Oh my, oh my...

...well, this time I've forgotten this place exists at all. Once in a while I a had an idea that seemed good enough to post it here, albeit the lack of audience. Now it's 1+ years since my last post, which was about Malay Magic, as you can see. I was pretty hyped back then (and am still, albeit not with that frequency). Still "supporting" Mun Kao. Still loving the zines. Other projects... well, let's say they hadn't such a good fate :-(

I guess I would never have looked again at these pages of my failed blogging carreer, if there wasn't Norbert Matausch of old-school-fame (look at his blog Darkwormcolt, good reading there!) and a pandemic going on (purely coincidental), forcing me to stay at home and staring at my pc, waiting for CTs, MRIs and X-Rays that need interpretation. Norbert asked what happened to my little Into the Odd-pocketmod I made years ago! Funny thing is, some guy asked me weeks back if I could share it with him... I guess I deleted the email, so no credits here, mysterious stranger.

Well, the pocketmod "Titan Bound" was not about good content, I fear. It was more of a test how I could design and publish a pocketmod in the most sexiest of ways. For my part, it included a bit too much fiddling around (which I was fond of, back then) and I am pretty sure, there are easier ways or even some kind of office-plugin or shit. But - I like the way I've done it. So, without further ado, the Titan Bound:

As a pocketmod and

As the underlying A7-Dok.

For the procedure these documents went through, see the original post.

Ok, folks, have fun with it and don't judge the content to hard. As I said: I wanted to make a pocketmod back then real bad and also could have published my favorite guacaomole-variants. So, I guess we'll see again in some years!

Bye so long, have fun - and, most important: Stay healthy.

sy F

One sentence reviews - 2015/3

So, some time has passed since I last posted... there should be no month without a post. So before July ends, I'll have some more one sentence reviews for you.

Gaming/Books

• Adventurers - The Dungeon and The Dawn of Tomorrow by GRAmel - not quite as good as expected but for the low price you get some nice add-ons for this lite game.
• Blood of Pangea +Olde House Rules - whoa - so simple and probably a bit flawed (I have yet to playtest it) but a hell of a read and with a small but growing community at G+ - go buy this game.
• Infernal Realms by +Olde House Rules - I love this game the more I read - future releases are a no-brainer.
• Mead & Mayhem by +Thaumiel Nerub - basically a random table for your average bar brawl - one I'll def. use at my next classic-fantasy game, though!
• Dragon Union by +Thaumiel Nerub - really nice collection of house rules for your average OSR-game; superb cover-art!
• Vacant Ritual Assembly Issue #3 by +Clint Krause - one of the best available of gaming fanzines right now!
• Zogonia - Slice of Death, provided by the ever friendly +Thaumiel Nerub - oh, how I love Zogonia - sadly I did already know many of the comics from my long-time Dragon Magazine-consume.

Movies

• Among the Living - interesting and entertaining mix of Stand by My and your average weirdo-slasher Flick - the most "meh" of the french "Terrorkino" so far.
• Deadgirl and Savaged were reviewed already - one good and one, ehm, bad.
• I stopped viewing Hidden in the Woods when I noticed I was looking the badly censored german version - which took around 9 minutes.
• Insidious and Insidious: Chapter 2 - nice "edge-of-your-seat" re-interpretation of the Poltergeist-genre, the second one was a bit underwhelming, though.
• Let Sleeping Corpses Lie - very 70s zombie movie with your standard eco-explanation of the zombie-plague; nice gore.
• Masks - surprisingly effective low-budget (?) italian/german horror-flic in the tradition of Dario Argento/italian Giallo.
• Suspiria - my first Argento - wowzers - colors, music, acting - everything over the top... I was quite entertained.
• Tenebre - my second Argento - more of a standard Thriller, an entertaining one, nonetheless.
• The Abandoned - sometimes things are not enhanced by repitition - this film is uninspired and lame.
• The Conjuring - I should have watched this before watching Insidious 1&2 - this is actually the same thing, only better.
• The Serpent and the Rainbow - A vodoo-classic with a total unecessary over-the-top ending and a very inconveniently positioned nail - well, two actually.

Music

• Brain Drill: Quantum Catastrophe - now we're talking - a bit too fiddly and the drums are more fast then overly complicated but hey - this is solid technical extreme music.
• Job for a Cowboy: Demonocracy - if I only were 15 again - I would have loved this band and album - right now I'm a bit bored.
• Whitechapel: Our Endless War - same thing as with JfaC - I like it but I don't love it.

