And random dark acts

I just found out about this last night.





You've got until the end of business tomorrow to get your gifts to me!

You can skip the incense, though. But all the others are fine.  As are offerings of books, lingerie, and ammunition (preferably 9mm FMJ). And, of course, My Little Pony paraphernalia.


(I'd include a link to my Amazon Wish List, but you'd think I was being serious.)

This is not a remake, just a re-imagining of the original post I wrote on the topic.

     So there's a remake of The Tomorrow People on The CW network. I'm really not sure how I feel about this, either, as I've watched approximately half the episode and don't feel terribly compelled to watch it further. It just feels like a rushed, poorly-paced remake of Mutant X; pretty, pretty people with superpowers and a government organization hunting them in a world where everyone knows martial arts. Which was fine in the 90s. Everyone knew martial arts in the 90s, and every gang was made up of middle-aged white dudes with receding hairlines and chunky sunglasses. The new version even makes a point of apologizing for its own name, which is far more shameful than embracing the corny sci-fi that birthed it. It was nice to see TIM again, though, as the first remake didn't have him. Big Finish's audio did, though, and I highly recommend anything they make.

Which brings me to remakes. Tricky business, remakes. A lot of people get all up in arms over them. How dare you violate my childhood, what was wrong with the original, all that. What purpose do they serve? When is it necessary, appropriate, acceptable to make a remake of something?

I know I've mentioned the Resident Evil series a few times in my past blogs, and for good reason. It stands tall amongst horror and gaming aficionados, and has changed and grown a great deal over the years. The first game is a classic, no doubt. That said, it hasn't aged terribly well. If we're completely objective here, the graphics are primitive, it has clunky controls, and the dialogue and voice acting is abysmal. 6 years later, a remake was made, which not only introduced the new face of Jill Valentine (which has been a consistent feature since in the series) but also had gorgeous visuals, some gameplay tweaks, and a mostly rewritten script with new voice acting. It probably would have been a smash if it weren't only released on the GameCube, a moderately profitable system (which in Nintendo terms means it was a dismal failure).

The next one is probably going to earn me some funny looks. I can't stand the original Total Recall. I'm sorry, I just can't. I don't like Arnold Shcaalkwwzrenger as an actor, the tone of the film was inconsistent, and the entire visual design just screams 1980s despite it taking place in the 2080s. That said, it's looked highly upon by a lot of people. The remake, despite its consistent tone, its slick visual effects, and its actors who were actually acting, it just felt... unnecessary. Personally, I liked it, but it just didn't need to be made.

And then there's Star Trek.

Star Trek's been around for almost 50 years now. It's so old that we've lost several of the original cast. The franchise has done everything, been everywhere. There's just so much lore and history that it's impossible for anyone to enter in fresh without being completely intimidated. The various series and movies stand on their own merits (well, except Spock's Brain. And Insurrection. And all of Voyager), but in order to bring new fans into the fold or give the old fans something fresh, that reboot/remake/re-imagining/re-whatever you want to call it (riversong.png) might just have been necessary. Yeah, it's a bit shallow, but Star Trek: The Motion Picture isn't exactly a stellar (sorry) example of paced storytelling. The first one and Into Darkness have given the new films a chance to flex their muscle and show us what they can do. Now all we need is a quieter, more introspective piece, and the new series of films can easily justify their place.

So, in closing, I'd say sometimes a remake is needed. Seeing something through a fresh pair of eyes, making something more accessible, or simply using better technology and hindsight to make a superior product is a good thing. Sometimes, it's a terrible, terrible thing that shouldn't have been done. Michael Bay, please stop this Ninja Turtles reboot.

I'm still waiting on the remake of Robot Jox, too.

Update on Squeak or Treat Raffle

Some clarifications and some new goodies being added to the raffle! All of these are $10 ticket items.


Michael Z. Williamson has clarified that the two signed books he is offering are hardcovers, and you can choose from any of the following titles:

• Do Unto Others
• When Diplomacy Fails
• Contract With Chaos
• Rogue
• Hero
• Clan of the Claw

Again, all of these are hardcover. If there's another book you really want, he has it in paperback. 

Friend of the blog Troy Hickman is offering a signed copy of his trade paperback Common Grounds!

Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary fame has generously offered a numbered sketch edition of his latest book,  The Body Politic, and the number will "be in the high 800's or maybe low 900's." Winner chooses the sketch.

Brook West is donating an MHI Challenge Coin, to be delivered as soon as the product ships in Januray 2014.

