Trombone

Doot!

#bards #KelvinDrawsThings

Alphorn

I drew another bard!

I feel like I'm getting closer to what I see in my mind's eye with this one. Not quite, but getting there. #bards #KelvinDrawsThings

Lute

I drew a bard!

I'm still (re)finding my feet, and there are some old bad habits in there, but I'm enjoying drawing again. #bards #KelvinDrawsThings

4000ad

I've been looking through my 2000ad collection* and I thought I'd highlight this one: Prog 2000, released in December 1999 as a double celebration; a big end-of-year special, and a semi-surprised "Crikey!" that 2000ad lasted up to, well, 2000AD, when pretty much every other British comic -- aside from stuff like The Beano or Commando that will likely survive the heat death of the universe -- had folded years before.

This is more properly Prog 1173.5 -- the "real" Prog 2000 would come in 2016 -- but given the date of publication, I can understand why they would jump the gun. This started** a tradition of big end-of-year specials that were numbered by year until 2016 when they switched to the weekly numbering, so there were also two 2001s, two 2002s, and so on.

Still with me?

I don't get many of the weekly issues these days but I always pick up the big end-of-year specials, and I think this first one is one of the best. As a look back at the glory days of the comic, they managed to bring back some big name artists who had long before departed for the US comics industry. There's a cover from Brian Bolland -- who apparently "enthusiastically agreed" -- Dave Gibbons coming back to draw a Rogue Trooper -- sort of -- story, Kevin O'Neill returning for the final episode of the batshit insane Nemesis the Warlock, and Mike McMahon and Cam Kennedy on the two Judge Dredd stories.

Aside from the "old" superstars, you've got incredible detailed black and white art from Kev Walker on ABC Warriors, the underrated Simon Fraser on Nikolai Dante, the genius Carlos Ezquerra on Strontium Dog, glorious painting from Greg Staples on Sláine and Simon Davis on Sinister Dexter, and Mark Harrison's impossible*** paint/digital hybrid art on Glimmer Rats.

Not every story is good, as such, but it all looks amazing, and is probably the most consistently good-looking of the specials.

Here, have a look:

Mike McMahon:

Dave Gibbons:

Kev Walker. Good gosh, look at it:

Simon Fraser. Most of this story is a sex scene, and I try to keep this blog relatively family friendly, so you get crying in the rain instead:

Carlos Ezquerra, experimenting with some slightly dodgy 1999 computer effects:

Greg Staples. This is a weekly comic, remember:

Simon Davis, ditto:

Kevin O'Neill, the only person to have his entire art style banned by DC Comics. Their loss:

Mark Harrison, the same one who drew "The Travellers" in White Dwarf, engaging in some sort of sorcery:

Cam Kennedy:

Not bad for £3.95 Earth money!

*(It's not much of a collection; a few issues from when I was reading the weekly comic, and every end-of-year special since 2000.)

**(There had been the traditional British Christmas annuals -- different to US comic annuals -- but those stopped in the 1990s... except they did an annual in 2025, in addition to the special, just to confuse matters.)

***(I can't work out how he did it in 1999, anyway.)

Most Wanted

If anyone out there has unwanted copies of any of these books, I am willing to pay a fair -- as in, not absurdly inflated collector numbers -- price for them. Let me know!

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and... Well That's It, Actually

I walked up a hill yesterday.

#MayThe4thBeWithYou

Happy Star Wars Day everyone!

#MayThe4thBeWithYou

Ed Balls

Ed Balls

#EdBallsDay

Who Lives In a House Like This?

Does new Doctor Who companion Belinda Chandra live in old Doctor Who companion Donna Noble's house? It certainly looks like it!

This is Donna's house from 2023's "The Star Beast":

This is Belinda's house from 2025's "The Robot Revolution":

So no, it's not the same house. I've seen some fans speculating that it's the same set, redressed, which is possible.

It does have a very similar layout though, right down to the same "alien back door".

From the Shadows, Dark

We have been playing Shadowdark, the current old-school darling. I've been running the gang through the quickstart adventure The Lost Citadel of the Crimson/Scarlet -- I kept forgetting -- Minotaur. In general, I think everyone enjoyed it, and it was a different experience for us, having not done much old-school gaming beyond the occasional LotFP playtest.

Here are my thoughts based on one adventure and a month of play:

Darkness and light: This is one of the big selling points of the game, with darkness bringing increased danger, and tracking light sources having increased importance, but in practice it was irrelevant. The players took steps to mitigate the risk and carried plenty of light sources, and tracking light started to feel more like busywork than gameplay; you could have reduced everyone's inventory capacity by one or two slots to account for torches and just assumed they could see.

The one time it should have been relevant, when the wizard ran off with the only light source in order to distract some enemies, the rest of the party was in what was more or less an outdoor area in full daylight. Oh well.

(I placed the dungeon within easy travel of a town where the player-characters could rest and restock; maybe light sources would have been more of an issue if they had been more isolated. One to ponder.)

Death saves and stabilisation: I'm not fully convinced by this mechanic. In the interests of honest playtesting, we followed the procedures through and the elf fighter expired after a number of failed attempts to revive him. Fix? I think in future I would rule that if the situation is "safe" -- at this point the enemies had left to pursue the wizard -- then attempts to stabilise a fallen character work without a roll.

Encumbrance: I like the simplified, slot-based system. It's easy, with a minimum of book-keeping, but there were plenty of times when the party had to make interesting decisions about what to take and what to leave behind.

Experience and treasure: The way Shadowdark tracks experience and treasure is weird, but once you get your head around it it feels quite elegant, and I prefer it to the meticulous counting of every single copper coin. Money did become a bit irrelevant, in part because there was nothing to spend it on, but I believe the full rules have more options for this. The adventure as written should have had the experience values for the treasure packets listed, but that's a presentation issue more than a problem with the game.

Random Levelling: I loved the idea of this, but in practice it wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped. I allowed the players to roll at second level -- as written they don't roll until level three -- in the interests of playtesting, and I think I would continue to do it going forward as it makes the first couple of levels more engaging.

Spellcasting: Shadowdark drops Vancian fire-and-forget spellcasting in favour of casting rolls; if you succeed you cast the spell and it's available again, but if you fail you don't cast and you forget the spell until you rest. The players seemed to prefer it, but I thought the wizard player was perhaps a bit demoralised on the occasions when none of his spell rolls succeeded. Fix? I am tempted to rule that spellcasters can pick one spell that they can cast without fear of failure.

Weapon limits: The "classic" weapon usage limits return and I've never liked them. If you want to be a wizard with a broadsword, then be a wizard with a broadsword. I'd probably fix this in my usual way: weapon damage equal to hit dice, regardless of weapon type, so that wizard's broadsword does 1d4 damage, but a fighter would do 1d8 with it. +1 for two-handed weapons. Shadowdark borrows the finesse weapon property from D&D5 and I think I would probably limit that to just fighters and thieves to reflect their better combat training.

I think everyone enjoyed playing something a bit different, and getting used to the different mindset of old-school play; more thinking outside the box in terms of fighting, negotiating, retreating, using the environment more than character abilities, that sort of thing. I'm in no hurry to play Shadowdark again, but if my group requested it I'd be quite happy to run it. With some tweaks.

Our plan is to play a short Old-School Essentials campaign in May. It will be interesting to see how that compares, as a more traditional approach to the same sort of play.