Rules of War by Iain Gale

This is second in a series that reads like Gale is essentially trying to replicate the style of the Sharpe books (in a different age). Jack Steel, his hero, is similar to Sharpe in many ways although from a middle-class family rather than a workhouse orphan. He also predates Sharpe by a hundred years - this book is about Marlborough's campaign against Louis XIV in Belgium.

The story follows the historical military adventure formula, so there's not much unexpected in there. Gale writes well enough that this isn't a bad thing, and Steel has a streak of compassion (particularly when the city of Ostend is bombarded by the Royal Navy) that is unusual.

I'm interested to see where the series goes (and find that first novel).

Spider Star by Mike Brotherton

This is a science fiction novel with a very cool world. The story deals with some humans dealing with an ancient technology (including an expedition to find the makers and learn to turn it off). It reminds me of the Ringworld books, although the scale of the engineering is even bigger.

The characters were interesting too, with a contrast between a retired explorer, now family man, and up and coming explorer in shared command of the mission.

The story leaves a lot of the facts about the world implicit, only explaining those that the characters come to understand along the way. This feels quite natural.

Geiger Counter - The Cylinder

(You're supposed to read 'The Cylinder' in ominous movie voice).

I took the playtest draft of Geiger Counter for a one-shot last night, as I was thinking of running a game at this year's Fright Night halloween convention. I'm also interested to see the similarities and differences with The Infected, given that they have pretty similar aims.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, with some good action/horror moments and a satisfying ending (with the villain of the piece escaping alive, and the rest left dead on the eponymous cylinder). I'm happy with it for my convention game, too.

The contrast with The Infected is basically characterization versus action. Infected focuses much more on character, Geiger Counter really seemed to make the actions to survive primary.

I really liked the way that quick scenes taken in turns really kept things going. Scenes that took more than about five minutes felt like they were dragging, which is fairly telling about the pace of things.

Drawing the map as you go was great too. Ours was a science fiction story, with humans exploring a huge alien cylinder. It quickly turned to chaos, with the entire artifact waking up hostile to the humans, as well as the things that lived inside it. The various groups trapped inside the cylinder did their best to fight off the menace and escape.

The conditions added a lot to the story too - there's a discrete list of things that can affect you after you lose a conflict - you can be injured or dead, but also lost, alone, hysterical, etc. Each has its own narrative effects and having these come into play added a lot of colour to the story.

Overall, the playtest draft delivered 100% on what it promised. I'm looking forward to the final version.

The Path Of Revenge & Dark Heart by Russell Kirkpatrick

Reviewing these two together as I read them together. This series takes place seventy years after his previous trilogy. The story is driven by fallout from the events in the previous story, and also opens up the world significantly. It's interesting, and the novel thinks a bit more about the whys and wherefores of the events than the average (or even superior) fantasy novel. On the down side, there are some truly horrible atrocities committed in the course of events which are fairly hard to get through.

One aspect that I particularly liked is an exploration of the role of a dark lord (the adversary from the previous trilogy), and how his brutal methods of control over his empire may be necessary or superior to more gentle governance. That said, it's far from an apology for him which might be an easier way to play this sort of thing in a story).

Another thing I find puzzling is the maps. Kirkpatrick is a cartographer, so the maps are wonderfully made (plausible geography and professional quality). Despite this, they all seem to miss out the most important things I want a map for: the journeys that the characters take. I think maybe the nicest looking ones have been chosen, rather than the most illustrative.

Sixty Days And Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson

(I kept putting off this because I hadn't quite worked out what I wanted to say. It is apparent now that I don't know).

Anyhow, number three in the climate change series. It's good.

It's an odd combination of disaster story (i.e. what will happen if we fail to act) and optimistic one (i.e. we can save ourselves, if good people make the effort). Plus there's some basic family and romantic drama for the main characters.

Casino Royale

Finally got around to watching this, and immediately regretted not doing so earlier. Very good, and feels a lot closer to the Bond I remember from the novels than the other films. Now looking forward to the next one (even though it has a silly name).

Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson

The second of Robinson's climate change novels. Good. More comments will follow soon, once I finish the third one.

Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire by Simon Baker

This book is companion to a BBC series, and takes portraits of seven people as a way to get at the Roman empire's history. Most are people who I already knew a fair bit about, but the way that Baker draws ideas from the individual lives to the bigger story of Rome is good. Plus, there are a few who I hadn't come across before, such as Alaric (he's in there as the Goth king who finally disestablished the western emperor).

The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger

A light, but enjoyable read. Taking a 1020 calendar to give it some structure, the authors take us through the life in eleventh century Britain month by month. There's a lot of good stuff in there, although the fact that the authors are journalists rather than historians shows.

Radio Freefall by Matthew Jarpe

A first novel that shows a certain amount of potential but doesn't really come through on it. The main story is about a rock star who uses a technology to create certain moods in his audience. However, the story ends up with him saving the entire world from tyranny, in a series of not terribly plausible steps. The characters are all supremely great at everything that they try, which gets a little tedious, too.

The Omega Expedition by Brian Stableford

The final of the emortality series, this one is focused on the unfreezing of Adam Zimmerman, a legendary character mentioned through all the other books. He made vast sums of money in the 21st century and created the Ahsauerus Foundation, the people who eventually created the true emortality technology. In this story, they are finally fulfilling their purpose, and reviving his frozen body to remake him as an emortal.

Of course, things don't go to plan.

The story of Zimmerman's return and what follows is told by Madoc Tamlin, one of the characters from Inherit The Earth. Mortimer Gray, from The Fountains of Youth, plays a big part too. The other stories are woven in too, but not so significantly.

Overall, it's a nice end for the series. The world's too complicated for everything to look simple and happy in the rest of Stableford's fourth millenium, but there's at least hope, and the way the Zimmerman deals with his resurrection makes a good epilog.

Dark Ararat by Brian Stableford

This is the colony story thrown into the emortality series. I enjoyed it more the second time through, although it's still a little odd compared to the others. It still suffers - like most colony stories - from a rather contrived ecology, but in the context of the development of the technologies of emortality I can see why he put this chapter in.

The First World War by John Keegan

Very good history of the war. Keegan has a great writing style, so that the book is compelling to read (very rare in histories!). It is also, inevitably, sobering and depressing due to the subject. Keegan makes a point of exploring the lead up to the war, the decisions that triggered it, and (briefly) the consequences.

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 by David Petersen

This is a strange sort of graphic novel. I got a copy after reading a lot of positive stuff about it here and there, and also reading about the in-development roleplaying game based on it.

So, it's about medieval mice. They have a whole little medieval republic, with villages, blacksmiths and what have you. The main characters are members of the Mouse Guard, a kind of military order charged with guiding mice between towns and protecting them from predators.

It reads sort of like a fantasy story - more like that than a historical adventure - because the other creatures that the mice fight are in effect monsters for them. The story is fast-paced, dealing with a mouse traitor and our heroes discovering what is going on about that. It feels very short, very much just the first chapter of a bigger story (annoying, as the second volume is not due until the end of the year and there are four promised).

The biggest strength is the art, which is absolutely fantastic. The world of these mice is brought vividly to life, together with the scale of things they have to deal with (such as a snake in the first part). The fights look great, too. A lot of things that seem rather silly if described in words, but the art pretty much makes them work.

Cloverfield

I really enjoyed this. It was a great take on a giant monster movie, and the thread of the character stories that tied it together added a compelling human side to the whole thing.

I can see why people found parts of it implausible, but overall it seemed to me like these elements were necessary to the story. The tale of the people who just evacuate to safety right at the beginning is not interesting, even if these people's attempt to save someone else in the disaster zone is absolutely crazy.

Also, I'm glad I saw it on video. I think the constant motion of the camera would have been terrible at the cinema.

Various Hellboy stuff

I'm looking forward to the second Hellboy film, so this week I've rather immersed myself in Hellboy media.

