vincentursus | Reading

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2925.html

I've mentioned this before... er... six years ago... but I hope you'll forgive the indulgence of doing so again, because I think this strip illustrates the principle nicely.

Something that has been a conscious constant in Irregular Webcomic! over the years is that I always endeavour to show the characters travelling left to right when they are making positive progress, and conversely travelling right to left when encountering obstacles or setbacks. Here, of course, they are being set back by being thrown into the cells, so we see our heroes moving right to left.

Sometimes, for reasons of scene composition, I've violated this principle. I just wanted to say a couple of things about it though. Firstly, check out how many other comic artists do a similar thing - you may be surprised when you look for it. And secondly, this really is a conscious element in my mind when I shoot the photos for a comic. I do it as second nature now, but it's always present there in my mind when I'm laying out the scene - it's not something that just happens by accident.

This isn't the only thing of this nature that comes into play when I compose a comic, not by far. There are many creative decisions and constraints that apply each time. I presume most creators have similar suites of considerations that they apply whenever creating a work, which their readers/viewers/listeners never consciously pick up, but which subconsciously influence the way the work is perceived.

2025-10-22 Rerun commentary: Another thing for me is that the light is always coming from the right hand side, because that was the most convenient way to set up the lamp I used to illuminate scenes. Which means, to avoid too many shadows or characters shading one another, often they are arranged with the leftmost characters closer to the camera than the rightmost ones. You can see that in every panel here. Also, being LEGO figures, I can't show them with their mouths in different positions, open or closed. So to indicate when someone is speaking, I almost always raise one of their arms, at least a little bit, sometimes very high. At least when they're not doing other actions like walking. You can see this in Erwin in the first panel and Monty in the last one. This one's more obvious, so you probably noticed it at least subconsciously before.

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2925.html

daily_illuminator_feed

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-10-22

Gamehole Con in Madison was as much fun as it always is. I got to run two games of Melee and play in a third one! Irene took the Adversary role in both Melee games, and ran a game of her Scurvy Buggers RPG . . . with some players returning from last year and bringing friends. Now that's a compliment.

I didn't ask, but I think the show was bigger than last year. And the dealer's room is excellent. Imagine taking the whole dealer area at Gen Con and then banishing the schlock and leaving the good stuff. That's Gamehole.

We hung out with old friends and spent some quality time scheming with John K. about upcoming goodies.

And I got to see a sandhill crane. Very impressive bird. The lore is that this one is named Brandon.

Oh, yes. We made a little announcement, too. So you can look for a lot of things coming up in the Year of the Munchkin!

– Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-10-22

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6448

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6447

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6446

camwyn

Considering shutting down my Etsy store. Haven't actually made jewelry in months (mostly I've been sewing instead), haven't made a sale in months, and since the Etsy store isn't in my legal name I have to have a DBA certificate, which means I have to have a business address, and since I rent an apartment I can't actually operate the business out of the apartment due to insurance issues (I checked with the landlord). Neither Boston nor the town I live in will let a business register with a PO box as their primary address so I have to pay monthly fees at a colocation space and that's expensive. It makes no sense to keep the Etsy store existing if I'm not actually making enough jewelry to need to sell any of it off.

If anyone has an alternative to colo that means I don't have to pay more per month than I actually ever sold (I made a profit for a while some time back but the colo space upped their prices and now there's nowhere in Boston that charges a reasonable price for just having their address rather than actually using their space), let me know.

ffutures

Having been happy with my old iPhone SE (first 2016 version) since 2020 I've had to upgrade because some apps I use quite often will no longer run on it, presumably due to security issues. I need a Lightning connector for my thermal camera, and the most recent iPhones are USB-c, so I got the last iPhone released with a Lightning connector, a 2022 iPhone SE 3rd version - it's an ex-display one from an eBay shop which sells at £154.99 including P&P and appears to be completely unused. They've got a lot of them, if anyone else is interested I can send you a link.

