hey.
moved the blog.
new spot is https://spooky.blot.im/
this blog can rot or whatever.
10/19/25
My Spooky Life S2 E1: A Liminal Horror Documtary Mode Funnel
Player One is Matthias Pias. German cop procedural actor. First time on American TV, brick-thick accent, always tossing out half-assed ideas to make his role feel “real,” like yeah dude, nobody gives a shit.
Player Two has Annie—camera operator, baddie, e-girl, hot as hell. Eve, audio tech, whatever. Third mess: safety officer Bum.
Player Three’s got a loose-cannon location scout, rooting out abandoned paranormal dumps. A gaffer, hairy lighting guy wrestling the glow. A Correspondent, ex-intern, costume hack.
INT. COMPUTER SCREEN – NIGHT
A close-up of a Discord video call. Four small video windows glow against the black interface — the FACILITATOR and three PLAYERS. The faint hum of a computer fan fills the silence.
There was an episode of season one that was filmed but never aired. What happened?
Yeah. Um… I think it should be—let’s see if we can build this story together, guys. I think it should be, maybe—maybe something that was recorded in the studio, maybe? Like… let’s see.
(beat)
Yeah, like maybe there was a haunted trailer in the studio. And we’re like, oh, this was abandoned by a famous star—blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What do you guys think?
Alright.
Yeah?
Yeah.
So, uh, this was an abandoned trailer that was supposed to be from this old star from our studio—like a huge star that disappeared, right?
And we’re going there, and we don’t see anything at first, but we keep filming, right?
And like… we just start filming. We go there, we don’t see anything, we don’t find anything.
But the camera keeps rolling for the rest of the day, and later we find that in the video—and in the audio—we can see a face. Like, in the reflection of mirrors. And in the audio, we can hear whispering from someone.
The studio doesn’t want to release this video because it’s gonna be bad for them, right? I don’t know. What are you guys feeling?
Oh, okay—going off of that vibe. If it’s from a famous person, then we thought we’d do this kind of cool thing where we’d get this paranormal thing from this famous guy’s stuff. But when we actually started picking up on some of the stuff, the studio got antsy because they were afraid of copyright from the famous person’s estate.
Yeah, I like that. PLAYER ONE, do you have anything to add to the story? You think it’s good enough as it is?
Copyright infringement—my character would be mad because there are some German films he acted in that never got released due to meddling and not being sure whether the rights were there or not.
At the same time, I’m just wondering… like, my character was already involved in the production. So he probably already has an idea of what he was doing.
And I’m just wondering—do you have someone in the production team who does not approve of the project in general? Maybe it was deliberately put on the shelf by someone from the executive level. They don’t want us to succeed.
Okay. So we’re just gonna say that y’all are in L.A., wrapping up your development for the first episode of season two.
Is there anything else you guys want to spend money on? You’ve got some cash. You also have a vehicle—a van.
I think I don’t want to spend any money. I just want to roll with it. You’ve given me a lot of good stuff.
So… you have a place of interest close by. You’ve got a motel room for three days.
This town was also the site of a movie called The Farmer’s Daughter. It was filmed here.
It’s kind of famous for its old onion train back in the day. Used to send a bunch of onions up north on the trains.
And the most decorated war hero in America from World War II was from this town.
Audie Murphy?
Yes.
Awesome.
And, um, we have the scout here, so I’m gonna post a map of the area.
[INSERT MAP HANDOUT — A new image appears on the computer screen, showing the map the Facilitator is sharing on Discord. The players lean in toward their webcams as the map loads.]
So the ten here in the center is just a neighborhood of ten homes. There’s this school, the motel’s on the top. On the left side of the map is a fence—and beyond the fence is this burnt church and some woods.
Do we know the circumstances of why the church was burned? Especially in America?
They said a long time ago, it was burned by some teenagers.
Teenagers? Okay. Alright. Whatever happened to those teenagers?
They disappeared.
They disappeared. Okay.
So… yeah. We’ll say the development phase is gonna end, and y’all can start at the motel.
You have three nights here—trying to get enough footage of the church and whatever else you can investigate.
I highly highly recommend y’all trying running Liminal Horror in its new Documentary Mode ruleset. It feels like a brand new game. Very exciting stuff. My players were really into it.
Writing game play summaries is so exhausting. Sorry I’m leaving y’all hanging. I wrote most of the summary but decided against posting it because I plan to submit ‘the monster’ in the adventure to the new Liminal Horror Halloween Monster Jam that’s going down right now over at itch.io
I encourage everyone to submit to the jam and remember the most important writing advice: Don't worry.
I recommend running Zombie Kiss Zero: Nightmare City Battalion for spooky season. It’s based on urban exploitation films like Tenement (1985). Zombie films to a lesser degree.
In other news I’ve been drawing an Alien a day for inktober in preparation to release a new alien-themed Liminal Horror adventure over at my Bluesky account.
4/10/25
the truly liminal dunge0n
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room 1
a, able, and, any, are, area, at, away, badly, be, board, burned, by, cadillac, cellist, charity, collector, composed, crypts, dance, dart, deaf, doorways, each, fizzle, full, great, hanky, harnesses, if, if, inflict, insect, inside, inspect, irritation, is, it, it, must, no, not, oaken, obscured, obstruction, of, open, opened, or, overbids, overpass, palisade, paste, planetarium, polarities, potato, prodded, pulses, reveal, reverberate, rioter, roommate, ropes, roughly, saxophonist, serpent, so, suddenly, that, the, the, there, these, throw, to, turkey, upon, weaken, will, with, worked
3/7/25
are you still in love with the thrill of the live music experience? a Troika zine review
(there's an audio recording of myself reading this post on my substack)
Gremlin Energy Drink now sponsors this blog.
Meaningful days are built around concerts.
Do you remember when you used to feel alive?
When you were young and excited about seeing your favorite band play live.
Excited about all the predictable/unpredictable possibilities that might come your way.
Venturing to the city, or perhaps an urban part of the city, and doing something meaningful that alternative grown-ups probably get to do every day.
You could find some inconvenience meaningful because you knew you had a purpose for enduring it: seeing your favorite band live.
Waiting in line but finding it meaningful because you were surrounded by other people who liked the same band as you.
Being convinced that an opener was meaningful/actually a good band—like you felt you should invest in them because they might replace the headlining band one day.
Standing in the front at the concert.
Taking tons of pics.
Taking a video of the most meaningful song so that people on the internet can appreciate your experience.
Meeting members of the bands and thinking, Wow. They are so lovely and humble. They are cool, just friendly people. We would get along if we knew one another in real life.
Walking away from the concert sweaty and satisfied, like you had sex and came.
Having the unique opportunity to buy authentic band merch so that the show would last forever in the form of a physical product.
Wish I could be young again and connect with a network of hopeful, like-minded people in a live setting.
Maybe everyone goes through a meaningful-core phase from age 13-18, and one band will always captivate this audience, no matter who makes the era's best cheesy, meaningful, emotional, hopeful music.
Some people had Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service/Ben Gibbard projects.
Others had Panic! at the Disco or My Chemical Romance.
Maybe some had The Cranberries or Goo Goo Dolls.
Or Sunny Day Real Estate and Cursive.
Meaningful-core has so many different manifestations.
I want to be young again and feel like my whole life is ahead of me.
I want to go to a concert and get the feeling that everyone in the crowd will fulfill their dreams.
I want to feel like the concert I attended was the most meaningful show of the entire tour and possibly one of the greatest live performances in the history of the world.
I'm going to write about a zine now...
I don't know what people do when they're alone.
Many nights, I look at the books or zines I've read a hundred times and flip through a few pages.
I like books and zines; I can open any page and read with the same enjoyment as if I were reading them from the beginning.
I don't know what I'm typing about, really, though.
Last night, I lay in bed and opened Welp Fest.
