Assassin's Creed (2016)

Not being a video game player, I came to Assassin's Creed (the film) knowing next to nothing about the franchise, and after sitting through this 100-minute movie I still know next-to-nothing.

This poorly scripted adaptation of the popular computer game managed to somehow be overstuffed with exposition and simultaneously obtuse in its plot and goals.

The script felt like it had been produced by either a troop of monkeys flinging their own shit at a wall to see what sticks or someone transcribing the stream of consciousness ramblings of a young child telling a story ("Then this happened, then this, and whoooosh, then this person came in...").

Or maybe a bit from column A and a bit from column B.

The wonderful Michael Fassbender stars as condemned killer Cal Lynch, who sits in prison under sentence of death.

Only, his execution turns out to be a fake, and he wakes up in an experimental facility in Spain, where he is soon plugged into a machine called The Animus.

This allows him to experience - but not influence - the life of his ancestor, the 15th Century assassin Aguilar.

The secret society operating the machine, modern day Knight's Templars', headed by Jeremy Irons's Rikkin and his daughter Sofia (Marion Cotillard), need Cal to find out what Aguilar did with an ancient artifact they are after, called The Apple Of Eden.

This object (and there's even a fleeting hint that it might be a remnant of Ancient Alien technology, which got me all excited) supposedly contains the DNA code to free will (the evil Templar scientists want to end violence by removing free will from mankind; there's a nice line about how religion and consumerism have failed in this task, so why not science?).

And here's one of the major problems with the film. The sequences where Cal is "living the life" of his ancestor are a 'film within a film'.

And we're often watching him watch this "film".

Although Cal is 'acting them out', while attached to the Animus, he can't change anything that has gone on in the past, so although they are spectacular sequences (and the rooftop escape is stunning), that's all they are. Spectacle.

Except for eye candy, these extended sequences add nothing to the contemporary sci-fi story, where all we - and the evil scientists - are interested in is the end result.

Storywise it would have made more sense to 'insert' Cal into Aguilar's life nearer to when he disposes of The Apple.

We just wouldn't have had so many fight scenes and rooftop chases...

Now, I try to make it a rule not to criticise films for what they don't do, and instead focus on how well they do what they do.

However, Assassin's Creed feels like two disjointed films forced together by Hollywood/video game science. And both of these could have done a better job on their own.

I'll be honest here: I'd have a preferred a film set entirely in 15th Century Spain following Aguilar and his fellow members of the Assassin's Creed trying to steal the Apple Of Eden from The Inquisition and The Knight's Templar.

Those sequences - which were sadly fewer than I was expecting - were the highlights of the movie.

All the modern sci-fi nonsense simply diffused and distracted from the excitement of these "flashbacks".

All the plot holes, clichés, and groan-worthy moments of Assassin's Creed come in the contemporary parts of the story (for instance, why did the Templar scientists operate The Animus in a building where they also allowed all their Assassin's Creed prisoners' free rein?), which then all got wrapped up in a very hurried ending that left me mentally shouting at the TV screen: is that it?

But I'm guessing all the weaker parts were essential elements of the video game's mythology and so had to be there for it to be an Assassin's Creed movie, rather than a straight-up thrilling Medieval action romp.

And the bizarre thing is, this film has a cast to die for: as well as Fassbender, Irons, and Cotillard, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, and Michael Kenneth Williams all put in not insignificant appearances.

Either this was some bizarre Hollywood dare; they are all fans of the video game (or have relatives who are); or they all needed some pocket money, but I can't believe a coterie of such calibre could all agree to take part in a film so clearly riddled with inconsistencies and brazen silliness.

Yaga-Dabba-Doooo!

All I ask is that Yaga embraces its supernatural side and avoids the anticlimactic True Detective cop-outs.

Words To Live By?

Conan & Dragonero #3 (Titan Comics)

In this month's issue of the non-canonical crossover comic, Conan & Dragonero, our Cimmerian protagonist delivered a throwaway, mid-combat, line that rather caught me by surprise.

"I don't worry about anything until it happens".

I am, by no stretch, a Robert E Howard scholar or expert on his most famous creation, but I guess this has always been Conan's philosophy - even though I don't recall him specifically spelling it out like that.

Perhaps, in all my years of consuming the adventures of Conan The Barbarian in various media, I've never really given this much serious thought.

To be honest, I'm not one hundred percent sure that this statement is a sensible approach to life as, taken at face value, surely that means a total absence of forward planning... and yet Conan is a master of the cunning trick and unpredictable battle strategies.

