I'm thinking that playing Axis & Allies is NOT something that I should do in my household.
Little Swinebread would have to play Germany all the time so he wouldn't deveolop some sort of complex... and that, in and of itself, would make him absolutely develop one.
Can you imagine him creating an atomic bomb and using it in this game?! *shiver*
I'm sure Swinebread would like to pay tribute to Dave Arneson, co-founder of Dungeons and Dragons. Anybody who has rolled a die that had fewer or more than six sides owes that guy a debt of gratitude.
I love that he, along with the late Gary Gygax, as adults had such pronounced imaginations that they still could come up with their wonderful worlds. It's an astounding thing when you think about it. The imagination seems to be the first thing to go as you get older.
Thank you and rest in peace, Dave.
- Dean Wormer
EDIT: I just want to add that it was very sad to hear that Dave is gone, he had been ill for a while but it still comes as a shock. I always considered Dave to be the Jack Kirby of roleplaying (with Gary Gygax as Stan Lee) but fortunately he received his due before he died. Thanks for sharing your wonderful imagination Mr. Arneson. You will be missed.
Then I start to read the article and quickly realize that bonehead is talking about a cheap Warhammer mass tabletop battles knock-off at not the legendary board game by the now defunct company SPI by the almost same title ("ring" v. "rings.")
THIS is War of the Ring-
This was an incredible board game from the 70s that included thousands of tokens for units and armies. You could play as Saruman, Sauron or the Fellowship. As great as the main game was it had a mini-game that involved the siege of Minis Tirith that I absolutely loved.
I've been searching for this game for years but every used copy on eBay goes for over $100 bucks, an amount I can't justify. So my hopes were briefly up that they finally reprinted the thing, only to be dashed by those AICN jerks yet again.
Top 10 lists are often arbitrary but by any standard PC Magazine's 10 Best PC Games Ever is saddled with some glaring omissions.
Sure, they get Civilization, Starcraft and Doom* but they also include the far less impressive Trade Wars 2002, Rogue:The Adventure Game and most notably World of Warcraft on that list. (If you're wondering why I'm hating on WOW- I like MMOGs but consider them more social chat rooms than games. There are better online gaming experiences, IMHO, including the recent Left 4 Dead zombie shooter.)
Just some of the games that should have been included-
Ultima 3
As a role playing game this was unsurpassed at the time. It had a strong sandbox flavor that made the game seem much bigger than it actually was.
Monkey Island 3
Actually all the Lucasarts adventure games were sublime, but the Monkey Island games had a wicked sense of humor and beautiful background artwork.
Wing Commander
It may have been a rip off of the Traveller rpg world but it was still a great space shooter. I can still hear the midi music when you took off in your fighter.
The original Castle Wolfenstein
My favorite bit was stealing nazi guard's uniforms.
Not to mention Might and Magic, Fallout 2, Grand Theft Auto 3, Planetfall (Infocom), Half Life 2, The Bard's Tale, Pirates!, Zoo Tycoon, Leisure Suit Larry, Oregon Trail, Tie Fighter, Test Drive, Interstate 76, Star Trek 25th Anniversary and about 100 other games I can think of off the top of my head.
Those guys at PC Magazine were just phoning it in.
(* If Snabalus reads this- I haven't forgotten the time you hacked Doom and stuck my wedding pictures in there. Having to look at yourself in a tux kind of distracts from killing mutants.)
I got a chance to play Call of Cthulhu over this last holiday weekend with family and friends. Man… I can’t even remember that last time I had a chance to play… Overdroid was in town and so he had the Gamemaster responsibilities. This one-off session was alotta’ fun especially because we had some newbies. I own most of the Lovecraft County books that Chaosium has put out, so Overdroid opted for an adventure out of Secrets of Los Angeles. I went temporarily insane but survived so it was all-good.
My Wife is so cool, because she looked after our son while the rest of played...
The copy I ordered through my local comics shop never showed up. So, I called a game-store from across town and luckily they still had a copy of the long awaited Basic Roleplaying System.
I love the BRP rules set as it is very intuitive and easy to learn. I'm still quite miffed that it took almost two decades for Chaosiun to put this project together but irregardless, all the various games from Call of Cthulhu and Runequest to Pendaragon and Stormbringer have finally been brought together and reconciled in one great game at last. Whatever genre you want, it's now here using the best engine around.
In a nice bit of simpatico Kurt Wiegel of Game Geeks just reviewed Basic Roleplaying.
