Saturday, February 03, 2007

Doctor Who and the French Dalek



Imagine a mash-up of Doctor Who and Monty Python. Of course, if you click on this link you don't need to imagine it.


The Grand Gaming Library





This are photos of my gaming collection, posted here and to Flickr. Every now and then you have to take stock of your habits.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Dave's Funky Setting Generator, v 0.1

Here's an interesting one-line campaign concept generator written by an RPGnetter. If you like the strange and unusual, and I know you do, this is for you.

Dave's Funky Setting Generator, v 0.1

Here's what I got when I clicked on the link:
Premise: Rebellious transhumanists uncover a shocking conspiracy in the furthest reaches of the Astral Plane.
Genre: Crime/Pulp

Thursday, January 11, 2007

The Binary Death of Robert Anton Wilson

You will be missed. I hope the pancakes are as good on the other side.

RAW Data: RAW Essence
Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.

All Hail Eris!

Saturday, December 30, 2006

The Stars Are Right Again!!

Great news for fans of Call of Cthulhu! Hopefully they will be able to maintain the high standards of quality that Pagan started with their magazine. It seems that a lot of support is building for Call of Cthulhu out there in the gaming world, which is a great thing.

Hopefully this will give Chaosium a much needed push in the market.

[TMP] Unspeakable Oath Reanimating for 2007
Skirmisher Publishing LLC is excited to announce that it is partnering with Pagan Publishing to resurrect The Unspeakable Oath, a leading periodical devoted to various manifestations of Lovecraftian horror in games, books, and films.

The Unspeakable Oath was last published in 2001, and the partnership will resurrect it in summer 2007 as an annual digest, containing top-notch articles, scenarios, and support material for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, Pagan's Delta Green campaign setting, Skirmisher's Cthulhu Live, and more.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

BBC moves to file-sharing sites

Geeks around the world rejoice! It will be interesting to see how many other networks around the world embrace this sort of move. American networks already offer streaming video of many programs via their websites but I think that this is the first time that any media outlet has embraced file sharing.

Time will tell the impact that this decision has.

BBC moves to file-sharing sites

Hundreds of episodes of BBC programmes will be made available on a file-sharing network for the first time, the corporation has announced.

The move follows a deal between the commercial arm of the organisation, BBC Worldwide, and technology firm Azureus.

The agreement means that users of Azureus' Zudeo software in the US can download titles such as Little Britain.

Until now, most BBC programmes found on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks have been illegal copies.

Beth Clearfield, vice president of program management and digital media at BBC Worldwide, said that the agreement was part of a drive to reach the largest audience possible.

'We are very excited to partner with Azureus and make our content available through this revolutionary distribution model,' she said.

Dorkland Participates: The Carl Sagan-Blog-A-Thon

If you're a blogger, this is one that you should spread around. From the Cornell University Chronicle Online:
Fans and bloggers are planning a worldwide blog-a-thon to commemorate the life and legacy of Carl Sagan -- consummate scientist, communicator and educator -- on Dec. 20, the 10th anniversary of his death. Sagan was Cornell's David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences.



Ten years ago bone marrow disease took one of the great popularizers of science from the world. Cosmos was an incredible television series that had a great impact on me in my youth.

"We are poised at the edge of forever." -- Dr. Carl Sagan

Today, on the anniversary of his death the blogosphere is saluting Dr. Sagan with the Carl Sagan Blog-A-Thon. Perhaps a chain of billions and billions of blogs will honor his memory.

Finding a copy of Cosmos on DVD is well worth the effort of tracking it down. The book is great too. My copy of the book has seen great use and wear throughout the years.

Dr. Sagan, I hope that your travels through the Cosmos are still as enlightening now as they were when you were here with us on Earth.

You can find the blog of Nick Sagan, Dr. Sagan's son, here.

On Google Video you can also find a NASA video of a 1972 panel on extraterrestrial life that features Sagan.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Cartoons inspire cosplay restaurant

Because the world just isn't goofy enough. There are some things that are just better when you let them introduce themselves...

