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 love that the artist is Floridian and works for a government space agency.

***

I’ve battling a bit of scope creep with finishing the next draft of my submission to the Liminal Horror Twisted Classics Jam.

Writing and sketching the writing and sketching writing.

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.

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.

1. i'm still wearing the shirt you gave me

2. a midnight walk in the middle of nowhere

3. the streetlights shine a subtle blue

4. don't look at me

5. i shouldn’t

6. bird

7. starlight / city of light bulbs

8. 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.

1d4 levels of greatness a ttrpg writer can achieve in america

1. giant centipede in the darkness:

Has published seven books. One on Lulu, two on their personal blog, and four "self-printed" via Mixam. Gets more hits on their blog weekly than has sold zines in five years and makes enough money off their zines to get drunk once a year. Will likely die alone of something easily treatable if they'd had money or motivation to go to a doctor. Will be forgotten in 20 years (while they are still alive) when they lose the ability to blog after getting second-degree burns on both hands while boiling potatoes at work, but will be rediscovered 60 years after their death. Their blog will be published as a hardcover in 2270 on Mars.

2. one dollar feeder fish:

Has been reviewed by Questing Beast and quit their adjunct teaching job because the cast of Critical Role was invited to speak at their college. Receives up to three e-mails a day from centipedes in the darkness wanting blurbs. Will not be forgotten easily even after they are dead and their books are out of print because of how easy it is to talk shit about them. Will then be forgotten very easily, completely, and forever a few days after I type this when there's someone easier to talk shit about. 

3. $9.99 petco gerbil:

Has won an Ennie and other major awards but is thought of by most critics, writers, and journalists as primarily a romance author. Makes enough money to not have a blog or their email addresses on the internet. Considered as "I really, really want to stay away from this person and their books" by people who like Mork Borg.

4. pony on a pony farm of a child billionaire:

Considered "important" and "serious" by most online reviewers and writers but are held back from further greatness by an inability to make a dungeon that conveys the tone of "I am very smart and this is serious." Held back also because they sometimes publish smaller zines, some of which don't even contain adventures; because some of their e-mail adresses can be found on the internet; and because they would never consider writing from the perspective of someone in a terrible event that they did not experience. 

Crapland is a game. (SPEED-RUN) Session twoo.

✿.｡.- ☆-. during this actual play I listened to the album .-.☆-.-｡.✿

(catch up on the previous session here)

1.

Shark-8 caries Tela under an arm. He thinks about how Mel will beat his ass. He says Mel is good to kick our asses. 

Mok doesn’t say anything and then says let’s just get home already.

Shark-8 wonders if the rumors about Mok are true. 

Supposedly, whenever Mok dies, they ascend, and another is born identical to the first. 

Shark-8 wishes Mok ascended instead of Tela. 

(From the last session, the party was going to have an encounter in the 9th hex. They traveled, but they only traveled 7 hexes. As Shark-8 and Mok walk home, I will roll on the encounter table to see what happens. I rolled two bad dogs and rolled napping for their mien on the CRAPPY ENCOUNTERS table.)

“Stay quiet. Look.” Shark-8 points with his free hand to two bad black dogs asleep in the grass under a tree in the front yard where a car is still on fire. 

Mok thinks Crapland is single-handedly fucking this sphere into climate change. 

(Their house is four hexes away now, so let’s roll 2d6 again to see if they have another CRAPPY ENCOUNTER before then. Oof, I rolled snake eyes. In two hexes, they will encounter… roll on CRAPPY ENCOUNTER table, two bad dogs napping again. I'll cross this encounter off now and write something new later if I roll the same encounter again.)  

Further down the street, the party passes by another burning car with two bad dogs sleeping in the yard. The dogs fail a skill test to sniff the party out from their dreams as the party turns the corner and makes it home safely. 

All the lights in the house are off, but the TV screen is giving off a faint glow through the front window. 

(Since the Dream_Bod encounter from the last session turned into more of a boss fight, I’m going to give the party some crappy items that might not even help them on their quest to unlock each ending. Let’s say 1d6 packages arrived before they were ordered from the online shopping CRAPPY APP that somehow distorts the time-space continuum. I’ll roll randomly to see who the mail is for. It’s for Mel.)

Mok grabs Shark-8 by the shoulder and says let me go in first. They walk up the porch steps and find 4 packages with Mel’s name on them. 

Mok opens the door and says, “Melyougotsomemailwe’retiredandgonnacallitanightseeyallinthemorning.”

Shark-8 follows Mok straight to his room while keeping a neutral facial expression and trying to hide Tela’s face from Nope, Mel, and Riff. 

