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If any good came out of events on last Saturday, it was that respiratory arrest stopped by mid-afternoon, and we were healthy and active enough to consider going out for a special event at the Dinosaur Company in Allen, just … Continue reading →

St George Rescuing a Maiden from a Dragon (Study for a Bookplate) 

Rivalin, 1921 

Illustration for Dante Alighieri's 'The Divine Comedy'1921 

Illustration for Dante Alighieri's 'The Divine Comedy'1921 

Illustration for Dante Alighieri's 'The Divine Comedy'1921 

Guardian Moat 

Tribute to Salome, 1921 

I stumbled onto this book years ago at a used book store. This collection of Bayros's erotic drawings "The amorous drawings of the Marquis von Bayros" is now available on archive.org, check it out here.

Along with everything else coming down this weekend (and let me tell you, full-bore asthma fits at my age aren’t fun, and that’s on top of emergency greenhouse repairs), one of the issues resolved was discovering why a large mailing … Continue reading →

Original artist website here..

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
GLORANTHA: A Trek in the Marsh is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a four page, full colour, 963.55 KB PDF.
The layout is clean and clean. It is art free, but the cartography is reasonable.
Where is it set?
GLORANTHA: The search for the Throne of Colymar is set in Sartar in the Upland Marsh. 

Who do you play?
Player Characters of all types could play this scenario, but is best suited to members of a nearby Colymar tribe or Ducks. Humakti will, of course, relish the opportunity to curb the influence of Delecti the Necromancer.

What do you need?
GLORANTHA: A Trek in the Marsh requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the Glorantha Bestiary. The later is a necessity as no stats or creature or monster write-ups are included.
What do you get?GLORANTHA: A Trek in the Marsh is set on the northern edge of the Upland Marsh and presents an opportunity for a nearby tribe to reduce the great swamp’s boundaries and reclaim land lost centuries ago to the magics of Delecti the Necromancer. One of the magical rods which enforces his malign influence has been located and the local tribal chief thinks it can be removed or destroyed and so sends some trusted adventurers to deal with it.
Consisting of really only two pages, the adventure is linear, the Player Characters proceeding rom the edge of the map straight to the location of the magical rod, perhaps having an encounter or two on the way to the marsh—depending upon if they veer slightly left or slightly right. These encounters, as are the majority of the encounters in the scenario, all combat based. No NPCs are encountered or detailed in the course of the adventure. No encounter, even the encounter with the altered Dancer in the Darkness which protects the rod is accorded more than three sentences.
GLORANTHA: A Trek in the Marsh is not badly written, but very much like the earlier GLORANTHA: The search for the Throne of Colymar, it is underwritten and underdeveloped. As presented it is not a whole scenario, but rather the middle of a scenario. Despite the fact that the Player Characters are on a quest to destroy or remove a magical artefact, the artefact itself is not detailed or illustrated, and there is no information as to how the local tribal chief learned of the location of the artefact, how the artefact is removed, and what happens once the artefact is removed. In addition, the protector of is described as a combination of a Darknesselemental and a Dancer in Darkness, but stats or abilities are given, leaving the Game master to develop these herself without guidance. Omitting the stats for monsters and creatures which can be found in the Glorantha Bestiary is not wholly unreasonable, as the Game Master can easily provide these, but not providing the stats or write-up of a new combination of monster is simply nonsensical.
Similarly, the lack of set-up and consequences for the scenario, leaves the Game Master with more work than should have been necessary. The author need not have tied either to a specific tribe, but with sufficient background, the Game Master could easily have tied in both set-up and consequences to the tribe of her choice. Instead, the author leaves all of the development work to the Game Master rather than some of it.
Is it worth your time?Yes—GLORANTHA: A Trek in the Marsh contains the germ of an interesting scenario if the Game Master is willing to completely develop its set-up and consequences which its author failed to do.No—GLORANTHA: A Trek in the Marsh is a third of a scenario, no more than a series of combat encounters, in need of development in the beginning, middle, and end. Cheap, but avoidable.Maybe—GLORANTHA: A Trek in the Marsh contains the germ of an interesting scenario if the Game Master is a running a campaign in and around the Upland Marsh, and is willing to completely develop its set-up and consequences which its author failed to do.

A decade ago, on January 12th, a plague struck the world. A flu-like plague which seemed resistant to the then available treatments. Fortunately nobody died, but eleven days later, on January 23rd, all of the symptoms vanished and everyone recovered. Only later did people realise the significance of what became known as ‘Ghost Flu’ as months later, sufferers began exhibiting powers and abilities only found in mankind’s wildest imaginings and biggest cinema screen franchise. The ability to fly, phase through walls, read the minds of others, control gravity, flatten or enhance the emotions of others, and read or even enter dreams. Literally, people had superpowers. This manifestation becomes known as the ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ or ‘SME’, and in the next ten years approximately one percent of the population will manifest SME. In response, there was no rash of costumed heroes or villains, though a few tried. The most photogenic of SME suffers became celebrities, sportsmen, television and film stars, or politicians, others found jobs related to their newly gained powers, for example, a firefighter who control flames or oxygen, a transmuter who could literally turn lead into (industrial) gold, or a healer who work as a medic or doctor, and the most popular sports found ways of incorporating them into their play. Some though turned to crime, and of course, there were criminals who exhibited SME, and whilst the Heightened as they became known were mostly assimilated into society, they could still be victims of crime and they were also victims of a prejudice all their very own. For example, the Neutral Parity League campaigns against ‘Chromes’ (from ‘Chromosome’) as the Heightened are nicknamed, often violently, whilst organisations like the Heightened Information Alliance campaigns for the protection of their rights. In general, the Heightened have become one of society’s accepted minorities and most just get on with their lives.

When one of the Heightened is involved in crime—whether as victim or perpetrator—the police will investigate and handle the matter just as they would any other crime. However, most big city police forces have established a unit to specifically deal with such cases. This is the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU), staffed by Heightened members of the police force and tasked with investigating and solving SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between the mutants and ordinary folk. The law has also adapted to take account of the prevalence of Heightened abilities. Thus investigative powers such as Observe Dreams and Read Minds require consent or a legal warrant, the use of X-Ray Vision ability must follow strict health and safety guidelines as its emits radiation and can cause cancer, the wrongful use of Impersonate is fraud, and several powers, including Radiation Projection, Invisibility, and Read Minds are deemed inherently dangerous. Such powers fall under Article 18 which regulates their use and may even see their users being monitored. The study of superpowers and SME expressives is known as Anamorphology, while members of the HCIU are trained in Forensic Anamorphology.

This is the set-up for Mutant City Blues, a super powered investigative roleplaying game, originally designed by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2009. It uses the author and publisher’s GUMSHOE System, designed to play investigative games which emphasise the interpretation of clues rather than their discovery, and which has been used with another genre in a number of roleplaying games from the publisher, including horror in The Esoterrorists, cosmic horror in Trail of Cthulhu, space opera in Ashen Stars, and time travel in Timewatch. In Mutant City Blues the other genre is the classic police procedural of Law & Order, Hill Street Blues, and NYPD Blue. The combination though is specific. The Player Characters are police officers with powers, not superheroes who are cops. So not DC Comics’ Gotham Central or the Special Crimes Unit from Superman’s hometown, Metropolis, or indeed, Wildstorm’s Top 10. This is very much not a ‘Four Colour’ superheroes setting. The action and the investigation of Mutant City Blues also takes place in a real city, whether New York or Toronto, or a city the Game Moderator is familiar with. Although Mutant City Blues has the feel of a setting that is North America, it would be easy to set a campaign elsewhere, and there are notes on adapting it to the United Kingdom.

To help the Game Moderator adapt Mutant City Blues to the city of her choice, the roleplaying game comes with a number of elements which mapped onto that city. This includes a future timeline which runs from the outbreak of Ghost Flu to the present day, a guide to the future city’s politics and leading figures, as well as its new institutes and businesses. First and foremost amongst them is The Quade Institute, the world’s foremost Anamorphological research centre, run by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade. The Quade Institute is also where members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit are trained in Forensic Anamorphology. A complete Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is described, ready for the Player Characters to be slotted into. Lastly, there is a ready-to-play scenario, ‘Food Chain’, which introduces the history of the Mutant City Blues setting as well as providing a case for the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit to investigate.

In actuality that is the set-up for Mutant City Blues as published in 2009. In 2020, Pelgrane Press published a second edition, this time by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Robin D. Laws. Mutant City Blues still retains the same set-up and flexibility in terms of where it can be set, but it also introduces a number of changes, not least of which is a new scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’. The majority of these changes have been implemented to make the game faster and easier to both set up and play.

