#hes just so. so god at worldbuilding and character creation i fear no book will live up to it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oonajaeadira · 1 year

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For the Love of Fic: May 9

A day later than usual because I had a long work day yesterday. But I’m slowly getting caught up with some stuff, so it was a joy to get to some reading!!! Here’s what I loved last week!

🪐 = Year of Themed Creations work!

EZRA

Tessellation by @insomniamamma 🪐 Technically, this one’s really about Cee. But it does bounce around her memories while she watches over Ezra in recovery. And it’s done with such measured care and observation, fitting that she should think about her parents at a time like this, when she’s found the next person who will care for her... and her for him. It’s a beautiful reverie on the past and a promise of trust for the future. Like all of J’s writing, I’m a total simping fool.

A is for Anal by @butchmandalorian 🪐 Holy CRAP, I am sweating. His fic is DEEEEprived and anal isn’t my thing, but going slow is, as is a man that shows competency and control...and kindness. Ezra’s a truly experienced dom here and I may be a soft girl that likes to read some hard stuff from time to time, but this is further than I usually go. AND I LIKED IT. Heed the warning. You might just feel some aches after this one.

JACK DANIELS

Cupcake by @ezrasbirdie and @haylzcyon I’m sorry, but I want my money back. Because I’m going to invest it under the name of this fic and watch it grow millions. This is so sweet, so yearny, so preciously hot, my gods, what I wouldn’t do for a sweet cowboy with a crush who can’t stop thinking about my ass even though he thinks it’s wrong I would really be okay with it. I just...I’m a mess. I need to go weep or something.

PERO TOVAR

Black Vultures by @chaoticgeminate 🪐 In her year of video game mashups, Kelli took Pero and put him into the world of The Forrest. This isn’t a game I’ve played or even heart of, but I went looking and kinda sorry I did. While I can watch a horror film without blinking and read horror books with only delicious shivers, horror video games are where the nerve gets shook. So I was on my edge reading this horror survival piece, complete with plane crash, cannibals, mutants, and a realistic denouement of PTSD. Pero is a good, good man here, and I am in love.

DIETER BRAVO

untitled by @fuckyeahdindjarin A library AU ficlet that pulled me in not by its romance, but by its growing familiarity and the dangling carrot of more..... Perfect.

JAVI GUTIERREZ

A Javi Drabble by @grogusmum Just a sweet little story, just a sweet little Javi, just a sweet little proposal. And to me, it is everything.

DIN DJARIN

Competing for Christmas 9: Here Comes Santa Claus by @something-tofightfor Rachael is keeping the spirit of Christmas going around here with this fic and I’m super okay with it. More than okay. Like THIS IS THE WAY OKAY. It’s finally here and it’s finally happening and it’s sweet and hot and everything I wanted and hella worth waiting for.

Unseen Smile by @beecastle On your one-year anniversary, Din gives you the greatest gift he can think of--his smile. After all, he’s grateful for yours every day and would be lost without it. Perhaps he can do the same for you. The choice here is so confident, so clear, so loving, simple and beautiful and pure. This is the kind of fic that fuels my heart--it burns brightly and lingers long.

DAVE YORK

Daughter of the Sea by @writeforfandoms 🪐 Me? Read Dave York? More likely than you think if you’re gonna make him a merman who is injured and takes kindly to your feeding and visiting him. He purrs, y’all. HE PURRS. I think I’d probably be petrified the first time he grabbed my ankle--fear AND attraction--certainly by his sense of mischief. I want one.

TIM ROCKFORD

Rockford & Roan by @littlemisspascal Taking the character from the video game ads, Rae plonks him down in a world that incorporates humans with special abilities...like the reader’s empathic traits. The worldbuilding on this is swift and effortless before diving into something of a meeting between soulmates. And after that meeting, all I want is to know a lot more about Tim effing Rockford.

SPECIAL GUEST CORNER

STEVE AND EDDIE (STRANGER THINGS)

Saying I (could have) Love(d) You to an Inanimate Object by @songsformonkeys 🪐 If you love some angst and pretty longing, look no further, for Hannah has you covered. I love her inspiration for this piece--a watch that has an alarm going off at the same time every day. It’s such a simple thing, to wonder what the alarm was set for, now that the wearer is gone.... to let the answer live within you when it means family and love and care... ugh. I’m just so broken after this. In the best possible way. <3

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scp-69 · 3 years

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the chad rocky from project hail mary vs the virgin any other humanoid alien design

#u guys dont understand this book has permanently raised my expectations for any media set in space. what do you MEAN your super mysterious #planet shares almost the same exact atmosphere as earth. why are the aliens eho evolved completely independently human shaped #where is your creativity!!!! your originality!!!!!!!!#sigh. SIGH #project hail mary #mine #andy weir #hes just so. so god at worldbuilding and character creation i fear no book will live up to it #why would i watch something about normalpilled aliens who have the same exact biology as humans and breathe the same air when i could read #ROCKY who lives in AMMONIA and EATS OUT THE SAME HOLE HE SHITS #he talks in music! he doesnt see! he has five armlegs and he does jazz hands when hes excited! ideal form #crabs really ARE peak evolution

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theonyxpath · 5 years

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Fresh off the excellent meeting we had with Paradox and White Wolf in Berlin a week or so ago, and a week before we open the tomb of the Mummy: The Curse 2e Kickstarter, I figure it’s a good time to give you a look at some of my thoughts on a bunch of our game lines.