I rewatched the first film, and enjoyed it. I'm not sure about all the decisions they made but they certainly nailed the look and feel of the comics just right. From the shorts I've seen, the second looks like it will be better.

BPRD comics: The Dead, The Black Flame, The Universal Machine and The Garden of Souls. I'd read just a few of these, mainly borrowing a random selection of the monthly comics. Reading the whole of the stories, and in order, was a big improvement. The Black Flame and The Garden of Souls stood out, building up the mythology of Hellboy/BPRD in the former and Abe's history in the latter. Great stuff.

Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others is a selection of Hellboy stories from his past, like The Chained Coffin and Others. Some really fun ones in here, although I find the collections a little of a letdown compared to the stories that move the story along.

Last Stand At Majuba Hill by John Wilcox

This is the fourth Simon Fonthill novel. It's good, but not as good as the third. Some of the characters and parts felt a little forced in this one.

Exploring Prehistoric Europe by Chris Scarre

Half coffee table book, half travel book. It covers fifteen important prehistoric sites in Europe, with a good discussion of why they are important and review of what is known about them.

In A Wicked Age As A Player

This week, one of the other members of the group gave GMing a shot, so I got to experience In A Wicked Age as a player. Compared to most games, the difference is not so huge. The game felts pretty similar, just replacing one set of things to think about (what scene next? which NPC to throw at the PCs?) with another (now what do I do to get what I want?)

I had a lot of fun, with my character (Omid, the Strongest Man in the World!) pulling in a combined win/loss that was really neat - he got exhausted out of the chapter in the same conflict in which he finally won his love. Omid's going to be back a couple more times, too.

The Merchants' War by Charles Stross

Number four in the merchant princes, this one moves along pretty fast and with a lot of excitement. There's a lot of plotlines, making it a little hard to follow until you remember who everyone was. Probably this one will reward rereading just after the first three. The setup for the next one is pretty good too, I'm looking forward to it.

Matter by Iain M Banks

I really enjoyed this novel. The cover blurb calls it a Culture novel, but really it's about people on a low tech world, with only one main character part of the Culture (and she came from the same world as the others originally anyway).

The story explores the place of the low tech people in Banks' galaxy, driven along by a plot about local politics and some machinations of other factions that are intertwined with it.

One other major plus is that it didn't have any of the kind of fascinated description of horrific acts that many of his earlier stories did.

The Quest for Origins by K R Howe

A good overview of what the current opinions are on the way the Polynesians colonized the Pacific Ocean. Howe also covers historical and alternative (i.e. crazy) opinions on the same topic. The book is an easy and short read, and packs a lot of information in there. There's a little bit of a New Zealand focus (probably as Howe is a New Zealander, plus he mentions it as especially interesting in that it's the most recently inhabited piece of the world).

The Cassandra Complex by Brian Stableford

Although this is the fourth of the novels in the emortality series, it comes first in time. It's set about 2040 and deals with a mystery to do with early research into the technologies, against a background of the beginning of what the later stories call 'the Crash'.

The story here is more interesting for what it informs of the later stories than on its own. Specifically, some of the twists and turns get pretty implausible by the end. Of course the mystery is really there to highlight issues about the human reluctance to deal with things (such as population growth and climate change).

The Fountains of Youth by Brian Stableford

This is the centrepiece of the emortality series, and was the one that I remember most strongly from my previous read of the books.

It's an autobiography of Mortimer Gray, one of the first generation of true emortals. Although his life takes many twists and turns over the five or six centuries that the book covers, the thread that runs through is his work writing a history of death.

This allows Stableford to blend the story of Gray's life with his commentary on how people of the past (including us, obviously) dealt with the omnipresence of death. This is interesting stuff, too, and a hell of a lot more deep and thoughtful than most science fiction.

In the background is the huge scope of future history that Stableford has built these books on. This world-building is, to my mind, a lot more plausible than most. There are a few places in which massive, implausible (or unlikely) events occur, but I find that the way he describes society reacting to them feels right. For instance (this will come up more in my review of the next book) the almost totally ineffectual reaction to the climate and (in his world) population crises of the twenty first century.

A great piece of work. Read it.

The Architects of Emortality by Brian Stableford

This is the second volume in Stableford's future history of emortality. This one is set at the cusp of change, when the first true emortals (i.e. humans who will not age) are coming into their own, and those with around two centuries assisted life are very conscious they are the last generation of humans who will die of old age.

The story is framed as the investigation into a bizarre murder, and is just as gripping the second time around (perhaps mainly because I'd forgotten the reasons for it all).

The Golden Compass (film)

I finally got around to watching this on dvd. I enjoyed it - it seemed to be a good adaptation to me. The screenplay was perhaps a little heavy handed at times but overall it kept faithful to the story as written. The visuals brought to life Lyra's world very effectively, too.

Iron Man

This film has pretty much no surprises but is good for what it is.

Robert Downey Jr makes Stark his own, and it's his charisma and humour that really carry the film. The suit is good too, and the fights. The plot is both shallow and easy to ignore.

As an interesting note, this film lacks any shaky fake hand held camera work. The fights are traditional, and you get to see everything happening in it's full glory.

Inherit the Earth by Brian Stableford

Due to a dearth of other interesting looking books at the library last visit, I grabbed the first four of Stableford's emortality series to re-read. If you haven't come across them, they deal with the development of life-extending and ultimately aging-prevention technologies and the way that these affect human society over the next few thousand years.

This is the first, and was just as good as I remembered it being. Knowing what comes after, the events in this one are overshadowed by that future history, which adds a sort of evanescence to the characters and events.

A Traveller's Guide To Mars by William Hartmann

This book has the form factor and layout of a typical travel guide, which is a neat gimmick. Inside is a really interesting, detailed explanation of what we know about Mars, up to 2003 or so (when it was written). It also has a fantastic selection of photos, many from the Mars Global Surveyor.

Hartmann takes a tour by region, in each one telling you a little more about what we know (or speculate). The tour covers areas of interest - both the obvious places to laypeople (e.g. Olympus Mons) and those that are geologically important. He starts with the oldest parts of the planet and works his way to the youngest, overall.

The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bledsoe

This is a hard-boiled fantasy novel. The tough-talking swordsman hero is great, and the mystery he must solve (bringing up dark memories of his past) is entirely the sort of thing you might expect. It works surprisingly well (and in many ways better than the Dresden Files).

Forest Mage by Robin Hobb

I wasn't particularly taken with the first book in this trilogy, but this second volume gives back all that was promised in that story. Possibly as good as the Farseer trilogy, recommended for those who like good fantasy stories.

This one also takes all the seemingly straightforward cultures of the first book and shows enough of each that they take on a lot more depth (and, at the end of the day, they all seem terrible). The protagonist spends the whole novel stuck between two of them, being required by both to destroy the other. He does not have an easy time (which I guess is pretty standard for Hobb - she's very nasty to her characters).

Actual Play Update: In A Wicked Age...

I haven't been making updates on this for each chapter (we seem to manage exactly a chapter per session). The game is still bringing some great play each time, and we're getting the rules down well too, which helps enormously.

The way that recurring characters develop is interesting - we have one in particular who is becoming more and more evil each chapter she appears in. Lucky for everyone else she's not going to be back for a while after last chapter (in which she was harvesting souls).

I'm also looking forward to next session, as I'll be taking a turn as a player, and sharing the GMing around. It will be interesting to see how it feels from the other side.

Updated opinion on the game: Not just recommended, mandatory!

Game Chef: Complete

I had fun with this, and I feel like the game I created has a good solid core in there. I also think it's pretty likely that playtesting will show that the mechanics are totally unbalanced between the three character types and need to be severely tweaked. Still, I'm more happy with this than my other designs.

It's a game about revolutionaries in a world with three strange societies, all in decline. Characters compete to be the one to reshape it all to match their ideals. Possibly for the better.

If you are interested, you may have a read.

