MUSICAL MONDAY: Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) (My Chemical Romance)

Rain Doesn't Stop Play At Annual Medieval Festival

You can't really judge the steepness of the hill from this picture

Having missed last year's event, Rachel, Alice and I returned to King's Grove: England's Medieval & Renaissance Festival this year... only to discover that it had grown considerably since we were last there.

Oh, and after a summer of heatwave after heatwave, the heavens opened yesterday and it rained almost constantly while we were at the festival (there was a break of around five minutes when the sun came out in the afternoon).

The clue to the event's expansion was in the addition of "& Renaissance" to the official title.

It now more closely resembles what I imagine an American "Ren Faire" experience is like, with the overall focus moving away from the purely historical (as it was back in its Herstmonceux Castle days) and now embracing cosplay, LARP, witchy bits, and even tabletop roleplaying games and board games.

Naturally, I wanted to check out the roleplaying (and board) game area first. As well as tables for people to play games on in the tented areas, there was an Aladdin's Cave of funky dice, of all sizes and denominations, all beautifully displayed.

Rachel said I could have a set of posh dice as a birthday present, but there were simply too many to choose from and my poor, little addled brain just shut down because of the input overload.

After a long time blankly staring at the displays, picking some dice up and putting them down, I just couldn't decide and so we moved on... before I had some kind of emotional breakdown.

THE COSPLAY TENT

THE GRAND PARADE

There were a lot of amazing artisans and craftsmen selling their wares at the show, and the constant rain didn't seem to be putting people off moving between the various tents and covered stalls.

Probably my favourite artists were Lucan Thorndyke from Wyrd Bones (who we had a lovely, long chat with and wasn't at all bothered when I said I liked the "roleplaying game prop potential" of his work), the Medieval illuminations of Eric Verkade, and the t-shirts of Hive Mind Games.

As with the dice, there were so many incredible creations to choose from that I was mentally paralysed by the possibilities and ended up not buying anything.

However, I reckon there's a good chance I will eventually (once I can get my finances in order) buy a piece from Wyrd Bones to use in a Tuesday Knights adventure.

To be honest, all the art we saw was top quality and once again I was also (sadly) reminded that we simply don't have any more wall space at home for additional framed pictures. 

Soggy puppy

Quick family portrait during the five-minute break in the rain

Although there were a lot of other floofs at the event, Alice still attracted her fair share of attention, due a combination of her cuteness, her little rain coat, and her rather bedraggled appearance thanks to the weather (Once we got home, Alice had a nice warm bath in the sink).

The only real problem I have with King's Grove is that it takes place on the side of a steep hill.

While the woods are very atmospheric, especially as the festival evolves into something more "magical", it quickly becomes a complication for those of us with mobility issues. Especially when combined with the mud and rain, making the use of mobility scooters totally impractical. 

I couldn't help but wonder if this might actually be the last time I'm physically able to visit this annual event. 

As we headed towards the exit on Saturday we caught a glimpse  of the demonstration (in the Pageant Arena) by animal sanctuary Watermill Wolves. This was, of course, wonderful 'cos wolves are so cool (and one of the wolves was called Alice).

Apart from some "Medieval" treats for Alice, our main purchase at the festival was a copy of The Box of Death: Tales of Castle Rory, Book One. This is a Medieval swords-and-sorcery adventure set in a low-magic fantasy version of 13th Century Norfolk.

Again, we had a good chat with the author, Rory Marsden, who sold me on the book (and signed it for me; you know I'm a sucker for a signed book).

This is the first of a 10-book saga, although I did warn Rory that I was a very slow reader these days so couldn't guarantee how long it would take me to get through this first volume, let alone the rest.

Cult Classics From The '80s That Failed At The Box Office

Some of these '80s horror movies were rejected by critics. Some lost money. Some were barely released at all. And some were so strange that the studios clearly had no idea how to sell them. But years later, they found the audience they were probably waiting for.

Another inspirational movie list from the Luminism channel.

READING REPORT: Still More Buying Than Consuming

I have to confess I haven't gotten any further in my reading of the brilliant Viking horror Draugr since last week, through no fault of the book (it's been really, really gripping so far) but because I'm still trying to catch up on my recent deliveries of new comic books from Paradox Comics.

But, of course, this hasn't stopped me picking up a few more second-hand and new books to add to be reading list.

Due to my recent discovery of Reacher (the Prime Video modern pulp action serial) I was tempted to give one of the books the show's based on a crack. But they're like 500 pages long, which seems a ridiculous length for such a style of story. 

