Well, the game's coming along pretty well. I'm actually quite surprised how easy it's been so far, but that might just because it's a new and fun project.
My last big effort was the Kapcon LARP, of course. I suspect that writing and publishing The Ship is going to end up being a fraction of the work.
I've found it interesting that some of the decisions I made are very unusual for a roleplaying game.
For instance, your player character will never die unless you specifically wish to risk their life in response to at crisis. In some ways that's a really obvious choice - we know that Aubrey and Maturin are going to survive each novel to continue their adventures. However, it's astoundingly rare in roleplaying games, even though it is a natural way to go - in almost all games, we want our character to survive and develop. Obviously we don't want it to be easy for them, otherwise it would be boring. So why do most games allow player characters to die so easy? The only reason is historical - D&D came from wargames, most other games evolved from D&D. At the end of the day, though, it should almost always be a player choice.
Enough ranting there. Anyhow, I've also recently begun reading Vincent Baker's blog which is mainly about game design issues and I've been getting a lot of "he's so right" moments going through the stuff there. A lot of "hmm, that's where I'm going in writing The Ship" as well. Recommended if you are interested in some extremely insightful thoughts on how roleplaying games work. You might disagree with him, but I suspect that you'll think about gaming with a bit more clarity. He's the author of Dogs In The Vineyard, my latest game purchase. I'm reading the pdf now while the hard copy is put in the mail. Expect a review soon. Sneak preview of the review: it's absolutely amazing. Also, the links he has on the Dogs page are great. Except that gentleman's Emporium place won't ship their wonderful Victorian style coats outside the USA. Bah!
05 March 2005
My Amazing Nautical Game Contest
Okay, so I'm doing fine on the actual game design at the moment, well on the way to a draft that I can playtest.
But I still have trouble with the name. The Ship is still the best I have, but it's not that great. I like it now more than when I started but there's no spark in it.
So, in an effort to have someone else help me, I'm going to have a game naming contest. Post a comment if you have any suggestions, and if you come up with a name that I want to use, I'll give you a couple of copies of Game X when I get it to the printing stage.
Things to bear in mind:
But I still have trouble with the name. The Ship is still the best I have, but it's not that great. I like it now more than when I started but there's no spark in it.
So, in an effort to have someone else help me, I'm going to have a game naming contest. Post a comment if you have any suggestions, and if you come up with a name that I want to use, I'll give you a couple of copies of Game X when I get it to the printing stage.
Things to bear in mind:
- I'm already occasionally pondering nicking one of O'Brian's titles from the Aubrey novels... The Wine Dark Sea is probably most appealing there (and he nicked that one from Homer anyway).
- The game's going to include multiple settings. At very least a Napoleonic and a science fiction one and I'd like to do more. So it can't just apply to one of them.
Film Review: Bubba Ho-tep
Well, after some years of wanting to see it, I finally got around to watching Bubba Ho-tep tonight.
It was really good.
I had wanted to watch it purely on the grounds that it features Elvis fighting an evil mummy, and was fully satisfied in that area.
However, the film actually did a lot more than just being a shlocky B-movie (which I pretty much expected, even though other people had told me to expect more). They did some neat stuff with the myths of Elvis and JFK in there. And Elvis and Jack are both convincing old, mad guys trying to save their rest home from supernatural evil. And it's always possible that they're not mad, and they really are Elvis and JFK. I mean, both their stories are pretty far fetched, but in the world of the movie ancient mummies can suck people's souls out through a very uncomfortable place - who knows what else might be going on?
It was really good.
I had wanted to watch it purely on the grounds that it features Elvis fighting an evil mummy, and was fully satisfied in that area.
However, the film actually did a lot more than just being a shlocky B-movie (which I pretty much expected, even though other people had told me to expect more). They did some neat stuff with the myths of Elvis and JFK in there. And Elvis and Jack are both convincing old, mad guys trying to save their rest home from supernatural evil. And it's always possible that they're not mad, and they really are Elvis and JFK. I mean, both their stories are pretty far fetched, but in the world of the movie ancient mummies can suck people's souls out through a very uncomfortable place - who knows what else might be going on?
02 March 2005
Read-through Review of Run Robot Red
I just got hold of Run Robot Red by Annie Rush, after hearing various good things about it here and there.
