the stranger

I saw this piece from Nick Derington on electroplasmosis, and fell in love with it immediately. Rather than go on and on about all the reasons why, I’ll just let the work speak for itself.

Go look at the biggest version of it, and take some time to discover all the different things that are going on in this piece. Trust me. And look at his other work while you’re there, because it’s brilliant.

And before I go do all the real life stuff I didn’t do while I was working on NUMB3RS this week, I hope you’ll all join me in wishing WWdN reader Lucas a happy birthday, filled with brains in jars and mysterious aliens approaching the diner.

Save vs. Awesome

Worldwide D&D Game Day is coming up on Saturday, November 3. GeekDad sez:

This year’s WWDDGD boasts over 1,000 venues (mainly game stores) and an
estimated 30,000 attendees from every continent except Antarctica. The
centerpiece is a special Icewind Dale adventure in honor of the
upcoming 20th anniversary of the creation of fantasy character Drizzt Do’Urden. There are D&D themed giveaways including D&D miniatures and RPGA
campaign cards. Active players, former players and absolute noobs are
welcome to attend, and no sign-ups are necessary — just show up! Check for games in your area.

I love this! What a great excuse to introduce someone — like your teenagers, for example — to tabletop RPGs! Wizards is sending out adventure kits to participating game shops, that sound pretty cool:

These come with everything your store needs to turn it into the center
of fun you’d expect from such a global celebration. This includes:
character packs keyed to one of five different player characters. In
each of these packs are the painted miniature, character sheet, d20 and
pencil. Basically everything your players need to have an action packed
adventure. For the DM there is a, special to game day, adventure and a
pack of dice (d4,6,8,10,20,100) and a unique RPGA rewards card offered
nowhere else!

My friendly local game shop is running one-shot adventures in the morning and afternoon. I’m not sure what they have in mind, but Wizards says

We are sending each venue a treasure chest of goodies that include an
special adventure sent in Icewind Dale a location in the popular Forgotten Realms
world. Each chest contains enough adventures, complete with full color
maps and miniatures, to ensure 25 players can strive for fame and
fortune at the same time.

I looked at the character sheets (they are already posted as PDFs online) and the set-up seems to be: two Dwarves find a map to their ancestral home, gather some friends and a stranger together, and head up into the mountains to find it. Sounds like a classic adventure to me, with some wilderness encounters on the way to the obligatory ruins that I’m pretty sure go deep into the mountain at some point, almost like a dungeon. Yes, a dungeon that you could crawl through.

Whether you’re a longtime gamer with a gaming monkey on your back, or a normal person who’s always wanted to give tabletop role playing games a try, this is perfect. Just show up, grab a character and some dice, and get ready for adventure. Wizards has wisely created 4th level characters for the festivities, so players won’t have to suffer the indignity of being killed by a single kobold. On the other hand, players won’t get to enjoy the rite of passage we all enjoyed the first time we were killed by a single kobold, while trying in vain to defend ourselves by casting Light.

happiest days gets a review

I was helping a friend troubleshoot and .opml issue a few days ago, and ended up building the mother of all vanity searches with this thing called monitor.

I was going to delete it last night, but I’m glad I didn’t, because I found this great review of The Happiest Days of Our Lives with it this morning:

The book is a compilation of stories from Wil’s earlier years. The
stories make for a great read. Some will make you laugh, while others
will sadden you. And more than one is very easy to relate to. I really
enjoyed the book. Reading it caused me to recall some great memories
from my past as well.

Yesterday at work, I loaned one of my books to this guy Robert, who is a makeup artist I worked with a million years ago on Star Trek. They’d hired him to do special effects makeup on the background actors playing fans, but wouldn’t let him use real pieces, because it would look too good. He ended up using the stuff you can buy at Cinema Secrets, and it still looked great. I’m telling you guys, the authenticity is so great, you’ll swear we were at a real convention.

Anyway, Robert sat down with it and started reading between setups. After about an hour, he came over to touch me up and make me look awesome for a closeup. While he put powder on my shiny face, he told me how much he liked the stories in my book, especially Blue Light Special, which he could relate to, and I am the Modren Man, which he said cracked him up.

I told him how happy that made me, and asked him to tell people about the book, because word of mouth is what sells books, not advertising. Think about this: when is the last time you bought a book, DVD, or game because of the advertising? I don’t think I’ve done that since I realized advertising was bullshit about twenty-five years ago. I have, however, bought lots of books, games, DVDs, and CDs because my friends told me how much they loved it, and thought I’d like it.

Reviews are important for books, because they can convince people who are on the fence to take a chance on a book, but even more important is word of mouth, especially from your friends, family, and other people you trust to give you good, honest advice.

I’m not going to be reviewed by Booklist or any of the major newspapers, and it’s unlikely that I’ll get a chance to go on television and radio to let people know about The Happiest Days of Our Lives who don’t know about it already. I’m counting on readers who feel my book was worth their time and money to tell their friends, and help me reach people who I haven’t reached already.

If you’ve read The Happiest Days of Our Lives, and you felt it was
worth your time and money, please tell your friends and family about it. It makes me so happy (and relieved) that it’s already happening a little bit, right here on the Internets.

all of my maps have been overthrown

I put on Miles Sklar’s suit and attitude today for my part of a three page scene where I got to be a serious douchebag. We did a lot of takes on the scene, and over the course of six hours I noticed that it’s equally easy for me to commit to being a kind, sensitive, vulnerable person as it is for me to commit to being a complete and total douche. The thing is . . . playing a douche is really a lot more fun.

The camera was pretty far away from me, on a long lens, and the director was watching feeds from two cameras in video village while we shot, so I didn’t get any direct feedback between takes. There was a time when this would have made me feel like I was doing something wrong, but I’ve done this enough now to know that if they’re not telling me to do something different, then whatever I’m doing is making them happy.

After we finished the master, a couple of tighter overs, and my close up, the director walked over to me. Background actors headed out of the set, camera dollies were moved around us, and assistant directors talked to each other on their walkies.

He had a big smile on his face when he arrived, and he told me how happy he was with my work. He singled out a couple of acting choices I’d made, and talked at length about how much he liked them. He said, more than once, that I was doing a great job bringing this character to life.

The thing is, directors just don’t do this when you’re working in television. They usually don’t have time to chat with the actors between setups, and they just don’t bother praising us, because if we’re not fucking up royally, we’re doing the job we were hired to do.

So it meant a lot to me that he made the effort to single out some of the choices I made. He didn’t have to do that, and it was an incredibly kind thing to do.

Later in the day, I met one of the writers from the show, who is as big a geek as I am. He even reads my blog! We talked about how cool the set was (they’ve built a scale model of Comic-Con, with a level of detail that should win an Emmy, or at least a Nerdy) and geeked out at each other about the comics we love. It turns out that he convinced the executives to do this episode by showing them Planetary, among other books. How awesome is that?

Tomorrow is my last day. I move from the convention to the interrogation room, and I get to work with Rob Morrow, which should be pretty awesome. Goddamn, I am having so much fun on this show.