329: Yes, I know, I’m fancy.
Hullo
Specific 1990s Nostalgia Play
Mommy
Maybe Scions?
Instadeath
Links
Bye
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It’s the time of Month. It’s the order cut off for The Power Fantasy 9, so let’s unleash a teaser.
Speak to your retailer (trad). If you are just picking up from the shelves, I really do recommend it – I do see folks posting about the book being sold out when they go to grab it. That said, if it is sold out, do mention to the retailer you wanted one. If you don’t, they’ll presume they didn’t need that copy. It’s the only way they can sort out their orders.
Here’s the two covers, Caspar’s and this Jamie McKelvie fellow.
I actually think pre-ordering may be especially important on the Jamie one – he’s someone who obviously a crossover with my readership, and I’m wondering whether that will lead to higher demand on the alt? We’ll see.
For more details on the book, see The Power Fantasy primer.
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DOUBLE IMAGE: MARGUERITE BENNETT ON MOMMY BLOG
Image’s solicit describes Mommy Blog #1 as an outrageous black comedy, which is true, but when I came away from it, I would have filed it in as horror comedy. Satirical horror comedy. And also, a delight – I’ve known and followed the work of Marguerite Bennett’s since we first crossed paths in a Karaoke dungeon in New York, but I’ve only had a little experience with Eleanor Carlini in Vicarious. Both are having a lot of fun here, and the whole thing is gleefully grotesque, hitting it as hard as it can before running off cackling. It’s a one-off standalone double-sized issue, and I was glad to get a chance to talk to Marguerite about it, even though one of her answers had me swearing at her. You’ll be able to spot it.
When reading Mommy Blog, I'm reminded of something. Whenever we hang out, you always seem to gleefully reveal a horror short story, your best evil smile on your face. The double-sized issue stand-alone comic story seems a great format for you - a single aesthetic chunk, long enough that you get a little space to explore that 20 pages crushes, short enough that it's nothing but that idea. Did you like it? What do you like about it?
You are so kind and I adore you and miss you profoundly. :D
I’ve really delighted in this format–it’s exactly as you say. Horror relies on focus and tension – you’re never going to get the same experience with the horror movie if you’re watching it on cable or a channel with ads, where the tension is routinely broken. In the same way, having the break of a cliffhanger between issues can burst the tension, which must then be reestablished before we may continue. In a fat 40-pager, I can deliver you a full horror movie experience, devoid of distractions. It’s just me and you, getting up to our elbows in gore. :)
I read Mommy Blog's horrorshow world of mom-influencers and immediately wanted to pass it to Chrissy to read, as much feels horrifically close to home. We're parents. You're not. What made you want to explore the world? Influencers is one thing - mom-as-influencer something else. What attracted you to the terrain and where you went with it?
Sadly, any girlchild raised in the South is raised to be a wife and mother before she’s raised to be a person. I was being trained for one of these six limited roles (as delineated by our villain) from just past infancy. The rules are hammered into you like burning hot nails – you may have the illusion of choice in what subset of wife and mother you might be, but YOU WILL SERVE.
Watching what was an intense and tribal element of my upbringing become a social media sensation was a bit disorienting. Some blogs were designed to offer understanding for new mothers; others established themselves as authorities, policing the struggles of women and invoking a hierarchy based on perceived success. All the old power dynamics of my childhood were suddenly pop culture entertainment.
I’ve run 30 years and 3,000 miles from an incident at a community pool as a little girl, but here it still is, all around me.
The killer caught up to me. That’s horror.
Eleonora Carlini has so much fun here - leaning into the grotesques of the world, casually doing the fashion, loving the brutality. How did you work together? How did you get together?
Eleonora is GRAND, simply GRAND! I’ve been such a fan of hers for ages – I could pick her doodles out of a line of a hundred imitators.