It's not long, so I read through most of it last night (I skimmed the crunchy bits). It's pretty cool. The basic idea is that you are robots in a communistic robot society in which you must be mediocre. Any robot that is not good enough or too good is punished, only robots that maintain the level of ability mandated by the overseers succeed.
The player characters are all robots who have decided to fight against the system, joining "ART" the conspiracy of those who dare to do things well.
So that's the setting. It reads like it will run kind of like Paranoia but with somewhat different emphasis (i.e. you are required to be mediocre rather than loyal). The game has a definite trajectory, in that you start out as conspirators and there are certain things that you will end up finding out and that will lead to a natural place to end the game. Rush provides the GM with two basic endgames, but it would be easy to add more or mess with those ones if they didn't appeal. Both the provided ones are interesting and should make for a satisfying story.
Also, everything possible using alliterative acronyms, which adds a lot of whimsical style to the thing. I mean, "Optical Openings" is certainly a funnier name than "Optical Sensors". Especially when everything is named like that...
What really stands out is the character creation. The robots are all different, with various standard units, abilities and custom extras to differentiate them. Additionally, robots from different factories have certain types of attachments and personalities common to them. There are a few different character generation methods to choose from, and they all look like they'll give you a crazy bunch of robots to play. The standard utility attachments range from basic arms to pneumatic cannon and electroprods and the factory-specific odd ones are all amusing (and might even be useful!)
The other thing I like is the economy of power. You need to keep track of your battery level. The dice rolled for an action are based on your CPU and the utility being used and this is how much energy will potentially be used. On a normal roll you just roll these and get the power back.
However...
If you roll better than your target number you are over-achieving and risk drawing the attention of the controllers. You can drop dice from your roll to minimize over-achievement, but this wastes energy, so you lose a charge. So you always want to walk the knife edge of doing well enough to get your target number, but never too well. I think this will lead to some funny moments in play, with robots saying "No, you open the door. I'm too good at it!"
Another nice trick is what happens when a robot over-achieves so much that they attract the attention of the controllers. In this circumstance, the robot is informed that an Internal Investigation Bot is on the way to assess them. The GM leaves the room to allow the players to get the robots' stories straight and after at least 30 seconds they return in the persona of the IIBot. Then the GM interviews them to determine if the suspicious robot needs to be memory-wiped and reprogrammed. I suspect that will be hilarious in play.
Overall, a very funny game. Probably only good for the odd short campaign, rather than long term (although there are seeds of some rather different longer campaigns in there).
It's not long, so I read through most of it last night (I skimmed the crunchy bits). It's pretty cool. The basic idea is that you are robots in a communistic robot society in which you must be mediocre. Any robot that is not good enough or too good is punished, only robots that maintain the level of ability mandated by the overseers succeed.
The player characters are all robots who have decided to fight against the system, joining "ART" the conspiracy of those who dare to do things well.
So that's the setting. It reads like it will run kind of like Paranoia but with somewhat different emphasis (i.e. you are required to be mediocre rather than loyal). The game has a definite trajectory, in that you start out as conspirators and there are certain things that you will end up finding out and that will lead to a natural place to end the game. Rush provides the GM with two basic endgames, but it would be easy to add more or mess with those ones if they didn't appeal. Both the provided ones are interesting and should make for a satisfying story.
Also, everything possible using alliterative acronyms, which adds a lot of whimsical style to the thing. I mean, "Optical Openings" is certainly a funnier name than "Optical Sensors". Especially when everything is named like that...
What really stands out is the character creation. The robots are all different, with various standard units, abilities and custom extras to differentiate them. Additionally, robots from different factories have certain types of attachments and personalities common to them. There are a few different character generation methods to choose from, and they all look like they'll give you a crazy bunch of robots to play. The standard utility attachments range from basic arms to pneumatic cannon and electroprods and the factory-specific odd ones are all amusing (and might even be useful!)
The other thing I like is the economy of power. You need to keep track of your battery level. The dice rolled for an action are based on your CPU and the utility being used and this is how much energy will potentially be used. On a normal roll you just roll these and get the power back.
However...
If you roll better than your target number you are over-achieving and risk drawing the attention of the controllers. You can drop dice from your roll to minimize over-achievement, but this wastes energy, so you lose a charge. So you always want to walk the knife edge of doing well enough to get your target number, but never too well. I think this will lead to some funny moments in play, with robots saying "No, you open the door. I'm too good at it!"
