I, Monster Maker!

As mentioned earlier, I've been listening to and enjoying James Hollway's podcast Monster Man, a simple idea of one roleplaying fan's reading of the 1977 Monster Manual beastie by beastie. Recetly James set his listeners a challenge I simply couldn't overlook: create an old school D&D monster.

Specifically, create a monster based on a bargain-shop miniature or knick-knack; the way the very first proprietary creatures were made by the likes of Gary Gygax and Tim Kaske from the dime store bags of 'dinosaurs' (loosely referred to as Chinasaurs, although they really originated in Hong Kong), repurposed to become the Carrion Crawler, Rust Monster, Owl Bear and Bullette. James' challenge was as much to do this as make the monster, then to draw up the relevant entry for the Manual.

So I took up the challenge - initially looking around the local Two Dollar shops for inspiration, but I found little outside of some insects and marine animals, made from pretty cheap and nasty-smelling rubbery plastic. Out of desperation I went underground - specifically, under the house to my Bitz Box, and found some loose plastic toys collected from recent school fairs. From that I found this guy:

I've no idea who or what he is. Looks modern, lacked a tail, so I carved up an old Allosaurus and courtesy of the donor dino, the result was near indistinguishable:

 The question then became what to convert my new beastie into? The current paintjob is okay - certainly fine for tabletop play, if a little airbrushed and quite 90s in colour scheme. Was it from a video game or something? Anyway, when I got it I thought it could be an evil tree spirit or something. Cut to the Monster Man contest and I wasn't as drawn to that interpretation. Still stumped, I undercoated it old school style with white acrylic...

...and inspiration struck! One turquoise wash later, with some blenched bone highlights and he's a mountain menace, a white wailer, an Eisengeist... ehh, I'll come up with something.

The next candidate was even simpler and more organic in his creation. take a grasshopper head and a triceratops body (it helps if they're not to scale, obviously) and you get this guy:

Sorta resembles a Rust Monster! But my version, the Flambeau or spit lizard, is a more natural creature in intent. The Flambeau lives deep in damp places where it eats subterranean fungi and rotten or petrified vegetation. Due to intestinal fermentation it has a unique defensive manoeuvre: it spits a noxious substance to deter its attackers. Now, in the natural world this means a tarry, foul-smelling substance to gum up would-be aggressors and maybe provide some random protein for our chimaeric critter here. However, as a trap for the unfortunately adventuring party, the Flambeau's spit also turns out to be highly flammable.

Yeah, he's a natural, walking napalm cannon to anyone sporting a flaming torch, opened lantern, or foolish enough to go in fists blazing with a fireball. Heh heh heh.

Stats to come, though  I missed the Monster Man deadline due to other engagements :/ Oh well.

Where Eagles Dare

So, the season of Doctor Who is now over, and the airwaves from Sofageddon Towers will go quiet until the inevitable swansong of Peter Capaldi at Christmastime.

Or is it?

Actually, it's not! Dave and I have, we must admit, been flagging a bit in our Who fandom of late, and rather than sputter out under the strain of supporting ebbing enthusiasm, we've diversified into comics.

Where Eagles Dare is our brainchild, a look back at the [New] Eagle of the 80s and early 90s, which brought a very boys-own stab at a magazine-styled comic into the age of the latter Cold War, Thatcher, New Romantics, home computers, The A-Team, and god knows what else.

These factors are a point of interest in themselves - because whereas the likes of the splendid 2000AD-themed podcast Space Spinner 2000 have an embarassment of riches to cover the heyday of the late Seventies to late Eighties in that title, poor Eagle probably peaked early, and the following drop was one marked with the dreaded staples of UK comics - mergers, cheaper printing, and reruns of old stock. But we'll see where we go, and as the magazine element of the comic has an eye on the real world, it just might be interesting to cover that, too.

Oh yes - and there are those photo strips, too.

So if you're at all curious, head over to the Sofageddon Wordpress site and give Dave and I a listen!

Where Eagles Dare 1 - The Eagle Has Landed!

Of Monsters and Men

Lately I've been indulging in touching up my podcast listening posts. Due to natural attrition and the capricious whims of fate, some once-beloved podcasts fell off the perch over the past year, and I've discovered new podcasts to fill their place as time goes on. One I'll cover here today, and it's a fun podcast because first of all, it does what it says on the tin, and second of all, it doesn't appear to threaten to outstay its welcome - both good things in my book!