Night's Sorceries by Tanith Lee

The final of the Flat Earth stories, this one interweaves the previous two books, telling other stories that interrelate with Ahzrhiaz's story. It's good, including some of the funniest stories in the sequence.

Delerium's Mistress by Tanith Lee

Continuing the Flat Earth stories. This one is a lot more of a traditional novel than the others, all about one character and her life. There's a certain freshness to the fantastic elements too. Good!

Gogol Bordello (A strange music discovery)

So, I came across these guys via Boing Boing and was extremely impressed by what I heard. On Saturday I tracked down their latest album and have been listening to that quite a lot since then.

They call themselves gypsy punks which seems to sum it up pretty well. It is fun, loud, and very very funny stuff.

Here are some of their songs on youtube:
Start Wearing Purple
Wonderlust King

More Wicked Age

We played some more In A Wicked Age tonight. It went pretty well, seeming like everyone was now into the groove of how to play. One recurring character got intentionally removed off the list because his player was sick of him (the guy had some seriously bad chapters), and there seemed to generally be more awareness of how to position the characters for conflicts.

The story went more smoothly than the previous ones, too, with two tangentially related plots each being resolved quite nicely.

I'm really liking this game, and each chapter increases my enjoyment.

No More Heroes

This is a game for the Wii. I'd pretty unreservedly recommend that anyone who owns the console buy it (unless anything I am about to say turns you off straight away).

It's a lightsaber (well, beam katana) fighting game in which you control Travis Touchdown (who is definitely a protagonist rather than a hero, as the title suggests). Having won a beam katana in an online auction, he is challenged to kill some guy by a sexy girl. This done, he is told that he is now #11 ranked assassin in the world and that he needs to off numbers 1 to 10 next. He carries on with gusto, in the hopes of sleeping with the girl (who is also absolutely crazy, it turns out). So much for the story - it's not really that important.

The game throws you into the first boss level right away, with many minions to waste before going after #10. Then you get let loose in the town, which is like a funnier version of Grand Theft Auto (just looking at the names of things is funny... Suplex Burger, Tyrannomarket Rex and Cafe Gloom are my favorites so far... oh yes, and Go Commando Army Surplus). There's a fee to pay to set up each boss fight, so you have to spend a while doing freelance assassination missions and other odd jobs to make money before you can sign up. The odd jobs are strange and hilarious (lawn mowing, mine clearing, pumping petrol, etc). There's also all kinds of collectibles - trading cards for luchadors, t shirts (they're numbered, and I have #83 or so), etc. You find these in various places - alleyways, dumpsters, buried treasure, boss levels, etc.

It also glories in absurdity. Travis talks to you directly, and speech bubbles appear by him to tell you when special button presses/remote movements are required. The HUD is all in fantastic fake 8-bit pixellation, and little midi tones and tunes abound when you pick stuff up etc. It's a collection of game in-jokes, as well as plenty of humour on the dodgy side of taste. The main example is save points - Travis needs to go to the toilet to save the game. As the story goes on the characters say stranger and stranger stuff. At halfway through I can't begin to imagine how it's going to be by the end.

The other chief thing is that the fighting is a lot of fun. The basic system is nunchuk stick to move, A to attack with beam katana and B to punch or kick, D-pad for evade. Holding the remote up or down switches you to high or low stance to defend yourself or get past defenses. That's all cool but not exciting. What makes it are the death blows and wrestling moves. Once you have almost taken someone out, the game goes into slow-mo and displays a (big, pixellated) arrow. You swing the remote in that direction, and that triggers a death blow animation. They are sweet. Wrestling is similar - if you stun an opponent with B attacks, you can grab them with another B press, then you get arrows for nunchuk & remote movements (sometimes two in order) which trigger some fantastic slow-mo wrestling takedowns. There's more in the fighting but that is the basic and the coolest stuff.

So far, I rate this as the best Wii game I've played. Buy it!

Delerium's Master by Tanith Lee

The third book of the flat earth series, this one has more of an ongoing story which appears to continue over the final two books. This detracts a little - I quite liked the collection of stories that were more tangentially related in the first two books. It's still fun, however, so no real complaints.

Under the Eagle by Simon Scarrow

I picked up a cheap copy of this first in the Cato & Macro series, and thoroughly enjoyed a second read of it. Great stuff.

The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia

Absolutely great fantasy. It begins with people randomly turning into birds, and the search for these people leads to an underground where the lost and unwanted of Moscow live - both the politically dispossessed and mythological and fictional characters. As the story goes on you get many little stories about why the people ended up there.

It's similar to Gaiman's Neverwhere, in broad strokes, but this story has a lot more to it. It's more straightforward (in both style and content) too.

Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay

This story is less original than most of Kay's - in this case the ground has been tread before by Robert Holdstock in particular. That aside, it's a good coming of age/discovery of magic in the modern world story.

Game Chef 2008 Approaches...

With a pre-contest, announced here. Interesting! I really like the idea of building a game to fit some illustrations.

Beyond Human by Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre

An interesting review of current research in robotics and cybernetic enhancement and where it might go. The book is strongest on the state of the art, but fairly weak on speculating further ahead (lots of interesting ideas, but many of them are not well supported in the text). There's a few interviews with people involved in the development of these technologies, too, which adds a few other points of view to that of the authors.

Ten Little New Yorkers by Kinky Friedman

Another of Friedman's strange, funny detective novels. This one has a more melancholy mood than usual, and seems like it might be the last he's intending to write. The story also focuses on the recurring characters quite strongly. Good.

Death's Master by Tanith Lee

More of the same crazy and glorious stuff as Night's Master.

In A Wicked Age: Wrathful Gods and Priests

We played another chapter of In A Wicked Age. It was good, with the conflicts running faster and character generation going a bit quicker. I think the other skill that seems to be building up in repeated play is choosing interesting best interests - this game's set seemed a little more punchy than the group's first try.

Anyhow, we had the Blood & Sex oracle, with the character Nirar (fanatical priest of Jila, destroyer of all other gods and cults) returning. The other elements that came up were the classic girl to wed the effigy of the harvest god, a cutting insult and a woman who was the heir of sorcerors and poisoners.

The story started with meetings between the player characters and some initial maneuvers as they planned how to achieve best interests. Then it all went crazy with almost no-stop conflicts as we had Nirar and the priest of the harvest god fighting (Nirar won), a poet-assassin being pursued by the now-animated effigy of the harvest god in revenge for his insults, and some crazy stuff as Adar tried to prevent his lover Shamnita marrying the effigy, and Ivanim (sp?) the poisoner trying to mess things up to her own advantage.

Great stuff. I'm looking forward to the next one (in which Adar will return, possibly as a ghost).

The Night Manager by John Le Carre

An interesting story, written soon after the Berlin Wall came down and dealing with spy agencies looking for other targets. Also stands out in that it kind of has a happy ending.

Night's Master by Tanith Lee

So, Luke lent me the actual books that Vincent Baker listed as inspirational to In A Wicked Age.

It's delightfully weird, and I can certainly see how the style informed the game. It's a fun read in it's own right, of course. In some ways it was like one of the classic Conan stories, but without the racism and sexism. Lee's style is also lyrical and whimsical, unlike Howard's very straightforward, punchy stuff.

One of the best fantasy novels I've read recently. I'm looking forward to the other four.

Spione Actual Play

Discussion thread is at the Forge. Short version: it was good.

Red Box Hack - Troll Trouble

We played a fun game of Red Box Hack. Unlike the other two games I have run, this one had a lot more general roleplaying and hijinks and was less a straight run of monster fights.

The story was that the town of Jade Lake was having more problems than usual with the nearby troll tribes, due to the trolls having a new king. Our 'heroes' all came to town in order to collect the reward and then got themselves thrown in 'the hole' for starting a bar brawl. We started play at this point.

The characters were a Longrunner (returning character from my first game, so level 2 - Birdfeet & Chalk door), a Bear (Heart song) and a Magus (Illusions).

