Saw the Hobbit

I saw the Hobbit yesterday and I enjoyed it.  I was not expecting the book, but I do think some of the changes were a bit too much.

I consider myself a huge Tolkien fan.  I have read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings 12-14 times over the last 30 years. I have read the Silmarillion a couple of times and I loved it. Really. I have read many of the lost tales, the Tolkien Reader and tons of his works.   So I am approaching this as a fan.

Spoilers follow.







I liked the bits with Gandalf at Dol Guldur, that was all in the Lord of the Rings and expanded tales, so I am 100% fine with that.
The CGI didn't bother me. In fact Smaug looked fantastic.
I liked the addition of Tauriel. Yeah she was not in the books, but I don't care.

But the movie was too long and some of the things added to the movie had no real benefit.
In many ways the movie was exactly like the giant golden dwarf statue in the movie.  Large, overwrought, a monument to excess and ultimately ineffective.

So in the end I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted, but it was still a lot of fun.

Zatannurday: ICONS

Digging through some characters and found some ICONS stats for Zatanna.  Time to share!

It's been a long time since I last talked about ICONS.  I would like to do more with it someday.

Zatanna

Zatanna Zatara

Abilities
Prowess: 3
Coordination: 5
Strength: 2
Intellect: 6
Awareness: 7
Willpower: 8

Powers
Wizardry (Magic) 8
- Blast
- Mind Controll
Telepathy 4
Teleport 5
Astral Projection 6

Specialties
Performance (Stage Magic) - Mastery
Sleight of Hand - Mastery
Occult - Mastery

Stamina: 10
Determination: 1

Aspects
Qualities
Connections
Epithet
- "World's Greatest Magician"
- "Mistress of Magic"

Challenges
Weakness - Must speak backwards to use her magic
Relationship issues.

Links

• Justice for ICONS
• Willow & Tara for ICONS

Happy Friday the 13th!

It's Zatannurday er Friday the 13th!

Hope is it a great one.

Bitten on SyFy

"Bitten" is the breakout novel from author Kelley Armstrong. It deals with Elena Michaels, the only female werewolf.

With Bitten Kelley began a 13 novel epic story of many lives and different types of supernaturals collectively known as "The Women of the Underworld".  The last novel of the series came out this last year and it was a very satisfying end to the series.

It is also the name of the new SyFy Channel's new series based on the book.



It stars Laura Vandervoort, in what might be the best bit of casting ever, as Elena.

Can't wait for this!

Of course I am looking forward to seeing Paige, Eve and Savannah; the Witches of Underworld. And Jaime, the Necromancer.

Tomorrow is her birthday, so stop by her site and wish her a happy birthday and a congrats on the new series.  http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/

Lilith can be Yours

Normally I like to spend the profits from my books on more art for the next book or something like that. You know, put it back into the creative effort.  But this was a particularly good couple of months so I splurged and got something nice for myself and my game room.

I got this from the artist's, Israel Llona aka Isra2007, shop over at Deviant Art.

The great thing is, you can get one of these prints too!
Just go to the prints page, http://www.deviantart.com/art/Lilith-142131246 and choose one of the prints.
This is the 12" x 18" art print.

Plus all the money goes to the artist, well minus whatever DA takes, but I don't get any. Not even a commission.   So if you liked my book and the cover, or you picked up my book for the cover, grab an art print too! It will look great on your wall.

You can also see all his great art here, http://israllona.wix.com/isra
He has a few more that I think would make awesome book covers.

The 12 Days of OSR-Xmas

Tenkar over at his Eponymous Tavern will begin his "Twelve Days of OSR Christmas" where he will be giving away a TON of great OSR products.  Included in the mix are a copy of the Witch and Eldritch Witchery.
That tomorrow is also Friday the 13th makes it doubly fun for me.

So please make sure you stop by and give it a look.  Hopefully you will win something cool.

White Dwarf Wednesday #90

June 1987.  I graduated from High School and started working two jobs to have extra money for college.  White Dwarf also hit a few milestones.  The price increased to £1.25, we hit the 90s (issue numbers), the issue is larger (as promised last week) and celebrate 10 years of White Dwarf.  It is also nearing the final turn from a general games magazine to a purely Games Workshop one.  But first lets see what is inside.

The cover features the White Dwarf himself by John Sibbick. The cover is marred by the unfortunate choice of blue and yellow text.  Not sure what the thinking was here.

The editorial is the expected reminiscing over the past issues and the long two month wait between those early issues.  More of this stuff later on.

