The Appendix N Jam Results are In

 While the contest judges are still working their way through the entries for the 2025 Appendix N Jam adventure module contest, the community judging has completed. 

My entry, Mistborn of the Thorn Isles, rated 177/227. Pretty low. But overall, it looks like there were mostly good entries. My weighted score was 3.176 out of 5, but the raw score was 3.709 from 11 reviewers. 

Looking at the criteria, I ranked best in playability (#140), and while the lowest ranked criteria was how well my game would fit in Appendix N (#189), that was also the highest individual score (3.425 weighted, 4.000 raw score). So it looks like most people got the assignment. 

[I couldn't find what criteria was used to weight scores on the site, but I'm sure it's there somewhere.]

 Some people had trouble downloading the module during the review, but I contacted Itch and they say the file wasn't indexed properly but should be now. So feel free to hop over and download it!  If you're running a salt-box/wavecrawl game, or just want a spooky sorta Celtic themed island to drop in your campaign, it should be a good fit. 

Movie Review: K-Pop Demon Hunters

I spent the past three weeks teaching the English camp I usually teach over summer and winter breaks. Yes, board games were played (Dungeon!, King of Tokyo, Werewolf Dead or Alive, Bang!). And this past week, my class watched K-Pop Demon Hunters for entertainment. 

 I head about the movie several weeks back when it came out on Netflix. Lots of people here in Korea were gushing about it. I'm not a fan of K-Pop, though, so I didn't rush to watch it. But my students wanted to see it (some of them for the Xth time), so we did. 

Parents wondering about Curse Words: None that I remember. There's some cartoon violence, but it's fairly kid friendly and wholesome. 

The movie follows a trio of K-pop singers who also happen to be the Chosen Ones to defeat demons and protect the magical weave of the world, the Honmoon. But Rumi, their leader, has a secret. And Gwi-Ma, the demon lord, has sent a group of demons to form a K-Pop boy band, Saja Boys, to compete with Huntr/x, the protagonists' girl group. 

The animation is for the most part really nicely done 3D animation mostly in a heightened reality style, but in anime fashion occasionally shots or scenes switch to more cartoony "chibi" or "kawaii" style. Yeah, it's Korean, but my language for discussing this stuff comes from Japan. Sue me. 

The story is fine for kids, but honestly, it's pretty cliche and predictable. But it does have compelling character arcs that pay off in the end (though you can see them coming if you've seen other Chosen One stories before), so it's competently scripted and the voice acting is good. And the music...well, if you like K-Pop, you'll like this film's soundtrack. It's not my style. 

I did appreciate the nods to Korean history, culture, myths, and legends. And as someone running an Asian fantasy D&D campaign, there's always something useful to snag from something like this. And some of the ideas in the film have given me ides for my campaign. 

In the end, yeah, it's not a bad movie. Just not my normal cup of tea. If you have kids and want to watch something together, there are worse choices could make. And even if you don't have kids, if you like Asian fantasy, K-Pop, Korean culture in general, and/or Chosen One/Magical Girl media, why not give it a watch? If you aren't into any of that stuff, you probably aren't missing much by skipping it. 

Final verdict: Not bad, but not something I'd likely watch again. 

Gearing Up for the Online SummerCon

The TTRPG in Korea community is hosting their online SummerCon at the end of the month (Aug 29-31). I'm signed up to run a Classic D&D game during the con. Hopefully, I'll have time to play in a few other games as well. It's right before the start of the new semester (Sept 1), but I'm more or less ready for my classes. 

I posted about my idea for the con game a few weeks ago. And in the mean time, I've redrawn the maps, revised and switched around some of the encounters, and added a few puzzles/challenges for some of the extraneous monsters. I also updated the pre-gen characters that I posted about a few weeks ago. 

This weekend, I created a Roll20 game for the adventure. I also digitized the maps using Dungeon Scrawl (a crash course in that app, which I'd only noodled around on before). I've got the basics of that down now, and the maps in the R20 game look pretty good. Not professional level, but good enough. 

I spent a lot of time today creating custom character sheets for the pre-gen PCs. Roll20 has a BECMI (RC) sheet, and a BX sheet, but neither exactly fits my house ruled version of D&D. I'm not running full TS&R rules. I've still got Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling as classes for this game. But otherwise, I'm using my house rules. I've got all 14 pre-gen sheets done -- two for each class. I still need to make token images for them, and get the tokens set up. 

I've got the character sheets set up with macros to roll for attacks, saving throws, and things like Thief skills or Turn Undead. That way the players can just go to the sheet and press a button to roll, and all the math is done for them. It will save a lot of time dealing with new to old school players. Considering the types of games on offer (5E/Pathfinder games of course, some neoOSR games like Bastionland and BlackHack derivatives, Free League games, various story/indie games), I'm likely to get some newbies. 

