Latest toybox:

http://www.rpg.net/columns/campaigntoybox/campaigntoybox25.phtml

I managed to start a new trend when I invented the "X episodes based on Y songs" thing.  I wonder if this one will take off too?  But mostly I just hope somebody develops at least one of these into something full and awesome.

N-Z next month.

From menulog.com:

The venue is unique, classy and comfortable. Worth taking your camera. The staff looked as though they loved their jobs and were thrilled to serve us. The food was fresh, well presented and punctual. My glass was never empty. The food is reasonably priced considering the ambience was priceless. Definitely one of the best places in Brisbane. Would recommend travelers to go, locals, partners, families and friends. It is a great night out.   (Debbie - January, 2010)

How many people does it take to create a campaign?  And which bits did they attach to what flanges?

A bit more on the Gathering Storm from FFG:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=1063

Some details and some lovely art of Stromdorf, the setting for the Gathering Storm Campaign pack:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=1035

As always with FFG, the art is superb

It seems some of my reviews aren't getting through the Game Cryer queue.  But here's November's installment:

http://gamecryer.com/2009/11/30/bohnanza/

Stevies for 2009

 

Here we go again with what’s fast becoming the least popular awards in the blogosphere. As always, it has nothing to do with when the product was produced, but when I encountered it.

 

Best TV Show

 

A few contenders this year. You’d probably suspect it’d go to Lie to Me: the science is fairly strong, the technical discourse fun, the writing decent and Tim Roth is glorious. It’s definitely the best new crime show around and is battling Burn Notice for my affections, beating out the charm of Castle (because almost all of that charm comes from Fillion and he cannot hold a show all on his own, no matter how often he smiles). Meanwhile Bones and SVU go from strength to strength to strength. Bones is totally the little engine that could, taking a fairly weak concept and making it rock the world with strong archetypes and fun gags. It’s effectively Buffy reskinned, which is why I like it.

 

But all of them pale compared to The Big Bang Theory. Not just because Big Bang is consistently home-run funny, each and every week, but because it’s doing that in an age when the sitcom is all-but dead. Reality TV stomped sitcoms so far into the ground that Two and a Half Men looked like comedy genius. Then along comes Chuck Lorre and proves he’s still got it. It’s no Newsradio but it’s extremely reassuring and a welcome return for a maligned genre. Props to the geek boys for doing that most difficult of things: bringing the funny, into a dark world, every damn week.

 

Best Movie

 

Son of Rambow is the runner up. Sweet without being saccharine, simple without being simplistic, low scale yet boldly told, this is a movie everyone should think about seeing. If it had more music and less Rambo, it would be this years’ Full Monty: lonely English kids fight their battles and become friends through the power of dreams and creativity. Except, you know, not TWEE like that sounds.

 

The winner though, is The International. I adore modern techno-thrillers and of late they’ve been kind of co-opted by too much angst (Bond, I’m looking at you), or too much conspiracy (Dan Brown, what have you wrought). The International is an old-school techno-thriller, more Le Carre and the Sandbaggers than anything has a right to be these days. It manages to be gritty yet slick, intense yet realistic, conspiratorial yet not overdone. It features probably the most exciting gun battle ever put on film and yet will probably be forgotten in favour of the more grand-guignol bulletpieces like Shoot ‘Em Up and the Cranks. Which blows goats and makes me yearn for the days when we had Gorky Park and The French Connection and Day of the Jackal and so on.  It’s not just that it’s my favourite genre well told though: the execution is extremely polished. Owen is better than ever, Watts manages to keep up, Mueller-Stahl has basically become the new Karl Malden and needs to star in these things forever. More than anything though, it was a film for which I had the absolute highest expectations, being as it is completely in my wheelhouse – and it exceeded them all. And that takes some doing indeed.

 

Best Board or Card Game

 

Okay, no surprise: it’s Dominion. It really does live up to the hype. It plays all the roles, it appeals to almost all comers and almost any size of group, it’s quick to learn, fast to play and can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be. It’s a social game but also an involving one. And it’s just goddamn good old fashioned FUN like very little else.

