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 A Leigh Brackett-style Mars campaign for an Old-School Renaissance (OSR) game moves away from the "superheroic" feel of John Carter and toward a gritty, "Sword & Science" noir. Her Mars is a dying, dusty world where ancient civilizations are being encroached upon by cynical Earth corporations and hard-boiled mercenaries.This blog entry picks right up from OSR Mars Campaign Update :Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The post Video of the Day – Behind the Scenes of The War Between the Land and the Sea, 2026 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

NUDIST PASTOR FILM WINS BIG The 7th annual Award This! ceremony has taken place at The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, CA and among the nominees for best of indies…

The post Nudist Pastor MOVIE wins Big appeared first on First Comics News.

MY NUDIST PASTOR MOVIE WINS BIG!! Film Threat’s Award This! has become a unique voice for indie film and an annual industry staple. An event with a mission — to champion independent…

The post FILM THREAT AWARDS appeared first on First Comics News.

The gaming industry has evolved far beyond consoles and controllers. Today, it represents a multi-billion dollar ecosystem where players, developers, and marketers converge. At the intersection of this digital revolution…

The post The Rise of Affiliate Gaming: Turning Passion into Profit appeared first on First Comics News.

February 16, Mt. Laurel, NJ: Dynamite Entertainment and Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products unveil today a brand new character entering the broader ThunderCats and SilverHawks comic book mythos, right…

The post New Character Chromium First Appears in ThunderCats X SilverHawks Crossover! appeared first on First Comics News.

February 16, Mt. Laurel, NJ: Dynamite Entertainment announces a brand-new flagship ongoing series hitting fans this May, as Red Sonja rips and tears into She-Devil With a Sword driven by writer Rory…

The post Red Sonja Faces Revolution in Hyboria In Brand-New Series from Rising Writer Rory McConville! appeared first on First Comics News.

Available June 3 in comic shops! MILWAUKIE, Ore., (February 16, 2026)—This June, celebrate love with Dark Horse Comics and Tiny Onion’s newest one-shot, Monsters in Love: A Pride Anthology!  …

The post DARK HORSE COMICS AND TINY ONION PRESENT MONSTERS IN LOVE: A PRIDE ANTHOLOGY ONE-SHOT appeared first on First Comics News.

[Los Angeles, CA] – Walt Disney Alumni and debut writer Chris Yates, teams up with rising artist Simone Ragazzoni (Robotech: Rick Hunter, Power Rangers Universe, Dune: House Corrino) to debut…

The post ONE PIECE CREATOR & NYT BESTSELLERS ENDORSE DEBUT KICKSTARTER, MARCUS WALKER: KINGSLAYER PROTOCOL appeared first on First Comics News.

IDW RELEASES THE SCARIEST GODZILLA COMIC YET THIS SUMMER LOS ANGELES, CA (February 16, 2026) – The shocking fear and astonishing devastation behind Godzilla’s first attack on humanity will be unleashed…

The post ‘THE HORROR OF GODZILLA’ UNLEASHES JAW-DROPPING TERROR appeared first on First Comics News.

Bulletproof Creators Matt Kindt & Brian Hurtt Pull the Pin on the Year’s Most Extreme Action Comic… Packed with Danger, Destruction, and Deranged Covert Operators Trapped Inside an Island Prison…

The post ComicsPRO 2026: You’re Being Sent to FORT PSYCHO #1 – Now Get the %#% Down! appeared first on First Comics News.

First Issue of the New Mini-Series Ships in July – Ongoing Series Planned for Later This Year 2/16/26 Baltimore, Maryland American Mythology Productions is thrilled to announce an all-new line…

The post American Mythology Announces All-New Fright Night Comic Book Series Based on the Classic Horror Film appeared first on First Comics News.

Cloud Eight delivers a classic tale of darkness beneath the suburban ideal, as the Doctor and Rose visit the 47th century Powell Estate

 

The new series of adventures for the Ninth Doctor and Rose stretches its wings a little by taking the pair thousands of years into the future. The TARDIS is still inexplicably drawn to the Powell Estate, but by this point in Earth history it’s been replaced by Cloud Eight, a supposed utopia high above the rain forest previously known as London. That geographical link otherwise impacts the plot not one bit. However, that only underscores it as some sort of hint, Bad Wolf style, of some subtle wider plot arc for this season of audios.