Eleonora seized immediately upon the over-the-top, zany, almost LOONEY TUNES violence of the premise–black comedy and satire as much as horror. Comedy and tragedy are separated only by consequence – a man in a top hat slips on a banana peel, LMAO, look at his dignity vanish! He had it coming, rich bastard, thinking he was better than us. But a man in a top hat slips on a banana peel, he hits his head on the pavement, he’s bleeding, God there’s so much blood, he’s not moving–they’re calling an ambulance, the lights all red and blue, they’re telling his wife, he has two children–that’s tragedy.
Eleonora knew implicitly where to twist the knife and where to leave the laugh. She’s brilliant.
I was just doing some horrible math. I'm totally old. It's the 20-year anniversary of Phonogram next year. But it's been 12 years for you since your first work on Lobo, a decade since we worked together on Angela. How have you changed as a comic writer - what have you learned? What are you still working on? You're someone who always had a powerful interest in how text and captions work on the page, and that's strongly at play in Mommy Blog.
I’m now as old as you were back when we first met, sugar. ;)
I’ve learned a great deal since I was a flouncy little baby writer fresh out of school. I’ve learned that very little is more important than sticking to your principles. I was an idealist when I first began, and I expected to be soundly disabused of that notion twelve years in, but I am more confirmed in this belief than ever. I have never regretted leaving a job if it went against what I believe in my gut is right and true and important. I’ll say my piece and keep my resolve, so be it.
To craft, I’ve learned the power of the one-shot, much as the one good sucker punch. When I was new at this, I wanted to write my epics, my forty-issue magnum opus, but now, I thrill at just having a good fucking time. Times are hard; money is tight; let’s have one blinding red bang for our buck.
I’m not less ambitious, but I am more interested in my own happiness than my own work.
Okay - I said the double sized one and done is a great format for you? Hell, it's a great format for me, as a reader. I'm aware that some of my big influences are the double-sized single issue, most notably Morrison/Bond's Kill Your Boyfriend. Do you think there's more of this in the future in the industry, from you or other people? And if not, what? I'm aware this is a fancyied-up version of the "So, what's next for you? Do you have a favourite superhero book you'd like to write, ideally, my favourite?", but go with me - I feel like I haven't talked for ages. Catch me up. Catch up the readers too. Where ARE you, Marguerite Bennett of Earth?
You are the sweetest. <3 <3
I’d be delighted to do more large format one-shots if publishers want them from me. They’re more than welcome to reach out.
In comics, WITCHBLADE is my monthly darling, MOMMY BLOG is the newest debut, I’ve got some wicked little ten-pagers in HELLO DARKNESS and CATACOMB OF TORMENT. I’ve got several horror series bubbling on the stove, one of which is with my brother-in-arms, James Tynion IV.
Beyond that, I’ve been doing a great deal of work in development in other media – it’s genuinely confounding that one can make a viable career out of writing a dozen horror screenplays that never see the light of day, but that’s Hollywood. Animation has also been very good to me.
I’ve been very busy, and very blessed to be very busy, but comics will always be my first love.
If anyone wants to seduce me back into the fray, I’ve got an open slot on my Saturday night dance card. ;)
Mommy Blog #1 is out on May 28, 2025 and is available to pre-order until May 5th.
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Jim and I continue to amble along on Old Men Running The World. The big feature this week was us chatting about our recently completed campaign where he ran Vast in the Dark in Mork Borg. Hence, Vast in the Mork. Lots covered herein. Here’s one of the bits where I cause trouble…
I do have the theory that OSR is actually replacing the computer with a person in a classic 1980s-1990s graphic adventure. As in, you’re basically meant to combine objects in the world in novel ways to deal with a problem, and if you fail, instead of getting an Sierra-games insta-death you get a tedious fight sequence. A comparison which I’m sure will piss off literally everyone.
But the bit where I attached a lantern to the bear-trap and the chain to the bear-trap and then lowered it into the chasm, and swung it back and forth so we could see if the giant beastie was hiding beneath the bridge? That’s absolutely a point and click adventure solution, but powered by a universe simulated in Jim Rossignol’s brain. I loved it. It was better than those Sierra adventures as it wasn’t a puzzle (i.e. a set solution) but a problem (i.e. something to be overcome.)
