April Round-Up, Star Wars Episode VII, and Never-Ending Cosmos Praise

So, the big news in April came just a couple days ago with the announcement of the cast for Star Wars Episode VII. I must admit I’m unfamiliar with most of them except the original trilogy cast (obviously), Andy Serkis and Max von Sydow. However, I couldn’t help noticing (as did others) that the new cast contains lots of men (mostly white men at that with one token black guy) and one woman. Sticking to tired old formulas, Star Wars? So much for progress. Still, following the fact that lots of people noticed this, it was revealed that there is still another “substantial” role to fill. That’s good news, I suppose. I do have to wonder, though, just how substantial this role actually is, given that they didn’t feel the need to wait for it to be cast before announcing the other actors playing substantial roles. Time will tell, I suppose, but let's be honest, even two is not a great number. Women do make up 51% of the population after all.

Honestly, even though I was a Star Wars fanatic as a child and well into my young adult years, it just doesn’t hold the same sense of wonder for me that it once did. Personally, I’m far more excited about the ongoing series of Cosmos! It has made a much greater impact on me this month, as can be seen with my ongoing coverage of it on this site. I was starting to fall quite a bit behind in my episode reviews, but managed to get completely caught up in the last week. Altogether, this month saw reviews of episodes four, five, six, seven, and eight. I eagerly look forward to the remaining five episodes. Although it’s not exactly Cosmos, here’s Neil deGrasse Tyson giving a kick-ass answer to a rather stupid question about whether genetics plays any role in the lack of women in science:

In gaming, April 5th was International Tabletop Day, and Wil Wheaton’s Geek & Sundry series, Tabletop began a campaign to raise funds for its third season. They’ve already made their initial goals and will be producing a 20-episode season. However, if they reach $1 million total, they will also produce a spin-off series based on roleplaying games. There are only ten days left, but they are very close to that million dollar mark. Tabletop’s a great show, and I would really like to see the RPG spin-off. Let’s hope they’re successful!

I only wrote one Pathfinder review this month: the opening to the new Mummy’s Mask adventure path, The Half-Dead City. The lack of further reviews is down to the fact that next one is of the massive 332-page hardcover, Inner Sea Gods. That took awhile to read through, but I’m done now and my review should be up within the next few hours.

This month, I also discovered the wonderful documentary The Delian Mode, about Doctor Who composer Delia Derbyshire. It’s a must-see for all Doctor Who and electronic music fans. Finally, I also made a brief post about the short video, “Stone”.

Here’s to a great May!

Tabletop Day

Today is the 2nd annual International Tabletop Day. And for the second year in a row, it’s been scheduled on an inconvenient day, and so there’s no one for me to play games with. My wife is busy studying for exams and everyone else has other plans that have nothing to do with playing tabletop games. Last year, I challenged my dogs to a game of Zombie Dice and lost solidly to Pan. I thought about doing the same this year, but Pan doesn’t want to risk losing his champion status, and honestly, if I lost again, I’m not sure I could suffer the humiliation. So Pan’s champion status is safe...for now.

However, as this blog is is heavily focused on tabletop roleplaying games, particularly Pathfinder, like last year, I couldn’t let the day go by without doing something in honour of it. As such, I have spent what free time I’ve had today doing long-term planning for my Pathfinder games. I have a regular group that meets every Sunday (although tomorrow will be the second of what will likely be three weeks in a row of no game due to real life interfering) and I also GM two play-by-post games on the Paizo messageboards. Of course, as a game master, I have to spend time every week preparing for games, but today I decided to look a bit farther into the future. As my Sunday group is nearing the end of its current campaign (the Council of Thieves adventure path), I decided to start making serious plans for their next campaign. It will still likely be a few more months before the current campaign concludes, but it doesn’t harm to have an idea of what to do next. I won’t go into too much detail here—partly because I’ve only done the barest of sketches so far and partly because members of my group read this blog and I don’t want to give secrets away—however, here’s a quick list of the books I’ve pulled out in order to assist me:

Inner Sea World Guide

Dwarves of Golarion

Guide to Darkmoon Vale

Andoran, Spirit of Liberty

Towns of the Inner Sea

Inner Sea Poster Map Folio

Bestiary

Tabletop Day was started by Geek and Sundry after the success of Wil Wheaton’s show Tabletop, a great show which has had two full seasons and is now looking to make a third. In order to do that, they are looking for donations, so if you’re interested, head over to Ilovetabletop.com to donate. If they reach $500,000, season three will be 15 episodes long. If they reach $750,000, it will be 20 episodes long. If they reach all the way to $1,000,000, there will be a spin-off series featuring roleplaying games! I will be very interested in seeing that should they achieve it. In just the first few hours, they have already passed $100,000, so I think there’s a pretty good chance they’ll make it all the way. Let’s hope they do!

Happy Tabletop Day, everyone, and as Wil Wheaton says, play more games!

How I Lost to My Dog on Tabletop Day

Today is International Tabletop Day. Started by Geek and Sundry, today is the day when everybody is supposed to get together to play tabletop games. Alas, there was nobody available for me to game with. Because of the holiday weekend and various other things, everybody had other commitments. My wife is working all day today and even my regular Sunday Pathfinder game (which, while technically not on the right day, I was thinking might be close enough) is cancelled this week.

But I couldn’t just let Tabletop Day pass by. After all, while I have branched out somewhat, this blog had its start as a place for me to review tabletop roleplaying games. Tabletop Day is what this blog is all about. So I needed to come up with a solution. I debated just playing solitaire games with myself, but that would be boring to write about. Then it hit me. I’m not totally alone today. My two dogs are here. So I decided to challenge them to a game!

The Guild - Season Six

Believe it or not, I only discovered The Guild just after season 5 came out. Somehow I had remained completely unaware of its existence until then. It’s odd because many of my friends apparently knew of it.

“What, you’d never seen The Guild before?” they asked when I mentioned finally seeing it.

“No,” I replied.

“You mean we’ve never mentioned it before?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

It’s odd, too, because many websites I often visit are exactly the kinds of sites that would mention it, but if they did, I somehow missed every reference. At any rate, it was after season 5 came out that I finally started noticing mentions here and there of a web show called The Guild and starring Felicia Day. I certainly knew who Felicia Day was, so I was intrigued and checked it out, starting right at the beginning with season 1.

And I was hooked. Soon, I had not only watched the whole series, but I had also purchased the DVDs of all five seasons (to be fair, watching a whole season is about the same time commitment as watching a single movie, so it’s not that amazing a feat that I got through the whole series in about a week or so). The series was a wonderful breath of fresh air, full of funny characters who, while crazy and over-the-top, were still relatable. Here was a show about geeks and written by geeks, a show that could poke fun at the idiosyncrasies and stereotypes of geek culture whilst never hiding the fact that it was also a love letter to geek culture. Shows about geeks have gained a certain popularity in recent years with the rise of programmes like The Big Bang Theory. But that show, while about nerds, is aimed at the masses, and is clearly written by people who don’t really understand what it is to be a geek or nerd and so rely entirely on stereotypes. Felicia Day, on the other hand, is a geek of the first order, and that breathes a life and reality into The Guild that the Big Bang Theory can only dream of attaining.