Cloud Eight exists during Earth’s Second Dark Ages. In Doctor Who’s most pleasingly pedantic line since the Master decimated the population of Earth, the Doctor correctly identifies the Dark Ages as merely a period from which little to no historical records survive. “Dark” as in unknown, not somehow grim or evil. Though, of course, this being Doctor Who, the reason nothing survives from this time is not exactly benign…

 

Despite feeling slightly misplaced in the timeline of the Doctor and Rose’s relationship, Eccleston and Piper are both on fire as the pair clash over the Time Lord’s plans

The Doctor and Rose insert themselves with typical ease into the lives of young Elsa and her two Dads, Oz and Marty. With humanity whiling away their days among the clouds while AIs repair the damaged ecology below, the little family initially appear to have a cosy, if somewhat bland, existence. Lots of morning walks, afternoon visits to cute little coffee shops, evenings watching classic Westerns, and all tucked up by bedtime. A very strict bedtime. So strict, in fact, nobody on Cloud Eight can even understand the concept of being awake after dark.

There are typically two types of dystopia in science fiction. The ones where the inhabitants know it’s a dystopia, and the ones where they think it’s a utopia. Cloud Eight definitely falls into the latter camp, and the Doctor’s immediate instincts to pull it all down lead to some conflict with Rose. Their arguments never quite ring true, though, given this series’ setting between Father’s Day and The Empty Child. Rather than the confident time traveller, ready to topple evil galactic news organizations and smoothly con interstellar con men, this Rose regresses to her earliest days. She’s strangely determined that nothing’s wrong here, and the Doctor’s just making trouble. Similarly, she angrily berates him for trying to enlist Elsa’s help in scenes reminiscent of her attitude to Gwyneth in The Unquiet Dead.

It’s almost as if writers Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle weren’t in the loop about where during Series One the story takes place. It’s a shame as in isolation as a story about an inexperienced Rose learning to trust the Doctor’s judgement and not take things at face value, this is top notch stuff.

 

Most of all, Cloud Eight succeeds in feeling like a true, missing piece of 2005’s iconic season

Cloud Eight’s deeper themes and concerns only reveal themselves in the final act, as the root cause of everyone’s behaviour becomes apparent. Unfortunately, that makes them difficult to even touch on without completely spoiling the plot. However, Blogtor can say they’re very much of their time, which is to say 2005. Indeed, if Cloud Eight had aired on television in Series One, it would seemed eerily prescient. As it stands though, the fast pace of world events even between Mooney and Pringle pitching the story and Big Finish releasing it make it almost passe. (More amusingly, a line about Rose not getting any WAP at home will probably trigger a generational divide between those old enough to remember Wireless Application Protocol and younger fans who’ll see it as yet another reason she dumped Mickey.)

Nonetheless, despite feeling like it belongs in a slightly different part of Rose and the Doctor’s timeline, this is peak 2005 Doctor Who arriving two decades on. The slow but steady slide from futuristic domesticity to a living nightmare is neatly balance, while having the Doctor himself fall under the spell is a card all the more effective for being so rarely played.

Most remarkable, Eccleston and Piper continue to excel as their characters, so steeped in every aspect that they perfectly recapture the motions of friction between the two as deftly as the strength of their bond.

 

Doctor Who: Cloud Eight. Cover by Soundsmyth Creative (c) Big Finish Doctor Who: Cloud Eight

The Doctor and Rose travel to the 47th century, Earth’s ‘Second Dark Age’, but when they arrive in the floating box city of High High Wycombe, it’s more like a paradise. The residents live an existence of endless leisure, and at night sleep a blissful, dreamless sleep.

But cracks soon begin to show on its perfect, polished surface, and something terrible is brewing in the mind of teenage Elsa – something ancient and hungry – something that sounds like a nightmare.

