick with boobies, and Bordello of Blood is that, but it's just not as much fun as it should be. Why is that? A few reasons.

The big one is Dennis Miller. This is the stage of his career before he became a full-on right-wing douchebag, yes, and he manages a couple of funny lines, but he's not the most charismatic of people and having him be our hero doesn't act as a particularly good hook. It really would have been much more interesting to have Katherine be the one to uncover and destroy the conspiracy - she has a personal stake in what's happening, she could have been a much more interesting catalyst for J.C. regaining his conscience and realizing what horror he unleashed, and it's not like any particular combat skill was needed to kill these vampires (one good squirt of holy water does it). 

But also, Angie Everheart isn't a great villain. She doesn't have the screen presence she needs to play the all-powerful evil, and the result is that Chris Sarandon reads as the real villain of the movie and Lilith is an afterthought. 

But also also, the movie just has some weird notes. Kondrashoff's bizarre-ass portrayal of Jenkins, the creepy dude who lures men to the bordello, would have been effective if he'd been used a little less, but he gets more screen time than Lilith. Whoopi Goldberg has a cameo out of nowhere, and if there's a joke in it I failed to spot it. The script is littered with little sex-jokes, but none of them really land (part of that is delivery; Dennis Miller is a comedian and knows how to deliver a line, but Angie Everheart is not and her lines kind of clunk).

There are funny moments, but mostly it's a waste of potential, which is a shame.

My Grade: D
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight

D&D: Back in the Woods

After a long hiatus because of fucking COVID, we're back in the magical land of Abhaile! Here's last time.

Our heroes rest up and then decide to head out into the woods, go back to Zook's hidey-hole, and stash some of their stuff. They decide to take a direct route there, rather than exploring, but the woods are confusing, dark, and deep, and they wind up dipping a little further south than they meant to. They wind up in a clearing that smells of dead vegetation, and Zook is just about to remark on this when the tree he's standing next to tries to grab him!

The "tree" - actually some horrible creature made of vines, wood, and decaying leaves, lurches out and attempts to engulf the gnome, but Zook is nimble (and his powers of prophecy serve him in good stead). The monster lashes out and Dara conjures a flame blade and stabs it, but it's moist and squishy and the fire goes out. Zook hurls firebolts and misses, though fortunately doesn't set the surrounding forest on fire. 

Clara strikes at the monster and Aisling grabs her drum and casts a bane spell, making the monster unlucky and clumsy. Clara leaps up on its head and pounds on it, while Zook unfurls his brand new crossbow and puts arrows in it. Aisling stabs at it with her family shortsword, and Dara, figuring fire didn't work, enchants her staff and pounds on it that way. The monster is tough and it gets in a couple of lucky shots on Aisling, but then Zook puts an arrow in its "head" and Clara strikes the fissure, splitting it in half. 

The heroes take a moment to rest, and then head onward, reaching the hidey-hole just before dark. They camp inside the hole (no sense rolling the dice on bullywugs coming back), and in the morning, Clara goes out to answer nature's call. She hears rustling in a tree and something tries to drop a noose over her head, but misses. She hears a burst of annoyed syllables from above, but not in the guttural, wet language of the bullywugs. She yells up at it and yanks on the rope, and sees a kobold appear briefly before disappearing back into the leaves (she hears the words "not here!" mixed with a bunch of kobold-language). 

She returns to the others and explains all this, and they decide to leave it alone. They stash some stuff in the hidey-hole: some of the gold they collected from the succubus, Aisling's harp-lute (for safekeeping), Dara's leather armor (now that she has the thorn armor). Then they discuss what to do next. Zook had been following his father's trail, but he isn't sure where to go next. Does anyone else have ideas?

The heroes decide to see if they can find the clearing where they experienced that weird fog that made them all hungry. It takes them much of the day, but they find it, and at one end of the glade they find a tree with leaves that look and flutter like butterfly wings. Dara approaches and tries to commune with the tree, and spots something sitting on a branch with dragonfly wings and human-like legs. She tries to talk to it and the "tree" answers her, but Aisling eventually steps in and flatters the "tree". A tiny woman with dragonfly wings flaps down and sits on a branch, and talks with the characters.

The tiny creature is a pixie, of course. She's affable enough, especially after Aisling gives her some pastry, and talks with them about the hunger-fog. She says it appears on kind of a schedule, but not one they would understand (not being fae). She mentions that she hasn't seen adventures in a while, and it comes out that she knows Zeb, Zook's father. Aisling convinces her to say a little more, and she reveals that Zeb is dead. Zook tears up a little, and expresses a desire to go and find the circumstances of his death, but the pixie advises against it - what would it matter? Zook notes that if something really bad happened to him, he'd want to make sure it didn't happen to anyone else. The pixie nods, and notes that Zook is much like his father. "Funny how true colors shine in darkness and in secrecy," she muses.

Aisling asks her name, and she tells them it's Perclan. Aisling introduces them, and Perclan nods, saying that in some sad way, she already knows. She says if they wish to help people, she knows some people that they could help, although they probably wouldn't accept the help and indeed might resist it. The characters are intrigued, of course, and Perclan tells them to wait until sunrise and when the first sunbeam hits the top of her tree and makes the leaves flutter, following that direction and stay on that course. They'll know it when they see it. 

The adventurers bed down for the night, and in the morning they follow the sunlight. As they're going, they hear bullywugs up ahead and sneak up to find six of the little beasts surrounding a pair of cockatrices, goading them to fight. Dara has no particular love for cockatrices, but she hates this kind of cruelty, and throws an entangle spell into the midst of them. The characters leap to the attack and make short work of the bullywugs, and Aisling casts a sleep spell on one of the cockatrices (the other attacks and gets filled full of magic missiles).

They move on, and in the late afternoon come upon what might once have been a settlement, many years ago. It's only a few houses, but now it's covered in a blood-red moss shot through with black veins. Dara notes that normally she loves the feel of moss, but she's in no hurry to touch this stuff...

Movie #824: Tag

Tag is a comedy starring Ed Helms, Jeremy Renner, John Hamm, Jake Johnson, Hannibal Buress, Annabelle Wallis, Isla Fisher, Rashida Jones, and Lesie Bibb. 

Simple enough premise: Five childhood friends have been playing the same game of tag since they were nine. Now they've grown up and gone in different directions, most have married, they live in different cities, but for the month of May the game is on. This particular May, veterinarian Hoagie (Helms) tells three of the others: successful but cocky businessman Callahan (Hamm); divorced stoner Chili (Johnson), and paranoid...not actually sure what he does...guy Sable (Buress) that the fifth player, Jerry (Renner) is going to leave the game after this year so he can retire undefeated.

Jerry, it seems, has never been tagged both because he's freakishly fast and because he's quite willing to go bananas and throw things at you if you corner him. But this May, he's getting married, so Hoagie figures there's going to be a window in the chaos leading up to the wedding. After a disastrous attempt, Jerry and his fiancee Susan (Bibb) lay out some ground rules to avoid having the game make too big of a mess of things, and the games begin.

The movie is mostly the five of them playing the game and trying (and failing) to tag Jerry, but in the process they learn he's in AA, they learn that his fiancee is just as ruthless as he is (though not nearly as fiercely intense as Hoagie's wife Anna (Fisher); women aren't allowed in the game because the boys came up with the rules when girls still had cooties), and a reporter from the Wall Street Journal (Wallis) who was interviewing Callahan and tagged (lol) along acts as a nice way to bring out some of the history for the audience.

In the end (spoilers), it turns out Hoagie is dying of liver cancer and lied about Jerry retiring to get everyone together for one last shot at tagging him, and the movie ends with Jerry letting Hoagie tag him and the gang expanding the game to include the women. 

I like this movie - the central premise goes back to the old quote (variously attributed to George Bernard Shaw and Benjamin Franklin) that we do not stop playing because we grow old, but grow old because we stop playing. That's a philosophy I happen to agree with, and the expression of that in the movie has given these guys a solid reason to stay in each other's lives. It's unfortunate, then, that we don't see enough of their connections. We see the history with Hoagie and the others, kinda, and we definitely it between Callahan and Chili, but I couldn't tell you a thing about Sable except that Buress plays him, and although Jerry has probably the most defined arc of the movie, we don't actually know much about him. 

