The Monster Scouts are a wonderful thing: monster-obsessed makers who have created a collaborative, detailed, LARP-ish world in which monsters are real and an imaginary scouting organization called the Crow Scouts, founded in 1907, has operated for more than a century to help our monster friends.
Monster Scouts are a real society that you can join by pitching in, creating your own steampunkish scouting uniform, and adding to the lore and collecting badges for doing good works and making life more fun for your co-scouts. The organization was founded by the delightful Steam Crow people, artists who make and sell beautiful, vintagey monster designs. They've collaborated with the monster aficionados who signed onto the scouts to create a huge, sprawling, wonderful shared world that has, until now, largely existed at cons and meetups, but which is now making the leap to real-world campouts.
These weekend-long "shindigs" are coming to five US states in 2017, and are a combination of a family weekend, a gaming weekend, a LARPing weekend and a maker retreat. I ran into the Steam Crow folks at Denver Comic-Con yesterday and was blown away by the raw delightfulness of their vision and what they've achieved with their fan-collaborators.
Monster Scouts Camp
I'm headed back to San Diego for Comic-Con today for a signing and giveaway for Radicalized, Tor Booth, #2701. I hope to see you there!
We're no strangers to the delights of the rude drawings that monks doodled in the margins of medieval manuscripts around here (1, 2, 3), but University of Bonn medievialist Erik Wade's epic Twitter thread on the astonishing variety of snail-doodles is genuinely next-level.
Escape from the Haunted Mansion is a massive, ambitious free papercraft project to download, print, mount on coreboard, cut out, assemble and play. I have no idea if the gameplay is any good, but the model is freaking gorgeous. It's from the good folks at Disney Experience, who have a wealth of papercraft Disney projects […]
Vape technology has been around long enough that vapers are starting to get picky about their gear. Luckily, so are we. From disposable models to cutting-edge touchscreen atomizers, there’s a vaporizer in this roundup to suit every taste. Hera 2 – World’s Most Advanced Dual-Use Vaporizer Choose between dry herb or oil extraction modes – […]
With enough practice and commitment, anyone can be a visual artist. But without the right instruction, that time spent honing your skills could seem like an eternity. If you really want to see where your talent can take you, you need sound fundamentals – and no matter what discipline or genre you lean toward, the […]
Theoretically, there’s never been an easier time for marketers. The ubiquity of social media means a good word – or a good brand – can spread like wildfire with very little effort. But as limitless as the internet is, there’s a lot of competition and noise to contend with. And the vast graveyard of failed […]
