A co-worker lent me "Gran Torino" today, so I sat down and watched it as I tried to sketch Clint from a photo. Still not quite there, but practice is practice.
"Gran Torino" is a good film about a decent guy who time has left behind, and how he finally finds some peace of mind. The acting is not perfect in this, or maybe it's just that it's hard to be a young actor performing in Clint's shadow.
I think I can say that this is the best role he's ever done. Walt Kowalski is just as badass as, say, Dirty Harry, but in a much more real and visceral manner. Dirty Harry is an iconic figure and has his place in our collective unconcious, but Walt could very well be that old guy smoking cigs on the front porch next door to you.
I don't really do movie reviews, per-se, but I'll say that I definitely enjoyed this, and would have happily paid the price of a movie ticket if I knew it was this good.
So, worth watching.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Origins 2009
Whoa...
Mouse Guard beat out D&D 4E and Trail of Cthulhu for Best RPG of 2009 at Origins.
You don't need a huge publishing house and a new supplement every month to make a good RPG. You need a guy and some friends who want to make good games, you need good art, good design, and a system that knows exactly what it's made for.
It's a brave new world out there...
Mouse Guard beat out D&D 4E and Trail of Cthulhu for Best RPG of 2009 at Origins.
You don't need a huge publishing house and a new supplement every month to make a good RPG. You need a guy and some friends who want to make good games, you need good art, good design, and a system that knows exactly what it's made for.
It's a brave new world out there...
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Gaming Goals
Scheduling concerns and other life events will keep me out of gaming until July. That being said, if I don't get some of this stuff down here it's going to keep occupying brain space, so here's what's on my mind, in no particular order...
Reading about Judd and Storn's one-one-one Burning Wheel game has rekindled my interest in 1-player 1-gm gaming. I played in a lot of sessions of Mechwarrior that way back in the day, just one GM and a player or two. Good times. Actually, another part of what has rekindled my interest in such games is a desire to give back to the guy who ran those games for us, by running a Mechwarrior game for him.
Because my indie-game group is always trying new things - it's why we formed the group in the first place - I don't get to participate in many long-term campaigns. 5 sessions is our usual limit. Now, I'm still not one for the "neverending campaign" but lately I'd like to do a long-ish game, with more time for character development and a slow build until hitting a good story arc or two, after which it gracefully ends. Call it a "mid-length" campaign, for lack of a better word.
I also want to play a game that (and I've talked about this before in this blog) generates a lot of ephemera - maps, pictures, photos pasted in books, player and GM notes, NPCs and all, built up over time. And, I want it all in one book, maybe a bound sketch/scrapbook, as a kind of Silva Rerum for the game.
Tying in to this, I'm itching to play something akin to Ars Magica right now, where the covenant of mages is the center of the story, and we play out the parts - mages, companions, grogs and all. There would be bookkeeping involved, but I think letting the player-mages work on projects of their choosing, building resources, and making changes in the game world is a big part of what that game is about. I blame Vincent Baker for all those Ars Magica posts on the Forge for my renewed interest.
Otherkind dice really fascinate me right now. They're a really simple and elegant system, and I want to take them for a test drive.
I also want to run something for my wife, for all the usual reasons people want to run games for their SOs - to share something special to me, for one. I've managed to sell her on trying it at least once, I've even got a little homebrew mini-game built to fit her stated preferences called "Night in Nan Madol". More on that if I can get it to fly once she's back in town.
So, hopefully I can make one or more of those elements intersect and turn into a game soon. I'd like to play little 2-hour sessions with a friend or two some weeknights - Mechwarrior using Otherkind or (gasp) Trollbabe, Ars Magica using (double-gasp) Burning Wheel, or the aforementioned Nan Madol game.
If you game with me, and any of those things interest you, ping me and we'll make it happen :)
Reading about Judd and Storn's one-one-one Burning Wheel game has rekindled my interest in 1-player 1-gm gaming. I played in a lot of sessions of Mechwarrior that way back in the day, just one GM and a player or two. Good times. Actually, another part of what has rekindled my interest in such games is a desire to give back to the guy who ran those games for us, by running a Mechwarrior game for him.
Because my indie-game group is always trying new things - it's why we formed the group in the first place - I don't get to participate in many long-term campaigns. 5 sessions is our usual limit. Now, I'm still not one for the "neverending campaign" but lately I'd like to do a long-ish game, with more time for character development and a slow build until hitting a good story arc or two, after which it gracefully ends. Call it a "mid-length" campaign, for lack of a better word.
I also want to play a game that (and I've talked about this before in this blog) generates a lot of ephemera - maps, pictures, photos pasted in books, player and GM notes, NPCs and all, built up over time. And, I want it all in one book, maybe a bound sketch/scrapbook, as a kind of Silva Rerum for the game.
Tying in to this, I'm itching to play something akin to Ars Magica right now, where the covenant of mages is the center of the story, and we play out the parts - mages, companions, grogs and all. There would be bookkeeping involved, but I think letting the player-mages work on projects of their choosing, building resources, and making changes in the game world is a big part of what that game is about. I blame Vincent Baker for all those Ars Magica posts on the Forge for my renewed interest.
Otherkind dice really fascinate me right now. They're a really simple and elegant system, and I want to take them for a test drive.
I also want to run something for my wife, for all the usual reasons people want to run games for their SOs - to share something special to me, for one. I've managed to sell her on trying it at least once, I've even got a little homebrew mini-game built to fit her stated preferences called "Night in Nan Madol". More on that if I can get it to fly once she's back in town.
So, hopefully I can make one or more of those elements intersect and turn into a game soon. I'd like to play little 2-hour sessions with a friend or two some weeknights - Mechwarrior using Otherkind or (gasp) Trollbabe, Ars Magica using (double-gasp) Burning Wheel, or the aforementioned Nan Madol game.
If you game with me, and any of those things interest you, ping me and we'll make it happen :)
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