Game Geek Reviews

I just came across Kurt Wiegel’s roleplaying game reviews on youtube. Interesting and informative, Check ‘em out! See Here

This is his 50th video retrospective posted just last week:


-Swinebread

Wired Article on D&D and Gary Gygax

Wired published an excellent article on Gary Gygax. It was to be an investigation into the man himself and the game he created, Dungeons and Dragons. Sadly now it’s a memorial of sorts.

The Dungeon Master: The Life and Legacy of Gary Gygax
Editor's note: Wired contributing editor David Kushner visited Gary Gygax at the Lake Geneva Convention last July. We were preparing a package of articles about the father of Dungeons & Dragons and the upcoming revised edition of the game he created when we received the sad news of his death. We are running this story now in remembrance of Gygax and in celebration of his staggering achievements. Later this month, we will run the additional articles about D&D as well as excerpts from the extensive interviews used in reporting this story. We extend our deepest condolences to Gygax's family.

Dungeons & Dragons had a way of turning game players into game designers. The rule set was pure potentiality, and the greater the creativity of each dungeon master, the more the players could extract from it. Many young people found their calling while playing D&D.

See the full article here. Check it out.

-Swinebread

A Random Day

My SO and I traveled around town yesterday after the morning errands and dropped a couple of bucks here and there to keep the economy from slipping into a depression. Our first stop was to the 3d Center of Art & Photography. It’s a neat little nonprofit that promotes 3D as a fine art and showcases various stereoscopic cameras. The Center currently has an exhibit by Claudia Kunin titled 3D Holy Ghosts. The themes in Kunin’s work are taken from the bible, folklore, and classical mythology. Medusa clearly was the most impressive piece from the show and Walpurgis Nacht was a close second. The erotic nature of the pieces is enhanced by Kunin’s use of photographic rather than representational images. We also were fortunate because the 3D Center had an amazing slide show of an African Safari. I’ve seen 3d images before but the combination of National Geographic quality with eye-popping depth was fantastic. There was one up-close shot of an elephant’s eye that blew me away because that’s not something I would ever experience in daily life. Another fascinating aspect of these stereoscopic photos was how strange water appeared. It’s hard to describe but the depth made the water seem almost plastic or jelly-like and yet it still come across as H2O.

We made a stop at Haba, a Japanese cosmetic store, so the SO could pick up some of “her” all-natural skin toner. It’s funny because Haba chose Portland of all the places in the U.S. to hawk their wares. Good for my SO, bad for most other Japanese in the states. On the way to Haba, we saw the Silver Guy. He’s a performance artist that stands motionless for hours until you drop money into his pot. The cash prompts him to lean over and shake your hand, leaving it covered in glitter. He’s been doing this for over a decade I think.



After heading over to the Eastside, we stopped by a game store I know to see if a buddy of mine was working. He wasn’t but the smelly, belly boys were out in full force playing Warhammer. There was a ton of D20 stuff on sale probably because 4th edition is coming out soon. I bought a post-apocalyptic game supplement that was half off. They had a copy of Arkham Horror; that made my mouth water…


After a nice dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant we enjoy, the SO and I swung by Cosmic Monkey. It’s a comic shop I would occasionally frequent when I lived on the Eastside. They had moved to a new location last year and yesterday I finally had a chance to check it out. I gotta’ say I liked the new digs a lot. The place was very inviting and comfortable like a coffee shop or an indy bookstore. They had a large selection of trade paperbacks, much better than my regular store, and a upper level had couches for folks to hank out and read. Of all the shops in Portland, this is the one I would bring someone to if they had trepidations about comic book stores. I talked to Andy, the owner, and he told me that they will be hosting some of the events scheduled for the Stumptown Comics Fest. The Trophy Awards will be handed out at Cosmic Monkey and the latest installment of the Comic Art Battle will be fought there as well. Sounds like fun! I picked up a copy of the collected New Mutants volume 1 before we headed back home.



