Valhalla, I am Coming

Treated myself to a few days at GenCon this summer.  The first picture is the first ten dollars I spent--used, on the goodbye shelf at the Auction--and the second a mix of all kinds of things I bought and liked, from zines to small press games. 

Live from the Heart of the Nerd-Quake

I'm slowly becoming one of those guys that reads more news about, and talks more about, comics and gaming than I actually read comics or play games, so my GenCon experience each year is becoming more about connecting with old friends. There is a lot of crossover between nerd-spheres so I should never be surprised when I see movie people at GenCon, like Matthew Meyers from Hoosierdance, FX guru Rob Merickel, and my Chicago people Jay Neander and Jon Solita.

But I make new friends, too.

I can't help but think about the food trucks when I'm there, and there was a time I would rather game than eat.

But sometimes I see something I can't resist, as displayed below.

Now to find time to play these beasts, and read that Doctor Who book I bought (not pictured).

How Years Ago, In Days Of Old, When Magic Filled The Air

Since I sadly had to miss the Blue Whiskey Film Festival this year for the first time ever, I decided I would do a little road trip for myself to take its place, and ended up at GenCon for the first time in about ten years. 

The best new thing was all of the food trucks along Georgia Street.  Ate there all the time.

The best old thing was the paint and take miniatures.  I don't play miniatures much any more, but still painted one.

The first five dollars I spent (not the last).

My friend Jon Solita got me hooked on the auction, where crazy stuff like this was.

Lots of celebrity sightings.  Crazed musician Andy D, who played at GenCon; The Angry DM, who I tried to thank for including me in a pickup game of "Kobolds Ate My Baby" with a bro hug, and almost got punched in the face; my pal Andy Britt, who was some video game character I don't know but other people dug; my old microcinema pals Jon Solita and Jay Neander; Blue Whiskey's Mike Noens, who was screening his film "Brightside" in the GenCon Film Fest; b-movie dude Rob Merickel; and Wil Wheaton, just chillin TFO and playing D&D with everybody else.  Plus my brother Eric, who took some of these pics.

Eric-Con 2013

My brother Eric and I always try to do a day of gaming for his birthday (also my dog's birthday but she isn't as good with throwing a d20); I lost three out of four.

Turn Left at Icewind Dale

My son and my brother in our traditional holiday gaming day.  Legend of Drizzt board game and Lord of the Rings soundtrack on Pandora.  Another day in nerd's paradise.

You Thought The Leaden Winter Would Bring You Down Forever

Commemorating our first win (in four tries) playing the D&D board game "Castle Ravenloft."  Recommended.

From Rome With Love

The annual Thanksgiving edition of Axis and Allies played with my son and brother.  This is the new Axis and Allies: Europe 1940 Deluxe edition and comes recommended.  I rather whimsically decided to play Italy and found myself dominating the Mediterranean and then helping my German allies repel the invasion of France.  After four hours we declared a stalemate.

Be Careful Not To Touch The Wall, There's A Brand New Coat of Paint

The hipster pinnacle for a midnight movie-loving kid like myself growing up was Fangoria Magazine, and I'll never forget when I first saw my name in its pages. And it never gets old.  You can check out the trailer here.

Careful readers see that I got some "Memoir 44" in over Memorial Day and actually won against my brother, a rare victory but tainted somewhat by the fact that I knocked the Allies off the beach on D-Day.  Somewhere, a parallel universe is in peril.  But I also got in "A Touch of Evil," also a very good but very different horror-themed board game.  Old fans of this blog, check it out.

Oh, and check this out too.

And check out this guy, who, like me, apparently enjoys a Gold Medal paperback from time to time (and I am trawling away on ebay trying to replenish my stock, an old fave company that you used to be able to throw away by the handful and now has disappeared off of used book shelves in favor of big thick Tom Clancys and John Grishams).  (Best not follow that link at the office).

Feeling linky today; more later at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

More Memorial Day

My brother and I playing the entirely excellent and fun World War II board game "Memoir 44" on, appropriately enough, Memorial Day.

Storming the Beach

Game's eye view of a D-Day scenario, which I would normally be glad to win but as I was playing the Nazis on Memorial Day I hoped a parallel universe didn't fall somewhere.

