More Than Half My Life
Somewhere outside the rigid constraints of linear time lies the Akashic Library, repository of the lost, the half-remembered, and the never-known. What mind-melting obscurities will we encounter there today? Read on, sojourner, and see . . .
It’s September, the month of my wedding anniversary. But this year’s not just any anniversary—it’s our 25th anniversary! Somehow Alice and I have been married for a quarter century. That’s more than half my life! Seems like only yesterday we were gathering with friends in Alice’s parents’ backyard in the boiling heat to get married.
For our anniversary, my in-laws and my parents gave us a fancy dinner at our home. Look how fancy:
We had a good time, and then the next day we had friends over for a party.
Probably about 30 people showed up, over the course of a few hours. And you know—get ready, this is going to be pretty profound—it’s good to have friends. I like them! If you don’t have any, I recommend you get some.
Whew, we’re getting pretty sentimental here. I better change the subject and talk about role-playing games.
A TROIKA! BUNDLE OF JOY
Have you wanted to try out Troika!, the acid-fantasy RPG from Melsonian Arts, but you weren’t sure where to start? Well, I’ve got good news for you . . .
The fine folks at Bundle of Holding are offering a ridiculously good deal on a bundle of Troika! books. As they say, “The simple Troika! rules, inspired by the 1980s Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, let beginners and jaded roleplayers alike go wild in crazed cross-planar pursuits. Trip the light fantastic with this new assortment of visionary adventures fueled by hallucinatory creativity.”
For just $9.95 you can get the core Troika! rulebook and three third-party sourcebooks as DRM free ebooks. Those sourcebooks are Bridgetown, from Technical Grimoire Games; Goblin Mail, by Evlyn Moreau; and Swann Castle, by my first-born child Blumiere and me.
Blu and I spent a long time working on Swann Castle, and it’s near and dear to our hearts. We’re so excited that the book is getting exposed to a whole new audience.
This Troika! bundle is way, way cheaper than buying the books separately—I think each of them retails for more than ten bucks. The bundle is only available for a limited time, so act now!
BUYING THE MILLION DOLLAR SUN
RedMageGM reviewed Million-Colored Sun—the pulp sword & sorcery game that Steve Johnson, Josh Burnett, and I wrote for Hex Games—on Youtube. Watch the review here; if you want to skip right to the MCS portion, start at minute 12.
Spoilers, he has a lot of nice things to say about the game. He sums it up like this:
“Million-Colored Sun is awesome. I think it’s great. It’s very, very simple, a light system, but if you’re going to play a very, very light sword and sorcery game, you don’t want to invest too much in terms of time, getting your characters together, you like a sillier tone, you like a more free-form game, or you’re interested in trying one, where players come up with their own characters down the line, then this is going to be something that’s really enjoyable.”
I don’t think the game has to have “a sillier tone”—for this book Steve, Josh, and I really tried to reign in the silliness—but I appreciate the kind words.
You can order your copy of Million-Colored Sun here.
We’ve also released our first MCS supplement, Inhuman Bloodlines. The recommended price is $2, but you can pay what you want—even as little as zero dollars—when you get your copy here.
Josh wrote Inhuman Bloodlines, but what’s Steve been working on lately? Oh, I remember . . .
CASTAWAYS & CONSPIRACIES
Years ago the Hex Games staff, including Mr. Steve Johnson and me, ran a game called Project G at various conventions. It was a conspiratorial take on a classic TV sitcom . . . I don’t have to be coy about it here, right? It was based on Gilligan’s Island, and the idea was that each castaway had a secret backstory and goals that they were trying to keep hidden from the others. This was a big hit at cons but it seemed like it would be impossible to publish. Well, decades later, Steve figured out how to do it—after changing it so that it’s not specifically based on the Gilligan’s Island intellectual property, of course.
As Steve puts it, “In Castaways & Conspiracies, the peace and laughter of a familiar tropical paradise begin to unravel, revealing a web of lies and hidden agendas where everyone’s a suspect and alliances shift in the blink of an eye. As life on the island gets weirder and more sinister, you’ll have to decide who you can trust and who gets a coconut to the head.”
Steve captured the chaotic fun of those con games we used to run and enhanced it with all sorts of tips, tables, and ways to expand the game. Even if you don’t plan on playing it in the near future, the character backgrounds are a lot of fun to read. You can order a copy here.
I drew three illustrations for the book. This is my favorite one:
How does this character fit into the castaways’ sitcom hi-jinx? Read the book to find out!
LIGHTNING MAN UPDATE
Back in July I ran a Kickstarter to print a hardcover collection of my comic book series Lightning Man. A few weeks ago I ordered a proof copy from the printer, and LO:
It was very exciting to hold a copy in my hand—it feels substantial. Which is good, since it took years of work to produce. The interiors look great and the only problem is with some small details on the cover, which I am working to correct before I order the full print run.
Speaking of collections of small press comics . . .
