FIRST!

. . . POST! . . . of the year.
Heaven help us, I passed my CBEST, which means I can corrupt . .  I mean influence young impressionable minds legally through the California educational system. HA! Or conversely, The little overly-hormone'd bastard that I once was may now torment me as an acne'd avatar of vengeance.
Hopefully to use the boost in income from subbing and potentially teaching full time to beef up my stage combat armory, as well as continue my certification in several disciplines AND get back into musicals. Almost got a callback to a production of Funny Girl in the area but due to a scheduling conflict I will see about auditioning for their next production because  . . .
I will be signing up for FOUR panels to host at Fanime this year. So stay tuned for that.

Some fun stuff so far this year you might want to check out . . .
STANDARD ACTION IS BACK YAY!!!! For some previous discussions, here & here.

For those of you who miss my usual music blurbs, I do apologize, I just haven't had anything come along that juiced my ear hard enough to move me back into slinging artists with the same zeal as in the past.
however . . .
NURSEHELLA ISNT DEAD! YAY!!!
She released a second album finally, getit!-getit!

Also, if you like to CONSTANTLY have FRESH BEATS and free? As well as even better beats for a small fee, ADAM WARROCK! Go get all the music, then listen to it. If you do, you win an acheiv that's very difficult to acquire.

And also, as per a couple tweets

Haha that made me laugh RT @raychl_rockstar: Welp, @doctor_awkward isn't making music anymore. I guess the world really is ending tomorrow.
— Dr. Awkward (@Doctor_awkward) December 21, 2012

NOOO!!! DOC AWK WAS QUITTING MUSIC NOOOO!OOOO!O!O!
but then

The best xmas present I got this year was the message @doctor_awkward isnt hanging up his mic!
— Lauren Furze (@TheFifthSister) December 29, 2012

SO YAYAY!!!! DOC AWKWARD ISN'T QUITTING BECAUSE HIS MOM TOLD HIM TO NOT BE DUMB! HAH!
So go get some of his music so he knows how much we love his music making abilities!

Withdrawals

So, I have not played a game of D&D in almost a month or more and it SUCKS.
I should be back behind a screen or a P.C. sheet within a couple weeks, but UNTIL THEN, and even when I usually get my fix, I love to hear about other groups who have A LOT of fun.
I was debating about whether to do a Meme-Orable for this but decided to against it.

Nerd Poker
Hosted by Brian Posehn, quiet nerdy comedian.
New, fun, mature & alternative, with nothing but notable entertainment geeks. As of the 2nd or 3rd episode they start telling stories from past games, it seems many of them including other L.A. nerds like Patton Oswald & Chris Hardwick

Acquisitions Incorporated
Many adventures from these characters, not to mention no shortage of reference comics in the Penny Arcade Archives. Most Recently The Vault of Winter
Penny Arcade, PVP & Wil Wheaton
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/podcasts.aspx
Oh yeah, and this happens fairly regularly as well . . .


Table Titans!
Headed by Scott Kurtz of PVP (of the above groups), not up yet, but can't wait. apparently in association with Wizards of The Coast. Not sure in what capacity, but cool.
http://tabletitans.com/

Zak & the Porn Crew!
I have mentioned how much I love this blog, not to mention ConstantCon!
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/
and the sadly defunct web series if you want to see what it looks like when you DO have a group full of females (oddly enough, very similar to any other game, go figure).
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/i-hit-it-with-my-axe?page=2

Give them a look over and I'm sorry if you now have some hundred hours to catch up on, it is HILARIOUS!

A Haven, for Mages

Yall know I love me some Fantasy / RPG settinged web series and how I just want to help so bad. Not even necessarily be like "IMMA BE A BADASS Drizzt Clone in all dis gear, that would be AWESHUM!" But you know, offer some locations I have access to, give creative input as I love adding my own flair to stories, OR even contributing my skills & knowledge as a combatant & fight Director.

So, I nearly flipped my wig when my buddy Pablo told me about a buddy of his, who is local to me, was doing a totaly-metal fantasy Web series. MAGEHAVEN

I've watched almost all of their videos, chatted with the creator himself and even do regular check ups on their TWITTAR! and their BOOK-FACE. I have very high expectations for this particular show based on what I've seen so far.
There appears to be professionalism and passion at every aspect. From the diverse cast, to the fabricated costumes and right down to post-effects that don't look cheesy or corny.

There are many hints in the videos as well as should you talk to those on the project as to what the story holds and some of the next episodes. And with thier indiegogo fully funded, it should be very soon!

So far there is only so much to critique as far as a finished product, I really wanted to help get them on other people's radars and hopefully get them some more support so it can continue to grow.