It's an annual inter-sphere music festival that was undoubtedly better in previous years.
It's got:
A d6 table of reasons why the party is at the fest.
A list of all the bands playing (with stats).
Merch tables.
You could learn a new spell if you buy a Welp Fest headband.
Encounters.
A timeline to help run the adventure.
This zine was a submission to the Troika City Jam I ran two summers ago on Itch.
My friend [redacted] also had the idea of releasing a zine about a music fest, but when they saw that Welp Fest was submitted, they threw in the towel because they were unaware of the sheer number of music festivals that exist in the universe.
I read Welp Fest on a bus, and the ride went fast and wasn't uncomfortable. It was like I drank a lot of coffee, but I just read a zine. I like Welp Fest a lot.
What was your favorite band of your meaningful-core era?
Does anyone know what concerts are still worth seeing?
What was your favorite part about attending concerts when you were a formative alt?
The last concert I attended was 100 Gecs, with Alice Gas and Underscores.
I remember seeing two guys wearing jean jackets with the same back patch.
It was, like, the Grim Reaper on a horse.
The patch was probably called Death.
They probably unknowingly bought it from the same Etsy shop.
I thought it was funny.
I bought two tickets for the concert months ago because it happened two days after my birthday.
The concert was also two months after my ex and I broke up.
I took my friend Diego with me.
He was the only one of my friends who actually liked 100 gecs.
I remember waiting in line to get into the concert. In front of us was a girl wearing Tripp pants with chains.
I usually wear a chain wallet, but I know better than to wear a chain to a concert.
A cop pulled her aside and said she couldn't get in unless she removed all the chains.
She tried to fight back, but the cop said, "There's a trash can. You can get in if you take them back to your car or throw them away."
It was a great concert.
I saw my ex there with a guy I thought resembled a possum.
Not in a spiteful way.
Some people's faces resemble animals.
(You're probably thinking of someone you know who resembles an animal.)
I'm unsure what animal I resemble.
(If you think my face resembles an animal, comment and let me know.)
I remember waiting in line so Diego could buy Red Bull vodka. My ex stood next to us and made out with the possum man.
The possum man said, "Ey, hassa goin." He pulled out a crackpipe and smoked, rotating the pipe and watching with his eyes crossed.
Diego folded one arm beneath the other, rubbed his chin with the other hand, and shook his head side to side, saying, "Here we go again!"
"Dahhhh," the possum man said, knelt by my ex, and looked her in the eyes. "This my baby, I love my baby. I'd do anything for you. You're my heart. I'd go to the gates of hell for you — go inside and close the gates to keep you out. I'd fight the Cerberus."
"Luff you more," she said.
He held up the crackpipe in his tiny paws.
It made my neck itch, and I felt pissed.
“I know I know. I’s just playin, man. Settle down, hah. I’m a fung bum, man. My place smells like dookie and piss for fuck sake. Don’t lissna me.”
You bastard-ass motherfucker, I thought. I almost dropped him, in my mind I jumped back into fighting position and said, “Shing-shing”—but I laughed, took a pull off my 40, and said goodbye.
Thank you for your time.
1/17/25
VIOLENCE, SNAKE-WOLF
Game:
Violence
Luke Gearing. 2021
# Additional Resources:
Terror of the Stratosfiend - Cycle of the Snake-Wolf
Orbital Intelligence. 2020
Terror of the Stratosfiend - Cycle of the Snake-Wolf 2 - Return to the Shattered Woods
Orbital Intelligence. 2022
Terror of the Stratosfiend - Cycle of the Snake-Wolf 3 - The Scales of Hyper-Visor God or The Final Voyage of the Crab King
Orbital Ingelligence. 2023
# Notes:
Using Violence for rules and custom homebrew rulings when needed.
