Returning to the Blogosphere....

Crikey, 2 years...

That's what it's been since I last posted on my blog - how time flies!

In that time, I've not really had much time to keep up with blogging here as well as working; but, with a change in jobs (yay!) and a reinvigorated love for my hobbies, I hope to change that...

Stay tuned for more regular updates - in the mean time I can be found on Twitter as @badsausagesdjs or in one of the many hobby related Facebook groups!

Comic Books - for all?

I love comic books.  I have done since my Dad used to bring home issues of Victor, Battle,  Roy of The Rovers and 2000ad to help teach my brother and me to read.

These comics then, in no short time, led to the introduction of the US titles which had, in 1982, started to be reprinted in fortnightly issues - Thor, X-Men, Spider-Man, alongside toy tie-ins such as Transformers and Zoids.

The love of comic books, just as with Role Playing Games, is still with me.  They've come a long way since then, with the surge of popularity due to the (pretty amazing on the whole) cinema franchises from both Marvel and DC.

When I started reading comics, the stories were about the heroes taking on the villain and (on the whole) beating them, rescuing the girl, who would then fall for them.  Of course, there were love triangles, and messy separations, unrequited love and spurned lovers, but it was all good, wholesome fun (even though this was the 80's and even into the 90's, the Comics Code Authority was still a powerful body, telling the Big 2 what they could and couldn't publish).

This series of frames, taken from West Coast Avengers, is pretty much par for the course of comic book romances at the time:

Hawkeye & Mockingbird, West Coast Avengers Vol2, issue 91 (1993) Artwork by David Ross & Tim Dzon

Admittedly,  there were no social networks or internet forums on which fans could express their pleasure (or displeasure) at the characters hooking up, but from reading the letters pages, it's pretty obvious the readership on the whole rooted for Clint & Bobbi's love story...

Now, advance to this year...

One of my favourite series of the last few years has been YOUNG AVENGERS. Relaunched in January of 2013 with a new creative team of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, the title ran for 15 issues, in which the creative team told one of the best stories I've read in a good long while.

Essentially, the title looks at what happens when Young Avengers start to grow up - opposed by 'Adult' enemies, the group come to terms with their own nature, resulting in the redemption of several of the heroes along the way.  

Central to the story is a romance.  Sensitively handled, with humour and affection, the lovers split, then realise that they're stronger together.  The two in question?  Hulking and Wiccan.

Two boys.

Two gay boys.

To the readers of YA this isn't as much of a shock as it sounds, as the two characters have been 'outed' for as long as the title has been around - their relationship was established in Volume 1.

Volume two sees Teddy (Hulking) and Billy (Wiccan) separate, as Teddy mistakenly thinks that Billy would be better off without him (hell, when haven't any of us ever not thought that about our partners?).  But, eventually, they come back together, in what is one of the most touching and romantic issues I've ever read.

Here's one of the final scenes:

Hulking & Wiccan, Young Avengers, Volume 2, Issue 15 (2014), Written by Kieron Gillen, Drawn by Jamie McKelvie

The story, which handles the relationships of all the characters in a mature, sensitive and honest way, has just been awarded a GLAAD Media Award for Best Comic Book which I think is well deserved, and heartily congratulate both Kieron and Jamie for their hard work.

But then I made the mistake of reading the Facebook comments against the announcement of the award on Comicbook Resources Facebook page:

Now, that's pretty tame compared to some of the comments that were left... 

And for that I was ashamed to be part of a community that still harboured homophobia.  

I highlighted this to the creators, through Twitter what they thought of the comments - here's their reply:

And you know what? I completely agree. They are doing something right.  They didn't set out to sensationalise the story through the characters sexuality - it was just something that was there, that was dealt with just like any other relationship, be it straight, bi or gay.

And for that they should be applauded.  

However, there's a good wedge of vocal 'fans' of comic books who seem to think that unless the relationship is between a man and (more often than not, anatomically impossible) woman, it's 'sick' or 'perverted'. 