Watch away and wait with me for more awesomeness from the world around Magehaven!

Double Move!

Standard Action. Season two began Filming a few weeks agoe!

Shooting tomorrow for @stndrdaction! #webseries
— Joanna Gaskell (@mightyjoanna) May 11, 2012

I Finally Finished watching the end of Season One and cant wait for Two to start being put out!
First of all, how big of a blade nerd am I that I can recognize every sword used in the last three episodes and I know who designed them, manufactured them and how much they cost and whether or not they should have used them the way they did.
I will admit I kind of wish I could fly up there or live up there to do Stunt for them, because although i felt how they handled the combat was well thought out and executed, it told the story and kept me engaged, I feel it could have been more visceral. Especially had they been using two functional swords, not just one.
Character wise, I love the development and once more the characters lived and existed in the world and were invested in their universe. The tongue in cheek and meta jokes were well integrated and one was allowed to intuit them without having them hit you in the face. Bravo to the actors for doing the work and not sacrificing craft for camp or parody, but letting the script do it's job.

Who Needs Tanks & Heals. All you need is dps, support, support and a nuke!

Oh yeah, watch out, spoilers;
Oh My Gawd Edda is one hard ass bitch! She fuckin cut that foo!
Let me elaborate. I was thoroughly impressed by the choice to have Edda actually kill The Cleric as he was the obvious arch villain. My mind was blown. Bravo. this whole time you get this light-hearted, naive, almost "pretty dwarf" vibe from her and then BOOM, grim leadership from school of hard knocks call. Totally won MANY points with me.
An THEN, how they handle Fernando about it afterwards, priceless.
I'm sure there's more, but I unfortunately didn't get around to actually typing this up till a while after I watched it so some of it has faded from my memory.
Needless to say even if the quality is ONLY maintained in the future, I think Standard Action can stand Toe to Toe with other Web series greats like The Guild and Epic Meal Time.
And you can quote me on that, and I hope they will!
Go WATCH EVERYTHING ESPECIALLY . . . . . (something that I think might be good to condense and maybe make into a monologue. Maybe I should email the author and ask about permission and editing . . hrrrm . .)

A Different 2.0

Damsels & Dragons II: Femmes Seek Funds!

Cleric, Rogue and left hip of Stone Golem . . . With Sai!?!

I know I like to give the fairer sex money if it means I get to watch, there are costumes involved, and they are very talented at what they do. I've mentioned this crew before and bemoaned the apparent drop in activity. Thanks to The Mary Sue I heard about a renewed effort to activate the shelved series.

Circulate them fun things kids! And peep the vid on my old post (click "before"), it's still the one I laugh at most. And there aren't many other vids online that aren't the episodes themselves. Gogo!

Gamer Specifics

So, all love, we all get things confused and mix things up or have heard of things and associate them incorrectly. In an attempt to make some nerdy sense of unarguably nerdy visual media, I present a couple properties and hope to establish some new mental associations.

Gamers (sometimes -> ) The Movie
A movie from '06, this particular film revolves around a group attempting to break a world record for length of time playing a table top RPG.
This one is fun as the production value is quite clean. I recall it receiving mediocre-to-decent press and there is a good amount of resources to be found concerning the movie. Behind the scenes stuff and production clips around the net. For further resources, have their site, as well as IMDB, and of course WIKI, and . . . .



The Gamers
and of course,
The Gamers: Dorkness Rising
And AND
Journey Quest
I will admit, I still need to watch the original movie, The Gamers, but I have consumed, with great relish, the sequel, as well as their current web series, as you may already be familiar with it.
Dorkness Rising, last I checked was available on Netflix, and crazy entertaining as it somewhat just dives right into the culture without trying to explain too much, which I appreciate.
And of course, Journey Quest goes even farther by setting the whole thing IN a fantasy setting, no "RL" players, just ridiculous fantasy characters doing things you might guess they would get up to. As I've linked to JQ a couple times and you can already read a review, have some Dorkness . . . The Magical Quote is at 3:50

It would also seem Dead Gentleman/Zombie Oprheus/Epic Level have formatted the Movie into a Web series and left the last few episodes offline, or have not finished posting them in their entirety.


In any event, GO! ENJOY!
Oh yeah, there was a movie called Gamer, it was kinda big, mostly what I'm sure FPS's will become in the future, Running Man already did it though, and I find it more likely to come true than the FPS one, or at least before the other.

Watch Out!

Quick! You got five dollars? You were gonna go get a double-double at InNOut weren't you? Dude, that'll take like, ten minutes, plus gas, you'd have to put on pants. Look, go shuffle into your food storage area, pull out some chips/munchies, throw some PB/hummus on some toast and come back. OH! and grab a soda.

