Praising or Burying The Scrap Pile

Not long ago, my long-running Icons campaign came to a good stopping place. I decided to run a D&D adventure and then have everybody come back with new characters. (Much as I love the original characters, their dynamic was getting a little stale, despite a few fun shake-ups.) The other day, I proposed that, before we start, I do a one-shot to test out my Defenders adventure for this year's Carnage convention. Some talk of spinning that into a whole campaign followed, after which a couple of players suggested that this would mean the death of The Scrap Pile.

I have some cool plans to kick off the next phase of the campaign but, if it is over, I'm okay with that. I'm really proud of what we did there and I'm satisfied with the ending we've got. There are a few things that were never resolved, of course. They never really found out much about Covenant, and some plans I had for The Unbeholden, one of the first villain groups they went up against, never really took shape. That's just how it goes, though. There are always gonna be loose ends. I tended to leave them on purpose, anyway, so I'd always have ideas for the next adventure.

The Scrap Pile came from a team Tom and I created on the City of Heroes MMO. Later, I wrote a couple of stories about characters from the group. Even later, when I started my Icons campaign, I set it in the same world and the group, at a loss for a name, decided to just go with Scrap Pile. The game took a new, somewhat appalling, direction with the addition of Disco, and off we went.

The Scrap Pile campaign survived at least two long breaks and the departure of one of its founding members. It gave us four giant-sized annuals, an anniversary crossover event, and a Christmas Special.

The team went to outer space, other dimensions, Atlantis, and even Canada.

They fought a bunch of villains I made up, but they also fought Deathbird, Blastaar, The Destroyer, The Headmen, Man-Wolf, and Baron Karza, among others.

One of the players is writing a novella about his character (I'd link to his web page if he had one).

So, will I pick this back up and return to Beta City with these guys if that's the way the wind blows? Hell yeah, in a heartbeat. If it's over, though, I'll celebrate its glorious end with the same enthusiasm.

Thena

 

 

 

There's No Coke

I wanna see a commercial for Coca-Cola that starts with Gabriel Byrne frantically searching a ship for something. Everywhere he looks, there's just a bunch of Pepsi. Stephen Baldwin shows up.

Byrne: There's no Coke!

Baldwin: What?

Byrne: You heard me, you dumb fuck! I said there's no Coke! I've looked in every fucking fridge! I've looked in every fucking cabinet! THERE'S NO -- FUCKING -- COKE!

Baldwin: I'm outta here.

Cut to Kevin Spacey, daytime, walking down the street. Pete Postlethwaite shows up to offer him a ride and and an ice cold Coca-Cola. Spacey smiles as he pops the can open and takes a drink. He holds it up to the camera like he's proposing a toast.

Cut with the sound of a blaring boat horn to the harbor, where a charred corpse floats, surrounded by mangled Pepsi cans, which somehow also float. Coca-Cola logo appears.

Voiceover: If they don't have Coke, get the fuck out.

... but that might not be the image they're going for.

Carnage 2019 Events

I'll update this post as stuff develops. The Carnage registration page is: https://tabletop.events/conventions/carnage-22

Defenders Again
Icons Assembled
Friday 7PM
Event 91, Snowshed Ballroom, SBL13
For some crazy reason I haven't settled on yet, the street-level heroes from the Marvel Netflix shows end up fighting crime together again. I'll write up a bunch of characters from the shows (and a pre-X-Men Dazzler) and let you pick the ones you want. There may be opportunities to tag in unused ones, too. This version of Dazzler is more in line with the early issues of her own series, before she developed the ability to store the sound energy she absorbs or started doing the constant "solid light" blasts. She'll have to rely more on immediate sound sources. Here's the list of potential characters: Jessica Jones, Hellcat (Trish), Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist (Danny), Misty Knight, Colleen Wing, and Dazzler.

Mountain of Mirrors
Moldvay/Cook Dungeons & Dragons
Saturday 1PM
Event 93, Snowshed Ballroom, SBL13
The Pass of Shanafria -- the Mountain of Mirrors -- is cut off by forces unknown. Climb to the high mountain pass, put a stop to whatever malevolent forces are at work, and reopen the vital link to the lands beyond before it's too late. Inspired by the Endless Quest book of the same name. If you've already read it, don't worry, the adventure is mostly my own stuff. If I have the physical books in hand, I'll be using Old School Essentials to run this. The rules are the same so it won't really matter. Since the books aren't due out until October, though, there's a good chance I'll be using the originals instead.

Dungeon!
Board Game
Saturday 7PM
Event 111, Oscar Wilde Ballroom, OW14
Play a Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, or Wizard searching for lost treasure in a dungeon filled with monsters. Wizards of the Coast edition of the classic TSR board game. This usually only takes an hour or so to finish. I'll be happy to stick around for two or three sessions to fill up the time if everybody's into it.

AKA Best Thing Ever

Okay, anybody who's still reading my posts knows that I'm totally ga-ga for Netflix's Jessica Jones show, so take this with however many grains of salt you need.

