Monday, April 30, 2007

A new edition of Delta Green

An advance review was posted on RPG.net. So, it exists!

Or maybe that's just what They want you to think.

If I had know the original was selling for upwards of 400 bucks on eBay, I might have sold it.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Alien foliage could be yellow or red

So it seems that all the gamers who used fluorescent aquarium plants for terrain in 40K were not so far off the mark, after all.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/12/alienfoliage_spa.html

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Apply for Mike Mearls' old job

He moved from the WotC development team to the mechanics design team, and the ad for his old job is here.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Trek Remastered -- "All Our Yesterdays" and "A Piece of the Action"

Because of the baseball season, we're behind a week on the new episodes. However, you can get a taste of what to expect in the upcoming weeks. The official previews for "All Our Yesterdays" and "A Piece of the Action" are available.

RPG setting ideas -- Freeport

I have been thinking about several different campaign ideas lately. Reading many forum posts and blog entries has inspired me, especially Jeff's Gameblog and the sensationally-titled I Waste the Buddha with My Crossbow by Dr. Rotwang. The love and the joy of gaming ooze out of their postings. You can tell that they are very enthusiastic about their prep and their gameplay, and they recall the sort of wide-eyed idealistic play that you remember in the early days of RPGs, when everything was new and awesome.

So this post is the first in a series about the ideas that have been churning around in my brain lately. I'm just throwing these out here without much structure.

I knew about Freeport only as one of the first third-party products for d20, when D&D 3.0 was released, but I never looked at any of the items or read any reviews. My introduction to it was one year ago when the True20 conversion of the module "Death in Freeport" was released as a free PDF.

Imagine this inner monologue:

"So, it's a fantasy setting, with elves, and dwarves, and orcs, sure..."

"Oh, but there's pirates, too... and Freeport is a pirate city like Tortuga...that's cool!"

"What? Lovecraftian cults, Mythos monsters and conspiracies too...what the..?"

How did I not know about this for 5 years?!

The setting is due for a re-boot with new books forthcoming. The Pirate's Guide to Freeport is all background material without system-specific stats and should be out any time now. Arrrr, matey!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Trek Remastered -- recent episodes

As I mentioned in my last post, the local Fox station has been showing baseball at the normal Saturday Trek time, with that week's episode being shown in the following week's re-run slot. This past weekend's episode should have been "And the Children Shall Lead". It's a poor Third Season episode, most notable for an appearance by Melvin Belli, but to me poor Original Series Trek is better than no Trek at all. It should be the Sunday night re-run this weekend.


It's the giant space ameoba!

In contrast to "AtCSL", then, was "The Immunity Syndrome". That was an excellent episode with great new CG effects that match the original 1960s look but are still eye-popping. Nicely done, CBS!

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Trek Remastered -- last week and this weekend

Sorry about not writing anything over the past week. Busy, busy.

We didn't see last week's Trek episode "The Tholian Web". Instead, the local Fox station showed a magic special titled "Masters of Illusion XX". Then this weekend's episode, "The Immunity Syndrome", wasn't on because of baseball.

My guess, then, is that "...Web" will be on during the repeat timeslot tonight and "Immunity..." will be shown in next week's Sunday repeat slot.

Screenshots, video and review of "...Web" at Trekmovie.com.

Trek: Impossible

A really cute fan-video of the opening titles; the joke being that both of these series were produced by Desilu on the Paramount lot at the same time.

One thing I love in movies and TV is that "Paramount look", from Trek and M:I through Grease, Happy Days, Airplane, and Police Squad. I can't adequately describe it, but I think you know what I mean.

Grindhouse

Saw this with Edige on Saturday. I might write about it here later, but I'll probably comment on the boards first.

If there is any movie that cranks it up to 11, it's this one.