Happy Independence Day, Philippines!

To slowly ease out on the D&D wagon, today’s collection are geek and gaming related.

Somewhat Recent Gaming News

• Magic: The Gathering Duel Decks for November - Unlike the new MtG Theme Decks, this one will be complete 60 card decks.  Probably like the Elves vs Goblins thing they released a while back.
• Alpha Point: Designing the HeroClix Alpha Rules System
• Cthulhu Dice Now Unlimited!
• The Gamer Dome: Community Game Design Projects
• Rubik’s Cube Algorithm Cut Again, Down To 23 Moves

Gaming Features

• The Evil That Designers Do
• Gencon Bankruptcy Filing– Guess Who They Owe Money to?

Movies/TV/Animation

• Grayskull: Masters of the Universe Script Review - Hmmm. Ok, it could work.  I just hope they don’t start thinking that a hip-n-edgy “My Little Pony” would work too.
• Interview: Dave Gibbons talks Watchmen and more…
• Pinoy animators form ‘holy alliance’
• HBO turns ‘Fire’ into fantasy series
• 10 year old cartoonist, Alexa Kitchen, signs with Hyperion/Disney

Misc. Geek Stuff

• Podcast Interview with H.P. Lovecraft Scholar, S.T. Joshi
• 7 Super Heroes We Can Live Without
• McFarlane, Portacio on ‘Spawn’ - Haven’t heard about anything from those guys in a while.  I wonder how Whilce’s art style would look on Spawn?

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Still on the Dungeons and Dragons 4E wagon, here’s a test to determine your D&D race, alignment, and class.

I ended up being a …

Chaotic Good Human Fighter!

You can see the breakdown below. A bit surprising that my Fighter side beat out my Monk side (it’s probably my role-play/gaming vs actual personality), but that I was almost a Bard (I guess this test ain’t 4th Ed yet) too? WTF?!

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I’ll let the author, Michael Kaminski, introduce his free downloadable book in his own words:

The Secret History of Star Wars is a new full-length e-book exploring the writing and creation of the Star Wars saga. Culled from over 400 sources and filled with quotes from people such as George Lucas, Gary Kurtz and Mark Hamill, The Secret History of Star Wars traces all the way back to 1973 to examine how the first 14-page treatment that began the series came to be and was slowly built, draft by draft, year by year and movie by movie. Covering a period of over four decades, you will discover how George Lucas got his ideas for the original film, how Darth Vader was made into Luke Skywalker’s father in 1978 and forever altered the arc of the story, what happened to the infamous third trilogy in the series and how the prequel stories came to be. The book also reveals the style and method of Lucas himself and how his personal life affected and shaped the story, for better and worse. This is a book which challenges many legends surrounding the series and places the films in a new light. For the more casual fan this will be a mesmerizing read and for those who think they know everything about the series, prepare to be surprised!

After going through the first few pages myself, it’s proving to be quite an interesting read. As with most things like this, take it with as much salt as you feel is needed.

You can download “The Secret History of Star Wars” for free from it’s official website.

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Geek Stuff

• A New Hope: The Future of Star Wars
• R2-D2 Ice Bucket with Han Solo Ice Molds Makes Any Drink Nerdier
• ‘Street Fighter’ Opens February 27th - After the Van Damme movie, I’m very leery of the words “Street Fighter live-action movie”.  Let’s hope this will be different.
• Death Note Manga Spawns Movie, Crime Wave
• Vintage Japanese Robots Storm Sci-Fi Museum
• Grandmaster Flashed: Kasparov Attacked by Flying Penis-Copter

Numbered Lists

• The 9 Most Obnoxious Memes to Ever Escape the Web
• The 6 Most Frequently Quoted Bullsh*t Statistics
• 7 Pleasurable Ways to Improve Your Reading Ability
• 99 Extraordinary, Creative and Unusual Uses for Ordinary and Everyday Objects
• Tech’s 10 worst entry-level jobs
• Five Gadgets That Will Make You a Superhero - Something must be wrong with my browser because I only counted four.