Week of Gore - Deadgirl

I've been busy lately, so I had no time to work up my week of horror movies.

After a really disappointing start things got better fast...

Deadgirl
Wow, this sounds disgusting! One part Nekromantik, one part The Stink of Flesh, one part "teenage drama/comedy" - let me tell you, the sum is better than the parts of it.

Two friends skip school, get drunk, go on a demolition spree in a near-by abandoned asylum, find a beautiful dead girl in the basement... which turns out to be not so dead at all. One of them is quite fascinated but more of a voyeur, the other one is quite "active" in his fascination and uses the zombie-girl for his own carnal desires. It doesn't take long and things go south...

Let me get this clear: This movie is not a new instant horror-classic. It is not the best in gory effects or splatter. It is not the socially critical movie it could be. It is just a deviant idea presented cineastically appealing. The main cast is solid/good, the make-up is good, the story is simple but interesting enough. The characters are mostly believable (aside from Eric Podner/Wheeler, which is just a bit too whiny and dumb) - they are your average over-sexed, stoned, lewd and scrupulous (male) teenagers; of course, Deadgirl takes this cliché ad absurdum  - it is a horror movie, after all. The end is a bit meh and there are moments you really, really now what's going to happen, but that didn't lessen my fun.

I'll give this movie a 6/10. If you like horror movies or zombie movies in particular and are not totally disgusted by the gist of the film go watch it!

F

I DMed DCC on saturday!

Well, my wife and son are on vacation, so it's time for action! Not only I declare the next days as "Week of Gore" (as I bought a bunch of uncut horror flicks which I'm going to watch the next five days), I had loads of fun DMing a one-shot for my good old friends!

I chose The One Who Watches from Below after reading a good review from +Bryce Lynch. It IS indeed a good adventure. A bit too long for a one-shot, so we cut it off at the end. There were problems (mostly caused by my very analytic players, who would've liked more logical explanations for various gonzo-elements - which there are a lot of in this adventure) but there were minor.

The thing is - it didn't matter how the adventure was. DCC is one of those systems where one only needs to sit and wait for coolness to happen. It started when characters were rolled (we started with a modified funnel - two 0 and two 1st level characters). We used Alternate Occupations. My good old rpg-friend +Christian Lonsing rolled a dwarfen outcast (with a bottle of elven wine), an elven herbalist, an elven vintner, and a dwarfen brewer... Team Alcohol! The others' teams were less distinctive but cool nonetheless. Only non-combat spells were rolled for the elves and wizards (like Detect Magic or Comprehend Language) which all proved useful during various stages of the adventure. Not a single character died (perhaps I did something wrong) - there would've probably some deaths at the end but we cut off at 3/4th of the adventure.

Despite the tons of tables (fumble, crit, spells, spell failure, deity disapproval to name a few) combat and rules-heavy situations went fast - and we only had one rule book (+ some spells copied by a fried).

DCC stays one of the best incarnations of the OSR and I hope I'll be able to play it again soon.

F

Week of Gore - Savaged

So. Wife and kid on vacation. I'm alone at home and tons of movies are waiting to be looked...

Savaged
This sounded interesting... it is advertised as "The Crow" meets "I Spit on Your Grave". No, I'm not into rape and revenge movies, actually I think they are most often dumb; but if there are twists, I'll have a look and decide again.

What do we have? A deaf girl gets kidnapped by sadist-racist morons which brutalize her for days. Then they kill her and dispose her body. So far so disgusting.
But then she is - surprise - found by a native american shaman. He tries to get her back to life with some yadda-yadda around a campfire but things go south - not only her soul but also the soul of a long dead native-american warrior uses the oppurtunity and uses her body as co-driver. So far... so dumb. Then starts the killing-spree. More or less uninspired gut-ripping, throat-slitthing, arrow-shooting. Nothing spectacular, if you're not totally squeamish. Ah, yes, while she finishes the bastards off, she slowly rots (why did the shaman want to bring her back to life when she returns as a zombie? No one knows.)

This could still be good... script, actors, screenplay, effects. But it isn't. The dialogues are more or less stupid, the actors (safe for some scenes) act clunky, the screenplay is mediocre, at best. The effects are bad. The whole movie has some kind of "300" or "Sin City"-filter which seems displaced. The gore-scenes are sometimes unbelievable, sometimes OK, nothing mind-shattering.

