James Marlowe and the Giant Peach

(See the full-sized scan at my Deviant gallery.)

My wife and I recently rewatched James and the Giant Peach. Partway through, it occurred to me that Miss Spider would be the sort of costume that one of my NPCs in the Grey Angels game would choose. Lilith Corman is a goth witch, largely inspired by Wednesday Addams (and cast as Christina Ricci), who works for Nightwatch. So I sketched her costume, and added her boyfriend dressed as Mr. Centipede. Lance Bogan (cast as George Eads) is a Nightwatch commando with an ever-cheerful personality. This pairing of opposites surprises everyone--not least the couple themselves--but they've made it work for a little over a decade now.

For this piece, I used photo references of both actors as well as stills from the movie to portray them in costume. Eads is approximately a foot taller than Ricci, so tall, lanky Centipede is a good fit for their relative sizes as well as their disparate personalities.

(Nightwatch is briefly explained at the end of this blog post. For more on the Grey Angels campaign, see my links on that page to my other blog posts about my PC, Trick Tillinghast. My title above references James Marlowe, a veteran Nightwatch agent who heads up a team that goes on missions to other parallel worlds.)

LEGO Minifigures Series 21

(See Tim's LEGO Reviews for my reviews of past LEGO Minifigures series.)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I never did acquire any of the Series 20 Minifigures, but I did recently visit a local store that had the Series 21 figures. Fortunately, the character I wanted most, the Centaur Warrior, is very easy to find by feel thanks to her large horse body piece. I was able to find several of them within just a few minutes, and then spent some more time looking for the others I wanted. 

I now own 7 of the 12 characters in this series. (Note that it's a smaller series that most, with only a dozen characters instead of the usual 16.) I did not buy the Airplane Girl, Beekeeper, Pug Costume Guy, Space Police Guy, and Violin Kid, so am omitting them from my mini-reviews below. Rest assured, however, that if you're looking for Airplane Girl, the big wings of her costume are almost as easy to find by feel as the centaur body. The Beekeeper's hat and square tile honeycomb are very distinct as well, as is the Space Police's shield and armor. (Is it just me, or does issuing a policeman with a riot shield and baton seems rather tone-deaf to major news stories of the past year or two? If I acquire more of this series, I'll be skipping that one.)

Alien: This alien wears an orange bodysuit and carries a crowbar and a crystal that it likely just extracted from a mine. Its species is unclear due to a mask covering part of its face. The mottled skin and small spines on the back of the head suggest reptilian or amphibian, or even insectoid or more bizarre. (My wife will be using this minifigure for her shirren, an insectoid race in the Starfinder RPG.)  

Ancient Warrior: This warrior is based on an Aztec Jaguar Warrior, with a feathered feline headdress, a shield with stylized jaguar face, and even jaguar-print tattoos or bodypaint, and clawed toes. The head is double-sided: one smiling, and one snarling with fangs. He wields a macuahuitl, a flat wooden club edged with sharpened pieces of obsidian. (This weapon is the main reason I wanted this character, because a recent session of the Grey Angels campaign involved stealing magical ones from an auction.) 

Cabaret Singer: This performer wears a glittery teal and purple costume with a silver fabric train and a feathered headdress, with matching makeup on a double-sided head--one face smiling, the other with eyes closed as she belts out her song. She comes with a microphone and stand, which uses a 1x1 round plate with a hole in the stud as the base, so it can be mounted on a baseplate's stud.

Centaur Warrior: This character's body is the same piece as the centaurs from Forbidden Forest: Umbridge's Encounter*, but in caramel and brown. The body is a bit smaller than a standard LEGO horse--about half an inch shorter both vertically and horizontally--but I think this smaller size looks more in scale with the minifigure. It's also easier to fit this centaur into a Large (2") space than a horse, and not horrible outsized for the playable centaur race in D&D 5E, which is technically Medium-sized.