Another nice trick is what happens when a robot over-achieves so much that they attract the attention of the controllers. In this circumstance, the robot is informed that an Internal Investigation Bot is on the way to assess them. The GM leaves the room to allow the players to get the robots' stories straight and after at least 30 seconds they return in the persona of the IIBot. Then the GM interviews them to determine if the suspicious robot needs to be memory-wiped and reprogrammed. I suspect that will be hilarious in play.
Overall, a very funny game. Probably only good for the odd short campaign, rather than long term (although there are seeds of some rather different longer campaigns in there).
28 February 2005
February's Book Report
Incidentally, this whole idea is being shared in our household. See Make Tea Not War for some other opinions on many of the same books.
Orbiter by Warren Ellis. Nice little book about wanting more space exploration. I heartily agree with the sentiment.
100 Bullets: The Counterfifth Detective by Brian Azzarello. Okay hard-boiled detective story. The resolution left me pretty 'meh'. Maybe it would have been better after reading the prior volumes - it felt like it might be a deconstruction of their own formula, thus not so interesting if you didn't know the formula already. Oh well.
Lord of Lies by David Zindell. Second volume of the Ea cycle. Much better on this read (second or third, can't remember which). Zindell has an amazing talent to make interesting philosophical questions into good novels. I don't know how, but he does it. Also pretty good as a basic adventure story.
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. Bizarre Lovecraftian bureaucratic spy novel. When I first read it, I thought it was fun. Then I spent a week looking back on it appreciating more little things about it. Absolutely great.
Enlightenment by Roy Porter. A history of the Enlightenment in Britain. Very good indeed, and made me nostalgic for studying philosophy. Also made me angry at religion. Can't people just get over it and realise that religion is a dead piece of history? Several of these guys pointed it out 300 years ago, and they were hardly the first. Bah! I also managed to, in a bout of foolishness, take it back to the library when only halfway through. Very annoying. I may have to buy it.
Fitzpatrick's War by Theodore Judson. Set in a few hundred years, in a strangely changed world - electrical technology has been suppressed - this is the memoir of a military engineer who was a close friend of a Alexander the Great style dictator. It seems to be partly a satire of contemporary American fundamentalism and adventurism but it's also a really good portrait of a man who contributes to some evil deeds and his moral awakening to what he took part in. So, a lot of humour for a serious book. The putative editor of the memoir is constantly putting in amusing footnotes to make sure you know when the memoir goes away from the historical record or is simply obscene or ridiculous by his standards. To be fair, we really don't know if Bruce, the soldier, is more reliable than the editor, but it seems that he is. Very good indeed. I shall certainly be looking out for more of Judson's writing.
The Golden Age, The Phoenix Exultant and The Golden Transcendance by John C Wright. Dense but interesting transhumanist science fiction. The first book takes a while to get into, as he just drops you into the world of at least 30,000 years into the future and a lot doesn't make sense for a few chapters. Stick with it. Once you get a handle on the different kinds of minds that people have then, this is a fantastic story of Phaeton, an adventurous soul in an unadventurous paradise. Great ideas and some sublimely funny moments, such as when one of the characters is travelling through the wilderness, lighting a campfire with her heat projector and living just like her ancestors in the stone age.
Rifles by Mark Urban. A very readable history of the 95th Rifles from 1809-1815. That is Sharpe's regiment, by the way. Urban does a great job of getting to the stories of the men there, focussing on a few particular people to tell the story. A must-read for any Sharpe fan, and a should-read for anyone with an interest in that piece of history. It's particularly interesting to read the facts about events that Cornwell writes Sharpe into. It's also terrifying - I really can't imagine how anyone could go through such events without succumbing to utter despair...
The Right Hand of God by Russell Fitzpatrick. Final one of the trilogy. Let me say again how wonderful it is to discover a series by an author who finished the whole lot before publishing, so that they are released rapidly. I raise a toast to Mr Fitzpatrick in recognition of his industry! In terms of the actual story, it ends... unexpectedly. Not quite a standard fantasy novel conclusion. Interesting, and I think I'll need to ponder the implications of it for a while before I completely get what happened. Good, just like the first two.
The Remarkable Worlds of Professor Phineas B Fuddle by Boaz and Erez Yakin. Very strange, very funny comic about a couple of scientists from a ludicrous steampunky world journeying to some very odd alternate histories.
