MSG is a decidedly different sort of RPG created by some of the minds behind White Wolf's various supernatural-themed game systems. There is no randomness of any kind, and not a D20 to be found. Players play the roles of company Reps who all work for the soul-crushing Company in service of the Brand. Each player takes a turn playing the part of the company and throwing some kind of bizarre situation at the Reps, possibly incorporating some of the backstories the players came up with about themselves at the beginning of the game. Then the Reps decide what to do, try to earn points by working corporate buzz-words into their plans, then attempt to outbid the Company by taking a Risk with their reputation. Whoever wins the Risk narrates the outcome.

If it all sounds a little vague and confusing, keep in mind that this isn't a "Only 45,000 more XP until I can wield my Holy Avenger +19!" type of RPG. The point is really to make a mockery of soulless corporations and their often ruthless strategies, not to mention the soulless drones who do their bidding. At the same time, it mocks our own willingness to worship these brands and submit to the will of these companies, all while creating ludicrous scenarios that are maddeningly interconnected with the stories created in the previous round. Maybe this excerpt from the rule book explains it best:

Brainstorm for a couple of minutes until you come up with a name for the Brand [that all the players work for]. If some of you hate it — or, better, all of you hate it — that’s brilliant, because it means you’ll understand a little of what it is to work for an organization that makes you cringe every time you look in the mirror and see the Brand logo they tattooed on your forehead.

MSG (I'm not really sure about the title - it just makes me think "Madison Square Garden") is stuffed to the gills with black, black humor. In fact, it is clearly heavily inspired by the classic Paranoia RPG. Instead of living in a domed city with the Computer, you're stuck in a boardroom with the Company. You can beat the other Reps, but you can never beat the Company. If you're looking for a change of pace for your weekly game night, this game is worth a look. You can order it over at lulu.com, and you can even download it for free in pdf format (but only until Nov. 25). Image by: johnheronproject.

It's been about ten years since Fallout 2 came out, and many PC gamers still fondly remember the game's blend of pop-culture references, rich gameplay, off-color sense of humor and weird retro-futuristic aesthetic. How could a game meet such high expectations, especially coming off such a long wait? By being just about perfect.

Fallout 3's gameplay is immersive and offers the player many options. The game is built on the same engine used for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but it's been immensely improved. The developers managed to take many of the classic elements from the original Fallout games and incorporate them into a modern 3D video game. You can play it as a straight action shooter, or activate the VATS system and play out combat using action points that let you plan out your moves, then watch them in slow-mo cinematic fashion. There's a lot going on with your character at any given time: health, ammo, weapon condition, weight and encumberance, radiation levels, whether or not any of your limbs are crippled, drug addiction, karma - it can be overwhelming at times. For the most part, you're usually focused on a few things at a time, so you get used to it fairly quickly.

What does Fallout 3 offer for sci-fi fans? It gives you the feeling that you're a character in your own post-apocalyptic movie, making your own decisions and discovering the blasted, war-torn world one mutant at a time. That old Fallout charm is still there, including the black humor (one mission that causes you to become irradiated leaves you with a mutation that regrows crippled limbs) and high-tech retro style (all the wrecked cars are nuclear powered but look like '57 Chevies). In first-person mode, there is a genuine sense of tension mixed with wonder as you pick your way through the rubble. Especially early in the game, you are fairly fragile, with a crappy gun a handful of bullets. The game doesn't hold your hand as you explore, so you can blunder into enemies far too powerful for you if you aren't careful. This can be frustrating, but it really elevates the suspense and makes the world feel more realistic. The weirdness of the freaky mutant creatures contrasts sharply with the semi-familiar setting - Fallout 3 is set in and around Washington D.C., and the ever-present shattered shell of the U.S. Capitol dome in the distance is a constant reminder that this world was once like our own.

It's also a world filled with interesting moral choices. You will meet many people, and you can befriend them, steal from them, or just kill them if you want to. Of course, there are consequences to any course of action, but you can decide if you want to be a bad-ass Snake Plissken, a Neo-esque uber-hacker, or a post-apocalyptic ninja sulking in the shadows. Early in the game, you'll find the town of Megaton, which has an undetonated atom bomb at its center. The mayor wants you to disarm it, but then you'll meet a man offering a bunch of money to blow it up, along with all the residents of Megaton. This may not seem like a moral dilemma (blow it up and see what happens!) until you've met and worked with those residents: Moira, the quirky general store owner/researcher; the reformed raider and his adopted daughter; the befuddled old man and his exasperated wife; the chain smoking whore; the drug-addled teenager.