Doctor Who – The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Cloud Eight, written by Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle, is now available to purchase for just £9.99 (download to own) or £11.99 (download to own + collector’s edition CD), exclusively here. Please note: the collector’s edition CD is strictly limited to 1,500 copies and will not be re-pressed. 

The post REVIEW: Doctor Who: Cloud Eight appeared first on Blogtor Who.

By Kabuki Kaiser
Self Published
OSR
Hex Crawls - Levels 1-whatever. Don’t fuck up

Danger Will Robinson! The vibe here is how I would live my life if I could. So, you know, I don’t think this is a based review but I’m aware of my love for the vibe.

Fly Me to the Moon gives you the fantastique Moon stitched into a majestic hexcrawl where each entry promises sleepless hours of adventure and d’Amberville conundrums, a moose head of a Moon in 168 hexes compatible with everything OSR from Basic to Advanced.

This 169 page hexcrawl uses about 120 pages to present about 160 hexes to explore on the moon. This is a romantic moon, with every lunar pop culture reference present. Fanciful, it remind a hex crawl, presenting situations that the party can involve themselves in. And, thusly, like most hexcrawls, you must bring to it your murderous intent to play as is. IE: hex connections/an overall thrust are weak Which isn’t a bad thing is your group like to loot The Keep in B2 cause that’s where the most XP is.

I think perhaps we need to talk about three things here. The vibe of THIS hexcrawl and then what a decent hexcrawl is in the context of if this is a decent hexcrawl. What I’m not going to do this time around is cover the evocative nature of the writing and formatting. The evocative writing is fine to good and the formatting is plain, with decent cross-references present, and at about two paragraphs to a column per, written in such a way that it is terse enough and “front loaded” enough to run pretty on the fly.

This is a romantic moon, as is romanticism, mixed in with pop culture. Every type. Cheese. Verne. About a dozen different selenites, including the Selenites, from every incarnation fo media. And, yes, this includes Apollo, the mission. Romantic as in what I’ve always wanted The Dreamlands to be. 

In one hex you stumble across a hunting party. “The party consists of eight hunters led by Turambol, a petty lord clad in a star–studded pyjama, and accompanied by two court poets, both of whom ride zebras and strum luths as they travel. Turambol himself rides a white gazelle with long horns.” Fanciful, in places. If the moon has ever had a reference, in media or culture, dating back three thousand years, then it’s probably in here. And it’s going to have a fanciful bend to it. Think slim arcing towers, silver and blue light and so on. 

We have incursions from other lands. An ambassador from other words, or references to Emperor Norton. Dreamy, but with consequences. “The Rotunda of Earthly Mirrors, a monumental structure of slate and alabaster tipped with a metallic silvery dome stands atop the Mons Piton’s highest peak here. The rotunda is visible from afar, its silhouette contrasting with the darkness of space.” Thematically pretty much everything matches perfectly here. 

A few notes on mechanics before I move on to the nature of a hex crawl. The map is nothing, really. Imagine a black page with hex numbers in it. There’s your terrain. There’s a light background image on the map but it’s artistic. What “travel type” we should consider the moon is not noted, although there are some low gravity notes. Whatever “These basaltic plains lie buried

beneath silt, ash, and black sand” is/are. Except in some places we have wildflower meadows, cultivated fields, groves of fungi and a land of chasms and canyons and the Marsh of Rot. No clue man, we’re just handwaving that. These are ten mile hexes, but mostly flat, I think? There is a landmark or two on the map, but, really, a better job at landmarks on the map would have been nice, as well as horizon stuff, to get players moving from hex to another with “in the distance you see” type of things. A better version of the map would solve most of my bitching here, maybe with a couple of travel/vision notes on it. 

And then, the nature of a hex crawl. What is its purpose? Dread has you wandering around, looking, essentially, for lairs, which contain loot, so you can level. Wilderlands, being a more platonic example of a classical hexcrawl, contains loot hexes as well as things for the party to exploit, or to get in to trouble with. More of a situational encounters, in that there is a situation to interact with … while you still look for personal gain to exploit. This is going to fall solidly in to the situational category, as you will meet a wide variety of people and encounter a large number of areas to find some gain in, either through looting or through making friends. There are lots of ogres wearing bejeweled crowns to talk to, to reference a favorite situation of mine in other adventures. Stab the potentially friendly dude to get the XP? Make friends? 