I Used to Roll the Dice, Feel the Fear in My Enemy's Eyes

It's been a long journey since my sword-fellows came down, bloodied and victorious, from White Plume Mountain, back in the heady go-go D&D days of the late 70s. The Keep on the Borderlands was but a humble ale stand in those bygone days. Many of that lost Fellowship of the Flayed Goblin--among them my brother Eric and Hal, and some newer war brothers (10-15 years of campaigning), Barticus and my son Daniel, always a loyal Ranger. Only the Mighty Caveman was truly missed from this noble ensemble as we tackled D&D 4th Edition for the first time and its kickoff module, H1: The Keep on the Shadowfell.

For D&D purists, I have alarming news: the Mighty Empire has finally come under the sway of the online gaming world. Though I shed a tear, let's be honest: it probably had to happen.

For online gamers, I have even more alarming news: you were actually playing D&D all of these years anyway. You laughed at the nerds at the lunch table in high school, but they were all smarter than you and went out and wrote computer games based on their favorite pasttime, D&D, and then you started playing them--EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and more. Truly, it must be like finding out that the hot chick you were dating was actually a dude living in his mother's basement in disguise.

So D&D 4E is a super-pimped-up version of our former beloved game, where you can easily take on powers and skills that you used to only dream of attaining in some faraway level. Even our self-proclaimed "chaos gamer" Barticus, who never met a dark elf assassin with quadruple backstab skills using an enchanted double-damage dagger that he didn't like, expressed surprise at the torqued-up characters. You also take "healing surges" an online gaming conceit that make you less killable than ever before.

But guess what, the bad guys are juiced also. We merrily waded into a kobold ambush expecting to bat them aside like a swarm of scaly flies only to find my own dwarf fighter Bridgit Brokefoot (of the glass armor) going down three times in a row and needing the noble healing power of my Dragonborn paladin Leonid (who speaks in a Russian accent, continuing the annoying trend I began with the Jamacian accent of my old-school fighter/magic user/thief Pollux).

I could write more about a lot of the nuances (and probably have written too much already), like missing races and alignments and classes that we used to favor, replaced by things we don't understand and can't pronounce, but your mileage can and will vary.

Suffice to say we played twice over Thanksgiving and the new Fellowship of the Flayed Goblin--Bridgit and Leonid, Frax and Don, and two people whose names I can't pronounce so I called them Jan and Lawndart (two Rangers, two Fighters, a Paladin and a Warlock; I know, not a super-balanced party) liked it well enough and will soldier on and try to solve the secrets of the Shadowfell, over Christmas break. More adventures later.

Until then, give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Close the Window, Calm the Light

When I wasn't paying attention 24 Hour Comics Day got moved to the fall, and through poking around on the interwebs home on a half-day from work when I should be doing something contructive I learned that it starts Saturday. I have survived this Nerd Extreme Sports challenge twice, once on my 35th birthday and once at Readers Copies Comics in Anderson, Indiana, with my brother, my pal Tom, and some other more talented people. I am going to see if I can get it rockin' this weekend, but if I don't, you can see THE LIBERATOR, my poorly-rendered take on the public-domain Nedor heroes starting here, and my first sketchy 24 Hour Comic, BAD EGGS, starting here.

In other geekly news, several of the old gang are trying to get together and try out this newfangled D&D 4E in the next few weeks. Though my brother wants to reboot a few of his old characters I think I shall retire the dwarven bard Farrah Brokefoot and start a new character; I'm contemplating a sardonic human rogue called Broken-Necked Jack, which came to me in a dream. Naturally, updates will be provided here.

Though I've only a third through it, I highly recommend HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON by Naomi Novik to my blog pals. Until later, catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

I Dreamed That Jimmy Page Would Come From Santa Monica And Teach Me To Play

I owe three peeps some coverage of their scripts. I am getting bad about that. I need to do some reading. One is horror, one I think is romance, the other I am a little afraid to read.

Me and my Little Brother Harold would snooping around for HeroClix commons at a local gaming store and came across the new D&D, which I think is version 4. Maybe I'm old school (okay--I was hanging around at the Keep on the Borderlands when it was just a lemonade stand) but my droogs had long debates about whether to go from Classic D&D to AD&D back in the day, and then in fairly rapid succession we have 3 and 4 (remember, there were many, many experience levels gained between when 1 and 2 came out) and I hardly have gotten to play 3 and now I have to throw it away and buy 4. Perhaps my last adventure has been written in that tome of legendary deeds.