However, though the lens of stoicism, he is right. Only worry about things within your control. 

There's no point worrying about the possibility of wild wyverns slashing the balloon of your airship and sending you plummeting to the ground... because that's out of your control. 

Fighting the monsters that are in front of you, though, is within your control.

I wish I could adopt this mindset.

I've always been quite an anxious person, but since the sudden aortic aneurysm that struck me down out of the blue a couple of decades ago (and the stroke I suffered during the emergency, life-saving surgery), my PTSD-fuelled anxiety and general nervousness has gone through the roof.

Things that used to bug me or worry me can now reduce me to a blubbering wreck.

But these are - nearly always - things that are out of my control.

I'd love to have a modicum of Conan's stoicism. I shall endeavour, next time an appropriate situation arises, to tell myself "not to worry about anything until it happens".

This reminds of another phrase I heard last year that I try to put into use when I can.

In the brutal Netflix Western serial, American Primeval, Taylor Kitsch's character tells a kid with a broken arm: "It's only pain."

A simple, little phrase, but one I now repeat to myself when I'm going to the doctor's or the hospital for a procedure that involves sticking needles into my tiny, elusive veins.

I still hate it, it doesn't stop me screaming out or crushing Rachel's hand, but - at the end of the day - it is "only pain". It's not going to kill me, and it will pass.

So, who still thinks that comic books and television aren't good for you?

"She Has Come To Do You Some Evil"

With only two episodes left in this season of House of The Dragon, tensions continue to ratchet up as plans unfold within plans and the Rightful Queen's hold on the Iron Throne is looking a bit shaky.

Up top we have a trailer for the penultimate episode of this season, while down below are spoilerific, behind-the-scenes features on this week's episode:

Keep Calm And Carrie On

She just wanted a friend. They gave her a fight. All episodes of Carrie, a new series from Mike Flanagan, premiere on October 7 on Prime Video.

Apple TV Is The Place For Top Quality Sci-Fi

Callum Turner stars in the cyberpunk series adapted from William Gibson's genre-defining 1984 novel. Streaming on Apple TV on January 22.

Based on the best-selling novel by Blake Crouch, Dark Matter is a story of the road not taken. In season one, the series followed Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), a physicist, professor and family man who — one night while walking home on the streets of Chicago — is abducted into an alternate version of his life.

Wonder quickly turns to nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could have lived.

Season two picks up with the Dessens as they settle into a quiet life in a world that finally seems safe until the unimaginable forces them to run once again.

Dark Matter Season 2 — August 28 on Apple TV.

"Beware My Power: Green Lantern's Light!"

Sinestro, Guy Gardener, Manhunters, alien planets: this trailer for the forthcoming Lanterns series has finally got my attention.

The previous teases suggested something a bit too Snyderversey for my tastes, but this three-minute trailer actually makes the show look like it could be some serious comic book fun, drawing on the Green Lantern Corps' rich and deep lore.

In brightest day, in blackest night; no evil shall escape my sight.

Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power: Green Lantern's light!

ONE PRIME TO RULE THEM ALL

Knowing full-well that it's my 60th birthday in November, Prime Video has just released trailers for two franchise shows dropping that month that are right in my wheelhouse: one a returning fantasy series, the other a new sci-fi spin-off from a great couple of movies.

BLADE RUNNER 2099

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER, SEASON THREE

Rings of Power continues to chart the rise of Sauron in Middle-Earth, starting November 11, while all eight episodes of Blade Runner 2099 will drop on November 25.

Coincidentally, both shows have popular roleplaying games based on them, published by Free League.

Archie Injects New Life Into Live-Action Zombies

When Jughead's beloved pet Hot Dog is killed in a hit and run, Jughead turns to the only person he knows who can help bring back his canine companion — Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Using dark, forbidden magic, Sabrina is successful and Hot Dog returns to the land of the living. But he's not the same... and soon, the darkness he brings back with him from beyond the grave begins to spread, forcing Archie and the gang to try to escape Riverdale!

There are some who say the zombie has had its day as a horror antagonist and should be left to rot.

Thankfully Disney doesn't listen to such naysayers and has greenlit a live-action adaptation of one of the finest, modern zombie stories in decades: Afterlife With Archie.

It is scheduled to debut on Disney Plus in Autumn 2027, which seems like the right time of year.

The show is based on the comic book series from 2013 by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla, with Aguirre-Sacasa acting as showrunner.