Scarred Lands:

With that lead-in paragraph, I bet you expected WW-IP stuff, but there is just so much happening with Scarred Lands that I wanted to get all that out first. To be honest, the interest in SL has been a real surprise. A great surprise, because there just seems to be a constant stream of folks that remember the setting from years ago and are excited to play and create with our new edition.

Which is wonderfully gratifying. Not only for the love and interest, but because we (I) was slow on the uptake on getting SL back on track after our original Scarred Lands partnership with Stewart Wieck came to an abrupt end with his passing. If I look back, I’m pretty sure I just delayed dealing with it, as jumping in where Stew was originally going to handle things reminded me of my friend too much.

But this year, we made huge strides – in a large part helped by the awesome efforts of all the creators on the Slarecian Vault (SL‘s community content site), our recently finished Creature Collection KS, and next year we’ll be presented monthly releases of Yugman’s Guide to the Scarred Lands, and the Vigil Watch project. There are weekly Twitch actual plays, and the amazing adventures of an awesome ratman (is it not all about him?) by Devil’s Luck Gaming that’s been running for months with all the twists and plot turns you could ever want.

Plus, just today Matt McElroy let us know that we’ll have a “What’s Up with 5e and Onyx Path” panel at Gamehole Con in Madison at the end of the week: https://www.gameholecon.com/events/event/7956 and he is running a “meat grinder” Scarred Lands game after hours at the con. If you’re interested in participating, let him know at our booth.

And then, we also have heard that the Scarred Lands supplement to Expedition, the exciting card and app-based RPG is going on sale the start of November. Here’s a description from Eddy Webb, who has been overseeing the project:

A lightweight, card-based roleplaying game that’s fun for players – and storytellers. Whether you’re playing alone, with a group of friends, your spouse or with your kids – anyone can learn to play in less than 5 minutes! Powered by a free companion app with hundreds of free adventures and new quests every week, there’s always something new to play! For 1-6 players, 20+ minutes, ages 8+

More on this as it’s released! Suffice to say, Scarred Lands has been reborn, and we’re just thrilled with how players have responded to its return!

M20 Book of the Fallen art by Sam Araya

World of Darkness:

We’ll be Kickstarting the traditionally printed and in-stores version of V5 Cults of the Blood Gods soon, and coming out of Berlin, our team has several more V5 projects to get rolling on. While we’ve been finishing the Stretch Goal rewards for several past 20th Anniversary Kickstarters, we also have a few more 20th projects that WW/Paradox is cool with us doing, so keep an eye out for those.

Overall, as WW/Paradox‘s method of handling the licensing of WoD changes as they continue moving to “5th Edition WoD”, we are comfortable with pitching individual projects or whole lines depending on the parameters they use on each line. Right now, if we get an idea we pitch it their way and see if it works with their plans.

Chronicles of Darkness:

Much like with WoD, we pitch interesting CofD projects to Paradox, and they can OK them or not according to their overall plans.

Which works out just fine for us right now, as we’ve got plenty to keep us busy as Dark Eras 2 proofs get finalized and out to backers, which has so many CofD lines in it, and with Geist 2e going to press, and Mummy 2e‘s KS and Hunter 2e‘s not far behind- plus all the attendant KS Stretch Goal projects, plus plus starting a couple of projects not yet on the progress report that WW/Paradox is OK with.

Exalted:

The big books roll along with Lunars and Exigents at different stages and with smaller books/stretch goals also rolling. We’re getting close to wrapping up the two monthly EX3 projects. There’s a very special secret project that we’ve been working on that we’re going to announce at PAX Unplugged in early December, and we’re really looking forward to letting our EX3 audience in on that!

In general, while we know folks might look back at the previous two editions’ release schedules and count the numbers, we are looking at how far our “new” Exalted team has come and the overall quality of the projects seems pretty satisfying. While we’re not aiming to return to the frenetic release pace of old, EX3 looks well positioned to deliver a more regular series of releases in the coming year.

Deviant: The Renegades art by Michael Gaydos

Scion:

For a while I’ve been thinking about how there’s really two tracks for Scion: the Mythic track, which contains Scion: Origin, Hero, Demigod, and God, and the projects that talk about The World and our take on how real-world pantheons would work in it like Titanomachy, and then there’s the Expanded track, which looks at ways to add further ideas on what could be considered a pantheon, or a god, or what else could exist alongside or outside the Mythic track. These would include Scion: Dragon, and Masks of the Mythos.

