- Nuits Sonores - Floating Points
- Wandering Star - Portishead
- Feel Life - POLIÇA
- Trip & Glide - Love And Rockets
- 6 Underground - Sneaker Pimps
- Rocking Horse (Acoustic Version) - Kelli Ali
- The Gaudy Side of Town - Gayngs
- Zero 7 - Destiny ft Sia and Sophie Barker (2002) - Sia Argentina
- Back To Front (Circular Logic) - DJ Shadow
- Diet Mountain Dew - Lana Del Rey
- Blue - MARINA
- Limerence (Orchestral Mix) - Dmitriy Kuznetsov
- Stay The Course - DJ Shadow
- Roads - Portishead
- Blood Moon - POLIÇA
- Sonic Boom - Venus Hum
A website dedicate to games of all favors and varieties, from video games to good old D&D.
Sunday, December 26, 2021
Trip Hop By The Light of the Silver Cords
Monday, December 20, 2021
Mecha Monday - 12-20-2021
My next review will be of the Battletech: Beginner Box.
I was hoping to do something like #monsterousmonday, #mechmonday, or #miniaturemonday but some of my skills have slacked off in the past year. For example, I let my drawing skills slack off which also impacted my painting ability. Basically, they are the same skill with two different types of media.
rough... really rough |
Mecha are amazing because there are so many different kinds. And they lend themselves to the exploration of ideas and concepts. They can be rude like the image to the right or more polished like the image below. Both are the same Mecha, an Invid from Robotech.
Of course, Robotech mecha aren't the only kinds out there. A more realistic rendition of giant killer robots are the Battlemechs from Battletech. My personal favorite mech is the Locust.It's like a Jeep on steroids and legs. What isn't there to like?
Anyway, 2022 is coming and I am ready to go. I hope you follow along with me.
Saturday, December 11, 2021
Game Review - Battletech Compendium (1990)
Rule Set: Battletech
Year: 1990
Editor: Donna Ippolito
Publisher: FASA
Pages: 144 pages
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Battletech started in 1984 as a boardgame called Battledroids. Over the years, Battletech expanded the universe with a series of boxed sets like Aerotech and Citytech. Each one came with a set of rules, folding Mechs, bases, and two large maps. By 1990, Battletech was ready for a revamp, with all the rules in one place and streamlined. This took the form of The Battletech Compenium.
And boy is this book concise and detailed. Within these 144 pages, you get Mechs, Aerotech fighters, infantry, dropship, tanks, heliocopters, and even subs all with integrated rules and easy to understand construction and pricing methods.The game is a great "I go, you go" game. Pick you mech or mechs, set the map, roll initiative and go crazy!
One of the great things about Battletech is the heat system. Heat is the limiting factor on what you can do in a give round or game. Sure, getting a limb blown off slows you down, but if your reactor overheats, you're done. Like "went nuclear and got a fork stuck in you" done. You can actually explode from your own actions.
Oddly, unlike other games where bad rolls can turn deadly, you have control over what harm you could inflict on yourself with heat. Every data sheet has a schedule of what occurs at each heat level. If you find the risk too high, slow down and cool it down. With great management, heat is never an issue. It's really a great game which lends itself to either one-on-one matches or full scale battles.For small scale fights, the rules are quick. Larger battles can bog down, but with some familiarity of the rules, they are still manageable. Even better, large battles work best off the hex map, so this set includes full color rules for tabletop battles with terrian. There is a massive selection of 1/287 scale figures for use with this set and to be honest, having the mechs is more fun than playing.
Models for black and white pictures don't need to be painted. |
This particular book requires more information than what is included. You will need Mech Data Sheets, a map or table, ruler, dice, and figures or tokens. There are plenty of resources online or use can use the ruleset to make up your own vehicles and mechs. The creation rules are extensive but intuitive.
I got my copy on Abebooks. You can try this link for the The Battletech Compendium to search by ISBN on their site.
You can also check out Classic Battletech on DriverthuRPG? While they don't have this exact title, they have tons and tons to choose from in the Battletech Universe.
Monday, December 6, 2021
Software Review - Pool of Radiance (1988)
Rule Set: AD&D
Designers: Jim Ward, David Cook, Steve Winter, and Mike Breault
Year: 1989
Publisher: SSI
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Pool of Radiance by SSI was the first AD&D released on computer. SSI brought to Macintoshh in 1989. It was a great and faithful rendition of AD&D as it was at the time and used the Forgotten Realms setting.
