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Friends LiveJournal for SITFUSO.
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| Friday, May 16th, 2008 |
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Quick DRYH/FATE-inspired die mechanic: Whenever you roll for something, you roll Xd6 [where X >= 1]. Depends on the die throw, you total your results differently: * If there are any '1's in the roll, your result is a flat 1. * Otherwise, your result is the total of your dice. Compare with TN or another roll, highest wins. So, the more dice you bring in, the more likely that both you'll succeed grandly and that you'll fail. A potential location for a point of tension. Potential "crunchiness handles": * Fail number (in this case 1, but maybe "1 & 2" for really rough checks) * Number of dice * Die size (maybe larger for more competence or something, as a 1 is less likely) * Other, special dice that don't trigger failure if they come up 1 * The number of fail dice needed to trigger failure (in this case 1, but maybe something would be "needs two or more dice to be 1 in order to FUBAR it up.") Potential "narrative handles:" * Additional dice beyond some starting number are gained through descriptive action or incorporation of color, like in Wushu I'm sure there's more, but it is after 3am. ("Crunchiness handle" term courtesy of Robin Laws. It is probably my favorite term as of late.) |
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Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses: STRENGTHS: most attractive most likely to succeed person with the best hair WEAKNESSES: most trustworthy smartest Everyone seems to think I'm a salesman or something. Seriously what is with this person with the best hair lark? My hair is lightweight, impossible to manage and most of the time unkempt and scruffy. How on earth does anyone think I have nice hair? |
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| Thursday, May 15th, 2008 |
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| I had a very odd dream last night. Gordon Brown said he didn't want to be Prime Minister any more and that I should do it. I tried it for about a day and it was a bit hard so I gave up too. But everyone said that was ok because at least I'd set a new record for shortest term in office. So I just cycled home through gridlocked traffic, happy that no-one seemed to recognise me or even realise that I had been the Prime Minister for a whole day. | ||||
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| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 |
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I have found out, a little late, that the iPhone is a poor choice of phone for a podcaster. It leaks EM worse than other phones. I just ran a battery of tests with my equipment using my iPhone & Jerry's new LG Rumor, and my phone causes EM spikes on all my equipment -- mic, XLR cable, recording device. This annoys me, not just because I bought an iPhone, but because they're popular -- I can't trust a convention hall to not spike my equipment now, when I do remotes. |
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| Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 |
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| Monday, May 12th, 2008 |
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Acquired today: updated edition of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Skipped to end of book to see what the new entries would be. One of them is The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. The FIRST LINE of the accompanying text is: The Kindly Ones is the first serious novel (after an early attempt at science fiction) by Jonathan Littell. God forbid that science fiction could ever be described as being serious. Though perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised (disappointed, yes, but not surprised). After all, this is the book where, in the previous edition, it listed a number of books that had some or all of the following attributes (a) small press/small print run, (b) out-of-print, and (c) not translated and published in English. An exercise in literary wankery, in other words, that served to piss off the people who chose to see the book as a guide to read by. Grr. |
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I have some time traveling on a train this morning on my way up to Hinckley for training. 2 weeks ago I got a new job as an IT consultant. I took it mainly because I think I will learn a lot and get my skills up to date. The downside is that it does involve a fair bit of travel. Previously I had my own company that didn't work out, mainly because most of my clients were in the sub prime loan industry. Otherwise things are going well. We have had a couple of house guests recently. Both from Australia and at different times, but this has given us an excuse to see more of England and we have now joined the national trust which should give us more of an excuse to travel. Bank holiday weekend was excellent; we got to see Churchhill's ex house, Dover castle, Bodium castle (fantasticly stereotypical with moat), Rye, Hastings, Winchester, stonehenge, Avebury and the house where Netherfield was portrayed in the film version of pride & p. |
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| Sunday, May 11th, 2008 |
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My now-stated goal for the end of June: write up a first draft for Mythender Battles -- at least, the parts ones I know. This mainly means writing up the Battle, Relic, Mortality & Advancment bits. I think I like character generation as-is for a battle game, though I may also write up a "quick-generation" method too. The parts I don't get mainly revolved in balancing the opponent with a given set of PCs, as I'm purely doing it by gut right now and the PCs are ever-evolving. Plenty of advice text should be in there, too. |
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| Saturday, May 10th, 2008 |
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At very few book awards do you find the door manned by stormtroopers. But in that regard, as in several others, science fiction is different. One obvious distinction between the Arthur C Clarke Award, for the best science fiction novel published in Britain the previous year, and the Man Booker is that a lot of people care, a lot.- Arthur C Clarke awards: a universe away from the Booker, Andrew McKie |
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| Friday, May 9th, 2008 |
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I watched The Band Wagon last week, and since then I keep thinking of this. So today, I share it with you. ( Read more... ) If that isn't the best musical clip ever, I don't know what is. |
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| Thursday, May 8th, 2008 |
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http://masterplanpodcast.net/index.p Master Plan #29: Designing from Other Games 2, John Wick After the beach sabbatical that was Have Master, Will Plan #1, Ryan goes back to his series of designers talking about their experiences working with other games. This week, he talks with John Wick about his now-in-preorder game, Houses of the Blooded. Along with talking about where various parts of the game were inspired, John drops a bit of insight into some other games and shares some stories where he's collaborated with and contributed to other designers. Then Ryan talks briefly about the part he really thinks is cool, which is what John's doing with the Limited Edition of Houses of the Blooded, particularly the Graphics Pack. |