Cartoons inspire cosplay restaurant
The only cartoon-themed restaurants that I've eaten at have been at theme parks and the only memorable one was Marvel Mania at Universal Studios, Hollywood. It has since closed down (probably because the food wasn't that great), but it was kind of entertaining to have Spidey hanging out at the dinner table. Perhaps drawing inspiration from that one selling point - that it is fun to sit with the characters - from such themed restaurants, a new cartoon-themed restaurant has opened up in Toronto that takes the theme further.

iMaid Cafe is a cosplay restaurant, which basically means that all the staff members are dressed in costumes and play a certain role. In this particular case, that role is of a maid from Japanese anime cartoons. 'I call them maids not waitresses,' said 24-year old Aaron Wang, the owner of the restaurant who is originally from Beijing. 'They smile a lot and they are cute. I want somebody cute like the characters from cartoons -- big eyes, long hair and young.'

[via Boing Boing]

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Light the Sky: A Comic Book in Progress /// Version 5.0: Fatally Yours

Another particularly twisted little webcomic (and I mean that in a good way) discovered via comicscene. Both Light the Sky and Self Inflicted have some things worth looking at.

Light the Sky: A Comic Book in Progress

Martin Nodell -- RIP

I saw him a few years back when I visited WizardWorld Chicago to meet the Big Bang Comics guys (too bad that didn't work out better) and he didn't look very good back then. It was sad, in a way, because he had been reduced to having to sell drawings of Green Lantern with his shaking hand just to pull in a little bit of money.

It's a shame how the comic industry ends up treating its own in the end. Siegel and Shuster. Dave Cockrum. William Messner-Loeb. Jack Kirby. Martin Nodell.

He will be missed, but somewhere there is an engineer lighting his way with an emerald lantern that brings life, then death, and the power.

Martin Nodell -- RIP
Martin Nodell, the artist co-creator of Green Lantern, died this morning less than a month after his 91st birthday. I'm afraid I have no further details other than that Marty had been in poor health lately.

Marty was born 11/15/15 in Philadelphia. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and later, Pratt Institute in New York. It was in New York that he began working as a freelance artist, in or around 1938. He soon started freelancing for several comic book companies that either didn't pay or didn't pay well. As he later told the story, he got tired of being stiffed by the smaller firms and decided to make an all-out effort to break into the majors. He called at the offices of the biggest publisher, DC Comics, and was told they were full up but that there might be work at an affiliated company, All American. The editor there was Sheldon Mayer.

Mayer gave him a little work. When Nodell asked what it would take to get steady assignments, Mayer, who was looking for a new feature for the company's signature title, All-American Comics, told him to come up with a character. Nodell returned a few days later with sketches and the germ cell of a strip called Green Lantern. He said the idea had come to him on the subway when he saw a man waving — you guessed it — a green lantern. Nodell also said he wrote and drew the first few pages of the first story...but he wasn't a writer so Mayer brought in one of comics' top writers, Bill Finger, to rewrite and finish the first tale. The result was that Green Lantern, by Bill Finger and 'Mart Dellon,' debuted in All-American Comics #16, cover dated July of 1940. The character, which drew inspiration from the legend of Aladdin, was an immediate hit on the magnitude of the firm's other new superstars, The Flash and Wonder Woman, and soon received his own comic. (The All-American company was later absorbed by DC Comics. A new version of Green Lantern was created in 1959 and that version remains popular today, though the original Nodell incarnation has also been known to reappear.)

The Graphic Work of Lien-Cooper, Greenlee and Howe

Here's a webcomic site that I found through the comicspace website. There's some really good stuff in here, particularly Gun Street Girl and Red Dahlia. Really good art and stories. If you like comics, web or print, you should check these guys out.

Panel2Panel.com

I will probably be posting more webcomics as I come across them through this site.

Edit: Be sure to check out No Stereotypes too. Pretty good stuff.

Georgia Erases 519 Places Off the Map

So, what happens when the place where you live disappears from the map? This can be an intriguing start to a senario for your modern horror games. What if someone was trying to actively hide a town from the rest of the world? Somewhere, off of the official maps, are places with names like Arkham, Innsmouth, Gotham are out there waiting to be discovered again. But why have they been hidden so thoroughly, and who benefits from their hiding?