The torso has a sleeveless green garment, with a tree motif, and the wrists have matching bracers. She has a bow, and a quiver that can be hung from one of the studs in her back. She also comes with an apple--but whether that's supposed to indicate her forest home, or be used as a target (ala William Tell) is unclear. 

(*The centaurs and the giant in the Umbridge's Encounter set are very appealing, but J.K. Rowling's very public transphobic comments over the past year or two have made my family resolve to not buy any more tie-in products to her creations. So I was very pleased to see the centaur body re-released as part of the Minifigures line.)

Ladybug Girl: This woman wears a spotted black and red ladybug costume, including a helmet with antennae, and a short, split cape like the insect's wings. Her head is double-sided, with two different smiles. She comes with a leaf and a 1x1 round tile printed to look like a ladybug. As with most parts this small, my bag came with an extra tile, which could be handy for anyone wanting more tiny vermin.

This minifigure makes a serviceable Medium-sized beetle as-is by bending her over onto all fours.

Paddle Surfer: This woman is clearly fond of dolphins: she has one printed on her wetsuit (though her life vest covers it) and she has found one to paddle near. Her head is double-sided, one side having sunglasses, and her ballcap is combined with hair in a ponytail. 

The dolphin is the same as used in the Friends theme, in a neutral gray. There are "anti-studs" on the bottom side of the flukes, so that the dolphin can be stood up on its tail on the baseplate, as if leaping out of the water. Strangely, the bottom surface between the flippers is exactly the same as the bottom of a minifigure torso, so it's possible to create a weird mutant dolphin-monster with human legs. It looks ridiculous--and a bit creepy. 

Shipwreck Survivor: This castaway wears tattered pants and a seashell necklace, and has an anchor tattoo. The head is printed with a beard, which is fully covered by the hair piece's shaggy mop. He also comes with a bottle printed to look like it has a rolled-up message inside. 

He is accompanied by a tiny, cute hermit crab. The shell, made of a 1x1 round plate (with a hole on the stud) and a cupcake (or ice cream?) piece, is attached to a small post on the back of the crab's body. Stacking multiple 1x1 round plates on this post allows other things to be attached to the crab--such as a tail to turn it into a scorpion. 

Or, on a more silly note, make it into the tiniest reality show contestant ever!

Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Freeport

For my past columns about using D&D Fifth Edition sourcebooks with Freeport: The City of Adventure, see the Freeport 5E Index.

This columns contains spoilers for the adventures in Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a nautical-themed anthology of seven adventures from previous editions of D&D updated to the Fifth Edition rules. Three of these form the original Saltmarsh trilogy (The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Danger at Dunwater, and The Final Enemy), so the book begins with a much expanded description of that port town. The appendix includes rules for ships, sea travel and encounters, and a few additional encounter locations that are too short for chapters of their own.

This book should be invaluable for a GM running a Freeport campaign using 5E. Some adventures will be easier to adapt to that setting than others (see each chapter's entry below), but almost everything in the appendix will be useful in any maritime campaign.

Saltmarsh

Saltmarsh is a coastal port town with a sizable fishing fleet, but it also serves as a port of call for many merchant traders. It is a far cry from the cosmopolitan, pirate- and cult-infested island city of Freeport, so the three Saltmarsh adventures in this book will require some thought to fit into a Freeport campaign. 

Perhaps the easiest option is to locate Saltmarsh on the Continent, some days' sail from Freeport--but that make the campaign more about the Saltmarsh region than about Freeport, at least for the duration of those adventures. On the other hand, Saltmarsh could be very useful for fleshing out part of the Ivory Ports part of the Continent, for when your Freeporters are passing through and catch a whiff of interesting news and rumors that cause them to tarry a while.

This chapter also includes a few new backgrounds for PCs--fisher, marine, shipwright, and smuggler--that are perfectly suited to a Freeport campaign. Each of the backgrounds from the Player's Handbook gets a few notes about how to tie them into Saltmarsh, which may inspire similar connections for Freeport GMs.

