Land of Azurth Rumors

I've got a Land of Azurth 5e game coming up next weekend. Here's another round of rumors/adventure hooks I'll give to the players:

70s Primetime Sci-Fi TV Crossover Timeline

The Planet of the Apes game I'm starting up, isn't just borrowing from that mythos, but stealing liberally from other science fiction shows as well. In talking this over with my friend Jim Shelley of The Flashback Universe Blog, he hit on doing sort of trading cards of major timeline events. Here's my timeline and what Jim did with it. I'm not using everything in the game, but it was a fun
exercise.

An additional note: This is a TV timeline. A lot of dates in Planet of the Apes are given in the movies, so it doesn't so up in this version. The Logan's Run tv show and film offer different starting dates, but the show is being used here (though in my game, should the City of Domes ever show up, I'm using the movie date).

Creation of cyborgs (like the Six Million Dollar Man) may also rank among the late 20th Century's achievements.

Suspended animation was used in spaceflight in the 80s, so either a less developed version was already in use (as suggested by the POTA films) or data from Hunt's project  did lead to a breakthrough despite the loss of the team leader.

The actual date is August 19, 1980.

The Great Conflict is the name given this war in Genesis II/Planet Earth. These shows make it clear that the war occurred in the 20th Century, though it most have been after a subshuttle station we see in the Planet Earth pilot was built in 1992. The Planet of the Apes tv show suggests a later date, no never specifies, but this date fits with the POTA film series. The Logan's Run series sets the apocalyptic war in the 22nd Century, which is why I chose to go with the earlier film dates in my game setup.

This is also true of the 2nd Roddenbery pilot to deal with this material, Planet Earth. There Dylan Hunt is played by John Saxon.

No evolved apes are seen at the time of PAX (or even Logan's Run), true, but it could be the apes were confined to the area that once was California then. Neither of these shows necessarily covered a wide territory.

Astronauts Burke and Virdon arrive in a North America (or at least Western North America) controlled by apes in a well-established civilization in 3085, so the culture must have spread before that.

Hexcrawl on the Planet of the Apes: The Set Up

art by Declan Shalvey

I'm getting ready to start my Planet of the Apes hexcrawl so I prepared a document outlining the mission that brings the PC astronauts to the ape-ruled future. Following the ideas in my initial pitch, there are easter eggs linking to other 70s sci-fi shows:

Wednesday Comics: Future Quest #2 Annotations

My on-going look at Don Lawrence's Storm will take a break so that we can revisit Future Quest, one of DC's re-imagining of classic Hana-Barbera characters. This will contain spoilers.

"Part Two: Visitors from Beyond"

Future Quest #2 (2016), Written by Jeff Parker; Art by Eric "Doc" Shaner, Ron Randall & Jonathan Case

The main cover. Features the nonhuman characters of several Hana-Barbera series: Bandit from Jonny Quest, Blip from Space Ghost, and Zok, Igoo, Gloop and Gleep from The Herculoids.

"Now a spaceship?" Space Ghost materializes in the Everglades and appears ready to blast Jonny and Hadj with his power bands. He seems to be in conflict with someone named Omnikron, then he disappears. The kids next discover a crashed spacecraft, Space Ghost's Phantom Cruiser. Inside, is an injured, unconscious Jan and an irate Blip.

"A lot of tough guys that point guns at kids." A bunch of goons--agents of FEAR from Birdman attack. They also have a spider eye-bot like the one employed by Dr. Zin in the eighth episode of Jonny Quest ("The Robot Spy"). The boys are rescued by the timely arrival of Race Bannon and Birdman.

"Don't you dare point guns at my family!" Dr. Quest and Deva Sumadi arrive in a two-man flying craft of the type we've seen previously employed by Dr. Zin's henchmen in "The Fraudulent Volcano." The badguys manage to get away, though, airlifting out the Phantom Cruiser. They also discovered an unconscious Jace, still under Inviso power.

Jezebel Jade. She appears to be working with Dr. Zin. Jade appeared in two episodes of the original Jonny Quest series. She appears to have a history with Race Bannon, has Dr. Zin hints here again.

Blood & Treasure

John M. Stater of the Land of Nod blog has released the second edition of his retroclone adjacent (meaning it isn't actually a retroclone, but uses the OGL to approximate something resembling older D&D) rpg Blood & Treasure. Unlike genuine retroclones, B&T isn't about emulating an out of print game. It aims to wed the simpler rules and playstyle of historic editions with some of the options and flavor more familiar from modern games. It's a delicate balance to pull off, but John's efforts achieve this better than just about anybody.

John adds some interesting new stuff; he outlines the differences between this and the previous edition here. One of my favorite new details is thieves getting to assemble a crew for jobs at 6th level--though they may not be trustworthy. I also likes the simple variations he provides at the end of the description for every class so you can be a Jester instead of a Bard or a Ninja instead of a Monk.

The art in this edition is great, too. I mean, check out that cover! The interior is good, too, and in an array of styles in true old school fashion.

It's available now on drivethrurpg/rpgnow.

A Hexcrawl on the Planet of the Apes

Here's a rundown (in pictures) of a game of exploration in the Planet of the Apes setting...

In 1980, a team of astronauts are put into cryogenic suspension on a satellite as part of study of longterm suspended animation in the face of classified information obtained from the "ape-o-naut" visitors from the the future in 1973.

The astronauts awaken over a millennia later, to a post-nuclear war world ruled by apes!

Humans are either subjugated by the apes or tribesmen living in the wilderness.

The relics of advanced technology remain, such as the ancient, underground subshuttle system.

Will the astronauts be able to change the future and save the human race--or maybe even find a way back to their own time?

Suicide (Squad) is Painless

I was never terribly excited for Suicide Squad. This isn't my preferred version of the team, and the trailers recalled Guardians of the Galaxy, which was not among my favorite of Marvel films. The negative reviews didn't change my perception. After seeing it last night, I feel like I misjudged Suicide Squad, and I think it is a better movie than rap its getting.

First off, it does resemble GotG in some ways, but uses those similarities to different ends. GotG's AM Gold soundtrack and stock characters were meant to pander and reassure. It wants desperately to convince you that this is like those these things you like and in doing so become on of those things. Whatever Warner Bros.' and Ayers' intentions, the film Suicide Squad seems indifferent to your like or dislike. It wants just to entertain. It uses (or overuses) musical cues like captions or narration to save itself time spent with building scenes or establishing drama. It's got other stuff it wants to do. The characters could all be described in a single comic caption box, but unlike GotG, to the extent that any have hearts of gold, it's only to accentuate the realpolitick evil of Amanda Waller (who out dicks Dick Cheney) and sometime sanctimonious soldier Rick Flagg.

Suicide Squad is perhaps the most comic book-y of comic book movies since the Batman 1966 film spinoff.  It's first 30 minutes plays like a Marvel after credits sequence with cameos and references to movies that haven't been made yet. "Of course a DC Universe exists; let's just start from here," it says, rather than wasting any time trying to prepare a timid audience or slowly build suspension disbelief. Metahumans. Superman's dead. Ancient witches. Batman. And on we go! Harley Quinzel was a Marilyn Monroe breathy-voiced psychiatrist who falls for the platinum-capped psychopath she calls "Mister J" is only as convincing as the images themselves burlesque backstory you know. Either you buy it or not, we ain't going to try to convince you.

In the end (again like GotG), it succumbs to defeating a narratively poorly sold and visually uninteresting and CGI swirly world menace, in a run of the mill superhero action sequence. Before that it's a live action 00s comic, and the extent to which you like it may be dependent on how you feel about that.