The Secret Lair

If you question the effectiveness of our Retrieval Squads, you may wish to ask Mr. Ken Newquist about his opinion on the subject. They came in the dead of night and before Ken was even aware that his home had been infiltrated he was subdued, transported to one of our Interrogation rooms and submitted to “methods of inquiry” that would make anyone even marginally acquainted with the Geneva Conventions weep.

Once satisfied that we had wrung every useful iota of information from Mr. Newquist, we wiped every memory of the interrogation from his mind—leaving only a powerful sub- and semi-conscious fear of all things related to The Secret Lair—and turned him over to our Detrieval Squad (which probably needs a better name) who returned him to his home.¹

In retrospect, Ken may not be able to provide the best testimonial to the effectiveness of our Retrieval Squads, but he can certainly attest to the thoroughness of our upgraded memory alteration hardware. More accurately, the recording we present in this episode of The Secret Lair and Mr. Newquist’s complete lack of memory regarding the same should demonstrate that the hardware works quite well indeed.

Our interrogation of Mr. Newquist (or, at least, the bits of it we’re sharing) was primarily devoted to roleplaying games, wikis and open source content management systems. While a roleplaying game about a content management system might be incredibly dull, there are certainly ways in which RPGs can benefit from web-based tools, and such is the core of our discussion.

Roleplaying Games

• Dungeons & Dragons
  • World of Greyhawk
  • D&D 4th Edition
• Mutants & Masterminds
• Savage Worlds
  • The Savage World of Solomon Kane
  • The Pirates of the Spanish Main
• WarHammer 40K
• World of Warcraft

Online Tools for Gamers

• The wiki, a tool that allows multiple users to easily create and link web documents.
  • MediaWiki is the software upon which Wikipedia and Mahalo are built.
  • The Griffin’s Crier wiki is powered by MediaWiki.
• The virtual table top, usually a client-server application, allows remote gamers to play pen and paper RPGs together.
  • OpenRPG is an open source application developed in Python that runs on any OS.
  • Battlegrounds: RPG Edition runs on Windows and Mac OS X.
  • The Screen Monkey GM server runs on a Windows PC, but clients need only a web browser.
• Play-by-Email
  • PBEM-Portal.com
  • PBEM Players
  • Groovy Gamers
• Other Tools
  • RPTools, a collection of tools to help with mapping, tracking initiative, dice rolling and more. [Kudos to Trevor for the link.]

Open Source Software

• Moodle is an open source Course Management System, an alternative to Blackboard.
• Drupal is an open source Content Management System with lots of module support.
• WordPress is the open source blogging software upon which The Secret Lair website is built.

Promos

• The Game That May Be
• Nuketown Radio Active

Ken Newquist is the editor of Nuketown and host of Nuketown Radio Active. His gaming column, Summon Web Scryer, appears in Knights of the Dinner Table magazine.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:11 — 43.2MB)

1. Mr. Newquist’s family was totally unaware that he had been abducted, such is the power of our new temporal arrestor. [↩]

Come, children. Gather ’round and listen to the first official promo for The Secret Lair. Utilizing our satellite¹ we tracked down J.C. Hutchins where he’s been hiding all this time and we cut off his only escape route. Then, we had beers and cocktail weenies.

Please, feel free pass this one around. Podcasters, let us know if you play the promo, and we’ll be happy to link to you.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:13 — 1.1MB)

1. Before it was shot down by the Navy [↩]

Follow me into the darkest depths of The Secret Lair, along passages watched by unseen, ever-vigilant eyes, past barred portals and shadowy niches and, finally, through the ancient wooden door that leads to row upon row of shelves piled high with tomes as old as the very mists of time. This is The Secret Library, and the texts contained within are wondrous and horrific, mundane and magickal, forgotten and forbidden.

Here is an aged volume, the words within first put to paper in the late twentieth century! Writ upon the faded spine of this mass market paperback is the title, Fatherland, and the name of the author who dared pen the tale, Robert Harris. Join the overlords and their special prisoner guest, Laura Johnson, as they unveil the sinister secrets of the very first selection from The Secret Library.