The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

The first Saltmarsh adventure involves investigating a seaside haunted house outside the town, then taking on the crew of a smuggling ship using the site as cover. This is a classic adventure, perfect for starting characters, but difficult to work into a campaign that starts in Freeport. It probably works best if set elsewhere in the Serpent's Teeth, perhaps near Libertyville or one of the handful of plantations on the islands. The house and the ship can also be easily used separately, if the GM needs a creepy hideout or a low-level ship's crew for their own adventures.

Danger at Dunwater

The second part of the trilogy is easier to adapt to a Freeport game. The adventure takes place within a massive lizardfolk lair located in a swamp. Lizardfolk are known to live in the Serpent's Teeth, and a tribe of this size would certainly pose a potential threat to other settlements there (though probably very little to Freeport itself). The other races present for the emerging alliance are also common to the seas near Freeport. 

The new lizardfolk stat blocks in the Appendix should be useful in converting older adventures such as "Dead Man's Chest," in Tales of Freeport.

Salvage Operation

This adventure is easily dropped into any ongoing nautical campaign, and Freeport has no shortage of desperate merchants who need adventurers to do dangerous work for them. Demonic cults are also a staple of Freeport campaigns, though GM who wish to emphasize the World of Freeport over Wizards of the Coast's IP may wish to have the villain of this piece worship the alternate Spider Queen described in Green Ronin's Plots & Poison: A Guidebook to Drow.

Isle of the Abbey

The heroes are hired to clear out evil clerics and undead that guard an abbey, while the cult is weakened from a pirate raid. Much like the Freeport line does, the adventure leaves the identity of the cult's god open-ended, with a few campaign world-specific suggestions given in the "Placing the Adventure" sidebar. 

The Final Enemy

In many ways, the finale of the Saltmarsh trilogy is the easiest to incorporate into a Freeport campaign. The sahaugin fortress is located some distance from the city, and could easily be located on an obscure reef near the Serpent's Teeth. The "sea devils" (as Freeporters call them) are a perennial problem for the City of Adventure, so scouting and then assaulting the site would be a highly appropriate mission for Freeport-based heroes. The module presents the stronghold as a former lizardfolk lair, but in the World of Freeport it might actually be an ancient Valossan ruin.

This adventure also includes many new stat blocks for new sahaugin foes and other undersea monsters (in the Appendices) that Freeport GMs can make use of elsewhere--for example, in converting the sahaugin attack in Crisis in Freeport.

Tammeraut's Fate

An island hermitage has come under attack by undead pirates, and by other monsters drawn to the scent of death. Once the PCs secure the island, they must follow the undead below the waves to stop the real threat that they pose.

The Styes

The Styes is a decaying port slowly sinking into the sea. Overall, the City of Adventure is too prosperous to be a good match, but the major sites of the adventure could be probably be transplanted to the docks of Scurvytown. Mr. Dory might be a gang leader, or a politician with ties to a member of the Captains' Council. The Tharizdun cult might be recast as a followers of one of Freeport's secret cults, such as the Unspeakable One, the Crawling Chaos, or Yarash. This adventure is certainly the most Lovecraftian in feel in the anthology, so may very well be worth the extra effort to adapt to Freeport.

Of Ships and the Sea

The book's first appendix presents rules for ships and ship combat, sea travel, and water hazards. Tables for generating random encounters, ships, and mysterious islands are also included. Finally, a trio of underwater locations are briefly detailed. 

Magic Items

A handful of new magic items are presented here, including a couple classic items updated from older editions of D&D.

Monsters and NPCs

In addition to the new monsters already mentioned above, this appendix includes a number of new undead and constructs that should prove useful in other adventures in the "sword & sorcery" vein of Freeport.

Bats in the Belfry

The phrase "You're got bats in your belfry" is purely metaphorical to most people, but for the church I attended throughout my childhood, it was absolutely literal. 