Speaking of whores, this is not a kids' game. There are curse words aplenty, including frequent f-bombs, not to mention various "working girls" who are actually available for the right price. Although in this game, "sleeping with someone" literally means closing your eyes and catching some snores in the same bed. There's a good deal of gore, too. Those cinematic action scenes feature sprays of realistic blood, severed limbs and even bursting heads. It can be pretty awesome, but definitely for mature audiences only.

You can leave your mark on the world of Fallout 3 with the smoking barrel of your 10mm sub-machine gun, or you can carve out a slice of civilization in this desperate place. It's as if you're the director, author and lead actor all at once, and you do your own stunts. All in all, it's a very satisfying sci-fi gaming experience. Image by: Bethesda.

Vade Mecum is a 160-page hardcover book with full-color art. And the art is amazing, really helping to evoke the gloomy, decadent world of CthulhuTech. This is definitely not a game for young children (if you couldn't tell by the cover). Further enhancing the "futuristic Lovecraftian" atmosphere are seven short stories, so there's plenty of backstory to flesh out your campaign (so to speak). For more hardcore gamers, there's plenty of crunch for the $39.99 cover price, including, "more than a dozen new unspeakable horrors, including the option to portray corpse-eating ghouls as Characters."

I'm not sure anything else in the book will top that, but it also has over 20 new "machines of death," a bunch of new magic rituals, a system for psychic powers, and three new professions. It could be interesting to play a Zoner, a character who starts out insane. Or perhaps you'd prefer portraying the lovechild of a human and an otherdimensional being. There are detailed fighting trees that allow you to chain together certain moves for devastating attacks, and those attacks can target specific body parts with the hit location chart. It's all fun and games until someone suffers a "Genital Injury." Ow.

Apparently, the CthulhuTech core book has been selling very well (the first printing sold out), so if you're looking for an RPG that's quite a bit darker than the usual swords and wizards affair, there are some kindred spirits out there. Image by: Catalyst/Widlfire.

The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide is being released today in conjunction with the video game. It depicts the Empire's domination of the galaxy, years before any unified rebellion existed to oppose it. Many characters familiar to fans of the classic trilogy appear during the so-called Dark Times, including Vader, the Emperor, and several notable Moffs. With no cohesive groups to join, Light Side heroes have to fend for themselves and take their shots against the soul-crushing fascist Imperials wherever they can.

This guide, like the Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide, features great production values and excellent interior art, including concept and production art from the video game that hasn't appeared anywhere else. It also ties into the Force Unleashed miniatures set that came out last year.The material in the guide is drawn from the game as well as the other multimedia products associated with it, such as the novel and the graphic novel. In addition to a ton of new alien races, talent trees, Jedi talents, ships, droids, weapons and characters, it features a section on creating your own organization. Will you form an elite group of anti-Imperial commandos? A smuggler's guild? Attempt to unite a group of backstabbing bounty hunters? If there's one thing this guide definitely offers, it's lots of options. Image by Wizards of the Coast.

The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide [via Amazon]

Even if you have no intention of ever playing the Star Wars RPG, the KotOR Campaign Guide is a pretty interesting book. There are detailed descriptions of Star Wars history and the lives of many main and supporting characters, along with ships, droids, weapons and alien races. The production values are top notch, with rich, full-color interior art, a clean layout and color-coded labels for each section. Here's a look at some of the splash pages that start off the sections:For gamers, this book is a feast of new rules. Wizards of the Coast has taken the force abilities, characters and weapons used in the KotOR video games and converted them into RPG form. While the SAGA rules system can be fairly complicated at times (it's a strange blend of 3.5 edition D&D with new 4th edition D&D elements, all customized for use in the Star Wars universe), this book offers plenty of options to players:

• 10 new playable alien races.
• 21 new feats.
• 3 new prestige classes, plus updates to old classes.
• 10 new Jedi powers, and two new Jedi talent trees.
• 15 new droid types.
• Dozens of characters, from Sith assassins to noble Jedi advisors.
• More than 20 new starships.