Georgia Erases 519 Places Off the Map
Poetry Tulip has vanished. So have Between and Climax. Cloudland and Roosterville are gone, too.

A total of 519 communities have been erased from the newest version of Georgia's official map, victims of too few people and too many letters of type.

Georgia's Department of Transportation, which drew the new map, said that the goal was to make it clearer and less cluttered and that many of the dropped communities were mere 'placeholders,' generally with fewer than 2,500 people. Some are unincorporated and so small they are not even recognized by the Census Bureau.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Your Mom's Basement: GALACTUS IS COMING!

From the Your Mom's Basement website:

Your Mom's Basement: GALACTUS IS COMING!
YMB's crack investigative team has unearthed the long rumored, but never confirmed, collaboration from 1983 between Marvel's Chairman Emeritus Stan Lee and religious comic tract creator Jack Chick.

Long out of print and now only infrequently stumbled upon in the odd truck stop bathroom (as all good religious witnessing tracts should be) YMB is now able to present to you 'Galactus is Coming!'

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Sausages affected by draconian trade laws

Warning: This sausage contains no actual dragon. WTF?

Sausages affected by draconian trade laws
A SPICY sausage known as the Welsh Dragon will have to be renamed after trading standards’ officers warned the manufacturers that they could face prosecution because it does not contain dragon.

R.I.P. Jack Williamson

This is a great loss to science fiction.

Jack Williamson
Jack Williamson has been in the forefront of science fiction since his first published story in 1928. Williamson is the acclaimed author of such trailblazing science fiction as The Humanoids and The Legion of Time. The Oxford English Dictionary credits Williamson with inventing the terms 'genetic engineering' (in Dragon's Island) and 'terraforming' (in Seetee Ship). His seminal novel Darker Than You Think was a landmark speculation on the nature of shape-changing.

Jack Williamson died Friday 10th November at his home in Portales, New Mexico.


Williams was 98 at the time of his death.

No Magic Fantasy and Keeping The Fantastic

This is a thread that I started on RPGnet, and also on the RQ3 mailing list. Because of my buying up some RQ3 stuff, I am interested in giving a try at running a fantasy game again (for the first time in a very long time). Obviously, because of the fact that I don't actually like a lot of the stuff that passes for fantasy literature out there I am looking for a campaign that goes a bit further afield.

These conversations represent my thoughts coming together on the matter. It seems that some can't grasp the concept of fantasy without magic.

And, since I've mentioned it in both discussions, this Wikipedia entry sums up some of what I am interested in within this genre of the fantastic.

No Magic Fantasy and Keeping The Fantastic
I'm going to start this out by saying something that won't come as a big surprise to some: I'm not a big fan of fantasy literature. Sure, I've made my attempts at reading Tolkien, Jordan, and so many others that are out there but most of them have just not sparked my interest. There have been a few fantasy writers that I've liked over the years, but they tend to be sword and sorcery writers like Moorcock, Leiber and Howard. I guess that I just liked their energy a lot better. Because of this disinterest I got out of fantasy gaming round about 87 or, except for a couple of one shots back in college and a rather long run as a player in a D&D 3.0 game a couple of years back. The stuff just doesn't really get me going in a way that makes me want to run or play in a fantasy game for any long period of time.

I'm stating that so that we all have a baseline for the conversation here. This isn't going to be a 'let's talk Chris into liking fantasy literature' discussion.

However, recently (do to my buying up some old RQ3 stuff online...most of which I am still waiting to arrive) I've been eyeing putting together a fantasy game to run. Obviously I want something that will interest me as a gamer and a GM, which means that the heroic fantasy stuff is straight out. What I am interested in is something that has a very strong fantastic element to it, but without being the 'stereotypical' fantasy stuff that I am really not as interested in going into. Obviously, from the title of this thread, I am looking to run something with no magic in it. Period. No spell casters, no clerics with healing magic...none of that. I do want there to be elements of the fantastic in there, however. I want bizarre non-humans who are different from elves and dwarves, and who are more than just the familiar tropes and conventions dressed up in new clothing.

