Steampunk? Victorian mustaches, pocket watches, gears on tophats... Sure, ok, its fine I guess. A little dainty for my taste.
1980's Punk Rock? Yeah, its a little better. Billy Idol, Rancid, Mohawks, spiked bracers, yeah man, sure, I'm into it, but its a little before my time to really appreciate.
But Cyberpunk? Cyberpunk is the shit. Especially chunky-style pre-iphone Cyberpunk. Fifth Element, Neuromancer, Cyberware, noodle bars, asian fusion, drones, flying cars, noir, trenchcoats...I dig it. Now this genre speaks to me a thousand times more than spikey hair-dos or airship monocles.
But most importantly, BLADE RUNNER!
The sequel to Blade Runner just came out, Blade Runner 2049. And let me tell you this: IT DOES NOT DISAPPOINT! This movie is a worthy sequel to the 1982 majesty of Blade Runner. Even with Harrison Ford returning to his original role (which we've come to fear because of Indiana Jones 4 and Star Wars 8), this movie is great. Ryan Gosling is no longer just a piece of eye candy for the ladies now. He's now a legit part of the Cyberpunk genre as one of the coolest Blade Runners to ever take up the badge. Do yourself a favor and go see this movie. Yeah, its three hours long, but the time is well-spent.
You get to see post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, flying cars, and even what anime addiction does to Replicants. Its frickin' rad to the max.
Then listen to me gush about it and try to break down the meanings behind all the little Easter Eggs on the Vorpal Podcast!
So they finally made the Dark Tower movie based on Stephen King's epic saga of dimension-jumping gunslingers, lobster people, billy-bumblers, and psychic kids. It fled across the desert, and the Vorpal Podcast followed.
While I'm a fan of Wizard and Glass and the DT graphic novels and the entire premise of the gunslinger, I read the first book back in about 1853 so I don't trust that I remember quite enough about the Gunslinger's early Saga to compare the new movie to all the actual novels. So we called in a Dark Tower Superfan and unofficial Stephen King expert Craig of Eld to help us out. He laid on us the Easter Eggs he found in this movie that should have fans who originally hated it for not being an absolute recreation of the books to reconsider what they were watching, because [SPOILER ALERT] it turns out it is actually a continuation of the Gunslinger storyline, and takes place afterthe last book! What what whaaaaat? Listen in and find out why!
So brighten up your Shine and load up your forty-five
(Ex)caliber revolvers, its time to talk Gunslinger!
New on the Vorpal Podcast: Atomic Suzy is joined by Comic Book Cory to breakdown this Fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall Spy movie (based on a Graphic Novel) and determine whether the 1980's-themed flick is worth its 99 Luftballoons. Pull out your walkman, light up a cigarette, and splice some microfilm because its time to review ATOMIC BLONDE!
"Take your stinking paws off of me, you damn dirty ape!"
I frickin' love Planet of the Apes. Also love the sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. The alien-ness of the world, the intelligent Apes who completely disbelieve in the possibility that humans were once intelligent (and their Orangutan scientists trying to hide any evidence of it), the weird rock buildings that look like anthills, the primitiveness of the technology, the delightful mystery of the "Forbidden Zone", and the general alpha badass-ness of Charlton Heston. All great stuff.
I even played a bit of the old rpg, "Terra Primate" by Eden Studios back in the day. It was an rpg where you could crash-land as an astronaught on future earth, and have exciting adventures as one of the few rare humans that could speak and think logically in a post-APE-pocalyptic society.
Eden Studios are the same folks who also published "All Flesh Must Be Eaten," one of the first, and still one of the best, Zombie Apocalypse RPGs.
But I digress, I'm here to talk about Apes. Planet of the Apes always had a John Carter of Mars vibe for me, with the strange world with alien denizens and super-power(s) granted to the protagonist because they are from a far off place (or time). In this case the "super power" was simply that Charlton Heston can speak and think logically in a world of super dumb humans, rather than leap tall buildings in a single bound like John Carter on Mars, but still it was pretty cool. Its the kind of super power you start to identify with when you're surfing through Twitter or shopping at Walmart.
Then came the sequels... which to put it frankly, are pure garbage.
