Blogroll
My personal blog of games, pop culture, content creation, web-technology, and whatever strikes my fancy.
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New Zombie Orpheus stuff
I watched the two latest entries from Zombie Orpheus, and loved them. Human’s and Households is about people living in a fantasy world, who play a game where they imagine characters in our mundane one. It is a hoot. Gamers: The Natural One is a thinly veiled excuse to have some of the Gamers crew playing a Shadowrun type game. It was fun as well, with some gamer humor. It is done by the guys who did Gamers 1, 2, and 3. I am fond of those films and one of the things I enjoy about them is they are getting better with every installment. These are shorter bits, but…
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Man of Steel
Superman is not an easy character to get right. Many people have taken approaches at him, and few have succeeded. Snyder’s approach was actually fairly new, and I am not sure if he succeeded or not, but if he failed, he failed in an enjoyable manner. Superman is a legend, a god that has feet on the ground like a man. He is the invulnerable, and unstoppable man. That is often the problem, as he is so powerful, it is awfully hard to give him a challenge he can’t rise to. More than that, he is big boy scout, always, and today’s audience is often seen as having a problem…
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Star Treking
I have been thinking about Star Trek today. Specifically, I have been thinking about gaming in Star Trek. Star Trek has had a few RPG’s based on it. Fasa, Last Unicorn and Decipher have all done games based on the material, not to mention Prime Directive. They all had varying levels of success. Fasa, in particular, had an “interesting” time with the fact they came up with their own canon for the game world, only to have it directly contradicted later by the rights holder. Star Trek, in general, seems like a no brainer for a scifi game setting, that anyone would love. Unfortunately, i there may be a significant…
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Many shades of black
Tonight’s Hannibal inspired me to write some things. Forgive me if I ramble. One of my all time favorite TV shows of all time is Millennium. It was done by some of the people behind X-Files and Space Above and Beyond, and it actually crossed over with X-Files at a couple of points. It was nominally about a guy who can see into the minds of evil, to help find killers. This is a premise that has been done often to varying degrees, but usually with a sort of typical police procedural feel. Millennium was not that model. It had a deeply melancholy theme running through it, a level personal…
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The Beyond of comic future
I see a lot of people who complain about the state of comics, for various reasons. Some complain they have lost originality. I have heard others complain about how dark they have become. Of course, the classic complain of expense will always come up. One I have heard come up time and again, is that they seem to have lost a lot of that simple fun we all loved when we first started reading them. When I say we, I mean those of us who started reading in the 80s. Well worry not my friends. I have a cure for this complaint, of sorts. DC comics has a line of…
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Why I love Eberron
I love Eberron. I have been reading some Eberron novels of late, and it has reminded me of this fact. With the exception of Spelljammer, Eberron has been my favorite D&D setting. Before you get to the question, I love a lot of D&D settings, but I will put a pin in Eberron, and say it is my favorite for a number of reasons.
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Schlock Mercenaries
About a month or two back I started reading Schlock Mercenary from the beginning. It is pretty good, actually, though the art at the start is a little painful. Thing is, I will be reading for a while. There is over 10 years of daily comics here. I have been reading it for a while now and I still have more than 10 years to go. I am not going to lie. It is bit daunting, even reading a month’s worth every couple of days.
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The social problem of MMO’s
A thing that has occurred to me. I play a number of MMO’s. I play them for two reasons. One, my career path requires a certain amount of keeping on top of things, and more importantly, I want to play with my friends. That is the point of an MMO, to me. MMO’s are rarely as much fun solo, as a good single player game. I want to play with other people, preferably with ones I know.
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Defining worlds for the game
Do you ever look at a TV show or a movie, and think to yourself, I could absolutely play in that world? Plenty of gamers do. I suppose it is the same sort of inspiration that fan fiction writers get. There is something about looking at a well-formed world, that makes you want to play there.
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The Hobbit The Unexpected Journey
I saw the Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey. It is good, very good in fact. It is not perfect, but very few things are. I like how they handled the added elements and from everything I know about Tolkien’s middle earth, which is actually quite a lot, they did not stray over much from the cannon found in appendices and his other writings. It was nice watching Sylvester McCoy playing Radagast. He is a lively and expressive actor, which I suppose you need for that sort of character. All the actors are good, and while there is just an edge of too much silly at times, it doesn’t quite cross the line. I…