 ________

In other news, I've been playing at the cafe I think would be good for our face-to-face Busan Tabletop Con, and it is a pretty good place to play. Scott and Justin have both visited, and they approve as well. Scott is pretty busy right now with the SummerCon, but after that's settled, I think we'll get to work organizing our local event. 

I plan to run this same adventure, and maybe either a Flying Swordsmen 2E adventure or a Chainmail-based tabletop skirmish/dungeon crawl game. AKA, reviving my idea from last year.  Probably more Chainmail than Gauntlet, but similar. I'd need to get off my ass to prepare for either of these two additional games, but that's a good thing. It will keep me engaged with the ideas. 

Mistborn of the Thorn Isles (Appendix N Jam 2025)

 I'm not on itch.io...or rather, I wasn't on itch before last week. So I wasn't aware of the Appendix N Jam adventure writing contest until Justin (of Vaults of Ur fame) told me about it. With his encouragement, and with only a week left to submit something, I applied, got a title, and made a 4-page (A5 size) adventure. 

 You can see my submission here. If you use itch.io, you can log in and vote for it. And check out the other submissions, too. I've only had time to look at a small fraction, but there's a ton of creativity and cool ideas on display. 

 If you're unaware (as I was), the idea is that the guys running the contest pick a title that sounds like it could be a story or novel in Gary Gygax's Appendix N. Something written by Lovecraft, Leiber, Anderson, Howard, Tolkien, Moorcock, Burroughs, or one of those other luminaries of early genre fiction. Then you design an adventure for an old school style RPG with similar flavor. 

There's a cash prize for the two best entries, but I'm not likely to win and don't care much if I don't. It was just a fun way to spend a weekend. I had a few ideas in my head for adventure ideas in the old adventure fantasy style, but when I got my title, Mistborn of the Thorn Isles, none of my preconceived notions fit. But it seemed like the sort of title a Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, Conan the Cimmerian, Solomon Kane, or maybe Corum story would have. 

So I came up with an idea for a cursed island, Celtic themed (with definitely a dash of Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man), and with some elements that might be found in Appendix N style stories (a cursed people, pirates chasing damsels in distress, and a treasure map leading to the isle). It's for 3rd to 6th level PCs, and written for BX/BECMI, but should be easy enough to convert to AD&D, OD&D, or your retro-clone or modern OSR game of choice.

Of course, I had to leave some stuff out. With a mock up cover page taking up 1/4 of my page space, that left three pages for background, a map, a time counter, random encounters, placed encounters, and a new monster write up. I had ideas for making a small dungeon, or notes to expand on the adventure, but there was no space for that. Maybe, after the contest is over, I'll expand it a bit. But I think it's good enough as it is. 

Anyway, if you were unaware, check out the Appendix N Jam. I'll be looking over more submissions over the next couple of days. I doubt I'll have time to read them all before the audience judging portion is over. But I'll be downloading a lot of them to look over when I have more time. 
 

Movie Review: Fantasic Four: First Steps

Yesterday, the new Fantastic Four opened in Korea, a day before in the U.S. So of course we went to see it! This was the movie I was looking forward to the most this year, and to get down to it, it did not disappoint. 

Parents wondering about cursing in the movie: A couple instances of "shit" but otherwise nothing too bad. 

First off, I like this cast. All of the four leads felt right for the characters they were playing. And while I've not read FF comics extensively, I've read a few here and there. And seem them in cartoons, crossover events, etc. They got the characters right. Well, mostly. I did like how in the early 00s FF movies, Johnny and Ben were always bickering...but it was overdone then. There could have been a little more of that in this movie without ruining the feeling, in my opinion. And a few times Reed didn't really seem that smart. I think they were trying to show just how tough of a problem Galactus is, but there were a few scenes that made Reed look impotent. Other than those two things, the characters felt right to me. 

I also really like how all four members have a chance to shine. They each get their moments of character development, vulnerability, and a chance to shine in solving the problem of Galactus. And Galactus really is a problem to be solved, not a villain to be defeated. But I won't say more on that to avoid spoilers. 

The special effects were well done. The music was great. The weird retro-futurist 60s of Earth 828 was cool to just look at and admire. And Pedro Pascal again gets to act alongside an armored, floating CGI baby carriage. 

Sorry if this is a little bit spoilery, but it's got nothing to do with the plot. There was absolutely nothing to tie into any other existing MCU properties, but the mid-credit scene does hint at what's to come. The post-credit scene was just fun.

Best MCU movie to date? No. But it was better than a lot of the stuff that's come out the past couple of years. With this film, Thunderbolts*, and Daredevil Born Again, I'm confident that Marvel is righting where they went wrong. 