As with other GUMSHOE System games, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues are defined by various abilities, either Investigative or General. Investigative Abilities are further divided into Academic, Interpersonal, and Technical. As a superhero roleplaying game, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues also have superpowers or Mutant Powers, which are again split between Investigative and General Powers. What defines the split between Investigative and General Abilities and Powers is how they are used. In the first edition of Mutant City Blues both Investigative and General abilities are represented by ratings or pool of points. For Investigative abilities, if the Player Character has the ability, he can always use it to gain core clues during an investigation, and his player could always spend more points from the Investigative ability pool to gain more information. For General abilities, such as Health, Infiltration, and Preparedness, a player expends points from the relevant pool and uses them as a modifier to a die roll to beat a particular difficulty. This is on a six-sided die and a typical difficulty is four, but can go as high as four. In the second edition of Mutant City Blues, a Player Character still has pools of points for his General abilities, including mutant powers, but not for Investigative abilities and powers. Instead of ratings, a Player Character either has the Investigative ability or power, or he does not. During an investigation, a Player Character will always pick up a clue related to an Investigative ability. If a Player Character wants more information, he can Push.

The Push is the major rule change in the second edition of Mutant City Blues. Replacing ratings for Investigative abilities, a Push is primarily used to gain more information or overcome obstacles preventing progress in an investigation. For example, it might be used to speed up the investigative process, such as getting the results back from the laboratory quicker than usual for Forensic Anthropology or Ballistics, to add an expert in the field as a friend using Art History or Occult Studies, or even use Cop Talk to impress the media or a Player Character’s superiors. A Push can also be used to sidestep or lower the difficulty of a General ability test. However a Push is used, a player only has two to expend per session, and they cannot be saved between sessions.

To create a member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, a player receives three pools of points to spend on his character. These are standard for both General abilities and Mutant Powers, but will vary for Investigative abilities, the value depending upon the number of players. To ease the creation process, the second edition of Mutant City Blues includes templates that model particular police departments, such as the Forensic Science Division, Gang and Narcotic, Robbery, and Special Weapons & Training. Each template has a cost in points, with any excess being used to purchase other Investigative abilities and purchase and increase General abilities.

Whilst choosing Investigative and General abilities is relatively straightforward, selecting Investigative and General Powers is more involved. In standard superhero roleplaying games, a player is free to choose what powers he likes, in any combination, often to model particular superheroes from the comic books and films. Now that option is possible in Mutant City Blues, but that diverges from Mutant City Blues as written. Mutant powers in Mutant City Blues are clustered together genetically, so that if a Heightened has the Transmutation power, he is also likely to have the Disintegration, Phase, Touch, Reduce Temperature, and Ice Blast powers. He may also have the Wind Control, Healing, Radiation Projection, and Self-Detonation powers, but not Pain Immunity or Gravity Control. All this is mapped out on the Quade Diagram—as devised by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade of The Quade Institute—and in addition to using it to select powers during the character creation, the Quade Diagram serves as a forensic tool in the game. HCIU officers can use it to determine the powers used at a crime scene, as many of them leave some form of residue. It can determine the involvement of one Mutant if the residue is clustered, more if there are several clusters. The point here is that mutant powers are known quantities and do not vary, and in addition, where in the comics, a superhero will often tweak or adjust his powers from one issue to the next, this is very difficult to do in Mutant City Blues.

Our sample member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is newly appointed Grace Bruckner who transferred across from Robbery where she specialised in art theft. She has become adept at identifying forgeries from merely touch alone. Her tendency towards Disassociation means she has few friends on the force, her colleagues seeing her as cold and unfriendly. This is despite the fact they know her genetics.

Detective Grace Bruckner, 1st Grade
General Abilities: Athletics 4, Composure 10, Driving 2, Filch 2, Health 10, Infiltration 4, Mechanics 2, Preparedness 5, Scuffling 5, Sense Trouble 5, Shooting 4, Surveillance 6
Investigative Abilities: Architecture, Art History, Bureaucracy, Bullshit Detector, Charm, Document Analysis, Evidence Collection, Fingerprinting, Forensic Accounting, Forensic Anthropology, Languages, Law, Negotiation, Photography, Research, Streetwise
Investigative Powers: Touch
General Powers: Disintegration 1, Healing 3, Phase 5, Transmutation 3
Defects: Disassociation

Certain powers and clusters, however, also have ‘Genetic Risk Factors’ associated with them. For example, Heightened with the Night Vision and Thermal Vision powers have tendency for Watcher Syndrome, whilst those with Telekinesis and Force Field, suffer from Sensory Overload. As she has both Phase and Disintegration, Detective Grace Bruckner can suffer from Disassociation, which means that she has a tendency to emotionally withdraw from people, and if the condition worsens, to see the world and her actions as unreal. Genetic Risk Factors need not come into play though, but it all depends upon the mode in which the gaming group has decided to play Mutant City Blues. The roleplaying game has two modes. In Safety Mode, Genetic Risk Factors are seen as potential risks to the Player Characters and may occasionally be topics of conversation, but in the main do not enter play except when they might affect Heightened criminals. In Gritty Mode, Genetic Risk Factors can express themselves in the members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, and in play, are one source of Subplots.

Subplots are plots extra to the main investigation, the ‘B’ plot to the ‘A’ plot, and are typically personal or tied to another case. The players are encouraged to suggest them and the Game Moderator can add them, but in Gritty Mode they can also take the form of a personal Crisis which will affect a particular Player Character, and they can be triggered by the expression of a Genetic Risk Factor or an event which occurs in the line of duty. The latter can affect all police officers, not just members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, but those triggered by a Genetic Risk Factor is specific to the Heightened. Mechanically, a Crisis requires a test and if failed, earns the Player Character a Stress Card. Similarly, if a Player Character exhausts the points from a power, but manages to refresh it by testing his Genetic Risk Factor (done against its resistance ability, which is different for each Genetic Risk Factor), he also gains a Stress Card due to the strain. Mutant City Blues lists over fifty, each with a tag like Addiction or Home Life, and Deactivation or Discard conditions, these being ways a Player Character effectively forestall the effects of a Stress Card or get rid of it completely. Should a Player Character acquire three or Stress Cards, then he is forced to quit or is fired from the force due to stress and his consequent actions.

Crises and Stress Cards are obviously storytelling and roleplaying tools, but they are also ways of enforcing the conventions of Mutant City Blues’ genre. In effect, Crises and Stress Cards are a way of handling a Player Character’s story arc over the course of a campaign. Just as in the television shows which inspire it, characters in Mutant City Blues leave, resign, take a new assignment, or are killed. Similarly, the use of the two modes—Safe and Gritty—model the two types of police procedural. Safe Mode represents a police procedural which focuses on the powers and the cases, and less on the personal and home lives of the Player Characters, whereas the grimmer Gritty Mode brings into play the personal and home lives of the Player Characters as well as the dangers of using their mutant powers. Of the two, the Gritty Mode more strongly enforces its genre than the Safe Mode. And this is in addition to the grind of dealing with the bureaucracy of the job, the Player Characters’ superiors, the media, and the criminals.

The two genres for Mutant City Blues—police procedural and superheroes—will be familiar to most, but not necessarily together. The roleplaying game’s authors provide plenty of advice to that end. The rules and advice cover collecting clues and using Pushes and their benefits, action at non-lethal, lethal, and superpowered levels, including combat, shootouts, chases, and more. There is a lengthy discussion of how the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit operates, including an orientation manual (with annotations from a member giving an explanation and opinion on how things are actually done), handling interrogations and court scenes, how the presence of the Heightened has changed the law, and running cases of the week and big plots. Plus there is a guide to the future world of Mutant City Blues, its politics, cultures, sports, and notable figures that the Game Moderator can map onto the city of her choice. Plus that mapping need not be onto a city in the near future, but could be the here and now, and there is advice for doing that too. The players are not left out here with advice on selecting their characters’ watch commander, using subplots, and suggesting some interview techniques, since after all, few of the players are going to be trained police officers. Lastly, there is an adventure, ‘Blue on Blue’ which does a good job of introducing the setting of Mutant City Blues and its various elements as they are affected by the Heightened, and takes the story of SME all the way back to the beginning. That said, it very much has the feel of a North American city and the Game Moderator will need to make some adjustments to set it elsewhere.

Throughout the pages of Mutant City Blues, there is another option discussed. That is instead of the Player Characters as members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, they are Private Investigators. This gives the players and their characters greater flexibility in terms of how they approach investigations, as well as less responsibility and also less authority. However, they are still private citizens and they will need to be equally as careful, if not more so, in their use of their powers than members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit. Rather than the set-up and organisation provided by the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, the players and their characters will need to work out the details of their agency ahead of time. The scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’ does have notes to enable it to be run using private investigators, but it is really written to be played using Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit officers.

Physically, for a book published in 2020,Mutant City Blues is surprisingly done in black and white. In some ways, that is thematic, and to be fair, it does not detract from the book in any way. In general, the artwork is excellent, the book is well written, and the layout clean and tidy, and best of all, easy to read.

