Seeing the Hunger Games, Panem Style

So, there is this movie that came out recently called 'The Hunger Games'.  I read the books right around the time the movie was announced.  A friend of mine told me that they worth a read and let me borrow her copy.  And like a zombie plague, once I finished reading it I swiftly started infecting all my friends, telling them to read it as well as it was a good book.

As you've seen before on my blog, I am sort of interested in strong, independent female characters who aren't defined by their gender or relationships.  And this series certainly fit that with Katniss.  She is absolutely a great role model for young women everywhere (unlike a certain vampire/were-wolf obsessed cultural phenomenon that is quite possibly the worst role-model for the women of the world).  So I was excited about seeing the book made into a movie, with of course the usual reservation that us book reading types have for movie adaptations.

But went my girlfriend and I did.  But not to just the local theater.  Oh no.  My girlfriend had purchased a Groupon recently for a ticket and dinner at the Muvico Theater down in Thousand Oaks.  I had never heard of the place, but once I saw what it was, I geeked out.  In my opinion, we were basically seeing the Hunger Games in true Panem fashion.  After the jump, I'll describe our experience and my thoughts on why almost every theater in the world needs to refurbish and reopen with the same features as Muvico.

Emperor Mage

 Today I thought I'd give you guys a little glimpse at the backstory of the first major villain of my world, Emperor Castor Broodan.  I hope you all enjoy it and feel free to leave a comment if you'd like.

The Kobold Expedition

Alright folks.  I have a Monday morning treat for you!  I have taken the first part of my campaign arc "Rise of the Dragon Kings" and turned it into a PDF for your downloading enjoyment.

Now, this is only the first part of the first adventure.  It just serves as a jumping point for the rest of the campaign and I hope you will all find it enjoyable.  Again, not that I get much, any and all constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated.

Now, as with most things pertaining to my world and game, please keep in mind that everything is in Alpha right now.  This adventure was play tested by my table-top group and it seemed to go over well.  The adventure is intended for a level 2 party and uses the Pathfinder rule-set, so keep that in mind as well.

Enjoy!

The Kobold Expedition - Level 2

Baldur's Gate, Getting Hit by a Car and My Childhood

Yesterday, some interesting things happened.  The main one being the announcement of a Enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate I and II by a company called Overhaul Games.  I'm not going to go too much into what my thoughts are about the enhanced version today because today I just want to wax nostalgic about Baldur's Gate and how important it was to me in my formative years.  Oh yeah, and I got hit by a car while I was taking a walk.

Don't worry, it'll all tie together after the jump.

And now for something completely different

Today I'm going to give you guys a glimpse into a story I started.  This was written years ago, and it was mostly to serve as a background for Mantarok as a character in my table-top DnD game.   Then I kind of shelved it and created other characters I wanted to expand on.  The problem now is that almost all of those people are NPC's in my home-brew world and all current stories that I write take place in that world.  The next couple of entries you should consider as stand alone little tales.  I may incorporate them into actual canonical stories eventually, but for now just enjoy the story as-is.

Shiny New Toys!

So I created a couple of items for my game.  Some are generic magic items with just a lot of various abilities, but a couple are world specific artifacts or just powerful items that I figured I would share with you all today.

Soooooo...this happened.

So, I tend to try to keep this blog fairly focused on Dungeons and Dragons, or at least loosely related to DnD.  I also try to keep my personal life a bit separated from it, mostly because I know you guys don't want to read about my problems.  And also because I also don't want to focus on negative things on here, mostly positive stuff.

However, an event took place today that is personal in nature, but also will effect the direction and focus of the blog.  Essentially, I am going to have a lot more free time to work on the blog and my writing because I got fired from my job today.  I've never been fired before, so it is kind of a weird feeling.  I'm not particularly happy about it...but I'm also not particularly sad about it.  I hadn't been enjoying the job lately, and honestly I was more excited about coming home and working on writing or blog entries.  So it is kind of a blessing in disguise, I suppose.

I'm hoping to get a new job soon, but in the meantime, expect a lot more updates during the week for a little bit because I'm going to be trying to dedicate any and all free time to working on various stories or scripts for the blog.  Hopefully, I'll be able to get my web-cam soon and still be able to start recording some video blog entries for you guys.

So keep reading and enjoy my extra free time!

Poll ->

Just a quick little post here.  I've decided to see what you guys want to see more of.  Please just vote in the poll on the right side to let me know what to start focusing on.

Thanks!

Blog News

So big news today, readers.  I am going to be advancing forward into modern blogging and get a webcam.  I plan on changing the format for the blog so that I'll be doing video entries for my lists and reviews while I still plan on using text entries for my short stories and my entries about my campaign setting.  I'm hoping you all will enjoy listening to me rant rather then just reading my rants.

However, due to this I may be a little sporadic in updates because I'm going to be writing up some scripts for the first video entries and also I have to wait for my webcam to arrive.  But rest assured I plan on doing a lot more video entries.  I also plan on expanding a little to include more video games and movies as well.  The focus will always be on Dungeons and Dragons, so there will usually be some connection.  Just to give you a hint of what I'll be doing, I plan on reviewing some more 3.5 stuff, like the Expedition series of adventure paths and the Complete series, my thoughts on 4th edition and, of course, moving into Pathfinder as well.

Anyway, I thank you all for continuing to read and I hope you will enjoy the changes I'll be making coming up.  I'm going to leave you with this:

Timeline for the world of Therotan

So I've been working on a home-brew world for Dungeons and Dragons.  I'm hoping to eventually try to get it published, but for now I'm just running it for my tabletop game.  But I have put together a rough time-line for the history of the world.

Please keep in mind that this is a rough draft of the time-line, I may be changing or filling in more information as time goes on.  For now though, this is a pretty good idea of what I'm going for in my world.  All the stories that I've put up here about individual characters are set in this world, usually taking place in the timeline during the most recent era, Broodan.

Also included is a map of my world, with the current set up of countries and nations.  I know I don't get a lot of comments on here, but I am going to say that any comments (critical or otherwise) would be immensely helpful as I'm working on this project currently and would like to see it come through to fruition.  So please, leave a comment and enjoy!