And this gets to the reference to The Keep in B2 earlier. Are you willing to murder hobo this place up? That would be a more traditional Wilderlands way to explore. Taking each hex individually and exploiting it. You’re going to need a party in the right mindset. And this succeeds admirably in that. You can rescue people/creatures and do some tasks for others if you are so inclined, and you can put the place to the sword and gather the loot also. 

What is lacking here is an overall plot. And I’m using that word very VERY loosely. Interconnections between the hexes. There are a few of those, but they feel intentional and constructed in a blunt way. 

I want to take this hex as an example: “t’s that time of the year again! Once more, the Flying Broom Acrobatics Competition has gathered next to an antique blue marble amphitheatre rising from the cloudy Mare” The Selenians here are excited about this. But no other Selenian encountered will mention it. There is no overview of a larger situations/situations going on that a DM can sprinkle in here and there to make the place seem more like the realm of intelligent beings that it is. There’s a loose “my enemy is the aphid-lord, please help me kill them”  but no larger … geopolitical context? Not in politics, perse, but in terms of larger situations to embroil yourself in. And no summary, anywhere, to help a DM toss some things in. A page of this would have really helped, and perhaps a little more work on the hexes to help connect them just a bit more. Again, some of this DOES exist, but it feels isolated. So, read a 120 pages and take some notes. 

As noted, I like this vibe/theming a lot. It’s consistent. And it provides interactivity for a party willing to mix things up. As a view of the moon, in terms of theming and encounters, I would be hard pressed to believe someone could do better. The map/mechanics are a let down, and it would be a much stronger product with a little summary of situations to help the DM interconnect things more and/or a few larger situations embedded i a stronger way. 

Experienced murder hobos are gonna have a field day. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is listed as fourteen pages and although a few are blank pages you do indeed to get see several hexes and get a sense of the style of encounters you are to encounter, both in romanticism and in hex-crawl nature, so, good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540802/fly-me-to-the-moon?1892600

A question came to mind during this. How do you handle “hidden depth” of resources? This happened in several places in this, and in other adventures as well. A platonic example here may be some mushroom that, if you kill, you could make their large caps in to umbrellalike things that act as feather falling. How do you telegraph this to the party? I mean when you encounter a note like “The spleens can be used to make an amulet of proof against poison.” Great! How do we know that? A simple DM note to the party, maybe during combat, that they seem to fall slower than they should?

Paul Wolfe of Mystic Bull Games is starting up a Sword & Sorcery fiction magazine called Swords Against! The first issue is being crowdfunded now. It features stories by familiar names including Michael Stackpole and Dariel R. A. Quiogue, and interior art by Jason Sholtis (presumably among others).

If that alone isn't enough to convince to you, Jason and I have short comic that will appear in the issue now that that stretch goal has been surpassed. It's called Spells Against Civility. Here's the pitch:

Harken to this tale of two rival wizards, apprenticed together, now alike in Art, pettiness, and vainglory...

Marzomon, once the Golden, former hero whose reputation fell under shadow of cowardice and party abandonment. He now ekes out a living trading on his former glories and hawking dubious male enhancement magics.

Hokus the Black, who sold his soul and other vital constituencies piecemeal to various diabolic entities and must stay ahead of his creditors as he seeks to overcome his rival. 

If any of the above sounds cool to you--and particularly if all of it does--then head over to backerkit and give some support!

