The Art of Karen Vaughan

The art below is by Karen Vaughan from the book Tangleweed and Brine by Deidre Sullivan.

Blood Standard

Episode 40: Blood Standard

Weird fiction luminary Laird Barron ventures into red-blooded, two-fisted territory in his 2018 novel Blood Standard. The book follows wise-cracking mafia enforcer Isaiah Coleridge as he navigates Upstate New York's organized crime world in search of a missing teen. Themed gangs, knuckle-busting dust-ups, and unexpected romance are just part of what he encounters in his unlikely hero's journey. Kate and Jack discuss the book, its relationship to classic hard-boiled fiction, and whether or not it might be a feel-good male equivalent to the romantic comedy.

How believable is a two-fisted Air Force colonel? Does New York State have a pagan festival underground? Are bean bag chairs appropriate gang lair decor? Which one of your hosts mistrusts horses and which one is a secret beastmaster? Find out the answers to all these questions and more in this month's episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

6th Edition Dungeons & Dragons

There was a "who is your dream design team for 6e" thing going around on Twitter and because everybody was tagging their friends as the team you could just imagine all the completely dysfunctional editions they would actually produce. But really, my ideas for what I would do if put in charge of a new edition of D&D are also going to sound terrible to a fairly large swath of the game's audience too. To wit:



Ability Scores

• The six standard ability scores? Cut down to four. Strength kills Constitution and takes its stuff. Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma get broken apart and reassembled as two ability scores. Shadow of the Demon Lord already does this and it's smart.
• No numerical ability scores, just the bonus/penalty. The numerical score is already a vestigial tail that barely sees any use in the game; the time has come to jettison it.

Races

• Races would have a whole lot less in terms of features because they tend to include a bunch of cruft that is quickly forgotten about in play. One or two spiffy features, maximum.
• Ability score increases would be decoupled from race choice, or at least remade as a potential source of ability score increase among others.
• Tabaxi and warforged are core now. Sorry. (Not sorry.)

Classes

• You make the subclass choice for your character at 1st level now. No more waiting until 3rd level to play the character you want to play. You wanna play a beast master ranger? Now you can from 1st level. You're welcome.
• Classes will only be detailed up to level 10 in the Player's Handbook. According to the available data, 10th level is about the highest level people tend to play to before their campaigns end anyway. Higher levels can be their own book later on, which will give that stuff time to actually be playtested.

Misc

• Milestone XP is now the default. Totting up XP as homework is hereby abolished.
• Alignment is gone. You won't miss it.
• Backgrounds stay. That shit slaps, as the kids say.
• The skill list can probably be pared down just a little bit more, especially if we make mix-and-match skill plus ability score a core concept. Do we really need perception and investigation?
• Bonus actions are gone. We can do better.
• More emphasis on reskinning the fluff around mechanics to get your desired game aesthetics.
• No default setting. The emphasis will be on making your own setting. 
• This time let's figure out what we want psionics to be before we publish the edition, even if it isn't in the core books.

Things to Look Forward to in 2020

It's a new year and it's nice to have things to look forward to. Here's some lists and trailers to whet your appetite.

Books

50 Most Anticipated SFF Books of 2020

- The Fantasy Hive

The 20 Most Anticipated Horror Books of 2020

- LitReactor

Film and Television Trailers

The Turning

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels

Locke & Key

Antebellum

Antlers

Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears

Music

Myrkur, "Ella"

My Dying Bride, "Your Broken Shore"

Medico Peste, "God Knows Why"

Igorrr, "Very Noise"

45 Most Anticipated Albums of 2020

- Revolver

Best of the Rest of 2019

Best of the Rest of 2019

Jack and Kate look at what they've read and watched in the second half of 2019 and make some recommendations in the world of books and beyond. The rules of engagement are simple: the hosts each choose one movie, album, TV show, book and "wild card" from any category that was the best experience of its kind encountered during the last half of the year that was.
Ranging from comfort food comedy to critically acclaimed foreign films to avant garde metal and right back around again, your hosts take a meander through what delighted them during the waning of 2019.