We’re aiming to create projects that provide value to both tracks, even if they are more firmly situated in a single one, and to release those projects so that everyone into Scion will receive a steady stream of excellent material. Having the Storypath Nexus community content site up and being the repository of even more potential Scion goodness is definitely part of the plan.

Trinity Continuum:

Sort of similar to Scion but the key design decision to build everything as a Continuum helps folks understand that we’re not going to stop with just the original eras but expand the potential eras from the past to the far future and eras in-between what we already have. Plus sideways and upways and downways. I’ve taken to considering the TC not as a linear time track alone, but as one with bubbles of eras that run parallel and drift closer or farther together depending on the interests of our players.

To use my favorite example, the hidden ultra-tech city of the intelligent gorillas may exist in a bubble that in your TC:Adventure! game is very close or even touching your TC:Adventure! era, but that same gorilla bubble may be far away and so unreachable in your TC:Aeon game.

So with the Trinity Continuum Core and TC: Aeon books shipping RIGHT NOW to backers, work progressing nicely on the final TC: Aberrant text, and TC:Adventure! on the progress report chart below, we’ve got all sorts of added Stretch Goal projects that are getting ready to come out, plus unannounced projects for both the Core and the TC itself that we’ll let you in on very soon.

They Came From Beneath the Sea!, Dystopia Rising: Evolution, Realms of Pugmire, and Cavaliers of Mars:

These are all verrrry different games, but all share the same publishing philosophy of launching and fulfilling a Kickstarter campaign to get the books into stores, and of working to provide a first wave of releases that support and add to the game line’s core book(s). Mostly via Kickstarter Stretch Goal rewards.

With Cavs and Pugmire, we try and work within the schedules and interests of the creators, Rose and Eddy respectively, so as they come up with ideas we bat those back and forth until a new project forms out of all of it. For They Came From and DR:E, we’re working on getting the core books created, as well as the supplements from their KSs. From there we’ll see if the interest is there for more projects with the line…but it’ll be a few months before those triggers are pulled and we have anything to announce.

Dark Eras 2 art by Luis Sanz

Legendlore:

This is one that I’m really interested in seeing how it hits. If you listen to developer Steffie de Vaan’s deep dive with Matthew and Dixie on last Friday’s Onyx Pathcast, she stresses that this fantasy world that has been around for decades as a comic book series contains a lot of inherent world design that she and her team took and expanded on – always with an eye towards the central premise of the setting: you the player are playing some version of yourself transported to this fantasy world.

This can be a touchy premise for a game, though. A lot of folks who play RPGs are playing to NOT be themselves, but to explore different types of characters. Steffie has that covered too, in much the same way that she has looked at how to make the premise work so that players have options that work for them, for their personal beliefs and ideas as to what sort of character they are comfortable playing.

It’s only one aspect of a rich fantasy world, but it is so intrinsic to the setting (even beyond how important regular character creation is for any game world) that it had to be handled with thought and empathy. If you have the time, take a listen – you’ll also get a chance to hear a lot more about the warring nations, and the skullduggery of appeasing a dangerous aggressive neighboring realm, and that there’s several different types of playable trolls (!), and much, much, more.

There you go – and I’m not even getting into the possible new licenses and other new lines we continue to look into. Truly, we have so:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

The Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition Kickstarter arises next Tuesday, Nov 5th, at 2pm Eastern US time. Be there to witness the majesty and terror of this new version of Mummy: The Curse!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features the recorded Worldbuilding panel from the Save Against Fear convention – Eddy, Dixie, RichT, surprise guest Neall Raemonn Price, and other game creators answer questions from the moderator and the audience as to what challenges creators face in world building for their games. The answers are often surprisingly personal, and no one held back their opinions, that’s for sure!

What a week we have in store for you on the Onyx Path Twitch channel! Matthew has already hosted the Onyx Path News today in a bumper, hour long edition, and we’ve got games of V5, Scion, Pugmire, Hunter: The Vigil, Aberrant, Changeling: The Lost, Mage: The Awakening, and Scarred Lands all to come! Check us out and give us a follow on twitch.tv/theonyxpath

It really helps us to have subscribers on our Twitch channel, and you can do so for free and catch premieres as they go up if you have an Amazon Prime account. Just type Twitch Amazon Prime into Google and you’ll be shown how to subscribe for free.

Do you follow us on YouTube? Well, if you haven’t subscribed to us on Twitch, do not despair, as a couple of weeks after each episode on Twitch we transfer the videos over to YouTube right here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzN5jRB35OvnC-6gxnRY4gQ We already have episodes of Aberrant and Changeling up, with more to come!

