Wasteland Wednesday: The Post-Apocalyptic Misadventures of Bluey and Peppa Pig

Okay...so, I don't have kids, so I need to be clear that the following has not been proofread by an expert.  However, I'm pretty sure I have most of the details correct regarding these IPs that have caught my attention over the past several years (and that I'm actually a little surprised I've never mentioned on the blog).

Laura likes to find aggressively pleasant children's programming to throw on the TV every once in a while.  She likes how it can be calming, centering, and oblivious to the shitshow that is the world right now (and maybe has been forever...?), and it usually does its job well.  As I felt with Pokémon Concierge, most of the time these shows are best described simply as delightful.

Two of the programs Laura has found that have really drawn me in are the British show Peppa Pig...

...and its Australian companion show Bluey (all images from their Facebook pages btw)...

I write "companion show" not because it's almost a dog joke, which I just realized, but because -- as far as I can tell -- these two programs are parallel views of a future post-apocalyptic Earth in which anthropomorphic animals have become the dominant species on the planet.

Peppa Pig (the show) is quite a bit older than Bluey (the show) and gave us our first look at a world rebuilt by walking, talking nonhuman (or maybe partially human?) animals.  It seems to take place in what used to be the UK and features a pretty wide variety of species.

There are very few humans.  It definitely looks like a Kamandi type situation.  And of those people that have been shown, I suspect that Father Christmas may actually be a spirit that simply chooses to take human form, and another -- Queen Elizabeth II -- is most likely a clone that was created to raise morale and provide leadership in the post-apocalyptic world.  While it wouldn't be a trivial undertaking by those in power, making copy after copy of one of Earth's more beloved 20th and 21st century leaders would probably be worthwhile to give an extra measure of hope to the survivors, especially when she's commonly seen doing things like having fun in the mud with her subjects.

Bluey, meanwhile, is seemingly set in Australia, and it appears that on this continent, all of the sapient creatures that remain after the global catastrophe are dogs, usually of recognizable breeds.  Bluey, her sister Bingo, and parents Chilli and Bandit, are a family of Australian cattle dogs known as the Heelers (seen three pics up)...clearly a surname given to them in the recent past simply based upon their phenotype.

I think other animals show up only in non-anthropomorphic form, and as far as I know, there are no humans.  It's unclear if these differences between the shows are a matter of geography or focus, or if they might actually reflect that the programs depict different eras of post-apocalyptic Earth.

And really, that's part of what's so intriguing about these shows: the mystery.  We don't even know what caused the fall of humankind!  Was it bombs?  Aliens?  COVID-29?  And is it possible that these are animated documentaries, sent back from a desperate future with the hope that we'll change our ways?  If so, I think they're failing on that front.  Honestly, life in Peppa and Bluey's world seems pretty spectacular.  Families love and accept each other and enjoy spending time together.  There's very little fear and nothing that even resembles hate.  I wouldn't mind falling asleep in a bunker and waking up to that world.

And of course, as a Yank, I wonder what America looks like in that future time.  I believe there's a possibility that what we know as an early animated short, Steamboat Willie, may actually be a similar documentary showing life on the Mississippi River early in Earth's rebuilding stage.  This would be an interesting set of information to add to our knowledge of the post-apocalypse, especially since it appears that some non-anthro animals have undergone other genetic alterations in that timeline.  (A goat whose tail can be cranked to make it sing like a phonograph is probably the best example of this.)

As with Peppa Pig and Bluey, though, specific details are scarce.  It is entirely possible that other "fictional" works we have encountered (including the proto-Kamandi story by Jack Kirby that I wrote about here several years ago) are similarly influenced by actual messages from future sources.  However, it's going to take some real effort to separate truth from myth.  I will be keeping my eyes open for clues toward laying out an accurate future history of Earth.  If you have any insight, I would love to hear from you.

