Wordery – Page 2 – MRAAKTAGON

Comic stuff 2016!

Sheet. I haven’t posted in a long time here. Work has been kick me up inside the backside and I pretty much come home, do stuff I have to do and then veg out in Fallout 4 then it’s up early and back to the grind.

First, I found on drive thru a FREE updated version of FASERIP. This is that old yellow box Marvel game TSR put out that we tried to play instead of Champions or TMNT for once… and at 12 years old or so, failed utterly. I owe it to myself to try it some time as I tossed the yellow box and contents into the garbage about 10 years ago.

I’ve read some comics recently, some good, some bad, some in the middle. Needless to say, the superhero genre is only loosely represented in what I like to read.

Legacy of Luther Strode

traddmoore

This was an interesting series, 6 issues, and the very end of the Luther Strode series (really?). Tradd Moore’s art is unique and very clean. The first few issues were excellent, though light, fare. However, near the end and especially the last issue, It was a bit of a let down, just not dense and at the end of the last issue, I was like: why did I pick this up? I felt like I missed everything and had no idea what the characters were talking about when they were talking and not throwing down. However, many of the fight scenes in these are fantastic. Maybe you had to know all the characters first? Looking forward to more Tradd Moore stuff though after this taste.

low1

LOW

I liked this book a lot, until the mutant mice appeared and then… I just kept plodding along with issues. I’m hoping it concludes. It had moments of absolute brilliance early on. Tocchini is amazing. Read about the first 12 issues. Then stop.

lopper1

HEAD LOPPER

Adventure Time style art and Ultra violent viking shit. What’s not to love? It’s a lighter book (what did you expect?) but quality through and through.

bprd-monsters

BPRD

This series has been going strong for awhile now. I picked up some of the older trades in a used bookstore a few weeks back and was very impressed. BRPD is an offshoot of HELLBOY: this series is the fish guy, the fire girl and some others who are paranormal investigators and destroyers. It’s a bit like THE OTHERS board game or Xmen vs Cthulhu, and of course, could be compared to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with a lot less tracking of allusions! Recommended.

The FUTURE

Looks like fans of Moebius and Numenera/The Strange has another friend in Rick Remender with his upcoming comic: SEVEN TO ETERNITY. First issue looks like it’s out now.

This is worth looking at

Click the picture for more.

Comic Recommendation

Head Lopper. Get it.

While I think LOW, one of my current favorites, may have jumped the shark with sentient MICE, I was happy to find issue 3 of Head Lopper sitting on the shelf and it’s superlative. Think viking violence mashed in with adventure time. I also picked up Miracle Man Olympus from the Alan Moore period where he teams up with the soon-after-to-be Swamp Thing artist. Also just finished Junji Ito’s UZUMAKI, which I had only read parts of on the internet in the past. Highly recommended.

IDW lands Micronauts and ROM

Two big comics from my errant youth may be back in action– both TOY BASED and should have been total shit, but both the early Micronauts and the middle run of ROM were excellent. Yes yes, the endings of both series were quite bad, but at that point both had been handed off to various other teams and artists and it just naturally turned to shit. I’m very interested in what IDW does with these two. The plot of ROM was fantastic for one, and Micronauts wasn’t too shabby either.

The only worry for me is that Micronauts has had at least one reboot (not including Micronauts Voyages which killed off all the characters in the end) and it was awful, so we’ll see… Go Baron Karza Go!

Pinterest’s new zoom search feature

It’s terrifying and awesome. Basically you see a picture you like and you can click on it, then you can search for more images LIKE that one by zooming in on a part of the image. While this could be very useful for just about everything, the obvious use is obvious.

of course I’m just searching for a camel-toe style bathing suit for Spring…

Seriously though, it’s pretty great for other stuff as well– really it is.

Yep

Feng Shui 2 looks gorgeous!

I kickstarted this for the love of Feng Shui and the Zman/Daedelus Shadowfist. I got the beta-PDF early and just didn’t have time to go through it. Recently the real-deal PDF has come available and I’m just starting to crack open the rule system. I thought it would be near exactly the same, but there’s a lot more going on than before. The few of you that played with me years ago, it was all about the single action value– say you had Guns 17, that was pretty much your most important stat (a bit like Diablo 3’s failed design with only DPS making any difference at all) and while the game was never boring to play, there was no true difference in characters with a couple exceptions. Also the stunting sucked in retrospect, but at the time it was a really awesome new mechanic. The new version seems to have a ton more going on with each character archtype, of which there are TWENTY SIX.

Here’s a shot of the Big Bruiser. As soon as things settle down again, I’ll be grabbing people to play this either on Roll20 or IRL.

Kickstarters to back

I was challenged by Matt when I stated that Boss Monster 2 was probably not the best kickstarter to back (since it’s a 2 really and not the original game, why would they need to kickstarter it at all?). Boss Monster is a good light game, but not great (like Condotierre or Glory to Rome or 7 Wonders in the same vein). Caveat to this I would say Boss Monster 2 may be one of the better ones for gaming up at the moment, but that’s because we just came off Winter kickstarter madness with stuff like the new Bulldogs and Bloodrage.

I don’t come off as a cunt without suggesting REPLACEMENTS, so here are kickstarters that you should back that are up now.

De la Soul’s new album.
Goodman Game’s 5th Edition Fantasy – even though I don’t yet play 5th, I have 1 and 2 of these and they are solid (one is Michael Curtis so there’s that) and can be used with any of the good D20’s that aren’t 3.5.
Car Wars Classic Arenas: I played as a kid but am not a big car wars fan– yet playing this out in a cabin in the woods would probably be pretty great.
And from Wisconsin: Dice Display box and roller. Fucking awesome.

I can’t back all these (only backed #2) since I’m spread out on Patreon and Kickstarter already too much recently, but you should since you have a lot of spare money right?

Secret Wars II: Cloak and Dagger

For those of you steeped in Marvel geekery in the mid-eighties, this is a fucking brilliant read about the abhorrent Cloak and Dagger Secret Wars 2 crossover. I had come out of my “buy everything Marvel” phase around this time with just how shit ROM had become and how piss Secret Wars II was from the outset– even as a little kid it was obvious something had gone terribly wrong with comics that would only be redeemed by the shallow but beautiful Image comics late in the decade. This was also the time I started getting into Epic Magazine, Heavy Metal, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and Cerebus (which was just a confusing mess for a kid really) so it was a distinctive shift from mainstream comics. Reading this, you can fucking SEE why in all the gory detail.

A poem about Runequest 6

If you read a Bernard Cornwell novel,
you’ll feel the need to run a gritty, medieval RPG.
So you’ll go to reddit to ask the people there what to play,
You will find that they are young and ill-informed and in many cases,
cunts.
They will recommend Dungeon World and FATE
without reading the entirety of your question.
You will ask yourself: are these really gritty or medieval?
The answer will be no.
This will remind you of an older game you’d long forgotten,
and you will search on the internet and won’t remember the name,
you will go to Half Price Books
and look to see if anything there jogs your memory,
but it won’t
you will go on /TG and ask
and though the people there are explicitly
cunts,
they will answer you with knowledge and thoughtfulness,
albeit rudely and with disdain for your person,
(Since you will likely be a summerfag or worse)
They will tell you Runequest 6 and you will coerce your friends to play,
they will complain about the long character creation
and lack of options for character powers, and at the table,
They will be shocked at the true horror of combat
at the blood loss and fatigue and destruction of limbs
and they will ask you to play more
and playing more will remind you of Bernard Cornwell
and you will need to read one of his novels.