Games - The Last Days of Destiny released 31st march

Howdy Pardners!

Welcome to Destiny, Arizona. The setting for my Wild West card game 'The Last Days of Destiny' which plays out exciting cinematic gunfights in a doomed town.

Over ten years in development (it's a long story, son) I have finally produced a version available for sale, which will be available for £2 on downloadable PDF. Featuring 110 cards with illustrations by professional artist Adrian Bamforth. It should be available from March 31st.

It is the first in a planned series of releases of the games that I have already devised, and following it later in the year should be 54 Jones, Mad Monks and if I'm feeling very ambitious, Midlam Manor.

While I sort out file hosting, games will be bought via paypal, and then I shall e-mail them to people. Usually this shouldn't take more than 24 hours and files size will be about 3MB. The cards can then be printed out at home. Full support will be given to rules and printing queries in the dedicated yahoo group.

Y'all have a nice day now!

OVS - OVS5 is Alive and The Definitely Last Days of Destiny

Last week I was adding another chapter to the longest mid-life crisis in history (I think it's been ongoing since I was about three) by lying about being really into the Hip Hop (but I really did enjoy the album, albeit it in an old-fogey fashion, cheers Junior Disprol!).

As for OVS, I'm working on it, as if it were some sort of Frankenstein and I was the mad professor who would later come to be named after him. "That's Frankenstein's Professor!" They shall cry. I have some odd things on the boil, but it should all be great :)

I still need artists for some spot illustrations and the odd strip. So if your work is of a high standard, you like science fiction (in a broad sense) and you don't mind contributing to a comic that doesn't pay, then please get in touch.

Also, I finished a revision of my last Days of Destiny card game recently, which is at least ten years old. I playtested it today and it worked surprisingly well. Very few kinks to iron out. A few more playtests and I'll release it with full support on this site for a measly weaselly £2.

It will be the first in a line of games I hope to put out including 54 Jones and Mad Monks (one of which will be next). I also have a new boardgame that I designed recently that won't get playtested until after Destiny is done. It's all about battling wizards and promises to be very simple but fun with some unusual mechanics!

I have also been writing again, on a script which I doubt will see publication this year, but it was good to sit down and dust off the cobwebs. It worked pretty neatly.

Anyway, off to get on with more comics work. I'd tell you what I was working on, but that old chap would spoil the surprise. Now, where did I put those photos...

What-ho!

PVS

Stuff - Another Year another Hardcore UK Hip Hop Album

Well, I'm a year older and I still haven't got my life sorted out. Still, I have a plan and a caffeine addiction, that my friends, is a start.

Arriving through the post, entirely unrelated to this cosmically ignored date, was a Jack Daniels Key Ring (They must think I'm still drinking like it's 1999) and the new album from Welsh Hip Hop monsters, the Dead Residents.

Now, as is well known, nobody likes the the top notch Hip Hop more than me, so it was a delight to receive Triple Crown on a 'rad' compact disc.

Lots of visits from Mr Sweary. I'm no Professor of the Hip Hop, but would the song Smashman Vs. Pacman's Ghost have been any less effective with the following lyrics:

"Don't act Chumpish. He's a Chump, he's a Chump-face, flip that chump. I'm the biggest chump."

One particularily appreciated Champion Sound and 10th World Transpecies Contest for Turf Dominance.

Dead Residents. I am not dis-respecting them.

"Squids kicked in the tentacles, anchovies face the Alamo."

The album is available from HMV online and all good musical emporiums.

Film - I Watched The Watchmen

I didn't think I was going to watch The Watchmen, but in the end, I did.

I left feeling the cinema feeling as if I'd received a severe blow to the head with a rather large book, wielded by a deranged American gentlemen, who then ran away into the night. Some of the pages may have been missing, but even in my dazed state I recognised the book as The Watchmen.

I can't tell you if it was good or bad or whether I enjoyed it or not. Despite having seen it, I'd need to see it again, just so that I could work out exactly what it was that I watched...

What a strange experience.

Paul "No comment!" Scott

OVS - We're on the road again... OVS 4 Review

Thanks to everyone who has got in touch to tell me about the review of Omnivistascope Model IV in the latest issue of Comics International (buy it at your local comic shop now). As I've been largely unable to reach the outside world for a month (except via the irregular No.56 outworld colony shuttle) I'm very grateful to you all for your transmissions.

Artists Paul McCaffrey, Bryan Coyle and Chris Geary all get mentions, as does guest writer Ben Clark for the terrific Sands of Holy Island. The first zombie story set on Lindisfarne I know of.

With a very respectable 8 out of 10 score, the review comes as a very pleasant boost just as I am looking forward to spending some time on putting together Omnivistascope 5, which will be something of an experiment. If it works may well change fundamentally how the comic works in the future. None of the old will be lost, but there may be a whole lot more new. We shall see...

Cheers :)

Paul

Wanted - A New Second Hand Car

At the start of February I was coming home from work when I hit an ice patch, I almost thought I had it under control, but that only lasted a fraction of a second before the car went into a spin and decided to become an off road vehicle. I was okay, the car not so much.

I've had a month of doing very little but travel to work and look for cars (admittedly I had a nice week's holiday in Inverness). Anyway the cheque is through from the insurers and I'm now desperate for a second hand car. I can't go on any more stuck in this tiny village without a car!

Ideal a small car about a 1.3, hopefully 5 door, but will settle for 3 door. I'll lower my demands for cheap. Any onboard computer shouldn't have attained sentience and joined an army of four wheeled warriors determined to hunt down the last remants of mankind.

I need to make some sort of rash and ill-informed decision this weekend. In my desperation I'm asking here.

Cheers :)

Paul

OVS - Lost an Artist

"Memory? Yeah, I used to have one of those, reckon I left it somewhere. Now lemme think..."

Well, rather annoyingly, I lost the details of an artist I was keeping 'on file' for when a suitable story came up. I was sure I knew his name, had a contact e-mail, everything. Looked up the name, and it's not him. Looked in my contacts list, he's not there.

Weird.

Anyway, he's from Darlington, and I met up with him briefly last year. If he happens to stumble across this in the next week (this is unlikely I know), I have a story for him if he's free.

Paul (he's lost it) Scott