So they first escaped from 'the hole' via a chalk door (into the town sewer). They made their way to a hole, and the longrunner ran up the walls and then acquired a rope to get the others out (with a town watch close encounter on the way). Then they all went and had some drinks and a bath. In the morning, they were preparing to go see the Count about the adventure when a town crier wandered by, announcing (amongst other news) the dangerous escaped convicts. They quickly 'silenced' the poor guy. Then they went to see the Count. After some waiting while he adjudicated a problem to do with a goat, they were told the details and shown the Medal of Glory that the Count was going to give to the people who brought him the troll king head.

They headed out of town for troll central, coming upon a caravan that had been largely destroyed by a huge group of trolls. They bravely attacked but were all defeated. They did some pretty awesome narration of their show off moves, though. The group kind of turned into a air guitar metal crew, so show offs included a lot of air guitar riffing, and similar.

They awoke in another cell, in the troll fortress. The bear healed them (heart song - Queen's 'It's a Kind of Magic'), then they exited via a chalk door. The two troll guards were rapidly slain, and they attempted to rescue other prisoners - until they found one that was some kind of hideous monster. That one got left in the cell. They also acquired a girl who was looking for her parents and also let slip that the caravan was transporting the legendary Golden Statue of the Monkey King.

They began making their way towards what they thought would be the troll king's chambers. They fought some other trolls on the way, which knocked the bear and magus out (they hadn't taken the time to fully heal after the heart song). The longrunner managed to elude pursuit and wake them up, and after another heart song and some troll liquor they were good as new.

Then they made a chalk door on the ceiling where they guessed the troll king's bed was - successfully!

The troll king's bed and his two consorts were angry, and the fight was quick and brutal. Due to a round of epic show off moves, they absolutely nailed the troll king before he got a chance to hit them (he had 5 awesome tokens at this point too).

Then they located the girl's parents and the statue. Both were surrounded by trolls. They realised that they had an ace in the hole, and the magus illusion disguised himself as the troll king. He ordered all the trolls to go attack someone to the north of the fortress, also successfully.

The team grabbed the statue and family and headed back to town. They simply ignored the entreaty to take the statue to the temple it was going to, grabbed the medal of glory from the Count and there was levelling up and rejoicing all round! Huzzah!

Great fun, but a couple of issues that made play a little less fun:

• It's still very easy for anyone to just get nailed in a fight before they had much chance to do anything.
  
• I'm not convinced that we need two different types of roll - I'd prefer if they were all d12 or all 2d10.

Centurion by Simon Scarrow

This new episode in the Cato/Macro series is the best so far. The two are in charge of auxiliaries in Syria, under the command of the Longinus (who hates them). They get involved in the affairs of Palmyra, a kingdom between Roman Syria and Parthia. There's a lot of action, and some good twists and turns as things escalate.

I also liked that Cato and Macro are back (almost) to their natural place. The last book (or two, maybe) in which they are required to act as spies primarily felt a bit less punchy.

The War of Knives by Broos Campbell

The second Matty Graves novel - about a young officer in the US Navy in Napoleonic times - this one has Graves entangled in the slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti). The story is exciting, bloody and generally a little more rough around the edges compared to stories about the Royal Navy. That seems fitting given my knowledge of the US Navy of the times. There's plenty of intrigue in amongst it too, with spies and conspiracies involved in the action.

Captain's Fury by Jim Butcher

In this book, I think Butcher has really hit his stride in this series. The characters are developing well, and there's more focus to it. Also, it's a good story, and I like the way that Tavi is going.

The Last Colony by John Scalzi

This is the third book about Perry (after Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades). It finishes off his story in great style - I think it's the best novel of the three. There's little of the humour of the first novel left, as Perry is given governorship of a new colony world and finds himself in a huge pile of trouble (hostile wildlife, human politics, interstellar war, etc).

The only thing that really troubled me is that a major subplot on the colony world is dropped as soon as the bigger picture issues come into play. I realise that the characters might be preoccupied, but there's a point where several months are skipped and I was expecting that how things played out would at least be mentioned. Oh well, a minor point really.

Read this. After you read the first two.

The Servants by Michael Marshall Smith

A short, strange novel. The story is halfway between Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman, with a kid dealing with various family issues and some mysterious (and later fantastic) things going on in the house he moved to. Interesting.

The Sky People by S M Stirling

A strange beast, this is planetary romance style adventure (e.g. Burroughs' Mars stories) with a hard science background. So we have some heroic people adventuring across a Venus that is filled with jungles, dinosaurs and primitive human tribes, but a plausible alternate history behind it all.

Good stuff. A solid adventure story, lots of neat bits in it along the way.

Nine Worlds: Slaves of Saturn

We played a one-shot Nine Worlds game last night. It was fun, but didn't quite meet my expectations. The main reasons for this were that the characters muses were not quite as good as they could have been, and that we got bogged down in the conflict rules. The muses lacked a bit due to me rushing through character generation a bit (to get through an adventure by the end of the evening) combined with the fact that they're a new idea for the players - everyone had got the idea by the end of the game, but not so much at first.

The conflicts were a problem mainly because I hadn't reminded myself how they worked (Nine Worlds was a last minute pick when one player couldn't make it). This meant that a lot of the subtleties were forgotten the first time through, or not explained well, and so on. We also went into follow-up conflicts too many times... this was just because we hadn't set stakes well, and because of a desire to (e.g.) take advantage of temporary point gains.

In any case, we still had a pretty good time, with the players starting as heroic pirates off to rescue some enslaved relatives from Saturn. Their nemesis, another pirate, tried to trap them at first and this led to a big fight between the two aetherships. Due to some bad luck, their foe got an early advantage and pushed it as far as he could, ultimately killing the PC ship captain while the other two scuttled their ship and escaped in the other. They made their way to Saturn and begun looking for the slaves.

While they did that, the player who had lost his character quickly made up a new one - a slave, hoping to escape, who was also designed to stretch (or break) the mechanics (with 6 or 7 in Metamorphosis and other similarly extreme stats).

We then played out the slave rebellion combined with rescue attempt, which succeeded and had the two pirates team up with the ex-slave (and one reunited with his sister). They went to find the other chap they were going to rescue, but by now we were running low on time.

To finish up, I had a chimera track them down, for one final conflict (with the assumption that if they won they would free the other guy and escape Saturn). This fight was more fun, as we had the mechanics down better by this point, and went back and forward a few times before they finally took the chimera down.

Conclusions: I'm a little more cautious about running this now (not less keen, but I'll be better prepared next time). Also, not well suited to a one-shot - looking back at the one I played in a few months ago, I suddenly respect Steve's ability to keep it exciting and on track even more (I can even pick a few techniques of his that I'm regretting not using last night). Running a longer game, with no rushing over character and group generation, to get muses right is pretty much required. Plus, the fact that you would get much better at the conflict mechanics (it feels to me like 2-3 sessions of play would be enough that it would be fully taken on board).

The River Horses by Allen Steele

This is a short novel in the Coyote sequence. It falls in between two of the novels, and feels like one of the episodes that make the main novels up. The story suffers a little because of this - there isn't the same context as the novels, which means that I couldn't really remember anything about some of the characters (and there isn't much time spent in that sort of backstory). Still, it's a good story.

Gold Unicorn by Tanith Lee

This follows on from Black Unicorn, and continues in generally the same vein. It's a little darker, however, and not quite as fresh as the first book.

Black Unicorn by Tanith Lee

I read this due to the things Vincent Baker said about Lee inspiring much of In A Wicked Age. This isn't one of the specific ones he mentioned, but it was what the library had.

It's fun. Light, funny fantasy about the daughter of a sorceress who inadvertently resurrects a unicorn in her room and the events that follow. It's reminiscent of Jack Vance (especially the Lyonesse books), but without the bizarre vocabulary and with generally more gentle events.

