The Analytical Engine

The LiveJournal Experiment

Erik — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:39:00 +0000

For the past few days, I've been posting to a LiveJournal blog instead of this one, in an experiment to see if the "friends page" feature of LJ can bring a bigger audience. I have no intention of abandoning the Analytical Engine at this time, and the "Lemuria Press" name is a placeholder, but I must say that I am sorely tempted to make the switch. Some things are simply easier on LiveJournal than they are on Blogger.

Thoughts?

Where My Head Has Been Lately

Erik — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 06:57:00 +0000

Otis Adelbert Kline is considered the only Edgar Rice Burroughs imitator to ever give old ERB a run for his money. In 1930 Kline, who worked on the editorial staff of Wierd Tales, pissed off Burroughs, who had a successful Mars franchise going with his "Barsoom" or "John Carter of Mars" series by setting his "Peril" series on Venus, and using a very similar means by which to send his Earthman to a distant planet. In retaliation, Burroughs created the "Carson of Venus" stories. Kline responded by writing a bunch of novels set on Mars itself. Sort of the 1930s version of a flame war. This cover is from a 1961 Ace Paperback edition on loan from my friend and colleague Pierce Watters. Artwork by Roy Krenkel, Jr.

Kothar and the Wizard Slayer, by Flash, Justice Society, Justice League, and Adam Strange creator Gardner F. Fox, is the final volume in a series that includes Kothar - Barbarian Swordsman, Kothar and the Demon Queen, Kothar of the Magic Sword!, and Kothar and the Conjurer's Curse. Cover image from the 1970 first (and only) printing from Modern Promotions. Artwork by J. Jokes (?).

Thongor, the warrior hero of Lemuria, was a... well, let's just call it an "homage" to Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian by Lin Carter. As an editor, Carter coordinated Ballantine's "Adult Fantasy" imprint, which greatly inspired Dungeons & Dragons. Though his is mostly forgotten today, in 1973 Thongor ranked enough to score his own Marvel character. Artwork for 1969's Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria is uncredited, but head-exploding awesome. Art on the original 1965 Ace edition by Gray Morrow.

Os Mutantes Has Altered My DNA

Erik — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 03:42:00 +0000

Since Wednesday I've been walking around with a stupid afterglow grin that must make my colleagues think there's some kind of funny business going on behind the closed door of my office.

"What's up?" they ask.

"I just saw a sweet concert," I say, grinning stupidly.

"Oh yeah? Who'd you see?"

"Os Mutantes."

The blank look is almost always the same. "Oh. Great," they say. The polite ones ask for more information, which I now provide to the world (or at least the subset that reads my blog) in the form of video.

Here's the trailer for a new documentary about the band. It provides the historical framework and gives you a taste of their music and peerless, unrelenting originality.

Then, once you are ready, delve deeper.

Then.

Now.

Now the only thing left to do is to buy the CD. This one, assembled by David Byrne of Talking Heads fame, is the best introduction to the band, but this one is also pretty essential.

I want your full report in the Comments. Those of you who don't click the links will receive 12 demerits.

Katherine Harris's Favorite Charity

Erik — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 21:28:00 +0000

You probably remember Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris from her role in the contentious 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush. She was the Cruella DeVille character who ended the hand count of the votes and achieved a place in infamy in the hearts of liberals everywhere. Did I mention that she looked funny?

Anyway, she's now a member of the House of Representatives (you scratch my back, etc.), and is running for a Senate seat against Bill Nelson, a fairly conservative Florida Democrat. That's brought a fair amount of attention from the media and bloggers, and she has certainly provided plenty of column fodder.

After being caught trying to get a financial earmark for the company of a convicted felon after enjoying a $2,800 meal with said felon, the red-faced Ms. Harris (haw haw) decided to donate $100 -- her portion of the meal's cost -- to a charity.

That charity has a pretty funny website that's worth a look. Note that the female pastor was "sold to devils" as a child and that she has come back from the dead.

Me, I'm not so comfortable with End Timers as the folks with their hands on the reins of power in this country.

You?

Our Media Blows Ass

Erik — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 05:01:00 +0000

I was doing some light reading on media consolidation this evening, and came across what must be one of the funniest "TV Funhouse" segments ever aired on "Saturday Night Live."

Once.

It got edited out of the reruns.

Surprise!

"Spirit of Ecstasy"

Erik — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 05:45:00 +0000

In the pantheon of Erik's Twisted Heroes, Serge Gainsbourg is chief musical curator and venerable boozologist.

??????

Erik — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 04:50:00 +0000

Your guess is as good as mine.

The Return of Politics

Erik — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 06:40:00 +0000

I provide the sweet link, you provide the comments.

Go.

Wikimania!

Erik — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 08:17:00 +0000

While doing a little research tonight I decided to try my hand at editing a few D&D-related Wikipedia pages, mostly to correct mistakes or add a bit of information I happened to know off the top of my head. While doing so I thought it might be a good idea to note which adventures had been ranked the 30 greatest of all time by the panel I put together back in 2004, and I ended up creating an entire page for that panel. You can see my first from-scratch Wikipedia page here.