Not only was it an incredible horror comic, but Afterlife With Archie was also one of the strongest character-led comics of recent years.

Unfortunately, as well as generating great critical acclaim, fan adulation, and a reputation for the sheer brilliance of the story and its visuals, the comic is also remembered for never actually reaching a conclusion.

Of course, the tale had to have a Lovecraftian twist in it!

Much like Doctor Who, it was never officially cancelled, it's just been on an extended hiatus... resting (in peace).

Only the first 10 issues of Afterlife With Archie were published and while subsequent ones were solicitated they never actually appeared.

Ironically, this was largely because Aguirre-Sacasa's career in television took off, with Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Let's hope that several episodes into the new streaming show, Aguirre-Sacasa doesn't get distracted by another 'better offer'.

Rumour has that more issues of the comic are also now "on the way", but no dates have been announced, and we'll believe that when we see it.

Of course, if the show 'overtakes' the story being told in the comics, we do run the risk of another Game of Thrones crash-and-burn. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Why I Embrace Random Character Creation in TTRPGs

The Adventures Of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks

"I didn't pick my superpowers, they picked me"

- Superhero Girl

Careers have been made in the comic book industry by being able to dream up new and imaginative superheroes and villains, yet "point-build" roleplaying games expect players to do this - sometimes at a moment's notice - right there at the games table.

In this article about my general preference for random character generation, I have leaned into superhero RPGs for the most part as this is where I have largely encountered this issue.

The out-the-door epic scale of some comic book heroes, compared to the street-level 'normality' of others, also helps make my point about emulating genres, even if in an exaggerated manner. 

Sometimes a player will arrive with a preconceived idea for a character, but more often than not - especially if, for example, the players are not totally au fait with the superheroic oeuvre - there's be a lot of umming, ahhing and staring off into space before he or she cranks out a thinly veiled clone of an established, popular character.

This mental constipation can also lead to further frustration and ultimately taint a player's opinion of your campaign before the first adventure has even begun.

And this, for me, is what makes Villains & Vigilantes' random superpower generation system so wonderfully appealing.

Anyone can pick up their dice and within 20 minutes to half-an-hour have the outline of a unique character, ready to play.

It's quick and easy, but there also remains an element of choice - so the experience doesn't go to the other extreme and the player feels totally at the mercy of the gods of fate.

Under normal circumstances, that is playing the "rules as written" in the 2nd Edition Villains & Vigilantes of my youth, each player character gets 1d6+2 rolls across his choice of the five tables of superpowers (powers; devices; magic/psionic items; skills; and magic/psionics) plus a random drawback from the "weaknesses" table.

The player must discard one of his rolled powers and if he wants to drop his "weakness" he has to scrub off a second of his random powers.

Now, of course, the observant among you would have realised this can mean a character ending up with only a single superpower.

Back when we were running our superheroes as a play-by-(snail)-mail game at the dawn of time, we addressed this very issue in our introductory material:

"Whenever someone rolls up a character and then moans: 'But I only got one power! What use is flight?' ... stop and think. If you woke up one morning and suddenly found you could fly would your first reaction be: 'ohhh, boring, wish I could fire blasts of super-heated energy and fry people's skin off..."

You just have to look at classic TV shows like Heroes, No Ordinary Family or Misfits or the original X-Men comics to know that people with a single superpower can thrive in a superhero milieu if enough effort is invested by the writer/player into developing the character's personality and backstory.

On the other hand, game-wise, this striving for realism is often more an ideal than a true reflection of the game as it relies on the other players not having rolled up Superman, Dr Manhattan, or Captain Marvel.

Comic book superteams usually represent a broad spectrum of power levels, but there has to be some degree of compatibility and synergy between team members in a game - no one wants to be the Wonder Twin stuck back at Titans Tower, while the team are off facing Deathstroke or Brother Blood.

This, again, ultimately comes down to discussions between the player and the Gamesmaster.

If he genuinely believes his character is unplayable (or unable to gel comfortably with characters generated by the other players), it's quick and easy to start the random generation process again - rather than endure the mathematically complex juggling act of point balancing, min-maxing and optimisation that goes into "points-buy" character builds.

I've played several different supers systems over the years, but the most memorable characters I - and my peers - have created at the table have all come via the random generation process (e.g. my Acrobatic Flea, Steve's Silverfist, Pete's Hurricane & Brutus, and characters from other V&V games, such as Dave's Nightgaunt and Mark's Copernicus).