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Like The Subtle Knife, I found this better the second time through. Still the weakest of the three, but a necessary ending to the story.

The Good Shepherd

Interesting.

This is a fictionalised version of the early days of the CIA, from the point of view of Matt Damon's counter-intelligence expert. I'm not an expert on the history, but the impression I got was that the main characters were all loosely based on real people and likewise with the events in the film.

It's pretty slow, and Damon plays his guy so cold that it takes a while to find people in the film to empathize with. As everything starts to slot together, it becomes more compelling.

I'm not sure yet what message to take away from it, which at least suggests it's somewhat deeper than most films. Well worth a look.

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

I enjoyed this more the second time. I think that the knowledge of where Will and Lyra's stories are going helped (the first time, the story felt like it was going off the tracks implied by The Golden Compass).

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

I decided to re-read this instead of seeing the film (which by most accounts is terrible). The book remains good, and coming out of it I can't really see how film-makers could have screwed it up. So much of it seems amenable to filming, with a moderately good writer.

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton

This is a really good read. It's an analysis of what makes houses and buildings good. I came to it via the TV series he made based on it (The Perfect Home), which is also good but has less to it.

In any case, this book gives you a lot to think about and has some really interesting stuff about the history of architecture. It also made me rather dissatisfied with my own house, but at the moment there is no way I can do anything about that.

Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds

I got pretty tired of Reynolds' stuff a while back - I find that the things I don't like pretty much balance the stuff that I do, so overall I don't get a huge amount out of the books.

In any case, I decided to give him another go with this story collection. Some of them were good, some suffered from the same things I dislike (e.g. atrocities).

In A Wicked Age: The Tyrant and the Thief

My Monday evening group played a nice game of In A Wicked Age. We used the God-kings of War oracle, and got a story about a soldier trying to desert, a tyrant and his demon adviser fighting for control of the kingdom, a religious zealot trying to execute the tyrant, and a thief trying to steal some relics.

The story started fairly slowly, with the characters maneuvering for advantage. Once they had felt out the terrain of the story (and become familiar with the conflict mechanics), things began moving a lot faster. The soldier's story was resolved first, with him escaping the army with some stolen cash. The other three ended up in a series of conflicts over the tyrant and the relics, ending up with them all escaping with their goals basically met (although I got the impression some were not quite as resolved as the players may have wished).

Only one character remained on the owe list at the end, and somewhat fittingly it was the zealot. I say fittingly, because he seemed to be a supporting character in this story, against the more significant moves of the demon and thief. I look forward to seeing the story which has him as a protagonist next time.

Mainspring by Jay Lake

Strange novel about an alternate Earth that is driven by clockwork - with the planets moving along rails in the sky and so forth. The story follows a young man given a quest to rewind the mainspring of the Earth before it stops, and follows him through various strange and cool places.

The ending and overall story arc didn't really work for me, however. It was an interesting read, just for the vision of things, but I felt that it needed more resolution than Lake provides.

Samurai Champloo

I should have watched this a while ago, as such a fan of Cowboy Bebop. However, when I attempted to, I didn't like it. Maybe subtitles and watching on a computer screen were the problem? In any case, I watched it on a decent-sized TV this time, and dubbed.

It's really damn good.

Basically, they made a modern, urban-inspired samurai story. This comes through explicitly here and there (particularly in some of the more silly episodes) but generally is present in the attitudes of the characters.

The animation is consistently high quality and the characters are great fun - they're a similar bunch to Spike, Jet and Faye in Bebop in some ways, but they're all moving on from their pasts, rather than letting their pasts drag them down all the time. Also, the fight scenes are fantastic. They're fast and exciting, and Jin and Mugen both have very different (and neat) styles that prevents them getting boring. They also have a healthy disregard for historical accuracy.

Recommendation: Watch them.

Death At A Funeral

Good but not great - a farce in which a funeral turns rapidly into a disaster for the whole family. Some great acting, but perhaps played too straight (with the exception of Alan Tudyk and one or two others). It suffered a little from a few extra characters and subplots that could probably have been left out in order to focus more on the main ones.

The rest of the Aubrey Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian

I got a little bored of individual comments, so here's the overall one for:

• The Nutmeg of Consolation
• Clarissa Oakes
• The Wine-Dark Sea
• The Commodore
• The Yellow Admiral
• The Hundred Days
• Blue At The Mizzen

Nutmeg through Commodore finish the best run of the books, I think. There's a general trend here of the books becoming shorter and more similar (in characterisation and prose, rather than the events chronicled). Still, it's a shame to reach the end again, and sad that O'Brian died (especially without completing the stories). However, the place that Blue At The Mizzen closes is perhaps as good a place as any for the end.

Stardust

Watched this one on dvd last night. I was pleasantly surprised by it. I remember not being hugely impressed by the book - it wasn't bad or anything, just not especially good either.

However, the film brings it all to life very well. The magical kingdom is just as magical as you might desire, and the acting is generally good (often over the top)... I did think that Ricky Gervais and Robert de Niro's pieces didn't quite work, however.

The special effects for some big pieces of magic were very well done, and there's about the right level of humour to contrast with the nastiness of the evil witch and princes who are involved.

Recommendation: If you like fantasy/fairy tale films, see it.

Kapcon/Games on demand - Red Box Hack

This choice came up after someone - Aaron, I think - requested 'the game with the least emotional depth'. The winnowing of choices left it up, so four brave adventurers headed off to the fire caves.

My dungeon had a sketchy plot about two rival groups of imps in the caves with a delicate alliance, which the adventurers totally ignored. Instead they charged in and murdered basically everything. Once again, the quirky character types and combat system were well-received and we had a great time.

I used more arenas and maneuvering this game, which added a lot to the tactical side of things. We did have a general tendency on the players' part to hold their characters back using show off and assist moves for too long... this meant that some of the fights became a waiting game until one side went for it, with many one-hit kills (both PCs and monsters) as a side effect. Note for Eric: do you intend that there is no real way to boost up your defense to get away from a really mean attack? The players were concerned (mainly when I one-shotted their warrior who was sitting on 15 or so awesome tokens, I think) that they had no defensive option in that case. There's something in that, but I had a feeling that this might be intentional on your part... can you let me know which it is?

Their first fight - a giant wolverine - was a walkover, partly because I forgot to include the 10 mook wolverines I had written in... too bad, I suppose. Then they charged right in to the lava imp area and began showing off and assisting while the imps did some quick attacks and so forth. The party were quite cocky about the lava imp shaman and his 10 minions until the third round, when a bunch of reinforcements turned up. The imps played it cautious as the party charged and began fighting, so they were really in the thick of it when the second wave of reinforcements came in. The warrior and bear got knocked out, and the magus was preparing for a final stand, when the mystic used 'commanding voice' to make the imp chief sound the retreat. As the imps pulled back, they ran back to town with the wounded. The bear failed both survival rolls, and died, to be replaced by a longrunner. Two of the monster lava imps remained.

On returning to the cave, they explored the other entrance, and fairly annihilated the village of the steam imps. They found a necromancer (NPC) who had managed to get in, to get one of the treasures himself, and the mystic used commanding voice to make him unsummon his 'giant thing made of imp bones'. Then they killed him, only realising their mistake when I pointed out that they never defeated the bone thing and thus missed out on 40xp. Haha!

There wasn't much time left, but they quickly went back to the lava imp village and finished off the rest of them, just in time for the round to end.

