Movie #890: House on Willow Street

House on Willow Street is a horror movie starring Sharni Vinson, Steven Ward, Zino Ventura, Carlyn Burchell, and Gustav Gerderner.

A group of thugs led by Hazel (Vinson) hatch a plan to kidnap Katherine (Burchell), the daughter of a diamond magnate, and hold her for ransom. They get to the house, snatch the girl, take her back to the abandoned factory they're using as a base, and realize that they can't get hold of her parents. Cousins Ade (Ward) and James (Gerderner) go back to the house to find her parents, and find them...dead. Also a pair of priests.

Turns out that Katherine is possessed by a truly gnarly demon, and needs to eat four souls in order to walk the Earth for realsies. She worms her way into people's souls by showing them visions of people they're mourning, or more directly by exuding a tentacle with spikes from her mouth. Hazel eventually manages to set her on fire and run away as the cops approach, but everybody else is dead like doornails. (Spoilers, I guess.)

This movie has a great premise; it's very similar to Abigail, though it came out a few years prior. The idea of kidnapping someone who turns out to be possessed is real solid. The idea of a demon that gets into you by exploiting grief and trauma is likewise cool, though bringing dead loved ones back as phantoms is a little pedestrian. Where the movie gets muddled is in the lore it presents about the demon ("Trangul," but I have no idea about the spelling) - it needs four souls to manifest and it lives at the exact furthest point on the globe from a book literally written by God and it feeds on people in mourning and etc. There's a lot going on and the movie tries to treat a bunch of these facts as though they're big reveals, with the result that we get distracted from the good stuff.

And there is good stuff! There are some fun jump-scares, some good gore effects, and Katherine getting more and more possessed as the movie goes on is a good time. I think it would have benefited from just having a little more focus, and probably from cutting the whole videotaped exposition sequence where Katherine and then the priests document the whole possession and exorcism (including trying to burn Katherine alive). The movie doesn't trust the audience much, and the script comes off as really needing some editing and darling-killing. Also the dialog is...about on the level of 17-year-olds trying to play Hunter: The Reckoning, I think.

But Sharni Vinson (whom I knew from You're Next) and Carlyn Burchell are fun to watch, the set design is awesome, and it's not a terribly long movie, so it's a good time overall.

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Hush 

Character Creation: The Bleakness

I have talked before about the "fishblade," which is a handy term for any RPG that the listener considers weird or outré based on their broader understanding. This, my friends, is definitely a game that a lot of folks would consider a fishblade.

The Game: The Bleakness
The Publisher: Twisted Image Publishing (although that site hasn't been updated in a while, since it says this game is still Kickstartering)
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

What's with RPG publishers not putting the book's cover in the PDF? So weird.

Anyway, The Bleakness is a grimdark RPG that has you playing people traveling on the Road. The Road is something that God created and said "go north and find the answers" or something (it's phrased better than that in the book, I just don't feel like looking it up), but when you start heading north, your fate is pretty much sealed. A game of The Bleakness goes until every PC is dead before reaching the next village, you encounter all of the Entropies (basically the incremental erosion of the world and march towards the end), everyone decides to quit and just live in a village, or everyone decides to turn around and go back (at which point the priests of the Road will probably kill you, because they are the only ones allowed to travel south on the Road).

Along the way, you encounter various things (it's all rolled on tables), and you track Despair and Hunger. Get too much Hunger, you starve. Get too much Despair, you go mad or kill yourself or someone else. The combat system is the most unforgiving thing I've seen since Dread (or, dare I say it, curse the darkness). The word "tragic" occurred to me, but it's not properly tragic, because in tragedy characters die or meet their ends because of their own actions and flaws. Here, it's just inevitable. You'll die horribly not because of anything you did (other than start walking north) but because that's what happens.

Now, would this game be, for want of a better word, "fun?" I think with the right group it could be satisfying to play, but then, I like going to darker places in my RPGs sometimes. This is a bitter brew, and it is really not for everyone. But I'm glad it exists, because as I've mentioned, I think games with a tight focus, a firm point of view, and a solid intended play experience are worlds better than the 1000th "you can make any character you want for our game where you have 'adventures' and kill monsters!" sort of thing. So let's make a character!

Everyone has a challenge and a role. Both are determined randomly, which suits me fine. Rolling for challenge gets me...10. Unlucky, I only find safe food when rolling a 6 (which I assume is on a d6, which means I'ma gonna starve). For role I get...1, which is hunter. I get a bow and 12 arrows, I get a +1 to foraging rolls when I'm alone, and when traveling alone no event can give me more than 1 Despair. That's pretty cool. 

I get 3 rations, a sleeping bag, a waterskin, a backpack, some clothes, and a random mundane item (hold on...10, an obsidian long knife. Cool!). 

My traveler's name is Sahmyis. Sahmyis got lost while hunting, far from his village, and emerged from the woods near the Road. He saw a group of priests, who explained to him the virtues of going north, and the dangers of going south (to wit, they'd kill him). Sahmyis is in his early 20s (so, middle aged in this fuckin' setting), He's thin but has a bit of a belly, and he just has the worst luck when it comes to hunting. Something always alerts what he's hunting and it runs off, that kind of thing. Sahmyis suspects he'll die on the road, but maybe if he's with other pilgrims they can watch out for each other? (Ha.)

D&D: Dead Minotaur Storage

Back in Madoc's Keep, in the Dead Valley, in the nation of Abhaile. Here's last time.

Our heroes are in the Keep, standing outside a small square room with an organ made from skeletons. They go back into the room and Aisling reads the musical notations. She recognizes the tune; it's an old song from the south that tends to get sung when you want the mood to be spooky (but not solemn). She casts identify and learns that the organ is used to unlock the two doors leading out of this room, and to turn off the trap if it's triggered. She relays this to the others and, after making sure playing the organ won't actually set the trap off, she plays it.

The heroes feel magic on the doors fall away, and they decide to open the door to the north (because it's on their left and Zook's opinion is to always turn left). Dara opens the door - and a skeletal minotaur lunges out! 

Dara, however, is very much on her game. She throws an entangle spell into the next room, and it slows the minotaur. There's another one behind it, but that one is held fast by the grasping plants (I was rolling like shit, but also Zook uses his prophecy powers and Aisling casts bane on the skeletons). Zook blinds it, which is weird since it doesn't have eyes, and it lashes about with an ax.

Dara discovers that her shillelagh spell works nicely against the skeletal foe, and Clara jumps in and pummels it until it falls apart. She then cartwheels into the smaller room and beats the one that trapped by the plants, and things seem fine...but then a third skeleton minotaur (skeletaur?) smashes through the door to the west! And another one clatters behind it!

The one that smashes through the door keeps moving, pushing into the room past Zook and Dara (and gets a bop from the shillelagh and Zook's dagger for its trouble). The one behind it tries to charge, but Dara drops her first entangle and puts one under this new minotaur, and while it doesn't stop the creature, it slows it just enough that its charge is deflated. The creatures lay about with their axes and manage some pretty unpleasant strikes on Dara and Zook, but Clara finishes off the one in the smaller room and lands a flying kick to one, and Zook's magic missiles and Aisling's non-magical missiles drop the other.

The heroes catch their breath, and check the room to the north. It's about a third the size of the room they're in, and notches on the ceiling and wall (from horns and axes, respectively) indicate that this must be where the skeletal minotaurs are kept. The heroes wonder why two of them weren't in the closet, but maybe they were patrolling or doing some other job. In any case, they're dead(er) now.

Clara opens the door to the east, and sees a dirt path sloping down. Dara takes a look (her ability to see in the dark is better), and sees that this leads into a cavern with pools of water throughout. It smells like a swamp, and she can't see a far wall or another exit. The heroes close the door and rest for a while, cast some healing spells, and generally ready themselves. And then they descend.

Dara looks into one of the pools, and sees corpses far below - this pool is much deeper than it should be. The corpses sway like sea-grass in a current, and Dara feels a sudden urge to dive in and join them. She fights it off and warns the others: "Do not look into the pools."

The party moves on, and finds exits at the end of this cavernous room (three, to be exact). The follow the first one (it's on their right, and Aisling says they should try that this time), and it loops around into another, dryer cavern. This one has piles of weapons, armor, and clothing everywhere - this seems to be where the inhabitants of the keep pile the belongings of their victims. 

Zook feels magic from several of the piles, so the party goes picking through them. They find some treasure - gold, another set of white vestments with gold trim, a thick, metallic potion that Zook recognizes as a potion of invulnerability, and a locked chest. Zook shoots it with a crossbow bolt ("never can tell, could be a mimic"), and Aisling deftly opens the lock. Inside, they find another potion (flying, this time) and a small stone tablet with writing in Abyssal.

Dara reads some Abyssal, of course, and Zook helps her parse it. It's an agreement between Madoc and some being called Orcus (Dara recognizes the name as a demon-god, someone who will listen to prayers). The tablet has some magic to it, so Aisling casts identify to see if she can learn the particulars.