If there are any issues with Mutant City Blues, it is in tone and setting. Some players may well find its strongly implied setting to be too North American, but the police procedural is very much a North American television staple, which for others it is that its superpowers are too low powered, to be not quite Four Colour enough. Yet even the roleplaying game’s Safe Mode is not Four Colour, although it is much closer than Gritty Mode, and after all, it is written to be a police procedural with superpowers, rather than it is a superpowered police procedural.

The GUMSHOE System was always designed to ease the process of playing investigative roleplaying games, but its iteration here in the second edition of Mutant City Blues has gone even further, switching from the previous edition’s pools of points to a simple binary yes/no for its Investigative abilities. Combined with the equally as simple Push mechanics and Mutant City Bluesmakes investigations even easier, shifting any prior complexity to the game’s action when General abilities—mundane and mutant come into play. And really, they are not that complex.

Inspired by two genres—police procedural and superheroes—Mutant City Blues still remains underpowered for handling either separately, but merged together, the result is an appealing combination of familiar genres that are consequently easy to roleplay. And that is made even easier by the streamlining of the GUMSHOE System and the cleaner presentation in this new edition. Mutant City Blues does what it says on the badge, present police procedural and investigative roleplaying in a near future that is almost like our own world, and make it accessible and engaging. The combination is very specific, but there can be no doubt that Mutant City Blues does it very well.

Warlock! Kingdom is a supplement for Warlock!, “A Game Inspired By The Early Days Of British Tabletop Gaming”, in particular, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Maelstrom as well as the Fighting Fantasy solo adventure books which began with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. It has Careers—Careers such as Agitator, Boatman, Grave Robber, and Rat Catcher; it has two attributes, one of which is Luck; and it has a Warlock! running around an unnamed, humancentric kingdom causing mayhem. Although mechanically much lighter than Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, it is nevertheless intended to be grim and gritty, a world of adventure and peril, but with mud aplenty—or worse—underfoot and a certain, sardonic sense of humour. However, beyond there being a marauding Warlock!, and gods, such as the beloved Thrice Blessed, the bloody Red King, and the reviled Dragon, there is unfortunately very little in terms of background in Warlock!. This is an omission that Warlock! Kingdom aims to rectify.

Warlock! Kingdom is published by Fire Ruby Designs and is very much a book of two halves. The first is a Gazetteer of the Evening Lands, which provides an overview and entails of the western part of the Kingdom, whilst the second is a guide to Grim Biskerstaf, a thriving port city on the mighty river Vessen. Both sections are for the most part systemless, so that a Game Master could easily take the descriptions and content found here and adapt to the roleplaying game of her choice, be it Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Zweihander: Grim and Perilous, or something else.

Warlock! Kingdom opens up with the ‘Kingdom Gazetteer’, which details the Kingdom, which feels fairly generic in its fantasy. It has great forests, mighty mountain ranges, rolling hills, broad meandering rivers, deep lakes, busy cities and towns with wide swathes of untamed wilderness in between, the settled areas populated by Humans, but also Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings. It stands on a peninsula, though this is not described. After this description, the book seems to go awry with a table of cultural events for the Player Characters to encounter and involve themselves in. It is a really good list, ranging from harvest festival to a funeral to dancing bear to Gerarix Stonecast with a mutated uman to exhibit, but feels too early in the book when you really want to know particular details of the country—languages, religion, and whatnot. Similarly, the discussion of the Royal Family and the Traitor, the latter the former chamberlain to the King whose worship of the demon Delock would lead to an unleashing of dark forces and precipitated a war that nearly shattered the kingdom. And also the fact that since the war against the Traitor, the King himself has not been seen, and that it appears that his wife the Queen and the King’s chief advisor are in charge given his absence. No suggestions are made as to why the King is missing or why, so there is plenty of room there to speculate—both in game and out.

Fortunately, Warlock! Kingdom settles down after that and guides the reader around the Evening Lands. This focuses on particular geographical locations like the Black Spine Mountains and the Golden Cave, the former riddled with caves and tunnels that are home to tribes of Goblins and clans of Dwarves, the latter a site of pilgrimage to the martyr, Saint Agarix, the current priest of which at the cave is probably living off the proceeds from the pilgrims’ donations. Many of these various location descriptions are accompanied by a table of random elements. Thus for the battlefield of Pomperburg, where the largest battle against the Traitor took place and which remains a place of horror to this day, there is a list of unusual items to be found on the site still. Not every location has such a table, but in each, they add a little bit of extra flavour and detail.

The bulk of Warlock! Kingdom—almost two thirds, in fact—is devoted to Grim Biskerstaf, a city on the kingdom’s south coast at the mouth of the Vessen River. In the wake of the war with the Traitor, though thriving, the city is in decline, its ruler, Lord Kelberond ineffectual and perpetually confused; the city guard forced to operate on a shoestring budget whilst the Peacock Guard, whose members protect Lord Kelberond, strut about the city as if they own it; the harbour the site of ongoing squabbles and fights between the Fish Speakers and the Dockers as to who controls trade on the river; and religious dissension growing as the Red King’s Men, worshippers of the Red King ejected from Fesselburg, the Kingdom’s capital, have taken up residence in the city—some actually devout, others little more than thugs. Then there is the Blight. This is a ghastly disease which turns the sufferer’s skin a sickly green and makes it break out into open sores. No one knows the source or cause of the Blight, but of late, the river has turned into sludge and it only affects the lower classes—so at the moment, the Blight is not all that important.

The description of Grim Biskerstaf follows the format used for the Kingdom in the first half of Warlock! Kingdom. Each of the descriptions of the city’s thirteen important locations is accompanied by two things. One is a snapshot from the main two-page illustration/map of the city, and the other is a table. Similarly, the descriptions of the city’s various organisations and notable figures are also accompanied by their own tables, which in each case adds further detail and flavour. Thus, outside the cathedral to the Thrice Blessed stands a tree and on that tree—in very Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay fashion—are nailed notices of employment described in a pair of tables, whilst along the city’s famous red stone walls, built by an Elven queen a millennium ago, stand a series of great towers, many of which have fallen into a state of disrepair and rumoured to have been occupied by persons other than the city guard. Who exactly occupies a particular tower can be determined by a roll of the die and reference to the accompanying table.

Grim Biskerstaf’s organisations include the Little Council, which supposedly governs the city and has table of its various plans; the College of Doors, its school of magic whose entrance changes regularly and is actually located in a hidden magical dimension, and its table suggests where the entrance door may be found that week or so. Its notable citizens include the wizard, Dolkepper, who when not studying the universe, is crabbily ruminating on which of the city’s citizens has slighted him and then tetchedly complaining about it. Who exactly, of course, is detailed on the accompanying table. In addition to the table, all of the descriptions are full of detail and flavour that the Game Master can bring to her game.
Rounding out Warlock! Kingdom is ‘So, You’re a Local?’, which gives a sextet of new Careers for Grim Biskerstaf. These are Docker, Fish Warden, Mudlark, Night Watchman, Publican, and Servant, but to be fair would work in almost any port city or town. Alternatively, they could serve as the basis for Player Characters in a campaign or scenario set entirely in Grim Biskerstaf! All of these have tables answering a couple of questions such as ‘What have you found?’ or ‘What have you seen?’, which further tie them into the city. As well as potential Player Characters they could also form the basis for NPCs too. Finally in Warlock! Kingdom, there is another pair of lengthy tables. One of hirelings, the other of adventure seeds. There are no stats with the hirelings, but the adventure seeds are nicely detailed and could keep a campaign in Grim Biskerstaf going for a while.

Physically, Warlock! Kingdom is a buff little book, starkly laid out and illustrated in a suitably rough style which feels suitably in keeping with the period inspiration. The cartography is nicely done, but the book does need a tighter edit in places.

Warlock! Kingdom begins in underwhelming fashion, the description of the kingdom at least feeling underwritten before it settles down and starts telling you interesting stuff. It really picks up with the description of Grim Biskerstaf, a city full of secrets and dirt which could be dropped into any campaign, which is made all the easier because like much of the book, it is systemless. Pick it up for overview of the kingdom, but definitely stay for the write-up of the Grim Biskerstaf in Warlock! Kingdom, which is perfect for any Grim & Perilous setting or roleplaying game, not just Warlock!

The last six weeks have been the most stressful in the gallery’s history, and thanks to yet more situations impossible to delay and unable to be predicted (which will be hysterically funny in retrospect) the October 9 Porch Sale has … Continue reading →

In ages past the greatest of all dungeons fell. Its great portals were penetrated by mighty heroes and level by level, its halls and corridors walked down, and its rooms and chambers, chapels and necropolises, lairs and dens, and reliquaries and treasuries entered, their denizens put to the sword and the spell, their coins, gems, and magics plundered. A millennium has passed since then and the doings of those great warriors and wizards have passed into legend and dungeons are things of the past, so perhaps it is time for a new network of tunnels and rooms, constructed and populated at the hands of a new Dungeon Keeper? Or at least the old Dungeon Keeper of old, woken after a thousand year slumber to build a dungeon anew?

