dungeons

Eau de elf. Essential oil of orc. Chaotic cologne. The one feature that Dungeons & Dragons has always lacked is a sense of smell. It's incredible that nobody has come up with a scratch-and-sniff dungeon adventure. That vast oversight has now been remedied by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's RPG series of perfumes.

The idea is that you build your own scent just like you build a D&D character. Choose your alignment (such as lawful or chaotic), add your class (like cleric or paladin) and top it off with your race (including half-elf or orc). Layer the fragrances together and you get the odor of your D&D alter ego. Ah, the sweet smell of a 20-sided dice.

The perfume descriptions read like wine-tasting notes. The paladin perfume smells like "immaculate white musk, sweet frankincense, bourbon vanilla, white leather, and shining armor." I'm not sure what shining armor smells like, but I'd sure like to find out.… Read more

CARBONDALE, Ill.--It has been many years since I have worn armor, grabbed a battle axe, stormed a castle, and watched my hit points drain away. My childhood came rushing back as I stood just inside the gates of the Jeremy "Boo" Rochman Memorial Park in Carbondale, Ill. I strapped on my breast plate, loosed my broadsword from its hilt, and let out a mighty battle cry... in my mind.

I'm on a detour from the Geek's Guide to Route 66. I veered off the path somewhere around St. Louis and wandered into the welcome arms of Carbondale, where weathered farmers surreptitiously check their iPhones at the local bar. That's my kind of town.

This park on the outskirts along Giant City Road is one of those places you hear called a best-kept secret. It wasn't secret to the dozen kids climbing over the head of a dragon and romping through the castle walls. Wizards battle on green grass, Pegasus rears up from the brush, and gargoyles guard the ramparts. This is Dungeons & Dragons come to life.

There is a sad story behind the magical kingdom, though. Local investment mogul Barrett Rochman built the park as a memorial to his teenage son. Jeremy "Boo" Rochman, an avid Dungeons & Dragons fan, died more than a decade ago in a car accident nearby. According to an article in the Southern Illinoisan, some of the statues in the park are based on painted figures found among Boo's possessions.… Read more

I love soda, but I don't drink it much because I'm not into high-fructose corn syrup. I love Dungeons and Dragons, but I don't play it much because I'm a grown-up with a real job. But I'm excited about a new D&D-themed collection of sodas by Seattle's own Jones Soda Co., which lets consumers personalize sodas with flavors, photos, and messages.

You see, I've always wanted to try an actual Potion of Healing. And now Jones has an array of "Spellcasting Soda," which includes the aforementioned Potion of Healing, … Read more

Pip is a dice-rolling simulator, a handy aid for any sort of game that uses dice--from Yahtzee to Trivial Pursuit to Dungeons & Dragons. Pip lets you roll traditional six-sided dice, along with rest of the holy hexad of polyhedral nerd dice: the d4, d8, d10, d12, and d20.

Pip emphasizes its elegant interface, foregoing the more complex functionality of other dice-rolling apps: you slide out a "tray" on the right side of your screen, then drag and drop your desired dice onto (or off of) a virtual black tabletop one by one. You roll by shaking your … Read more

According to a new study I came across at AppleInsider, Apple's iPhone OS has 40 percent of the Web market share. This study doesn't specifically reflect iPhone or iPod Touch sales, rather it shows that the iPhone OS dominates around the globe when it comes to mobile handset Web browsing. The two areas where iPhone doesn't dominate (Asia and Africa) are places where the Symbian OS had an early foothold and continues to be number one.

We all know the iPhone is doing extremely well around the world, but I have to think this particular dominance (52 … Read more

Dungeon Defense is a promising game with ample swords-and-sorcery ambiance and an innovative take on the traditional tower-defense format. You have to protect a dangerous dungeon, commanding an evil army of skeletons as it fights off heroic (or maybe just greedy?) adventurer types. But the "towers" in this tower-defense game are your skeleton warriors, and the skeletons--being skeletons--they move.

The interface mimics many other tower-defense games: you pick from three skeleton types (light, heavy, and archer), you choose where you want to place them on certain locations on the map, and then you can sell, upgrade, and heal … Read more

A friendly member of Buzztown calls up to tell us how he named his Dungeons and Dragons characters after the core Buzz team. It all seems fine and dandy until he gets to Molly. Ahem. Not cool, guy. In actual news today, earbuds can be dangerous to your health (if you use a pacemaker), Circuit City files for Chapter 11, and the iPhone tops the RAZR as the most purchased U.S. consumer handset. Take that, RAZR!

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Your earbuds could stop your pacemaker http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2008/11/09/2091277-music-headphones-can-interfere-with-heart-devices… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--This is not your big brother's Dungeons & Dragons.

On June 6, Wizards of the Coast will officially roll out the fourth edition of the D&D franchise, as well as a new suite of digital tools, and the world-famous game will never be the same.

And this time, it won't require the death of the game's inventor, Gary Gygax, to get D&D into the news.

I got a preview of what's new on Monday, and while I'm certainly no D&D expert, I'll try to spell out what … Read more

Over at Laughing Squid this afternoon, I found a wonderful item about some ingenuity on the part of some obvious Dungeons & Dragons MIT students.

Apparently, according to The Tech, MIT's student paper, the students put the giant die up in the campus' Killian Court as a way of paying tribute to the late Gary Gygax, who created the iconic game.

This, obviously, isn't huge news, but it's yet a wonderful example of people using a little bit of whimsy and a little bit of creativity and mashing them up to make something that tugs the heartstrings.… Read more