Now with all the oodles of time I have after caring for Swinebread jr. I can game a lot!
Instead of making baseless attacks to distract the media and the public away from Senator McCain’s horrible record on actually helping Veterans when they need it (like the GI Bill), I suggest that Mr. Goldfarb do a little research before he debases a whole segment of the population that includes active duty service members, veterans and *surprise, surprise* even non-liberals. Using moral panic tactics of the early 1980s and supposed jock vs. geek paradigms shows that the McCain camp has wrong ideas, is drastically misinformed and is clearly out of touch.
Basically the McCain campaign is stating directly that people that play D&D are unpatriotic and in-fact not real americans. This is so stupid it sounds like something Dan Quayle would say. With the election so close, making disparaging comments about anybody seems like a really dumb idea and very petty.
Edit: I liked this point
Goldfarb apologized, displaying a tongue in cheek familiarity with the rules of the game.
If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.
That's the kind of deep, personal animosity that you associate with experience, which clearly Goldfarb has. It’s not hard to imagine that some basement somewhere holds the abandoned d20s, dusty rulebooks, and broken heart of a young Michael Goldfarb who never got to be Dungeon Master because he wouldn’t stop yelling. In fact, it’s hard not to wonder if, when Michael Goldfarb is berating the D&D players of the world, he’s really just berating Michael Goldfarb.
Wow, I’m not impressed at all. I was really looking forward to this film. Now? Not so much. The CG looks cheesy, the music sucked and I F***ing hate the slow mo. Watchmen is already a 12 issue graphic novel, so screen time shouldn’t be wasted on visual masturbation, my suppressed fears about the director of 300 just might be confirmed here. I really appreciated what Zack Snyder was saying about the comic and the project but I’m dubious now. Watchmen is a deeply psychological work full of rich subtext and just slo-moing scenes directly from the comic is not the way to go.
Here’s What Alan Moore recently had to say about Snyder:
When asked by Entertainment Weekly if he was curious about Snyder's version of his story, he replied: "I would rather not know."
Moore, who previously disowned the Warner Bros adaptation of his comic V For Vendetta, voiced his disapproval of Snyder due to his involvement with 300.
"He's the person who made 300. I've not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn't particularly like the book 300," Moore said.
"I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid."
Furthermore, the comic scribe insisted that he hadn't been in contact with studio Warner Bros regarding the Watchmen adaptation: "No, they've all been told not to. They get the message... I don't want anyone who works for DC comic books to contact me ever again, or I'll change my number."
I’ve been absorbing I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets, which collects all the Golden Age comic stories by Fletcher Hanks. It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever read. At first these stories almost seem like a joke or a 60’s, underground comic parody, but these bizarros were actually published. The art style is akin to a crossing of Robert Crumb and Basil Wolverton but with less talent than either. The narrative of these odd gems is hard to describe other than to say that the heroes tend to abnormally torture the villains by the end after some ridiculously grand scheme. This collection is the naked lunch of comics.
Overdroid is in town and we met for a quick get-together yesterday. He brought along a copy of the Arkham Horror board game, which I’ve been itching to play. Well, it was a hell of fun time. We were quickly overwhelmed by the machinations of Nyarlathotep. OD was killed when the crawling chaos manifested after only a few turns of play and I didn’t last much longer in a head to head fight with Nyarly. In fact, OD told me that it was the shortest games he’s ever played, which ended up being OK because we didn’t have a lot of time anyway. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had losing, but then this is a horror game after all.
Overdroid also had a copy of Basic Roleplaying. I was a surprised how huge it was. Due to our short schedule, I didn’t really have time to look through it. Maybe Diamond Distributing will see fit to send me the copy of Basic Roleplaying that I ordered.
Arkonbey made a joke about me cutting down on comics now that Swinebread Jr. is on the way, but I do need to cut down. I’ve been surprised how many comics, especially trades, I order and then wonder what the hell was I thinking when I signed up for this. The only kink in the plan is that a significant amount of items that I have ordered, many months ago, have not shown up and now, with budgets tightening, I might be in a rough spot. Oh well, I’ll figure it out…
When the SO and I were cleaning up a few weeks ago to make room for our expectant arrival. I came across my old collection of Heroclix figures. About five years ago, I was a total fiend and bought tons of figures from the first two sets of both the Marvel and DC versions of the game. I even picked the Indy Heroclix starter and some boosters. I had to have the Judge Dread guys after all.