This is the set-up for RISE: A Game of Spreading Evil. Published by Blackwell Games, it is a counterpart and opposite to DELVE: A Solo Map Drawing Game. Both are map-drawing games for one player and both involve the drawing and building, populating and defending, and exploring and exploiting of great underground networks. The difference is that in DELVE, the player takes the role of the Overseer of a Dwarven hold, digging down into the depths of the earth, whereas in RISE, the player takes of the role of the Keeper, tasked with building up to the surface—though is nothing to stop an enterprising Keeper from building down! In the course of this mighty construction, a Keeper will explore nearby caverns and tunnels, develop them into rooms such as chambers and hovels in which recruited troops can have their lair, forges which enable traps to be built elsewhere in the dungeon, a mason to allow the construction of secret passages and barricades, prisons in which to incarcerate captured adventurers, taverns and theatres to keep the dungeon’s denizens happy, and altars on which to sacrifice them in return for really good magic! Lastly, a Keeper might discover a portal to another realm and send forth explorers to learn its secrets and plunder its treasures.

RISE: A Game of Spreading Evil is a solo map-drawing game with tactical elements and some journaling aspects which can be played at leisure by the would be Keeper. Fairly easy to play, it can be started, put down, and picked up again because a Keeper’s dungeon never amounts to more than sheets of paper and perhaps a notebook. It requires a good pencil, a rubber, several sheets of gridded or graph paper, a notepad, some tokens, and a standard deck of playing cards. Each turn, beginning from the Dungeon Heart, as the Keeper the player will draw a card from the playing deck, and draw what it indicates on their map; resolve any combat; exchange Resources for Trade Goods or vice versa; build new features like rooms, traps, and barricades; and recruit new Units. Only one room can be built per turn. In addition, the Keeper must keep track of the dungeon’s Happiness, keeping it high enough to avoid its denizens from mutinying and turning on the Keeper!

The suit of the card drawn determines what the Keeper’s excavation teams have discovered. Clubs are Remnants, Diamonds are Trade Goods, Hearts are Resources, and Spades are Natural Formations. The depth or level of the discovery will determine the amount of Resources or Trade Goods found, whilst the number on Clubs or Spades card indicates the result on the Remnants or Natural Formations tables. In the case of the Hearts or Diamonds result, the Keeper can draw an empty cave on the map to represent the discovery, whilst with a Clubs or Spades card, the Keeper refers to the result from the relevant table and then draws that on the map. When building a Room, the Overseer pays the listed cost and either adds it to an empty space or builds it into an already discovered cavern. Each Room provides a particular benefit. For example, the Hovel serves as a basic lair and can house some ten units’ worth of troops, whereas a Puzzle Room is intentionally designed to slow any combatant—whether having descended from the surface or mutinied from amongst the Keeper’s own troops—down from one turn to the next. Others like the Theatre or the Casino enhance a dungeon’s Happiness, and some provide buffs, such as the Kitchen, which increases the fighting Strength of nearby troops with a ready supply of good unwholesome food, and Treasury, which increases the maximum amount of Trade Goods the Keeper can store.

If a Keeper builds an Altar, then sacrifices can be made to gain Good Magic. This might be to summon a spell which brings a room to life and turns it into a unit of its own or helpful whispers flit about the dungeon and cause any imprisoned Adventurers to switch sides and enlist in the service of the Keeper!* Another potential Good Magic is a portal. Once a portal has been discovered, the Keeper must construct a Portal Siege Camp if the aim is to launch raids through the portal and into other Realms. Successful raids will return further Resources and Trade Goods, as well as captured Units and even stolen items and artefacts. The latter is best stored in their dungeon’s Thieves’ Gallery.

* This quicker than the other option, which is sending the Adventurers to the Torture Chamber—should the Dungeon have one—and from there to the Hiring Office, and probably involves less paperwork. It is also probably less fun for one of the parties involved.

Combat occurs when a Keeper discovers the presence of the enemy, represented by a Remnant being drawn at the start of turn, such as an Adventuring party or a powerful champion who tests the Keeper’s forces. It can also occur when a Keeper’s own units become unhappy and mutiny, turning on their former master—or mistress, fighting their way to the Dungeon Heart. If the enemy or mutinied units cannot do this, then they will dig in and begin taking over a section of the dungeon. This will present a further challenge to the Keeper in addition to expanding the Dungeon from the depths to the surface. Combat is a matter of attrition, comparing the Strength values of the combatants and deducting the lower Strength value from the higher Strength value. A Unit whose Strength is reduced to zero is removed from the Dungeon. The rules allow for Ranged combat, such as from Archers and Warlocks, whilst Cultists can cast a protective shield and Trappers can reset or disarm traps.

In addition to launching raids into other Realms via Portals, RISE gives tables for Adventurers to be encountered, Information to be found, Legendary artefacts to be discovered—once the Joker cards have been added back to the deck with the Keeper’s expansion reaching the fifth level, gratuitously great Heroes who take it upon themselves to delve deeper and deeper into the depths of the Keeper’s Dungeon, and options such as World Layers. The latter are themed levels of the Dungeon, like a Primordial Layer populated by gigantic reptiles, lava flows, and ancient megaliths. These add flavour and serve as a feature in the Keeper’s Dungeon. Lastly, RISE comes with a set of challenges which can be attempted over the course of multiple playthroughs of the game.

What is not quite clear is what the end objective of playing RISE: A Game of Spreading Evil actually is. The aim is to explore and develop up from the depths, ultimately to reach the surface, and perhaps from there, become a true threat to the world beyond. Yet there is barely the need for such an objective, or even a sense of having won in playing RISE. This is a game whose point is twofold. There is, of course, the play, the intentionally procedural construction of the Dungeon and its development, but there is also the story of the Dungeon to be told in that constructive play. As with DELVE: A Solo Map Drawing Game, what develops out of the play of RISE: A Game of Spreading Evil is a map of the Dungeon, level by level in cross section; when combined with the notes kept in the journal, a story that tells of the Dungeon’s development, history, and notable features; and ultimately, a Dungeon complete with notes and map that the Keeper can take, and as Dungeon Master, could be run as a dungeon for a group of players. Perhaps for Dungeons & Dragons, perhaps for another roleplaying game.

Physically, RISE: A Game of Spreading Evil is a cleanly presented, digest-sized book. The writing is clear and simple such that the reader can become a Keeper and start digging and drawing with very little preparation.

One of the given inspirations for RISE’s sister game, DELVE: A Solo Map Drawing Game is the computer game, Dungeon Keeper, and the same can be said for RISE—if not more so. It is played at a much more sedate pace, with the player as the Keeper handling all of the procedural and resource management elements. Of the two, DELVE: A Solo Map Drawing Game is the more polished and deeper affair, RISE: A Game of Spreading Evil being a little rougher around the edges and not being quite as well explained as it could be. Nevertheless, RISE shares much in common with DELVE. It can be played in one sitting or put aside and returned to at a later date, but it does take time to play and the more time the Keeper invests in the play, the more rewarding the story which should develop and the more interesting the Dungeon created—and ultimately, RISE: A Game of Spreading Evil is about the story of Dungeon.

Horoscope, 1981 

Homage to Raymond Roussel, 1970 

L'Angelus, 1972

The Night Stirs , 1974 

The Zinc Son 

The Colossus , 1990 

Crossroads, 1971 

Surrealist Salon, 1968 

Composition, 1971 

Ashes 10 

 Jorge Camacho - Reflection Corruption (Tribute to D.A.F. Sade), 1964

Four years ago, the Triffid Ranch debuted in its current location, opening right when Dallas was overrun by shambling, mindless horrors. In 2021, the Triffid Ranch once again opens in time for the streets of downtown to run with margarita … Continue reading →

One of the pleasures of visiting the home of a friend or acquaintance, is the opportunity to peruse his shelf. Does he have the same titles as you, suggesting that you share interests and friendship in common? If so, does he possess titles you have never seen before, perhaps books you want to read or simply never heard of? Or do his shelves hold titles on subjects you have no interest at all, revealing a point of divergence? Perhaps he will allow you to browse their contents or even take them home with you to read them at your leisure? Author Edward Brooke-Hitching is highly unlikely to allow you to do either. He barely mentions the titles he has in his own collection, let alone on his shelves, but in the pages of The Madman’s Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts, and Other Literary Curiosities From History, he explores the weird world of books that are mad, bad, and dangerous to handle (and even eat!), and which he would like to have in his library.

