Ant-Man, Death of Roddy Piper, and a Couple of Homebrew Games

This week has been quite the interesting week, to say the least, so I’ll just jump right into it.

The harvesting book is coming along. Like I haven't said that a hundred times already. I finished the work I needed to complete when it came to coming up with the prices for the various harvestable materials from the Creatures of the Tropical Wastes. With that, the chart for the various compounds and modifications grew quite large, and I haven’t even started work on the core book!

One aspect of this project that really consumed a lot of time was reading over the entries as I added them to the main chart. So yesterday I began to re-vamp the chart to make it a lot easier to find what I was looking for, and added an explanation to what each entry meant. That was something I had no choice but to add, as people reading over the chart would end up scratching their head in confusion.

I don’t need that!

The work I've been doing on it yesterday got me thinking... when I get back to the final work on the mutation book, I'm going to have to incorporate that book to work hand in hand with the harvesting book.

This won't be a massive problem, as I will be going through each mutation anyhow to do re-writes and make changes, so I can easily add the rules for the harvesting.

I’ve always wanted the various books I’ve been writing to mesh together, and this is a perfect example of that.

So that’s my update when it comes to that particular project.

Friday saw Chapter 28 of Buck Who? Posted. I’m currently working on Chapter 31, and hopefully I’ll find the time to finish it today. Shockingly enough, I was thinking about the chapter and decided to make some significant changes. I just hope my readers like it!

Monday saw two more mutants posted, The White Raven and the Hummer. Tomorrow I will have two new mutants up,  but since it’s the long weekend, I might just double that. We shall see.

Also, when it comes to creating New Mutants for the Skirmisher site, I have found most of my creatures don't look like mutants. Going through the entries I have posted, a lot of the time I state they look much like they did before mutation.

That's going to change.

Just like I will be writing more plants and bugs, I need to create some really twisted and hideous creatures for my New Mutant Monday entries.

After all, a couple of my favorite post-apocalyptic games - Darwin's World and Mutant Epoch both have really twisted and hideous mutants! So I need to do the same.

Two factors are going to make this difficult though. First I always use images for my entries. It's going to be difficult to locate appropriate images for some of the really twisted creatures.

And my mind is not quite so chaotic as those who have created the true monstrosities. That's by no means an insult to them! My creatures have a natural order to them, there tends to be very little chaos.

Well, that's just going to have to be a challenge then. I don’t often accept personal challenges when it comes to my writing, but when I do, I try to excel.

Over on the Gamma World Online (or was it the Cyberpunk and Gamma World) Facebook pages, one of the contributors posted a link to a Gamma World card game. It was some home-brewed rules without any actual cards, but for those interested in seeing what someone managed to come up with, check it out. Just click on the link in this paragraph.

And if you happened to love Mad Max: Fury Road as much as I did, here is a link to another simple card game set of rules called Death Racers. Like The Gamma World rules, there are no cards and you would have to create them yourself.

I just don’t have the time to take on yet another project like this, so don’t expect anything from me. And besides – where would I find all the images one needs to create these cards, and the time to playtest the rules?

This week saw the completion of another novel. This time I read Mike Sheppards Target. This was the first novel in his new Kris Longknife spinoff using the character Vicky Peterwald. The universe has already been established with the Kris Longknife series and as such it is very easy to jump right into it.

I found it to be a little tedious. I’ve gotten to the age where reading about sex no longer is appealing and Vicky is totally different from Longknife. If I was to be blunt, she comes off as a serious slut who can’t keep her legs together.

Very unappealing to me. I guess Mike’s idea was to make her significantly different from Kris, and as such he succeeded.

I’ll continue with the series, and hopefully she will mature and grow as a character with each successive book.

Friday had a little bit of a shock. Nearly 30 years ago I had met and spoke with Roddy Piper. I’ve mentioned this in my previous blogs so I won’t go into it again. I met him for the second time in May at Comicpalooza.

Unless you don’t use social media, or don’t pay attention to much going on in the world, you’ll know he passed away from a heart-attack on Friday. He was only 61, and that’s far too young to have left the world.

It’s life, sadly enough, and we all have to leave someday. Even I will eventually pass on, although I hope it’s not until I’m well into my second century of life. Hey, you can dream, right?

Although I typically catch new releases the weekend they open, I did not have a chance to see Ant-man when it hit the theaters last weekend. Well, I managed to alleviate that today.

Overall, it was fun. It is pretty amazing how Marvel is able to take rather obscure characters and make them into pretty good movies. DC certainly could learn a thing or two about that. Well, that company does quite well when it comes to television, but movies?

Anyhow, I did not like it as much as I did Guardians of the Galaxy or other Marvel movies, but it was worth my time and money to watch.

And that’s it for this week.

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Until next Sunday, peace!