Characters:
1. U.S. Postal Inspecting Service Agent, Stew, just Stew, he is inspecting several charges for illicit drugs or dangerous substances, dealt with a lot of wild animals that are being smuggled
2. Lex Decker (although X refers to them as papa Gino [from 90 day fiance), 5’3”, wears a black suit with a piano necktie that is cut in half and black gloves with tennis shoes (Nike Air Max [all black]). All of his gear
3. Nikki (doesn’t go by Nichole), 65 years of age, an agent of the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms…
2024-02-28 – XXXX-XX-XX
# The Log
1: A state park in North Virginia
Find the Shattered Woods and the village's location within it beyond the state park.
The players roll up in separate vehicles, sticking to themselves and vaping.
Characters rolled a d6 on the rumor table.
Stew, Decker, and Nikki (after all rollings 2s) have interviewed people and heard familiar stories of distant family members healed after talking to *The Enigmatic One* inside the woods.
Two Blackhawk helicopters land in the field near the players in their vehicles. The Characters load their gear into the first Blackhawk and board it.
They fly for 2 hours as the sun begins to set. From a window in the Blackhawk the players see a tree walking through the other trees, seamlessly.
Nikki says she believes in Ents.
The back of the Blackhawk gets smacked and begins spinning in 360s. The pilots of the Blackhawk tell the Characters they must make an emergency landing.
The Blackhawk crashes as the Characters roll a d20 to attempt to secure themselves as best they can.
Nikki 1, Decker 10, Stew 14
Nikki is 75’ off the ground, hanging from a Pine-tree. Decker and Stew remain in the Blackhwak. The pilot is dead, the copilot is dead, and no one has seen the second Blackhawk which was following them (from behind [to fully support the mission.])
Decker says oh shit and Stew asks if the Pine-trees are moving.
Niki asks Decker and Stew ask if they can get her down from this tree and how she feels like a fish up in the tree.
Nikki sees hawks or eagles nests up here.
Nikki sees a mud put in the distance.
The Characters hear guttural sounds in the distance; no Pine-trees move.
Decker attaches one of his walky-talkies to his drone.
Deckers fly the drone up to Nikki in the Pine-tree.
Nikki (who is skilled at climbing [rolls with an advantage of 1d6] decides to climb down. She rolls on 1 on the d6 and a 1 on the d20.
*everyone laughs at that*
Decker says if you die I can just put you in the regeneration tank (heals you 3x faster) and we’ll just use the helicopter battery?
Nikki gets injured.
**(roll for down?)**
Decker stands creeping over her body and goes hehe, and everything said I was a fool for bringing my humanoid cell regeneration tank but here we are.
The Characters hear guttural sounds in the distance; no Pine-trees move.
Decker says oh shit quick quick hide back in the helicopter with her broken body, and we’ll use her multitool plier and ugh, i got the battery of the helicopter.
Nikki is skilled in electrical engineering.
Decker says he is skilled in jump and the occult and that he can sacrifice her to Satan. She’s the one with medicine, biology, and electrical engineering.
Decker laughs.
Decker says a sixty-five year old woman, who’s all fucked up and shit.
Decker says maybe she can just tell us how to use my own regeneration tank.
Working together, Nikki and Decker rolled with advantage. They beat the 14 difficulty I set with their 19.
The Characters hear guttural sounds in the distance; Pine-trees are knocked over.
Decker says we gotta get the hell out of this forest folks, we gotta get clear of these trees!
Nikki says because theres Ents?
Decker says Ents yes Ents.
Stew says I would have never have thought about that, getting attacking, mainly mauled by anything, any beast, and right now, now it’s trees, I would have never thought about that but, damn I prefer right now the tigers.
Nikki says I don’t it is trees, I think it’s people, the thing about it is, I would rather it be trees.
Decker says I just know Korean.
The party is given 1 round to ‘plan’ before combat.
Decker says the tree-man is coming.
Decker asks if the military helicopter has attached guns on the back.
It only has forward facing guns for the pilots.
Decker says so what we’re gonna do…
Nikki asks if her e-echo absorption banlges can help her heal faster in the pod.
Decker takes four of Nikki’s pink smoke grenades and hands Stew two.
Decker gives Stew a walky-talky (they each have one now).
