Setting for the Vorpal Chainsword Chronicles

As some of you know, I recently started a Sword & Sorcery 5th edition D&D campaign with my local crew. Thing is, as a fancy-pants weekly business-traveling responsible sad adult I can't seem to get enough productive creativity-time these days to actually flesh out a solid campaign world. One that is internally-consistent and that would allow the players the ability to sandbox-explore like they deserve. I mean, I can type up blogposts in hotel rooms easily enough, but I can't as easily sit back and fully-immerse myself into the fantastic worlds of the mind and create fantasy realms as much as I could in my youth.

Dramatization: Me circa 1988.

So far its just been a city and a dungeon I've had to design/build, which is fine for 1st and 2nd level characters, but I feel like it would be better if I could describe the landscape in a more detailed fashion, without having to build it all myself. Basically what I need is a campaign world template that I can place my own individual dungeons and such on top of if I want, or that the players can explore on their own. It needs to be a good fantasy setting, but not one that's full of elves and hobbits and whatnot. It can't be the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or anything normal. It needs to be something post-apocalyptic, and yet full of alien magic.,,

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead - Netflix Movie Reviews

So I recently saw that Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead was available on Netflix. For this movie I knew I needed assistance to get through it, as the original Dead Snow was, while an interesting idea, not that good at all (kind of like Iron Sky). So I invited a couple of buds over and we fired up Dead Snow 2.

Was it any good? ...No.

So was it worth watching? ...Yes!

See what fun we're having?

Dead of Winter on TableTop!

While I love the Geek and Sundry show TableTop (on Youtube), its rare that one of the episodes features a boardgame that both:

1) I haven't yet played
and
2) I really want to learn how to play.

In this case they play a relatively new boardgame that I actually own, but haven't put in the effort to be able to both learn the rules and explain them to others. That's the slow step in my boardgaming nowadays, having enough excitement about a game to be able to teach the rules to others. I mean, once everyone knows how to play Shadows of Brimstone, then that's a guaranteed good time so you might as well play that, right?

Well, last GenCon I got a badge to get into the Dealer Hall an hour early thanks to my homey Chad Delp, and went into a rabid buying frenzy. There I picked up the game Dead of Winter, because the reddits said it was so great and I was in a serious buying furvor. However, I also picked up about six other games (including the aforementioned Shadows of Brimstone), so even though I cracked Dead of Winter open and perused the rules and components, I never really put in the time to learn the game well enough to suggest it to my friends. Fortunately for me, this week's episode of Tabletop features Dead of Winter, and does a pretty good job explaining the basics of the rules, so now the game is a real option for game night for peeps that've watched the episode!



So thank you, Wil Wheaton, for continuing to make TableTop an awesome show and helping diversify my gaming, despite my laziness.

Game on!

Ash Wednesday

Happy Ash Wednesday! Down with Deadites!

Army of Darkness is my favorite movie ever made, so I'm glad that the Vatican sets aside a day to recognize its value. Let us pray.

Amen.

Wizards (1977) - Review

A while back during some of my semi-bored internet surfing looking for stuff similar to the animated Heavy Metal movie (we all revisit that phase every once and a while), I came across talk about a movie that was 'inspired' and 'is the original' in the line of fantasy post-apocalyptic animated movies. This move was referred to as 'Wizards' by Ralph Bakshi, and a number of anonymous gamers and rpg-folks felt that it was a seminal film of that genre.

Now, I had never seen this movie. And as a person with a high level of self-importance and good amount of know-it-all-ism, I felt a bit of shame at that realization. I decided I needed to rectify that situation in case I'm ever at a party with Frank Mentzer and Joss Whedon and they randomly strike up a conversation about how they both love this mysterious 'fantasy-animation-origin' film I'm hearing about and I need a way to cut myself into their conversation. So I searched for an online version with Netflix and Amazon, but had no luck. Finally I just decided to take a chance and ordered the blu-ray of it, figuring it probably deserves a place next to Heavy Metal and Fire and Ice in my blu-ray collection if its so important.

So, how was it? ...Well, I watched the whole thing, so that's something I guess.

New Video by MC Frontalot! - Start Over

I a fan of the NerdCore Hip-Hop, and therefore I follow the doings of the godfather therein, the most honorable MC Frontalot. And Good news! Today he released a new video for his song: Start Over.
Where he nerds up the Little Red Riding Hood story. Check it!


Even more better news! He put said song itself up for the download on the interwebs for free: Clickz heer!

Vikingdom: The Blood Eclipse - Bad Netflix Movie Reviews

Okay, I already know you haven't watched "Vikingdom: The Blood Eclipse" yet, so I won't go into a lot of boring critiques on specific points of the movie. What I will do is tell you this right up front: This movie is WAAAAAY better than its rating on Netflix would have you believe.

I'm serious. Its good. I mean, its not Lord of the Rings or anything, but you can tell these folks tried their hardest to make an action-adventure fantasy movie for people like us.

 

Now, I realize it only has 1-1/2 Stars on Netflix, but you know who rates movies on Netflix nowadays? Everyone. And have you been outside and seen Everyone lately? Everyone can be really stupid, so their collective opinions on things can often be really off. This is one of those cases. This movie was clearly made with you and I in mind: the proud... the few... the Nerdcore!

Carnage of the Blade Demons! - Behind the Screen

So last Saturday I wrote up and ran my first 5th edition D&D game, set in a new Sword and Sorcery world. I mentioned in that post that since I only had a couple hours to write it that I'd be utilizing the charts in the new DM guide to get the brain-juices flowing by randomly rolling up the dungeon adventure bits. I also said I'd let you guys know how it turned out. Well, here's the beef on how I went about creating the adventure from the random-generator charts.

Its a Brand New Day - New Improved Site!

So in honor of Groundhog's Day and his Glorious Majesty Punxsautawney Phil, I've released a new website for Vorpal Chainsword upon the world. I like it here on Blogger and all, but Blogger doesn't allow you to do a lot of things other than, well, blog, and I needed a bigger place to put all of my stuff. A place where I can upload campaign write-ups, podcast interviews with famous nerds, and hide online puzzles to confound sharp-eyed adventurers. So without further adieu, I present to you:

The Vorpal Chainsword Website

Don't worry, dear blog readers. I'll continue to do bi-weekly updates here on good ol' blogger (so keep that rss feed if you like!), but now I have a place to put interviews with nerdcore masters of the art and display pictures and files for campaign games and whatnot. Come on over and check out the new digs! I'll be updating the various segments of the main site regularly but will try to remember to post here when I've got something cool on there you can download.

For our special release, may I point you toward a couple Podcasts: with featured guests MC Frontalot and The Dungeon Bastard!