Off the Shelf: Hyperion, The Golden Compass, American Gods
The end of the summer saw me pick up a bunch of new books, including Hyperion and its sequel, The Fall of Hyperion and autumn actually gave me enough time to read one of them!
As we moved into December, the movie release of Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass – and the religious controversy that surrounded it – led me to pick up the book, and the subject of gods and religion inspired me to return to this summer's audio book listening project, Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
Game Day: The Book of Almost Everything
With the Dark City campaign back in full swing, I’m finally able to use my Book of Almost Everything. I created the Book in the waning days of the original Dark City campaign as I realized that I had a treasure trove of instant non-player characters, random encounters, and flavor text lurking in my back issues of Dungeon Magazine.
I spent a weekend finding and copying useful articles from my back issues, accumulating about 40-odd articles to use at the gaming table. And then the campaign promptly ended as I ran out of free time to work on Dark City, and the group moved onto other adventures.
With the campaign’s resurrection, I’m dusting off the old book, and eyeing a few new charts for its pages.
First Round Free RPG Day '08 Sponsors Announced
Free RPG Day will be held Saturday, June 21, 2008. The event, inspired by the extremely successful Free Comic Book Day, features the following sponsors this year:
Get A Head with Futurama Icons
If you're like me, you saw the shelf-based Dock for Mac OS X Leopard and thought ... hey, I could put some heads in a jar on that! And now you can, thanks to the Futurama "Heads in Jarks" icons from Icon Factory. I give you my ... "Al Gore's Head in a Jar" Dock! (which will be even better once 10.5.2 is out, and you can assign icons to Stacks).
Signs & Portents #52
Issue of #52 of Mongoose's in-house magazine Signs & Portents is out. On the war gaming side they've got a bumper crop of Babylon 5 stories with four new A Call to Arms articles, including three space combat scenarios.
Radio Active #60: NaNoWriMo Wrapup, Zelda, Podcast Roundup
Radio Active returns from its holiday hiatus with a wrap up National Novel Writing Month and news about my new reviews up at SCIFI.com. I also talk about my family's adoption (finally) of a TiVo, ramble on about boys and their trucks, spend some time playing Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and get caught up on a half-dozen different gaming and political podcasts.
Getting the Show
There are several ways to get the podcast:
Game Day: Ravenloft Ends, Dark City Returns, D&D 4E Prelude
When last we left our weekly Game Day, our Ravenloft campaign was slugging along, pitting a heroic band of adventurers against the monstrous horrors of the fading land of Count Straud. It’s based on Expedition to Castle Ravenloft an old school, 1st-edition style monster-crawl in which role-playing is minimized, and encounters with level draining undead are maximized.
We knew this getting into it, and in spite of the fact that most of us were getting burned out on the 3E combat mechanics, we plunged ahead anyway for nostalgia’s sake. At the same time, we were running a superheroes campaign using the Mutants & Masterminds rules, and loving the largely free-form, role-playing intensive style of play.
Friendly Blogging
My friends (and fellow gamers) are joining the blogosphere in force. Erilar's Day in the Life of a Gamer has returned from hiatus with posts about Mass Effect, holiday gaming goodness, and a test drive of Burnout: Paradise City.
Jan/Feb Issue of Geek Gazette Online
The Geek Gazette returns from holiday break with its January/February 2008 issue. It includes a 2007 geek news recap, an essay on the merits (or lack there of) of digital comic books, rumors and speculation on Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, and a look ahead movies, game and book releases for the new year, and capsule reviews of The Simpsons, Halloween and Futurama: Bender’s Big Score.