The belfry was located above one of the two entrances into the sanctuary. The vestibule below it had a pull-rope for ringing the bells when it was time for the worship service to begin (shortly after the end of Sunday school). However, a colony of bats lived in the belfry, which meant that guano falling through the rope hole was a recurring problem, and a serious health hazard. Eventually, the church had to thoroughly seal off the belfry from the rest of the building, after installing a system by which the bells could be rung by pushing a button rather than pulling a rope.

Because of that hole, and because that vestibule was the exterior entrance to the sanctuary, a bat would occasionally find its way inside the building. I recall two occasions when this happened when I was present at the church, which had very different endings.

The first time was during a youth group meeting held in the sanctuary one evening. Towards the end of the meeting, a bat started swooping around the sanctuary, freaking out most of the kids. As the only adult present, our youth leader took it upon himself to get the animal out of the building. He found a broom and swatted the bat out of the air. However, he hit it a lot harder then he intended, and it went BOOM into the paneling right below the framed painting of Jesus above the altar. The youth leader had an immediate and intense attack of guilt--he had hurt this tiny creature, and now Jesus was glaring at him!--so he carefully collected the stunned animal, putting it into a bucket until it recovered. I think he stayed there watching over it long after the rest of us were picked up by our parents.

A few years later, when I was in high school, someone spotted a bat clinging to the frame of a stained glass window in the sanctuary. This was during the brief gap between Sunday school and the worship service, so the room was still largely empty and quiet, but wouldn't be for long. I retrieved a ladder and gloves from the janitor's closet, and climbed up to very carefully pry the bat off the window. I held it gently but firmly in my hand as I climbed down and took it outside. Along the way, the bat caught the attention of many of the younger kids as they were leaving their Sunday school classes, so once we were outside, I held the bat so they could get a closer look, but warned them not to touch it. After a couple minutes of this, I found a high ledge on the outside of the building where the bat couldn't be reached easily by little kids, local cats, or other dangers while it recovered from being frightened and disoriented by all the noise and light. 

The picture above is a recent photo of the church, as seen on Google Maps Street View. The belfry roof shown here is new since I last regularly attended (many, many years ago), and I believe that the tower was shortened somewhat in the process, so I'm not sure if there are still any bats in the building today. 

Trick's Picks (updated)

I first posted my "Trick's Picks" playlist last April, and have been adding to it in fits and starts ever since. It now has well over 100 tracks (120 at the time that I'm posting this), so I've taken the list and sorted it into some semblance of order. I will update this post as the playlist continues to evolve.

[Songs with dates are just a reminder to myself that the game hasn't caught up to the present day (we're in December 2020 as of December 2023), so Trick hasn't technically heard these tracks yet.]

ABBA - Dancing Queen
Adam Lambert - Better Than I Know Myself
Adele - Rolling in the Deep
Alicia Keys - Girl on Fire
Angel & The MamboKats - Black Mambo (Mambero Mix)
Anna Kendrick - Cups

Ava Max - Kings & Queens  

The B-52’s - Love Shack
Backstreet Boys - Larger Than Life
The Bangles - Eternal Flame

The Beatles - Blackbird

The Beatles - Can't Buy Me Love

The Beatles - Imagine

Beyonce - Run the World (Girls)  
Bjork - Hunter
The Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling

Blondie - One Way or Another  
Blue Man Group - Drumbone
Bruno Mars - Locked Out of Heaven

C&C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)  

Calvin Harris (feat. Rihanna) - This is What You Came For

Christina Aguilera - Genie in a Bottle
Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, Pink - Lady Marmalade
Clean Bandit (feat. Jess Glynne) - Rather Be
Colbie Caillat - Brighter Than the Sun
Colbie Caillat - Bubbly
Colbie Caillat - Fallin’ For You
Coldplay - Viva La Vida

The Corrs - Breathless

Daft Punk (feat. Pharrell Williams) - Get Lucky
David Guetta (feat. Sia) - Titanium
Des’ree - You Gotta Be
Donna Summer - Hot Stuff (12" Version)