However, this led me off on a tangent, given that Reacher is clearly inspired by the Mack Bolan books of my youth I grabbed a random Mack Bolan book from 1975, for a paltry sum, on eBay to add to my reading list instead.
 

Mack Bolan The Executioner no. 24: Canadian Crisis is a much more sensible 181 pages of decent-sized print, in which Mack is still killing off members of The Mob. This time in Quebec, for a change of scenery.

I wonder if The Executioner books will generate the same frisson of excitement that they did when I read them as a schoolboy? 

Another recent eBay purchase was the vintage Marvel "giant-size" comic teaming Spider-Man with Doc Savage.

I've been reading comics pretty much all my life but I'm still continuing to be educated on what's out there. I knew there had been Doc Savage comic book adventures, but I never knew he'd teamed up with Spider-Man!

I can't remember exactly how I came across this title, but I'm pretty sure it was either a Facebook post by author Charles R Rutledge or a Booktube video from Michael K Vaughan.

My big pre-order of the week, however, was a new, clothbound edition of A Dance With Dragons, the 'most recent' (i.e. 2011) volume in George RR Martin's epic A Song of Ice and Fire.

As you can see on my "Westeros shelf" below, I now own all the books in the series he has penned to date, but all in different editions. This was a deliberate choice as I wanted my collection to have a particular quirk about it.

Given that my "simple" PROJECT 60 is in a state of disarray, I'm now renaming it PROJECT BUCKET (as in "bucket list") and adding to it a goal of reading all the books of A Song of Ice and Fire before I kick the bucket.

Perhaps by the time I've finished these volumes George might have completed the next book, The Winds of Winter, or even wrapped up the saga with A Dream of Spring!

As it stands, I've only actually read the first volume, A Game of Thrones, and that was 15 years ago.

I'll repost my review (written just as the HBO adaptation was taking off and A Dance With Dragons was published) of A Game of Thrones at the bottom of this piece. Check out the ironic comment at the end of the review.

I regard Michael Moorcock as one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time - which is why I established my "Moorcock Rule" for choosing, and buying, fantasy literature.

With his first run of Elric books, Moorcock created - for me - a perfect set of standalone novels that sculpted out an incredible fantasy world and detailed a complex anti-hero in the albino prince.

Each of these books ran to around 150 pages (stretching to about 200 by the end) and so I reasoned, for future comparisons, that massive, door-stop sized fantasy novels were probably not my thing and were best avoided.

And anyway they would take an age to read, during which time I could have read several shorter - and possibly better - books.

But A Game Of Thrones shattered my Moorcock Rule with a vengeance.

Enticed by the prospect - at the time - of the impending television series I found a copy of A Game Of Thrones in our local Oxfam charity store and began to read.

It took two extended bursts to finish this 800-page epic (which is only the first segment of the as-yet unfinished Song Of Ice And Fire saga) - the first couple of hundred pages up until the HBO show aired on Sky Atlantic and then once it had finished I returned to the land of Westeros to devour the rest of the book.

The power and genius of the television show certainly influenced my enjoyment of the book, as I could easily visualise the actors from the series speaking the lines in the book - and, in turn, the show turned out to be an incredibly faithful, if naturally streamlined, adaptation of the book.

George RR Martin has a very visceral style of writing that likes to describe the food people are eating and the clothes they are wearing (which reminded me in part of Brett Easton Ellis' name-dropping technique in American Psycho) as well as what they thinking and doing.

Along with these visual motifs, Martin takes the unusual - to me anyway - step of focusing each chapter on a different character's point-of-view, which helps introduce different methods of describing certain swords-and-sorcery standards, such as the "mass battle": in one chapter we'll hear of a battle from the POV of someone participating, in another it's being described by someone watching from afar, and in a third it will be a report from a messenger - who survived the conflict - to his lord.

The world of Westeros is very rich in detail, customs and history and this is drip-fed to the reader as it becomes necessary to the plot, rarely feeling like a massive info-dump of exposition (as the TV show suffered some on a couple of minor occasions).

Finally, A Game Of Thrones - and, I suspect the entire saga, - is dreadfully addictive reading. I've always loved reading and getting stuck into fascinating books, but I found myself more and more drawn back to A Game Of Thrones in preference to watching TV or pootling about the Internet, which are my two usual default settings.

I really didn't mind that it was an 800-page tome, because I was totally invested in the characters, their machinations and the world of Westeros. The entire book is shot through with a sense of foreboding and the feeling that something major is on the verge of occurring... as the central Stark family say: "Winter is coming!"

And, like the first season of the HBO series, A Game Of Thrones ends on a massive series of cliffhangers that pretty much guarantees I'll be reading the next book - A Clash Of Kings - as soon as I get my hands on it (it's at the top of my birthday list!)