Taking up the mantle of Mandalore the Indomitable after his death at the Battle of Onderon, Mandalore the Ultimate shaped the ragtag Mandalorian warrior clans into a powerful mercenary force. Himself a Taung, the Predator-like alien race that made up the original Mandalorian clans, Mandalore the Ultimate recruited humans and other species to his banner. His decree of uniform armor for his warriors lead to the well-known "Mandalorian Battle Armor" worn by everyone's favorite jet-packed bounty hunter, Boba Fett.

Mandalore the Ultimate's inclusive recruiting strategies are reflected in his "everyone's a Mandalorian" ability. He deals out an impressive 30 damage with brutal speed, attacking up to three times in one turn. Mr. Ultimate is also an effective commander, giving all his troops a startling amount of battlefield mobility. Knights of the Old Republic booster packs will be released on August 8, while the KotoR campaign book for the Star Wars RPG will come out a few weeks later. The dual release is perfect for fans who have been longing to run a campaign n the Old Republic era. Images by: Wizards of the Coast.

The first d20 version of the Star Wars Role-Playing Game did not have many fans, what with the lack of balance and generally overcomplicated rules. The recent Saga Edition, while still d20, is a sleeker, faster Star Wars RPG. But something was missing - bad guys. The void has been filled by Threats of the Galaxy. Essentially the Monster Manual for the Star Wars RPG, Threats of the Galaxy provides full statistics on a wide variety of general villain and NPC types (information broker, diplomat, pirate, Sith apprentice) and several specific villains from the entire spectrum of Star Wars mythology. The aforementioned Bossk gets a page, along with Darths Maul and Bane and many more. At more than 150 pages, your PCs are going to have their hands full.

Just a reminder to my fellow io9 gamers - I'll be at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio next week, bringing you all kinds of science fictioney gaming goodness. If you'll be at the con too, drop me a line via the email link on the front page. Maybe we can all get together for some Car Wars or old school Battletech. Image by: Wizards of the Coast/Lucas Books.

[Threats of the Galaxy via Amazon]

Shortly after the release of Dark Heresy, the role-playing game based on their Warhammer 40k miniatures game, Games Workshop closed down subsidiary Black Industries, which produced all their RPG products. Although Dark Heresy garnered strong reviews, it seemed like the system would never see any supplements to expand players' optons. Enter Fantasy Flight Games.

FFG now holds the rights to Dark Heresy, and they're putting out all the handbooks and adventures fans have been waiting for. The Inquisitor's Handbook fills many of the gaps in the system, offering a ton of new character options and paths, and an equipment section that is worth the price of the book by itself. The production values are top notch and the book is filled with stunning art. The coolness factor can pretty much be summed in two words: Metallican Gunslingers. Plus, this makes the perfect companion piece for Dark Heresy: Purge the Unclean, a trilogy of adventures set in the Calixis Sector.

Dark Heresy still only explores a narrow slice of the 40k universe, that of the Imperium Inquisition. No space marines, and not a lot of aliens. But if you're not interested in that other major RPG game released last week, it's worth a look. Image by: Fantasy Flight Games.

The Inquisitor's Handbook [via Amazon]

Sadly, the trailer shows us very little about the game's plot or gameplay. The English-language title screens reveal the game will be a prequel to the other Star Ocean games, but publishers Tri-Ace and Square Enix have been very tightlipped with details since announcing the game in September of 2007.

All we know for sure is that the game will combine sci-fi and fantasy elements, allow the player to control a spaceship and explore different planets. And it features a hero named Edge Maverick. They haven't even announced the platform yet. The game has an official website, but there's nothing there beyond a pretty intro screen. The animation style of the trailer is interesting - at times it's hard to tell if you're looking at traditional animation or CGI. For some reason it reminds me of the old Voltron cartoon. Someone please explain to me why no one's made a Voltron video game yet.

This takes us onto the Physical and Mental Mutation tables, full of exotic adaptations to the new brave new world ("Quills/Spines", "Pyrokinesis" "Multiple Body Parts"), and the occasional dark side of genetic damage ("Hemophilia," say, or "Epilepsy").

When it arrived in stores in the early 1980s, Gamma World was announced like this:

The first world is lost in the mythical past, the second was destroyed by apocalyptic energies, and now a whole new world awaits you - GAMMA WORLD!

...or would we!? Because maybe we'd still be around, and everything would be messed up in a cool way. When I was playing Gamma World in junior high, it seemed vaguely plausible that in a few years we'd have tattoos, and cool rubble to climb around on. There would be tribes!

