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I don’t own a lot of remnants of the D20 boom any more, just a few select books, for the novelty and quality of the ideas rather than for anything mechanical. Tynes’s D20 Call of Cthulhu, for example. The least remembered of these is a D20 Modern setting called Dark Inheritance, which I bought at GenCon. I absolutely adored this back in the day, for its weird mix of genres and modern occult vibe, plus I always thought D20 Modern looked like an interesting system. So in my constant effort to blog a bit more, I dug around till I found my copy, pulled it out, and am spending some time reading it and blogging my thoughts. This is not a review, because I haven’t played it, although that’d be a kick – it’s just a once over. No promises on how often I write these. The original book was published in 2003; I believe there’s also a Spycraft version, published a year later. It is not available in PDF. Noble Knight has a copy of the D20 version, and it occasionally shows up on eBay. The publisher is Mythic Dreams Studios, which appears to have been mostly Chad Justice. Chad is no longer working in the industry and Mythic Dreams only had these two releases, despite plans for other books as per an advertisement in the back of this one. Still, one solid 200 page campaign book isn’t bad. The other writers are a range, career wise. Alphabetically, we have Edward Milton, Jason Olsan. Aaron Rosenberg, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Jeremy Tibbs, Wil Upchurch, and Sam Witt. There’s no indication of who wrote what, but I’d bet that Ryder-Hanrahan wrote at least some of the words that sparked my imagination back then. The cover artists is a dude named Mark Sasso, who sets the tone with a painting of a shadowy figure stepping forward out of what appears to be a fire. Sasso’s gone on to what looks like a decent career in and out of the TTRPG space, with some fantasy-inflected design work for the WWE and metal bands like Dio. The interior art is B&W, mostly spot illos. The book is good 2000s TTRPG design: clear layout, in-world fiction broken out into sidebars, nothing to complain about. This is definitely the era when people expected big metaplot and lots of fiction in their game books. OK, let’s dig in.

Summertime! Pretty solid lineup coming in July; last month set a very high bar but we’re definitely continuing with those sun-drenched themes. Plus, uh, Haneke.

I’ve been rereading Greg Rucka’s Atticus Kodiak books on the occasion of him republishing the first four in the series, and it’s been a pleasure. A gloomy, morose pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless. As always they seem like they ought to be quite adaptable to tabletop RPGs, so I spent a while thinking about that last night while I was falling asleep. The super-easy adaptation would use Night’s Black Agents, drop the vampires. It’s easy to dial that flavor of GUMSHOE into gritty dangerous street level action, and the bursts of competence that result from the Military Occupational Specialty rule – automatic successes once per session on your chosen MOS skill – would also fit perfectly. Atticus and his friends spend a lot of time being able to push themselves to unreasonable levels of competence when the situation really calls for it. ...

It’s clearly the beginning of summer because Criterion’s June lineup is even more summery than last month’s. And last month they did a whole collection of Coastal Thrillers.

The May Criterion lineup is, in my book, timely and exceptional. I am going to be excited for perhaps controversial reasons; let’s dig in! (Man, and I completely forgot to post this in a timely manner. Had it ready days ago.)

Umpteenth in an occasional series discussing games I might ilke to run or play someday. What’s on my mind in 2025? In no particular order… Nahual has been on my list for a while now. It’s a really cool adaptation of a Mexican graphic novel. The Kickstarter had a translation of the original material as a stretch goal, but you know how those go sometimes. Anyhow: it’s interestingly rebellious urban fantasy about shapeshifters who hunt angels to make a living in Mexico City. Needs to be a campaign because the journey of becoming a more adept shapeshifter is a pretty key part of the rules, and the setting is about community which means it also benefits from time to breathe. Somewhat more inclined to run this because it’s a world I’d enjoy riffing on. Legacy: Life Among the Ruins is an odd choice in a way. I’m not compelled by the setting which is fairly generic post-apocalypse material. It’s sort of more a toolkit setting – you can make of it what you will, but you have to put that effort into it. However, the generational style of play is fascinating for me. Also obviously a campaign. I’d run or play. Outgunned is so high on my list of one-shots I can’t even say. I want to find out first hand if the action mechanics are good; word of mouth is strong. I could use a more flexible version of Feng Shui in my toolkit. One-shot, or maybe one scenario’s worth of play over a couple of sessions, since the whole point is finding out if I like it. I do have a campaign floating around in my head set in a Madripoor pastiche, complete with street level superheroes and mad science, and the existing superhero rules for the game would do just fine even before the upcoming superhero-specific book, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Happy to run this. The Troubleshooters is occupying a similar place in my head except it’s more that Tintin nostalgia is strong in me. Pulpy 1965, you bet! Nice d% system that won’t get in the way, Jet Age coolness, etc. I would really dig playing this, I think. Worldwide Wrestling is fun. I’ve run it once; I’d be into running a year’s worth of events in my PNWage Wrestling promotion. (Man, past me put in the work to make that writeup usable, thanks!) Trophy one of these days. Specifically Trophy Dark, I don’t need the campaign play here. And I wanna play this, not run it. I mean I could run it but I’m interested in how it feels at the other side of the table. I did play Trophy Gold once but the scenario never got finished, which was a bit frustrating. Agon or a derivative, but probably Agon. I like getting the pure form of an exciting design. You could talk me into Deathmatch Island. I am more interested in this as a player than as a GM, because I’m interested in the competitive aspects and I don’t want the extra effort of nudging players in that direction. But, you know, with the right group…

I’m going to start keeping track of how many New York themed collections Criterion runs before they get around to Boston. Which I suppose would need to be Boston Crime – it’s a low hanging fruit, y’all. Or Boston Journalism but that’s not quite as rich a topic. Anyhow I did wind up watching Carol from New York Love Stories so I can’t complain too hard. So, April’s lineup:

March’s lineup is the kind of varied, interesting curation that represents the Criterion Channel at its best. Unfortunately, there’s one big miss: no celebration for Women’s History Month! Nannina Gilder took up the slack with a great Bluesky thread (original) curating the collection she’d have made with movies that are already on the Channel. Also I’m late on this one. Criterion dropped the lineup later than usual and it’s been a very busy month for me. So it goes.

Sometimes it’s just a new month with new movies, you know? I’m gonna dig right into it – there’s at least one collection which I want to draw attention to.

I wanted to build something completely weird and gonzo and that’s Heart in a nutshell. It’s a weird dungeon delving game into a dungeon that wants to give you your heart’s desire but isn’t very good at it. The world is just deeply weird. Let’s mess around in it.