Daniel G -- a gentleman I met over Facebook -- came to me and offered TWO HUNDRED ROUNDS of hand-loaded .45 ACP. Here is his info on the ingredients:

Here is the load info:   I use 185 grain Berrys Hollow base round nose bullets with an O.A.L of 1.250 inches and 5.7 grains of Bullseye powder. It's built as a light target load.

And Jennifer is offering -- as a sweetener, not as a raffle -- a recorded message of your choosing.


If at least one of these doesn't get you drooling with envy, there's something wrong with you! To enter, just make a donation at Squeaky's YouCaring site, then email me the PayPal receipt and indicate what combination of $5 and $10 tickets you want to purchase.

Donate early! Donate often! The drawing will be held on Halloween!

Salem Reviews A Movie, and has rather Strong Feels.

                                                                            I will remain calm.

                                          I will remain calm.

     Some people think the zombie fad is over. That it's been played out. That zombies, as a 'thing,' are over and done with. I am most fervently not one of these people. I'm looking forward to the return of The Walking Dead (and have a figure of Andrea on the shelf over my desk - Team Andrea!) and Left 4 Dead 2 is still one of my all-time favorite games. I am shamed to admit that I enjoyed the Resident Evil films, and have played RE6 twice since buying it in June. Something about the lonely desolation of a post-zombie-apocalypse world appeals to me, deranged loner that I am.

     I have a copy of The Zombie Survival Handbook. It's well-thumbed, and when I still smoked regular cigarettes, I'd pop outside, read a random article in it whilst smoking, and repeat every hour or so. I've probably read that book cover to cover three or four times. I don't read as often as I used to, so when I broke down and bought a copy of World War Z, that was kind of a big deal for me. I liked that Max Brooks decided to take a strictly documentary approach to the ZedApoc, and that he was using slow, classic zombies instead of rage-zombies. The Battle of Yonkers and the International Space Station bits really captured my imagination, and just the thought of recovery and rebuilding a world after something that catastrophic...

                                                      I will remain calm. Will I, fuck.

     I saw the trailer for World War Z and despaired. It looked like a generic zombie flick, and it had Brad Pitt  in it. I decided to pass. Recently, I got a chance to see the film. I was... less than impressed.

     Gone are the slow shamblers that, if you were smart, you could fight. In their place were rabid rage-beasts that went from human to physics defying tidal waves of flesh in 13 seconds. I had resolved to remain calm regarding this, but as I watched the movie, I just got more and more mad. Irrationaly mad. Angry. I wanted to grab this film by its crashed airplanes and punch it in its big stupid plot-convenience gob.

Salem is less than pleased with the outcome of this film.

     What we have at this point is, quite literally, a zombie movie. Not a movie about zombies, but a stupid fucking movie that IS a zombie. It lurches unsteadily from set piece to set piece, with lifeless characters and rotting cliches, stretching your suspension of disbelief to the snapping point at the half-hour mark and staggering away with its throat between its smelly, decaying teeth. I went, scene to scene, from being actively frustrated by this movie to sheer boredom.

     The last few minutes of the film, and only the last few minutes of the film are worthy of the name "World War Z," as it sets up a post-ZedApoc world that, paradoxically, looks like it could be a more interesting sequel than the original film was. Being somewhat of a fan of the zombie genre, I know this probably affects me more than it should. I know a lot of people probably liked this movie. I can't explain quite why I'm so angry at it, though. All I know is that I now want a Resident Evil movie marathon to clean my palette of this.. spoiled meat.

I have not forgotten about Pellatarrum

I just need to be kicked in the butt to be reminded to do it, is all.  As a writer, I am remarkably ADHD in that the posts and topics which generate the most interest and comments are the ones which are more likely to get further attention. If something falls off the radar, I tend to forget about it.

That said, I want to make Pellatarrum a regular feature of this blog again. So just writing this will (hopefully) keep me on track to write more about it. Perhaps a "Thursday Pellatarrum"? Or maybe just a generic "Gaming Thursday," so that Salem's article about computer gaming doesn't seem out of place.

(Brief aside:  I find it darkly funny that when I started this blog, I was in a strong Discordian phase. Now I seem to be moving towards increasing structure of my blog content.)

I was reminded of this because I had another D&D thought earlier today. I either overheard, or was reminded of, Blue Oyster Cult's song Veteran of the Psychic Wars.  My brother played that song on his stereo in the early 80s a lot, and before I was 10 I knew all the lyrics to it. (This probably goes a long way in explaining how and why I'm messed up.)

For a long time now -- not "since I was 10," obviously, but at least during the 90s when Planescape came out -- that song has made me think of a really cool idea for a D&D or Pathfinder campaign, and I'm going to share that idea with you.