You can read the whole thing here.
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I did another playtest of the new role-playing game I’m noodling on. Its early working title was Primacy, but I’ve moved that to Scions for now. That has problems too (there’s already a game call Scion, singular) but it’s at least not 1:1ing another game.
Anyway, I haven’t talked much about it, so I thought I could give some basics of what I’m up to. This is an extended and remixed version of what I said on BlueSky, for those who follow me there.
Anyway, this is the state of play at the end of the last session…
It may look like a card game, but it’s not. It’s very much a role-playing game, that just uses some board/card game tech to track the world.
The players are all Scions, competing to be the best Scion and become Definitely-not-warmaster, leading to a big civil war where all these imperialist bastards' hubris destroys everything. It’s powered by the Paragon system (John Harper and Sean Nitter’s system you may have first saw in Agon – you may know it from Deathmatch Island too). That works (basically) by using dicepools to determine whole encounters in one go, and giving it dramatic structure to play out. So in Agon, the whole fight against some Harpies would be a single dice pool. Scions goes even bigger: stuff that would be a scenario or even a whole novel may be decided in a single pool.
Every play cycle ("Season") you draw more cards, which are the available missions. Each scion can choose which to engage with – they can all jump on the same mission, or separate. The mission begins, roleplay continues and eventually you turn to the dice. When you complete a mission, you likely flip the card and see what it reveals.
(When players got excited when they flip a card is the "this game has something" moment. It's based off the Paragon system, so the core rules are already rock solid, but that's the special sauce. Will it be something good? Will it be something horrific? Let’s find out.)
The assets to the side are things which Pud ("Kaelstorm Redwake") and Emma ("GALAP'AGOS") have picked up. Gally won a psychic poetry competition, so is hailed on the planet of Theatricus while, Kalestrom rescued the Rogue trader from a rotting hulk that felt out from another dimension. The assets are both fiction (Kaelstrom has a friend, who they can turn to) and also mechanical (they can be tapped to add more dice, targeted by enemies for death, etc).
Sadly, Katie ("J'ASÖNÑ") has yet to get anything. Poor J'ASÖNÑ. He hasn’t got any assets, but he does have the most accents, and has killed a lot of people with his thighs.
Worth noting in passing – the tone and details are deliberately flexible. It's clearly riffing on 40k, but this particular playtest is as if Douglas Adams took over the Imperium. The more the game develops, the more the flexibility will be there. I want that players who want this to feel more Flash Gordon or Dune to be catered for. It’s a game about the rise and fall of a space-empire, and that’s broader than just Warhammer.
The cards at the bottom of the screenshot are the factions in the Space Empire. At the start of the game, you pick six of the factions, and the rest are thrown into the deck, as possible antagonists and allies down the line.
That’s the thing – while a screenshot will make it look like a card game, it’s actually not that at all. The game is deck driven, but the GM can pick the cards in the deck – and the cards are basically all random encounters, which the GM runs and builds upon as they turnup… and also interact with the other cards. For example, the Biofleet says "Threat: Faction" which means it will wipe out a whole faction if left alone. The GM picks which faction it’s targeting, and that becomes the story. As the missions are in play, the GM can give extra sub-missions, based upon each of the Imperial Faction’s goals (and guided by the notes for each scenario).
In other words, the cards are a mixture of random encounter generator, fronts tracking, faction-game from blades, treasure and few more things too. And map! That may be the most important one.
Probably best to talk through the actual playstate that’s shown above to get the idea of how that plays out.
Look at the three central encounters. That’s the main events.
We have a signal from deep space - that can be ignored, and will stay around to be dealt with on future turns. A Scion would go, and if they succeed in traversing the depths of space, flip the card.
The orcs are raiding the Terran lords, who'll be very annoyed (and have a small possibility of rebelling) if the players don't do something. That’s not great.
