Geeky SKAturday SKAliday: Oi to the World!

Next in line for ska songs that should probably be enjoyed every holiday season:  "Oi to the World!"

I only first heard this one when No Doubt covered it on a Christmas album in the late 90s, but I would later learn that it's actually a cover of a 1996 song by SoCal punk band the Vandals.  I like this song a lot, and I also have thoughts about it, so first I'll just share the video No Doubt made for it, and then if you want to see some of my thoughts (and I bet you'll have some of the same ones), you can read on.  I promise I won't go on for too long.

Okay, that was pretty fun.  Now, No Doubt is a band that's sure to elicit plenty of eyerolls among ska fans the world over.  However, their early years saw them much more connected to the fairly insular ska scene than many people realize, even finding their way onto some ska compilations around the late '80s/early '90s...and back then, comps were HUGE and among the major ways for ska bands to get their name out there, maybe even more than zines and shows.

And despite exploring a spectrum of new wave-y and punk type sounds...and wtf is wrong with that, btw...No Doubt began out of love for 2 tone bands, and my memory of guitarist Tom Dumont shouting out to the Specials and Fishbone on MTV back in the '90s was a tiny formative memory for me.  Although I have to acknowledge, at 47 years of age, that I might not even remember that correctly.

Now...it must also be noted that part of the modern view of No Doubt is shaded by shifting views toward lead singer Gwen Stefani, and this video isn't a bad example of that.  I'll say it up front...the bindi seemed like a much better idea for a white California lady back in the '90s than it does today.  I can't even completely put my finger on all the reasons why, but that video just oozes cultural appropriation (not to mention I'm not sure how to feel about the use of the elephant).

Part of this is, admittedly, connected to ska itself, and its weaving with punkrock.  As I think I've mentioned before, when I dressed up to go to ska shows in the '90s, I was basically cosplaying late '70s British kids who were cosplaying '60s Jamaican tough guys and sharp dressers.  And with this song (and it's discussed nicely here in a lengthy analysis on the Kerrang! website), you also have the white California lady putting on a tiny bit of a British accent (a punk tradition, of course), but that's because it's a cover from a California band that really went out of their way to be British in the original version:

The theme of the song is undeniably positive.  Unity.  Oi to the world.  Drink some bourbon with your new mate!  It also sounds like the kind of anti-racist story I would have found much more meaningful as a 19-year-old in south Georgia than here and now, as the complexities of racism around the world and throughout history have thankfully become a bigger and more nuanced part of the conversation.

It's just so simple...those racist skinheads such as Trevor "liked the music, but not the unity," and it just took standing up to them and ultimately being kind to change the ways of at least one of them.  I guess it also took a few well-placed oi!s, but we did it!

It's also just too convenient to rhyme "turban" with "bourbon," and I can't help but think that the reference to Indiana Jones (arguably a really stupid line, btw, but it entertains me) makes the whole thing a little more problematic, since those films aren't exactly known for their cultural progressiveness, and the fact that "Haji had a sword like the guy in Indiana Jones" seems a little like a Sikh caricature that I probably shouldn't pretend to be qualified to evaluate in terms of sensitivity.

BUT...

Y'know what...

This song also reminds me that I should probably be okay sometimes just accepting a hokey anti-racist vignette for what it is.  In this world where a growing recognition of the complexities of racism has made the conversation all the more difficult at times, we've somehow allowed blatant racism to come to the forefront again and gain acceptability in forums far wider than I would have expected.  I think I should just be happy to enjoy a song where a narrow-minded white dude ends up as a drinking buddy to a presumably brown dude who wears a turban.  That's still a win, especially in today's world.  We can still worry about all the complexities, but until this simple message is actually the fucking baseline we're building from, I'm not gonna hate too hard on something like "Oi to the World!"

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Now...No Doubt deserves at least one or two sounds to be cast by those who are able to harness the power of Rudeness...in OGL games or using Monstrous6 magic.  I couldn't decide which song would be best to use, so here are two.  One is among the best-known tunes by the band (and it's a good one!) that also retains a heavy dose of their 2 tone roots; you'll probably recognize it as a common D&D spell, very thinly reskinned for Rudies.  The other is a pretty early No Doubt song that made its way onto some ska compilations back in the day, as they say...

Spiderwebs

2nd-level Sound

Casting time: 1 action

Range: 60 ft (20 ft cube)

Duration: 1 hr

Saves: Dexterity/Strength

You conjure a mass of thick, sticky webbing at a point of your choice within range. The webs fill a 20-foot cube from that point for the duration. The webs are difficult terrain and lightly obscure their area.

