We Interrupt this Blog for an Important Message...

No "real" post today.

I was up last night watching one of the most exciting World Series games I can recall.  I didn't work on my posts and now I am dragging.

I am not a Cubs fan despite living in and around Chicago most of my life.  My loyalties are to my St. Louis Cardinals and always will be.   But damn. You can't help but really feel for the Cubbies.

Congrats Northsiders! THIS is now Next Year!

Conference this Week

Hey all.

I am headed to an Education Conference this week and will be out till Friday evening.

Posting will be sporadic.  I have a few more horror movies in the hopper, but most will be this weekend.

Looking forward to talking about how The Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen goes this weekend!

Non-Gaming: So Long Blockbuster

A non gaming post this morning (plus I still have a bad migraine that I can't shake).

Blockbuster has announced it is closing the last of it's 300 stores and it's mail-in Netflix-like service.

While I am sad at the passing of an era and I feel bad bad about those loosing their jobs, I do not mourn the passing of Blockbuster.

Once Blockbuster could be found in every strip mall in suburbia and a store in every town.  That was it's appeal to so many.  Not to me.  I disliked that Blockbuster came in and more or less destroyed the Mom and Pop video stores that had sprung up in the 80s.  I remember renting many old horror movies on Laser Disk (yeah I had one of those) and VHS.  When Blockbuster came to town with their far cheaper rental prices I wasn't a fan.  I had rented Hellraiser once to show a girlfriend at the time and noticed how much of it was cut out.  Yeah they had either edited it themselves (not likely, but that is what I thought at the time) or only stocked edited versions.  No thanks.

While I marked the passing of Borders with sadness of something I had lost, I have not been in a Blockbuster in I don't know how long.  Between Netflix, OnDemand and Amazon Prime streaming services I have unprecedented access to viewing options.

So goodnight Blockbuster. Be kind, please rewind.

Grumble*Sprint sucks*grumble

Was going to work on a post today.  But been on hold fighting with Sprint over the crappy ass phone they sold my son.

Hopefully something soon.

Run Booster! Run Blue!

Ok. So I got sucked into this contest.

The contest is take this photo of cosplayers Jettie Monday and Katy Mor:

And make them run from something scary.

My photoshop skills are only ok.  But my thoughts went immediately to what would be the scariest thing they could be running from?  Ron Jeremy.  Atomic Ron Jeremy dress as Mario.

How's that for horror!  I should have made his eyes glow.

I should stat him up for Mutant Future to be honest.  12' tall Atomic Ron Jeremy.

No idea if I won the contest or not.

Limited Posting

Hey all.

Posting is going to be fairly limited over the next few weeks.
My wife needs to go in for surgery and at present has very little mobility.  So now and till after she heals I am both mommy and daddy at the house.

I'll keep you all updated.

Introducing my other blog

I have started up another blog.

This one has more to do with my academic and work-related interests than anything to do with gaming.
Sometime they might cross paths, but nothing at the moment is coming to mind.

The URL is an easy one:
http://timbrannan.wordpress.com/
It is called, originally enough, Tim Brannan's Education Blog.

I am hoping it will grow and be as successful as I deem this blog to be.

I am not slowing down my posting here though.  My Education blog is going to be low bandwidth for a while.  But every so often I get something I want to post and it is not really appropriate to post here.

Stop by and have a look every so often!

This is not a good sign

I wanted to start a new blog over on WordPress to cover the Education work I do.  For my job, classes (taking and teaching) and working on my second Ph.D. program.

The trouble is that WordPress keeps eating my posts.

Might be sticking with Blogger.  Even if I am not a fan of the new interface.

On campus...

Going to be on campus for the next few days.  Posting will be sparse.
Those courses don't write themselves...

I recommend...

I read a lot of books.
LOTS.

I just finished Christopher Hitchen's "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (it was a great book) and I have a new tablet with Nook, Kindle, Kobo and a generic e-reader apps all installed.  I have about 30 new books that I got for free; and not stolen mind you, but given to me and asked to read.

But I have bought one book.

Fellow blogger, Eden Freelancer, old-school publisher and my usual verbal sparing partner, Jason Vey has released his first novel, Broken Gods.

You can find it here, http://www.reliquarypress.com/Reliquary_Press/Welcome.html
Or at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

I have the Nook version and can't wait to start it.  I read a first draft of it and I like the world Jason is building here.  If you are a fan of modern supernatural then this should be added to your list of things to buy and read.