Open box covers the new Warhammer Battle supplement teased last issue, Ravening Hordes.  It gets a good review.  There is The Shattered Ilse for Stormbringer, but the highlight (for me) is Terror Austrails for Call of Cthulhu proving once again that games are not immune to the popular trends of the time.  You might recall that just the summer past (1986) one of the biggest movies was Crocodile Dundee.  At least Terror Australis is much better reminder of this time than Yahoo Serious.  One does not normally put Australia and Lovecraft together, but they really are a chocolate and peanut butter mix.  Aboriginal myths and legends are practically Lovecraftian anyway.  This book, one of the must haves for CoC in my opinion, really gets into that.
Open Box also covers local favorites Mayfair Games adventures, Wizard's Revenge, Pinnacle, Crystal Barrier and Beneath Two Suns.  I had real love-hate relationship with Mayfair at this time. I liked thier D&D products on principle even if I thought some of them were not very good.  My opinion would change in a couple years when I got to play more DC Heroes, 2nd Ed Chill and of course their famous book Witches.

Awesome Lies, the upcoming news and rumors feature lets us in on the next Bloodstone/BattleSystem module, H3 Bloodstone Wars.  I remember picking this one up only after I had gone through H4.  There is mention of two branches of the same Greyhawk novels tree, the New Infinities "it's not in Greyhawk honest!" Gord the Rogue book and Rose Estes' The Price of Power.

Green and Pleasant Language was supposed to be included in the CoC adventure A Green and Pleasant Land.  It covers various bits of colloquial British and American slang and well as words from Cornish and Welsh.  Great actually if you want to capture the feel of some NPCs from some rural areas of Great Britain.

Ian Livingstone is back with Ten Years On a retrospective of the early days of  White Dwarf and it's fore-runner Owl & Weasel. There is a lot of interesting tidbits about Brian Blume getting a copy of O&W because he subscribed to Albion.  This lead to Blume sending Livingstone a copy of the Original D&D rules.   They loved it of course and turned issue 6 into a "D&D" issue.  O&W had 25 issues till it morphed into White Dwarf.  It was named that to cover both Fantasy and Sci-Fi gaming.   I think it would be interesting to see those early issues of Owl & Weasel.  Though I stumbled on these WDs and there were no Owl & Weasels to be had.  I didn't even know about it till I started doing this retrospective myself.

The Magard Scrolls is an interesting article.  It's a bit like the old Ecology of articles from Dragon. This one deals with a particularly silly (on the surface) monster, the Jack O'Bear. A bear with the head of pumpkin.  Yeah.  Though in the elvish they are called Yalarvagoon. Ok less silly. And they are some foul chaos monster with a swollen head. Ok even less sill now.  Might need to adapt this one.

Fear & Ignorance covers being a better Paranoia game master.

Practice Makes Perfect is more career guidelines for Warhammer Fantasy, but can be used as a guideline in other FRPGS.

Killing in Silk is one of the last of the AD&D adventures in the pages of White Dwarf and it is not a very long one.  Though it has everything I would have loved back then, a city-based adventure, lots of NPCs and dubious legality of the actions of the PCs.  You won't find a bunch of monsters in this one, save the townspeople and no dungeons to speak of.

There is article on playing criminals in Judge Dredd, something I am sure came up a lot in the game but the rules didn't cover.  It's a longer piece and a pretty good one too.  While I don't play Judge Dredd I could see the potential in the game.  There are some neat ideas that I could see applied to Shadowrun.

Two parallel articles are next, The Difference and A Monstrous Regiment dealing with the female persona and the female warrior respectively.  Interesting reads, just odd it took THIS long to get into the pages of White Dwarf.  But I am coming at this from a Post-90s, Post-White Wolf age and from the point view of guy that likes playing witches.  The Difference deals mostly with female sterotypes in the game. Not how they are played or portrayed, but what those stereotypes, or even archetypes, are.   This isn't Mongooses' rather awful Guide to the Female Gamer, but nor is it Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress either. There is a quite a lot of myopia here that I am not sure if it was because of the 80s or England or this particular author.   A Monstrous Regiment provides a different point of view that is closer to what we except now as the role of the female character in a game; ie anything one gender can do, so can the other in terms of role-playing activity.

Graham Staplehurst covers Ley Lines and their connections to ancient monuments.  No game is specified though many are mentioned (including Traveller), though special attention is given to MERP, Warhammer Fantasy and some AD&D.  It is a general guide on how to use ley lines as a power source.

More Judge Dredd in Tales From Mega City 1.  A bunch of adventure ideas.
Letters is up to it's usual odd bits of nonsense.

Finally there are some new cards for the Rogue Trooper board game.

Ok so 10th anniversary.  I was expecting more to be honest. Now keep in mind I have been reading and rereading these a lot over the last two years, but I would have liked more articles like Ian Livingstone's. Maybe an article on the covers or one on the changes they have seen in gaming hobby in England or even more insight on where WD wants to go next.  Huge build up, but only a little pay off.