Open up the pages of The Madman’s Library and within moments you will be astounded by the vibrancy of the colour illustrations from Louis Renard’s Fishes, Crayfishes, and Crabs, of Diverse Colours and Extraordinary Form, that are Found Around the Islands of the Moluccan and on the Coasts of the Southern Lands from 1719, if not intrigued by the scientific inaccuracies and wild imaginings, been offended by a nude depiction of the demon Asmodee from the Compendium of Demonology and Magic, and hopefully amused by He-Gassen, a Japanese scroll depicting men in flatulent competition with each other. You will also have learned that in 2010 Google estimated that there were approximately one hundred and thirty million titles in print—or at least available, and that Google planned to scan them all; the eponymous dictator commissioned the Blood Qur’an of Saddam Hussein, a copy of the holy book written using fifty pints of his own blood as ink; and that the art of binding books in human skin is known as ‘anthropodermic bibliopegy’. The practice is more common than you would have thought, and so deservedly receives its own chapter devoted to ‘anthropodermic bibliopegy’ in The Madman’s Library. It is also as fascinatingly ghoulish as you would expect.

Other chapters explore ‘books that are not books’, such as Chinese oracles bones, carved with predictions and forecasts, which were often mistaken for dragon bones and ground up to be used in medicines; ‘demon bowls’ containing spiralling protective incantations on the inside and buried in houses as supernatural protection; and hollow books which contain a secret cabinet of poisons; and 20 Slices, whose bright yellow binding contains exactly that number of Kraft American cheese slices. There are also the aforementioned ‘Books Made of Flesh and Blood’—thankfully not made from us, along with ‘Cryptic Books’, which takes the reader all the way from secret messages written on eggs and only revealed on the white of the egg is boiled to Kit Williams’ infamous Masquerade via the incomprehensibly mysterious Voynich Manuscript, followed by ‘Literary Hoaxes’, ‘Curious Collections’, Works of the Supernatural’, ‘Religious Oddities’; there are hoaxes, like the Fortsas Affair, which was announcement in 1840 of the sale of the magnificent library of the late Comte de Fortsas, which included fifty-two previously unknown works and which brought bibiophiles and collectors scurrying to the Belgian town of Binche, and which of course was an enormous joke; and a whole lot more.
Throughout, The Madman’s Library is delightfully luxurious in its presentation. No page goes without the image of a cover of, or of pages from a book, presented in exquisite detail and beautiful colour. These bring each and every book mentioned in the text to life—and short of having the titles in front of him, they are the next best thing.
As engaging and as entertaining as The Madman’s Library is in bringing its many books to life, the writing does sometimes feel as if it is skating over several of its subject matters. For every Grand Grimoire, a guide to summoning the Devil’s prime minister of Hell, Lucifuge Rofocalé or If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive…, a patent of 1987 which discusses the technological, scientific, religious, historical, and ethical issues of decapitation and afterwards, there is a prayer-book pistol—owned by the Duke of Venice, Francesco Morosoni—which could be fired when the book was closed and the silk bookmark pulled as trigger, that only merits a mention. However, this still leaves several shelves’ worth of books to discover in reading The Madman’s Library.

Our fascination with books is also carried over into our gaming. Not just the fact that many of the games we play are actual books, but that the books play a role in our games. They are sources of knowledge, MacGuffins to be chased, secrets to be found, and more. Straight away, The Madman’s Library is excellent source material for almost any roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Both Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu both share numerous Mythos tomes, but so many of the esoteric titles described in the pages of The Madman’s Library would sit alongside them or even make their way onto the shelves of the Orne Library’s Special Collection at the renowned Miskatonic University. Of course, the contents of The Madman’s Library are perfect for Bookhounds of London, Kenneth Hite’s campaign setting for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu, since it specifically casts the Investigators as bibliophiles. Many of the titles mentioned work in earlier periods too, whether that is the aforementioned Grand Grimoire or prayer-book pistol for The Dee Sanction or Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, or even earlier for The Design Mechanism’s Mythic Babylon or Mythic Rome.

As good as a potential source of inspiration for your gaming as this book is, it is simply a good read. Engaging and eclectic, entertaining and enjoyable, with something interesting to discover on every page, The Madman’s Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts, and Other Literary Curiosities From History is a delight to read from end to end.

(A bit of context. This blog features regular reviews of books, horticultural products, and interesting related items, under this proviso. All items reviewed will be purchased by the reviewer in advance, at full retail price, in order to prevent any … Continue reading →

I started watching 1988's The Unnamable tonight thinking for sure I had seen it.  Started it, couldn't remember it, then realized I had seen it.

The Unnamable (1988)

So there must be an unwritten rule that all modern adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft must take place in or around Miskatonic University and/or Arkham. After all, it makes good sense and if I were a filmmaker it is what I would do as well.  Of course, it doesn't mean you always have to do it.

Case in point there is almost more about M.U. here than there is about the titular monster/character here.  We get glimpses into the undergraduate life, the student body (and bodies), even people majoring in things other than medicine and the dark arts.  But all of this is just fluff for the main story.  Again a common problem, how to make a full-length movie out of a short story.

This one features Lovecraft's reoccurring protagonist Randolph Carter (this time played by Mark Kinsey Stephenson).

It is typical late 80s fare. Lots of gore. Lots of implied sexual antics.  

In this second viewing (or third, who knows) I can help but think Randolph Carter here is kind of a jerk. By the time he comes around to helping anyone half the cast is dead. Yeah, it's a horror flick people are going to die, but his laissez-faire attitude borders on sociopathic negligence rather than a cool distance.

I wanted to also watch The Unnamable II but I can't find it anywhere.  This is also a problem I am having with other Lovecraft-based flicks.

October 2021
Viewed: 11
First Time Views: 4.5

Alex Adams / October 6, 2021

In Toho’s 1965 tokusatsu spectacular Invasion of the Astro Monster, humanity makes contact with ruthless hive-mind aliens from Planet X, a new stellar body discovered on the far side of Jupiter. The aliens who inhabit this cold, bleak planet—the Xiliens—are a technologically advanced but blankly unemotional civilization, a race of grey-clad scientists whose remarkable intellectual development has allowed them to live safely underground in the hostile, unwelcoming environment of Planet X. They propose an interplanetary trade: if the world’s authorities—Japan, the US, and the UN—will lend them Godzilla and the fire-hawk Rodan in order to fight off the murderous three-headed space dragon King Ghidorah, who has, of late, become the scourge of Planet X, the Xiliens will provide humanity with the cure for cancer. This trade sounds like a win-win, a blessing, as Earth will simultaneously be rid of its two most troublesome inhabitants and gain a medical miracle. But, of course, it is a cynical double-cross: by stealing Godzilla and Rodan, the Xiliens have captured Earth’s only defences against Ghidorah, who is in fact a living weapon under their control that they plan to use to colonize Earth. Though the “superior” race comes offering gifts, they in fact seek to subjugate and exploit.

Invasion of the Astro Monster is a potent blend of alien invasion, mind control, and interplanetary blackmail. This story, retold several times in the Shōwa era of the Godzilla franchise, is a clear engagement with themes of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism that were very much current across the globe in the mid-1960s, a decade featuring a panoply of gruesome colonial wars the world over in Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Kenya, and elsewhere. It is widely acknowledged that Godzilla is, as Ian Buruma writes in the BFI DVD booklet for Ishiro Honda’s original Godzilla (1954), “a profoundly political monster.” But Godzilla’s many sequels are often written off as cheap and goofy cash-ins. Big mistake. Much as US sci-fi movies like The Blob (1958), The Thing From Another World (1951) or Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) used alien encounters to think through themes of cross-cultural contact, colonialism, and communism, the Shōwa Ghidorah movies are a rich engagement with world-historical themes of Cold War antagonism, first contact, and imperial manipulation.

A History of the Dragon

Godzilla has long been understood as a powerful symbol of nuclear devastation and the horror of war. While this is true, Godzilla has taken many forms over his seventy-year career, and he has symbolized a great many things. Philip Brophy writes that Godzilla is “less a vessel for consistent authorial and thematic meaning as he is a shell to be used for the generation of potential and variable meanings.” This is true of many of his adversaries too. Monsters have always been tremendously flexible and evocative ways of digesting ideas, fears, and emotions, and Toho’s Kaiju are no exception.

King Ghidorah, an enormous three-headed golden dragon inspired by Yamata No Orochi—a fearsome eight-headed dragon from Shinto mythology—is perhaps Godzilla’s most frequently battled adversary. Along with Mechagodzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and Godzilla, King Ghidorah is one of the cornerstones of the Kaiju Big Five, and his antagonism with Godzilla headlines eight movies, with further variations on Ghidorah also appearing in Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) and the Heisei Mothra trilogy (1996-1998). In the Shōwa period (1954-1975), he is a villain in Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster (1964), its sequel Invasion of the Astro Monster, the blockbuster monster brawl Destroy All Monsters (1968), and, as a supporting character, in Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972). In the Heisei period (1984-1995), Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) would see Ghidorah inflicted on Japan by time-travelling saboteurs—not to mention his cyborgic resurrection as Mecha-King-Ghidorah at the film’s climax. Ten years later, Ghidorah’s role was reversed when he teamed up with Mothra and Baragon to save humanity from Godzilla in Shusuke Kaneko’s Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001). Later in the twenty-first century, King Ghidorah once again features as Godzilla’s arch-nemesis in The Planet Eater (2018), the climactic movie of the Polygon Anime trilogy, and King of the Monsters (2019), the second movie in the ongoing Legendary MonsterVerse. No other monster confronts Godzilla so many times and in so many forms. His Cold War appearances are, thematically, particularly rich and rewarding.

