Pith Helmet

First, Governor Sanford, who had the huevos to tell P-BO where he could stick his stimulus bucks, trades it all for a fling with a second-rate Evita. Then, Palin, the golden girl of the God, Guns, & Guts crowd, proves to have a glass jaw after taking a few lightweight jabs from a gap-toothed has-been t.v. host. What's next? Bobby Jindal admitting he is a card-carrying Kali-worshipping Thuggee?

Perhaps it is a sign of just how bad things are and how worse they are getting. Perhaps, they're all saying "what the hell," and, as Jim Morrison said, getting their "kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames." After all, who wants to buy a china shop after the bull has dropped by?

Watching
Watched the first part of Warehouse 13 this a.m. Not too bad so far. Now, it's Casino Royale

Reading
Charles Saunders' Imaro

Randolph Carter has posted an interesting interview with author Thomas Harlan over at MMO blog Grinding to Valhalla. Harlan, the author of the In The Time of The Sixth Sun series, talks about how gaming has influenced and hindered his writing.

For those who have missed out on Harlan's tremendous talent, The Sixth Sun series follows is a science fiction epic set in an alt-future world dominated by the Aztec culture as embodied in Empire of the Méxica.

Harlan's protagonist multi-globe-trotting xenoarchaeologist Gretchen Andersson is joined by Japanese naval commander and Aztec noble judge-sorceror Green Hummingbird in an attempt to suss out the Mystery of The Missing Survey Team on Ephesus III.

Reading Harlan is a sheer delight. The reader can tell that Harlan's head is chock full of historical obscura just waiting to bust out on the written page in a hodge-podge inventive way that miraculously makes sense. After all, how cool is it to have Aztec Jaguar knights walking around with Webley and Nambu pistols?

http://grindingtovalhalla.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/reading-the-text-thomas-harlan/

Noisms at Monsters and Manuals posted a link to an absurd thread over at RPGnet that breaks Dungeons and Dragons character classes down into three or four categories. Here is an excerpt:

Anyway, A-shaped classes are those that use one primary attribute for all attacks and relegate secondary attributes to other effects. The fighter's an example of this. V- and Y-shaped classes refer to the same thing: a class that has attacks based on two different attributes. The ranger and the paladin are examples of V-shaped classes.

MAD = Multiple Attribute Dependency (or Disorder, if you like), in reference to V-shaped classes.

The thread reminded me of J. Evans Pritchard, PhD's soulless essay "Understanding Poetry" from the movie Dead Poets Society, the one that Robin Williams makes his students rip from their textbook. Pritchard proposes a measure for tallying the greatness of a poem by marking "how artfully the objective of the poem has been rendered" on the x axis and "how important is that objective" on the y axis. The TSR fanboys over at RPGnet are doing to the paladin and the ranger what Dr. Pritchard's formulaic approach to literature would inevitably do to a reader's love of Byron, Shelley, and Keats -- namely, suck the ever-lovin' life out of it.

One 4Eer posted that, "rangers are technically H shaped. Two builds that are for the most part nearly interchangable but viable by themselves." Can someone who posits something like that be having half as much fun as I did in 1982 when I decided to "roll up a druid" because I had just seen the movie Beastmaster and thought it'd be cool? I think not.

From Br'er spearweasel

You see them around a lot, especially in Central Texas. But they could be anywhere.

- Almost always wearing sandals and khaki or OD cargo shorts. The more pockets, the better.
- Tech-savvy... they often worked at Dell.
- Might have a bumper sticker on their car, but you probably won't get the joke.... unless you know who HP Lovecraft is.
- Often center-right or vaguely libertarian politically, but not always. Their politics are usually pragmatic rather than ideological.
- Usually own multiple "sport utility rifles"... you know, the scary-looking ones that some call "assault weapons".
- Often slightly overweight, usually have a goatee.
- Probably play WoW, or DnD, or something nerdy like that... but they also do martial arts, and hit really hard for a pudgy guy.
-Up on the latest fan boy superhero or sci-fi blockbuster, but for some reason still have a fairly attractive mate/S.O.

Does this describe you? Welcome to the tribe. Do you know someone who fits this bill? Invite them in. No dues, no requirements.