And so to the book itself, the podcast, for the book itself of the 1977 1st edition AD&D Monster Manual, and the podcast Monster Man, one man (and occasionally also his wife) rambling through the tome, cover to cover, so far in alphabetical order. At ten to twelve minutes an episode it's a fun whistle through the fabled, the revered, the weird and the gonzo of Old School D&D's classic bestiary.

Um, that's about it. It's pretty much what I'd want from a shortform podcast like this - descriptions of a monster, taking in historical, cutural and biological angles, plus reference to the artwork in the MM (which even casual browsers will know to be varying in styles and quality.) Host James Holloway comes to his subject fresh, with a classical perspective, but not so scholarly to be exclusive or inaccessible. I'm checkcing it out on a regular basis, and will be listening with keen ears on some upcoming entries!

Happy Jack

Another Halloween has passed, and much like wearing an onion on one's belt, the Simian family seems to have adopted a fashion for our times - the carving of the crown.

The Crown! Most granity of pumpkin squashes. Leathery outside, amber within, and resolutely squat and green as a bad moon rising. This year's face came courtesy of Jet Jr who, instead of picking from a lineup of facial features, drew his own version, which I then transferred onto Happy Jack below and got to work. Pumpkin came courtesy of the in-laws' crop, which aren't great eating this year, but weren't too hard to carve out.

Plus, Mrs Simian approves of the smiling friendly face of Spring's waning, moreso than last year's wicked maw.

Poor Jack had a lonely vigil in the end, with only family visiting and none of those pesky kids (apparently Ngaio was the place to be this year), but he was still admired and even earned a photobomb from the neighbour's cat. If he's anything like his predecessor he'll hang around 'til Guy Fawkes Night and then take his leave for a new face next year.

The Artist

See You Next Year!

Auckland by night at street level

Auckland sits somewhere on my radar, sure. Since I've lived in Wellington the bigger city has been a feature and occcasional destination. All trips bar one have been for work and that's ok. I now have the working traveller's familiarity with its airport, taxis, hotel rooms, food courts, and inner CBD meeting spaces. As such the city has assumed itself alongside other regular drop-offs with a similar sort of 'familiar anonymity'. I like visiting the place, and am reasonably comforable being a stranger there, but I don't really know it outside those spots, and one visit I'd really like to see its beaches, volcanic cones islands and western ranges instead of simply flying over them. And this year I'll be flying over them a lot more frequently, thanks to work.

Like any big city inner Auckland city has its own face, which fits with it being our most Pacific city, and our most Asian. Among the modestly ambitious post-80s skyscrapers the usual big city caches apply- everyone's there for business of some sort, dressed to impress. I feel older, less gainly, shabbier, just walking down Queen Street at key hours of the day.  There's still a lot of life in the main drag after business hours; when the office blocks empty out and people rsh for carparks, bus stops, ferries or the central britomart Station terminus for home. After half an hour a different sort of city dweller emerges, and this year it seemed a lot of that life has taken residence in its doorways and parks, and on its benches. There's less of that in Wellington, although more than there used to be, and I wonder, with weeks to go before the general election, whether anyone notices any more. By morning, you get the impression that in some places there's the gesture of support and charity: baked goods left still in their packets on park benches down Fort Street for anyone to take and use - and it seems that this does happen as intended.

And then by night Auckland comes alive again, particularly at street level where its laneways and sidestreets open their doors, spilling light out onto the pavement.I don't often walk alone at night on any city streets, but Auckland's are so busy, so constantly in movement that I've never felt actually alone. And there's always so much light to walk by.

Lead Time Lords: Affairs of the Hartnell

In their day Harlequin Miniatures were tremendously prolific and varied in their choices of subjects for their Doctor Who range. Every current Doctor, including the Eighth and Cinematic ncarnations ere represented, along with every companion, nearly every major villain and an embarrasment of riches in the monster department. No manufacturer since - licensed or not, has met the enormity of their range.