I quit getting them for several reasons, the biggest being that I wasn’t really gamming with Heroclix all that much. I was also annoyed that the paint jobs were terrible considering the price, and like all “collector” games you never knew what you were gonna get and thus duplicates abounded. So I threw what I had into a container and forgot about ‘em.
When I “rediscovered” my figures recently, I got curious. What had Heroclix been up to these last few years? Well, by going on line, I was surprised to find out that the quality of the paintjobs had improved. But what really got me, though, was the fact that many of my favorite, b-lister characters had been made into figures. I found the Supernova set particularly appealing with its Guardian of Galaxy and Squadron Supreme figures.
Two weeks ago, I dropped by Cosmic Monkey while on the eastside and noticed they had old, loose, Heroclix figures for 50¢ each. I bought several and this wet my appetite for more. So this last weekend, I swung by my usual comic store and purchased two sets of Marvel Supernova, and a set of DC Crisis. The figures in the Crisis set weren’t all that special except for a batgirl version, but I was really happy with the supernova guys. The best thing is that I got a Colonel America Zombie figure! It’s my understanding that this dude is very rare. Considering the fact that I’m not even interested in the other marvel zombie Heroclix characters, it was an amazing thing to rip open the package and just find him there. I lucked out this time. It kinda’ made up for all those lame duplicates I wasted my money on years ago… …OK, not really, but it was nice to get a “hard to find” character that I actually wanted.
I plan on buying a few booster sets here and there, but mostly I think I might try hunting for individual figures at stores and conventions. I feel this could actually be sorta fun, like antiquing for geeks. Too bad I didn’t shop for anything at Emerald City Comic Con though; I bet I could have found some good Heroclix deals. Regardless, I’m happy with the Zombie Colonel. I have him next to my computer between Papa Smuf and No-face.
Well, the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons is out and the majority of reviews have been very positive. Wired Magazine’s take is quite good, here’ s a section:
In D&D 4th Edition, dungeon masters, or DMs, are freed from a good deal of the bookkeeping associated with the hobby in previous editions of the game, as the designers have streamlined the process for preparing adventures. Boxes of statistical information and extensive charts were once the norm, but now DMs can almost throw together an adventure on the fly. This philosophy has also lead to some radical changes in monster design. Just as players now have a fun trick or two up their sleeves, monsters now wield fantastic abilities that are wholly unique.
The possibilities these mechanical changes unlock are exciting in and of themselves. Nerds love to debate game mechanics, but what all this ultimately means for the player and the DM is more time focusing on more important things.
Combat moves so fluidly now, and the DM has so much less prep time to worry about, that the art of role-playing itself finally moves into the foreground of Dungeons & Dragons. Telling a compelling story, and having a ton of fun doing it, is ultimately the reason players sit down to game in the first place. What D&D 4th Edition represents is the chance to have fun with your friends without a ton of hassle, to immerse yourself in a fantasy world without working at it.
In fact, many of the mechanics are so easy to use that they remind players of what it feels like to play a massively multiplayer game. Wizards' Slavicsek has absolutely no problem with those comparisons, as all good games build on what has come before.
It seems that D&D has finally, finally shed most of its clunky rules but for me, it comes too late. The lawyering, number crunching, and game preparation were way out of hand. I've always stressed that Roleplaying games should just be that, about roleplaying and sadly the D&D folks never quite understood this until now. Most people don’t enjoy nor have the time to endlessly scourer the rules just to do the most basic tasks. Versatility and ease of story creation is the way to go and so it sounds like 4th edition would now finally provid that. It might actually attract new, non-geeky types… well probably not, but Wizards of the Coast can dream can’t they? It seems like 4th edition would be right up my alley.
The problem is I’m way too invested in 3.5 to upgrade. I bought tons of D&D and D20 books, looking for ideas and hoping the next volume would be the one to unlock the secret of easy and fun gameplay. Now I’ve got no one to blame but myself, but why would I do this? Well, I was sublimating my desire for a universal roleplaying game into the D20 system. It was the most prevalent RPG and I thought that it would provide more opportunities to actually sit down with somebody and game. I was wrong about that.
