Conan Movie News

According to ICV2, the Hollywood Reporter has announced that a new Conan movie is not only back on track, but it appears also has a director lined up. The movie is slated to be a live action film and it appears that Warner want to "stick closer to the Howard" source material than the two existing Conan films.

What exactly the above means can only be guessed at, but the director slated for the film is Boaz Yakin. On the plus side is the fact that Yakin directed Remember the Titans an entertaining if prozaic film, and wrote and directed Fresh starring Samuel L. Jackson (a very good film). On the negative side is the fact that Yakin wrote the Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie, the Charlie Sheen film The Rookie. He also directed Uptown Girls and was Executive Producer on Hostel. Looking at this past work doesn't really give me a vision of what to look for regarding what Yakin's Conan will look like.

My hope is that the film will encorporate more of the weird elements of the Conan tales and depict the young Cimmerian in as human a fashion as Howard's stories. Conan may be preternaturally proficient with weapons, but in the stories he has a heavy superstitious streak as well.

Will Conan be young or old? Let's hope old. My favorite stories are of King Conan and not the younger one. Though Queen of the Black Coast is fun.

A Quick Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG) Q&A with Matt Forbeck

I play a lot of games. I don't necessarily claim to be a "gaming expert" or "expert gamer," but I definitely consider myself a fan of games in multiple media. In fact, I like games (as well as movies, literature, philosophy, and comics) so much that I am surprised when a type of game has existed without my knowledge. I don't mean that I overlooked a particular game that people play. I am certain that happens all the time. One only has so much time and thus can only be exposed to so many different games. I mean an actual type of game. But when I read Matt Forbeck's entry titled Clothes Make the Game, that is exactly what occured. Matt was talking about a type of game I didn't know existed, or I hadn't made the connection that it exists. I didn't know there was a such thing as an Alternate Reality Game.

An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is defined by the Alternate Reality Gaming Network as:

Alternate Reality Gaming is, according to CNET, "...an obsession-inspiring genre that blends real-life treasure hunting, interactive storytelling, video games and online community...

"These games are an intensely complicated series of puzzles involving coded Web sites, real-world clues like the newspaper advertisements, phone calls in the middle of the night from game characters and more. That blend of real-world activities and a dramatic storyline has proven irresistible to many."

These games (which are usually free to play) often have a specific goal of not only involving the player with the story and/or fictional characters but of connecting them to the real world and to each other. Many game puzzles can be solved only by the collaborative efforts of multiple players, sometimes requiring one or more players to get up from their computers to go outside to find clues or other planted assets in the real world.

One such game, and maybe the most famous was The Beast an interactive advertising game designed for the movie A.I. where perceptive viewers found clues to a mystery. More on that below. There are many others, and I guess I had a hint that such things might exist when I discussed the phone number on the show Supernatural. I noticed they gave out a real phone number, called the number, but didn't explore to see if there was a game. There might just be, as I have explored their website more thoroughly and unlocked things I hadn't known were there. But the number is no longer active, likely do to the uncertain status the show had with the WB/UPN merger. Though that tension has been resolved. Another time I encountered a possible ARG was when I read David Blaine's book Mysterious Stranger which advertised a contest where readers who solved puzzles could win money. I didn't try my hand at the time as I was stressed about life enough at the time, but it seems I might have missed a fun opportunity. And recently I went to the website for Stranger Than Fiction which has more interactivity than I would expect without some "gaming" element.

With the advent of ARGs, it appears that games can happen anywhere and at anytime. With this knowledge, I asked Matt Forbeck, a game designer who did some work on The Beast, some questions in the hopes of writing an article. Time has conspired against me integrating his quotes into background for a more detailed article, so I will post the coversation here (my comments are in bold).

1) Where does the name "Alternate Reality Game" come from and how does it,
in your opinion, describe the phenomenon?

