I will return Monday from my unannounced hiatus. But,today being Friday the 13th, I leave you with this hilarious nugget of joy:

Exciting News! After being announced four years ago (has it really been that long?), “The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising” finally has a release date. It will release August 14th at Gencon Indy. What makes this extra exciting (for me, anyway) is that I’ll be at Gencon this year to promote a Board Game that will be released at the con. A handy coincidence, if there ever were one. (Read: I’ll be watching the film that Thursday night from my hotel room)

The first Gamers movie was a surprisingly funny low-budget look into the world of gaming. Some of the jokes may have fallen flat, but overall it was a fairly true-to-life look at the overall fun and silliness that hardcore geektastic gamers have. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth picking up and watching (or you can watch it, in it’s entirety, on Youtube. If you’re broke. Or a cheapass). The second film looks to up the ante with an actual budget, higher production values, and (gasp!) what appears to be a real plot. It’s sad, but it looks like it could be better than the two Official live-action D&D films that have been released. But don’t take my word for it, check out the trailer below.

Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising will be available at Gencon, at Paizo, and a surprising number of a bigger box retail stores. MSRP: $19.95

Just about everyone has played some sort of board game in their life. The majority of people play the tried and true mainstream board games they can find in the Game/Barbie aisle of Omni-mart. This aisle is filled with fond childhood favorites. However, go back and play some of these games as an adult and you’ll find a shocking truth: they suck. Here for your reading pleasure are my top Five picks:

#5: Operation

I would like to see a video of real-life surgeons attempting to beat this frustratingly difficult game. A few years back they started advertising again for this game on T.V. making it seem like a madcap, frenetic good time. Well guess what? Advertising lies. If sitting around in a circle, taking turns pulling random body parts out of some schmuck while he buzzes and lights up is your idea of fun, I’ll be keeping my kidneys away from you and your probable bathtub of ice. Also, much like most the games on this list, they’ve shoveled out a variant of Operation for all sorts of licensed properties. For example, you can perform Operation: Spongebob Squarepants. That’s right, you get to pull crap out of a talking pantsed sponge.

#4: Don’t Break the Ice

Don’t get me wrong, these seemed like the coolest game ever as a kid (Pun definitely intended). However, even as a kid it was not hard to figure out that one merely had to keep either the row or the column intact for the ice skater to not fall down. Nowadays the game is an exercise in futility and the winner is determined based on who went first. I see that the current version of the game has a polar bear that you’re supposed to save from falling through the Ice. Hidden Global Warming messsage?

#3: Guess Who

This is another game that becomes a “who goes first, wins” sort of game. When you’re a kid and deductive reasoning isn’t your thing, then the game is a bit more fair. However, after replaying the game as an adult, I found that I could reliably eliminate at least 51% of the field with every question. I love the disclaimer in the above commercial, “Game Cards do not actually talk.” Even better, is the fact that the disclaimer was added to the commercial after the commercial aired without it. Though, I guess the type of people that would think cards could talk, are the type of people that would play Guess Who.

#2: Monopoly

The only thing shocking about the inclusion of this game is that it’s not Number 1 on this list. Seriously, have you ever completed a game of Monopoly? Ever? Let’s say you think you have. Did the game actually end or did everyone agree to end the game because it was late or one person was too far in the lead? Chances are, it’s the latter. Also, the game whores itself out to every licensable property in existence. There’s Nintendo Monopoly, Batman Monopoly, .com Monopoly, Star Trek Monopoly, General Mills Monopoly, World Cup Monopoly, U.S. Army Monopoly, just to name a few out of the hundreds of licensed offshoots. It is my firm guess that none of these variants have ever actually been played, just purchased and looked at by enthusiasts of whatever topic that monopoly game was based on. Here’s a “fun” fact for ya, the longest game of Monopoly took 1,680 hours (or 70 days straight).