Decker says we’re gonna have the walky-talkies.
Stew says O.K.
Nikki says she longs for the fight.
Decker says yeah so we’ll leave you your useless ugh echo absorption bangles and multitool pliers for the giant tree-man to kill you with and ugh Stew do you wanna ugh head North and I’ll head out west or do we wanna head out in the same direction together, We’ll head out in the same direction together, but we will go North, yes Nikki you’re in the iron lung and we need the tree-man to not be here, but we gonna run for it, we’re gonna run for it, we’re running for it, but the tree-man is also gonna come to the iron lung.
Nikki says they’re leaving me for dead.
Decker talks over; Nikki doesn’t stop talking.
Decker says we’re gonna try to get the tree-man to chase us someplace different.
Nicki says you’re jealous and you’re leaving me for dead because of how pretty I am.
Decker says yes we’re not even gonna leave you a walky-talky to talk to you when you come back.
Decker says just kidding we’re gonna leave you a walky-talky and me and Stew will staying together.
Decker sends his drone out from within the helicopter to see where the tree-man is at.
Tree-man can’t be seen. The Sounds have been coming from the south side of the helicopter.
Nikki says is it a tree-person, I’m so fucking confused?
Decker says it could be a fiddy foot treet man.
Nikki says it could be the Wizard of OZ or it could be a man in a ghillie suit, he’s a fifty foot man in a ghillie suit.
The feed from the drone’s camera displays to Decker a Dryad moving through the pine-trees like holograms. One of it’s legs have been cut off at the knee cap.
Stew says I’m wondering what did it.
Nikki says from the helicopter.
Nikki says I hope you guys are happy that I can’t help.
Decker says he knows marital arts and throws a pink smoke grenade at the Dryad (he rolled a d6 plus a d20 for advantage [he got a 4 and a 1]).
The pink smoke bomb isn’t thrown in a good enough position to conceal the character’s movement out of the iron lung (formerly known as the Blackhawk helicopter).
Stew throws a pink smoke grenade (rolls a d20 [he gets 19]).
The Characters are concealed by the pink smoke grenade and the sounds of the Dryad hopping closer are heard.
Decker says he is going to run away until he get’s tired and then take out his lighter and start a forest fire.
Stew says I think it’s good that we don’t have some guy from the E.P.A. right now, he would turn on us.
Decker says domestic agriculture can bite it, ya know, just kidding.
All Decker has is his lighter and he runs out and starts trying to light a forest fire to piss off the Dryad. Pine needles everywhere and shit.
The pink smoke is going off at the rear of the chopper. The blades have ceased movement but you still hear the motor. The pilot and copilot have been impaled. There was a second helicopter but yall haven’t seen them and lost contact with them since the crash. The characters still have a lot of gear in the helicopter at the moment. Lots of heavy pelican cases, mostly belonging to Decker.
Stew begins collecting everything that he can carry.
Stew grabs the laptop and the satellite phone.
Stew uses the last cover of the pink smoke grenade and flees towards Decker.
We rolled intitative.
Nikki is alone in the iron lung.
For a moment it’s silent.
the entire iron lung is tossed 30 feet into the air.
Nikki managed to roll well enough to wedge herself into the iron lung and remains good.
Nikki’s gets out of the pod and hides. She makes it looks like is still in the pod though.
Nikki sees the dryad as the pink smoke grenade fades.
Nikki shoots her gun at the dryad; shooting at the roots.
She misses.
Nikki says she thinks she will die.
Niiki says she jsut embrassed herself infront of a tree person.
Decker says he’s been training his whole life for this moment. he runs 50 feet towrdas the dryad and busts out his fingerless telekinetic amp gloves and within 10 feet of the dryad Decker crouches down and pucnhes at the dryad’s balls area, like hadouken hadoken.
Decker says he is karate chopping him in the throat and balls (with advantage for knowing martial arts).
Decker and the Dryad are injured and they both go down.
Both of Decker’s gloves are broken (by range or broke broke? [it’s unknown at the moment]).