I'm not sure where the term sprang from, but I think it does a fair job of pinning a label to that sort of game. It can conjure up images of things like Deadlands, which is set in an alternate reality, but I think most people who learn a little about ARGs can recognized them for what they are.

2) Other than the Beast, the AI ARG, what are some of the more successful
ARGs?

ilovebees (for Halo), Dead Hand Poker (for Gun), Perplex City (a new CCG/puzzle/ARG from the UK).


3) Hecatomb had an ARG, which I was unaware of at the time, how does one go
about trying to find/identify extant ARGs?

It's hard sometimes. The Beast was designed to be viral from the start. The only way you would know about it is if you spotted a strange credit in the original AI trailer for Jeanine Salla, Sentient Machine Therapist. A web search popped up Salla's website, and from there you fast became embroiled in the game.

ARGN.com is a good source for details on ARGs, both new and old. Otherwise, the best thing to do is keep your ear to the ground and keep listening for something odd.


4) In your discussions with Sean Stewart, etc., did the old "Choose Your Own
Adventure" or "Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks" ever come up as an influence on
the construction of ARGs?

I worked very little with Sean. Pete Fenlon (formerly of ICE, now of Castle Hill Studios) directed most of my work. I think the analogy to those sort of pick-a-path adventures is clear. However, the Beast had a specific ending that the fans were meant to reach: solving the murder of Jeanine Salla.


5) What types of prizes are offered, if any, in a typical large ARG?

It varies from game to game. Perplex City offers a $200,000 prize. With the Beast, players were invited to early screenings of the AI film and given special movie posters that had their handles printed on them. I have mine framed in my office still.


6) What is your personal ARG design philosophy? By which I mean what types
of "game mechanics" do you think are most appropriate?

It changes with regards to the property involved. Puzzles always seem to play a big part in such games, as does mystery. It's great to come up with enough substance to your alternate reality to give it the verisimilitude such worlds require too.

There often aren't mechanics as such. With the Beast, for instance, the players kept solving things faster than the team could come up with them, so a lot of development was done on the fly. As Jordan Weisman once said, "It's like running a roleplaying game for 50,000 of your closest friends."


7) What role did you play in the creation of the Beast?

I wrote design documents for a bunch of the websites, including—in most cases—the full text. Most of these were the background sites that added to the game's sense of reality. I also helped out with some of the bit games tossed in, including a cell phone game I'm told only appeared in Japan.


8) What do you think are the long term implications, say the Lost "novel",
in terms of marketing opportunities for the RPG industry? In other words,
could Wizards create a d20 Modern ARG to accompany an animated or live
action show which also supplemented their own campaign supplements? How
would they go about communicating the existence/interaction of the ARG to
the PnP game?

The trick is that a great ARG requires a huge audience. In the RPG arena, only Wizards has a good hope of drawing in such a group. A smaller crew might be able to pull something like this off, but a good ARG is expensive to deploy and maintain.

In the past, most of them have been executed as marketing tools, not revenue generators, although Perplex City aims to change all of that. I'm watching their progress with great interest.

Getting people who already know about Dungeons & Dragons to try an ARG affiliated with it wouldn't be too hard. Most of the time, though, ARGs are meant to generate a huge buzz for the introduction of a new product/film/game. D&D is already established, so I don't know that an ARG would fit it all that well.

As for things like the Lost novel, Wizards did something like that last year when it published Three-Dragon Ante, which is meant to be a card game that characters might play in a fantasy world. I don't know if it brought in any new players that way, but it was a cool idea, and I hear it's a solid game too.

So, are you just picking my brain, or is this for your website? If not, I think it might be fun to run this Q&A on my site instead. If you'd like it for Cinerati, though, no sweat. Just let me know when you post it, and I'll put up a link on my site too.

Great questions, by the way. If you have more, just let me know.


A part of me is excited about the viral nature of these games, but another part is resistant to praise anything that creates an “insider” vs. “outsider” phenomenon. For example, with the AI thing, I had never heard of the Beast. I think it is a great idea, but I never noticed the obscure credit and so I was out of the loop. So now I feel like an outsider trying to catch up.

