KJToo

Hot on the heels of news that Joss Whedon is re-shooting the pilot for his upcoming sci-fi/thriller series, Dollhouse, executives at FOX announced that the show has been pre-canceled.

“We don’t anticipate that the show will appeal to a broad audience,” remarked a FOX spokesperson. “It’s just way too…’out there’ to bring in the ratings share we’ll need to compete in early 2009, so we’re pulling the plug. We’ll air three episodes out of order in January in a timeslot usually reserved for Billy Mays and Kevin Trudeau, a fourth episode will air on FSN Tennessee during the Super Bowl, and then we’ll replace it with an as-yet-untitled sitcom starring Dane Cook.”

“[The pilot] Joss is re-shooting probably won’t even air,” the spokesperson added.

Potential fans of the doomed series began a “Save Dollhouse” letter-writing campaign in November 2007, shortly after production was announced. FOX receives hundreds of impassioned pleas to keep the series on the air every day.

“The response has been great,” Whedon said in a recent interview on Entertainment Insider. “I’ve been blessed with some very loyal fans.”

When asked about rumors that most of the letters are written by one fan, Derrick Stroyer, who also continues to write similar letters pleading for the return of Firefly, another failed Whedon vehicle, the writer/director/producer/caterer replied, “Yes. Okay. A very loyal fan.”

In the same interview, Whedon announced that he will definitely not be working on a sequel to the movie based on Dollhouse. The movie, tentatively titled Echo, will continue the storyline where the series inevitably leaves off. Echo will be in theaters on August 19, 2011. Derrick Stroyer is already in line for tickets.

Disclaimer: I am not an entertainment news reporter. I am no more informed about the wheelings and dealings of the entertainment industry than anyone else with access to the Internet. Also, this story is a lie.

Posted October 30, 2008 Comments(19)

‘Round about the last week of October, there’s usually a flurry of activity here as I announce what sort of insane challenges I’ll be embarking on in November. National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) has topped the list for the last several years, followed by National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) and finally, a challenge of my own making: HoNoToGroABeMo, which is what we call How Not To Grow A Beard Month in these parts.

My attempts at writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days have been largely unsuccessful. Even when I managed the word count in 2005, I abandoned the story without a resolution; my protagonist fleeing across the desert and the man in black following.1 This year, I’ve decided to leave the writing to those with more determination (and story ideas) than I.

Blogging every day for a month was, all things considered, a walk in the park, especially when I combined it with daily photographic evidence of my inability to grow a proper beard. I was already planning to do NaBloPoMo again this year, but when my friend Bob unveiled the HoNoToGroABeMo website it was like combining two great tastes that taste great together.2 Now my genetic disinclination toward facial hair and my proclivity for aimless babble form up, becoming the Voltron of pointless, month-long pursuits!3

The website, if all goes well, should be operational by the end of the week, at which point anyone who wishes to join us on our mad crusade can create an account. I’m told the features will include not only a blog, but a place to post photographs of what passes for progress throughout the month. I suspect that my own attempt (futile though it is destined to be) will be chronicled both here and there, perhaps through the utilization of some manner of imported cross-posting technology.

1. No. Not really. [back]
2. Chocolate and cheese. [back]
3. Form blazing beard! [back]

Posted October 30, 2008 Comments(6)

Okay, listen up: I need a favor. A big favor. If you’re within the sound of my blog, I need you to hire J.C. Hutchins and Matthew Wayne Selznick. Before you start in with the questions, let me throw a few tidbits at you:

1. They’re not a matched set. I’m not talking about Salt and Pepper (or even Salt ‘n’ Pepa) here. These two guys aren’t joined at the hip or anything. But they’ve got a lot in common. Like what? How’s this for starters:
   • They’re both authors. J.C. is the guy behind the kickass 7th Son trilogy, the first of which will be available in print next year. Matt is the author of the coming-of-age superhero novel, Brave Men Run: A Novel of the Sovereign Era, which is available on Amazon.com right now.
   • They’re both podcasters. I know, who isn’t these days, right? But get this: they both released their novels as free, serialized downloads on these very Intertubes before they were picked up for publication! J.C.’s trilogy sucked me in big time, and I’ve fawned about it here before. Matt’s novel hit me over the head with a Peter Gabriel-wielded Sledgehammer (ironically, one of the few iconic eighties anthems that doesn’t appear in Brave Men Run) and I was happy to add the print version to my bookshelf at home.
   • They’re both new media geniuses. Look, let me lay my cards on the table here: I have no idea what the hell a new media genius does—I’m not even sure I’ve got a grip on what new media is—but I know that these guys can make the Internet marketing wheels spin, baby. And that’s why you want to hire them: because if you don’t, someone else will, and you’ll be out in the cold with your tired old marketing strategies and your Gold Clipper. You need to do better than that, and these guys can deliver.
2. Of course their credentials are available on the Intertubes! You were paying attention when I said “new media geniuses”, right?
   • Matt’s LinkedIn profile.
   • J.C.’s résumé.
3. Why am I shilling for these guys? Well, if I haven’t already made it clear, I enjoyed the hell out of their books. These are two of the most creative guys I know, and that kind of talent shouldn’t sit idle or there will be trouble. Also, if they’re not working, they’re going to be all over the Internets, blogging and tweeting and just generally filling the tubes with whatever strikes their fancy; quite frankly, I don’t think the tubes can handle it. So, please, won’t you think of the tubes? Put these guys to work.

Posted October 22, 2008 Comments(6)

A couple of weeks ago, a recipe for Schadenfreude Pie appeared in my RSS reader.1 Schadenfreude is a word meaning (roughly) the joy derived from the misfortune of others. When you laugh at a video clip of some dumbass taking a running leap off a shed in his backyard and almost making it to the swimming pool, that’s Schadenfreude; it’s the sort of deep, complex emotion that only a German could encapsulate in a single word and upon which only a third of the cast of Full House could build a secondary television comedy empire.2

The recipe for Schadenfreude Pie, however, comes from neither a German nor a Saget,3 but from a science fiction author: John Scalzi. It was in Mr. Scalzi’s recent retrospective of his ten-year-old blog, Whatever, that the recipe came to my attention. I’ll leave it to Mr. Scalzi to explain how and why the seemingly disparate notions of Schadenfreude and pie—the latter of which has, apart from an incident involving blackbirds and the de-probosciseration of an unfortunate young woman, never been associated with misery in any form—came together in his recipe. Regardless of its storied origin, I was intrigued by the ingredients of Schadenfreude pie, and so decided to attempt to bake one for my gaming friends.

The pies were still in the oven when Rachel and the two Davids arrived for the evening’s activities, but were soon removed to the cooling racks while we played Rorschach, a party game in which players examine a series of inkblots and answer such questions as “Which is the cuddliest?” and “Which would keep you up at night?”. Points are scored by selecting the same inkblots as your opponents (thereby, one presumes, successfully delving into the murky depths of their psyches) or by selecting an inkblot that was chosen by none of your opponents (thereby establishing yourself as the freaky, unbalanced misfit). After several rounds of the game, it was agreed that the outcome seemed to be a tie more often than not, though we were not able to agree upon whether this indicated a sloppy game mechanic or a series of disturbing psychological trends amongst our gaming peers.

Rorschach was followed by The Great Dalmuti, a card game I’ve owned for probably 10 years or more but had never played,4 and the arrival of Gus. The idea behind The Great Dalmuti is pretty straightforward:5 you’re better than all these schmucks. The goal is to rid yourself of all the cards in your hand and be declared the “Greater Dalmuti” for the next hand. Unlike most card games, which end after a winner is declared, play in The Great Dalmuti continues until the ultimate loser is determined. The second player to play all of his or her cards is the “Lesser Dalmuti”, while the last two players are the “Lesser Peon” and “Greater Peon” (and forced to pay taxes to their respective Dalmutis at the beginning of the next hand).