Gamma World's principal architects were Gary Jaquet and James M. Ward - the latter of whom must be touched by some visionary quality, since his name is on Metamorphosis Alpha and Deities and Demigods. It's patterned more after science fantasy than science fiction proper - the creators cite The Long Afternoon of Earth by Brian Aldiss, Starman's Son by Andre Norton, Hiero's Journey by Sterling Lanier, and Ralph Bakshi's marvelous Wizards, a post-apocalypse subgenre boiled down and codified into 56 pages of narratively generative charts'n'tables.

Players set out into an America remade as a country of mutants, rural communities, and the mystery-shrouded ruins of a prior civilization. Robot farms, nomadic tribes, ancient spaceports, mutated forests and radioactive desert dot the landscape as well as the Cryptic Alliances, crackpot factions contesting for the fragments of what used to be.

As a context for storytelling Gamma World gets full marks. Gamma World's crazy mix of high-tech and ruined-garden aesthetics is still my preferred vision of the post-Reaganite era. In Mad Max, or Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the post-nuclear world is a humorless burned-out husk, but Gamma World is lush and green, a hothouse full of unwholesome life - like dropping the bombs just kicks everything up a notch.

It combines that neo-tribal waste-land adventure with a Riddley Walker, Motel of the Mysteries vibe - familiar artifacts become strange to us, the present day world we walk around in becomes a strange and distant past, a lost technological climax instant for the human race. Poignant and thrilling at the same time.

But Gamma World never caught on in a big way. Some X-factor was missing - maybe it lacked D&D's potent fantasy urtexts. Or maybe it was in the game design? GW's character creation lacks the hard-wired archetypal structure of D&D's class system - sure, mutations are fun, but it doesn't bring the ready-made type-casting of fighter vs magic user vs thief.

And the reward schedule isn't there. You don't go up levels - in Gamma World your base stats go up, and you can find artifacts, and there's a thin chance of further mutation (here I consult the Radiation Matrix), but you don't find that steady treadmill of advancement that keeps D&D and WoW players grinding onward and opening up new areas in the game mechanics.

And of course the nail in the coffin is the post-Reagan New World Order itself, which let the air out of our collective investment in a grim post-nuclear endgame.

But Gamma World keeps being remade, even unto the Sixth Edition. Cormac McCarthy, along with Jericho, Sarah Connor Chronicles, and even Al Gore, show that the devastated future Earth still has a place in the contemporary imagination. I like to think McCarthy would appreciate the final pages of the 1981 manual, a 100-item treasure table full of poignant relics as "57. Jungle gym - fair condition, used," or "1859 Swiss Infantry Sabre - excellent condition, well polished blade." Gamma World is a future with a past that includes the world we see around us, which ought to mean as much as a bunch of halflings.

And, seriously, as futures go, would you rather the boring old Singularity, or Gamma World? Do you really want to float around in space chatting with Farsc4pe_Guy_21 or do you want to explore a secret bunker shattered by nuclear fire, to learn the truth of our elder civilization? Leporinoid art by David Trampier.

• 
  
• The first game to bear the Star Wars name was The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari 2600. You could fly around as Luke Skywalker taking down AT-ATs which inexplicably had one tiny space on their backsides which allowed you to destroy them easily. Too bad the Rebels didn't know about this in the movie.
• 
  