#1: Risk

I can already see some of you running to get the tar and feathers. Don’t get me wrong, I love strategy board games. However, strategy in Risk takes a second billing compared to luck in Risk. Risk has too much of a luck-factor to be a good strategy game. It’s prevalent through the whole game, as anyone who’s lost a calvary piece to a lone infantryman can tell you. The payoff for spending the several hours it takes to finish the game? Having your carefully laid plans decimated by the guy who just got his third matching card and gained 50 men. Suddenly he has men on every front, he spreads around the world and wins it in one go. Suddenly, pieces and game board are flying through the air and calls of “bullshit” fill the room. There are far better strategy games out there. Far, far better ones. You don’t even have to look that far. For example, Axis and Allies, far better. Though if you want something different and more interesting to try, try Supremacy; it’s less luck based, has a really cool commodities feature, and has a much cooler look and feel.

Agree, disagree, think I’m an Idiot? Let me know in the comments.

“Where are my Online Episodes?!”

Dear Sci-Fi Channel,

I would love to tell you that I have seen the most recent Episode of Battlestar Galactica. You know, the one that I keep hearing is fantastically awesome. I would love to share with you my new theories about who the fifth cylon could be. However, I can’t. You can blame(/thank) yourself for that.

You see,you used to have this great, forward-thinking feature on your website. You called it Rewind, your term for what is basically time-shifted content. Whenever you would air a New Episode of Battlestar Galactica you would also post it on your website later that evening at 1am. You see, I work days and nights, and am thus not home when BSG is on TV. So for the first six weeks of new episode bliss, I would excitedly pop over to your website at some point after 1am and excitedly watch the weeks new episode. Last Friday, I excitedly popped over and found nothing. You had the four previous episodes, but not the newest one. I searched and searched and could find no announcement of when it would be posted.

So I ran over to Hulu, which puts their episodes up at the same time as you do (you know, since you’re both owned by the same company). They had nothing either. I hoped that it would be a simple technical problem, and that the show would be up by Monday. Wrong.

I popped on Sci-Fi.com Monday, confident that my beloved BSG would be there waiting for me with a warm embrace that only two lovers can share. Nothing. No announcement, nothing. So I checked out Hulu. This time, they did have an announcement:

Upcoming Episodes:
Guess What’s Coming to Dinner: Pt. 1; Airdate: May 16, Avaiilable on Hulu: May 24
Guess What’s Coming to Dinner: Pt. 2; Airdate: May 30, Avaiilable on Hulu: June 7
Sine Quan Non; Airdate: June 6, Avaiilable on Hulu: June 14
The Hub; Airdate: June 13, Avaiilable on Hulu: June 21

Being that you get the episodes the same time Hulu does, this is essentially rewind’s schedule also. So I angrily ask, I have to wait a week and a day to watch the Episodes online?? That’s a week of dodging co-workers out of fear of spoilers, instead of spending time talking with them about and building up buzz and goodwill for your damn show. That’s a week of avoiding enthusiast forums and blogs, instead of discussing and dissecting.

So guess what happens now? I stop playing your game. You were at one point getting advertising revenue and hard viewing statistics from me watching your show online. GONE! I will now go back to far more convenient BitTorrent approach to watching your show. I got rid of Comcast a few months ago, so I’m still able to download those Peer-enabled wonders.

The tragedy here, Sci-Fi, is I actually like the show enough, that I was willing to jump through your flash-driven, advertising-enabled hoops. I don’t do that for just anything or anyone. But, hey, if you change your mind and decide to embrace the 21st century, give me a call. You’ve got my number.

Love,
~Chris

Apparently superdeluxe.com is being shuttered and rolled into Adult Swim’s website. The reason being that the humor on both sites is very similar. I guess this makes sense, in my Internet Video post I mentioned that the two sites were fairly similar. There has actually been somewhat of an outcry online, with people comparing Superdeluxe.com to Arrested Development and other great cancelled shows. While I may not go that far, the site was pretty cool, and I liked it a lot better than funnyordie.com. The silver lining of this story is that two of the site’s more popular video series have already been picked up to be turned into a TV show. Here is a nougat-y sample of what that show could be:

This would be the dice part of Dice & Mice.

