This movie is looking better and better! Here is the extended clip for Prometheus. Ridley Scott is by far my favorite director...Legends, Blade Runner, Gladiator, My Little Pony...

So before the great pyramids the British were building elaborate burial chambers. In this really cool photograph you can see the nature of the room as it was originally built. This the famous burial mound on Orkney, off the coast of Scottland.

Read More.

The modern form of 'masquerade' the folks of cosplay are well to all we gamers of the convention stripe. It began at Worldcon some 70-80 odd years ago and has gradually spread everywhere our fellow gamers and role playing enthusiasts have gathered.

Here's some culled from the web!

Great moments in movie history:

Sometimes you just have to go with it. Even if that means getting shot out of a tree with a tranquilizer dart and bouncing on a trampoline. Boulder, Co.

The worlds largest ship graveyard. Back in 1944 the United States hit the Japanese in harbor sinking some 60 ships and over 200 airplanes.

Check out the photographs:

Thanks to Sir Ironside from the message boards. Sometimes batman needs to think before he speaks.

Blast from the Past

Here ya go, this one will date you!

On Top of the World

This fellow is almost on top of the world...but it looks like someone beat him to the punch. I can only imagine if he was wearing armor and carrying a sword. I suppose he would find another path.

Taken from: http://pixdaus.com/follow-the-heights-adventure-hiking-ice-man-mountain-summit/items/view/133784/

Classic Monsters The Manual, print version, is rolling out of the Dens. We've begun shipping the kickstarter and pre-order copies of the book. You should have your soon and for those waiting on the sidelines, order today for immediate shipment.

Trollzah!

Impressions

Impressions Advertising and Marketing has a new website. Check it out! Impressions has been consolidating TLG's books for 47 years now! Since the early d20 era! He also does Free RPG Day or some such thing!

Trollzah

Who Knew?

Who ever would have guessed that water could be good for you in more ways the one? This study, costing millions upon millions of dollars (pounds in this case) no doubt, found that people who are in their first year of school/college and have a drink with them during exams. . . preferably water . . . might do better. Apparently such drinks have no affect on students later in their school careers.

Job clarification experiment for the day link.

Who knew?

Big to small - reaaly cool graphic interace - a must see

Okay, this is pretty cool, gives us a good idea of how much space we have to stretch our legs in to!

So for those interested in visualizing the big and small follow this link!

Classic Monsters is in the HOUSE

We received "Classic Monsters" later Friday night. The book looks awesome. Mr Hartsfield has done a bang-up job with a Castles and Crusades rendering of a metric ton of those old classic monsters found in those tomes and volumes from the early years of The Game.

Now we need a "Classic Adventures" line of modules to bring back that hack and slash and hack and slash and death and dying of those early games.

In High School we playing up in the attic of the apartment complex we lived in and had a "Wall of Death" where everyone would proudly pin their dead characters. When we moved out, the wall of death had many hundreds of sheets pinned to it.

The surviving characters went away with the players. Good times, good times.

Davis

The hobbit goes Lego - awesome

Lego is going to make a Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series. Awesome. New minis.

Cosplay, its not just for girls

The Lama Murders

That's Potala Palace. The Smithsonian has an interesting article on the Dalai Lamas and some rather nefarious activities that occurred in the 19th century.

during the first half of the 19th century, the palace was the scene of a grim battle for political supremacy fought among monks, Tibetan nobles and Chinese governors. Most historians of the country, and many Tibetans, believe that the most prominent victims of this struggle were four successive Dalai Lamas, the ninth through the twelfth, all of whom died in unusual circumstances, and not one of whom lived past the age of 21.

Linky

Wind Blows!

This is just a cool site, check out all the winds and to which and where they are blowing!

Speaking of Disney - Brave

fun looking movie. if only the characters in the game could be, well, less worried about loot.

brave

Real Life Disney princesses

So I was looking for some Rapunzel pics for my daughter to go a drawing and crayoning on and all that and I came across this. These are pics by famed photographer Ryan Astamendi (famed for what, I don't know). So anyway he got up some real look-a-likes and photographed some well done almost real to life images of the famous Disney Princesses. Of course, it would take a metric ton of plastic surgery to make them look exactly like the princesses, but all said and done, this was a good effort.

 

More here.

No we need some real life looking photographs of papa smurf!