For all that, the chemistry is there, and you do buy that these guys were friends but have become different as life happened. And knowing this is based on a real group of friends who have indeed been playing tag every year for most of their lives is just heartwarming. 

The movie is fun, it's funny, but it does improve if you imagine that Jerry is really Hawkeye using a cover identity.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Tales From the Crypt: Bordello of Blood

Character Creation: Fight to Survive

I'm sure this is deliberate, but whenever I see this game the song of the same title from Bloodsport starts going through my head and I wind up chanting "kumite! kumite!" to myself. 

The Game: Fight to Survive
The Publisher: Radio James Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Fight to Survive perplexes me somewhat (not necessarily in a bad way, though). It's a game about martial artists, and it's unabashedly inspired by the 80s and 90s movies on the subject. The author actually says that one of the big touchstones for the game is the scene in Bloodsport where Frank Dux is riding the bus at night (it's about midway through this video) where he's contemplating his experiences in the kumite and his friend getting injured and so forth. The system is diceless and built around move progression and management, and the game is structured so that you play a character, sure, but also create a successor and eventually a martial arts lineage as you go through the whole 20th century. 

If you were to say "this is an RPG inspired by Bloodsport and similar movies," almost none of that would come to my mind. Reading the game, it didn't scream "run me" and it didn't feel terrible accessible, but every bit of love and work from the creator was on display, so I definitely think there's some cool shit happening here. 

Oh, the other thing that perplexes me is this:

That's a line from Bloodsport. 

So...why not just say that? Who's "Handlebars"? There are quotes throughout the book and I didn't recognize all of them, but a lot of them are at least close to movie quotes. Like I said, perplexing. 

Anyway, let's make a fighter. Let's assume that, like the sample character, we're starting in 1989. We start off with Build - how big n' beefy do I want to be? I just made a lorge character, so let's slim things down a little and say my Build is "tall & muscular" (as opposed to "huge"). I get three choices for Distinctive Feature (tattoo, wild hair, or sunglasses). Let's go with sunglasses, he can wear those cool Ray-Bans that reflect like mirrors.

Next we pick Age/DOB. The book recommends that a first fighter be younger (teens or 20s), so let's say my guy is 27, meaning he was born in 1962. 

Mode of dress - the book points out that while obviously you can change clothes, this is the "look" that's associated with the character. Let's say Street Clothes, I'm feeling basic today.

Home District - Fight to Survive is set in "New Hope City," which has 10 Districts. Since I don't have a particular feeling about where I'm from, I shall roll a d10. A 2 puts me from Beat Town, the "multi-cultural West Side." I can vibe with that. Maybe my guy's dad owns a bar or something.

Next we pick Heritage. The book tells me that Beat Town has a Little Russia, so let's say that my character's family fled the USSR. His name is Vilen Ivanovich Dubinin. 

Now we pick a martial art! The game recommends to pick one of the basic ones, but it has a list of lots of them, too. The temptation is to go with Wrestling, but that seems cliche. Actually, let's go with Boxing, we can have an Ivan Drago thing going on.

Comforts! I get five, but to start out we do a Person, Place, and Thing (and then two more of whatever category). I see Vilen as being very tight with his brothers, so we'll say his older brother is Ivan Ivanovich, and his younger brother is Fyodor Ivanovich. That's two People, so I've got two of my five handled. 

For Place, I'll take the New Wave Enclave, a dance club in Beat Town. I can see Vilen as a club kid, maybe getting a little too old for this place now, but he and his brother like to go hang out there on Fridays.

And then a Thing. This can be a literal object, but can also be a vice or a job. For Vilen, I think I want it to be an apartment key. 

Backstory: After his first fight (which Vilen dominated), a girl in the crowd came up and kissed him and pressed a key into his hand. She whispered something to him, probably her address, but Vilen still had his headgear on and his blood was pounding in this head and he didn't hear her. He'd love to know who this key belongs to, even if he probably missed his shot. He's sure he'd know her if he saw her again...but he couldn't place her accent.

Right, then I get one more Comfort. You know, let's take the Family Apartment. Vilen lives with his brothers and his parents in an apartment in Beat Town. He could probably move out (he and his bros have talked about getting their own place), but no one wants to be the one to tell Mama.

Finally some numbers! I get to fill in one Force checkbox for all of my Moves (well, the three that have Force boxes), and then I get an extra one in one of my choice because I'm big. I'll put it in Punch, since I'm a boxer. 

I get half my age rounded up (14) to split up into my Comforts and Techniques. Hrm. I feel like I should have at least some rating in my brothers and my family apartment. If I put two in both brothers, the apartment, and the key, that's 8 of my points. I'll put one into the club, too, which leaves me 5. I'll put 2 into Punch, one into Footwork, and one into Grapple. 

And, finally, we construct a Training Regime (I think you might mean "regimen"?). This determines which moves I can train during a training segment. Because of my Build, I can train Grapple or Block. Let's go with Block. Boxing lets me train Punch, of course. 

My place Comfort is a Stage, so I can train a move there. My GM would tell me what move would be appropriate, but since it's a dance club let's say it's Footwork. I don't have a teacher, so I'll skip that one.

And that's it, kids. Vilen is pretty tall - about 6'3" - and built solidly. He's got good reach and he's pretty nimble for a guy his size. I picture him with short brown hair, blue eyes, always has those damn shades on, favors blue windbreakers. 

Movie #823: The Swan Princess

The Swan Princess is a very 90s animated movie, somewhat based on Swan Lake, that I found utterly mediocre but has somehow spawned a film franchise that was still going as of 2023. Life is perplexing. Anyway, this one stars Michelle Nicastro, Liz Callaway, Howard McGillin, Jack Palance, Lex de Azevedo, John Cleese, David Zippel, Steven Wright, Sandy Duncan, and Steve Vinovich. 

So in the Kingdom of Whatever, ol' King William (Dakin Matthews) and ol' Queen Uberta (Duncan) get their kids Odette (Nicastro, Callway singing, Adrian Zahiri as a child) and Derek (McGillin, Adam Wylie as a child) together every summer in hopes that they'll fall in love so they can marry them off. It's nice that they care, of course, but the kids don't much like each other until they grow up and then Derek suddenly realizes that Odette is a babe, and they fall in love, except she asks him what he likes about her other than her hawtness, and despite having literally grown up with this girl he can't think of anything so she kicks him the curb.

Meanwhile, evil Sir Rothbart (Palance, de Azevedo singing) has been scheming to take over the kingdom for years, and pops out of nowhere, turns into a monster, kills the king, kidnaps Odette, and turns her into a swan. Kind of; she's human when there's moonlight on the water where she's being held captive (she's not really being held captive because she's a goddamn swan and can fly). In a nice bit of character motivation, Rothbart doesn't want to force his way into power in the kingdom, because, as he puts it, if you steal something you spend your life defending it. As such, every night he begs Odette to marry him, and every night she tells him to get fucked.

Derek, in the meanwhile, has been trying to learn the truth about the "Great Animal" that killed King Whatshisnuts and training to kill it, while his mother tries to marry him off, and anyway eventually Odette manages to get Derek back to the lake with the help of her pals, Speed the turtle (Wright) and Jean-Bob the frog (Cleese, Zippel singing; in an interesting bit of world-building that goes exactly nowhere, Jean-Bob is convinced he's the frog prince and is trying to get a kiss from Odette). 

More twists and turns involving alligators happen, eventually Derek kills Rothbart and marries Odette. Happily ever after, cue the endless sequels.

This movie is bad. I know that's simplistic; so is the movie. The songs are trite and insipid (yes, the love theme got a Golden Globe nom, whatever, it's still boring), and it suffers from the Disney problem of adapting a story that's pretty dark and tragic (though not so much as The Little Mermaid, granted) and making it sugary and kid-friendly. But the larger problem is that Odette has no character. She's the title character, but she's got no real personality except "damsel in distress", and the third act of the movie gives her almost nothing to do while the characters around her (Derek, Speed, Jean-Bob, and Puffin (Vinovich) save her and do all the important plot things. 

I suspect I once owned a VHS copy of this movie because I had small children (though I also suspect it wasn't me that bought it), so good, now I've watched it, it was the last movie in "S", on we go.

My Grade: D+
Rewatch Value: IINSIAIFWT

Next up: Tag

Movie #822: Surf's Up

Surf's Up is an animated movie about surfing penguins starring Shia LeBeouf, Jeff Bridges, Jon Heder, Zooey Deschanel, Diedrich Bader, James Woods, and Mario Cantone. 

Presented in mockumentary format, the movie follows Cody Maverick (LeBeouf), a penguin from the tiny Antarctic town of Shiverpool who wants to be a professional surfer. Recruited into a surfing contest by Mikey (Cantone), the put-upon little assistant for scummy opportunist Reggie (Woods, and I'll refrain from pointing out how that's not a big acting stretch), he travels to Pengu Island and promptly gets his ass handed to him by the reigning champ, Tank Evans (Bader). Yes, most of the names are that on the nose. Or beak.

Anyway, Cody gets lugged off into the jungle by a sexy penguin (oh dear) lifeguard named Lani (Deschanel) to her uncle Geek (Bridges) so he can pee on an urchin sting. This isn't plot-crucial, I just thought I'd mention this movie has a great deal of pee and poo jokes. Anyway, Geek turns out to be the presumed-dead surfing legend Big Z, and he acts as a guru to Cody and teaches him not only how to surf but why to surf. 

Into all of this, we get interspersed moments of Chicken Joe (Heder) searching the jungle for his friend Cody, interviews with unnamed penguins about surfing (and farting), and bits with Tank "polishing his trophies."

So, I'm being harsh, but the movie is cute. Sure, Shia LeBeouf isn't the most charismatic of voice actors, but Bridges and Bader more than make up for it, and as big of a douchebag as James Woods is he brings across some nice energy to his performance as Reggie (I will not stand for him slandering the noble otter, however). The story is a fairly tepid "let go and have fun" sort of thing, but I did like that not only does Cody sacrifice the "win" in the competition to let his friend have it, but Chicken Joe doesn't even realize he's won because he's very much just here for the waves. 

I suspect this movie might be more interesting to someone who surfs? I don't know. Like I said, it's cute, and despite all the bathroom jokes it's watchable.

My Grade: B-
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Character Creation: Ecopunk 2044

At last, a -punk game with some actual punk in it.

The Game: Ecopunk 2044
The Publisher: Dice Kapital
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

So, at the heart of it, it's a post-apocalyptic mission-based game in which the characters ("Punks") are fighting against some enemy or other - your crew might be mercs, ecoterrorists, or just "meddling kids". Honestly, though, the game it reminds me of most is Red Markets, both for the relentless political/economical focus reflected in both setting and system, and for the lavish detail and thoroughness of the lore and setting of the game (that still somehow manages to be accessible). 

The system is impressive because it manages to not be cobbled together from like three other systems that I can identify; sure it uses dice pools (kind of), but it treats the dice pool as a finite resource that renews every scene. Plus, it considers the "temperature" of a scene, which is mostly a way to measure time and focus - in a "cold" scene, things happen over days or weeks, in a "warm" scene, they might happen over hours. I really wish we'd thought of that for Chill, because it's a really good tool for an investigative game. Maybe in the next edition we'll OH THAT'S RIGHT. 

(It's the anniversary of my cancellation, so I'm a little on edge. Plus I have COVID. Don't mind me.)

Right, anyway, let's make a Punk. Grr, PDF isn't bookmarked, that's annoying.

Create a character concept. Hmm. I did have the glimmer of an idea whilst I was reading the book. Food and its production are very important to the setting; there's a multi-page section talking about what people do now that they basically can't get meat protein anymore (short answer: they eat bugs, some of them farm dogs/cats/rats, or they whine about it a lot). But there are farms, it's just that they're focused on growing the most productive crops to feed the most people, which involves changing what you grow based on what's in season. Anyway, mostly the farm work is done by robots, but there are people who act as security and militia. 

So I think my character used to work security for a farm, which would imply a military background (WWIII just ended in 2038, so assuming my character was 20 when the war started, that would put him born in 2011, making him three years younger than my son Cael, and now I'm sad). Anywho, that would make him 33 now, just a young'un. 

That's as much of a concept as I really need to get going, so let's continue on to Drivers! Drivers are...I don't know, personality facets? But not all of them, actually. I guess "things that drive the character" makes the most sense as a definition. Anyway, I can roll them randomly, but I don't know that I want to roll all three of them, so let's roll the first one and see where that takes us.

Well, the first one I roll is Doomed (a "noir" Driver), and basically it means that we're pretty fatalistic. I can get behind that, I think. 

Let's roll another one (though it can't be another noir): Delicate. Interesting combo with Doomed, does it work? I think it does, it just means that he's precise and maybe doesn't like getting his hands dirty (anymore). Last one: Intense. Yeah, that'll work. As a side note, when you take damage in this game (which is a whole other system that I think is really well thought through) you can wind up swapping Drivers, and I think Delicate would be the first to go. 

Languages! Let's assume I have a cyberbrain, and take English as one of my language (long story short, if you speak English, Mandarin, or Arabic and you have a cyberbrain you can converse with anyone who also speaks one of those languages through a global AI kind of thing). So where is my guy from? If he's American, he probably wasn't in WWIII much because the Americans withdrew their military early in the war because there was this civil war happening in the good ol' USA, so let's assume he's from another English-speaking country. Well, Africa (and Nigeria in particular) emerged as a major player during and after the war, so let's say he's Nigerian and speaks Yoruba in addition to English. 

Skills & Talent! I get 9 Skill levels, which I buy one-for-one, and then a Talent based on one skill (based an area of specialization). Hmm. I feel like making this guy a jack-of-all-trades, so let's put one point into Athletics, Ecology, Engineer, Industry, Politics, Science, and Warfare, and then put an extra point into Athletics and Industry. For the Talent, hmm. Let's put it in Ecology and say it's in Farming; he paid attention to what the robots and botanists were doing.

And now we choose Body. Basically the question is "am I cybered or not." If I am, it costs me some of my expcoin in the next stage. I think I'll just stick with Precariat, which means I increase one Aspect (basic stats) by one and lower another by one. Let's raise Clarity and lower Speed. I'm also meant to define a community I'm part of. Let's say that my guy lives in "Black Dust," a portion of the City that's prone to getting dust from a faulty filtration system belched up on it. You get used to it, and there's a knocking sound before the dust comes, so you just cover your drink. 

Finally, spend 16 expcoin (in-setting it's a cryptocurrency kind of thing, but for my purposes it's freebie points). There's a bunch of options, though, so I need to look through these. Oh, and I want a cyberbrain. But first, I get a minor tool (mostly flavor - I'll take a nail file because my guy hates when his nails get ragged) and a skill tool based on my highest Skill (a pair of good trainers, probably obtained during the War and meticulously kept up). 

Oh, and then I get two random knickknacks (misspelled as "nicknacks" - what, did the "k"s cost extra?). I get a fresh-air canister (Perri-air, if you will) and some multivitamins. 

OK, now let's buy some stuff. A cyberbrain costs 1, so that's easy. I'll blow 2 on a Pain Inhibitor so I can just ignore a Crisis brought on by physical damage (at least temporarily). I think I'll take Internal Clock - I dunno, seems to vibe with his precise nature. 

I definitely want a couple of Combat Traits to reflect my time in the War, so let's take Breacher (2), Duck for Cover (2), Gunslinger I (4), and...3 more, hang on. I'll burn the last three on a machine gun and a flashbang. 

All I need now is a name, I think. Let's say his name is Olufemi Durotoye (goes by "Femi"). Femi is, as mentioned, 33, dark skin, brown eyes, has some scars from his days in the war but his hands are pristine. I think he keeps the real doom n' gloom stuff under wraps, but it's never really far from the surface and if you're on a job with him you can kinda tell he doesn't really intend to come back from ("it's always a nice surprise when I do live, then," he'd say). 

Movie #821: RED

RED is an action/comedy based on a Warren Ellis comic (which I've not read) starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Morgan Freeman, Karl Urban, and Mary-Louise Parker.

Frank Moses (Willis) is a retired CIA assassin quietly living in Cleveland (which is apparently where retired spies go to live; see also Captain America: Civil War). One day a bunch of dudes with guns show up to kill him, but he handily kills them, and then realizes that they will surely go after the nice young lady who works for Social Security that he's been chatting up on the phone (Parker - the lady, not the phone). He abducts her, and they go through the country picking up various other retired-but-extremely-dangerous (hence RED) folks. There's kindly-but-dying-of-cancer Joe (Freeman), ex-KGB string-puller Ivan (Cox), paranoid kook Marvin (Malkovich), and pleasant and proper assassin Victoria (Mirren). Together they work to stay ahead of the evil(?) CIA dude Cooper (Urban) and figure out what's really going on!

(What's really going on is a kind of tepid bait-and-switch involving Dennis Hopper and the Vice President (Julian McMahon), but that's not important right now.)

I like this movie, but I have to say it doesn't improve much on a rewatch. The novelty of the movie is largely bound up in these older actors being badass and being underestimated, but there's not really a sharp divide drawn between the old school espionage and the new. Rather, said divide is referred to a lot - Ernest Borgnine referring to how this used to be a gentleman's game, Marvin joking that he remembers the Secret Service being tougher - but none of it is ever contextualized or shown (as opposed to told) so it doesn't mean much. 

Also, and this is just me getting older and more sensitive, but I've kinda started having a hard time rooting for people who say they miss killing people. It shows up here and in The Whole Nine Yards (or rather, the sequel, I think), where career assassins are like "man, I haven't killed anybody in forever lol where does the time go" and I just sit here thinking "I'm supposed to be rooting for you, am I?" The humor in the movie comes from, for example, prim and proper Helen Mirren saying "I kill people, dear," but then you stop and think about what the intelligence agencies of the West have done and the line about Frank Moses toppling governments kinda becomes a splinter.

The actions scenes are fine, lots of fun gunplay and Bruce Willis has always managed to be able to sell being both a romantic goofball and a smooth killer. Morgan Freeman is wasted in a role that gives him very little to do except die. John Malkovich looks like he's having fun. Mary-Louise Parker, I think, should have leaned into her character being hooked on the adrenaline because the most interesting scenes she has are when she's doing spy shit with Willis and getting obviously excited by the danger of it all.

All in all it's a fun action movie that doesn't seem to want you to think about it, but then is filmed and acted in such a way to make not thinking about it difficult. 

My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: Medium 

Next up: Surf's Up

Character Creation: Infected!

Nearly Halloween, better do a horror game! OooooOOOOooo!

The Game: Infected!
The Publisher: Immersion Studios
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Zombie-themed games aren't exactly thin on the ground, but I never really thought before about how you can go one of two routes with them - give the players a toolkit and say "make your own zombies", or presenting a fully fleshed-out (if you'll pardon the expression) setting. And most of the time, from what I've seen, it's the former - Zombie World, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Death Throes and so forth all present "a world with zombies" as a kind of baseline assumption but without much in the way of a full setting and lore. On the other side of things, we have this game and Red Markets and maybe Outbreak: Undead? (Not sure about that last one, I haven't read it.)

Anyway, Infected! is, setting-wise, pretty basic. There was this disease, it killed a lot of people, some of the people who got it became lean and hungry and started chasing after anything made of meat, and now the world's gone to shit. There's a considerable amount of attention paid to the life-cycle of the disease (called "Calera" after the village in Mexico where it was first discovered). The system involves rolling a couple of d10s, one for a stat and one for a skill, and then determining successes based on the roll. It did not seem intuitive to me when I read it. (On the face of it, it reminds me a little of Edge of Midnight, but didn't make as much sense.)

Seems like a perfectly serviceable zombie apocalypse horror game with a somewhat janky system. Book needs an editing pass. That's about all I got. Let's make a character!

Step One: Narrator Selects Starting Experience. Let's assume my hypothetical Narrator would start us at Novice, so I have 175 Exp. 

Step Two: Formulate Concept. I could formulate a concept, but there are some handy tables in the book to help me do that, so I think I'll use 'em!

Body Characteristics: Freakishly big & strong. I can dig it.

Before the Outbreak: Military. Well, that fits.

Disposition: Callous. Not the sort of character I'd choose to play, normally, but for chargen purposes I'll keep it. 

Family: Unemployed. 

Surviving the Outbreak: Lived on a boat. This would suggest I was Navy?

Harsh Times: Survived Genocide. 

Making a Living: Hunter.

Contact: Cannibal. Holy shit.

Twist: Terrible Accident. 

OK, well, let's try and weave this shit together. Jordan Terry was never the brightest bulb in the drawer, but he was big and athletic and that opened some doors. His family had its problems - Mom couldn't keep work (maybe undiagnosed schizophrenia?) and Dad had a record and so had trouble finding a job at all. Jordan wound up joining the Navy right out of high school, and was out on a ship when the outbreak really ramped up. 

Ask Jordan nowadays what he and his crew were doing during the five years that the world was ending, and he couldn't really tell you - he followed his orders, that much he knows. At some point a group of pirates hit his ship and killed everyone on it, and Jordan wound up on a life raft with two other guys. Only two of the three made it back to shore, and Jordan has told himself that he didn't partake of the long pork, as it were, but the truth is he might have blocked it out. 

Jordan put his military training to use once he got back to the USA and started hunting - even squirrel pelt and meat is useful these days. He keeps in touch with Jack, the guy from the life raft. He knows Jack kind of acquired a taste for human flesh, or maybe he just finds it easier than hunting? Jordan just tries not to think about it.

Some time back Jordan slipped down an embankment and broke his leg. He can push on it a little now, but he knows it didn't heal right. He figures it'll probably be the death of him sooner or later, but eh. People die every day. 

There, now, that's fuckin' bleak. What's next?

Step Three: Select Attributes. These go 1-10, but most people won't have anything higher than 7. They cost two points per level, and I can spend a maximum of half my 175 points on Attributes. Let's see now.

Brawn needs to be high, and since I'm freakishly big I'll set it at 9. Dexterity can be average or a little above, let's call it 5. Presence and Tact are, um, not where Jordan is a Viking, so let's say 3 and 2 respectively. Awareness can be a little higher (6), but Intelligence doesn't need to be (2). Resolve is on the high end for Jordan (he's still alive, after all), so let's say it's 7, but Luck is pretty low (3). That's 74 points spent, comfortably below the 87-point limit for Attributes. 

Oh, wait, dammit. I can only have one Attribute at 7 and two at 6, nothing higher than 7. Grumblegrumble. FINE. I'll lower Brawn to 7 and Resolve to 6. That gives me 6 points back, only spent 68.

Step Four: Select Skills. Same idea, 1-10, except these only cost 1 point per level. I can, however, only have a rating of 7 in one Skill, and it's probably gonna have to be Athletics.

Well, you never go wrong with Athletics and I want that to be Jordan's strong point, so yeah, let's say 7 there. Construction, sure, let's put 2 points in. Dodge (ugh), but again, Jordan isn't necessarily slow, so let's put 4 points in there. Hand to Hand, yes please, 6, and Melee likewise (Jordan can fight with a knife) can have some points. Call it 5. 

There's a Military Skill, but it's for tactics. Jordan should have some, but not more than 3, methinks. Observation can get 4. Intimidation definitely needs a good score, let's pump 6 into there. Ranged can get 6 (hunter, after all), Stealth gets 6, Wilderness gets 6. Total that up and we get...55 on Skills, 123 total. Doing fine.

Step Five: Select Circumstances. Weird term for allies and equipment and so forth. These are 1 per level, too, and I can put these up to 10 if I want. Let's give Jordan Allies 2 (he knows some people). Let's pump 10 points into Equipment and say 5 of it is survival gear and 5 of it is an old SUV that runs on biodiesel. I'll put 3 points into Reputation ("you know Jordan? You know, that huge motherfucker, rolls through here and sells pelts sometimes?"), and 3 points into Teammate (Jack the Cannibal). And then we'll put 4 points into Weapons so Jordan can have a good rifle. That's 22 points, 145 spent, still got 30 points.

Step Six: Select Advantages & Disadvantages. Usual drill, Advantages cost points, Disadvantages give you points. Let's start with the Advantages, since they're first in the book. 

Patient sounds about right for Jordan (that's only 1 point, too). I think Fearsome is appropriate. Why that's 6 points I have no idea, but whatever, I've got points to spare. Oh, wait, Large Size, need that (7 freaking points). That's 14 points, but I've still got 16 before I even get into Disadvantages. Well, let's do those and then I'll go back and spend my extra.

Injured Leg gives me 5 points, and that's really the only one I want - there's a few more I could take that are kind of appropriate, but I don't need the points, so eh. That gives me 19(!) freaking points to spend. OK then. 

Well, I would like to raise my Attributes, but I can't so fnah. Suppose I spent 7 on Thick Skull, though. 12 more. I'll spend 4 and take the Gutsy Advantage, which leaves me 8. Let's buy 3 levels of the Rogue Skill, bump Observation up by 1, and dump the rest into Weapons and say I have a compound bow. 

Step Seven: Vital Statistics. I can choose Morality, but I don't think for Jordan it'd be higher than about 4. Health is Brawn + Luck, and I can buy more with Experience which I would have if I'd known that up front, but I ain't going back and rejiggering things now. Initiative is Dexterity + Awareness (11), and that's actually about it, I think!

I picture Jordan as about 6'6", very thick, blue eyes, brown hair (still buzzed), various Navy tats on his arms and chest, walks with a limp on his right leg. He has a pretty flat affect most of the time, and while he might chuckle, he very rarely actually laughs. What's there to laugh about, anyway?

Movie #820: Parasite

Parasite is a black comedy/tragic drama kind of thing directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Jang Hye-jin, Cho Yeo-jeong, Lee Sun-kyun, Lee Jeung-Eun, and Park Myun-hoon. 

So! In jolly ol' South Korea, a poor family, the Kims, lives in a semi-basement and struggles to make ends meet. Ki-woo (Choi), the young man in the family, gets tipped off by a friend (Park Seo-joon) that a rich family needs an English tutor for their daughter Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), and with the help of her sister Kim (Park So-dam), fakes his way into the job. 

And from there, the Kim family just slowly scams their way into the Parks' lives, with his sister taking the role of a high-priced art therapist for the Park's little boy Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun), his father Ki-taek (Song) taking over as the family driver, and his mother Chung-sook (Jang) taking over as housekeeper Moon-gwang after they oust the current one (Lee). 

The twist, here, is that Moon-gwang was not just acting as housekeeper, but was secretly feeding and caring for her husband Geun-sae (Park Myun-hoon), who's has been living in the secret basement shelter in the Park house for months after debt collectors wouldn't let him alone. Both families discover each other and a big fight ensues, in which Chung-sook kicks Moon-gwang down the stairs and kills her, and the next day at poor little Da-song's birthday, Geun-sae rocks up and starts stabbing people. 

It's kind of a hard movie to describe, in some ways, because some of it is pretty firmly rooted in South Korean culture, but for all that I feel like it's pretty accessible. There's a strong gothic element, but also heavy capitalist themes, and one thing I've always found really striking about this movie is that for all that the Kim family lie, scheme, and defraud people to get into the Park's house, they're not there to rob them - they just want actual jobs. I also really enjoy how everything just happens right underneath the Parks, right up until a crazy fucker starts killing people at their little boy's outdoor birthday bash. 

Parasite was nominated for (and won) a bunch of Oscars in 2020, and I remember thinking at the time that it would win for Screenplay but not much else, and then it shocked the hell out of me by winning both Director and Best Picture (deservedly!). It's tragic, but it's not sad - it doesn't dwell on the horror and unfairness of the situation, just presents it and allows the characters to be flawed and angry and regretful. I still think at least someone in the cast should have gotten an acting nom, but hey, baby steps. 

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: RED

Chill: Meet Me in the Boiler Room

Yesterday we jumped in the ol' Zoom-mobile (fuck COVID) and played some Chill! Here's last time.

It's the afternoon of Sunday, October 29 2023 (in game, that is), and that envoys are having some difficulties. Mercy Williams is still in the hospital, having suffered an infarction the night before (thanks to Donald Young, the undead creature they've been pursuing). Britt Lepus is still under the creature's influence, cheerfully packing to go to Vegas and marry him once he gets back from his tour on the Thunderstruck (she said she'd wait for him). 

Nicholas Failor and Amelia Rostov are doing their best to keep everything together and, with Mercy, figure out what next. They decide to split up and do a little more digging. Nicholas heads back out to the cemetery to use the Postcognition discipline again on the grave of Anya Kostov, the one-time girlfriend of Donald and in whose grave he'd been buried, to see if there's anything they missed. He focuses this time on the police and forensics teams extracting Donald from the grave, and while what he hears is nothing they didn't know (to wit: that based on the soil composition he's been buried for 20 years, but based on forensic sciencey things he's only been dead a few days), Nicholas spots a piece of paper in the grave. Based on the positioning it would have been on top of Donald when he was buried. Love note, perhaps? Sometime to immobilize or distract him?

Amelia goes to the HQ's archives and looks up how to immobilize a ghost or undead creature, and doesn't learn much of note - ghosts can usually be distracted or immobilized by something of particular interest to them, but that's very specific to the creature in question. Amelia also goes out to the jail and visits with Naomi Rose, the girl that got arrested getting into a fight with another girl that Donald was making eyes at, and finds her writing love letters. But when Amelia asks her about it, she pauses, and then her crazy love for Donald starts to fade - she has a "what am I doing" kind of moment and then asks if she really pushed a girl into the water. Amelia says that she did, and Naomi continues to become more rational, realizing that she needs a lawyer. She gives Amelia the letters she's been writing and tells her to get rid of them, and asks to talk to a deputy so she can make sure to have representation at her arraignment tomorrow. 

Amelia gets back on the group chat and informs everyone that it looks like Donald's influence wears off in, at most, 48 hours from contact (which still gives Britt another full day, annoyingly). Britt herself is wavering between "pack everything since I'm not coming back" and "fuck it, I'll buy more clothes when I get there." Amelia goes over to her apartment and drugs her with Benadryl and alcohol, but then takes her eyes off her for a minute and Britt has wandered out the door...without her phone.

They dispatch Nicholas to the docks, figuring that Britt has gone there to pine, and indeed, she's standing in front of the water scream-singing "More Than Words" to the waves. Nicholas gently guides her back to her apartment, and Amelia narrows her research focus to undead creatures.

Undead creatures, she learns, are often a lot like ghosts with bodies, so distracting them is similar to doing so with a ghost. She also learns, though, that the undead's physical form is often amazingly resilient or even capable of regeneration, but for all that, fire is often a good bet. The envoys discuss it (Amelia has been in favor of cremating this fucker all along) and Mercy reveals that the hospital she's in has an incinerator used to burn medical waste. All they have to do is get the zombie into the basement of a hospital, into the incinerator, and then burn him without anyone noticing. Since Mercy is likely to be discharged tomorrow, they decide to wait.

In the morning, Britt wakes up with a head full of cotton, but fully lucid - Donald's influence has worn off. She learns everything that happened from Nicholas (who crashed on her couch), and gets back on the group chat, ready to burn the zombie. 

The plan is simple - lure Donald to the basement, distract him with the love letters from Naomi, shove him into the incinerator, shut the door, Amelia puts a Line of Defense over the opening so he can't kick his way out even if he is strong enough to do that. There are, obviously, some holes in this plan (such as how to find Donald), but it's a start. Amelia sneaks down to the basement early in the day and checks the machinery, and learns that it's only lit once a week, so it'll take some time to heat up - fortunately she saw that, so she can get the process going. 

Midday, she also gets a call from Naomi - she's been released! Jessica Lindsey, the girl she pushed into the water, apparently also came out of the influence and the two of them talked, and she dropped the charges. Amelia congratulates her and tells her to stay away from the docks for a while (Naomi confirms this). 

