I’m in San Diego airport, a little too early for my (mercifully brief) flight back to San Francisco, and I should be writing. I have things to write. But my brain feels half-functional. And this blog needs a post, occasionally.

Comic-Con 2010. Woah.

I last hit Comic-Con in 2003, and every time this week that I said “I was last here seven years ago” I felt like it was a huge gulf. Not much has actually changed about Comic-Con in that time, to be honest; it’s still huge, and the same sort of stuff is still being shown. On the other hand, an awful lot has changed about me in seven years. I started to wonder what 2003 me would think of 2010 me. Y’know, if they could have a conversation. Considering the amount of sci-fi entertainment media on display at Comic-Con, and the amount of geeks willing crazy stuff into existence during the show, it doesn’t seem impossible.

What’s up, 2010?

Nothin’. Sitting in the airport, drinkin’ a… actually I’m not drinking. Just finished the Con. Heading home to San Francisco. I live there now. Well, near there anyway.

Wow! Really? That’s great. How was the Con? Cool, right?

Well yeah, it was cool – I spent it working, though.

Working?? What as? Doing what??

Manning part of the Marvel booth. Showing off a Marvel game I’m working on. I can’t tell you too much, it’ll cause a massive paradox. Suffice to say it’s pretty darn cool.

Okay, alright. But working at the Marvel booth? That must be amazing!

It is, especially considering that they make movies and stuff now. About half the booth, maybe more, was focused on their movies, and building hype for them -

Marvel makes movies???

Alright, let’s not talk too much about the spoilers. What else did you love about the 2003 con.

I got to spend a bunch of time talking to some artists. They didn’t seem to mind me talking to them. I got a few sketches done, too.

Yep, started off a rather ambitious sketchbook as I recall. Turns out sketches aren’t free… but still, that Brent Anderson one is a doozy, right?

Sure is. I loved hanging out with these guys though. I could watch them draw all day, frankly.

Some things never change. Did you enjoy the panels?

Some of ‘em, but some of ‘em, I was just watching them to get to the ‘real’ panels that I wanted to see later on, so…

Well, you won’t have to do that next time. Frankly you won’t have time to do it… you’ll still get to a couple of cool ones, though. Just not the big, crazy, media presentations. Frankly that’ll all be on the web a few minutes later anyway. Or Twitter.

Twitter?

You’ll see. It’ll change your life. Well, sort of.

Okay…

What about the night life? Good times?

Pretty good times. I only knew the guy I came with, so -

Well, that’ll change. You’ll get to hang out with work folk, which is fun, but also with artists and other creative types. It’ll be pretty cool. Although somehow you won’t get to see many of the ‘big’ parties. You could work on that, starting now. Er, then.

Oh alright. I kind of felt like I was tired at the end of every day, though -

Exactly, right? Too tired to party. Well, admittedly, that’s the years adding on…

… sounds like an excuse to me.

It is, kind of. Hey, you’ve got it easy – you can sit down any time you want, go back to the hotel – I’m on my feet all day and my hotel is a mile away!

Cry me a river, buddy. Working the Marvel booth. Living the geek dream.

Alright, okay. I shouldn’t complain.

Nope, you shouldn’t. Also, you shouldn’t blog about it. If you even keep a blog going in 2010.

Point noted. Points, in fact.

Friendly stalkers might have seen me muttering recently about virtual tabletops, as I seem to be going through another of my phases where I think about getting back into regular roleplaying – as in face to face, dice-rolling, character sheet-checking roleplaying. Old-school, in other words.

(Notice I said ‘think’, because these ideas rarely go anywhere. What I’ve discovered over the last few years is that for me, roleplaying as a hobby isn’t about the roleplaying anymore – it’s about the socialising, and that means my requirements for a gaming group have gotten tougher. To put it bluntly, I have to like people before I can enjoy roleplaying with them. Sounds obvious, I know, but I tend to forget that my best roleplaying memories were generally with people I knew as friends first and roleplayers second; it’s easy to delude myself into thinking that the activity will make me like someone, and that doesn’t happen.)

(Having said that, I’ve got some pretty fun memories of playing games with total strangers, as that seems to bring out the sociopathic side of my personality. Thinking about it, it’s surprising I’m not the world’s biggest online griefer.)