Other notes for Eric:
- I think some more limitations on cross-class talents are in order... in this game, the player of the longrunner urged everyone to take 'Do two things at once (if one is running)', which made them an unstoppable parade of destruction. Maybe like niche protection: you can't have a cross-class talent if someone in the party already has it?
- Maybe add another combat action: 'Cunning plan: use your gear, the terrain, etc to gain some advantage in the combat. E.g. "I use my specialist equipment: bombs to turn the terrain into hazardous!"' Really, I just want a placeholder (and suggested mechanic maybe) for 'something else not directly about damage/movement/awesome tokens'. At the moment, there can be a temptation to just stick to the listed combat actions, because they are listed as 'the things you can do'. Adding one that encourages creative crazy tactics (as seen in both my games so far) would be cool.
- I don't think you need all that stuff about connections between arenas, beyond a little paragraph about how they might be one-way or ranged only or require a roll or something. Categorizing them as you have doesn't seem to add much.
- Some of the talents are way, way more effective than others. Is that a choice or are you still balancing them. Of particular note: the longrunner's two things at once if one is running (do anything then move) compared to warrior's charger (move then get an attack).

Kapcon/Games on demand - The Shab-al-Hiri Roach

This game, pitched as 'all about academic politics, but with an ancient Sumerian roach-god' immediately got two excited players (both only too familiar with academia), plus another who had played it before.

The game was the most restrained outing to Pemberton I have yet seen, with only one murder (committed by my character, who was a little paranoid even before he was possessed by the roach). Everyone else was maneuvering the luminaries against their enemies in a manner much like it is done in the real world (or, at least, the world of university politics).

The other thing was that everything fired on all cylinders right away - each event, scenes were quickly proposed and resolved, then followed up by others building on what had gone before. We raced through the six events of the year, with time left for a couple of InSpectres missions. That said, it wasn't like we were skipping any cool stuff... just focus on what to do each scene, and how to manage it. We did have a little less focus on NPCs than my previous games, which probably contributed to the quick finish. The four of us largely concentrated on each other in our maneuvering for reputation.

We all spent most of the game possessed, the winner luckily drawing a roach card at the beginning of the final event and casting it off (just as the other character who had already done so was possessed a second time).

A great game! The Roach is a nice one-shot, and I haven't had a game yet that wasn't hilarious.

Kapcon/Games on demand - In A Wicked Age...

I played this twice, in rounds 1 and 4.

Re-reading the rules, I note that I made one mistake about how conflicts work, but a fairly minor one that didn't detract from play (for those who care, it was they way that round one's first roll is initiative, and that the winner should declare actions and the loser respond and re-roll their dice. We just skipped the initiative bit, really, rolling against each other and then on to the second round).

The first group picked 'A Nest Of Vipers' and we had:
... A murder by strangling of an officer of the city... (ha, in play this was actually a stabbing)
... A night-wisp who devours its victims magical potency...
... A wayhouse in which plague victims hav recently stayed... (this got transformed into a warehouse by the magic of one person reading and another writing)
... A conjuror possessed of spirits of uncivil character...

The player characters ended up being the night-wisp, the conjuror, the murderer and the new officer of the city (chief justice/watch commander).

The story began with the wisp and conjuror meeting outside the city, and joining forces (the conjuror bound the spirit and added it to the collection of uncivil things possessing him). The murderer desired the victim's wife (the town priestess) for his own. The watch officer wanted to catch the murderer and execute all magicians. This led to a fun story as everyone was running around the city trying to mess with each others' plans. We had some great shifting alliances as people switched around after discovering that they had been lied to (and so forth). It all culminated in a fight between the officer and priestess and the murderer, who was slain, and then an attempt by the night-wisp to devour the power of the city's god for it's own (this failed).

Great stuff. Nobody else really knew what they were getting into... I think my enthusiasm to run the game was the main determining factor that interested people. Afterwards, two of the players said they were interested in buying the game on the strength of that story, too.

Second time around, we chose 'The Unquiet Past':
... A convocation of a ruin's ghouls, gaunts and wisps...
... An ancient stone way-marker indicating an overgrown road and the ghost of the man buried under it..
... A cruel and powerful young lordling...
... A camp physician, her pockets full of salves and drugs...

The player characters were the physician (who was from a nomad tribe), the chieftain of the nomads, and the lordling.

This story ended up being all about nomads versus the encroaching settlements. The lordling had started a colony town, to build up his power to rival his father's city. We began with him leading a surveying team, and meeting the physician at the ancient way-marker. After some initial talk, the ghost beckoned them both along the road. This road led to the ruins, where the various monsters had their convocation. Both the nomads and settlement had been suffering the depredations of the monsters, so all three characters worked together to deal with them. This culminated in a big battle, with the chieftain and lordling duelling the leading gaunt and ghoul, respectively and attempting to outdo each other in glory. This contest was a draw - they both slayed their enemies, and the surviving monsters fled into the desert.

In the aftermath, tensions between the two groups became apparent... the lordling wanted the nomads as his vassals, and they wanted the settlement gone from their range. The physician now was pursuing a cure for her nephew's blindness. A cure was suggested by the town doctors, but the lordling had his men harvest the fungus required before the physician could reach it. She attempted to steal it from them, but was caught. Brought before the lordling, this gave him the bargaining chip he needed to force the nomads to compromise... just before they assaulted the city! In the end the nomads agreed to trade peacefully with the town when they were near, and the physician was indentured to the town for a year to pay for her attempted theft (but her nephew was cured).

So... two very different stories, but both great fun to create. The oracles are fantastic at generating a grabby setting and characters, and the way that things play out afterwards was amazing to watch. The game delivers everything the text promises, and is now the one I most want to play a longer game of (beating out Hero's Banner and Nine Worlds, both now fighting for second place).

Kapcon/Games on demand - The book table

This is the display of games we had available.
Only a few got to be played, but the selection was still pretty damn impressive.

Kapcon/Games on demand

I just finished up my time at Kapcon 17 here, running our inaugural games on demand room with Steve Hickey, Malcolm Craig and Morgan Davie. It was a success as far as I was concerned - I had a great time.

I also got to play In A Wicked Age (twice!) and it turned out to play as good as it seemed like it would.

Also ran games of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, InSpectres, and Red Box Hack. I'll post some more detailed reports on those once I have time to think about them.

It was also good socially. We had all the games stacked on a table, and plenty of interested people came to look at them, which led to some interesting conversations and various game evangelisation.

The Thirteen-Gun Salute by Patrick O'Brian

This must be one of my favorite of the whole series - it has a bit of all the different things that make the books so good... the relationship between Aubrey and Maturin, some spy stuff, some real people, some fun fictional people and places, and some military action.

Read-through Review of In A Wicked Age by Vincent Baker

Technically, this hasn't been released yet, but I pre-ordered it and got a preview pdf in my mail this morning.

It's short, with only a few pieces of art - they're immensely evocative of the setting, however. The setting is basically undefined except implicitly. There's the art, plus the oracles (more on these later) and these imply a version of Mesopotamia (or somewhere like that) with spirits, gods and magic.

Game play involves randomly choosing some elements from an oracle (there are four to choose from with differing styles). Each element is a little sentence - maybe describing some characters, a single character in more detail, a place or an event. Then all the characters explicitly mentioned or implicit in the oracles are listed.

Players choose one of these to play for this chapter (session). Everyone else is an NPC. Then character generation goes ahead, which is pretty simple. The oracles and system push for stories about sex, violence or sex and violence.

Then there's a bit of discussion about how to set up scenes, how to get to conflicts or build up to them. This all seems pretty solid advice.

Then there is conflict resolution, which is kind of interesting. Like Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard, there is quite a lot going on in the mechanics. In A Wicked Age seems basically simpler and also quicker (there's a three-round limit on conflicts). It's not just a simplified version of the Dogs mechanic, though... it's quite different but with a similar feel. Partly this is that the narration leads to rolls and the rolls then feed back into narration in a similar way. Looks cool, anyhow.

An important element is that if a PC gets beaten but not knocked out of the conflict, they go onto the 'we owe' list. This has two effects - the first character on the list automatically gets to be in the next chapter. However, you may also strike off a character from the list to either give them a temporary advantage in a conflict or bring them into a new chapter.

A chapter is deemed to be over when either the characters fulfill all their desires or time is up.