I'll update you all as I am reading it.

But don't wait for me.  Go out and buy a copy.

Even Witches have Itches, Part 2

Happy Harry?  Hogwarts Hanky-panky?

Please let that be the last time I ever say "hanky-panky" on this blog.

Anyway new easter egg from the 3rd Harry Potter film.
Found by the Daily What?  http://geeks.thedailywh.at/2011/06/09/harry-potter-innuendo-of-the-day/ 

Sorry, I was OUTSIDE!

Yeah it's springtime in Chicagoland, which means it is just as cold as winter, but we have a few more hours of daylight.   I wanted to do some more White Plume Mountain today, but yardwork calls.

Though while cleaning out gutters today I did think of how first contact happened between the dwarves and human of my world.  Much better than the first contact between dwarves and elves.

Going out to fertilize the lawn now.  Who knows what I'll come up with then.

This is a Test

This is just a test. Trying out some new software.

Del.icio.us : blog

This is why we don't have nice things...

To the 4-Haters, 3-haters, the 3.5-but-still-like-3-haters, the OSR-haters, the Orcs-with-lasers-haters, the Orcs-with-lasers-haters-haters, the ones that like Orcs but not Orks and that One Guy.  And to all one-true-wayers and anyone that thinks that it is part of a company's business plan just to screw you over.

This is all for you.



I have seen fewer cat-fights and bitching in a Spanish soap-opera.

Look, I like some of the points made by the blog-cognoscenti but the constant complaining about "that other game" (whatever that is for them) is getting old again.

Tell me why you like you game, but try to do it without resorting to "it is the only true way to play because the new/old/different way sucks."

Labor Day

It's Labor Day here in the US.

Hope everyone here enjoys the long weekend.

LEGO Minotarus

I don't talk much about board games here.  Nothing against them, they are just not something I talk a lot about, but I would hazard a guess and say that a full half of my game room shelf space is devoted to board games.  My kids and wife love them and it is something we can all do together.

So if you were at Gen Con this year you saw the LEGO booth.  And if you saw it then like me I am sure you looked at their new board games, Minotaurus, Rames Pyramid, and Lava Dragon.  I am sure that LEGO is still kicking themselves for not bringing product to sell, because they would have raked in the bucks.

We went to our local LEGO store and picked up Lava Dragon and Minotaurus.  The salesman mentioned that they had been selling out of them over the last three weeks and couldn't keep them in stock.

Well I can see why.

We got the games home and my LEGO loving son wanted to build them right away.   That is part of the appeal of these games over say most board games.  You have to build everything first.

It was easy for him (he regularly builds the big Star Wars LEGO sets, so something under a 100 pieces is nothing) and we all sat down.

The rules are simple.  Roll a die, move your pawns.  Try to get to the center of the maze and don't get hit by the Minotaur.  Oh, and you have to build the die too.  On some rolls you can move the Minotaur to send a pawn back to "home" or move a wall to block an opponent.  The game move quick and I can see how it will be a little different each time.  The rule book also comes with some suggested "house rules" like more or less powerful Minotaurs, the ability to jump over some walls and how many pawns you need to get in to win.

In truth this game reminded me of the old Mattel "Electronic Dungeons & Dragons" game from the dawn of the D&D age.

If LEGO is moving into the board game world then I think they are going to do very, very well.  For the RPG crowd this game is nice little diversion and I am sure it will not be long before there are house rules about how the pawns can attack the Minotaur and even rules separating the three pawns each into "classes".  Maybe that is too much, but I can see ways to do it now and certainly someone else will too.

Anyway, see more here.  http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=3841&cn=595&d=70

iPad for gaming. Not yet for me.

I have blogged about my love for tech in the past. I raved about my HP laptop till it died on me recently. So today I get to try something new. An iPad.

It it about the size of the old TRS-80 palm top. Which is kind of cool really. The screen is really nice and typing is not too bad. typing got faster towards the end. Logging in to blogger was easy.

But...well the rich-text/HTML editor is flaky, same as my phone. Logging into DrivethruRPG was a pain and I could not download any books. Oh and I had to completely mess with my router to even do this little.

Without network it is little more than a big iPod with no music.

I was really excited about this thing too, but right now I can't recommend it at all. At least not right now. There are not a lot of reasons to bring this to game table.

I guess I'll need to wait for the Google tablet.

New Layout

Playing around with the layout here.
Have a new section called "Pages" to the right.  ->
That is for more static pages and links.

