Friday Snark

High Elves: More than any other kind of Elf, the High Elves allow little to interfere with their lives of pleasure. They are the core of their race, living in the cities of the Elven Kingdoms and scorning travel. To these people, working for a living is regarded as a sign of personal failure. Few High Elves ever leave the Elven Kingdoms, though a few younger, more adventurous individuals might do so as a form of vacation, or for the 'experience.' These travelers cannot help but irritate the other races they encounter by their patronizing and overbearing attitude. Lynchings of such individuals are not uncommon.

One might think I'm quoting a passage from Blood Bowl, a game that both satirizes and parodies American football (and fantasy game species) with a snarky...if good spirited...attitude. But I'm not. Instead I'm quoting the "grimdark" RPG known as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, specifically the section of the game's bestiary dealing with elves. 

What I find especially amusing about this passage is setting it down next to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons PHB which states in no uncertain terms that

Elven player characters are always considered to be high elves, the most common sort of elf.

[emphasis added by yours truly]

Typical.

WFRP is a good game, and one that I never got to play enough of "back in the day." But that's (mainly) because I had D&D, as well as DragonQuest and Stormbringer (both of which filled particular needs not met by D&D). And for all its neat ideas, it's not much different from D&D in terms of system. But it's a great read and full of punchy attitude.

ANYway...just a little break from the Blood Bowl talk. Started a post about penalties, but I'll save that for tomorrow or something.

Happy Friday.

: )

My DragonFlight Adventures

I know I said I'd post about my DragonFlight sessions, but it's been a busy couple weeks (kids starting school, managing three different soccer teams, last minute road trips, etc.). So before the memory fades too much, I'll jot down some things that stand out, minus any ennui. For the first time ever, I went to the convention with no expectation of running a game, and I played zero indie/story games, instead focusing squarely on Dungeons & Dragons:


Session #1: Captain Zhudo & The Last Crown of Atlantis (B/X)

DM: Scott

My Character: a chaotic fighter with 18 strength and a big axe.

Quick Take: One thing that I noticed right from the sign ups was that there were a lot of common players scheduled for all four games I would be attending. It wouldn't be until my final session that I'd find out that many of these players attend a regular old school game up at Around the Table Games. So a lot of these guys were buddies since long before DragonCon.

I know I wrote that I was going to take a less blood-thirsty approach to the con games, but the beefy axe-guy (a pre-gen) was too hard to pass up.

Much hilarity and blood-letting ensued as we looted our way into the ruined Atlantean settlement...mostly our own blood owing to some invisible stalker mischief. In the end, we went through a teleporter that beamed us to the lair of "the big bad" and while I was discussing strategy with our party cleric, a pair of fireballs from our wizards/elves wiped out all the monsters in a single round. Yay, initiative FTW. It seemed very easy...no party deaths occurred.

After the con, I would discover that the adventure was, in fact, an existing OSR adventure written by our DM (though I believe it may have been written specifically for Labyrinth Lord).

Funny Anecdote: Early on in the session I got the "uh-oh-serial-killer" eyeball from my fellow players for "going too dark" (I believe it was the dismembering of one recalcitrant captive in order to compel the other to act as our guide to the lost city) but, well, these were bushwhacking goat men we were dealing with and things needed expediting.


Session #2: The Masks of Lankhmar (B/X)

DM: Travis

My Character: a female "acrobat" (thief)

Quick Take: Another adventure that I learned (after the con) was pre-published, this one for DCC, converted to B/X. Because it took place in Leiber's Lankhmar, the pre-gens were setting appropriate (no clerics, more than half the party consisted of thieves, magic-users had pretty light magic). The DM used a twist on AD&D2 thief rules when setting thief skill percentages (so my character was really good at climbing, while another was our trap expert, etc.). He also included a "heroic luck" mechanic that I found to be less-than-stellar in practice, but was still kind of neat in that it encouraged us to try more risky maneuvers.

For the life of me, I can't remember how the session ended...oh, wait, now I do (floating masks in an abandoned temple). I liked this adventure quite a bit, as it had a real "sword & sorcery" feel...reminded me of the stuff I used to run with first edition Stormbringer, but more supernatural and less alien/extra-dimensional. Having a party consisting mostly of thieves (with a sprinkle of lightly armored sell-swords) helped immensely. That being said, I found the adventure again to be way too easy (no one died despite the absence of healing magic; damage was d3s and d4s), and there was a lot of "roll under ability score" mechanics that made accomplishing tasks waaaay too simple (when you have a character with a 17 dexterity and know something's a DEX check). I'll stand by my earlier assertions that these need to be cut out of the game.