Meanwhile, our fans keep creating excellent content for us, not limited to:

Occultists Anonymous continues with their fantastic Mage: The Awakening game right here:

Episode 54: A Marrow Escape The cabal travels into this strange Atlantean temple and tries to decipher the purpose of the building. The ancient defenses still work though…https://youtu.be/_6asdJMHo00

Episode 55: Judgment Call Shaking the remains of the Temple’s defenses off of themselves, the cabal begins to discover the heart of the Temple and it’s possibly dark purposes…https://youtu.be/S9eSLKTnUR8

Plus, the Story Told Podcast posts another episode of their fantastic Exalted: Dragon-Blooded series right here: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-17-welcome-to-daric

Do not miss Devil’s Luck Gaming with their superb Scarred Lands content: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming

Watch Geek & Sundry‘s Eric Campbell discuss his love of Geist: The Sin-Eaters right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es7G-P9iou8

Twin Cities by Night continue their fantastic Chronicles of Darkness chronicle right here on Podbean: https://twincitiebynight.podbean.com/

Did you miss the Ragnarok & Roll podcast’s coverage of Scion Second Edition and their actual play spanning first edition’s Hero to Ragnarok? If so, please check them out here: https://ragnarokandroll.podbean.com/

If you want a fresh new take on Chicago by Night, complete with animated opening, please give the fine folks (with superb voice acting) a look at Windy City Kindred right here: www.twitch.tv/wickedstudiosllc

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

The big Halloween Sale on DriveThruRPG and Storytellers Vault continues until Halloween.

Most of our Chronicles of Darkness PDFs will be on sale on both sites, plus there will be some Halloween Treats (i.e. free PDFs) hidden around the sites.

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we’ll be resplendently releasing our monthly Exalted 3rd PDFs on DTRPG!

Conventions!

GameHoleCon: This week: October 31st – November 3rd in Madison, WI! PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th, in Philadelphia, PA. 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI.

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Second Draft

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Post-Editing Development

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle – Sent out contracts.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Contracted.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Trinity RMCs – Finals in.

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Mark finals rolling in.

Chicago Folio – Finals rolling in.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Ready for KS.

City of the Towered Tombs – Contracted.

Let the Streets Run Red – Figuring out probable page count.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Awaiting artnotes.

Scion Mythical Denizens

Deviant

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

In Layout

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Template created… system chapter done.

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood

Geist 2e Screen – Putting it together.

Pirates of Pugmire

Proofing

M20 Book of the Fallen – At WW for final approval.

Memento Mori

Dark Eras 2 – First dev pass ready to go back to designer.

At Press

Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.

TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

Trinity Core – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.

Trinity Aeon – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.

V5: Chicago – Printing.

Aeon Aexpansion – PoD proofs ordered.

W20 Art Book – On sale next week.

W20 Auspice Gift Cards deck – Backer PDF out to backers, PoD proofs ordered.

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Getting print files ready.

DR:E – Getting print files ready.

DRE Screen – Getting print files prepped.

C20 Cup of Dreams – Backer PDF with backers.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PDF out to backers.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Eight years ago, I let the ever-optimistic Impish Ian Watson know that Onyx Path had purchased the Trinity IP from White Wolf/CCP. And that we were going to bring it back and he was going to be as involved as he wanted, after all his years of keeping the flame lit. Today, Ian received his KS copies of the Trinity Continuum Core, and Trinity Continuum: Aeon. Took longer than either of us expected, but the dream is now real!

#Onyx Path Publishing

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antiquery · 6 years

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Top five lovecraftian stories that are not written by lovecraft!

the dream-quest of velitt boe, kij johnson: means almost as much to me as the original on which it’s based. bittersweet and elegiac and achingly lovely, it captures so perfectly what it feels like to come back older and wiser to something you loved very much as a child— as a girl, specifically; everyone loves to overlook the gendered aspects of escapist fantasy. also, worldbuilding! the dream cycle is such an overlooked part of the mythos, but it’s so full of opportunities to explore this strange and fantastic place that is so much like the parallel worlds created by lovecraft’s near contemporaries, but at the same time completely unique. johnson recasts the dreamlands as something so much more melancholy than the uncompromised wonder lovecraft shows us, something with the same tone as catullus 101, or the sense of the moors in wuthering heights. mourning, loving, and so much richer for it.

the litany of earth, ruthanna emrys: this is a very jewish story, and i am not jewish, but i read it during lent and something about the part where aphra reads the litany to charlie made me cry so hard it hurt. there’s something so liturgical about the whole story, something very biblical in the prose and in aphra’s struggle with faith and persecution— like i say, it’s a jewish thing, but it’s also universal in its quiet sense of the universe’s immensity, our smallness within it. this is something people associate with lovecraft, but emrys conveys it in a way so religious that it seems almost unrecognizable from the original, so much more poignant and painful. sadness, rather than fear.

the ballad of black tom, victor lavalle: sharp and witty, and unremittingly tragic, and also somehow triumphant. i love it so much; it doesn’t Mean Something To Me in the way that the first story on this list does, both because i’m white and because i don’t have the same emotional resonance with the non-dream cycle stories, but that doesn’t mean i can’t adore it for its piercing insight and brilliant script-flipping.

the city born great, n.k. jemisin: next to terry pratchett, my absolute favorite example of lovecraftian humanism out there. this passage filled me with such a furious joy i can’t even describe, just read it:

I raise my arms and avenues leap. (It’s real but it’s not. The ground jolts and people think, Huh, subway’s really shaky today.) I brace my feet and they are girders, anchors, bedrock. The beast of the deeps shrieks and I laugh, giddy with postpartum endorphins. Bring it. And when it comes at me I hip-check it with the BQE, backhand it with Inwood Park, drop the South Bronx on it like an elbow. (On the evening news that night, ten construction sites will report wrecking-ball collapses. City safety regulations are so lax; terrible, terrible.) The Enemy tries some kind of fucked-up wiggly shit—it’s all tentacles—and I snarl and bite into it ’cause New Yorkers eat damn near as much sushi as Tokyo, mercury and all.