She does, and feels madness clawing at her mind, but fights off the terrible understanding. The agreement is clear to her, but it still doesn't make sense. It "stretches Madoc's year to eternity," but if he leaves the keep, his year is up. That's strange enough, but the agreement also has a third signatory, a witness that made a mark rather than writing its name. Aisling notes that beneath the mark is a cryptic sentence: "I won't lie if there's something to be gained."

The heroes speculate a bit about what that might all mean, why Madoc needs a year stretched to infinity, and whether Madoc was undead when he got here or whether he become undead from this contract. They think about smashing it, but Aisling informs them that because the contract has that third Witness, the agreement wouldn't be voided by breaking the physical contract. Zook speculates that finding the Witness' identity might be of benefit - maybe there's an "enemy of my enemy" kind of situation they could exploit?

They follow the spoke from this cavern and it loops back into the swamp cavern, leaving only one unexplored tunnel from this room. They decide to fall back to the organ room and camp; they don't want to see what's in the next room while they're exhausted and out of spells.  

Character Creation: The Long Road Home

Roads go ever, ever on, doncha know.

The Game: The Long Road Home
The Publisher: Plane Sailing Games
Degree of Familiarity: None 
Books Required: Just the one

This game is basically covering the same ground as Back From the Broken Land, in that it's telling the story of the Fellowship going home after the destruction of the One Ring. But where BftBL hits the mark, TLRH kinda falls short.

Why? Well, for a few reasons. One is that while neither game is actually about The Lord of the Rings, both use those books/movies as their inspiration for a very particular kind of story. To wit, the "main quest" isn't the action, it's the homecoming and dealing with the aftermath that's the focus. Except that while BftBL does that very nicely, TLRH actually focuses on the main quest. You're telling the story of the quest, you're just framing it as a flashback and drawing a single card to explain your character's experiences within a given scene (in very general terms). Both games have you establish the particulars of the quest, the bad guy, the MacGuffin you needed to obtain, and so on, right up front, but then TLRH just has you go through the quest in linear, start-to-finish sequence and describe it. It just has you say "Do you remember when" first. 

The other thing I didn't like was that the running example through the book was literally Lord of the Rings. A bunch of other properties are mentioned, but every mechanic and section is told to us in terms of Frodo and his hobbity pals. Meanwhile, BftBL gives us the tools to tell a similar story and clearly takes inspiration, but moves beyond it.

I think it would have worked better if the game took us through the same steps but in reverse order? Like, start with how we defeated the evil Big Bad, and then work backwards until the quest starts. Trickier to pull off, but it would have been so much more interesting.

Anyway, it's got a green dot so it's got chargen, so here we go!

First thing we really need is a setting, and since all of the setting elements random-able and one the sheet, I'm gonna do that. 

Genre: Our options are Child-Friendly, Young Adult, Heroic, Grim, and Horror, and since it's Halloween this week I'm gonna go with horror.

Realm: Our options are Sylvan, Fey, Faded, or Dark. Dark would be the obvious choice, but I think I'll draw for it. Let's say clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades, respectively. Spades gives me dark, apparently the cards are feeling obvious. That means that the world is under the thumb of the Evil Bad Guy, and things generally suck. 

Enemy: Speaking of which. The basic categories are Tyrant, Dragon, Undead, and Otherworldly. Well, let's draw, same arrangement as before. Spades again. Our enemy is something from beyond human understanding. The book notes that this means it could be divine or demonic in origin. Let's draw a couple of threats to get a sense of what it might be. Two and a 7 (both diamonds, but suit doesn't matter here) gives us demonic fiend and possessed innocents as our threats.

You know, what if the Enemy is something like Sil in Species? Like, something that can combine with humanity, but has its own (horrific) form. So since this game assumes a fantasy setting, we'll say that the Red Moss (yes, I did just rewatch Fear Street) started off on the shores of the Still Lake. When it grows near people as they sleep, it worms its way in and possesses them, but the very first thing it possessed was a crane that came to the lake to fish. That bird has become the Moss' main vector, and it's mutated into something truly awful. 

OK, so with all that, I think we have enough to make a character. Let's decide on a background (which would apply to the characters as a whole). I like "retired" - these are characters who had illustrious (or at least notable) careers and have been called into service for One Last Adventure. My character's name is Pollus. 

I need a trope; this is something I'd want to see highlighted in the game. I could pick, I would rather draw. A 3 gives me "corrupting knowledge", I'm good with that. That implies that knowing too much about the Moss can be dangerous. Maybe it's got a "Colour out of Space" kind of vibe to it.

Now, on to character questions. Really these are basic things to consider about a character (appearance, vibe, strengths, weaknesses) plus a touchstone, which is a person or object that's important to Pollus.

Well, let's say Pollus was a Lakeman. The Lakemen row around the Still Lake using small, two-man craft. They monitor fishing, make sure no one's throwing anything into the lake that they shouldn't, and appease the lake-spirits (that one's a holdover from more superstitious times). Pollus was a Lakeman for most of his life, and finally retired. He never got to have kids of his own, but his niece Byn is his pride and joy (his sister's kid, she reminds him of her). 

Pollus is big, hearty, and strong. Broad chest from rowing, but his back is hunched a bit. Strong swimmer and can hold his breath for a long time. On the weakness side of things, Pollus has steadily lost his eyesight over the years, and especially his night vision is crap. 

And then the other bit is to establish the group, but it's just me, so I'm done! 

Character Creation: Transformers

Autobots, rock, rock on! No, hang on, that's Cheat Commandos. 

The Game: Transformers RPG
The Publisher: Renegade Games Studios
Degree of Familiarity: Gen 1 for life, baby, but I've never played it
Books Required: Just the one

Transformers is one of several licensed games by Renegade (others include G.I. Joe and Power Rangers). I read it not quite knowing what to expect. Licensed games are hit or miss, they're often designed with too much non-gamer input, and they don't always evoke the feeling of the property they're based on. 

I don't know if Transformers would feel like an episode of the show at the table, but the book is certainly created with some love for that show. I used to watch Gen 1 when I was a kid, and I saw Transformers: The Movie in theaters in 1986. It was never my favorite - I was more into Masters of the Universe - but I definitely enjoyed the show and I had a bunch of the toys. I did find myself wondering if I could do a good enough Peter Cullen impression to run the game and do Prime justice, so that speaks well of it.

So let's make a robot! (I will never not see and pronounce that word as /robət/, the way Zoidberg says it.)

Well, I have no GM or other players, so moving trippingly along to #1: Character Concept. Trying to think of an Alt-Mode for an Autobot that hasn't already been done is a fool's errand, so let's just consider what I think would be cool. I was thinking about a cement mixer; I know there have been a couple canonically (one of the Constructicons, and then I guess there was an Autobot named Quickmix, but I didn't know that until I looked it up). 

So let's say my Autobot is a big, heavy, somewhat simple guy named Tumbler. Tumbler's Alt-Mod is a cement mixer truck, while his Bot-Mode has the barrel slide around to form his right arm, making it a weapon or shield. Tumbler, like I said, isn't the cleverest of bots - he's not, like, Grimlock levels of inarticulate, but thinks and speaks slowly. He's always concerned for humans and how they're so squishy but they've made their world so hard and rock-like - it doesn't make a lot of sense?

OK, I think that's good enough for concept. Essence Scores! There are four of them: Strength, Speed, Smarts, and Social (guess we couldn't think of a characteristic in noun form that started with "S", huh?). I get 12 points to split up now, and then I'll get more from later steps. 

Well, I think we'll start with 7 in Strength, 1 in Speed, 1 in Smarts, and 3 in Social, and see how things shake out as we add things.

Skills are categorized by Essences, and I get points equal to said Essence, so I think I'll wait until my Essence scores are finalized before I pick my Skills. 

Influences! These are careers, hobbies, passions, lifepath-y kinds of things. I have to have one, and I can pick up to three, but any I pick beyond the first gives me a Hang-Up (basically a flaw). There's a list, let's check it out.

Well, I don't love a lot of these for Tumbler, but I think I'll go with Security and say that Tumbler was originally designed to be a brick, something between the bad stuff and squishier robots. I get the Perk, which allows me to take a Move Action and roll a Skill Test when Surprised (contextually, I think I get it and that's cool). I don't get a Hang-Up for this, since it's my first one. I do, however, get a Background Bond, which is basically just a memory or personality quirk from my time as [Influence]. I could roll a d12 or pick one off the list, let's see. One of them is "My body will always be a shield to protect the innocent," and while Tumbler might say "squishy" instead of "innocent," I think that works.

Now, do I wish to have a second (or even third) Influence? Nah, I don't love any of the others. Machinist kind of appeals, but I think it's a little too precise for Tumbler, and I don't wish to go dark by picking War Veteran or something. Moving on!