Surprisingly Good Things on Twitter

Some excellent rpg Twitter threads that are absolutely worth your time:

Math is scary, and often we stick to what we know because its easy, but the best games examine the mechanical choices they make, so I'm gonna demistify some shit about 2d6 math.
Alternate Title: PbtA designers, please stop using +/- x modifiers in your games.
- @ammourazz

* * *

Some mid-morning spice: You CAN create a satisfying layout for your game using Google Docs.
- @DeePennyway

* * *

Hello, beautiful creative people. Have you considered making a zine? Like a physical, printed zine on actual paper?

Great. You should definitely do that. And once you do, you should maybe sell it on Itch, if that's a place where you sell stuff. Here's how.
- @infinitemao

* * *

OK so this is a thread containing productivity tips I have learned from making ttrpgs, though probably they are applicable to other creative arts as well. It will end up being fairly long.
- @chthonstone

* * *


CREATIVE COMMONS = BLOODY AWESOME #TTRPG ZINES
A Thread


So you want to make cool RPG Zines and have just discovered you can use paintings and illustrations under creative commons CC/public domain PD license. This are some advices around this kinda tricky thing. Here we go.
- @guilhermedenovo

* * *

I've been writing and publishing RPGs for a few years now. I can't say I am successful but I have a couple of tips.
- @lostpaolo

* * *

Okay, I have an hour to kill: Retweet, then reply here to the original tweet, and I'll invent a D&D class for you.
- @scumbelievable

Falling in Love with Bloodborne

Bonus Level: Falling in Love with Bloodborne

Neon Genesis Evangelion, Daemon, Knives Out, Spiritual Instinct

Things that brought me delight in December, 2019:

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Come for the giant robot battles, stay for the existential dread, deep-seated sea of anxieties, meditations on the abjectness of the physical form, and the nihilistic relief of the dissolution of a sense of self! Oddly, the ending reminded me a bit of The Prisoner.

Mayhem, Daemon
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is great, of course, but I haven't been into most modern Mayhem albums. Daemon is a notable exception: it sounds exactly like the kind of infernal war music it ought to.

Knives Out
Quite possibly the funniest movie I've seen in a theater in a long time. I mean intentionally funny.

Alcest, Spiritual Instinct
The Alcest formula is a strong one: complex layers of sunlight and darkness, each song good on its own but achieving greatness in context.

Simon Stern (ed), The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Volume Three
Read a volume of these Victorian Christmas ghost stories is probably my favorite part of the holiday season. Haunted ovens! Ghost brides! Misers! Editors! Dyspepysia!

The Witcher
I had my doubts, but this adaptation of The Witcher is actually good! It could have done with a date flashed on the screen to identify the various timelines, but that complaint aside the show was a lot of fun to watch.

Oxxo Xoox, Y
Who releases a potential album of the year in late November? Oxxo Xoox, that's who. As bold a move as that is, it pales before the mix of beauty-and-the-beast vocals, chugging guitars, and an utter lack of artistic restraint.

Richard Gavin, Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness
In less enlightened circles, I think we'd call this "folk horror," but I reckon that is a disservice. Nature's monstrosity is unveiled, as is our craving for it.

Blut Aus Nord, Hallucinogen
"Blut Aus Nord goes psychedelic," is a phrase that gives pause, but curiously...it works.

Officium Triste, The Death of Gaia
Lush orchestration coupled with growled vocals that are surprisingly precise in their delivery.

Vampire Hunter D Reader's Guide
A handful of short-stories and an encyclopedia of "lore" entries from the long-running light novel series. Whoever wrote the lore entries was clearly having a ton of fun.

Nile, Vile Nilotic Rites
Everyone else can go home: "The Oxford Handbook of Savage Genocidal Warfare" is the best song title of the year.