Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year
Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s what’s going on:
Stuff I’m Working On
The Red Witch of Chapel d’Angoisee is now available in PDF format. I just got notification that the proof copies of the print version are on the way, so hopefully a paper version will be available soon.
On Sale Now! As usual for this time of year, I’ve been writing a bunch of World Anvil entries for their Worldember event. I’ve stuck to Hex Ficton stuff this year, and you can find all my entries gathered conveniently here. I’ve technically reached the 10,000 word goal, but might write another entry or two before the end of the year. If you happen to have a World Anvil membership (they’re free), I’d appreciate you logging in and liking some of the entries—it doesn’t determine who gets fabulous prizes, but it can help.
Work on QAGS 2E continues. I’m hoping to start a regular campaign for playtesting purposes sometime after the first of the year.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here, but my Zine Month project for 2025 is probably going to be a game that’s basically the legend of Robin Hood reframed with a Greg Garcia comedy. He’s the guy who did My Name is Earl, Raising Hope, Sprung, and a few other series. Earlier this week I started working on the cover. The plan was to do a police line-up shot of some Garciaverse-looking characters:
Outlaws of Nottingham County But while I was doing the post-render work, it occurred to me that silhouettes might work better. It did, and now I’ve got my banner/cover image:
My Name Is Hood Image I also got a chance to get back to work on the Khezvaros map yesterday during Leighton’s OSE game. Right now the buildings are about halfway done.
The City of Ten Thousand Daggers Stuff I’ve Read
After finishing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I started If This Book Exists, You’re In The Wrong Universe by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong). It’s the fourth book in the John Dies at the End series and I’ve still got about 50 pages left. It’s par for the course for the series, so if you like the other ones you’ll probably like this one.
Otherwise I’ve mainly been reading stuff about Robin Hood on Wikipedia looking for stuff I can use in the My Name is Hood game.
Stuff I’ve Watched
The Guest Book is a Greg Garcia show that I hadn’t previously heard of that ran for two seasons. The first season is about a cabin in the mountains, the second is about a beach house. Each week, new guests stars come to the cabin and do hijinx. There are also a handful of regular characters from the town, including Eddie “Crabman” Steeples and several other Garciaverse regulars.
Agatha All Along was a very Marvel series. It was good, but at this point I think I’m just burned out on Marvel.
Vikings Valhalla was fine. It kind of felt like a shadow of the original series, but nothing wrong with it. The only thing they really added was a soundtrack with viking chants that somehow sound loke Pearl Jam.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was fun, and made me finally appreciate how stupid the lyrics to “McArthur Park” are.
Sturgill Simpson: Sound & Fury is basically Simpson’s homage to Heavy Metal. If that sounds like a good idea to you, you’ll probably enjoy it.
Tiptoes is on Amazon Prime right now. It’s the movie where Matthew McConaughey plays the only non-dwarf in a family full of dwarves and Gary Oldman plays his (Dwarf) brother. It’s at WTF as it sounds.
Red One: I’ve heard some complaints about this seeming like what you’d get if you asked AI to make a streaming platform original movie, but I enjoyed it.
Borderlands: It’s not terrible, it’s just not very good. Just a lot of money spent to create something completely and almost instantly forgettable.
Lisa Frankenstein: I can now say I have a least favorite Diablo Cody movie. I didn’t regret watching it, but there are better ways I could have spent that time.
That’s it for now. More in a few weeks.
TYTYVM,
Steve
©2024, Steve Johnson