Select an Origin! Origin determines my Alt-Mode and sets a bunch of other mechanical stuff. 

Well, Tumbler is pretty obvious a Monolith (like Optimus Prime, actually). That increases my Strength by 1 (to 8), gives me a bump in either Might or Brawn Skills (what's the difference? I'll have to look that up), starts my Health at 4, and lets me speak Cybertronian, an Adopted Earth Language (let's just say English), and one more for every three points of Smarts (lol). 

Hrm. There's a section on the sheet for Alt-Mode (Modes, really), but nothing for Bot Mode. Presumably that'd be on the first sheet, and there's a lot for Movement, but not Size. GUYS. 

Well, anyway, I'm Large & In Charge, so I get to pick a Social Skill and I get a dice bump (this game uses die size to indicate Skill progression) when I'm dealing with beings smaller than me. I guess let's just call it Persuasion, because it sure isn't gonna be Deception or Streetwise.

Role! This is specifically one's role in the battle against the Decepticons. Tumbler is pretty clearly a Warrior (I would love to make him a Modemaster so I could have a Minicon, like Blaster or Soundwave, but I don't think it fits). 

OK, so as a 1st Level Warrior (ugh, levels, whyyyy), I get +1 to Strength (9) and Smarts (2) and bumps to two Skills from those Essences (I'll get to that). I get a suite of Autobot abilities called For the Allspark!, but I'm not gonna note most of them because there's not a good place to do it. 

If I'm Defeated, I can spend an Energon and just lose a limb instead of going down, which is pretty badass. I'm Trained in Limited and Restricted Armor Upgrades, whatever that means, and I'm trained all weapons but Qualified with Might Weapons. 

I get a Focus, which is either Sentinel or Wrecker, and obviously I'm going with the former. That bumps my Speed up one (2) and gives me a bump in Finesse or Initiative (again, Skills at the end). I get the Stalwart Defense perk, which lets me take a shield or a parrying weapon. It doesn't look like I have to make a choice once and or all (though in Tumbler's case it'd pretty much always be the shield). 

I get some other perks, but there's not a good place to write them (man, character sheet design is such a hard thing to do, apparently). 

Anyway, next thing to do is Describe my Character, but I'm gonna do Skills first. To recap: My Essences are presently Strength 9, Smarts 2, Speed 2, and Social 3. I get 9 Skills in Strength, and for each point, I can gain a Rank (starting at d2), increase a Rank (which is effectively the same idea; max d12), or Specialize (which lets me roll my Rank die and all dice beneath it, and take the highest result, meaning unless you've got a d6 or better it's not worth it). 

SO! Brawn is sustained effort, Might is short bursts, Tumbler needs both. Four ranks in Might gives me d8, three in Brawn gives me d6, and then I want two in Athletics (d4). That's 9. Hrm. Feels like I should have some in Conditioning as well, but I'm out of points. OK, here's what we'll do, we'll move a point from Might and bump Social down to 2, that gives me 2 in Conditioning, which increases my Health by 2. 

Speed! Initiative and Driving d2, I think.

Smarts! Alertness, and I would take the second point in that, too, but I need to take either Culture or Survival per my Role and Survival doesn't make a lot of sense.

Social! Both points into Persuasion, I think.

Defenses! There's one for each Essence, and they're equal to Essence + any that I get for Perks. I don't think I get anything for mine? Let me check again. Nope; I do when I use my Sentinel perks but that's situational. 

So that's all the numbery stuff! Tumbler is, in Alt-Mode, a big blue and grey cement mixer. When he transforms, he's a very lorge robot with the barrel of the mixer on his right arm (I think he still has a hand, though). His voice is deep and slow, and he refers to anyone smaller than him as "squishy." He means it affectionately, though.

 

Movie #889: Ginger Snaps

Ginger Snaps is a werewolf horror movie starring Katherine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, Kris Lemche, Mimi Rodgers, Danielle Hampton, Jesse Moss, and Peter Keleghan. 

Ginger (Isabelle) and Brigitte (Perkins) are two teenagers - Irish twins, really - living somewhere in Canada. They are both somewhat late bloomers, both highly morbid. Their school project for "Living in Bailey Downs" is to take a series of elaborate photos depicting them as gruesomely dead, and it's good work, though it gets them sent to the counselor's office (Keleghan; the counselor, not the office). They're deep into the "this sucks we should die" aesthetic, their mother (Rodgers) is trying desperately to connect and be the cool mom, and their dad (John Bourgeois) is pretty checked out.

And then one night, Ginger finally gets her first period (this is, I promise, relevant), they go out looking to kidnap the dog of the girl bullying Brigitte at school (Hampton; the girl, not the dog - the dog was uncredited, I did check). They don't get the dog, but they do get attacked by a werewolf. Ginger gets bitten and subsequently begins to change. Brigitte recruits the local drug dealer Sam (Lemche) to help (he killed the first werewolf with his car, and knows a lycanthrope when he sees one) and they try to cure Ginger, but she isn't making it easy what with all the new cravings (meat, sex, murder). It all ends really badly, with multiple people dead (including Ginger), and Brigitte alive but infected. 

So, right off the bat, the movie uses lycanthropy as a metaphor for menstruation pretty much all the way through. It's not a perfect metaphor - the werewolf curse is also treated as a disease, and it's communicable by sex as well as bite - but Ginger's transformation in a werewolf is treated as by turns intriguing, horrifying, empowering, and just flat-out gross (sound familiar?). That's probably about as far as I'm gonna go into that metaphor, so let's think about Ginger Snaps as a werewolf movie, I'm better qualified to talk about that.

One thing that the movie underlines is how being a werewolf makes you a monster. I've seen werewolves becoming hungry in movies and wind up killing and eating people, but the werewolves here just want to kill. The curse takes effect almost immediately and is notable even without a full transformation; Ginger (and later, Jason (Moss), whom she infects) grow sharp canines and long fingernails. Jason also gets a nasty case of acne and starts pissing blood, which is neither here nor there. 

The effects are entirely practical, which means that Ginger's fully transformed self bears some resemblance to the dog-ish form of The Thing (as in John Carpenter's, not Ben Grimm), but it's shot in a such a way that it looks pretty effective. The werewolves here aren't sleek and furry and mostly lupine, they're nearly hairless, moist, and asymmetrical, and that neatly plays into the theme of lycanthropy-as-puberty. 

The girls' performances work perfectly. Emily Perkins retreats into her oversized clothes as Brigitte, but is clearly the smarter of the two and throws herself into trying to protect and cure Ginger. Ginger, for her part, doesn't go fully evil until closer to the end; she has moments where she knows what she's doing and tries to stop, but she can't fight the murder-urge for long.

I really like that their mother goes a little around the bend towards the end and we can kind of see where the sisters get their dark edge; mom clearly had some formative experiences growing up. Actually the acting and writing is pretty solid across the board.

I am less fond of how many dogs die in this movie, but none of it happens on-screen, so that's a small mercy. I think it's safe to say that it's a pretty good argument for crate-training, though.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next Up: House on Willow Street 

Character Creation: Psychic Kids

You know, like in Village of the Damned. (Not really.)

The Game: Psychic Kids
The Publisher: Wet Ink Games
Degree of Familiarity: None, but I know the game engine and the subject matter feels awful familiar
Books Required: Just the one

Psychic Kids has you playing, well, psychic kids. You're all held in the Facility, and one night your powers Awaken, you break out, and you're on the Run (the book insists on capitalizing it) to a barely-remembered safe place. 

The game has a lot in common with Psi-Run, though it has a firmer structure and more trad system. It also has a lot in common with Timepeekers, the PbtA game I was working on when I was cancelled (like 8 years ago this week, in fact, how time fuckin' flies), but that's neither here nor there. The concept is very simple and borrows a lot tonally from Stranger Things, E.T., Firestarter, and the like. 

The game engine is the +One system, same as for Heckin' Good Doggos and Garbage & Glory. I have mixed feelings about the system. Basically the way it works is that you roll a number of d6s equal to a Skill, looking for 5s and 6s. Points in the controlling Attribute allow you to alter that roll, adding dice, rerolling dice, or adding "pips" (changing the result of a given die roll). When we played Garbage & Glory, it felt really unforgiving. Like, especially when you get into needing multiple successes on a given roll, it didn't feel like characters had enough points to make it work. I don't remember feeling that way after running Heckin' Good Doggos, though, so many G&G just doesn't give starting characters enough dots to throw around? 

Anyway, I think I'd run (Run) this game, if I could do it without making myself feel sad. Let's create me character!

I poke fun, but the truth is I make this mistake a lot

I don't have a concept handy, so I think I'll do my old standby of "pick a random song from my music library" and see where that gets us.

And here's where it got us!