King Ghidorah’s first movie, Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster, is a crossover sequel that, through its incorporation of other successful Toho monsters into the Godzilla franchise, was the Avengers: Endgame (2019) of its day. In Rodan (1957), aggressive mining operations awaken a species of enormous and destructive prehistoric birds, and in Mothra (1961) a scientific expedition to Infant Island incurs the wrath of a colossal and beautiful winged insect. Both of these monsters would return in Ghidorah, meshing together their continuities with Godzilla’s and building a wider fictional universe overflowing with Kaiju. Both Rodan and Mothra had a clear environmentalist emphasis, but Mothra is particularly explicit with its political themes. Through its characterization of the greasy capitalist Clark Nelson as an amoral and exploitative villain and its satire of the imperialist nation “Rolisica,” the movie comments on Japan’s geopolitical conundrum: caught between the two nuclear superpowers, striving for more independence from American influence, and balancing the demands of economic prosperity and modernization with the desire to preserve traditional Japanese values. After the runaway success of King Kong Vs. Godzilla (1962/3), which fused monster spectacle with a satire of the advertising industry, Rodan and Mothra too would have their opportunity to confront Godzilla, enriching the franchise with political commentary.

The central themes of power and violence are developed iteratively through the Shōwa monster movies, from the nuclear allegory of Godzilla, the environmental anti-imperialism of the two Mothra films, and on into the Ghidorah movies, which comment much more explicitly on imperial violence and conquest. Mothra’s first sequel, Mothra vs. Godzilla (retitled in the US as Godzilla vs. The Thing) was released early in 1964, and later that year Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster hit cinema screens as a winter blockbuster. The movie’s bombastic plot saw the virtuous Mothra persuade the quarrelsome Rodan and Godzilla to team up against the alien peril Ghidorah, a beast more threatening and dangerous than anything anyone had seen before.

Perhaps the single most notable aspect of Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster is its lighter, more family-friendly tone. Where once they represented different flavors of doom, Rodan, Mothra, and Godzilla now come to humanity’s aid and are openly celebrated as the triumphant heroes of the hour. This broader tonal appeal has sometimes been read as a disengagement from political themes, as the movie’s crowd-pleasing entertainment value is seen as overriding any attempt to sermonize on social or political matters. Noted Godzilla investigator Steve Ryfle, for instance, writes that in this movie “high-brow issues like nuclear weapons and commercialism are abandoned in favor of pure, fast-paced escapism.” But the central antagonism in the film—the clash between the alien Ghidorah and the trio of cooperating Earthly Kaiju—in fact extends the series’ engagement with international politics even more boldly than the previous entries in the Godzilla series.

In a short tongue-in-cheek article in a 2000 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Janne Nolan writes that Ghidorah’s first movie works as a compelling example of the benefits of international security cooperation. The movie “is a clear demonstration that even mutants, despite tiny brains and a Darwinian environment, can understand the imperatives of cooperative security when survival is at stake. Maybe policy-makers will be next.” Though Nolan is writing playfully here, this interpretation in fact has much to recommend it. Japan’s post-1945 constitution was written by the occupying US forces, and it placed firm restrictions on Japan’s ability to form an army of any kind. Over the following decades, this constitution and various additional security treaties that were added to it became increasingly controversial and unpopular across the political spectrum, culminating in violent protests in 1960. And there was plenty more happening abroad: China’s regional influence and nuclear weapons program were growing, and China tested its first atomic weapon two months before Ghidorah was released; the USSR was a strong and expanding regional presence; memory of the Korean War was painfully fresh; war raged, bloody and bitter, in Vietnam. Cooperative security, then (however reluctant and fragile), would be a theme that was at the forefront of many Japanese audience members’ minds in 1964.

As we have seen, the sequel Invasion of the Astro Monster (originally titled Godzilla vs. Monster Zero) followed in 1965, omitting Mothra and sophisticating the narrative. Where in his first appearance Ghidorah’s arrival on Earth had been a freak accident, in his second Ghidorah is cynically used against the Earth as part of an overtly imperialist venture by the Xiliens. Similarly, in Destroy All Monsters the Kilaak aliens hijack Earth’s monsters and unleash Ghidorah with the explicit aim of blackmailing humanity into submission. The Kilaaks announce that they come offering peace terms that humanity must accept or die; sacrifices must be made if the Kilaaks are to build the perfect world.

This rhetoric of peace is a particularly evocative element of the films’ representation of imperialism. Roman historian Tacitus famously wrote in Agricola, his history of the Roman conquest of Britain, that the Romans “make a desert and call it peace.” These words are spoken by Calgacus, a Caledonian war leader and resister of Agricola’s conquest, a “barbarian” Briton who Tacitus turns into an eloquent critic of the violence of the Roman Empire. Calgacus’s insight is that the bloodthirsty and warlike Romans, who conquer the entire world through slaughter, slavery, and pillage, cynically describe themselves as benevolent peace-bringers. Indeed, little has changed in the vocabulary of warlike empires: to this day, devastating imperial wars are justified as liberatory and civilizing, as the necessary violence that will bring enlightenment to the dark places of the world. Toho’s Astro-colonizers, too, repeatedly speak the language of peace and cooperation while preparing to annihilate or enslave humanity. In 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan (originally titled Earth Destruction Directive), Ghidorah is sidekick to the sinister robotic space-chicken Gigan, and once again both monsters are used against the Earth by an invading force of alien beings, this time the Nebula M aliens. In this one, huge cockroaches masquerading as humans are “striving to bring absolute peace to the whole world.” By this, the Nebula M aliens actually mean that they are plotting the eradication of humanity and the extractive exploitation of Earth’s environment and resources. 

“Oh Glenn, I am governed by electronics”

This masquerade, in which alien cockroaches appear indistinguishable from ordinary humans, is an interesting thematic overlap with a particularly politically charged Cold War form: the espionage thriller. It is of course no coincidence that the monster stories in Ghidorah movies are often complemented by espionage stories involving the human characters. This was due both to the explosive popularity of 007—Sean Connery had swaggered and snogged his way through Dr. No in 1962 and From Russia With Love in 1963, initiating a global sensation still going strong in 2021—and the rise of Japanese Yakuza crime films that were beloved by audiences. Importantly, many generic elements of Japanese crime and espionage stories (and their Western counterparts) translated particularly well to science fiction, including mind control, subterfuge, infiltration, and double-cross.

Some of the movies’ women are particularly important elements of the Cold War politics of the Shōwa Ghidorah stories. In Invasion of the Astro Monster, American astronaut Glenn’s (Nick Adams) Japanese fiancé Namikawa (Kumi Mizuno) is revealed to be in fact a Citizen of Planet X, where all women look identical—she has been sent by the ashen-faced Commander to seduce and surveil Glenn with the aim of recruiting him to the Xilien cause. Like a sexual temptress from an Ian Fleming novel, she has used her feminine wiles to compromise and manipulate our wisecracking male hero. However, in a campy yet emotionally powerful scene, she defies her programming to declare her authentic love for him—for which crime she is vaporized by her superior. “Our actions are controlled by electronic computers, not by human emotions,” explains the Xilien who coldly murders Namikawa. “When that law is violated, the offender is eliminated.” Likewise, in Destroy All Monsters, Kyoko Manabe (Yukiko Kobayashi) has a small metal receiver implanted into her earrings, and, robotically, she follows the Kilaaks’ every broadcasted command, blithely sowing destruction wherever she goes.

Brainwashing was a major cause of political panic in the late 1950s and early 1960s. American POWs, horribly traumatized by their torture in communist re-education camps, were filmed falsely accusing themselves of war crimes, refusing repatriation, and regurgitating communist propaganda. This extreme ideological indoctrination was dehumanizing, depersonalizing, humiliating, and appeared particularly terrifying because it seemed to show that the human brain could be rewired or manipulated to the extent not only that the prior personality was eliminated but, worse, that the victim appeared either blissfully unaware of or sycophantically grateful for their transformation. Very soon, however, the focus of the political panic sharpened, shifting from the suffering of the captured Americans to the possibility that repatriated soldiers could be reprogrammed into secret assassins whilst appearing, from the outside, to be respectable and well-integrated citizens.

In Richard Condon’s 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate (famously adapted by John Frankenheimer in 1962), for example, the stepson of a prominent anti-communist senator is brainwashed and used as a remote-control communist assassin. The double agent, unaware of his own programming, is memorably described as “Caesar’s son to be sent into Caesar’s chamber to kill Caesar.” Soon enough, of course, this would shift once more into a more generalized scaremongering about Soviet indoctrination, sleeper agents, and totalitarian mind control that clearly influenced Toho’s Ghidorah movies. The enemy who seems concerned for our safety but who secretly plots our violent demise—the double-crossing double agent, the indoctrinated infiltrator—was a very widespread Cold War bogeyman, and he remains with us today in the modified form of the secretive “lone wolf” terrorist living and moving among us.

