It should be a surprise to no one that I was one of the founding members of the Hobart High School Dungeons & Dragons Club*. Each Saturday morning, about twenty of us took over the basement of the Hobart Public Library for a half day of imaginary violence.

Here, courtesy the HHS yearbook, is the sole photo I have of me In flagrante dungeon…

Note that I was both wearing a Star Wars T-shirt and using an Empire Strikes Back school folder as a Dungeon Master’s screen. Yeah, I was stylin’.

What’s truly scary is that I’ve just realized that all these years later I can still immediately identify the D&D adventure being played by the two virgins in the background: the infamous “Queen of the Demonweb Pits.”

All this is my way of pointing out that I am indeed an old-schooler when it comes to dungeoneering. And now, nearly three decades later, I’m running a twice-monthly exercise in Old Tyme D&D I’m calling “The Tower of Mad Mungus.”

In my last update, I noted that some of the less likely members of the D&D bestiary were blamed on experimentation by a mad wizard. I decided that it was high time someone met him.

So it is that our party of adventurers have found themselves in the chambers far below Mungus’ tilted tower. Having defeated a fierce owlbear, they pressed on into a series of caverns.

Their first challenge was a cave overgrown with mushrooms. Large mushrooms. Mushrooms that smelled like warm, freshly-baked bread. When disturbed, they blasted a cloud of spores into the surrounding area. Unfortunately–or perhaps fortunately–the heroes never learned what effect those spores may have had, as they managed to safely bypass them**.

In a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, they found that certain sections of the floor glittered with bluish crystal. Those peering into this “mirror crystal” found that they could see portions of the tunnels otherwise out of sight…and that a monster was looking back at them! In a manner understood by no one including myself, the clawed insect/lizard was able to fire its poisoned spines at them from its lair elsewhere in the caves.

Hunting the sniper, they were beset by a bunch of young kruthiks and their pissed-off parents.

And now, a word from the Dungeon Master:

“Despite my stated intention to provide an old-school D&D experience, kruthiks are from a much later period in the game’s evolution. I included them for two reasons: 1) The game itself seems uncertain what they are. The 4th edition Monster Manual keeps referring to them as “reptilian,” even though they both look and behave much more like insects. They have a “hive lord,” for Pelor’s sake. So they seemed to fit the theme of creatures produced by madness. 2) I have an awful lot of kruthik miniatures.”

Having hacked their way through the skittering, spiky menace, the party next found themselves in a large grotto divided by an underground river and dotted with stalagmites and stalactites. Rob, my fellow old-schooler, heard the magic word “stalactites” and immediately began searching the ceiling for piercers.

“As I’ve previously noted, the piercer is one of the silliest 1st edition monsters. A mollusk which closely resembles a stalactite, the piercer lurks on cave ceilings, waiting to drop on its prey. If it misses, it has no recourse other than to crawl sloooooooowly away and try again…much, much later. In other words, it’s a monster which is precisely as dangerous as a piece of loose stone. When 3rd edition D&D came along, it was replaced by the darkmantle, a squiddy thing that flaps down from above and tries to wrap itself around its victim’s head.”

No piercers presented themselves, but sure enough a flock of darkmantles dropped down. Many heads were engulfed. Our intrepid wizard was forced to fire rays of frost at his own noggin in hope of knocking loose a tenacious, tentacled terror.

And that’s when the piercers began to fall.

The first one missed, but Rob’s warlord was speared right in the sternum and lay gasping at the brink of death. Oddly, I believe Rob was actually happy about being laid low by a piercer.

It was looking bad for a few moments, but the good guys eventually won the day. Then, something completely unexpected happened…

Another piercer plummeted to the floor. And excused itself.

The creature explained that it had once been a knight polymorphed into its current form by Mad Mungus himself. Sir Pearce† spent the next fifty years waiting in the cave for a party of dungeoneers that could help him to break this terrible curse.

Rob has kindly provided his iPad sketch of Sir Pearce.

And that’s where we left things. Five defiant adventurers and one stouthearted, conical mollusk against the forces of evil! To be continued…

*aka The Grand Order of High Schoolers Who Were in No Way Likely to Get Laid.

**Or did they?***

***Yes, they did.

†I’m so sorry.

Dave Games Dungeons & Dragons, monsters

Wizards of the Coast recently announced that it was allowing its license to create Star Wars role-playing games and miniatures to lapse. However, before the product line became one with the Force, WOTC gave one last gift to old-school fanboys. The final miniatures set, “Masters of the Force,” includes all eight of the “chess monsters” seen in the original film.

The scene was a throwaway bit in which R2-D2 and Chewbacca passed the time by playing a holographic board game. Chewie’s poor sportsmanship–and the threat that he might pull someone’s arm from the socket–elicited C-3PO’s timeless advice, “Let the Wookiee win.” Special effects artists Phil Tippett and Jon Berg created the charmingly crude stop-motion monsters that squeaked and hissed at each other across the chess table.

