Archive for October, 2009

The Return of The NanoMonkeys

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Way back when the Internet was young, in 2006, Chris Miller, Kris Johnson, Mur Lafferty, and P.G. Holyfield put together a podcast consisting of writing tips and tricks for the valiant souls participating in National Novel Writing Month. They repeated the series in 2007, when they got other authors, like Sam Chupp, Phil Rossi, J.C. Hutchins and Seth Harwood to wax poetic on the craft of writing a novel in thirty days.

Then, the NanoMonkeys went silent, the domain was taken over by one of the less savory outfits on the web, and the podcast passed into legend, never to be heard again…

…until now.

Starting on 10-31-2009, The Secret Lair will present encore episodes from those original shows, releasing one a day for the month of November. Subscribe to the main feed, and you too can join the madness.

Watch this space in the coming days. And get those index fingers ready to type until they bleed. It’s time to get to work.

Episode 0029: Storygaming

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Overlord KrisWe are joined in the Lair by one Mick Bradley, who can be heard on the Canon Puncture podcast discussing all manner of things related to tabletop gaming. These are apparently games that can be played using little more than the top of a table and your boundless imagination. From what I’ve heard the whole thing smacks of a scam, as neither the table nor the boundless imagination are included in the purchase price.

If Mr. Bradley’s name resonates with some of you, it is likely because the conditioning wears off over time and you should report to the nearest Retcon Reinforcement Center for additional therapy. I assure you that Overlord Miller and I never, ever appeared on a podcast known as The Round Table from the House of the Harping Monkey, and on such podcast we never discussed the monomyth as it applies to gaming and popular culture. Not ever.

Staff Reports

  • Voicemail from Captain Tortuga of the S.S. Isopod. Our RCPJs have been delivered! Our RCPJs have been delivered! Royal Canadian Painted Jackalopes? Oh, no. Far more insidious.
  • Ken Newquist reviews Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers for the Xbox 360. Sounds great, but is there an add-on that allows me to slip the digital cards into mylar sleeves to keep them in near-mint condition?
  • Chief Medical Officer’s Progress Report. The bad doctor reports that we had a bit of a run-in with NASA (again). Meanwhile, if that ointment were any closer to our Minister of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies it would bite him.

Discussion

One word: storygaming. I still think that’s two words, but the man threatened to hack off my thumbs if I hit the spacebar when I typed it, so we’ll leave it as written. Long time listeners may know that Overlord Miller and I have been carrying around a chip on our should regarding so-called “story games” (shut up; that’s totally two words) for some time now. We’ve brought Mick Bradley in to hug…er, talk…it out and see if we can’t get over it already.

  • Ron Edwards. Game designer (Sorceror). Co-founder of The Forge, and indie-RPG community. Author of “System Does Matter“.
  • Vincent Baker. Game designer (Dogs in the Vineyard).
  • Storn Cook. Artist. Former co-host of the Sons of Kryos podcast. Rabble rouser.
  • Judd Karlman. Former co-host of the Sons of Kryos podcast.
  • Jeff Lower. Former co-host of the Sons of Kryos podcast.
  • Paul Tevis. Upstanding citizen. Host of the Have Games, Will Travel podcast.
  • World of Darkness. Vampires and Werewolves and Wraiths, oh my! Role-playing game/world originally conceived by Mark Rein-Hagen.
  • Dungeons & Dragons. The mother of all Lord of the Rings rip-offs and the stereotypical “traditional” RPG. Created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
  • Primetime Adventures. The story game that started the whole kerfuffle. Created by Matt Wilson.
  • Story Games. An Intartube forum where hemp-shirt-wearing hippies gather in drum circles to talk about their feelings. Allegedly.

Promo

Lair Keeping

Staff

Story gaming. Ha! OW!

Review: The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

(originally published on The Secret Community)

c8372I’ll fess up to it. I’ve been meaning to read some Robert E. Howard for a long time, but it wasn’t until I saw the trailer for the new Solomon Kane movie that I took the plunge and picked up a copy of the most recent collection of Howard’s stories about the sword-slinging puritan.

It was surprisingly readable. The fiction holds up over time, even better than some of Howard’s contemporaries. The language is crisp and descriptive without filling in every last detail; Howard is a master at leaving enough room for the reader’s imagination to fill in the details. For me, that makes for an intensely visual experience, as the story will play out like a movie in my mind.

