RPGA Film Studies cover

A Podcast Guest at RPGA Film Studies

Yesterday, Kalum from The Rolistes Podcast released an episode of RPGA Film Studies. Kalum’s guests this episode were Senda Linaugh of She’s A Super Geek Podcast and I! We discuss The NeverEnding Story, the 1984 film directed by Wolfgang Petersen. After talking (and laughing) about the movie, we also discuss RPG systems that would be perfect to adapt for The NeverEnding Story. Finally we also exchange stories and tips on how to run RPG sessions for little kids. I also talk a bit about running games for Irfan. Click on the image below to go to the episode podcast. The episode length is 1:06:03. Note: The episode was recorded months and months before Stranger Things season 3 made this the talk of the town again.

Continue reading
Hishgraphics H

Posthuman Pals

POSTHUMAN PALS RPG IDEA This article was first written and published on my Google Plus account on Jan 27, 2012. Once upon a time, humans flourished on this planet Earth. They found newer and faster ways of doing things and moving information around. They developed not only computers, but computers that could think, speak, communicate and observe like a human. They developed ways of duplicating an individual human’s memories and thought patterns and transfer them into machines, as well as transferring artificial intelligence entities into cloned human bodies. For many centuries, humans and machines lived together peacefully. Then one day, for some now-forgotten reason, humans and machines began to believe themselves superior to the other and a war broke out, beginning with the deaths of organic minds in machine bodies and machine minds in organic bodies. Then they started tossing nukes at each other. Billions died every night. Some servers […]

Continue reading

A Wakanda Weekend

We got a bit of a windfall upon my sacrifice of Saturday mornings teaching the previous semester, so I decided we would take a break and head down to the mall in Alor Setar. For the first time since moving here we had food at the Chicken Rice Shop. I think the last time we had some were at Berjaya Times Square. We also caught our first movie of for the year, which is Black Panther. As with other Marvel Studios films, this one also eludes a particular genre being pinned on it. It was definitely more than just a superhero movie. The story is enjoyable. I wish there was a Wakanda sourcebook that features all the peoples and cultural elements they created for the fictional nation. Shuri and M’Baku were scene stealers and I was glad to learn that they would be back in Avengers: Infinity War later in […]

Continue reading
Droid trio

Star Wars The Force Awakens Review

We finally saw Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens the evening of the 18th, a day after general release. I discovered that trying to write a review about it was impossible for me. I will get to that soon, but what about the movie itself? It was to me an excellent Star Wars story with new characters interacting with the old, swashbuckling their way through space to save lives. I suppose the story beats did get too close for comfort to the original trilogy, but with characters that were amazingly developed and actors who had great chemistry with each other. It was a fun movie. Although there were some things that I did not like about it (such as how it was possible to see the First Order’s beam from a planet too far away), these things are trivial compared to the fun experienced from watching it. I loved […]

Continue reading
Rogue One Strikeforce Enteague

Strikeforce Enteague The Movie?

Once upon a time, Shanna Toarinar the bounty hunter stole a captured A-Wing Fighter from the Empire. Soon after, she was recruited to be the first member of the Strikeforce Enteague. Thus begins the Star Wars RPG campaign – using West End Games’s D6 system – that lasted for 10 years in real time as well as game time. Today Lucasfilm released a cast photo of their new Star Wars film: Strikeforce Enteague the Movie*. With Felicity Jones as Shanna Toarinar, Diego Luna as Ace Browning Crossfire and Donnie Yen as Ben-One-Howel. Download the Worlds of the Enteague Sector D6 pdf supplement that I made here! * Sigh. I wish. Sigh. But seriously, doesn’t the Rogue One cast photo looks like someone’s Star Wars D6 (or an Age of Rebellion) rebel commando party? Sigh**. **Siiigh!!! (Just in case this needs to be said: Yes, that is a promotional photo from […]

Continue reading
I should have also drawn the Lawgiver

Day of Dredd

Earlier this week there was a drive via online social networks for a sequel of 2012’s film Dredd starring Karl Urban as Judge Dredd. Known as Day of Dredd, there were many posts and tweets about it across the internet. Even Psi Judge Anderson actress Olivia Thirlby herself made a thank you video for fans who helped with this drive. Dredd was an enjoyable, very tight, very focused story with just the right balance of grittiness and the absurdness of the future social dynamics of Mega City One. Its violence is very explicit, assaulting viewers with the atrocities of the film’s villains. It sets the tone for the grimness of the situation of having Dredd and the rookie Anderson trapped in a vast but somehow claustrophobic Peach Tower residential block by Ma-Ma, the local drug lord played by Lena Headey. Of course the dire circumstances only serves to  accentuate how […]