I'm about halfway through Season 3 and, while I hate to say anything before the end, the final season is looking like the best. On top of an exciting serial killer plot with street-level superheroes, it's got writers who clearly love their subjects. And I mean writer-love, not people-love. Nobody has it easy, but every one of them has depth. Whether I like these characters as people or not, I feel like I know them, and I care what happens to them. I could say more, but I don't wanna spoil anything on opening weekend.

Also, I'm super happy that Pryce Chang hasn't shown his douchey face. At least not yet.

But I'm still mad at Disney for killing it.

Getting Better All the Time

I've been feeling and generally functioning better lately. Maybe it's the longer days, maybe it's City of Heroes, maybe it's something I'm eating, or maybe it's a combination or something else entirely. Whatever it is, I've been getting up more cheerfully, getting to work earlier, getting more stuff done, and even drinking less. I mean, I still love my bourbon; I just don't go quite as far with it.

One thing that's made life a lot better is that I finally went out and got the prescription glasses I've been needing for the last few years. It's sooo much better than getting by on reading glasses. I sometimes just walk around looking at all the textures and little details of things that I hadn't noticed before. I wear them all the time. I want to have them welded to my skull.

Operation: Faceblock is still in effect, and probably will stay that way. One of these days I might even delete that account instead of just deactivating it. Socializing online is a lot more fun without Facebook trying to sink its sticky, slimy claws into me every time I try to check on my friends. I'm enjoying MeWe as a substitute but, even if I didn't like MeWe, I don't think I'd want to go back to Facebook. Some of my friends are probably mad because they have to click away from the blue god to reach me, but they'll live.

I've been writing a lot more too. I started taking two or three breaks at my dayjob in which I just go down to the bottom of the stairs by the basement door with my tablet and plug away. It's amazing how well it flows in that quiet little cell with nobody looking over my shoulder. I guess it's the real world equivalent of that mythical cabin where writers in movies go to finish their novels. Rich and/or imaginary people get quaint hideaways in the mountains; poor people get the bottom of a disused stairwell in Cleveland. Oh well, as long as it works.

What's really funny about it is that I'm actually more productive at the dayjob since I started doing this.

We haven't played D&D since the last blog, but it's supposed to happen this Sunday. Last weekend we played Wobble. I patched up my old character, Daisy, for the new rules and had a blast hamming it up with an over-the-top transatlantic accent and a plucky attitude. Tom wrote about what happened and how it went on his blog. There's another game scheduled for Friday night.

I think I've discovered my spirit animal. Check out the red-legged seriema. This bird stuns or kills its prey by picking it up and smashing it on a rock as many times as necessary. There's a video, too, of course.

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Here's hoping it all keeps on rolling for a while.

Mostly Games

The Nameless Way had been in a bit of a slump, but picked up quite a bit last month. I've gotten up to the part based on When a Star Falls, which is something I've really been looking forward to writing. That adventure leads into their first time travel jaunt in the novel, even though When a Star Falls came after that in the original campaign.

I think I already mentioned that our Icons game is on hold and I'm running the Goodman Games update of Isle of Dread for a change of pace. It's going... slowly. We've only had one session. There was supposed to be a second last weekend... and a few weeks before that, but those didn't happen. They didn't make it to the island last session. I had originally intended to play all the pre-island stuff out, but I've since decided to fast forward through most of it. I don't want this to take all year.

While Tom and I were down with a delightful cold/sinus infection combo, I tried out Audible. Audiobooks are great when it hurts to focus your eyes. It's also something two pathetic sick people can do together. We got through most of Ringworld that way. I'm totally hooked on the service now. Sometimes I even "read" on slow days at work. I'm listening to The Mothman Prophesies right now.

I stumbled across the Kickstarter for Old-School Essentials and was surprised that it was so tempting. I like 5th Edition D&D. I've got a bunch of stuff for it. Do I really want to go back to Basic/Expert, however well it's organized? So I dug up my old books and went through them, kind of ran through stuff in my head. My group didn't really play much B/X before we started on AD&D. Anyway, I decided that yes, I really do want to play this again and I backed the Kickstarter.

Schedule permitting, I intend to go to Carnage this year and run a B/X adventure (OSE if I have it in hand by then), but I didn't have any particular inspiration, so I went back to the DM'ing section and rolled some stuff. For the scenario, I rolled, "Escaping from Enemies," which I've done a bunch of times before and... I dunno. For the setting I got, "abandoned mine," which... okay... I guess. I even rolled the special monsters part using the random encounter tables. I'm planning on using 5th level characters, so I rolled once on the 6-7 table, and three times on the 4-5 table. I got Giant Scorpion, Blink Dog, Hellhound, and Caecilia. It'll be fun to try and make something out of all that.

Not sure what else I'll run. Maybe just Dungeon. Maybe Doctor Who. Still thinking.

Hey, City of Heroes is back! At least for now. Somebody got ahold of the server code and has released it to the public, where these people and probably others are running the game for anybody who wants to play. They've added several servers and it seems to keep running more and more smoothly. I was on last night and didn't get kicked off once. Of course, you never know where this kind of thing will end up. For now, though, it sure is great to be back in Paragon City.