Missed saving throw against death

For those who did NOT grow up playing D&D, maybe you should skip down to the next post. For those who did, brace yourselves for the sad news...

The Godfather of roleplaying, Gary Gygax, passed away today at the not-so-old age of 69. I guess he missed his saving throw against heart problems.

I prefer to think that he reached such a high character level, that his GM couldn't think of any new challenging scenarios, and opted for divine ascension. I hope he gets to ride upon Golden Dragons in the afterlife, and drink from everfull goblets of Mead. Oh, and Valkyries. There should most definitely be some Valkyries to keep him company. With -10 AC bikinis. Old School style.

Maybe he's watching over us now, rolling die and mucking around with human fates.

Thank you, Gary, for all the good times, the late nights, the marathon weekend campaigns. My life would be much, much paler without your influence. I expect if I hadn't started playing D&D in 1979, I may have not have found a creative outlet for my inner medieval geek until much later in life. Thank you again for the kick my imagination needed at the time. To pay homage to you, I shall roll my special iridescent 20-sided battle die in honor of the man who made whole new worlds appear in my head as if from magic.

Hmmm...14. That's not bad. I mean with racial modifiers and all...at least I didn't roll a 1.

Update: From xkcd...comes the most fitting tribute I've seen.

Night Watch, Dragon Skulls and SCA Podcasts, oh my!

Well, I'm experimenting with a new format for my posts. If I've got more than one thing to talk about, I'll break it up into sections like this:
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Movie review - Night Watch (2004) aka Nochnoi Dozor
"A fantasy-thriller set in present-day Moscow where the respective forces that control daytime and nighttime do battle." - from IMDB.com

Well, the preview of Night Watch was great. Though the Mayan Theatre was a bit underprepared for the turnout.

After racing to Denver to arrive just in time to make it inside, we watched while every last seat in the house was filled. Then the market researcher made an announcement that if we filled out a short survey after the show, we'd get free movie schwag.

OK, so, the preview was free and now I'm getting free stuff, too? I like this movie already.

I had a couple of small technical issues with the flick, but on the whole I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. But it is NOT your typical vampire story. I guess I've never seen any Vampire pull out his own spine and fight with it, though.

The story was in Russian, subtitled in English. And the text effects on the subtitles were the coolest I'd ever seen. The look and feel of the movie is murky and the CG is great. It's a 'good vs. evil' story, but the distinction between good and evil isn't quite as concrete as we Americans usually go for. I will probably go see it again, and I hope it does well so that the sequels (which are apparently already shot) also have a chance in the theaters.

One of my favorite games when the credits roll is searching out the 'hard to pronounce' names, and saying them in funny accents. Well, this movie has tons of Russian names and the bad Russian accent I was trying out only made me want to drink a NostaRovia. (I've GOT to write about THAT drink soon...)

By the way, they were handing out stickers and posters after the show. I got a sticker, but so far have yet to find a large enough surface for it.

Check out these other movie reviews
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Dragon Skull on Ebay!

I actually saw this beast in person at Estrella War.

Shane was walking around one night with it on his shoulder, and it very much creeped me out. It felt utterly real.

In the interest of helping a fellow SCA'er, I thought I'd post a link to his auction.

Check out the eBay listing for more photos!
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SCA Podcast

Hey, the modern and medieval are finally getting together and going bowling!
(if that reference is lost on you, sorry, it comes from the 80's)

The Pain Bank is podcasting SCA topics from the Midrealm. You don't need an i-Pod to listen, just click the pod symbol next to his entries and your media player should do the rest. It sounds pretty rough now, but I bet if they get enough listeners, it would inspire them to keep at it.

Makes me almost tempted enough to start my own podcast. Almost. But if you think my writing is bad, wait 'til you hear my voice!
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Enough for now. Time to do my taxes online and commence with the general unhappiness of tax season. Huzzah!

Here be Dragons!

I'd like to take a moment to point out that I've believed in dragons since I was four years old. So sue me.

You'd think that because the myths and stories of Dragons have been told for thousands of years, that the movie studios would get something right eventually. So far, only Dragonslayer was worth a serious look. Dragonheart? OK, maybe if I'm really drunk. There's also Reign of Fire, which was pretty entertaining, except for that whole female-to-male ratio thing with the dragons. But the best dragon of all (but maybe I'm biased) was Smaug in the animated version of The Hobbit.

It's not just the movies that have jumped on the dragons back to ride it into success. There's lots of other dragony things out there...

Lets set the way-back machine to 1983. Arcade games were sucking quarters out of our pockets at a rate beyond comprehension. Then, it happened. Cartoons and arcade games had a bastard child, and named it Dragons Lair!! My God. I...can't...stop...playing...

Around the time of late high school, I started receiving a mail order catalog from Dancing Dragon. Since 1987, they've grown into a vast empire of dragon-related merchandise. More dragon stuff that you can shake a wizards staff at!

Tour a fire breathing dragon! How many times have you wished for real dragons? This interactive segment from Discovery.com makes them look all too real. And coming on March 20th on the Animal Planet... DRAGONS!

Learn to draw a dragon, a very funny cartoon courtesy of Homestarrunner.com. Make sure your speakers are on, you don't want to miss the, uh...instructions.

REALLY cool optical illusion Dragon that you can print, cut out and assemble!

Which Elemental Dragon are you? Quizilla aims to find out!

Ah, it feels so good to think about these creatures who have flown through my dreams and drawings all my life. Maybe I should completely geek out and re-read all my Anne McCaffrey books again.