I Think I'd look at you the same way if I saw you in your skivvies

You back? good.
So, I've covered a few Web-Series in the past, and even gotten some feedback about them from the creators themselves. So, as I continually try to do with Nerdcore, here I present a bit of an "update through my eyes" of a few properties for some of you, my readers, who are kind of lazy or just joining us.

Journey Quest, which has captured the heart and mind of one of my party members, seems to be fully funded for season 2. You can keep appraised of events up on there blog, and there are some REALLY cool resources that are cooked up specifically for Pathfinder, which I have a strong hunch we'll be using. According to the kickstarter they will start filming next year, OR, if they receive more donations, they will produce more.

A glistening group, GOLD, continues along. Though I have not seen any substantial postings on the site since August, the mood is that of steady activity. Donations are made through paypal, and I can't wait for season two to see how the league play is realised.

Standard Action continues with standards in action as they continue to promote and fund raise.Just past their half way goal, there is only 2 months left until the indie go go site is finished. And if you want bang for no-bucks, these guys deliver. There have been no shortage of free plugs

& samples from this crew in order to get people to donate. Just imagine what they will do if they HAVE the funds. You should have seen what they did in season one, and although it started a bit out of order for myself, the amount of passion and superb production value kept me hooked. If that isn't incentive enough, the donation gifts are very entertaining and if you're into the series I'm sure you'll find use for the prizes.

So, since I'm going to be spending all MY money on stage combat training (two workshops in 2 months) AND hoping my car/computer/family members don't die, so that I can replace up to two of the previous, PLEASE!! for me, use three of those dollars to donate to each of these series, and then donate the other two as you see fit. Or . . I guess go grab a $1 menu item at a cheaper fast food joint. mmmm, I want Jack Taco's now . . . Later guys, Keep supporting small entertainment, its not the size that counts, it's how you use it!

The dungeon master & webseries.

The Golem, I think. (off their Myspace)

As I mentioned last week I had the good fortune of participating in a cool event at Strategicon Gateway called The Dungeon Master. It is a performance group that does live theatre where audience members are pulled up on stage to form the adventuring party that may or may not complete the quest presented to them for that show.

Although the version I played in was a low rent/on the road/woo-this-space-allows-for-nothing sort of set up, the costumes they brought were excellent, the tech aspect served it's purpose and coming from a theatre background myself I applaud the final result, I would not dare to claim I could have done better under the same circumstances. And as far as content, the story, characters, and gags were all, at worst, amusing. Many of the jokes were clever and fun with many obvious nods to RPG and geek tropes, creating an overall sense that yes, you had played this campaign before and that was half the fun of it.

I never realized I need to buy a welding jacket for T1nk, it's kind of a good look for her. (Ty Rayne 4 pic)

Running for over a decade now this crew has been living nerdy and providing art and culture to southern California. Not content with ten years of longevity on stage they have also branched out by starting a web series.

Of the four episodes of Legends of Atoll there is a lot of fun. I'm not sure exactly how intertwined the two shows are as far as production but they are both chock full of the same humor, charm, and love of the genre.

 In having many friends who are also in the entertainment industry I usually give my honest opinions and critiques, and although it appears both products could use improvement and tweaking, I highly recommend this to all nerds. Question about your character? Ask, The Dungeon Master

The Quest is The Journey

Journey Quest

So it appears, the more I watch these web series, the more they become attracted to me, and I keep doing these little reviews and posting them. I could get into this.

My aggressively nerdy homeboy, "RunningRyan" who is in my "store D&D" group, told me about this one after I showed him a couple other web series I reviewed and stressed the fact that the crew who made this was the same guys who made "The Gamers" & "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising" and also that he laughed so hard he cried. And, a bit to my chagrin as DM of the group, seeks to emulate the fighter from this series. We shall see if he is as fortunate with my traps, MUAWHAHAH!!!, I mean, I hope they have fun in my game.

But enough about my attempts to TPK, this series is superb. It has touches of all sorts of cliches yet several nice deviations from stereotypes that enrich the world, and of course, a few nods towards the fourth wall as some vaguely meta-aware characters quip here and there.


That thar is the Trailer, apparently all the episodes are up on hulu and youtube and stuff. Something about being open source and free so, I'm sure that's awesome.

Take Initiative

While I was Hustling Hewing-Items at WonderCon, I had some propaganda pushed upon ME for a change, so I took it and stashed it for my usual Post-Con Research. As soon as I fired it up and did a bit of research on it, I was hooked.

Standard Action, yet another RPG Web-series, mixes excellent location scouting with a love and knowledge of the genre.