Funny Anecdote: Jokingly asked if I was going to play my character "suicidal" again (based on my actions in the earlier session of prompting folks to follow me through an unknown teleportation device), by the end of the session I had been nominated by at least one player as the "MVP" for braving a fire trap to recover the loot we were after. I later had to escape through said-wall of fire with a bag over my head. Again, my character survived the entire session (as a 1st level thief!). Chalk it up to the double gin-and-tonics.


Session #3: Beneath the Ruined Tower of Zenopus (Holmes Basic)

[if you check out the photos in the link, I was to the left of the guy with the green thermos. You can't see it, but my beer glass was emptied rather early on]

DM: Andy

My Character: a first level magic-user

Quick Take: This was my first time playing the Holmes edition of basic, something I really wanted to do (and a nice way to fend off any leftover ennui from the night before). This was an expansion of the adventure found in the Holmes rulebook, but it wasn't anything I was familiar with. Andy played mostly BTB (except for trading out some of the wonky combat stuff...my character did not strike twice/round with a dagger, for example). The DEX-based combat went very well, and added an extra level of tension as each monsters' DEX was diced for at the start of an encounter (when the 16 DEX orcs showed up, we knew we were in trouble!).

Since this was a con game, the acquisition of treasure was actually a secondary consideration for us despite, ostensibly, that being our characters' goals (in the earlier sessions we had some specific objectives of play). The "for reals" goal was exploration and survival...could we navigate the labyrinth beneath the town, pick up some bling, and make it back alive? And in this, I think I chose a very challenging character.

We created our characters at the table (3d6 rolls in order), and it just so happened that I rolled up the stats to play a magic-user. Poor rolling for "spells known" precluded me from taking the usual spells of sleep, charm person, or magic-missile (or even read magic!), but I was satisfied with protection from evil, which I used to ward myself against possible undead in the first crypt we had the chance to desecrate.

While I would not go so far as to say Zenopus was exceptionally easy, it's a fact that only one PC died during the session (see below). However, I'd say that death for our fragile characters was mostly mitigated by good game play (we were very much on our toes during the game), and partly through sheer strength of numbers: it's harder to kill PCs when you have a large party (we had eight plus two NPCs) and can rotate bodies in and out of the marching order. We actually found a respectable amount of treasure; definitely enough to encourage further exploration.

Funny Anecdote: The one character death that occurred was my PC, at the very end of the game. The crypt room (where I used my one and only spell) occurred near the very beginning of the adventure, so for most of the four-hour session my character had neither spell, nor armor. What's more, I was injured early on in the game as well (hit by an arrow? maybe) and spent nearly the entire time adventuring with 1 hit point.

Did that mean I was huddled up in the middle of the party doing nothing? Of course not! When we were ambushed by orcs, I spoke to them in their same language and tried to bluff them into letting us pass. When there were trap doors in ceilings, I was the first up the ladder. When we found some sort of venomous gorilla straining at the bars of its cage, I'm the one who splashed oil on the damned thing and set it on fire.

My character survived the entire scope of the adventure. I was killed by another player at the table, in a fit of PVP violence, as we were leaving the flaming tower, loot in hand. He attacked my AC 9 character from behind, apparently piqued by my setting the place alight as we were making our escape (I assumed we should leave no evidence of having despoiled the place). It was more of an epilogue to the session than an actual part of the adventure.


Session #4: The Castle That Fell From The Sky (B/X)

DM: Scott (again)

My Character: a cleric of Odin

Quick Take: Yes, I ended up playing four different character types over the weekend, none of whom were demihumans. This was yet another pre-published adventure that I'm not familiar with...it had kind of Krull-crossed-with-White Plume Mountain vibe to it. It was also exceptionally loooong...we did not reach the game's objective goal (getting through only about one-third the thing). Of all the adventures I played, it had (probably) the most challenging encounters...we even saw an actual PC death!...but it probably evoked the most listless performance from myself of any of the sessions. Maybe it was fatigue (on my part), but I just couldn't get up for it like I had with earlier games.

