I’m a little anxious here, due to a ton of procrastinated work waiting for me to finish it, but hopefully by the time Monday’s update rolls around and the holidays are over, everything will be awesome.
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
I’m a little anxious here, due to a ton of procrastinated work waiting for me to finish it, but hopefully by the time Monday’s update rolls around and the holidays are over, everything will be awesome.
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
We’re entertaining guests from out of town as the extended holiday season (for us) continues! It was all I could do to get away to upload this Stiff page. I hope all’s well for everyone else as you move on to the beginning of 2015.
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
Surprise! Here’s another one of the zombie portraits I made for backers of “The Map of Zombies” project. My assignment this time was to draw vegetarian zombies, so these two undead are chowing down on cabbage, Thai eggplants, etc. Their ghoulish stares perhaps make them look more threatening than was strictly necessary, considering all they’re eating is plant matter. OTOH, wouldn’t hordes of plant-eating undead be an ecological catastrophe, like uncontrolled livestock grazing? Horrifying!
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
* I’ve finally recovered — almost — from the flu/cough/something/sickness I’ve had since last Tuesday night.
* I ran a playtest of DREAMLAND: THE ROLEPLAYING GAME, the third playtest so far. Lots of good ideas and lots of help balancing the system, but the players responded well to the basic premise and mechanics. Highlights of the evening gameplay-wise included a pit inhabited by a giant monstrous slug-hydra which killed a PC and sucked out his blood with its many toothless mouthes (the first PC death during a playtest!!); the city of the pale beautiful men and women, which would have been very pleasant to stay in forever except that the inhabitants subsisted entirely on imaginary food; the party Troubadour repeatedly Breaking the World with his incredible song and sending the other PCs into wildly uncontrollable rages and passions; the escape from the city of the Dark Blue Men; a long boat ride of 22 days downriver through a peaceful jungle where lions lay down with lambs; and the climax on the Island Where Dreams Come True.
* I’m going to be DMing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign! Not sure when the first game will be still, but the subject matter and setting will be: Pirates in the Persian Gulf in Ancient Sumeria. This was the compromise decided on by the players when I asked them to choose between an Ancient Mesopotamia and Pirates campaign. -_- Not to count my dice before they hatch, but I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.
* More immediately, our guests for the holidays are finally out of town for the moment and now I’m playing catch-up with work.
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
Looking through my files, I realized that, when this page originally ran in 2005-ish, I’d done an entirely different version of it. The existing page you see here was created later, in 2006, when I tidied up Chapter 5 for publication as a minicomic. (I used to make The Stiff minicomics for conventions, but I stopped after awhile — the 40+ page chapters were too big to print economically at local print shops in small quantities.) The original page wasn’t as good and added an unnecessary element, so I decided to just jump straight ahead, to Jamie arriving at Alice’s house. Although maybe I’ll post up it and other alternate pages for filler someday…?
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
I just went to the store and bought new sharpies and address labels. And two lamps. Seriously, how did I survive without fresh sharpies? (Also, having my office properly lit is pretty helpful…)
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
Random news: I’m designing a new core class for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition! (An unofficial design, as a fanboy, that is.) If anyone is playing D&D and interested in playtesting out my class the Priest (a sort of Bronze Age cleric/wizard hybrid), I’d love the feedback, so I’d happily send you the rough PDF of the class info. (There’s illustrations!) A player in my new D&D campaign is trying it out, but the more the merrier!
UPDATE: A little bit of information… originally the page number here jumped from 214 to 217, but there are no missing pages 215-216. Or rather, there were, but I retracted those pages and filled in the gap in the storyline. I apologize if I missed updating any of the page numbers! -_-;;
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
Recently I read the Trail of Cthulhu supplement Dreamhounds of Paris and I really love it. It reminds me very faintly of a Paris-based “Call of Cthulhu” adventure I was working on in college, which is probably one reason I’m so taken by it, although Robin Laws, Ken Hite and Steve Dempsey far surpassed my juvenile efforts. (My juvenile adventure was more of a typical Mythos science fiction thing which just happened to include some Paris poets and artists around the edges, too, whereas “Dreamhounds” is all about the Surrealists, all the time!) This makes two Trail of Cthulhu adventures I’ve bought and read now, even though I’ve never read the actual rules of the game; that game has some good adventures. I’ll probably write a longer review later, but in short, it’s one of the greatest Dreamlands things anyone has done since Lovecraft.
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
I’m thrilled that The Double Shadow, the Clark Ashton Smith podcast, recently released a new episode after nearly a year’s hiatus. I hope they’ll get back in the swing of things and finish talking about Smith’s most famous stories, the Zothique end-of-the-world cycle. “Xeethra,” “The Dark Eidolon,” “The Empire of the Necromancers”… these are some incredible stories.
Speaking of other early-20th-century fantasy authors, I’d love to hear some podcaster’s opinion coming fresh to Charles Finney’s novel “The Circus of Dr. Lao”… Maybe Bookwyrms will review it…
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!