Other Lists

• The ‘Winners’ of the Wired News Saddest-Cubicle Contest
• Mock the Apocalypse From a Stylish New Houseboat
• Annoying software: a rogues’ gallery

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 Special Note:

• Happy Mother’s Day!  Here’s a video game recommendation for every type of mom!
• Tubataha Reefs is now #8!  Help push it into the New 7 Wonders of the World!

Geek News:

• Speed Racer bombs in the box office (still beaten by Iron - Man).  I’ve been leery of the concept from the beginning, and although I would’ve wanted to see it for myself over the weekend before passing judgment, Ijust couldn’t bring myself to try the film out. 
• Marvel Super Hero Squad - If the animation art will be like the ones on the box, it’s gonna be a tough sell for me ‘coz I’m not a fan of the style.
• Destro from the new G.I. Joe film sucks - No metallic mask?  Then I’ll have to agree.
• ‘Batmanime’ Is a Blast in Batman: Gotham Knight - The stills have a slight Aeon-Flux slant to it, which I’m not always hot about.  Still, it will boil down to the animation and story quality.  Looking forward to this.

Tech News:

• Flaw turns Gmail into spamming machine (more here)
• IFPI Advises Kids to Use LimeWire and Kazaa
• 25 year old BSD bug fixed!
• Next generation of business software could get more fun
• Once shunned by academics, Wikipedia now a teaching tool
• MySQL reverses original musing on closing some of it’s source.
• Data recovered from Seagate drive in Columbia shuttle disaster - You’ll be amazed at how they could’ve actually gotten anything when you see the pic of the hard-drive.
• TorrentSpy ordered to pay $110 million in damages to MPAA
• MSI HAS shown off its new, Shuttle-esque mini PC
• Syllable, SkyOS, ReactOS Move Forward
• MySpace Embraces DataPortability, Partners With Yahoo, Ebay And Twitter
• Google denies staff ‘brain drain’
• Just when you thought it was overwhelming enough to upgrade a PC with all the parts involved, ASUS creates upgradeable graphics cards.
• Windows-based EeePC cheaper than Linux one - Talk about aggressive marketing.

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No news for today, but I have found a great survey, a list of movies I’m looking forward to, and some geek stuff.

Survey

• Take the Geek Test!

I got 37.47535% on the 1st try, 43.58974% on the re-test, and a possibility of pushing it to 44.37869% (given the books I plan to get in the next few months). All “Major Geek”, but pushing it precariously near “Super Geek” if I do accomplish my planned readings.

Moviewatch

• Iron Man (2008.05/02)
• The Incredible Hulk (2008.06/13)
• Wanted (2008.06/27, loosely based on the comic)
• (Batman) The Dark Knight (2008.07/18)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2008.11/21)
• Watchmen (2009.03/06)
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009.05/01)
• Transformers 2 (2009.06/26)
• (Avatar) The Last Airbender (2010)

— edit 2008.05/13 —

There’s better and more comprehensive 2008 Summer Geek Movie Guide at Yvette’s blog. The release dates are based on US release schedules, though, but it’s basically near enough (if not the same) as that of the Philippines.

Geek Life

• 56 types of geeks
• Create a Geek Code for yourself! <- Now THAT is geeky!

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Ernest Gary Gygax , co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), passed away last March 4, 2008 at his home in Wisconsin.

I never really got to play the old vanilla D&D that was published under Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. or TSR (the religious zealots insited TSR was an acronym for “To Satan’s Realm”). I did get to play some of the near kin, specifically a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style book and three 1 on 1 PvP style variants (two of which were Marvel licensed). Of course there was the Saturday morning cartoon (did they ever get to go back home?). In later years, the nearest I got to D&D was with the Icewind Dale PC game.

Most of the games that I play and love, however, are decendants of D&D. All Role-Playing Games (RPGs) ever made (pen-and-paper, electronic, or any other format) inherited one thing or another. Any game that has spells, multiple character classes, leveling up, stats like HP STR DEF DEX etc, random number checks that influence a hit/miss, even the concept of critical hits and backstabs, inherited from D&D.

Reading through the hundres of messages from people expressing their grief and appreciation, I personally think the comment by someone named ‘Mo Khan’ at Wired.com describes best how much he meant to so many people.

Rest well Gary, and thank you. You’ve touched more lives than you know and your work will continue to influence generations to come.

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