NEWS

I've Got the Blues
posted by Chana on August 22, 2010

 
For my mama's food.

Recently, I became a college kid. So far, it's not much different from being in high school, or at camp. Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow it gets real.

So I'd like to thank the good people at Gloomcorps for finally getting my icon up. Soon, I will have more to say, really. I could do a review on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World sometime later. In fact, I think I will.

Good day.

Link to this article

Horror is Hard
posted by JoVo on June 22, 2010

 
After years of slowly nudging the World of Darkness from horror to science fiction-fantasy, I've decided to give the original horror setting another shot. I've always been a science fiction fan. Nothing enthralls me like the wild ways that authors and storytellers are able to twist magic into science, to make the unknown knowable, and to make the supernatural explicable and, ultimately, manipulable. It's a quintessential human need to discover laws to the otherwise chaotic universe and thus to bring it under our control. It's why we invented gods, after all. And why millennia later we invented philosophy. And finally science.

This is one of the reasons that I love mages so much. They seek to use wisdom and gnosis to understand the laws of the universe. In my games they often succeed. Maybe they succeed too often. As a result, I've slowly sucked out the mystery from the world of darkness. And, to some extent, the consequences of dealing with the unknown. Even the Abyss is no longer that scary. If any of my players are scared of it, it's probably them just trying to play in character what they don't really believe anymore.

Horror is hard because it goes directly against natural human wants and needs. It leaves things unknowable. It punishes vice. Greed and curiosity can lead to horrible deaths. If not worse. And the horror world seems to be almost geared toward the loss of morality, if not sanity as a whole. My players don't seem to react too well to that. In the end, good horror, when storytold, has to involve more than sadistic minions, invulnerable evils, and world-shattering horrors. It has to grip something within. It has to make characters want to run. Not because they're not sure they can beat the monster, but because they're sure they'll lose something precious in trying.

Maybe. I'd like to hear your opinions. Even if you feel a deep love of horror, it's counterintuitive and more difficult than it appears on the surface.

I'm giving it a shot because I think it's very easy to get caught up in different genres. Perhaps less evocative ones. To a great extent, turning the world of darkness into science fiction-fantasy is easy. It almost lends itself to that (particularly if you play a lot of Mage: The Awakening). Vampire: The Masquerade lends itself easily to becoming a political drama, where Kindred constantly (and often ridiculously) compete for power within a city. Oddly, Changeling: The Lost can easily follow suit. And Werewolf: The Forsaken can easily turn into a chest-thumping, action-packed dungeon crawl, suitable only to power gamers with a fascination for honor-speak.

The World of Darkness should be more complex than that. Fascinating though science fiction can be, it tends to remove the mystery and magic from the world. In time, everything—even the unknowable Abyss—becomes explicable, knowable, and manipulable. And when humans can control even the Abyss... Well, what's left?

Link to this article

Happy Bruce Campbell Day
posted by Kattastrophe on June 22, 2010

 

Even if you don't really like him, you've gotta appreciate his work, man.

Link to this article

I Used to Think the Day Would Never Come
posted by Kattastrophe on May 18, 2010

 

Thirty years ago today, Ian Curtis killed himself. The lead singer and songwriter for Joy Division, he helped create goth culture. So, go find your favorite Joy Division or New Order song and play it before your game tonight.

Link to this article

Saw VII
posted by Kattastrophe on April 25, 2010

 


So, I'm sure you all know about the new Saw movie. It's gonna be in 3D. I think that's awesome. Kinda. I saw My Bloody Valentine in 3D and managed to get through it with only a mild headache. I consider that a success.

Anyway, I'm super excited about blood and crazy traps flying at my face. But, even awesomer, is that Cary Elwes is returning. Also, bonus points for Sean Patrick Flannery.

The movie finished filming a couple weeks ago and it comes out October 22 of this year.

Link to this article

Lost Boy
posted by Kattastrophe on March 11, 2010

 


Silver Bullet, The Lost Boys, Dream a Little Dream (both of them)... these movies are thick with everything that's shaped our World of Darkness and that's just a tiny sampling of his body of work.

Growing up as a fan of horror movies, there was no way I could avoid having a srs crush on him. He was like the male answer to a Scream Queen.

So... he died. Another celebrity OD doesn't really surprise anyone anymore. Something's gotta give though. In our voyeuristic society, we've got to learn to take some responsibility for the way we treat people. It isn't fair to glorify them then throw them to the lions as soon as they make a bad decision. The way we treat our celebrities is appalling. How many more need to go down before we take a look at ourselves and stop giving "reporters" money for telling us about Britney's latest meltdown?

Link to this article

The Evils of Inergen
posted by JoVo on February 23, 2010

 
What is Inergen? Well, Inergen is a blend of inert atmospheric gases that contains 52% nitrogen, 40% argon, and 8% carbon dioxide. It's a clean agent used as a gaseous fire suppressant. It's eco-friendly and nontoxic. What it does is it lowers the concentration of oxygen in an area so that it can no longer support combustion. It's also better than older gaseous suppression systems. Back in the day, they used to use plain carbon dioxide or halon gas. The problem with these gases is that they... well... they can kill you.