“The standard message” of the science fiction film, writes Susan Sontag in 1966’s Against Interpretation, “is the one about the proper, or humane, use of science, versus the mad, obsessional use of science.” Later: “Science is magic, and man has always known that there is black magic as well as white.” The black magic of mind control is one of the most enduring aspects of Cold War political panic. In their attempts to “scientifically” understand Communist brainwashing, the CIA developed the MKUltra program, a set of gruesome torture sessions masquerading as scientific investigations into the limits of human endurance. This program (and the assumptions about the scientific possibility of directing the human mind that underpin it) has continued to have terrible ramifications into the present, as psychologists were brought in to develop the post-9/11 torture program, pseudoscientifically dignifying scandalous mistreatment by presenting it as a controlled and methodical process of scientific investigation. In each of these cases, black magic is not magic at all, but simply, and sadly, torture. Of course, it is overreach to suggest that the Shōwa Ghidorah movies are about CIA torture; but it is clearly true that brainwashing and mind control have always been deeply political concerns.

King Ghidorah: A Political Demonology

The four Shōwa movies featuring Ghidorah are, then, remarkably thematically consistent. Alien invasion, subterfuge, mind control, and monster cooperation (a kind of Kaiju anti-imperialism) are central to each of them. Most fundamental, however, is the theme of power. Ghidorah is, after all, a King: a total sovereign, breathing fire, exercising absolute and arbitrary power over everything he surveys. It’s true that there is a lot of knockabout fun involved, but the Shōwa Ghidorah movies are also vibrant explorations of authoritarian power, of the political totalitarianism that was so powerful and such an omnipresent concern in the mid-20th century. Importantly, too, a major part of the appeal of the films is their ambiguity. It’s difficult, after all, to say exactly which empire Ghidorah’s villainous commanders are supposed to represent, and, in any case, pinning it down to one definite answer would only diminish the sloshy, sticky generosity of the metaphor.

But it is nonetheless interesting to think it through in terms of concrete possibilities. Since the relationship to the US was a matter of considerable controversy in 1960s Japan, the Astro-colonizers in these movies could well represent America—that most powerful and potentially violent of international actors, the occupier turned ally whose boot was slamming down heavily and noisily in Vietnam. The USSR was also a significant political concern, another expansionist superpower bearing down upon Japan; as we have seen, brainwashing was seen as a specifically communist tactic. But the Cold War period was also marked by precipitous decolonization and rapid, blood-soaked political reconfiguration. The French suffered humiliating and ruinous defeats in Indochina and the Maghreb, most notably in the Algerian Revolution, a bitterly violent conflict abroad that caused the downfall of the Fourth Republic at home. Britain fought dirtily in harrowing counterinsurgency wars in Kenya, Aden, Cyprus, Malaya, and elsewhere. Portugal, too, prosecuted a gruesome campaign in Angola that ended in ignominious defeat. Japan, of course, had its own share of Imperial shame.

Invasion of the Astro Monster makes explicit reference to this global unrest in a startling montage of documentary photography that follows the revelation of the Xilien betrayal.

In the 1960s, cities the world over, including Tokyo, were the stages of protests, unrest, and heavily militarized police crackdowns as groups representing a wide array of new political forces rose up against the established order. This clear visual reference to the global reconfigurations of power that were taking place in the long wake of World War 2 unambiguously situates the Xilien conquest in the tradition of Earthly political upheaval. The Xiliens could be the French, the Soviets, the US, Perfidious Albion—the British Empire—or even the militaristic Japanese Empire of recent memory. Destroy All Monsters, too, set in the utopian future of 1999, shows the fragility of international peace and its vulnerability to imperialist aggression. The futuristic society at the end of the Millennium, dedicated to cooperation and scientific discovery, is still easy prey to the calmly, arrogantly seductive Kilaaks, who are an amalgam of every negative trait ascribed to imperialists: parasitic, violent, manipulative, and smugly convinced of their own superiority. In the final analysis, it is precisely the fact that the Kilaaks, Nebula M aliens, and Xiliens represent imperialism in general, rather than any specific historical constellation, that gives these movies their power.

This condemnation of empire, of course, raises an interesting contradiction, or tension, with relation to the US. One of the defining ideological contradictions of postwar America is that it has managed to present itself as somehow “not an empire” despite its constant projection of militarized power across the planet. The demonization of the tactics of the duplicitous aliens in Invasion of the Astro Monster—a Japan-US co-production—is, for example, clearly in harmony with the political ends of American Cold War neo-imperialist ideology, and serves to cement US-Japan relations as much as it does to criticize them. That is, by using the Xiliens to caricature the crimes of the dying 19th century empires and showing the countries of the democratic capitalist West as an anti-imperial coalition defeating the villains, US-led imperial aggression is painted as a form of humanistic anti-imperialism. The fetishization of anti-imperial resistance is, after all, a core component of contemporary imperial ideology: think Star Wars or any number of similar genre pieces in which plucky Davids smash brutish Goliaths. 

In summary, then, the Shōwa Ghidorah films are extraordinary documents of Cold War politics. As they were being made, the old empires were being smashed to the ground, and in the process imperial power itself was problematized and condemned as never before. In this context of global transformation, imperialism itself took on the appearance of senseless, cruel, and openly manipulative barbarism, and imperialists were known more openly as blackmailers, villains, and torturers—or, as Glenn puts it in Invasion of the Astro Monster, as “double-crossin’ finks.” What better metaphor, then, for the arbitrary despotism of empire than a colossal golden hydra remotely controlled by forked-tongued extortionists?

Alex Adams is a writer based in North East England. He writes widely on popular culture and politics, and he is currently writing Godzilla: A Critical Demonology for Headpress Books. Follow him on Twitter at @AlexAdams5 and @GDemonology, or visit his website to read more.

Ok. I can already tell that a Lovecraft film-fest is going to be rough.  Lovecraft's writings rarely translate well to the screen, this one is no exception.

The Thing on the Doorstep (2014)

This one looks like it was a student film, except everyone looks too old to be a student. 

The story sort of follows the Lovecraft short story, updated to modern times.

The cast is all unknowns. For most of them, this is their only film credit.  

The filming has an odd sepia tone to it that I thought was more than a little annoying. It certainly gave it a solid straight-to-video vibe about it. 

Again this video commits the worst sin a horror movie can; it was boring. I made it halfway through and ended up fast-forwarding to the end.  I am sure I missed nothing.   But given that I can only give myself half a point.  

October 2021
Viewed: 10
First Time Views: 4.5

"Son, she said, have I got a little story for you
What you thought was your daddy was nothin' but a...
While you were sittin' home alone at age thirteen
Your real daddy was dyin', sorry you didn't see him,
but I'm glad we talked...

Oh I, oh, I'm still alive
Hey, I, I, oh, I'm still alive
Hey I, oh, I'm still alive."

Pearl Jam, "Alive" (1991)

It's October. There's a chill in the air and there is a feeling in the air. Something that makes me reflective, chilly, and maybe a little melancholy. Sounds like the 90s to me.  There is also a game that captures this feeling perfectly.  Bloat Games' newest offering in the SURVIVE THIS!! series; We Die Young RPG.

I have been waiting to share this with you all and today is that day! 

We Die Young RPG Core Rules

"Tell me do you think it would be alright If I could just crash here tonight?"

We Die Young RPG Core Rules is 372 pages with color covers and black and white interior art.  The book is digest-sized, so the same size as Bloat Games other games.  The game was Eric Bloat & Josh Palmer with art by Phil Stone and additional art by RUNEHAMMER & Diogo Nogueira.

For this review, I am considering the just-released PDF on DriveThruRPG that I got as a Kickstarter backer.  The print book is due out soon.

Comparisons between this game and their first game, Dark Places & Demogorgons are natural and I think needed. I spent a lot of time with DP&D so I am looking forward to seeing how I can use this game with that as well. But first, let's get into the game proper. 

The book begins with two dedications from the authors.  I want to repeat them here since they set the tone not just for the game but also for my review.

Growing up in the 1980s was fun.  Being in my late teens and 20s in the 1990s however, was AMAZING.  January 1990 I was a university undergrad, living in the dorms with a girlfriend that driving me crazy (not in a good way), but a best friend I hung out with all the time.  December 1999 I was married to that best friend, I had a brand new baby son, living in my new house, and was working on my first Ph.D.  That's no small amount of change.  But I never forgot that kid in 1990 with the flannel, goatee, Doc Martins, and long hair. This is the game for that kid.  BTW "Layne" is Layne Staley, the former lead singer of Alice in Chains who died of a heroin overdose in 2002.  If you can't remember EXACTLY where you were when you heard Layne, Kurt, Shannon, or Chris was dead, then this game is, to turn a quote "not for you."

