In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall escape my sight

Let those who worship evil’s might,

Beware my power…Green Lantern’s light!

So, an epic superhero space movie that draws out the Sinestro/Hal Jordan relationship and seeds the beginnings of Guy Gardner?? Seriously, Green Lantern is perhaps the best established comic franchise yet to be exploited by the movie industry. It has the potential to be a Star Wars esq hit with the right creative team.

Universal Pictures has acquired film rights to the late Robert Jordan’s bestselling “The Wheel of Time” novel series in a seven-figure deal.

Now, I may have some complaints about the series, but it sure does do a lot of things right.  I liked the idea of a mini series more, but maybe a movie done right will chop out all the extraneous bits and tangents.  Good luck keeping the franchise alive for about a dozen movies!

So about a week and a half ago The Game received a review copy of Alone In the Dark, a somewhat new game from Atari and Eden Games released June 24^th. A PS3 port is to come later, possibly September. The demo is being released pretty soon if not already.

Alone in the Dark is an incredibly ambitious game. The developers took a number of risks which individually may not mean much, but combined together make the entire game a huge risk. Unfortunately, their gamble did not pay off. While I respect the intentions of the developers, the final product is a mess.

My initial impression of the game was quite good: the menus looked cool, they had good mood music, etc. It wasn’t long though that I noticed something odd: everything was eerily quiet. I turned up my stereo so I could hear everything properly and decided to switch back to regular TV just to see how loud it was. The difference was shocking.

Read the rest »

WoTC has served up their latest helping of errata for 4e.  While most of it appears to be simple clarifications and actual fixes for typos, there are a few morsels worth noting and savoring.

• Some Endurance checks are more difficult
• Active Perception checks are a Minor Action instead of  Standard Action
• Stealth completely rewritten (move action, total cover/superior concealment to start, etc)
• Stealth and Invisible Creatures, Targetting What You Can’t See, etc - clarified and tied into the Stealth/Perception changes
• Brew Potion ritual was changed from 5th level to 1st level
• Several monsters gain significant boosts to their attack damage

Just as with last year, I am inflicting upon you the movie I helped make in 48.25 hours. It is not eligible for the YouTube of the Year award, despite being awesome.

How much do we like to fight in our RPGs? 43% of you enjoy half your time being taken up with kicking butt, whereas closely behind 40% of you like the majority of your game to be hack and slash. Only 1% of you enjoy no-combat games. This probably reflects our audience more than it does RPGers in general… though I could be wrong, D&D is popular for a reason!

Just a short poll question this week, and then a favor that I must ask…

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I had originally planned to do the YouTube of the Year award this week, but I find myself without free time between GenCon prep and RPGBloggers taking off (we’re up to over 50 members!) So, those of you who enjoy the regular YouTube feature, if you would be so kind as to go through the archives since last year’s award and tell me which one or ones you really enjoyed. I’ll take those suggestions, plus any ones that seemed particularly popular at the time, and select 5 nominees to vie for the coveted YouTube of the Year award.

I also need to take this time to publicly shame one of our esteemed commenters: Reverend Mike, who promised us last year that he would follow up on his previous ground-breaking work, and even hinted that a new chapter would bring us insights on 4e, has not yet delivered on the promise in time for this year’s awards. I can only hope that he will in turn shame me, and deliver an awesomely epic new video that blows away all expectations.

With the evergrowing list of publishers not signing the GSL (or choosing their own alternatives), it looks like the message finally got through to someone:

“We recognize the important role third party publishing support plays in the success of the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. We have listened to the community and our valued colleagues and have taken their concerns and recommendations to heart. Our commitment to the health of the industry and hobby gaming lifestyle is reflected in the revisions to the Game System License.”

Also the fansite policy was mentioned again. We’ll try to get some answers in person at GenCon.

Not that I normally cover them, but I’m receiving word (via text message from my mother at WorldCon) that the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) went to Stardust, and Best Novel went to The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. EDIT: A Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) went to the Doctor Who episode “Blink”, which is my favorite Dr. Who episode ever, and possibly in my top 10 science fiction episodes ever.

Also, I received word that the newest Game of Thrones book is behind schedule.

Greetings all,
For the past year or so I’ve received monthly newsletter updates on the progress of the upcoming MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of reckoning. Just the past week, I recieved the “newsletter you have all been waiting for” and by that I mean Mythic Entertainment (finally) has announced a release date for their long awaited game: September 18th, 2008.
For more detailed information about the release, you can check it out here.

There are a few points worth mentioning here, however. Read the rest »