While discussing Fatherland, we mention:

• The Day After Tomorrow by Allan Folsom.
• Fatherland is a television mini-series based on the novel. It stars Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson, but seems to be available only on VHS.
• 1984 by George Orwell.
• The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum.
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is essentially the same novel as Angels & Demons (also by Brown).
• The gorgalthumper.
• Life is Beautiful starring Roberto Begnini.
• Schindler’s List starring Liam Neeson.
• Harry Turtledove is arguably the master of alternate history. How Few Remain tells the tale of how one seemingly minor alteration might have changed the outcome of The Civil War and rewritten a hundred years of history.
• Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga features an intriguing anti-hero who engages the reader and draws them into the story.
• Jim Butcher’s urban wizard, Harry Dresden, is an entertaining character and he makes The Dresden Files a fun series to read.
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is an exercise in tricky typesetting.
• M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense isn’t as enjoyable when you know the big secret ahead of time.

This is the first episode recorded with our brand new Samson Zoom H2 mobile recorder. As of this writing, we’ve almost covered the entire purchase price with donations! Many thanks to everyone who donated.

Coming soon to a podcatcher near you…

Our next book for The Secret Library is Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan.

From the back cover: “A coup in Cambodia. Guns to Guatemala. For the men and women of Shorn Associates, opportunity is calling. In the superheated global village of the near future, big money is made by finding the right little war and backing one side against the other—in exchange for a share of the spoils. To succeed, Shorn uses a new breed of corporate gladiator: sharp-suited, hard-driving gunslingers who operate armored vehicles and follow a Samurai code. And Chris Faulkner is just the man Shorn needs.”

From the Amazon.com editorial review: “Market Forces is at once an anti-globalization treatise and anime fantasy meets The Road Warrior…a disturbingly brutal picture of slash-and-burn capitalism run amok.”

We encourage interested minions to acquire a copy and join in the discussion at our official community or The Secret Library group at Goodreads.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:32 — 37.2MB)

We’re happy to announce that our Propaganda Team has provided us with badges for your Social Networks or your Blog, so that we can identify you as loyal to us when the revolution comes. Use them wisely.

Just wanted to keep everyone updated: We’ve changed the Mobile Equipment of Choice from the Zoom H4 to the Zoom H2. The reason for this was twofold.

• We do not need everything the H4 can do
• The H2 is cheaper, which means we get to start using it faster.

Thanks to everyone who has donated, and we’ll keep you in the know on future developments.

To: All Personnel
From: Management
Subject: Sub-basement Flooding

Despite what many of you may have heard, The Secret Lair was not invaded by subterranean mutants last night. The lower sub-basements are closed due to flooding brought on by unseasonal rainfall coupled with melting snow, not because we are repairing a sixty-foot wide hole and removing dozens of corpses. Rumors that we have sent a reconnaissance team into the vast network of tunnels beneath the Lair are entirely unfounded; personnel who propagate such rumors are subject to disciplinary measures including (but not limited to) immediate termination.

Greetings, hapless victim and/or loyal minion!

You are being afforded a rare opportunity to provide feedback to your evil overlords with little or no fear of retributive disintegration. In just over a week, we will be recording a new episode of The Secret Lair in which we will discuss the novel Fatherland, by Robert Harris. If you have read the book and would like to participate in the discussion, please visit the forums at our official community or join The Secret Library group at GoodReads.

Even if you haven’t read the book, you can make suggestions for future books you’d like us to read and discuss on The Secret Lair by commenting at the aforementioned on-line venues or in the comments section of this very blog post.

Act now! Our benevolence may expire at any time!

Your Overlords would like to publicly thank Natalie Metzger for her fine work on the logo for The Secret Lair. She has been named the Secretary of Artistic Propaganda, will be give one of the office near the cappuccino machine, and has a boy on order from Barbados to serve as a personal assistant. Bow to her, and give her the respect she deserves.

-The Mgmt.

“I have a $70,000 sliver of meteor to stop the one from Metropolis; with you, all I need is a penny for a book of matches.”