Oh, now you’re crying! Now you wanna run? Nah, son. You came to the wrong town. I curb stomp it with the full might of Queens and something inside the beast breaks and bleeds iridescence all over creation. This is a shock, for it has not been truly hurt in centuries. It lashes back in a fury, faster than I can block, and from a place that most of the city cannot see, a skyscraper-long tentacle curls out of nowhere to smash into New York Harbor. I scream and fall, I can hear my ribs crack, and—no!—a major earthquake shakes Brooklyn for the first time in decades. The Williamsburg Bridge twists and snaps apart like kindling; the Manhattan groans and splinters, though thankfully it does not give way. I feel every death as if it is my own.

Fucking kill you for that, bitch, I’m not-thinking. The fury and grief have driven me into a vengeful fugue. The pain is nothing; this ain’t my first rodeo. Through the groan of my ribs I drag myself upright and brace my legs in a pissing-off-the-platform stance. Then I shower the Enemy with a one-two punch of Long Island radiation and Gowanus toxic waste, which burn it like acid. It screams again in pain and disgust, but Fuck you, you don’t belong here, this city is mine, get out! To drive this lesson home I cut the bitch with LIRR traffic, long vicious honking lines; and to stretch out its pain I salt these wounds with the memory of a bus ride to LaGuardia and back.

And just to add insult to injury? I backhand its ass with Hoboken, raining the drunk rage of ten thousand dudebros down on it like the hammer of God. Port Authority makes it honorary New York, motherfucker; you just got Jerseyed.

like. FUCK YEAH, is the only way to convey that emotion. the premise is “new york city beats up cthulhu�� and it’s so, so perfect. god.

the light fantastic, terry pratchett: this isn’t explicitly a mythos story like the others on this list, but it’s another great example of lovecraftian humanism. this is the second book of discworld, and it’s where terry first hits upon the theme that’ll come to define the series, summed up best in granny weatherwax’s conversation with a bit character in carpe jugulum:

“There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is. “It’s a lot more complicated than that–” “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes–”“But they starts with thinking about people as things.”

when you do that, when you treat people as things— no matter if you’re an ancient and terrible eldritch entity beyond human comprehension or a greedy capitalist robber baron— that’s evil. that’s evil. that’s what it is. and nothing and no one is exempt from it. all sentient creatures— gods, humans, dungeon dimension creatures, golems, vampires, nobby nobbs— are held to that standard. trymon doesn’t get a pass. no one gets a pass. there is no such thing as amorality in pratchett’s universe; that’s where he diverges from lovecraft, even though their cosmologies are (at least at this stage of development) so similar.

in addition to that, the scene at the end of the book where rincewind is fighting trymon is humanist in a different way: it’s the first place terry asserts that no matter our smallness or insignificance, no matter our weakness, we matter, because we are. humans matter because we are human! it always reminds me of the last scene of the dream-quest of unknown kadath, the closest lovecraft ever got to real humanism, where carter is tumbling through space and the thing that brings him back to himself, that saves him, is the thought of home. this very human thing, it matters, against all odds. that tiny circle of firelight that is our home, that is our world: rincewind holds onto it, and saves the disc from the should-be-inexorable clutches of lovecraftian abominations in the process.

#bookshelf blogging #o do not ask what is it #archistratego #q&a

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comicbookuniversity · 6 years

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Avengers: Age of Aaron

So I’ve recently caught up with the new volume of Avengers by Jason Aaron and company- Ed McGuiness, David Marquez, and Sara Pichelli with Justin Ponsor. With such a stellar art team, does Jason Aaron, who has become one of Marvel’s biggest writers, live up to the promise of making what is probably the most well-known superhero team on the planet right now the most spectacular book out there? The answer is- mostly. Ten issues into this run, the book is really starting to find it’s stride after a bumpy start, and if this trend continues, Aaron may be entering the company of Buisek and Hickman as one of the best Avengers writers, which shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has followed him from other books.

This new Avengers title started with there being no existing Avengers team, no SHIELD, and a big threat in the form of a new group of Celestials tied to a mystery that spans back to before the dawn of modern man. This central mystery is only gets a few answers in this first arc, but it’s tantalizing enough to keep things exciting. The team coming together starting in small groups and alone as solo heroes all responding to the same threat is a little rough, but this is reflective of how the characters themselves feel about this reformation of the team. This is either a cool writing trick or simply not good writing, and this answer will depend your enjoyment; but for me, I simply didn’t find the pacing to be as enjoyable as it could have been, despite recognizing the structural reasoning. The characterizations are all spot-on and the relationships dynamic, but the conversation in the first issue between the Avengers trinity is a standout moment. The moment standouts, because of the characters are voicing concerns of fans and commentators about the gains of diversity and how maybe it is time for the old guard to stand down for a new generation, but here as he has in previous titles, Aaron shows that no matter how much the world has changed that these characters’ cores are what make them continuously dynamic and exciting.