(Using the Fallen Oracle, let’s see if they noticed what happened to Tela. I’ll say they likely notice. They don’t notice anything weird, and since both d6 aren’t less than the d8, we don’t alter the scene.)

“Cool. Peace.” Riff says while giving the peace sign. 

(Roll on the CRAPPY T.V. SHOWS ON YERCRAPP T.V. table to see what has them so enamored they don’t notice anything different about Tela.)

On the T.V., cars drive around while people greased up in their underwear say “VROOM VROOM” loudly.

Mel says she had put some items from the Troikan Apparel online store in her cart but hadn’t purchased anything yet.  

The end credits of the “Vroom Vroom” show roll on the screen as drum-and-bass liquid neurofunk dark-side music plays. Riff turns the volume up. Mel gets up to collect her packages.

(Let’s roll for a random event on the Fallen Oracle to end the evening. I rolled a faction. I’m going to add the F.B.I. as a faction. I feel the F.B.I. are Crap.)

A blacked-out Crapillac Escrapade is parked illegally across six bike lanes across the street from the player’s house. 

(Does Mel notice? Let’s say the odds are even; it’s a 50/50 chance. We need an 8 or greater on 2d6 for Mel to notice. 2D6 = 4, 5, and 1D8 = 4. Mel definitely notices.)

She raises her flaming eyebrow, grabs her 4 packages, and heads back inside the house. 

“There’s some fucking FBI agents watching us from outside,” Mel says. Her flaming eyebrow sputters.

“Maybe they’re trying to find out who or what is causing all the cars to blow up in our hood,” Nope says.

“Don’t you think it’s strange? I’ve never seen the fucking FBI in Crapland before. Have you?”

“Nope.” Says Nope.

“It’s not like one of us is secretly an alien infiltrator operative from Mars,” Riff says, biting his nails. 

Let’s ask Witch Piss if Mel is going to do anything about the F.B.I. agents outside. 

“We stood around drinking, listening to the swish of rush hour traffic in the rain.” (I rolled page 145, paragraph 4, sentence 1).

I feel it’s obvious what happens. The party spends the rest of the evening chilling and watching T.V. before falling asleep. (Everyone heals 2d6 stamina and luck.)

Mel sits in front of the T.V. on the floor and opens her packages (quest items):

1. A bag of Crap Chips - These either heal you or make you unable to shut up about how good they are.

2. Portable game console - Requires a plasmic core, casts games as spells

3. Bucket of fish - 3d3 fish. Good for frying or fighting. Damage as a club.

4. Craptors-only jacket - It makes people think you’re a Craptor.

Mel says it’s bullshit that the portable game console doesn’t come with any games or batteries.

2. 

Mel, Riff, and Nope wake up in the living room with the T.V. still on. 

(OH NO A COMMERCIAL PLAYS! Everyone tests luck. Mel failed XD. ROLL ON CRAPPY COMMERCIALS TABLE)

A crappy commercial selling action figures from a new R-rated alien movie plays. It has a subliminal message about spit. Mel is enamored. Water (ACID) sprays from her face. Her eyes shoot into the back of her head. There’s a hard crack of thunder outside, and it begins to rain.

(Let’s roll a random event focus for the morning; it's a new plot.)

Mok places Tela’s dead body in his closet and wakes up Shark-8 by saying he’ll make breakfast.

In the kitchen, Mok opens the Fridge. There’s 1 canister of anise quick action whipped cream, a half-eaten chocolate cake, rotten bananas with a roach crawling on it, wilted greens, a half-eaten sandwich, and a jar of spicy pickles. 

Mok uses Tela’s ending to make a sandwich. (He tests luck and fails. He tries again but fails.)

Mok tries to make something remotely edible from this crap and fails. I mean, Shark-8 COULD eat this crap, but it wouldn’t provide any bonus.

“We’re out of bananas. Who wants to come with me to get some?” Mok says.

(I rolled, and Mel is the only one who doesn’t want to go with Mok.)

Shark-8 and Nope say they will go with Mok, but they must unlock their endings today. Riff just wants to get out of the house for the day. 

Wait, Mel says. She hands over the Craptors Only jacket, the bucket of fish, and a bag of chips. 

3. 

Inside Nope’s car, Shark-8 says he needs to go to the beach. Nope says he needs to go to the beach! Mok says that’s fine because the banana tree is near the beach, but they get the bananas before all the good ones fall off the tree. 

