I picked up a sci-fi novel called Burning Skies, by David J. Williams at Half-Price Books in Berkeley last weekend, and started reading it on my bus ride to work yesterday.

This book is smokin'! It starts with a little bit of exposition and then wham, full burner, you're rolling and it's not going to end until the last page. It's a nano-tech ( Read more... )

Watched the Clash of the Titans remake last Saturday. Not horrible, decent enough action flick. If I were 14 and watching it for the first time, I'd probably like it as much as I did when I saw the first one back in 1981. Actually, I was kinda disappointed when I saw the original. The early 80's was the heyday of sword & sorcery fantasy films (IMO ( Read more... )

Let’s make a character for Hellas. I’ll start with a baseline Hellene (human) character, and I’m thinking of an Athenoian citizen-soldier, so we’ll see how it does a common type.

Race - Hellene. In Hellas, humans average 2m tall! Heh, that’s kind of cool - everyone is taller than real-world humans. Plays into the mythic nature of the setting I ( Read more... )

 Well, I decided to finally go to DunDraCon. Even reserved a hotel room already! After talking to my good gaming buddy Jack, who goes every year, about the ins and outs and ups and downs, I decided to do it. Lots of people I know go out there and I always feel like I'm missing something or not contributing. And I'm going to run a game too, since ( Read more... )

Some of you may remember "Fire in the Sky" my aborted attempt to make an air-combat themed game based on the Area 88 manga and anime. I was looking over the files today (I spent some time at work today reading the original manga - yeah I get paid to read manga, so sue me...) and I feel like perhaps trying to advance it along a little more ( Read more... )

Spent some more time today reading Hellas. Really liking it so far. It's got great presentation, great hooks, a setting and background that's sparking ideas, and it really makes a well-thought-out effort to integrate its mechanics into the setting in a way that encourages the kind of play experience the designers want you to get out of it ( Read more... )

I did watch Lost in Translation. Turned out I rather liked it. The interactions of the main characters with the Japanese were spot on - I can remember many similar things that I experienced. One thing I noticed is how weird Japanese and Americans seem to each other. The American audience watches the movie and thinks, "The Japanese are so weird." ( Read more... )

I've been on vacation this week. Or is it a "stay-cation"? I sure as hell ain't goin' anywhere - the company was kind enough to give us the week off right before payday...

Anyway, the wife and I rented some dvds and we've been watching one each night this week. She picked two and I picked two.

"9" (wife's choice) - The freaky animated movie. It was ( Read more... )

While I await delivery of my copy of Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone, I'm perusing all the post GenCon threads and so forth and finding more games I want to add to my list of potential acquisitions.

The first is Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which is an old school D&D clone. Do I really need this? No. But the name itself is double-plus cool. ( Read more... )

2300AD always pulls me back to it. I love this old hard sci-fi game from the late 80's. You've heard me go on about it before and well, I'm going to do it again. This time I grabbed it off the shelf after I was thinking about the Memories anime the other day. I re-watched the Magnetic Rose segment (which made my head explode, it is that awesome) ( Read more... )