These all tend to be event-based games, and if you miss the event, you can't do much more than read about it afterward. Still, the event is one of the big draws of the games, so I don't know if anyone will ever want to separate that out.

Two Games for the Role Playing Game Historian

During my nearly daily viewing of the RPGNow online Roleplaying Download website, I found two good buys for those interested in the history (and the future) of the roleplaying hobby.

Roleplaying games, in their current form, have been around for a little over thirty years. During that time many good games have come and gone, as have many very bad games. One of the problems any market is that when it is no longer profitable for publishers to do new print runs of a game, they stop doing print runs of the game. Sadly, some products don't sell as well as their quality deserves and they fall to the wayside lost to the dustbin of history. The same is also true of games that aren't particularly good, in and of themselves, but have historical importance due to the subject matter and or systems innovations they attempt to bring to the milieu.

The games I located at the RPG Now site were the republication of Games Workshop's Golden Heroes, under the new name Squadron U.K. Golden Heroes was one of those games that wasn't a particularly good game in and of itself, but has historical importance as an attempt to expand the genre covered by the hobby. It also sought to create new mechanics in its simulation of superhero activities. In the early 80s, many of the games published had mechanics that were highly derivative of the D&D and AD&D mechanics. Surprisingly, many of the exceptions to that statement were published by TSR, the creators of the D&D roleplaying game. Golden Heroes was one of the games that made sufficient modifications from the D&D system, largely because of the subject matter it dealt with. Though Villains and Vigilantes did use a D&D inspired system, and Super Squadron (an Australian game) was almost an exact duplicate of Villains and Vigilantes. Hero Games' Champions was better than Golden Heroes, with regard to creating entirely new mechanics, but Golden Heroes did have innovations like Level-less character advancement. Golden Heroes is also important because it is one of the few times that Games Workshop published a roleplaying game, even more remarkable in this case because the mechanics didn't use Games Workshop's popular miniature rules as a foundation. Games Workshop's other "comic" RPG Judge Dredd did use the Warhammer miniature rules as a foundation.

The other game is far more recent, much better, often overlooked, and linked to the history of the hobby. RPGnow has a well priced bundle of Dying Earth RPG products. One of the things that makes the Dying Earth RPG so important for the RPG historian is that it is an attempt at a direct translation of a series of stories that were themselves inspirations for the creation of the Dungeons and Dragons game. The Dying Earth RPG is a licensed RPG which has as its source material the works of Jack Vance. Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories were extremely influential in the creation of the Dungeons and Dragons game. In fact, the "cast and forget" magic system used by D&D is called Vancian because of the Dying Earth influence. Robin Laws does a wonderful job of adapting the Dying Earth source material to RPG form without being D&D-ish. Most remarkable is the way Laws wrote the game in a tone similar to the writings of Vance.

Interesting stuff for those who want to know.

Hell in a Handbasket...Where Roleplaying Games are Headed?

Over at the Pelgrane Publishing website is a thorough discussion of the state of the Role Playing industry. The discussion has commentary by many gaming professionals who have access to inside information that I don't, nor likely will ever, have access. It's an interesting read that presents several perspectives on the state of the hobby. It is also interesting in my eyes, that is to say the eyes of a particular consumer of games, because of the assumptions that many of the discussants have about the hobby and why sales in the RPG arena have dropped. One thing I am noticing is the real lack in not addressing what I see to be the key pratfall that the RPG hobby has entered. More on that in a minute. Let's have a look at whether these professionals think that "the RPG industry is screwed" or not.

1. The first discussant in the conversation is Mongoose publishing, who is represented as following the "Classic" model of RPG publishing. A statement that is only partly true, especially when one looks at the history of the hobby. Most "classic" companies did not base their industry on a combination of another company's product and add licensed products (like Mongoose's Conan or Lone Wolf roleplaying games). Did some classic companies do those very things? Yes and most of those went the way of the dinosaur. Where is Judge's Guild? How about the Mayfair "roleplaying supplements?" FASA?
   