However the big problem is that last Season Kaelstrom went to a deep space signal and rather than a nice friendly world, found a biofleet of monstrous attack cysts. If the players don't stop them, the Imperial Fleet will be destroyed, and removed from play. They will need at least two Scions to destroy the aliens AND save the fleet. That’s assuming that the dice are kind. What are the Scions going to do?
Of course, that's not the end to it - the Imperial Army want samples of the biofleet (which will increase the difficulty to actually win), the Inquisition definitely want the biofleet entirely destroyed, the Collegia-Psi would prefer someone go and do the signal NOW and the Terran Lords really do have this little orc problem we mentioned.
And you can imagine the Fleet really would rather not be eaten either.
Point being - it's modelling a high scale strategic situation in a simple way, with players able to see and priortise a bunch of conflicting demands from the world, and their own desires. I'm trying to give context (and so meaning) to the missions by the modelling.
We'll see what happens when the intricacies of this kick in, of course (it’s early, and there’s also much more I haven’t talked about), but I'm delighted with how it's going. It's using this simple boardgame-y tech as a campaign structure to do a ridiculously epic space opera storygame, and it’s working. Also, in the case of our game, is pretty hilarious.
Next: putting more info on the cards, so actually operate as cheat cards for each encounter.
Oh: if you're aware of my "All games are either high art or fanfic" this one is as fanfic as it gets.
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I plugged my items in the silent auction of creators supporting trans rights in the UK and South Africa last time, and the response has been great. It’s still going on right now if you want to jump aboard.
Leigh Alexander writes about what makes a great reality TV star. Leigh’s a long way away from criticism now, so when she steps back in for something she’s passionate about, it’s always a treat.
I love Black Armada’s TTRPGs – they’re thoughtful and provoking works. This continues with Grimbark, a game where you play space marine dogs. As Larkin once put it, to some this says nothing, to others, it leaves nothing to be said.
David Harth over at Comicbook.com has beeh having a time with some of my stuff recently. He actually jumped aboard The Power Fantasy on issue 8, and enjoyed it (which is a relief – it’s a complicated book, but it is written with an episodic structure in mind, in terms of information flow) and then went back to look at Phonogram.
The Open Hearth podcast, where people in the community talk about what they’ve been playing, covered DIE RPG in a recent podcast, which was a really nice surprise. Lowell and company really dig into the game, and highlight some of the things I’m always relieved to see in play. The Rorschach test nature of DIE is very much part of the beast, and this is some high level play (whatever that means)
I’m a huge fan of Tom Ewing’s Popular – where he’s reviewing each UK number one. He’s in the early-00s now, and has reached Crazy Frog. This is a time capsule full of poison gas, and I’m all here for it.
Clare Napier put together a crew to do a zine celebrating the great Jim Steinman. You can get it here. I’m still waiting for my copy, expectedly.
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My new house has a conservatory. Yes, I know, I’m fancy.
Writing in the conservatory has become part of my work routine. I’ve got an actual office, but there’s too many distractions there. Just with the macbook, typing is what I need, at least until I get my pages done.
There’s a couple of quirks to working in the Conservatory.
Firstly, at least right now, it’s freezing in the morning and becomes physically unbearable in the early afternoon. I’m embracing this. I’ve always tried to get my pages done in the morning – “write and then eat” is something my body has internalised. Now, I have an even more gruelling physical timer to enforce this. You have to write Etienne saying some stuff about how utilitarianism has made him kick this puppy before you die of heat exhaustion.
Secondly, the wifi here is patchy at best. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. Sometimes it works as a trickle. This is actually a boon – it’s harder to waste time by refreshing the internet when the internet won’t refresh. With luck, I will get frustrated and actually do some work.
However, sometimes I will actually need some internet – like right now, where I need to download a gig install of Affinity Photo. Then I have to get up, and open the door to the garden, because doing so ups the bandwidth. It gives the image of the Internet being like a cat that’s prowling around outside the house, and needs to be let in.
This delights me. I like this house.
I have done that, and then written all of this, and we have reached noon, and we are very clearly in the heat-death stage of the work cycle.
So the end of the mail.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
1.5.2025