Season 14 Update

I've got another Strat-O-Matic hockey season going on in the background, and at this point all six teams have played half of their 20-game regular-season schedule. The Victorias, who have stumbled a bit in recent years, are back on top of the standings at 7-1-2. Their aggressive rebuild strategy of bringing in speedy forwards to create a more up-tempo attack has been paying off in a big way; the Vics lead the league in most offensive categories, including a power play that's clicking at 40%. In second place we have the Millionaires, winners of the last two first-place pennants, who are having a strong season at 5-3-2. The Bearcats, last year's surprise Creighton Cup winners, are treading water at .500 (4-4-2). As for the Comets, Bulldogs, and Thistles, well, one of those teams will make the playoffs by default. 

Looking now at individual performances, "Phantom" Joe Malone is leading the league with 9 goals and is the frontrunner for Forward MVP. Defenseman Cyclone Taylor has racked up a league-best 21 points as he looks to reclaim the scoring title from the Millies' Mickey MacKay, who won it in Seasons 12 and 13. Taylor's teammate Hobey Baker is second in hte league with 18 points, and could give Malone a run for his money in the Forward MVP race. I should also note that George Hay, the Vics' big offseason trade acquisition, has been thriving in his new home and is tied for second in goals with 7. Heralded rookie right wings Punch Broadbent (Comets) and Babe Dye (Millies) haven't seen the hype translate into results just yet, and it's hard to say which one has the edge for Rookie of the Year. There's no such ambiguity among the goaltenders, as Bowse Hutton of the Vics has a commanding lead in save percentage (.941), ahead of Georges Vezina (Millies) and Hap Holmes (Bulldogs), both at .929.

What's the big storyline for the second half of the season? It could be which teams don't make the playoffs. There's an especially talented draft class coming up for Season 15, so the teams that crater now are likely to get some major talent for next year.

Cartography Woes

After no small amount of frustration and way more hours than I would have expected, the Torchlight campaign setting at last has a complete world map. Now we just need to find the time to play the actual campaign...

Torchlight Ignited

This month should see the release of some cool new Blade Runner-themed Lumibricks that will enhance my growing city of Vesper. I want the city to look and feel epic in scope before we start the campaign. I'm also not in any great hurry to begin because, well, the new edition of Cypher doesn't include cyberpunk info in the core rulebooks! MCG maintains a cyberpunk campaign setting, however, so I'm hopeful we'll see cyberpunk content in the upcoming player supplement that was part of the Backerkit campaign for the second edition. That book likely won't be in our hands until early in the new year. 

In the meantime, we'll test out Cypher 2 with a return to the Torchlight setting. Nathaniel and Amy will play in person, while Matthew will participate remotely and asynchronously from his distant outpost in Indiana. Torchlight was an easy call because I already have a campaign written for it -- something I drafted back in the days of Covid but never got around to using.

Common Tongue

One building at a time, I'll assembling quite an enormous Lumibricks city to serve as the physical representation of Vesper for our upcoming Cypher campaign. I finished up a corporate skyscraper last night and brought in Amy and Nathaniel to see it light up in the dark. Afterwards, Nathaniel got a cheeky look on his face and asked what language people in Vesper speak. When I replied that English would be the lingua franca, he quipped, "What, not Vesperanto?"

My Bad!

I shouldn't have doubted MCG. Nathaniel found a legacy site where the original Cypher character builder remains intact, with all of our first-edition characters. Huzzah!

Wipeout

I do love Monte Cook Games, but I have to say that I was a bit peeved to find that when the online character builder tool launched for the new edition of Cypher, it seems to have wiped out all the saved characters from the first edition. I wish I'd had a bit of notice so that I could download PDFs of all the characters we've made over the past year or so. We would, of course, need to rebuild them for Cypher 2 anyway, but still...

Lanterns

Lanterns premieres tonight on HBO. Seriously hoping that it exorcises the ghost of Ryan Reynolds...