Escape from the Planet of the Apes - An Austin Powers wanna-be movie where the main apes from the first film go back in time to the swingin' 70s and become celebrities in "modern-day" America. But then are murdered for some reason. Who cares.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - A half-ass near-dystopian movie where they begin the process of utterly destroying any wonderment fans may have about how the Apes rose to power. Instead of a long mysterious process of evolution to replace humans who destroyed themselves (that the Statue of Liberty in the first film suggests), the Apes rose up against humans because racism(!). So I guess, the Apes destroyed the statue of liberty? Bah.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes - You're supposed to root for the Apes as they take over the planet, because humans are jerks I guess. Completely destroys any reason that the Apes in Charlton Heston's "future" (the original PotA) would be so against the thought of humans ever have been smart. If the Apes really rebelled and won against a bunch of butthole humans they'd have a holiday about it every year.
The movies then died off for a time, since the studios had squeezed every dime from fans of the subject by releasing worse and worse movies. But now they've rebooted it! And its somehow even MORE depressing!
Planet of the Apes (2001 Remake) - Marky Mark is an astronaught who does the time portal thing and lands in Ape-ville. Great costumes and special effects, but completely lacks the points of the original that make it so great. Future humans can still all speak, making Marky Mark's limited vocabulary just as useless as it is now. Plus the twist at the end is...Ape-raham Lincoln? Ugh. Still, I liked it better than the latest Trilogy.
Rise of, Dawn of, and War for the Planet of the Apes. More Apes vs. Humans uprising prequelness that I can barely give a crap about. Its like they're stretching out the painful over-explanation of how the Apes rose up, which is like the least interesting part of the whole genre.
But I watched them, because my co-hosts JC and Jillian on the latest episode of the Vorpal Podcast desperately wanted to talk about the latest movie, War for the Planet of the Apes. They're actually fans of these Attack of the Clones-worthy prequels. How?! Why?! It completely boggles the mind.
So if you feel like hearing me lament the lost promise of these movies (and mock co-host JC's evidently terrible taste in sci-fi), check out the latest Planet of the Apes episode of the Vorpal Podcast (with special guest-host Jillian). We slash our way through every single one of the Apes movies from 1968 on, and vehemently disagree on most everything about these latest Ape-stallments to the filmography.
In a special extended edition of the Vorpal Podcast, Batman
correspondent Paul of Gotham joins us in
the studio to cover everything we all need to know about Batman in
Cinema.
We light up the Bat-Signal for Michael
Keaton Batman, Val Kilmer Batman, George Clooney Batman,
Christian Bale Batman, Ben Batfleck Batman, and even the
late Adam West Batman! Its an episode bat-freaks and DC fans
do not want to miss!
Hey there Spider-fans! Your favorite wall-crawler is back in a
brand new adventure. This time our web-slinging hero is up against
the nefarious Vulture, who's gun-running criminal empire threatens
the entire eastern seaboard, not least of which contains Spidey's
own neighborhood! So put on your webshooters and give a listen as
Cory, JC, and Suzy discuss the web-headed antics of SPIDERMAN
HOMECOMING! Excelsior!
The Power Rangers: A show from the 90's where high school kids find magic belt buckles that enable them to turn into ninja warrior dinobot robo-pilots. Yes, it was a strange decade, the 90's, yet I still look back on it fondly. It was back when they still made low-budget live-action sci-fi shows, and not everything sci-fi or comedy on TV had to be done with bad animation. Instead stories could still be told through the medium of bad acting. Truly the halcyon days.
Power Rangers was a cross between Saved by the Bell and some Japanese Game Show that you accidentally stumble across after midnight while watching cable. Five very American hip kids with tight-rolled jeans, oversized cut-off sweatshirts and half-undone overalls would discuss some issue at school about bullies, and then a floating head would summon them to a giant spaceship and inform them that aliens were attacking, and then the kids would morph into a Japanese Action Monster Movie. You would then watch motorcycle helmet-wearing colorful ninjas fight guys in rubber suits somewhere in a California desert for the next twenty minutes. You wouldn't see the kids outside of their ninja fighting suits and helmets again until the credits were about to roll, and whenever they spoke the helmeted ninja would move his or her arms around really flamboyantly so the viewer could tell who was supposed to be speaking. It was fairly ridiculous yet pretty fun to watch back in the day.
So this year they released a Power Rangers reboot movie, and a couple of the folks who listen to the Vorpal Podcast asked us to review it so they could hear our take. Since it was only in theaters for about a week before it went to video (which ...should've been a warning I now realize), Suzy and I decided to just rent it and do a live podcast review it immediately after watching it. Its fair to say we both were ready to Morph into rock monsters and join Rita Repulsa by the time this movie finally finished.
