Awesome Gaming Prop

A very awesome D&D spellbook. [Link to gallery, Link to reddit post]

Miami International Science Fiction Film Festival

Neat. January 17^th - 19^th, 2014. [Link]

A survey about SFF fandom

Interesting survey. [Link]

So there’s this really good conversation going on in Twitter about encouraging Diversity in SFF. The hashtag is #DiversityInSFF and I highly encourage checking it out. Anyway, reading that and thinking about the other conversations, I started wondering who the fans of speculative fiction are? I mean, I know who goes to conventions, but what about everyone else?

So I figured I’d just ask and made a survey.

Pass it around? The more people who fill it out, the better the sample.

Edited to add: I updated some of the questions and added some to address concerns people raised. If you go back to the same link, you can change your response.

The results are here, if you are curious.

How much fiction is ok in a fact-based film?

Lincoln, Argo and Zero Dark Thirty all have fictionalized things a bit more than some would like. [Link]

Filmmakers have been making movies based on real events forever, and similar charges have been made. But because these three major films are in contention, the issue has come to the forefront of this year's Oscar race, and with it a thorny cultural question: Does the audience deserve the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? Surely not, but just how much fiction is OK?

The latest episode involved "Lincoln," and the revelation that Spielberg and his screenwriter, the Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner, took liberties depicting the 1865 vote on the 13th amendment outlawing slavery. In response to a complaint by a Connecticut congressman, Kushner acknowledged he'd changed the details for dramatic effect, having two Connecticut congressmen vote against the amendment when, in fact, all four voted for it. (The names of those congressmen were changed, to avoid changing the vote of specific individuals.)

In a statement, Kushner said he had "adhered to time-honored and completely legitimate standards for the creation of historical drama, which is what 'Lincoln' is. I hope nobody is shocked to learn that I also made up dialogue and imagined encounters and invented characters."

In a historical piece, there is always the need to use fiction to fill in the gaps of what we don't know. In the case of Lincoln, facts that were known (how the Connecticut congressmen voted) were changed for no reason other than false drama. I think changing known facts is a bridge too far. History is exciting enough without having to make things up.

A bakers dozen of Dwarves

From The Hobbit. [Link]

Traveller RPG in Ancient Times

Neat. The sword skill finally makes sense. [Link]

This has been on my mind for several years, and I had chance to get all my notes together last week to write it up. The ancient world seen through the eyes of Traveller characters, they own a ship, travelling from port to port, trading and smuggling, picking up rumours, having adventures, taking jobs from shadowy patrons, dodging Roman patrol galleys...

The aim was to use as much as possible from the original rules. I didn't mention my preferred houserule, which is to ignore all armour DMs if they are positive, only using the negative DMs. Its my standard CT houserule that I've used for years. 

I never had chance to write up the last chapters, on patrons, encounters and equipment lists ... but the game is playable without those just using the relevant sections in Traveller Book 3. Of course stats for Terran creatures wopuld have been nice too  

http://www.geocities.com/zozergames/mercator1.pdf

John Wick's The War

Game designer John Wick has an ambitious project. Here's Paul Tevis describing it: [Link]

My high-concept pitch for The War is “Ken Burns’ The War of the Ring.” It’s a documentary about a fantasy war done in the style of Ken Burns’ epic about the American Civil War. When I first saw the script, I was excited. When John let me know my part was basically the Shelby Foote character, I was honored. And now that the first episode is available, I’m proud.

Well, that was fast. Game of Thrones renewed for second season

I read the first book, but unlike almost everyone I know who has read them, I made my saving throw and have not read the rest. It was well done, but not to my style. [Link]

HBO announced the Game of Thrones will be picked up for a second season.

The series, based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice books, premiered on Sunday night

to good ratings: 2.2 million viewers watched it in its initial airing. That number grew to 4.2 million, as it re-aired twice. The initial number is low, compared to HBO’s last big launch,Boardwalk Empire, which premiered with 4.8 million, but like that show, Thrones was almost immediately picked up for a second season after its premiere aired.

CSI: Ankh-Morpork

Terry Pratchett's Discworld to become a weekly mystery show. [Link]

Prime Focus Productions, the people behind the upcoming Good Omens TV series and the three existing Discworld miniseries, have commenced development on a new, ongoing show. This one will revolved around the City Watch police force of Terry Pratchett‘s vibrant fantasy city, Ankh-Morpork. It’s an amazing location, as vividly described in the fantasist-satirist’s series of 38-going-on-39 Discworld novels.

As with Good Omens, Terry Jones and Gavin Scott have been called in to work on the scripts, and ccording to the press release, they’ll be plotting:

…a ‘crime of the week’ episodic storyline. As each weekly adventure unfolds, viewers will be taken on a ride through Pratchett’s genius imagination, with the author overseeing the creation of the series,  where wild and exciting encounters with werewolves, dragons, dwarfs, trolls and golems and the classic heroes and villains, are an everyday occurrence…and where many of these characters even make outstanding crime fighters!

There’s been early interest from broadcasters around the world and, with luck and following wind, we could be seeing this on screens before too, too long. It might be a hard one to pull off, but there’s certainly a good sized fan base in place already, and pretty much anything like a police procedural seems to have a shot at ratings glory, so here’s hoping.

Mind Map of the History of Science Fiction

Click for full size

Amazingly detailed. Click for full size. [Link]

Does what it says on the tin… and does it gloriously, too. What a super piece of work! Can’t tell you much about it beyond that it’s signed by someone called Ward Shelley

Fantasy World Map

This would be awesome to play in. [Link]

A hobbit, a Sleestak, a Who, and the Cheshire Cat walk into a dungeon...

Ron Moore's Harry Potter for grown ups

A pilot has been ordered. It is a fantasy ensemble police drama. [Link]

Battlestar Galactica reboot visionary Ron Moore just took another step forward to bringing a fantasy series to broadcast TV.

NBC just picked up his pilot, which could be described as “Harry Potter for grown-ups.”

The Sony Pictures TV project takes place in world ruled by magic instead of science. The working title is 17th Precinct and it’s basically an ensemble police drama set in the fictional town of Excelsior.

David Eddings: 1931-2009

That sucks. I really liked his books. They had believable characters in worlds that felt real with real motivations. [Link]

His commercial success paved the way for a whole generation of doorstopper sized fantasy series.... I was in my early teens when I discovered these books, and they opened my eyes to the fact that not all fantasy had to be the 'Ye Olde Speake' variety favoured by Tolkien - they were fantasy, but they carried a modern feel to the dialogue and characterisation, while still being firmly placed in a deeply believable fantasy world.

It's a feel that influenced a whole swathe of media, and not just books - you can see David Eddings' influence running through Xena and Hercules too, albeit taken to extremes with their, 'Hey, dragon dude!' dialogue.