What I really wanted was a universal gamming system from Chaosium. I've always loved how their mechanics work in a simple but appropriate manner for their various games like Call of Cthulhu, and Stormbringer. Their core mechanic has a name, it’s called Basic Roleplaying or BRP but Chaosium hadn’t really pushed it as a universal gamming platform before except for a halfhearted attempt with Worlds of Wonder. So in my desire to fill the void, that Chaosium seemed unwilling to satisfy, I self medicated with 3.5 and D20.
It’s ironic that D&D 4th edition is being released at about the same time as Chaosium’s new Basic Roleplaying game. Finally, I’m getting the game I really want, and it’s not from Wizards of the Coast. Of course, Chaosium should have done this years ago but at least it’s happening at a time when I’m feeling particularly left out of the next big jump in RPG industry.
Basic Roleplaying the Chaosium System is rolling out to a store near you as I type this. But if you’re more of a PDF type of person, downloads are now available for purchase on the website. Dungeons & Dragons and Chaosuim have changed with the times even if both were very late to do so.
An interesting and slightly clueless (did this guy read any comics made before the 1990s?) article titled "how superhero movies made comic books cooler if not better on io9 caught my attention. Most of these changes I don't consider making comics any better but yes maybe cooler for a little while at least.
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engaging Watchmen costume design video
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Chaosium is running a new pole on their webpage's sidebar called: Which Genre would you most like to see as a Chaosium BRP setting? (See here) The choices are Fantasy, Historical Horror, Post Apocalypse, Pulp, & Science Fiction. Of course I chose Post Apocalypse. head over and make your vote count.
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Black Cat on Spectacular Spiderman this Saturday (may 17th) at 10AM on The CW. I've always liked her, so I'm glad she's getting her TV due. Black Cat takes me back to a time when I first read comics and reminds me of what I used to enjoy about the Spiderman stories. Oh and the Black costume symbiote shows up as well. What, No Secret Wars?
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Ron Perlman talks Hellboy
In all of Guillermo’s movies, the monsters are the ones who are the most human and the humans are the ones who are the most monstrous. He’s been playing in that world ever since he made his first film and that’s a theme that fascinates him for all the right reasons. And even if you don’t see it necessarily on the surface of the entertainment he is giving you, it’s there and this is why you are so stirred when watching his films for reasons that you can’t even really articulate. There’s so much there that he’s grappling with.
That's right folks, the BASIC ROLEPLAYING SYSTEM is finally going to be a reality. I've been waiting for real multi-genre game from Chaosium for years. They have finally wised up and are providing a game system that's user friendly, like Call of Cthulhu, and is easy to apply to any type of adventure you want to run from sci-fi to fantasy. I've got a ton of ideas that BRP would be perfect for and now I’ll get to make them a reality.
The truth is I love roleplaying, but I hate rules. Rules get in the way of having a good gamming experience, imo, mostly because they are too complicated and so I spend most of my time with my nose buried in the rulebooks rather than focused on the players. The weird need by most game designers to create RPGs with overly complicated rules sets which must be memorized has always astonished me. I think this is the main reason most folks aren’t interested in playing RPGs. If you like legalistic stuff that doesn’t represent any kind of reality then by all means keep playing that way but I certainly don’t have the time relearn an overly complicated rules set, like D&D, every time I want to add something to an adventure or a new addition comes out. Have you looked at the Stat blocks for creatures nowadays? I don't understand half of that crap. Plus, all the rules about levels, experience points and etc, etc just get in the way actually rolepaying, being the character and that’s what I find fun. Roleplaying, for me, is about being in the moment and BASIC ROLEPLAYING will allow that now that it’s not tied to a specific genre. Can you tell I’ve been waiting for this?
This book represents a first for BASIC ROLEPLAYING—a system complete in one book, without a defined setting. Previously, BASIC ROLEPLAYING has been an integral part of standalone games, usually with rich and deep world settings. Due to differences in these settings, BASIC ROLEPLAYING has had many different incarnations. Variant and sometimes contradictory rules have emerged between versions, to better support one particular setting over another.
Chaosium’s BASIC ROLEPLAYING system reconciles these different flavors of the system and brings many variant rules together into the covers of one book, something that has never been done before. Some of these rules are provided as optional extensions, some as alternate systems, and others have been integrated into the core system. By design this work is not a reinvention of Basic Roleplaying or a significant evolution of the system, but instead a collected and complete version, without setting, provided as a guide to players and gamemasters everywhere and compatible with most Basic Roleplaying games. It also allows the gamemaster the ability to create his or her own game world (or worlds), to adapt others from fiction, films, or even translate settings from other roleplaying games into Basic Roleplaying.
