You Can Now Watch Kung Fury Online for Free? Radical!

Photo via Laser Unicorn

After the trailer concept for Kung Fury, an explosion-drenched tribute to ridiculous action movies of the 80s went viral and took the internet by storm last year, the newly-formed production company Laser Unicorn took to Kickstarter, where they raised enough to make a full length short. The movie clock in at 30 minutes and features explosions, kung fu, dinosaurs, Norse gods, bikini Vikings, fights against Nazis and a theme song performed by David Hasslehoff. Check out the full movie below:

Scenes From a D&D Barbarian Campaign

So, my character, Par Vaartal The Dark, is a barbarian originally from the frozen north. The current campaign has the group of barbarian PCs plucked from around the world and dumped in a strange, almost tropical forest and plains. So, in addition to initial communication difficulties, there is also the geographical unfamiliarities.

Michelle's character, Dru, is a fierce warrior as well. The group was just jumped by a horde of Kobolds, and through a hard-fought battle, use of the death's door rule (where if you're healed quickly enough after your hit points drop below zero, you don't die), and our groups SOLE shaman healer, Par Vaartal is taken from near death to a whopping 3 hit points.

Dru wants to help. She is not a healer. She knows just enough to realize that the healer can't make another healing check unless there is a fresh wound to be healed. Dru approaches Par, and says "Do you trust me?"

Par nos, "Yes, of course!"

... only to be poked by Dru a second later with her dagger; after all, if she can make a tiny wound, then the healer can heal that, and perhaps gain Par a few more HP...

... and ends up doing maximum damage with her dagger: 4 points. PLUS her strength bonus.

So, of course, Par was a little leery of her when ever he saw her dagger.

In another irony, the healer used the last of her healing herbs.... and brought Par Vaartal back up to positive hit points.

TWO hit points total. So it was a net loss. ;)

But also one of the funniest moments in any campaign.

Gamespot Steals Content, Gets PWNED

Danny "Sardius" Cowan compiles a weekly feature for gaming industry news site Gamasutra called "Release This!" which compiles worldwide video game releases. As you can imagine, this feature takes him quite a bit of time and effort.

So when GamePro began syndicating this feature across all of the IDG family of sites without permission of Gamasutra, and without crediting Danny, he could have gotten mad.

Instead, he got even.

Not once, but twice.

"In brightest day/
in darkest night,/
Crtl+C, Ctrl+V is how GamePro writes."

Heart of A Lion? Check. WIngs of a Bat? Double check.

Strong Bad's favorite glam metal band, Limozeen, played a club in Atlanta for reals over the weekend.

Here's a taste of "Because It's Midnite":



You can see the rest of the show up on YouTube.

Life Meter: Amazing Art & Creative Comics, All About Video Games

Hey, you!

You read The Code, so you obviously like video games.

You probably like art. You've maybe even read a comic or two in your lifetime, I'd wager.

Then you will love the happy mutants over at LifeMeter.

Edited by Zack Giallongo, Dave Roman, and Stephanie Yue, Life Meter is a collection of comics and cartoon art inspired by the artists' collective appreciation and love of video games. The site manages to show off a diverse range of art styles, while maintaining respect for the characters and their game worlds.

And contributors to Life Meter have racked up some pretty impressive recognition. Life Meter contributor Matt Loux's videogame inspired graphic novel, Sidescrollers,
was listed by The American Library Association as one of the Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2008.

You can check out the art gallery or read up on the collection of comics.

(The art piece used in this post is entitled Castelvania by Bill Mudron and is one of many outstand fan works presented in the Life Meter art gallery.)

Dungeons & Doggerel 2: Electric Bugaloo

Remember my previous post detailing spell poems I wrote for my 2nd Edition D&D Bard?

Reader R^2 has contributed a few more! here they are:

Time Stop--
For this spell all the Mythal is beckoned
And the power of aracnists reckoned
All reality twists
While this spell exists,
But it's Time Stop, so I've got second.