I guess my issue is with the idea of "wholly designed characters", and this pretty much applies to any genre, probably because I was introduced to gaming via "old school" Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller.

Both of these systems employed - very different, but no less inspirational - random character generations methods.

I really admire the random "story path" method of character creation in Traveller (yes, your character used to be able to die in the process and, no, they no longer can), but also the fantastic 'group' method of random character creation in Beyond The Wall & Other Adventures from Flatland Games.

This clever folk fantasy system sees your party creating its home village as part of the character creation process, as well as weaving meaningful connections between all the player-characters which, in turn, influence their starting statistics and abilities.

Meanwhile, I have friends who draw Tarot cards to stimulate ideas for their character's personalities and I don't see random generation as being any different.

When it comes to superheroes, all the major teams (such as Justice League, Avengers, Watchmen, Teen Titans etc) feature characters with a broad range of power 'levels' and abilities.

It's only certain structured teams - such as the Fantastic Four - who could be seen to have roughly equivalent power levels.

But the FF are the exception, not the rule, as this "style" of team also tends to share a common origin story as well.

Generally I find that point-buy systems, without a degree of randomness, don't gel for my tastes and style of gaming.

The whole idea of artificial balance is ridiculous and fails to simulate either 'real life' (whatever that means to you, of course, in the context of sci-fi, fantasy, and superpowers) or the comics, novels, films, TV shows etc that your games seek to emulate.

Let's strip this down to ridiculous basics: Players A and B each design 100 point characters; Player A just uses the 100 points and takes no weaknesses, but if Player B takes "heavy smoker" for a bonus of 10 points or "terminal illness" for 50 points, why should Player B's character then have more powers and abilities than Player A? It makes no sense.

I'm not saying character's shouldn't have weaknesses (in fact, as with V&V, I like the risk of random character weaknesses), I'm saying I don't see how the 'reward' for taking them in a point-buy system reflects any degree of verisimilitude.

[Footnote: I strongly recommend you check the highly entertaining Adventures Of Superhero Girl, from 2013, by the talented Faith Erin Hicks, for a wry take on the idea of superheroes with real lives. I can't praise it highly enough - just read and enjoy!].

PROJECT 60: Back In The Saddle

My three new mini packs for Dead Man's Hand

Inspired by my whinging about not getting anywhere with  the skirmish wargame side of PROJECT 60, I felt I should invest in some new miniatures for Dead Man's Hand.

This coincided with Great Escape Games announcing a couple of new packs of townsfolk (ladies and children), and me bingeing the entirety of the excellent, new iteration of Little House on The Prairie (on Netflix).

So, I ordered that pair of new packs and a pack of Chinese labourers (I'm pretty sure that with all the other Chinese figures I own, I could populate an impressive Chinatown for my unbuilt Wild West town). 

As ever with Great Escape Games these all arrived safe and sound the day after I'd placed my order. 

My painter, Matt, currently has some fantasy figures of mine he's working on at the moment, but the next shipment will be a return to my Western theme, to spur me on with this scheme.

To give you a better idea of what I've just picked up for my game, here are Great Escape Games' beautifully painted versions of these figures from their website:

President Curtis: Where Are You?

Ironmaster (1983)

No battleaxes appear in this film!

Surprisingly, for all its low-budget awfulness, Ironmaster actually has a powerful message to deliver: that violence begets violence.

It just doesn't do it that well.

A slice of not-particularly sleazy '80s Italian exploitation cinema (shot largely in Custer State Park in South Dakota), the film tells a fantastical, pseudo-prehistoric story of two feuding half-brothers, the amiable Ela (male model Sam Pasco, in his only non-'adult movie' role) and the ambitious Vood (George Eastman aka Luigi Montefiori).

Initially, Vood is driven out of their hunter-gatherer tribe of Zog-worshipping good guys after he kills their leader and then the wiseman (at their leader's funeral).

But then, wandering near an active volcano, Vood stumbles upon a conveniently-shaped spike of iron that he realises will make a powerful weapon.

Egged on by luscious dark-haired priestess of Eferron the Earth Trembler, Lith (Pamela Prati as Pamela Field), who appears out of nowhere like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn, Vood takes back control of the tribe, driving Ela out, and laying his plans for world domination.

While Vood is leading the tribe in a violent wave of conquest against other tribes in the area, Ela falls in with blonde-haired Isa (the lovely Elvire Audray, who you may remember from Amazonia - The Catherine Miles Story), who - like Lith - also wanders in like a Dungeons & Dragons random encounter.

