Black Sabbath = Heaven & Hell!

Old School Heavy Metal fans are eager in anticipation for the new "Black Sabbath" CD that comes out on April 28. Fans of Black Sabbath know that the Mob Rules lineup of the band, with Ronnie James Dio on vocals and Vinny Appice on drums, has been playing together for the past couple of years as "Heaven & Hell" (the title of the first Dio-fronted Sabbath album, which saw Appice take over the drums during its touring). The 2007 and 2008 tours went so well that the Heaven & Hell guys decided to record an album of new material, which they titled "The Devil You Know" since fans know it really is Black Sabbath (why not simply call themselves Black Sabbath? Well, the Ozzy-fronted lineup is in the R&R Hall of Fame, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler might play with Ozzy again someday, and Butler was never happy with various non-Ozzy lineups using the Black Sabbath name, so this works out all around, and fans don't expect to hear Ozzy-era songs in concert).

I've indicated numerous times on various Metal boards that I "worship at the altar of Dio" and that I greatly dislike Ozzy's voice. I respect the legacy of the early Black Sabbath albums, but my full interest begins with 1980's Heaven & Hell. I like almost all of the band's work that follows, whether with Dio, Ian Gillan, or the massively underrated Tony Martin. Only the last album, 1995's Forbidden, falls short.

I was quite excited to get 2007's Black Sabbath - The Dio Years because it had three new songs recorded in the autumn of 2006. The songs were written by Iommi and Dio, and Butler and Appice then joined them for the recording. I found the songs quite worthy, and it was a good sign that Black Sabbath fans couldn't decide on which was the best of them.

This is happening again with The Devil You Know. Most Black Sabbath fans have probably heard the album by now. This isn't from illegal dowloading, at least not necessarily so, because the full album has been streaming on various sites (one for the USA, another for Europe). Lots of reviews and opinions are appearing, and many listeners are slightly underwhelmed. Few state that the album is poor, but "mediocre" seems to be common. There is no consensus on which songs are good and which are lousy, and again this is a good thing. It means the music holds a wide appeal, "saying" different things to different listeners. And the lukewarm praise indicates that the album hasn't fully sunk in yet for most.

I'd be more concerned with widespread adulation. Since at least 1992's Dehumanizer album, anything by Black Sabbath (or solo projects by its members) has required numerous listens for the quality to truly emerge. I expect that in a few months, The Devil You Know will start to be regarded as a masterpiece, at least among Sabbath and Dio fans. As I listen to the stream for perhaps the fourth time, I hear bludgeoning power, fantastic guitar, and Dio's voice in fine form. There's doom, a bit of speed, and an overall sense of darkness, and the songs are slightly better than the new Dio Years tracks because they were written as more of a full band effort. As another commentator indicated, the 1970 Black Sabbath album Paranoid was perfect for its troubled time, and The Devil You Know is perfect for our current troubled time.

If you are interested in The Devil You Know, and somehow haven't heard a stream of it yet, check out USA or Europe. You'll find an album with song structures rather like those on Dehumanizer, with playing and singing often reminiscent of Mob Rules. I am delighted with it, and can hardly wait to own it on CD in roughly 48 hours. I expect it will ultimately please all fans of Dio-fronted Black Sabbath!

Another one bites the dust...RIP Steve Tompkins

I've been coping well with the loss of my beloved feline friend, but today I discovered another death of which I had been unaware. I learned that Steve Tompkins passed away on March 23 at age 48. He had a heart attack after being hospitalized for severe food poisoning that led to anemia.

Steve was THE world authority on heroic fantasy fiction, with an unmatched style of witty, informative writing in his many posts to various sites. I especially enjoyed his discourses found on The Cimmerian Blog, and his pieces can be accessed here http://www.thecimmerian.com/?author=3. No one else ever put Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien into context with one another in such well thought out ways.

Everyone who knew Steve personally felt he was a great guy. I only knew him through his writings, and those were pretty great too. My condolences to his family and friends, his memory will stay alive as long as people continue to read and enjoy his writing. I'll drink a fine India Pale Ale in his honor, even as I'm sure he's now hoisting a few flagons in the company of Robert E. Howard in the afterlife. Cheers and goodbye!

Kitty Update

I'm gradually feeling better this week, as I keep in mind that Jaws lived longer than could reasonably have been expected, and had a charmed life in every way and at every stage. She was a wonderful cat when it came to dealing with humans, but she never accepted Ember, the other cat I brought into our little family on August 11, 1999. I've been curious these past couple of days to observe how Ember handles the changed dynamic in our home.