"There Is No Such Thing As Death"

Married couple Patrick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Abigail (Phoebe Dynevor) journey to a new-age retreat in New Mexico, drawn by the possibility of healing after a traumatic event.

Patrick is willing to do anything to help his wife, but becomes distrustful of the retreat’s enigmatic leader (Jacki Weaver) even as Abigail falls under her spell.

As paranoia builds, the couple must determine if the group’s spiritual practices offer genuine healing – or mask a terrifying truth that threatens to consume them both.

Pendulum is scheduled to swing into cinemas on New Year's Day, January 1.

Conan The Librarian, Part Two

My Conan of Cimmeria paperback collection

While I'm still trying to collate all my Marvel issues of the Conan the Barbarian comic book*, my thoughts have drifted to my paperback collection.

I'm trying to recreate the extensive collection of Conan books I owned in my twenties. I recall, during one of my house moves, I trimmed the collection to just the titles with Robert E Howard's name on. 

But in recent years, every so often, I get inspired to scan eBay for any of the later pastiches in the hope that I might be able to reclaim them for a reasonable price.

Part of the problem though has been my inability to find online a definitive list of the Sphere paperbacks and their numbering.

I've cycled through three such lists of late, all showing different titles and numbering, finally settling on the one that best tallied with the numbering on the books I possess.

Somehow, through all of this, I'd overlooked the fact that I didn't own book number 10: Conan The Avenger, an actual Robert E Howard-credited volume.

But, once more, eBay was my friend and I snagged a really decent copy for a few quid.

It arrived this week (see below).

From the current list I'm using, I reckon I now have all of the first 30 paperbacks except for Conan The Fearless and Conan The Destroyer (this latter tome seemingly being a movie tie-in?).

But I'm also pretty sure the pastiche range ran on for many more titles than these (not counting the current ones being published by Heroic Signatures and Titan that I pick up as they are released).

It's just seemingly impossible to find a hundred percent reliable list of all the original titles and their authors. Either that or my Google-fu has failed me completely in my old age.

Conan The Avenger: newest addition to my Conan collection

* I'm pretty sure they're under the bed... with a lot of other comic books, but I just don't have the energy to properly sort them out at the moment.

Joan of Arc aka The Messenger aka The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)

I'm not a professional film critic (although I did play one for many years on our local newspaper, when such things still truly existed), therefore I'm allowed my fair share of "review-proof" movies, such as 1960's The Time Machine, 1967's Quatermass and The Pit, 1992's The Muppet Christmas Carol, and 1980's Hawk The Slayer. To name but a few, off the top of my head.

Proudly standing among this nebulous selection of movies across many genres is Luc Besson's magnificent biography of Joan of Arc, which I've always known as The Messenger since I first saw it back in the day.

And I won't hear a thing against it. I even enjoy the strange sequences at the end, before she is to be burnt at the stake, when Joan engages in heated debate with Dustin Hoffman's weird, supernatural, presence (called The Conscience in the film's credits, but is almost certainly meant to be God or an angel).

I don't know if it's the gritty depiction of Medieval warfare or my weird fixation with the iconography of religious epics, but I've been obsessed with this movie since my initial viewing, which has, in turn, led to a low-key fascination with 15th Century Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc herself.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt - for me, anyway - Milla Jovovich's powerful, unglamourous yet highly charismatic, and slightly deranged performance as Joan is her strongest cinematic role, although some may argue it's Leeloo in The Fifth Element (which is certainly more comedic).

The Messenger does an impressive job of building in the suggestion that Joan's proclivity for vivid, religious, visions comes, at least in part, from the childhood trauma she endured when English invaders pillaged her "idyllic" home in the French countryside.

But whatever the cause, these visions result in the older Joan being granted a status well-above of her peasant birth to "lead" the French army in its fight back against the stereotypically vile, f-bombing English. 

Her boundless zeal and insistence on unorthodox tactics, coupled with her "holy aura" in the eyes of the common foot soldiers, results in some wildly unexpected victories.

This, in turn, makes her a powerful symbol for the French... until she isn't.

The naïve, 19-year-old fanatic becomes an embarrassment for the French authorities once the Dauphin (John Malkovich) gets the crown he has been seeking.

Those in power who supported her, when their goals were aligned, turn on her. Joan is transformed from a figurehead into a diplomatic pawn. 

And we all know how that ended.

Not only is The Messenger a damning indictment of corrupt, organised religion but, once again, its central, emotional conflict highlights the inherent misogyny of the Medieval world (which has, of course, tempered slightly now, but still exists). 