They head to the Wave-Brick Cove, unaware in 5 hexes, they will have an encounter:

1. Local odor

2. Bad dogs Giant Banana Slugs

3. Jerks

4. Dog Head Guys 

5. Omega Craptor 

6. Hissing lizards 

7. FBI

8. NONE

“Did you feel that?” Riff says.

“It’s just the car engine taking a shit. I’ll fix it later,” Mok says.

“You’re the worst mechanic. It’s raining, and I don’t even have wipers. This blows,” Nope says.

Shark-8 has his head out the window, and his mouth is wide-the-fuck-open. 

“GUYS GUYS!” Shark-8 yells. “It’s SHIN UNCHI TOKAGE!!!” 

(an Omega Craptor 3+ stories tall.) 

“He looks big mad!”

(START THE initiative)

Shin Unchi Tokage shoots a beam from its mouth at Nope’s car.

Everyone runs out of the car as it blows up.

The party is frantic, and the Omega Craptor tail swipes Shark-8 for 4 damage. 

“Guys, I forgot I could have restocked the fridge earlier,” Riff says as he gets kicked into the air by the Omega Craptor for 16 damage. 

(I will start letting the characters roll under their base skill to run away on their turns.)

Nope tries to run away but gets hit for 18 damage.

Omegacraptor goes again, and this time for Shark-8, dealing 8 damage.

Shark-8 eats the bag of chips Mel gave him and fully heals. 

Riff plays a nasty riff and gets hit for 4 damage.

END OF THE ROUND!

"Over here!" Mok lifts a manhole cover and jumps underground. The party follows without thinking twice. 

Riff puts his mask over his head.

Shank-8 says, “That’s not a mask; it’s a plastic bag.”

“Same thing,” Riff shrugs. “Follow me, I used to play shows down here when the band was underground.”

(let’s roll again to see how many hexes until the next encounter, 9 hexes, that actually will bring the party right across the street from the beach by that weird portal!)

(Let’s consult Witch Piss to see what the sewer is like. “Back at Danny’s, I gave everyone a beer - except Danny, who wouldn’t drink anything except his watermelon-flavored malt liquor.” I think this means there is a soda machine down here.)

Shark-8 pulls out his Crappy Phone and opens a Crappy App, but it’s just a Loud Ass Dub Siren. 

Riff grabs the phone from Shark-8 and opens another app. “It’s not party time, Breh.”

“BIKE MESSENGER ON A PIKE DAMNIT!” Riff drops the phone immediately after opening the messaging app, unencrypted. 

The phone hits the damp floor. (roll on the what did you slip on table) It’s covered in a red substance. 

“Did you just open the messaging app unencrypted” Nope asks. “Breh, you just sent all of Shark-8's nudes to the government.”

“Wait, what? Breh are you serious?!” Shark-8 picks up his phone using his mouth. The red substance tastes like sweet blood. “Oh, this is blood.”

“The government is going to rate your nudes and ensure they adhere to public decency rules,” Nope says. 

“Hol’ up, that’s why the FBI was outside the house last night, collecting nudes?” Riff says.

Mok says, Let’s just get to the beach so we can unlock all of our endings.

The party sees a light at the end of the tunnel.

They all start running towards it. 

“It’s a miracle,” Riff says. “Look.”

Conveniently placed next to the ladder leading up to the street is a Saint Refreshness machine.

Mok pulls 4 coins out of his pocket and hands one to each friend.

Riff says they have Elderberry Mindfuck and sheds a single tear. “They haven’t made that in like weeks!”

He inserts his coin and selects Elderberry Mindfuck.

Mok and Nope insert their coins and push the Marrow Rush button.

Shark-8 inserts his coin and selects Elderberry Mindfuck, but nothing happens. He has his own coins but holds his palm up towards Riff.

Riffs feels terrbile, that the FBI agents saw his nudes, have to rate them, make sure they adhere to public decency rules, feels terrible again, and hands Shark-8 a coin.

Shark-8 tries to get a dark star cola, but a nope cola is dispensed from Saint Refreshness.

They each climb the ladder and crawl out of the manhole in the middle of the damned freeway and back into the rain. They see the beach and the banana tree. All of it is only 100 feet away.

“Is that normal?” Shark-8 points at an Open Interdimensional Portal, Letting Forth Another World That is Decidedly Less Boring and Much Cooler, where Movies are Decent, and food tastes Good.

(I roll on that table and get a result that states roll again twice on the table.)

Plants near the schism start growing and growing and growing until they tower over the skyscrapers that don’t exist in Crapland. 

A Sports Car skids out of the schism. The action hero driving it shouts “Get in.”

Shark-8’s jaw drops. “Woah. That car looks like it's never blown up before.”