That list, incidentally, follows (I've put stars on the ones that don't have Wiki pages):

30: The Ghost Tower of Inverness
29: The Assassin's Knot
28: The Lost City*
27: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh*
26: City of Skulls
25: Dragons of Despair*
24: City of the Spider Queen*
23: The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
22: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
21: Dark Tower*
20: Scourge of the Slave Lords
19: Against the Cult of the Reptile God
18: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
17: Ruins of Undermountain* (!)
16: The Isle of Dread* (!!)
15: Castle Amber
14: Dead Gods*
13: Dwellers of the Forbidden City
12: The Forge of Fury*
11: The Gate of Firestorm Peak*
10: Return to the Tomb of Horrors*
9: White Plume Mountain
8: Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
7: The Keep on the Borderlands
6: The Desert of Desolation* (!)
5: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
4: The Temple of Elemental Evil
3: Tomb of Horrors
2: Ravenloft
1: Queen of the Spiders* (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Not a bad list.

Hordes of the Abyss is Now Available

Erik — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 23:39:00 +0000

My newest book, Fiendish Codex 1: Hordes of the Abyss, is now available at bookstores, game stores, and on the Internet. This is my first hardcover release for Wizards of the Coast since 2003's Fiend Folio, and believe me when I tell you it was an absolute labor of love.

My co-authors on the book were James Jacobs and Ed Stark. My contribution is Chapter 5: Into the Abyss, an overview of D&D's Outer Plane of chaos and evil. The Abyss is home to the vilest demons in the multiverse, and it was a thrill to update their habitat in an official Dungeons & Dragons book.

I had previously tread upon this unhallowed ground, albeit unofficially, in the pages of Green Ronin's Armies of the Abyss, which was later compiled (with a bunch of stuff I didn't write) into the company's extremely popular Book of Fiends. Although the Green Ronin books are not official D&D, they are a hell of a lot of fun to read and are great additions to any Dungeon Master's library (if I do say so myself).

I'm interested to hear your reaction to my material in this book (much of the Internet chatter so far has focused on game statistics I didn't write), and will happily answer any of your questions about the book in the comments section of this post.

I'm the Decider

Erik — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 04:38:00 +0000

I'm the decider.
I pick and I choose.
I pick among whats.
And choose among whos.

And as I decide
Each particular day
The things I decide on
All turn out that way.

An epic poem by Roddy McCorley via Daily Kos.

Bingo

Erik — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 03:51:00 +0000

"Even had this project not produced such an invaluable aid to so many Dungeon Masters, it would still have been fascinating; for this is the campaign where much of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS and ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS took shape and form. This world was the first -- the prototype for the countless D&D universes that exist now. Already famous among fantasy gamers, Greyhawk also served as the setting for the novel Quag Keep by famed SF&F author Andre Norton. At conventions D&D players jump at the chance to play in this venerable campaign. How many characters were born, lived, fought, and died in this rugged land no one will ever know for certain; several will live forever through their contributions to the game. Do the names Tenser and Mordenkainen ring a bell?..."

--Allen Hammack
February 6, 1979
Foreword to "The World of Greyhawk Gazetteer"

Project Update: Second Person

Erik — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 22:09:00 +0000

A few months ago I wrote an essay entitled "From the Basement to the Basic Set," which gave an overview of the birth of Dungeons & Dragons from its origin in the field of miniatures wargames to the consolidated "Basic Set" published in 1977.

The essay is just one of several to be published by MIT Press in a book entitled "Second Person: Role Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media," which is scheduled for a November 2006 release. I was pleased to contribute to such an interesting project, and am proud to have an essay alongside such authors as George R.R. Martin, Greg Costikyan, Kenneth Hite, Jonathan Tweet, John Tynes, and James Wallis, all of whom I admire for one reason or another.

In any event, MIT just put up their order page for the book, which will cost you $45.00 in hardcover.

Cheap.

Go here for a preview and table of contents.

One of Us

Erik — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 04:56:00 +0000

Courtesy of Craig C., in the comments.

You Know that You're Toxic

Erik — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 01:36:00 +0000

"Natural aspects of Spears' pregnancy, like lactiferous breasts and protruding naval, compliment a posterior view that depicts widened hips for birthing and reveals the crowning of baby Sean's head."

I mean, I had dreamt those words before, but I never thought I'd read them in real life!

Wayne Reynolds is the Best

Erik — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 07:21:00 +0000

Check out the winner of the "Wayne Reynolds Draws Your Character" contest over at EN World. Wayne is probably my favorite D&D artist ever, and certainly my favorite of the crop currently working on official D&D product. His work is really remarkable, and perfectly captures the D&D feel (and especially the Third Edition feel).

One of the things that makes Wayne such a great artist is that he genuinely loves D&D. I first became aware of him after my friend Sean Reynolds got him to do interiors in Slavers! a late-era Greyhawk book. I may have the lore wrong, but I think Wayne emailed Sean because he was a Greyhawk fan, and that was how he started his work on the game. The point is the man can draw, and he's got great taste.

And he's just turned in one of his most incredible paintings ever for the final installment of the Age of Worms Adventure Path. It serves as a perfect capstone to the series and a great follow-up to the first Age of Worms cover, Dungeon #124.

