WoW is racist….

This was sent through to me and I just had to share…

Have LotRO will travel…

American  performance artist Jordan Long plans to ship himself across the US in a crate with only  Lord of the Rings Online as company.

Avid Lord of the Rings Online player and performance artist; Jordan Long is taking his theories about in-game communities and their benefits for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to new levels.

Long has shipped himself from his home in Bald Knob, Arkansas to a final destination in Oregon locked in a crate with nothing but his computer and his LOTRO companions along for the ride. 

According to Long, the purpose of his most recent “art” project is to study “trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and claims that he has found that many who are confined to their homes due to such trauma tend to find their escape in the form of online games such as LotRO where they can ‘enter and exit whenever they choose, be whoever they want to be and feel like functioning members of society again.’”

Good thing he isn’t playing WOW or people would want to know the gear score of his crate….

HBO Developing Series Based on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods

The series based on Gaiman’s 2001 novel would showcase his new pantheon of deities based on American culture.

 The details are scarce, but HBO is currently in talks to write and film a pilot for a new fantasy series. Interestingly, the series would be produced by Playtone – the outfit of Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman who made Big Love and Band of Brothers. Gaiman first gained notoriety as a comic book writer with his Sandman series in the late eighties but he’s since branched into writing novels, short stories and movies (Beowulf). Gaiman’s works are no stranger to adaptation as his novella Coraline become the 2009 animated film and his Graveyard Book is also tapped to be a feature film. No one knows who would write the script for American Gods or when production would begin, but it seems that HBO is becoming more interested in genre content with the success of True Blood and the imminent Game of Thrones.

The main character in American Gods is an ex-convict called Shadow, who starts working as a bodyguard for a mysterious con-man named Mr. Wednesday. As Wednesday travels across the United States meeting with strange people, Shadow eventually figures out that his employer is an incarnation of the Norse god Odin and that he is recruiting other mythological figures whose power has diminished to fight a war against new American “deities” such as the Internet, media, and mass transportation.

Typically I don’t watch a lot of telly but I really have to take my hat off to HBO who in recent years have pumped out some absolute crackers;  Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire and Six Feet Under to name a few.

Having watched the first episode twice so far it seems that Game of Thrones is set to be another classic and if they do even half as good a job with American Gods it will be outstanding.

Original source Hollywood Reporter

The Magician’s Guild – Trudi Canavan

The Magicians’ Guild by Trudi Canavan

Seeing as the story revolves around a pre-teen child who has no knowledge of her magical abilities but ends up being whisked away to a magicians guild and ends up being pretty much the top of the pile there were always going to be similarities drawn between this book and the Harry Potter series.

I really can understand how on the face of things it all seems a bit of a coincidence. Especially when in the second book of the trilogy we discover that the real enemies were believed defeated years ago but are back in secret and it will take huge sacrifice to defeat them…

Ok so I lied –  the similarities aren’t just on the surface. This really does read in parts like a mild re-write of some of the HP books.

But that didn’t really detract from my overall enjoyment, not just of this book but of the trilogy as a whole. The story is different enough that you don’t feel like you should just be replacing the name Sonea with that of HP himself and for the most part is well written, if a tad simplistic.

The class issues that Canavan brings up are a little bit clumsy and play out much as expected but even so it is a nice touch and helps keeps things fresh when otherwise you could be about to swap the Magicians Guild for Hogwarts.

There are however two big problems for me that keep me from scoring this book higher and unfortunately they carry on pretty much through out the latter installments of the trilogy.

Firstly there is the characterisation which is a little bit lacking on occasion.
The principal characters are surprisingly two-dimensional and formulaic and you never really find yourself building any attachment to them or indeed giving two hoots as to whether they all die in a fire.

This is a real shame as there is plenty of potential to really build some tension between the main protagonists right from the start.

 One prime example of this is the relationship between Sonea and her friends in the slums; it is obvious that Cery, one of the thieves, has strong feelings for Sonea but rather than build this up into anything too deep or emotive Canavan has the character dismiss his own feelings and cast them aside quite casually over the space of two or three paragraphs.

The second big issue that I have with this series is that I never really get a sense of immersion into the world the story is set in.

The slums and the guild are outlined reasonably well but even they are rather thin on detail and everywhere else we venture is so sketchily outlined that you are squinting to see it.

I am not asking for Tolkien like levels of detail about every blade of grass crushed underfoot but I would like to feel some sense of connection.