”That’s right!” The action star says. “I always drive away from explosions in slow motion.”

(Let’s ask Witch Piss what happens. pg 136, paragraph 2, sentence 1. “Felt a painful excitement in my chest.)

It’s obviously a red convertible with a set of longhorns across the grill. Riff calls shotgun, and the rest of the party hops into the back seat. 

(gonna ask Witch Piss what the heck is going on now, pg 68, paragraph 3, sentence 4. “Something. Something. Bussy.”)

(I will roll 3d8 on the quick NPC section of the Fallen oracle. I get the words Soldier, Drunk, Obtain.)

“I’m a drunk solder from the future sent to obtain Shark-8’s nudes from the FBI before they can take them to the white house to be rated by the president.”

Nope asks what the future is like. The action hero describes grim scenes where everyone is literally pawns in a game of chess played by corporate executive gods with giant stone faces. 

“I have a surf competition today, and I can’t be late,” Shark-8 says.

“I’ll get you there, but it is paramount I obtain your pictures and destroy those FBI agents."

Notes:
1. During this actual play, I listened to the album 召喚 by 妖女 · 天火見.

It was released on June 6, 1995.

This album is tagged as "80's," "90's," "ambient," "adult contemporary," "devotional," "dream," "funk," "jazz," "light," "love," "mountain," "new age," "temple," "traditional," and "world."

This album is a peaceful journey in your inner self. I'm happy to own this album.

Sometimes an atmosphere can only be captured by a song. This music makes me feel an indescribable emotion.

Imagine mooning through a psychedelic jungle under a holographic disco ball moon. That’s not even close to how fantastic this album is.

2. Witch Piss is a novel by Sam Pink

3. Crapland is a game by Orbital Intelligence 

4. I used this oracle by Perplexing Ruins

Rolling Your Own Cigarettes in the OSR

this is where i blog from

(the record pictured in my photo is The Boston To Little Rock Connection Split 7" by The Shyness Clinic / Everyone Asked About You, the latter being a legendary female-fronted 90's emo band.)

my friend said his first character sheet for Troika was written on a rolling paper.

this got me thinking about magical cigarettes in games (for the second time).

settings should have fucked up roads, trash, and cigarette butts floating in deep puddles.

all that is required is a rare item (or not [whatever]) crushed and ground up mixed with the tobacco, paper (or something paper-like [and smokeable]), a spark, and lungs (I think?).

bad guys also smoke cigarettes; add cigarettes you've created to your loot tables.

warning: smoking leads to vampirism, addiction, stankiness, iron deficiency, and bad taste in music  

 🎀  𝕕1҉0҉   𝔠𝔦𝔤𝔰  🎀 

1 putting the cigarette out on a metal item no larger than 1meter x 1meter rusts it immediately 

2 cigarette of vomiting 

3 this cigarette allows the smoker to imitate the last human/creature they slew 

4 smoking this cigarette will allow you to throw a web-spell once a day

5 cigarette that steals d8 hp from the smoker

6 cigarette that stops burning 30 meters from undead

7 cigarette that makes the last 7 minutes never happen 

8 cigarette of perfect hair, tuck it behind your ear and your hair is always perfect

9 this cigarette summons a pet tarantula (crawling out of your mouth [popular in many nightclubs across the city])

10 second hand smokers of this cigarette [redacted]

 

Longshot City chat and updates

news:

spooky jaguar international has released a new zine for the cairn a town, a forest, a dungeon jam that was going on at itch. 

it's called The Weeps.

there's a contest to win a copy of it!

here's what some people are saying about it...

"The weeps is like someone coming up to you saying, 'You are a terrible piece of shit.'" — Fernanda Melchor

"I like this. It is nice to read. It makes me feel better about how lost I am." — Elija Wood

"In 2350 i will be dead and The Weeps will be taught in colleges and published as a commemorative hardback edition with a red ribbon for a bookmark." — Werner Herzog

if you haven't heard of cain it's a game based on knave and into the odd (or electric bastionland) that is about exploring dark and mysterious woods.

red solstice issue 3 has been released 

my friend jert launched their new publishing house!!! 

it's called space penguin ink 

they got some new never before zines for sale for troika, mothership, and mork borg.

captain blowfish has a really great blog post about it.

i recommend reading their blog.

captain blowfish also has a kickstarter going on right now with melsonia arts council for their new super hero ttrpg book Longshot City.

it fucking slays!

i thought it would be cool to chat with him about it here

4:36 PM me: im making anew blog post
and im trying to say something about longshot city
the blog post is mostly about like music concerts
is anything meaningful about music and when you wrote longshot city that
connects
like to you personally
musical inspiration or anything

