Yearly Archives: 2006

Protocon 2.0 Official Announcement

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Get ready to mark your calendars, because Protocon 2.0 is official!

When: Friday, November 17th until Sunday, November 19th. Festivities will begin at 7pm Friday Night and last until 5pm Sunday.

Where: At Webb Manor in Chestertown, MD

Webb Manor comes equipped with 2 smoke machines and a wiener dog. You do the math.

If you are not a regular contributor to this forum but are interested in attending, please leave a comment on the website and we will get back to you with details.

We will be putting up an official itinerary of events here in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, take a gander at DJ Webb’s Wicker Duck submission (we are still accepting wicker duck design submissions, so be sure to email or post yours).

Continue reading Protocon 2.0 Official Announcement →

The Lesternomicon

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So after Tim threw up Night Caller, we got on the phone and started talking about the “archives”. Soon after, the dig began.

The thing is Night Caller isn’t all that old. Like what, maybe a year and half? I dunno. Somewhere, the debauchery of Night Caller is still fresh in my mind. The “10 years” of absolute nonsense before that is all but a forgotten prehistory. Going back another 5 beyond that, to the unlistenable 4-track years, it is like trying to decipher cave writing. If we are the late night of the web now, 15 years ago our only fan was truly our mother. Wonder why. Luckily though, all wasn’t for nought. We actually managed to make some gems during that time.

Over the next couple weeks, months, maybe years, I’m going to be posting up some of those choice gems. Tim probably will too. This will hopefully placate our readership, encourage them to come back, attract a couple new folks and maybe even writers for the forum – that is until we get around to posting the things that we are actually doing now. You can expect one of these later this week or early next. So be sure to be constantly (and I mean constantly) refreshing your browser.

For now though, I give you the first installment from the vaults:The Lesternomicon. The Lesternomicon was originally an offshoot of Chook. While not directly related to what Chook would become, or even show up on the Chook site, in a lot of ways it gets at what the spirit of Chook was. Chook, even in its early days when Dragon and I were cooking up Chung Hort stories, was originally intended to be a mythos and a universe of characters. While arguably this was never fully realized and at best half-baked, it was always working in the background. For most of us involved with the sprawling and disjointed project, the word mythos pointed dead ahead to Lovecraft. That was the genesis of The Lesternomicon. It would become part Shub, part Chook, part Lester, part Larry, massively unintelligible and also unfinished. Originally, it was to be a book unto itself, a sort of religious text, much like Lovecraft’s Necronomicon. While I don’t foresee it being finished any time soon, perhaps it one day will be. Till then, enjoy what there is of it.

Props to Chris who probably wrote more of it than I did. I’m not sure who did the PDF though. It might have been Tim (nice spider).

Click here to Download The Lesternomicon in PDF format.

Night Caller

songs

Here’s another tasty tune for your enjoyment. Night Caller started out as just one song. During the writing of the lyrics, the idea of a sequel came up and for some reason we thought it sounded like a good idea. For reasons lost in the mists of time, that good idea some how became a great idea, and it was decided that we would write 6, no 10, NO 12 SONGS! in the same story arc.

Night Caller was still the first one and most likely the best. I think in the final count, we recorded 3 songs and had ‘rough’ recordings for 3 more. They might eventually make their appearance.

Continue reading →

Doctor Who

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The premier of the second season of the new Doctor Who ran on Sci Fi Channel last night and it was really good. Though I know a lot of people liked Christopher Eccleston’s more hard-boiled take on the good Doctor, I thought David Tennant’s Doctor was more in the spirt of the show’s more eccentric qualities. While the series willingness to inject a little more action into the stories does change it from the feel of the old considerably, it also finally brings the series into the 21st century. Here is looking to more episodes!

