Mixed Signals

Straight-forward gaming

I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. The short story Another Show at Twenty-Two is a sequel, of sorts, to the haunting Street Candles novel.

This review contains spoilers. It's a short story, so by discussing it at all there are...

I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. The second novel in the series is Street Candles and it's one of the most intense and emotionally taxing things I've read in a long time. This review contains no spoilers beyond what you'd read on...

I'm rewatching every episode of the Man from UNCLE series from start to finish. This review contains spoilers.

Quick summary: Ilya Kuryakin and an airline attendant get stranded in the Sahara and stumble into the clutches of a captain who believes he's commanding a regiment of the Foreign Legion...

I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. The short story Code Black is a prequel to everything, and I do mean everything.

This review contains spoilers. It's a short story, so by discussing it at all there are contextual spoilers. Don...

I've been watching the Hammer and Bolter animated series on Warhammer+, and I'm reviewing each episode as I watch it. There may be very minor spoilers, but ideally no more than you'd get from the episode description.

Garden of Ghosts

This episode successfully demonstrates the surprising dept...

My first experiences in hobby shops (specifically, but not exclusively, a Warhammer store) were not great. And yet some of my best experiences in the hobby have happened in a Warhammer store. I think there's a secret to turning a geeky hobby, like building and paintng 28mm toy soldiers so you can pl...

Deliver us from evil isn't quite a horror movie, but a supernatural police thriller. That's not usually my kind of movie, but I didn't know what kind of movie it was when I started watching. To be honest, it captured my attention for a while, as the two lead cops in the story (Sarchie and Butler) t...

When I find art I love, I'm usually compelled to share and promote it, because that's what we humans do when we're excited about something. With independent art, though, that can be tricky because sometimes the art you love is literally one-of-a-kind, or it's only available from the artist directly,...

In a previous post, I wrote about how tracking encumbrance made loot more "valuable" by enforcing a weight-based economy. However, tracking encumbrance can be hard. In theory, it's exclusively the responsibility of each player, but if the game master (GM) doesn't announce the weight of each item t...

In the Warhammer 40k universe, there were originally 20 chapters of space marines. Two have been lost, leaving 18 today (meaning in the 41st millennium). There's a convenient even split within these 18 legions, with 9 being loyalist troops in service to the fascist Emperor and the other 9 being dedi...

I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. The second story in the series is Hull Breach. This review contains no spoilers.

Here's the unnecessary but obligatory disclaimer! I know the author, David Collins-Rivera, personally (he and I w...

In hacker culture, there's the adage that you should always "use the source". In programming, the source is code, like Java or Python. It's usually called, literally, the "source code". In other sciences, it's a series of steps you can repeat to achieve specific rezults (it's an algorithm). It's...

Last year, I developed and published Skuffle Wammer, the universe's smallest wargame. It's designed to be played in 5 minutes or less, with the intent of being the tabletop gaming equivalent of a good stand-up-and-stretch at work. The play area is an A4 sheet of paper, you throw out some miniature...

I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. The first book in the series is the novella Motherload, and it introduces not only the main character of the Stardrifter series but also the sci fi universe that serves as the setting. This review...

I'm rewatching every episode of the Man from UNCLE series from start to finish. This review contains spoilers.

A two-part episode. It's mostly good, although the main plot is the least interesting thing about it. The story is something I feel like we must have seen before, or maybe it's the reve...

Everybody has their own tolerance levels for how much paperwork in an RPG they feel is fun. For some people, updating their character sheet is a milestone system for their character. It's as much a part of the game as NPC interactions, decisions, strategy, solving puzzles, and so on. For others, a c...