Wired published an excellent article on Gary Gygax. It was to be an investigation into the man himself and the game he created, Dungeons and Dragons. Sadly now it’s a memorial of sorts.
The Dungeon Master: The Life and Legacy of Gary Gygax Editor's note: Wired contributing editor David Kushner visited Gary Gygax at the Lake Geneva Convention last July. We were preparing a package of articles about the father of Dungeons & Dragons and the upcoming revised edition of the game he created when we received the sad news of his death. We are running this story now in remembrance of Gygax and in celebration of his staggering achievements. Later this month, we will run the additional articles about D&D as well as excerpts from the extensive interviews used in reporting this story. We extend our deepest condolences to Gygax's family.
Dungeons & Dragons had a way of turning game players into game designers. The rule set was pure potentiality, and the greater the creativity of each dungeon master, the more the players could extract from it. Many young people found their calling while playing D&D.
As some of you have heard by now, Gary Gygax, the D&D guru, has died. I wasn’t part of the first wave of roleplaying gamers and so I largely missed out on playing through most of Gary’s adventure modules, but I did encounter the large part of the game’s initial aftershock when the production values had increased. I love roleplaying games a lot but I kinda’ had a love hate relationship with them when I was a kid. Being able to inhabit another world and use you imagination was an incredibly powerful and fantastic experience, but the D&D rules were very encumbering and, for me, stymied that imagination. I never owned a copy of the main rulebooks until D&D 3.5 (well OK, except the Basic and Expert boxed sets) and I merely relied on others to run the game if we wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons.
It wasn’t until I encountered both the skills focused Basic Roleplaying System (via Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer) and the rules light Storyteller System (Vampire, Werewolf), that I really found gamming a truly immersive experience. It was also around this time that finally realized why I found D&D to have such a strange, clunky, mechanistic feel. It’s because Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were strategy game players first and then developed D&D roleplaying out of that. I was never a strategy game sorta’ guy and that’s why their approach to the gaming seemed backwards to me. Levels, experience points, tons of charts, character classes, and mutually excusive rules for every little aspect, was really just too much in my opinion. But for other folks, with a more mathematical or legalistic mind, probably found these rule mechanics pure heaven. For some, roleplaying was a numbers and accounting game but I never saw it like that. For me, gamming should be a character driven, story creation experience. On the other hand, I always greatly appreciated the world building that went into Dungeon and Dragons and the different types of dice as well. I believe those two aspects were some of D&D’s greatest strengths beyond just simply using your mind's eye.
Now it may seem like I’m bashing Mr. Gygax, but I don’t feel that I am, rest his soul, but rather I’m merely providing context and probing the memories his death has brought up. Gary Gygax was an entertainment innovator and brought a new way to experience, and harness imagination. I just needed it in a different form than he originally designed it. Regardless, thanks for starting the roleplaying game industry Mr. Gygax.
I think the New York Times has the best article about Gary Gygax, so I’ll post the whole of it here, as it will eventually disappear behind a registered user function.
Gary Gygax, Game Pioneer, Dies at 69
By SETH SCHIESEL Published: March 5, 2008
Gary Gygax, a pioneer of the imagination who transported a fantasy realm of wizards, goblins and elves onto millions of kitchen tables around the world through the game he helped create, Dungeons & Dragons, died Tuesday at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis. He was 69.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Gail Gygax, who said he had been ailing and had recently suffered an abdominal aneurysm, The Associated Press reported. As co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, the seminal role-playing game introduced in 1974, Mr. Gygax wielded a cultural influence far broader than his relatively narrow fame among hard-core game enthusiasts.
Before Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy world was something to be merely read about in the works of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert Howard. But with Dungeons & Dragons, Mr. Gygax and his collaborator, Dave Arneson, created the first fantasy universe that could actually be inhabited. In that sense, Dungeons & Dragons formed a bridge between the noninteractive world of books and films and the exploding interactive video game industry. It also became a commercial phenomenon, selling an estimated $1 billion in books and equipment. More than 20 million people are estimated to have played the game.
While Dungeons & Dragons became famous for its voluminous rules, Mr. Gygax was always adamant that the game’s most important rule was to have fun and to enjoy the social experience of creating collaborative entertainment. In Dungeons & Dragons, players create an alternate persona, like a dwarven thief or a noble paladin, and go off on imagined adventures under the adjudication of another player called the Dungeon Master.