Prismatic Sphere--
If you're as dangerous as you appear,
I'll defend with a Prismatic Sphere.
You've got seven dispels
Before this ward is quelled
While you do that, I'll go get a beer.

Power Word, Kill--
I've patiently waited until
your health dropped below 60. Now we'll
Allow no saving throw
'Cuz when it comes, you go;
That's what I mean by "Power Word Kill"

Gate--
The gods themselves laugh and chortle
At reality at the whim of mortals
Let's pop open this Gate
To see if we can relate
Because now, we're thinking with portals

Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Tetris With A Twist: Retro Sabotage

Retro Sabotage, at first blush, seems to be a collection of mini-versions of classic arcade games like Space Invaders, Pong, Pac-Man or Tetris... but there is more than meets the eye.

Some of the games, like "pong 2.0" are pure parody. Others, like "Compromise", have some very interesting nuggets of gameplay.

They update every Thursday, and if you have a single pixel's worth of gaming nostalgia, or a sense of humor, you'll want to check it it.

Tell My Wife I Love Her!

My wife was given WoW and a bit of World of Warcraft time by a friend of hers.

She just started her first character.

Pray for me! ;_;

Dungeons & Dogerell: Spell POems in AD&D

Okay, so it's probably no big surprise that I am Dorky McNerdpants, and thus play D&D once a week with a bunch of friends (and it's house-ruled 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons, to boot!).

One of my characters is a Celtic-flavored bard by the Name of Daffyd ApOwen, and one quirk I gave him are the fact that along with whatever requirment he has for casting spells, he has to end it with some sort of poem.

So...


Armor: "Gather energies around me/ Magic armor doth surround me."
Burning Hands: "Heart's passion, desert sands/Inner flame brings burning hands."
Color Spray: "From my hands, I shall show/ Wonders of the sky's rainbow!"
Comprehend Languages: "With my touch, words are clear/ Whether I must read or I must here."
Enlarge: "Girth now grows with but a word/Magic can be its own reward/"
Reduce (reversed form of Enlarge): "Larger creature, now ye ken/The diff'rence 'tween mice and men."
Featherfall: "Gentle winds, heed my call!/Gift me with a feather's fall!"
Hypnotism: "Trust in me I suggest/ That you heed my one request."
Light: "Glowing softly, captured day/Sliver o'Sun, light our way."
Magic Missile: "Mage's missile shall do harm/ All in sight should take alarm!"
Message: "Bear my words upon this gust/of wind to whom that i must trust."
Read Magic: "Open my mind that I might see/ Reveal thy secrets unto me."
Shield Magic: "Magic Missile, do no harm/Mages now should be alarmed!"
Sleep: "Close your eyes and dream deep/Now 'tis time to go to sleep"
Ventriloquism: "Magic's weaves, place my voice/ In a location of my choice."


Now for second level spells, I figured that instead of just doing the rhyming line again, or adding more lines, a spell could just have a one line evocative image, like so:

Blur: "'Tis neither here, nor there/ but everywhere."
Continual Light: "And thus! The Sun opens its unblinking eye!"
Detect Invisible: "Lo! The Weave's hand parts the Unseen's veil!"
Detect Evil: "Hark! Evil's shroud is ripped away!"
Flaming Sphere: "Doom in fire's what I desire!"
Knock: "No matter the lock, my will is the key!"
Leomund's Trap: "Wand'ring fingers, prying eyes/Rogues'll get a nasty surprise!"
Magic Mouth: "Speak when magic deems others should be spoken to."
Melf's Acid Arrow: "Sizzle, bubble, bowstring and trouble!"
Pyrotechnics: "Snake of smoke, coil about me."
Web: "What a tangled Mythal Weave..."

Now, while this character will not be able to cast 8th level spells for quite some time, I figured that the second-highest level of spells in the PLayer's Handbook needed an awesome for to go with it: Haiku!

I only have one written so far, though.

Binding:
"The Mythal weaves ties that bind/
Mine bind further still/
An unbreakable circle."

