Soundtrack Sunday: Conan the Destroyer

As sorry as I am to rip off Stelios' gimmick here, I wanted to share this one, as I recently re-watched this film. Perhaps you may be thinking, "What? Really - that silly, goofy one with Grace Jones that killed off the franchise for so many years?"

I admit, I'm not too happy about A View to a Kill either. Leaving the shortcomings of certain Bond films aside and getting back on track, it's surprising to hear this caliber of music in a film that is, arguably, more of a parody of the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian than it is a sequel. Fortunately, the one area in which this film was not a huge step down from its predecessor was in the soundtrack. Of course, nothing can really replace Basil Poledouris' stirring themes from the original movie, but here the result was not a complete aural betrayal of everything the first film did right.

Ordinarily, I would embed a video below (as Stelios typically does), but YouTube won't let me embed this one clip. Less fortunate still, this piece of score has yet to be officially released on CD, so I had to use the actual scene from the movie; the orchestral strains are still pretty prominent nonetheless.

Sit back, and enjoy!

Change, changing places

A lot has been going on, both inside and outside cyberspace. In the "real world", I've had very little success in gathering people together for games - at least the kinds of games that I want to run or play. I've used that time in overhauling my hex-map of my campaign world, finally adding roads (or at least trails) and cleaning up the coastlines.

Here's a snippet of my campaign world, rendered in Hexographer.
(Scale: 1 hex = 6 miles. The tan lines [heh] are roads.)

In cyberland, I have been neglecting this blog, though that's mostly due to the lull in actual play; without continuing to run, I run out of new challenges and new ideas. Hopefully my attempts at getting a group together will produce results; at the very least, I can post about some of my ideas that I've been working on (and I will very shortly).

Meanwhile, Stelios of The Word of Stelios has converted his gaming blog into a writing blog. Thankfully, he hasn't deleted any of his old gaming-related posts, and his few posts on writing thus far have been quite specific and relatable (as opposed to just rehashing "advice for new writers" that I had to read a lot of in junior high). DM Wieg of Save Vs. Poison has also started posting again, with some interesting content; hopefully he'll be able to share some similar content as time and occasion permit.

I'll try not to neglect this blog as much, more for my own sake than for anyone else (though I am thankful for the comments of those who do read it!), and maybe get some feedback on a few ideas.

Thanks!

Lately I've gotten a couple of shout-outs on other blogs. A few days ago, JB of B/X Blackrazor pointed out a couple of possible solutions to my conundrum on uniform weapon damage, and then mentioned me in his post on axes. And now, Stelios of The Word of Stelios has mentioned my recent post on gender in gaming in a post recounting some similar experiences.

I'm glad to see that I've been writing some things worthy of taking notice, but even nicer is Stelios' description of this 'spot as "a new blog worth reading".

Wow. What can I say, but... thank you! Thanks to both JB and Stelios for their insights and kind words. I'll do my best not to disappoint!