Our Friends the Machines (2017) seems like a pretty key companion to the Tales from the Loop rules. There are scenarios, of course (more on them in a moment), but it’s the final, relatively brief chapter that I see as the crucial one: it provides rules for sticking a Loop under your hometown. That’s, I think, the ideal mode of play for Tales from the Loop. I love Stalenhag’s art and how it fuels the feel of the game, but at the end of the day, the winter twilight of his paintings represents his nostalgia trip. With a little work, guided by this chapter, you can make Tales from the Loop so much more personal. I’ve done it both ways and the North Jersey Loop looms larger in my mind than the Swedish one.

Anywho, in addition to the hack chapter, we have three scenarios, a mixtape of scenario seeds and four closer looks at some of the machinery that shows up frequently in Stalenhag’s paintings. The first scenario involves a rogue a.i. infiltrating a toy factory and, through manipulation of chipped human workers, distributing itself into a new line of action figures. I like this one a lot, and appreciate how it gets close to the horror line, but never crosses it. Same with the very similar second scenario, in which a PTA president under the influence of some malicious software, brainwashes a town with subliminal messages. The only cure? Horror movies and heavy metal music, which the adults in town are confiscating. I love this one. The third one gets into the idea of the Loop as a conduit for interdimensional entities. This is highly implied in the source material and the rulebook and I am into it, again, because it never quite becomes a horror show like Stranger Things. It’s more like…hm. My Science Project, maybe? But it is held back by the fact that I can’t really picture the entities and the book is dependent on recycling Stalenhag’s art so…no illustration. Booo.

I do have to note that while most if not all this art appears in Stalenhag’s two narrative art books, I don’t mind it being recycled here. Deploying it in the layout here changes it somehow. It doesn’t feel fresh, exactly, but it also doesn’t feel stale.

I'm down the shore with the family this week. Since I don't do the beach and it's been inferno hot, I've mostly been reading novels and working on the monster book. So, like a regular week, just with more restaurant dining. And I'm ignoring my inbox.

When I was a kid, both sets of grandparents had places at the shore. My maternals lived year-round in Brick Town and we spent a lot of summer weekends there. My paternals had a trailer in a seasonal campsite down in Cape May that we'd usually decamp to one week out of the year. Before trips to both destinations, it wasn't unusual for me to hit the Kearny Public Library to stock up on monster books. I'd call the stack "my research" and then as now, I'd be inclined to shirk the usual outdoor summer activities to hide somewhere with my nose in the books. For instance, the Cape May trailer had a little crawlspace under the entrance stairs that was the perfect place to curl up, especially during thunderstorms. I learned a lot about werewolves under there.

All this to say that maybe destiny is real, or that I've been highly motivated (read: stubborn) since I was a kid; whatever the case, it's a bit strange to see how much has changed, how little has changed and how the pile of books has finally, truly, become "my research."