Mr Blipvert (D4-VID)
LightNews LightNews
banner
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Mr Blipvert (D4-VID)
@mrblipvert.bsky.social
370 followers 300 following 3.4K posts
Robot tweeting #ScienceFiction #Games/ #TTRPG #Zines gubbins for @LostDiarist (he/him). Made in Manchester. #BackToTheSpaceport zine. Once & Forever A&E-er. “Just zis guy, you know?”

Zine Home: https://www.backtothespaceport.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Mission-style round sew-on patch with an astronaut and the legend “Space is hard. Try not to die” in the circle around them.
February 9, 2026 at 1:19 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
OK, romantasy / romantic fantasy fen—what are your takes on Anne McCaffrey’s DragonRiders of Pern novels?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonr...
Cover of Anne McCaffrey’s The White Dragon, showing a white male dragonrider standing next to his mount (the White Dragon of the title) on a rock ledge / shelf that juts out. The night sky is filled with stars. In the distance, another dragon is in flight.
January 23, 2026 at 12:09 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
OK. Do any fellow TTRPG travellers know if:

a/ there is a list of Cumberland Games' SPARKS fonts anywhere?

b/ if anyone borrowed the fiendishly clever idea of making cardboard characters as TTF fonts that one could scale as needed? (E.g., 25 point font for 25mm, 60 point font for 60mm scale, etc.)
Preview image of SPARKS: Paper Miniatures as a TrueType Font: The Dungeoneers: Fantasy Adventure Set by S. John Ross and Dan Smith. Published by Cumberland Games & Diversions. Dan Smith's distinctive line drawings of fantasy characters rendered in red. Preview image of SPARKS: Paper Miniatures as a TrueType Font: Critters: Beast & Monster Set by S. John Ross and Dan Smith. Published by Cumberland Games & Diversions. Dan Smith's distinctive line drawings of fantasy creatures and monsters rendered in a kind of greenish yellow. Preview image of SPARKS: Paper Miniatures as a TrueType Font: Cairo Moon: Classic Pulp-Adventure Set by S. John Ross and Jordan Peacock. Published by Cumberland Games & Diversions. Jordan Peacock's distinctive line drawings of pulp fiction characters (1920s-1940s) rendered in tan. Preview image of SPARKS: Paper Miniatures as a TrueType Font: Legend of Winter Forest Fantasy Adventure Set by S. John Ross and Jordan Peacock. Published by Cumberland Games & Diversions. Jordan Peacock's distinctive line drawings of characters rendered in cyan.
January 10, 2026 at 1:21 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Also: blonde mutoids?
Two black-catsuited blonde mutoids at the flight controls of a Federatio Pursuit Ship in Blakes 7, Series B episode, “Hostage.” White spaceship interior.
January 8, 2026 at 2:20 AM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
My great Blakes 7 rewatch: series 2 episode 2, Shadow, and a nice “homage” to Star Wars in their hot weather clothing?
Avon, Blake, and Jenna looking at some “moon discs” in a quarry—I mean, desert—in clothes that look not entirely unlike Luke Skywalker’s in the original Star Wars movie.
January 4, 2026 at 7:32 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
This is very childish of me but … Rygel XVI, meet Nigel.
Rygel XVI, Dominar, from Farscape. Nigel Farage, MP.
January 1, 2026 at 6:28 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
OK. "The official Goblinoid Games website has been refreshed, focused on our core game lines." The Pacesetter titles are no longer listed there--they're still on DriveThruRPG but not on the home site. Has Dan said anything on Facebook? #OSR #LabyrinthLord #MutantFuture
goblinoidgames.com
The Goblinoid Games logo, showing a dwarf, a wizard, and a large fighter in a cavern. Steps lead off into the background. The fighter holds a sword and a torch, the wizard holds a staff emitting some king of light, and the dwarf carries an axe.
December 28, 2025 at 3:47 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
I should probably take another look at TSR's Tabloid! www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/1...
The cover of Tabloid for the Amazing Engine TTRPG. In the style of a tabloid newspaper. The image shows a picture of a lake monster rising from a lake with a fish man portrait as an inset image. Text reads: Amazing Engine system Tabloid! Game (in a red box with white frame, like a tablid newspaper) November 1995 Aliens Attack Loch Ness! No story too strange for our underpaid reporters!
December 20, 2025 at 2:16 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Show me a picture on your phone that has your energy that isn’t a selfie...
Old BOB, a beaten up, googly-eyed robot from Walt Disney’s the Black Hole.
December 8, 2025 at 11:59 AM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
I was late to the ThoughtEater podcast & I miss hearing Jeremy’s commentary, sooooo … I’m gonna go to the beginning & listen to all 200+ episodes: frothsofdnd.blogspot.com
The Thought Eater blog masthead with an AD&D first edition drawing of a thought eater (weird, hairless platypus?) & the words “thought eater” in classic AD&D font.
November 20, 2025 at 11:53 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Me:
November 17, 2025 at 12:35 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Share someone who looks stylish wearing the color pink 🌸 🖤
An older, more current Howard Devoto (of punk/ post-punk band, Magazine) wearing a pink suit while performing.
November 17, 2025 at 12:37 AM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Logo by Heretic Works: www.hereticwerks.com/2013/12/sect...
Logo for Kepler 22-B A strange new world Kepler22-strange-new-world.blogspot.com
November 16, 2025 at 2:41 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Aww, man—Does anyone else remember the John M Stater-led Kepler 22B collaborative world-building project?
kepler22-strange-new-world.blogspot.com
Heretic Works Sector T-3 logo for the Kepler 22-B project. Large text in retro-futuristic font with a representation of the super earth exoplanet on the right. Green background with hexes.
November 16, 2025 at 2:36 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Wondering if old school adventure writers could learn thing or two from the (at times) evocative but clipped prose of 8-bit text adventures.
Welcome to Dungeon Adventure from Level 9. Enter English phrases (no punctuation) to play, collect treasure and return to civilisation along the forest rood to win. You are on a mud bank, north of a wide river. A stone bridge spans the waters, reaching from the granite cliffs above to the flat lands of the far bank, and a path climbs up to it. There is a piece of driftwood here A huge packing case, open at one end, rests on the ground What next? N You can’t move in that direction What next?
November 15, 2025 at 5:23 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
You’re going to remaster the sahuagin?

