The life and times of a fallen hacker
Archive for the ‘cthulhu’ Category.
Dunwich Horror, the second expansion to Arkham Horror, is out and available in shops.
Seems that my living room table is too small to accommodate the two towns, as the expansion adds a two-panel board to the already big need for space.
Thus far the Wednesday Emperors have beaten the Great Old Ones 3-0, but the expansions supposedly turn up the difficulty of the game.
[ via Hiljaisten seiväshyppäjien kerho. ]
As a movie, the recent maximally retro Call of Cthulhu is not very good. The minimal budget of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society shows, but in the end: the low allowance does not matter, and the movie just moves along at its own pace, entertaining for the whole 45 minute length.
I never expected an HPL movie to be full of deeply built characters played by the marquee names of the day - no, the anonymous actors employed suit the genre perfectly.
I never expected spectacular effects, the rather blatantly stop-motion animated Cthulhu suits the purpose well, as do the ship models. Which are not CGI, but real scale models.
I kind of expected the movie to be tied together a bit more - the short story consists of thinly connected separate threads, and the state of affairs remains the same.
As a movie this is indeed decent brief entertainment, and as such a good introduction to the works of the Cthulhu Mythos. For the HPL-connoisseurs the movie is a revelation - the works can be brought to celluloid without resorting to modernization and extra gore (no matter how functional and entertaining they may occasionally turn out to be).
The production values on the dvd do not leave anything to be desired. Well worth the money, and hopefully the proceedings bring forth more such fruits of labour.
No Deadwood right now - the rather recent Call of Cthulhu movie shall be the form of entertainment that rinses visions of lush Oahu from my brain.
Black and white. Silent. Ought to be good. And different.
Utterly forgot some quality links in the previous entry. Centered on the latter speaker:
Visited Ropecon, the annual finnish gaming convention, for the first time in four or so years. I’m guessing at the interval, it sure has been a while - and previous few years’ cons have been missed due to being abroad or lazy.
First impression upon arrival in Dipoli was of disbelief: “what am I actually doing among these kids”. Kids that have either dressed up, dressed down, ingested far too much sugar or are lethargic to the point of catatonia. A brief trip on the very shallow sales floor didn’t really much improve matters (though the first sighting of Ptolus confirmed that it is indeed a humongous tome). Figured that following the official program would be a better bet than roaming the halls.
The first of the guests of honor to speak was Bruno Faidutti, a french boardgame designer. The topic was the distinction of theme and mechanics in the games. A good talk, peppered with references to well-known games as well as to Faidutti’s own output (which is pretty much a blank slate for me, have played only Warrior Knights). The boardgame industry seems to be in decent shape, and the publishers have slightly retreated from the “all games must be easy”-stance - and true gamers’ games (such as Twilight Imperium) occasionally show up. The american (theme first) and german (mechanics optimized) schools are mixing up - and the market is bristling with interesting offerings. Mr. Faidutti didn’t much like online (”for me gaming is a social event”) or co-operative games (”they are so hard to balance, since the players do not play each other”). A long interactive session followed the presentation, and I think I have to take a serious look at his Mystery of the Abbey, a dedcuction game in the style of Name of the Rose.
Kenneth Hite was the guest of honor I chose the friday to show up in the con. A prolific author who has written more ideas about alternate history and conspiracies than pretty much anyone. He first gave a “state of the industry”-style speech (like his annual Out of the Box-post about the topic). And the state is bleak, very bleak - substandard books and a needlessly complex three (or even four) tier system are sapping the profits. And most companies are clueless to see the writing on the wall, and especially to react to it. Massmarket sales in bookstores are one way to increase the volumes - but only very few companies attempt to gain a foothold in, say, Borders. The future lies in two directions: PDF and small press. PDF because the sales can be controlled, without any inventory out in the field, and because the middlemen are eliminated from the equation. Small presses fill niches, and fill them in a way in which they know their customers and play to them as the customers want, and do not attempt to court the wider market.
Favorite games were discussed at length. Call of Cthulhu’s position at the very pinnacle is not threatened by anyone - and an appropriate comparison to old western movies was spot on. The #2 spot is held by Unknown Armies and Over the Edge, both games that have simple rules and a complex milieu in which to act. Lots of other games (and individual supplements) were named to be of rabidly good quality - both from massmarket publishers as well as some of the independents. My poor AMEX is going to scream soon, the tips will be put to good use.
Mr. Hite was quite simply one of the best speakers I’ve had the pleasure to listen to in ages. Precision-aimed sentences at the hobby were a good beginning, but when the delivery was drily witty and completely deadpan, I was sold. And the skill of deprecating himself and the audience was impressive. After all, in most circumstances repeated statements to the fact that the people on the other side of the stage were “basement-dwelling bozos” wouldn’t have gone down so well. But Hite, having been one of them just made himself more available to the audience. And availability was indeed made good use of, in another lengthy Q&A-session. The two statements (heavily paraphrased) that crystallize the event: “the industry may be dying commercially, but the hobby itself if flourishing” - to cap the state of the union-part, “do not be disturbing weirdos” - on how to attract more players (especially women).
Hite’s questions-n’-answers was curtailed by the arrival of the next speakers. The session turned out to be a game, not a description of the jeepform. A massivish LARP-ish game whose topic was a dating show on stage. Watched for fifteen minutes and decided that I wasn’t really into it (being a card-carrying member of reality-tv haters club) and sneaked out.
Been a long time since the last.
Not totally silent any more. Speaking is now actually quite painless, but the tone is still on the low side. My absolute tonedeafness prevents estimation of quite low exactly.
More Martin. More KotOR. More lazy lounging on the sofa (the little red triangles in antihistamins do work).
Stumbled upon this, a pretty credible subdivision of the US. Quite a few regions I’d
probably hate to live in.
Had forgotten how good old Sepultura actually was. And by old I mean “Schizophrenia” from 1987. And by good I mean “unlike the latest few albums, and thus actually very listenable”. Had underestimated the quality of the new Apocalyptica record, much better than was apparent on first couple of rounds. And not only the vocal-accompanied tracks, some of the instrumentals on this (like Farewell) rank among the best of their output thus far. Also played too much Pet Shop Boys for comfort. But only as shelled out by the ipod.
boingboing pointed towards a good article about H.P. Lovecraft on Salon.
Yet another blogger dismissed due to extracurricular online outputs.
Showing that imitation is indeed the strongest form of flattery, a cheap replica of the ONE TRUE SOURCE has
arrived onto the web [Neither makes any sense unless you speak finnish, I'm afraid].
Noted from Empire that Angelo Badalamenti (yah, the guy behind the uncanny soudscape of most David Lynch’s movies) is the composer of A Very Long Engagement’s soundtrack. If he hasn’t strayed too badly from his old mainstays, this is definitely a record to pick up, one of these days. Still haven’t seen the movie, either.
EDIT 18.8.2008: maamme.fi is gone.
Four full lines of bowling produce an unexpected leg-ache. Decided to take it easy with biking today.
Did the requisite consumerism downtown:
Especially the last one was quite an unplanned one.
Turns out that even Tapani Maskula likes Collateral. Usually he’s pretty reliable in smacking a whole single star on popular movies, but this one clearly tickled his fancy as well.
