Moe Lane's Blog, page 703
July 1, 2021
Lost afternoon!
It was a false alarm sort of thing, thank goodness. The youngest does not have strep throat (he doesn’t have COVID, either). Still, straightening that all out via a pediatrician visit was fun. And now I have a sore throat, and I know perfectly well it’s psychosomatic…
June 30, 2021
Tweet of the Day, Yes, That Is SO Much Better edition.
@EsotericCD is correct: they should have let the kids have them. I’m not precisely sure how they could have done a worse job of disposing of the things:
how it started / how it’s going pic.twitter.com/ib24mll7LF
— David Hines (@hradzka) July 1, 2021
Annnnnd… below is how it kept going. Hopefully, nobody was seriously hurt…
The moment the explosion happened. Wow.
— Jessica Oh (@JessicaOhTV) July 1, 2021: alyssaacasillas @FOXLA pic.twitter.com/bz0epXHUUr
RIP, Donald Rumsfeld.
He was one of our better poets. I’m not actually joking here. I would like to write a poem that was this good. My condolences and prayers to his family and loved ones.
Reports that say that something hasn’t happened
are always interesting to me, because
(as we know),
there are known knowns;
there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns;
that is to say
we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns
—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
And if one looks throughout
the history of our country
and other free countries,
it is the latter category that tends to be
the difficult ones.
Item Seed: Spell Cubes.
Spell Cubes
Appearance: A regular-sized Rubik’s Cube; while looking like a toy, it feels heavy in one’s hand, and metallic to the touch. Spell Cubes are not invulnerable, but they can take a battering and still function.
Use: typically, a miniature grimoire. Each Spell Cube can hold up to six basic spells. Traditionally, the spells are variants of the following:
Red: Heat
Orange: Move
Yellow: Glow
Green: Deflect
Blue: Cool
White: Heal
To activate, touch the center square on one side, concentrate, and spell whatever magic energy is required. The basic spells do not need to have the Spell Cube in a pattern to work, but they also have very mild effects, and the amount of energy that can be put into one is limited.
Creating a pattern with a Spell Cube can produce more blended (and powerful) effects (for example, combining Heat/Deflect to make a fiery shield), but the process is not instantaneous. At a minimum, the caster will have to make both magical skill rolls to define the effect, and a physical dexterity check to weave the spell together. On the other hand, magical failures involving Spell Cubes give much less dire results.
Spell Cubes are typically used in mages’ academies to give apprentices practice in both basic spellcraft and hand-eye coordination. Most mages graduate to direct magical manipulation, once they graduate, but a few do fiddle around with Spell Cubes for their entire careers. It gives them something to do with their hands, you see. And it’s useful when you don’t want to worry about generating a serious magical backlash over a simple spell.
And, yes: those mages do modify their Cubes. An Archmage’s Spell Cube could have all sorts of spells on it.
The KING IN YELLOW RPG Bundle of Holding.
Having backed the KING IN YELLOW RPG Kickstarter I can tell you that the stuff that they’re offering in the Bundle of Holding‘s worth it. Particularly Robin Laws’ THE MISSING AND THE LOST: it’s just a good book in its own right. He should be selling it more widely — in fact, why am I not telling him that?
The June Patreon stuff is up!
Behold!
RPG: Monster War Doom, Part I: The World of Coming Doom. Can’t have Doom without a world to put it in!Short Story: We Like To Talk About The Place. And they certainly do!As always, sign up for my Patreon if you haven’t yet!
Patreon!June 29, 2021
The new BLOOD RED SKY trailer.
I watched a lot of trailers today. It was that kind of day. But this latest trailer for BLOOD RED SKY doesn’t look half bad. It’d be even more interesting if she wasn’t an actual vampire: just a regular mom who maybe shouldn’t be taking flights…
The LUCA Honest Trailer.
LUCA was surprisingly free of emotional torture. I mean, considering it’s a Pixar flick. I liked it, and so did Honest Trailers, apparently. You do have to wonder just how much Vespa paid for that product placement, though.
