Roll For Treats
October 31st, 2011

Posted by Matt

Halloween is arrived, and the LRR crew has donned our costumes to bring you some holiday treats!

LRR: Roll for Treats
Unskippable: Call of Juarez: The Cartel
Checkpoint: Uncharted Charted

This week’s installment of LoadingReadyRun continues the series of Wizards of the Coast-sponsored episodes. Being the lazy Halloweeners (Halloweiners?) we are, this video bears a striking resemblance to most LRR Halloween parties. Costumes sourced from the prop room, some sort of board game, a few bottles of some fine locally-brewed craft beer, these are the hallmarks of our craziest nights. Party animals, we are.

Shirt orders close tonight, so this is your absolute LAST CHANCE to get in on our awesome Magic tees. The end of the pre-orders has gone on the stack, so respond quickly before we send them into exile!

Enjoy the video, all, and have a safe and happy Halloween!

Cheers!

GPLP – Dante’s Inferno (f. Brad!)
October 28th, 2011

Posted by Graham

It was conceived and teased in this old vidcast, and now it’s finally here!

In the newest Graham & Paul Let’s Play, Paul and I are joined by good friend, frequent LRR contributor and (importantly) medieval studies Phd student Brad Kirkland, as we take on Dante’s Inferno.

Brad isn’t an expert on the book, but he’s studied it before, he knows the time period, and he’s armed with a ream of notes. Brad is here to keep us apprised on how faithful the game is to the source material. We’re betting on not a huge amount.
Brad is also here to be generally horrified. We play the whole game this time, so it should be fun!

Watch this space and the LRR Twitter account for more updates, but the first two episodes are below.

 

Here’s Part 1:

And Part 2:

Reminders time, reminder time…
October 27th, 2011

Posted by Matt

I’m a little late getting to the blog this week, I’m afraid (and as I’m sure you’ve noticed). The delayed upload on Monday tossed my whole update routine into disarray, and I’ve only just now had time to sit down and take care of this. Hopefully you’ll forgive me. Because this update is late coming though, and our videos long ago went online, I’ve decided to make this blog post a reminder round-up!

First off, this week’s videos. If you haven’t seen them yet, you probably ought to get on that:

LRR: Socially Awkward.
Unskippable: Mortal Kombat
Checkpoint: The Ultimate Scrolldown
Feed Dump: Powerless and Nude

Secondly, I’d like to alert everyone to the fact that our current shirt pre-order period has been extended until the end of the month, as seen in the graphic below, which Graham apparently updated and stealthily re-inserted into the relevant blog post, much to my delight (mostly because it saves me having to do it. [And by “do it”, I mean badger him to do it for me]). Simply click the banner to be whisked away to our store where you can place your order.

Next on the agenda is Desert Bus, which is rapidly approaching. 22 days remain. The LRR crew has been hard at work to ensure that this year’s event is the best one ever, and we hope you’ll agree. Certainly there are many surprises in store. I’d like to send out an advance thank you to all of the Craft-along crafters too. There’s some truly incredible stuff sitting in the moonbase right now, we’re nearing a critical mass of awesome. You won’t want to miss out. We hope to see you on the stream come November 18.

Finally, it happens that for the next 21 minutes local time, It’s James’ birthday! Happy birthday James! Another year older, another year of wasted youth.

Cheers everyone!

Dunegons & Dragons & LRR
October 21st, 2011

Posted by Graham

Greetings all! Everyone roll for initiative.

I’m excited to formally tell you about a deal we’ve got going with the Wizards of the Coast D&D department, to showcase some of their new products.

Quick background: As you’re probably aware if you’re a long-time LRR fan, Dungeons & Dragons holds a special place for us (and we’ve done videos to that effect in the past). It’s how most of us met and became friends in high school, and was where we started all the goofing around that would eventually lead to everyone getting involved with LRR. And while Jer doesn’t kill our parties as much as his commodoreHUSTLE character would lead you to believe, many of us still play from time to time.

So, when WotC asked us to show off some of their cool new D&D stuff, we were totally up for it.

I’ve mentioned in passing (on the forums and Twitter) that the episode of Feed Dump with the Neverwinter Fortune Cards, and the recent LRR episode with the Legend of Drizzt boardgame were sponsored by WotC, but we wanted to make a full post about it let you guys know what’s up. We like keeping you as apprised as possible (sometimes we just aren’t timely about it… sorry!)

 

Basically, WotC has asked us to showcase some of their new products, and it’s totally up to us how we do that. This is what’s so important for us. They’re products we already love, and we have creative control over how we choose to do it… it’s really the best case scenario for us.

And we do love the products. I mean, the boardgames alone… Jer & Tally have both the Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon games, and we’ve played the heck out of them. So, we were looking forward to Drizzt anyway… we just got it a little early 🙂

 

So there’s a couple more videos to come in the next month or so (perhaps featuring the return of some old friends?), but we wanted to let you know about this now, because we’re very excited about the whole thing.

Glad you guys have enjoyed the videos so far!

 

The Secret Life of Board Games
October 17th, 2011

Posted by Matt

Hi adventurers! Use your move action to head over to The Escapist by clicking this link, and watch this week’s video! (We’ll count the click as free).

This week’s video was written by Graham, and features the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons board game Legend of Drizzt heavily. We’ve fallen in love with these games since Jer got a copy of Wrath of Ashardalon, so it was only a matter of time before they ended up in a video in one form or another. This, as it turns out, is the final result. Graham had the following to say about the writing process:

I think everyone, regardless of what game they’re playing, has at some point given little voices and characters to their play piece. Even if its something as simple as giving revving and screeching noises to the race car in Monopoly. Come on… we’ve all been there.

Going from that, I thought that turning a game filled with as much magic as the D&D board games into “just another day at the office” seemed like a fun idea.

I like that Gary and Dave dislike Ronny not because he’s a big scary half-spider creature (who, in the game, is legitimately a difficult enemy), but because he’s a dick. Then, adding the little cutaways to other games just fell into place. Originally we’d wanted Clue and Snakes & Ladders (“Now it’s Snakes & Ladders & Spiders, bitches!”), but we couldn’t get a hold of them, so Chess and Robo Rally were the replacements.

Unskippable this week was Drakengard 2. You’ll find that video here.

Over on PATV, you’ll find this week’s Checkpoint – once again featuring our good friend Justin McElroy, of Joystiq.

Cheers!