I also added the old background image from my "The Other Side" website.  I like it. What do you all think?

The Week in Review (and then some)

Back from vacation.  I had the Blog on Auto-post all week, so sorry if I did not get to respond as quickly as I would have liked.

So what do I know?

- Gary Con.  Sad I missed it.  I really wanted to go but was on a plane at the time.

- TARGA/DnDWPS dust up.  That was a bunch of suck.  I am going to miss Chgowiz's blog, having met him in person recently.  I still like TARGA and what they do, and I still enjoy the hell out of Zak's blog.   I just find it all odd really.  Reminds of the time my mom told my brother and I that she hated it when we watched horror movies full of killing. She said she would rather see us watching porn because at least that was some positive.  So we went out and brought a bunch of porn home.  I think Dad was happy.  So people that play a game that is basically about "killing people and taking their stuff" have some issues with some occasional dirty talk and maybe a boob?   Not getting it. Sorry.  But that is all I want to say on the issue, I don't want to add fuel to a fire that is almost out.

Reminds me of another story.  I was supposed to go to a party to meet up with a bunch of the people that I hung out with and lived with in college (this was back in like 1990).  But my buddy Scott and I had gone out and proceeded to start drinking without everyone first.  We drank, listened to the Who for a while and were generally in a really fantastic mood (it was "springtime in Carbondale!" three words that held so much meaning back then, and "Face Dances" is much better when you are little off).  We showed up at the party and we were smashed and happy and loud and there had just been a HUGE fight between one of my roommates and his girlfriend and everyone there was so not in the mood for me or Scott.  That's what I am trying to avoid here.  We left and finished drinking on the steps of the local Lutheran Church because we felt at the time the Lutherans were the most accepting of all the local churches. Especially of a drunk atheist and neo-new agey whatever Scott was at the time.

Oh, and put me in the crowd as someone that would like to see Chgowiz/Mike bring his blog back.

- Vampyres. Yeah that was fun.  I love that stupid little flick. Might be a reflection of my immaturity or (as I prefer to think of it) my esoteric tastes in horror cinema.  Plus I got to try it out in a bunch of systems.  Might be a bit before I do that again; doing a bunch of systems at once.  I have nothing else up my sleeve unless I want to drag out Willow & Tara again, and you all might be tired of hear about them from me.

- Succubi week. I post my Sympathy for the Succubus post right before and then I see a bunch of other posts.  Mostly related to succubus pic from the Monster Manual.  Cultural Zeitgiest? Collect Subconscious? Naw. Doubt it, more like it is gamers for the most part are pervs.

- Blog Persona vs Real Life. This is an interesting one. I have a some people that read this blog on the website and others that read the redirect from Facebook.  On Facebook I have friends, family, co-workers, people I know from the gaming world because I like their stuff, people from the gaming world because they like my stuff and a bunch of others.  So, how should I "present" myself?  I mean I have people at work now telling me they had read my blog and commented on some of the things I have said.  Sometimes I even get a call from my mom and she comments on something I have said.  All I have really have to say about all of that is, well, you people are supposed to know who I am by this point. ;)
I am not planing to put anything here that I wouldn't figure my mom, my wife or my boss would read and get me into trouble.

- Books & Reviews.  I FINALLY got around to reading some the books and products sitting on my "to read" pile since before Christmas.  Expect a round of reviews to start coming in.

- What Scares you the most?  During my feverish time while I was sick it came to me what scares me the most.  Look forward to a post on that too.

- Orcus.  I am going to agree with Zak on something else here.  Orcus is the most Metal of all the Demon Lords.  If I ever get a chance to re-run going to Orcus' plane in the Abyss it needs to make "Tomb of Horrors" look like "Candyland".  Then I am going to ask James Raggi to tell me how to make it more metal.  This would fill that desire I have to an adventure that has EVERYTHING in it that all those critics in the 80s said D&D was about (and were wrong).  Childish of me?  Maybe I think it is actually that part of my brain that is attracted to medical dramas and really bad movies that part that says "how bad can this get? And then what can happen to make it worse?".  In other words, I want to turn it up to 11.
Maybe I could make it something like an OSR community thing.  Contribute one thing you would find in Orcus' lair, I don't care how sick, twisted, cruel or profane. Or I could just listen to Iron Maiden for about a week straight till something pops in my head.

Sick

Hey all.  Updates are going to be slow, I am really, really sick.

I have Part 2 of "Black Rose" ready so maybe I can post that here soon.