Ember, who is in the photo, was around 11 weeks old at the time I acquired her. A guy standing in front of the supermarket was holding her, looking for someone to adopt the kitten. I planned to get Jaws a companion, so she wouldn't be alone when I was away on trips, but I didn't expect to do so for a few more months. However, when I drove into the parking lot and spotted the man holding the kitten, I heard a voice in my head state, "that's your cat!" I tried to argue, but the voice persisted. I chatted with the man holding the kitten, but told him I wasn't ready yet for a second cat. As I began to shop, the feeling that I should take the kitten continued, so I decided that if I thought of a name for the female kitty before I was done shopping, I would indeed take her home with me.

I had lately started collecting the new line of Elfquest comics "Readers Collections," and I almost instantly realized that the character of Ember would be the perfect namesake for a kitten. Ember was a brash, brave tom-boy, who took no nonsense from anyone. That was it, the kitten would be Ember, and I brought her home with me!

As soon as we got home, I noticed that 11 week old Ember's tail was already a fair bit larger than 7 year old Jaws' was! Uh oh, I realized, this is going to be one large cat. And indeed, she grew to be huge, with a very long body, and a weight of over 20 pounds as an adult. She is the size of a Maine Coone, but has no other obvious signs of being that breed. I think she is a mongrel who just happened to inherit the genes to be very large. She also inherited incredible smarts. I came to realize that Ember is a genius among cats. She observes her surroundings, takes mental notes, and sometimes I can almost hear the gears cranking in her head. Like her namesake, Ember the cat is also very bold, and from the get-go, she refused to show Jaws any sign of respect. Jaws, therefore, never liked her, and up to a week before her death, still gave Ember the occasional hiss.

Ember has never been a good listener, unlike Jaws, who loved attention so much that I could speak to her for hours. But Monday night, Ember sat still and listened as I explained to her that she was now Senior Cat in the household, and would have priority rights to food (and my lap, and similar things) if and when I get another cat. Ember has never been a noisy purrer, but since Monday night she's been giving me the loudest purrs of her life. I think she is delighted to no longer have Jaws around, and to be receiving my full attention.

Ember was high strung, even for a cat, when she was younger, but she's mellowed a lot in middle age. I think she and Jaws were the proverbial oil and water, and that Ember would have gotten along better with most other cats. I expect the 10 year old Ember will get along fine with any kitten I bring home in the future. Ember never tried to take advantage of a sick and weak Jaws this past week, so I believe she'll be considerate of a small and fragile kitten when the time comes. In the meantime, I'm glad that Ember and I seem to be getting along better than ever, and I hope that won't change.

RIP my Beloved Kitty

Jaws died this morning at not quite 17 years of age. She was born on or about July 1, 1992 on a farm in Utah as the runt of her litter. The owners of the farm took her into their home, but soon realized they couldn't keep her. She was too friendly, and her attempts to cuddle disturbed their newborn child. Therefore they sought a good home for this affectionate kitten, and asked their old friend Mark the Shark if he wanted her. He was one of my roommates at the time, and knew that another roommate, Erik, and I planned on getting a kitten once Erik returned to Fort Collins from spending the summer in New York. Erik was due back in late August. Mark decided to surprise us with the cat.

One day in the middle of August, Mark the Shark drove up to Vail to meet his old friend for lunch. She drove over from Utah with the kitten, and Mark brought her home with him in a wine glass! She was that tiny! I worked the day shift delivering pizza that day, and in the evening I met up with Mark. He showed me the bottles of beer he had gotten for me at the Hubcap Brewpub, and then...surprise!

Here was this perfect little cat! She was tiny, but could eat solid food and use a litter box. She would zip up and down the stairs, and was always on the lookout for a lap upon which to nap. Everyone loved her, and thought she was the best cat ever. We held off naming her until Erik was back a week or so later, and then remained stumped. When we played with her, she would start to chew on our hands like a little Tasmanian Devil, or a shark from a cartoon, so our roommate Matt suggested we call her Jaws. The irony of naming such a sweet little thing "Jaws," along with its uniqueness, convinced us to go with that name.

I've had her ever since, until today. She seemed to get sick a few days ago, she stopped eating, drank a lot of water, and had difficulty relieving herself. At first I thought it was something like a cold that she'd get over, but she got weaker and weaker. Yesterday, I looked up veterinarians, and found one just a quarter mile or so from my home. I left a message for them, and this morning finalized an appointment for Jaws for 11am. Jaws and I then sat together for half an hour or so while I used my computer. I knew it couldn't be good that her usual loud purr was more like a murmur, but at least she was purring and happy. At 10:50 I carried her down to car, and drove to the vet office. I brought her in, filled out a form, and quickly was able to bring Jaws into an examination room.