The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling. I have a distinct memory of writing about this already but do not appear to have actually done so. Not his usual stuff, but a pretty brutal indictment of the anti-terrorist culture in the USA at the moment. My memory is too vague for anything more specific than that.
Orbiter by Warren Ellis. Nice little book about wanting more space exploration. I heartily agree with the sentiment.
100 Bullets: The Counterfifth Detective by Brian Azzarello. Okay hard-boiled detective story. The resolution left me pretty 'meh'. Maybe it would have been better after reading the prior volumes - it felt like it might be a deconstruction of their own formula, thus not so interesting if you didn't know the formula already. Oh well.
Lord of Lies by David Zindell. Second volume of the Ea cycle. Much better on this read (second or third, can't remember which). Zindell has an amazing talent to make interesting philosophical questions into good novels. I don't know how, but he does it. Also pretty good as a basic adventure story.
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. Bizarre Lovecraftian bureaucratic spy novel. When I first read it, I thought it was fun. Then I spent a week looking back on it appreciating more little things about it. Absolutely great.
Enlightenment by Roy Porter. A history of the Enlightenment in Britain. Very good indeed, and made me nostalgic for studying philosophy. Also made me angry at religion. Can't people just get over it and realise that religion is a dead piece of history? Several of these guys pointed it out 300 years ago, and they were hardly the first. Bah! I also managed to, in a bout of foolishness, take it back to the library when only halfway through. Very annoying. I may have to buy it.
Fitzpatrick's War by Theodore Judson. Set in a few hundred years, in a strangely changed world - electrical technology has been suppressed - this is the memoir of a military engineer who was a close friend of a Alexander the Great style dictator. It seems to be partly a satire of contemporary American fundamentalism and adventurism but it's also a really good portrait of a man who contributes to some evil deeds and his moral awakening to what he took part in. So, a lot of humour for a serious book. The putative editor of the memoir is constantly putting in amusing footnotes to make sure you know when the memoir goes away from the historical record or is simply obscene or ridiculous by his standards. To be fair, we really don't know if Bruce, the soldier, is more reliable than the editor, but it seems that he is. Very good indeed. I shall certainly be looking out for more of Judson's writing.
The Golden Age, The Phoenix Exultant and The Golden Transcendance by John C Wright. Dense but interesting transhumanist science fiction. The first book takes a while to get into, as he just drops you into the world of at least 30,000 years into the future and a lot doesn't make sense for a few chapters. Stick with it. Once you get a handle on the different kinds of minds that people have then, this is a fantastic story of Phaeton, an adventurous soul in an unadventurous paradise. Great ideas and some sublimely funny moments, such as when one of the characters is travelling through the wilderness, lighting a campfire with her heat projector and living just like her ancestors in the stone age.
Rifles by Mark Urban. A very readable history of the 95th Rifles from 1809-1815. That is Sharpe's regiment, by the way. Urban does a great job of getting to the stories of the men there, focussing on a few particular people to tell the story. A must-read for any Sharpe fan, and a should-read for anyone with an interest in that piece of history. It's particularly interesting to read the facts about events that Cornwell writes Sharpe into. It's also terrifying - I really can't imagine how anyone could go through such events without succumbing to utter despair...
The Right Hand of God by Russell Fitzpatrick. Final one of the trilogy. Let me say again how wonderful it is to discover a series by an author who finished the whole lot before publishing, so that they are released rapidly. I raise a toast to Mr Fitzpatrick in recognition of his industry! In terms of the actual story, it ends... unexpectedly. Not quite a standard fantasy novel conclusion. Interesting, and I think I'll need to ponder the implications of it for a while before I completely get what happened. Good, just like the first two.
The Remarkable Worlds of Professor Phineas B Fuddle by Boaz and Erez Yakin. Very strange, very funny comic about a couple of scientists from a ludicrous steampunky world journeying to some very odd alternate histories.
The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling. I have a distinct memory of writing about this already but do not appear to have actually done so. Not his usual stuff, but a pretty brutal indictment of the anti-terrorist culture in the USA at the moment. My memory is too vague for anything more specific than that.
"High concept"
I like to read publicity blurbs on books for their general absurdity. Recently, I've noticed that a lot of science fiction novels (or authors) seem to be being described as "High concept". I could never work out what it meant - the books labelled this way don't seem to have anything in particular in common.