One thing The Castle That Fell lacked was any connection to an implied setting. Here's this thing: go explore it. Oh, you're trapped, find your way out. So what? Boring. Even though the earlier adventures were still "con games" (i.e. one-offs and not a part of any on-going campaign) there were cities/towns involved...a sense of place. When our caravan was ambushed by goat men on the road to whatever-whatever, there was still this place (whatever-whatever) that we had been attempting to get to...we almost continued on anyway (after dispatching/dismembering goat men) to stock up on supplies and whatnot before we realized (meta- like) that O Wait, this is a con game, and we're just supposed to follow the goat men's back trail into the jungle. Lankhmar is a place...with themes and concepts and history and its own weird culture. Portown is likewise a place...it was our following of rumors that led us to the secret entrance of the place in some woman's root cellar; when we were making our escape, it was with the knowledge that we would be fencing our loot somewhere in the town...some place we probably lived and resided.

Just working with set-piece challenges (giant hypnotic albino snakes, huge lurking spiders in mirror-crystal caverns) isn't enough to get my blood churning. It isn't enough to evoke a sense of wonder...at least not when it occurs in a vacuum. It's not that I've "outgrown" dungeons or that I need my dungeons to "make sense." It's just that there has to be some sort of larger consequence or reward for my actions; that my actions need to matter (even in the most paltry fictional way) to the setting. That I'm not just playing a board game or some app I've downloaded on my phone. There are already apps for that.

Funny Anecdote: I've got two for this session. First one goes like this: we thought we had too many people at the table (I'd actually been on a waiting list) so when the last two folks arrived, the DM thought we were waiting for two others and (gently) turned them away. Upon discovering that those guys were the ones we were waiting for (the couple we thought we were waiting for hadn't signed up for the session), one player commented that "they sure were quick to leave" (rather than staying and explaining they were signed up for the game). And the DM said, "Yeah, and the funny thing is, one of those guys was that dude who writes the B/X Blackrazor blog!" Of course, I then had to explain no that's me...the same guy they'd been gaming with for two days.

The other funny thing: the same guy who backstabbed my character in session #3? At one point his character was in danger of dying (the reason is a too-long story about hypnotic toads, armored dwarves, and boggy swamps), and the only PC in any position to save him was my own. And I did, solo and unprompted (possibly to the surprise of some people at the table...). Sometimes, you just have to break that karmic wheel.
; )

Legend of the Lich Lord

So I was up till 3:30 this morning (um...that would be Thursday morning, actually, though I'm probably posting this Friday or Saturday) watching the entire series of Legend of the Lich Lord, the latest YouTube series from Spencer Estabrooks and the One Hit Die folks.

[EDIT: yeah, this is getting posted even later. Sorry about that!]

Some ambitious D&D-style
(web) TV from Canada.

As usual, I'm a little late to the party, seeing as how this was released back in October...though I did mention its imminent release back in September. Even so, I want to talk about it a bit.

There's a lot that I don't like in this series. I want to start with that. I know, I know...I'm O So Mean. Keep in mind that I did spend my time (and precious hours of my time) watching the thing. There's enough substance there that (for me) makes it worth watching. There are some genuinely funny bits. There's some fair acting. It's D&D...really, it is. And it's independent filmmaking which, of course, I want to support and promote. Art, etc., etc.

Plus, it's compelling. I mean, each episode made me want to watch the next episode, which should be a goal of every good series (TV or internet). Case in point: TV crack like Game of Thrones.

For me, OHD is compelling...but not, perhaps, in the way the filmmakers are hoping. It piques my curiosity...I genuinely want to see where the show is going. I'm interested in the destination of the plot. However, the journey to that destination isn't always fun...or, at least, not as fun as it could be.

That's the thing I'm trying to figure out...right now, as I type this. There is some disappointment for me with the second series of OHD, and not just because the show displays some amateurish filmmaking (I realize this is a low-budget internet production, so of course I cut it some slack...it's the film equivalent of your neighborhood theater group). I'm not sure, but I'd guess my dislike stems from  either my sensibilities as a gamer and/or as a film watcher...OR it comes from some disappointed expectations. Right or wrong, I feel like the latest OHD series is a missed opportunity.

Okay, now I'm going to write out some specific critiques, but they will probably contain SPOILERS so if you want to watch the show first (and draw your own opinions), you probably don't want to read the following notes just yet.

By The Way: I DO think folks should watch and support the show, and I would very much like to see a third season. I think there's potential there that hasn't been mined...I truly feel like the show has yet to "hit its stride."

