Geeky SKAturday: "The Shadow of Your Smile" by Larry McDonald and friends

Larry McDonald is a well-known and highly accomplished percussionist in the Jamaican music scene.  I've seen him sit in with the Slackers (one of my favorite ska bands) more than once, as well as performing with the modern iteration of the Jamaican ska band that really defined the genre, the Skatalites.  Hailing from Jamaica, McDonald has played with many of the greats that have defined the sound of the island nation where he was born (not to mention blues legend Taj Mahal) and should definitely be considered among their ranks himself (he is a member of the Jamaica Music Museum's Hall of Fame).  And...as he was born in 1937...I'll just say that I hope I can be as active and creative as he is when I'm in my 80s.  (If you're interested, you can go here for a great article about his journey.)

(86 years young here, from a 2023 Slackers show...)

When we saw him with the Skatalites, I found out there's another aspect of McDonald's musical pursuits: He sings!  And he's great at it.  Earlier this year, McDonald released a ska version of the song "The Shadow of Your Smile," taking the vocal lead himself.  Marching forward with the virtuosic backing of guitarist Natty Frenchy and saxophonist Zem Audu, the tune even has a cool video with some scenic shots around the city.  Check it out below!

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Now, to make this SKAturday truly Geeky, let me talk a little bit about how this applies to the Agents of SKA, the time-traveling, ska-sharing protectors of the ever-branching multiverse.  I figure there needs to be at least one "elder statesman" among the SKA crew, so I think I'll make one as a little tribute to Mr. McDonald. So, let's go with...Don Lawrence...he's been at this for a while and has unparalleled wisdom not just from the time he's spent living, but all of the times he's experienced as a SKA agent.

With McDonald's history of setting a rhythmic foundation for his musical colleagues, I could imagine Don Lawrence's character class might be some sort of support role.  However, Mr. McDonald's killer vocals have made me go in a different direction...at heart, Don Lawrence (like Haruto Suzuki) is a star and probably needs to have the Three Minute Hero class.

And...it looks like I haven't even shared the details of the Three Minute Hero class on the blog yet.  It's about time for me to start logging the classes I've been thinking about for my little Monstrous Heartbreaker and its compatible games and minigames...so that'll be a post for this week...!

Meta Monday: Psychedelic wizards, living on Earth-Prime, and the D&D Cartoon

Fr. Josh has continued to indulge me in working his way solo through my first Monstrous Matters campaign.  At some point I'll probably get it in my head that other people want to read details about my game sessions and write up some specifics, but until then, I'll just say that it's gotten a little weird.  Which I think is something most of us would like to be able to say about our fantasy RPGs, so I'll definitely take it.  Eh...what the heck...as a small example, the MM team (Josh's character "Fingers" Watson plus less experienced agent and son-of-a-Ghostbuster Bobby Flech) found some scrolls while exploring part of a dungeon.  I decided to just let these scrolls be randomly assigned from among the full range of traditional fantasy spells, and...well, one of them turned out to be a Wish scroll.  And then it got used when Fingers was on the brink of death, but not just to get healthy, but also to fulfill Fingers' childhood dream (seemingly nourished by a healthy helping of Dungeon Crawl Classics) to become a psychedelic wizard.

So, not only did they succeed at the first mission (encountering goblins in the mountains of western North Carolina and seeking out the story behind their actions), but Fingers is now known as Tape Deck the Something, and is finding his consciousness progressively merging with that of the millennia-old spellbook for which he is the latest in a long line of psychic hosts.

It's pretty fun.

Along with thinking about the role of the Monstrous Matters team lately, I've also been reflecting on how many of my favorite comic book moments have come from those most "meta" of ideas, the ones that fully embrace the inherent silliness of superhero worlds but also acknowledge the powerful space they occupy in the human psyche.  I'm thinking about stuff like when Julius Schwartz helped Barry Allen build a cosmic treadmill to get back to his own universe, or when the Fantastic Four met God, and he looked like Jack Kirby.  And, of course, there's the story in what might be the greatest single issue in comics history (IMHO), Grant Morrison's "The Coyote Gospel," in Animal Man #5.  (The art -- by Truog, Hazlewood, and Wood -- and that Brian Bolland cover are also pretty badass, but hopefully it isn't TOO unfair that I usually think of it as G-Mo's masterpiece...)

