Comic Con Day 1
The first day is always an easy pace as people get their bearings and figure out what they want to see. Loki and Cormac arrived early on to scope things out and lay nefarious planes for today’s shenanigans.
Of course this being New Orleans the geekery takes on a whole different complexion, one infused by our long standing carnival and costuming traditions. Even with the relatively light crowds of opening day warriors of the Crescent City were present in their finery as the Krewe of Chewbacchus marched through the crowd.
Stay tuned for more from the Comic Con!
Read MoreOn The Line with Kevin Sorbo
Kevin David Sorbo (born September 24, 1958) is an American actor best known for the roles of Hercules in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Captain Dylan Hunt in Andromeda and Kull in Kull the Conqueror. A few days ago Loki got him on the phone to talk about his work, his stroke, and his upcoming appearance at the New Orleans Comic Con.
Check it out!
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Loki on Dorkland
Recently Dorkland made the mistake of having me on as a guest. The verbal diarhhea is archived below. -Loki
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NOLA Comic Con 2012: Loki Talks with Kevin Eastman
Covering Comic Con in New Orleans has become an annual tradition for us. This year Loki kicks it off with an interview with Kevin Eastman, owner of Heavy Metal Magazine and co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Enjoy!
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Social Responsibility and The Self Publisher
A few days ago our lead artist, Emily Vittori, and our founder/DM were guests on a panel: Social Responsibility and The Self Publisher. The panel appeared on Indie+ , a virtual convention hosted across an array of Google+ Hangouts.
As a bonus the camera got accidentally locked on one person rather than changing views as people spoke. Fortunately for all of us it was Emily’s face it got stuck on!
It’s been a Dark Road to this Golden Hell, but I am now published!
Can’t believe I have not written about this yet! I’ve been so absorbed in preparing for the move that I completely neglected to blog about the fact that I am now published! An actual book!
Up until now almost all of my work in the gaming sphere has been community management. Almost eight years as a manager on Planewalker.com, a time during which we won two silver ENnies, has been fantastic but this is a long-standing dream come true.
Dark Roads and Golden Hells from Open Design is the book in question. A tome of resources for planar adventuring under the Pathfinder rules. I had the pleasure of contributing a plane of existence and a nasty little creature to go with it.
And now back to the mountain of work involved in preparing to move house….
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The Wotan’s Day Gaming Video
Today we are debuting a new tradition - The Wotan’s Day Gaming Video. Every Wednesday we will post something gaming related, usually music and usually something funny. Granted that means funny by our standards and we are sick people.
Today I’d like to kick it off with a couple of Brooklyn hobbits laying down the beats about Middle Earth.
Advisory: As with all videos posted in this series you may have to bleach out your brain afterward. You have been warned!
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An Interview with Larry Elmore [Comic Con New Orleans 2012]
Larry Elmore and Loki: NOLA Comic Con 2012
I’ve spent most of this past weekend covering the Comic Con in New Orleans for my local blog, HumidCity. I’m debuting this one here because it’s of particular interest to gamers, an interview with Larry Elmore.
We talk about Dragonlance, artistic freedom and the story behind the cover illustration of the first Red Box (yes, it’s a Gygax story).
Not only was a great getting to talk to him, but Mr. Elmore is a fantastically interesting and personable man. The grey hair really is the only indication that he is over 60, and he has a boundless enthusiasm beyond that of many younger creators.
Read MorePlanejammer Roundup: Campaign of the Year, The New Game, and The Joys of Video
I’m guilty as all hell.
Guilty of working on the Obsidian Portal wiki for the game rather than posting here. It’s my own fault and I make no apologies. You see, we started the new game last night. Ad Astra Per Arcana has kicked off the latest campaign in the Planejammer series as it enters it’s thirty-first year!
Before I go on about the new game and our experiments with video conferencing I’d like to thank everyone who voted for us. Our Spelljoined campaign, affectionately referred to as the Cincinnati game, won Obsidian Portal’s Campaign of the Year for 2011. I’ll be sharing photos of the trophy full of dice as soon as it arrives in the mail!
With the new game we decided to bring in one of the players from The Spelljoined via video. With modern technology four state lines should be as nothing to a bunch of determined gamers. First we tried the Hangouts function on Google+ which held up reasonably well for a while. Unfortunately as time wore on and we had been using it for an hour or so the video and audio artifacts began to multiply like orcs in an adventurer free zone.
Since we had Mac devices on each end we decided to try Facetime from the Mac desktop here in New Orleans. Without an available external mic we were limited to the factory offering. This was still not cutting it.
Then I had an inspiration – what about my iPhone? It’s got Facetime and relatively decent volume when in speaker mode.
At first it was clunky, but I think it turns out to be the best bet when only bringing one player into the came virtually like we were. I ran an audio-out to my stereo system and we adjusted her volume to the average conversational level of the room and it worked out perfectly.
We used a small stand for the iPhone so we could rotate her view, which took a bit of work. One terrific aspect of this approach, despite the extra work of playing camera-man as well as DM, came when doing combat. Unlike a stationary webcam I could easily rotate her view of the battle mat and miniatures, even setting the iPhone down on the battle mat itself. This afforded an on the ground view most players never see, one that garnered quite a look of surprise from Emily when we tried it.
While we have not looked into Skype yet, a service I use a lot but that was not available on the other end, I don’t thing we will need to. Despite the trailing audio cable using the iPhone in the way seems to offer the easiest way to really bring a single player to the table over long distance.
Between that and Obsidian Portal for managing character sheets and game data we have the makings of a great tool set for bringing in guest stars and other long distance gamers. In the future we will be trying to reboot the Spelljoined as a purely online game. Whether Hangouts, Oovoo, or Skype end up being our best bet for a game where everybody is on webcam remains to be seen, but I’ll make sure to report on our experiments as they evolve.
One last quick announcement. If you’re looking for a new fantasy novel to read on your Kindle? Check out Eria by Andrew Sanderson with the cover done by Planejammer artist, Emily Vitori, as it’s free for the next two days!
If you’ve been gaming over video I’d love to hear about what has and has not worked for your group, let us know in the comments or circle the Planejammer page on Google+ and interact!
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