I want a world that is dangerous, strange and more than a little dark around the edges *but* at the same time I want the the heroes (the PCs) to be grand and larger than life. They are heroes who kick ass and take names, but at the same time there are grander threats to them out there in the larger world. But I don't want those threats to be so overwhelming that there is no chance of the PCs being able to achieve victory over these threads. I want mythic and fantastic, but without the usual trappings of magic that populate most fantasy games and books.


Please, comment and let me know what you think.

Edit: Here's an interesting blog post that was mentioned in the RPGnet thread.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Man arrested for strangling woman he met through suicide website

Strange news out there in the real world.

Man arrested for strangling woman he met through suicide website
An unemployed man was arrested Wednesday for strangling a woman he had got acquainted with through a suicide website, police said.


[via Warren Ellis]

Vertigo First Issues for Download

DC Comics is offering some of the Vertigo first issues for free download off of the DC Comics website. If you haven't already, check out these books. All are available in trade format as well.

Dorkland reccomends: DMZ, Doom Patrol, Transmetropolitan and Hellblazer. It wouldn't be worth the efort to reccomend either Sandman or Swamp Thing. Those are just givens.

Vertigo First Issues for Download
Now you can read the full first issues of the many Vertigo series that revolutionized comics! Follow the links below to download a PDF version of the first issue of these classic Vertigo series now collected in graphic novel form. When you visit the Graphic Novels section of VertigoComics.com, any graphic novel titles with a #1 icon (#1) will have a download of the ground-breaking first issue!

Runequest III: Here, There and Everywhere

I've got a new gaming interest: Runequest. However, if you came to this blog entry expecting me to talk about the new Mongoose version of the rules. What I am actually interested in is the classic Runequest designed by Chaosium and published by Avalon Hill -- Runequest 3.

I've been spending the last few months working at tracking down some of the stuff for the game, and now I am in the stage of waiting for things to come in. I am very excited about learning the system. This is the worse part of buying a "new" game, the wait for it to arrive.

I was talking to Ben Monroe about my new interest in RQ3 and he pointed me to this great essay about the game written by Sandy Petersen (Call of Cthulhu and DOOM creator). I think that it brings up some really interesting points about the system.

Sandy Petersen on Runequest
Few RPGs permit playing a non-human with the facility of Runequest even today [1996!]. In fact, the trend is rather away from playing non-humans. 'Tis not necessarily a bad trend, given the rather lame interpretations of these beings that have infested the RPG market. Partly as a result of the difficulty in playing them.

You see, most games render non-humans as variations on humans. Example: 'dwerlfs are like humans, but with -2 from STR and INT' or whatever. RQ nonhumans are completely independent -- you could set up a RQ game with no nonhumans at all, and never make any reference to humans, and character creation and play would be smooth. I think that the psychological aspects of this difference have had an effect on scenario designers, essayists, and gamemasters.

There is another way in which RQ affected Glorantha. By the nature of most of Greg's early stories, plus White Bear & Red Moon, Nomad Gods, etc., Glorantha seemed to be a place where titans battled far above the level of mere mortal fodder.


So, are you a Runequest III fan? I would really like to hear your thoughts and experiences with the system. Share your stories, exploits and adventures. I will be writing more about the system here as the box sets start trickling into my mail slot.

Also, Ben has started a RQ3 discussion list on Yahoo. If you are interested in joining discussions on the game that don't necessarily focus on Glorantha, check out the discussion list.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Classics Corner: The Green Eyes of Bâst, by Sax Rohmer

This is something new that I am going to call Classics Corner. These are stories, novels and other literary works that are important to the horror, fantasy and science fiction genres. Each Classic Corner will feature an opening quote from the particular work, with a link to a way for you to read the complete work. I hope that you enjoy this.

There is so much cool old stuff that you just cannot find from publishers, or on the shelves of bookstores anymore. True, some of it has held up better than others but these things are still the basic blocks upon which the new, the wild and the now have been built.

One thing that is cool about the internet is that these things are not truly lost anymore, but they are out there hiding in the shadowed corners waiting to be found and enjoyed again. From time to time, from here on out, I am going to point you in the direct of some of these lost classics that I am pretty sure that you haven't read before. If you have, that's great. If you haven't, though, you are going to be exposed to some writings that I consider to be interesting, if not seminal.

A lot of this stuff is going to be stories that can be related to your role-playing games.

Classics Corner: The Green Eyes of Bâst, by Sax Rohmer
CHAPTER I
I SEE THE EYES


'Good evening, sir. A bit gusty?'

'Very much so, sergeant,' I replied. 'I think I will step into your hut for a moment and light my pipe if I may.'

'Certainly, sir. Matches are too scarce nowadays to take risks with 'em. But it looks as if the storm had blown over.'

'I'm not sorry,' said I, entering the little hut like a sentry-box which stands at the entrance to this old village high street for accommodation of the officer on point duty at that spot. 'I have a longish walk before me.'

'Yes. Your place is right off the beat, isn't it?' mused my acquaintance, as sheltered from the keen wind I began to load my briar. 'Very inconvenient I've always thought it for a gentleman who gets about as much as you do.'

'That's why I like it,' I explained. 'If I lived anywhere accessible I should never get a moment's peace, you see. At the same time I have to be within an hour's journey of Fleet Street.'

I often stopped for a chat at this point and I was acquainted with most of the men of P. division on whom the duty devolved from time to time. It was a lonely spot at night when the residents in the neighborhood had retired, so that the darkened houses seemed to withdraw yet farther into the gardens separating them from the highroad. A relic of the days when trains and motor-buses were not, dusk restored something of an old-world atmosphere to the village street, disguising the red brick and stucco which in many cases had displaced the half-timbered houses of the past. Yet it was possible in still weather to hear the muted bombilation of the sleepless city and when the wind was in the north to count the hammer-strokes of the great bell of St. Paul's.

Standing in the shelter of the little hut, I listened to the rain dripping from over-reaching branches and to the gurgling of a turgid little stream which flowed along the gutter near my feet whilst now and again swift gusts of the expiring tempest would set tossing the branches of the trees which lined the way.

'It's much cooler to-night,' said the sergeant.

I nodded, being in the act of lighting my pipe. The storm had interrupted a spell of that tropical weather which sometimes in July and August brings the breath of Africa to London, and this coolness resulting from the storm was very welcome. Then:

'Well, good night,' I said, and was about to pursue my way when the telephone bell in the police-hut rang sharply.

'Hullo,' called the sergeant.

I paused, idly curious concerning the message, and:

'The Red House,' continued the sergeant, 'in College Road? Yes, I know it. It's on Bolton's beat, and he is due here now. Very good; I'll tell him.'

Saturday, November 11, 2006

CCP and White Wolf to Merge

Some interesting news via Flames Rising. If this is accurate (I can't find confirmation on either company's websites) it certainly means that the gap between the (probable) number two RPG company and the rest of the "industy" just got much, much bigger.

Not being a MMO person it doesn't mean a lot to me from that angle, but I'm sure it means that we'll see a WoD MMO before too long.

This will certainly be something to watch.

CCP and White Wolf to Merge
CCP hf. and White Wolf Publishing, Inc. today announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement to merge. The creators of the single largest persistent online role-playing world and the world's second-largest developer of offline role-playing, strategy and collectable card games will create the industry's largest independent Virtual World developer. CCP is the publisher and developer of EVE Online, the world's largest virtual gaming universe. White Wolf is the creator of some of the world's most recognized role-playing titles including: World of Darkness (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) and Exalted. The combined company will introduce new online and offline gaming products across the science-fiction, horror, and fantasy genres.


Click on the link for more information.

Oscar Winner Jack Palance Dead at 87

He may not have been a great, but he certainly was good. I'm sure that he's doing push-ups in heaven.

Oscar Winner Jack Palance Dead at 87
For most of his Hollywood career, Jack Palance played memorable tough guys in films such as 'Shane' and 'Sudden Fear,' but it wasn't until he was in his 70s that he won an Oscar for his comedic self-parody in 'City Slickers.'

Palance endeared himself to viewers of the 1992 Academy Awards when he accepted his Oscar for best supporting actor by dropping to the stage and performing one-armed push-ups.