Spontaneous Combustion on Google Video

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DJWebb alerted me to the rather baffling fact that over 1,800 people have viewed Spontaneous Combustion on Google Video. Sure maybe all 1,800 people stopped after minute one, but really who is counting? When you type in the words “spontaneous combustion” into the Google Video search engine, the movie is ranked number 1, above South Park‘s take on the phenomenon. It even gets a respectable 3 out of 5 stars. That converts to something like 6 stars on IMDB, or maybe one of those ubiquitous 7.1’s on Pitchforkmedia.

d20 Adventure – Playdough Fun Factory of the Godz

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Alternate Title: Evil Elf Chicks Must Die

This was the adventure designed for the sole purpose of testing out the Injury and Consequences mechanics mentioned earlier. The level of the PCs was 6th and I had them gradually facing protagonists closer and closer to the standard D&D challenge ratings.

The since some of the mechanical elements I eventually try out might clash with any of the pre-planned settings (ie. Forgotten Realms or Ravenloft) I instead cooked up a home-brew setting with characteristics generally similar to the standard ones. There’s not much to it but a few background details thrown together and some antagonists. Since I’d been reading Vance’s Dying Earth recently you may notice some minor thematic aspects of that setting worked in as well. Other elements will be invented later as they become relevant to the story.

My prep-notes for the session follow. As such they contain spoilers, players be warned.

Continue reading d20 Adventure – Playdough Fun Factory of the Godz →

d20 Alternate Mechanics – Combat Sheet

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In trying to playtest the d20 combat systems discussed recently I’ve gotten to the point where the alternate rules are sufficiently different from the original rules that it’s difficult to keep track of things on a normal character sheet.

So here’s a sheet to keep track of the new character stats:

d20 Alternate Rules – Character Sheet – Combat Section

This sheet is just for combat-relevant stuff. I figure at some point I’ll come up with one for spells and another one for abilities, skills, and other noncombat stuff. But for now the standard sheets can handle those things pretty well.

Paradigms in Conflict

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On why a big rip is gradually forming on my side of the bed:

Dragon: I know, maybe the mattresses they installed in this building were manufactured with the assumption that every year a different person will sleep on them and the wear and tear will even out over the whole surface. But since I’ve slept on it in the same direction four years in a row without an egg-crate* it’s getting too much stress in these particular spots.

She Dragon: Or maybe it’s because every year it collects the hopes and dreams of the varied dreamers who sleep upon it. But your dreams are so vapid and shallow that you’re robbing it of it’s essential mana and it’s become weak.

*– Egg-crate: A piece of corrugated foam rubber used to suppliment the cushioning of firmer sleeping surfaces.

Interview with Sean McKnight, Director of “Disturbing Images: The Story of Helmut K.”

writings,

Disturbing Images: The Story of Helmut K. (2006), directed by Sean McKnight, paints the portrait of the artist who is questionably consumed by fires his art ignites. Previously a schlock filmmaker, Helmut K. turns to the world of photography in search of his muse. When some of Helmut K.’s photos of scantily clad young men and religious imagery come under attack from a right wing religious group led by Byron Lloyd, rather than shy away, Helmut meets the challenge by adorning his best ring-leading hat. “Be, like the monkey,” chants Helmut K. throughout the circus that boils around him. And it is such a hypnotic circus that Helmut’s art takes back seat to his outrageous performance.

Helmut K.

Norm Macera as Helmut K.

Disturbing Images: The Story of Helmut K. balances artiness with comedy and philosophy for one entertaining ride. In the following interview, the film’s director, Sean McKnight, gives some of his insights into the film and the making of it.

For more information on Disturbing Images: The Story of Helmut K. visit the Cinema Alliance website.

Interview follows.

In the opening shot of Disturbing Images: The Story of Helmut K. the viewer can see a microphone and the back of the head belonging to someone who is presumably a crew member, if not a person meant to represent the filmmaker him/herself. Throughout the film, similar acknowledgments of the artifice of the fiction of the film occur. Was this something that was in the screenplay, or something that you chose to do as director?

McKnight: The film crew is mentioned briefly in the script but I wanted to
emphasize and expand that concept a bit more as a way of telling the story. I think one thing that’s important from a director’s standpoint is to place a lot of emphasis on how you tell the story. While reading the script for DI, a documentary approach to it just made sense.

Continue reading Interview with Sean McKnight, Director of “Disturbing Images: The Story of Helmut K.” →