Dungeons and Dragons (or DnD as we nerds call it) is, by far, the most popular Roleplaying Game ever created. DnD was first published in 1974 by a small, relatively unknown company called TSR. The very first edition (which we’ll call 0th edition) was fairly crude and not well-written. So, in 1977, TSR released what they called 1st Edition. Compared to 0th edition, 1st edition was quite polished and written for more of the average layman. (There was also at this time a split in the rules, with Advanced DnD spinning out of regular DnD; my experience was always with ADnD, so this article will deal primarily with that.) 1st edition established the format that is still in use today. There are three “Core” rule books: The Player’s Handbook (PHB), The Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG), and the Monster Manual. The PHB was truly the only book required to play the game, as people with extremely active imaginations and creativity could make up all their encounters based off of that book. What was more common though, was the person who assumed the role of Dungeon Master (aka the ‘DM’, the person who runs the adventures and adjudicates the rules) would buy all three, and the other players would either share with him or pick up their own copy of the PHB. The DMG contained rules for traps, treasure, magic items and running adventures. Lastly the Monster Manual was essentially a compendium of monsters the players could face against, it was the least useful of the books, but handy to have around in a pinch.

These books stayed on the shelf until 1989, when TSR decided to release 2nd Edition. 2nd Edition was made largely in response to the backlash that had come up surrounding DnD. A lot of people believed that DnD was a game for Satanists and that people were encouraged in the game to actually perform dark rituals and attack each other in Steam tunnels. All of which was a bunch of sensationalist nonsense cooked up by some parent who felt an emotional disconnect with their rebellious teenage child and instead of chalking it up to the natural disconnect kids feel with their parents at the time of puberty or to some sort of parenting flaw they chose to lay the blame on a game. (Sound familiar?) Anyway, the 2nd edition removed any reference to Devils or Demons along with any provocative artwork and character classes that could be considered evil. There were also a small litany of rules changes and the introduction of more non-sword-and-sorcery campaign settings. In 1995 they released a new version of the books with further rules updates and clarifications. People nowadays refer to this as version 2.5. This is also the last version that TSR released.

In 1997 Wizards of the Coast, the company famous for Magic the Gathering and Roborally (among others), purchased TSR (which included the DnD brand). They promptly set to work on developing an overhaul to the system. In 2000 they released 3rd Edition. 3rd Edition was the largest overhaul to the system yet. It streamlined a lot of the rules and made the whole system more flexible overall. That’s not to say it was not without its flaws, but the ideas were fairly sound. It reintroduced some of the more controversial elements removed from 2nd edition, which resulted in a somewhat surprising lack of controversy. In 2003, they released a revised version. This time, they actually called it 3.5. The rules updates were mostly minor, but they did fix a lot of the problems with 3rd edition. Mainly power level issues and the like.

Now, five years later, cometh Fourth Edition. 4th Edition is an incredibly different DnD product than before. Don’t get me wrong, it still has the classic elements of DnD in place, you still make characters and go on adventures. It’s just the actual process of doing such has changed somewhat drastically. They’ve taken many cues from computer and video games, adding in things such as skill trees and World of Warcraft-esque character roles. They’ve cut out things like picking your spells at the start of each day and attempted to prevent situations where one character is completely useless. One of the bigger changes is that they have given fighters what are essentially spells. They now have abilities that rival the flashiness of a spellcasters. You’ll still be swinging the sword each round, but you’ll look fabulous doing it. Spellcasters now have abilities that will prevent them from using all their spells up and being useless. Especially handy during those longer battles, no spellcaster likes to resort to melee combat. That would just be uncivilized. Overall, things have been cut up, shuffled around and remixed. Most importantly, though, the game looks fun. Don’t get me wrong, DnD has always been fun. In fact, there is nothing better than getting together a group of friends and playing a game. However, 4th edition looks fun. Italicized fun. I’ve been reading previews and excerpts online, and from what I can see, the game looks like a joy to play. Obviously I’ll have to reserve final judgment until I get a copy of it in my hands, but that won’t be long now. The game is released in a mere 30 days.

