Rebecca "Black" Metal -- It's Friday

A friend of mine wondered -- rhetorically -- how long it would take for mash ups of Rebecca Black's new song "Friday" to work their way to the net. My answer was that they had probably already happened, but that none had become viral yet. So I did a quick check this morning to see what was out there, and of that what was the most "out there." I came across this bit of mindshattering contrasts. It's the Rebecca Black song sung as if it were a death metal tune. The video remains the same, but the pulse pounding drums, gravely vocals, and wailing guitars are different.

What I found most amusing were those moments where the song and the video lined up in intriguing ways. There are are a couple of times during the video where it almost seems like it really is an ironic death metal video.

Wizards of the Coast Adds Vehicle Rules to Gamma World

Are you wondering what to do with all those pick up trucks that your players acquired during Gamma World character generation? Do you want to add a little dash of Car Wars into your Gamma Terra campaign? Are you and your players fans of Death Race: 2000, The Road Warrior, and Knight Riders? Are you a big fan of Wizards of the Coast's latest Gamma World offering?

If so, then the new rules posted on the D&D website this week are for you. Keeping in line with Gamma World's "Quick and Dirty 4e" adaptation, the vehicle rules provide a fun and workable system for running vehicles and vehicle combats/races without adding undue complexity. Rules for the damage caused by crashes and the effects of critical hits on vehicles are presented in an easy to use format. Stat blocks for a decent number of vehicles are provided, as are some "customization options" like "oil jets." These rules also bring the idea of "stunts" to the table. Stunts are out of the ordinary actions that characters can attempt to perform with their vehicle, like jumping the vehicle off an incline.

I know that my gaming group, SUPER TEAM GO!, will make good use of the offerings and will likely begin coming up with some of their own thoughts on customization options.

It's good to see Wizards supporting the game even after all of the products have been released. Let's home they continue.

Oh..and it's FREE.

Fantasy Flight Games Experiments with Print on Demand Support for Death Angel

Since I purchased Death Angel at last year's GenCon the game has received a decent amount of play time from my gaming group and between regular gaming sessions. The game is well balanced, fun, and plays quickly. This allows it to fill time gaps that come up when waiting for players who are running late, or on an evening when you have a half-an-hour gap between the shows you like to watch. Eric Lang's Corey Konieczka's design on the game is very good, but even good design must abide by product life cycle trends. If a game doesn't have support materials, it tends to fade away as gamers consider it to be a "dead" game. There are rare exceptions to this rule, but even Monopoly gets official new versions every now and again.

In order to provide support for Death Angel, Fantasy Flight is moving to a print on demand model that provides expansions for the game at a reasonable price. Typically, when I see the words "Print on Demand" I know that the products will be a little more expensive than I would normally expect. Print on Demand, by its very nature, means smaller print runs and smaller print runs mean higher production costs. For this reason, I was surprised when I saw that the two Death Angel expansion packs were coming in at $4.95 each -- exactly what I would have expected with a full print run.

These decks, in particular the Space Marine deck, should have some interesting affects on play and I just ordered my copies. We'll see how the PoD model works for FFG. If all goes well, we might see support for some of their older games using the same model.

It Appears that Guillermo Del Toro's Adaptation of "At the Mountains of Madness" is Dead

If I were to ask you how you would go about killing a possibly excellent adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's novel At the Mountains of Madness, what would be your first answer?

When I first read that Guillermo del Toro was working on the project I had high hopes indeed. del Toro is one of the pre-eminent horror directors in the market today and his combination of surreal and horrific imagery seems a perfect match for the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket inspired Lovecraftian tale. That was until I read that del Toro wanted to spend $150 Million on the production of the film. That is a tremendous amount of money to spend on a film, and Lovecraft has never been a name that -- as much as he inspires gamers and defined modern horror -- has ever brought people to the theater. Given that horror movies are typically lower budget films, and that the del Toro written remake of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark came at around a $13 Million budget, making an epic $150 Million Lovecraftian epic seems even more difficult sell.

Last night, the Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog reported that the movie had been put in jeopardy writing, "The situation had been building to a head for a quite some time, and del Toro is not going down without a fight, exploring the option to take the project to another studio. Sources say Fox is a likely destination, since James Cameron is one of the producers and has a long association with that studio. (Other producers include Don Murphy and Susan Montford.)"

Those who follow how Hollywood works know that conflicts like these can be hints toward the demise of a project, and according to indieWire the movie is now officially dead.

As indieWire also points out, it isn't like Universal Pictures has been particularly risk averse of late, but after a string of box office fizzles it seems that they have reached their limit.

Given that the R rating and $150 budget were the major stumbling blocks, what are your thoughts?

Does a version of At the Mountains of Madness need to be rated R, or can thematically horrific moments suffice in translating the tale? Does it need gore and profanity, or just tone?

Does the film need a $150 Million budget or could a director who is less in demand than del Toro bring in a quality version for less?

One thing is certain, fans of Lovecraft are still waiting for a quality big screen version of the film. As good as the H P Lovecraft Historical Society's version of Call of Cthulhu was, it hasn't caught the imagination or passion of main stream audiences.

While we wait, might I interest you in the HPLHS's radio adaptation of Mountains? Or perhaps their upcoming film The Whisperer in the Darkness?

