Ken Newquist I got a bunch of books for Christmas — the Robert E. Howard’s The Bloody Crown of Conan, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, a bunch of D&D source books, and Star Trek alum-turned-writer Wil Wheaton’s autobiography Just a Geek. It’s a measure of how good Wheaton’s book was that after reading a page or two … Read more
I’ve been publishing Nuketown as a webzine, and then as a sort of webzine/blog hybrid, since 1996. So why am I ringing in the new year by creating a blog apart from the ol’thermonuclear site? There are a bunch of reasons, but the biggest one is that despite its shifts to a more bloggish set-up, … Read more
There are a few major gaming milestones in my life. Playing Colossal Cave on my Apple II+. My friend Jeff and I engaging in a Saturday-long game of Asteroids on my Atari 2600. Playing GoldenEye on my N64. Meeting my present off-line gaming group and launching our Blackrazor D&D campaign. And finding the Geezer Gamers. … Read more
As you can probably tell from the lack of posts around here lately, Nuketown’s on a mini-hiatus for the holidays. I’ve got a week off from work, and I’m using it relax. I’m spending time with my wife and daughter, getting together with friends, playing games (Halo 2 on Xbox, Mario 64 on Nintendo DS), … Read more
I’ve been thinking about doing a monthly column dedicated to audio, much like I do for the written word, but I never had enough music or spoken word stuff to talk about (yeah, I listen to audio books each month, but I have to count those as books, or I wouldn’t have enough “written word” … Read more
Matt Snyder (of 20by20room.com fame) recently posted a RPG meme topic to his blog. In it, he poses 15 questions about people’s gaming experiences. Here are my answers. 1. What is the first RPG you ever played? Some weird combination of 1st Edition AD&D and the basic set. At the time I was in 4th … Read more
When the mainstream sees Grand Theft Auto, they see mindless violence, rampant mayhem, and destruction without purpose. When gamers look at it though, they see something different: freedom to explore. Unlike many other games (at least until the release of Grand Theft Auto 3), the mission agenda in the game is not hard coded. Players … Read more
There’s nothing quite like spending a Saturday playing nothing but board games. That’s what the guys in my gaming group did this weekend, starting around 10 a.m. on Saturday and playing through until nearly 2 a.m. Sunday. We called this home-grown festival of gaming “LanceCon”, in honor of our friend Lance, who starts to get … Read more
My quest to improve the Geek Tree this year continues. I have found what I think is the perfect size for the tree — 9 feet tall, and 40 inches in diameter. That makes for a narrow, slender tree that shouldn’t have huge footprint in the living room, but provides ample space for the various … Read more
Victor Koman’s Kings of the High Frontier shows us a world a few years in our future where a number of individuals, from billionaire Larry Poubelle to smuggler Marcus Grant, seek to shrug off the combined shackles of Earth’s gravity and Earth’s government to live among the stars. Caught between the astro-entrepreneurs and the sinister … Read more