—Batman (Jeremy Sisto), Justice League: The New Frontier

It might seem cynical of The Dark Knight to keep an artifact capable of destroying his most powerful ally, but it’s an attitude that we here at The Secret Lair embrace. You’d better believe that each of your hosts has the capability to crush the other; it’s our own form of détente, ensuring that no one gets any funny ideas about turning our little partnership into a solo act.

Does that mean all the friendly banter is just a façade we present to our audience to conceal that fact that we’re constantly waging a sort of Cold War behind the microphones?

Yes. Yes it does.

Episode 0004 of the podcast is another trip into The Screening Room, where we have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to cell phones and chit-chat during the feature presentation, and our ushers carry stun guns and neural disruptors as well as those funny little flashlights.

Lairkeeping

• We’ve overcome our recording scrambler issues and, for the first time, are recording from within The Secret Lair.
• The minions have begun their search for the infamous Cleveland Death Ray.
• We’re working on building our own Eye of Harmony, but it’s not quite finished.
• We’re borrowing foolproof money-making schemes from Superman III and Office Space.

The Screening Room

Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor) is based on the novel of the same name by Sergei Lukyanenko. It is the tale of two ages-old supernatural factions that have been in a tenuous state of détente for hundreds of years. Now, an ancient prophecy is on the verge of coming true; The Great Other will choose sides in the battle of light against dark and the balance will be upset. This is the first film in a trilogy that continues in Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor) and will conclude in 2009 with the as-yet-unnamed third film (rumored to be titled either Twilight Watch or Dusk Watch).

We managed to get our evil little hands on a preview copy of Justice League: The New Frontier, a direct-to-DVD animated movie from Warner Animation and DC Comics due out in late February. The movie is based on the New Frontier graphic novels by Darwyn Cooke. It is the second of three animated movies based on DC characters (the first is Superman: Doomsday and the third, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, will be released later this year). The story takes place in the mid-1950′s and chronicles how several masked heroes join forces to face a powerful enemy known as The Center.

More Movies

• Hellboy is a great sci-fi/fantasy/action flick that we feel stands up well to repeated viewing.
• Hellboy: Sword of Storms is the first animated Hellboy moving, starring Ron Perlman as Hellboy, Selma Blair as Liz Sherman and Doug Jones as Abe Sapien.
• Hellboy: Blood and Iron is the second (but hopefully not last) animated Hellboy movie.
• The Amazing Screw-on Head, another Mike Mignola creation, is worth watching but, at a mere 22 minutes long, may not be worth the original $14.98 retail price.

TV Series on DVD

• Chris couldn’t get into HBO’s Rome.
• We agree to disagree about the artistic value of the colorful language in HBO’s Deadwood. Chris prefers the dialog in the BBC’s Spooks (rebranded MI-5 in the United States).

Even More Movies

We are looking forward to (in varying degrees) some upcoming 2008 theatrical releases:

• Iron Man (Release date: 2 May 2008)
• The Dark Knight (Release date: 18 July 2008)
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Release date: 11 July 2008)
• Kris really has no interest in the new Star Trek movie (Release date: 25 December 2008).
• The X-Files 2 (Electric Boogaloo?) is due out on 24 July 2008 and doesn’t yet have an official title. Tick-tock, Mr. Carter. Tick-tock.
• The new Bond film (starring Daniel Craig as 007) does have an official title: Quantum of Solace (Release date: 7 November 2008).

Accolades

• Natalie Metzger has made great progress on our official logo and we look forward to revealing the final product.
• Many thanks to J.C. Hutchins, who is taking a break from all that crazy cloning to design our official henchman badge, which you’ll soon be able to proudly display on your website.
• Thanks again to Jennifer and Mark for their donations. We’re two steps closer to acquiring the Zoom H-4 digital recorder. If you’d like to make a donation, there is a PayPal link on the main site. Please be sure to let us know whether you’d like us to use your real name or a pseudonym when we praise your generosity.
• We salute Mick Bradley, who recently announced that he is stepping down from The Rolemonkeys podcast. We both owe Mr. Bradley a debt of gratitude. Without his influence, The Secret Lair would probably not exist today.
• Thanks to Ken Newquist for being a good sport.
• Finally, thanks to Kingfish and the boys over at Geeklabel Radio for helping to spread the word about The Secret Lair.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:36 — 38.1MB)