-Swinebread

What D&D Character Are You?

Apparently I’m totally lame... because I am a:

Chaotic Neutral Elf Bard

Alignment:
Chaotic Neutral characters are unstable, and frequently insane. They believe in disorder first and foremost, and will thus strive for that disorder in everything they do. This means that they will do whatever seems 'fun' or 'novel' at any given time.

Race:
Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.

Primary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.

try the quiz Here

Oh well, at least I'm the life of the party...

...so to speak.

-Swinebread

My New Comics

This week’s best cover is Alter Ego #72. It honors the first appearance of the JLA in The Brave and the Bold #28.

Fall of Cthulhu #6, Boom Studios. New Storyline, New Horrors.

Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #1, DC Comics. I’m giving this a look-see, as I’m an old fan of Sam.

Marvel Zombies: The Book of Angels, Demons, & Various Monstrosities #2, Marvel Comics. It’s an evil handbook to the Marvel Universe that includes the Zombies.

Terminator 2: Infinity #3, Dynamite Entertainment.

Army of Darkness: From the Ashes #3, Dynamite Entertainment.

Magazine:
Alter Ego #72, Twomorrows Publishing. I’ve been waiting for this retrospective on Captain Carrot!

Game Book:
Conan: The Roleplaying Game 2nd Edition Mongoose Publishing. This core rulebook is published in black and white not color like the previous addition but it’s thicker. Content over esthetic I guess.


-Swinebread

Some Gaming News

I was in Powell’s Books the other day and happened across a copy of the new Hawkmoon RPG by Mongoose. I didn’t have a lot of time to look through it but the art looked very amateurish, and the overall book design uninspiring. While I was happy to see familiar Basic Role-playing Stats I wasn’t impressed with the mutation rules. I filed that away. When I read a review at RPG.net my doubts were confirmed.

the book is too short, the space between paragraphs is really huge and the page borders are enormous. This means that we have around 120 pages of real text, not enough for a traditional core book, and the consequences are huge. The rules are explained lightly, not improving the short descriptions from the SRD and lacking many examples, and the background is sparse.
The writing style is functional but never managed to catch my imagination, and the few interior illustrations are not good nor bad. At least the Tragic Europe map is adequate and well done…

…The game should be cool, but it's not, and I don't know what has happened. Maybe the Tragic Millennium is not suited for an RPG, or the book needed another focus and writing style.

For 30 bucks a pop it ought to be much better. Also, considering Mongoose is usually very good with design this is somewhat of a surprise. More books are coming so the world of Hawkmoon will be much more fleshed out and it’s compatible with all the other Runequest games published by Mongoose so that’s something. I guess I’ll wait for another edition down the road if I buy it at all.


Speaking of Mongoose, I’ve noticed that Conan 2nd Edition is a little late. It’s now coming out early September. I hope I still get the copy I ordered. Another Book, the Conan Bestiary has completely disappeared from their site. I was look forward to that one.

The big news that’s fired up the gamming community it the announcement of D&D 4th edition for 2008. From here:

Wizards of the Coast announced at Gen Con Indy Aug. 16 that the much-rumored fourth edition of the seminal role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons will be released in May 2008. However, several D&D support products…

D&D 4th Edition will continue to use the d20 game system — according to Wizards of the Coasts designers, the 4th Edition rules will be an “evolution of the system, not a revolution.” 4th Edition play is designed to be faster and easier for the Dungeon Master to adjudicate. Each character class will have a specific, defined role within an adventuring party, and the designers’ goal was to give each class interesting options for gameplay at every level. Character races have undergone a similar overhaul, with at least two new player races included in the Player's Handbook, and the core rules now go up to level 30 for characters; with the levels divided into three tiers: heroic for levels 1-10, paragon for 11-20, and epic for 21-30. One goal was to avoid having a single “sweet spot” — a specific range in levels where everyone wants to play. In D&D 3.5, this tends to be levels 7-13. For Dungeon Masters, the new edition includes new ways to build encounters by giving every monster in an encounter a role to play, and addresses or removes “game-stopping” rules like grappling in combat.