I love the odd looks of these whatsits.  They suggest the crazy biological diversity of a galaxy far, far away in a way that subsequent Star Wars productions never have.

These days, they naturally have been forced into codified confinement. The space chess game was given a name (dejarik) and each of the creatures a detailed background. In other words, all the fun has been surgically removed.

As for the miniatures themselves,  I placed an order and received seven of them earlier this week. (The eighth is still to come via a separate order.) Here they are!

Best of all, they’re just the right size to stage my own space chess match! Wookiees, of course, will not be invited.

Dave Star Wars Chewbacca, monsters, woo hoo

It’s time, once again, for the search terms that have brought poor, unfortunate souls to this blog.

So, what have we learned? Lots of folks looking for “Tina Fey Hot.” Far fewer who redundantly deemed her “Hot Hot Hot.” At least one schmuck searching in vain for “Tina Fay.” “Barbie musketeers” get nearly twice as many hits as I do. And this post continues to bring me the occasional person in pursuit of “Alison Brie fakes.” (I only search for “Alison Brie reals.”)

And I have no idea what “Ñ%81еÑ%81Ñ%82Ñ%80Ñ%8b биÑ%82вÑ%8b” is.

Dave Website Alison Brie fakes, Tina Fey hot hot hot

Yesterday we kickstarted my long-dormant Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I was shocked to learn that our last play session was more than a year ago. I knew it had been quite a long time, but that’s epic-level procrastination on my part.

We’d left our heroes in the middle of their trek to the tower of the wizard knows as Mad Mungus. Thought to have been long-abandoned, the crooked structure recently had shown signs of life. A hooded figure claiming to be the wizard’s servant showed up in the town of Boswin. Days later, a weird river beast rampaged down the docks. Some speculated that the mutated creature had swum downstream from Mungus’ old abode.

I picked up things with the party finally nearing the tower. In a forest clearing, the adventurers were attacked by stirges: bat/bird/mosquito things with a taste for the red, sticky stuff!

The flying suckers weren’t the true threat, though. That came in the form of the dreaded “land shark” which had been attracted from underground by the vibrations of the battle above. Better known as the bulette, this burrowing behemoth was once famously described as “the result of a mad wizard’s experimental cross breeding of a snapping turtle and armadillo with infusions of demons’ ichor.”

Slaying the predators, the group settled down for the night. Their sleep was interrupted by a host of unusually friendly bullywugs, who invited them to their village of Frogton. Rip Reeep, chief of Frogton, told them that their own community had been attacked by a creature much like the one that had been seen in Boswin.

Avoiding the front door of Mungus’ tower, the heroes instead looked for the underwater waste pipe from which the river freak had emerged. They emerged in a refuse room off a main hallway. The corridor was lined with a series of elaborate stone arches, one of which had apparently collapsed on the head of a previous dungeon diver. While wary of the apparently trapped hall, they greedily picked up the gold coins which had fallen from the dead fighter’s purse.

Unfortunately, one of the coins was attached to a wire! The section of corridor upon which the party stood abruptly slanted at a steep angle, while oil sprayed from a concealed spigot. One of them became a helpless victim of the slick chute, traveling several hundred feet underground in seconds. And below, a hungry owlbear* awaited.

Rather than see their wizard pecked to death, the others voluntarily slid down the chute. The battle was long, bloody and punctuated by angry hooting.

We left things there, with the party stranded deep below the tower. With no obvious way out, who knows what mysteries and horrors await?

Well, I do.

*The owlbear was originally said to have been “probably the result of genetic experimentation by some insane wizard**.”

**It’s just possible that there’s a theme at work.

Dave Games Dungeons & Dragons

I’d been looking forward to Date Night from the moment I heard of it. Steve Carell and Tina Fey trying to survive a romantic action comedy? Bring it!

Really, the only thing puzzling about the teaming of Fey and Carell is that it took this long. As other reviews have noted, they’re completely convincing as long-married couple Phil and Claire*. They seem so at ease with each other as performers that one might think that they had worked together for many years rather than merely sharing adjacent timeslots on NBC.

Date Night itself is sort of a duo, but its two sides aren’t quite as compatible. One is the mistaken-identity, crooks-and-chases, screwball comedy promised by the trailers. The other movie roiling beneath that surface is one about the quiet desperation of two people married for so many years that they risk becoming “awesome roommates.”

Thankfully, the filmmakers mostly stuck to the screwball. Because that other movie trying to get out would’ve been kinda depressing. As it was, there were moments–particularly a pulled-over-to-the-side-of-the-road discussion that showed Fey’s acting chops–that hit a little too close to home.

