The League 2000

Harris mentioned to me some time ago (years?) about a forum post he read that kind of stuck with me. It was about the League of Reagan-era Gentlemen and followed the trend of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in the sense that a group of otherwise unrelated characters were brought together to foil some plot/defeat some evil.

The idea has been rolling around in my head for quite a while and I decided I wanted to do a one-shot with this idea. It would be with Savage Worlds and would involve the League in 1999 - on the cusp of the 21st century. Some villain(s) were threatening the world and only an assortment of characters from the past 25 years stood in their way.

The premise behind the League is that the characters of fiction are real. Most of the most renown characters in the past 30 years have been TV or movie characters - larger than life, people whose name you know even if you haven't seen them or read them.

Here are some characters I brainstormed. You'll see some of these fulfill different niches, and more than a few are essentially "duplicates" (fulfilling the same role). But you get the idea.

John McClain – Die Hard

John Rambo – First Blood

Doc Emmet Brown – Back to the Future

Clarice Starling – Silence of the Lambs

Sarah Connor – Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Jules Winnfield – Pulp Fiction

Egon Spangler – Ghostbusters

Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez – Highlander

Ash Williams – Evil Dead II

Roy Neary – Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Karate Kid – Karate Kid

Cole Sear – The Sixth Sense

Agent J – Men in Black

“Crocodile” Mick Dundee – Crocodile Dundee

David Lightman – War Games

Thoughts for a Game Day

No kidding it's been a while. Well, I've been thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and sadly not playing. Aaron has a new Fantasy Craft campaign but sadly that's already falling victim to the dreaded "missing players in a small group" attack that seems to crop up at an alarming rate. All for good reasons, of course, so no hits there, just a reality of trying to play an ongoing RPG campaign with mid- to late-20s adults.

So I've been thinking about the best way to rectify this. I've got some ideas, and I'd like to repurpose this blog as a sounding board for those ideas. I'll post something in a few days once I work out a few kinks, but my idea is a sort of open game day - a day in the week devoted to gaming of some sort, including RPGs, board games, card games, and MAYBE video games (though that gets a lot of attention anyway). No ongoing campaign, essentially a series of one shots or one shot like campaigns sprinkled amongst other gaming related things.

That Is Not Dead

Which can eternal lie, and all the rest of that phrase. This blog's not dead. Nay, never! But for as long as a steady campaign is not being run it's hard to come up with relevant posts.

So I propose a new D&D campaign - well, Pathfinder specifically. I've got a fairly short campaign called "Rise of the Runelords" I'd like to run soon, probably during the week at a time when I can get at least two players (more would be better!).

A lot of the details I used to post on this blog have moved over to Facebook. Event scheduling works better on a site designed to handle it, so this blog has gone to sleep in a way. But as the saying goes, "and with strange aeons even death can die."

More details to come.

Check Out Movie Jerks!

Check out the sister blog of the Dragonfyre Association, The Movie Jerks! http://moviejerks.blogspot.com

This will be the general dumping spot for movie reviews, including reviews of the AFI list as we go through them. Check it out and let me know if you want to be added as a contributor!

AFI List Schedule July/August 2009

The journey has begun. As a bit of background, I recently realized I had not seen most of the movies chosen by the American Film Institute (AFI) as the 100 best movies of the last 100 years. A sad state, to be sure, given my love of movies. But I didn't want to just watch them, no no no. There were other people out there just like me who had yet to see some or most of the list.

So I cleaned up the Theater in the Garage a bit (still need a new couch) and dove right into the last. Starting last Thursday night at midnight we watched #100 on the AFI list - Ben-Hur. 3 1/2 hours of Ben-Hur. Oi vey.

We followed up with #99 on Saturday night at midnight - Toy Story. Much easier to take. Only 98 more to go, so I thought I would post a general schedule. This schedule assumes showings on Thursday and Saturday nights at about midnight (give or take depending on who's attending).

7/23/2009, Thurs - Yankee Doodle Dandy
7/25/2009, Sat - Blade Runner
7/30/2009, Thurs - Do the Right Thing
8/1/2009, Sat - The Last Picture Show
8/6/2009, Thurs - Pulp Fiction
8/8/2009, Sat - The French Connection
8/13/2009, Thurs - NO SHOW, GENCON 2009
8/15/2009, Sat - NO SHOW, GENCON 2009
8/20/2009, Thurs - Goodfellas
8/22/2009, Sat - Sophie's Choice
8/27/2009, Thurs - Swing Time (1936)
8/29/2009, Sat - NO SHOW, CALIFORNIA TRIP

That covers the schedule through August. All are welcome, admission is free, and I'll try to have beer and snacks available. People are also welcome to bring beer and snacks, which is always greatly appreciated. But the show goes!

Minnesota Fringe Festival: Must see

Another theatrical production of a Cthulhu Mythos story is playing at the Minnesota Fringe Festival this year, "The Curse of Yig" and it looks pretty cool. It's being performed by Tim Uren who did "The Rats in the Walls" a few years ago, and if this is anything like that, it will be awesome. So, I'm definitely going to go, and I'd recommended others see it too. Here's the info;

http://fringefestival.org/2009/show/?id=973

And a summary; In 1929, a young academic visits the Guthrie Asylum in Oklahoma to explore the native tribal belief in the snake god, Yig. There she is confronted by a bizarre creature, the sole living survivor of the nightmarish Halloween of 1889. As she learns the tragic tale of Walker and Audrey Davis- early residents of the Oklahoma Territory- she too begins to fall under the spell of an unrelenting fear that time cannot diminish.

Roadtrip Specifics

I think that the weekend of July 17 to July 20 would work best for this trip;

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Mound,+MN&daddr=Mankato,+MN+to:Blue+Earth,+MN+to:Austin,+MN+to:Harmony,+MN+to:La+Crosse,+WI+to:Spring+Green,+WI+to:Baraboo,+WI+to:Hayward,+WI+to:Duluth,+MN+to:Brainerd,+MN+to:Alexandria,+MN+to:Mound,+MN&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=44.55106,-93.803355&sspn=0.867058,2.447205&ie=UTF8&z=6

Here is the Google maps trip itinerary; it is around 1,095 miles round trip. Feel free to make suggestions, etc.