This week

First real week of 2025. First week back at work. I'm at work today, that is; tomorrow, I'm traveling all day for work, Wednesday I'll be at my destination in El Paso and Juarez, and then Thursday I'm traveling all day again. But both of my travel days will have me at my destination before 5 PM. Not only will I have plenty of time to read and listen to music on the flight, but after getting a nice dinner on Uncle My Employer, I have all evening—both Tuesday and Wednesday—to sit in the hotel and do whatever the flip I want to do. Here's my plans for the week.

• I just finished the second (of three) novels in the second (of two) Hawk & Fisher Omnibus collections, and read the first long chapter of the third novel. I intend to finish this novel before I'm home. I've got about 150 or so pages to read. Bones of Haven is the book I'm on. Although this is the second time I've read my omnibus collections, I've never read the prequel and sequel books. I probably should. In fact, I just put them on my Thriftbooks wishlist. I'll order them sometime this year.
• I intend to record audio for my Shadows Over Garenport First column Youtube Video, slap it into a slide-show/presentation style format and upload that as a new Youtube video on one of the two nights that I'm in the hotel in El Paso.
• I intend to eat BBQ at Rudy's. Maybe twice, if I can't find another nearby restaurant that looks as good. Of course, I don't live in the northern midwest anymore; I now live back in the south, so getting good BBQ isn't nearly as hard as it used to. That said, Carolina styles of BBQ aren't the same as Texas, and Texas is the best. And not just because I grew up there. But Texas style seems to have spread and I can get it pretty good here too. But still. If I can get it and work can pay for it, and I'm in Texas while I'm doing it; of course I'm going to. Now, if only there were a Pappadeaux's or a Double Dave's in El Paso, I'd really be good to go. Sigh. I can probably get lunch at Pappadeux during my layover in the DFW airport on the way home, at least.
• I intend to finally finish Sandstorm, the 3.5 era book that I've been reading for months now. I knew that that was going to be tougher to get through than I hoped, but it was even worse than I thought. It's just painfully tedious to read those environmental books nowadays. I just don't have much interest in the super rulesy approach of 3.x, and most of the ideas that it has really aren't all that interesting. My review of it now, were I to write another one to replace the one I wrote years ago, would be even less positive than my already desultory earlier effort.
• Just in case I have time, I'll also bring the first of the first of the Lord of Nightmares Arkham Horrors trilogy. It took me forever to track down the third book, which I foolishly didn't buy when it was still in print. Now that I have it, I have hardly any memory of the first two so I need to reread them. Sigh. Hopefully I'll be reading that on the flight back home.

Updates to DFX, Appendix and Character Sheet

All three documents have had some minor changes. Some of it is merely cosmetic; this is the only change to the character sheet, for instance. But both the rules and the appendix got another editing pass, and some errors were corrected, and a few other things were reworded to be more clear.

And just so this isn't just links to an ephemeral version of the game (not that I have any intention of making any more modifications anymore; and I haven't for a long time. This is probably pretty stable now), here's a picture or two just for fun, from my AI DFX collection.

Dark Fantasy X Rules

Dark Fantasy X Appendix

Dark Fantasy X Character Sheet

An alternative to the cover art

Alpon von Lechfeld, in his study (above) and his lab (below)

Pulp Hero X

Back in this post on my modular modules, I didn't actually have a pulp hero module identified. Part of this is because I never actually did anything with the modules. Then again, there isn't really all that much that needs to be done. If by Pulp Hero X I mean something along the lines of Brendan Frasier's The Mummy or Harrison Ford's Raiders of the Lost Ark or possibly Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing, except also with the possibility of completely non-supernatural games, then what really needs to be done for Pulp Hero X that isn't already there in Horror & Macabre X, License to Kill X or Weird West X anyway? Pulp Hero X becomes more of just a setting than a full module, utilizing nothing new or original that can't be pulled out of the already identified modules. In fact, if Horror & Macabre X's default is a kind of Lovecraftian 20s or 30s, a la default Call of Cthulhu (which it probably would be) then Pulp Hero X is literally the same module, just played with a different tone.

Honestly, what does either of them need that Dark Fantasy X doesn't already provide? Eliminate the fantastic non-human races of Dark Fantasy X, redo the equipment section to focus less on Medieval-like items and instead include some "modern" stuff like guns and cars to replace all the swords and wagons, and you're pretty much good to go. You've got your Lovecraftian magic... if you want to use it. You've got lots of monsters... if you want to use them... and you've got everything you need to build a character. I noticed this when I made a Western appendix area in my Fantasy Hack X game, back when I was still more overtly Microlite derived. I replaced the black powder piratey and musketeer-like firearms rules that Dark•Heritage Mk. IV, the then current version of what is now DFX was, with six shooters and rifles that, honestly, would still be perfectly fine rules for most modern firearms today. Then I had more definition and detail around horses and horseplay, which seemed very genre appropriate.

For something like License to Kill X, I could do the same thing except instead of more with horses, do something about vehicle chases, including car chases, and have more detail and definition around guns because those seem genre appropriate. 

The modules under this paradigm can be as simple as a one pager detailing what elements of the DFX game not to use, and then some expanded stuff that's a little hyper-focused (to the degree these rules-lite rules are hyper-focused at all) on something that seems genre appropriate because the genre itself focuses on that aspect of play.

What brings this to mind right now is, as I've noted in a semi-recent post, is that I'm revisiting my Ruritanian alternate history timeline of a frontier Republic of Texas, except still existing in a Ruritanian section of the US way into the 20s, 30s or 40s, roughly, model railroad plan. As I've started to make more and more specific plans of more and more specific pseudo-dioramas on the layout, it's developing a kind of weird tales, pulp vibe. No doubt, that will make my layout even more anathema to the spergy crowd to disparagingly refer to anything unlike their boring layouts as "cartoonish", but I've long ago decided that I'm parting ways with the rivet-counters and operational spergs, and that my vision of the hobby is so different from theirs that it might almost be best considered another hobby altogether.

Of course, if I'm developing all of this Ruritanian Territory, as part of a fictional "pulp modern" Republic of Texas setting with all kinds of weird supernatural elements in it; archaeologists discovering "The Mound", Nosferatu out west, sasquatches, Dark Watchers, ghost stories, a kind of frontier analog to Arkham County, etc., then whatever I do with that setting for the model railroad plans certainly are appropriate for roleplaying usage too.