The GROGNARD Files Interviews Christian Nommay

The GROGNARD Files podcast continues its exploration of Savage Worlds with special guest Christian Nommay in Episode 55 Pt. 2. Hear ye!

Flash Gordon/Savage Worlds Thought of the Day 2022-09-10

So far, Savage Arts & Sciences has been a blog with two separate personalities: half Flash Gordon and half Savage Worlds. In the future, I would like to merge these halves to a greater degree without sacrificing the blog's usefulness to those who are exclusively interested in one or the other. Can it be done? Only Tao knows, but I'll give it a shot.

I shall continue to post articles of Flash Gordon inspiration, which are free of game-related content, but I am thinking about writing follow-up articles that specifically address how they may be useful to those running or playing The Savage World of Flash Gordon for SWADE.

Meanwhile, today I shall be starting a rewatch of the second season of the Flash Gordon animated series. I have a feeling it will be a lengthier journey than my rewatch of the first season.

The GROGNARD Files Interviews Eric Lamoureux

The GROGNARD Files podcast (a personal favorite) finally dedicates an episode to Savage Worlds with special guest Eric Lamoureux in Episode 55 Pt 1. Listen, learn, and enjoy!

Flash Gordon Inspiration: The Comic Strips 1940-1942 (Dailies)

Flash Gordon: Radium Mines of Electra (Dailies 1940–1942) is the first volume in the collected Flash Gordon daily comic strips by Austin Briggs and Don Moore. The artwork by Briggs is strong, but the stories by Moore are not, and at times they border on self-parody. At one point Flash suffers a blow to the head, after which he becomes cold and cruel, only occasionally remembering his affection for Dale. Eventually, he snaps out of it after receiving another blow to the head, and he resumes a semblance of normalcy, but his encounter with the tempestuous Tigra, Queen of Forestia, results in a radical personality change for him. No longer an upholder of loyalty and chivalry, he transforms into the sort of stereotypical womanizer he would ordinarily chastise or fight. Perhaps the second volume of dailies will reveal that he is under the influence of another drug, spell, or hypnotic ray of Mongo and he will return to his senses, or that this is not the real Flash Gordon at all. Short of such a revelation, I fear that Moore himself might have been under the influence of something, and the dailies will be shown to have "jumped the flying shark" as it were.

Overall, I'm disappointed and a bit saddened by the comic strips in this volume. Flash Gordon's greatest appeal for me is his character: his courage, his ideals, his capacity for forgiveness, his open-mindedness, his ability to find and encourage the goodness in others, and his willingness to sacrifice himself to save others. To replace that with stock machismo and misogyny is a betrayal of the spirit of the Alex Raymond era of Flash Gordon. I will be relieved if he returns to normal in future installments, but I can't help feeling that it is a cheap and unimaginative plot device. If it isn't a plot device, but rather an intentional alteration of his character, then I regard it as a serious misstep (that was thankfully disregarded in the better adaptations). I await the next volume with trepidation.

Savage Worlds Thought of the Day 2022-06-26

As much as I appreciate the alacrity with which Pinnacle is working on the SWADE versions of the Fantasy Companion and the Super Powers Companion, I wish they had prioritized the Science Fiction Companion so I could use it with The Savage World of Flash Gordon (and post about it here). I have ideas for things I'd like to introduce for use with it, but I'm not sure if they've already been done or what the established parameters are rules-wise, and I'm not sure how useful the previous edition would be. I hope it won't be too long before it's released.

Flash Gordon Thought of the Day 2022-06-04

Flash Gordon has appeared in various forms in various media since first appearing in a Sunday newspaper comic strip in 1934, and many of these are fine, but some beg the question, "How dare you call this Flash Gordon?" followed by a slap in the face with a glove. The worst offenders are television bastardizations that bear little resemblance to the original characters and storylines. The 1996 animated series and the widely despised 2007 series are both execrable in their own ways, but the most egregious example might be the 1954 series. "Ah, Flash on television at last!" viewers might have said after his absence from movie screens for more than a decade. Alas, this is not the heroic and compassionate Flash Gordon who united disparate peoples to overthrow a tyrant. This is angry and hard-boiled Flash Gordon who works for the Galaxy Bureau of Investigation, a space G-man you might say, enforcing space laws and bringing space villains to justice. Granted, I have not seen more than a few episodes, and none to their conclusion, but as far as I can tell it has nothing in common with Flash Gordon — in any incarnation — other than the names of a few characters. The characters could have been renamed and the series retitled and no one would have ever connected it with the Flash Gordon legacy. Any television space opera of the period was superior to the 1954 Flash Gordon. Any! The rollercoaster that is the history of "reboots" goes on and on and on. Thank Tao we have the technology to preserve and enjoy the original Flash Gordon and the good reboots.

Flash's Background

When I was very young, all I knew about the background of the fictional character Flash Gordon was that he was a star polo player. I also thought he was supposed to be British, but I'm not sure where I got that idea. As it happens, very little about his background has been provided in any of the media in which he has appeared. For example:

The Newspaper Comic Strips: He was a star polo player and a Yale graduate.

The Movie Serials: He was a pilot and his father was a famous scientist.

The First Animated Series: Nothing I can recall.

The 1980 Movie: He was a quarterback for the New York Jets and had taken some flying lessons.

That's the entirety of his background as far as those sources are concerned. I'm not saying Flash Gordon needs more of a background (he's an action hero, after all), but I find it interesting how little we need to know about his life before Mongo. In terms of role-playing games, perhaps the lesson is that all you need for a character's background is a single sentence. The most compelling part of the character is that which emerges through play.

Lists of Mongo Update: The Dailies

I have begun reading the first of the Flash Gordon daily comic strips, and as I progress, I shall be adding to the Lists of Mongo as new subjects make their first appearance (such as the porcon, the horrosaur, and the cat-horse, all of which first appear in the dailies of May 1940).

Thinking about how I wish to organize the lists with the addition of material from another (albeit parallel) source, I originally planned to keep the Sundays and dailies in two separate lists, but I decided it would be easier for everyone if I integrated them and simply added (D) to those subjects that originated in the dailies. This prevents duplication and enables me to easily check chronology.

Savage News: Fantasy Companion

The updated Fantasy Companion for Savage Worlds Adventure Edition is now being crowdfunded via Pinnacle Entertainment Group's own site. You can pledge through 26 April 2022. Click on the link for details.

Savage Worlds Thought of the Day 2022-03-13

Of all the role-playing systems currently in publication, I think SWADE is probably the best fit for the Barsoom/Mars stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Savage Worlds is perfect for swords & planet pulp adventure, and the Barsoom stories are the epitome of the genre. (Note: I do not call them "John Carter stories" because Burroughs did not make John Carter the central protagonist of every story set on Barsoom.) We may never see an official SWADE version of The Savage World of John Carter or The Savage World of Barsoom or whatever it might have been entitled, but there's nothing to stop us from running our own unofficial versions for our own tables. And I just might do it.