But...Superman was better. It hurts to say that, as a Marvel kid, but DC wins this round! Don't let that dissuade you, though. Fantastic Four First Steps was not a fantastic bore. I want fantastic more! 

Some Updates to an old Dungeon

The Seoul-based TTRPG in Korea group is gearing up for their Online Summer Con. The days haven't been decided yet, but it will be a weekend in August. I'm hoping it will be either the 2nd or 4th weekends, because on the 3rd I'll be up in Seoul for an academic conference and won't have a lot of time to get online and play games. 

Of course, the 2nd week is the final week of English Camp, so I can't play in any Friday games, but Saturday afternoon/evening, or Sunday will work for me. 

The 4th week is best for me. Nothing much else going on that weekend. 

Assuming I have time to run something, I've been working on updating an old one-shot adventure I made during my time in Yamanashi. I ran it for them so they could experience a mid-level game, with more powerful characters and enough magic items. They ran through the adventure, but I don't remember exactly how it turned out. I have a few notes from those sessions (I think we spent two evenings on it), but they're incomplete. 

So I'm updating it for the Summer Con. And if it goes well, I'll also probably run it for the Busan Tabletop Gaming Con (that's not the official name yet, just the one I prefer) that Justin, Scott and I are organizing. 

The adventure as I wrote it back then (20ish years ago) had too many monster encounters and not enough interesting puzzles/situations. I redrew the maps, simplifying them a little but also making them less linear at the same time. I took out or changed some monster encounters, rearranging a few things. I added more exploration/navigation/spelunking challenges. I've upped the treasure a bit, but since this is a one-shot, that's probably not so important aside from magic items. After the Cons, I'll probably format this and sell it through Hidden Treasure Books, though, so the treasure content may matter to players in the future. 

The basic premise is that there is a tower built by a wizard. A dragon destroyed the wizard long ago, and has laired in the caves beneath the tower ever since. A new wizard has shown up and taken over the tower, but stirred up the dragon. Both the wizard and dragon are problems for the local lord, so he's asking adventurers to deal with one or both problems for him. 

So players may decide just to deal with the dragon. Or just with the wizard. Or get ambitious (in a 3-4 hour time slot) and take on both. And of course I'm prepared with ideas for if they try to team up with one side to take out the other.  And the inevitable double crosses that may happen. 

I found a file with some pre-made BECMI characters that I used for another project. That means Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling are classes, so it doesn't completely follow my TS&R rules, but I'll use them anyway for simplicity. They were 1st level, so I updated them to be anywhere from 5th (the Elves) to 8th level (the Thieves). I had pre-made magic item packets from the time I ran this adventure in Yamanashi, so I added those magic items (with a few changes here and there) to the characters. And updated them with TS&R abilities (mostly for Fighter types, since I have rules for Sweep and the like). 

I need to finish up a few more encounter area descriptions (the wizard's lair). And for the Seoul Summer Con, scan the maps and prepare them for a VTT. I'm looking forward to running some old school D&D for hopefully some new blood.  

Movie Review: Superman (2025)

 This afternoon, the whole family went to see the new James Gunn Superman. 

Wondering if there are curse words in it? Quite a few characters say shit, but I don't remember any F-bombs in it. 

So how is the movie? It was excellent. It was fun, exciting, had me almost tearing up in a few places, and finally, we have a Lex Luthor whose genius evil plan is actually fairly intricate and complex. No spoilers, but of course you know it's all going to unravel in the end. But it's a worthy plan for a movie villain. 

The acting was good. My wife has been a fan of Christopher Reeve's Superman since she was a girl, and she really liked Corenswet as Clark/Superman, and Brosnahan as Lois Lane. I really loved Hoult's take on Lex Luthor, and a lot of the supporting cast were fun as well. 

I haven't read Superman comics extensively, but I liked that the film used characters from the All Star Superman run in the Daily Planet. I don't know how important they are in normal Superman comics (haven't read any in a long time) but it was fun to see that group in the film. Plus, they found room for Otis and Miss Tessmacher from the Donner films (who may also be in the comics?).  

Another thing I liked was that the plot didn't go as I was expecting it to from the trailers. That's all I'll say on it, but while there were a few things I predicted, lots of other things surprised me. 

The special effects were mostly good, but there was a scene where a choice was made to make a certain...element, let's say...look like it was made of Minecraft blocks. Not sure where that choice came from, and it looked odd. Was it intentional? Was it just rushed? No idea. But overall the super powers, the fantastic locations, the creatures, etc. looked good.  

Most of all, and no apologies to the Snyder-verse fans, we finally have a Superman who embodies HOPE again. For that, I'm really happy. 

Go see this movie. Seriously. It's good.