The next chapter gets prepared right away, with the player whose character is on top of the 'we owe' list noting down the character at the top of next chapter's sheet, plus picking the oracle that you will use for the random elements, and picking one element from the list to include. The other three elements will get randomly picked when you begin that chapter.

I'm pretty excited to give the game a try, it seems to have a nice episodic structure combined with a setting with loads of cool ideas that can be built on in play.

Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe

Strange (like of all Wolfe's stories, really). It is about a young man who just falls from the near future back into the height of piracy in the Caribbean. In many ways, it's a reaction to all the overly romanticized pirate stories in the world, although there are still a lot of these elements to be found. The main character is an interesting chap... he was brought up really tough in early life (his father was a mafioso) but then sent to a monastery for schooling. So he's humane, but able to make hard calls too. When he finally gives in and becomes a pirate, he still tries to be as good as he can (i.e. preventing loss of life, freeing slaves, protecting prisoners from his crew).

Recommended if you like Wolfe's books (if you don't know, this is probably not the best place to start).

Actual Play: Don't Rest Your Head

We played a one-shot of this one last night. It went well, although suffered a little from first time play (as GM I went a little easy on the players at the beginning, some rules issues, etc).

For a one-shot, the characters ended up being made too individual - it would have worked better if everyone was in a group (afterwards, someone suggested a sleep-disorder center, which would be perfect). A bit more time for me to think about some nightmares for each character would have helped too... two of the ones I came up with were pretty strong, but the other two were not. Having the group tied together from the beginning would help here too.

The rules work well, and the tension between wanting more dice and wanting to avoid mechanical consequences of using them was very effective.

I'd like to run this again, I think my second try will be a whole lot more fun. Especially with either setting things up better for a one-off or playing a whole story out.

In War Times by Kathleen Ann Goonan

Strange novel about... well, responses to world war two, I guess, in the context of people trying to improve humanity so that it doesn't happen again.

Some things bothered me, like some pretty blah stuff about consciousness and quantum (a personal bugbear of mine). However, as a meditation on the human condition and how to prevent wars, it's a good one.

In The Garden Of Iden by Kage Baker

Finally, I read the very first of the Company books. It's also one of the best, following the immortal cyborg Mendoza in her early years, mainly her first mission. Has everything that the series is great for - humour, pondering the place of the cyborgs, sinister Dr Zeus plans, etc.

Fantastic.

Red Box Hack - Temple of the Dragon Priests

I played a game of this last night with a pick up group at hix's house con. Overall, we had a blast.

Character generation was a highlight, with everyone enjoying the classes and talent picks. We then had a small changeover as a pre-planned game began, and two players left, passing their characters to other people. Both characters appealed to the new players, luckily, so that was fine.

We had time to go through about half the dungeon I had planned - this involved the 'find out stuff in town' scenes, getting there, fighting a monster that was hunting from the dungeon, and then taking out a goblin tribe in the old temple.

The first fight was with a tough wolf-beast, and the four characters only just survived (two were taken out). This was partly that I made it too tough, and partly that one particular power was overpowered. However, a burst of cunning tactics by the remaining two players had them defeat it okay.

Then they scouted out the old temple, got spotted by goblin guards. The scouting pcs took out the guards, then there was a big battle versus the goblin warlord with 12 more goblins. The warlord had a neat power that allowed him to redirect damage onto his mooks, which was a lot of fun for all. This guy also had the first treasure they were after.

Then the sneaky snake character got into the goblin area and scouted it out inside, and another battle began to take out the goblin shaman (monster). The shaman had the stun power, and this was another close fought battle, with people still down hp after the first one. They won, and everyone levelled up.

That brought us to the end of our time, so we finished up there (leaving the dragon priest cult untouched in the lower levels, maybe they'll get theirs another time).

We discussed what worked, and everyone liked the simple system and combat, and the fact there were a few tactical options in there.

Seems like the system is basically solid, though. I think it really just needs the GM planning section sorted out and a few more tweaks.

It had a lot of the cool tactical feel of Agon, but with the emphasis on teamwork instead of individual glory, and a more light-hearted attitude. Great stuff.

Endless Universe by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok

This is some cosmology for laypeople. Specifically, the authors are introducing a new theory of cyclic universes as an alternative to the big bang with inflation model that is currently the received view. They're obviously excited by the research (which they appear to be leading champions of) but also cautious about a theory that so far is observationally indistinguishable from the competition.

It's a fairly easy read, with no mathematics and a fairly slow buildup of jargon. The theory is fascinating too, and I can understand the feeling that it is more elegant than inflation (at least, as they presented it here). It's the idea that the universe is a n-dimensional membrane that is paired with another across a microscopic extra dimension. I've come across this before, as an explanation for dark matter (in this case, the dark matter is in the companion space-time: undetectable by radiation but gravitationally interacting). They focus more on the way that this generates a model for the existence of the cosmic background radiation, expanding space and a variety of that sort of cosmological mystery. Essentially, it comes down to the two membranes crashing into each other periodically, then bouncing back for a trillion years or so before they collide again - which smashes everything into an immensely hot soup of basic particles before cooling down into stars and so forth again.

It's also rare to read popular science that is so cutting edge - normally it is about stuff that is much more settled than this.

Interesting!

Nine Worlds by Matt Snyder

I've already played this one, so I pretty much knew what I was getting into. The book's a very nice one, with some nice Art Nouveau page decorations that contribute a lot to the feel (especially when you make it most of the way through and discover that the setting is full of that style).

The mechanics have a few more subtleties that didn't come up in a one-shot, such as the choice of using Arete (skill) versus Hubris (magic) in every conflict is also a statement about whether you accept the rule of the Primarchs (i.e. the Olympians and Titans) or are rejecting it. There are also a lot of nifty options in the results that we didn't use all of.

Conflict resolution is by cards. You draw a number of cards based on your Arete or Hubris plus any relevant Muses (character goals). You are looking for a number of cards in one suit, which you then add to the ability associated with that suit to get your total. The ability chosen also determines how you deal with the conflict - if you pick clubs for your total, then you used Chaos (destruction) to achieve your end. After the totals are revealed, there is a point scoring phase, in which you may take points from opponents that you beat. Face cards, aces and jokers score points, and you then may use those you won plus your own to temporarily rearrange the stats of anyone involved in the conflict. Exactly how depends on the suit played, but options include moving points from one character to another, increasing or decreasing them, or locking the current scores for a while. My feeling is that this will get really interesting once the group gets a good handle on the rules, allowing a lot of fun tactics. In the game I played, we really just scratched the surface of this stuff.

Once again, a shout out goes to Muses, the coolest thing in the game. These are player-authored character goals. Once you resolve it one way or another, the current rating gives you points towards character development. These can be of two different types, depending on whether you had more Arete or Hubris successes for the goal.

The setting is both really cool and extremely evocative. Snyder provides a huge, epic, history to build on. Then he presents a page on each of the nine worlds that describes a few key conflicts going on there right now, together with some statted up NPCs for that world (usually deeply involved in the conflicts just mentioned). The color is pulled from Greek myth, with the Olympians and Titans currently in a cold war type of situation after a couple of wars that raged through all the worlds. It seems prefectly matched for the intention of allowing each group to pick a couple of their favorite places to build the story from, and then just go from there. I also really like that it's set up so that you can build your character up to change the world - there's a sort of endgame where you become a champion for a Primarch (ruler of a world) or instead usurp a Primarch's position.

Good stuff, recommended!

A Prairie Home Companion

I was somewhat surprised by how much I enjoyed this Robert Altman film. It's about the very last show of a Grand Old Opry style radio evening. It pretty much just shows you all the people involved and lets them do their thing. In feel, very much like The Big Lebowski (albeit without quite as much darkness as is usual for the Coens).

69 A.D. : The Year of Four Emperors by Gwyn Morgan

Fairly dense history of the civil war that the title implies. Morgan is attempting to take the few but disparate sources and work out what was most likely to have actually happened. The paucity of material means that a lot of this is fairly speculative (or relies on just one original author). On top of this, the number of people and legions involved means that just keeping track of those is hard work in itself.