Elphaba and Glinda freaking killed it

It's been a while since the Oscars have been very exciting to me.  I had a period in my youth when I was really into movies and tried to see all the Best Picture nominees that I could, and the show was an event that I even looked forward to (that and the VMAs, for some reason...!).  So, I didn't watch last night, but when I realized that Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande had performed, I checked it out ASAP.  And holy shit.

I am a fan of Oz in general.  It's quintessential American fantasy that I grew up with.  I looked just now and was a little surprised that the only time I've even mentioned it on here is when I referenced it fairly vaguely in a discussion of the history of interplanar portals.  But I dig it in a lot of the forms in which I've consumed it, and last year's first installment of Wicked is honestly one of the most immediately captivating movies I've ever seen.  (It did win awards for costumes and production design last night, both for very good reason.)

Anyway, the fact that Elphaba and Glinda also perform songs from The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz makes this an even more interesting performance.  And they...freaking...killed it.  What's that?  Oh...no, I just have something in my eye...  (As did Michelle Yeoh at the end of that clip, which is really sweet.)

Honestly...and this might be hyperbole that I rethink once it's sat with me for a while...if you had to pick out a few things to show an alien species as representations of humanity's achievements, you could do a lot worse than showing them this clip.  I mean...the Einstein field equations probably have to be in there, and maybe a selection of different expressions of the Golden Rule or something.  But if you want to show that we're a beautiful species who made beautiful art?  This'll do.

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I don't think I've ever gamed in Oz at all, although I've thought a lot about it.  I backed Double Critical's Adventures in Oz Kickstarter and have enjoyed looking through the campaign PDF.  Unfortunately, unless something has changed or changes, it doesn't look like some (maybe any?) of us are going to be getting the physical rewards we signed on for, which is a shame but one of the hazards of taking part in crowdfunding.  So, I can't necessarily suggest picking up the book because there are creators who follow through who probably deserve your cash more...BUT it's a cool sourcebook, and I could easily see myself using it eventually.  Maybe the Monstrous Matters team will encounter some flying monkeys at some point...

A flood of new research on Martian geological history... (That was a water-on-Mars joke.)

I found it sort of interesting that two of the new research papers whose publication I happened to catch over the last few days were studies on Martian geology and reminders that the Red Planet once had conditions that may well have enabled Barsoomian warfare.  That's probably overstating it a little bit, but I do marvel sometimes at how, when I was a kid, I was under the impression that the idea of life on Mars was an outdated and overly fanciful notion, and the longer I've lived, the more we've seen real evidence that liquid water (indicating conditions suitable for life) existed on the surface of Mars in the past and...who knows...maybe it's still there somewhere (probably a stretch, but see the thesis of this sentence).

The first paper came out on Monday in the highly regarded PNAS and covered radar imaging from China's Zhurong Rover, which indicated a history of plenty of surface water and lots of space for living things to grow.  You can read about it at Penn State's website here; here's the quote of the article, from the university's Benjamin Cardenas: "We’re finding places on Mars that used to look like ancient beaches and ancient river deltas.  We found evidence for wind, waves, no shortage of sand -- a proper, vacation-style beach."

Then on Tuesday, Nature Communications published a paper that gives a nontraditional view of why the planet is red, and which indicates that its current chemical structure reinforces a history of "ancient cold and wet conditions on Mars."  You can read more about that at the Discover Magazine website here; the image below is yoinked from that article.

Again, not my image; it came from here

These papers remind me how much fun is still left in speculating on the life history of one of our closest cosmic neighbors.  Mars has played into so many works that influenced my views of science fiction and of the world in general; it's easy to dismiss "Mars stories" as old-fashioned, but sometimes old-fashioned stories still have a lot of life left in them...

In continuing with that little reminder, don't forget this table from OD&D book 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures:

Haruto Suzuki, Three Minute Hero

Okay, it's time to get serious about creating some Agents of SKA.  First up is Haruto Suzuki, who came to be thanks to a little randomization and AI decision-making.  He's a trumpet player from Japan.  His band?  Hmm.  I reserve the right to say this is one that he was just in for a few weeks in high school or something, but let's go with Ringo SKARR.