As a consequence, and with Black Tree Miniatures still runing the range in a scaled-own way, the collector can have more than one version of most their favoite Time Lord. It meant that, thanks to UK-based friends, I have more than one version of the First Doctor. One has already been painted, but recently I've been working on Harlequin's alternative sculpt - and here he is

This is the unpainted version off Black Tree's site. You get the gist of it - this is the First Doctor from An Unearthly Child, his debut. OR, from The Tenth Planet, his swan song. The Astrakhan hat and cloak give the painter a few options, really, maybe Planet of the Giants at a pinch, for example. So my approach was to take advantage of that. But first, a few adjustments:

Harlequin sculptors loved their bow-legged poses, and they weren't averse to the odd stragely-positioned arm either; and so we have a First Doctor here who not only has both, but also lacks a few characteristic accessories - his monacle, for one. Plus, blink and you'll mis his walking stick in his left hand, buried underneath the cloak. In the pictures I've seen, William Hartnell carried his cane in his right hand, so a new cane and green stuff monocle were fashioned. I'd have loved to have made a scarf as well, but there's quite a lot going on under that elongated head already.

So here’s progress to date paint chips, scuffing and dodgy painting aside. I briefly considered rendering my alternative First in monochrome, but having seen examples online decided against it (harder to make the colours pop, and it’s something this figure needs.) unlike his other incarnations the Girst Doctor has so far has three distinct faces from different actors - Hartnell, Richard Hurndall and more recently David Bradley (actually there have been four if you count Edward Warwick’s Android ‘duplicate’), so while my original First Doctor resembles Hartnell the most, this alternative will do for the others.

Geek Like Me

'Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks' by Ethan Gilsdorf (2012)

On a recommendation from the Save or Die podcast I recently read through Ethan Gilsdorf's Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, an autobiographical journey by the author, a journalist, who revisits an Eighties childhood of roleplaying games through literally revisiting and immersing himself in many of the elements past and present of a fantasy geek lifestyle. Along the way he meets other gamers, lifestylers and geeks, some of whom also tell their story through Gilsdorf.

Gilsdorf is around my age, but got into gaming earlier, and seemed to stick with it larger, and yet his experiences of leaving the game seem pretty familiar to anyone who has left home, entered adult institutions and fumbled their way through the sought treasures and pitfalls of adult relationships. In fact, the author's late childhood of nursing a severely disabled mother while entering his teens weighs heavily on the narrative, as does his confessed difficulty with committing to his longtime girlfriend. In a way, the premise of the book as quest oriented helps tell his story - the work of the journalist being one of discovery, detective, conflict and intuition, much like that of an RPG character; however, it's a piecemeal journey, with interruptions, revisions and deviations. There's also an returning element in Gildorf's writing that admits to a form of arrested maturity in the writer - something he explains in part to his unenviably difficult teens, but nevertheless it intrudes into the narrative. In short, there are times when the quest seems to be aimed at more than just awakening and examining the geek in Gilsdorf's head, but also pursuing a warrior queen of his very own, and to me it sat uncomfortably.

Nevertheless, there's plenty here to absorb if, like Gilsdorf, you've been somewhat divorced from the world of roleplaying games and are interested in how its various worlds - tabletop gaming, LARPing, historical reenactment, online MORPGs and fan culture, have evolved. As anyone who has followed the fortunes of games like Dungeons and Dragons can attest, the fortunes of the game and its community have waned and waxed over the years and fought their share of demons - from Eighties Satanic Panic to the collapse of many of its gaming studios, to the emergence of new media and the digital age. I found a lot of interest in Gilsdorf's visit to the spiritual antecedents of RPGs, in particular Guedelon in France, where a castle is being constructed strictly according to mediaeval methods including manpower, and the modern re-enactors, whose lives I do not envy, but dedication and philosophy intrigues me.

Perhaps the book rather extends its stay, though. The coda, a visit to New Zealand, seemed tacked on to complete Gilsdorf's mission of visiting a fantasy world up close and offer the best chance to immerse himself in one post-Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. But anyone who has tried to accomplish this will probably tell a similar story of the variable fortunes of attempting to meet screen with reality. It's a rather flat ending, and somewhat unsatisfying. I recommend Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks with some hesitation, but will say that its coverage for the time is pretty generous, and while told from a US perspective, doesn't seem to be especially parochial. Gilsdorf himself comes across as a pretty intense individual - sometimes apologetically so, and as noted above, this personality drives a lot of his book: your mileage may vary. Fr my pafrt I finished the book a little less patient with its writer, but happy to have been on some of his journey at least.

Here, recently posted on YouTube is Gilsdorf's original films of his teenage gaming group in jittery, blurry Super 8, with the soundtrack 'Kids' from Stranger Things. As an artefact of its time it's damned near perfect.