Moe Lane's Blog, page 784

Guy Ritchie to direct MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE.

So: “Guy Ritchie, known for his films Snatch and The Gentlemen, has joined the World War II film Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare at Paramount as writer and director.” …Annnnnnnnnd that’s enough for me, what-what? Just let me know when it’s coming out, and I’ll pencil in the date to go see it in theaters. I’m sure they’ll have worked out all the pesky little details by then.

Mind you, it will be a while. I’d be surprised if this gets released before 2023. Still, something to look forward to.

Day 3, Fulfilling the TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION Kickstarter.

The books are ready for shipping! Well, except for one person I’m waiting to hear back from to find out if they want two of one book or one each of two books. So if you’ve gotten an email from me on that, let me know.

Anyway, tomorrow I’ll take ’em all over to the post office and mail ’em out, along with a few complimentary copies to various people and so forth. Assuming it doesn’t rain, which it has been doing with some regularity over the last week or so (when it’s not snowing). I am so ready for winter to be over…

Moe Lane

PS: Books can be bought here.

02/23/21 Snippet, GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND.

I think this is perilously close to being done.

Patreon!

“Not until afterward,” Greg said. “We found a bunch of stuff on his computer. The usual: he was keeping a private journal, showing some pre-obsessive behaviors in his searches, reading a lot of 21st century fiction, all the warning signs. Looks like the Redacted showing up sent him over the edge. The entries got a lot more purple after that.”

“Oh, crap,” I said. At Greg’s look of sudden worry, I shook my head. “It was just that we were talking about the Terrans, and he started going off about ‘mind-locking,’ whatever that was supposed to be. I figured it was just Nur being Nur, but he must have been already going space-happy. Dammit!”

But Greg was shaking his head. “Nah. There was nothing like that in the computer. Just a lot of ranting about Earth and its evil minions. His fixation on the Redacted was pretty thorough. And vicious. Nur really hated that ship.”

“That’s… weird? He didn’t show any of this. Hey, Process!”

“Yes, Ghost-Dancer Tanaka?”

The ultimately depressing WEREWOLF: THE APOCALYPSE: EARTHBLOOD Honest Game Trailer.

Depressing because, yeah, the gameplay looks pretty bad.

I kinda wanted this one not to suck. I also wanted VtM: Bloodlines 2 to come out this year, too, so it’s not been a great week for World of Darkness news.

The two Clam Chowder LPs have arrived!

BEHOLD!

Behold! pic.twitter.com/z1az6gO8K2

— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) February 23, 2021

I do not believe that they sold me these two for fifty bucks. I would have been tempted to splurge if one of them had been only a hundred. I mean, geez, they’re sealed.

I just need to find or buy a record player that can burn the songs to mp3, and then the albums go right up on the wall…

Moe Lane

PS: This CD’s price should give you an idea of how hard it is to find Clam Chowder music these days. Or this LP’s price. Finding these was an absolute stroke of luck.

‘You Were Meant For Me.’

You Were Meant For Me, Jewel

02/22/21 Snippet, GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND.

There might be a book in here.

Patreon!

Landing was not anticlimactic: it was a perfectly good climax to what had been a fun half hour of sheer neurochemical overload, thank you very much. This time I actually landed, but I still had the hatch opening as the hauler touched down. The medical staff unloaded the stretchers with almost blinding speed, too. One of them even had time to check on me; I thought about waving her off, but then I remembered she probably had access to painkillers. I felt I could use one. Or two. Was there a sampler?

Okay, all of that was a lie. Not what happened, but how I was reacting to it. When the doc checked me out she was happy to give me something that made me drift a little, probably because she didn’t want me freaking out when I heard about the two people that had died. I didn’t tell her that I already knew. It gets weirdly quiet in the hauler when it powers down — something about the hull; people are looking into it — and when I was on that ballistic arc all I could hear was the faintest sounds of whistling as the hauler caught what atmosphere was outside.

Well, that and the fuzz. The fuzz that spiked suddenly louder, twice, as we reached the top of the arc and began to descend. I don’t know how it is on other worlds, but on 118-G-002 the fuzz definitely isn’t made up of voices. Ask any pilot, and we’ll all agree. Immediately, and without hesitation. And the voices that aren’t there absolutely don’t ever sound like they’re coming from what was once a human throat. And that means that I didn’t hear anything human in those two spikes, right? Right. Just so long as we all understand it. Or at least… get past it; but that’s what the sedative was for.

Yeah, you’d normally have me at ‘Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition Victorian Age.’

Well, hell.

Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition Victorian Age goes live on Indiegogo tomorrow.

I think i’m obligated to be in, immediately. https://t.co/9qStzLjTfg

— Neil Stevens (@presjpolkrta) February 23, 2021

That would largely be a no-brainer. So would the core M:tA 20th Anniversary game, except for the same problem: no dinero for something this ultimately frivolous. I’m not running a campaign in this setting and I’ve already spent my share of the luxury budget. And, naturally, revenue from book sales is going right back into paying for more books. I’d rather get two novels out this year than pick up these games.

Still: very pretty.

Day 2, Fulfilling the TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION Kickstarter.

Well, the bulk of the packaging is done.

Tomorrow I do all the more persnickety ones, including the international copies. We’re still on-track for me mailing them out Wednesday, which would hopefully mean people will start getting them by the end of the week. At least, that’s the goal. And from there it’s just a matter of finishing up the sampler. With any luck I’ll have it all done two weeks early.

Moe Lane

PS: Books all available here.

Finally finished CYBERPUNK 2077 (B+).

Overall: CYBERPUNK 2077 is a good concept and a good game, but it needed a bit more quality control work before release. I’m not being facetious, by the way: I know that the console versions were disastrous. But since I bought it for PC (and made sure I had a machine that could run it), I’m pretty much shrugging that off.

I’m not really going to apologize for taking the PC Master Race position here, either. Cyberpunk 2077 still needs a bit more long-term stability on the PC (and the release of whatever DLC was planned) before the modders can get their hands on it. But once the modders do get going this game has tons of places to insert missions, vignettes, and entire campaigns. The long-term playability of this game is going to be in the ability of people to mod it, I think. And there’s a bunch of stuff they can do there.

Strengths: I liked Johnny. He was fun to run around with, made me not feel the lack of companions for most of this game. Good stories generally, fun quest lines, NPCs I liked interacting with. Once you get the hang of motorcycles it’s just fun to drive around Night City at 1 AM, which is totally one of the things I wanted to do in a cyberpunk game. And the game is wicked funny in a lot of places. Listen to the conversations around you.

Complaints: hard to reach level 50 before the endgame, pretty much impossible to get all of the cars (which stay on your damn map until you buy them), the aforementioned unfinished QA work. Quickhacks are extremely powerful at endgame, but you’ll pick six and just use those. I’d like more radiant quests and I hope the DLC raises the level cap to 60. Oh, and there’s got to be a better way to fast-level your Athletics skill besides punching the damn walls.

All in all, upgrade your PC and buy the game. Don’t bother getting it for the console until they fix it – and fix how you console folks handle mods, which is a general industry-wide problem and not one I can advise you on. And keep your hotfixes current!