Ninth level spels are the highest level available in the player's handbook, so what sort of epic form should be used for these spells?

Limericks, DUH!


Wish:
"I'm finally of magickal skill
Enough to bend it to my will.
Of the Mythal I ask
This one humble task:
Make the following wish be fulfilled."

Astral Spell:
"When body and soul're combined,
the complete person's intertwined.
Separate 'em, you're dead,
but with an astral thread,
and this spell, well, you're totally fine."

Kill Dr. Lucky Lord British

Lord British, the in-game alter-ego of Ultima series creator Richard Garriot is essentially immortal and nearly impossible to kill.

That doesn't mean that it's completely impossible, nor that gamers haven't tried.

Computer & Videogames has a feature article that covers all the ways Lord British can or has died.

Bonus video: How to kill Lord British in Ultima IX:

John McCain: Power Gamer?

Prolific fanatasy author and role-playing game designer Robin D. Laws ( he designed Feng Shui, Over the Edge, Hero Wars, and Jack Vance's The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game) has an interesting and amusing analysis of the recent US primaries:

On the Repub side, John McCain takes the award for most skillful power-gamer. His team saw a process with a clump of winner-take-all states at the beginning and concentrated his efforts there. Now that he’s taken them, Romney is already dead in the water, mathematically speaking. Most of the races to come are proportional, and he’d have to get impossibly high margins of victory in all of them to triumph. It may be Ticket To Ride for McCain, but Mitt's stuck playing Arkham Horror, and he's already lost.

The whole article reads like a hilarious playtesting post-mortem. Read the whole thing here.

So You Want To Be A Video Game Journalist?

This series is a bit of an oldie, but a goodie.

I've written feature articles for 1UP.com and been published in PC Magazine, I have written for 411Mania Games, and I blog for RPGX.org. What insight can I offer to those wishing to become a Games Journalist?

Hell if I know.

Seriously, I'm not some big special person, I just had the right ideas at the right time, and was a little bit lucky. As passionate about the medium as I am, I do other things besides write about video games; it's nowhere near a full-time job. I don't really have any authority in the matter. I don't think I'd be up to writing a guide, personally.

CMP, the company behind Game Developer and Gamausutra recently published an article titled "So You Want to Be a Games Journalist" by Aaron McKenna. Criticism leveled at the article was that it was written in what seemed like an overly optimistic, condescending and starry-eyed tone that wasn't helpful in conveying what it REALLY was like to be a video games journalist.

This article got Kieron Gillen and Tim Edwards so hot under the collar that they arranged for as many games journalists as they could think of to publish articles titled "So You Want to Be a Games Journalist" of their own at the same time. Matthew Kumar of Insert Credit says:

There are currently 12 entries, and you can read my take at my workblog, but readers might particularly be interested in the Triforce's extended metaphor, John Walker's frontal attack on the original piece, and Kieron Gillen's completely straight (and certainly useful) guide. But there's also Tim Edwards, Tom Bramwell, Suki, Bill Harris, Jon Blyth, Richard Cobbett, Stuart Campbell and Jon Hicks.

You've never heard of any of them? Well, as my guide explains, that's practically the point.

The entire series in incredible reading; I particularly recommend the Triforce's piece, along with Tim Edwards' and Kieron Gillen's article, but they are all good, all useful, and they all ring true (even the contradictory parts).

All YouTube, All The Time!

Hope everyone had a festive holiday. Here's some geeky youtubery related to the season:

First off, this video short was animated in the space of about 6 months-- two guys, adobe photoshop and adobe premiere and after effects. The premise: 3 LARPer nerds end up interrupting a nativity scene. Hilarity ensues.



They also animated two youtube responses:





Heh, of course, technically, I think if you're a paladin to Tyranus, you CAN be Lawful Evil;. But then again, I didn't see the lawful evil paladin use any class abilities. ;)

Here's a video for all the gadget dorks and Wii hackers: How you can take a Wii remote, a Wii sensor bar, and your laptop to create a Virtual Reality display! Seriously! The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space: