As ICv2.com reports, Ridley Scott is taking another run at Blade Runner. Blade Runner was the first R-rated movie I ever saw, and it branded my imagination with its plot, characters, and imagery. I can’t wait to see the new cut and eventually pick up the DVD set with all four cuts of the film.
This ranks right up there with the news that George Lucas plans to release the original editions of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD this fall. My inner kid is bouncing off the inside of my skull.
As I mentioned a few weeks back, Palladium Books is in trouble due to some insider swindling on the part of one of its employees. At the time, Kevin Siembieda asked people to help out by purchasing an exclusive print entitled “Megaverse United.” I slapped down my virtual cash right away, and my autographed print showed up yesterday, #296 in the run.
Kevin’s latest update thanks everyone for their outpouring of support. He notes they still have a long way to go, but the fan response has given him a real shot at making it past this Mt. Everest of a speed bump.
Mark Preuschl lives here in my hometown of Beloit, Wisconsin, and he takes some fantastic photographs of the place. He does a great job of capturing the beauty of the place, something it’s all too easy to take for granted in the rush of daily life. I especially like his shots of the refurbished Beloit Corp building as seen from the back of the Beloit Inn, the Old Water Tower, and just about everything in his 2006 Beloit Area Calendar.
The voting for the annual Origins Awards is now open, but only until June 6. If you’re a gaming industry professional, you can join the AAGAD and vote for free. So please do!
If you’re not an industry professional, you can still take a gander at the nominees for this year’s awards and bask in their reflected glory. I don’t have anything on the ballot this year, so this time around my announcement is stunningly plug-free.
I just finished reading Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids by David Kushner. It’s the story of how Jon Finkel, a Magic: The Gathering player, went from high-school nerd to world champion, joined a casino blackjack card-counting team, and then decided to take on the World Series of Poker too. It’s a fascinating study of a generation of gamer geeks that I could well have been a part of were I 10 years younger.
I’d long known about the top players on Magic‘s Pro Circuit, and I’d heard stories about how some of them were now winning poker tournaments, but the book goes over it all in loving detail. It’s really a coming-of-age story for Jon, one that many gamers can probably identify with. As gaming becomes more and more mainstream and mass market, it’s wonderful to have a record about those who were there at that cusp and see how they helped define the culture that’s arisen around gaming of all kinds. The fact that I know some of the people named in the book, like Peter Adkison and Richard Garfield, added that much more life to the story.
It’s inevitable that people who work for a game company sometimes leave. Maybe they got laid off, maybe they left on their own. Lots of times they leave the industry for good, but just as often, it seems, they find some way to stick around and keep working at having fun. By way of example, check out Crafty Games and Hyperion Games.
Last year, AEG laid off a number of employees and cut support for its fantastic Spycraft game. One of those laid off–Patrick Kapera–gathered some of the others who had helped out on the latest edition of the game (Alex Flagg and Scott Gearin) and formed Crafty Games. They just released their first product: the PDF of the second printing of Spycraft 2.0.
I never heard that Brian Wood had left Fantasy Flight Games, but he did. Now he’s the brains behind Hyperion, which just released its first board game: Vapor’s Gambit. Hyperion also just announced its first big license, for the Dilbert board game.
Good luck, guys! I can’t wait to see how well you do.
If you’re a fan of the undead (and who isn’t) and you haven’t seen James Farr‘s Xombie, you’re cheating yourself. I had the honor of working with James on a project this year, and he’s flat-out amazing. Xombie shows why.
I’ve been tinkering with the site again. If you look at the bottom of each post, you’ll see a pair of new icons. If you click on the printer icon, the post reformats into an easy-to-print style. If you click on the e-mail icon, a pop-up window allows you to send the content of the post to a friend.
At the bottom of the sidebar, I’ve also included a plugin that permits automatic translations of the page into 11 different languages via Google. I realize that the translations will often be wonky at best, but it should make it more convenient for non-English-speakers who would like a rough idea of what I’m going on about.
To cap off the week of Battle Dice previews, we have one more from the upcoming DC version of the game: Starro the Conqueror. If you thought MODOK was weird, he has nothing on the giant starfish alien who controls the minds of his victims via miniature, face-hugging versions of itself. Better yet, Starro takes the blame for the discovery of Earth-C, home to Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!
You just can’t get much more trippy than that. Still, I enjoy Starro stories, and I read lots of Captain Carrot as a kid. I can only hope the influences don’t show too often.
Fantasy Flight is having a Memorial Day weekend sale on its website. Among the roleplaying game books available for only $5 each is Dragonstar: Guide to the Galaxy, of which I wrote a good-sized chunk. It’s a great price for that book, and you could pick up a number of other neglected tomes while you’re there, like Grimm, Spellslinger, and the Fireborn Player’s Handbook and Gamemaster’s Handbook.