Technology Fail

MMORPG REVIEW: Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited

Well, I had wanted to pen a review of the free D&D MMORPG, but after downloading it onto my netbook, it looks like my little device don't quite have the juice necessary to load and run the game. That or there's some other technical difficulty that makes the game's load screen hang and freeze after I open up the app.

Ah well, nothing beats in-person pencil-and-paper gaming, anyway. But maybe if I upgrade my tech, I'll be able to post a review at some later date. We'll see, I guess...

Dungeons & Dragons Encounters - Dark Legacy of Evard, Episode 12

Dungeons and Dragons Encounters is a "season" based weekly 4th edition mass game campaign produced by Wizards of the Coast that's played in comic book and gaming shops across the nation on the same day every week from season's start to season's end.

This season's campaign is "Dark Legacy of Evard", and runs 13 episodes. I'm only recently back into D&D after a very long absence away from the game, having subscribed to the D&D Insider earlier this week. This week's penultimate 12th episode was my first chance to put my subscription in action and see if I got my money's worth from it.

So far, the verdict is a big YES.

REVIEW: Black Panther: The Man Without Fear #521

Marvel Comics' Black Panther stalked back onto the monthly issue scene at the end of last year (in December, I think), taking Daredevil's title (both literally and figuratively) as the new Man Without Fear in Hell's Kitchen, NYC, as written by David Liss and illustrated by Francesco Francavilla.

I've always had a soft spot on my heart for the Black Panther in his various incarnations, though the incarnation that had me buying his adventures on a regular basis was not T'Challa but rather that of Christopher Priest's American, urban and working class Kevin "Kasper" Cole, a NYC narcotics cop who took over the mantle for a brief time on the streets of Harlem.

Maybe it makes sense then that I'm now adding the current series back onto my pull list given that the original Black Panther, T'Challa, has been placed into a similar setting (NYC) and role (urban vigilante facing modern problems and real world challenges beyond just the supervillain du jour) of my most favorite incarnation.

REVIEW: Dungeons and Dragons Insider

So as a birthday gift to myself, I took the plunge and decided to subscribe to the Dungeons and Dragons Insider on the D&D website for a year at a rate of $5.95 a month.

I'm hoping that it will help facilitate my entry back into the world of tabletop role playing games after a long absence from the hobby, seeing as the last time I played tabletop pencil-and-paper D&D it was AD&D 2nd ed.(published in 1989).

Is the investment in the online subscription worth it? Well, the subscription gains one access to the Dungeons & Dragons Insider Toolbox which includes the following components:

• A browser based Character Builder, which saves me from having to buy or hand write character sheets for my Player Characters
• An online  D&D Compendium, which is basically an indexed collection of all the rules from all of the published 4e D&D books, including both Dragon and Dungeon magazine content
• An online Adventure Tools service, which assists in dungeon mastering adventures should I ever care to take up that little bit of insanity
• Online subscriptions to both Dragon and Dungeon magazines, which I haven't read in ages but am really looking forward to catching up on

Time will tell how useful it all is when I actually start attending the weekly D&D Encounters session at my local comic book/game shop, but if nothing else the two magazine subscriptions alone seem to make it worth my while for now. I'll post an update after attending a D&D Encounters session this week with a review of how useful the service actually is in facilitating my participation and return to the game.

REVIEW: True Blood Episode 41, "Me and the Devil" (with spoilers)

True Blood Season 4, Episode 5, entitled "Me and the Devil," in which various things of great consequence and import happen to our beloved cast of characters, imperiling their bodies and/or souls.

Without further ado, here are what I thought to be the highlights:

• Tommy whacks both his parents as dear old mom tries to bring him back into the world of dog fighting for not so dear old dad
• Lafayette and Jesus go on the lam to Mexico in search of Jesus's brujo father so that they can gain some way to protect themselves from big, bad, Eric Northman after their wicca group banished the vampire's memories and set Northman's child Pam to rotting
• Sam helps Tommy get rid of the evidence of his parricide, where we learn that 1. Alligators LOVE marshmallows and 2. Sam's killed before and done just fine afterwards
• Jason is rescued from panther hillbillie enslavement by best-friend Hoyt and redhead hottie vampire Jessica, only to have a dream of stealing said redhead hottie vampire away from Hoyt

And the biggest bomb of the evening

• Bill learns that Eric has been hiding out at Sookie's place, even after Sookie told him she had no idea regarding Eric's whereabouts (oh, Tara also find s out Eric is hanging at Sookie's, and storms out in typical Tara fashion)

This season of True Blood has been one of expanding mythology with the introduction of faeries and witches, and this episode's drama arises from the mischief wrought by the latter. Its also been a season of secrets kept and secrets revealed, of which there were plenty of this episode. I was a little unsure of how the expanding mythology would play on the show, and feared that it would weigh down the story rather than enhance and carry it along, but so far my fears have been (happily) allayed.

Here's to next week's episode, in which Bill Compton (angrily) goes to see about a girl and her Viking vampire! Will we see that Hell hath no fury like a vampire scorned?