If the webs aren't anchored between two solid masses (such as walls or trees) or layered across a floor, wall, or ceiling, the conjured web collapses on itself, and the spell ends at the start of your next turn. Webs layered over a flat surface have a depth of 5 feet.

Each creature that starts its turn in the webs or that enters them during its turn must make a Dexterity saving throw vs. your magic save difficulty. On a failed save, the creature is restrained as long as it remains in the webs or until it breaks free.

A creature restrained by the webs can use its action to make a Strength check vs. your magic save difficulty. If it succeeds, it is no longer restrained.

The webs are flammable. Any 5-foot cube of webs exposed to fire burns away in 1 round, dealing 2d6-2 fire damage to any creature that starts its turn in the fire.

Everything's Wrong

3rd-level Sound

Casting time: 1 action

Range: 60 ft (10 ft sphere)

Duration: 1 min

Save: Presence

This sound causes all willful creatures within its area of effect to second-guess everything they do for the duration of the spell.  Once the creature determines what it will attempt for the turn, it must succeed on a Presence saving throw vs. your magic save difficulty or be rendered confused and unable to take any actions for that turn.

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The Monstrous6 Magic System

From the PDSH wiki entry for John Force, Magic Agent

Well, I had a "Real Monstrous Matters" post that I was working on, as I've been enjoying putting one of those together each week if I can.  For some reason, this one started morphing from my established pattern of "this is some cool science, now here's a monster" into speculation on the subjective experiences of starfish.  So, that one will wait until next week when I can get a little bit of a handle on what the heck I'm trying to say with it.  In the meantime, as I've been building the "Monstrous6" rules system, tiny piece by tinier piece, with my posts on here, I figured I'd go ahead and lay out what I'm imagining as the default magic system for the game (and for the Monstrous Matters campaign).

I want something that will feel at least a little different from Vancian spellcasting.  Shadowdark and Dungeon Crawl Classics have given us some nice variants that keep a lot of the Vancian bones in place, so I looked to them for inspiration but tried to give it a little spin that would feel unique to this 2d6-based system.  Here's what I came up with; I've only been able to test it once so far but hope to get more under my belt soon...

The Basics:

1)  Monstrous6 is essentially a skill-based system, so Magic is a skill and is given a value just as other skills are.  Different types of magic are connected to different skills and potentially to different underlying attributes.  The spells cast by a wizard, for example, might use the skill Arcane Magic (or perhaps a different skill for each school) and use the Knowledge attribute, while those of a cleric are resolved with Divine Magic (or specific domains) and Presence.  Christmas Elves have Holiday Magic (Presence).  Rudies have...Rudeness, I guess...?  (Also Presence...)

2)  Starting characters can learn one spell for each point they have in the attribute that governs their specific type of spellcasting.  More may be learned as play progresses.

3)  Spells are roughly the power of those found in most OGL games.  So, OSR spells will work, or 5e spells with some adjustments to the dice used.  (I like to use d6 in the place of both d6 and d8, then have the other die sizes represented by d6 +/- the appropriate value.)  Also, advantage/disadvantage will need to be turned into bonuses or penalties.  Spells still have levels, just as they do in d20-based games.

4) To cast a spell, make a magical skill roll [2d6 + Attribute + Skill] vs. the spell’s difficulty, which is found by adding [10 + (spell level) + (number of times you’ve attempted to cast a spell today, including the current one)]. If you meet or exceed the difficulty value, the spell is successful.

5) For spells requiring a saving throw, those difficulties are calculated by [8 + Attribute + Skill]. (For both saving throws and the magical skill rolls in #4, as with most rolls in Monstrous6, a 12 is always a success, and a 2 is always a failure.)

6) If your magical skill roll results in both dice landing on the same face (rolling doubles), you can feel the vibrations of magical power escaping your grasp for the day. You may continue to cast spells on the current day by “paying” 1 point of your magical attribute. You may do this as many times as necessary but may not drop below a value of 1. This loss impacts all rolls for that attribute until the point is regained. All of these points in the attribute, along with the daily spell counter, are reset after a long rest. (Alternatively, you may choose not to pay the attribute point after rolling doubles; in that case, you are simply unable to cast further spells of that type until you take a long rest.)

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More to come on this.

Geeky SKAturday: It's "Christmas Time Again"! (Bad Manners)

December is here.  It's Christmas time again!

I think I'll share some of my favorite holiday ska tunes this month.  Here's one I've posted before that is always worth revisiting, from the band that is probably the goofiest and maybe my favorite of the 2 tone era...

No notes.