That's "Angry Young Man" by Billy Joel (actually it's "Prelude/Angry Young Man" because the instrumental before the song is great too). That's actually a really appropriate song, I think, because this game asks you to play tweens who are running from government oppression. The titular angry young man is probably an adult, but that's fine. The line "I found that just surviving is a noble fight" is perfect on its own. 

So I think my psychic kid needs to be on the older side of things. That probably makes him 12ish? Let's say his name is Caleb Bachman. Caleb is tall for his age, and he's always been on the rowdy side, which means the Facility has history not been gentle with him. He's got a lot of pent-up anger, and it's going to get him (and probably the other kids he's Running with) in trouble someday.

Attributes! I get 10 points to split between Brawn, Smarts, and Guts, minimum 1, maximum five. Well, Guts definitely needs to be on the higher side for Caleb. Let's put four there and three in the others (I have learned that in this system, you really run a risk if you over-specialize).

Skills! Again, 10 points. Yeah, this is definitely more than the raccoons got. I'll put three into Run, two each into Find, Befriend, and Throw, and one into Sneak (I know from experience that putting one into a Skill isn't smart, but I feel like Caleb would have some skill there).

Psychic power! I get one from the list (or I could in theory make one up, but eh). The obvious choice would be something big and showy like Telekinesis, but I think I want Caleb to have Emphakinesis (control over emotions, though I've never heard it called that).

And then I need a Memory of Safety, just some concrete thing that Caleb is running (Running) toward. I think Caleb remembers a hand on his shoulder, firm, heavy, comforting. Dad? Maybe, but he doesn't know.

That's basically it! Caleb is average height, average build (maybe a little on the skinny side since I'm sure he got sent to solitary without supper more than once). Hair is brown and getting shaggy because now he doesn't have to buzz it. Chews his nails, his right hand tends to flap when he gets mad or excited. 

Movie #888: The Fog

The Fog is a horror movie directed by John Carpenter and starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Leigh Curtis, Tom Atkins, Janet Leigh, Hal Holbrook, John Houseman, Ty Mitchell, and Charles Cypher.

We open with a spooky sea captain type (Houseman) telling a story about a shipwreck 100 years ago in the seaside town of Antonio Bay. The town is about to celebrate its centennial, all set to the sultry voice of the local DJ, Stevie (Barbeau). But that night, at the stroke of midnight, weird shit starts to happen - windows break, electronics go haywire, and a mysterious fog bank rolls over a boat out on the water. Oh, and mysterious, blade-wielding figures slaughter the three dudes on the boat. 

We learn the truth pretty quickly - the boat the wrecked on the shore 100 years ago was deliberately lured into wrecking there, because the founders of the town wanted their gold but didn't want them to establish their leper colony north of town (I mean, there's NIMBY and then there's this, am I right?). The town drunk priest, Malone (Holbrook) finds his grandfather's journal stuck in a hollow in the church, which explains most of this. Meanwhile, the fog returns that night and anyone caught in it gets attacked by the ghost pirates (I mean, we say "ghost" but they're totally physical and will stab you). 

I don't think I'd ever seen The Fog before. I know I've seen the god-awful remake with Tom Welling and Selma Blair, but I only watched that because DeRay Davis was in it and he referred to it in his stand-up and I wanted to check it out (that's not relevant here, though). Anyway, this one is really good. I am, of course, a sucker for Chill-esque horror plots, and here we have a few of the citizens of the town gradually learning what happened and finding a way to banish the pirates. 

What I really like about it, though, is the decentralized approach to storytelling it's taking. We're seeing a bunch of parallel tracks come together - Frankie narrating everything with a kind of cool distance, but then freaking the fuck out as the fog approaches her house and son (Mitchell - the son, not the house). Nick (Atkins) and the hitchhiker (Curtis) that he randomly picks up wind up becoming our kind of point people, driving all around the town try to prevent more grisly murder, while the centennial celebration is going on and a whole crowd of people are blissfully unaware. 

All in all, it's a solid ghost/horror movie and, in typical Carpenter fashion, it was not appreciated in its time. Much like the leper ship, I guess?

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: High, I think?

Next up: Ginger Snaps 

Character Creation: The Means of Magick

Like the means of production, you see.

The Game: The Means of Magick
The Publisher: Wannabe Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I wasn't kidding, actually. This game is an urban fantasy sort of thing that has us in the post-Industrial Revolution, except that said revolution involved Magick. There are several megacorps that basically run everything, including Presto! (which is basically magickal Amazon). I especially like the FAI, where are AIs that have physical bodies and sort of went rogue, but live in the wilderness and obey strange bits of their programming (like, say, having to count every grain of wheat scattered in front of them. They're robo-faeries, basically). 

I'm iffy on the system, though. It has you succeeding on all of your actions but marking stress every time, and once you're out of stress, shit breaks. It feels like it would give the GM a lot of control over which parts of an adventure a player would succeed at, without any of the tension that comes from the possibility of failure. But then again, I do like "ticking clock" kinds of systems, and as always, the true test of a system is at the table. 

So let's make a character and see where we land. 

Step One: Choose Your Background. There are a bunch of examples listed, though it wouldn't be hard to make one up. I don't think they mean anything mechanically, but they're good jumping-off points. Let's see here.

I like NDA breaker. Basically I know something about Normal Corp (they develop drugs and other magi-tech, lots of shell companies; basically they're magical Disney or Google, I think) and they would rather I didn't know. I'm given three questions to answer:

What do you know about Normal Corp? Let's say my character knows about "The Bubble." It's a complicated shell game of dummies corps, risky investments, and loans propping up loans that, if poked in the right way, would hit the bottom line pretty hard. The Bubble was the brainchild of some magickal accountant and it's meant to bring about amazing profits in a year or two, but right now it's pretty fragile. My character found it (or maybe just worked it out based on the figures), and Normal Corp figures it's probably better just to shoot me and call it good.

Feels like I need a name at this point. Let's call him Elijah Scanlon ("Eli" is fine).  

What did you leave behind when you escaped? My own financial schemes. My character was a stats guy and had come up with something like the Bubble himself, so it's really not fair that this is going to get him killed. He left behind the complicated mesh of finances he was planning to present so, insult to injury, he can't even use it himself or sell it to Presto! or whatever. 

Who else did you tell? My guy was having drinks the night before he presented this to Normal Corp and he got a little sloshed and told everybody. OK, maybe not everybody, but like, at least a dozen people who were in that pub. Some of them were Normal Corp employees. Some of them were probably corporate militia. (There has been the occasional second thought.)

Step Two: Choose an Archetype. These do have mechanical effects. There are a bunch of examples; let's see if Eli fits any of them or if I have to make something up. There's no "financier" or even "finance bro" Archetype, but I like "finance bro" so I think I'll try and make that work. I'd need a Special Trait, a Stress Break, and a Narrative Flaw.

Special Trait is a little mechanical tweak that makes me excel. Actually, is money, like, a Thing in this game? It seems like it should be. And indeed it is! Wealth is a whole subsystem. So let's say Eli manages his money well and has accounts in hard-to-find places. We'll say his Special Trait is that given a few days to make calls and move money around, he can make a moderate Wealth purchase regardless of his actual Wealth rating at the time.

Stress Break happens when Stress hits 0. They're pretty potent, but I don't have a good enough sense of the system to figure one out. I think I'll steal the one from the Influencer Archetype: If you stress break during transactional dialog, reset to half your Stress. You can continue the dialog, starting back at d4. 

Narrative Flaw is easy: Hubris. Eli is good with money, and he thinks that makes him more valuable than it does.

Step Three: Skills. I get three; looks like they're binary. I also get a Learned Skill (something I'm assumed to be working on "off camera" and an Opportunity Skill (something I want to learn; when I have a chance to do it "on camera," I add the Skill). 

Well, I know I want Knowledge (Finance), and I probably should have Investigation, too. 

Man, I hate these Skills. You've got stuff like "Feint" and "Juke," but also "Give 'em the Chair!" C'mon, pick a tone, pick a level of granularity. Argh. Anyway, I'll take Dodge as my third Skill. For my learned Skill, I'll take Athletics, and for Opportunity, I'll take Balance. 

Step Four: Calculate your Stats! These better not change later! They won't, looks like. I get a dot in the Finesse pyramid and two in the Willpower pyramid, assuming I'm right in thinking that I just get these from how many Skills I have. That gives me modifiers for each Stat (+1 as a base, and then another +1 for each row I have dots in, so I have +2 in Finesse and Willpower). Speed, Concentration, and Stress are all figured using combinations of these, and they're on the sheet, so yay!

And that's really it! Eli is on the run but hasn't really figured that out yet. I think the first session would involve Normal Corp coming to have a "chat" with him, and him developing the Balance Skill as he Neo's his way along a ledge or something. 

Eli is a pretty nondescript white guy. Dark hair, brown eyes, on the skinny side (he prefers to think of himself as "lean"). 