 

What is surprising is the runner up, and how close it came to snatching the title. Space Hulk is a game which costs more than I make in a week and is, at heart, little more than simple minis rules for two players. Sure it has a modular board and pretty plastic dudes and a cool setting but…no, but nothing. It actually takes a lot of work to make something this simple and this easy – and much more work to make it this beautiful. The rules are few, the set ups simple, the gameplay a breeze, yet the tactics are serious, the tension is palpable and the stories so evocative you can smell the fear. The setting helps but what really helps is the unbelievably high quality components. I mean, we live in an age where beauty and game pieces are synonymous; where every singe chit or tile is a work of art and a monument of design, and yet Space Hulk is beyond them all, a whole extra level higher in design and beauty and construction. Swear to God, you’ve never seen room pieces click together like this. You may never see it again. And the minis are awesome too.

 

Best RPG

 

As always, tough to judge for a man with no disposable income and not enough time to review review copies.  I’ll decline from mentioning WFRP 3e to avoid bias. Mad props to Dragon*Age for not recreating D&D but rather recreating the unique experience of redbook D&D, and all that implies to creating new gamers – with all the usual Pramas skill and aplomb. Speaking of recreating and attracting new blood: I’m still trying to wheedle a review copy but it looks like Dr Who will be the best licensed game since Buffy (aka the best licensed game since Ghostbusters). Other notables: Rogue Trader was prettier than Dark Heresy, Eclipse Phase brought back detailed percentile systems with a glorious vengeance, Geist had one of the funnest magic systems I’ve seen in ages and Jennifer is Missing broke several brains, including mine. But nothing quite re-wrote the books as much as Supercrew did, and it did it by rewriting the way books are written. 99% of game designers all-but ignore the art of RPG presentation (or just assume that White Wolf does it right, which is pretty galling when you look at the abomination that is Awakening) but if we’ve learned anything from Space Hulk, it’s that design is about far, far more than mechanics. Runner up in the damn-that’s-just-ridiculously-easy-to-digest stakes is Song of Ice and Fire, because Hal Mangold continues to be just better at layout than everybody else in the industry.

 

Other Things:

Arkham Asylum takes best Computer Game for letting you feel like you’re Batman with just a bit of button-mashing. Best comic remains Paul Grist’s exquisitely perfect Kane, the comic that Sin City wishes it would grow up to be like. Best gift to comedy is the Twilight Saga because having your spine broken by your terrible (but sparkly) vampire foetus never stops being funny. Best animal is the Sea Otter for continuing to crack oysters on their tummies. Sadly Missed Montage goes to Dan O’Bannon, the man behind the alien behind John Hurt’s stomach wall.

 

Awesome of the Year

 

An easy win for the Large Hadron Collider, built last year but turned on this, and making science huge and sexy and awesome and terrifying in an age where all people think of science as doing is dissing religion and making phones smaller. Let the other ages have their Difference Engines and moon rockets, we have our own edifice now. May it produce something cool by next year.

 

 

Bad-ass torn-up rebel toys, that's who:

http://www.rpg.net/columns/campaigntoybox/campaigntoybox24.phtml

I lose the net for two weeks and FFG barrels ahead with the WFRP news:

The Adventurer's Toolkit should be in stores Real Soon Now - see http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=991 and it includes a big splash for an old friend, the Small But Vicious Dog (he's so cute!!!) http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=981

Also announced is the first campaign box, The Gathering Storm, for which I crafted the whole campaign skeleton, which is something of a landmark for me. Should be awesome. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=967

Which is nice.
"Background: the fluff from these two books are excellent primers for the religions and mage orders of the Warhammer world, with some clever first-person accounts that make the history come alive."

I mean, the review. My monthly piece on Game Cryer:

http://gamecryer.com/2009/11/30/bohnanza/