“The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience,” Mr. Gygax said in a telephone interview in 2006. “There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.”
When Mr. Gygax (pronounced GUY-gax) first published Dungeons & Dragons under the banner of his company, Tactical Studies Rules, the game appealed mostly to college-age players. But many of those early adopters continued to play into middle age, even as the game also trickled down to a younger audience.
“It initially went to the college-age group, and then it worked its way backward into the high schools and junior high schools as the college-age siblings brought the game home and the younger ones picked it up,” Mr. Gygax said.
Mr. Gygax’s company, renamed TSR, was acquired in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast, which was later acquired by Hasbro, which now publishes the game.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Gygax is survived by six children: three sons, Ernest G. Jr., Lucion Paul and Alexander; and three daughters, Mary Elise, Heidi Jo and Cindy Lee.
These days, pen-and-paper role-playing games have largely been supplanted by online computer games. Dungeons & Dragons itself has been translated into electronic games, including Dungeons & Dragons Online. Mr. Gygax recognized the shift, but he never fully approved. To him, all of the graphics of a computer dulled what he considered one of the major human faculties: the imagination ’ ”
“There is no intimacy; it’s not live,” he said of online games. “It’s being translated through a computer, and your imagination is not there the same way it is when you’re actually together with a group of people. It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, ‘Because the pictures are so much better.’ ”
Nice article huh.
On another note, if you are a serious journalist (by serious I mean you get paid) and you use the words “geek,” “geeky” or “geeks” in your news article about Gary Gygax's death, you can FUCK OFF… …Just go fuck yourself. Those geek words are pejorative and not appreciated. Some folks in the gamming community use them, but that’s simply to take the word geek and disarm it while turning it’s original demeaning meaning on it’s head. “Geek” has no place in a eulogy or a serious piece of journalism and certainly shouldn’t be used by folks that don’t consider themselves a part of “geek culture…”
My SO and I traveled around town yesterday after the morning errands and dropped a couple of bucks here and there to keep the economy from slipping into a depression. Our first stop was to the 3d Center of Art & Photography. It’s a neat little nonprofit that promotes 3D as a fine art and showcases various stereoscopic cameras. The Center currently has an exhibit by Claudia Kunin titled 3D Holy Ghosts. The themes in Kunin’s work are taken from the bible, folklore, and classical mythology. Medusa clearly was the most impressive piece from the show and Walpurgis Nacht was a close second. The erotic nature of the pieces is enhanced by Kunin’s use of photographic rather than representational images. We also were fortunate because the 3D Center had an amazing slide show of an African Safari. I’ve seen 3d images before but the combination of National Geographic quality with eye-popping depth was fantastic. There was one up-close shot of an elephant’s eye that blew me away because that’s not something I would ever experience in daily life. Another fascinating aspect of these stereoscopic photos was how strange water appeared. It’s hard to describe but the depth made the water seem almost plastic or jelly-like and yet it still come across as H2O.
We made a stop at Haba, a Japanese cosmetic store, so the SO could pick up some of “her” all-natural skin toner. It’s funny because Haba chose Portland of all the places in the U.S. to hawk their wares. Good for my SO, bad for most other Japanese in the states. On the way to Haba, we saw the Silver Guy. He’s a performance artist that stands motionless for hours until you drop money into his pot. The cash prompts him to lean over and shake your hand, leaving it covered in glitter. He’s been doing this for over a decade I think.
After heading over to the Eastside, we stopped by a game store I know to see if a buddy of mine was working. He wasn’t but the smelly, belly boys were out in full force playing Warhammer. There was a ton of D20 stuff on sale probably because 4th edition is coming out soon. I bought a post-apocalyptic game supplement that was half off. They had a copy of Arkham Horror; that made my mouth water…
After a nice dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant we enjoy, the SO and I swung by Cosmic Monkey. It’s a comic shop I would occasionally frequent when I lived on the Eastside. They had moved to a new location last year and yesterday I finally had a chance to check it out. I gotta’ say I liked the new digs a lot. The place was very inviting and comfortable like a coffee shop or an indy bookstore. They had a large selection of trade paperbacks, much better than my regular store, and a upper level had couches for folks to hank out and read. Of all the shops in Portland, this is the one I would bring someone to if they had trepidations about comic book stores. I talked to Andy, the owner, and he told me that they will be hosting some of the events scheduled for the Stumptown Comics Fest. The Trophy Awards will be handed out at Cosmic Monkey and the latest installment of the Comic Art Battle will be fought there as well. Sounds like fun! I picked up a copy of the collected New Mutants volume 1 before we headed back home.