And while I definitely have a big interest right now in turning Christmas songs into spells...that's a whole different project.  Instead, here's my favorite Bad Manners tune and a sound to accompany it...

Special Brew

2nd-level Sound

Casting time: 1 action

Range: 30 feet

Duration: 1 hour

Save: Presence

This sound targets one being that can see you and has a Knowledge score of at least 1.  On a failed save, the creature regards you as their best friend.  We're talking soulmate type feelings, although no romantic notions are necessarily involved.  They know that you want to spend all your money on them.

When the spell wears off, the target will remember what has occurred but will not necessarily feel deceived unless you have coerced them into doing things contrary to their usual wishes.  You will simply be regarded as a former friend.

My Mince Pie Odyssey

Undoubtedly, many of you reading this have also seen the comprehensive mincemeat pie reviews written by Kelvin Green over at his Brainsplurge blog.  If not, you should give them a look.  They've been...inspirational...as you'll see if you keep reading (no hard feelings if you don't).

See, I'm an uncultured Yank who's maybe had mince pie like once in my life, decades ago when my grandmother in Florida made one.  I remember (1) not understanding why there would be meat in a dessert, (2) not understanding why it didn't actually have meat in it, and (3) not understanding why it was this weird fruit and spice concoction instead of a sugar-soaked treat like proper desserts.

But I'll be darned, those mince pies that Kelvin displays look delicious.  He slices/bites (maybe both) and seemingly squeezes each one for a photo, so you can practically taste the filling just looking at it.  At least, if you know what mince pies taste like, you can probably practically taste it.  I don't have a very solid memory of it, but I definitely craved what my mind filled into that blank flavor.  So, I decided I needed to seek some out this year.

Okay, TRIGGER WARNING:  For the rest of this post to make sense, I have to inform you that I am vegan.  I hesitate to do so because the first thing many people want to do when they find out someone else is vegan is insist that no vegans ever quit talking about being vegan.  And if you're like me and Laura, who eat this way around family members who don't identify with any goal of veganism in the first place, you definitely know that we aren't the ones who won't quit talking about it.  So that whole trope is...annoying.  At best.  But I'll quit talking about that now.

With that bit of info on the table...well, as you are probably guessing right now, it poses a little obstacle for my mince pie quest.  I had high hopes of finding prepackaged vegan mince pies that look as mincemeaty and delicious as the ones Kelvin highlights.  And maybe if I were in the UK, where such pies, in a wide range of quality, are apparently a holiday staple, the case would be different...especially since cheap pastries often end up being accidentally vegan.  For the ones I could access, though...no such luck.  The mince pies, my oh my do they thirst for butter.

So, it would come to assembling my own.  I say "assembling," because this didn't seem like the challenge to put my meager cooking skills to the test this holiday season.  There has to be a way, eh?

I started with some mincemeat with verified ingredients:

Before tasting it, I had no idea if this is a quality brand or not.  And after tasting it, I still have no idea if it's a quality brand.  I think I like it, though.

The crusts were a little tougher to pull off.  I finally found some fillable pie shells intended for sweet or savory, then filled them with mincemeat and baked at 350 for half an hour to see what came out.

These crusts are pretty thin and crispy, especially after baking.  I know from this review that these can both be marks against them.  At least I know they aren't too sweet.

Oh!  And really, these are pretty tiny.  To give an idea of scale, here's my old character Ezra happening upon one...

The verdict?  Well, if you've read this far, I should probably apologize because I don't think there's much payoff to this little adventure.  I do appreciate the faith you had in me.  If it makes you feel any better, I've written all of this before realizing that I don't have anything especially worthwhile to tie it all together.  So...I guess I just wanted to share my little mince pie odyssey with others.  Thank you for indulging me.  And happy holidays!

Y'know what?  I'll give it a rating.  Using Kelvin's system, these are a 2 out of 5.  I mean, I'll still make and eat more of them, but those pictures on Kelvin's blog...well, I know there's more to mince pie than this, probably at least 3 out of 5 more.  I just have to figure out how to get my pinko vegan mitts on them.

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Now, maybe the best part of the journey is that it gave me an excuse to write this up...somehow, btw, not even the first pie elemental I've statted up on this blog...

