An Assortment of Christmas Presents

Here's some stuff you might have missed.

First, a collection of illegal taxidermy from one rogue taxidermist.  If you can't find inspiration in that, I can't help you.  Hamster crabs are absolutely terrifying.

Next, here's a superpower wiki's random feature.  Click that link and *bam!* random superpower.  That might actually be a neat superhero game — make a character in whatever system you want, and then get a random superpower (or two or three, depending upon how powerful you want your characters).  You were normal until this superpower manifested, and now what are you going to do?  See, story hook.

Collegia Titanica has a blog post about fleshing out NPC backgrounds.  Always a good idea, and this post is worth reading if you're stuck or just want to think about the process.

Hill Cantons brings us some random plot ideas.  They're all interesting reading, but the one that stuck with me was the "Point of Light" one; particularly the idea that the settlement where you start is the only settlement in the world.  There's no merchant path to follow, no rumored other town.  Just you in the middle of all the wild.  The video game Terranigma begins like this and only gets weirder from there.

Also from Hill Cantons, you may want to check out this contest.  It's passed, but all the entries are in the comments, so there's likely to be something interesting there.  I have yet to slog through it.

Here's some random artwork.  Much of it is popular culture, but so stylized as to be unrecognizable (Realistic Kirby is horrifying).  This was brought to my attention by a recent Wizardly Wednesday post.

Finally, E. M. Lamb has made a couple of Lovecraftian posts with postmodern flair at Role-Player Hater.  The first is the iPod of Erich Zann, which is an iPod containing songs that act as an Elder Sign.  The good news: the sounds affect all mythos creatures in hearing range, meaning this has decent range for an Elder Sign.  The bad news: the battery lasts six hours.  Better have a backup plan in place.

The second such post is about the Yell0k1ng7 virus, which is confusing authorities because it's only affecting some sites in the midwest.  In a V-pattern.  Needless to say, it's bad news if nobody can stop this thing.