From the issue's page at the DC Database

All in all, I'm wondering if I should take the premise of the Monstrous Matters team a bit more in this...for lack of a better term, I'll use this one a second time, complete with quotation marks once again..."meta" direction.  There are a lot of implications tied up in this.  I think there's actually quite a bit that changes if the monsters that are finding their way to our world aren't just similar to the ones in our stories and imaginations, but are actually shaped by our stories and imaginations.  It's one of my favorite aspects of superhero comics...and I'm wondering how it could play out at the gaming table.

And so, each Meta Monday, I hope to explore this theme a little bit, or at the very least take a look at some examples of this metatextual approach to RPG-style fantasy.  It's entirely possible I'll never follow up with a second Meta Monday, but right now, I'm feeling it.  And there's probably nowhere better to start looking than at what is in some ways the root of it all: Dungeons & Dragons itself, and its well-known '80s cartoon.  Remember, those kids didn't just haphazardly stumble upon some interdimensional portal; they took a D&D carnival ride there.  And they met a mysterious mentor/observer who happened to speak English...and they ended up with abilities they were undoubtedly familiar with from the tabletop game.  Whoa.  Meta!

These Cards Are Demonic: A quick little game of diabolical summoning

My recent obsession with the new Pokémon TCG Pocket app has me thinking about trading card games a lot, and obviously the Pokémon game in particular.  Something that has interested me at times is the idea of taking an existing TCG and using cards for it to create and play an entirely different (yet functional) game.

Somehow, all of these thoughts swirled around in my head recently to convince me that the project I'm presenting here is a game that I needed to offer to the world.  It's inspired by this alternative-game concept and follows along with the the trope of kids at school with a handful of Pokémon cards but no real idea of how to play the game (this was definitely a thing, and I assume it still is), who just want to have an easy way for their monsters to battle each other.

And obviously, I couldn't call it "Pokémon," so it gained its theme from the once-prevalent and undoubtedly persistent belief that Pokémon cards were and are a way for children to channel demonic powers and summon the denizens of Hell.

So, here is v0.2666 of the rules for These Cards Are Demonic, a quick little game that can be played with just a few cards per player:

These Cards Are Demonic v0.2666 via Google Drive

You can't see its face in this picture, but it's really cute.

I'd love it if anyone among my friends and readers (which are pretty much the same) had a chance to look over these rules and share their thoughts with me!  I'm interested in hearing from folks both familiar and unfamiliar with the card game (and the franchise in general).  For some reason, I'd really like to spread the word on this one.  Something is compelling me...

Geeky SKAturday: Ska Tune Network and the wonder of Sonic fandom

A wonderful, geeky SKAturday, all!

A couple weeks back, RPG blogosphere neighbor and all-around great dude Pun from Halls of the Nephilim sent me a link to the YouTube channel Ska Tune Network's cover of Weezer's "Say it Ain't So."  (Oh wow, do I put too many links on here?  They lose their weight at some point.  I'll ponder that later...)

Anyway, this was a reason to smile for a bunch of reasons, but it was also a reminder that I've hardly mentioned the creations of the Network on this blog, even though they fit the themes I explore here pretty perfectly.  The immensely talented Jer has built up quite a following on the channel largely by creating ska covers of...well, all kinds of stuff.  And most of them, as far as I can tell, are one-person efforts (they're really good about giving others credit when they're part of the creative process).

I did post Jer's rendition of the Pokémon Red and Blue theme more than four years ago, but I thought it'd be good to revisit the Ska Tune Network today to cover the Geeky SKAturday 2025 plan of introducing new ska released this year and talk about a growing RPG setting of time-traveling, multiverse-protecting ska bands.  (And yeah...I do know that the last Geeky SKAturday was an "internet song," and maybe it'd be cooler if I focused on "serious" new music in the scene, but...it's 2025, that's the way music goes these days.  And from what the Agents of SKA tell me about the music industry of the future, it's only gonna get worse...)

It just so happens that a week ago, Jer released a version of "Dr. Wily's Castle" from Mega Man 2...pretty freaking cool...and so, looking back through the channel's videos, I realized they dropped a perfect Geeky SKAturday song in January.  Here is "Green Hill Zone" from Sonic the Hedgehog:

For the sake of completeness...or, at the very least, for the sake of all of our memories, here's a playthrough of the Green Hill Zone...

I think Jer absolutely nailed it.

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Since there are so many things about the world of Sonic that fit the Agents of SKA so well -- fighting the man, a multiverse, and a general "anything-goes" approach to storytelling, for example -- it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that one of Sonic's rebellious anthropomorphic animal colleagues would also join with the Agents of SKA at times.  And in looking up a way to quickly create such a character for the team, I found out that Sonic fandom actually has a big focus on OCs (original characters), which I think is pretty rad.