Dua Lipa - Dance the Night [2023]

Dua Lipa - Levitating  

Ed Sheeran - Shape of You

Ed Sheeran - Shivers  
ES Posthumus - Unstoppable
Eurythmics (feat. Aretha Franklin) - Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves
Evanescence - My Heart is Broken

Fall Out Boy - Uma Thurman
Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice
Fine Young Cannibals - Good Thing
Franka Potente - Believe

George Michael - Faith
The Greatest Showman Cast - This Is Me

Hadouken! - Levitate
HAIM - Little of Your Love

Halestorm - Freak Like Me

Halestorm - I am the Fire
Hayley Kiyoko - Girls Like Girls

Heart - Barracuda  
Heart - Crazy on You
The Hu (feat. Lzzy Hale) - Song of Women

INXS - Need You Tonight

Janelle Monae - Make Me Feel
Jason Mraz - I'm Yours
Jefferson Airplane - Somebody to Love
Jessie J - Domino
John Legend - All of Me
Journey - Any Way You Want It
Journey - Don't Stop Believin'

Katrina & The Waves - Walking on Sunshine
Katy Perry - Firework
Katy Perry - Rise
k.d. lang - Constant Craving
Kelly Clarkson - Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)

KISS - I Was Made For Lovin' You  

Lady Gaga - Edge of Glory
Lady Gaga - You and I

Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song  
Lenny Kravitz - Fly Away
Lenny Kravitz- Are You Gonna Go My Way

Lindsey Stirling - Artemis  
Lizzo - About Damn Time [2022]

Madonna - Vogue
Major Lazer & DJ Snake (feat. M0) - Lean On
Mark Ronson (feat. Bruno Mars) - Uptown Funk
Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing
Mary Lambert - She Keeps Me Warm
Meredith Brooks - Bitch

Michael Franti & Spearhead - Say Hey I Love You  

Michael Sambello - Maniac

Natalie Cole - Wild Women Do
Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes
Pharrell Williams - Happy
P!nk - F**king Perfect 

P!nk - Get the Party Started
P!nk - Just Like Fire 
P!nk - Raise Your Glass 
P!nk - Try 

The Police - Every Little Thing She Does is Magic

Portugal. The Man - Feel It Still
The Pussycat Dolls (feat. Snoop Dogg) - Buttons

Queen - Somebody to Love
Queen - We Are the Champions

Rachel Platten - Fight Song
Rachel Platten - Stand By You

Rare Earth - Get Ready  

Rick Astley - Together Forever
Ricky Martin - She Bangs
Roisin Murphy - Night of the Dancing Flame
Roisin Murphy - Ramalama (Bang Bang)

Salt-N-Pepa - Push It
Sara Bareilles - Brave
Sara Bareilles - I Choose You

Sara Bareilles - Orpheus  
Savage Garden - I Want You
Shania Twain - Forever and for Always

Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like a Woman

Shania Twain - You're Still the One  
Sia - Alive
Sia - Cheap Thrills
Sia - Unstoppable
Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2U
Sixpence None the Richer - Kiss Me
Sixpence None the Richer - There She Goes

Skillet - Not Gonna Die  
Smash Mouth - All Star
Sophie P. Hawkins - Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover

Spice Girls - Wannabe  

Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild
Sting - If I Ever Lose My Faith in You
Survivor - Eye of the Tiger

Swedish House Mafia - Save the World  
The Sweet - Ballroom Blitz

Taylor Swift - Blank Space
Taylor Swift - Delicate
Taylor Swift - Shake It Off
Tegan and Sara - Closer
They Might Be Giants - S-E-X-X-Y
Trinket - Boom
The Troggs - Wild Thing

Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles
The Veronicas - Take Me On the Floor

Walk the Moon - Shut Up and Dance
The Wallflowers - Heroes
WAR*HALL - All This Power [theme song for Grey Angels Season 4]
The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army