Honestly, I don't care how historically accurate - or not - The Messenger is, it's simply magnificent in my eyes.

Certainly the gritty, muddy, gruesome, unheroic Medieval violence is a strong selling point for me, but there are so many great, larger-than-life, characters in the film - as well as Jovovich's Joan - that also speak to the gamer in me.

And the religious weirdness, of course.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Traveller

Loved this book so much that having worn out my original copy, I bought a second

I've spoken many times about one of the greatest roleplaying campaigns I was ever privileged enough to take part in: Nick's legendary multi-season Traveller game that began during our years together at school.

However, it wasn't Nick that actually introduced me to this beautifully streamlined games system, but rather Steve Grover, the teenaged mentor who'd opened my eyes to the delights of RPGs years before.

But just because I saw myself as a "bit of a writer" and was slinging dice with some wildly creative and incredibly smart people didn't mean my own contributions were that great or original.

I have a vivid memory of one of my earliest Traveller characters being called Boba Fett and being, essentially, the mysterious bounty hunter from The Empire Strikes Back (which was the freshest bit of Star Wars at the time).

The other day I was sorting out my old Traveller books and came across my original copy of Judges Guild's The Traveller Logbook (a brilliant collection of blank forms and random tables), which contained a character sheet for a PC that had totally slipped my mind: the imaginatively named Zephod Beeblebrox of America(!!!).

I definitely had "problems" with conjuring up sci-fi names back in the day (not saying I'm any better now, but these days I can do it "ironically").

The fact that old Zephod has a big red "X" over his sheet suggests he died during some escapade, which I have no record of.

However, his scrawled backstory - which mentions "being stranded on Jupiter for two years" - suggests this was a more Earth-centric game than the traditional Traveller set-up.

While I may have spent a lot of pre-secondary school years scratching together underground lairs and haunted islands for my friends to explore in Dungeons & Dragons, I think the elegance of Traveller's mechanics allowed for simple solo play more.

Hell, even rolling up a character in the original rules was pretty much an adventure itself... with PC death being a real possibility before you even grubbed up a seedy mission to earn yourself some credits. 

Sadly, I can't find any records of these chaotic, freeform Traveller games I ran for myself, although I suspect most involved shooting bad guys and trying to look 'Boba Fett cool' while doing it.

Then, Nick showed Pete, his brother Steve, and I how great a Traveller campaign could be.

Of course, I still played a borderline psychopath with a gun fetish, but mainly I enjoyed simply being in a group of gamers who were all invested in the wonderful universe our gamesmaster was weaving for us.

When Monopoly Becomes Handcrafted Art

As some of you may already be aware, a group of us play an almost monthly game of Monopoly - with every game utilising a different themed board from Pete's ever-expanding library of Monopoly variants.

This week's game was something a bit different though: we were using a Monopoly set that Pete had designed and constructed himself a quarter of a century ago, based upon his favourite annual sporting event: the 24-hour Le Mans endurance race (as captured in the classic Steve McQueen movie from 1971).

Last month Rachel, Clare, Pete, and I played the official Le Mans Monopoly set, but Pete's was in a different league, drawing directly from his decades of experience attending the event.

You can read all about it, and see plenty of photographs of Pete work of art, at our Monopoly Club blog here.

On her internationally renowned Three Beautiful Things blog, Clare wrote of the evening:

"Pete brings his own homemade Monopoly set and it's a stunner -- unique, handcrafted and thoughtfully built to a Le Mans theme with the finest artwork early 2000s clipart CDs can offer. It's very nostalgic, and with his own added context, much more interesting than some of the official sets we've been playing."

Trailer for Conan: Tides of the Tyrant-King

Tides of the Tyrant-King #2, variant cover art by Fraulian Gardner

Tides of the Tyrant-King #2, cover art by Jesús Merino, due out in October

Tides of the Tyrant-King #2, variant cover art by Sean Izaakse

Tides of the Tyrant-King #2, cover art by Micah Ulrich

The Seventh Seal (1957)

After ten years away fighting in The Crusades, Templar knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) and his squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand) return to their homeland, only to find it in the grip of the bubonic plague.

Block is approached by Death (Bengt Ekerot) who tells the knight his time is up, but Block challenges him to a game of chess first, as way of postponing - and possibly escaping - his inevitable fate.

As the chess game unfolds, Block and Jöns slowly make their way towards Block's castle, passing through villages ravaged by disease, and drawing to them a growing caravan of refugees looking to outrun the plague, including a family of actors, Jof (Nils Poppe), his wife, Mia (Bibi Andersson), and their infant son, Mikael (Tommy Karlsson).

