True20: D&D With a Twist

For a lot of gamers, Dungeons & Dragons serves as something of a default game system. Certainly, it is by far the most popular, though some would argue the system suffers in comparison to other RPGs. After all, there are countless systems out there, some of them very different than D&D. For instance, game designer Jonathan Tweet created Over The Edge, a system with no skills or attributes, as well as Everway, a game with no dice. Of course, fans of the White Wolf's World of Darkness series of games prefer their system, and GURPS-players like theirs.

However, in the end, D&D's ubiquity won out. Wisely, D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast licensed out the game system, calling it d20 and inviting small publishers to design products for it. The terms of the agreement, called the Open Gaming License (OGL) even allows publishers to tinker with the rules.

True20 started as a d20 variant designed for use in Blue Rose: The Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy. In the True20 rulebook's introduction, developer Steve Kenson describes the game this way: 'The idea behind Blue Rose was to introduce new players to fantasy roleplaying with an untapped genre and a simpler, more self-contained system than is currently available under the Open Gaming License.'

Abney Park

McGuinn’s Folk Den

Do you like folks music? Real folk music that stretches back into history for hundreds of years? Then check out Roger McGuinn's (if I have to explain who he is I am going to be disappointed in you) folk tradition website.

If you don't know who he is, I leave that as an exercise for the student.

This song is what lead me to his site:

That's Cab Calloway singing though.

WotC at GenCon Indy

Well, it looks like the worries of D&D fans can be put back into their pockets. WotC will be in attendance at Gen Con this year.

Gen Con is pleased to announce that once again Wizards of the Coast, will be a co-sponsor of Gen Con Indy. Fans of all ages come to Gen Con each year to see and experience the latest in analog and digital gaming, and Wizards’ participation is a highlight for many fans. This year, Wizards of the Coast will be showing off their latest offerings, including the release of Dungeons & Dragons® 4th Edition.

Matt Fraction/Casanove Interview Podcast

If you aren't reading Casanova the question that you should be asking yourself is "Why Not?"

Matt Fraction interview

Go out and get it and come back. I'll wait.

Ohio State "Super" Collection

In comic book terms, it might be on the scale of a merger of the X-Men and the Justice League of America: two collections combining to form what's believed to be the world's largest treasury of cartoon art.

Ohio State University's Cartoon Research Library said it's acquiring and plans to display the collection of the International Museum of Cartoon Art, about 200,000 works that have been in limbo since the museum's last physical location closed six years ago.

The museum's original drawings for comic books, comic strips and animated cartoons, as well as display figures, toys, collectibles and films, will double the size of the library's cartoon art collection, said Lucy Shelton Caswell, the library's curator.

Man says JetBlue made him sit on toilet

A New York City man is suing JetBlue Airways Corp. for more than $2 million because he says a pilot made him give up his seat to a flight attendant and sit on the toilet for more than three hours on a flight from California.
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Gokhan Mutlu, of Manhattan's Inwood section, says in court papers the pilot told him to 'go hang out in the bathroom' about 90 minutes into the San Diego to New York flight because the flight attendant complained that the 'jump seat' she was assigned was uncomfortable, the lawsuit said.

Mutlu was traveling on a 'buddy pass,' a standby travel voucher that JetBlue employees give to friends, from New York to San Diego on Feb. 16, and returned to New York on Feb. 23, the lawsuit said.

Company to reprint yearbooks after head switching

School officials say they are appalled by altered photos — including heads on different bodies — in hundreds of McKinney High School yearbooks delivered this week.

A Look at the Pentagon’s Five Step Plan For Making Iron Man Real

'The human being is almost singularly pathetic. We lack claws, sport tiny little teeth, and are covered with thin, delicate skin. Most of us can’t even walk outside barefoot.' Roboticist Daniel Wilson is pointing to a singular riddle of humankind’s place on the planet. We are one of the weaker species physically and yet we sit at top of the food chain. The reason is our technology. A saber tooth tiger may be able to chew us to bits, but once that first cave man learned to shake a stick, its time was over. Today, we could literally bomb that tiger back into the Stone Age, that is, if it hadn’t already been made extinct by our stick-wielding ancestors.

And yet, while we have exponentially gone from stick to nuclear bombs in our destructive power, our human bodies aren’t any stronger, faster, better protected, or even that much smarter. About the only things that have even moderately changed about us are our waist sizes and hair to body ratio.

Technology again offers the lure, however, of solving for this weakness of the human body, an idea frequently played with in science fiction. Iron Man is the Marvel comicbook series in which Tony Stark, a playboy industrialist, dons a technologic suit of powered armor. The suit gives him superhuman strength, virtual invulnerability, the ability to fly, and packs an array of weapons. In the comic books, Iron Man uses his suit to battle the communists, a Chinese warlord, Godzilla, and the Incredible Hulk. In the new movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, Iron Man takes on our 21st century versions of arch-villiany: terrorists and an evil CEO.

Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones