Thursday, April 30, 2009

The treasures of Uncle 4e

No, this "4e" doesn't refer to D&D 4th Edition. It's one of the nicknames for the late and legendary Forrest J. Ackerman, who in addition to being a writer, agent, and founder of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, was probably the biggest science fiction fan ever.

For many years, he graciously opened his home, the "Ackermansion", to fans from all over the world so they could see one of the largest and most important collections of sci-fi, fantasy and horror memorabilia ever assembled.

Uncle Forry passed away last December, after ill health caused him to move to a smaller home and sell much of his collection to pay medical and other expenses. Today and Friday, the last and most personally significant pieces he had left are up for auction. The full story is at this LA Times blog posting. You can find the auction catalog here.

As one of the commenters said at that blog post, the real tragedy of this is that the collection is being dispersed and not kept intact for future fans to see in a proper museum setting.

And, of course, the man himself isn't here to lead the tour.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

RPG blog anthology update

Good news regarding Open Game Table -- Studio 2 Publishing has picked it up for distribution into the book and hobby trade. It should be available in stores in three or four months. Indie Press Revolution should be stocking it also.

Tickets to the big show

Only 15 days until the movie...

Picked up our tickets today for the first showing on Thursday. Many venues are having early screenings, 7 and/or 9pm. It beats having to go at midnight -- much easier for Mrs. Kaiju to go earlier.

It's funny, I've been waiting for this movie for nearly three years. Now that it's almost here, it will be a little sad not to have the anticipation, the snippets of news parceled out, the constant checking for more updates every day. I've been looking forward to this more than any film I can remember. Maybe the closest would be the wait for The Phantom Menace -- and we know how that turned out (I really enjoyed parts of it, but that's a story for another post).

It's difficult to think that any movie can live up to the expectations that we, the fans, have put on it. I'm glad to say that the early reviews have been generally positive, even with some of the industry press and foreign critics, who tend to not be as forgiving. All good signs.

I suppose that I don't need to have movie-anticipation-letdown for very long. Paramount already signed up the creative team to work on the sequel several weeks ago.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Sidebar and link update

This is something I meant to do before our trip a few weeks ago; just a bit of page cleanup and updating broken links. I also added the nifty subscription feed drop-down boxes.

I'm saving the old link information here for myself, but you might find it amusing too.

Magister Ludi Roleplaying Resources
- great site but now getting a forbidden URL message.

Random RPG Idea Generator - Off-line? Maybe their URL registry expired.

The Gamestas - Once hosted an amusing gaming podcast. Is it .com now? Answer unclear.

Deeper in the Game - great gaming theory blog, but now gone private? (login required)

Burning Void -- Invalid URL? Their blog hasn't been updated for a while. The articles seem to have migrated to Errant Dreams.

Kaiju Shakedown - Variety Asia Online's movie blog - invalid URL? The main page disappeared too.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Dave Arneson and others, R.I.P.

(Late posting...)

I read on icv2.com and rpgblog2.com that Dave Arneson has passed away. Like most people, I knew about Gary Gygax but it wasn't until several years into my gaming life that I found out about Dave Arneson, which is a shame because he was probably responsible for more of what I enjoyed about Dungeons & Dragons, and role-playing games in general. For a great Arneson story read Ben Robbins' Braunstein article.

The RPG hobby has matured (age, not behavior) enough so that we're starting to lose some of the Founders. The past year has been bad in this respect: Gygax, Erick Wujick, Robin Crossby, Bob Bledsaw, and Keith Herber. In 2007 we lost Chuck Crain.

The best way to remember these giants
- besides donating to a favorite charity - is to play. Roll the dice, draw some cards, move some miniatures... have a few laughs with your friends.

In other gaming news, Wizards of the Coast decided to fight PDF piracy by pulling all of their PDF product from legal sale. I should have purchased the Rules Cyclopedia when I had the chance.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Rock Band/Star Trek cross-promotion

Only 35 days until the movie opens...

Paramount has been pulling out all the stops on promoting the movie and the ST franchise in a big way, but here's one of the oddest:
Paramount and MTV Games announced a promotional partnership for the new Star Trek movie and the popular rockin’ videogame Rock Band. The promotion kicks off today and will include music track giveaways, an in-game Star Trek themed battle of the bands and a futuristic avatar contest. You can even win your own personal screening of Star Trek.
I feel that the more promoting they do -- and in many different directions -- the better it is for the movie and creating a bigger fanbase. Get all the details at the official Rock Band Star Trek site, or the summary at Trekmovie.com.