 Thirteen Parsecs: Beyond the Solar Frontier is a toolkit-style science fiction tabletop RPG designed by Jason Vey and published by Elf Lair Games. Released in 2024, it is the third pillar in their "trilogy" of core games, following Night Shift (modern horror) and Wasted Lands (fantasy).+1

The post Video of the Day – Doctor Who: General Staal and the Leaders of the Sontarans, 2026 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

 Mixing the "Raygun Gothic" surrealism of C.L. Moore’s North West of Earth with the grimy, claustrophobic body horror of The Red Room and The New Flesh creates a campaign setting that is essentially "Cyberpunk at the Edge of Cosmic Madness."In this world, the frontier of space isn't a high-tech utopia; it’s a decaying, visceral nightmare where the laws of physics are as fragile as the human Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Doctor Who’s Mandip Gill will be a new mum facing a literal nightmare scenario in new horror short Hush Little One, coming to film festivals this spring

 

Doctor Who star Mandip Gill is starring in the new short horror film Hush Little One. The actor, who played the Doctor’s companion Yaz Khan between 2018 and 2022, will play new mother Maya. However, darkness threatens to consume Maya and her baby when the child’s nightmares begin to manifest is physical form in the shadows of their home.

Hush Little One will tour film festivals throughout 2026 and has been described by producers Rebel Yeah! as a “proof of concept” for a feature length version of the story. Whether Mandip Gill will also star as Maya in any feature adaptation is unclear for now.

Hush Little One continues a busy post-Doctor Who career for Mandip Gill. Can You Keep a Secret?, the sitcom starring Dawn French, Mark Heap as a married couple defrauding their insurance company by faking the husband’s death, and Gill as their police officer daughter-in-law, has just finished its first season on BBC One and received a warm reception from audiences and critics alike. Meanwhile, last December she starred as DC Diane Fry in Five’s detective series Cooper and Fry, alongside Downton Abbey’s Robert James-Collier as DC Ben Cooper. Earlier last year, she also has a lead role in near future dystopian series Curfew.

There’s no word yet on second season renewals for either Can You Keep a Secret? or Cooper and Fry. However, it seems likely. Certainly in the case of Cooper and Fry, there are still fourteen more novels in the original series to adapt, so there’s plenty of material with which to continue the show.

In the meantime, Hush on Film will receive its premiere on the 20th of March at Ashford Cinema as part of the Kent on Film weekend.

The post Mandip Gill’s New Horror Project: Hush Little One appeared first on Blogtor Who.

The B/X Carousing Procedure

FRONT (3x5) — B/X CAROUSING (HOUSE PROCEDURE)

1) SPEND (gold is gone):

   Light:    50 gp × level

   Standard: 100 gp × level

   Hard:     200 gp × level

2) INTENT (matters on high rolls):

   Rumors / Contacts / Heat Dump / Blow Off Steam

3) ROLL:

   2d6 + CHA

4) BAND:

   2–5  TROUBLE

   6–8  MIXED

   9–11 GOOD

   12+  GREAT

5) BASE RUMORS (always, by spend):

   Light 1 / Standard 2 / Hard 3

TROUBLE (2–5): +Roll 1 Trouble

   Heat Dump: reroll Trouble once (must take new)

   Steam: roll 2 Troubles, take worse

MIXED (6–8): choose 1

   Complication OR Owed Favor OR Contact-with-a-Want

GOOD (9–11): add by Intent

   Rumors: +1 rumor OR upgrade 1 to STRONG

   Contacts: +1 Contact

   Heat Dump: reduce Heat 1 step

   Steam: small boon

GREAT (12+): add by Intent

   Rumors: +2 rumors OR (1 STRONG +1)

   Contacts: Strong Contact + boon

   Heat Dump: reduce Heat 1 step + safe contact

   Steam: bigger boon

OPTIONAL XP:

   XP = 10% of gold spent (cap 200 × level)

BACK (3x5) — QUICK TABLES

RUMORS (d12)

1 Odd coins buyer       2 Paying for fresh graves       3 Missing guide/map

4 Watch attention        5 Noble servant hiring           6 Shrine lit at night

7 Rival crew hurt         8 Healer wiped out                 9 Road “curse”

10 Locked cellar         11 Torchlight in tower            12 Bounty on the impossible

TROUBLE (d12)

1 Brawl enemy                                               2 Pickpocket (lose +10% spend)

3 Public scene (-1 reactions 1 week)            4 Owed favor (fixer)

5 Property damage (+50 gp×lvl or feud)     6 Bad bet promise

7 Offended faction                                         8 Watch questions

9 Duel challenge                                            10 Hangover day (lose morning)

11 Tagalong NPC                                          12 Marked by rivals