I'm not even sure how many variations of "Sonic character creator" software there are out there, but I think I'm just hitting the surface with the few I looked at.

First, here are shots of, and links to, some of the ones that stood out to me (I have no affiliation with any of them, in case that needs to be said):

Picrew Sonic Maker

Doll Divine Sonic Character Designer

Doll Divine Male Furry Dollmaker (it definitely works)

And here's the anthropomorphic cat who now joins Haruto Suzuki in the Agents of SKA...Beat the Hepcat!  The name is a little tribute to the band Hepcat, one of the absolute finest of America's third wave crop, and the images below were made using two of the tools above (and some amateur coloring work on one).  Beat has options this way...he doesn't have to be restricted by clothing.  (Making these also made me realize how much Felix the Cat looks like a Sonic character, which I'm not sure I love, but what are ya gonna do?)

Anyway, here's Beat!

In case you're wondering about the bandages...he got into a tussle saving the multiverse...

Now he knows to wear these stylish 2 tone gloves...

Have a great weekend, y'all!

Affirmation of the Week: I do not have to succeed at this mobile game in order to prove myself to anyone

Eh...except myself, maybe.

So...I quickly became a big fan of the Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket mobile game that came out last fall.  As I've mentioned before on this blog, the Pokémon TCG is what really turned me into a gamer in the first place (despite my advanced age).  From there I discovered MTG, then D&D, then other RPGs, including the OSR community.  I write more about gaming than anything else on here, but if I had never discovered the Pokémon TCG (thanks to the kids I worked with at an after-school arts program), this blog would probably be primarily about comics, or music, or biopunk, or...I dunno, dogs or something.

The Pocket version is a great distillation of the physical card game into a quick and casual competition that works very well on a phone.  A few aspects of the game have been tweaked for simplicity (the elimination of Energy cards probably being the most impactful), but it's largely the IRL game, shrunk down.  Games are fast (around 5 minutes on average), and most of them feel like a little self-contained puzzle to be solved.  The app also keeps free packs flowing to you, so even without spending a dime, you get the constant "thrill" of opening up boosters, searching for rare cards and variants.  In case you can't tell, I dig Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket quite a bit, and it has definitely taken its place as the next in a line of mobile games that have been my go-to downtime entertainment.

And then, on March 28, ranked play debuted, and PTCGP become a much more serious matter.  In the months leading up to start of the ranked ladder, there was really no in-game measure of your success other than a running log of how many games you've won.  And that's cool, and it fits the overall casual feel of the app, but I had really been longing for something like this to give some weight to the games, like I used to have when playing Hearthstone and Auto Chess and Chess Rush.  Plus...and this is a side effect of the new mode that has played out somewhat like I anticipated...I wanted a reason for players to quit disconnecting as soon as they felt like they were going to lose a game (leaving me to wait for the fairly extended timer to count down before I could move on, unless I just conceded), which actually happens way more than I would have thought in unranked play.

Of course I wanted to see how I fared on the ranked ladder.  The point system is set up where you technically don't even need a winning record to advance, especially at lower levels where you earn bonuses for win streaks.  It became pretty clear once I got into the weeds of it, though...especially as I read others' takes on the math involved in the climb...that reaching Master Ball (the top rank, not counting placing in the upper echelon of those who reach Master Ball) would be a grind.  This wasn't unexpected...but it was really going to be a grind...hundreds of games even if you perform pretty well, and hundreds upon hundreds if you happen to be a solidly average TCG player like me (borne out by decades of experience in competitive formats).

Now, keep in mind...I really don't have especially onerous responsibilities in life.  I don't have kids, for example...ones with fewer than four legs, at least.  BUT...I do have fairly normal adult responsibilities, along with that persistent little daemon in the back of my mind telling me that I'm too old and ostensibly responsible to spend this much time trying to earn a little digital emblem that doesn't even necessarily mean I played the game with a winning record.  It'll definitely make you question if the time spent is worth the reward, especially when you know the reward doesn't even indicate that you're actually good at the task involved.  (Honestly, it's sort of a microcosm of getting a PhD...)