• They followed that one up with the equally forgettable The Return of the Jedi: Death Star Attack on the same system, and it faded like a an iron-on tranfer that's been washed 2,000 times.
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• Probably the worst (or at least simplest) Star Wars game to come out of the Halls of Lucas was 1983s Jedi Arena, which featured an overhead shot of... two dueling lightsabers. The little Star Wars target probe would pop out every now and then to irritate the crap out of you, and you'd try to vanquish your opponent.
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• The real Star Wars game that most people think of and remember as the first in the genre was the coin-op game Star Wars from Atari in 1983. The thing came in both standup and sitdown versions, and featured digitized voices from the game. It was vector graphic goodness, and for some reason it was also addictive as hell. You could even "Use the Force" by not firing a shot during the trench run on the Death Star for bonus points.
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• Atari also put out versions of Return of the Jedi in 1983, and a strangely out of order The Empire Strikes Back in 1984. Jedi featured a weird 3/4 angle looking down at speeder bikes, but Empire returned to the vector graphic format. You could find Jedi at theaters across America, but Empire was extremely hard to come by.
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• Star Wars games faded from the limelight until 1991 when Ubisoft Games released Star Wars on the Nintendo, but the game really looked best on the Super Nintendo where it appeared as Super Star Wars, Super Empire Strikes Back, and Super Return of the Jedi. These were side-scrollers that were surprisingly fun to play, especially since the Jawas would say "Utinnin!' over and over.
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• Part of what I can blame my low grades for in college was the release of Star Wars: X-Wing in 1993. It was a flight and combat simulator based on the X-Wing, and it was obsessively fun because... well, you're in the cockpit of an X-Wing. What kid hasn't dreamed about that? It had expansion packs for more missions, different kinds of ships, and later led to Star Wars: TIE Fighter in 1994.
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• By 1996, the Star Wars gaming renaissance was in full swing, and LucasArts released Shadows of the Empire for the Nintendo 64. It was set between Empire and Jedi, and followed the exploits of Dash Rendar, a sort of Han Solo-ish mercenary. In fact, Shadows of the Empire was also a novel, a comic book, an action figure line, and a soundtrack release for Lucas, in an attempt to take advantage of all types of multimedia at once.
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• In 1997, the popularity of fighting games on gaming consoles was hard to resist, so LucasArts released Masters of Teras Kasi, where you could pit Chewbacca against Luke Skywalker, and so forth. The game had some decent animations, but mostly sucky gameplay. Just explain to me in what world a Gamorrean Guard could beat Darth Vader.
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• With the prequels came more opportunities for video games, and there were a slew of forgettable Episode I games on the consoles and on PCs. However, Episode I Racer in 1999, which was a game solely about podracing, can still be found in most arcades around the country. It's not half bad, even if that movie did suck.
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• In 2001 LucasArts created a launch game for the Nintendo GameCube with Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, which features the word "rogue" in the title two times, just so you're sure. It was a sequel to 1998's Rogue Squadron, which was a Nintendo 64 (and later Windows) title. It spanned all three movies, and tried to fill in gaps in the story.
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• In 2001, 2002, and 2003 LucasArts released Star Wars Starfighter, Jedi Starfighter, and The Clone Wars, all with declining sales, and they featured elements like stale gameplay, and repetitive missions.
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• 2001 was also the year that LucasArts tried to go after the hardcore strategy gamers with Galactic Battlegrounds. It featured gameplay similar to Warcraft (not World of, mind you, which hadn't been invented yet).
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• 2002 was a year of Star Wars sequel games, giving us not only Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (which was a sequel to Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, which was itself a sequel to Dark Forces) but also Racer Revenge, which was an update to the Episode I Racer game.
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• Dark Forces actually followed a character created specifically for the video games, Kyle Katarn. He was originally an Imperial Officer, but later turned and became a spy for the rebellion. He was played by actor Jason Court for Dark Forces: Jedi Knight II.
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• 2003 saw both the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars Galaxies, both of which were the first Star Wars roleplaying games. Knights was set 4,000 years before A New Hope, but Galaxies was in the "current" Star Wars universe. However, while Knights was a huge hit and spawned a sequel (and possibly an upcoming third game), Galaxies was reviled for having sucky gameplay and things like dancing Wookies.
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• In 2004 Lucas brought Battlefield style gaming to the table with Star Wars Battlefront, where you could play as a single soldier in massive battles set in the Star Wars storyline and universe.
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• Republic Commando in 2005 was, for my money, one of the most underrated Star Wars games, featuring you as a clone trooper who had to issue squadron commands to the other clones under his command. It was set amidst plot holes in the prequels, and was genuinely Anakin-free fun.
• 
  
• However, one of the most fun Star Wars games, both in gameplay and with the supplied tongue-in-cheek humor was Lego Star Wars: The Video Game. It was irreverent, sassy, and pure dumb fun. It was followed up with Lego Star Wars: The Original Trilogy in 2006 and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga in 2007. Later this year you'll also be able to pick up Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures.
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• While there are many to choose from, what wins the award for the crappiest game ever to bear the Star Wars name? That would have to be Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing from 2001. It featured big-headed versions of the movie characters racing around go-kart style. While the Star Wars Lego titles could take something like this and make it fun, this game just sucked, bombad.