The envoys hit the hardware store and pick up some supplies - heavy gloves so they don't have to make skin contact with Donald, a sack to use as a makeshift spit hood, a control stick like dog-catchers use. And then they get set. Britt and Mercy go to the incinerator, Nicholas watches the docks, Amelia waits at the hospital...but then Amelia gets a frantic call from Jessica.

"He's here," she says. "I don't know what to do-" 

"Call the police," says Amelia, already heading to her car. 

"I did, but they pulled up downstairs and then left!"

"I'm on the way." But all she hears is a scream and a thump.

Amelia calls Nicholas and the two of them head to Jessica's apartment. Amelia spots Donald walking away into an alley as she pulls up, and calls out to him. He turns, and she convinces him (with some very good Persuasion rolls) to come with her to the hospital to see Britt - she really wants to see him before the wedding. Donald spots Nicholas and that almost blows it, but Amelia keeps him focused and even gets him into her car. On the way, Donald mentions that he's looking forward to going to Vegas with Britt...but he's got to ship out on the Thunderstruck first. She said she'd wait for him.

Nicholas gets ahead of them and gets to the basement first. They get to the hospital and head into the back hallways to the basement, but an orderly pops out from around a corner and tells them they can't be here. Donald casually brushes his chest, and the man collapses, and Donald keeps going. Amelia, horrified, texts Mercy for help and starts doing chest compressions, and Donald continues on into the incinerator room.

Mercy runs by Donald ("Britt's right in there!"), and runs out to switch places with Amelia and save the orderly's life. Britt, fortunately, is composed and waiting for Donald - he approaches and starts singing "More Than Words," and she joins in, dances with him (containing her revulsion at the feel of his dead flesh but feeling his still-beating heart) and maneuvers him around so his back is to the incinerator. 

And then he spots Nicholas, and becomes more hostile. Nicholas closes and tries to stick him with a tranquilizer that Mercy jury-rigged, but Donald catches his wrist. Nicholas feels his heart flutter, but stays standing. Britt shoves him back toward the incinerator but tries to disguise it as a protective move, not wanting to sacrifice her advantage. Amelia runs into the room and puts a Line of Defense across the door - now they're trapped with the zombie.

Britt summons up all of her strength (and the Quicken discipline to move faster than Donald) and shoves. She shoves hard enough that Donald stumbles back and falls halfway into the furnace. He kicks and screams, but extracts himself, on fire, eyes melting, howling in betrayal. 

Mercy enters the room and she and Amelia whack at Donald's legs with various implements, trying to knock him down, but he's too sturdy (and Mercy's heart is too weak). Britt closes with him again, but he backhands her away. Amelia grabs the love letters and shows them to Donald ("see these? They're from Naomi!") and throws them into the fire.

And Donald, the lovesick thing that he is, follows them. 

Britt grabs his boots and shoves him into the incinerator and Nicholas slams and locks the door. Amelia watches through the little window as Donald burns to ash - his heart is the last thing remaining, still beating, but it, too, succumbs to the fire.

The envoys quickly leave the basement, exhausted. Mercy managed to get help for the orderly in time, and he'll live. Jessica, however, is found dead in her apartment, strangled, with the words "wait for me" scrawled on the headboard. 

Amelia writes up the entire ordeal to include in the case files, and the envoys pool their money and purchase an incinerator. They figure they might need to do something like this again someday.

Pugmire: Honey I Shrunk the Dogs

It seems like it's been forever since I did an actual play write-up, and...oh, actually it's been like two weeks, which for me is a good long time. No wonder I'm twitchy. ANYWAY. Here's last time.

The Pioneers (most of them) are in the Underneath, having just driven a fungus-demon out of a poor unfortunate mousie. They now stare up into a hole in the ceiling, a hole which supposedly leads into the house of a rich cat called Taymor Persian von Cymric. They decide to have Gelert Sausagedog go up there first, as he is small and lithe and stealthy. Petunia Pibble casts a Slick spell on the hole (yes, there were more than a few innuendos tossed around during this scene) and Dire Newfoundland boosts Sausagedog up.

Sausagedog finds himself in a basement storeroom - spices, tubers, wine, liquors - but nothing suspicious or demony. The others help Peppa Papillon through (she is also smol), and the two of them creep upstairs. 

The door opens into a hallway in an opulent house. They find Taymor herself snoozing in the sitting room, and return to the basement to help Petunia and Dire through. They decide to search the house quietly, and have Peppa summon a Spiritual Weapon that can knock on the door to distract Taymor if she wakes up.

Searching the house yields some interesting stuff - they find a sack hanging on the back of a door, a little pouch of shimmering dust, and a container of a paste that smells vaguely of yams, all of which smell like magic. Peppa also finds a journal sitting near Taymor, written using numbers, letters, and weird little symbols - probably some kind of code. And they find some plastic lying about, too. Peppa isn't necessarily OK with stealing, but both Dire and Sausagedog are pretty enthused (Dire likes to steal stuff, Sausagedog is very much of an "eat the rich" kind of attitude).

As they're getting ready to head back to the basement, though, Peppa's magic stick knocks over a vase, and Taymor wakes up! The only one she sees is Peppa, though, who valiantly tries to pretend that she's here soliciting alms for the poor. Her puppy-dog eyes don't work on Taymor, though. Fortunately Petunia is there, and yanks Peppa into the basement with the Arcane Lasso, and they all flee back into the Underneath. Dire knocks the doorway into this room into rubble, and the dogs try to find their way back the way they came...

Meanwhile, at the Welcoming Orphanage, Father Eddie talks with Boomer Pitbull, the supposed Lost Pitbull Prince. He says that while he doesn't know the legend of the Lost Prince specifically, he does seem some family resemblance in Boomer to some Pitbulls he knew back in Pugmire - what does Boomer know of his family?

Boomer actually doesn't know much. He was abandoned by his family in the outskirts of Pugmire and raised by a family of Sheepdogs, and he never really felt that he fit in there. He asks Father Eddie what he knows of the family he was talking about, and Father Eddie says that this was decades ago, at the beginning of the War. There was a strong branch of the Pitbull family, and the father, the patriarch, the paterfamilias if you will, only wanted sons and demanded that his sons be warriors. There were a lot of Pitbulls on the front lines in the War of Cats and Dogs, but after the war, many of them set up estates and family homes from Pugmire to Waterdog Port. One of those - run by a Pitbull named...Maurice? Martin? 

"Max," says Boomer.

"That's it!" says Eddie. "Max Pitbull!" Anyway, he has an estate north of Houndton along the South Road out of Pugmire. 

Boomer files this information away for the moment.

Back in the Underneath, Dire tries to point the dogs down a hallway, but the other three all agree that he's wrong and they should go this way. As they're walking along, they notice the hallway getting narrower - not squishing them, just not much wiggle room. Their voices also seem to be getting higher in pitch. Up ahead, they see an exit from the corridor, an opening that's almost perfectly round, and note that the ground seems to slope up to it slightly.

Peppa casts a light spell on a rock and tosses it into the hole, and there's a clack and then a rolling sound...and a huge, round stone appears in the hole and rolls right toward them! Peppa casts Spiritual Weapon to create a wedge to stop the rock (can't stop the rock) and buy them a little time, and Dire tucks her under his massive floofy arm and runs. They run back down the corridor and into the previous one, which has somehow grown a hundredfold in size! They run to the sides and the stone rolls past them harmlessly.

Petunia determines that they're all exuding magic, and figures that it's not that this room has grown - they've been shrunk! She tries to Disrupt the spell on Peppa, but it backfires and Peppa vanishes! 

(Peppa finds herself the size of a ladybug relative to the other Pioneers, who are the size of mice relative to the room that they're in. She tries to cast a Spiritual Weapon in front of Petunia's snoot, but it's too far away. She crawls up on Petunia's foot and whacks her ankle with her staff, but Petunia doesn't notice.)

The dogs consider their options and Sausagedog and Dire encourage her to try again. Petunia is reluctant, though - what happened to Peppa?! And now, giant thudding footsteps approach! What fresh horror!

Meanwhile, Boomer continues his conversation with Father Eddie. Eddie points out that one's family, whatever it is, doesn't determine one's path in life - his family currently sits on the throne of Pugmire, after all! Boomer muses that power corrupts, and Eddie agrees, but does note that at least in Pugmire, you aren't guaranteed the throne just because of who your father is. Any family can become "royal." 