Anyway; this actually isn’t a precursor to me boring you with my roleplaying memories. Some random searches later brought me to a whole host of roleplaying blogs (because of course being supreme geeks, roleplayers are all over the web) and led me to an interesting phenomenon: the resurrection of old-school roleplaying. I mean real old-school. I mean… original Dungeons & Dragons.

Not the ‘red box’ edition of D&D. Not even first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which is pretty much where my memories of roleplaying begin. I’m talking about guys who want to play with the original ruleset, exactly as it was back in 1974. And who were obviously guided by the spirit of Gygax when they came up with the name Swords & Wizardry.

They’re not the only game in town, either. Apparently if your taste is a bit more ‘new school’ then you can play a ‘retro-clone’ of the 1978 ruleset in OSRIC (Old School Reference & Index Compilation!), or even recreate those red box days of 1981 with the cunningly referential Labyrinth Lord.

Understand that none of these games are strict reprints of the original material; instead, under Wizards of the Coast’s Open Game License, they’re a sort of… reimagining? Retelling? Swords & Wizardry describes itself as a ‘newly written description’ of the original rules, almost as if they’ve been told to scribes down through the years and now just written down, or perhaps swapped around campfires.

If you’ve got any experience of the original golden oldies though, like I have, then you might be wondering just why these things exist. I mean, we’ve had Advanced Dungeon & Dragons 2nd Edition, then 3rd, then 3.5 and even 4th last year – although somehow they lost the ‘Advanced’ along the way. I mean, isn’t this sort of like ignoring World of Warcraft’s existence, and recreating Colossal Cave Adventure, claiming it’s more fun to play?

Well yes, and no. The comparison is spurious of course, because any roleplaying game trades in one thing; imagination, which doesn’t ‘improve’ with 3D graphics or an 80-level cap. In fact, the argument goes, your imagination tends to atrophy when you’re shown more and asked to imagine less. That’s basically where the fans behind these games are coming from. Just as modern games have added graphical complexity, modern RPGs have added rules complexity – partially because gamers asked for it, and partially because it means more books can be filled with rules, and then sold.

The idea behind this ‘old school movement’ seems simple enough; get back to basics, where the rules are just a helping hand to let your imagination run riot. When the rules don’t cover something, you make it up. Whether that’s a summation of the ‘true spirit’ of original style roleplaying is for a more learned blog than this to cover, but suffice to say, it’s appealing to a lot of people.

I find all of this fascinating, partially because the idea that people are still clinging to The Rules while playing RPGs seems unbelievable to me. I do feel sort of smug saying this, but I never really got beyond the (apparently) old-school idea that the rules are just there for when you want them, and should be ignored when you don’t. Even when I was 15 I was gravitating towards systems that were rules-lite (Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Marvel Superheroes) after struggling with others that were rules-heavy (Champions, Rolemaster).

Perhaps those who’ve been faithful to Dungeons & Dragons all these years have felt that their faith demanded an adherence to The Rules, whatever they may be, and some of them are finally ‘seeing the light’. (Born again roleplayers?) They seem to be kind of late coming to the party, though; even my casual interest in the pen-and-paper industry over the last few years has shown me that the trend is towards less rules and more storytelling, although that itself seems to be a bone of contention for some.

In some ways this is a massive exercise in nostalgia, but then there’s really nothing wrong with that. Just as I still cling to my original favourites (and have been interested to see ‘remakes’ of those games, too), so ‘old school roleplayers’ want to get back to what excited them about roleplaying in the very first instance; imagination run riot, and rules be damned.

POSTSCRIPT: I found a very workable description of what ‘old school D&D’ should ‘feel’ like back in the Grognardia archives, which is worth reading in light of this. I’ll admit, it makes me pine for something, although I’m not too sure what.

The soon-to-be-unemployed Creative Concepts team is very proud to present our swansong event… organised, as usual, with not nearly enough time.

Prepare for awesomeness!!!

(Image by Mat ‘Snapshot’ Keller. Who else??)

It’s on, baby!!!

To recap the entire day’s events in more detail and give you all the info you need…

(Optional) Activity One: Fiery Food UK

This weekend is the Fiery Food Festival in ol’ Brighton, which means a whole host of spicy, flavourful and downright delicious foods will be on display to be tasted, sampled, feasted upon and bought whole to take home. It’s completely free to come along, browse, and enjoy some great food.

Amanda and I have been going to this for the last few years and it’s always fun. So, assuming that it’s not peeing down with rain (and forecast suggests it won’t be) then we’ll be around and about The Old Steine, which is basically the bit of grass between the town centre and Kemptown, from around 10, 11am onwards.

I’d say “Here’s my mobile, come find us” but I won’t have a new mobile before tomorrow, and this is the internet, what do you think I am, some crazy fool who just gives out his mobile?

More details on the event are right here.

Activity Two: Tropic Thunder!!

We’ve been looking forward to this movie for months, and I’ll be damned if some ‘redundancy’ nonsense is going to stop me from seeing it!! So, please feel free to join us after a (probably hot ‘n’ spicy) lunch for the 3pm showing at the Odeon on West Street. (No West Street jokes, please.)

We’ve booked our tickets in the ‘standard’ seating area, so feel free to do so as well. Book either by visiting www.odeon.co.uk or calling 0871 22 44 007, or indeed just turning up on the day – just don’t blame us if they’re sold out….

Not heard of Tropic Thunder? Feel free to get more info on the movie… right here.

Activity Three: Drinking!! Eating!! Drinking some more!!

Movie should probably finish about 5pm or so, and that gives us more than enough time to saunter across town and head for Moksha Caffe, the (in)famous haunt where I spend more time than is probably healthy. But, all that coffee drinking is finally about to pay off, because the wonderful people there are ready to welcome us with open arms.

What’s that you say? A cafe surely doesn’t serve sweet, sweet booze? WELL THIS ONE DOES… including fabulous caffeinated cocktails (which will be available in a 2-for-1 deal for part of the evening), beers, wines, that wonderful Kopparberg Pear Cider that I know I’ll be getting trashed on, and food as well!!

Seriously, they’re going to treat us right.

During the evening it’s quite possible all or none of the following may happen:

• An impromptu quiz, with all questions focused on dead roleplaying game designers we have loved*
• An auction on behalf of Draw the World Together (You better believe it – cash only, please!)
• A Q&A session which will be notable for the amount of ‘Qs’ asked that get no ‘As’

It’ll be a cracker. If you come for one part of the evening, make it this one. Unless that is you’re a complete insomniac, in which case, HAVE I GOT AN EVENING ACTIVITY FOR YOU…

Activity Four: Gaming Until Your Eyes Fall Out

Yes, our old friends at Gamer Heaven (who have moved premises – this is very important to note if you went to the meet we did at the old Gamer Heaven in 2006…) have allowed us to host an all-night gaming lock-in!!

Starting at (about) 10pm, for just £10 entrance fee you can kick back, relax, and play games ALL NIGHT LONG on their LAN, enjoying some City of Heroes (maybe I’ll even do a Task Force!!), Guild Wars, or indeed Other Games from Other Companies. On top of that they have consoles – there may even be some (whisper it) Rock Band.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, by the way: if you’re looking for somewhere to spend the night in Brighton (admittedly, without a bed, but hey, those chairs are soft)… this is your best option.

Check out the Gamer Heaven site here.

That’s it! What more do you need to know?

Oh yeah: where everything is.

Enter Google Maps, baby! Click here for all the local info.

One last VERY important thing

TELL ME IF YOU’RE COMING. I need numbers, both for Moksha and for Gamer Heaven. (If we get enough, we might get the run of Moksha, which’d be nice.)

Either leave a comment below, or if you can’t comment for some reason, send me an email – details are on the Contact page.

Oh no wait, there was one more tiny thing

That image above? Available in LIMITED EDITION POSTER FORM (well, printed A4 sheets…) on Saturday night. We are that shameless!

SEE YOU THERE!!!

Just a quick one here. First things first: man, Judge Dredd does not age well as a film (it’s on TV as I type). Although I still do think the costumes are… kinda good, at times. Screw it, it’s an excuse for a picture of Stallone:

Wait: did I say the costumes looked… good..?

