Best of the Web - Space 1977, Chris Pine cast, Urban Spirits

 Skerpies over at Coins and Scrolls has an interesting post called Sci-Fi: Space 1977 - An Analysis of Failure in which he talks about a setting comprised of various Star Wars knock-offs. I really like the idea but think a similar idea might be more to my tastes: 

A setting comprised of the Aliens knock offs. Outland, Mutant, Forbidden World, Galaxy of Terror, Xtro, and Dead Space. You could even throw in Killer Klowns, the Thing, and all the underwater ones. If you were willing to really dredge deep there are dozens of additional entries.

A setting comprised of various Sword & Sorcery knock-offs that came in the wake of the Conan movie. Beastmaster, Hawk the Slayer, Sword & Sorcerer, Deathstalker 1-4, Barbarian Queen, The Barbarians, and probably a bunch of horrid others. 

I think most DM's back in the day picked and pulled at the parts we liked and maybe filed off the serial numbers.

Tenkar has a post about Chris Pine being cast in a D&D movie called D&D Movie News - Chris Pine (Capt Kirk in the new Star Trek Movies) Will Star

Chris Pine is a good actor. He's been good in everything I've seen him in, and will do well but if I ran the movie studio I wouldn't try to make a Lord of the Rings knockoff. I'd go small, hire Dan Harmon to write and direct, Joe Manganiello to star as the hero, Vin Diesel as the baddie, Patton Oswald as the comedic side-kick. I'd have just about every actor that has ever admitted playing the game to star, co-star, or make a cameo. Have the movie be a comedy about a group going into a dungeon again and again and again and getting torn up but persevering. Concentrate on the zero, not the hero, as that'll be for the sequels.

Elfmaids & Octopi has a post called Urban Spirits that was fun and dripping with creativity. The idea is spirits are everywhere, and goes on to list different types of spirits and where they might be found in an urban landscape including tables of petty spirit powers and a list of 100 Petty Urban Spirits. The whole reminds me of the Bard books by Keith Taylor (which are out of print and I had to rediscover through eBay, and he never made the fifth available outside Oz for some reason, but I digress). Bard's magic was all about getting elementals to do things for him. He could see water elementals in the river and air elementals in the sky when others couldn't and with his music he could convince them to do what he wanted. The big difference is urban areas were dead zones. I like the idea of a divide, nature spirits out side the town where nature runs free, and the spirits of the dead (those 100 Petty Urban Spirits) remain in the town. 

Beyond the theoretical kind of info GMs like and players ignore this sort of thing might provide advantage for Necromancers in the city and Druids outside, and I can imagine a Magic Item that allows a possessor to see the spirits in a They Live fashion which would be fun and might work into a plot hook or two.