Ruining Childhoods Since 2023

It is at this point that I should mention -- since I completely forgot -- that my new Lamentations of the Flame Princess book is now out:

Can you guess the source material?

James Raggi asked for a Cocaine Bear pastiche, and this is what I did. To be fair, there is a bear in the book, and the bear does engage in substance abuse, but the overall focus is a bit different. It's a mini wilderness crawl with anthropomorphic -- and murderous -- animals, a massive idiot, and a conceptual entity that will -- I hope -- befuddle your players and maim their characters.

It went on sale at Ropecon and Gencon a few weeks ago and is now available from the LotFP EU shop. It's not yet on sale at the US shop or DriveThru, but I will try to remember to update you when it is.

(It's now available from the US shop here, or in pdf form here. I remembered!)

The Fifth Place

So this happened:

I have mainly been using it to play the PS4 games that won't fit on the tiny hard drive inside my PS4, and to benefit from the "PS4 Pro Enhanced" features that I obviously cannot detect with my ageing brain and eyes.

It's a fine machine. It's huge, about the size and weight of a small family hatchback, but at least it's nowhere near as noisy or power hungry as its predecessor. I have two complaints:

1. The build quality feels wonky. For such a bulky thing it feels flimsy, even cheap, and I'm not fond of the shiny black strip down the middle that does nothing but attract fingerprints and smudges.

2. The user interface is bonkers. Gone is the lovely simplicity of the XMB, or even the PS4's chubby menu, and instead we have an insane double menu system that seems to combine both, but in the most non-intuitive way possible. Utter madness that feels like it was designed at 4:30pm on a Friday and released before anyone noticed.

All that grumbling aside, the happiness in the image above is genuine.

Moving Without Travelling

I have never played Traveller.

No, that's not true. I did run a very brief Traveller: The New Era campaign when I was 15 or 16 but:

1. TNE is its own weird thing and doesn't feel like proper Traveller.

(Although I do quite like the updates it made to the setting. I think they restore a bit of fun OSR-type exploration and uncertainty to a setting that sometimes felt stale and static, and also sidestep around some of the issues regarding how real world technology has outstripped the predictions of 70s science fiction.)

2. I was teenager and had no idea what I was doing. It was equal parts Bablyon 5, Call of Cthulhu, and utter rubbish.

Anyway, I would quite like to play proper Traveller one day, and this excellent series of posts from Sir Poley on the "four table legs" of classic Traveller only makes me want it more. Go and have a read; they are very good pieces and make a lot of sense.

Always Daring and Courageous

Although I was just about the right age for it, for some reason Star Fleet/X-Bomber passed me by. Which is a shame, as it spawned glorious stuff like this, from Brian "Badgers" May and Eddie "Van Halen" Van Halen:

I've Seen That Bethor

Thor: Ragnarok (2017):

No, in fact this is from Paul Pope's 2013 graphic novel Battling Boy. There's a clear Thor influence in this part of the comic, so perhaps there's an ur-example that Pope and Taika Waititi are both referencing, but the similarities with the opening sequence of the best Thor film are striking.

(Battling Boy is quite good, by the way, but alas it finishes just as it's getting going and there was never a proper second volume.)

Kind Words

John Arendt over at Dreams in the Lich House is embarking on a grand quest to review a huge pile of Lamentations of the Flame Princess books, including a few of mine!

You can read John's review of Magic Eater here.

And his review of Bee-Ware! is here.

And a review of Winnie-the-Shit here.

Elsewhere, The Curious Conundrum of the Conflagrated Condottiero gets a good review at, er, Reviews From R'lyeh.

Finally for today, there's a review of More Than Meets the Eye that is mostly positive and makes some fair criticisms too:



If those reviews have enticed you, you can buy the books in the usual places.

PINKROBES

PINKROBES, not fluffy: Armour 14 (as leather), Move 120', 3+1* Hit Dice, 14hp, two-handed sword 1d10, Morale 9, Number Appearing 1 or 2. Half damage from bludgeoning or crushing weapons.

PINKROBES are pink, malevolent -- possibly fey -- spirits that take the form of floating, ragged monk-like robes. Cruel and mischievous, they delight in capturing and murdering sentient beings. They favour large two-handed swords, as they think they look cool. They have no physical form beyond the robes themselves; as such they are very quiet -- they surprise unaware opponents on 1-3 -- except when they communicate with each other, which they do in howls and moans.

Once per day a PINKROBE can go into a berzerk fury and attack 1d6 times in a Round.

PINKROBES are not undead, although they seem similar, and are intelligent and spiteful enough to pretend to be in order to trick, for example, clerics into wasting their turning abilities. Bastards.

PINKROBES obey the howling, moany, commands of higher-ranked *ROBES, and can order REDROBES, YELLOWROBES, GREENROBES, BROWNROBES, and BLUEROBES about.

BROWNROBES

BROWNROBES, but fire isn't brown: Armour 14 (as leather), Move 120', 2+1* Hit Dice, 10hp, two-handed sword 1d10, Morale 9, Number Appearing 1 or 2. Half damage from bludgeoning or crushing weapons.

BROWNROBES are -- you will find this surprising -- malevolent -- possibly fey -- spirits that take the form of floating, ragged monk-like robes. Cruel and mischievous, they delight in capturing and murdering sentient beings. They favour large two-handed swords, as they think they look cool. They have no physical form beyond the robes themselves; as such they are very quiet -- they surprise unaware opponents on 1-3 -- except when they communicate with each other, which they do in howls and moans.

Once per day a BROWNROBE can, instead of attacking, produce a fireball with a range of 240' that causes 3d6 damage to anyone in a 20' area.

BROWNROBES are not undead, although they seem similar, and are intelligent and spiteful enough to pretend to be in order to trick, for example, clerics into wasting their turning abilities. Bastards.

BROWNROBES obey the howling, moany, commands of higher-ranked *ROBES, and can order REDROBES, YELLOWROBES, and GREENROBES about.

Vintage Bugman's

Blood Bowl and Warhammer enthusiasts will know well the name Bugman. The leader of a mercenary band one day, a Blood Bowl player-coach another day, and the seldom-seen proprietor of an out of the way Nottingham pub, Bugman and his brews have been part of Games Workshop from the earliest of days.

They've also been part of Dungeons & Dragons, sort of, as can be seen in 1985's White Dwarf #67.

That's from "A Murder at Flaxton", an adventure for AD&D1, by Michael Heaton. I'm fairly sure the art is by the legendary -- and recently retired -- John Blanche.

Is the adventure set in the Warhammer World? Beyond the picture there's nothing else to suggest it is, but there's nothing that rules it out either. If you choose to believe that it is, then this may be the earliest Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (sort of) adventure in print.

Across 2 Bear (Spider)

Spider-Verse 2: Spider-Verser is excellent and you should go and see it as soon as possible. I only have two quibbles:

The first film was impressive in part because there was nothing like it. You can't say that about the sequel because, well, the first one exists.

Still no recognition for Nicholas Hammond and Shinji Tōdō. Although to be fair, there are hundreds of Spider-Men in the film so they could be in there somewhere.