Last night, noticing another such comment (describing Robert Reed's Marrow) it suddenly dawned on me what it means.
"This author has really fucking weird ideas."
I'd be interested to hear if anyone agrees or has an alternative definition for the term.
Last night, noticing another such comment (describing Robert Reed's Marrow) it suddenly dawned on me what it means.
"This author has really fucking weird ideas."
I'd be interested to hear if anyone agrees or has an alternative definition for the term.
25 February 2005
Read-through Review of Conspiracy of Shadows
Conspiracy of Shadows by Keith Senkowski is a fantasy game about fighting evil conspiracies in a setting based on the dark ages in central/eastern Europe. The evil conspiracies are left for individual gaming groups to determine the nature of, but are clearly expected to be Lovecraftian or devil cults in most cases. The main vibe that I get off the game after reading it through is that it will play like Buffy or Angel in a different setting. I get the impression that this is entirely on purpose (especially with one of the sample demons apparently inspired by a monster from a Buffy episode).
The character generation specifically sets up the PC group as united in fighting the conspiracy, and you can buy group resources like contacts and a library and a base and so forth that all can draw on.
The art is all very evocative. Better than most big game companies, too.
The setting is good. As mentioned, it has a Dark Ages Central/Eastern European flavour which is unusual. I felt that the cultures and states provided all had enough familiarity to play them without just being 'country x with a different name'. And it's hard to forgive him one thing... the Narrlachi invaders (similar to the Huns) who still rule a big chunk of the place. Well, their great khan was from the Chaka clan. Ahem.
Character creation is fairly simple and directed. First choose why you are fighting the conspiracy and your character's main passion. Then add various stats and skills. That's pretty much it. All of the cultures give you a special ability related to their character, too. So, simple but directed to what the game is about.
There's a short chapter on magic, divided into two types. There's witchblood, which means you can do some crazy magic innately, until somebody burns you as a witch. Then there's ritual magic, that looks to be your basic summon or banish demons magic, and associated bits.
Combat has a few neat elements. You have a pool of points representing your energy. You spend these to do combat actions. If you succeed on an action, you can immediately take another before the next character, until you run out. I can see some cool combats in which desperate characters hit their enemies with a brutal flurry of attacks happening quite often.
One nice rule is destiny points, which are kind of a karma thing. You gather them and spend them to increase rolls when required. However, you earn them from doing things like adding your own details to the setting. So everyone is encouraged to chip in with ideas for what's going on in the game.
The advice on creating your conspiracy for the players to fight is good but unfortunately short. I was hoping for a bit more. Oh well. Luckily Senkowski is planning a supplement that has more stuff in this area which looks like it will make up for that lack.
There's a rule for seeing horrific stuff and freaking out. Not anything like Call of Cthulhu's sanity rules, it's more a 'panic' rule. There is a rule for slowly turning to the dark side as well, but it's separate and really quite creepy.
There's also a section on making up evil supernatural creatures for the PCs to take out. This is great and they're easy to design. I can see myself getting some horrible, horrible ideas from the powers.
Also, Senkowski has lots of support on his website, including regular bits of setting - new monsters and things and discussion about playing the game.
Overall, a really solid game to do what it sets out to. I look forward to running it, and hope my regular players are getting ready to fear the things that they'll be fighting.
The character generation specifically sets up the PC group as united in fighting the conspiracy, and you can buy group resources like contacts and a library and a base and so forth that all can draw on.
The art is all very evocative. Better than most big game companies, too.
The setting is good. As mentioned, it has a Dark Ages Central/Eastern European flavour which is unusual. I felt that the cultures and states provided all had enough familiarity to play them without just being 'country x with a different name'. And it's hard to forgive him one thing... the Narrlachi invaders (similar to the Huns) who still rule a big chunk of the place. Well, their great khan was from the Chaka clan. Ahem.
Character creation is fairly simple and directed. First choose why you are fighting the conspiracy and your character's main passion. Then add various stats and skills. That's pretty much it. All of the cultures give you a special ability related to their character, too. So, simple but directed to what the game is about.
There's a short chapter on magic, divided into two types. There's witchblood, which means you can do some crazy magic innately, until somebody burns you as a witch. Then there's ritual magic, that looks to be your basic summon or banish demons magic, and associated bits.