The game proved to be a lot of fun, but I think next time we’ll set forth some rules as to what, beside taxes, the Dalmutis can expect from the Peons. We really didn’t play up the whole caste system aspect, but I’ve heard of groups wherein the Greater Dalmuti may command the Greater Peon to fetch drinks and such, which sounds like it could add another level of fun.

Sometime during The Great Dalmuti the pie was served. Unfortunately, it soon became very evident that I had managed to burn the graham cracker crust. The pie was rather troublesome to cut (a jackhammer would have worked well) but got generally favorable reviews. It is incredibly rich, as one might expect considering that the primary ingredients are dark corn syrup, molasses and dark brown sugar, but not too terribly overpowering provided it is eaten in moderation.6 Mr. Scalzi’s suggestion that the pie be eaten with a large glass of cold milk was spot on.

To finish out the evening (and to keep from slipping into a diabetic coma), we played Carcassonne, a tile game that Laura and I enjoy but had never played with more than three people. As it turns out, six people is a good number. The game was very close: only a single point separated the victor from his nearest opponent, and the overall point spread was somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen points.

I was pretty pleased with how the evening went. We introduced a new gamer to the group, crammed a lot of play into about three hours and enjoyed some dark, sweet pie without having to feel karmically guilty afterward.

1. Google Reader, if you’re curious. [back]
2. Sorry, Mary-Kate and Ashley, this doesn’t mean you. [back]
3. …nor a Coulier. [back]
4. I also own—and have played, though only once—Dilbert’s Corporate Shuffle, which is essentially a repackaging of The Great Dalmuti aimed at appealing to the corporate cubicle drone crowd. [back]
5. Don’t ask me what the idea behind Gus is; I’m as mystified as you. [back]
6. The second pie, which I didn’t eat until the following day, turned out better than the first. [back]

Posted October 15, 2008 Comments(6)

Tomb is a board game in which each player recruits a party of stalwart adventurers from the Troll’s Head Inn and sends them to explore crypts in The Goldenaxe Catacombs. The objective: kill monsters and get loot. I happened upon an impromptu demo run by Todd Rooks on Saturday afternoon on the third day of Con on the Cob.

The game starts with players populating the crypts of The Goldenaxe Catacombs with a wide variety of Monsters, Traps and Treasure (Crypt cards, which are placed face down in the crypts). There are 16 crypts in the basic game,1 each of which can contain a specific number of Crypt cards; crypts close to the Inn can hold only 1 card each, while those in the far corners of The Goldenaxe Catacombs hold 5 cards.

After the crypts have been populated, players spend one or more turns in the Inn recruiting characters and (optionally) drawing Inn cards. There are four character classes: Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard. The majority of the 84 characters appear to be single-class, but a number combine one or more classes; such was the case with Ichaerus, a Cleric/Fighter/Wizard I recruited early in the game. Each character has four stats and a special ability. The stats—Attack, Skill, Magic and Holiness—are each defined by a number of Green, Blue and Red dice. Here are the stats for Grim, the Cleric I recruited on my first turn:

When Grim makes an Attack, he rolls 3 Green dice and 1 Blue die; when he makes a Holiness check, it is with 3 Blue dice and 1 red one. All dice in Tomb are 10-sided, and the color of a die indicates its chance to roll a success:2 Green dice have only a 30% success rate, Blue dice have a 50% success rate, and Red dice have a 70% success rate. Grim has a fairly puny Attack, which is the domain of the Fighter class; his Skill (the primary stat of the Rogue class) and Magic (important to the Wizard class) are both nonexistent, and his Holiness (as one might expect from a Cleric) isn’t too shabby.

Grim also grants each character in the Party an additional Blue die to all of their rolls for each Wound they have. This was an ability that I completely failed to remember during the game, which undoubtedly made things a bit more difficult for Ichaerus, The Iron Duke (a Fighter), Ricart Darpor (a Rogue) and Sir Aleron D’Ilchant (another Fighter). These five characters comprised my party for much of the game, but I managed to stumble on a bit of luck early on and my party was pretty stable. The three gentlemen I was playing with weren’t so fortunate, and as a result the four of us managed to get at least 16 recruited characters killed over the course of about two hours.

