I’m still trying to fuse the brilliant combat engine from D&D 4e with the brilliant narrative engine from Gumshoe. You may not have known I was trying to do this. But I am. Let’s skip over the skills question for now and pretend that we have a Gumshoe adventure all mapped out, with the multiple paths and the clues and the major and minor scenes. It’s a flowchart, basically. None of these scenes are directly combat-related, although it may require combat to reach a given scene. Here, have a PDF example. Contains spoilers for the Esoterrorists sample adventure, though! ...

Some guy named Shane Acker apparently made a student animation film called 9, which you can see online (original). It’s only like 10 minutes, it got nominated for an Oscar, go ahead. But because sometimes the right thing happens, it got picked up and now he’s directing the full-length movie version, with Elijah Wood and Crispin Glover and other people doing voices. There’s a trailer just out. I think maybe the right order is the trailer first, so your appetite is whetted, and then you can say “whoa, I can see a full version!” and watch the short, and then sit around contemplating whether or not adding voices and making it stretch longer is a mistake. It’s probably not, though.

Peter O’Toole? What has become of you? (original) Thomas Kincade is the paints with light guy. And love. He paints with love. Most important concept of all – THE CONCEPT OF LOVE. Perhaps we could make large posters that simply say “Love this movie” and post them about. I pour a lot of love into each painting, and sense that our crew has a genuine affection for this project. This starts with Michael Campus as a Director who feels great love towards this project, and should filter down through the ranks. Remember: “Every scene is the best scene.” He wrote a memo explaining how his movie should look. Which is to say: gauzy, full of light, and dark at the corners so it’s more cozy. Like this. ...

Running: one straight-up 4e game. We’re working through WotC’s module series. This is fun. Playing: one 4e game which I’ve played in no sessions of but I like the writeups. Should be fun. Will be running: online 4e game heavily influenced by The Shield and The Wire, or possibly the Scales of War adventure path instead, although I’d need a couple more people for the latter. Sort of leaning towards Scales of War for the sake of easier prep, but undecided. ...

Jere ran some more Gumshoe for us over the last couple of weeks; it was once more a bunch of fun. The scenario was more Cthulhoid this time around, not so much from a villain perspective but definitely so in terms of locale and threat. The PCs (a retired cop, a linguist, a spirit photographer, a stage manager, and an NSA analyst) were a motley crew attending a Shakespeare festival in New Hampshire. At a party a couple of days before Opening Night, the actress slated to play Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra killed her understudy under suspicious circumstances. By virtue of our collective failure to run away screaming, the local sheriff deputized us to solve the murder. ...

Referring back to this post… The DM’s screen fits on the card table with the battlemaps, so that’s all good. Alea Tools magnetic markers work like a charm if you remember to use them, and your players are happy to take care of slapping down the markers for effects they generate. Chris suggested clipping the Encounter Manager sheets over the GameMastery initiative tracker; that worked fine too, with magnets and all. I may look for slightly stronger magnets or something, but it works well enough as is. ...

Things that I find disturbing in this post: The idea of an Anita Blake TV show Glen Morgan producing it IFC broadcasting it “It’s a sexier Buffy The Vampire Slayer.”

Nothin’ ain’t somethin’ till there’s mashup DLC.

I want to do a big thoughtful post on Dennis Lehane’s newest novel, The Given Day, because hey, Lehane. Mystic River remains one of my favorite books ever. But… I liked The Given Day a lot. It’s an easy read, it’s interesting history, and Lehane’s love for Boston shines through every page. I don’t, however, think it’s quite as significant a book as Lehane seems to think. It has to carry both the weight of Lehane’s discussion of race and class, which is great as always, and of historical information, which I think weighs the book down overly. ...

SSC: I’ve been waiting for Chinese Democracy to come out, because I wanted to hear it. First single (also titled “Chinese Democracy”) is here (original).