VISIT BROKEN CROWN
Some people think of me as a “tsunami of creativity” because I make games, write fiction, draw comics, etc. And if you glance through this newsletter, you might think, “Wow, this guy does a lot!” But look closer . . . Million-Colored Sun, Swann Castle, and Lightning Man were all finished months ago. What have I done lately? Not much. I’m a creative slacker.
You know who’s a real creative dynamo? Joseph Morris. That guy is constantly coming up with new ideas and putting them to paper. He’s drawn more comics than you’ve had hot dinners. The plus side is that, if you subscribe to his Patreon, you get a steady stream of awesome comics. The downside is that a man like Joseph is at the mercy of his muse, and when he gets captivated by a fresh idea, he may drop an existing project.
That’s what happened with Broken Crown, which at one point was my favorite of Joseph’s comics. He was serializing it a page at a time, until he ran out of enthusiasm and left it unfinished. I pestered him to do more, and he did a few pages, but then he moved on. I mourned and then I, too, moved on.
But recently a wonderful thing happened—inspiration struck, Joseph went back to Broken Crown, and he finished the first volume. He formatted it into a paperback and put it for sale on Amazon. I ordered a copy ASAP, read it, and loved it.
Joseph has his own sprawling cosmology with dozens of characters that stretches across many different projects. So if you’ve read his previous comics, you know who some of the characters in Broken Crown are, and you have some insights into why the world is the way it is. But Broken Crown also makes sense as its own story, a murder mystery that is clearly inspired by Twin Peaks.
The first volume covers one day in Broken Crown, a small town in Indiana. It begins with a young man finding the body of Gwen Thomas, who’s been murdered and nailed to a tree. Things go from there, with a Lynchian blend of small town life, the surreal, and the supernatural.
One thing I really appreciate about Joseph’s work is how he depicts evil. It’s not standard comic book villainy. Like Jack Kirby, Joseph sees injustices around him and transforms them into drawings. You can feel his anger at the petty despots and small-minded bigots who make his fictional world terrible, just like their real-life counterparts are doing to our world. In addition to being a murder mystery and a supernatural epic, Broken Crown is a scathing look at life in a small Indiana town in the age of Donald Trump.
For example, this page:
There’s a nice payoff on the next page, where the owner of the diner asks if they have a problem with her and her wife, and the two old men say no, “Yer one’a tha good ones.”
If that sounds like something you might enjoy, I humbly suggest you order a copy.
BOOKS I'VE READ SINCE LAST TIME
Houses of the Unholy, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Dracula Book One: The Impaler, Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones
Uprooted, Naomi Novik
Den: Children of Fire, Richard Corben
The Great Hare After, Liam Sharp and Matylda McCormack-Sharp
The Man Called Noon, Louis L’Amour
My Western kick continues, with another Louis L’Amour book. I found this battered paperback copy of The Man Called Noon at an antique mall in Terre Haute. I was hoping to find an old Western and luck was with me—there was a whole stack of Louis L’Amour. Obviously I picked this one because of the cool title. I enjoyed the book, largely because of the way L’Amour worked in elements of the noir detective genre. A man is shot, falls out a window, and realizes he doesn’t know who he is. Who are the men trying to kill him? What do the letters in his coat pocket mean? And which of these dames can he trust, and which is out to plug him full of lead? The ending was a bit disappointing, but I think this could be adapted into a great movie. [EDITED TO ADD: I have just learned that the movie The Man Called Noon was made in 1973. I need to see it!]
Uprooted has the tight-yet-organic plotting I’ve come to expect from Novik, Dracula Book One is just the B-movie bloodbath I wanted it to be, and Houses of the Unholy was another engaging story from the Brubaker/Phillips team.
TV SHOWS I’VE WATCHED
Leverage season 1
MOVIES I'VE SEEN SINCE LAST TIME
Eraserhead
Beetlejuice
The Elephant Man
“Eraserhead and then The Elephant Man . . . wait, Leighton, are you planning on watching the films of David Lynch in order?” Maybe I am, dear reader. MAYBE I AM. I’d seen Eraserhead once before. The first time I liked it, but this time I loved it. This was my first time watching The Elephant Man and it was wonderful. What a picture!
For years I said that Terry Gilliam was my favorite director. Gilliam spoke to a sense of lost childhood whimsy within me. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown more attuned to that strange buzzing noise in the background, the insidious whirling of ceiling fans, the malevolent crackle of electricity and the thousands of hideous insects seething and roiling just beneath the surface. Now, in my advanced age, David Lynch is my favorite director. Most of my friends and family members seem to dislike Mr. Lynch’s work, finding it “off-putting” or “difficult” or “stupid.” It’s okay, I still love and respect them even if they are uncultured philistines.
So that’s a wrap for September. If you haven’t already, maybe go ahead and subscribe to this newsletter. It only comes out once a month, so it’s not that big a commitment. Not that I am personally scared of commitment—I’ve been married for 25 years.
Your Pal,
Leighton