Second: Saturday’s looking good, unlike that codpiece. We’ve got a couple of potential venues, all in easy walking distance of Brighton station. Also, we’re going to investigate the possibility of an all-nighter at a gaming cafe, which could negate the need for people to get a hotel, assuming you can stay awake… we should know more on that tomorrow.

Third: Quite a few ‘things’ have landed in my lap in the last 24 hours. All pretty positive. I don’t want to say much more for fear of jinxing, but hey, perhaps your positive thoughts have done some good!

Fourth and finally: Last day is officially Thursday. Signed my papers and got confirmation of voluntary redundancy today, so come early October I’ll have my money… and then will promptly not spend any of it.

Plenty to keep me busy between now and then though – oh yes. Stay tuned.

They’re performances of the winning entries for Set the Stage, the competition that we ran to get players to write scripts for the Aion and Guild Wars characters to perform. (The scripts were reworked by me to become suitable for performance, but these two are quite similar to the original material, with many lines remaining intact. You can download my script drafts for all six final entries at the official Aion and Guild Wars sites.)

The sound quality is not excellent – source was basically the speakers on the stand, which had to compete with everything around – so I’ve embedded the ‘normal’ and English subtitled versions. (There are also French and German versions of each – see below.)

As I said before, these stage performances were probably what I was most proud of achieving during Games Convention. Trust me; there were some obstacles to overcome! However, I personally feel the performances were excellent, given the lack of rehearsal time we had and the environment they were performing in, and I’m very proud to present them to you.

Aion: The Tower of Eternity – ‘Captive’ by Will Carpenter

Script performance draft by Stephen Reid

Subtitled in English

French subtitled version | German subtitled version

Guild Wars – ‘No Beautiful Day’ by Melanie Lauterbach

Script performance draft by Stephen Reid

Subtitled in English

Seven days to Comic-Con in San Diego – and 230 days until Watchmen.

With The Dark Knight in US movie theaters today (another week for us to wait here in the UK – thanks, don’t tell me) it seems about the right time to release a movie trailer for Watchmen, doesn’t it?

Go see it right now in HD over at Apple. (And thank God it isn’t hosted on Yahoo!.)

Then come on back; I’ll be waiting.

Try and tell me that doesn’t look like a faithful adaptation of Watchmen – at least with the right beats, the iconic moments from the original. I could probably go through and count the number of shots in there that look practically lifted from the comic, but instead I might as well share my favourite:

Yes. Those of you who have read Watchmen will know just who that is and just what happens next… and I won’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t. (But dammit people, this just won’t fly! You’ve got 230 days – pick up a copy! It don’t read like War & Peace!)

Snyder very smartly places that image really near the front of the trailer, letting fans like me know that at the very least, he knows how to film a comic book panel – although to be fair, he already did that in 300. What he also does though, even before that, is give us the big reveal. Up until now the best image I’d seen of Doctor Manhattan was an action figure. Right up front, he gives us the real thing:

That’s so eerily close to the comic.

I can see the next shot in my head: “Jon..?”

But there’s the proof. There is the damn proof. I don’t think you could have gotten closer to the comic image unless you were making an animated film. I am officially amazed by that.

It felt pretty weird watching this trailer, overall. I think we’re about to see one of the most faithful comic book adaptations ever – right down to the background details. What’s fascinating is to see Dave Gibbons’ alternate 1985, which was simultaneously grimy and gaudy, come to life. I’m not 100 percent sure it’s right, here, yet… but some of the details are wonderful. (Rorschach’s mask can briefly be seen ‘moving’ in the trailer; as soon as I saw it, it seemed perfect.)

And damn, can Snyder shoot some lovely imagery.

Roll on March 2009….

I know it’s been a bit quiet around here; sorry about that. A hell of a week last week for all sorts of reasons, least of all my continuing power cut / electricity supply problems, which usually affected my wifi.

In the meantime, if you’d like to hear Something What I Did, a new episode of Tagline: a movie podcast is online, with my brother and I talking (mostly) about The Incredible Hulk, Indy and other geeky movies. You can listen, subscribe, etc over at the Tagline site.

Speaking of podcasts, we’re really close to locking Episode 3 of the Official NCE ‘cast, too.