The Sakura Dojo

This is, barely, not too late. I encourage you to join the upcoming Speak Out with your Geek Out, from the 12th to the 16th of September, let your geek flag fly and show people how much you love your hobbies and obsession. Hopefully we can turn this into a yearly celebration of geekiness in all things. Thanks to Monica Valentinelli for getting this rolling.

And my geekiness can mostly be found at the Sea of Stars RPG Design Journal these days.

Short, non-spoiler version:

Go and watch it for the CGI world of Pandora and the Na’vi. An amazing realization of an alien environment, the best so far. Ignore as much as possible the ham-handed plot that lacks all subtly and shows that Cameron does not understand what science fiction is. My Grade: B- (and only because the CGI is so spectacular, apart from that it would drop a full letter)

For my spoiler-laded analysis of why it fails at being science fiction here.

A summary of my adventures at GenCon can be found at Sea of Stars Design Journal.

But you can rejoin at GenCon . . . Wizards of the Coast is having an amazingly awesome contest, the Never Split the Party Contest in fact: Describe your gaming group that has since broken up and you could win a trip for all the group (up to six) to GenCon!

I have been running a monthly, in store, D&D 4e game using the Delve Night adventures provided by Wizards of the Coast. So, I have a little more play under my belt and I have been reading bits and pieces of the new 4e books.

Today, I was looking at the new Arcane Power book, which is new options for wizards and other, well, what used to be spellcasters. Various impressions:

-Art, the cover is terrible and much of the interior art is reused from various 3.x books (which just strikes me as cheap), not that it is bad art, but I have seen it before.
-New Powers, pages (and pages and pages, roughly 2/3rds of book) of new powers which just leave me cold. Which is odd, as I like to look through spell and magic item descriptions. But page after page of carefully blocked out, narrowly defined powers, I find very wearing.
-Vague Nods to Roleplaying, there is a little discussion of how somethings (like a Warlock's curse) might look to the characters but most it is just mechanics and more mechanics. My favorite example of this is there is a feat that can only be taken by dwarves with the beautifully evocative name of "Rune-Scribed Soul", know what it is? Neither do I, as it is only described in mechanical terms! Not a single word of descriptive text or how it might define a character outside of bonuses to dice. Such a waste.

In other words, it fully confirms my existing opinion of 4e.

We are getting back to the AEON Mall setting in gaming, which is a very post-modern take on superheroes. The Ultimates by way of The Office and reality programming. Most of the characters are new, but one, mine, is returning.

( Scenes from a Mall )

Not as easy to make as you would think.

From the BBC: James May, from Top Gear, and an Ekranoplan! The Caspian Sea Monster! And May gets to drive one. More information on ekranoplans.

A new way to view flickr images: Tag Galaxy. Go and give it a try, Dragoncon is a great search seed.

Ancient yeast reborn in modern beer, says it all really.

Is a new ITV sitcom about a group of superheroes, sad, unsuccessful superheroes who hang out at the local pub for supers "The Fortress" whose sign states: No Masks - No Powers - No Heroics

The No Heroics site, unfortunately you cannot watch the video unless you are in England but visit the Geek Detail section. But luckily you can find a preview on YouTube.