Yep, still faceless.  I mean, he has a face.  Just not an official one yet.

Because I like to come upon RPG specifics that aren't critical to the story at hand via (1) randomness, (2) undeniable destiny, or (3) other people's ideas that I can bring to life (all perhaps pointing more toward laziness than a devotion to principle), I asked my buddy Jake, who lives in Japan, to write a brief background for Haruto.  Jake isn't an RPGer and probably had a bit of a wtf reaction to the request, but he was gracious enough to toss that aside and help me out.  I found out Haruto was born in 1980.  Some more details:

Haruto Suzuki loves natto for breakfast. He loves the stir of the sauce and the mustard, and he likes that it’s slimy. He likes slimy things. Later, he’ll go to the studio to practice his trumpet, but first he’ll hit the 7-11 for cigarettes. At night, he has a show at Salt Peanuts. He’s not feeling his best, but he’s gonna give it a go. Ganbarimasu!

Stats (3d6+1 in order, no rerolls): STR 11  DEX 9  CON 9  INT 17  WIS 12  CHA 12

Class:  Hmm.

Pretty sure I want classes for this game, but I don't think everyone should just be a Rudie.  So, I'm looking at basing them all on classic ska (and related) songs:

Monkey Man - The big bruiser.

Gangster - The clever rogue.

Three Minute Hero - The magical charmer.

Keasbey Knight - The paladin of making the best of life with your friends.  (Thanks for the idea to whoever it was who has/had that as their handle on some forum or platform...!)

Maybe some more.  I'm thinking about a Special Brewmaster/Brewmistress (but probably not).  I also think the negative connotations of the Monkey Man class may require a rename (or scrapping it).  We shall see.

Haruto is a Three Minute Hero.  He's a star!

Geeky SKAturday: A Kick in the Bits have an anthem for 2025 (and...every year before it, I suppose...)

It is Geeky SKAturday!  Welcome!

Today's song comes from the Leicester, UK, band A Kick in the Bits, who released the EP Don't Break It last month.  This MIGHT be their first album (I'm not sure), but either way it has become an early contender for favorite ska-ish record of the year here at Monstrous Matters.  (So, y'know, me.)

The album is eight tracks and about a half an hour, and the tune that really caught my attention upon first listen is this one, "No Surrender."  It's really more punk-reggae than ska (a lot of their songs wouldn't sound out of place on a Clash album), and it could truly be an anthem for 2025 America:

You can find A Kick in the Bits on Bandcamp, Facebook, and maybe live near you.  They are definitely worth a listen!

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Now, I'll get down to the really good stuff...connecting this to an RPG campaign in which ska bands are time-traveling protectors of multiversal order.  The key to today's song: Politics.  Ska has always been a genre expressing cultural awareness.  You can listen to songs coming out of Jamaica in the '60s and hear both the optimism that accompanied independence from Great Britain AND both adoration and warnings directed toward the original Rude Boys who often found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

In the late '70s, when ska was revived in the UK alongside the punk movement, its political nature was sealed.  It won't all be serious music -- and some of the greats, like Bad Manners, had little serious about them at all -- but the political undercurrent solidified by the 2 Tone scene has had a lasting impression on the music.

And there are going to be folks who disagree with this (I believe them to be wrong), but I'd also argue that the political leanings of ska have almost universally been to the left.  Some of the easiest evidence?  Well, here's the (English) Beat performing in 1982:

I realized that I wasn't sure if that specific tendency was found in A Kick to the Bits' songs...maybe they're more just general, "the system sucks, we have to fight back to make things better"...?  (Which is already pretty broadly left wing, btw.)  But then I realized they have a song called "Tory Bastards"... ;)

So with that said, I am not going to shy away from having the shenanigans of the Agents of SKA tip into political territory.  Well...okay, I might shy away a little.  I'm not looking to make a political game/setting here.  But the main beliefs expressed within the genre are sentiments I can usually get behind, and they may just show up in the game.