In the wee hours of this past Saturday, however, I got that final win necessary to put those all-important letters (MB) after my name on official documents.  I reached the mountaintop...or, at least, the plateau where you can rest while the real go-getters are up there aiming for the peak.  I probably used around 15 different decks in total to get there, including (but not limited to...and if you don't play the game, this is just going to seem like a bunch of gibberish): Gyarados/Manaphy (with Dewgong because I don't have an Origin Form Palkia...played this one pretty significantly, actually); Gyarados/Greninja/Druddigon; Rampardos/Hitmonlee; Rampardos/Lucario/Sudowoodo (both Ramp decks got played a fair amount); at least two different versions of Circle Circuit Pikachu; Arceus/Exeggutor; Arceus/Skarmony; Pachirisu/Zebstrika; Giratina/Darkrai (the bogeyman of the format, so my deck is named "Sellout"); Giratina/Mewtwo; Giratina/Greninja/Druddigon; and one or more decks using Wigglytuff, since the Jigglypuff line is my favorite group of 'mons.

Wigglytuff was actually kind of crucial, as a Wiggly/Weezing/Darkrai deck helped me rebound from a slump that sent me crashing down out of the Ultra Ball rank.  I basically replaced Wigglytuff with Weavile to end up using the following deck (with tiny tweaks here and there) for a majority of the rest of my grind.  I know it isn't the best, but I was able to play it A LOT without getting tired of it.

I'm pretty happy that I had Weezing in there, as it isn't a common 'mon in competitive decks these days, although I'll fully admit that the deck may be stronger overall with something else in those slots.  As mentioned above, though, I was fine playing this deck for a lot of games.

How many games, exactly?

Well, since most of the people who will read this are friends that I don't expect to judge me for it, I'll give the real answer...

674.  I went 338-333-3.  At somewhere around five minutes a game (thankfully, often less than that in ranked mode, as players are ready to move on to the next game in the grind as quickly as possible)...well, I'm good enough at multiplicaton to know that I don't want to think about that math at all.  Perhaps it's good enough to give the total amount of time as: pretty much every minute that could be spared from real life, and some that probably shouldn't have been, for the 15+ days I was caught up in the grind.  My overall winning percentage as calculated by the game (so ties count the same as losses) was 50.1%.  And if you take away the "gimme" wins when you're matched up against bots at the early levels, I may not have even had a winning record.  But y'know what?  I'll take it!

(And then...just so the world could have a little extra fun with me, I guess, I accidentally clicked back into a ranked game -- intending to just rest on my current points and not risk falling out of the Master Ball rank -- with a silly Golduck/Wigglytuff deck that was not exactly prepared for competitive play.  So I did drop back out, thankfully winning my way back in with a two-win streak -- after losing my first "serious attempt" to recoup the lost points.  So...you can add an extra four games to that total because I'm kind of an idiot.)

So where does this all leave me?  Well, I intended to just care about it this one time, to prove to myself that I was capable and get the emblem for the first ranked season, and then go back to the casual enjoyment of the game that most players had been experiencing since it launched.  But...apparently, having hit Master Ball, I may start next season already just a few ranks away from hitting it again (although still where most of the grind is found).  And in playing casual games now, I do have to admit that I kind of miss having something riding on the outcome of my games.  I'm honestly not a very competitive person in general...but I think I might be drawn back in...

And so, I'm telling myself this over and over: I do not have to succeed at this mobile game in order to prove myself to anyone.  But man, is this game good at what it's designed to do.  It hasn't managed to get any cash from me (yet), so I guess it's failed at its primary function (although it has raked in oodles of money from players around the world)...but as far as making me feel like there's always time for one more game, it's about as good as it gets.  You might even say The Very Best.

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Alright, time to tie this all in with the stuff I normally like to post here on Monstrous Matters.  I also happened to recently catch a Koffing in Pokémon GO, so to celebrate my little TCG achievement, I evolved Louise into a Weezing and decided I'd stat her out for OSR games, as I've done at times in the past.  First of all, here she is with Tulip:

And here's the PTCGP card she'll be based on:

For this as a final result...

Weezing

HD 3 (11 HP), AC 11

Weakness: Fighting

Ability: Gas Leak - All creatures near Weezing (including other active Elemental Beasts) must save vs. poison (CON) each round or become poisoned by its noxious gas.  Until healed, the poisoned creature takes 1 damage at the end of every round.

Attack: Tackle +5 (1d6 darkness damage)

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Geeky SKAturday: There's a McDonald's in the Pentagon

Well, this actually might be the most influential ska song to come out so far this year.  If you haven't already fallen victim to this earworm, here's your chance to be infected...

I may not have discovered this masterpiece if it weren't for r/Ska, but apparently it's achieved a healthy level of virality on TikTok.  There's even a Know Your Meme page for it, if you'd like to check out the details, but...briefly: In February, musician Silly Stu put the original acoustic version online.  Here it is...or, a copy of it at least...I still don't completely get TikTok...