There are more of us out there than you'd imagine, and we are all going to see the Avengers movie when it comes out.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=110509073085&ref=mf

I'm a chronic doodler. Put me in at a table without a book or a keyboard, and I can't help myself. Inspired by my reborn interest in gaming, it features a Telmarine-inspired human, a kraken (a PC race which is basically a human with a cuttlefish for a head), and a jambiya-fightin' monkey (inspired by Monkey of the Red Pagoda and the knife-fighting monkey craze.


And The Meme Raths Outgrabe

D&D Home Page - What Monster Are You? - D&D Compendium

“Vampires are Brad Pitts. Zombies are more like the Steve Buscemis. We can relate.”
--S. G. Browne

Over at Andrew Breitbart Presents BIG HOLLYWOOD, S. T. Karnick links the current trendiness of zombies with America's present shuffle toward socialism. He cites a recent Chicago Trib article which reports that the one of the what-if scenarios addressed by representatives from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the like at the University of Chicago annual Model United Nations conference was a zombie outbreak.

Perhaps that's why the Russians just had a good, old-fashioned Sov-style military parade in Red Square. Prepping for World War Z, anyone?



And perhaps the potential for friendly-fire in a a war against an enemy that must be shot in the head to be taken down is the true impetus behind recent efforts by the British to develop bullet-proof turbans for their Sikh officers.

( Read more ... )

Zachary the First over at RPG Blog II hearkens back to the old AD&D DMG, specifically Appendix N (in which E. Gary Gygax Himself lays out the literature that influenced the development of his campaign) and challenges his readership to discuss their own private Appendix N: "What fiction has influenced your campaigns, play styles, and writings? If you want to include TV or movies, by all means."

The Hobbit by Rankin-Bass
The Adventures of Robin Hood
John Coyne's Hobgoblin
Stephen King's The Stand
The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub
Michael Moorcock's Elric, Hawkmoon, and Corum books
Tom Baker-era Dr. Who
The Prisoner
Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe
DC Comics Warlord
The Savage Sword of Conan
Both Conan movies
BBC's The Chronicles of Narnia
Ladyhawke
Legend
Labyrinth
Epic Illustrated
Heavy Metal: the movies, the soundtrack, and the magazine
Jonny Quest
The music of Blue Oyster Cult
The music of Saxon, especially the Crusader album
Ronnie James Dio-era Sabbath
Jack Vance's Lyonesse books and, to a lesser extent, the Dying Earth
Werner Herzog's Nosferatu
The Star Wars trilogy
Raiders of The Lost Ark
George Romero's zombie movies
David Lynch's Dune
Land of The Lost
The works of J. R. R. Tolkien
Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane stories and, to a lesser extent, his Conan stories
Robert Asprin's Thieves World
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Gray Mouser tales
Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber
The art of Los Hermanos Hildebrandt
The Wild Palms comic strip from Details magazine
John Carpenter's They Live
Overdose levels of Mountain Dew
The works of Clark Ashton Smith
The works of China Mieville
The works of Gene Wolfe
Magic: The Gathering
Planet of The Apes
The Shannara stuff by Terry Brooks
Piers Anthony's Xanth series

The Who's Who of Modern Gaming give their "Appendix N". And so do Jeff Rients and Matthew Conway

A couple of years ago, the blognardosphere was all abuzz about the "hobbit" remains found in Indonesia. Now there's more evidence leading to the conclusion that the Indonesian "Bagginses" were actually a separate race, not modern pygmies.

( Read more ... )


Say It Ain't So, Benedict

h/t Feral Jundi

According to Reuters, the Swiss Guard, a crack unit of Swiss soldiers entrusted with the life of the Pope whose history dates back to the 16th century, may open its doors to women. Hell, they may as well open up the ranks to out-of-shape, middle-aged, married, Protestant Americans.

( Read more ... )

The Most Interesting Man in The World

I can't believe I haven't posted any of these before. After all, the guy is what Race Bannon would be like after retirement.



For more, go to staythirstymyfriends.com

During my C-SPAN2 binge, I also caught David Grann, the author of The Lost City of Z, which is the story of the mysterious disappearance of British explorer Percy Fawcett while searching for a lost city in the Amazon. Fawcett's expeditions were like something straight out of the adventure pulps. He claimed to have encountered all kinds of cryptozoological treats: giant anacondas, small cat-like dogs, and double-nosed Andean tiger hounds. It has been alleged that Fawcett was the inspiration for everything from Indiana Jones, to Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost Word, to Kent Allard.

View it here

Apparently, John Grisham has discovered The Lost City of Z as well. Maybe it will inspire him to write something other than courtroom drivel.