"So, you're saying I should become King of Pugmire?" says Boomer. Eddie says that's not what he was saying, but it that's the path that Boomer wants to take, he has as much claim to the throne as any good dog.

Boomer thanks him for the philosophical discussion, but it's been a good long while now and he's worried about his friends. Eddie says that they were going to visit Bantus the Rat King at the Janus House, and helps Boomer to disguise himself so that he can walk the streets relatively safely. 

Boomer finds the Janus House and demands to speak to Mantis ("Bantus," the immense rat corrects him). Bantus offers to sell him the horn of a Stone-Bones ("killed it myself, shot it in the eye with this bow"), and Boomer realizes that his friends have already been here. He growls and shows his weapon (he's only carrying his hand ax, but also these guns), and Bantus acknowledges that Boomer could probably tear this place up pretty badly, so he agrees to guide Boomer to his friends in exchange from some plastic.

Boomer agrees and pays the rat, and Bantus has a mouse named Squiggles take Boomer out to an entrance to the Underneath. Boomer follows the instructions ("right, left, left, and then...walk") and enters a room with a narrower corridor attached.

The thudding footsteps approach and Petunia casts Disrupt, and quickly snaps back to her normal size! She "appears" right in front of a strange dog - "Who are you?"

Boomer takes off his fake snoot, and Petunia breathes a sigh of relief and restores Dire and Sausagedog. Peppa, tired of being tiny, casts Inflict Wounds on Petunia's foot, which is still not enough to harm her but enough to get her attention ("OW, something bit me!"). She restores Peppa, and the Pioneers head back to the Orphanage to reconnoiter.

A little experimentation reveals the nature of the things they found - the sack is a Sack of Holding, capable of carrying the weight 10 dogs! (Dire jumps inside, and learns that there's only a few moments of air in there. "Maybe some kind of snorkel," muses Sausagedog.) The dust makes things or people invisible for a moment, and the ointment is something called Master Ointment - it promotes healing and curse disease and poison. 

But the journal is the real prize. Its takes a while to decipher it (because Dire insists on helping), but they realize that it's an account of the activity of the Seekers of Ubaste. It describes hiring the mercenaries that attacked them in Caer Clawtree, how that plan failed, and more importantly, discusses an artifact that will "reveal the base nature of dogs." The plan discusses swapping the medal meant to be given to the "so-called Pitbull Prince" with this artifact.

Demons are never actually discussed, so the dogs wonder if the Seekers are aware that they're in bed with the Nagayaga (ew). In any case, though, Eddie advises them to turn themselves in and present this evidence. They'll be subject to truth-detecting spells and interrogation, and the political fallout here might still be a problem, but Eddie believes that Man will guide them.

The dogs sleep on it, and then decide to follow Eddie's advice. They'll arrange to surrender, and try to clear their names.

Character Creation: Agon

 Man, COVID sucks. Someone should do something about this.

The Game: Agon
The Publisher: Evil Hat Productions
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

As I may have mentioned, I like games that are focused (though just at present I'm finding I'm enjoying the trad "GM makes everything up" kind of vibe a lot; basically my preferences for a lot of things are "why not both?"). Agon is such a game - you're playing a bunch of heroes in a Greek mythological kind of setting, sailing between islands, getting into adventures, building your legends, and sooner or later you're either going to return home or die/otherwise meet your fate. 

Actually, it's not a million miles from Atlantis: The Second Age insofar as it's concerned with the legacy of the characters, but it's a squillion times simpler. Also although it's written with the Greek gods in mind, there's nothing that says you couldn't use whatever pantheon you wanted (or make one up), and I don't think it'd be terribly hard.

So let's make a hero! This is pretty quick, actually. First thing we do is pick an Epithet. This is the key thing that boost me in conflict. Hmm. We just rewatched Raya & The Last Dragon last night, and I'm thinking about Tong, the warrior from Spine (huge, tough, tries to be vicious but can't quite manage it). I think that my Epithet will be Oak-Skinned. I start with a d6 there. 

Now we need a name (which also starts at d6). My guy is named Sithas (there's a handy list in the book). 

Lineage! I can be a mortal hero or a demigod. I don't see Sithas as a demigod, actually. Let's say that (like Tong) he's from an island in a very cold clime, but not so frigid that there's no plant life - in fact, it's called the Frozen Forest. That makes me Oak-Skinned Sithas, scion of the Frozen Forest (I could have named a specific ancestor or something, but I like that better).

Favored Domain! The choices are Arts & Oration, Blood & Valor, Craft & Reason, and Resolve & Spirit. One gets a d8, the rest get a d6. I think Blood & Valor is pretty obviously my forte.

Now, who's my Honored God? Assuming that we're going with the Greek pantheon, I think it's gotta be Ares. I also think this might be a source of conflict at some point. I get marks of Divine Favor with three other Gods, though, so I'll take one with Artemis, one with Demeter, and one with Zeus.

Style! This is basically how you'd recognize Sithas. Sithas is tall and broad, with the long, thick, black hair done in the braids his people are known for. He wears a brown tunic and carries a big wooden club, hewn from the mighty trees of his homeland.

And...actually that's it, because the next two sections are Bonds (I get 2 bonds with each other hero, but it's just me) and Leadership (which would decide who's the leader on the first island) and both are whole-group things. So, um, on to blood and glory!

Movie #819: Ouija: Origin of Evil

Ouija: Origin of Evil is a rather surprising horror film by Mike Flanagan, starring Lulu Wilson, Annalise Basso, Elizabeth Reaser, Henry Thomas, and Parker Mack.

In 1967, Alice (Reaser) is bringing up two very lovely girls, Lina (Basso) and Doris (Wilson). They're coping both financially and emotionally with the loss of Alice's husband (Michael Weaver, when we see him briefly). Alice is trying to make ends meet as a medium, and she happily uses the girls in the ruse, having them rig various gimmicks (moving table, blowing out candles). And then Lina gets turned on to a Ouija board and Alice incorporates it into the act...except Doris starts using it alone (!) for realsies, and slowly becomes possessed. 

This does not end well for anyone - the thing possessing Doris isn't a ghost, exactly, but the house used to belong to an escaped Nazi doctor and the house is full of death, both literally and figuratively. Eventually the kindly priest Father Tom (Thomas) gets involved, but by then Doris is fully taken over, and Father Tom, Alice, Doris, and Lina's crush Mikey (Mack) all wind up dead with Lina in institutionalized. 

Oof, pretty bleak, right? Characters in Mike Flanagan movies (see also Oculus and Hush) don't fare well. Ouija: Origin of Evil is a prequel to Ouija, and while that film was OK at best, this one is actively good. Some of that is because Flanagan knows how to work with the space - as with Oculus (and Hush, as I think about it) we get to know the house and learn our way around, some when something looms in a corner we can tell even if it's not really in focus. The performances are really strong, too, Lulu Wilson especially. Watching her bright-eyed earnestness slowly curdle into the cheerful murder is chilling, and seeing Basso's Lina and Reaser's Alice realize they can't help her is pretty quintessential horror.

Likewise, the effects are mostly practical and filmed within the space, so it all feels very real and genuine. Also also, Flanagan generally does a nice job of threading the needle between giving us enough of the characters to make us care about them, but not twisting the knife when they get killed (it's a fine line between horror and misery/torture porn). I think, as dirty as this makes me feel, that the PG-13 rating helps, because a lot of extra gore really wouldn't have done much for the movie. 

Also, as with a lot of Flanagan stuff, it's totally a Chill scenario.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium (get it?!)

Next up: Parasite

Character Creation: It's Only Magic

The title of this game always puts this song in my head, which...I don't know. My high school years were a strange and wondrous time. 

The Game: It's Only Magic
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: None with this particular setting, but I know Cypher OK
Books Required: It's Only Magic and the Cypher System Rulebook

As with Stay Alive! and The Stars Are Fire, It's Only Magic is a genre sourcebook for Cypher System. This one takes on modern fantasy, but leans a little more wholesome (for the most part) than the horror-tinged modern/urban fantasy games than I've played (that'd be things like WoD, Urban Shadows, Nightlife, and so on). There are a couple of sample settings, one of which is called Axial, which is billed as "coffee-shop cozy witchcore," and which I think I shall use as the basis for my character.