In addition, the initial scenes of Fey and Carell putting themselves in the hands of a pair of corrupt, gun-wielding cops struck me as a bit too intense for what is otherwise a very silly story. (The couple were mistaken for a pair of criminals with an incriminating flash drive after stealing a reservation at a packed restaurant.)

While the caper aspects of the storyline weren’t especially believable, I did buy into Claire and Phil’s approach toward extricating themselves from the situation. Early on we saw them engaging in some clever mimicry of other restaurant patrons, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch for them to begin affecting makeshift disguises and stereotypical accents. And while Date Night never got as self-referential as the Scream films, I did have the sense that these were people who had watched entirely too many police procedural TV shows and were using what they’d learned.

There are some very funny parts, including an over-the-top chase involving two cars linked at their front bumpers. (I’ve never quite been sure why, but I always find hilarious scenes in which people scream and scream and scream.) On the other hand, a tandem pole-dancing number for the benefit of the evil D.A. (played by the creepy, alien sheriff from the TV series Invasion) went on perhaps a bit too long.

While Date Night may not have been quite as good as Fey’s first feature film, Mean Girls, I hope that she tries another action comedy. Especially if Steve Carell can play as well.

*Coincidentally, Phil and Claire are also the names of one of the married couples on the ABC sitcom Modern Family.

Dave Tina Fey Date Night, reviews, Steve Carell

A trailer for Luc Besson’s latest film, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. From what I’ve been able to determine, it’s an adaptation of a series of graphic novels about an early 20th century adventuress. Mummies? A pterodactyl? I’m in!

Dave Movies Adele Blanc-Sec, freakin' awesome, trailers

The new series of Doctor Who made its BBC America premiere on April 17, a mere two weeks after it aired in the U.K. If you are reading this review before that date, it’s because I discovered the wibbly-wobbly, time-wimey WordPress hack that allows me to post retroactively. Where I sit it’s Monday, April 19.*

BBC America was certainly brave in choosing to delay the debut of the 11th Doctor. They had to know that Doctor Who fans are no longer living in an era where they have to worry about PAL-to-NTSC transfers. It can’t have escaped their notice that there are several methods by which television shows can almost immediately be shared worldwide. Yet they held their ground, and I salute them.

It was tough waiting out those two weeks.

So, anyway, the 11th Doctor.

It’s a tradition to fear the arrival of a new Doctor Who. Oh sure, most of the time you’ll be fine. You’ll get a Peter Davison or David Tennant, and you can afford to exhale. But every once in a while someone tries to slip you a Colin Baker.

I remember the first time that I saw this early promotional photo of Colin Baker as the 6th Doctor in Starlog magazine. I believe that my first thought was WHAT THE FUCK THEY HIRED A CLOWN. (Yes, my thoughts know where to find the Caps Lock key.)

So, even since Ronald McDonald and his Amazing Technicolor Umbrella, I’ve greeted the announcement of each new Doctor Who with suspicion. And with Doctor Number 11 looking uncomfortably like Crispin Glover (stays Crispin even in milk!), I was especially nervous.

I needn’t have worried. Matt Smith hits the ball right out of the park (remember to insert equivalent cricket term here). He owns the Doctor, playing him as a charming madman.

(WARNING: ALL SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ONWARD.)

His early scenes with Caitlin Blackwood, the child actress who plays the young version of new companion Amy Pond, are a delight. Especially fun is the sequence in which she tries in vain to find foods that the newly regenerated Doctor will like, only to have him repeatedly spit them across her kitchen. Little Caitlin is so good, and has such a rapport with Smith, that for a few moments I hoped for an entirely different take on the traditional Doctor/companion relationship. But I suppose dragging a seven-year-old into an endless series of dangers wouldn’t be such a hot idea.

That’s okay, because the all-grown-up Amy is a bit of all right as well. That’s her to the left, wearing the Dr. Elizabeth Shaw Memorial Miniskirt.

Keeping in mind that Doctor Who is now in the hands of writer/producer Stephen Moffat, the man who brought us the saucy comedy Coupling, it’s perhaps not much of a surprise that Amy’s livelihood involves delivering “kiss-o-grams.” (Oh, so that’s what we’re calling it these days!)

Karen Gillan as Amy is a lot of breezy fun. At first glance it looks like she might be part of one of the all-time-great Doctor/companion double acts.

The introductory story, “The Eleventh Hour,” isn’t much more than an excuse to reintroduce the series and provide Amy and the Doctor twenty minutes to save the world. It’s about an escaped alien “multiform” and the belligerent intergalactic police officers that track it to Earth.

Amazingly, the Atraxi–who resemble an eyeball stuck to a snowflake**–manage to beat even the Judoon for sheer bull (rhino)-headedness. At least the Judoon are competent, if overzealous, law officers. The Atraxi method of recapturing an escapee amounts to broadcasting the same unhelpful message over and over again, then threatening to incinerate the planet.