It's these same morons I'm sure that have been posting rape threats to Janelle Asselin for having the cheek to criticise the cover to the new Teen Titans comic book, again on Comicbook Resources (as it happens, I agree with her on this cover - the cheesecake depiction of Wonder Girl seems massively out of place compared against the other characters AND the previous TT story lines).

Both of these incidents are, to me, unacceptable.  I feel that as a man, who loves comics, I need to apologise for the brain dead, neanderthal actions of my fellow comic book fans, who seem to be stuck in the past, where being sexist or homophobic is somehow acceptable (hint: IT'S NOT) or cool (DEFINITELY NOT).

I've challenged the comments on the CBR facebook page, as have others I will say.  But even one sexist or homophobic comment is too many.

Comics should be for all - not the just the few. 

A Foray to Warhammer World...

Today, through an invitation from the Eldar painter extraordinaire  Nigel Bartlett, I went to a friendly club tournament at Games Workshop's Warhammer World venue in Nottingham.

I've not attended a tournament, event or even just played  at Warhammer World since 2010.  I've been there as a stop off for lunch a few times, but not to play.

Previously, when I worked in Nottingham, Warhammer World was almost a second home; as it was round the corner from my office I ate in Bugmans Bar on most lunches, and was an active member of the First Company Veterans (1CV) club, helping to organise and run many successful tournaments over the course of about five years.  I made a lot of good friends in my time there, but, as with many things, my time there was all too brief and when I changed jobs, my time at Warhammer World was over.

So going back for a couple of friendly games was a nice plan, one I looked forward to.

But I digress....

Warhammer World, Sunday, April 6, 2014

After meeting the rest of the team in the carpark, I was handed a rather fetching Polo Shirt with the WS10 logo emblazoned on the breast, and my name on the back!

My army was:

HQ 

Chief Librarian Tigurius,                  

Elites   

6 Sternguard Veterans; 3× combi-melta &heavy flamer, Veteran Sergeant with plasma pistol & power fist,

6 Assault Terminators; 3× 2 lightning claws; 3× thunder hammer and storm shield,

Troops           

10 Tactical Marines ; meltagun; missile launcher (frag missiles; krak missiles, Space Marine Sergeant; power fist; bolt pistol,

10 Tactical Marines; flamer; missile launcher (frag missiles; krak missiles).

Space Marine Sergeant; boltgun; bolt pistol,

6 Scouts; 5× sniper rifle; missile launcher (frag missiles; krak missiles); Sergeant Telion

Fast Attack  

Stormtalon Gunship; twin-linked assault cannon; Typhoon missile launcher;

6 Assault Marines; bolt pistols; plasma pistol; chainswords; Veteran Sergeant; bolt pistol; thunder hammer;

Heavy Support  

3 Devastator Centurions; twin-linked lascannon; 2× grav-cannon and grav-amp; 3× missile launcher (frag missiles; krak missiles);

Stalker; Icarus stormcannon array; searchlight; smoke launchers; extra armour. Vehicle (Tank).

And looked like this:

As it turned out, due to a few issues, I only got the one game in - against Tau...

Tau aren't an army I've faced for a god while, so were a bit of an unknown quantity to me - I'd forgotten how nasty they could be, with their marker lights and plasma weapons all over the place....!

Still, I put up a valiant fight, and did my best.  However, when the dice rolls are against you, no matter how well you plan it just won't work...

Things I learned from my game:

1) Tigurius is incredibly fragile.  As he doesn't have 'Eternal Warrior' as a special rule, nor an invulnerable save, he's prone to dropping like a stone on the first occasion he's shot at. Which he did...

2) Centurions scare people! No matter that I don't particularly care for the miniature, just their presence on the table scared my opponent into using them as target practice for pretty much the whole game - leaving my other squads free to move and grab the objectives early on (the fact that once they were destroyed it was open season on the rest of the army is moot...).

3) Stalkers aren't that bad, when you realise that Skyfire can be used against skimmers as well as flyers....

4) Riptides are hard - bloody hard, to get rid of.

Even though I lost 9vps to 3, I had a great game, and between Ade (my opponent and another member of the WS10 gamers club) and myself we didn't stop laughing throughout the entire game.

It was worth the trip, and the neverousness I felt at the idea of going was replaced by more good memories.

Thanks guys - I had a great time!

Evolution of a Roleplaying Hobby Part Three - Of Old Gods and Madmen...

In Part Two I rambled on about my first forays into Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and the influence it had over the whole of my gaming hobby.

I mentioned that whilst AD&D was possibly my favourite RPG system, it was a close run thing between that and another - Call of Cthulhu.

Call of Cthulhu 5th Edition, Peterson & Willis, Chaosium 1989. From my personal collection.

Whereas AD&D concerned itself primarily with fantasy, derring-do, cavern exploring and, well, DRAGONS, Call of Cthulhu (CoC for short) looked towards the ancient horrors which lurk in the shadows, evil cults and weird events...

In the United States of the 1920's.

Now, to a boy of 15 from a provincial Midlands market town, this equated to Bugsy Mallone, Al Capone, Bonnie & Clyde and Tommy-guns. Of course, I didn't realise that was a few years down the road, but it evoked a setting which was just as exotic as Tolkien.  

Published by Chaosium (still one of the best RPG publishers around) and based on the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (considered by some to be the father of modern US horror), the game pitches groups of investigators (the players) against the nameless horrors of the Great Old Ones, including the Great Cthulhu himself, in a race against time to stop the cultists from causing the end of the world....

It's a markedly different system to AD&D, one I would say is more involved.  With skill lists and no set character classes (and not a sign of an alignment system), a player could be whatever they wanted to be (as long as it fitted the setting) - in my time I've had characters that were librarians, military officers and policemen, even a cricket playing spy in one memorable game!

The big difference though, behind the mechanics, was the 'feel' - AD&D at its core has a strong emphasis on combat - one of the largest chapters in the rulebook is for just that, whereas CoC's strength lies in evoking a sense of horror - that creeping feeling on the back of your neck, the knowledge that no matter what you did, there were things out there that you just couldn't fight, or if you did, you wouldn't defeat without either dying, or going stark staring insane...

Which leads me to the thing that, for me, is the USP of Call of Cthulhu - the sanity rules!  Every time you encounter the monsters, read a text or decipher a carving, your character runs the risks of going mad.  The Sanity Rules control this with great effect, never appearing to make light of insanity, giving weight to the decisions your character makes.

The writing throughout the rulebook, originally by Sandy Peterson and ably updated (in the edition) by Lynne Willis is fluid and inspiring, each section easy to understand and pick up.

Contained within the rules are a few introductory adventures that I've ran over and over again with various groups, and they're all great little scenarios to get your teeth into before you look further afield.

I've loved this game both as player and Keeper (the CoC term for the GM), and even now, many years later my old group still recount the adventures we endured.

I still run games now, the rules in their 6th edition (soon to be 7th). The original 1920's setting now vyes  for time alongside newer versions (which use the CoC rules under license from Chaosium) such as World War Cthulhu (adventures set in 1940's World War Two Europe), The Laundry (which takes its setting from another series of books - this time the Lovecraft / Deighton lovechild of Charles Stross's books of the same name) and Cthulhu Britannica (games set in the UK, with a great series of adventures set in Scotland, written by Stuart Boon and the winner of several awards and a personal favourite).  Curiously, these three settings are all published by those fine fellows at Cubicle 7, who are also the malevolent minds behind this year's big kickstarter, Cthulhu Britannica: London, which I can't wait for!

Coming Soon from Cubicle 7....