You’re going to remaster the sahuagin, right?

(🙏)

www.solegends.com/rsadd/add67/...
Painted examples of Otherworld’s sahuagin minis—minis that look very closed to AD&D first edition’s Monster Manual illustration.
November 9, 2025 at 12:07 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
To be honest, I saw that there’s a book in the series titled “Woman of the Horseclans” & I am here for the idea of post-apocalyptic new dark age horse-riding, bow-wielding Amazonians. (You know? Like “Classical” Amazonians?)
Vintage cover of Robert Adams’s novel, “A Woman of the Horseclans” with a fully armoured woman horserider, astride her rearing horse and waving a sword in the air. Next to them is a big sabre-toothed cat. Based on the cover, she is living her best life.
October 21, 2025 at 7:56 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
And today’s quite-by-chance-discovery is the bookazine, The Classic Adventurer. One for fans of “Twisty Little Passages,” and 8-bit & 16-bit text adventures AKA “interactive fiction.”

classicadventurer.co.uk
Classic Adventurer cover spread showing a “redo” of the cover of The Hobbit text adventure. Smaug takes flight! Classic Adventurer cover spread showing a “reworking” of the social-climbing text adventure, Hampstead—two Afghan hounds lounge on a living room sofa, in an elegant and minimally decorated living room with hardwood floors and a rug. Two white running shoes are discarded on the rug. An arched window reveals an elegantly manicured edge, and a black car that looks like a 1930s model. Classic Adventurer civer speead with a reworking of creepy, Wyndham-esque , alien invasion SF text adventure: a village green, a bench, a sign saying Woodbury End. In the background, there are quaint village buildings including the village hall, and a fairground from which a several balloons rise. Classic Adventurer cover which seems to show the reworking of a Sherlock Holmes game—sorry! I don’t know this one well. Several Victorian people in a collage effect with chap with deerstalker and pipe in the foreground.
October 21, 2025 at 4:44 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Oof. I actually had the first two of these Tom Swift books:

