wolfinthewoods

I am a longtime GM, and have been looking to stretch my improv muscles for a long time. I've had this idea percolating for awhile about making quick, micro-rpgs that get resolved in a week or so. If that sounds like your cup of tea, join in! I'll be creating the initial games, but anyone that wants to create and GM a game is most welcome!

The first game is already up and is based on superhero parodies like The Tick. I call it: Stuperheroes!

Let's have some fun :D

This is a swashbuckling superhero comedy scfi adventure.

Inspiration: The Tick, Megaton Man, Any other superhero parody

In this world:

• Superheroes are ridiculous buffoons with quirky powers (Cactus Man, Ice Cream Sundae Avenger, Papercut Pete)

• Villains are equally as silly and generally pathetic (Taking over the local Sears, turning everyone into teddy bears, writing their name on the moon)

• Whenever a hero or villian does something they succeed, it's not exactly how they intend it to succeed (Papercute Pete tries giving a henchman a papercut to drop their weapon, but the henchman instead becomes a blubbering mess because he can't stand even the smallest amount of blood)

• The world is incredibly fragile, buildings topple when barely impacted, cars crumple at the slightest touch, things break in spectacular fashion, natural and man-made disasters occur frequently and with devastating force.

You are a team of stupid superheroes seeking to stop The Big Squeeker from turning the city into squeaky pet toys. Already many citizens and the local police have been turned into various squeaky toys, squeaking incessantly, driving everyone batty.

Right now, the team is fighting a giant squeaky robot that is knocking over buildings and causing havoc downtown.

If you can defeat the robot it will reveal the location of the squeaky ray which is transforming the citizens into squeaky toys.

Character Creation:

• What weird power do you have that nobody else can do?
• What is your biggest fear?
• What crippling flaw do you have?
• What do people call you?
• What do you look like?

To accomplish an action:

Roll the dice and tell me a reason why you succeed, for each acceptable reason I'll add one to your result. If you can come up with 3 or more acceptable reasons, you succeed automatically. Otherwise, roll a D6 and add 1 for each acceptable reason.

• 6 or more: You succeed cleanly.
• 5: You succeed at a steep cost.
• 4 or less: You fail and things go badly for you.

Failure: Each failed roll you'll take a condition. Each condition weakens future rolls by one.

To Roll: Use the free dice roller by /u/starlord@lemm.ee linked here: https://tinyurl.com/everypostroll

Be sure to add your character's name and the action they are taking in the roll dialogue. Then copy the link generated to your post. For each roll copy the roll of the person who last rolled, so we can keep our rolls in the same history together.

So, it dawned on me while watching a documentary directed by an obviously well-to do upper-middle class guy, that most media is slanted towards upper-class sensibilities and perspectives more often than not. This is especially prevalent in movies and tv where the main characters are typically upper-class or even rich. I'd always had an aversion to these depictions, but I've never fully articulated my disillusionment with it. The problem is that these depictions of "average" families are woefully unrepresentative of your average person.

My question is: what is some media, in any format, that is informed by a working-class perspective?

I've found a few obvious authors out there, like Steinbeck, Bukowski and Irvine. But am interested in not only authors, but artists of all kinds and different mediums. Alternative comix and independent cinema, and things like zines spring to mind as mediums that might have more representation along those lines. Are there any specifically worker derived works that any of you can recommend?

Great article about Quebec comics at Angouleme and a good look at the festival in general. Lots of discussion about the current state of the festival and some of the internal divisions of the fest between the organizers and artists. There's been some controversy regarding 9e, who organize the festival, and the creators that attend over the committee's refocusing on a more commercial outlook for the event, and more disgusting developments such as the rape of Chloe, a former employee that had her employment terminated after the horrific incident. This has caused many publishers to create a counter event in protest, with some publishers looking to avoid the festival for the foreseeable future.

A very interesting and informative article. I'm still quite new to the BD scene, and had only hard about the festival in Angouleme vaguely, so it was an intriguing look into the preeminent BD comic festival. I also discovered some new publishers to check out such as Le Monte-en-l'air, La Pasteque and Les Requins Marteaux. There's a lot of great pictures too peruse as well.

Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen tells about a day in the life of a fictional version of Olivier's cousin. The entirety of the over four hundred page comic is contained in a single Sunday in the life of Thibault, centering mostly on his internal thoughts and mundane doings on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

It's an excellent exercise in turning the mundane into an interesting and humorous piece of story art. Funnily enough, I didn't intentionally do it at the time, but fittingly read it over the whole course of my own lazy Sunday.

This is an interview by Matt Seneca of the Comics Journal probing Schrauwen on the creation of Sunday. I highly recommend reading Sunday whenever you have a lazy Sunday of your own ;)

Djinn tells the story of a young woman looking into her long lost grandmother's past as a concubine in a harem in the 19th century. The series is beautifully illustrated by Ana Miralles and written by Jean Defaux. This video shows her working her magic, creating the beautiful watercolor art for the comic in her studio. Enjoy ;)

Been wanting a NES for a minute. Decided on buying myself a toploading unit for my 40th birthday this year. The American NES toploaders were too pricey, but the Famicom AV was much more affordable and with the bonus of AV instead of RF only like the US model. Just by coincidence I bought Mario Bros as my first Famicom game since that was the cheapest, best quality game I could afford and it just seemed right to make it the first Famicom game I owned. But after I purchased it it dawned on me that it was delightfully appropriate to buy Mario Bros on it's 40th anniversary as my 40th birthday present this year :D

Looking forward to grabbing an Everdrive when I have the cash and really getting down and dirty with it. I have a whole bunch of homebrew and hacks I'm itching to play.

Bleu à la lumière du jour has a very haunting, noir-ish feel to the art. The dialogue is sparse, making the big, silent panels even more exaggerated in their quietude. I am still learning French, so I am slowly reading/translating it piece by piece, as sparse as the dialogue is, but am relishing soaking in the sumptuous atmosphere that Gonzalez has sculpted in these panels. Definitely highly recommended.

I decided I want to ditch my cell plan and rely primarily on a VoIP service for calling. To anybody here have any experience with VoIP: what providers would you recommend?

So far the two that I see recommended the most online are JMP and VoIP.ms. I setup an account with VoIP.ms, but am hesitant to pull the trigger until I have done a little more research. Any insight and info would be most welcome.