She happens to be the daughter of Mogo, the headman of a pacifist tribe of lakeside dwellers.

A proto-'old hippie', Mogo (William Berger aka King Minos in Hercules) is not impressed by Ela's warning about Vood's aggression nor his determination to take the fight to him.

Eventually, Vood's growing army discovers Mogo's village and the final confrontation looms...

Directed by Cannibal Ferox's Umberto Lenzi, except for a few moments of cheap gore and a nip- and willy-slip or two, Ironmaster is tame fare that unfolds at a snail's pace, especially when just as you think something interesting is about to happen, it doesn't.

The film's just over an hour-and-a-half long, but, often, feels much longer.

As the meme goes, there was a time when I was growing up that TV and movies made me think quicksand was going to be a big problem in my life, but Ironmaster would have you believe it's lions.

Every so often, out of the blue, lions jump into shot, growl, scare people, and - usually - exit stage left.

Despite its attempts to frame itself as an allegory about the nuclear arms race, Ironmaster is an ill-judged attempt to jump on the 'caveman movie' bandwagon.

Its screenplay by Alberto Cavallone, Lea Martino, Dardano Sacchetti, and Gabriel Rossini, is underwhelmingly pedestrian.

However, the movie is riddled with moments of unintentional humour, from the mammoth models seen early on, through the assemblage of strange wigs and the actors' wardrobe of fur bikinis and slippers (Vood's penchant for assless chaps - which presumably he invented - are of particular note), to the preposterous way Vood's tribe go from poking things with sticks to smelting iron and forging swords in the space of 24 hours.

An added historical bonus is the gobsmackingly bizarre way, in preparing for the final battle, Ela suddenly "invents" archery!

Obviously, Ironmaster isn't a documentary, or even vaguely based on any sort of facts, so it's not the sort of sword-and-sandal flick where such matters should be taken into account.

Yet, the liberties Lenzi and his team of writers take are hilarious and make the film difficult to treat with any semblance of seriousness.

Another bizarre aspect of Ironmaster is that Ela appears so 'roided up that he moves like he's had an accident in his underpants. Which is ironic as he's clearly not wearing any.

The Friday The 13th Prequel Nobody Asked For

A prequel to the Friday the 13th franchise, the series follows single mother Pam Voorhees who has been unable to shake her grief after her young, sickly son Jason tragically drowned in the town lake almost a year before. 

When two strangers arrive at Pam’s door digging into her past, a disturbing chain of events are set into motion, leaving the townspeople of Crystal Lake wondering: just who is Pam Voorhees?

Do we really need a prequel to the Friday The 13th franchise? Do we need a deep dive into Pamela Voorhees' psyche? Surely we know all we need to know from the first movie?

There's no mystery about any murders here (spoiler: it was Pamela Voorhees) unless the show screws with the established mythology or buries it under a mountain of unnecessary distractions (as was done with the pointless, and quickly forgotten, Bates Motel).

Of course, I'm going to watch all eight episodes of Crystal Lake when they drop, though, as I'm a big fan of the Friday The 13th movies. And it stars Linda Cardellini (which is enough reason to watch anything).

Maybe, it will (fingers crossed) tie into the Deadite/Evil Dead seeds sown in Jason Goes To Hell. Now, how cool would that be?

Or, at least, add in something different and supernatural to the story of the Voorhees family.

You can learn more about the show from this useful article over on Dread Central.

Crystal Lake comes to Sky in the UK this October.

"We Should Have Burned Them When We Had The Chance"

There are many great programmes on television at the moment, but nothing tops this season of House of The Dragon.

See above for the trailer for episode five, while below are the usual, spoilerific behind-the-scenes features:

It's A Marathon Rather Than A Sprint: Why I Will Always Champion The "Forever Campaign"

Trawling back through his archives recently, I found myself agreeing with the sage wisdom of Grognardia's James Maliszewski, in his pontifications on a subject near and dear to my heart: the desirability of long-running campaigns.

I've mentioned a number of times on this blog my personal white whale: my dream of an open-ended "forever campaign", which I have long-considered the definitive expression of our hobby (certainly where Dungeons & Dragons-style games are concerned).

Inspired by the early practitioners of our art (from Gary Gygax's Greyhawk via David Hargrave's Arduin to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor), I'd always felt this was how the game was meant to be played.