4:48 PM Captain Blowfish: sure

4:48 PM me: i was thinking we could a chat about it that i can post

4:48 PM Captain Blowfish: hard to describe with a keyboard tho
yeah

4:49 PM me: like you did with that other blog

4:49 PM Captain Blowfish: oh
we can try

4:49 PM me: or if you wanna do a zoom call sometime i can record the audio
nothing like really serious or long

4:49 PM Captain Blowfish: we can try text now everything just feels hard when i'm drinking
sometimes lol
i'm sure it'll be fine
how should we start

4:50 PM me: thats goin on the record ^^^ lol
we already did heh

4:50 PM Captain Blowfish: fair
i mean unfair technically but whatever

4:50 PM me: super heroes and music
x-men the cartoon immediately comes into my mind

4:51 PM Captain Blowfish: oh sure i absolutely can hear that theme song every time i see the
jim lee era costumes
but i was thinking more about music that i've just always been into
i listen to a lot of pop punk for example. i don't mean popular punk by that, i
meansimple fast songs with three chords (four at most)
the ramones are essentially the definition of that, misfits are the sort of crossover
between that and the gothier stuff

4:53 PM me: yeah i always write to music, i feel like some people can't concentrate on writing
with music, especially something like punk

4:54 PM Captain Blowfish: yeah i'm like that with some music but that particular style of punk
to me is like water to a fish
but there's a lot of superhero content in that genre
subgenre whatever
phantom maggot by the lillingtons is an absolute classic

4:55 PM me: goldfinger - superman comes to mind

4:56 PM Captain Blowfish: fair
or even rem superman lol

4:56 PM me: im listneing to phantom maggot right now, that would be a cool super hero name

4:56 PM Captain Blowfish: he's right on time always fighting maggot crime

4:57 PM me: when you ran longshot city do you recall ever saying something like "i'm picturing
this song right now as yall do this"

4:58 PM Captain Blowfish: so i ran that campaign you were in over the course of almost three
years much of which i was pretty intoxicated for
but in a few instances yeah
not so much the pop punk thing tho

4:58 PM me: right, it was probably tom waits

4:58 PM Captain Blowfish: lol okay well yeah that too now that you mention it
but also some metal and some hip hop
what's that one big business song... mind the gap? i'll look it up but i wanna see if
i got it right
oh it's the drift i was way off

5:00 PM me: that has a cool album cover

5:01 PM Captain Blowfish: and then like don't come to the woods by backxwash and
guillotine by the coup both popped into my head when related things were going
on in the game
with tom waits mostly stuff like hoist that rag, the more rock & roll stuff, but that's
partly because of the style of campaign

5:02 PM me: this big business song is sick, i can totally see it playing as the party is planning
some shit out to infiltrate

5:02 PM Captain Blowfish: it could have easily been his earlier jazz stuff like romeo is
bleeding or small change if it was a more street level campaign

5:03 PM Captain Blowfish: yeah totally. just any kind of approach where they mostly at least
think they know what they're getting into and feel ready
which to be clear didn't happen often in that campaign lol

5:03 PM me: i was just reflecting on that
i remember you has some like tower
and part of it was a lab

5:04 PM Captain Blowfish: that would either be sentinel tower or the agritower

5:04 PM me: and one room i found myself in was like a lab that was conducting tests on
animals

5:04 PM Captain Blowfish: did it explode at the end of the session?

5:04 PM me: i think so yeah in a big boss fight with the gold guy
no the teleporting guy

5:05 PM Captain Blowfish: yeah that makes sense

5:05 PM me: but like i started letting these animals out of cages and then like this one creature
just ate all the other animals lol

5:05 PM Captain Blowfish: lol yeah that does sound like a game i would run

5:06 PM me: is longshot city something you plan to support for a long time with future
releases?