   To be fair, Mongoose is classic in the way it operates. It publishes books regularly and supports them with peripheral gaming "necessities." Which is to say that they sell games, miniatures, and for a time had a magazine. Mongoose's products tend, in my opinion, to run the gamut from average to excellent with only their pure splatbooks being poor. The Conan RPG is good, the Lone Wolf RPG better. The Lone Wolf RPG's adaptation of the d20 magic system is a remarkable system that even Chris Pramas of Green Ronin would be proud to attach his name.
   
   What does Mongoose think of the state of the industry?
   
   

   At Mongoose, we believe that a good RPG book still has the potential to blow through entire print runs and that sales of 10,000+ units are still achievable with the right product.

   
   
   According to the Pelgrane article the Starship Troopers RPG (based on the Heinlein Novel) has sold a solid number of copies, more than 6000. Mongoose is a company whose stock and trade is licensed products, which have the advantage of name recognition, but the disadvantage of higher production costs due to royalty fees. If Mongoose is a strong player, you can see how small the hobby market is.



2. Aldo Ghiozzi sees dilution in the market place as a part of the problem in the current environment. Simple economics, a glutted market will produce more than it can sell. Interestingly, due to the size of the market some companies like Malhavoc Press are aiming for extraordinarily high prices and quality to add interest and profit, but since as Ghiozzi points out one of the ways the market has expanded is in the PDF market the potential for dilution is nigh infinite. How is the prospective gamer to find a quality game for their limited dollar? Right now you have to search through a lot of product to find good product and often the good product is much higher priced. Though a high price doesn't guarantee a good experience, or even production quality, all of the time.



3. Chris Pramas solidly observes that the market needs to redefine the marketplace, but offers no solution. He sees the need for change, is working for change, but knows that it may be up to someone else to be the visionary to bring change. This is surprising to me. When Chris Pramas, one of the more savvy publishers, isn't the one with the quick answer to solve the problem, you know there is a problem. Chris does a great job defining the problem and contrasting it with other industries, but once again no solution.
   
   

   They eclipsed wargames and dominated the market for many years. Since then we've seen significant events in our own industry, the two most important being 'Magic: the Gathering' creating a whole new category of game, and Games Workshop hitting upon a business model that redefined miniatures games. In the same period we've also seen computer/console games become increasingly sophisticated and immersive, and the development of MMOs. In light of these events the old RPG business model has a tough time competing. Once players have a core rulebook, they don't need to buy anything else to enjoy the game. Contrast that with the collectible games, where not only can you sell people the same product over and over again, but also they have to keep up with each new expansion to stay competitive. Or MMOs, where players pay each month for the privilege of continuing to play.

   
   
   Chris had the perfect opportunity here to criticize the RPG industry for mimicking the behaviors of the MMO, miniature, and Collectible Card Game (CCGs) marketplaces. Chris mentions the d20 flood, following the above excerpt, but he fails to compare the d20 flood and marketing practices to the CCGs. Right after the release of D&D 3rd edition various companies flooded the market with material, but Wizards (pre and post-Hasbro) in the early days of the d20 boom released products in a manner that can only be compared to new sets for the card game. As a game master, I was compelled to buy over 20 new softback books filled with gaming material just to keep up with my players who wanted to "explore" the new powers/abilities that the softback products offered. Compare this to 1st edition AD&D where there were a total of 9 books by the end of the 80s (produced in a decade's time), sure many softbound adventures, with no boom of softback "splatbooks." Those came with Second edition and the 90s. This excludes "settings," those are a different creature, I am talking just core rulebooks. Not one month has gone by where the total of d20 products available (just that month) that are also worth owning (in other words are of good quality) where the products have been within any reasonable person's budget. I make good money and even I can't buy all the gaming material I think is worth it. Packs of cards don't cost $40 in hardback.
   
