Vote for your favourite Wiki Logo!

The time has come - the people must choose. Let the voice of democracy speak!

Okay, calm down - it's the Wiki Logo vote. I've set up the poll for the three entries we've had and you've got till Good Friday, 22nd April, to cast your vote.

The contenders are

Greg Christopher from Errant


Arkhein from Rather Gamey


Anthony Hunter from Battleaxes and Beasties

Good luck, chaps!

Rational Role-players?

I noticed when reviewing the replies to my post on scary books that, like me, quite a few of the commenters were rationalists. I wondered to myself if this was common amongst gamers, and thought "Aha, I smell a poll coming on"

I'm not religious but I do have a fascination for where religions and mythologies come from, what basic human needs they answer and how they evolve, shift and develop. I'd like to think that when my game gets some players and gets going, the pantheons will be realistic, rounded and sociologically credible. In true sandbox style, I may even let the players develop their own deities and mythoi.

RPGs have had their run-ins with religion in the past (Dark Dungeons, Pat Pulling, the renaming of devils and demons for 2e...) but I know for a fact that there are religious roleplayers, atheist roleplayers and no doubt a sizeable chunk in the middle.

I'm curious as to the proportions and whether religiosity or lack thereof affects the RPGer's approach to their games, especially given that in at least two (D&D et al, and CoC) the existence of deities as such is taken as a fact.

Let me know your views on this one. I'm intrigued...

Mountains of Madness - then or now?

As we all know, Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) is at the wheel for the movie adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness, HPL's classic tale of where not to go on your skiing holiday. Good news for Lovecraft fans, even if his co-pilot on this project is James 'Titanic and Avatar' Cameron.

I was all a-go for this until a thought struck me - I'd assumed that any film of the book would be set in the 1930s where it belonged but how do we know that's what would happen? Would it actually work if updated to the present day?

If we really wanted a modern version of AtMoM, we've got John Carpenter's The Thing and Aliens v Predator (the similarities between those and Mountains are manifold, although there are, of course, big differences).

I watched Jackson's King Kong the other day (eeeew, big worms, must use for next CoC adventure!) and he has very faithfully recreated the world of 1933. The original was a work of its time but I'm sure we all remember (although we try to forget) the 1976 version with Kong on the World Trade Centre (perhaps that's why it doesn't get shown much these days) fending off jet fighters.

For me, part if not all of the attraction of HPL is the (to us) period setting - am I alone in thinking that if del Toro and Cameron update the story, it would somehow lose something?

I've set up a poll on the matter - let me know what you think and vote for your preferred option.

The Gamer's Year

When I started this blog back in October of last year, the evenings were drawing in and the weather was worsening. In fact, that December we had the coldest winter for years. Ideal conditions to ignore the state of the garden and get the dice out. So I did and the Training Dungeon and the first sessions of the sandbox were the result. I thought to myself that surely, once the summer set in, there would be ample opportunity to get more gaming in, but I was wrong.

In fact, what with holidays at various times from June through to September meaning that at least one of the players is always away, the fine weather meaning that there is no excuse not to get on with the garden and the tendency of families to decide the weekend is too good to waste, so let's do X, Y & Z (but not D&D) it's a wonder any gaming gets done once the summer is here.

Yet clearly some of us do get game. Which leads me to the question of the day - which is the best season for gaming? I'll set up a poll for it and I'd be interested to see what it tells us.

(as an aside, apologies for not posting more just recently. I have been Busy on a Big Project - more anon - watch this space)

Willow wins it!

Maybe it's her red hair...



Maybe it's her awesome witchy powers...



Or maybe it's because she's just so darn cute....

But 84% agreed with me that when it comes to the Scooby gang, the magic-user has the edge over the fighter.