Joanna Gaskell, who plays the Elven Barbarian with a heart of gold, is the mastermind of the show.Not only do they have about a half dozen excellent episodes so far, they have some extra content in the form of a chuckle worthy Dating Service, great for extra flavor to the universe.

Only in production for a year so far (it appears) and an excellent stream of production during that time. And, if their self promotion is matched by their dedication to continue the series, this should be fun to watch.
(witty turn of phrase to do with initiative orders or number of actions you can take in one round)

Ladies Playing Pretend

Who doesn't like it when a bunch of lovely women get dressed up and then start make believe. . . That they're warriors, clerics, and monsters?

Continuing on my RPG webseries kick, I also finally watched Dragons & Damsels. With Mirai Booth-Ong from The Guild (I may or may not do a post about that as it has a bit more popularity then a lot of the stuff I post about, I think you all know what it is).

My quick, snarky, over-simplified impression was, like many girls I like, short, pretty, something deep about them, but unfortunately leave me frustrated in ways I can't fix.

To elaborate, I think the short part is obvious, it is very well produced, as in the camera work is fine, the audio is excellent, and I believed these characters lived in this world, they seemed to have lives and desires and dreams.

I liked how there were plots that were alluded to and there was set idea of how the game went, all that sort of thing.

However, the first story arc finished after eight short episodes and no one besides bots have posted anything on the site or the forum since '09. It feels like they had intended to do quite a bit further with the world but have left it or are unable to continue it for whatever reason. If there had been anything on the site to suggest that that was it and the project was finished I might feel a bit more closure, but as it is, my neuroses is agitated by such frivolous things, ah well.

If they do decide to clean up the forum and perhaps begin a new story arc I hope I will be able to find it or see it advertised as it was fun and think it has quite a lot of potential.

1 part fem, 1 part drake, mix vigorously!

P.S. Apparently back in 2010 a few of the ladies filmed character Vlogs for their youtube channel, and although I liked the thief & the cleric, this one was the one that actually made me laugh.

All That Glitters

Here is a trailer to get you THERE

I finally got around to watching "Gold," the webseries about gamers.

Season one is about professional gamers working for the gold medal and is fairly entertaining, however some elements felt weak. (I will try to explain below.)

The other "season?" is a sort of six episode mini-series based around a one shot. This one I enjoyed much more and after about a week passed having seen both I think I realized why;

The main season felt forced and didn't feel real. It seemed set in this alternate reality that never totally embraced it's silliness which made things uncomfortable and awkward to watch. Not to say there wasn't elements of drama that I believed, the characters lived in this world and I felt most of their pains. Also, the sound quality really got to me. I understand it's technical and how much of a pain filming independently can be (oh yeah, tangent, did I mention I finally graduated, I have a B.A. in Theatre Arts and have acted for a few student films. I can relate, camera mounted mics can be the devil) but a little touch up, maybe some post recordings might have been nice? Anyway, yeah, the locations were fine, the camera work was fantastic, but something about the character work felt lacking, especially when I saw some of the production was SAG, I guess it raised the bar for me. Also, soundtrack choice was a little off. It felt right a few times but it didn't seem to flow with the ENTIRE season.

Now that I have talked smack about the main shows, lemme tell you how AWESOME Night of The Zombie King was. Watch season one to get yourself oriented and learn the mechanics of the world and then watch NTZK. I watched all six episodes in one sitting because I was so absorbed with it. It follows an old group reuniting after several years to have on last game as their old characters and it all felt so much more honest. Real characters with real lives trying to interact with each other.Several conflicts working in concert to elevate each other. Stakes get raised up in this one, with a great nod to the main series.
I am honestly optimistic to see if the company will continue and will wait patiently to see what new gamer-centric vids they will unveil. I don't know if they are worthy of platinum, but I will say they are as good as gold.

Meme - Orable: memeet the . . .

DAT! DAT! DehDAH!!! duhnduhnduhn DOW!

Meet the "Meet The . . . " Series! From one of my favorite press campaigns ever, Valve's promos for Team Fortress Classic 2 are definitely a staple in most gamer-geeks quotable arsenal.

I was going to post my 2 favorites, but all of them are my favorite.

GO HERE! OR HERE!!! for info & the movies.

Dear Valve, release "Meet the Medic & the Pyro" KKTHNXBAI

(apparently, Rumor has it, the Pyro is a chick. geek superstition. Samus, style. yeah.)

"ITS CALLED A TSU!! UNLESS ITSA FARM!!!"

"If you were from, where I was from? You'd be fuckin dead."

You smarter than bullet?

"Pransin aboot wit yer hed fulla eyebulls . . *maniacal laughter*"

okay, maybe post one. here, stick this in your piehole!