UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

5 thoughts on “558 – Cotton Clad Calamity”

  1. Raznaak

    Yup, he’s a bastard XD

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Are those pajamas available in XXXL in the gift shop?

  3. Otaku

    It’s been a while, so let me ask: Did we get a reason for him to WANT Susie dead? Not to backseat, but if we didn’t, I’m worried were about to move into “Stupid Evil” territory. Now, stupid happens, don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad storytelling for that to be the case here.

    You’ve just done a good job NOT having that be a driving factor, so the “Kill off the stars of my successful reality TV show.” seems shortsighted, otherwise. Oh, I guess I could be mistaken about the in-story reality TV show’s success. Like, if the company behind them is losing money, or they think a change in management at the ranch would make the whole thing more popular/profitable, then I can see the above scenario happening as well.

    I REALLY think I’m just forgetting something important, but that I don’t have time to deep dive to remind me of, hence the comment. >_<

    1. Deoxy

      It certainly has been stretched out over quite a while, but there have definitely been hints from quite near the beginning that whoever is running the reality TV show definitely wants her dead.

      But I certainly don’t recall any reason why.

      1. Clint

        Yeah it’s fair to not remember since it’s been a hot minute (many, many minutes) but if you feel like a refresher the most relevant bits would be the beginning of Episode 8 and the end of Episode 15. We haven’t explicitly spelled out exactly what The Exec means by his “side hustle” or who was on the other end of that phone call, though.

        I’m hoping that when the whole thing is eventually available it will make sense, or at least enough sense to have hung this narrative on.

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558 – Cotton Clad Calamity
Posted on August 26, 2026 by Dawn

What would you call this? Armchair assassination? Merk-from-home?

Well, Suzie ain't dead (or undead) quite yet, so we'll just have to see if his gloating is justifiable.

It’s a gas, gas, gas…

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Clint

In the wake of the Great Pandemic, my local friends have been reaching out feelers towards group play gatherings again. Not RPGs, but good ol’ friendly competitions — in person, usin’ them table thingies what aren’t even virtual.

But what to play? Well, we were floating around the usual boardgames that had been gathering a patina of dust but nothing was really firing excitement. Miniature wargaming was out, even with Warhammer 40k debuting its 10th(!) edition. Just too expensive…

…or was it?

One of my friends brought up a game he thought had good fun potential and a low “buy in” called Gaslands. What, pray tell, was Gaslands? In a nutshell it was a post-apocalyptic car combat game.

“Oh, like Car Wars?”

“Yes, but this is designed and scaled so you can use Hot Wheels as miniatures.”

Ooooh!

I mean, not just Hot Wheels, any 1:64 scale vehicles will do. I myself had a box of twenty Matchbox cars that I purchased several years ago with the idea that we could take close-up pictures of them as Zombie Ranch references. Alas, the Matchbox 20 (heh) mostly remained in storage… but now was it time to roll them back out?

Dawn and I played a test game and it was utter chaos. In a good way. The rules encourage recklessness and even have a built-in feature so that even if you get your whole team of cars wiped out you can get back in the game. There’s a remotely tuned-in audience, you see, and if you blow up stylishly they love that and will shower your (next) driver(s) with accolades.

So from that you might get the sense there’s a heavily tongue-in-cheek media element to the mayhem, and you’d be right, and combined with the “soft apocalypse” setting which still allows for some amount of civilization, Zombie Ranch wouldn’t feel very far off from the very loose lore so far provided. Heck, there’s even a zombie horde scenario provided where the object is to collide with as many of the posthumous pedestrians as you can — what a waste of perfectly good zombies! But game designer Mike Hutchinson straight up admits he’s less interested in world-building and more just wanted to make a fast-paced game where you can push toy cars around and go “VROOM PEW PEW” and have lots of dangerous and fatal hijinks ensue. Team Sponsors add special perks to spice up the running and take inspiration from Death Race, Mad Max, and even Stephen King’s Christine.

It’s wild in the best way and Dawn and I are already brainstorming some customs for next time. I mean, you can just use your unmodified toy cars, but a quick Google search will show you what people have gotten up to and we still have a lot of bitz packed away from our Warhammer/Warmachine days. And Dawn has her 3D printer which means there’s lots of free STLs for an enterprising lad or lass to grab online.

But still, it’s nowhere near as big a buy in as most of its ilk and you can just write what you’re armed with on a sheet of paper rather than having to painstakingly glue it to your car, if you don’t have the time or energy to do that. You can use thimbles for start and finish gates. All the bells and whistles are totally optional and my group of 40-somethings, several of whom have kids, are not going to judge each other on that score. The rulebook is less than $20 on Amazon right now, and then you buy, print, or excavate some toy cars and you go. Vroom vroom.