Thumbsucker

A strange film about a teenager who still sucks his thumb. It's in the quirky family comedy-drama genre, a bit like Little Miss Sunshine or Rushmore. I liked it for not having anything really terrible - no awful secrets, just people dealing with odd problems.

The main thing that I loved, though, was Keanu Reeves. He is the main guy's orthodontist, and plays the guy as a new age spiritual mentor. It's fantastic, and the film is worth seeing just for that.

Queen of Candesce by Karl Schroeder

This novel follows on from Sun of Suns. Like the first, it has a big weird setting that serves as a backdrop to a great adventure story.

In this one, a character who I remember as one of the villains from the first novel is the focus. She finds herself stranded in a bizarre corner of the world, and sets herself the task of getting home. This involves taking on a whole group of insular, crazy nations in the habitat.

Good stuff.

Reign: The County of Grockelfin

We played a one-shot using Reign. My idea was to have everyone roll random characters, see what we got and then either point-build or roll a company for them. After that, I'd grab some of the companies I made up, pick some as antagonists and let it all roll, driven by the players' plans for their company.

This overall structure worked well. We had a variety of down on their luck but previously important characters, and they rolled a small coastal area as their company. One-roll character generation was a success in this context, creating some interesting characters that gave everyone some unusual elements to build on - perhaps the coolest was the bastard who was stranded and raised by animals as a child. We decided that they had been shuffled out of the way by the king for various reasons, and put in charge of this impoverished border county.

After some initial discussions, they decided to go after the rebels in the hills, mainly as a way to build up the county - their first raid was intended to loot all the rebels' goods. After some misadventures in the early stages, this became personal and over the course of the evening they conquered the rebels utterly. We also had some other side-plots, with a religious sect, some mercenaries and one PC's (doomed) attempt to take the company's influence rating above zero (so that he could be the spymaster that he claimed to be).

We had to abbreviate a lot to fit in the company action, leaving most of the PC missions down to a single scene or two. Given longer term play, these would be much more of a focus (and thus much more fun). On the other hand, we gave the company rules a decent workout and had a lot of fun.

Positives: The company stuff worked well, and gives you some easy goals in play. The world has some cool features, that added some good colour (although I was fairly cautious about infodumps, I did a couple on major points - geography and ghosts as I recall).

Negatives: The magic system and esoteric disciplines are pretty over the top for a one shot - there's a lot to take in. Almost certainly this is a non-issue for medium or long term play.

The Sons of Heaven by Kage Baker

Goodness, the final novel in the Company stories. It's an epic conclusion, perhaps somewhat rushed as Baker ties up all the loose ends from the series. There's also an element of deus ex machina at the very end. That's not to say it's annoying - in fact the over the top elements there are in many ways sidelines to what's actually happening, rather than a way to avoid concluding it properly (it might be that it was required to prevent the book being twice as long).

The ending is a good one, too. She answers or addresses all the interesting questions about immortality, time travel, and so forth that she has brought up through the series. Satisfactory!

Now I just have to read the first one...

The Letter of Marque by Patrick O'Brian

This novel basically continues the story from The Reverse of the Medal. Here, Aubrey has been struck off the navy list and is commanding a privateer. The story deals with his use of this to get himself reinstated and how he deals with all his dreams and plans being destroyed. Although there is no shortage of action in this story, it's another that shows different sides of Aubrey and Maturin, as they deal with their various problems.

The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O'Brian

This book is fairly unusual in the series in that little of it takes place at sea. The plot concerns legal entanglements and spying in England, mainly, and so it's a change of pace from most of the series. However, this gives us a different perspective on Aubrey and Maturin.

The Far Side of the World by Patrick O'Brian

Another re-read. I was once again reminded of how utterly different the source novel is to the film adaptation (not in a bad way - I think it was about the best a single film could do with O'Brian's novels). The main themes of the film are almost unrelated to those in the book, and the naval action is too. Odd.

Treason's Harbour by Patrick O'Brian

Another re-read. This is one of the books that gets deepest into Maturin's work as a secret agent, and this gives it overall a very tense story (especially as we the readers know of a traitor that he does not). It is also the first time we really get to know Reverend Martin, and his unfortunate habit of being bitten, stung or otherwise abused by random creatures.

Magicians of the Depression (Mortal Coil)

Tonight we embarked on a short period of trying out one-shots of various games that I have not yet managed to play. First up was Mortal Coil.

Our setup was that we were in a small town in the dustbowl. The characters were some magicians who were all miners (although the mine had shut down). It seemed that they spent their days at the union hall, fighting the mayor and presumably any other people who threatened the status quo. Interestingly, they resisted things that might have directly helped them (i.e. a railroad line to the town).

Setup and character generation was fun, and provided a good basis for the world. However, it felt pushed to do it quickly enough to fit some play into the same session. An entire evening building the world with play the next time would have worked better.

The conflict system works, although there's a lot to keep track of. Possibly more than I can manage as a GM (especially when multiple NPCs get involved). The total lack of randomizers is also kind of odd... just mentally different and subtly odd.

Everyone really enjoyed the ability to define magic as we went. That part was great fun.

Good game, but looks like it really needs continued play to get to the game's strengths.

Hadrian's Wall by William Dietrich

A good adventure story, perhaps tending a little towards over-romantic (although I prefer authors to err in this direction than cynical misanthropy).

The story is framed by an investigation into some terrible event that occurred at a fort on Hadrian's wall in 367 AD. It's only gradually revealed what occurred, but we follow a patrician woman, sent from Rome to marry the new prefect as part of their two families' political alliances. She gets involved in some Celtic barbarian raids and rivalries and tension between the Roman officers.

This isn't really a time and place generally associated with stories about Rome, and I think that Dietrich enjoyed that aspect of the story. The legions (and indeed Romans) that he writes about here are very different from those we generally think of (e.g. in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus).

Spione by Ron Edwards

This book is part general history of spying in the Cold War (particularly in Berlin) and discussion of the popular culture associated with it. It's also a game to replicate personal spy stories - basically stories like Le Carre's.

The history part is very good. It's concise, and packed with interesting facts. As well as that, it follows neither an academic historical format nor that of a typical history aimed at laypeople. It's somewhere in between, but not on a direct line. Perhaps it's just that it seems to reflect Edwards' own research and discoveries (and his excitement while doing that).

The game is quite specific and closed. You tell the story of two spies in Berlin during the Cold War. Characters are pre-generated and included in the book. However, the personal history and role as a spy are separate. Character generation is basically picking one person and one spy sheet, and sticking them together.

The other element to character generation is one that I find somewhat out of my comfort zone. Every player is required to write down two 'trangressions' - morally wrong things that they or someone they know has done. The player for each of the two characters each pick one of these at random and this act becomes part of the character's history. This feels like it's getting into a kind of psychodrama that I have no real interest in exploring. On the other hand, these spy stories generally include flawed characters and this method seems well picked to have a plausible and relevant flaw included.

The other players, by the way, share the responsibility for playing all other characters in the game.

Play proceeds by building up scenes, each player taking turns to add elements. The scenes generally are about one or the other spy, but everyone gets a turn to add to them. When the scenes reach a flashpoint (that's the game term - essentially a critical conflict) then you go into a card game to resolve that. Each player has a particular card associated, and a certain number (based on the character) are laid out. Then you play a few rounds of a game that allows you to maneuver your cards around. This allows you to influence the order of narration (each player narrates as their cards are placed in the line) and how much authority you have (e.g. if you lay a card on another player's, they narrate one thing and then you add to that; only if you have two matching cards may you narrate a character's death; etc).

Play continues through building up scenes to flashpoints until a spy's friends and companions are all removed from play - then the character comes in from the cold, one way or another. Once both spy's stories are over, the game is finished.