Jof has the gift of seeing visions, soon after we first meet his troupe he sees the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus walking through a field, and - eventually - is the first person to see Death playing chess with Block.

And it is the joy his young son brings to Block that persuades the knight to change his tactics in the game of chess, to save the young boy instead of himself.

I'm surprised it's taken me this long to get around to watching Ingmar Bergman's legendary meditation on death.

Perhaps because so many of its visuals have become iconic over the years and oft imitated (for instance, of course, the whole 'playing chess with Death' is probably better known to the general public for its central role in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey!), I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

While there are a couple of minor Medieval scuffles, The Seventh Seal is by no means an action film, instead concentrating on the growing ensemble of characters whose lives interact with Block and Jöns. And while Block may be the main protagonist, as it is he who draws Death into the chess game, Jöns is the more proactive character 'in the real world'.

It's Jöns who rescues the silent girl (Gunnel Lindblom) from a would-be rapist and brings her along on their travels. He also rescues Jof from drunken villagers who blame him for Blacksmith Plog's (Åke Fridell) wife, Lisa (Inga Gill), running off with another actor, Jonas Skat (Erik Strandmark).

Beautifully shot and framed by Bergman, The Seventh Seal is wholly absorbing and Max Von Sydow is a striking figure as the taciturn knight who draws the eye in every scene he's in.

However, after years of facing existential threats, fighting in the Holy Land and now the plague at home, agnostic Block wants concrete answers about the meaning of life and God before he dies.

He feels that by engaging Death he may find them, but he's also willing to treat with the Devil through a witch (Maud Hansson) who is about to be burned alive.

Unfortunately, again, he finds no answers because the supposed witch - proclaimed to be in league with the Devil by priests and soldiers - is just an innocent woman, facing her own death.

While the film does have an upbeat ending, it's main focus, I believe, is getting the viewer to contemplate their own mortality, which, for me, is why I count this as a "horror film" - even though I would expect I'd be in the minority who say so.

The Seventh Seal tells us that everyone has a different way of coping with inevitable final curtain: for example, some create art (music, paintings, performances etc), some just want to "have fun", and others resort to fundamentalist religious flagellation.

The film poses questions it cannot possibly answer, which I suppose is the whole point: not to dwell on what's to come, but what we can do while we're here.

My Thoughts on RPG Experience Points

Picture Credit: KindelMedia

While I'm no fan of "heavy crunch" at the table when it comes to gaming, I absolutely love doing math away from the table when I'm running a game.

Particularly when it comes to calculating experience points, and seeing that moment when player-characters "level up" and improve.

I've heard a lot of whining about this topic of late, but generally from the point of view of giving the players extra bookkeeping ("home work") to do.

But I've always been of the opinion, when I'm in charge of a campaign, that it's my responsibility as gamesmaster to calculate the experience points earned from a session, log them myself, and share the results via an email or campaign blog.

I, honestly, get a thrill from seeing how each individual player-character advances differently through a campaign (but then I am a bit of a stats nerd). 

I also, strongly, believe that experience points gained should be on a personal basis - meaning everyone gains experience based on their own character's actions in the game.

For example, if a party overcomes an opponent by luring it into a trap, the experience points  for defeating the monster should be split between them, but the person - or persons - who came up with the plan should get a bonus on top of that.

My understanding of the current D&D approach to experience is not only is there a unified level table for all the classes, but generally everyone levels up at the same time and pace.

That's on a par with "participation ribbons" for me. 

People simply don't learn and grow at the same rate. I was never particularly academically gifted at school (spending too much time daydreaming, dodging lessons, and thinking about roleplaying games, comics, and girls), but I bore no ill towards those who did achieve things, win awards etc 

It would have been an incentive for me to try harder... if I could have been bothered.

If everyone gets the same rewards whether they turn up or not, where's the incentive to turn up?

To be honest, I would consider docking a player's character experience if they failed to show up to an agreed gaming session (I'm also not a fan of forcing the players who did bother to turn up to run the absentee player's character by committee).

It's hard enough organising a get-together of mature gamers in the first place (herding cats is the perfect analogy), so a player certainly shouldn't gain any mechanical benefits from the evening they missed.*

Experience points are about more than simply killing monsters (and stealing loot), it's an abstract measure of the life the character has lived during that session, the lessons learned, the sights seen, and so on.

Check out this particular ruling from the Arduin Grimore on awards for completing missions.

Everyone "experiences" these things differently and thus they grow, and improve their skill set, at different rates.

* Obviously, often there are valid reasons (work, illness, family emergency etc) for a player's absence.