Imaginary Vestibule has been merged into Population One. Still to do: a couple of redirects and a bunch of category editing. Apologies if this does horrendous things to anyone’s RSS feeds. Edit: category mergers complete. Edit 2: Vestibule redirect complete. Step three is another blog merger, and then I have some CSS cleanup/modification to do, and then I think I’m done.

Step one completed.

If you aren’t watching it, you might want to catch up. The characterization has improved remarkably, and as of the end of the season the plot is equally enjoyable. We’ve taken a heavy turn into the SF. Also, Brad Anderson is producing and directing a bunch of episodes, and he is one creepy director. Spoilers follow in the form of transcribed newspaper headlines, cause we couldn’t resist freeze framing.

Lady Blackbird, Vanguard, and Lunar Notes. A few pages, perhaps pregenerated characters, rules on the character sheets. That’s interesting.

I’m not sure how I missed the Ken Hite-scribed setting coming from Atomic Overmind Press, in which the Nazis summoned Jormungandr (original), only to see it nuked by the United States (original), which led to disastrous physical and occult effects including monsters (original), not to mention Soviet giants (original) and a generally battered world (original). But I did. So there it is in case you did too.

My current secret MMO crush is Funcom’s The Secret World, which will be a modern dark fantasy conspiratorial MMO. I don’t expect much from it, which is why it’s a crush – the ideas are hot but as much as I want to like each and every Funcom MMO, there’s always been a bit of a gap between concept and execution. Hope springs eternal nonetheless. Now there is a trailer, which will probably not bear that much resemblance to game play. There is also a sort of informative interview. Starting locations will be London, New York, and Seoul. I so much want this game to be good.

The Character Builder has been updated, so I started fiddling around with Players Handbook 2 ideas. The first thing I statted up was a human shaman named Bivvy, who claims to be of a noble family fallen on hard times. His spirit companion is a butler. “Whichever type of spirit companion you choose, it can have any appearance you like.” I’m just sayin'. He’s taking Wrath of Winter as one of his at-wills, on the premise that the butler ought to be able to appear at someone’s side noiselessly. Also, I think, Blessing of the Seven Winds. Bit of a tornado, what? ...

This would be the newest thing to do.

Even after downloading and playing this I’m still substantially surprised that Richard Thompson found his way onto Rock Band. But it’s awesome! The fan reaction has also been pretty gratifying. There’s a lot of “it started badly but then I got to the solo, whoa.” It’s weird realizing that this track has the potential to be the top selling Thompson song ever. My favorite comment on the video: “Is all of that solo really played on a guitar though? Man, I wish mine sounded like that. ;P”

That was a very loyal adaptation of the comic book, which did not improve on or shed new light on the source material. So hm.