I thoroughly recommend both Call of Cthulhu and ALL of Cubicle 7's output, and look forward to many more year's running from gribbly horrors!

Next time: my gaming take a turn toward mutant animals, and a foray into the dark future of the 41st millenium...

Evolution of a Roleplaying hobby: Part Two - I'm hooked.

Whilst I had bought Dungeons & Dragons in 1984 (as previously outlined in this blog), it wasn’t until 1987 that I really caught the Roleplaying bug.

In the September of that year, I moved from primary school to high school.  For a kid like me, this was a major upheaval, made all the more so (I now realise) through the fact that I have Aspergers Syndrome (of course, I wouldn’t know this until 2012, some 25 years later).  I have always had a difficulty making friends, and bullying was a normal occurrence to me.

Because of this, I would hide away in the library, ploughing my way through the seemingly endless supply of Asterix and Tintin comic books (there was also a series by Goscinny & Underzo that dealt with a Native American, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called – answers on a comment please!), Biggles and Billy Bunter novels and various books on myths and legends.

It was during this time I met the group of guys who would come to be the constant in my life.  I already knew John as he lived over the road from me and Derek from a summer play scheme I had attended the year before, but the others, Paul, James and David were new to me. Over the course of the next few years, I got to know each of them, until finally, in 1989, Dave suggested we play a game he had...

That game was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. 

Having already played a bit of DnD I thought this was great news! But Dave was quite scathing in the fact that ADnD was more complex, DEEPER than DnD. He was right to an extent - in ADnD you could play a race as well as a class - Elven Wizards, Dwarven Thieves - all possible in the more detailed rules of ADnD.

I loved it. I remember seemingly moving into Derek's parents kitchen to play long games, made even longer by their holiday absences, which allowed us to play though the night (a memorable 36 hour game resulted in a concussion for Paul, Derek having to use a calculator to add 5+3 and me scrubbing lipstick out of a sheepskin rug - don't ask). The game took us on adventures our small town childhoods could only dream of.

ADnD is still possibly my favourite system, with its closest competitor being Call of Cthulhu( of which I will explain more in the next article...).

The 2^nd edtion of AD&D (which is more commonly referred to as 2e) captivated me.  Here there were two hardback books – the Players Handbook (PHB) and Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG) – hundreds of pages in blue edged script, interspersed with full colour plates from the likes of Jeff Easley (he of the dragon artwork on the Basic Set), Clyde Caldwell and Larry Elmore, showing adventurers fighting monsters, gazing a huge jewels, wizards casting mighty spells and priests praying to their deities.

And then there were the Monstrous Compendia…  Gone was the list of monsters I knew so well, replaced by whole ring binders full of monsters, all weird and wonderful in their descriptions!  Each page gave a new wonder (or horror) for adventurers to face, but more than that the MC gave them ‘ecologies’ – reasons to exist.  The various volumes concentrated on the different settings in which you could set your 2e games – from the classic feel of Greyhawk, to the oriental adventures of Kara-Tur, to outer space in Spelljammer and hammer horror in Ravenloft – all had their own monsters, each with its own ‘taste’.

With these three ‘books’ (in reality two books and a ringbinder or two) you could play to your hearts content, only restricted by your imagination.

I however, found that I was trapped – I needed more. More setting ideas, more adventure hooks, more everything!  And so it was I set down the road of buying a setting box…  FR1: The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, which I shall explore more in the next instalment.

Evolution of a hobby.. Part One

This game requires no game board becuase the action takes place in the player's imagination with dungeon adventures that include monsters, treasures and magic'

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (authors own copy, with thanks to Neil Hubbard for donating it)

It all started with a trip to a school fayre...

In the late June of 1984, my brothers school held a summer fayre. It was the standard thing - tombola, games and lots of jumble stalls, selling everything from mismatch roller skates to tarnished silverware.