I guess it's worth saying here: The lyrics in this little tune are clever as hell.  And clearly it's super catchy.  So, thankfully, Spencer Vann decided to expand upon it, and 10 days later, we got the ska gem in that first video above.  Vann even goes over his process of making the backing track in a video here:

And it seems this song is already a bit of a phenomenon.  I'm sure there will be more, but here's the first cover I heard, by Philly ska band Goofy at Night:

(I'm not sure why they left out the last bit of lyrics...maybe they didn't love the idea of exclaiming, Bitch you hit the Pentagon!  But who knows...)

At any rate, I am very happy to bring this song into the canon of the Agents of SKA.  Surely there are times that this super-secret organization (the Sentinel Khrononaut All-Stars) has to have extra-secret meetings with a double-secret committee from the American military.  Now we know exactly where those meetings take place.  I'm guessing in the crew room...

Actually from a Reddit post here

Hope you all have a great SKAturday and a wonderful rest of your weekend...!

Geeky SKAturday: Gettin' RUDE with the Sybians...

Happy SKAturday, all!  Thank you for stopping by to hopefully make it just a little bit brighter, nerdier, and more skankable with me.

As a reminder, these Geeky SKAturday posts have two main goals this year: (1) Take a look at some great ska and ska-related tunes that have come out in 2025, and (2) Ramble about how to work ideas from these songs into a work-in-progress RPG setting in which the denizens of Skaville (metaphorically) travel through time to protect the multiverse (literally).  Today's new(ish) song: "Naughty Boy (Not Rude)" by the Dutch offbeat purveyors known as the Sybians!

I've just discovered the Sybians this year.  Hailing from Amsterdam, they are self-described as "the new dark horse of 60's reggae," and that seems like a fair description.  The band includes some Dutch veterans of Jamaican music and plays an infectious take on early reggae that hits pretty hard and sticks in your brain.

From here

I went with this song today because I wanted to finally feature one that references that most iconic of concepts in the ska-sphere: the idea of being rude.  Now, that word is thrown around in ska circles, but I would imagine the meaning behind it could fuel many dissertations at this point.  There is a Wikipedia page devoted to the rude boy (and variants)...but it's pretty short, and I would definitely encourage anyone with interest to explore how the term has been used over the years.  In summary...rude boys were originally rebellious young men in Jamaica who became closely associated with ska's first wave in the 1960s.

During the 2 Tone era in the UK, the term shifted to more broadly encompass the subculture associated with ska.  Over the decades in the ska scene, the word rude has taken on a connotation that is almost undeniably positive, but also really hard to pin down exactly.  Being rude likely means you have an appreciation for the music that brings us together, and it might still refer to a questionable association with lawful living, but it also has implications of being courageous and street-smart.  Today's song is a good example of its subtlety of meaning...the subject of the song is naughty but decidedly not rude.

I guess that to me, being rude at this point broadly means sharing some degree of similarity to this archetypal Rudie that has been built up in the lore of ska.  This is part of what makes it perfect for gaming!  Not only is there a story behind the word, there's an aesthetic!  Visually, Rudies are probably represented most prominently by the mascots of 2 Tone bands the Specials and the Beat: Walt Jabsco (based on an early photo of Peter Tosh) and (the) Beat Girl (based on first wave rude girl and trans pioneer Brigitte Bond...go here for some of the great work that has been done in uncovering her story!).

From this Reddit thread about "The world's best relationship"... :)

To get deep in the nerd weeds, in working on a "ska RPG," I've thought about different ways of approaching the concept of being rude.  I made the Rudie class for 5e a while back, and in thinking about a "Big 4' of RPG attributes, I've considered having a set that form RUDE as an acronym, so that I could play the RUDE System (Reasoning, Understanding, Dexterity, Endurance?).  I'm also wondering if Rude/Rudeness should be a completely separate attribute in a game, like Sanity in Call of Cthulhu.  After all, if you look at the classic six stats of D&D, Rudeness is a little bit Charisma, a little bit Wisdom, and probably dashes of both Intelligence and Constitution.  So, maybe it should be its own thing...perhaps even influenced by all of the attributes...?

Eh...like I said...there are dissertations waiting to be written about this historically rich term (and maybe already have been).  I mean...I haven't even gone into how the term is likely still used at times in Jamaican dancehall and various British dance genres...which probably complicates the archetype I'm following here, and maybe even opens up some questions of cultural appropriation (with which I am always willing to engage).  I think I'll just stop rambling about it now.  That's not very rude of me, after all.