You Die, She Dies, Everybody Dies
The subject line for this newsletter is from Heavy Metal, because I’m watching Heavy Metal right now and never know what to put in the subject line of these things. Yesterday I added everyone who opted in on the My Name Is Hood backer surveys, so if you’re new to the newsletter, welcome!
Rain Delay
This newsletter is a week late because last weekend was GameCon, the yearly-or-so-trip where me and a bunch of friends rent cabins at a state park and spend the weekend hanging out and playing games. This year we tried Lake Cumberland for the first time, and it was not ideal. It was a fun weekend, but there were a ton of little annoyance that made it exhausting, especially when my drive time home was doubled due to flooded roads.
Important Notice:
We’re in the middle of a price update at DrivethruRPG. Some items have already been updated, but many are still available at the old prices. If you’ve got anything on your whishlist, get it while it’s still cheap.
Stuff I’m Working On
My Name Is Hood continues slowly but steadily. As I’ve gotten into the rules section, I’ve realized that a few of the things that I thought were central elements of the new version of QAGS are actually optional rules, which is a good thing since the more stripped-down the most basic version of the rules are, the more it feels like QAGS and the more room we have for customization when crunchier rules are needed.
I might have mentioned that I want to run a City of Ten Thousand Daggers game sometime in the near future. I was supposed to run a test game at GameCon, but it got interrupted before it really got started and we never got back to it due to the aforementioned annoyances. I did have to create characters for it, though, and that helped me work out a lot of the details of how the rules will work. I’m working on a Death Cookie article about some of those specifics. It’ll be out in a week or two.
Back in the 90s, I ran a series of fantasy campaigns all set in a game world called Kreos that lasted several years. Since I didn’t have a computer for most of that time, the majority of the notes are hand-written. I’ve meant to transfer them to a more permanent form for years, and I stumbled across some of the notes a few weeks ago and realized that the World Anvil platform that I’ve been using for several years is a perfect place to do that. The page isn’t live yet, and it’s a very low-priority on my projects list, but hopefully I’ll have it ready to launch soon. Here’s one of the header banners I did for it, though.
The Faere
Currently Reading
Makers, by Cory Doctorow. I’m guessing this is one of his older books, because it’s kind of slow and sprawling and the pacing is all over the place. His more recent stuff has been a lot quicker to read. It feels like it might be going somewhere, but it’s taking its time.
Recently Watched
Still watching Lucifer (I think I’m almost done), but took a brief break to watch the new season The White Lotus. I’m really not sure if I actually like this show or just enjoy watching bad things happen to rich jerkoffs, but they always include at least one actor who I’m willing to follow just about anywhere (the new season has Walton Goggins and Parker Posey). I’ve also been watching the new season of The Righteous Gemstones, which is making me begin to wonder whether Walton Goggins’ dick has its own contract with HBO at this point.
The Electric State has really cool retro-futurist robots, but everything else about the movie is very “meets expectations” except for a couple of scenes where Chris Pratt does a passable 80s Kurt Russel impersonation.
O’Dessa is billed as a post-apocalyptic rock opera, which is kind of weird since the music is mostly very folk/country (I mean, Pokey LaFarge plays the dead father whose footsteps the heroine is following in) and even the “rock” is more rockabilly than what you usually expect from a rock opera. It’s kind of a mess, with elements of Streets of Fire, The Running Man, Six-String Samurai, and a dozen other dystopian future movies, but they’re all movies I enjoy and the parts fit together reasonably well. I was impressed to find out later that Sadie Sink actually sang the songs. She’s surprisingly good. I’m not sure if this movie is good, but it’s definitely fun.
A Complete Unknown was fine, and actually managed to avoid following the Walk Hard formula exactly, which is rate with biopics these days. I was also impressed with how well Ed Norton’s “aw shucks” nice guy act from Death to Smoochy works for playing Pete Seeger.
Land of the Dead/Dawn of the Dead I put on Land of the Dead yesterday when I was scrolling through for some background noise, because you can never go wrong with a Romero zombie movie. The Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead auto-played when it was over, and I’m not going to turn down watching Sarah Polley fight zombies.
Drowning Mona is a movie I haven’t seen in a while because I stopped buying DVDs before I got around to replacing my VHS copy of it. If you’ve never seen it, you should definitely give it a watch (it’s on Amazon right now). Danny DeVito plays a small town sheriff who has to solve a murder. The only problem is that nearly everyone in town wanted the victim (Bette Midler) dead. It’s a weird, quirky movie with a great cast and more Yugos than you’ve ever seen in a single movie.
You’re Cordially Invited took me a while to get around to, but I eventually realized that (1) Will Ferrell has a pretty strong track record with wedding-related comedies and (2) Geraldine Viswanathan is in it, and she either has a good agent or great instincts because I’ve never seen her in anything bad. It’s pretty much what you expect, but it’s a fun way to spend a couple hours. Also, Will Ferrell rassles a gator.
Million-Colored Suns is now on Bluesky!
Follow us at @millioncoloredsun.bsky.social
That’s it for this time. See you in a few weeks!
TYTYVM,
Steve
©2024, Steve Johnson