Nikki says OMG it broke your telekinesis gloves, that’s the only cool thing you had.
Decker says I throw these gloves away like trinkets.
Decker says he’ll figure something out.
8/28/24
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Smogg
Dr. Smogg is a rich bitch industrialist who made his fortune in heavy manufacturing. Still, his methods are wasteful and produce many toxic by-products, which he disposes of in environmentally irresponsible ways. His next scheme is to pump massive amounts of toxic smog into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of his factory. Once airborne, the pollution will condense into solid waste particles and rain down upon the unsuspecting countryside.
Fortunately, Professor Rusty Sauernoggin is on the case! Rusty Sauernoggin has dedicated his life to finding ways to transform toxic waste into good and useful products. One blast from his rooftop "Smog-o-matic" ray gun and the cloud will rain down delicious sour candy balls... an outcome Dr. Smogg is less than pleased about!
8/4/24
unpublished blog post
in an attempt to declutter my ttrgp space at home i've decided to burn some old campaign books and transcribe some bits i may reuse.
the following is from a small thousand thousand islands campaign. i'd link to their zines online but i'm pretty sure everything has been removed by the creators.
The zines require a lot of preparation to run smoothly so here's some shit I prepped for the sessions I ran.
Late Feather Scale Village NPCs:
1. Wet Beak (Snipe, Bird-folk) - red tattoos, avoids moonlight because it makes their feathers glow with cult like runes, they are here to establish bleaching hexes, they're a saboteur of the "Ingido God"
2. Paw Dew - dancer (Man-folk) - missing a hand, harassed by a trio
3. Twelve Roaring Tooth - artist (Monitor-folk) - toothless
4. Ear Wall (she/her) - girlfriend ran off with the drummer Paw (Man-Folk)
5. Rum What - clammer (Man-folk) - covered in suck marks (like from octopus tentacles I guess, "suck marks" is straight from the zine), bleeding, wants revenge (this part was from the zine too, I guess they want revenge for the octopus sucking on them).
I started to write number 6 on the table here but then thought "i don't really care about any of this" and now I'm going outback to burn some notebooks.
7/29/24
the signalwave series part two: Top "Signalwave" Albums to "Liminal Horror" to (2024)
My best guess is that the album cover is a YouTube screenshot.
tracking by antenna decay (released February 21, 2024)
Is there a constant beeping in the background, or is it tinnitus? I take my left air pod out, and the beeping stops, but now track two is playing, and I still hear the beeping. I checked my surroundings and removed the air pod again, and I realized it was the album’s heart monitor.
The first two songs are piano and nice and short, but track 3, “found,” is where the album begins to shine. It sounds like a slowed-down oldie with a full band (strings, winds, drums, etc).
Track 4, “slow,” has big Weather Channel vibes (a staple of the genre) with its piano tones, electric guitar riffs, and jazz flute! It also begins what I’m going to call The Trilogy, which, if you put all the single-word song titles together, makes “Slow Days Fading.” The album is also tagged as “Sentimental Transmission.” I recommend that fans of the soft rock bands Chicago and Bread start here, as well as anyone limited to time. The album sounds like a tragic love affair, good times and bad. It felt like the pace of the beeping varied at times.
Track 7, “worn,” is a melody I know from somewhere, and research is still ongoing.
Track 8, “gone,” I recommend to fans of dunegon synth and cottagecore.
The whole time, I was waiting for the beeping to cease or remain in the steady drone of death you see in the movies, but it never came. Which is fine; you live another day.
The album description is like the gray text box from an adventure:
viewing the memories of a soon-to-be-gone tape.
---
you walk into the attic.
the dust dances in the air around you.
there it sits, in the exact spot where you once stood, sun-bleached.
you feel a sense of familiarity.
you walk into your bedroom.
the smell of your past greets you.
there it lies, as if it were waiting for you, wishing for your return.
you choose to face yourself.
you walk into the living room.
the carpet feels softer than usual.
there it lies, gone in a moment, never to be seen again.
you watch as it all passes.
