Red Planet Forecast

According to NASA's Phoenix lander, it's snowing on Mars.

Obviously, the snow was brought to Mars by Santa, who moved there after global warming sank his previous workshop.

Live and On Stage

After much debating and uncertainty, the opportunity of playing Rock Band 2 with friends online finally spurred me to get an actual XBox Live Account. That's why many of you may have received friend requests from FZbang - and if you haven't then you should toss a friend request my way!

Last night saw my housemate and I playing out main band, Vröck & Tröll with a couple friends over as guest artists, heroically struggling through Metallica's "Battery" and Dream Theater's "Panic Attack" on Hard. For those who haven't experienced them, Battery is one of the toughest songs on the game in its own right, and then Panic Attack makes Metallica look like a garage band.

Over our several attempts at the song, we not only improved our instrumental skills, but we refined our overall strategy of how and when to deploy star power, how long to wait before saving members, and other attempts to eke out a way through the 7-and-a-half-minute onslaught. It felt every bit as tense and challenging as any raid in Warcraft, and completing it felt every bit as rewarding. That's the sort of team experience that the best co-player games can elicit.

I'm looking forward to playing much more with full groups, on- or off-line. Mostly for the team experience, of course, but also to show off my character and his post-apocalyptic drumming outfit. As always, Barbie-Dress-Up is one of my favorite parts of any game, and until RockBand.com updates to include RB2 characters, this is the only way to show him off.

And maybe I'll get around to playing my other band: the all Lincoln-impersonator band, Fourscore and the Seven Years.

Fallout 3 Picked Best In Show at E3!

Fallout 3 just won Best In Show and Best RPG from the official judges at E3. In addition to the expected suite of judges from Wired, Kotaku, Gamespot, and so on, it includes judges from such austere institutions as Time, Newsweek, and The Washington Post.

After months and months of late nights and deadline pressure, it's pretty damned satisfying. There was some very, very stiff competition, from games I'm deeply excited to play.

Looks like another excellent year for gaming, huh?

Glorious Four-Color Comedy!

What do you get when you combine post-apocalyptic fun with gamer comics? A series of hysterical Fallout comics by the folks at Penny Arcade!

Check out the first one on the site, now! And check out the official Bethesda Blog for insight into their production.

Wisdom and Genre Evolution

In an excellent essay on being a more open DM by Stephen Radney-MacFarland in Dungeon, this brief section struck me as being a good encapsulation of a larger truism about genres in any art/entertainment form. And life itself, perhaps:

Keep this sense of wonder and flexibility in mind when deciding what you'll allow as PC choices as well. I know there's been a some virtual rumblings about dragonborn and some of the newer D&D races from folks who (like myself) were weaned on Tolkien. But you have to realize that fantasy is a language, and that languages expand and change -- especially when the language is discovered and loved by younger users. When I was a kid, all I wanted to write, draw, and paint was the fantasy of Moorcock, Leiber, Howard, and Tolkien . . . and of course D&D. The adults around me told me I was wasting my time. Often, cruelly and with much certainty, they said the flights of fantasy I loved were dumb, or pedestrian, or childish. They were wrong.

Now the tables are turned, and I'm the adult. It wasn't so long ago that I sat in a meeting at my other gig -- as an instructor at a local art school -- and I sat around and listened to other instructors complain about how the kids liked drawing all this over-the-top anime fantasy. They called it childish, pedestrian, and a waste of time. Guess what: They're wrong, too. What those kids are drawing is the future of fantasy and it's coming fast. If I were you, I'd do my best to understand it and embrace it, and go out of your way to find a fit for it in your game world. Join the conversation instead of denying it! One of the greatest strengths of D&D and roleplaying games as a medium is the shared aspect of it. Sharing is compromise. Sharing is being flexible. Sharing is saying yes. Sharing is fun!

Prepare for the Future!

Post-Apoc Film Festival!

If you're in the Santa Monica area on the weekend of August 22-23, and jonsing for some Fallout and other postapoc movies, then I've got good news for you!

The American Cinematheque, and Geek Monthly Sponsor ‘A Post-Apocalyptic Film Festival Presented by Fallout® 3’

It's a two-day long movie festival of post-apoc movies, showing Wizards, Damnation Alley, A Boy and His Dog, The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and Twelve Monkeys. General Admission tickets are $10, which covers three movies, popcorn and soda, and an entry in a Fallout 3 giveaway.