NOW...my gripes (in no particular order):

I think OHD suffers from wanting to adhere too much to its "mockumentary" style. There's a fairly obvious influence from shows like The Office and Parks & Rec. I think it's important to understand why those shows are successful with this style of filmmaking: 1) the writing is spectacular (and I will address OHD's writing in a moment), 2) much of the humor comes from the ho-hum setting. The idea of spending time and resources to make a seriously thorough documentary about the scrub office workers of a smalltime paper company (The Office) or a small government department of a small town (Parks & Rec) is ridiculously absurd...and yet through the lens of the filmmaker we see how their small-time, non-Earth-shaking concerns can still hold drama in the lives of the characters, with big emotional stakes, even (or despite) the silliness of their mundane, daily lives. Petty politics, office romances, infighting and bullying...these are things that a lot of people can relate to from their daily lives, and even we can acknowledge the ridiculousness of it when viewed from a large enough frame of reference. And yet, there's humanity to it as well, which makes all the ridiculous characters lovable in their own silly ways.

[another show in the same style, VEEP, takes a slightly different tact by taking the sacred cow of the American White House, and boiling it down to its most mundane bits and pieces, showing it as just another workplace full of shmucks, rather than some group of lofty power brokers...but it's still the ridiculousness inherent in the daily grind that is on display]

OHD, though, isn't about the "real world." It's not about LARPers dressed in RenFair costumes, even if the first season often sounded like it was (talking about the Out-Of-Character needs to gain experience points and level up, etc.). Instead, it's a show about fantasy characters in a fantasy world going on fantasy adventures. There's certainly things in OHD that gamers will identify with (not exactly broad appeal that), but there's little "real world" humor and humanity. To me, the little asides (the 4th wall-breaking talking heads) feel jarring given the hyper-reality of the show's setting. Consider another television show, 30 Rock, which people often associate with the (aforementioned) mockumentary shows. 30 Rock is NOT a "mockumentary;" it is hand-held, slice-of-life filmmaking of a deliberately absurd hyper-reality. There are no side interviews, no panning to the (fake) documentarian. The musical score/soundtrack is played throughout the show (not just briefly between scenes) to accentuate the fact that this is a fictional piece, created for slapstick humor about some extremely over-the-top nut jobs.  Maybe that style would be more suitable to what OHD is trying to do, especially considering some of the slapstick touches OHD regularly adds to its scenes.

Personally, though, I think the subject matter is far more suitable for a different style of show altogether: something akin to the live-action fantasies of Sid & Marty Krofft...just written for adults rather than children. It has all the elements needed for that kind of crazy...things like The Bugaloos, or Dr. Shrinker, or Land of the Lost...right down to the guys in the rubber-faced, monster outfits (and a very sexy necromancer...necromantress?...as an updated "Witchie-Poo"). If OHD was to take its cues from the Krofft brothers...well, I think we'd see a style of medium eminently suitable to the production.

Of course, OHD doesn't have the sound studios (mores the pity), which I would guess is due to budgetary constraints. But dammit, that's another major gripe I have! Much as I love some of the forest scenes (the Elvish king was a highpoint for me...I shall henceforth portray all elves in similar fashion), I get tired of watching the characters tramp through the outdoors. A D&D-inspired show should have more "dungeon" to it...and necromancers and undead should not be hanging out in broad daylight just because it's cheaper to light. Isn't there some local set designer that could cobble together something modular in way of a "dungeon set" that could be shifted around as needed to represent different  chambers and whatnot? I mean, isn't it kind of a running gag of D&D that all dungeons are composed of perfect 10' wide corridors? Couldn't that be built into the show as part of the commentary/humor/satire of the thing?

Anyway, I've known some pretty creative set designers who were good at coming up with all sorts of clever ideas on the cheap (one of the reasons they got paid before the actors). Maybe no one was to be found among the back alleys and neighborhood theaters of Alberta, but I have a tough time believing it. I'd like to see OHD scrounge something up for season three.

Let's see; what else? I disliked the "beating-the-dead-horse-into-the-ground" brand of humor. A lot of time, it seemed that one-note-joke scenes ran overlong, filling far too many empty minutes (how many mummy heads need to fly before one gets the point? how many times do we have to explain the Lich Lord's "orb" isn't his eye?)...but perhaps that's a stylistic choice, or perhaps I am just an un-funny person. For me, it felt like the script could have used an extra set of eyes to say, "hey man, hit it  and quit it" and move on to the next clever/funny bit. The actors...especially the returned ones from last season...seemed competent enough to deserve some better writing.