(Notice I didn't do anything with the actual magick system, because it's never mentioned in chargen so I couldn't be bothered.)

Movie #887: The Doctor & The Devils

The Doctor & The Devils is a 1985 thriller/drama kind of thing starring Timothy Dalton, Jonathan Pryce, Stephen Rea, Julian Sands, Twiggy, Phyllis Logan, and Nicola McAuliffe. 

In the late 19th century, one Doctor Rock (Dalton) believes that science must progress by any means necessary. Since the laws of the time prevent him from getting his hands on medical cadavers (he's only allowed to use hanged criminals, and they don't drop in that often), he pays people to dig up dead bodies. The fresher, the better, no one gets hurt. 

(You can probably see the problem here.)

A couple of local lowlives, Broom (Rea) and Fallon (Pryce) catch wind of this scheme, and very quickly realize that they get paid more money for less work if they just murder people, rather than do all the labor of digging. Meanwhile, Dr. Rock's reputation steadily declines because not only is it painfully obvious what's happening to anyone paying attention, he openly says that the law is dumb and following it is dumb. 

Eventually, Fallon goes truly off the deep end and kills a woman named Alice (McAuliffe) that Rock actually knows (he fixed her brother's broken leg (Philip Davis - the brother, not the leg)), which causes kind of a crisis of conscience for him. His assistant Dr. Murray (Sands) gets to be all heroic and rush in to stop Fallon murdering Alice's friend Jenny (Twiggy), with whom Murray has fallen in love. Broom turns on Fallon and rats him and Rock out to the authorities, Fallon is hanged, Rock isn't charged because that would embarrass rich people, all is right with the world. Kind of.

Obviously this is a cinematic version of the Burke & Hare story, and the movie has some interesting trivia behind its creation. It's based on a screenplay written by Dylan Thomas (as in, "do not go gentle into that good night"), but wasn't produced until thirty years after he died. One of the producers was Mel freaking Brooks, and the director was Freddie Francis, who I only knew because he directed some horror films for Hammer but is also a celebrated (and Oscar-winning) cinematographer.

But that's all very interesting - what about this movie? It's not bad. The performances are what make it, Jonathan Pryce chewing scenery and Stephen Rea being relatively restrained as a counterpoint. Twiggy was an odd choice for the pragmatic, somewhat cynical prostitute role, but I think she does OK. Julian Sands is perfect as the young hero (I of course know him from Warlock, so it's weird to see him play the hero), and Timothy Dalton goes from self-righteous to charming seamlessly.

The pacing is a little weird, and the script leaves some guns unfired that make me a little sad. Like, Dr. Rock's wife Elizabeth (Logan) is a medical illustrator and is shunned by polite society because she draws anatomy (shock, horror, clutch pearls). I'd have loved to know more about her and their marriage and how she copes with being ostracized for her husband's work, not to mention where she learned to art so well, but she just kind of gets a couple of scenes to smooch her hubby and not much else. 

It's by no means a bad or boring movie, but there are more interesting adaptations of the events.

My Grade: C
Rewatch Value: Medium-low

Next up: The Fog 

Super Cortex What If Giant-Sized First Issue!

That's a rather jumbled title, I grant. 

Our next installment in Magnus' Multiversal Journey takes us into the Marvel Cinematic Universe! A little more fan-fic'y than I usually roll, but it's a world that all the players are familiar with. The original intent was to use the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game (which I've run before), but then I read Cortex Prime and decided to basically reverse engineer MHR using that. That allowed for some little tweaks, stuff like Crisis Pools and adding a new form of stress (Dimensional), stuff like that.  

So, in (very) brief: Earth 10763 is a spinoff of What If...Iron Man Crashed Into the Grandmaster (Magnus basically branches any reality he winds up in). Tony Stark didn't fall out of the wormhole after the Battle of New York, and so things progressed from there: No Tony means no ULTRON, no ULTRON means no destruction of Sokovia City and therefore Zemo never lost his family, so no Sokovia Accords. SHIELD still fell, Dormammu still nearly came to Earth but was stopped by Dr. Strange, there's a lot more work and "what-if"-ing that went into this but I'm not typing it all out. No Thanos, no Blip, that's potentially important. 

We saw Magnus the Magnificent arrive in New York last time. He drops down to street level to get a frappuccino, while his new acquaintance Spider-Man swings off following the sound of emergency vehicles. But let's rewind a little.

On the this particular day, an unassuming truck is heading across New York from Avengers Tower (still the base of the titular team; no ULTRON, so it was never destroyed, and the compound upstate was never refitted into the new base) to LaGuardia Airport. Driving the truck is one Maria Hill, former second-in-command to Nick Fury, now effectively the director of what remains of SHIELD (Agents of SHIELD isn't canon, fight me). Riding with her is a young agent named Ingrid, and a car behind the truck contains several more agents. Everyone is on edge - in the back of that truck, imprisoned in a transparent, cube-shaped cell with his arms immobilized, is James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, the infamous Winter Soldier.

(Side note: Bucky escaped into the world after the fall of SHIELD, but in this universe was never drawn out of hiding by the assassination of King T'Chaka, since that never happened. Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson tracked him down some time ago, and they and the Avengers have been working on breaking his brainwashing ever since. It's...going OK, but no one's ready for him to be free just yet, least of all Bucky.)

The truck stops at a red light, and the back doors open. Bucky sees a figure wearing an army coat and a hat pulled down low slip in and shut the doors behind them. The figure puts a small, round device on the door and taps a button, and the restraints holding him in place snap open. 

"What's this?"

The figure taps the device. "Damn. It was supposed to open the doors, too." The person pulls off the cap to reveal a cascade of red hair - Bucky recognizes this persona as Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. 

(Side note: The Sokovia Accords never happened, so Natasha never went on the run. She's still an active Avenger. This is, shall we say, a strange turn of events.)

"What's going on?" Bucky asks.

Nat glances behind her. "I don't have a lot of time to explain. We need your help."

"This is bad?"

"Potentially really bad." 

Bucky nods, stands up, squares his hips, and punches the door with his metal arm. The door buckles, the glass spiderwebs, the whole truck shakes...

Up in the cab, Maria and Ingrid feel the shaking. They glance at the monitor that displays the back of the truck, but it just shows Bucky locked in his cell. "Right," mutters Maria. "Pull over."

Ingrid complies, and Maria gets out, signalling to the other agents to spread out ("Copy."). Inside the truck, Natasha gets the device working and it opens the doors, freeing Bucky. Maria opens the back doors of the truck. "Oh, come on."

Nat smiles. "Sorry, Maria." Maria draws her taser rod and signals her agents to get In Position (d6). "Stand down," she says. "And we'll figure this out."

Natasha hesitates, probably not because she so much concerned about beating Maria and her agents in a fight but because she doesn't want to. "OK," she says, but not to Maria.

A shot rings out from high above them, and one of the agents collapses in pain. A voice over Natasha's comms speaks in a Russian accent: "Come on, let's get out of here. Is boring."

At this precise moment, Spider-Man swings into the scene! He sizes up the situation quickly, and all he sees is a bunch of people pointing guns at Black Widow, whom he knows as an Avenger! He deftly fires webs at the agents, yanking guns out of their hands (Disarmed d12). Maria wheels around ("the hell?") and Natasha fires a widow's bite at her. She stumbles (Shocked), and Bucky, not at all wishing to escalate this already tense situation, starts to head into an alley to disappear.

Maria speaks into her comms: "Ingrid!" Ingrid slides out of the passenger seat and fires a shot at Bucky. It's not a bullet (PG-13!), but a non-lethal round. It doesn't much matter, because he blocks the shot with his arm, but he's been effectively stopped from leaving.

At this point, Magnus wanders around the corner, finishing his coffee. He glances up and sees Spider-Man yanking guns out of the hands of dudes in blue-black uniforms who are menacing a guy with a metal arm, and chooses a side very quicky (from Magnus' perspective, it was less than an hour ago that a bunch of uniformed thugs were threatening his friends, so he's not well-disposed to trigger-happy LEOs right now). He teleports into the alley behind Ingrid and whips out a huge magnet from his hat, yanking the gun right out of her hand. 

Ingrid turns and sees him, and her eyes get wide (and maybe glow red, just for a second?). She rushes him, trying to pull off that signature Widow move where she wraps her legs around his neck and puts him on the ground, but Magnus is braced for it. He rolls with the hit and slams her on her back.

Spidey flips over and lands on the truck, and yells down to Natasha. "Hey, is tall, dark, and scary with you? You want me to get him out of here?"

"Yes please!," she replies, and Spider-Man fires a web, yanking Bucky into the arm by his arm. The two of them swing away - Maria is still zapped, the agents are in disarray, and Ingrid is preoccupied with standing up. Natasha goes to leave, and Maria pulls herself up and hits her with a taser rod. "No you don't!"