One of the stalls was selling toys. in amongst the Star Wars figures, Action Man kit and Cindy dolls there was a bright red box with a dragon on the cover... and the same name as one of my favourite cartoons!

I remember putting the Action Man that I had chosen back down, and picking up the box. It rattled... I opened the box, and inside there was two booklets and a set of odd looking dice - the rattle in the box.  I asked my Dad to buy it for me, instead of the Action Man.  He looked bemused as to why I would want  a box containing two booklets which would cost 75p rather than the Action Man, but he agreed.

I didn't put those booklets down from then until bedtime.  They captivated me.  The two booklets - 'Players Manual (emblazoned with READ THIS BOOK FIRST!) and the Dungeon Masters Rulebook (READ THIS BOOK NEXT!), both with the same picture of a warrior fighting a dragon (by Jeff Easley) on the cover filled my 8 year old imagination with ideas galore, which over the coming summer weeks my brother and my friends explored, until we wanted more - more monsters, more magic, MORE DRAGONS!

But, back to the Basic Set..

Written by Frank Mentzer, what the 8 year old me didn't know was that this was a new version of the game written by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax.  Released in 1983, it was the first release in what became known as the 'BECMI' range (which stands for Basic, Expert, Companion, Master and Immortal sets) of boxed set rules.  You could happily play the game with just the Basic Set, but the ECMI sets added greater depth to the rules.

The Player's Book, within 64 pages, explained how to create a character, fight battles and cast magic spells.  The Dungeon Master's Rulebook in 48 pages, furthered these rules,  providing rules on how to deal with various situations, abilities for the various character options and most importantly, details on monsters and treasure - without these two the whole game would be a lot less exciting!

Looking back, I wonder how we managed to get so many games from so little.  The two book were black and white throughout, and the rules as the name suggests, were 'basic'.  Compared to today's games such as Pathfinder (which is the spiritual, if not actual successor to D&D Basic) it gives very little in the way of situational guidance or detail.

So why did it hold mine, and my friends attention for so long?  

Because, to a group of boys from a small Midlands market town (Birmingham is a 12 mile car journey away), there was nothing like it.  From these 112 pages we could explore dungeons and fight monsters that we had seen in the cartoon, and read about in the Hobbit (we were too young to have yet read Lord Of The Rings), without spending a fortune on boardgames or props.

Unfortunately, my original box is now lost in time - think I lent it out and never got it back...  But thanks to fellow hobbyist Neil Hubbard I have a new copy.

And the magic is still there.  Just opening the box filled me with inspiration and special memories, pulling me to run one more game...

Next I'll be moving onto Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - why was it called Advanced, and what's this about being able to play an Elven Fighter? That's two classes!

I'd love to hear how your hobby started, what inspired you to play the games we play?

This Place Is Like Someone's Memory Of A Town & That Memory Is Fading... True Detective - your next favourite show.

True Detective - (c) HBO 

"I know the difference between an idea and a fact"

Every now and again, a show comes along that just grabs you by the throat, keeps you on the edge of your seat, and makes you want each episode more than the last.

TRUE DETECTIVE is such a programme.

On the face of it, it's pretty much just another cop show - two detectives, played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey,  investigate a series of gruesome murders in Louisiana.  

Shown through a series of flashbacks and interviews, the two men explain what happened 17 years previous, when the naked body of a woman was found, leading to kidnappings, drug busts and further murders.

So far, so procedural...

Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) & Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson)

(c) HBO

But then the writer, Nic Pizzolatto, throws the audience a curveball... and what a curveball it is.

It's hard to write a preview of a show as taught and full of twists without spoiling it.  As it has yet to be shown in the UK (Sky Atlantic have the rights), I don't want to ruin it for everyone!

Needless to say, if you like the same kind of fiction and games as I do, you'll LOVE True Detective.  I'll be revisiting the show week by week as soon as the UK airing starts.

The devil is in the detail - as will be shown over the next 8 episodes...