In addition to the physical rulebooks and supplements, a major component of 4th Edition will be digital. Wizards has launched a free beta version of Dungeons & Dragons Insider, the online component for 4th Edition, shortly after the Gen Con announcement. D&D Insider will change over to a subscription model around the time the new Player’s Handbook is released. For a monthly fee, D&D fans will have access to the online versions of Dragon and Dungeon magazines; online tools for players and DMs, including a character creator and map, encounter, and adventure building tools; D&D Anytime, a round-the-clock virtual game table which will allow gaming groups to get together and play D&D online; and forums and other community features.

I’m not mad I knew this was coming. I was thinking more like 2009. I’m not using the tons of 3.5 books I bought because I rarely role-play anyway. Oh well. It’s a good time to quit Dungeons and Dragons, although haven’t purchased anything new since 2006.



The future digital component of D&D explains why both Dragon and Dungeon magazines were cancelled. The final publication of these magazines was this month in fact. I thought about picking up that last Dragon, issue #359, because it’s supposed to have a retrospective, but most of it is info I wouldn’t use. So Long Dragon, I will miss the art.

Dreaming of Swords and Rayguns...

I had a weird dream the other night. It started out with Conan the Barbarian (not the Arnie one, but the John Buscema one from Marvel Comics) and me battling our way through some ancient back alley. We were probably in a Turanian city like Aghrapur or Zamboula as there was sand everywhere. I’ve been readin’ a lot of Conan lately, could you tell? Anyway, we were fighting some nefarious, robed rogues on a dark street, with me mostly bobbing and weaving so Conan could do his slaughter thing, when our surroundings changed. The sword and sorcery street morphed into a modern version and the thugs were gone.

The two of us looked at each other with befuddlement before we jogged to the end of the street to get our bearings. When we rounded a corner we ran into a group of what looked liked beggars. They had tattered; dirty clothing and a few were deformed. I quickly noticed that they weren’t actually begging but bartering with each other, using all manner of junk from makeshift wagons. I paused, looked at Conan and then looked around and noticed that we weren’t in a modern city but in the remains of a modern city. Recognizing this to be some sort of post-apocalyptic world, I grilled an old man (it’s always and old man isn’t it) for details. He told me that a huge battle was raging outside the city between the forces defending the city and a group of super-mutants. …Super-mutants?!

Well, being the protagonists of my dream, Conan and I set out for the desert. The rest of the story is kinda’ hazy, but we immediately linked up with an armored group of what looked like the Brotherhood of Steel from Fallout. Their commander showed me a small device that had a digital readout, showing the progress of the battle via a hex grid. It looked a lot like a computer strategy game. I don’t really remember the rest, but I think Conan and I left for the “front” to engage the super-mutants with me feeling a lot more useful in this world than in Conan’s Hyboria. At this point I woke up and realized: “Hey, I had a Conan / Fallout crossover.
It’s strange because I don’t usually have such direct dreams about pop culture. Usually, if they’re interesting at all, my dreamscapes have to do with creepy investigations, beachfront environments or urban excursions. This particular dream is the first time I’ve ever “interacted” with any kind of comic book character, like Conan. I’m thinking it must be because another collection of the Conan comics is on the way (here). Dark Horse has been doing an excellent job reprinting the old Conan the Barbarian series with new coloring. Also, a possibility is that Mongoose Publishing is releasing the 2nd edition of the Conan RPG. I’m pretty excited about that too.

As for Fallout… well, I’ve always been a big fan of post-apocalyptic stories and both Fallout and Fallout 2 are my favorite computer games. I had recently gone on youtube and watched some of videos from the game. I guess I was kinda’ nostalgic so that’s why I must have dreamt about Fallout. Supposedly Fallout 3 is in the works, but who knows when that’s coming out. The guys making it sure don’t.