tomswift.net/ts3.htm
Cover of Tom Swift and the “City in the Stars.” White, blond boy with silvery spacesuit, helmet under right arm, looks out. Behind him is a cylindrical O’Neill habitat.
October 20, 2025 at 7:01 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
I honestly cannot tell if this Japanese set comes with subtitles at all: www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%B0%B4%E6...
Japanese DVD boxed set of The Water Margin.
October 17, 2025 at 8:27 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Anyone remember where the "beer standard" for currency conversion in FRPGs was first published? (The assumption that a pint of beer would take up a certain percentage of a daily wage so was a good basis for currency conversion.)

Is there an online version anywhere?
"Schlenkerla Rauchbier, a traditional smoked beer, being poured from a cask into a beer glass" from the Wikipedia entry on beer, because all the Blue Sky GIFs for beer are for Root Beer and ale for Ginger Ale and I have no words to describe how irritated this makes me.
October 17, 2025 at 3:41 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
As @lectrotext.bsky.social cites The Thirteenth Floor as being among the NetCrawl TTRPG’s media inspirations, I must ask if James has seen “World on a Wire” or read the novel that inspired BOTH films, Daniel Galyoue’s Simulacron-3
Still from German TV film, “World on a Wire.” White man in a black business suit lies on a couch/ recliner, while wearing a crash helmet with multiple electrodes and connections. A mid-century modern design telephone is in the foreground. White man in a business suit looks on at a scene on a TV/ CRT monitor showing events from the computer generated world. Cover of a German-language edition of Simulacron-3. Colour-illustration of an angular with high ceiling. The silhouette of a man is at one end, framed in the doorway with the light of the next room behind him.
October 2, 2025 at 5:09 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Anyone know what happened to the cat who used to write the Sickly Purple Death Ray blog? #OSR, #OldSchoolRevival, #OldSchoolRenaissance, #RussNicholson … web.archive.org/web/20110827...
Russ Nicholson illustration of a magic-user annihilating a sword-carrying warrior with (yes) a Sickly Purple Death Ray. Image carries the blog title in the upper right corner, in a white, calligraphic-style font.
September 30, 2025 at 7:34 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
Any of you DCC/ MCC/ USG hepcats got recs for Umerica Survival Guide adventures?
Cover of USG's "Damn Tasty" which shows a dingy post-apocalyptic industrial shop floor with ghoul-like figures running a conveyor belt, On the conveyor belt are day-glow rectangles that remind me a lot of Soylent Green. Cover of Children of the Sun which shows post-apocalyptic adventurers facing off against a robed cultist who is wielding something (a heart?) in one hand and a vicious-looking knife in the other. Behind him is a central American (?) pyramid adorned with carved stone skulls. The cover of Burger Wars! 5 post-apocalyptic adventurers (A robot with a CRT set for a head, a bandaged and heavily muscled human, a big cat (on all fours), and a rhinoman defend themselves against evil clowns and what look like hot dog creatures. The cover of Killer of Giants. A bunch of bipedal, humanoid rabbit people with white fur and red eyes jostle for position in front of high tech computer panels with lots of monitors.
September 23, 2025 at 10:05 PM
mrblipvert.bsky.social
And …
2. Douglas Hill’s Day of the Starwind (in which the finale includes a massive superstorm) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Le...
Piccolo paperback cover of Day of the Starwind. Last Legionary of Moros, Keill Randor, runs across red sands from his crashed aircar, as a guard in another aircar fires at him from the air. In the background, a colossal squared, stone monument like tower rises into the yellow sky.
September 19, 2025 at 5:00 PM