So far I'm pretty happy - it's a bit bigger than I like to carry, but does have the advantage that I can read the screen clearly. Data transfer turned out to be remarkably easy - I've never had two phones or devices that were compatible with Apple's settings transfer thing before, and it really does seem to have gone perfectly without supervision. Not sure yet what I'll do with the old phone - trade-in value is pretty small so I'll probably keep it as a backup for the time being.

And yes, this is yet another lurch into rampant consumerism - I've had to replace my ipad, PC and phone this year and my old Macbook Pro last year - but it's probably keeping someone in work somewhere...

darths_and_droids_feed

https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/2690.html

Episode 2690: Fire in the Hall

Some types of opponents the heroes should just be able to mow down without worrying about being hit. In some games.

It very much depends what type of game you're interested in playing. You can go fully cinematic and have Arnie run across an open courtyard wearing shorts and a ripped shirt and carrying a minigun, with hundreds of soldiers firing machine guns at him and they all miss, while Arnie picks them all of easily. Or you can go grittily realistic and have Arnie be turned into a smear of red paste.

One important part of this is letting your players know which sort of game it is before they try this.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Run and shoot their way through without a care in the world? It wouldn't be a Jim plan if it made sense! The really surprising thing is how well this all is working in the movie. There hasn't been any sneaking around at all yet! Okay, so the big bad leader left the ship for a little bit, but I would have assumed Hux is at least competent enough to have a proper number of troops keeping an eye on incoming ships. Though perhaps this is a baiting trap of some sort via the Millennium Falcon? That was towed or something back along with Chewbacca, and Episode IV did have the tracking device put on the Falcon as well.

That just leaves the question of why the heroes would take the Falcon anywhere the First Order would be interested in at the moment, but that's only a small plot hole. We've got references to make and there's a bunch more left to do! All we need now is some superweapon that gets used. If we do get another superweapon, I hope it's more interesting looking than that oversized land cannon in the last Episode.

Transcript

https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/2690.html

irregular_comic_rss3_feed

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2924.html

Try this some time. When someone says something in casual conversation, leap to your feet excitedly and exclaim, "That explains everything!"

Savour the moment of bafflement your action engenders.

2025-10-21 Rerun commentary: If that doesn't work, say, "Let me remove this mask," and do so, revealing that your true face is that of a robot. That's guaranteed to cause a reaction.

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2924.html

daily_illuminator_feed

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-10-21

Pledging is now open on Kickstarter for Choose Cthulhu Books 11-14!

Choose Cthulhu is a series of non-consecutive, solo adventure gamebooks set in the otherworldly realms of H.P. Lovecraft. Throughout the books, you'll face terrifying decisions which force you to choose the best path forward. Each decision you make will drive the story and ultimately determine your fate.

Choose Cthulhu Book 11: The Haunter of the Dark – "You've been to Providence before. It didn't turn out well. The nightmares still haunt you . . . And you believe that you can redeem yourself." 
Choose Cthulhu Book 12: The Thing on the Doorstep – "You need to uncover the truth about the enigmatic and distant Asenath. What hides behind her inexorably attentive stare? Is it possible that the answer lies with a strange message from a mysterious figure clothed in an overcoat and hat who is waiting on your doorstep?" 
Choose Cthulhu Book 13: The Shadow Out of Time – "A sudden case of amnesia has kept you unaware of your own reality for 5 years. Where was your mind over the 5-year period that was taken from you? Will you be able to dig in the sandy desert in search of undeniable evidence of those shadows that stalk you from out of time?"  
Choose Cthulhu Book 14: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward – "It might be dangerous to be privy to the forbidden knowledge that young Ward has unlocked. What sinister state of degeneration is ailing your godson and dragging his family to despair?"

Seven exciting pledge levels are available, ranging from a PDF of a single book of your choice to a collector's set that includes all 14 physical Choose Cthulhu books, PDFs of all 14 books, a Cthulhu d6 Dice Set, a set of 10 Cthulhu Coins, a Cthulhu Dice Bag, and even another game – Cthulhu Dice.