Tornado on mars

pretty awesome

Last month, we were excited to share an image of a twister on Mars that lofted a twisting column of dust more than 800 meters (about a half a mile) high. We now know that’s nothin’ — just peanuts, chump change, hardly worth noticing. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has now spotted a gigantic Martian dust devil roughly 20 kilometers (12 miles) high, churning through the Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars

From here. There are videos and stuff online as well.

The Birds

Hitchcock had it backwards with his movie The Birds. The birds weren't going mad for some strange reason, but rather it was an attempted coup to return the world its rightful owners! THE BIRDS!...or in this case the dinosaurs. Seems that they've uncovered a very large feathered dino in China...well bone collectors found em anyway. They've long postulated...the archeologists, not the bone collectors...that dinosaurs are related to birds. Here's another piece in the puzzel it would seem.

Check out the full monty.

Technology breakthrough: Detect Magic

Often confused as to the nature of items found, adventurers approach clerics and wizards alike in search of knowledge of many items looted and stripped from the dead and dying, objects stolen from the tombs of the dead and other rapacious and ill thought of methods of acquisition, the worshippers Makicoradario have declared there services open to one and all.

 

For a small fee, theses clerics allow people to pileup objects before them and they will forthwith cast spells upon them and detect magics amongst the pile. Come one come all. There are dozens of clerics just waiting to serve you. Some are even willing to travel with adventurers and continually cast there magics in an effort to detect these magical items.

 

They guarantee 100% detection of magic within a ten foot wide by fifty foot long cone in front of them, though not its nature. For an extra fee they even reveal whether the magic is strong or weak.

 

 

A Super Violent Universe

Worse than any fireball spell! The universe IRS super destructive and no act of congress seems likely to stem the tide of violent implosions, explosions and incenerative moments. Oh our little old universe, such a rapscallions.

 

There is a three hour long documentary available here aptly entitled, The Violent Universe.

 

 

 

 

Skulls - Awesome

There  is a skull thing over at the California Academy of Sciences. Go visit, its waaaay cooler than anything else you are doing right now.

Jack and the Bean Stalk - or Giant Killer

A movie called Jack the Giant Killer is coming out this year. It looks pretty good. One can watch the preview here. The interesting thing about the movie, to me and at the moment, is that it takes a classic fairly tale and turns it into a more adventurous exploit and explodes it onto screen for a modern and more adult audience.

 

Throughout my long game running career, I have done much the same, though not in quite so literal a manner. For example, for the Death on the Treklant series oif adventures. I took a simple and calssic plot hook, rescue the beautiful princess, and churned a massive plot around that simple quest.

 

I hold to my belief that many fairly tales and such contain the germs of some very fundemental human explorations of self and one's place in society (as well as offering lessons on how to behave in society). To take these fairly tales and myths and re-expolore them in a game context can, I ardently believe, add depth of meaning to one's game.

 

Give it a whirl. Pick a classic and turn it into a new and more magical adventure. One not about the loot, but about the theme.

 

My two cents and worthless advice.

 

Davis

Evolution of the Sword

So I was looking at swords again and found this cool drawing by Z. Edward Lohse. See his page here.

 

Its sorta cool as an overall timeline and comparative look at the sword. I'd like to see something

Like this done in greater detail. Maybe Peter has some time?

 

Totally cool Total Recall returns to the theater

The first Total Recall featured the ex governor of California. It was OK but I doubt I could sit through it again.

 

Keep this image in your mind.

The newer Total Recall seems a little more polished.

 

Earliest depictions of Dragons

Interesting snippet from a book. The author contends the earliest depictions of dragons are these

 

Its Tiamat and a griffon respectively. I have no reason to doubt the claim as the these being the earliest depictions. Interestingly, both are from

 

Both deoictions are form ancient Babylon. The discussion can be found, at least in part, here. I find, you decide.

Saber tooth lemming

Haha awesome

 

Linky

 

HD 1hp

Damage. 6d6

Cool Castle

Cochem Reichsburg or something or other. It's early and I am having a difficult time actually focusing. anyway, I was looking for some inspirational images and found this castle image.

The castle was destroyed or damaged in the 17th century I think, and then reconstructed in the 19th century.

These windows would not have been an element of the original castle.

It's a cool looking place. It also served to remind me that the castle was used to house locals in times of conflict. Or, at least some locals, or at least that was the idea. I keep forgetting this aspect of a castle when laying them out. Well, there it is, reminded.