And while Fawcett may have ended up as an entree, his spirit lives on. Seventy-year-old Colonel John Blashford-Snell, late of the Royal Engineers, has taken up his mantle. The Times lists the following as his acts of "derring-do":

—Colonel John Blashford-Snell is a former officer in the Royal Engineers who helped to found Operation Raleigh. He will lead the 20-person team on the two-month trip on June 21

—He has twice been shot at by Ethiopian bandits, bitten by a vampire bat and ate a Panamanian spider monkey

—Blashford-Snell is the founder of the Scientific Exploration Society

—He led the first descent of the Ethiopian Blue Nile in 1968 and the first vehicle crossing of the Darien Gap in Panama in 1972

—He invented a jungle hat that is mosquito-repellent, Teflon-coated and has a refrigerated headband

—He said recently: “I often say at 6am as I climb out of a soaking wet hammock, ‘God, I must be mad. Why am I doing this?’ ”

His official website is here: http://johnblashfordsnell.org.uk/

Church organist required for jungle meteorite hunt

Autism Note
From CNN, this a.m.: Toddler brain difference linked to autism

C-SPAN2's Book TV had an excellent interview with Christopher Buckley. Usually, I can't suffer through In Depth's full three hours, but Buckley's three hour block was so interest, touching on so many different subjects, it was over before I knew it.

Among other things of interest, I found out that Buckley dispatched his father to the Great Hereafter with a jar of peanut butter, the t.v. remote, and the deceased's favorite rosary. He touched on his endorsement of Barack Obama, praising him as "a very fine guy possessed of a first class temperament" while predicting that Obama's deficit-doubling economic policies will "bring this country to its knees." He also spoke of Dubya's ruinous deficit spending, his love of Dubya's dad, his time in the merchant marine, the war between his dad and Gore Vidal, and, of course, his works -- especially his latest, a memoir, Losing Mom and Pup.

Watch it here.

While checking his blog at The Daily Beast, I found out that Tucker Carlson is a fellow Flashman fan.

Whether he intended to or not, one of my favorite bloggers Berin Kinsman started something. He takes a writing exercise from Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem! and applies it to fantasy RPG world-building:

In the book No Plot? No Problem? author Chris Baty discusses creating two “Magna Cartas” before tackling a fiction project. One is a list of things you like about the genre, what makes you want to read it (or, in the case of a roleplaying game, play it or run it), the things you’ll want to include. The object is to keep you focused on the things that will make it fun to work on. The other Magna Carta is for things you dislike and want to avoid. You make this list to remind you where you don’t want to go, cliches to resist and paths of least resistance to avoid traveling. It’s a process I apply to worldbuilding and campaign building, and a topic I cover at length in the forthcoming Worldbuilding 101 book.
Because I’m currently working on a 4th Edition D&D campaign, partly as a practical lab to test my Worldbuilding 101 principles, I created a Magna Carta. Here’s what I came up with. Note that there are some system-related things in there, because I will avoid creating encounters that I dislike or find hard to run, and do more of the things I think are fun.
Magna Carta: Fantasy RPG Likes

Heroic PCs with a purpose other than kill and loot

PCs with back stories and NPC connections

Villains with actual goals and motivations

Political intrigue and conflict between like-aligned powers

Setting-based consequences to PC actions

Skill challenges

Monsters as PCs and NPCs

Scary monsters that are actually scary

Magic affecting the economy and ecology

Period-appropriate technology — stuff that actually existed

Conflict between faiths and ideologies
Magna Carta: Fantasy RPG Dislikes

Yet another Lord of the Rings knockoff

All-combat adventures

Illogical treasure (how’d the monster get that? Why didn’t they use that magic item against the party?)

Kitchen-sink ecologies and economies - everything and anything exists without consequence

Too much anachronistic tech

Absentee gods that grant powers without reward or consequence
All of this is written in my purple drakeskin journal, of course, to be referenced and amended as I go along.

noisms of Monsters and Manuals fame followed up with his own:

Likes

Non-European influences

Capricious gods, spirits and suchlike

Characters who relax the way people relax in the real world (sex, alchohol, drugs)

A cold-hearted universe

Ancient ruins

Mutations of some variety, and/or fear of mutation

Good old British fantasy malaise/fatalism

Dwarves having disproportionate influence
Dislikes

Elves and their imitators

Anachronistic real-world modern-day politics/beliefs

Characters who kick ass all the time or who are overly awesome

Magic item economies

Gods who dispense quests

Giving new names to traditional fantasy races to try to appear innovative. If it's an orc, call it an orc, for God's sake!

