Author Archives: Henry

Choose Your Own Adventure! Part 2

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Edit: Part 2b has been posted and can be found here.

This particular story follows in the footsteps of the previous CYOA which I published on this blog.  It should be perfectly legible and entertaining without having read / played through the first one, but those of you that like knowing a little bit more about what’s going on should try the other one first.  As with the previous one, you’ll have to make a little effort not to read ahead.  But if you keep your eyes on the topmost section of text and click the links as you see fit, you’ll do fine!

Another important note: this was originally going to continue both sides of the the previous story.  I’ve pared it down to just one of them to give myself more time with the other half, but even so this may be longer than the first installment.

# Start with this link #

Last you knew, a knight had ordered that wretched man named Hurly to pick you up and carry you off…

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Computer Game Gossip! Blackbird’s new game will be in the Homeworld universe

Posted on by Henry

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SPAAAAAAAAAACE

So, this is not what I usually write about.  But I was given some really great news and I thought I should share it with the rest of you.  You know how Gearbox acquired the rights to that totally sweet game Homeworld?  I know, I know, it came out in 1999 which is practically forever ago, but it was still pretty incredible… rather than review it right now, I’ll just say that I loved playing that game, loved watching that game, and loved listening to that game.  Anyway, Gearbox just signed a deal to allow Blackbird, a company founded in part by people involved in making the original Homeworld, to publish their new game Hardware: Shipbreakers as a part of the Homeworld universe.

I also haven’t mentioned how excited I am by how Hardware looks, so I forgive you if you are confused.  Check it out:

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Cartozia Tales

Posted on by Henry

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Quick disclaimer: I received my copy of the first issue as a review submission, and am friends with Lucy Bellwood, one of the excellent artists on the project.

Cartozia Tales is the collaborative creation of a group of indy cartoonists, with two issues out and another eight to come pending a successful Kickstarter project.  It explores the world of Cartozia by offering stories from all over the map… literally.  One of the central conceits of the project is that each of the artist teams will create stories from a randomly chosen location in the world of Cartozia, with the eventual goal of having every artist tell a story from every section of the world.

The world itself is filled out in promising detail on a map in the center of the first issue (like that pretty one up above).  Your initial introduction to the material is offered by a young cartographer named Shreya, who travels around the world of Cartozia mapping it out and collecting stories.  These stories are all designed to be accessible to young readers, and as such they are short, move quickly, and don’t require an extensive background vocabulary.  But leaving it at that doesn’t do full justice to the content; a number of the stories were just as deep and engaging as I would hope something aimed at an older audience to be, and the stories that didn’t quite hit that note felt like they promised to do so within the next few episodes.

The art changes from one story to the next as different artists take the reins, offering a wide variety of styles in a medium that is more often denoted by much larger uniform chunks.  I am of course quite partial to Lucy’s work, but I found several new artists that I expect to look up once I’ve finished writing this post (never mind, I couldn’t resist and already looked them up).  Simply put, I quite like this project and I’m looking forward to reading the next issue.  I highly recommend that you check it out, and contribute to their Kickstarter if you like what you see.

Rough Drafts and Epiphanies

Posted on by Henry

Maybe I should put a number on that title.  I expect I’ll be writing more posts like this in the course of writing this blog.  Much like Mattias’ post, this one is meant to keep you up to date.  First, some housekeeping notes: I’ve set up additional pages such that you can more easily find my creative content simply by mousing over the Our Fiction tab.  My choose-your-own-adventure is still hidden a little deeper in there, so you’ll have to click on the tab itself in order to find it (I should probably fix that too, just to make my other work more accessible, no?).

Also similar to Mattias’ note, I’ve got news on more adventures for Jerome!  My Jerome, not his.  I’m afraid there was some cross-pollination after Mattias briefly used the name “Jerome” for all of his RPG characters.  Now we’ve both got main characters named Jerome in our stories, which certainly doesn’t help you, our readers.  Just remember that my Jerome lives in a world of fantastical alternate history, while Mattias’ Jerome lives in a straight up fantasy world.

Anyway, the news is this: I expect that there will be another short story installment in the next two weeks.  I’ll post it when it’s mostly done, but let’s call it September 9th just to be sure.

Would you like to know more?

