Every Leaf a Flower
Greetings Last Piners,
Someday I’ll get better at updating this thing more than once every few months. Maybe. Or probably not. Thanks for sticking with me, regardless.
It’s my favorite time of year, and the weather has been perfect: crisp but not too cold, great for sweaters and cuddling up under a blanket and reading. On that note, I’ve been reading The Saga of Swamp Thing, Alan Moore’s classic run with Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, to go along with Shelved by Genre’s unit on Alan Moore. I’m not sure how I never read these before, because I was quite the Alan Moore fan as a teen and young adult, and while my feelings on Moore have cooled some, this is still Great Comics here.
I’ve also been reading Margaret Killjoy’s Danielle Cain series, which is pretty fun. Queer anarchist crust punks solve supernatural mysteries and fight monsters. It would be fun to run a Bump in the Dark campaign inspired by these books.
Speaking of Bump, we’re wrapping up our second long-term campaign, and it’s bittersweet. We still have a few sessions left, but dominoes are falling and threads being pulled. This campaign was recorded with the intention of editing it into a podcast, which we still might do, but either way I’ll try to share a postmortem once the campaign is done.
As far as I can tell, the Crit Awards haven’t officially announced their winners yet, but the finalists document on their website has been updated. Unfortunately Bump didn’t win (losing out to the amazing, much-deserving Triangle Agency), but I am still so, so grateful to have been a finalist and I appreciate everyone in this weird little community we’ve built!
Things have been pretty busy at work (in addition to my regular day job, I am also teaching for the first time) and I haven’t had much time to work on any new stuff, but I’m hoping we can start playtesting Embers and Grim Harbour soon. I’ll let folks know once we’re ready to start setting that up.
In honor of Spooky Season, I’ve set up a sale on Bump and all my supplements for it, which you can find here.
Odds and Ends
Last month, my partner and I went to Toronto to see my favorite band of all time, Propagandhi. It was everything I hoped it would be. I’d hoped to write more about the experience, and why their newest album is the perfect album for this fucked up political moment that we are in, but, as always, time got away from me.
I’m super excited for GdT’s Frankenstein, but we probably won’t catch it in theaters because Netflix’s release strategy is actually insane, and the closest showing is at least an hour away.
Check out my friend Hendrik’s game, Girls of the Genziana Hotel, funding now on Gamefound. I haven’t been this excited about a game in quite a while.
Speaking of Margaret Killjoy, her podcast, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, and her newsletter, Birds Before the Storm have been an absolute salve. Check out this piece to start.
That’s it for me, folks. Enjoy your autumn and have a Happy Halloween.
jex