But OTHER THAN ALL THAT...yeah, I just threw up a few thousand words of negativity, but I still think One Hit Die is a fun project, worth watching/supporting and certainly worth continuing. I think it's ambitious (in a good way), and can see the possibility of the show being pretty cool with a little tweaking to the writing and production; certainly, it could be a vehicle for communicating useful commentary on both the game and gaming...the scene where the thief gets stuck in the girdle of masculinity/femininity and turns into a "sexy pirate" was both amusing and (dare I say) pertinent ('Why are your shoulders suddenly bare?"). Even the whole "teamwork" thing was a nice coda to the season, if a little primary school in tone...but then, didn't I say the thing would be better suited to the old Saturday Morning Krofft shtick?

[and oh, the druid. Loved the druid. Need to get him reincarnated]

So watch the series, recommend it, support it, and hope that One Hit Die will continue to grow and evolve. That's what I intend to do. Hell, in all honesty, I wish I could get in on the thing...it certainly looks like they're having fun with it.
: )

Gonzo

I got some bad news earlier this week. Oh, it's no big deal for folks not from Seattle...and even for folks who are, it won't matter much unless you care about basketball (which I don't) or private investors dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy in the form of jobs, improvements, and infrastructure (that's me). So...well, a bit of a downer.

So to cheer myself up, I started surfing the blogs (as I'm wont to do), looking for something to lighten my mood. Specifically, I was interested in finding info about Paul Reiche's (and Erol Otus's) old FAE supplements The Necromican and Booty and the Beasts. What I found was Mr. Lizard's fantastic gaming blog, and I've spent much o this week reading his archives.

Ian "Lizard" Harac is a very smart, very funny guy who's been playing RPGs since the 70s...a looong time, in other words. A part-time game designer (his latest book has good reviews), he makes no bones about his affection for "gonzo" gaming...his pet project (years in the works) is a GW-style game with a bat-winged, laser-eyed bear for a logo (Earth Delta). He was heavily inspired in his formative years by the Arduin books of David Hargrave, and that's mostly what I've been reading: his series of posts reviewing, detailing and commenting on the three tomes that make up "the Arduin Cycle."

For me, a guy who was never exposed to Arduin (never owned, read, perused, or played in Hargrave's world), Lizard's articles have been nothing less than fascinating. And funny..I often find myself laughing out loud at his caustic observations. I'm a big fan of snark and sarcasm (there are worse failings to have...*drink*), and Lizard is an equal-opportunity offender, sniping at Old School, New School, and Indie gaming wherever his fancy takes him. At the same time, it's obvious the love and admiration he has for these crazy-works, books that have inspired his own gaming for decades...as I said, he makes no bones about it.

Not that he plays OD&D or S&W or any other retro-clone...Lizard is a Pathfinder guy these days, and the content he posts on his blog (other than reviews and reflections) is for that game, which he finds preferable with its well-defined limits and boundaries...even if he approaches it in a gonzo fashion. His stance is that "D&D" is more a genre than a system, a genre defined by its kitchen sink, gonzo attitude (not to mention dungeon delving and whatnot), and the system Pathfinder (or D20) provides (with its defined conditions and visual battle mats) gives him the freedom to allow his imagination free reign unencumbered by a system that can degenerate into argument over ill-defined rules.

In fact, Lizard is pretty explicit in his criticism of what he sees as some "revisionist history" among OSR folks. What he is quick to point out (and something I don't disagree with) is that, far from being enamored with a "rules light" or "streamlined" approach to role-playing, real "old school" play was typified by players (and DMs) wanting MORE rules...more systems, more mechanics, more definitions. More clarification of a game that was far from clear. The additional supplements to OD&D, the additional rules published in The Dragon, the larger page count of AD&D, the extra denigrated volumes of the Unearthed Arcana, etc. were all things clamored for by players...players dissatisfied with the Rules As Written.  In addition to Arduin, he points to the other fantasy RPGs that were published back in the day that (with the exception of Tunnels & Trolls) added more complex rules, skill systems, combat options, etc. to what was the basic D&D-ish premise...not necessarily trying to model realism but wanting to model more.

As I said, I don't disagree with him. If I like and champion B/X or other "basic" games these days, it's because they provide something closer to the happy medium I prefer in gaming. Certainly that wasn't how I operated in my youth, when I was a stickler for segments and speed factor and weapon vs. armor and minutia. A Dragon mag that provided new, specific "thieves' tools" (each with their own cost, skill affected, and individual bonus) and random tables for determining what was in the purse or pocket that the thief was picking...that kind of stuff was appreciated by myself and my players. New "content" for the game (whether from the UA or the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, etc.) was welcomed as new "canon" and quickly adapted into our game. It did head off arguments and provide guidelines when a young Dungeon Master (myself) needed some back-up "authority" for my rulings. It's no good saying the objective of a game is "having fun" when different people at the table have different concepts of fun.