At first, it was tough to get used to the lack of continuity. We are so used to reading novels these days that some readers might be frustrated by the nature of these stories. They were all written as serials; short stories for magazines of the time, so concepts like character development are lacking. However, the stories themselves are engrossing, and Howard managed to surprise me more than once with the way he ended some of his tales.

Fans of Stephen King’s Gunslinger will find Kane familiar…there’s more than a little Kane in Roland. Similarly, if you grew up reading science fiction of the sixties as I did, you’ll find Kane an ancestor to many characters. For me, that heightened my appreciation for the stories.

All in all, it was good read, and I recommend it.

Episode 0028: The Time Traveler’s Wife

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Overlord KrisGreetings from 1982! I hope these show notes reach you in time to be included when you post The Secret Library discussion of the Time Traveler’s Wife. I’m placing my hand-written notes in a safety deposit box at a Swiss bank (what with me being in Switzerland and all, I thought that was the best option) with instructions that they are to be delivered by special courier on Tuesday, October the 6th, 2009. That is, as near as I can recall, the date the episode in question is supposed to be posted. The account number and passphrase you will need to give the courier in order to authorize delivery of the show notes is [REDACTED].

Well, that’s dumb, isn’t it? I mean, including the account number and passphrase in the contents of the delivery. How the hell are you supposed to know about the credentials if you can’t read my message until after you’ve authorized delivery? Damn it all, I hate time travel. Tell you what: I’m just going to proceed under the assumption that you’ve done what I would do in your shoes; namely, haul the courier off to an interrogation suite and convince him (or her, I suppose) that you are, in fact, the intended recipient of the message.

Right now, you’re probably thinking, I know for a fact that Kris isn’t in Switzerland in 1982, I just spoke to him on the phone not half an hour ago. That’s very true. As you read this, I’m sitting at home, studiously not writing the show notes. By the time I remember that I was supposed to be doing that tonight, I’ll be in the Lair tomorrow morning—on the verge of accidentally tearing another hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum. In fact, that’s the precise moment it will occur to me: right as I’m being pulled through the wormhole. Oh, crap, I’ll think as I tumble through hyperspacetime, I didn’t write the show notes. I knew I shouldn’t have played Left 4 Dead all evening.

But that, as they say, is all spilled milk at this juncture. Water under the bridge. An excited neutrino burst through the temporal displacement matrix.

Moving on…

I’m not going to trouble you with the details of what I’ve had to go through over the past three and a half months to stabilize the little temporal hiccup that’s had me careening about through time-space like a pinball; I’ll save it for my memoirs. Suffice it to say that there was a time when I was not in Switzerland (or anywhere remotely as…Swiss) and now—well, now for me—I am. There will come a time when I’m once again not in Switzerland and (if my calculations are correct) no longer in 1982; instead, I’ll be in Cleveland in 2009 and and the tiny little hole I ripped in the great big space-time continuum will have been sewn shut. With time thread.

You should know that my previous efforts to contact my pre-10/07/2009 self in order to prevent the incident from occurring have all failed. I’ve also given some serious thought to what would happen to me—the me in 1982 Switzerland, that is—if I succeeded, and I think we’re all better off if that doesn’t happen. So, rather than focus on what I can’t and don’t want to change, I’ve decided I may as well try to set this one thing to right. As such, the show notes for our discussion of The Time Traveler’s Wife are attached.

Believe me, I appreciate the irony in that. I really do.

Staff Reports

Chief Medical Officer’s Progress Report. In which the Bad Doctor
speculates that the Minister of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies ought not be involved in our plan to demoisturize the moon.

Discussion

We are joined by our lovely wives to discuss The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

  • There is chili. And there are Fritos. And SPOILERS.
  • Everyone talks about time travel as metaphor, but what if it’s actually a simile?
  • Chris discusses the difference between men and women. He says it’s all about the potential versus the kinetic. Or something.
  • We explain why Prisoner of Azkaban is the best book-to-film translation of Harry Potter to date.
  • Chris issues a challenge to Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Anansi Boys).
  • Kris was right about the “R”. The movie version of Clare Abshire is portrayed by Rachel McAdams.

Promo: Serving Worlds by John Mierau.

Lair Keeping

Staff

Overlord Dispatches for 2009-10-04

Sunday, October 4th, 2009
  • We have removed the forums in favor of our new community site: http://is.gd/3KHab. Won't you join us? #
  • An interesting report has been dropped on my desk "Advanced Lanyard Weaponization". #

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The Secret Lair Comic 0019: Radioactive Overlord

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

comic0019_sm