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Thursday, July 16, 2009

Rescued from storage: Chill invitation

chill_invite_webWhen I was visiting my family a couple weeks back, I delved into my grandmother’s musty garage, stuffed to the gills with storage boxes from my family’s past. There are tons of my old toys, books, etc., and it’s always something of a mystery just what I’ll find. I might report back later on some of the books and toys I uncovered, including a few things I shipped home, but for now I thought I’d share this one piece of paper I found, an invitation I crafted 23+ years ago (yikes!) for a game of Chill.

I remember the game session well, and for the rest of my high school days, those friends and I would sometimes say, “Ahhh! Fear check!” (a game mechanic when a character encountered something frightening or unusual). Lots of fun.

A few random thoughts:

  • Dig that lightning bolt motif for the word Chill!
  • I’m pretty sure I photocopied this, so I actually did it in red ink less for the scare/blood factor and more because I thought it would scan better than black or blue ink would.
  • The language in the bottom left cracks me up: “you possess,” “you can conceive.” I was a pompous guy, wasn’t I?
  • S.A.V.E. was a sort of anti-monster organization that all the PCs in Chill ended up belonging to. It was useful, I guess, as a way to get all the PCs together. I used it because back then I was nervous about deviating from game backgrounds and module info, but I think in general the game would have been better off without it. Let the PCs be people caught up in the craziness somehow without an organization, and you can ramp up the fear. Not that the concept itself was all that bad, but it wasn’t developed in enough detail to make it worthwhile, as I recall.
  • If you go here and scroll down, you can see the module I ran that session, Isle of the Dead. I’ve got very fond memories of Chill in general and that one in particular.
  • Part of what drew me to the module was the freakiness of the various carnival characters, a fascination that continues today and that showed up in Devil’s Cape.
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Saturday, July 11, 2009

Devil’s Cape review on Seattle Geekly

seattle_geekly I’ve been following the enjoyable Seattle Geekly on Twitter and sent Shannon and Matt a copy of Devil’s Cape for review.

Matt was kind enough to give it a read and a plug on the latest podcast, Episode 22. You can check it out here. The references to the book start at about four minutes, 45 seconds in, but the podcast is fun, so I’d recommend giving the whole thing a listen when you get a chance.

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Sunday, June 21, 2009

Buffy vs. Edward

Funny, funny video.

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Saturday, June 20, 2009

Science fiction publishing contest

People sometimes ask me about how to get published. I’ve touched on this in the past. The short answer, for Devil’s Cape, is that I answered an open call for submissions from Wizards of the Coast (for a program that’s no longer running) and was ultimately accepted.

I ran across a somewhat similar program from SciFiNow, TorUK, and Play.com, called War of the Words. It’s open to people who have not yet had a book published. If you’re a writer with a novel looking for a home, you might want to check this out.

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Thursday, June 04, 2009

Han Solo, P.I.

This is incredibly awesome. My hat is off to those behind it. Watch the video solo…

 

then watch the side-by-side comparison:

 

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Sunday, March 15, 2009

Semi-Conscious: Driving in the Real World

Presented for your ironic amusement, this hip safety video features four diverse teen pals singing such classics as “Intersection,” “Pick Your Spot/Get Up to Speed/Go With the Flow” and “Stay Out of the No Zone.”

If you accidentally get one of these songs stuck in your head, I apologize. At least I didn’t point you at the Monchichi song. Oops.

As to why I’m watching a driving safety video on a Sunday evening? I plead the fifth.

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Friday, March 06, 2009

Good news for fellow Top Chef fans

fabio

Good news, Top Chef fans, particularly Fabio fans. Fabio Viviani is getting his own show. Not a lot of detail yet, but there’s a bit more here. Dina and I found him charming. He could indeed, as he put it, sell “monkey ass on a clam shell.” Hoping for a fun show and some good recipes. I’d love to eat at his restaurant someday.

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Thursday, March 05, 2009

Saturday morning Watchmen

sat_morn_watchmen If you haven’t already seen it (it’s been all the rage on Twitter today), check out the Saturday morning Watchmen video here. Very, very clever and fun. Kudos to the creators for fine, funny work.