Continue reading
Tacit Ronin

Pacific Rim: Tacit Ronin

So I quickly painted the PPDC Jaeger Tacit Ronin, which was seen for about 0.4 seconds on screen in the movie Pacific Rim, Guillermo Del Toro’s mecha vs kaiju movie which I immensely enjoyed by the way. Check out the larger image of Tacit Ronin on my Tumblr.

Continue reading
Reichenbach something...

Some Iron Man Three Viewing Report

The onslaught of summer movies is upon us. We’ve caught the first of them, Iron Man Three. Here’s Irfan with Benedict Cumberbatch behind him just before he watched the movie. Yes, yes, yes. We saw Iron Man and not Star Trek that evening. SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT I SAID SPOILERS!!! Iron Man Three The story takes into account Tony’s PTSD he suffered after fighting Loki and the Chitauri army in “The Battle of New York City” during The Avengers. I guess you would have panic attacks when you are suddenly aware of a multitude of unknown and powerful alien species in space (and other dimensions). We hope he doesn’t go into full catatonia when he learns of highly evolved space raccoons. Aldrich Killian, the founder of AIM has Chinese dragon tattoos? Breath attack? Wears underpants? That’s Earth-199999’s version of Fin Fang Foom. How did they write around the fact that the […]

Continue reading
Promeffeus

Wallpaprometheus

I appear to have a new wallpaper for the Artist X 1.0 desktop. Click to expand it. It’s that ship sent by Weyland Industries. S.S. Lollipop or something. Can’t wait for the movie. I’m not saying it’s ALIEN, but it’s ALIEN.

Continue reading
I prefer Threepio's hair in the pic above

Holy Crap! Star Wars DVD to Blu-Ray Comparisons!

IT’S AN OUTRAGE! Star Wars: The Complete Saga blu-ray set has been released and I have compiled a comparison of five screenshots between the DVD and its corresponding scene in the Blu-ray version. In each image, the DVD version is the top half and the Blu-ray the bottom half. Here follows a commentary on the above-mentioned screenshots. The Opening Crawl As you can see, the opening crawl in the DVD when viewed in Blu-ray looks so much worse. The blackness of space seems to have been greyed out and smudged in a shape that could be a mountain. Seriously? Someone thought a mountain would look good in space? Even the text font has been changed, perhaps to accommodate extra details about some “Purple Death”, which I believe refers to General Tagge’s underpants. The Tatooine Desert The picture quality is so bad after a transfer to 1080p that some of the […]

Continue reading

Poster for Horizon

Horizon is a short film written and directed by Emma Coats, set in the wilds of a post-apocalyptic near future. I’ve seen a rough cut of the film. It looks spectacular and is very ambitious project. Also, it has a zeppelin! I was invited to contibute a movie poster to be displayed in a gallery released with the DVD and here’s what I came up with. Watch this space for details of its upcoming release! [[image:horizon-poster.jpg:80s comic adapation movie poster at its cheesiest?:center:0]] Click here to see more photos and posters for Horizon. Click here to see a bigger version of my poster on DeviantArt.

Continue reading

The Many Green Lanterns of the Trailer

The official trailer for next year’s Green Lantern movie starring Deadpool is out. There are quite a number of Green Lanterns in the trailer. [[image:green-lantern-trailer01.jpg:WHAT YA LOOKIN AT, POOZER!:center:0]] Kilowog! [[image:green-lantern-trailer02.jpg:Amon Sur, you’re a jackass:center:0]] Abin Sur! [[image:green-lantern-trailer03.jpg:But where’s Qward?:center:0]] Tomar-Re and the Oan central power battery! [[image:green-lantern-trailer04.jpg:Green Lantern of Space Sector 1417:center:0]] Sinestro! [[image:green-lantern-trailer05.jpg:Highball:center:0]]  and of course, Hal Jordan. Yeah, I just wanted to post pictures of the live-action corpsmen on the blog, is all. Too bad there’s no Mogo and Bzzd.

Continue reading