While the protagonists prove themselves to be continually exciting, the threat they face that unites them proves less so and this isn’t that surprising- to me at least. Being more familiar with Aaron from his Thor and Doctor Strange runs, rather than his X-Men work or even his Ghost Rider and Punisher work, I found the lack of awesome surrounding both the Final Host and The Horde to be normal for Aaron. I’m not sure what happens in the production of his titles, but his original villains like Gorr the God Butcher from Thor and Emprikul from Doctor Strange are both one step shy of being as great as they could be and the same proves to be true of the Final Host and the Horde.

For this newest creation, there is still time for Aaron to come back and further develop them considering they are related to a tale with the Avengers of One Million BCE that seems purposefully incomplete currently. But my fear is that their spotlight moment in the tale is over, and that both will remain underdeveloped. For all three original villains, the issues of the execution of their motivations come tantalizingly close to fully cooked, particularly with Gorr and Empirkul compared to the Celestials considering their long history of having no clear motivations. It could be my expectations compared to other areas of the story where I think Aaron does better, but my experience is that Aaron’s villains are cool premises who are so thoroughly dedicated to their missions that they never reach a level of sympathy or develop a good antagonistic relationship with the hero that pushes them into being a real character or the major level villain that they clearly have the potential to be. The Final Host and Horde, like Gorr and Empirkul, serve more as props to force important introspection on the protagonist’s part, which is always ends up being good, but I wish these villains didn’t suffer in service of this other journey.

After defeating these new Celestials, who were aided by a mostly monologuing and underutilized Loki, and deciding to come together as team in a new base of operations, the book really starts to find it’s groove and each successive issue continues to build off the forward momentum that shows off one of Aaron’s greatest strengths as a writer- worldbuilding. What Aaron did in Thor with the Omnipotence City the cosmic citadel of the gods, Doctor Strange with the addition of Mahatma Doom- the lone surviving guilt-motivated monk of the temple where Doctor Doom learned magic, and from what I read of Wolverine and the X-Men, the new pre-teen board of the Hellfire Club are all great examples of Aaron’s ability to seamlessly add to a franchise in a logical, substantive, and cool way. An awesome new HQ in the form of a dead Celestial is a solid start, teasing that Robbie Reyes is a new and very powerful kind of Ghost Rider, and the political implications of Black Panther as chairman is perhaps the cherry on top. This might not be Millar’s Ultimates, with it’s skewered ‘realistic’ politics, but Aaron’s work over on Thor and now in Avengers prove that he blends just enough realism in the with the always ‘current’ Marvel universe to seem almost authentic in media and geopolitical response.

The build-up with Namor that results in the best issue so far in #10/700 brings out everyone’s A-game with great character work, fascinating set-up, and a titanic battle that is clearly just the first skirmish in a longer and exciting arc to come that will explore the Avengers place in the world that we haven’t seen since the film Captain America: Civil War, despite the differences in the universes. The emerging team romance should be fun with a blushing Thor seemingly in a new position of being on the other end of a crush; but on the other end of team dynamics, the relationship between Tony and Carol feels breezed over considering that they were on opposite sides of hero-on-hero battle in Civil War II. I don’t care for that story, because of its half-baked premise and how it goes out of its way to assassinate the good characters of both Danvers and Stark to fit them into an antagonistic relationship just so Marvel could have product synchronicity with the aforementioned film. I just feel like Aaron could have done more to make their reconciliation feel a little more earned.

I think that it’s also important to note that Aaron and company’s work with the Avengers is happening parallel to the other major and world-famous superteam also having a revival in the pages of the comics. Scott Snyder leads the charge over in a family of Justice League titles that is similarly aiming to restore a sense of grandeur with the well-known old guard of heroes that also started with a story about armored space giants threatening the Earth and beyond. I think it’s interesting that both of these revivals launched at the same time with very similar opening arcs. As Snyder pointed out in an interview, it’s a small community of creators, so it shouldn’t be that surprising that they talk with each other. Still, it’s fascinating that both companies managed to relaunch their biggest book with their some of their strongest creators to tell what are clearly long term (hopefully somewhat insular) stories, and that both titles are doing very well. It’s a good time to be a fan of both books right now.

With the teases of the back-up stories in #10/70, this volume of Avengers is shaping up to an exciting book. Here’s to hoping it can live up to last major Avengers run.

#avengers #jason aaron #thor #doctor strange #justice league #scott snyder #black panther #marvel

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mairzymarzipan · 6 years

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I’m just in the mood to talk about writing tonight I guess...