Inergen is different because it creates only a 3% concentration of carbon dioxide in the space where it's discharged. This causes the human body to take deeper breaths (a physiological adaptation given to us by wonderful, wonderful natural selection), allowing our bodies to make more efficient use of the available oxygen.

Unfortunately, even though Inergen kills fires without killing humans, it also kills hard drives. And so that's what happened to us this weekend. Here's what our webhost had to say about it:

On Saturday, February 20th at approximately 2:20 p.m. MDT, the server your account is on experienced some hardware failure as a result of an annual fire system inspection at our Data Center (DC). An inadvertent release of Inergen was triggered in the DC environment. The release was triggered by an actuator that was not removed as required in the DC's pre-test checklist. As such, the entire DC was impacted at some level, however not all servers were affected. This error was not the result of a mistake by WestHost employees, our hardware or systems. The mistake was triggered by an error from a vendor. With that said, we take responsibility and are doing everything we can to restore all systems completely.

There were multiple servers impacted by this outage; some of the servers have had damaged hardware replaced while other servers need to be restored from backups. A large majority of the servers that were affected have since had all services restored and are back online. We still have a few remaining servers that are experiencing problems. We are doing everything we can to restore those remaining servers as quickly as possible.

So there you go. Shit happens. The test was being run by the company that does the disaster management for Westhost, Consonus Technologies. Ironically, their error caused its own disaster. Enjoy the irony there.

Anyway, we're back, we're glad to be back, and hopefully we'll get to stay back. I've been doing business with Westhost for years now and this has never happened. With any luck, in all the rest of the time we'll continue to do business with them, it won't happen again.

Sorry for the inadvertent shut-down. But we're back, and that's all that matters.

Link to this article

Heraldry of Stupidity
posted by Kattastrophe on February 17, 2010

 


Anyone remember that Tom Hanks movie, Mazes and Monsters? You know, the one where Tom plays Dungeons and Drag-- oops, I mean Mazes and Monsters-- and goes totally batshit. Yeah. I hated that movie.

Well, looks like the media wants everyone to remember how srs bsns the whole gaming thing is. The Boston Herald, that's right, guys, a "reliable" news source came out with this article about the murderess Amy Bishop just yesterday.

Kind of reminds me of that old Penny Arcade comic.

I frakking hate it when someone who knows nothing about something decides to write rubbish about it. I'll never understand how people come up with this crap. If making up a story can really turn me into a violent murderer, then it seems like Stephen King, Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, and so many others would be filling up the jails.

Table-top RPG's are, like, the next logical step from those games of pretend we all played when we were kids. Someone's the hero, someone's the villain, and there's a big epic battle as you guys gallivant around the yard with sticks for swords or guns. The only difference is the addition of rules.

It's like the oral tradition from back in the day. Everyone sitting around a table instead of a fire (unless it's decent enough weather and we break out the firepit :P). Each person has their own thing to add, weaving a story together.

It's social. It's creative. And more than that, it's cooperative. You have to be able to work with other people to do it. Despite the stereotype of of the fat cave-nerd emerging from his mother's basement/womb to sit with his toad-like friends eating cheesy snacks and drinking mountain dew, the best gaming groups I've been a part of only bear a passing resemblance to that. Hell, GC doesn't even bring mountain dew to the game. And the chips of choice are usually barbecue or salt and vinegar.

The point is this: In any group of people, there's a nutjob waiting for a reason to lose their shit. There's ALWAYS someone ready to give the whole crowd a bad name. It's crap to label all of us because one geek went and shot a bunch of people. I've got a morality of seven. Don't try to paint me with your own derangements.

Link to this article

Bigger Word, Bigger Boom
posted by JoVo on February 13, 2010

 
It's been said that the bigger it is... something, something, I'm not sure.

Either way, I spent all day today pouring over the website and trying to figure out what I could do to make it better. Well, first, the text had to be bigger. I realized the hard way that no one can read things as small as I can. I say the hard way literally, since Topher hit me in the head. You see he wears glasses. And I can read well past the 20/20 line at the eye doctor's. Needless to say, I was fine, but the rest of the Internet, being normal humans with non-superhuman senses like myself, need bigger text.

Now, I can set my computer across the great hall where we live, and read leisurely. (I don't actually do this, but I could!)

Added on to the reviews, you'll now notice that we're giving props to all of the writers, directors, artists, etc. whose effort and sweat we tear apart (with love). We do give good reviews on occasion, so that's not entirely fair. Either way, I'm sure nobody would watch and then review something they absolutely hated. Unless they were masochists... and I suppose we do have those on staff.

Link to this article

Coming Soon!
posted by Kattastrophe on November 25, 2009

 
To the comics...

Link to this article

View all news