Lizard's writing...both about Arduin and his remembrances of the hobby "back in the day"...has really got me thinking and considering my own game, reflecting on how much "gonzo" I want and what I feel are appropriate limits for, well, everything. Level advancement and allowable classes. Magic consumption and endgames. Adherences to genre consistency and allowing the imagination free reign. In my youth, my co-DM and I created all sorts of random tables and systems on par with what one finds in the Arduin books...but we only did so when there wasn't already an appropriate table or system available as "canon" for our games (which was often enough that we had many pages of such charts and tables). In my youth, I stole ideas willy-and-nilly from any fiction, film, or TV show that caught my imagination and while (I admit) I still do this somewhat, it's nowhere near the wild abandon with which I use to approach my "larceny." These days I'm more restrained (I'd like to say "refined" but that might be giving myself too much credit), and I wonder if my concepts suffer a bit from being too conservative and/or staid in my approach.

Well, regardless, it's gotten me thinking (though I have a lot of other things on my mind this week and most of it is NOT gamer related). And it is entertaining reading. If, like me, you had the misfortune to miss Arduin the first-time around, you might just want to take a gander at what Mr. Lizard has to say on the subject. His passion for the material is positively contagious.

"Gonzo" - when practical < awesome.

Knights of Badassdom

When I'm putting my smallest child back to sleep at three in the morning, I will sometimes pull a show off Netflix to watch on Ye Old Laptop with the headphones.  Not always (usually it's just marching and playing Peter Cetera or Jimmy Buffet or some other random, easy listening music), but it has given me a chance to catch up on the occasional random flick that I wouldn't ordinarily be able to watch (because it's too rough for the the kids and too "not my taste" for the wife).

Last night, that flick was Knights of Badassdom.

I can't remember why I'd heard of this...maybe I'd done a search for Game of Thrones previously and this had been returned (because it has Peter Dinklage). Anyway, I was fairly surprised by the cast that had been thrown together for this fantasy-horror-comedy flick. Steve Zahn and Summer Glau are probably the biggest "names" besides Dinklage, but Ryan Kwanten (of True Blood), Danny Pudi (of Community), Michael Gladis (Mad Men), and Jimmi Simpson (of a bunch of stuff, including House of Cards) are all quality actors, and fairly recognizable (by face if not by name).

The movie itself wasn't great art by any stretch...pretty lightweight even for B-Horror (which is about the closest genre it gets to)...but it did have some pretty damn funny moments, and the quality of acting really helped elevate it. I wouldn't call it "camp" (it takes itself a little too seriously...not with regard to story, but with regard to production/performance), but it certainly borders on the absurd. The actual references to Dungeons & Dragons (something I can't ever recall seeing in film before), were all very amusing, in a way that anyone who's played the game, I think, can appreciate (I suppose I'm saying it's possible to be respectfully irreverent).

"Thou needst an ounce of killer shrooms."

That's pretty much all I want to say, except for one thing: Peter Dinklage is an absolute stud. He's riveting and steals every scene he's in...something he's been doing this for years (Living in Oblivion, The Station Agent, Elf, etc.). It's wonderful that he's had the opportunity to play such a fabulous role in Game of Thrones for years...most working actors would love to have a starring role in a popular, multi-season series. But it's not the role that's so excellent (though Tyrion Lannister gets most of the best dialogue)...it's what he brings to it. Dinklage's role in Knights isn't specifically written for a person of small stature; none of the dialogue or action hinges on the character being a "little person." Likewise, he could have been cast as most any of the other (male) characters in the film (with the possible exception of the neanderthal-like "Gunther"). The guy is just a straight-up quality actor with great charisma...a "star" in other words. Unless a role specifically calls for someone who is tall, or non-white, or female, there's really no reason why he can't play anything on the screen.

Anyway. Just wanted to mention that.

"Why Do Elves Sharpen Their Ears?"

...asks my wife as I'm trying to write a thoughtful post on the ol' blog. Dammit, sweetie! Go to sleep! Now I've written "Tomb of Elves" twice while laughing. Sheesh!

Jim Henson is Spinning in His Grave

...but hopefully with laughter. I laughed MY ass off when I saw this.

Sorry...not an RPG post per se, but a new take on an Old School fantasy favorite. Check it out: