Geek Interest – Page 26 – The Designer Monologues

October 27, 2010

Tabletopocalypse, Follow-up

Sure, people say that they want more positivity, but negative topics are apparently are far more likely to spark conversation. My Tabletopocalypse Now post has 70-odd comments here at the blog (more than I’ve ever seen for any other post), as well as extensive (and varying degrees of ridiculous/frustrating/infuriating) discussions at RPGnet, ENWorld, The RPGsite, Circvs Maximvs, RPGgeek, and dozens of blogs.

I figured that there would be some hullaballoo over my post — I said as much in the post which preceded it. I completely underestimated the level of vitriol.

My take-aways from this: Continue reading “Tabletopocalypse, Follow-up”

October 14, 2010

Us vs Them

As I attended NYCC last weekend, I was struck by the massive difference between the comics audience and the tabletop gaming audience. There’s a lot of cross-over in various geek-niche interest groups, but the contrast between the comics fans and professionals that I spoke with, and the gamers and professionals at GenCon in August was profound.

Both industries are having a hard time of it in this economy, and have been on a decline for a long time. Both hobbies are losing fans to other pursuits at a fairly regular rate, and not really experiencing an influx of new blood from any source. Both have fans prone to orthodoxy and “nerdrage”, driven to expressions of negativity on the internet with unfortunate regularity. Yet the comics crowd seemed far more energized, positive and hopeful than the gamers — even at the relatively positive GenCon.
Continue reading “Us vs Them”

September 13, 2010September 13, 2010

The Greatest Space-Fantasy of All Time!

Part of it, I’m sure, is that I’m now in my 40s.

Part of it is reminiscences like James Maliszewski’s recent run of entries on his blog, “Grognardia” (start from that date, and go forward from there, he’s done a few), or the always-excellent Space:1970 blog.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the stuff that I *lived for* from roughly Age 8 until my teenage years (when things like music and girls distracted me).

The fire was lit, certainly, by Star Trek re-runs in the early-to-mid 70s. But, like most geeks of my age, the conflagration took off in 1977, with Star Wars, and nothing after that was ever the same.

So yeah — I’ve been thinking a lot about that time, especially the years from 1977 through 1980 — when the first film was all that there was, when the horizon was endless, and the galaxy hadn’t been defined down to the last name and backstory given to every minor walk-on in a scene. Thinking about my imaginative diet at the time — the thing that consumed me, from reading to watching to drawing to playing.

I’ve come to the realization that I’m not really a Science Fiction fan.

I’m a fan of SPACE FANTASY.

That actually used to be a branding description for Star Wars — the Marvel comics used to occasionally have a bannerhead that proclaimed “The Greatest Space-Fantasy of All Time!” That terminology eventually faded from view, of course, as Lucas retroactively tried to convince us all that what he was *really* doing all along was a Campbellian Hero-Myth Exploration. Very Serious, you see. Not just a tribute to the far-flung Flash Gordon serials of his youth, when he couldn’t get the License from King Features. No sir.

I love Space Fantasy. I want giant space-cruisers. I want soaring spacefighters wheeling and roaring unscientifically. I want jungle-planets, desert-planets, ice-planets. I want floating cities. I want knights and knaves and princesses and kings and queens and wizards and monsters… But I want them with lasers.

I want GRAND EPIC HEROISM AND SCALE, not speculation on possibility.

So, dear reader — feed the monkey on my back. I’ve got plenty of filmed entertainment to choose from, but what I’m lacking is stuff to read. What are some of your favorite Space Fantasies?