I spent a chunk of this evening playing Armello, and I'll admit: I'm intrigued. I played the tutorial, which takes quite a while, and then played one game as a regular player.  I won, though partly by luck, and therefore I like the game.

It has a lot going on.  It has more mechanics than an F-1 race.  There are four or maybe six win conditions, ( Read more... )

The first Third Thursday Game Night went well! Somehow we ended up with very few 'regulars' from my board game semicircle, and lots of folks who have never met each other. Until tonight, that is.

1. That's a great setup for Apples To Apples, great as ever for a pickup game and icebreaker.
2. Once basically everyone had arrived, we were too big for a good ( Read more... )

Shortly after the Gregorian New Year, I decided to really look into the fact that my Wii wouldn't connect to the internet reliably.  It was so slow that it would usually drop the connection with an error.  I went on Nintendo's support site, and was REALLY impressed.  Sure, it asked me for the platform (Wii) and kind of connection (wireless, ( Read more... )

A close friend (not on LJ) sent me an article about games from the London Review of Books entitled, "Is It Art?". The conclusion seems to be "well, certainly not even as much as film, but someday, perhaps." However, the author John Lanchester put the article together pretty well. He raises points I've seen elsewhere but not together, and which I ( Read more... )

O Dearest Better-than-Google:  I'm looking for reference material in the (pre)medieval studies vein.  Suggest!

I am writing something that may be very loosely described by "Hellboy fanfic in a 10th Century AU".  That's not *actually* a very fair description, but it's the half-sentence version.  It will be a character profile for a fellow that lived ( Read more... )

I love lists.  I love collections.  I like knowing, and being able to tell folks, what I have to lend, use, give away, play, borrow, etc.

And I'm trying to do more frequent Game Days now that my job is back to only consuming 60% of my life (down from 85% over the summer).

So: Board Game Geek!  I've been reading it for years, and have used it as the ( Read more... )

Dear Flist, I need software for making dungeons.  For my dragons, of course.

The needs are modest but quite firm:

• I often want to freehand, and I often want to obey a grid.  I need to switch back and forth easily, and preferably to be able to print or display it with a grid easily.  I've yet to find a tool that does this, that lets me make walls on ( Read more... )

Oh man, do I want to go to this.

"We're Rollin',They're Hatin', is a large-scale contemporary art show that examines the role of Dungeons and Dragons, Escapism and Fantasy in contemporary art and culture. The exhibition is an art show and interactive platform to explore how artists are influenced by fantasy and role playing games. Over 30 artists ( Read more... )

ali_wildgoose and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth for my birthday, and it was better than I expected. I was worried that it would be a boring speech by Gore. Instead it was an interesting speech by Gore with a lot more interesting non-Gore stuff inserted into it. It made its point and, more importantly perhaps, enabled the audience to make its point ( Read more... )

A new game is starting this weekend, and though I will miss the first session, I'm excited for the second. I sat down the other day to write a quick character sketch and two hours later (!) had what is behind the cut.

If you're playing in The Great Ward, please don't read the cut yet. It'll be more fun if you don't read it until you've known ( Read more... )