I set her on the table, and the vet came in. He started examining her, and they took her temperature. He was worried about her breathing, which sounded very poor. The thermometer showed her temperature to be dangerously low, and just then, the vert told me he couldn't find her pulse. She still responded to his touch, for a moment, but then her eyes lost their recognition for the first time ever. she was staring into space, and I knew she had expired right then and there. She lived as long as she possibly could, and I'll eternally be relieved that I never had to make the call to euthanize her. I'm also grateful she didn't die alone, with me to find her later, but had my company up to the final milisecond.

A sign of affection from many cats is to wink at someone they love. Jaws had often winked at me over the years, and she did so again several times over the past few days. I'll always treasure that we parted on good terms. My other kittie, Ember, is almost 10. Ironically, one reason I got her is because I knew that Jaws, at age 7, wouldn't live forever. I hoped to soften the blow of her eventual demise, never imagining that she'd live for another decade. Jaws and Ember didn't get along, but Ember was very respectful towards Jaws these past few days, so they went out on good terms too. Jaws had a very long and happy life, and I'm devestated to lose my little buddy, but I can't be too sad about the overall situation. She had more than her share of years, love, shelter and food. She'll be cremated, and I'll eventually bring her ashes up to South Dakota to spread in the area where, years ago, I spread my parents' ashes in the Black Hills

I'll get Ember a new companion sooner or later. Ember came as a sort of surprise in her own way, so I'll sit back and wait, and see if fate surprises me a third time with a feline friend. Rest in peace, Jaws, you had such a good life that I doubt you've passed on to a better world. But I hope you are finding times just as good in Kittie Heaven. I love you, Baby Girl!

Thought for the day: If you are a cat fan, check out my Lol Cats (photos to which humorous captions are added) at http://mine.icanhascheezburger.com/pictures-by-BigWade57/

The Dungeons and Dragons Dilema

Wow, what strange timing. A week ago I discussed older forms of Dungeons & Dragons, and mentioned the easy availability of legal pdf downloads of product for these games. As of Monday, April 6, 2009, Wizards of the Coast (owners of the D&D copyright) revoked the license of the various sites that sold these files. For the moment, no legal pdfs exist for any version of D&D prior to the new 4e (and not for that version either, if I understand correctly).

The internet gaming community has been discussing this at length, usually quite angrily. WotC hasn't issued much in the way of explanation, other than to state that they are trying to crack down piracy. Of course, this isn't done by denying access to paying customers, so speculation on the real reason has fallen into two camps. On the one hand, some feel that WotC are trying to shore up the position that they aggressively defend their copyright, as they commence with legal action against eight individuals believed to have illegally shared scans of the new 4e Players Handbook 2. Eventually, WotC will open their own online shop to sell pdfs. The other, more cynical view, is that WotC want to force those with an interest in D&D into playing 4e, and so have removed the availability of products through which the company competed with itself.

I'm hoping the rationale is the former, while I suspect it is really the latter. I don't know the actual state of affairs, and can't make even an educated guess. I do feel strongly that removing the availability of old school D&D pdfs will ultimately only lead to more people downloading pirated versions. This material isn't hard to find on file sharing and bit torrent sites. Just do a web search for the name of any older D&D product, and you'll see all sorts of illegal results. It really is that far out in the open, at least for the moment.

I know that those who seek long enough can find old Middle Earth Role Playing products, and those are items the designers WANT to be available to potential players! MERP was always far more obscure than D&D, so older D&D products are not going into hiding, despite what WotC may want. Perhaps this will all blow over soon, or possibly the outcry among gamers will be great enough to force some sort of change. I'll be watching curiously from the sidelines in the weeks ahead.

Mystara, Yourstara, OD&D

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the original Fantasy Roleplaying Game, is in the midst of releasing material for its 4th Edition (4E). You might have seen the books for it in various bookstores, with hardcovers and colorful artwork. And with $30+ pricetags per book.

I haven't played, or even really read much of 4E. I do know it is getting very mixed reviews online from gamers who have used it. Many people my age (I'll be 39 this year) are starting to have kids old enough to play D&D with, and they are daunted by the idea of spending $100 on new rule books, and then having to learn hundreds of pages of rules. They just want some quick, relatively cheaper fun.