Many artists will write some micro-fiction, or poetry.
***
I’ve battling a bit of scope creep with finishing the next draft of my submission to the Liminal Horror Twisted Classics Jam.
I drew this after writing, “Her Bible is white, and she holds it in both hands, like a big sandwich.” When I need a break from the writing and frustrations and it's too hot to skateboard, I’ll draw the writing.
7/16/24
i ran the chair by zach hazard vaupen ask me anything!
Play reports are so exhausting to write. This will be brief.
Two friends and I met up and played Liminal Horror the last two days for about an hour each session. It was my first time running Liminal Horror, and it was their first time playing. I didn't prep anything and hadn't even read all of the rooms prior, but I invited Bolt Neck Possum to play, who joined the call but just as a listener while working and answering a few questions I had on rules.
They both rolled the same result on the "What Brought You to the House" table: "Greed made you into a fugitive, and you needed a place to lay low."
At one point, Jason went into the air duct, which led to a heated room. He sat in the chair and teleported between the bathroom walls. He lost all control and became an NPC that started to break through the walls.
Peyton heard the thuds and went to investigate and help their friend, but after using the rock hammer to break the drywall, they saw their friend's eyes were solid black and abandoned them.
In the end, Peyton drove off, but curiosity took over, and he turned around to dig up that grave he saw in the garden.
The Chair is easy to run and incorporate into your ongoing campaign or a great start to a new one. I think it took us 2.5 hours to complete the scenario. If I were to run this again, I would change the NPCs into something else—another type of creature, perhaps, or at least reskinned. The creep factor in this one is easy to achieve, and it has a few things players who like puzzles or problem-solving will enjoy.
If I run Liminal Horror for the same group again, I hope we can continue where we left off.
Thorn: I didn't realize the fallout card for this game wasn't included in the pamphlet pdf, even though I downloaded and read the card a few days before the game and had the card open in a window during the game. So we didn't roll on the new fallouts in The Chair, which is kind of a bummer. I just totally spaced.
Rose: I pulled a few things from Gonin that I used in the sessions. Like starting the players off sitting in a car in the rain. Turning the whole fugitive hook into a heist gone wrong, as well as using the film to add more to the recent grave in the garden in the adventure.
Other news: I've been reading a lot of manga this summer (I recommend Hideout [short and more traditional horror and psychological] by Masasumi Kakizaki, and Paranoia Street [a more twisted slice of life and the first story was my favorite in this collection] by Shintarō Kago).
The night before the game, I watched Gonin. It's a yakuza film from 1995 directed by Takashi Ishii, who began his career making outlaw comics. Beat Takashi is awesome in the movie, as he always is.
7/4/24
Top "Signalwave" Albums to "Liminal Horror" to (2024)
Warning: reading this post may result in spending money on cassettes, vinyl, CDs, and MINIDISCS.
“Signalwave” and “Broken Transmission” are subgenres of “Slushwave,” which has been one of the best musical discoveries I’ve made this year.
They’re the soundtrack to decay.
I think of them as concept albums portraying memories of good days long gone.
It’s what Liches listen to when playing Second Life online to feel human again.
These artists have their entire catalogs hugely discounted on Bandcamp.
On the other hand, the Liminal Horror Twisted Classics Jam has begun.
So what’s so great about “Signalwave?”
Look at CT57’s discography.
Their album art is a ready-to-go d10 table you can insert into whatever “Twisted Classic” you’re working on. You even got an NPC in the top right corner.
All of their albums are amazing.
My favorite release is “Distant Sounds of Desolation.” Released March 22, 2024, It sounds like what I picture corpse dance lessons to be. May the track list be your spark table. You can purchase any of their albums for $1 or their entire discography for $6.