When comes to the crossover aspect, the only thing I can come up with is… I want a Fallout comic books series. Think about it. I really enjoy both the new and the old Conan comics currently being published by Dark Horse. Conan’s adventurers occur in an incredibly detailed fantasy universe. Fallout, by comparison, has this amazingly rich, visually engaging retro-futuristic world. It just begs for a comic series. I think that a comic company could make some serious cash on it as long as they stayed true to the computer game’s themes. Also, another aspect might be that I’ve always wanted to run/or play in a nice long post-apocalyptic campaign. Conan’s got a good tabletop RPG, so I’d like something compatible for Fallout. Darwin’s World comes close but… I just haven’t gotten around to it.

Anyway, my dreams were back to normal last night as I had an excursion through a city that couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to be New York, London or Frankfurt.

-Swinebread

Elric to Mongoose

There’s an unfulfilled yearning I’ve had for a long time. It was the hope that Chaosium (the guys that publish the Call of Cthulhu RPG) would really support their Michael Moorcock licensed game Stormbringer. It was the first non-TSR game I ever played that I honestly enjoyed and it was also my first introduction to Elric, the multiverse and the Eternal Champion. Well, that’s not entirely true as I had read the Oswald Bastable stories years before but at that time I hadn’t realized their connections to Moorcock’s other works. After playing the Stormbringer RPG, I immediately went out and scooped up and read all the Elric novels. This of course led me to Hawkmoon and Corum as well as the rest of the Eternal Champion titles. The battle between Law and Chaos both in the books and in the game was a fantastic backdrop for the adventures. Also the dimensional and time travel aspects fired me up as I greatly enjoy this type of fantasy.

Eventually, I bought all the Stormbinger game materials I could get my hands on, many from used bookstores. The product line went through many aborted restarts that included a name change to Elric for a while and even a poorly adapted version for D20. Many promised supplements never came out as the line was always thrown on the back burner in deference to Call of Cthulhu. We finally did see a Corum supplement and Chaosium finally put out some of their unpublished but promised books out as monographs (cheap photocopy tape bound books) but the fan base for their Moorcock inspired works seemed greatly reduced as was the enthusiasm for game itself.


Recently, I discovered that Mongoose Publishing acquired the RPG rights to the whole Eternal Champion line including Elric from Chaosium. See the link here. In the end it’s probably a good thing because Chaosium really wasn’t doing a whole lot with it (the biggest missed opportunity of the RPG world in my opinion), plus they had terribly damaged their relationship with Michael Moorcock. Still, it is a little sad as I thought we just might be on the verge of a Basic Role-Playing System Renaissance, Basic Role-Playing being Chaosium’s house system. Elric and Hawkmoon, which are coming out very soon, will be using Mongoose’s new Runequest rules (MRQ) to make them compatible with other game products they publish. This is good as the original Runequest formed the foundation for Basic Role-Playing (BRP) and Stormbringer, although the new Mongoose Runequest rules has been tweaked to make it appeal more to D20 fans.

I’m a little leery on dumping money on these new game products as I have spent a ton of cash on Mongoose’s Conan line only to see it revamped with an updated second addition. This is very much like how many fans were stuck when Wizards of the Coast decided to go from 3 to 3.5 on D&D. But if the past is any kind of prolog, Mongoose Publishing will be putting out a bunch of supplements for the Eternal Champion line, something Chaosium was unwilling or unable to do.

To sum it up, I guess it feels like I was in a relationship where I was never getting what I needed or wanted but still I stayed. Now, that bad relationship is over and I wonder if I should start a new one. I think I'll wait and see. I waited so long for Chaosium to step up to the plate, I guess I can wait a little longer to see if Mongoose’s game is any good before I buy.

-Swinebread