You don't think of virtual worlds like Second LIfe as sensual — after all, there's no sense of touch at all — but watching the lush footage in Second Skin and hearing people talk about their hunger for Worlds of Warcraft may change your mind. Immersive virtual reality might never live up to the hype, but already more and more people are pouring so much of their hearts and minds into virtual worlds that they seem to "feel" their experiences in them.
Director Juan Carlos calls it "An Inconvenient Truth meets Errol Morris," which sounds like he's swinging for the fences. If Carlos was on death row, he'd pick Weird Science as his last movie to watch:

I've always really loved that comedy. I mean John Hughes is great, and he's made a bunch of good movies, but Weird Science to me gets the fan favorite award. The idea behind that movie was so inventive and hilarious. Plus there is just something awesome when aliens come to crash a party in the middle of a teen comedy. So I'd laugh to start, and then get a little Zen.

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• Gygax spent his formative years reading science fiction authors Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, L. Sprague de Camp and Fritz Leiber as well as the fantasy world of Conan the Barbarian via Robert E. Howard's books.
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• In 1953 Gygax first played Gettysburg by Avalon Hill, and later ended up ordering blank hexagonal mapping paper from the same company.
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• In 1966 he founded the International Federation of Wargamers with friends, and in 1967 he organized a 20 person gaming get-together in his basement that was later billed as Gen Con 0. Gen Con is now the world's largest hobby-gaming convention.
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• He founded the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association, which was a military miniatures society. This guy sure loved his Associations, Federations, and groups.
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• In 1971, he and Jeff Perren wrote Chainmail, a medieval miniatures game, which later featured a supplementary set of rules featuring magic spells and other fantasy elements.
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• After playing Gettysburg, he became obsessed with finding ways to generate random numbers rather than using traditional six-sided dice. He found a set of the five platonic solids in the back of a school supply catalog and ordered several sets, and later introduced them into gaming in D&D. In fact, owning your own dice and keeping them in a little velvet bag was a sign of geek coolness, back then.
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• In 1974 he formed Tactical Studies Rules with Don Kaye and released the first set of Dungeons and Dragons rules, and their first run of 1,000 hand-printed editions sold out in nine months, and were later passed around college and high school campuses across the nation.
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• In 1976, TSR introduced the game Metamorphosis Alpha, which later became Gamma World. The game was inspired by Brian Aldiss' novel Starship, and later crossed over into the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons world with the "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" module. Gygax said the module was meant to show what would happen if a ship like one in Metamorphosis Alpha crashed into a D&D world.
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• In 1982 TSR followed the scifi vein with Star Frontiers, which featured swashbuckling space adventure through the unexplored worlds of the Frontier. This was actually my first introduction to role-playing games, and I have to admit that I loved this game a lot more than D&D. In fact, I'm tempted to dig through trunks to see if I still have the rulebook.
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• Gygax left TSR in 1984 during changes to management, and began working on the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon show.
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• In 1987 Gygax developed Cyborg Commando, a science fiction roleplaying game "set in 2035 at a time when the earth is invaded by aliens called Xenoborgs intent on subduing humanity and taking control of the planet. Luckily humanity has developed a new kind of solider: the Cyborg Commando, a mechanical/electronical man-like structure that can be implanted with a willing human's brain." Unfortunately it was later criticized as "the worst role-playing game ever written."
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• In 1999 he introduced Lejendary Adventure, which was meant to be a return to less-complicated gameplay with an emphasis on fun, although it explored the familiar gaming territory already well-covered by D&D. One of the last projects he had been working on was an expansion module for Lejendary called "Lejendary AsteRogues", as sort of "fantastical science RPG." According to Gygax, "The Lejendary AsteRogues game is actually in the "Fantastical Science" area, not true SF. It is a sort of mix of steampunk and super science with a leavening of Napoleonic Era military material." Sounds pretty scifi to us.
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• He wrote two science fiction short stories, "Pay Tribute" and "The Battle Off Deadstar," which were published in the scifi anthology The Fleet and Breakthrough (The Fleet, Book 3).
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• He has a strain of bacteria named after him: "Arthronema gygaxiana sp nov UTCC393." We hope it's not flesh-eating.
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• In 2000 he appeared as himself on an episode ofFuturama along with Al Gore, Nichelle Nichols, and Stephen Hawking. He rolls the dice to determine which greeting to give to Fry.
  

The plot is right out of a Pearl Jam song, or the headlines of a newspaper. When two bullies at school start knocking Ben around for his milk money, the lines between game and real life become blurred. Epect some angsty teen ass-kicking and emo music. Flemish director Nic Balthazar is working on the U.S. version of the film, and he is searching for "The new Leonardo DiCaprio" to star.

Balthazar to remake 'Ben X' in U.S. [Variety]