Not to be outdone, I came up with my own:
Magna Carta: Fantasy RPG Likes

Dying Earth

Intrigue and conspiracies.

Episodic sword & sorcery REH stuff.

Vancian magic

Religions that have differences other than which deity they worship.

Non-European influences (yeah, I stole that one) and semi-European influences -- especially Aztec, Mayan, Timurid, Khazar, etc.

Making the cryptozoological (i.e. Cameroon Flashlight Frog), Yeti, etc.) and extinct live (i.e. aurochs, mastodons, etc.) and making the living (i.e. horses and their ilk) extinct.

Golems

Telmarines

Magna Carta: Fantasy RPG Dislikes

Middle Earth. Don't get me wrong. I loved JRRT. But I loathe his imitators.

Dragons. Maybe it was Dragonlance overkill. Maybe it was having to wade through too many Pern MUSHes when trying to find a good MU* back in the day. But I prefer my Dungeons sans Dragons.

Anarchronisms. I'm not talking about a flintlock or a pocket watch in an otherwise medieval world. I'm talking laser guns and tricorders. I hated Expedition to The Barrier Peaks.

Epic quests. I don't mind quests so much, but there's life outside of "The Quest Is The Quest." Right?

Idyllic Celtic/Proto-Wiccan cultures

Elves and those like elves.

Japanese stuff. There is an excellent game called Legend of the Five Rings. If you have a yen for Japanese stuff, go play that.

Orcs that don't have snouts.


Speaking of orcs, Tony DiTerlizzi has a great post explaining the evolution of an orc he drew: http://diterlizzi.com/blog/2009/04/24/back-in-the-saddle-again/.

Jack Webb. Gene Roddenberry. True: The Man's Adventure Magazine. The trifecta of men's adventure entertainment if ever there was one. Well, apparently these three greats came together thanks to their good sponsors at G.E. to give early sixties television viewers G.E. True, an anthology series based upon the stories in True.


The Executive Producer


The Writer


The Source

The following is from the October 12, 1962, issue of Time magazine:

Even Jack ("dum-de-dum-dum") Webb is back. This time he is retelling stories from the files of True Magazine. The first one was set on a hospital ship off Okinawa, where a doctor operated on a marine who had a live and sensitive shell in his body capable of blowing a six-foot hole in a steel deck. It was a hell of a moment, but Webb sank it. "At 1830 hours exactly," he intoned, "the operation began on a human bomb dead center in the circle of death." He hosts the program in an echo-chambered voice, while he stands beside the word TRUE, spelled out in block letters 22 feet high, or roughly ten times as tall as Jack Webb.

The cast included such "guy show" luminaries as James "Scotty" Doohan and Werner "Col. Klink" Klemperer.

I don't get it. G.E. gave my dad's generation this, and all they give me are those crappy Al Gore light bulbs. Go figure.



Policia: Uno, Zetas: Zero
h/t Feral Jundi

I've been following the Zetas for quite some time now. For those who haven't, they are a Mexican narco-gang who started out as a special drug interdiction unit trained and armed by the U.S. government, then realizing the money to be had playing for the other team, they switched to the other side. B'rer Jundi reports that Mexican authorities have nabbed one of the Zeta leaders. Hats off to the Men-in-Black. Whew, I made it through a post about federales without mentioning "steenkin' badges." Doh!

Note the anti-Swine Flu masks.

...And Finally
For fellow fantasy fans, I recommend the TV Tropes article on "Fantasy Counterpart Culture."

In the April 2, 2009 New Statesman, A N Wilson recounts his conversion experience ... to atheism and his "slow and doubting" return to faith.

By nature a doubting Thomas, I should have distrusted the symptoms when I underwent a “conversion experience” 20 years ago. Something was happening which was out of character – the inner glow of complete certainty, the heady sense of being at one with the great tide of fellow non-believers. For my conversion experience was to atheism. There were several moments of epiphany, actually, but one of the most dramatic occurred in the pulpit of a church.

( Read more ... )

Last night, I managed to catch Futurama: Bender's Game. The whole show was centered around Dungeons & Dragons. They even paid homage to Dungeon Master Zero himself. Frye & company have to destroy a dodecahedron by tossing it into the fiery plastic from which it was molded ... at the Geysers of Gygax.