Quarriors -- Are You Ready For Dragon Dice 2.0?

Late in January, WizKids games announced that they would be releasing the Quarriors Dice Building Game later this year.

Designers Eric Lang (Warhammer: Invasion) and Mike Elliot (Thunderstone) have pooled their game design talents in order to create a game that combines the play of a dice battle game like Dragon Dice with the strategic elements of a deck building game like Thunderstone or Dominion. They also seem to be taking a marketing lesson from Fantasy Flight Games Living Card Games, and Deckbuilding games, in that the product will not be sold as a collectible game like earlier battle dice games. Games like Dragon Dice and the Marvel Super Heroes Dice Game were fun to play, but can be frustrating to collect. Quarriors is avoiding the potential pratfalls associated with a collectible game by offering everything you need in order to play in the box itself.

The game is slated for release this summer, just in time for the convention circuit, and is on my much anticipated list. Lang and Elliott are both talented designers, and I look forward to seeing what they have to offer in this game.

Night's Black Agents, Kenneth Hite, Fritz Leiber, and Vampires

I have long been an admirer of Kenneth Hite as game critic, game commentator, and game designer. The reasons I hold him in high esteem are too numerous to be enumerated here one by one, and that would be boring besides, but there is one reason that stands at the summit of my admiration. It is his awe inspiring ability to fuse history, mystery, pulp, and high art into his game design in surprising ways.

Consider the following. I have known for some time that Ken was working on a new role playing game for Pelgrane Press entitled "Night's Black Agents." The game uses Robin D Laws' innovative "Gumshoe" role playing game system as its engine and combines the genres of action-espionage with vampire horror. That alone makes it a winner. Just read the Pelgrane blurb (and this interview):

The Cold War is over. Bush’s War is winding down.

You were a shadowy soldier in those fights, trained to move through the secret world: deniable and deadly.

Then you got out, or you got shut out, or you got burned out. You didn’t come in from the cold. Instead, you found your own entrances into Europe’s clandestine networks of power and crime. You did a few ops, and you asked even fewer questions. Who gave you that job in Prague? Who paid for your silence in that Swiss account? You told yourself it didn’t matter.

It turned out to matter a lot. Because it turned out you were working for vampires.

Vampires exist. What can they do? Who do they own? Where is safe? You don’t know those answers yet. So you’d better start asking questions. You have to trace the bloodsuckers’ operations, penetrate their networks, follow their trail, and target their weak points. Because if you don’t hunt them, they will hunt you. And they will kill you.

Or worse.

It just oozes high concept excitement. Yet, much like Ken's brilliant The Day After Ragnarok, there seems to be something else going on here as well. It is something that I missed at first glance -- Ken is sneaky that way. I didn't notice it until I was reading an interview with Fritz Leiber in Charles Platt's "Dream Makers vol. 2."

There was a brief comment by Leiber that his first book, published by Arkham House, was entitled Night's Dark Agents. Hmmm... Sneaky that Hite fellow. A follow up game to the successful, and remarkable, Trail of Cthulhu (which I believe to be the best Cthulhu game published to date, though Ken humbly differs) is named after a book published by Arkham House. Arkham House Publishing's first publication was a book of Lovecraft's stories, and Leiber wrote letters to Lovecraft receiving kind responses from the father of Cosmic Horror -- responses that kept Leiber writing until it became a paying gig. The Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story "Adept's Gambit" that is in Night's Black Agents is Leiber's first written -- though not first published -- tale of the duo, and it includes some Cthulhu references.

You see how he so subtly built a connection between Lovecraft and his new game through the vehicle of Leiber?

More than that, Hite knows that the title references "The Scottish Play" as well.

You see, Hite is just able to take ideas -- sometimes seemingly incongruous ideas -- and meld them into something new and wonderful.

I cannot wait for the release of Night's Black Agents.

I wonder if the game will include echoes of Leiber's vampire story, "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes." You can watch a "Serlingized" version of that tale below.

Nostalgia and Self-Loathing -- "Legends of the Superheroes"

It is the curse of Generation X. In our youth, we experienced some of the best pop culture entertainment ever produced. We grew up watching The Six Million Dollar Man, Starsky and Hutch (you can really tell the Michael Man Episodes), Kolchak the Night Stalker and reading Watchmen, The Killing Joke, Tim Truman's Scout, and the Giffen/Maguire/DeMatteis Justice League, Star Wars, The Terminator, and Tron.

We also had to endure the legacy of the ultra-camp "too hip to like pop culture" mentality of many Boomers. Case it point is the "Legends of the Superheroes" television special. Gen X kids loved the Super Friends cartoon, especially when the show added the Wonder Twins, so we eagerly begged our parents to let us watch the "Legends of the Superheroes" special when it aired.

After all, what could be better than a live action version of our favorite show?

Apparently, a kick in the face would have been better. The show was campy and awful, and the follow-up roast was a mockery of everything the kids loved about shows like Super Friends.

LEGENDS OF THE SUPERHEROES - watch more funny videos

And yet...I still have this compulsion to buy and watch the special and relive the hopes that I had for the show, even as I re-experience the nightmare of its reality.

There must be some connection between nostalgia and self-loathing.