5:07 PM Captain Blowfish: i have a few adventures cooking for it. one of them is probably
ready for me to run, i'd need to check my notes
basically i feel like i'd be a fool not to at least give that a shot

5:09 PM me: true
so do you keep all of your notes from running games?
i know you had a really small notebook at one point or would design sessions on
stick it notes

5:10 PM Captain Blowfish: it's mostly ephemera in practice. i am an avatar of adhd

5:10 PM me: ephemera would also make a sick super hero name

5:10 PM Captain Blowfish: that's stuff that's for running games. stuff i'm keeping notes on to
actually try and publish something i keep for years

5:11 PM Captain Blowfish: her power is she can create things like green lantern that fade
away when she stops paying attention

5:11 PM Captain Blowfish: back to the music question i think i have listened to every single
genre i am aware of while writing this game
partly because the superhero genre contains every other genre within it

5:14 PM me: yeah i really liked when x-men would do that side stories

5:14 PM Captain Blowfish: mostly thanks to saint kirby

5:14 PM me: like stuff with wolverine and kitty pride

5:14 PM me: so you've been a bunch of wild shows
concerts
whats like the craziest thing you can recall from one currently

5:17 PM Captain Blowfish: one time i was in a pit for i think h2o and i knocked heads with
some kid by accident and i didn't move but he bounced off me and fell down at
least five feet away and then some big guy behind me picked me up and i was
crowdsurfing by accident trying to keep track of my wallet

more upliftingly another time before that it was the misfits with the jerry only + dez cadena + marky ramone lineup and some young kid, like maybe 5, with a pink mohawk got caught on stage in between songs (like he was up there to stagedive)
and he didn't know what to do, deer in headlights
jerry put his massive pro wrasslin arm over the kid's shoulders and they had this exchange:
hey kid didn't i meet you last time i was in pittsburgh?
Yeah
what did i tell you kid?
do good in school
pregnant pause
how you doin in school kid?
good
thunderous applause
the end

5:21 PM me: that's awesome
i think jerry only is vegan

5:21 PM Captain Blowfish: no idea
i've been told by vegans that cannibalism doesn't violate it btw, just sayin

5:23 PM me: why doesn't the kickstarter say you have an ennie lol

5:23 PM Captain Blowfish: at least two of those particular vegans were also texans which
makes sense
uhhhhh because dan didn't think to include bios and when he asked me to look
over the page i didn't either
jrat also has an ennie, he worked on early development. and it's basically leaving
money on the table not to talk about evlyn

5:26 PM me: her art style is instantly recognizable

5:27 PM Captain Blowfish: it is. i think the same is true of jecorey

5:27 PM me: i know she was a player in your years long campaign of longshot city

5:28 PM Captain Blowfish: boson's i have to look a little harder to be sure it's him but that's
not a bad thing by any means
she was, very early on
she basically gave me the idea for the k.o. table

5:28 PM me: jecorey did art on academies of the arcane too

5:28 PM Captain Blowfish: correct

5:28 PM me: the KO table is one of my favorite parts from playing the game with you

5:29 PM Captain Blowfish: i agree, it adds so much
what she noticed was that longshot's character creation being more involved than
troika's led to being a little more attached to the character
that combined with the absurd damage tables means people were dying too
much

5:32 PM me: yeah its cool how longshot city is building on the troika rules and evolving them

5:32 PM Captain Blowfish: i forget if it was her or me who was like what if they just come
back like superheroes do? if it was me i couldn't have gotten there without her
and i wouldn't have noticed that kind of problem as easily

5:32 PM me: im thinking it might give other people new ideas to do the same with their settings
is there a k.o. entry that like takes a player character and turns them into a
villain?
like as an NPC

5:35 PM Captain Blowfish: there are a few bait and switch things
lemme check if that's one
yes
recovered, revived, and brainwashed by the enemy, now your old pc is a villain
roll up a new one

5:38 PM me: i like that

5:38 PM Captain Blowfish: that's the only one specifically like that out of 36

5:38 PM me: yeah it makes sense to just have the one

5:38 PM Captain Blowfish: there's only like maybe six that actually end your character
mostly they just make you weirder

5:39 PM me: the k.o. table is awesome too because it really pushes people towards longer
game play
like campaigns
like being able to really get character growth for one

5:40 PM Captain Blowfish: yeah i think having the range of rogues' gallery npcs i did helped
with that too
like they already had killed the thanos equivalent by the time you joined

5:41 PM me: is there anything in the book on building up a base?

5:41 PM Captain Blowfish: yes there's starting bases and inventions and upgrades

5:41 PM me: hell yeah

5:42 PM Captain Blowfish: what is available in your starting base is defined by the wealth
category (on a scale of 1-3) of the richest member of the party
which is defined by the origin roll
so if you have someone with an inheritance you have like a tower downtown and
a helicopter and all kinda bullshit
or if everyone is struggling then you live in a not great apartment and get around
in a utility van
the inventions and upgrades are pretty simple mechanically, just skill rolls. The
only limiting factor is that you spend a point of maximum luck, permanently

5:45 PM me: could i invent something that grants luck? lol

5:46 PM Captain Blowfish: the playtest campaign started out with everyone struggling btw.
their first team name was the tenement superpals, but by the end of the first
session they could never go back there again

5:46 PM me: was that when they killed all the cops?

5:46 PM Captain Blowfish: then they switched to the van superpals and totalled the van
no that was the first two or three sessions

5:48 PM Captain Blowfish: there's nothing that says you can't, but if i was running the game i
would probably put some kind of monkey's paw effect on that
that kind of thing might get the attention of cosmic entities off the top of my head

5:49 PM me: oh that's a good one
fuck, so you got cosmic entities in the book too

5:49 PM Captain Blowfish: only a couple of the npcs in the book qualify as that

5:50 PM me: ok so now you've got something i'll hold you to for future releases

5:50 PM Captain Blowfish: there are a few that i used in the playtest campaign, but i think i'd
like to explore them further in their own supplement sometime down the line
yeah pretty much lol

5:51 PM me: ive got some ideas percolating for stuff id like to put together for adventures in
longshot city
i definitely plan to force this game on my friends that arent too familiar with ttrpgs

5:52 PM Captain Blowfish: it's an easy one
you might need a tiny bit more buy in than in troika during character generation, if
the archetype and origin don't immediately make sense together for the player,
but that's like on the level of choosing a name honestly

5:53 PM me: yeah but once they get started i think they will definitely be invested

5:54 PM Captain Blowfish: you've made a few characters in it, how smoothly did you feel that
step of marrying the two rolls and settling on an aesthetic went?

5:55 PM me: i was a scale shifter on my first roll as an achretype for one character
big as a whale small as an ant or something

5:56 PM Captain Blowfish: yeah the ant man powerset

5:56 PM me: but my other roll for origin or maybe it was complication
one of those had my character become an alien
that had crash landed

5:56 PM Captain Blowfish: that would have been origin

5:57 PM me: im looking at the google doc lol
yeah i was an alien soldier
and i had a -3 luck modifier cuz i was struggling

5:58 PM Captain Blowfish: that only applies to wealth tests

5:58 PM me: oh yeah it says resources heh

5:59 PM Captain Blowfish: so yeah to answer my own question, i think that archetype and
origin make a lot of sense together without having to make any effort at all

6:00 PM me: oh back to that
it reminds me of the life paths from traveller
ive played more traveller character creation than i have of just traveller in general
lol

6:01 PM Captain Blowfish: oh man if you just rolled on the ko table like 1d6 times during
chargen it would be exactly like that

6:02 PM me: that's really interesting actually
that's like a whole new mini game or soemthing for solo play
we're already thinking of hacks lol

6:04 PM Captain Blowfish: i mean i ran habergoun with it for awhile already when we were
doing mass combat

6:05 PM me: yeah that was really fun
a highlight of the campaign for me

6:06 PM Captain Blowfish: probably cause you were soccer kicking your way
throughplatoons like they were kittens

6:06 PM me: heh
whats the last comic you read?

6:07 PM Captain Blowfish: well i most recently re-read "jack kirby: the epic life of the king of
comics" by tom scioli
i had started hate watching that new stan lee documentary on the disney plus

6:08 PM me: i feel like i wanna rewatch the peacemaker show

6:08 PM Captain Blowfish: and i got like 15 minutes in before i felt like was drowning under
all the lies

6:09 PM me: was stan lee a good guy or a bad guy?
ive heard so much shit surrounding him

6:09 PM Captain Blowfish: so i went back to that kirby book to refresh myself on the details of
exactly how and why he was lying about each thing
bad guy

6:09 PM me: like stealing ideas or not sharing pay

6:09 PM Captain Blowfish: both of those things
also ended up in charge of marvel by getting jack kirby and joe simon fired by the
parent magazine company
by the time kirby came back it was about to be cancelled entirely from what i
understand

6:11 PM me: ok, so don't waste my time by pirating that disney documentary

6:11 PM Captain Blowfish: eh you can pirate it just assume that every single thing in it is a lie
at least for the first 15 minutes or so
"i made up spiderman! i made up the hulk! the army saw my talent and ordered
me away from the front line to write instructional comics!"

6:13 PM me: oh god, does he talk about being in combat in the army?

6:13 PM Captain Blowfish: no the records would immediately prove that wrong
even back then if you're as famous as he wanted to be
kirby has occasionally talked about combat but he was actually in it

6:15 PM me: maybe im making this up, but i swear you told me the kirby style of art
the kirby explosion or whatever
was directly inspired by like grenades or something
is that true?