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral characters are unstable, and frequently insane. They believe in disorder first and foremost, and will thus strive for that disorder in everything they do. This means that they will do whatever seems 'fun' or 'novel' at any given time.
Race: Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.
Primary Class: Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.
This December we should see the publication of Basic Roleplaying (BRP). It’s a universal RPG system that uses the same rules set as the original Runequest, Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu games. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Chaosium really has the best rules system but they haven’t capitalized on it by publishing a generic set of rules until now. Finally, all those worlds I’ve dreamed of will much easier to bring to life. The only caveat: will they get it out in time…? Meeting public deadlines is not something they’re famous for.
This book represents a first for BASIC ROLEPLAYING—a system complete in one book, without a defined setting. Previously, BASIC ROLEPLAYING has been an integral part of standalone games, usually with rich and deep world settings. Due to differences in these settings, BASIC ROLEPLAYING has had many different incarnations. Variant and sometimes contradictory rules have emerged between versions, to better support one particular setting over another.
Chaosium’s BASIC ROLEPLAYING system reconciles these different flavors of the system and brings many variant rules together into the covers of one book, something that has never been done before. Some of these rules are provided as optional extensions, some as alternate systems, and others have been integrated into the core system. By design this work is not a reinvention of Basic Roleplaying or a significant evolution of the system, but instead a collected and complete version, without setting, provided as a guide to players and gamemasters everywhere and compatible with most Basic Roleplaying games. It also allows the gamemaster the ability to create his or her own game world (or worlds), to adapt others from fiction, films, or even translate settings from other roleplaying games into Basic Roleplaying.
Additionally, Chaosium has announced their first officially licensed setting, Deadword. See here
The DEADWORLD RPG is based upon Gary Reed's DEADWORLD comic, previously published by Caliber Comics and Image Comics, and soon to be released through Desperado Publishing. One of the forerunners of the zombie comic, DEADWORLD was an early work of artist Vincent Locke who went on to work on DC/Vertigo's SANDMAN and A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, recently made into a major motion picture. Seraphim Guard plans to release the DEADWORLD RPG in fall 2008, at the Wizard World Chicago comic convention.
Obviously that’s a ways off but it looks promising…
I really want this RPG, Chaosium don’t let me down!
This week’s best cover is Alter Ego #72. It honors the first appearance of the JLA in The Brave and the Bold #28.
Fall of Cthulhu #6, Boom Studios. New Storyline, New Horrors.
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #1, DC Comics. I’m giving this a look-see, as I’m an old fan of Sam.
Marvel Zombies: The Book of Angels, Demons, & Various Monstrosities #2, Marvel Comics. It’s an evil handbook to the Marvel Universe that includes the Zombies.
Army of Darkness: From the Ashes #3, Dynamite Entertainment.
Magazine: Alter Ego #72, Twomorrows Publishing. I’ve been waiting for this retrospective on Captain Carrot!
Game Book: Conan: The Roleplaying Game 2nd Edition Mongoose Publishing. This core rulebook is published in black and white not color like the previous addition but it’s thicker. Content over esthetic I guess.
I just thought I'd list a few things from September’s Previews that ticked me for some reason or another. Items to arrive in November.
Nurse Ogawa! Now your Star Trek: The Next Generation action figure set will be complete. Oh, and I guess they’re releasing an action figure for some character called Ensign Ro too. Page 444.
The Complete Terry and the Pirates Volume 2. This is one book series I really wish I could pick up but at 50 bucks a pop... I always wanted to read this classic strip due to the great art by Milton Caniff. Lots of strong Female characters, including the Dragon Lady. Page 314.
The Smurfs are coming to DVD! Season one is only $44.98. That’s 26 Smurftasitc episodes for chump change. Page 537.
Doctor Who’s Tardis, how cool is that? Pretty cool. If you’ve got the action figures you have to get the Tardis right? Page 488.
The Cthulhu Rainy-Day Activity Book. Mazes, drawing, coloring and Mad Libs (to name a few items) that will occupy your time and drive you totally crazy. Page 518.
It’s also worth noting that Chaosium is releasing their D100 RPG rulebook. Finally, a generic set of rules for any type of play using the Basic Roleplaying System. I’m looking foreword to this one. Page 518.