If I had to give an example of a fantasy writer who manages to pull this off to perfection it would have to be Terry Pratchett; on one hand I haven’t a clue what colour the second daffodil to the left of the buttercup and indeed don’t want to know was but on the other hand I can walk the streets of Ankh Morpork in my head without having to fill in huge chunks of blank canvas.

When I read that Sam Vimes stops and buys a sausage in a bun off of C.M.O.T Dibbler I can not only see Sator Square where they are standing I can smell the sausage.

In contrast to this I can read that some Bolhouse (a pub in Sonea’s world) is about to be destroyed by marauding Sachakan magicians (the bad magicians) and I really couldn’t give two figs. I haven’t a clue about the place in question other than the mere fact that it is a kind of pub and that they better have insurance. 

I am probably coming off sounding more displeased with this series than I mean to; it really isn’t bad but I feel that it lacks depth and a bit of originality and I am hoping that Canavan’s next installments will give me a bit less Potter and a bit more sense of her world and what she wants the reader to see.

View all my reviews

Terry Pratchett joins staff of Trinity College in Dublin

Fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett has been added to the academic staff of Trinity College University in Dublin.

Pratchett’s first lecture will take place on Thursday 4 November at 7 pm and has been entitled ‘The importance of being absolutely amazed about everything’.

“Professor Sir Terry Pratchett brings a new depth of creative genius to our cohort of distinguished international adjuncts in our School of English,” commented Provost John Hegarty.

“His contribution to the student experience and to the wider Trinity experience will be absolutely unique and we are delighted to have him on our staff.”

Just how awesome is this??

Imagine walking into your lecture and being greeted by arguably one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time!

See the article in full at : http://www.joe.ie/news-politics/current-affairs/terry-pratchett-joins-staff-at-trinity-college-dublin-006625-1

Retro RPGs

baldurs gate

I love RPGs, always have really, since the first time I ever sat round a table and played my first game of D&D through to the present day.

Recently I have been a little underwhelmed though; the current crop of RPGs for the PC, Xbox 360 etc are pretty good but they just seem to lack something.

It isn’t that they are bad games, far from it but somewhere amidst the amazing graphics, cinematic sound, famous voice actors etc  they seem to have lost some of that traditional RPG element that I love.

That is why I have gone back to playing classic RPGs that whilst nowhere near as polished as the current crop of games just seem to be a little nearer the mark.

In particular I have been playing the ever so awesome Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Baldur’s Gate 1 &2 and the original Fallout.

For me these 5  games encompass pretty much everything that I want in a RPG.

I love the sheer immersion that takes place when playing one of these older story driven RPGs sure I enjoy having a massive sandbox world to track around (the map in Oblivion is 16 square miles!) but nothing beats a riveting story that drives you to continue and keeps you focused.

I sometimes think that with some of the current sandbox games that it is too easy to be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of different things you can run off and do and that the main campaigns/storylines can get overlooked.

I also miss the fully turn based combat systems like you saw in Fallout, it is reminiscent of my hours spent with pen, paper and dice and just has a charm about it that is sometimes lacking these days.

Maybe I am just getting old and turning into one of those people who goes on about how everything was better back in the day but as much as I really enjoy modern games -trust me I do- the old classics just seem to be more fun somehow.

neverwinter nights 1 &2 /baldurs gate

rattle on about how these feel more dungeon and dragonesque then the current big rpgs where you trot around by yourself for days at a time

Martin Freeman to play Bilbo Baggins

I am  a little behind the times on this as I have been up the walls recently and haven’t been looking at the entertainment news as much as I normally would so

But there it was in black and white Martin Freeman (no relation to Morgan) of The Office fame is to play Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming Hoobbit movie!!!.

Personally I think that he will be perfect for the role, not only is he English and I have always visualised Hobbits as being essentially fat little Englishmen, but he looks exactly like a Hobbit!

This is going to be a really big step in the right direction for Freeman, who has come a long, long way from his days as Tim in The Office or as John; the actor who is filming a sex scene with the oh so appealing Joanna Page of Gavin and Stacey fame in Love Actually.

I am now even more excited about these films then I was previously and that was fairly excited let me tell you! As much as I love the Lord of the Rings and have read it far more times then I should probably admit to the Hobbit has always held a special place in my heart.

I had always enjoyed reading, even as a small child but it was Tolkien’s story about a Hobbit that lived in a hole in the ground and the adventures that he had that really started my life long love of fantasy books.