   All of which I think points to something Chris didn't mention here specifically, but hints at with his comments about the d20 flood. There is a lot of material and a lot of companies out there, but only so many consumers. Once again, how do we help the consumer?



4. Chad Underkoffler discusses the issue as only a part-time designer can. He talks about how he believes that the market is too small for too many big publishers and that some publishers ought to realize that and be satisfied with "extra income" rather than expecting a full-time job. He nicely completes my observations on the Pramas piece by coming out and saying that the market is small and that designers should treat the market as if it were small.
   
   I found it hard to believe that Chad had only sold 525 copies of his Truth and Justice rpg. If only because I think it is a good game (I am one of the 525). But I guess it is more than the quality of the game that made me think he has sold more. I was thinking about the "buzz" the product has. Every "cool" gamer can at least talk about the game. If that doesn't speak volumes for the amount of piracy in the PFD market, I don't know what does.



5. Gareth-Michael Skarka talks about the decline of the number of retailers, or as I like to call them the Friendly Local Gaming Store. Mine recently went out of business and the owner complained about two things, a local weekly flea market who reduce the cost on Magic cards to near cost, and Paizo press for becoming a legitimate online retailer with no "store." I don't know if Paizo has a store or not, but I do know that they are a trusted name and have managed a few exclusives (like the British D&D Boardgame I am pre-ordering). The decline in the FLGS is related to why I think the RPG industry is in the state it is, the decline of the FLGS is a symptom.



6. Of course so are people like Ben Lehman. Ben Lehmen views the traditional market model as a model that lessens the integrity of the product and drives costs up to the consumer. In Lehman's view the 3 (or as he calls it the 6) tier marketplace.
   
   

   In the six-tier system, there is economic and creative compromises at every level. The end results is that both the game player and the designer get screwed -- the designer has to make artistic compromises and gets paid no money and the game player gets a watered down product and has to pay a lot of money, because each level in between needs to take their cut. [sic]

   
   
   Lehman's attitude is that of the avant garde creator, games to him are art that require artistic integrity. Things that might make the game have broader appeal and profitability are "compromises." Even if you take out the anti-marketplace sentiments and view these merely from the aesthetic level, these are the sentiment of an immature child. Sorry, but it's the truth. Have you ever had that guy in your creative writing class who has just heard a criticism during the group discussion of his "work" who says, "but that's what would happen, that's my vision, and to change it would be to lessen the power of my point?" I have. They are irritating. I don't think that good editors cause "artistic compromises," sometimes they cause artistic improvements. Roleplaying, as a hobby, is by its nature collaborative so additional collaborators oughtn't be though of as watering down the process. I can assure you that I have run many pre-written adventures (I work, hence why I have a good income) but I have never run the pre-written adventures "as is." In fact, I tweak and manipulate at will. As a Game Master I assault the integrity of the roleplaying object, most GMs do, normally I view it as adapting it to the tastes of my group. I guess I was wrong, I was compromising Lehman's integrity.
   
   I know, I know, some of you out there are going "ouch! That's harsh." Damn straight it is. Pretension like Lehman's assumes that the hobby is fine as a niche event. "The role-playing industry, if we evaluate its success based on how well it facilitates awesome play, is healthier than it has ever been, period." Awesome play, not widespread is what is important to Lehman. That is the artist's mindset and to be fair it is a worthy and good mindset. I know I have been hard on him, he seems to be a great guy. But I prefer Robert Howard's mentality. Give the gamers what they want and have more people gaming, if the game is lacking we will make it awesome. If it is awesome to begin with it will rise to the expanded marketplace.
   
   Lehman just reminded me of all my friends who liked Nirvana, well until everyone else started liking them. They are too cool for that. And being to cool and becoming niche isn't good. Art had Andy Warhol for a reason, it was to help breakdown the pretentious and show that Art surrounded us. Punk happened because Rock became bloated and self important. Too bad so many punks today are like those bloated self-important rockers.



7. West End Games gives a purely Economics 101 discussion, diversify. Good, but not inspirational. I gotta give Lehman credit. I may disagree with him, but he got my juices going.



8. Titan Games talks about the difficulty of being a destination store when other retailers, who carry the flavor of the month only and are diversified, offer big discounts. His tale is the tale of my local FLGS. I hope he doesn't change too much though, because I believe that only the destination store can save the hobby. Well, that or Conventions.



9. Jeff Tidball's answer is good, direct, and true. It accounts for the decline in the industry. What it doesn't account for is the industry's failure to expand to new consumers, even while losing others.

My thoughts, well if you haven't guessed I think that gaming needs good old Evangalism. Own a copy of Axis and Allies? Have you ever had a "gaming night" with your adult friends? Why not? Oh they only play Monopoly and Risk. Start with Risk, then Axis and Allies, then when everyone says..."but we're sick of arguing all the time" have them play Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings cooperative game. Then a movie night with "Bang!" Eventually you say, "you know I have this great game called Savage Worlds (or insert favorite RPG) I'd like you guys to try this game night. People will moan, sure, but one or two might say yes. Those who don't can participate in next month's Arkham Horror or Game of Thrones night. Don't have gaming space? Stop buying online and go to Titan Games (or your local FLGS) dammit! Have a local bookstore? Do a "Fantasy/SciFi" night. Bring Star Wars Minis and D&D Minis. Run demos. Go out there and meet new people and get them to game. Only some will become RPGers, but all will have more fun because of it.

Why do so many people play MMORPGs? Because people who play them talk about them excitedly. D&D, and Pen and Paper RPGs, are the brunt of jokes. We play them in dark basements where the crumbs of junk food have come to life. No one wants to go into a real dungeon, bring RPGs back into the light. We were getting better press when Tipper Gore said D&D was devil worship and killing kids. Better Press? Wha?! Actually we were getting press at all. Roleplaying should be that thing that the funny guy I know, who has a wife and kids, does instead of drinking beer and playing Playstation. He's that nice guy who puts together the "block barbeques" and has all those age appropriate games (like Kinder Bunnies and Kitty Chaos and ...) for the kids to play. He's the published author, the actor, the director, the politician, the priest. She's the lovely lady who has the best Halloween decorations. She's the woman with the MA who helped my daughter be the best Juliet.

Get out there and game people!

San Diego is Classy Even When I'm Not There

Please forgive the Ron Burgandy reference, but I will be unable to attend this year's Comic Con International in San Diego and it had become somewhat of an annual tradition. The reasons for it are simple, my wife and I moved to Glendale and our rent more than doubled thus I am unable to afford 4 days in a motel room. Okay, that and the three other people I was going to hang out with can't make it either. Really that has more to do with it, so if you want to go and share a room, I might just change my plans.

Why would you want to go to Comic Con, especially if you aren't a comic book fan?

As I have said many times, it is important to understand that comic book readership has fallen to an abysmal level. We are talking 1/10th of what it was 20 years ago. Not surprisingly Comic Con has adapted with this trend. They have adapted by turning the Comic Con from merely a comic book convention into one of the largest pop culture conventions in the country.

Do you like Tenacious D? They performed last year.

Are you interested in Science Fiction and Fantasy Films? The Con usually has great previews, often exclusive previews.

Are you interested in Scifi television? The cast of Battlestar Gallactica, and the writers/creators, fielded questions at last year's Con.

Fantasy books? Got those covered too. The great independent bookstore Mysterious Galaxy usually hosts four or five must attend panels for the fantasy fan. One of the co-owners is a prolific licensed property author. You would do well to read his recent "Age of Conan" series The Marauders.

Toys and RPGs? Wizards, Hasbro, and Wizkids usually have booths and there are usually tons of PS2 games (usually Comic related) demoing as well. This is the Con I discovered the Heroscape game at, and I have been greatful since. I also won free Axis and Allies minis, good times.