As long as a player has at least one character in his party (maximum party size is five), he may enter the tomb and begin exploring crypts. When a party enters a crypt, a symbol in the entrance indicates which player becomes the Crypt Master. The Crypt Master picks up all of the cards in the crypt, announces whether there are any Traps to disarm, and controls any Monsters. In the event that the crypt contains only Treasure cards, they are immediately given to the player whose party entered the crypt.

Each Trap, Monster and Treasure card has an XP (experience point) value, occasionally zero; successfully disarmed Traps and defeated Monsters go into a players Bank, and Treasure looted from crypts can also be banked, though players have the option of equipping their characters with any Treasure they loot. Banked XP is (for the most part) safe; equipped Treasure, on the other hand, is lost (along with its XP) if the character to which it is attached is killed. Equipped Treasure may also be pickpocketed by Rogues from other parties, though the consequences of failing a pickpocket attempt can be severe (up to and including the death of the pickpocketer).

During his turn, the actions available to a player depend on where his party is currently located. In the Inn, players may recruit additional characters to the party or draw two Inn cards. There are four types of Inn cards: Items, Spells, Prayers and Tactics. To be eligible to draw Spell or Prayer cards, at least one character in the party must have dice in Magic or Holiness, respectively.3 There is no hand limit, but Inn cards have no XP value, so eventually the party will have to venture out of the Inn. In the Tomb, a party may move, pickpocket, or enter a crypt (normally, a party may not move and enter a crypt in the same turn).

Apart from the standard Inn and Tomb actions, it is also possible to cast Spells or Prayers or use Tactics, provided the card allows it. One card, for example, allowed me to immediately return to the Inn and recruit two new characters; assuming I was in the Tomb, this would normally take three turns: one turn to return to the Inn (which can be accomplished in a single turn, regardless of distance), a second turn to recruit the first character and a third turn to recruit the second character.

While some Spells, Prayers and Tactics are used in place of a normal turn, others can be used to react to something another player has just done. These cards can be played outside of a player’s turn, but do not otherwise affect the turn order. In one case, after an opponent’s Rogue had failed to pickpocket my Rogue (and, thus, was killed), I used a React to immediately recruit him into my party.

When the final crypt has been opened and all Crypt cards have been removed from the Tomb, the game is over and the player with the most XP wins.

Despite a very lucky start, the ability to move around the Tomb more than twice as fast as most of the other players and some sneaky tactics that made it difficult for any party but my own to enter the final crypt, I still managed to fumble and lose the game by 10 points. My downfall was brought about by two things: first, a monster that forced every character in my party to make a Skill, Magic or Holiness check before battle began; a failed roll meant death, and four of my five characters either failed the check or were killed in the ensuing battle. The second component in my defeat was a decision to retrieve two monsters from my XP Bank to fight for me in the final battle. The monsters were worth a total of 13 XP and both were killed in the course of battle. That thirteen point loss more than accounted for my ten point deficit at the end of the game.

Had my convention budget been larger by about fifty dollars, I would have done what one of the other players at the table did: run immediately to the dealer room and purchase a copy of Tomb. The game was a lot of fun and, despite a minor rules snafu, ran very smoothly. I’d play it again in a heartbeat, and I’m very curious about The Tomb of the Overseers side of the board as well as the campaign play Todd mentioned.

1. The flip side of the game board is The Tomb of the Overseers, a more advanced game featuring 22 crypts and more advanced rules. [back]
2. Each die face is either blank or decorated with an axe; axes indicate success. [back]
3. Additionally, a player must discard all of his Spell cards if his last character with dice in Magic dies. Ditto for Prayer cards and Holiness. [back]

Posted October 7, 2008 Comments(2)