proof of life

today in recent fb marketplace finds: a grip of Wizard Magazine centerfolds circa 1997-1998 plus two appropriately-sized Ikea frames for $40 total. there's also a Fantastic Four one but it sucks so bad i won't post it. i'm framing the last two, though.

my partner just sent me this one this morning! a Suzi in her natural habitat (a pile of trash)

HELLO?? YEAH I'M--YEAH I'M IN AN UNDERGROUND BUNKER!! I'M ON MY MOBILE!! YEAH IT'S RUBBISH!! WE'RE BACK ON THE AIR!! WE-ARE-BACK-ON-THE-AIR!! ON THE CRITERION CHANNEL!! THE CRI--YEAH!! YEAH OKAY. CIAO!!

This is a cat check point. Relinquish your most recent cat picture on your phone

hi, i'm argent (and that's Suzi (a cat))

or like so

its Suzi, queen of my heart!

and if the family is neglecting their kids' needs in favor of buying candles, at least some of the kids are going to notice, especially if they look around at other families.

the young children of wealthy families are not wealthy. their parents are wealthy. the kids have nothing.

11. this one is also for @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social — i replaced a few hundred pages of Stormbringer with 5e Black Sword Hack, a ~100pg, digest-sized cutie that does the job better and isn't at least a quarter-century out of print and priced accordingly.

10. this one is for @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social — i don't have Stormbringer, but I do have her weird cousin Hawkmoon. apparently the French edition of this got a lot of love, but all we got was one adventure, The Shattered Isle. also notable for being one of the first rpgs designed by a woman.

9. my collection of early-2000s Traveller reprints. they're in a landscape format which is probably to keep them all from being phone book-thick. i think i copped these around the time i was hunting down the Gloranthan Classics reprints, so i must have been actively jonesing for reprints.

8. GATEWAR: Believable Fantasy Role-Playing in the World of Vinya. speaking of ads in Dragon Magazine, this one time i sent my name and address to a company called Escape Ventures who claimed to offer paid playtesting gigs for major TTRPG publishers. i don't remember if i had to pay for the honor.

7. RÜS: Fantasy Role-Playing in Heathen Russia. if i had a nickel for every time i copped an impenetrable TTRPG off eBay that i saw an ad for once in Dragon Magazine circa 1989, id have enough money to cop another impenetrable TTRPG off eBay that i saw an ad for once in Dragon Magazine circa 1989

6. Fever Knights is a work by cartoonist Adam Ellis @adamtots.bsky.social, a graphic novel in the form strategy guide for an Earthbound-like video game that doesn't exist, but there's also a Fever Knights TTRPG that does exist, loosely derived from Zweihander. strange things afoot at Andrews McMeel.

Original post: dice.camp/@mxmarkargen...

Suzi is not so much a shoulder cat as an equestrian of human mounts (please forgive the shirtlessness)

3. around 1980, Chaosium cut a deal wth the now-long-defunct Reston Publishing to get a hardcover editon of RuneQuest into bookstores alongside AD&D. i didn't find out about this hardcover edition until 2010 or so. the first copy i got off eBay was bound with the signatures out of order.

2. i found this copy of the Corgi Books edition of Tunnels & Trolls on the grungy shelves of the local dimly-lit android's dungeon about thirty years back, around the same time i was playing T&T: Crusaders of Khazan on PC. the solo adventures came from eBay and Flying Buffalo decades later.

1. one saturday morning after work about fifteen years ago i drove to a McDonald's two hours out of state to meet a sketchy older dude and slip him two $20 bills in exchange for a battered plastic shopping bag containing a stack of his late brother's 1974-era original D&D booklets

well this just isn't playing fair.

Nez and Suzi have claimed the ottoman for their own

damn right

"Eveghenia first on mars"

partner sent me this a couple days ago (not apparent from the angle, but it's a dreidel)