Conclusion: Watch it if you have a lot of spare time, spare money, like Amanda Adrienne and are a big fan of occult r&r-movies. Otherwise: Hands-off, I'll give this film a 2/10.

F

One sentence reviews - 2015/2

So, time for more one-sentence-stuff...

Gaming Products

• Black Box Books Tome 1-5 (by +Kirt Dankmyer) - I love, love, love the pocket-mod-format; the content is of various usefulness, the price of <1€ (wedding sale) made it a no-brainer.
• Empire of Dust (by +Clint Krause and Amy Garcia) - a sandbox-y science fiction rpg which I can't really grasp but tickles my fancy nonetheless.
• WhiteBox Omnibus (by +James Spahn) - really good vanilla fantasy add-ons for my favorite retroclone.
• Wonder & Wickedness (by +Brendan S) - wowzers, so simple, so cool - this is a must-buy for any fan of magic systems and variants for your favorite old-school rpg.

Books

• Pages of Pain by Troy Denning - for me one of the best planescape-stories out there, lots of cool characters, a bit on the slow-side, though.
• Verheißung by Jussi-Adler Olsen - solid detective-story, not his best, for fans a must, though.

Movies/Series

• Across the River - advertised as the italian Evil Dead; this should've made me suspicious; better look some other ghost/horror-flick.
• Camp Evil - meh, takes itself way to serious... stick with your favorite slasher movies.
• Deliver Us from Evil - meh, the beginning was so cooool, ends totally lame; skip the last 20-30 minutes.
• Game of Thrones Season Four - what can I say - it's the tv-fantasy gold-standard.
• Halt and Catch Fire - great series, very calm, geeky, and: No zombies.
• Ironman 3 - perhaps I'm the only one, but think #1 is the best; nice effects, though.
• Outlander Season One 2/10 - crap.
• The Punisher and Punisher: Warzone - Punisher One was a waste of time, Warzone was actually really entertaining!
• The Purge and Purge: Anarchy - I had fun, popcorn-wise.
• Walking Dead Season Five 12-16/16 - they should reduce to 10 episodes/season... seemed a bit stretched in the end.

Other

• Platinum Pen Carbon - cheap and really handy ink pen, very similar to the rOtring ArtPen; the ink doesn't smear, though, which is a big plus.

Phew, many movies/series this time... too much radiology-books, so I needed distraction.

The year of getting shit done... turned up to eleven!

2015 slows down a bit...

March '15 passed and no post yet... why? Well, RL pretty much occupies me at the moment - my toddler needs much attention (which I'm happy to give since he continues to become the most awesome person on the planet), my work is very demanding (plus I'm learning for my board certification as a radiolgist), and I'm ill quite often these days - nothing spectacular, only very annoying things like common colds et. al. (probably day-care center/toddler-associated)

This means my year of awesome slows down a bit... but, hey: I will play more 5e soon, pushing my fighter a bit closer to level 4 (and playtest some maneuvers!). I will paint my frickin' 6mm minis and playtest some skirmish systems. I will further my attempts to modify Into the Odd, hopefully playing Into Carcosa.

Funny enough my only contact to gaming these days is Google+, which is really fun and sometimes plain awesome. Unfortunately it is very time consuming! Perhaps I need to take a step back from following social media and focus my sparse free time on more productive tasks.

F

p. s.: Sophias blog travelled through space and time and is now located at http://dieheart.net/. Read it!

One sentence reviews 2015/1

So, the year is young and already had its moments... here are my purchases so far:

Gaming Products

• angelbarracks.co.uk Starter Set (scroll down the page) - When I'm not going insane while trying to paint these, it could be my entry into 6mm wargaming/skirmishing.
• Dungeons & Dragons 5e Player's Handbook - Really good if somewhat verbose successor to our beloved game; worth the 40€.
• 2 Hour Dungeon Crawl - Interesting, a bit on the pricey side, though.*
• A dozen of Vallejo Game Colors - For my 6mm guys... hopefully they evade the fate of my old GW-colors death by dessication.

Books

• Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" - One of the most depressing and futile novels I've read so far - I loved it.
• Cormac McCarthy's "Ein Kind Gottes" (Child of God) - Not as good as "The Road", but after two books I can see a pattern here, Mr. McCarthy - and I like it.
• Joe Haldeman "Camouflage" - Well, one-fifth through the book and It's more like "fifty shades of grey-alien" then the nebula-award-epic-sci-fi-I-hoped-for.