In my next post (hopefully before next weekend!), I think I'll actually start detailing our first agent, Japanese trumpeter Haruto Suzuki.  He is thus far faceless, but some small pieces of his life are starting to emerge.  I have a feeling we'll see that he's a bit political himself...

Here's how to play Ring Doctors, a boxing microgame that might be almost finished...

This is, at least, the current state of a project I've been trying to chip away at in my free time.  I met a very nice dude named (I think) Art (but with the handle of McGrizzle75) back during Covid.  We chatted a bit about tabletop sports games, and he even took the time to stat out a large number of players for the baseball simulation that I wrote about back during those strange times.  (I'm not sure how far he got with his tournament, but as you might imagine, sports simulations can be a bit of a grind, and sometimes it ends up being fulfilling enough to just assign numbers to a bunch of athletes in a way that you know contests COULD be simulated...)

Image from here

McGrizzle recently asked me if I had ever tried making a simple boxing game.  I had not made one, but because I spend way more time thinking about unimportant things than items of actual value, I had definitely put a fair amount of thought into how one might be structured.  (This is in part because I found that archive.org has all these old issues of an early 20th century publication called Famous Fights, Past and Present with some amazing and presumably public domain art accompanying stories about the history of bare-knuckle boxing.  There's a game just waiting to be made with those images; you can look here if that's something that seems interesting for your own use!)

Anyway, I decided to see what I could do with one.  And here are the results so far!  It's still in playtest mode, but it's actually worked reasonably well.  So far, at least.

Two notes: (1) I am apparently a person with really odd motivations at times, so there is also a D&D-style Pugilist class I've been working on simultaneously that covers the development of a boxer's style over five levels.  It isn't quite complete, partly because the specifics are dependent upon the final ranges of the minigame's stats, but I'll probably post it here eventually.  Theoretically, you could also then take a d20-esque character of any class and stat them out for battles in the ring.

And (2) I made sure to get the game to this point so I could "preview" this Saturday's bout between current IBF heavyweight champ Daniel Dubois and challenger Joseph Parker.  Here's a pic of the playtest cards I used for them; the results of the match are down below.  Get ready to call your bookie!

Ring Doctors

1.  Boxers are defined by five stats: Hand Speed, Dodge, Power, Chin, and Heart.  Most also have a special ability that helps to differentiate them a little more in the ring.

2.  Rounds are divided into 30-second segments during which one of the two fighters goes on the offensive, referred to broadly as an attack and as that boxer's turn.  Boxers are assigned to Even and Odd corners; at the beginning of each round, roll a d6 to determine which boxer attacks first.  They then alternate until both fighters have had three attacks in the round.  Since right now I'm just working with professional boxers at a championship level, matches can go up to 12 rounds.

3.  To attack, subtract opponent's Dodge from attacker's Hand Speed, then roll that many 6-sided dice. Any die that comes up equal to or less than the attacker's Power is a hit. (Note that maximum Power is 5, no matter how abilities might try to alter it.)  In a single attack, the opponent can disregard a number of hits equal to their Chin to determine the final damage, which is subtracted from the opponent's Heart.

4.  Once per turn, before or after their attack, a boxer can have their card rotated 90°,  which changes their strategy to a more offensive or defensive approach.  At the beginning of each round, boxers start with their base stats (an upright card).

5.  If 5+ hits are taken in a single attack OR if 5+ dice are rolled and they are all hits, the opponent is knocked down.  If knocked down with 18 or less Heart remaining, roll 3d6; if the total is greater than or equal to their remaining Heart, it's a knockout!  When Heart = 0, it's an automatic KO.

6.  TKOs are called if a fighter is knocked down three times in a single round OR twice in two consecutive rounds.  (If no knockouts occur and a decision is required, the boxer who has dealt the most damage is declared the winner.)

Additionally, each boxer has an ability and a random table for knockouts based upon their history in the ring.  For the Dubois/Parker championship bout, the abilities are:

Daniel Dubois:  Raw Aggression - If Dubois scores hits on the first two attacks in a round, he gets +1 to Hand Speed and Power for the third attack of the round.