Characters should live, grow old, and die (either in battle or in the comfort of their own keep) during the run of a campaign, but the world always carries on. Characters have long and storied careers, then retire, raise castles and families, become legends, but the world always carries on. 

The world shouldn't 'end' when a particular adventure ends (unless, of course, it's an apocalyptic adventure such as I concocted for the Tuesday Knights in The Chronicles of Cidri).

Modern campaigns, to me, feel like they have a story to tell and once it's told, it's time to pack things up and move on to another game.

For instance, while I loved playing my human fighter Syr Edvard in Simon's Dungeons & Dragons 5e Curse of Strahd campaign, we knew from the moment we stumbled through the Mists into Ravenloft we were destined to ultimately confront the vampire lord Strahd and try to free the land from his grasp. 

Us and the thousands of other gamers who have - and will have in the future - played through this campaign book, all following roughly the same story.

The details may vary, both in the plot and how the character's react, but, ultimately we all have a single primary objective.

The current crop of campaigns from Wizards are designed to take characters from 1st to 20th level, in a compressed period of time (10 to 18 months of weekly games, I believe), and then those characters go away, and new characters are "designed" (not generated)  for the next book-length campaign.

Ultimately, we are telling the story that Wizards wants us to tell. And that's okay, if that's how you want to play Dungeons & Dragons. And a lot of people do, I get that.

These are blockbuster movies, whereas my gaming interest lies more in the direction of the on-going soap opera, a marathon rather than a sprint.

I look at Robert Wardhaugh's famous four-decade spanning campaign, and the original campaigns I mentioned above, and that's what I want a piece of.

I like the idea of a sprawling, living, setting where the characters create their own story, rather than characters being created for a story.

I, again, cite my own Chronicles of Cidri as a small example of what I have in mind: when I began that campaign (taking over the reins from Pete a few sessions in), I had no end goal in mind, there was no set objective for the characters. A string of events - all driven by the player-characters (knowingly or unknowingly) - led to the final apocalyptic battle and the destruction of the world.

If Clare's character hadn't fallen under a certain curse and then hadn't chosen to trust the untrustworthy Witch of The Woods the campaign - and the world - would have turned out a lot different.

James pulled out a brilliant quote from 'noisms' of Monsters and Manuals:

"We need long campaigns. We need to sit down with the same group of people on a regular basis over the course of years, telling the kind of stories which require concentration and thought and, above all, loyalty; stories which gain their own momentum through peaks and troughs, ebbs and flows, ups and downs and ins and outs; stories in which the events which happen matter because they have a context and a background and an unknown future waiting to be discovered. We don't need the inconsequential frippery of the one-shot; we need time."

However, 'noisms' also wraps up his own commentary on the need for long campaigns, thus:

"Almost everything worth doing, knowing, reading, hearing, feeling or saying in life has the character of being unobtainable via shortcuts except in a form which diminishes both you and it. Why would you expect RPGs to be any different?"

While I have been known to enjoy an odd one-shot as a palate-cleanser, a way to explore new and different rules ideas, I want my players' characters to become enmeshed in their game-world, there to live and breathe, rather than drive one single plot forward at breakneck speed.

In his article, James said:

"A multi-year campaign is, I think, the ideal form of most roleplaying games ... and by "ideal," I don't mean some unattainably lofty goal but rather the most desirable and satisfying version of this type of entertainment."

I realise my time on this Earth is finite, I'm heading towards my sixtieth birthday later this year, and I'm plagued with a host of health issues that fate has foisted upon me.

If I'm lucky I have the time - and energy - left in me for one last, massive, sprawling campaign in the manner I aspire to. 

This is why I remain staunchly zealous (almost certainly to an annoying degree at times) about protecting the Tuesday Knights' precious, monthly gaming slots.

I'm still quite adamant that while we are bound to "one RPG session a month" (meaning a maximum of 12 a year, and we rarely achieve that for sundry health, family, and work reasons) I want to play (or, more crucially, run) something with the potential to become this kind of open-ended "forever campaign".

I'd love to see characters invested in something other than an "overarching plot", putting something back into the game world, be it building a castle or a dam, seizing a crown and struggling with the mantle of rulership, getting married, growing their dynasties etc

There would still be the grand expeditions, the megadungeons to loot, the Big Bads to slay, but between all this the characters would have lives, dreams, aspirations, passions, and growth that might not be measured in experience points, but would certainly make their personal stories more rounded and interesting.