Mince Pie Elemental

Scale: --

Handling Difficulty: 15

35 HP, 8 Defense (large size)

Strength 7

Dexterity 1

Knowledge 1

Presence 3

Skills: Religious Dietary Law +3

Attacks: Pseudopod-Like Appendage (melee, +7, 1d6 bludgeoning damage) and Mincemeat Missile (range 30 ft., +1, 1d6 bludgeoning damage + roll 1d6 on table to find the missile and effect)

1-2  Currant - target saves vs. DEX 10 or loses next action

3-4  Date - additional 1d6 bludgeoning damage

5  Orange Peel - additional 1d6 acid damage and target smells like citrus for next 2d6 days

6  Mutton Shred - target has a 1 in 6 chance of realizing they have Salmonella infection within 24 hours

Mince pie elementals appear most commonly during the winter holiday season.  They are mysterious creatures, going about their existence silently, bringing joy to many and religious anxiety to others.  The "personality" of mince pie elementals has been variously described as sweet, spicy, and a little bit savory.  That last one is especially strange because what tf does that really mean when you're talking about a personality?

While lacking arms, mince pie elementals are capable of attacking via pseuodopod-like extensions of their mincemeat guts, and by forcefully expelling components of their body at perceived enemies.

The Real Monstrous Matters: Microbial contamination or killer space ooze?

Fortunately for humanity...and unfortunately for those of us just wasting time until the day we make contact...it's probably just microbial contamination.

A paper came out on November 13 detailing the examination of rock samples brought back from the asteroid Ryugu during the Hayabusa2 mission of Japan's space agency JAXA...

Photo of Ryugu's surface; from the mission website

They got some rocks from the asteroid's surface?  COOL!

They succeeded in a number of microscopic analyses of these samples?  VERY COOL!

There appear to be bacteria there?!?  HELLA COOL!!

The bugs on the asteroid; from the paper

Oh.  The reasonable conclusion is that it's just contamination?  BOOOOOOOO!!

Yeah, so despite being processed at pretty much the abso-tippy-top level of contamination protocol stringency, one of the samples ended up with some microbes growing on it.  The authors suspect Bacillus, but who knows.  Unfortunately, they were unable to look at the bug's genome to see what it was (and it has since been polished off of the rock and hasn't regrown).  Considering that Bacillus includes bacteria that can cause anthrax, food poisoning, and probably a host of other maladies, it's at least cool to imagine that it might have been some killer space bug that came close to unleashing a Michael Crichton-style pandemic upon humanity.

Probably for the better that it didn't, though.

(You can find a nice summary of the paper at Phys.org.)

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Now, what's cooler than a killer space bug?  A killer space ooze!  Can I get some cheers from the Blob Mob?!

Space Ooze

Image from Pixabay

Scale: --

Handling Difficulty: -- (uncontrollable)

25 HP, 9 Defense

Strength 5

Dexterity 1

Knowledge --

Presence 1

Skills: Detect (chemical) +3

Attacks: Pseudopod (+4, 1d6 bludgeoning damage + 1d6 acid damage)

The space ooze can move 10 feet per round, including up surfaces.  It is capable of moving through openings with a diameter of less than 1/10 of an inch, although its speed is slowed by as much as 99% while doing so.  The space ooze is capable of dissolving metal at a rate of up to 1 inch per round; this is often performed to overcome obstacles but will also impact any metal weapons used on it.

When reduced to 0 HP, the space ooze simply spends 1 round regrouping, then continues with the same task that was interrupted when it was "destroyed."

Geeky SKAturday: "Orphan Town" from Warriors (concept album)

At this point, I really don't want to miss Geeky SKAturday twice in a row(!), so here's something close enough for this week...

The concept album Warriors, that I mentioned being excited about around a month ago, came out, and it's pretty great.  From Lin-Manuel Miranda (of Hamilton and...a bunch of other stuff) and Eisa Davis (who isn't as well known, but I was still probably a bit of a dick for not even mentioning her in that last writeup), Warriors is a really nice take on the cult film, changing things up enough to make it interesting but hitting enough familiar notes that it pays off to know a bit about the movie.  I had such high hopes for it that it wouldn't have been crazy for it to fall short, but it delivers.  And it's easily accessible, hitting both Spotify and YouTube immediately upon release.

One of my favorite tracks comes when the Warriors encounter the second-rate gang known as the Orphans.  It's a cool scene in the movie, introducing us to Mercy, and the song has a sort of rocksteady rhythm for the verses, transitioning into really catchy choruses.  You could argue that Utkarsh Ambudkar sings the part of head Orphan Sully with a little too much...goofiness...but in the context of the song, with his right-hand man Jesse delivering backup lines like a bully's toady, it didn't take long for Sully's voice to sound natural enough to me.

For reference, here's the analogous scene from the film (cutting off a bit earlier than the song)...

And for gaming, here's the top Orphan in Monstrous6 terms...