Visit Kickstarter today to make your pledge before the campaign concludes on October 31.

Do you dare enter the infamous mythos of Cthulhu? And will you make it out alive?

– Michelle Richardson

Warehouse 23 News: Why Is The Darkness Blinking?

They're trapped between the realm of the living and the dead . . . and they're not too pleased about it. The Book of Unlife adds 44 unliving monsters to your The Fantasy Trip campaigns, along with a complete adventure setting. Live like there's too many tomorrows thanks to Warehouse 23!

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-10-21

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3157/

Many things about Star Wars were not well planned out, but having a 37-year-old in old-age makeup play the Emperor in Return of the Jedi was such an incredible call.

https://xkcd.com/3157/

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6445

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6444

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6443

ffutures

This is another horror bundle featuring Ghastly Affair, the "Gothic Game of Romantic Horror in the fevered age of Marie-Antoinette and Napoleon."

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Ghastly

This one is quite interesting, although it does have its origins in systems that put numbers on everything - I'm a little boggled that these include stats for Death and for Lucifer. it's primarily focused on Gothic horror, but claims a lot of other things as inspiration including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, etc. - a list of fictional characters that might be inspirational puts Faith Lehane immediately after Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. It has quite a lot about weird science and weirder magic, horrible illnesses (including several that often get overlooked in RPGs, such as rabies), and period architecture - the last is there because a major theme of Gothic horror was strange crumbling manors and their denizens. While the military history of the era is mentioned in the timeline, it's mostly there as background, and this isn't the game you want if you want to re-enact Sharpe or Master and Commander. On the other hand, it would work very well for ideas like a Napoleonic-era version of The Beguiled and other war-adjacent dramas.

The bottom line is that you get a huge amount very cheaply, and it's full of ideas that could be useful for any game or fiction with similar themes. This is one I definitely recommend, but I should really add a disclaimer that I sometimes forget - I get to download this stuff free, if you don't your mileage may vary.

alierak posting in

dw_maintenance

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

irregular_comic_rss3_feed

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2923.html

Alas it's necessary for me to point out that Viking helmets in fact didn't have horns on them. Mainly to pre-empt the hundreds of e-mails I'd receive if I allowed the comic to stand as it is without that statement.

Interestingly enough, this is probably the most repeated fact about Vikings ever. Because if you so much as mention Vikings in any work, it's absolutely necessary to say that they didn't have horned helmets, lest you incur the wrath of people who want to correct your obviously mistaken perception.

2025-10-20 Rerun commentary: This must be early on in his work on The Hobbit, because he eventually moved to using a typewriter, using that device almost exclusively for The Lord of the Rings. (At least by my meagre research; dedicated Tolkien scholars may know better.) Interestingly, it seems by his own admission that Tolkien never learnt to type with more than two fingers.

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2923.html

daily_illuminator_feed

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-10-20

If you're looking for a different near-steampunk aesthetic, consider a computer keyboard that uses rotary-dial telephone technology.

Treading similar ground to The Onion's revelation of the MacBook Wheel 16 years ago, Google Japan has created the Gboard, Dial Version. Anyone born before 1980 or so will recognize the tech (and have a rush of nostalgia or panic), while anyone younger might be mystified.

My Japanese isn't great but – as best I can tell – they've also released the 3D-printable files to make one's own keyboard . . . in case anyone's looking for a holiday present for me this year.

This seems to be a years-long ongoing joke for Japan, as I also found a video for a Möebius-strip double-sided keyboard and others I won't spoil . . .

– Steven Marsh

Warehouse 23 News: The Autodueling Continues . . .

. . . with the Car Wars Pocket Box Bundle 2! Visit Midville and Black Lake to see its sights and colorful citizens, or take your chances in the Armadillo Autoduel Arena! Will you find glory or defeat? Find out by picking up this Pocket Box from Warehouse 23 today!

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-10-20