Of course, I realise if I'd just stuck to my guns when we launched the Tuesday Knights, back in 2008, and kept my initial Castles & Crusades campaign going, there's every possibility that I would be running such a "forever campaign" as I dream about. 

But there's no point having regrets over my stupidity back in the day. At least, it was a learning experience. Albeit rather late in life.

I'll let James have the final word on the subject of extended campaigns, quoting one of the founding fathers of our glorious, and occasionally frustrating, hobby:

"Indeed, I'd argue this is the way D&D at least was intended to be played, as Gary Gygax states in the foreword to OD&D: "it is the campaign for which these rules are designed."

The Archer and The Sorceress (1981)

A sword-and-sorcery flick that has long eluded me, I finally caved and got myself an imported German DVD of The Archer and The Sorceress aka The Archer: Fugitive from The Empire (aka Der Zauberbogen).

The poster art, by Les Edwards, that had so stirred my youthful imagination, had always suggested that I was missing out out on another Deathstalker or The Warrior and The Sorceress, but sadly The Archer is a family-friendly, Certificate 12, failed TV pilot.

This kind of explains the lethargic set-up and anticlimactic denouement, but doesn't excuse the messily over-complicated plot and the occasionally nonsensical dialogue.

The land of Malveel, home to a disparate group of feuding nomadic tribes, is under threat of invasion by the Draikian empire (known, confusingly, as The Dynasty) and its snakemen allies.

The nomads have been united under the rule of King Brakus (George Kennedy), but behind-the-scenes shenanigans see him murdered and his son, Toran (Lane Caudell), framed.

With his dying breath, Brakus tells Toran to seek the wizard Lazar-Sa, to assist him in regaining his rightful position as the tribal leader.

Toran escapes with his mentor, Mak (George Innes), but Mak soon dies as well (for reasons) and in doing so bequeaths the magical Heartbow, known as Elbe, to Toran.

On his journey, Toran teams up with the slippery rogue Slant (Victor Campos) and the sultry sorceress Estra (Belinda Bauer). Having had a previous run-in with Toran, she is also seeking Lazar-Sa, but to kill him in revenge for the death of her mother.

All the while, they are being chased by Gar (Kabir Bedi), the leader of the Draikians (I think) and his warband of nine snake-people.

Snakeman

Although they add little more than a modicum of atmosphere, the make-up on the snakemen is superb, they wouldn't have looked out of place on Jabba's sailbarge.

Like the handful of other creatures and species shown in this hour-and-a-half flick, the snakepeople, ultimately, are little more than set dressing.

When our 'heroes' arrive in the town of Kamal, they end up saving the locals from someone claiming to be Lazar-Sa.

They pursue him to his hidden, magical base only to discover he is an imposter, a student of Lazar-Sa's, defaming his old master's name.

Nevertheless, Gar and his snakeboys pursue Toran and co. into the misty valley for a final showdown.

There's definitely potential in The Archer, but the ragged script (written and directed by TV stalwart Nicholas Corea) comes nowhere close to realising it, despite the best efforts of Victor Campos's duplicitous - but ultimately good-natured - scoundrel and Belinda Bauer, who smoulders extremely well in an Eva Green style.

Clearly a lot of worldbuilding had gone into the backstory, the film opens with a fleeting shot of a map of the area, people swear by different gods depending on where they hail from, and it's implied - more than once - that Elbe is not the only Heartbow.

But none of this, or any of the other setting nuggets the script is sprinkled with, really go anywhere because this wasn't written as a self-contained movie, but rather the start of an on-going serial.

Sadly, we will never know the full depth of Toran and Estra's world.

The Archer still has a few interesting moments, but its bloodless combat and bland lead mean it really should turn in its swords-and-sorcery genre membership card.

I don't know if I'm getting slow in my old age, but, for me, one of the main areas where the story fell down was my inability to keep track of who was on whose side, and really why Gar was bothering with Toran in the first place (having already successfully engineered his fall from grace).

My problem with following the narrative was heightened by the mumbly dialogue, made worse by the fact that more than once - when I could understand what was being said - it didn't make a lot of sense anyway.

For instance, the town leaders in Kamal, when thanking our heroes for their rescue, seemed to be riffing off the script they had been given, talking over each other, and generally behaving rather peculiarly.

The Archer and The Sorceress isn't so bad that it's good (cf. Deathstalker) and it obviously isn't particularly good.

Instead, it's horribly mediocre, one of the worst sins a film can inflict upon an audience.