Sully

From The Warrors Wiki

Leader, the Orphans

10 HP, 10 Defense

Strength 2
Dexterity 2
Knowledge 4
Presence 4

Skills: Misinformation +4, Streetwise +3, Leadership +2, Straight Razor (Short Blades) +1

Goal: Respect as a bopper

Quote: "I don't know what you're talkin' about, man.  How could this be a big meeting if the Orphans wasn't there?"

The Real Monstrous Matters: Japanese scientists get us one step closer to Greenskins...or maybe just solar-powered humans...

This is one that was covered by a lot of mainstream news outlets, so you might have already seen it (you MSM zombie, you)...in a cool little biological trick that I'm honestly surprised hasn't been achieved before, researchers anchored by a group at the University of Tokyo have gotten chloroplasts to carry out photosynthesis in hamster cells.  Mammalian cells making food from light...pretty cool if you ask me.  You can check out the paper (from the Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B) at this link, and the university's press release can be found here.

Fluorescence microscopy image from the press release.  The chloroplasts are magenta, while cell nuclei are light blue.

This is one of those things that really gets the imagination firing, and most of us who are drawn to science fiction and/or fantasy have probably already thought about this possibility at some point.  And obviously, it brings to mind the green-skinned characters of fantasy lore, like Warhammer's...er, Greenskins...

It's also a fairly well-known "rule" of biology that mammals aren't green.  When those who craft fantasy fiction feel the need to justify green pigmentation in a humanoid species, the likely explanations are reptilian ancestry or some sort of photosynthetic machinery.  In Warhammer, for example, I believe the lore is that Greenskins, already an assemblage of fungal species, also have a symbiotic relationship with algae.  It's unclear, as far as I know, exactly what the mechanics of this symbiosis may be, but I don't think there's ever been an implication that the algae are inside the creature's cells (but please do correct me if I'm wrong!).

This new paper takes things a step further, with chloroplasts (the site of photosynthesis in plants and algae) being isolated from red algae and incorporated directly into the animal cells, where they kept on working away like all those other organelles you remember from high school biology...the mitochondria and Golgi apparatuses and all.  It's a very different result from the researchers' expectation that the little algae bits would be digested by the hamster cells.  Which, y'know, when in doubt, is probably a good idea for an animal cell to do when it finds it has taken up a random foreign organelle that resembles bacteria.

Also kind of fun: It appears that these hybrid creations are often referred to as "planimal" cells.  It sounds like a failed '80s toyline.

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As far as fantasy species go, orcs and goblins are probably the most commonly green characters, but elves occasionally get this treatment as well.  In Magic: The Gathering, for example, the well-known elf Glissa Sunseeker has been portrayed with green skin.

Image from here

I also think it's interesting to look back at the green elves in the group of MTG sets known as the Onslaught Block.  Over the course of those sets, various creatures were mutated to become purer expressions of the color of mana they represented.  The blue wizards, for example, basically turned into water.  Elves, meanwhile, came to resemble plants more and more.  In the second set, Legions, we see some green (or at least greenish) elves...

Card images from Scryfall

(This included at least one creature that arguably looks, to an outsider, more goblin than elf...)

And then by the third set, Scourge, the elves were even more plant-like:

Something tells me there are chloroplasts in those elves' cells.

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Now, a species for gaming...

Emeraldkin

Attribute Points: 12

Min/Max:

Strength 1-5
Dexterity 1-6
Knowledge 1-5
Presence 1-5

Skill Distribution: 3/2/1

Special Skills: Can use Nature Magic without allocating any skill points to it; if this skill isn't chosen, it is treated as +0, and Nature Magic skill rolls use the character's Knowledge value.

Abilities: Able to see in low-light conditions; resistant to hunger

Emeraldkin are found in many realms among the multiverse.  They appear very similar to Humans but are identified by their pointed ears and the greenish hue of their skin (due to the chloroplasts found in their skin cells).  On some worlds, they are referred to as Elves, while residents of others will call them Orcs or even Goblins.  They identify with none of these terms, however, and refer to themselves as Unliavel, broadly translated as Emeraldkin.  It is thus far unknown what species they are closest to genetically; in general, though, they will associate with all other groups who maintain a similar connection to nature.

The photosynthetic skin cells of Emeraldkin allow them to go much longer than other humanoid species without food.  While they cannot wholly abandon eating, in conditions of sufficient light and water, they can easily go up to 10 days in between meals.  This is rarely necessary; Emeraldkin are usually very knowledgeable about the natural environment and are capable of obtaining food in almost any situation, although the vast majority rely on vegetarian sustenance only.  Overall, their connection to the natural world and low need for resources make them ideal adventuring companions.