A shot rings out and something whacks Maria in the neck. She drops, ears ringing, and Natasha jogs off down the street. Once she's out of sight, she's gone. Magnus, noting that the action seems to be about done, tosses down a smoke bomb and teleports away, leaving Maria feeling a little humiliated and more than a little confused.

On a rooftop a few blocks away, Spider-Man lands and drops Bucky off. "That was crazy! What's going on?" Bucky shrugs. 

A woman pulls herself over the edge of the building. She's wearing a cool vest with a lot of pockets and sports short, dyed-blonde hair. A moment later, a door opens and Natasha emerges, a little out of breath. "You're out of shape," says the blond woman. 

"Screw you," pants Natasha. "Stairs." 

Magnus steps out from around a corner and tosses Nat a bottle of water. "Here you go." 

"Where'd you come from?" Magnus doesn't bother trying to answer that one. Bucky takes all of this in stride. Spidey waves. 

"You know him?" asks Natasha. 

"We just met," says Spidey. "He was falling, I caught him."

 "OK," says Natasha. She opens the water. "This is just water, right?"

"As long as H2 and O make water in this universe, yup." 

"Huh?"

"You are like a magician?" asks the blond woman. "You have a rabbit in the hat?"

"Yeah," says Magnus. "I have lots of things in here, it's a pocket dimension." He pulls a baseball bat out of the hat.

"That's cool," she says. "You're like the...strange doctor? Except he has better cape."

"His cape flies," adds Spidey.

"Yes! I don't know how that works."

"What am I doing here?" Bucky asks.

"Right," says Nat. "So here's the thing. You got your brainwashing from HYDRA, I got mine from the Red Room. A couple years ago, my sister," she nods to the blond woman "and I took the whole thing down, and since then we've been trying to free the other Widows. They're embedded all over the world, finding them took some time." She pauses to drink. "But now the brainwashing has gotten...stronger. Weirder. Our stuff to free them isn't working."

"You think it's HYDRA-related?"

"Not necessarily, but the HYDRA stuff is different, might give us a road map to breaking it. I heard a rumor about a facility in Siberia?"

Bucky frowns. "Yeah." 

"So it's not ideal, but we need your help, and we need to keep this unofficial for now."

"That why all this," adds Yelena.

"OK, sure." 

Natasha looks at Magnus and Spidey. "You guys probably just broke a bunch of laws, and I can't ask you to help out, but-"

"Eh, laws," says Magnus. "I'm in."

"Yeah, me too!" says Spidey. "I mean, I can help."  

 Meanwhile, back at the truck, Maria is getting bandaged up a little. "What the hell," she mutters. She glances behind her and sees Ingrid staring into the alley, and hears her murmuring to herself. "You OK?"

Ingrid snaps out of it. "Yeah. Sorry. Might have gotten hit harder than I thought. What do you want me to do?"

"Call central, tell them what's happening, we might need more backup."

"Got it."

Ingrid gets in the cab, and Maria notices that while she's picked up the radio and is talking, she hasn't depressed the button, and she's staring at the rear-view. Maria opens the door and Ingrid turns her head, and Maria sees her eyes glow red, just for a moment, leaving a trace of light...

"Yeah, nope." She tases her, and motions to the other agents. "She's compromised. I don't know how, but we're gonna keep her in custody for now." And then Maria hears glass breaking and crunching noises. A few blocks over, she sees a building suddenly develop furrows, as though something long and cylindrical was smashing into it. "Now what?"

On top of the building, the others are talking about disguises. Bucky asks if they can grab something to eat on the way to the airport. "Sure," says Yelena. "There's a great shwarma place right down the road."

And then the edge of the building crumbles, and something lets out a roar, something like a combination of a lion, a loud hiss, and an elephant's trumpet - but they can't see anything.

"Invisible chimera," says Magnus. "That's new." 

Movie #886: Cockneys vs. Zombies

Cockneys vs. Zombies is a horror comedy starring Rasmus Hardiker, Harry Treadaway, Alan Ford, Honor Blackman, Ashley Thomas, Michelle Ryan, Jack Doolan, Georgia King, and Tony Gardner. The premise is pretty much right there in the title.

So! It's a zombie movie set in the East End of London. While doing some excavating in preparation for some kind of building project (which ultimately is going to result in destroying an elder care home, which is important to the plot), a couple of workers (Gary Beadle and Finlay Robinson, I think) crack open a tomb sealed in 1666 and unleash the zombie plague! 

(Side note: This kind of hints at a more supernatural origin to zombies than we usually see in these movies, but it never really goes anywhere and it doesn't need to. I just thought it was kind of a cool start to the whole thing.)

Anyway, as the plague spreads, a pair of brothers, Terry (Hardiker) and Andy (Treadaway) are embarking upon a desperate plan to save their grandad Ray's (Ford) care home by robbing a bank. They recruit their idiot friend Davey (Doolan), their batshit insane acquaintance Mickey (Thomas), and their kick-ass cousin Katie (Ryan), take the bank, grab a bunch of cash, and get waylaid by the police...just as the Rise happens, and before they know what's going on they're trapped in an industrial yard with two hostages (King and Garnder).

Plot-wise, it's a fairly standard zombie movie. The zombies provide an obstacle that traps people in places so they can conflict with each other, though once Mickey dies the interpersonal conflict largely dies down and it really is about getting to Ray and saving him and the handful of other old folks that haven't been eaten. The gore and violence are nicely done, I'm sure some of it is CGI but none of it is egregious, and the humor mostly lands. The performances are fun, if a little shallow. Ray and Katie are far and away the most interesting characters, and I'm glad Mickey doesn't stick around to be the dick-in-residence for any longer than he does.

It's a little uneven - we get flashbacks establishing character traits for some folks (the brothers, Ray, Mickey, Davey) but not others (especially Katie, who is super-competent and I'd really love to know why she's such an amazing shot, because she takes headshots like it's nothing). Davey kinda goes out like a chump, shot by accident when one of the hostages gets tackled by zombies. They use the "there are zombies behind you." "Do you think I'm stupid?" CHOMP gag a little too often. But these are minor offenses, and it's exactly what it sets out to be - a fun horror comedy about the folks of East End getting overrun by zombies and fighting back to take care of each other, and that's something I can always get behind.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: The Doctor & The Devils 

Character Creation: Welcome to Slaughterville RPG

Whenever we've playing the board game, we've wound up say /slæftɚvɪl/ ("slaffterville"), because you can't have slaughter without laughter!

The Game: Welcome to Slaughterville: The Roleplaying Game
The Publisher: Laughing Rogue 
Degree of Familiarity: None 
Books Required: Just the one

So, as mentioned, this was a board game first. I've played it, it wasn't really anything special. But now it's an RPG, using the Year Zero Engine! And it's...still nothing special.

The basic premise is that you're in the titular town, which occupies a weird liminal space and prevents anyone from leaving it. It's the town where the horror movies happen, where all the monsters live, which is actually kind of a cool premise - you're trapped in the meta-space where the horror stories happen, and if you wanted to do something like Tales From the Crypt or Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, that would be a fantastic framing device. But the book never really gets into that, it just tries to be spooky without grounding the horror in anything understandable or interesting, and as any connoisseur of horror will tell you, horror without characters you can relate to is just brain-popcorn, at best. 

And, of course, this game runs up against the problem that all horror RPGs do for me: Would I ever choose to run this over one of the games I really like? And, like, not really. But let's make a character and see where we end up!

Let's assume we'd be playing through the introductory scenario, which is your basic "slasher hunts the camp counselors" thing. PCs are the counselors, but literally nothing else about them is established. Let's assume they're young adults (I had counselors at summer camps that ranged from late teens to early 40s, though it would be much more in-genre for them all to be 20-somethings). 

(Side note: There is no table of contents, the index is crap, and the PDF isn't bookmarked. Sigh.)

First thing we do is pick an Archetype. There are 10 to choose from, I don't have a concept, so let's just roll a d10 and pick one that way. A roll of 1 gives me...The Jock. OK, sure. There is...no spot to write this on the character sheet. Not off to a strong start, here, guys.

My character does not look like this

Well, you know what, I went to soccer camp as a teen, and a lot of the counselors were European, so let's assume my character is English and he's on a minor-league football team in the UK, and is here working after an injury. His name is Hayden Raleigh. 

Attributes! These are rated like grades, A to D. I start with C in all four of them and then I get three increases. I can also drop one to D to get another such increase. But I think I want Hayden to be relatively competent across the board, so let's go B in everything except Agility (the injury, you see). 

Health is determined by translated the grades into die types (A = d12 and so on down), summing the die types of Strength and Agility, and dividing the sum by four. In my case, 5 (we round up).

Nerve works the same way with Wits and Empathy, so also 5. 

Stress starts at 0, but it's not on the sheet, so it can't be that important.

Skills are rated the same way as Attributes, and I get 6 of them (one B, two C, three D). Let's take...Stamina as my B, Mobility and Force as my Cs, and Observation, Insight, and Persuasion as my Ds.