Movies/Series

• Lost Season 4 & 5 - Better then I thought, at least without ads and a week between episodes.
• The Walking Dead Season 5 (11/16) - I'm not sure I like every development, but among the best on TV nonetheless.
• The Purge - A whaky dystopian future makes a mediocre excuse for an mediocre kind of home invasion movie...

Music

• Huss & Hodn Zitate EP - Funky.
• Venetian Snares My So-Called Life - So far detrimentalist was my favorite album by Aaron Funk, MSCL could be the successor...
• Venetian Snares My Love is a Bulldozer - Interesting... lots of singing is going on here, but a true VS-album nonetheless - not for the faint of heart.

*The underlying mechanic is neat, though; you can get the basics for free here.

Overall some good purchases! We'll see what comes next...

So, yesterday I played 5e...

...and damn, it was fun! Only one dm, two players and the mandatory mines of phandelver. We startet at level 2, Sophia played a white dragonborn warlock of the old ones, I played a human fighter (soon to be battle master). We rolled 4d6, drop lowest & arrange, rolling mediocre at best. hp for 2nd level were rolled randomly, again with mediocre results - all in all retro-enough for me.

We jumped right into action; some blah-blurp when handing the cart over, then we went straight to Trazendar Manor (sp.? don't want to spoil myself googling the right name), expecting nothing but a few ruins. We surprised three Redbrand-thugs in the cellar (calling them Redbricks by error), killed two with little effort, and in an act of endless humanity let the third one live (not really knowing what the hell Redbrands are). The idiot went right to their nest, the "Sleeping Giant" and made us officially "personae non gratae" in Phandelin. Meanwhile we went a little bit further down the cellar of the ruin and discovered a crypt with three sarcophagi and three grumpy skeletons; since we weren't expecting a "dungeon", we retreated using the just-triggered pitfall-trap as an undead-proof obstacle. Back in phandelver we dodged the Redbrands and got a little help from a half-elf turnip-farmer called "Darren". After full-resting we tried to convice some of the merchant-folks to assist us in smashing the opressive Redbrands but we fell on deaf ears. Only Ms. Halia from the Miner's Exchange seemed to care, supporting us with some knowledge of a secret tunnel found by some local kiddos. We tried to contact them, but found only the mother, a halfling-famer called Kelin (sp?); she told us what she knew and we headstarted to the tunnel. Some 50ft. into it, we found a giant-cave (with crevasses and shit) and were approached by some psychic entity, which read the thoughts of my scaled-friend but failed on my mind of iron (Int 8, Wis 9...). Nonetheless the beast appeared at the end of the cave, being some kind of cyclops-alien, shooting death rays from its single eye... I kid you not! Well, call it fate but one of those pesky death rays did 13 damage to the dragonborn (dropping dying, having only 9hp). On the following rounds, Sophia passed one death save, then missed one, then... rolled a 1, dying instantly! I whipped the hell out of the beast, rolling two 20s and using my action surge and such. After that, I recovered my dead companion and we ended the session...

So, that's special?

Yeah, of course! It was friggin awesome. The fights were really hard, even deadly. I like the death-saving-throw-mechanic. The town, simple as it was presented, provides tons of low-scale adventuring opportunities. The npcs were good enough to remember them by some quirk or feature. The option to do eerything wrong was fine by me ("Look, an old ruin, let's have a look before dinner!", "Ok Mr. Redbrand you're no danger for noone, sod off and don't look back!"...) - not being railroaded was really a refreshing experience.

I guess I'll stick to low-level 5e with its deadliness and such, and probably you'll never see me playing dragonborn or drow-rangers, but hey - that's my choice. I'm not really sure what to think of feats, but the seem nice enough (I went for Heavy Armor Specialist, essentially gaining damage reduction 3/mundane, which really improved my survivability). Magic seems a bit high-powered, but that's ok for me - I'd prefer a drawback, but that's probably my DCC-faible.

I guess this wasn't my last 5e-session...

F  

Getting Shit Done in 2015 - erste Resultate...

Ja, etwas langsamer als versprochen, aber >10x schneller als zuvor!

2015 - the Year of Getting Shit done.

Ja, so schaut's aus! Blog gestartet, Notebook gewechselt, Providerwechsel im Gange... verdammte Axt, das Jahr ist erst 3 Tage alt, was kann noch alles geschehen?