Fun Photoshop Contest

Check it out.

A few faves...

Good gravy, I'm kind of amazed I actually get the Tubeways one.

Pardon my way clumsy use of images in a blogspot blog. I'm just pressing buttons here and hoping.

EDIT: Joe here. Sorry Ed, I had to kill those images. They were driving me crazy!

More UncleBear Linkage

Apparently somebody's going to be publishing RuneQuest again? How does this relate to the existing Hero Wars/HeroQuest thing? And they're doing Lankhmar too? Just in time for the comics and movies and republished books? Huh. I'm not sure how to react to that. I thought HeroQuest was Glorantha now.

Drama At Palladium Greatly Exaggerated (By Palladium)

Why do I care about this? I don't know. Palladium's in Michigan, and I've lived here in Michigan most of my life. I have a soft spot for some of the old Palladium games, freakish as they are (Ninjas & Superspies, TMNT, maybe Beyond The Supernatural, and the original tiny Mechanoids booklet). Also I am a sucker for tabloid scandal. If the blog hadn't already made that clear.

Anyway, Uncle Bear has more on the Palladium crisis. Turns out (unsuprisingly) that this wasn't actually that recent, that at least as far as the Law is convinced, he was off by a couple orders of magnitude on how much was stolen from him (5 figures instead of 6 or 7).

I wonder if he was thinking of Mega-Financial-Damage-Capacity instead of plain old Financial-Damage-Capacity?

Go read if you care about this stuff. Uncle Bear's always a good place to go for mainstream game news.

Empires

I don't know much about Iron Empires; Burning Empires looks cool to me because there aren't enough good sci-fi or even space opera type games out there; but the thing I can't get over about it is that in addition to the glorious painting type illustrations, there is this awesomely cool sketch on the PDF of the Table of Contents.

I don't know why that geeks me the heck out, but it does.

Spoken Like A True Benevolent Dictator

Ron writes:

This is where I lay down the law for participating at the booth. By signing up (that is, by paying Luke), you are agreeing to all of the points listed below, plus whatever I forgot but remember or decide later.

Awesome. I laughed.

K.O.

How do people get knocked out from a punch? The Straight Dope answers.

If you want to knock somebody out, apparently, you have to get some fast rotational motion in there -- a really swift blow to the jaw is the thing, not something heavy dropping on your head.

If you're writing simulation-y rules for pugilism, take note!

A Highly Unfortunate Distinction

There is site called "Perverted Justice" which performs the admirable service of exposing sexual predators who hit on children in regional chatrooms. Reading it is a combination of fascinating and completely nauseating, with a side order of righteous indignation and schadenfreude at their being caught and exposed.

Anyway, the character who has been voted #1 slimiest predator ever is 34 year old Paul from Chicago, aka "fleet_captain_jaime_wolf" on yahoo. His transcript is a nasty glimpse into the universe of a pedophile into dominance/submission stuff.

Why do I bring it up here? Check this shit out. (At this point he has gotten what he thinks is a 13 year old girl to refer to him as "master.")

fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:29:15 PM): Do you play role playing games?
sadlilgrrl (6:29:24 PM): i used to play a mud master
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:29:36 PM): I see... What else?
sadlilgrrl (6:29:55 PM): i try to write some master but im not very good
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:30:10 PM): Youwill get better... I write for RPGs...
sadlilgrrl (6:30:34 PM): like dungeons and dragoons master?
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:30:40 PM): Yes, like D&D...
sadlilgrrl (6:30:47 PM): thats a really cool game master
sadlilgrrl (6:30:52 PM): i get confused by the dice tho master
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:30:53 PM): Do you play it?
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:31:00 PM): I will explain the dice...
sadlilgrrl (6:31:02 PM): i try to master
sadlilgrrl (6:31:15 PM): i had a book on a vampire type game like that master
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:31:27 PM): Oh? Good... Vampire the Maskerade?
sadlilgrrl (6:31:33 PM): yes master
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:31:42 PM): I used to work for White Wolfe...
sadlilgrrl (6:31:56 PM): is that the publisher master?
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:32:03 PM): Yeppers, it is.
sadlilgrrl (6:32:32 PM): thats really cool master
sadlilgrrl (6:32:38 PM): you must be really really creative master

I'm not even going to quote where the conversation goes immediately after that, but eventually, after we find out that Paul prefers Macross to Gundam, we get this:

fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:58:40 PM): Have you seen the movie "Underworld", yet?
sadlilgrrl (6:58:42 PM): my friend hillary left it at my house master
sadlilgrrl (6:58:43 PM): no master
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:58:50 PM): Oh? You should, when you can.
sadlilgrrl (6:59:11 PM): okay master
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (6:59:37 PM): Did you know that "Underworld" stole some of my ideas? (*blinks*)
sadlilgrrl (6:59:44 PM): no master
sadlilgrrl (7:00:06 PM): what did they do master?
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (7:00:23 PM): Well, in Vampire the Mascerade, you know how Vampires & Werewolves are enemies, right?
sadlilgrrl (7:00:42 PM): yes master
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (7:01:10 PM): But, I had to idea to base an adventure around a Vampire who falls in love with a Werewolfe...
sadlilgrrl (7:01:36 PM): even though they hated each other master?
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (7:01:50 PM): Even though their people did....
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (7:01:55 PM): Look at Romeo & Juliet...
sadlilgrrl (7:02:01 PM): oh okay master
fleet_captain_jaime_wolfe (7:02:34 PM): THink about it, doomed love is the best form of love. (This comment scares me.)

(Italicized bits are the reaction of the Peej volunteer playing the part of the 13 year old.)

So anyway, he's apparently a former writer for White Wolf, and wants his new massively underage sex slave to play RPGs with him. Eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Anyway, he got busted and is now immortalized both on PeeJ and the Illinois sex offenders page.

There's no particular point to this post, I just was goggle-eyed seeing the juxtaposition of nerdy gamer and predator. Had to share.