The songs aren't too short but aren't too long, and the pace is great. The tracks blend smoothly into each other to give you enough time to "meditate." I like that there are no commercial ads. The melodic vocals in "Weeping Willow" are haunting. I feel like this album has a lot of up-and-down movement, like the lovely pipes in "Memories of Good Days Long Gone." Maybe it's not even pipes; it's got chimes or wood blocks.
Let’s look at another release from this year. Dead Hues by Localdecay. Released April 3, 2024, are you starting to see a pattern of the genre yet?
The first song is a fucking banger. It just rips you right into the rhythm. Pulsating piano with saxophone and fucking railroading drums. Just all drenched with reverb. You could work out to this one. Then it ends with a raven-sounding synth that caws, and I fall into the track "Analog Decay." I feel like this is what it sounds like to be in a hot spring in Iceland. With the mud. If you see foggy power lines on a cover, it's a banger.
街灯 by ビリヤード場 (Street light by Billiard Hall) Released February 2, 2024, this one is great because not only does it introduce UFOs (or whatever the government refers to them as now) to our countdown, but we finally get some vocals sampled. Sampling is mostly all “Signalwave” is.
The track titles are listed in Japanese, so I’d like to translate them here to use as a spark table after you purchase their album.
i'm still wearing the shirt you gave me
a midnight walk in the middle of nowhere
the streetlights shine a subtle blue
don't look at me
i shouldn’t
bird
starlight / city of light bulbs
it’s getting late…
I recommend viewing your “Twisted Classic” through multiple lenses, like a copy of All Dogs Go to Heaven on VHS. However, the VCR is connected to a projector, and there’s no screen. It’s playing on a garage door, being filmed by a Sony Nex 6 camera that’s had its sensor converted to infrared and streaming to the internet.
Next week, we’ll sink our brain fangs deeper into “Signalwave” and “Liminal Horror.” I promise to challenge your tastes.
Until Next Time, Consider the following inspiration:
Outlaw Comics:
Battalion: The Return of the Living Dead, or more recently, Junji Ito’s adaption of the Lighthouse, among many other “Twisted Classics.” Battalion is a bootleg manga released in a Japanese magazine at the time of the American Film’s Japan release. This blog takes a deep dive into it. Manga has filled my summer reading.
Vacuum Decay. All five issues of this horror comic by various artists are free to read online or can be purchased via their website. It’s worth reading each issue for the overarching “Twisted Classic” take on The Simpsons, “Shadows Over Springfield,” which is also available to purchase standalone.
Literature:
The Sword-wielding Statue of Liberty in Franz Kafka’s novel Amerika. Kafka never visited America, but he saw many pictures and wrote his own twisted version. The ebook is free to read, and it’s hilarious.
7/1/24
codex r review
I recommend reading high.
The attention span is shrunken, but the focus is heightened and very intense.
For me, the reading experience becomes more vertical.
In this case, I like to read books of a certain depth.
You want to avoid reading something you've seen before because you're absorbing things more sentence by sentence. It will be a smooth ride down if you do, and it will lead to no exciting experience.
You want an experience where there are a lot of hand and foot holes, but some of them are jagged, some will cut you up, and some will require you to leap from one spot to another over the chasm, and you have to trust it, but you may also die.
Codex R is among The Top 5 OSR Zines to Read When You're High as Balls.
When I first read this zine, it was hard to position myself because I was utterly mystified.
Its page on Itch.io describes it as:
"A kaleidoscopic excursion in space-time, cataloging headless farmers, party deities, apocalyptic critters, bad hair days and totalitarian practices."
It doesn't take many pages to excite and activate some unused neural pathways in the brain when reading Codex R.
It's a catalog of an entire culture in an alternate reality. It has 46 objects or beasts (I consider this zine a bestiary), each with its own full-color illustration that invites you to understand them. They pull you in and lead you around with their descriptions, like a tour guide (sometimes it's like encyclopedia entries). The people, the objects, the places, but still familiar enough.
I think it's intended to be used as an "in-game" artifact.
Codex R is an endless source of fascination. Definitely buy yourself a copy and check out what else the creators have made: here and here.
im a fucking thrill mimic btw
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