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Writers in the science fiction and fantasy genres moan about the critical coverage they get from mainstream critics - sometimes with justification, sometimes without - but the fact is most critics inside the genre are intellectual dorks. The genre magazines have a long and ignoble history of roasting novels which are too large for the genres from which they've come. Unformed research material posted in error. Damn software. Proper post will appear, er, later this year? |
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So close to MP #29 being out...and yet so far. My voice faltered on recording the endcap. At least the rest is cutup and ready to go, though. This has been one of my favorite interviews, I have to say. I'm looking forward to pushing it out. Now, less blogging & more sleeping. |
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| Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 |
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Consider, if you will, that one key difference between role-playing games and other games is that there is that intent that the mechanics, or at least some subsets of the mechanics, are open to interpretation & manipulation by the collective will and interests of the individuals playing the game together -- something I call "Groupmind". This intention may be explicitly stated in the text or it may simply be implicit & assumed by the nature of how role-playing games work. This should be obvious, if verbose, as we understand role-playing games to be this thing that allows us to tell stories in our heads by giving us the tools, but doesn't tell the story for us. ( A 1700 word essay on role-playing games and Groupmind, what that does to a ruleset's stability, how I see GMing, and where I see disconnects in GM-less games... ) |
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| Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 |
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( meh )
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I was intrigued to read about the ReaditSwapit website. Here, you register books you have finished with, and agree to swap them for books other people have finished with. The founder, Andrew Bathgate, clearly well-motivated, but too young to have heard of that marvellous institution, the public library, says, ‘we wanted to create a site that would enable people to gain access to books, without having to spend any money.’-- Jeanette Winterson. My intital reaction to reading the above? Unrepeatable in polite company. As were several of the following observations. A bowdlerised edition of my thoughts would read along these lines. Oh, good golly. You silly woman. Perhaps you should pick your analogies with more care. The comparative situation in the music industry is not 'file sharing', but sending a physical CD (or tape, or record, or minidisc) you own to someone else. Last time I checked, that wasn't illegal. If the book was being photocopied, and the copy sent on while the owner still keeps the original, that would be closer to what you're suggesting. But it's a million miles away from what is actually happening. You daft so-and-so. I respectfully suggest that you climb down from your vaulted pedestal and get over yourself. If you wish to have an idea of what the unexpurgated version of the above would look like, sprinkle it liberally with swearwords and add several choice person insults. It just beggars belief, really. Metallica sued Napster eight years ago now, yet there are still people who persist in thinking that the correct way to deal with a situation they are unhappy with vis-a-vis distribution of their work is to abuse their (potential) fan-base? That's just really stupid. |
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| Monday, May 5th, 2008 |
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From a conversation I just had with a friend: Me: Another awesome thing about Unknown Armies: it has mechanics for playing a sociopath. You gotta love that. Him: as opposed to most RPGs, where 'sociopath' is an assumed trait of all PCs Me: heh Me: You know how to tell if someone is a sociopath in D&D? Me: See if their alignment is Lawful Good Him: heheh, that metric works in real life too you know (Long-time readers will note that I very, very rarely copy-post IM. I felt this was worth a few brain cycles.) |
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| Sunday, May 4th, 2008 |
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With work out of the way, Paul, Jerry & I were a bit drained -- running around & shooting all day will do that to you. We ended up deciding that we were going to be too tired to get any gaming in that evening, but as we were eating dinner at the local Vietnamese place, I noticed that I perked up. We talked a lot about PTA, as Paul was explaining it to Jerry & talking about his PTA games overall. Noticing how I was perking up, I asked if they were as well, and gaming was back on the table. We weren't sure between PTA and In a Wicked Age, as Paul and I were a bit interested to play that as well, but PTA was chosen as Jerry was on the phone with another friend of our, James, and pitched PTA to him. So PTA it was. Incidentally, I had yet to play with James this year. You know what that means? Macklin's 2008 Played-With Count (to date): 90! Suck on that, Richmond! (The person or the city, take your pick.) For the game, Paul was the Producer, and James pitched to us what would eventually (with everyone chipping in) become Aircrew! - a 70s light-hearted drama about an "elite" airline crew for Pan World Airlines, who take on the tough flights when normal crews can't! James played the old veteran pilot whose issue was around dealing with his aging self. Jerry played the flight engineer who's constantly chasing after skirts, whose issue was around admitting (or not) that he has a problem with his compulsions with women. I played a half-Russian stewardess (remember, this is the 70's) who wanted people to see beyond "the piece of ass" and see her as a person. Then James took it to fucking crazy town by having the short in our communications come not from the suspicious looking gentleman with a briefcase full of electronics and Cyrillic writing (which we mostly, but not entirely, negated), nor from the co-pilot who had a grudge against everyone (which we were setting up), but from God trying to get a secondary character to save a 13 year old from Jerry's character's clutches. Clearly, our show did not get picked up. But, we finally got to play one of the seminal works in the indie culture -- the original scene framing game, and the game that has made "fanmail" part of our language. So, I was pleased there. Between that and the different take of scene framing that Burning Empires has, I feel like I have a good foundation for this toolbox. Now I want to spend more time using it, learning it better, and enjoying how it lifts the game and distributes the authority out. (Let it be known that I was going for a "lifts and separates" pun, but couldn't work it in to my satisfaction. So later the Internet will get some sort of "PTA is the bra of indie gaming" gag from me. Be warned!) |
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| The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was the one where you pretend to pull your thumb off. | ||||||
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Friends LiveJournal for SITFUSO.
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hot.
bitchy.
amused.
relaxed.
geeky.
chipper.
mischievous.