I'm just going to go ahead and tell you, this movie did not have nearly enough Power Rangerin' in it. Plenty of teenager angst, but very little Mighty or Morphin at all. They also make it super clear this movie was heavily sponsored by Krispy Kreme. It was like Mac and Me, except without the cute little Coke-drinking alien who makes you want to keep watching. GO GO POWER RANGERS! VORPAL PODCAST: POWER RANGERS (LIVE)
So just finished watching and recording a podcast review for TRANSFORMERS:THE LAST KNIGHT, and I am just going to say, this has to be the worst Michael Bay movie yet. I can't imagine how a giant-budget movie like this got green-lit, and I'm a guy that actually enjoyed Suicide Squad when I saw it in the theater.
Don't get me wrong, I don't automatically hate Michael Bay movies. I loved the first Transformers, and the second Turtles movie was pretty good too. But there is a storytelling and visual style that Michael Bay is known for, and that is usually ridiculously big explosions and effects (good) but silly or inconsistent plot writing and characters (not as good). Still, if you promise you'll show me Optimus Prime punching a giant bug-robot in the face, then I'll forgive a lot of plot holes and silliness. But this movie did not have enough robot fights or explosions to overcome the stupidity of the characters and plot and whatever the hell was supposed to be happening on screen. Not even close.
It turns out that forgiveness only goes so far. THE LAST KNIGHT far. If Michael Bay was for some reason secretly trying to actually torpedo the Transformers property, well then he couldn't have done a better job.
By Hera! Wonder Woman is finally here to save the DC Cinematic
Universe! Cory, Suzy, and JC get pull out their bracers of
deflection and review the Heroine from Paradise Isle. So grab your
shield and unhook your lasso, because these superhero fanatics are
about to drop some serious truth about Wonder Woman!
Cory and Suzy of the Vorpal Podcast are joined by Iron Fist expert Chad Parish of the Dead Games Society podcast to review Netflix's newest Marvel street-level superhero: Iron Fist! Clear your mind and summon up your Chi for this special extended Kung Fu Netflix edition of the Vorpal Podcast!
Its time to downshift into gear and check out the latest episode of the Vorpal Podcast, because THE F8 OF THE FURIOUS is going to blow your gaskets off. Furious Suzy educates Cory and JC on the rich saga that is the Fast franchise. The three also discuss the finer details of this cinematic masterpiece, such as how in the world do you remotely hack and drive a submarine with an ipad? SHUT UP! DOESN'T MATTER! HIT THE NITROUS!
On this episode of the Vorpal Podcast,
Cory, Suzy, and JC watch each other's favorite movies, and review their
co-hosts' terrible taste in film. Its a three-for-one review of some
cinema classics!
On this episode of the Vorpal Podcast the dillettante, the dancer, and the dungeon master hack back
into the matrix to see what the newest live-action cyberpunk movie,
Ghost in the Shell, can teach us about humanity. Turns out: not
much. But there is an assassin droid in a Scarjo body if that trips
your trigger.
On the latest episode of the Vorpal Podcast Suzy and I are joined by my Vorpal Chainsword Games partner-in-crime JC to discuss giant Apes fighting Samuel L Jackson on an island that leads into the Hollow Earth. My money's on Jules!
Hey hey hey! We've launched a new Podcast here at the Vorpal Chainsword Network. Its called the Vorpal Podcast and its all about discussing comic book and sci-fi movies and arguing about their place in the greater pantheon of important topics. Such as the ongoing argument of whether Marvel is better than DC (its not, but don't tell that to my co-hosts).
The first Issue of the Vorpal Podcast sees myself @VorpalC and my co-host @Suzapaloozah reviewing the New Old Wolverine movie - Logan.
Should you go see Logan?
Yes!
Should you listen to the podcast afterward to see if we noticed the same stuff you did?
Yes!
Should you consider the implications of the Logan storyline and its ramifications on the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe?
...Well, no, probably not. Its pretty standalone.
Running
some Middle Earth 'Scouring of the Shire' using AD&D? Yes please!
We discuss Rob Ujazdowski's "Scouring of the Shire" AD&D adventure he's run at GameholeCon, Nexus Game Faire, and GaryCon. Its a great adventure about an oft-forgotten part of the Lord of the Rings story.
In honor of Valentines Day I'd like to talk about a subject most near and dear to my heart, my unrequited love for Ravenloft and all things Strahd Von Zarovich!
On the Dead Games Society podcast #38 we talk a little about the tragic romance that is Strahd Von Zarovich's origin story.