6:15 PM Captain Blowfish: i think it is. this is my conclusion tho
he saw artillery shells exploding firsthand in france
and the shrapnel from those explosions is what the kirby crackle looks like more
than anything to me

6:16 PM me: the kirby crackle
the way you explain it makes hella sense
it's cool that he was able to make something artistic from that experience despite
having to suffer from it at the same time
im just assuming he was fucking up from war though now

6:18 PM Captain Blowfish: i think it informed everything from then on
nah everyone was fucked up from that war

6:19 PM me: for sure

6:20 PM Captain Blowfish: and the only person you could talk to about it was your faith
leader if you had one

6:20 PM me: thats an aspect that gets really overlooked

6:20 PM Captain Blowfish: the fact that the resources we have now weren't available then?

6:20 PM me: exactly

6:21 PM Captain Blowfish: yeah it used to be that ptsd was just normalized for a generation
after any big war
that's a big part of why the wild west happened, everyone had ptsd from the civil
war
or happened the way it did at least

6:23 PM me: i always get some kind of new insight talking with you i feel like
a new perspective that is

6:24 PM Captain Blowfish: well thanks man

6:24 PM me: i've been reading silver surfer black, per your recommendation a couple months
back

6:25 PM Captain Blowfish: yeah that's some really solid work
soundtrack to that is prog rock
probably like hawkwind and rush and his name is alive

6:25 PM me: what about coheed?

6:25 PM Captain Blowfish: hmmmmmm okay so i know all of their albums are different but
i've only heard a couple

6:26 PM me: yeah i didnt follow them after like their 3rd album or something like that

6:26 PM Captain Blowfish: there was a series a while back tho where there was a continent
full of hulks except for steve rogers who had a shield an axe and devil dinosaur
as a mount

6:26 PM me: wait what
like a universe where everyone was a hulk?

6:27 PM Captain Blowfish: yeah that was part of the whole secret wars 2 thing
well a continent
the universes had all collapsed because the incursions got to be too much for the
Illuminati
dr doom was king of the one remaining universe and his enforcers were the thor
corps
planet hulk probably would have been a better example

6:29 PM me: immortal hulk is really great, i need to finish that, have you read any of it?

6:29 PM Captain Blowfish: only the first volume so far
it's on my list tho, i dig it so far

6:29 PM me: i really liked how you had Constantine as an major npc in our campaign hahwe
would just show up at his apartment and raid his fridge lol
most of the food was spoiled but i dont think it stopped some of us lol

6:30 PM Captain Blowfish: lol yeah that was because i too drunk and high to realize i should
just use mad tom instead
same thing in terms of how the game went

6:31 PM me: i was drinking with you during most of the games

6:31 PM Captain Blowfish: i just managed to avoid any characters that weren't mine except
him you know? lol

6:32 PM me: i know you're always there for me to chat with and likewise

6:32 PM Captain Blowfish: but hellblazer has been my favorite mainstream comic for like 30
something years so fair enough

6:33 PM me: i need to read some of it eventually
im a big fan of swampthing and i know they team up a lot

6:33 PM Captain Blowfish: start with all his engines
he was introduced in swamp thing
volume three i think?
of alan moore's run

6:33 PM Captain Blowfish: his artist wanted a character to draw who looked kinda like sting
and full circle back to music
you never asked me about the crow soundtrack

6:34 PM me: dude!
the stone temple pilots song on that cd is my favorite

6:35 PM Captain Blowfish: oh come on burn by the cure obviously

6:35 PM me: i do love the police

6:35 PM Captain Blowfish: narc

6:35 PM me: im not familiar with sting's solo stuff
i have read the crow graphic novel

6:36 PM Captain Blowfish: i don't like either particularly tbh. they kinda feel like the same
thing as like generation x and billy idol in that i don't care about either

6:37 PM me: i think the police is more nostalgia for me, reminds me of my mom type of shit

6:38 PM Captain Blowfish: the crow is solid. a little rough around the edges, clearly a labor of
love, but solid and focused

6:38 PM me: do you know about the creator?

5:39 PM Captain Blowfish: i feel like there was something fucked up but i haven't thought
about it in long enough to not remember

6:39 PM me: he wrote the crow after losing his fiance to a drink driver
and he's a marine lol

6:39 PM Captain Blowfish: right. yeah that all tracks

6:39 PM me: any last words before i get offline to have some dinner and you most likely sit by
the fire and make a 'pizza' ?

6:40 PM Captain Blowfish: stop cop city

6:42 PM me: fuck that's going to change everything

6:42 PM Captain Blowfish: 🇻🇳

(if you'd like to support me there are links on the right to purchase zines)

(i'm open to taking art commissions)