In the Axial, magic exists and it's open and obvious, but it works on a cycle and it came back into the world recently (rather, the two forces of magic, Hibernal and Estival, recently became strong enough to be noticeable). People can transform into magical creatures using a ritual, anyone can use magic if they can focus the appropriate energies, it's pretty cool. So given all that, what kind of modern magic-y sort of person would I like to make?

There are a bunch of factions detailed and I don't really love any of them (I also don't love the way ghosts and death are handled in this setting; I think it'd be something I'd change if I were to run it). But that's neither here nor there. I think I shall turn to my old friend "pick a random song" and see what inspires me.

That's "Nightswimming" by R.E.M. I probably used this as a character them for Changeling back in the 90s, but if I did I don't remember. It's pretty in-tone for this, anyway, so let's do that.

Hmm. I wasn't going to make another ocean/water themed character for Cypher (since I've kinda done it twice), but this song combined with the possibility of making a nixie is too good to ignore. Since the song refers often to the past and memory, I think my character is someone fixated on something he lost. Let's say that his mother died when he was very young, before magic returned to the world, so she never had a chance to be a ghost and hang around for a while. Further, let's say she drowned, and he's had this morbid fascination with the lake where it happened ever since (is there a lake in Colvin Park? Not as such, but there are bathing pools for nixies in The Meadows, so let's assume that one of them was a lake before magic etc etc). 

My guy's name is Adam Kasih (Indonesian-American on his father's side, his mother was a Colvin Park local). They used to go to the park and picnic a lot during the summers when Adam was a kid, until his mother fell into the lake and drowned. Adam still isn't 100% clear on what happened - his father refuses to talk about it and Adam himself was only 6 at the time - but over the years Adam's been affected by it. And then magic came into the world, ghosts were real, and Adam figured someone could tell him what happened. But no one could. It was just something that happened, just an accident. Adam went as far as becoming a nixie to try and learn the truth, to try and commune with the lake itself, but it didn't work. And one night Adam dove down to the bottom of the lake in frustration, and everything was quiet and dark. And...it was OK.

Adam might never know the truth of what happened to his mother, but for the first time he considered that maybe there wasn't a truth to know? Maybe it was just a simple accident - she slipped, she hit her head, it doesn't take long to drown, no one saw anything. No conspiracy, no foul play, just bad luck. Adam could never know for sure, but he had to admit that the simplest explanation was possible, and he's finding some peace in that. 

I know that seems like the end of an arc rather than the beginning, but I think for this setting that works pretty well - Adam now gets to cope with being a nixie and what that means, reconciling memories and the anger he carried around with the magic and wonder of the world. That's pretty cool.

OK, so characters here use the usual [adjective] [noun] that [verbs]. In Adam's case, his descriptor is nix. He transforms into a fishlike/aquatic form when in the water, he's got Armor +2 vs. cold, skilled in persuasion and deception and identifying animals & plants, stuff like that.

So what about the noun? Usual choices: Speaker, explorer, warrior, adept. Hrm. I think we'll go with adept; Adam strikes me as pretty introspective. I get Might 7, Speed 9, Intellect 12, plus 6 more points to split up. I feel like Adam should be a bit more well-rounded, so I'll put 3 each into Might and Speed. Effort is 1, I get Edge 1 in Intellect, I can hold 3 cyphers at a time.

And then I get four abilities! I feel like a fish in a candy store! 

A lot of these are a little more combat-focused than I'd like, but that's OK. I'll take Scan, Sculpt Flesh, Distortion, and Push, how about. 

And now, Focus! There are lots of options, here, and I don't think the ones that get more attention in the It's Only Magic book really work for Adam. I could wriggle a couple into place, but eh. I think we'll go with Separates Mind from Body; I figure Adam has learned to meditate and focus his third eye or whatever as part of his outward (and then inward) search. That gives me the Third Eye power (kind of low-grade clairvoyance). 

And that's pretty much it, actually! In human form, Adam is a young man (late 20s, maybe), brown skin, black hair, brown eyes. In fishy form, he develops small, rounded scales, like a water-snake, reddish-brown in color, and his eyes go slitted and turn amber. 

Character Creation: Flabbergasted!

Trevor Noah lists "being flabbergasted" as one of the top five things white people love. I dunno, it is fun.

The Game: Flabbergasted!
The Publisher: Wanderer's Tome
Degree of Familiarity: I've watched Fawlty Towers, but never played this
Books Required: Just the one

Flabbergasted! is set in the 1920s in the fictional city of Peccadillo, and characters are meant to be members of a Social Club. It takes inspiration from various British sitcom-y sorts of things, and I suspect that with the right group it'd be a hoot. I don't know that I have that group (that is, a group of players with the frame of reference for the humor this game trades on), but I might stick it on the one-shot list someday. 

For now, however, I shall make a flabber. Or a gast. (I keep wanting to spell "flabbergasted" with an h, which isn't right, though "ghast" is a thing in some contexts.)

So, step one! We pick an Archetype. My options are Aristocrat, Well-to-Do, Staff, and Bohemian. Hmm. I think any of these would be fun to play, but Staff is the one speaking to me at the moment, so let's do that. 

Having chosen an Archetype, I'm meant to come up with name and age. I've been watching a lot of How to Drink on Yubtub recently, so I think I'll say my guy is the Social Club's bartender. His name is Gustav and no one really seems to know his last name or quite place his accent, but he's a pretty amazing bartender and he can guess a person's drink of choice at a glance (if there's a way to simulate that mechanically, I will). Gustav is about 45. 

Next we pick Relationship Status. I think Gustav is single, but he definitely had a spouse or partner at some point. I think if this were a real sitcom his son or daughter would show up in a season finale or something. 

A short physical description: Gustav is of average height, firm build, and he has a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. He stays clean-shaven but there's a picture behind the bar of him with a huge mustache. He's got frosty blue eyes and a kind of "yep, seen it all" smile. I picture him being played by John Ralston (played the butler in Ready or Not). 

Now we pick a starting Memento. This is a special item that's important to the character. It's tempting to make Gustav's a jigger (you know, because he's a bartender), but I think I'd like to broaden his horizons a little, so let's say that photo of him is the memento. It's a picture of Gustav and a couple of other fellows in uniform (obviously he was in the service before this), and he had a huuuuuuuge mustache. He doesn't talk about "the mustache days."

And now we need a Flaw. Good, Gustav needs some more rounding out. Ooh, let's make him a High Roller. Gustav is pretty steady, but he's got a bit of a gambling problem. 

A Dilemma! This is something that is currently a fixture in my character's life; it's something that can be resolved, it looks like, and it should be more immediate than "has a mysterious past." I think leaning on Gustav's Flaw is the way to go here. Gustav lost a great deal of money on a horse race, and one of the delivery drivers moonlights as a collector for the fellow who owns Gustav's debt. He (the driver) is named Little Ben, and Little Ben...isn't little. 

Next is Background, but I've been hinting at it somewhat throughout this. Gustav has a mysterious past that he doesn't talk about, complete with military service, a gambling problem, at least one previous marriage, and that's to say nothing of the "mustache days."

Scene Cues - oh, finally some game mechanics! I get to pick four from the Staff list. Ooh, there's a bunch I like, but for Gustav I shall choose:

This Way, Please (I can intuit the layout of a building), Unflappable (I can't be intimidated), Specialty (Mixology) (when I mix drinks I impress everyone around me), and Soothing Touch (I can heal people, probably by mixing them a drink). 

Character Traits! I start with one each in Bravado & Persuasion, Culture & Etiquette, and Creativity & Passion, and two in Wit & Sharp. I get five more to divvy up, and I can't go higher than 4 in any one. I think I'll put one in each of them and then the extra one into Wit & Sharp. 

And, finally, I get 40 "readies", representing my wages. 

And that's it! I like Gustav, he'd be fun to play. I'd have to watch that he didn't get too serious (as my inclination is toward drama and tragedy), but I think it'd be doable.