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You’ve Gotta Be Kiddin’ Me….

It’s April 7th.

It’s Spring.

It’s the Home Opener at Yankee Stadium.

It’s SNOWING. Heavily. We’re supposed to get 8-12 inches or more.

Gah.

This winter had been the worst I’d seen in my entire life…over 50 inches of snow, including one blizzard responsible for half that amount in a single day. Apparently, it doesn’t want to let go.

Normally, I like winter. Fall is my favorite season, but winter comes in a close second…mostly because I can breathe: summer and spring are allergy-filled and uncomfortable, for the most part. But I’ve gotta tell ya: I’ve had ENOUGH. Enough snow, enough cold, enough $300-a-month-home-heating-oil-bills….Enough.

Snow. In April.

Feh.

GMS

Arrr….Good Timing, Matey…

So, there are a couple of trailers for Disney’s forthcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl movie floating around the ‘net: The “corset” teaser trailer, and the full-length trailer (low bandwidth version, high bandwidth version).

Zombie pirates….goofy action…swashbuckley goodness. Looks like the release of Skull & Bones is going to turn out to be perfectly timed…which was completely unplanned when Ian Sturrock and I first started knocking the idea around at the Treasure Island pirate show in Vegas, two years ago. Hell, we didn’t even know the movie was in development.

Life works, sometimes. Not often enough for any of our tastes, but when it slides together seamlessly, it’s always good to make a note of it, out loud, just in case the Fates are listening. You want them to know you appreciate it, after all.

GMS

Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis….

I’m a big fan of Conan.

Robert E. Howard’s stories were some of the first fantasy tales I devoured in my discovery of the genre…I remember fondly the day when my father took me into Manhattan with him one day, and in addition to the scads of office supplies I got to scam from his office (the joy of gamers everywhere: notebooks, binders, graph paper!) he took me to a bookstore near his office where he got me my first copy of the Dungeon Masters Guide and the first of the Conan paperbacks from Ace.

Conan the Barbarian was my first R-rated film, and I spent years reading Marvel Comics series, from Conan to King Conan to Savage Sword of Conan.

Needless to say, I am looking forward to the new Conan RPG coming from Mongoose Publishing. I can’t wait to see what they’re going to do with it….and I have high hopes for the quality of the game, given the fact that Ian Sturrock (designer of their Slaine RPG, and one of my co-authors on Green Ronin’s Skull & Bones) has been tapped as the author.

However, if you, like me, can’t wait for it to come out, check out the following fan sites, where industrious gamers have produced their own versions of Conan for the D20 rules system:

Vincent N. Darlage’s Conan the Barbarian for Third Edition D&D site is great, concentrating especially on the portrayal of Conan in the original Howard stories.

The Hyborian Age d20 Campaign Site is another good one, concentrating on the setting as a campaign, rather than focusing on adaptation of Howard’s characters.

Very cool.

GMS