Author: Gareth

Transmedia developer — writer, consultant, game designer, graphic artist, and publisher. A sharp tongue, a sharp blade, and on a good day, a sharp mind.
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Post-Christmas Update

The Minion got back from visiting her Mom this morning, and and I are back to work — and so, with things back to normal, here’s a wrap-up of the holiday.

The mood was down quite a bit — ‘s Grandmother passed away on Christmas Eve, barely two months after the death of her husband, to whom she’d been married for 68 years. It was fitting that they’re together again after this brief period apart, but, as you can imagine, the family Christmas gathering was bittersweet, to say the least.

We did, of course, fully participate in what refers to as “the Festival of Avarice.” Nifty presents abounded. The highlights of my particular haul:

The biggie, from the in-laws: an M-Audio FastTrack Pro USB Audio/MIDI Interface with pre-amps, and a First Act ME301 Double Cutaway Electric Guitar. This combination allows me to plug directly into my Mac and record guitar tracks for my compositions, using any number of Amp and effects emulators that I have.

Holy Crap. I was gobsmacked.

A Metric Fuckton of nifty DVDs, from and some self-purchased with Yule Loot/Gift Cards, including: The Planet of the Apes Legacy Boxed Set (all 5 original films, plus a documentary), The Clash of the Titans, Superman The Movie (4-disc Special Edition), which includes the 1951 “Superman & the Mole Men” and 9 Fleischer Cartoons, in addition to the film plus extras, the Richard Donner Cut of Superman II, The 1966 espionage classic The Quiller Memorandum, 70s sci-fi goodness Logan’s Run, Miami Vice Season One, and the last two sets in the James Bond Ultimate Edition collections.

‘s Uncle Tony picked me up the coffee-table book Conan: The Ultimate Guide to the World’s Most Savage Barbarian, which is a nifty DK guidebook illustrated with tons of art from the various Conan comics over the past 35+ years.

There were other nifties as well, but I’ve rambled on quite enough. Talk to you all again soon.

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Friday Music

Short entry this week — prepping for the Holidays.

I discovered an absolutely amazing album this past week — Lamia is an Argentinian group who mixes electronica with medieval vocal arrangements. Their album, La Maquina De Dios is actually the 14th century compositions from The Red Book of Vermell! Here are two of my favorites:

Lamia – “Laudemus Virginem.” This features the two female singers in a gorgeous duet.

The male vocalist takes the duties for this track: Lamia – “Cuncti Simus.”

Wow.

As a complete change of pace, here’s my favorite track from Tom Waits (which I believe I’ve posted before) — a nice little jazzy narrative: Tom Waits – “Frank’s Wild Years.”

Another track from The Knife’s Silent Shout, which was easily one of my top choices for the best albums of 2006: The Knife – “Forest Families.”

Here’s another track from the forthcoming “supergroup” project featuring Damon Albarn (Gorillaz), Phil Simenon (The Clash) and others: The Good, The Bad & The Queen – “Kingdom of Doom.”

…and we round out the week with one of my favorite tracks from Fiona Apple’s latest album, Extraordinary Machine: Fiona Apple – “Not About Love.”

There you go, kids. Blessed Yule and Merry Christmas. See you next week for the last Friday Music of 2006.

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2007 Gaming

Giving a lot of thought to what I want to do, recreational-gaming-wise (as opposed to publishing-gaming-work-wise) this coming year.

As much as I hate to say it, I think that the SERENITY campaign is DOA. Too hard to pick up again after all this time, plus, to be completely honest, every time I think about it, it dredges up some fairly unpleasant memories. Best to leave it be, I think.

Hellboy….meh. OK for a one-shot, I guess, but I’ve lost my drive to really do anything with it.

Saw ‘s comment on this post, where he mentioned the possibility of a superhero game… This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, actually.

I’d use Mutants & Masterminds, which is an extremely nifty d20-based rules system. The actual play is fairly rules-light….the only complicated part is character creation (which is a points-buy thing, allowing you to design a character and their powers in the most minute detail)…although for people who don’t jazz on the number-crunching, they give the option of simply picking an Archetype and modifying it, which is WAY easy (and I’ve got several PDF releases full of Archetypes….so I guarantee if you’ve got a superhero that you’d like to model, I can get you a matching archetype).

Anyone interested?

The other gaming idea: D&D….sort of. Using the straight D&D rules, but in my own campaign world, which takes things pretty far from the usual Medieval-Fantasy model and more into a bizarre mix of Western, Wuxia, Steampunk and more, set in a fantasy world.

Anyway — I’m open to comments. I really want to get something regular started up.

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