Introduction

"With the lights out, it's less dangerous. Here we are now, entertain us."

Here we are introduced to the newest SURVIVE THIS!! game. The authors are upfront about their inspirations here; grunge music from the 90s and the games that were popular at the time.  Having already gone through the book a few times it is a thread that weaved in overt and subtle ways, but it never feels overused, hackneyed, or clichéd.  We are given some in-game background for why the Pacific Northwest is so full of supernatural strangeness and it is a fun explanation.  But to quote the late, great Bard of Seatle I prefer it "always been and always be until the end."  But it works well. 

The basics of RPGs are covered and what you need to play.  Next we get into character creation.

Character Creation

"I'll be whatever you want. The bong in this Reggae song." 

Character creation follows the same process as other SURVIVE THIS!! games and by extension most Old-School games. We are told from the word go that we can add material we want from the other SURVIVE THIS!! games. 

Attributes are covered which include the standard six, plus the "Survive" attribute common to all SURVIVE THIS!! games.  My first thought?  My Dark Places and Demogons characters have grown up and moved to Seatle.

Like the other games in this family, Hit Points start with a 2d6 and increase by 1d6 per level regardless of class or race.  Combat can be quite deadly in these games for people used to the hardiness of even Old-School D&D characters.

Saving Throws are different from D&D but the same as DP&D with the edition of the Magic save.   This does make porting over characters and ideas from the other games pretty easy.

Alignment covers Righteous, Law, Neutral, Anarchist, and Evil. 

Races

"All I can say is that my life is pretty plain, You don't like my point of view and I'm insane."

Here we get into the really new material. We have a bunch of new races for this setting.  These include shapeshifting Doppelgangers, undead Ghouls, garden variety Humans, the immortal Imperishables, the ancient undead Jari-Ka, the various Realm-Twisted Fey (my new favorite, and I am sure I dated a Twitter Fey back then), Vampires (sparkles are optional), and Were-beasts of all stripes.  If you played ANY RPG in the 1990s you know what you are getting here, but still, they manage to make it feel both new and old at the same time.  New, because there is new potential here and old because they feel comfortably familiar; like that old flannel in the back of your closet or those beat-up old Doc Martens.

The races are well covered and you could easily drop them into any other SURVIVE THIS!! game or even any other Old-School game. They are really quite fun and I could not help but think of what characters I wanted to make with each one. This covers about 40 pages.

This is followed by a list of occupations with their bonuses. 

Classes

"This place is always such a mess. Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn."

We Die Young is a class/level system.  There 16 classes for this game.  Some look like repeats from DP&D but are not really.  They are updated to this setting and older characters.  We are told that classes from the other SURVIVE THIS!! games are welcome here.

Our classes include the Mystic (tattoos mages), Naturalists (potheads, I mean druids), Papal Pursuant (soldiers of God), Psions (Carrie), Revenant (Eric Draven the Crow), Riot Grrl (what it says on the tin), Rock Star, Serial Killer, Shaman (oh here are the potheads), Sickmen (homeless, as seen by Sound Garden), Street Bard, Street Fighters, Thralls (Vampire servants), Tremor Christs (psionically powered religious prophets), Warlock (steal power for otherworlds), and what I can only assume is an attempt to get a good review from me (just kidding!) the Witch. 

The witch here is slightly different than the ones we find in DP&D.  So there can be no end to the witchy goodness you can have by combining games. 

That covers a healthy 50 pages.  

Skills

"And so I wake in the morning and I step outside, And I take a deep breath and I get real high.
And I scream from the top of my lungs. 'What's going on?'"

The skill system for We Die Young is the same as DP&D.  Though without checking it feels a bit expanded.  You get points to put into skills and there are DCs to check.  Very 3e.  Or more like 3e IF it had been written in 1995.  So, yeah, another solid point for this game. 

Magic (& Psionics)

"Show me the power child, I'd like to say. That I'm down on my knees today."

Here is one of my favorite things in a game.  There is a mythos added to the system here that is rather fun (see Spellcasters & Salt) as well as rules for Rune-Tattoos.  Yeah, this is the 90s alright! 

Now I have to say this.  If adding a witch class is trying to get me to do a good review, then these spell names are outright flirting with me.  Spells called "All Apologies", "Heaven Beside You", "Black Days", "Wargasm", "Super Unknown", and "Far Behind"?  Yeah. That is hitting me where I live.  And that is only the very tip of the iceberg.

Magic, Spells and Psionics cover a little over 60 pages and I feel they could have kept going.

Equipment

"What did you expect to find? Was there something you left behind?"

No old-school flavored game is complete without a list of equipment. This includes common items, weapons, and even magical items.  Don't fret, it's not like there is a Magic Shop there. A "Health Locker" costs $50k and that is if you can find one. 

The list of drugs is really interesting and fun.  Look. It was the 90s. Everybody was taking drugs. 

New to this setting are the Zapatral Stones.  These are the remains of a meteorite that fell to Earth and hit the Pacific Northwest and Mount Rainer in particular.  They have strange power and effects depending on the size of the stone and the color.   

Playing the Game

"Whatsoever I've feared has come to life. Whatsoever I've fought off became my life."

Here we get our rules for playing the We Die Young game.   We get an overview of game terms, which is nice really. New rules for Curses, Exorcisms, and Madness are covered. It looks like to me they could be backported to DP&D rather easily. 

There is a fair number of combat rules.  Likely this has come about from the authors' experiences with their other game Vigilante City. 

We also get rules for XP & Leveling Up and Critical tables.

The World of We Die Young

"I'm the Man in the Box. Buried in my shit."

This is great stuff. This is the built-in campaign setting for We Die Young set place in a mythical and magical Pacific Northwest.  the TL;DR? Grunge woke supernatural creatures.  Ok, I can do that.  I mean it is not all that different than ShadowRun right?

The setting of the PNW/Seatle on the 90s is covered well.  I had many college friends that made the trek out to Seatle after our graduations (91 to 93 mostly), so I have some idea of what was happening on the ground level.  Twenty-somethings like me seemed drawn to the place by some mystic siren song.  A siren song with a Boss DS-2 distortion pedal. 

Various associations/groups are covered, like Jari-Ka circles, Ghoul Legacies, Vampire Lineages, were-kin groups.  Like I said, if you played RPGs in the 90s you know the drill. But again they are still both "new" and "old" at the same time. Kudos to the authors for giving me something new AND invoking nostalgia at the same time. 

We also get some great locations of note and some adventure seeds which include some creatures. 

Bestiary

"She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak. I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box for weeks."

This covers all the creatures you can run into.  The stat blocks are similar enough to Basic-era D&D to be roughly compatible.  They are 100% compatible with other SURVIVE THIS!! games, so the excellent DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - The Cryptid Manual will work well with this. In fact, I highly recommend it for this. 

There is a good variety of creatures.  Angels, Demons, BIGFOOT! and more. 

We get about 47 pages or so of monsters with stat blocks and an additional 10 pages of templates to add to monsters such as "Vampire" and "Radioactive."

Radioactive Bigfoot.  I don't need a plot. I have that!

We get Adventure Hooks next.  Roll a d100 and go!

The Appendix includes some Grung songs to get you into the mood.  Some Seattle Grunge bands, some not-Seatle Grunge Bands, and some late 80's and 90's Alternative bands.

There is a list of movies about the era. A list of books.  And finally the index and OGL.

Thoughts

"I don't mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows. I can taste you on my lips and smell you in my clothes."

Wow. What a really damn fun game!

If Dark Places & Demogorgons gave a "Stranger Things" 80s, this gives me a strange supernatural 90s.

It is exactly what I would have expected from the fine folks at Bloat Games.

My ONLY question about this setting is "Where are the UFOs and Aliens?"  I mean NOTHING was bigger in the 90s than "The X-Files."  I get that it is hard to cleave 90s Aliens to 90s supernatural (ask anyone that has tried to play WitchCraft AND Conspiracy X), but maybe a supplement is due out later?  I would suggest grabbing DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - The UFO Investigator's Handbook to add some X-Files flavored goodness to We Die Young. 

Back in the early 2000s I had a game I was running, Vacation in Vancouver. It took place in the 90s and in Vancouver (naturally).  These rules make me want to revive that game and see where I could take it now. 

The bottom line for me is that SURVIVE THIS!! We Die Young RPG is a great game.  The pdf is fantastic and I can't wait for my Kickstarter books.

Midnight Animal, 1980 

Double Cephalopod, 1973 

Half Man, Half Dark, 1976 

Behind His Double, 1973 

La Rou, 1975 

Rapture I, 1981 

The Midnight Demon, 1975 

Ge's crisis, 1978 

Le Chasseur Chassé, 1973

He Tilts Off His First Self, 1974 

The Present Past, 1960-80 

The Prey of Water, 1970 

Rebel Bird, 1970 

Born, 1937 

Walker in the Dark, 1980 

They Were Looking For The Light