Ken Newquist This week’s Game Day sees us returning to the Dark City campaign to wrap-up our quest to save a bunch of kidnapped kids from some dungeon-dwelling kobolds. It’s a fun adventure, but I find myself straining to connect it to a Game Day column. So instead I’m going to stick with the semi-random rambling approach … Read more
My dad was a science teacher, and I spent many a day going to work with him, on Saturdays or summer days, while he set up his classrooms, rebuilt bulletin boards, and generally did teacher stuff. I have pleasant memories of wandering through empty schools, exploring new corridors, and taking the occasional break to draw … Read more
I didn’t have enough time for a full-fledged Game Day column this week, so here are some random thoughts relating to Mutants & Masterminds inspired by Friday’s session. The new Infinity Storm blog is coming along nicely. I’ve got an HTML mock-up mostly working in Safari and Firefox; Internet Explorer still has issues (but really, … Read more
Back in November, when I was working on my novel, I wrote a scene in which the main characters got together for a graphic novel book club. When I mentioned this to my gaming group, they thought it was a great idea … and that we should give it a try in the real world.
After much discussion and a few delays, we’re finally doing it. Our first-ever Graphic Novel Book Club will take place tonight at WhichBrew, where we’ll be eating good food, drinking local beers, and discussing Alan Moore’s classic (if highly depressing) graphic novel Watchmen.
It’s a tough novel to start with because it truly feels like a novel. It’s dense and literary, with some chapters that spin the narrative wildly out of control, and an ending so depressing it could drive you to drink. It’s dystopian alternate history 1980s has almost no sympathetic heroes; there are plenty of reasons to hate them, and almost none you can admire.
I’d settled into a good routine. Get off work at 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., go to the gym, and then get home by 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. in time for dinner with the family. Take care of the kids – giving them baths and cleaning up the house – and help herd them into bed … Read more
Radio Active returns to its somewhat regular schedule as I talk about family visits, getting more sleep, hacking Moodle and trying out Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. In Netheads, I talk about getting a sneak peak at D&D 4th Edition through already-released products like the Book of Nine Swords, discover a new Secret Lair for … Read more
GoodReads is a social networking site for readers, allowing users to add their book collections to online bookshelves and then share those collections with friends. Books can be stored on different book shelves, rated, and reviewed. You can compare your collection to that of a friends, with the site giving you a side-by-side comparison of … Read more
My brand-new, yellow-painted, Chaosium-sanctioned Call of Cthulhu dice by Q Workshop arrived today from Poland. I’ve got to say — these things are easily the most beautiful, well-crafted dice in my collection, and I’d put them up against any of those meteorite dice in a geek cred show down. I mean, sure, dice made from … Read more
Last week was a light one for Marvel (or at least the Marvel titles I read) so I let Tony at Phantom of the Attic talk me into trying out a couple of other titles. In addition to my X-Universe standby – this week it was “New X-Men”, Part 12 of the Messiah Complex – … Read more
I look like death warmed over. There are deep bags under my eyes, my neck muscles are vise-tight despite a massage on Saturday, and my face has that hang-dog, puffy look that comes from one too many nights spent sleeping far too little. This is actually an improvement. Things were worse in December and January, … Read more