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D&D Entertainment News

Secrets of Blackmoor Review

Dungeons and Dragons eludes complete understanding. Secrets of Blackmoor offers one step on your way to enlightenment.

Despite re-reading the 239 pages of the 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Guide as a kid, the game remained inscrutable. Despite this, I recall my first encounter with the game as effortlessly joyful. Though it was easy to catch on to the varied and vigorous opinions about proper play in The Dragon magazine, some force drove me onward, compelling me to re-read pages. Somehow, I aimed to solve the disconnect between the game as played by my friends versus the outlandish ideas in the books.

The written word, however erudite or evocative, can only suggest the experience of artwork. It cannot reproduce the feeling of gazing meditatively at The Starry Night. I thought if I could just decipher the jumble of thoughts in the rule books, I’d reach some nirvana of RPG mastery. Eventually I concluded, playing is a craft you learn by doing, hopefully with the guiding hand of a master, in the same way you learn to build a fence with your dad.

I have read Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World. It’s deep. It’s essential. And it illuminates a thousand other paths to explore. I’ve read Jeffro Johnson’s APPENDIX N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons. It inspires, offering additional twisting trails to follow. Two aspects of Secrets of Blackmoor make it uniquely compelling: the focus on Dave Arneson and the experience of first hand accounts.

The confident voice of Gary Gygax echoes across the years. Though sharing equal billing with Arneson on the original little brown books, the misconception that the D&D was his invention is easy to understand. By the time AD&D arrived, it was the Gygax name alone on the front cover. By the end of the 1980s, it’s as if he gave birth to the genre and all other games descended from his wisdom. Fortunately, historians are uncovering the complete story.

The more we learn from the originators, the better our play today. I am completely happy to spend weeks pouring over 720 pages of thick, comprehensive history. At the same time, I’m grateful for a 2 hour documentary I can share with my sons. It offers a concentrated impact to receive the legends related by the heroes themselves. It communicates an infectious passion for the hobby.

As this film is labeled as the first volume, I do look forward to a continuation of the series. The more we all enjoy this work, the more it will encourage and enable the creation of additional volumes in the series. As I write this, physical copies are still available from the Secrets of Blackmoor store. You can also stream the film from Vimeo or Amazon.

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Entertainment

London Town Movie Review

The whole family caught this fine film via Netflix last night, finding it quite entertaining. Just like the year 1979 in which it takes place, the story is more earnest, innocent and romantic than most fiction you’ll encounter these days. Esthetically, the film produces warm feelings with it’s remembrances of vivid color and Clash songs you can sing along to. The plot moves along without lingering on useless atmosphere. The protagonist is a likeable kid who faces challenges, conquers them and grows as a result.

You’ll find nonsense criticism of this movie that complains about it being unrealistic, which misses the point as much as complaining that Van Gogh’s paintings are blurry. It’s romantic. It features Joe Strummer the mythical hero. It presents a vision of things how they ought to be. It has something profound to say about being 15, about transforming into an adult.

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Entertainment News

Steam Family Sharing

This will make it a lot easier for me to introduce PC games to my two boys. And it will be one more reason to put a Linux box in the family room.

Steam Family Sharing lets users share games with unique saves

Steam Family Sharing enables users to share their entire library of games with up to 10 other Steam members – Steam suggests “close friends and family members.” Users request access to a friend’s library, and if their computer is authorized, they have access to all of the games in that friend’s library, complete with the ability to earn their own Steam achievements and save their own progress to the Steam Cloud.

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Entertainment News

Parkour Moves Indoors

My kids love American Ninja Warrior. But what’s called Parkour today, used to be Freestyle Walking and the Ministry of Silly Walks before that. The sport has really come a long way.

Parkour, a Pastime Born on the Streets, Moves Indoors and Uptown – NYTimes.com

They are skateboarders without skateboards, urban acrobats who scale walls, hurdle mailboxes and leap between buildings in stunts that might give Spider-Man pause.

Practitioners of parkour, a daring pastime born in the streets, have long seen public spaces as their playground, and parkour as the ultimate rebel’s game, one with no rules, league, equipment or winners. It started in France (the name is derived from the French word for “course”) and has spread around the world: GazaTokyoRome and Miami are parkour towns.

Categories
Entertainment News

Falskaar mod for Skyrim

OK, I thought I was done with Skyrim. I Played through all the content and moved on to Dishonored via a sweet deal on Steam. Now I’m thinking I may give this mod a try. The author built this mod as a way to a job as a level designer.

Falskaar by Alexander J. Velicky

Falskaar is a new lands mod that adds an entirely new worldspace to the world. It’s accessed by a dungeon the first time, then by boat from then on out. Falskaar’s goal was to sharpen my skills in almost all areas around the board, with a focus in level and dungeon design. The result is that there is at least a little bit of everything. There is a new land, places, people, quests, dungeons and more for the player to experience. It adds roughly 20+ hours of content, and favors all types of characters.

This is NOT a beta. This is NOT a test version. This is a 100% completed new lands mod.