I get one Specialty. My Archetype suggests Hard Hitter, but that's just a suggestion. And indeed, it's not appropriate for Hayden. I'll take Fast Thinking (if I go first, I get a +1 to my first skill test).

Gear! Hayden has a whistle, some shinguards, and a pair of cleats. His Signature Item is his Arsenal hoodie (my friend Morgan is a big Arsenal fan, see). 

Hayden is tall, red-blond hair, blue eyes, still walks with a slight limp but it's improving. He's finding he's developing an American accent and he hates it. He's still trying to live down referring to himself as a "gooner." 

Movie #885: The Blob (1988)

The Blob is an extremely 80s horror movie and remake of the 1958 classic, starring Kevin Dillon, Shawnee Smith, Donovan Leitch, Jr., Del Close, Candy Clark, Jeffrey DeMunn, Joe Seneca, Paul McCrane, and Billy Beck.

So we start off about the same way: meteor crashes to Earth, is found by old man (Beck) who makes the mistake of poking it with a stick. It gets on his hand and starts eating him, and he's discovered by (that is, struck by the car of) a pair of nice, clean-cut kids on a date: Meg (Smith) and Paul (Leitch Jr). Also in tow is town delinquent Brian Flagg (Dillon), who was trying to get hold of the hold man to help him. They all bring him to the hospital, where the Blob eats the old guy, and then - twist! - eats Paul (oh, sorry, did you think you were the protagonist?).

From there, it's basically the same plot but with a bigger budget and with 80s sensibilities. In the original, the Blob actually is an alien. Here, it's a viral weapon experiment mutated by cosmic rays. The military shows up to "contain" it, led by a kindly old Dr. Meddows (Seneca), but it turns out they want the Blob alive and they're happy to sacrifice the town to get that. But the Blob's motives (eat, blorp) and its weakness (cold) and the resolution (freeze that sumbitch) are the same, it's just that with advances in technology and a bigger budget, you can have the Blob extended pseudopods to grab people and eat them as it schlorps around. 

The remake is more explicitly a horror movie, too. Not just in gore; obviously between the changes in technology and sensibilities, you get to see more people getting dissolved and there are more "oh, shit" kinds of moments (a standout is poor Fran (Clark) trying desperately to call the sheriff (DeMunn) while in a phone booth as the Blob smashes its way on, only to glance over and see his corpse being eaten). But actually one of the most affecting sequences in the movie is the opening titles, as the camera shows us the town completely abandoned, streets empty, a lone cat wandering down the road...and then we pan over and see it's because everyone is at the high school football game. 

The acting is overwrought and hammy; Shawnee Smith eventually landed in the Saw franchise for a reason. Jeffrey DeMunn brings some much-needed kindness and rationality to the movie for the few scene he's in, and the casting of Joe Seneca for the evil Dr. Meddows was a nice touch because he brings this very avuncular vibe and then turns on a dime. 

I was really enjoying the movie, and it occurred to me later that I hadn't seen a new (to me), fun, horror movie in a while. I've seen some really great ones in the last few years, but for the most part they've all been very serious (Sinners, Weapons, etc.) and I needed some camp in my horror, I think. 

My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: High, I think

Next up: Cockneys vs. Zombies 

Character Creation: Rust & Redemption

Figure we're about due for an apocalypse.

The Game: Rust & Redemption
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: Getting more conversant with the Cypher system all the time, and I'm pretty hip to post-apocalypse settings
Books Required: Rust & Redemption and the Cypher System core

This is one of these genre sourcebooks for Cypher, like The Stars are Fire and We Are All Made Here. As with those other books, it presents an examination of the genre (in this case post-apocalypse) and gives us some assumptions of how that genre works, what set pieces you might see, different permutations, and rules for how it would work at the table. As usual, I read this book and I think "I could totally run this", which is the sign of a well-done game book.

(Side note: I lurk on the RPG reddit a lot and I often see people bag on the Cypher system and I don't get it. I find it actually pretty intuitive and it works just fine at the table; been running Tidal Blades for a few months now and it's been a lot of fun. But whatever, people are strange.)

There's a convenient setting detailed in the book called The Radio Quiet Zone. Basically, internet and wifi technology was a little more advanced in this world, the Y2K bug was a real problem - maybe? Actually the problem was that the government sent out AI "Fixkits" the morning of Y2K and they all gained sentience. Each one decided it was going to be the only one of its kind, and a bunch of different apocalypses kind of cascaded. Now it's 20 years later, the Quiet Zone is a community with its own stuff going on, including some people who fell into a coma on the night it all went down and are just starting to wake up and some psionic folks and so on.

I didn't get too far into the weeds on the particulars of this setting, because I kinda came up with a concept as I was reading it. There are bands of raiders that sometimes hit the Quiet Zone and the outlying farms. I'm gonna make someone who was part of a raiding party, and then turned over a new leaf. Let's call him Lenny McGrath.

I already know Lenny's focus, that'll be Raids (it's in the R&R book). I think I'll keep it simple and say his type is fighter. But what of descriptor? If focus didn't change when he gave up his old life, descriptor probably did. Ooh, let's take Hopeful (also from the R&R book).

So, Lenny was about 15 when the apocalypse happened, meaning he was in high school. He was at a New Year's Eve party with some buds when the shit went down, and a lot of people died in the ensuing weeks. But Lenny and his friends helped each other through trauma, helped each other survive, and gradually they got down to the Quiet Zone. But by that time, membership in the gang had changed, some of his friends had died, some new folks had joined, and it had become a matter of what you could take rather than what you could find. 

And then they were getting ready to raid a farm, and another band of raiders found them first. They had guns, but these guys had bigger ones and weren't interested in new members. They shot Lenny's group (including Lenny) and dumped him on the side of the road, assuming he'd died off. The kids of the farmer they'd been planning on raiding came along the next morning and found him bleeding, took him back to the farm, and patched him up. It took a while for Lenny to recover, but after he did, he felt...good? Like, watching people die was nothing new, but seeing kindness to strangers was really uncommon. It's given Lenny a lot to think about.

Right, good, on we go! As a fighter ("warrior," actually, but whatever) I get 10 Might, 10 Speed, and 8 Intellect, and then 6 more points to throw around. I'm gonna just distribute them evenly, leaving me with 12, 12, 10.

I get Edge 1 in either Might or Speed. I think Might makes right more sense. Two cyphers at a time, sure. Practiced with all types of weapons, sure. And then I get four warrior abilities. Let's see now.

Well, Improved Edge is not a bad idea, so I can take a point in Speed Edge. Maybe it's just been because I've been replaying XCOM-2 lately, but I think Overwatch is a good idea. I'll take Physical Skills and be trained in running and climbing. And then as much as I like Swipe, I think Trained Without Armor is more realistic for Lenny.

Cool, so, over to Hopeful. I get +4 to Intellect, holy shit. I'm trained in Intellect Defense. I can shrug off disappointment, meaning that I get a free level of Effort when I try something (noncombat) after I fail (which usually means that I break even, since it normally requires that I apply Effort to try again, but that's still pretty good). 

But, nothing's all sunshine and roses. I'm hindered in Might Defense (oof) and in all movement tasks (double oof). Let's assume that's a result of getting shot.

And, focus! I get a tattoo that identifies me as a raider, probably something that my boys and I got in the years following the collapse. Let's say it's a Spartan symbol (the "Spartans" was our mascot in high school) on my right shoulder. 

I get Ignore the Pain and Wilderness Life, which are...? I ignore impaired and treat debilitated as if it were impaired, that's cool. And then Wilderness Life means I'm trained in two of a few skills. Hmm. I could take swimming and break even. Nah, I'll take identifying plants and creatures, and navigation.

And that's it, kids. Lenny is now about 35. He's got blue eyes and brown hair, but he buzzes his head whenever he can. The Spartan tat is his only one (he got sick after he got it; might have been the ink, but he's not taking chances). He's muscular, but he's lost some weight and muscle mass since getting shot and he gets winded easily. He looks like a meathead, but Lenny was actually a straight-A student in high school and he's pretty sharp, it's just that his education stopped at 15 and everything else has been, shall we say, practical. 

Pugmire: The Ten Castles of Houndton

Once again, we venture into the mythical lands of Pugmire. Here's last time, though this is a new adventure.

It's been some time since the Pioneers liberated the iron mine near Ellendonk from the treacherous Doberman family. There have been political rumblings from the Dobermans, but it hasn't directly impacted the characters. Peppa Papillon stayed up in that part of the kingdom to help manage the burgeoning pilgrimage site. Gelert Sausagedog has been carousing and telling stories about his exploits and letting people buy him drinks. Boomer Pitbull has been continue his fitness regimens, and Dire Newfoundland has acquired a set of heavy armor from the Pioneers. Petunia Pibble has helped Biva Affenpinscher to record all their adventures and keep the archives up to date.