Oh, and did I mention Star Wars? Comic Con is usually the host to several signings and has historically offered an exclusive Star Wars action figure.

Last, but not least, one of the hardest working freelancers in the RPG industry (and a licensed fiction author himself) Matt Forbeck will be there. I am sure he will have a hectic schedule, but he usually tries to make time for fans. But don't go crazy and stalk him.

I remember, either last year or the year before, when Matt was promoting the Knights of the Silver Dragon Young Readers series for Wizards of the Coast. He was humorously self-depricating and praised the other authors on the panel for their wordcraft. Even when his publisher got into an argument about the appropriate term to describe 10-12 year olds, ("Is it 'tweens or something more sophisticated sounding?") he was able to move the conversation away from a sticking point without making either camp. If you want to hear what it is like to live in the trenches of a freelance lifestyle, Matt's your guy. His personal narrative is inspiring.

It's D-Day, Not "Devil's Day!"

Two things happened in the past ten minutes. First, a friend I game with every now and then reminded me that today was our annual D-Day deathmatch. Second, I read The Shelf, one of our community members and J.C. was lamenting the lack of discussion regarding D-Day on the news today. Add to that the discussion about this obscure invasion of Normandy in 1944 that was mentioned on NPR this morning and I realized that today is D-Day.

That's right today is the day we began taking it to those Jerrys seriously. Today is a day when we should all be watching The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan. Though Turner Movie Classics seems to think that was Memorial Day, but we all know Memorial Day is all about the Civil War and not WWII. You know the whole "sacrifices that were made to keep our nation united" thing that cost untold lives. That's Memorial Day, D-Day is when we landed on a beach and got torn to shreds by Kraut machine guns.

For those worried about my strongly anti-German language, remember that my Oma came over from Deutschland after the war and that Germany is my #2 team at the World Cup. America is #1.

Annual Deathmatch? However is it resolved? Knives? Guns? Wet noodle slapping?

No, no, no. We usually work out our Deathmatch using one of many games devoted to the topic to simulate the invasion of Normandy (as opposed to the Norman Invasion which we use different games to simulate). It depends on how much time we have to devote to the occasion. This evening we will be using Memoir '44 in our annual tradition. It's a fun game that can be played in a reasonable amount of time. If we had played this weekend we might have written up some scenarios for Pinnacle Games Fields of Honor which we have both been looking to play, a great system for our Axis and Allies collectible minis. At least Wizards of the Coast remembered D-Day. I only wish that Chris Pramas were there to pwn me.

Manga and Anime Transitioning to Live Action

In upcoming months many Anime and Manga titles will see production as live action movies and television shows according to ICV2. Most interesting is that those first down the pipeline will likely be some of the smaller names, at least to non-otaku. Everyone knows that a Transformers movie is on the way, and that Vince Vaughn is working on a Speed Racer movie, but Min-Woo Hyung's Priest will likely be released before any of these bigger budget films. Priest is a narrative that should appeal to those who like demon killers in the Old West. All you Deadlands fans should already be buying the manhwa.


Roy Lee (whose name is attached to almost every import from the East since The Ring is developing one of my favorite moody anime series as a live action television show. Lee hopes to turn Witch Hunter Robin (click here for official site) into a successful live action series and more power to him. While it is difficult for me to imagine most anime series being adapted successfully to live action on a budget, Witch Hunter Robin is one of the rare exceptions. The anime version combined religious symbolism, Supernatural style stories, and hidden government agendas (very X-Files) into a moody and interesting combination. I look forward to seeing an attempt to bring this to the silver screen.



If you want to get an idea of what I am referring to, add it to your Netflix queue or ask to borrow my DVDs. I thought the animation in Robin was fluid and remarkable, but be warned the stories are directed at a slow pace. On a side note, I would love to see a Samurai Champloo live action film.