Thinking about scoping out this.

If you have Netflix (and by the way, the queue only holds 500, as I found out) you can now check out SEX MACHINE with the "Instant Play" option right off the site, which is pretty cool. Thanks to Peter Bruno for the heads up.

AMONG US has been available on "Instant Play" for a while.

PETER ROTTENTAIL and RAZORTEETH you still have to get off of Netflix the old fashioned way.

If you don’t have Netflix, you can still find them at discriminating video rental outlets, late-night cable, Amazon, ebay, dollar bins, etc.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

When the Blues Come Callin' at the Break of Dawn

I have started working with Celtx and so far find it to be very agreeable and intuitive. I'm just beginning to putter on my summer spec script (and the summer is one-third over!) but like what I see so far. I like the open source concept and the price point (free!) is certainly right for the blossoming screenwriter. I will report back more later.

I have always liked Joss Whedon because my daughter and I used to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer together and did some father-daughter bonding over it. We used to call it Buff-K, for some reason that has been lost in the sands of time. Now Whedon is busting out all kinds of awesome with this, which is a little bit of everything I have been thinking about lately.

Here's a cool article about where and why Dungeons and Dragons sprung up when it did, instead of in Ancient Greece or whatever. It was because of my midwestern brothers from Wisconsin and Minnesota, natch!

Speaking of the greatness which is D&D, I think I have linked to this before but it bears repeating. If this were true, I would be Anton LaVey by now.

Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Shake Your Booty!

This morning I was dreaming my wife and I were looking at buying a house and went to the Open House on a dark, snowy night. It was kind of creepy and I heard the bureau rattling. Then I was half awake and hearing a real bureau rattling and thinking my cats had gotten into my underwear drawer again (my wife suspects it's because my drawer smells like a catbox, but I digress). Then I heard a SKWONK! and I thought the siding was coming off the house. I came fully awake when my wife shouted "Earthquake!" and we both ran downstairs and out the front door as the siren in town nearby went off.

At first I wasn't sure what exactly had happened, but yes, we had a damn earthquake. If a tornado comes through town and knocks down the high school or something we don't think much about it here in Indiana. But an earthquake! Dang, man!

In other seismic occurrences, my brother had a birthday this week. I won't tell you which one because I've lobbed enough grendaes at my brother when I was supposed to be his wingman. I'm really out of practice being a wingman, having been married most all of my adult life; the last time I tried to put the moves on a stone fox, Gerry Rafferty was playing on the radio. Suffice to say he is young at heart. We celebrated by going out for Thai and then playing the "War on Terror" board game with a pal.

"War on Terror" is sort of like a mix between "Risk" and "Settlers of Cataan" with the backroom dealings of "Monopoly" thrown in. I believe you could actually be sent to Guantanamo Bay for even owning this game. Basically you build an empire while deciding whether you secretly want to fund terrorism to take down the other empires that are competing with you. However, if you start seeding terrorists all over the place, they can turn on you and be used by other players as well.

Both times we played terrorism won. The first time rather abruptly when a terrorist hijacking bankrupted an empire when an attempt to foil it went wrong, allowing too much of the world to fall into anarchy (and thus the terrorists won). The second time rather slowly, as a player willingly became a terrorist after I nuked the U.S. and Europe (only a little) from my South American empire because the U.S. kept trying to destabilize me. I thought I had launched an endgame to solidify my empire but actually ended up causing worldwide chaos and had to give in to terrorism in the end. I left being glad than neither my brother or my friend are running for public office.

Waiting for aftershocks at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

What Is My Life

Off the rails crazy around here lately but I hope to return to the blogosphere before long. I owe some peeps some emails!

In the meantime, this is highly interesting and will probably become the next five Quentin Tarantino movies.

And check out these yeggs (courtesy Bill Cunningham).

You know what was pretty good? JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER. I watched it last night with my Little Brother Harold while we played Risk: 2210 A.D. I was just staging a bit of a comeback in the last turn when he played the "Apocalypse" card and cleared off most of the board, including a lot of his own dudes. This is why 12-year-old kids can't run for President.

Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com and maybe one day I will write back.