Witch Hat Atelier Season Two Now In Production

With the first season having finished the other week, it has been officially announced that the second season of the gorgeous Witch Hat Atelier fantasy anime is in production, and will come to Crunchyroll in due course.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Whole World Is A Sourcebook!

As a creative, gaming-obsessed, pre-teen I sat in my corduroy shorts in prep school assembly seeking inspiration from the hymns we sang... just what was the to hit/damage bonus of a "bow of burning gold", what effect did "arrows of desire" have and just how fast was a "chariot of fire"?

In 1977, as well as discovering Star Wars, I had been introduced to Dungeons & Dragons and the whole world was suddenly "research material".

Everywhere I looked there were potential magic items or monsters for characters to contend with in dungeons drawn from every imaginable source.

My prep school co-dungeoneer, Tom, even ran me through a D&D adventure based on the first season of The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy (a radio serial he had introduced me to and also had a major impact on my life).

Television and books (particularly the sword and sorcery tales of Fritz Leiber, and a little later Harry Turtledove's first Elabon stories - Wereblood and Werenight) shaped many adventures and characters in those early years; then later comic books became a major source of inspiration as our games moved away from straight fantasy into the four-colour world of superheroes.

From these I still have three comic book standards that I would one day love to weave into a single, long-running roleplaying game: time travel, alternate dimensions, and cosmic entities.

Yet somehow, even in the games I've run for the Tuesday Knights in the past couple of decades, I have yet to squeeze all three of them in successfully; feeling that a campaign needs to progress at a steady pace for a considerable length of time before such contrasting, incredible elements can have their full, desired impact when introduced.

That said, all three feature heavily in The Sailor on The Seas of Fate, the second of Michael Moorcock's Elric books.

Even dreamier, more surreal and more psychedelic than Elric of Melniboné, this 190-page delight had me joining Elric on a ship sailing a strange ocean that linked not just islands, but worlds and planes of existence in time and space.

In a series of three adventures, Elric discovers he is but one face of The Eternal Champion, travelling to the Earth's future with three other incarnations of the Champion (Hawkmoon, Corum and Erekose) to battle two universe-threatening alien magicians; then he finds himself being chased by a Melnibonean sorcerer from history and swept up in a mythical love story; before finally taking a Heart of Darkness-style river journey to the legendary, lost birth place of his people.

These stories continue to leave me breathless, blown away by the absorbing text, the clever imagery and mental stimuli they spark in my enfeebled brain.

It also made me appreciate, perhaps, why I have never successfully tackled such cosmic themes as I desire to in my roleplaying games - they are best left to the master storytellers!

POSSE POWER!!!

Photo by Reda Bluo

Since this blog celebrated its first six months of active service back in May, another brave soul has joined our Posse of Followers: Tom D.

This pushes membership to a very lucky 13, but we could always do better! We're very welcoming around these 'ere parts.

Look to the right and you will see in the side column (below the current 'featured article') a widget entitled Join The Posse. Under avatars for my current followers is a button marked Follow.

Simply press that and - all being well - your avatar will join the ranks of this group of brave heroes.

I do think you'll need a Google account for this to work (Blogger, after all, is a Google thing).

Not only does this mean, my expertly crafted prose will appear in your Google "Reading List" but it demonstrates to me that you're interested in my waffle and support what I'm doing (without having to part with a single red cent, sign up to a Patreon, or back my Kickstarter).

For those of you new around here, my blog is kind of a broad church at present with a mix of film (and TV) reviews, trailers, books, comic books (particularly Titan's Conan and other Howardverse titles), and underpinning it all a life-long love of tabletop roleplaying games.

I also love swords-and-sorcery, monster horror, westerns, Star Wars, B-movies, select superheroes (primarily Superman and Fantastic Four these days), curry, pizzas, my long-suffering wife, Rachel, and our cute little doggo, Alice.

And probably other things that have slipped out of my Swiss Cheesed brain.

I also write, occasionally, about my health: the idea being that, as a stroke survivor, I can share both the highs and lows of my ongoing physical and mental battles. I try to limit this, at most, to once a week (although, where pertinent, it can slip into posts about other things).

Anyway, you're here now, reading this, so why wouldn't you want to join the Posse?

• Of course, honestly, the best way to follow the action on Cowboys, Capes, and Claws is to add this blog to your Feedly aggregator or similar RSS feed reader application (it almost sounds as though I know what I'm talking about!)