Joseph Parker:  Well-Timed Counter - If an opponent scores zero damage on an attack, Parker gets +1 to Hand Speed and Power on his next attack (if it occurs in the same round).

And now, for the match...!

Image from the BBC here

Well...I guess this is a little awkward.  I just found out that Daniel Dubois is sick in Saudi Arabia and can't fight on Saturday.  He's being replaced with Martin Bokole, who is not the IBF champion and, crucially for this blog entry that I'd like to post, has not been statted for Ring Doctors.

I've already played the match, though, so here's how it would have gone...!

The champ Dubois came out aggressive, scoring a quick knockdown on the surprised Parker early in the first round.  Parker regrouped, however, and took a defensive approach, hoping to find a chance for a powerful counter.  Both fighters stayed on their feet for the rest of Round 1, even with Dubois's mounting aggression at the end of the round.

Parker had powerful combination to begin Round 2 and knocked Dubois to the canvas as quickly as he himself had gone down earlier.  Upon returning to his feet, though, Dubois went on the attack and leveled Parker with a left hook.  Parker went down in a Round 2 knockout!

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Okay, my out-loud thoughts:  I think I may still have some tweaking to do in order to let early knockouts be possible but not guaranteed.  Granted, I haven't played all that many matches yet, but I think I may have matches going a bit too quickly at this point (and directly related, knockdowns might be a bit too easy as well).

Of course, this isn't exactly a detailed simulation.  It's meant to be quick and fun, and it's definitely done that so far.  I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to "simulate" Parker/Bokole before it happens, but we'll see...

Okay, thanks for reading/browsing/checking out the pictures here!  I am open to ANY and ALL feedback you might have on this game.  I've never been in a fight in my life, and most of my boxing knowledge comes from trying to get Little Mac into The Dream Fight vs. Mike Tyson, so I'll be really upfront about my limited grasp of the sport.  With that said...hopefully more to come on Ring Doctors in the near future...!

J6, the miniatures game...

Well...it's Presidents' Day.  Or...Washington's Birthday as I guess the federal government actually recognizes it, but also a day to remember the contributions of other past American presidents.  So, it's the perfect time to point out this interesting little pursuit out there in the world.

NPR ran a story yesterday about a pretty cool collision of art and gaming: Fight for America! is a wargame hosted by a Brooklyn-based art nonprofit called the american vicarious.  It is a reenactment/gamificaton of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, in seemingly amazing 1:64 scale detail.  (I'm stealing all the pics here from the NPR article, which used images provided by the american vicarious.)

Participants are divided up into the Red Team...

...and, of course, the Blue Team...

...and a GM dressed like Uncle Sam guides them through the day...

The NPR article does a really good job of leading the reader through one person's experience as they attempted to find Vice President Mike Pence with the rest of their team.  A slight spoiler alert: They do find him, and then the fact that they vote on whether or not to hang him to close out the game is...well, a little chilling.

I'd like to believe that there's power in gaming that really could help us recognize what it's like to be in the shoes of those with whom we disagree.  That chance for empathy is one of the (many) really cool things about RPGs in general.  There has to be a LOT of unexplored space to use games like this.  I'm a little bummed I missed the test runs in NYC last month, but I hope to catch it when it returns to the States sometime after a run in London starting June 8.  You can check out the Fight for America! website here.

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Have I really put two political posts on here in less than a week?  Is this even a political post?  I was tempted to tie it into the gaming I usually talk about by writing out some sort of feat or item that helps a character wield a flag as an improvised weapon.  But...for obvious reasons...nah.  (Plus, why not take the "high road" while also artfully taking credit for such a horrendous idea by mentioning it...?  It's my blog, I'll take the win/win whenever I can...)

Y'know what, it's Presidents' Day, so I'll just end with a quote from George Washington, from his farewell address written to the American people in 1796.  It sure seems to fit today's topic; he's writing about political parties here...

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.