Again, the Atraxi and “Prisoner Zero” are really just a distraction; the real story here is the first (and second, and third) encounter between Amy and the Doctor. And, as he did in previous scripts such as “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Blink,” Steven Moffat enjoys playing with the implications of someone whose relationship with time is, at best, relative.

My present-day self can’t wait to catch up with the future me who is writing this review! Only another twelve days until the premiere!

*If you’re seeing this on April 5, don’t worry. You have eight entire days to prepare for the arrival of the meteor.

**Thankfully they do not wear the kiss-o-gram costume!

Dave Doctor Who reviews, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey

Despite my lifelong love of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, I must confess that I’ve never had that much affection for his final film, Clash of the Titans. The story, based very loosely* on the Greek myth of Perseus, was a bit of a muddle. More damningly, the special effects–with the exception of the suspenseful confrontation with the gorgon Medusa–didn’t impress me that much either. And then there was that damned robot owl.**

Harryhausen’s retirement was well-timed. He not only went out with a box-office hit, he never had to confront the reality that his groundbreaking techniques would have appeared increasingly outdated in the Age of Industrial Light & Magic.

In turn, ILM gave way to the Age of Silicon, in which anything that can be imagined can be brought to three-dimensional life provided that one has the computing power. These days, even a Roger Corman sized-budget can produce a passable Dinoshark. And $125 million–about seven times the cost of Harryhausen’s last hurrah–can buy you the convincing mythical menagerie seen in this weekend’s remake of Clash of the Titans.

What I found most surprising about the new Titans is the extent to which it hews to the original.***  There’s an added subplot about an attempt by Hades to oust Zeus from Mt. Olympus, but otherwise it hits many of the same story beats. The Kraken returns, as does Calibos the beastman. There’s another brood of giant scorpions, even though their appearance in the middle of a Greek myth makes no more sense this time than it did back in ’81. The damned robot owl, however, only rates a cameo.

Early trailers for the film suggested that it would resemble 300 with a pounding rock soundtrack, but this proved not to be the case. While the action sequences display modern sensibilities, alternating between quick cuts and slow-motion, at its core Clash is rather old-fashioned. When you get right down to it, it’s a movie in which paycheck-cashing famous actors dress in shimmering togas and play with tiny statues of their mortal pawns, while buff heroes battle harpies and ride flying horses. It’s the stuff of countless Saturday matinees.

The weak spot in this new Clash is Sam Worthington, who, it must be said, is no Harry Hamlin. Worthington seems to be the go-to guy if you want someone to Make! Short angry pronouncements! And with his inexplicable buzz cut, he seems to have walked in from an entirely different movie. Harryhausen flicks weren’t exactly known for their strong central characters, but at least Sinbad and Jason seemed to be having more fun than Worthington’s Perseus, who spends most of his screen time pissed off.

There’s another kinda, sorta mythological movie out right now: How to Train Your Dragon, the latest offering from Dreamworks Animation. Despite a terrible title (an unfortunate remnant of the children’s book series on which it’s based) and one of the worst marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen, it’s an utterly charming story about a studious, imaginative boy who forms an unlikely friendship with the most mysterious of the dragons that assault his Viking village on a nightly basis.

Unlike most Dreamworks cartoons, Dragon avoids pop culture references and emphasizes character over comedy. That’s not to say that there isn’t humor: the dialogue is at times intentionally anachronistic and, for some reason, the Vikings have Scottish accents. Yet the overall effect is far less wacky than the commercials suggest.

At its center, it’s a boy-and-his-dog**** story in parallel with a sweet tale about a child trying to win the affection of his father while charting his own path among his more bloodthirsty kin.

I think that the highest praise that I can give How to Train Your Dragon is that it’s a Dreamworks film that displays the heart I usually associate with Pixar. And while it (thankfully) never goes ventures into Old Yeller territory, it does make one decision in its final scenes that was darker than I would’ve expected from the company that gave the world Shrek.

*Fidelity to mythology wasn’t one of Harryhausen’s priorities. For example, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad intermingled Arabian, Greek and Hindu elements. And in his version of Clash of the Titans, Cerberus the three-headed dog got shortchanged a head.

**Bubo was a magical, clockwork bird intended to pander to the Star Wars generation. In the ’80s, not even Greek mythology could avoid the cute robot sidekick.

***And, just as in the original, the Titans themselves never put in an appearance.

****The animators get a lot of personality out of “Toothless” the dragon. Maybe it’s just because I’m a cat person, but Toothless’ facial reactions struck me as more feline than canine.

Dave Movies Clash of the Titans, How to Train Your Dragon, Ray Harryhausen, reviews