Available June 6th from wherever nerdy books are sold; you can pre-order DnD up until this Saturday from Leisure Time or the Dragon’s Table, here in town.

MSRP 34.95 per book or 104.95 for a Box Set.

(Click Image for Bigger View)

One of the coolest things about the interwebs is that it really rewards ingenuity. I’ve touched on this slightly in a previous post. Being that it is almost two years old by this point, I’m sure most of you have heard about the One Red Paperclip Project. Essentially, somebody traded up from one red paperclip to a house. An honest to goodness, mortgage-free house. He had the idea and proceeded to act on it and the internet rewarded him for it. The internet is cool like that. He did have a few things going for him, in a sort of right person/place sort of way. He had the freedom to and was willing to relocate to wherever his new house might be; his job ended up paying for the traveling he did to various places; and the house he got was given to him by a city. That’s not to deny his feat, he did an awesome thing.

The whole situation reminds me of a book I used to read a lot when I was younger. It was called “Alvin’s Swap Shop”, apparently one of a series of books by Clifford Hicks based around a character named Alvin Fernald. (I just found out now, after doing some digging, that there is a website based on this character: http://www.alvinfernald.com/.)
The book was written in 1976 and retains a sort of “Everything is A-OK!” mentality that was really prevalent in the 50’s. In the book, Alvin has just started his summer vacation and is bored. Seeing an Ant on the ground, he convinces a gullible classmate of his that it is a special, trained Ant that can do tricks. He then trades the Ant for the gullible classmate’s prized bug collection. He takes the bug collection to someone else who’s really into bugs and keeps trading his way up. Eventually he trades a bunch of old records and a record player for the use of an old gas station to use as a Swap Shop (hence the title). Through creative swapping, he fills the shop full of interesting knick-knacks. There’s also a mystery plot thrown in for good measure, involving Jamaicans, scarred bad-guys, and postage stamps. He ended up getting all of this through something worthless (an Ant). At the end of the book, it’s the end of summer, Alvin sees the guy he traded the Ant to. The guy is incredibly happy with his Ant, and has spent all summer training it. Maybe the Ant wasn’t so worthless after all.

I did some local digging to find out where I would need to go to give the iPod Touch a fitting death. First stop will be Leisure Time Pet & Hobby, here in Champaign. They have a crap ton of Model Rocket supplies at my disposal. Stop 2 will probably be somewhere in Indiana. I don’t think sparklers and snakes are going to as much as dent the iPod. Stop 3 will be at the Fair-lab. There I will get things ready. Stop 4 will be a field with nothing around to damage and no one around to disturb.

I’m expecting this can down sometime next week. So hang tight iPod-watchers!

Well using a very complex and specific tool (read: a paint scraper), I was able to crack open the iPod touch today. The first thing I noticed was the abundance of water present inside the case. I was actually surprised by how much water was in there, as it has been several weeks since it had gotten wet and no water came out upon vigorous shaking.

Looking around inside the guts of the beast, one thing that surprised me was the flexibility of the battery. Apparently it uses a sort of Li-Ion polymer putty, which results in the battery being kind of squishy. It was overly disconcerting. Anyway, I found some pretty tell-tale signs of death throughout the iPod. The sickly, ammonia-esque smell, slightly corroded connectors, the piece I broke off while opening it… Though it was my boss Troy who noticed what was probably the actual cause of death: burn marks near the top of the iPod. This iPod had shorted out. Such a shame. Only three weeks old and it already is meeting the big Steve in the sky.

Well, the only step left is to lay this thing to rest. It might be a few days for the conclusion, as I want to plan something rather fire-y and explode-y. I’ll be sure to post pictures when the time comes.

Just got the pseudo-official word. The Water Damage Indicator on the iPod has been turned half-red, which means there was some water damage, which means no warranty exchange. I argued that since the WDI was only half-red, I should have a 50% chance of getting the warranty. However, any red is enough to deny it. Like I said earlier, I wasn’t expecting much from this option.

Oh well. This is actually more exciting, as it means I can now crack this sucker open with impunity!

Let’s get to work.