Orson Scott Cardassians be forewarned. The show has nothing to do with Card's novel.

I found it far more entertaining the Krod Mandoon and most of the other t.v. fantasy genre fare out there these days.

In other gaming related matters, Matt Staggs has an interview with Erol Otus at Tor.com.

In political news, Arlen Specter (RD-PA) announces that he is not a Republican. Most of us have known that for at least a decade or so. I'm glad he finally figured it out.

Ever since I read Michael Crichton's speech about the Green Religion, I've just considered Earth Day just another whackaloon made-up holiday like Kwanzaa; however, Michael Tresca of used his Earth Day constructively: he wrote about Jack Vance's Dying Eath and the contributions Vance made to the genre. See it here, if for no other reason, the illustration.

In movie news, I saw Monsters vs. Aliens. I highly recommend it to those with offspring. I got to see the trailer for Land of the Lost. I'm not a fan of Will Ferrell, but I'll be there for the sleestaks.

Anyone who grew up watching Ripley's knows of Florida's Coral Castle, but not so well known is the Bosco dei Mostri. In Bomarzo, Italy, there is a garden that looks like it was designed by the same guy who designed the tomb in the Advanced D&D module Tomb of Horrors. Compare Erol Otus's green-faced devil with the Orc of Bomarzo's Monster's Grove.



Built by 16th century condotierro and patron of the arts Pier Francesco Orsini in memory of his deceased wife, the park also features statues of Ceres, Cerebus, and one of Hannibal's elephants trampling a Roman soldier. Architectural wonders include a temple and a stilted house which is reminscent of Pisa's Leaning Tower.

Looks like a great place to LARP (not that I've ever done that, mind you) and a great source of dungeon-design inspiration.

h/t to Secret Saturdays creator Jay Stephens for this one.


NPC

Thirsiz the Augur

From my Timurid clone culture, this young man is autistic except when mounted on horseback. Once on horseback, he is wise, possibly lucid, and can give prophecies.

The idea for this fellow came from a CNN story about a family that travelled to Mongolia in hopes of battling their son's autism. Having witnessed progress after stateside therapeutic riding and visits from Botswanan bush healers, the Austin, Texas family felt what better place to go than the oldest horse culture on the planet and the place where the word "shaman" was coined. John Bonifield, CNN Medical Producer, reports that even though parents Rupert Issacson and Kristin Neff "never abandoned more orthodox treatments," the double dose of hippotherapy and shamanism seem to have improved both Rowan's linguistic skills and his temper.

h/t Chris Roberson

h/t Mild Colonial Boy.

The Free RPG Blog reports that Jay Libby, an indie game designer and R. Talosorian Games illustrator, has released a tabletop roleplaying game based upon G.I. Joe of the eighties.

Based upon the Fuzion rule system, it allows players to role up their own Joes and take them on adventures against COBRA.

Download here: http://libbyracing.net/GIJoe/GIJoeRPG1.pdf

There's a thing going around the internet in which you're supposed to name your Celebrity Zombie-Killing Dream Team. At first, I thought it was a trick question, since I find most zombies vastly more likable than most celebrities. I'm not sure whether fictional characters count, so I made two lists. One fictional. One nonfictional.

Fictional Dream Team

James Bond - Master of armed and unarmed combat. A natural survivor.

John Locke - Lost's survivalist-by-birth.

O-ren Ishii - Lucy Liu's character in Kill Bill.

The Comedian from Watchmen - If he can take out a certain former-PT Boat commander with a Mannlicher Carcano from a grassy knoll, I'm sure he can take out a few zeds with no problem.

Lewis from Deliverance - A good archer. Another survivor.

Nonfictional Dream Team

Ted Nugent - He knows guns, knives, and bows, and he plays a mean guitar.

Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden - In addition to being able to lay down vocal tracks for the Nuge, Dickinson is a skilled swordsman and pilot.

Bear Gryllis - The survivalist guy from Man vs. Wild. He could show us how to toast fly larvae using piano wire and a match once the canned food ran out.

John Milius - Director. Producer. Writer. NRA Member. John Goodman's character in The Big Lebowski (Walter Sobchak) was based on Milius.

Giada de Laurentis - We'd need a cook, and she looks a lot better than Anthony Bourdain.

Very Metal!