For this reason, many old timers ("grognards" is the polite term) are rediscovering Original D&D (OD&D) and Classic D&D. OD&D is the game as it was first released in 1974, and in five supplemental booklets in the two years that followed. Classic D&D is the revision of OD&D into Holmes-edited Basic Set, the Moldvay-edited Basic Set (followed by the Cook/Marsh Expert Set), and the Mentzer-edited Basic Set (followed by 4 expansion sets also edited by Mentzer). Most of these products are available cheaply as legal pdf downloads from sites such as Paizo.com and can also be had in hardcopy format from auction sites such as ebay (where prices vary greatly depending on the condition and scarcity of a particular product). What these versions have in common is a much smaller body of rules, and the implicit acknowlegdement that those rules are merely guidelines, with the players free to adapt their own "house rules" as they see fit.

A related popular choice, both as a used book and as a download, is the Rules Cyclopedia (RC). It was an edited compendium of the rules Mentzer presented in his Basic, Expert, Companion, and Master D&D Sets, with a hint of his final Immortal Set. This gives a very playable and comprehensive game within the bounds of one book, and in the back, it has a chapter on what had evolved into the default campaign setting for the D&D, the world of Mystara.

Mystara began years earlier as a small sample campaign area presented in the Cook/Marsh version of the Expert Set. David Cook and Tom Moldvay mixed together a variety of cultures in a relatively small area, and gave just a few paragraphs of description to give players a head start in customizing the area portrayed. Frank Mentzer then expanded that world a bit, and it was further expanded through the course of several adventure modules.

Finally, Bruce Heard oversaw the release of a line of "Gazetteers" that examined in detail each of the lands of the "small area" mentioned above. A backstory was created, which explained how this situation, of unrelated cultures being shoehorned in next each other, came about. The Gazetteers were full of the trade and diplomacy of the lands they covered, and this encouraged the players to spend years of game time in visiting new lands and exploring the wilderness in between. This was a much more cerebral way of playing than the usual "hack and slash" mode of dungeon crawling, and these Gazetteers have since been hailed as some of the best gaming materials ever made.

Most of the Gazetteers are now available as pdfs. Also available in that format is the inside of Mystara. Following pulp fiction tradition, the Hollow World Setting explains in detail the various cultures found within the planet. These are mostly unknown to surface dwellers, and add yet more areas for players to explore and find adventure. An additional boxed set, still not legally available as a pdf, concerned a "war of the gods" on Mystara. This Wrath of the Immortals set had rules for playing immortal characters, somewhat revised from Mentzer's Immortal Set, and a massive, world-shaking campaign, which changed the map of Mystara by its conclusion. An on-going storyline of the war's aftermath was covered in a series of supplements (most available as pdfs), but eventually, Mystara was discontinued as an active D&D "world."

When Wizards of the Coast became the owners of D&D around the year 1999, they announced that fans were now free to publish not-for-profit online Mystara material however they saw fit. A site for Mystara fans was already running at pandius.com, and it 2009 it remains the center of an active fan community. Between the published materials and fan additions, one can lose themselves for countless hours in Mystara, either by reading the descriptions of the lands simply for fun, or by actively gaming through them.

I've never played D&D in the lands of Mystara, I've only dreamed my way through them via the many available materials. However, I do hope at some point to Dungeon Master some players in that world, using a version of Classic D&D modified by my own house rules. All of the online resources give me a sense of relief and pleasure in knowing i'm not alone in my interest. Happy reading and gaming to all Mystara explorers!

The Return of the Black Company

The first six of Glen Cook's Black Company novels are available in two omnibus editions, released in November of 2007 and June of 2008. Three of the remaining four books are out of print, and command exorbitant prices from online auctions and sellers. Water Sleeps is the exception, it is still in print for the moment, but I doubt Tor is printing any more copies anytime soon.

People who read the first two collections have been chomping at the bit to get the next one, and today I noticed on Amazon that there is a listing for The Return of the Black Company, due to released on September 15, 2009. At 672 pages and $15.99, this is almost certainly the omnibus of Bleak Seasons and She is the Darkness, the two books that continue the story of the Black Company after Dreams of Steel.

I freely admit that I consider Bleak Seasons the weakest of all the Black Company novels, but I still enjoyed it. Many other reviewers are not so kind. They seem to dislike Murgen, who serves as the narrator of it, and of She is the Darkness. I thought he was a great way of showing that the prior narrators were not always completely candid in telling us their story. But he does lack Croaker's very particular voice, and this upsets some readers. It will be interesting, come September, to read the reviews of those encountering these stories for the first time. And then, the wait will be on for the final omnibus, for those not lucky enough to own copies of Water Sleeps and Soldiers Live, the final Black Company novels to date (though Cook is working on another one).

Thoughts of the Day: Hilbert remained as CSU Volleyball Coach, and I've lately been spending a lot of time in Mystara. More on that latter point soon!