My gaming group recently returned to D&D 4th Edition with a megashot of the Revenge of the Giants supermodule. I talk about our experiences with Wizards of the Coast's homage to the original 1st Edition Against the Giants tournament modules on Episode #121 of The Tome Podcast.
I'm joined by Quinn Murphy of the excellent At Will 4E blog and regular Tome host Jeff Greiner. Check out the podcast.
It's the Winter Solstice, and what better way to celebrate than with a rousing chorus of (and a music video for) "The Carol of the Old Ones"? While the stars may not be right this year we all know it's just a matter of time.
This song's taken from A Very Scary Solstice, the most excellent Cthulhu-inspired holiday music album by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.
Episode 27 of The Secret Lair is online and features a discussion of the (unwanted?) intersections of fantasy and science fiction. It also has the audio version of my review of The Day After Ragnarok, a campaign setting for Savage Worlds that asks the questions "what if the Nazis had summoned the Midgard Serpent in the end days of WWII ... and what if America had killed the wyrm with an atomic bomb?"
The Secret Lair is mixing up its format, bringing in more guests and special features, and I'm curious to see how it all shakes out. You should be too -- go listen now!
There are some things so weird, so strange, so downright incomprehensible that they could only have emerged from the cyclopean depths of the 80s. The music video for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" -- a song heard by many, but perhaps only seen by a few -- is one such artifact.
Indeed, it so transcends our modern understanding that the only thing we can do is mock it. And mock it literally. The "literal version" of the music video replaces the original lyrics with a musical transcription of what's happening on screen.
And yes, Arthur Fonzarelli really does have an army of clones...
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition and Star Wars: Saga Edition were the big topics of conversation on my third guest appearance on The Secret Lair podcast. Hosts Kris Johnson and Chris Miller and I spent about a half hour talking about the latest iteration of the venerable fantasy RPG before launching into why my gaming group decided to ditch it in favor of Star Wars. We had some technical issues while recording, caused by Skype, faulty microphones and my cranky son, but once we got past those we had some solid conversations about both games.
Wish you had a new episode of Radio Active to listen to? Never fear, a new one is on the way, but in the mean time you can listen to Episode 17 of The Secret Lair podcast, in which I talk with hosts Chris Miller and Kris Johnson about S.M. Stirling's alternate history/modernized pulp novel The Sky People.
In this book, Stirling creates a solar system in which Venus and Mars were habitable, just like they were in the pulps - Venus is a jungle world complete with near-human civilizations and dinosaurs, while Mars is a dying desert planet populated with ancient civilizations. Unfortunately, we found the premise to be a lot more interesting than the actual book.
Wizards of the Coast launched a new podcast dedicated to its Star Wars Role-Playing Game, providing more evidence that WotC's getting more serious about supporting the RPG side of its Star Wars offerings.
The first episode features designer Rodney Thompson talking about the Saga Edition rules and running SW campaigns. Check out the show by visiting the Star Wars game home page or download the file directly. Wizards has also been featuring more and more RPG content on the site, including articles about Behind the Threat: The Sith and Star Wars: The Musical Experience, Part 1.
Geek musician/singer Jonathan Coulton (Skullcrusher Mountain, Re: Your Brains) lives in Brooklyn, New York, which isn't all that far from the Lehigh Valley. Yet to the best of my knowledge, he's never played here, which is something I'd like to change.
There's a Lehigh Valley "demand" for him in Eventful:
http://eventful.com/demand/D0-001-000000412-0
This is basically a webified way of asking someone to come play in your area; by accumulating votes we can show that there's enough folks in the Lehigh Valley to make it worth his while.
Click the link and vote if you'd like to see him perform in the area.
I've been losing myself in BioShock for the last three weeks or so, fighting my way through a pseudo-Randian dystopia that's as engaging as it is beautiful. Part of what makes the game so exception is its soundtrack, which is by turns cinematic, classical and terrifying. Now you can enjoy composer's work outside of the game by downloading the soundtrack for free from the BioShock web site. And yes, I will be figuring out someway to include this in a future role-playing game session...
Midnight Syndicate will be teaming up with Hollywood FX legend Robert Kurtzman (Dusk till Dawn producer, co-founder of the KNB EFX Group) and his production company, Precinct 13 Entertainment to produce the horror-suspense film, The Dead Matter.
Development has been underway for several months and pre-production officially began March 1st. Principal photography is scheduled to begin in Northeastern Ohio this August with a projected release date sometime in 2008. Edward Douglas will be directing the film and producing it through the newly-formed Midnight Syndicate Films division of Entity Productions, Inc. The company is currently in talks with Doug Bradley (Pinhead from the Hellraiser series) and Andrew Divoff (Wishmaster, Air Force One, Lost) to star.