Whitney Houston - I Want to Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)  
The Who - Who Are You
The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Burning [2022]

Zara Larsson, MNEK - Never Forget You

The State of the Blog (and the Tim)

In the process of looking up something that I had shared here a couple of years ago, I realized that I had not posted anything new since August. I've been meaning to post a few things during that time, but lacked the motivation to make it happen. So here's a very quick update of where things stand in the many lands of Studded Plate. (Warning: There's a bit about a friend I lost very recently at the end of this column. I'm still figuring out how to talk about it online...or in general) 

Freeport and 5E: The 5E and Fantasy AGE versions of Death in Freeport were released just as I was finishing up that last post in August. I intend to run one version or the other sometime this year. I also have a few items to compose "Freeport and..." articles about at some point: the latest Unearthed Arcana articles (only two since August), Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and possibly Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts (which I'm slowly making my way through). And whenever I acquire Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, I will almost certainly have something to say about using that book with Freeport.

Time of the Tarrasque: This Pathfinder campaign went on hiatus back in 2019, and to be very honest, I'm not sure if it will ever restart at this point. 

The Kynthiad: The solo Greek myth BESM game that I run for my wife Erika is still going, though the end of the campaign is finally approaching. In our last few sessions, Kynthia has been instrumental in definitively ending the Trojan War--with Troy emerging victorious, and many Greek going home without their kings. Now we just have to figure out how she's going to stop Typhon's return, which will make a fitting conclusion to the story--and free up some headspace for me to run other games. 

Building the Bestiary: I would almost certainly have added another installment or two of this series by now, except that the pandemic has forced us to go online for most of our gaming, which means I'm producing far fewer LEGO minis for games. (We do play occasional games in person within our "bubble," but I've been GMing far fewer of those than I used to.)

On a related note, I have not purchased any of the new Minifigures series that have been released since the pandemic started. If and when I do, I will post reviews, but I don't know if that will happen before the end of mandatory social distancing.

Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society: Erika and I are still heavily involved in organized play for Pathfinder (1E & 2E) and Starfinder. All of these games have been strictly online since March or so, except for occasional games within our "bubble" (such as the Starfinder AP we started recently). I earned my third GM Star for Pathfinder Society 1E just before the end of 2020, but Erika has shot way ahead of me there, and is closing in on her fifth (and final!) GM Star. She became a Venture Officer for our local store about a year ago, so has been running a lot of games for that venue, as well as for several online conventions. We're both playing a lot more PFS 2E and Starfinder now than we have in the past, because it's easier to find games to play in now that we're online. Erika has GMed a couple of 2E scenarios so far, and her first Starfinder game this past month. I haven't tried GMing 2E yet, but have a few Starfinder games under my belt, and intend to run more as I get more familiar with the system. (I still have a ways to go before my first GM Nova, though.)

Grey Angels: I have been intending to write more about the (new and old) adventures of Trick Tillinghast, one of my characters in the long-running "Grey Angels" campaign (using Buffy/Angel Unisystem) that revived for a "reunion arc" at the end of 2019. Sadly, our main GM, Cassandra Lease, died rather suddenly at the beginning of this month. All of us in the game have been close friends with her for upwards of 15 years, so we're all still reeling from this loss. At some future date, we may try to find some way to continue playing in the world that she invited us to help her create, because it would be a damn shame to never again revisit those characters. But we're nowhere near ready to contemplate how to do that yet, apart from agreeing that some day, when we're ready, we very much want to have a long, involved discussion about it. Sharing stories about Cass among her circle of friends has been very helpful to us, and very necessary. When I'm ready to, I will probably share some more stories from the game here, in her memory. She would have liked that. 

I received this Abe Sapien figure as a gift from Cass early on in the Grey Angels game. She used the movie version of Abe as the visual reference for the Tritons, the sea demon race from which my very first GA character, the mage Baz Olmstead, was descended.