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Sir, You Are Being Alpha’d

Posted on by Henry

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Your merciless foes

Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also runs a game company, called Big Robot.  For one month last year, Big Robot ran a kickstarter project to fund their game Sir, You Are Being Hunted (now available both directly from Big Robot and through Steam).  I backed that project.  This summer, just a few days ago in fact, Big Robot released an alpha of their game to their backers.  Can you see where I’m going with this?  Good.

What follows is a collection of my first impressions of Sir, You Are Being Hunted, a game about traipsing across faux-British countryside in search of important MacGuffins while being mercilessly pursued by a very large number of robots with guns.

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Define Your Terms! Talking about RPGs

Posted on by Henry

Let’s start with the title.  When I say RPG, I (usually) don’t mean rocket-propelled grenade.  Usually.

No, this post is meant to unpack the terminology surrounding role-playing games, and to be used as a future point of reference.  I’m also going to refer back to Mattias’ excellent post about role-playing, because he did such a damn fine job of describing what role-playing is.

All three of us have written about role-playing games (check out the GMing category, and look at the older articles).  Yet for the most part our posts have assumed a certain level of familiarity with RPGs and their terminology.  I’ve certainly presumed that other people know what I’m talking about; but what the heck does it mean when I call a system “sparsely elegant“?

In an effort to minimize confusion, here’s a quick primer that will begin to bring you up to speed.  I’ll do my best not to cover things that were done better elsewhere (see Mattias’ article, really), but there may be a little bit of overlap.

The terminology and topics that I plan to cover…

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Monsterhearts: taking a peek under the ribcage

Posted on by Henry

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Monsterhearts sells itself as “the messy lives of teenage monsters.”  But the truth is that the monstrous nature of the PCs in any game of Monsterhearts really just serves as a reminder of the alienation, discomfort, and feeling of mislabeled or misunderstood powerlessness that gnawed at so many of us when we were teenagers.  And maybe as adults as well.  Furthermore, themes which have filled classic literature for ages rear their heads again and again in this game; you don’t have to have ever experienced any of them yourself in order to be fascinated by and indulge yourself in them.

A quick background: this is an RPG which has grown out of the Apocalypse World system created by Vincent Baker.  It takes the sparse elegance of Baker’s ruleset and applies it to a very different type of life.  Read on to find out what makes Monsterhearts different from Apocalypse World, and learn some of what makes it so dynamic and so much fun to play.

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Cabin in the Woods

Posted on by Henry

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Abraham is told that he should really just watch the movie already

Cabin in the Woods is an excellent film, particularly if you’re looking for a bloody romp through the menacing trees with a plot twist that will leave you trying to screw your head back on straight.  You get plenty of warning, and the ending is staring you down from a mile away, looming like a blood-hungry Macy’s parade balloon as it swoops down on you and consumes all in its path.  But for all that you can see it coming once you put the pieces together, it’s so totally not what I’ve come to expect from a “kill-the-youngsters” horror movie that I was still gobsmacked when I actually realized what was happening.  And if you can handle the buckets of gore and unrepentantly dark story, the humor which rears its head time and again will keep you chuckling the whole way through.

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Beautiful Creatures is more than skin deep

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Just to make things clear, this is about the 2013 movie, not the book by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.  I honestly haven’t even looked sideways at the book, though I probably should.  I originally watched the movie because I was bored on a long flight and I hoped it would inspire me in running a Monsterhearts game.  I was totally right.

On the face of it, Beautiful Creatures is a fairly average movie that nestles comfortably in the niche most recently made by Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series.  I haven’t read those books either, but yes, this is all about teenage monsters and teenagers who have magical powers.  See how I just implied that most teens are monsters?

I have no love for the Twilight books, and the only times I’ve watched the movies were during “watch to regret, drink to forget” parties, mourning the particularly shitty moments in my friends’ lives.  Beautiful Creatures, on the other hand, is genuinely fun and rewarding to watch.

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Ironskin, by Tina Connolly

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Ironskin, by Tina Connolly, is almost exactly what is promised on the cover.  No silly, not the illustration; the cover blurb on the edition that I picked up says, “A steampunk Beauty and the Beast tale, beautifully and cleverly reversed.”  And while I would say that “steampunk” is not the appropriate description for the setting, the book certainly delivers on all of the rest of that, and then some.

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