Game play involves running a custom built party of 6 PCs. Your goal is to drive off the monsters inhabiting the ruins around the city of Phlan. It will take some hacking, slashing and puzzle solving to complete. One of the features of the overworld is open game play, meaning you aren't on the clock and can goof around for a good long time before actually tackling the problems at hand.To complete the game, you need to complete a couple of quests. On the way you'll knock out a few (ok, a lot) of creatures in combat.
One of the oddities of this game is the mix of color and black and white graphics. The black and white graphics are great while most of color graphics are ugly. The layout is your standard 80s RPG layout: Picture in the upper left, info on the right and text/controls at the bottom.
Sunday, December 5, 2021
Software Review - Townscaper
The Lost Room - Mini Series Review
Krause stars as a divorced dad and Pittsburg police detective, Joe Miller. This is exactly the point where most but not all of the police procedural ends and the crazy begins. The series opens with a series of murders at a pawnshop with the number one suspect missing. Finding this guy is the key to The Lost Room. Joe finds his man dying from unknown causes and with his last breath, he places a key in Joe's hand.
From there, Joe's world spins out of control. You can try the trailer to try to get a sense of what's happening, but it doesn't quite cover it.
Joe finds every door opens with the key, yet returning to the door he entered doesn't work as it should. He hops from a sun-drenched hotel room off of Route 66... circa 1960 to many different points around the world. Through trial and error, he makes his way home. Joe's daughter , Anna disappears into the room sending Joe on an insane quest to learn the secrets of the room to bring his child back. And to clear his name of Anna's murder.
While it sounds like a bit from Monsters, Inc., the lost room is even odder than a one-eyed Mike Wazowski, Boo, and Sully dropping acid.
The world Joe and his daughter disappear into is one of creative storytelling with 100 objects cast minor characters to build a story of consistent insanity. Consistent enough to create a warped police procedural. Every item has a purpose, every purpose leads Joe step by step back to the room and his daughter, with every step, bringing a crazed 60s hip mythology to life through magical items. Items that call to people, items that are collected and killed for, the Objects of desire with a horrible price.
I wish I could say this mini-series was amazing, but it's really middle of the road. Peter Krauss and Ellie Fanning deliver, the story as wonky and compelling, but somehow the story never really progressed to satisfaction. It could be that Sci-Fi Channels' treatment of the story as a backdoor series pilot is to blame. Or maybe the internal consistency was not meant or able to progress to a regular serialized TV show. I'm not sure.
It was well written, nicely filmed with interesting locations, and still didn't quite rise to what it could have been. In rewatching in 2021, it is still as intriguing and crazy as it was in 2006. A modern-era Twilight Zone that didn't get the same traction as that other, more sustaining TV show. It has many of the same weird vibes as the X-Files without being locked at the turn of the century.
I give it a strong 3 of 5 stars.
You can pick up a DVD with the original 3 episodes parcelled out as 6 one hour episodes plus an 18-minute featurette called "Inside the Lost Room". On the DVD, the episodes have the following titles:
- The Key,
- The Clock,
- The Comb,
- The Box,
- The Eye,
- The Occupant.
Saturday, November 27, 2021
New Books From Todd Leback to Review
Author's Note: Sometimes, life kicks you in the balls. Sometimes it just doesn't stop. If you don't laugh some or all of it off, you'll go nuts. This post is in that laughing spirit.
It pokes fun at my situation, skewers my reviews and pays homage to a spammer that used my 52 Weeks of Magic series to promote a consignment shop by implying items sold were possibly magical. It also promotes a pair of titles by Todd Leback.
Since it was unusually cool today, I knew this package contained a new book from Todd Leback. How do I know that? All of Todd Leback's books are magical.
In defiance of all FTC rules, I told all of my readers Todd Leback's books are magically protected from fire. In all seriousness, it's totally true that one of his titles, Into the Wild survived a housefire. So clearly, there is some unknown physics happening here, if not out and out magic.
Snow this early in Buffalo New York is so unusual, I find it hard to believe that a single book could possibly cause it before December.Well, it turns out that is correct.
In order for me to cause it to snow so early in the year, I had to order two books from Todd Leback. I ordered both A Guide to Thieves Guilds and Basilisk Hills Ultimate Hexcrawl. This order was placed back on November 11th and arrived the morning of November 27. I know DriveThruRPG is urging people to order early to allow time for Christmas delivery, so I might have just been lucky.
Or it was magic. You decide.
Monday, November 22, 2021
The Minus Faction by Rick Wayne Review
Outbreak