We Could Be Heroes, Just For One Day

I am trying to spend out the rest of my Christmas money collecting up a Heroclix team based on my Lost JLA fan fiction I have been brewing up. I got a Firestorm, Firehawk, Hourman and Bulleteer in one swoop, then a Zatanna; Green Arrow is hard to find, and the price points on Golden Age Flash, John Stewart Green Lantern, and especially Ambush Bug are a little rich. But I am working on it.

I had my interest renewed in Heroclix after my Little Brother Harold's birthday. He has been wanting to play for a while and said that was all he wanted on Earth, so what else could I do. I got him a starter and a couple of boosters, then after taking him out to lunch on his birthday we went to a gaming store in search of a few more. I have been going to this place ever since I wasn't much older than Harold and it was fun to stop in. We began rooting through the big commons box (where I found much of the aforementioned Lost JLA) looking for a Superman. There was not going to be any Superman Heroclix in a commons box and my heart sunk a little.

But a college-aged dude gaming at a nearby table opened up a tacklebox full of Heroclix and handed my Little Brother a very nice Superman. That pretty much typlifies what's cool about gamers, no matter what other stereotypes might apply.

We ended up buying a few more boosters and Harold, as luck would have it, also got a Bizarro Superman (the "slow and misunderstood" Superman, according to Harold) and a Superman Blue. This League of Supermen, with the help of Flash, Hawkman, and Aquaman, later took on a rather robust Suicide Squad team of my own devising and beat them fairly mercilessly. But it was still fun.

Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Stamping the X into XMas

Thank God Christmas is over. Aside from the usual trauma and catastrophes I broke an antique chair at my mother-in-law's house which will probably end up at the center of family disagreements for the next few decades or so, surpassing the Thanksgiving when my dad bit into one of my mother-in-law's brownies and broke out his front tooth.

This year, I hauled in some new clothes and Charles Frazier's new book and a few bottles of wine (including one from Coppola's vineyard), and spent an Amazon gift certificate on Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, the Robin Hobbs Liveship Traders Trilogy, and a couple more of those great, great Hard Case Crime paperbacks.

I am chunking along on Primal for a January 1 delivery date. I saw some location photos of a pretty cool cave that will play a central part in the feature, and am working that in.

I have dozed through a few movies but been wide awake during a couple of really good ones, including Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School and Little Miss Sunshine. Marilyn Hotchkiss was so good I immediately put it back in and started listening to the commentary track, because I had a couple of suspicions about why things were done, most of which proved out to be true.

My brother got the Star Trek cartoon series on DVD and I proved that there was a character with his name in it, a sore point in his early childhood, according to our mother. In real life, he was named after Eric Fleming, the trail boss in Rawhide.

I played the new Marvel board game, which is fun but needlessly complicated, though I won in a last-ditch battle, Wolverine vs. Spiral, which catapaulted me in points over my middle-school nephew who was making hay with the Hulk. Then I turned around and stunk up Risk 2210 A.D., which is very fun even when you are down to holding Siberia and one or two other places while your brother rampages over the other continents. But like a true rogue state, I kept lobbing nukes at him, a nice added bonus missing in the earlier Risk games.

I'm ready to chuck 2006 aside and solider on to 2007. In the meantime, give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

And Eat It Too

Had to reboot my PRIMAL rewrite, so I have been chugging along on that for an end-of-the-year delivery.

I went to my nephew's birthday party and had one of the best pieces of cake I ever had. It was baked by an eastern European immigrant who is trying to break into business here, so he made this as a friend of my nephew's family to get the word out. It was so good that I have dreamed about that cake since. It is in the top ten pieces of cake I have ever eaten in my life. It made me weep to see crusts of it on disinterested kids' paper plates. All I can do is wish this man with his American Dream well.

I bought my nephew a classic version of Stratego. And all he did was immediately shove everything else aside and have me teach it to him. For my other nephew's birthday, I bought him Risk, and the same thing happened. Take that, Xbox. I still carry the torch for comic books, board games, and snap-tight models as the "bad uncle" I never had myself.

They served Colts Touchdown Sundae ice cream, and I observed that it started off tasting good, but the longer you ate it, the more bitter it became.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Gen Con #2

My brother and I enjoying gamer humor at "Bride of the Skinflayer," opening night of Gen Con. Photo provided by The Caveman.