So, over the week I watched the terrible movie The Flight of Dragons. It’s such a love hate thing for me bc I love the dragons in it and the explanations and the involuntary dragon possession ofc Jame Earl Jones. But. Oh god, the story and the characters. I’ll just say this: There are two women in the entire movie. There is also a confessed pedophile in the cast who sits there and tells the hero how much of a pedophile he is and the hero doesn’t even flinch.

Yeah it’s...that kind of sexism

Anyway in my spite I wrote 8k in a day about an AU where the same thing happens but it happens to my friend’s OC Cass instead. And also like, most of the characters are women. And also tried to fix the worldbuilding bc I can’t wrap my head around a world where wizards who study a lot are also proud of their ignorance.

Then I showed it to said friend, who built on the lore a bit, which got me into worldbuilding mode, and anyway, now it’s turning into like, A Thing

This is the only part I want to share though...sort of a creation myth about the god wizards.

At first there were the gods. They made the crops grow, the sun shine, the sick heal. More importantly, they decided which crops should grow and which should die- which days would be sunny and which would be dim- who should recover and who should falter. But they grew bored with the small strifes of the below creatures, and left this world. Before they did, though, they chose an agent.

She was of the roden- the most diminutive race of the land. Despite her stature and weakness, and she was true fighter, who championed the will of the gods. And so the gods imbued her with all the power to take care of the world.

There were no colors back then. No names, even. The name she was born with was forgotten in the sands of time. She was simply The Great Wizard. And for a century, she alone kept the world on track.

It killed her. Several times. She came back, a little more mad than she had been before. She came to realize that if she died much more, she would become a different person entirely- a harmful person.

So she raised up a new agent- this time, a peafowl-like dragon named Turquoise. Now, they had colors. There was the Pink and the Turquoise. And the people chose a new name for The Pink: Sugarplum.

In no time at all though, Turquoise was deteriorating faster than Sugarplum, because of Sugarplum’s sin. Because Sugarplum had kept all the pleasant, bubbly magic to herself, and left Turquoise with all negative, cannibalistic magic. Sugarplum realized her mistake, and convinced Turquoise that they should bring on a new agent. This time, they chose a harpy who was young and strong of will.

Sugarplum and Turquoise both imbued him with their magic, to give him a mix of positive and negative. There reigned a thousand years of peace. Turquoise the Turquoise improved. Sugarplum the Pink guided the creatures below, and Winston the Golden inspired them to reach new and incredible heights.

He inspired the humans too, of course, because humans were creatures of the land just like roden, dragons and harpies. Alongside their beastly allies, they created a written language- not just for spells, but for poetry and history record as well, and books to hold those words in. They created roads, and infrastructure, clean water and healing for all. The era was called the Golden Age- a nod to the wizards’ newest member.

But the humans grew suspicious of the beasts. Why should the roden, dragons, and harpies have their own Great Wizards, but not them? Sugarplum, Turquoise and Winston were hesitant to move because Three, over the centuries, had proved to be a holy number. Four was unlucky and unbalanced, and Five was just a mess. If they added a Great Wizard, how could they hold up the balance?

But the jealousy and suspicion from the humans had its effects on Turquoise, so Sugarplum and Winston agreed. After a long time they chose Peter Finch, a soft spoken but self-thinking man- a man of the learning and scholarship that the Golden Age had produced. The color he took on was Green. He and Winston became close friends- on top of all the Great Wizards calling each other siblings.

Turquoise went back to normal- for a little while. It seemed like lifetimes for the creatures below, even the dragons, but for the Great Wizards it was painfully short. All four races feared the Great Wizards for being Great Wizards. They said that they weren’t even real anymore, the way they could come back from death. They started seeing ghosts and monsters. Turquoise relapsed again into hatred begot madness, and made those terrors real.

But a funny thing happened. Sugarplum, Winston and Finch’s powers waned as the creatures turned to negativity. But Turquoise’s power just grew and grew and grew. They could not longer redistribute and set things right. They needed to take away Turquoise’s power.

#over here #real toys #bc it has some rt characters in it #afaik the movie has fuckall to do with the book except for some names and dragon possession thing #so i do what i want

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bakechochin · 7 years

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Book Reviews - Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute

Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute – Jonathan L. Howard - So I fucking love the Johannes Cabal series – the first book in the series was the best book I read in 2016, and the second book was easily in my top five – so it came as no surprise to anyone that this book would also be fucking great - As is to be expected, this is yet another fantastically written and very funny story full of literary allusions and sardonic necromancer quips - This story, however, differs from the other books in the series as most of the story (like three-quarters of it) takes place the world of the Dreamlands, and this setting is fucking great because it works on multiple levels; not only is it an adaptation of good ole Lovecraft malarkey (‘The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath’ is actually my favourite story of his, so hell yeah I’ll read stuff that references and adapts the Dream Cycle setting), but it manages to present a romanticised world of fantasy whilst simultaneously taking the piss out of itself through Cabal’s commentary -> We do however still get some of the usual Cabal book world though (i.e. the ‘real world’ filled with thinly veiled references to literature and folklore), which is totally appreciated - The main characters are generally alright and pretty likeable – no surprise there regarding Cabal, who as we already know is a total geezer and complete twat and therefore we love him, but let’s briefly focus on the other main characters -> Seeing how seemingly mundane Shadrach, Corde and Bose were at their first appearance, I thought it was a missed opportunity to have this expedition to the Dreamlands and not have main characters that reflect the unorthodox and fantastic nature of this world, but fortunately when everyone gets to the Dreamlands their true natures are emphasised to make them more unique/entertaining and the influence of the Dreamlands turns them into romanticised character archetypes, which was great -> I will say that at the beginning of the book there were a couple issues with the characters’ traits and characters’ competence noticeably keeps on changing, with the three characters being a bit interchangeable as to who out of them was to be the competent straight man, but it gets resolved quickly enough - As to be expected from books with Lovecraftian gods fucking about, there’s some fucking great twists and mindfucks in this book courtesy of such deities, including one chapter involving Cabal’s overarching storyline outside of the Dreamlands and outside of just this book that really really fucking got to me - The ending was fucking great, easily my favourite out of all the three books I’ve read thus far; not wanting to spoil too much, there were twists and there were turns and there was a hell of a fucking cliffhanger - Oh and I’m glad to see that the tradition of presenting worldbuilding in unorthodox and humourous ways continues in this book; there’s no better way to learn about Lovecraftian elder gods than through the voice of a children’s author - As much as I love the Dreamlands setting, a lot of the things that I don’t like about this book can be attributed to it -> Howard attempts to create this whole new huge expansive world, and this means a lot of excessive travelling from point A to point B that’s supposed to establish the grand scale of the world but ultimately means a lot of reading stuff like ‘they travelled for five days’ and subsequently the story seems less like a grand continuous adventure and more like a fragmented sight-seeing tour interspersed with occasional things happening -> I guess ‘Johannes Cabal the Necromancer’ did this as well to an extent, jumping from one location to another, but I’m more lenient towards that because it didn’t have all the monotonous description about the journey itself and therefore seemed more refined than this -> And yeah ‘Johannes Cabal the Detective’ showed the whole journey, but because it was only a small-scale adventure from one country to another as opposed to world-spanning adventures, it makes sense to describe everything as there’s something interesting and exciting happening in every bit, unlike in this book - Another complaint I have with the world is that the side characters seem kind of incongruous with what the world is set up to be – I went into this and expecting it to be full of colourful characters and dreamy poets but for the most part there’s just generic burly fighter men; yeah there are some cool concepts scattered throughout the book, but for every sea captain with a scrimshaw prosthetic hand or hermit philosopher there’s just as many grizzled fighter men with little to no interesting characterisation - Speaking of characters, it’s worth mentioning that the protagonists other than Cabal, whilst good characters in their own right (as mentioned above), never really mesh well with Cabal like Horst did in ‘Necromancer’ or Leonie did in ‘Detective’; as Cabal never really connects with them beyond reluctant low-effort acceptance of their presence, they just seem like unnecessary hangers-on there to make up the numbers - Something that I don’t quite know what to make of is Cabal’s character, or perhaps lack thereof -> Now don’t get me wrong, I fucking love Cabal, he’s easily one of my favourite characters out of all books I’ve read recently, but there are times that I think that his whole totally in-control unflappable calculating badass vibe gets in the way of any further characterisation -> There are little moments throughout the books so far where little bits of his hidden humanity have broken through, like his frantic rush to reclaim his soul or when he first sees Leonie (both in ‘Necromancer’), and there was a bit in this book where I thought that poking at Cabal’s past would absolutely fuck him up and make him crack, but in the story it’s just kind of glossed over with some long-winded explanation about how Cabal is apparently not too affected by this, and what’s more outsmarted everyone and he’s the greatest -> Like honestly I like seeing characters fuck up because fuck ups are what make us human, but there are times where Cabal’s complete imperviousness to fuck ups kind of gets in the way of me taking him seriously as a character -> But again let me reiterate, most of the time this isn’t an issue, because most of the time Cabal’s character is played for laughs and is a joy to read; I just hope that in future books we get to see more of Cabal then just the cold emotionless side - Since this a series that occasionally adapts/cribs from pre-existing literature, this book more explicitly than most, there were times when I was a wee bit confused as to whether or not a character or concept was of Howard’s own creation and is recognisable to Cabal because they’re a part of Cabal’s past, or was a reference to pre-existing literature/folklore that I just wasn’t picking up on (the main example of this being the character of Miss Smith) -> But y’know this only happens a handful of times and can just be attributed to me being a dumbarse - 8.5/10

I have a load of other book reviews on my blog, check that shit out.

#book reviews #johannes cabal #johannes cabal the fear institute #Jonathan L Howard #fucks sake Howard you were so pleased with yourself for having a reference to 'Cyclopean' that you did it three fucking times #i wish there were more gugs in this book #i relate to gugs spiritually

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