In the original AD&D Ravenloft adventure from 1983, known among collectors as "I6," we are introduced to a most cunning Vampire Lord that harries the Player Characters throughout their journeys within the Transylvania-like realm of Barovia. The villagers name him as "The Devil Strahd," and that he lives in the mysterious castle that perches above the village like a waiting vulture. This mysterious Strahd expertly performs guerilla-like attacks on the PCs as they travel and camp at night, striking only once or twice before fading back into the shadows. Eventually the PC's may explore Castle Ravenloft and find Strahd's personal journal, wherein he describes in his own hand (and point of view) how he came to become obsessed with his younger brother's fiance as well as his own creeping mortality, and made a pact with some dark entity to the blood-drinking master of Ravenloft.
"With words she called me “brother,” but when I looked into her eyes
they reflected another name – “death.” It was the death of the aged that
she saw in me. She loved her youth and enjoyed it. But I had squandered
mine. The death she saw in me turned her from me. And so I came to hate
death, my death. My hate is very strong: I would not be called “death”
so soon. I made a pact with Vol, a pact of Blood. On the day of the
wedding, I killed Sergei, my brother. My pact was sealed with his blood,
his…divinity. I found Taryana weeping in the garden east of the Chapel. She fled
from me. She would not let me explain, and a great anger swelled within
me. She had to understand the pact I made for her! I pursued her.
Finally, in despair, she flung herself from the walls of Ravenloft and I
watched everything I ever wanted fall from my grasp forever."
-Tome of Strahd
During the adventure, the PCs are tasked with protecting Ireena Kolyana from Strahd's affections (who he sees as the reincarnation of Tatyana). He constantly tries to separate her from the PCs and whisk her away to Castle Ravenloft to woo her into loving him. However he thinks the best way to do that is to charm a PC into attacking her and then swooping in to destroy that PC in front of her. He's not a super lovey-dovey dude. Based on that diary passage above, I don't think the Strahd fall from grace is about love so much as obsession with her youthfulness and rebelling against his encroaching mortality. When Strahd says that he "Loves" Tatyana (Ireena), its really more about his obsession with her youthfulness and carefree life. Love is reciprocal and pleasant, Obsession is more one-sided and lustful. I think it could be argued that obsession may be a stronger emotion than Love, and I don't think Love is really a power that would create vampires, after all. So when Strahd is chasing after the PCs in I6 and trying to capture Ireena, I think he subconsciously understands this lost cause, and knows that she will never actually love him, no matter how much he whines about it. He doesn't expect to actually get her. He simply desires a justification to feel persecuted again, to be perceived as a martyr as much as possible. Of course, once he achieves that goal of being rejected and again proving the injustice of "love", he'll he'll happily rip the rest of the party to shreds. Happy Valentine's!
So that's a bit of my take on Strahd's personality, but developing your own understanding of Strahd's motivation is key to playing him as interestingly as possible if you dare take your players through the original I6: Ravenloft.
You can listen to me ramble on and on about how much I love Ravenloft (with tangential references to Valentines Day) on the DGS Podcast #38!
In Dead Games Society Podcast #37, DGS Chad and I talk about what Out-of-Print RPGs and
miniature wargames we're running at this upcoming GaryCon (Battletech
and Starship Troopers! w00t!), and then
move into discussing World Building (especially building your own world
within an established setting) with the historical details that help you
more confidentially improvise and react to player actions while running
your RPGs!
Welcome one and all to the Yawning Portal! Grab your iron rations, silver mirrors, and tinderboxes because it’s time to descend into the dreaded Undermountain! We’re talking convention-gaming Undermountain, that is. On episode of the DGS Podcast I take the DGS mic on a solo adventure down into the cold dark to explore the depths to which one can go when creating conventions based around old-school Megadungeons. I interview Brando of the annual megadungeon-themed convention Brandonomicon, and we discuss hyper-deadly Undermountain, Ropers, Twitch-style technical setups for multi-room gaming, making mystic treasure props and cards for the players, side-betting on adventurer deaths, dungeon-themed geocaching, and for some reason, pizza roll eating contests! (Plus a special return edition of the Vorpal Chainsword Quizblast!)
This week on the Dead Games Society Podcast we discuss the old-school RPG Cyberpunk 2013 (yes, the hyper-deadly edition that came before Cyberpunk 2020). I interview Digital Dungeon Master Chad Parish (who runs Cyberpunk 2013 regularly at Cons) about the game and what its like to take mirrorshaded players into a world set in the distant dystopian future of Two-Thousand and Thirteen! We also discuss Chad's fantastic answer to the ever-problematic Cyberpunk RPG question of (be it Shadowrun, Cyberpunk20XX, or other): "What do you do with all the meatspace mercenary characters while the one hacker player just wants to keep surfing the matrix?"
Of course his solution is based on Neuromancer. Of course!