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Tuesday, March 03, 2009

I think I owe someone at The Suffolk Voice a cheeseburger

suffolk_voice2

I was very pleased to see a positive review of Devil’s Cape in The Suffolk Voice a while back, but I was surprised and thrilled to get a shout-out in a Watchmen review. I’ve been flattered in the past when people reviewing Devil’s Cape have mentioned Watchmen, but to actually see someone comparing Watchmen to Devil’s Cape is very, very cool (and yes, I realize it’s mostly a matter of timing and referencing a previous article, but I’ll take my thrills where I can find them).

Here’s a quote:

The heroes of Watchmen have a lot in common with the heroes in Devil's Cape. They have no superpowers, they drink, they smoke, and some are mentally unstable but they are all vulnerable to things like bullets, knives, arc welders, cancer, age and nuclear weapons.

And go here for the full article.

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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Little Gordon Ramsay

Dina and I have started watching [shudder] Hell’s Kitchen. There’s not a lot of depth to it, but it seems to appeal to some kind of sadistic side of us.

I stumbled across these and thought I’d share. They’re pretty funny. I purposely skipped over part 2. It’s easy enough to find if you want it, but I didn’t find it quite as amusing.

 

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Monday, February 23, 2009

In Memoriam 81st Oscars 2008-2009

I’m not sure that enjoy is the right word, but I always appreciate this section of the Academy Awards.

EDIT: Not sure of the source of the original video I linked (still included below for posterity) but it wasn’t from the actual Oscars. Here’s the correct one:

 

And the other one:

 

Some great talents here.

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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The Suffolk Voice: Devil’s Cape pulls no punches

suffolk_voice I have a Google search set up that generally lets me know when someone writes about Devil’s Cape, but sometimes it misses things. Yesterday, I stumbled across (OK—I did a Yahoo search) an article that I’d missed in November, from The Suffolk Voice.

Here’s an excerpt:

Luckily, Devil's Cape by Rob Rogers exists in a universe where if a superhero gets shot, blown up, mauled, or set on fire, they better damn well have a good HMO.

Very nice review. If you’re interested, you can check out the whole article here.

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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Awesome Bedlam images

I managed to win the HeroMachine caption contest for a thrilling second time (with a The Brave & The Bold joke—yay me)! The best part of winning isn’t gloating, though. It’s the image that Gentleman Jeff Hebert draws for you as a result.

Dr. Cain Ducett, also known as Bedlam, is one of my favorite characters from Devil’s Cape, so he was a natural choice for me to request as a character illustration. And Jeff, of course, did a wonderful job.

Check this out:

bedlam_hebertIncredible, yeah? Feels like he could jump off the page and kick your ass. And Jeff did a wonderful job of working with me to get an image very much like I pictured in my head.

Speaking of heads, here’s a close-up of Bedlam’s:

bedlam_headGives me chills and nightmares both.

Thanks, Jeff, for a terrific image. I’m going to have to see about getting this colored someday.

 

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Good Dollhouse Q&A with Joss Whedon

There’s a really good Q&A about Dollhouse here (between Alan Sepinwall and Joss Whedon). A couple minor spoilers if you’re a spoilerphobe, but lots of good questions and responses.

I’m looking forward to this show (set your DVRs, folks: It starts Friday night at 8 p.m. Central time).

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Friday, February 06, 2009

Customer service rant

I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts this afternoon. I ended up with a little while to myself and, on impulse, swung into a comic book store that I was passing on the way home. It’s not a store I’d ever visited before, but it was close to the house and I was curious just to get a look at it.

The place was open and nice, with a lot of gaming tables, a pleasing layout of books, etc. What’s more, it had a large selection of quarter boxes with a bunch of recent titles. If I’d splurged and spent three dollars or so, I could have come out with a nice handful of books.

I’m the only customer. There are two people working there—one of them hanging some stuff up, the other behind the counter. They greet me just fine, ask me if I’m looking for anything in particular, and leave me alone after I say I’m just browsing.

So far so good.

Then one of them starts to talk to the other one about how his cat puked in his bedroom that morning.

In what world is this an appropriate discussion in front of a customer? Particularly a new customer who has been in your store about 90 seconds?

I’d been enjoying starting to flip through the quarter boxes, so I decided to hunker down and block it out, but the two start to go back and forth about it and quickly get into a nauseating level of detail that I won’t elaborate on.

My god.

I stalked out of there. Despite the close proximity and the allure of the cheap back issues, I doubt I’ll ever go back.

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