And even this year we are in the zenith of Summer. A pause about our little soldiers, to speak about bikinis. Do you prefer military uniforms or these two strips of cloth? Impossible to answer.

Who are these beautiful girls? They are Stellar, a popular Korean pop group. Don’t hear the music but enjoy the video.

Summer is time of holidays. And if you want a budget holiday you can go to Terni to visit your friend Andrea that needs some holidays too. So we travelled in a few days in a lot of towns, small towns and villages around Terni. This is the photographic report.

Perugia
In the first couple of days we went to Hydracon, a boardgame convention around Perugia held in a luxury hotel. No swimming pool use for games, pity. I played 5 games of Fortebraccio, and I lost all of them.

Bevagna
The last day of Mercato delle Gaite, when during a couple of weeks this town turns into a medieval town with various markets, celebrations, games, stages.

Labro
A gem all made of stones on top of the hill. A fairy village with a castle. Its calm is unreal, but all is real.

Piediluco
A lake, a small town, a past tourist vocation, the centre for agnostic rowing in Italy.

Castel Fiorentino
An Etruscan city, then a medieval city with its castle and a tower built over the ancient acropolis. And a view on the valley.

Cortona
Another Etruscan city, larger than the other one. In the local museum a great special exposition on Etruscan writing. A collection of all available Etruscan inscriptions around. Pieces that you can view on books were all concentrated here. A must see!

Castiglione del Lago
Along our road we arrived to Trasimeno Lake. Yes, that Trasimeno Lake. A hill on marshes with another Etruscan city, after a walled medieval city with its castle, after again no more marshes but only the lake. Now a pleasant tourist place. Dinner with lake view.
If you remember in a past post there was a pennant from here. If you can’t notice it, the photo is that with the girls…

Rocca Albornoz di Narni
This castle was built when on Papal coat of arms were put two keys. Over Narni. To control the city, the road, the State.

Poggio di Otricoli
Another castle, but this one is in ruins. Around a village where there is a medieval festival every year. Otherwise a bunch of small houses.

Calvi dell’Umbria
The name is something as “bald people from Umbria”. It was lunch time, it was hot, so none was around. Andrea was the only available balding person from Umbria. I’m from Lazio…

Otricoli
More hot, more hunger. No restaurants. We leave.

Otriculum
Along the road we find a bar to eat something. Surprisingly it was outside the archaeological city of Otriculum. Wrong weather (full Summer) and wrong time (two and half in the afternoon) to visit it without dying for the hot. So only a view from the bar. And this satellite photo of the local arena, with plantation inside.

Civita Castellana
It was late so we didn’t visit the castle built on a ravine. However there was this beautiful church with some marble pieces added.

Then the train for Rome, with a late in the travel almost equal to the time needed. And so these were my Summer holidays for the 2016. Maybe next year we will visit other towns in Terni surroundings.

One more year! On the way for half a century. But I feel (almost) so young. However, let’s celebrate!

If you think that 1/6 action figures are expensive and that building a scenario for them is something impossible due to space issues, you don’t know the Memento Mori web comic. It is a Roman story made of photos of customised action figures, a lot of them. So you can call it photo story book instead of comic book. It is still in development, even if in the last times I think that new work lacks. However we are speaking of 223 pages at the present. With a cast of 95 figures and lots of extras. Think to the effort, economic and artistic to realise it. Epic!

Read the story of these people made of plastic but with human passions, free on the web on Memento Mori web site.

Milo Manara is a great comic book artist that draws beautiful and sexy women. When Marvel commissioned a cover for Spider Woman comic, he drew the character as he is used to do. Then social justice warriors, who get offended by anything and everything, honked against this cover. In the name of political correctness they claimed that it is offensive for women. Someone claimed with a specious justification that the cover was to throw away because of incorrect anatomical pose, as if comic characters are like real people and not idealisation of them. Even Renaissance Italian artists took anatomic licenses to better represent people, situations or sentiments.

After this lobbist pressure, Marvel courageously dropped the cover. A sad day.

Some time ago we had conservative bigots, now we have radical left bigots. These modern heirs of Wertham want to impose their view only for personal power, taking vantage of social themes only to judge other people in the name of their imaginary moral purity and emotional sensitivity.

Frank Cho is another great comic book artist. In the struggle against the abuse of political correctness he drew some covers in the same way of Milo Manara’s Spider Woman cover. A razz to censorship.

How to ruin your comic book author career: take an icon and write an outrageous plot twist. Please, execute this idiot by a firing squad for high treason of national values and culture.

Here the report of a long weekend with Andrea in Rome at my new, and still almost empty, house. We rallied a lot of things and events in 4 days. To begin, we held some playtests about next Ganesha games. This one is about mutant apes.

And this one is about that old project that we are developing through these last years. Maybe this one is the final effort. However we are speaking about 2017.

Other things were tested and other ideas were submitted. Diego join us for a couple of half days and this is a moment of relax in a patisserie.

We passed the Friday night at a game shop in the opposite part of Rome. Andrea presented his kind of games with a demo of Advanced Song of Blade and Heroes.

Here the Mjolnir shop and an exposition of Ganesha Games books. They are too much to show, indeed. Free apple pie for everyone. However chatting went from Friday to the first hours of Saturday…

Saturday afternoon was the time for the class on game design. In this photo Andrea seems a priest on a pulpit.

After the lesson, a direct check to the game projects of the people. There are very different ideas and kinds of games, with Andrea and the organisers that are trying to address them to their realisation.

And the Sunday was the time for Romics. But that is another post…

After 5 years I’m in Modena Play again. A lot of things changed in my life but some are always the same.

Here I’m with an anthology of adventures for roleplay game Kata Kumbas on Savage Worlds game engine. I’m one of the 8 authors. Out just for Modena Play. Read and play in an medieval Italy where Brancaleone da Norcia rode.

Modena Play is the annual appointment for boardgames and roleplays in Italy. Furthermore you can find card games, 2D wargames, 3D wargames, videogames, reenactment and cosplay. Players illustrate games so you can play with it freely after few minutes. And in these two days you could play even 20 games if you are an hardcore player.

While I was walking around I was approached by two chaps who were playing around. It is so simple to find mates to play here. So we formed a temporary player group of 3 people to play with what we could find around. This was a game about the management of Roman provinces.

Another game that we played was about the training to be a knight.

Sometimes there is someone that do it bigger.

Card games can be designed for adolescents with hormone storms. Like this one with an ass as advert. More sexy poses inside…

The ritual auction for games. Gems and garbage mixed in a crowded and fun moment.

I met Paolo in the fair! Now he is full involved with videogames as profession. Here he was in a play-by-play together with a mate of his. Good luck! ; )

A more traditional game than games on videos: a foosball table, but a very small one.

A more traditional game than foosball: wooden tops. Bigger ones were made on request with a lathe. Cool!

A more traditional game than top: war!!!

I found this book in the reenactment part of the fair on fighting with armour in ‘500. He is the curator of the modern edition of an ancient work. I bought Fluxx Cthulhu, MDF terraces for a new gladiatorial arena and 35 vallejo colours too.

After 5 years I could eat tigelle again, a kind of soft bread made with lard filled with a mix of lard and parmesan cheese. Available only in Modena. A long wait…

Here can view people who eat and the corridor between the two main pavilions. Moreover there were the upper storey, another pavilion and a tensile structure.

Unexpectedly you could find a lot of cosplayers around. A stage was setted for them. Every opportunity is good to show your costume. Even during the play of games.

And now some of the best cosplays that I picked from an unofficial photographic report of the event:

Next time Modena Play and wargaming!