Me is Risen

Erik — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 04:46:00 +0000

Two of my favorite Dragon and Dungeon contributors, Dave Noonan and Jesse Decker, recently started a fascinating series of Dungeons & Dragons design and development journals on the official D&D site. This week's installment surveys important nonfiction resources for crafting D&D material as suggested by the readers of the site. Lots of interesting suggestions the further you go down the list, but the "part 1" in the title makes me hope that we'll be seeing more obscure suggestions than "The Power of Myth" or "The Prince" as the series progresses.

The format of Jesse and Dave's article reminded me of a book I briefly browsed yesterday in a trashy Portland bookstore. The title was something like "Mondo-Outrageous Questions: Answers Inside!!!!!11!!1!", so of course I had to pick it up. The first question I noticed in my random sample seemed relatively straightforward and obvious: "Why does the rest of the world hate America?"

Instead of getting to the meat of things, the book provided a sampling of witless "common man" opinions that read like viewer mail on the O'Reilly Factor. More to the point, they read like tightly edited message board posts, which I strongly suspect they were.

I immediately skipped past these truisms, guesses, and disagreements with the premise of the question to get to the summation by the book's authors, which is what I had come for in the first place. The fact that I often had to flip a couple of pages while doing so made me think: "So I'm supposed to pay money for this? It's probably still sitting out online somewhere."

In short, it felt like a ripoff, and it was a ripoff. I put the book back on the shelf.

The same editorial approach that worked for this week's free internet D&D design column doesn't work in the printed medium. When there is a monetary exchange involved, people expect a little more effort for their cash, and they are right to do so.

One of the constant struggles of my day job is to ensure that the magazines I edit remain relevant and worthwhile in an era choked with free online content. The answer lies in the difference between something you read online and something you read that you had to pay for.

In order to earn the customer's dollar, the editor must give him something the Internet can't, or at least doesn't accomplish very often. In our case, it's got to be something people don't just read and enjoy, but something they want to keep. That's extremely rare in the magazine world, but in our case I dare say the majority of our regular readers keep their Dragons and Dungeons alongside their other gaming material. Not many other magazines have the same status. National Geographic, certainly. Perhaps Popular Mechanics? And then there's stuff like Playboy.

But most people don't keep Cosmopolitan or Time or Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly or Harpers or Atlantic Monthly or whatever.

But they do keep their Dragons and their Dungeons. Pinpointing why they do so is the key to understanding what makes the magazines tick, and how to make them financially successful.

Fight the Net!

Erik — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 23:11:00 +0000

Our government at work.

These Dicks are Going Down

Erik — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 07:53:00 +0000

Speaking of Paul Hackett...

I Support Fighting Democrats

Erik — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 10:49:00 +0000

Paul Hackett looks like the real deal.

Current 2008 Presidential Nominee Pick: Russ Feingold.

Discuss.

Jesus Says Lying is OK!

Erik — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 08:34:00 +0000

M14 Frodo Says:
January 4, 2006 - 21:47

The funny thing that liberals don't get... any issue... religion, politics like Iraq... you name it... is that even if the WMDs was false information, it is still a good deed because we helped the Iraqi people. And a good deed done for different reasons is still a good deed, it's just to denounce the reasons... not reverse the deed... and they want to stop good deeds and reverse Iraq.

The above post, to this entertaining account of David Letterman cutting the knees out from under talkshow guest Bill O'Reilly, exactly states why I do not trust fundamentalist Christians in politics.

MYSTERY COUNTRY UPDATE!

Erik — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 09:16:00 +0000

Happy Christmas, Nauru!

You're fucked.

The Past is the Present is the Future

Erik — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 07:43:00 +0000

Fellow scholars, it's come to my attention that malefic have recently become a topic of some interest in your forum. While much of the recent learned discussion has (quite accurately) worked toward defining in quantitative terms what exactly a demon is, it fails to directly address the topic of how these fiends interact with Oerth, and which among them have turned their attention to our niche in the Prime Material Plane.

The matter came to my attention at an opportune time, I must admit, as I am currently in the process of composing a manuscript on this very topic. As such, I feel that I can only provide the barest of explanations here, so as not to adversely effect the final project, which should be completed in the coming months. Despair not, readers, for it shall reach your much-discussed library as soon as it has reached an acceptable format.

I wrote that nine years ago, on this webpage.

Wow.

Mortellan: He Hilarious!

Erik — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 23:41:00 +0000

Frequent Analytical Engine reader Mortellan started the Greyhawk-themed web comic W.o.G. about a year ago, and has been posting weekly updates ever since. When I say "Greyhawk comic" I really mean it, because some of the jokes are so laser focused on obscure setting trivia or even decade-old Internet discussions that they'll fly right past the casual reader.

I am not, insofar as Greyhawk is concerned, a casual reader, and I suspect many of you aren't either.

Enjoy.

The multi-page Christmas Special is a must-read.

AFFIRMATIVE!

Erik — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 03:51:00 +0000

This Wikipedia entry, and the preview clips mentioned at the bottom of it, make me happier than just about anything in years.