On this particular day, the Pioneers all meet up at the Guild Hall for lunch, and Bivi tells them he has an interesting mission for them. Apparently around Houndton, an earthquake uncovered some ancient ruins. That by itself is interesting, but he mentions that there's an estate down there owned by one Max Pitbull, and asks if he's any relation to Boomer.

(As it happens, Max Pitbull and his estate were mentioned way back here.) 

The Pioneers make their preparations. Sausagedog hits the books and learns a little about Houndton. A group of Hound families tried to split off from Pugmire and form their own kingdom, and actually did manage for a while. There was economic and political strife between the two kingdoms (though never open conflict) for some years, but then Queen Carmella Papillon I made a deal with Cyrus Transylvania-Hound and Houndton became a protectorate of Pugmire. The ruler of Houndton took on the title of Lord Mayor, and thus is has been ever since. 

The area is known for stone mining, and ten families have built castles (of varying size) around Houndton. Those are: Transylvania, Beagle, Basset, Afghan, Bloodhound, Dachshund, Wolfhound, Foxhound, Greyhound, and Ridgeback. (There's a drinking song called "The Ten Castles of Houndton," with a verse for each one complete with hand motions. It's rare to get to the last verse, Ridgeback, because you're usually too drunk by then.)

The Pioneers set off, and the journey south is largely uneventful. Unlike the road north, this one is much better traveled, and they pass and are passed by wagons going to and from Pugmire. A couple of days later, they arrive at a manor house surrounded by a short stone wall and closed off by an iron gate. The crest of House Pitbull adorns the wall. This, then, must be Max Pitbull's estate.

The Pioneers decide they have to call, so they ring the bell. A door opens a moment later, and a large, muscular dog emerges. He immediately lights up upon seeing Boomer, and introduces himself as Harley Pitbull. The Pioneers introduce themselves, and Harley lets them in - they were just about to have dinner!

Harley shows them in and has them leave their weapons and armor in the cloakroom. They note that there are several sets of armor already there, with little plaques indicating who they belong to: Harley, Davidson, Rizza, and Rumble. An ornate set of armor has the place of honor in the room. It's polished and well-kept, but hasn't been used in a while. Its plaque says "Lord Max." 

The dogs enter a dining room with a long table that would easily seat thirty, but at present, only five dogs sit around it. The one sitting at the head of the table is old, gray of fur, and wearing fancy robes. This must be Max Pitbull. The others sit around him, and the characters join, just as a group of rats bring out trays of food - whole turkeys, a big slab of beef, and a big tray of greens (pit bulls, as anyone who owns one can tell you, are omnivores and love them some plants). 

The party eats heartily. Dire and Boomer both pack away food and are delighted to see it get replaced; the rats bring more turkey. The Pioneers relate some of their adventures and discover that Max is something of a bigot; he's disgusted to hear the Boomer was ever in the Monarchies, but when he hears he was transporting a prisoner he softens to that some. Hearing about the mines and the Dobermans, he laughs and says that the Dobermans once tried to control stone mining here, but they were sent packing by the Hounds. 

The Pioneers also learn that when a new hound becomes Lord Mayor, their castle becomes the political and economic seat of Houndton. That was what ruined the Transylvania family - their castle is up in the mountains and they tried to build a road up there and wound up bankrupting the family. Now no one lives in the castle, and there are spook stories of monsters and ghosts. Max says that sometimes Pioneers have gone up, but never returned (but then, they weren't Pitbulls). 

They ask about the earthquake. None of the Pitbulls saw it, but one of them remembers that supposedly a dog named Arrowak Foxhound did. They've never heard of an earthquake here before, but who knows. 

Peppa eventually has enough of this guy and goes to the kitchen to talk to the rats. They initially freeze when she walks in, but after talking to them a bit they realize they've heard of Sister Peppa - they've heard from rats in Pugmire that she's a Good Dog. Sausagedog leaves the table to snoop, but gets turned around and winds up back in the dining hall. The Pitbulls don't seem to mind much, though.

Peppa learns that the dogs who stay here are Max's grandsons, but he has sons and daughters of his own, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so on. Most of them live in Maxville, a town a little ways off. The rats tend the estate, raise the turkeys, farm the veggies, cook and clean and so forth, and live in a servant's quarters. Peppa goes back to the dinner, but decides to return and visit the rats later.

Harley offers the Pioneers lodging for the night and shows them to their rooms (they each get their own, which is novel). After they settle in, they come back downstairs for drinks, chats, and cards. Harley arm-wrestles both Boomer and Dire and handily beats them. Sausagedog finally does get to snoop, but doesn't find anything untoward - the place is clean and well-maintained, but the finery is all old. Peppa accompanies the rats out to their quarters and listens to the gossip a bit more. 

Turns out that a few grandsons stay with Max all the time, but they rotate out who's doing it. The wives and children stay in Maxville because although Max is obsessed with progeny, he doesn't actually like having pups around, and no one trusts him around the wives. He's also known to decide at a very young age whether a pup has "the eye of the warrior" - no girl ever does, and if there's actually something to it Max has never been able to explain it. The rats have heard rumors that, in years past, pups that didn't have this "eye" were either left to die or outright killed, but that hasn't happened in their memory. But Max fought in the War of Dogs and Cats, and he has been spreading his seed for decades. He has family from Ellendonk to Waterdog Port. 

The dogs stay up with the family for a while, and learn that Harley and Davidson share their father's bigotry (basically, only dogs are worth any time, and of dogs, only Pitbulls or other warriors - they seem to respect Dire more than Petunia, for instance). Rumble is a little more reasonable, and Rizza tells Petunia that he'll walk with the Pioneers to Maxville tomorrow since it's on the way to the earthquake site. He wants to see his kids, anyway.

The night passes uneventfully, except that Peppa gets a little drunk with the rats. In the morning, they all meet up before breakfast and share information. Sausagedog reports that it seems like Max is just an ordinary bigot, rather than a demon worshiper (how boring). Petunia opines that the Nagayaga could do worse than a decaying castle as a hideout, and the Pioneers decide they'll definitely need to investigate. First, though, the earthquake site. 

They have breakfast with the Pitbulls, and then the Pioneers strike out west with Rizza. He's a little more forthright than his cousins, and tells the Pioneers that yes, there was a time when young pups that lacked the "eye of the warrior" were killed in infancy, but that's been years ago. They ask who stands to inherit all this, and Rizza says that when Max finally dies it's going to be a bloodbath - he's never named an heir, and there are literally hundreds of dogs with a claim to the estate. He's not going to bother, though, he's going to take his family and go to Pugmire. 

Boomer muses that he might be related, and Rizza asks who Boomer's mother was. Boomer doesn't know; he was abandoned and left with a family of Sheepdogs outside Pugmire. With that question hanging in the air, the dogs walk over a rise and see Maxville below! 

Rizza howls, and hears three returning howls, and beams. As they approach, three pups run up and hug him. He introduces them: his oldest daughter Jasmine, middle daughter Shale, and young boy Gizza. ("He's a genius," says Rizza proudly.) 

The dogs look around Maxville a bit, but everything seems pretty functional. There are Pitbulls of all ages, and no obvious signs of inbreeding so they're getting new blood from somewhere. They pick up a pack lunch and move on - Rizza tells them to keep walking toward Ridgeback Castle, and then past that towards Dachshund Castle; the ruins are between them.

They move along and see Ridgeback Castle, and have a quick yelled conversation with the guards on the ramparts. They pass that, and see Dachshund Castle in the distance (they ask Sausagedog whether there's any relation, and he insists that there's no relation between him and those stuck-up wieners).

And then they find the churned-up earth and walls sticking out of the ground! A Dachshund is peering into the area, and Petunia goes up and talks to her. She introduces herself as Tizzy Dachshund and is very polite. Petunia asks if they're on anyone's land - that is, do they need to ask anyone's permission to investigate? Tizzy says that if they're going to, the head of the Ridgeback family is a much more reasonable dog than her uncle, the head of the Dachshund family. But, as Dire points out, better to ask forgiveness than permission anyway.

The dogs see what looks like a window or door in a wall half-buried, and Boomer forges ahead...and promptly falls through a weak spot, plummeting into the ruined building below. He lands in what seems to be a cage, and immediately feels a profound sense of shame. He's a Bad Dog, because if he weren't, he wouldn't be in this cage. 

The others climb down (more carefully) and all feel the same sensation. Petunia sniffs for magic and finds nothing evil, but a deep, ancient power suffusing the place. It's bad magic, it's just not Unseen. Dire leans on the bars and they give way, and the dogs walk out into what seems to be a hallway, lined with more cages. They all feel that same sense of shame, of being Bad Dogs, and a deep feeling that if they're here, they will probably never leave.

"Is this a...prison for dogs?" wonders Boomer. Perhaps it is.