Imagine an all-psionics campaign set entirely within the Astral Plane. The aesthetic is half Michael Moorcock, half Flash Gordon movie -- somewhere at the Venn Intersection of Trippy, Gonzo, and Grimdark.  The PCs get to fight Githyanki and Mind Flayers atop the floating, mummified corpses of dead gods, wielding Silver Swords and terrible mental powers, while living in an environment where gravity is subjective, time doesn't pass, and characters don't age, eat or sleep.

If someone decides to run a game like this, you are obligated to invite me to play in it.

More proof I am actually a girl

Quoting a Facebook friend who was speaking in my voice after I posted this link:

"I just ordered more shotgun ammo and, SQUEEEEEE!, precious tiny dragon gaming dice keepers!"

You are such a girl.

I am, and thank you for noticing. ♥

But really, how can you NOT find these precious and adorable?

They're holding tails while they sleep oh my god OH MY GAWWWWWDDDD !!!!!

Stage direction: Erin runs around the room, flailing her arms like Kermit the Frog, whilst making incoherent "squee"-ing noises. 

These are just so adorable I don't know what to do with myself.  I desperately want one (or all) or them. But then, how could I use my dice?  I CAN'T TAKE DICE AWAY FROM THESE ADORABLE DRAGONS.

Becca Golins' DeviantArt gallery may be found here


ZOMG SHE MAKES PONIES TOO!!!   AHHHHH!   *dies of cuteness overload*.

Traveller Tuesday: Staying RAD

Last game session, my intrepid band of murderhobos did a standard jump instead of a targeted jump, and so through random die rolling and GM maliciousness, they came out just a little too close to the stellar primary. This means I got to look at the rules for radiation...

Actually, the rules for radiation seem okay (at least for the moment; I might find something I didn't like and hack them later); it's the rules for shielding against radiation that I find funny.  Specifically:

According to the rules as written, a Vacc Suit decreases radiation exposure by 50. Which is all well and good and makes sense, considering that space is filled with hard radiation that isn't attenuated by an atmosphere or a magnetic field. However, also by the rules as written, starships without armor provide no radiation protection whatsoever.

WTF, over? A 24 kg suit gives more protection than the 20 ton hull of a Launch?   This is wrong.

Now, the easy answer is to just give all ships & small craft the same level of rad protection as a vacc suit, but that doesn't scratch my itch to tinker.

A quick & dirty lookup on ionizing radiation indicates that mass is what stops it; alpha particles can be stopped with a sheet of paper, and beta particles are stopped by your skin, but the penetrating types -- gamma, x-ray, and neutron -- require either dense materials, or lots of non-dense materials, to stop.  The game world supports this, by having objects with greater density (hazarous environment suits, battle armor, starship armor) block correspondingly more levels of radiation.  So it makes sense that the larger the ship, the greater its overall density, and therefore it would be better at blocking radiation.

Therefore:

• All craft capable of space travel decrease radiation by 50 points. 
• This stacks with vacc suit protection, so a suited pilot in a launch would have 100 points radiation protection. 
• Size of the craft adds additional protection; take the higher of Hull or Structure rating times 10 and add that to the craft's radiation resistance. (It doesn't add more than this because hulls are pretty thin.) 
• Starship armor adds even more protection. Rules as written say it decreases rad exposure by 500, regardless of whether this is 1 ton of armor or 100; this really should scale according to rating. 
• I'm inclined to go with "Each point (not ton) of armor reduces radiation by 100 rads," but that has not been playtested.
• Radiation shielding can be added to ships (High Guard, p. 42.) which protects against another 1,000 rads. Weirdly, this does not cost tonnage. I'm going to handwave this as protective insulation, or perhaps lead-based hull paint, or even a manner of construction, and try not to think too much about it. At the listed price of a quarter million credits per ton of ship, though, it isn't going to be a common option. 
• Lifeboats should probably come standard with rad shielding, though. 
• As should capital ships, because why would the government care about cost?
• Since lifeboats stored within a ship would be really well protected, the concept of a "safe room" becomes logical.  Instead of shielding the entire ship, just shield an area inside it, like a stateroom or a sickbay or the passenger common area. 
• A shielded bridge would probably be A Good Thing, just in case you needed someone to fly the ship during the solar flare. 
• Passengers in low berths are considered to be protected by "hazard suit" levels of shielding, and therefore removes a further 200 rads of exposure. 

Yes, I realize these rules gives capital ships massive amounts of rad shielding. I feel this is a feature, not a bug, as cap ships are huge, and nukes are flung around like spitballs during such engagements. Radiation exposure shouldn't be a factor for their crews unless their ship's integrity is seriously compromised.