Combat has a few neat elements. You have a pool of points representing your energy. You spend these to do combat actions. If you succeed on an action, you can immediately take another before the next character, until you run out. I can see some cool combats in which desperate characters hit their enemies with a brutal flurry of attacks happening quite often.
One nice rule is destiny points, which are kind of a karma thing. You gather them and spend them to increase rolls when required. However, you earn them from doing things like adding your own details to the setting. So everyone is encouraged to chip in with ideas for what's going on in the game.
The advice on creating your conspiracy for the players to fight is good but unfortunately short. I was hoping for a bit more. Oh well. Luckily Senkowski is planning a supplement that has more stuff in this area which looks like it will make up for that lack.
There's a rule for seeing horrific stuff and freaking out. Not anything like Call of Cthulhu's sanity rules, it's more a 'panic' rule. There is a rule for slowly turning to the dark side as well, but it's separate and really quite creepy.
There's also a section on making up evil supernatural creatures for the PCs to take out. This is great and they're easy to design. I can see myself getting some horrible, horrible ideas from the powers.
Also, Senkowski has lots of support on his website, including regular bits of setting - new monsters and things and discussion about playing the game.
Overall, a really solid game to do what it sets out to. I look forward to running it, and hope my regular players are getting ready to fear the things that they'll be fighting.
23 February 2005
Read-through Review of The Shadow of Yesterday
Well, my moderate mail order package came yesterday so here's the first review. I skimmed Conspiracy of Shadows but it didn't initially grab me as much as The Shadow of Yesterday, so that's the one I read first.
The Shadow of Yesterday is by Clinton R Nixon, one of the two guys who runs The Forge. The game is his attempt to write what he wanted D&D to have been. Our lives in the alternate worlds where The Shadow of Yesterday was the first roleplaying game are much richer than this one. Lucky alternate selves.
I should note that although I bought a copy from Indie Press Revolution, you can get the whole thing free online. I don't regret my USD$20, as the art is good and I don't like to read online. I guess I could have reformatted the html version, printed it and had it bound but that would have taken more of my time than the actual cost of the printed version is worth. But it can be free if you want it, which is friendly of Mr Nixon.
My first comment is that I have to love any game in which, as I make up a character on my first proper read through, he turns out as a sword-slinging adventurer - so far so normal - who is also a decadent poisoner searching the world for true love. I mean, this guy has some serious cool, and I was just picking up on the first thing I liked for each step.
That's moves nicely on to my first comment. Character generation is both simple and very evocative. He encourages making up your own abilities, secrets and keys (more on these below). I like games where you can define your own skills and suchlike, it just allows the player to give that much more personal detail to the character. In fact, my first guy I mentioned has a couple of things of my own invention.
Characters are defined by three pools (basic stats) and a bunch of abilities (skills). These are grouped into A, B and C types which govern how good you are in those areas. You also have secrets and keys. Secrets are much like feats in D&D 3rd edition and so on - they give you a special ability of some kind. The secrets provided are almost all either useful or extremely nifty (and sometimes both).
Keys are something new, I think. A few games (e.g. The Riddle of Steel) have similar ideas but this takes it to another level. Keys define how the character gains experience. You can have up to five. Each defines how much XP you get for doing different things. Here's the one I made up for my first character, which shows the basic structure:
Key of the Romantic: Your character is searching for his true love, who is waiting for them... somewhere. Gain 1XP every time you flirt with a possible lover. Gain 2XP whenever you endanger yourself or neglect your duties to court someone. Gain 5XP if a woman accepts his courtship for life. Buyoff: Decide that true love is a myth.
The main features are that you choose how your character advances, and you also choose how fast they do it (by determining how many keys you have). Note that fast advancement isn't necessarily what you will want, see below about character transcendence. Also, there is that 'Buyoff' note. Every key has one. Anytime you want (and that circumstance is met) you can just throw away that key and get 10XP (that's exactly the number to buy a new Key, by the way). This allows you to make sudden changes of personality for the character pretty much when you decide you want to change how they go. This, I think, will make for some good roleplaying. I can already imagine how much fun I might have with buying off that particular Key.
That covers the character generation chapter. Next is the resolution mechanics. Nothing too revolutionary at first, a simple roll 2d6 + ability to get a result which gives you a level of success. Nixon has a good section on the stages involved in an ability check, stripping it down to the theoretical bone of what's going on. This is probably not strictly necessary but it's a good analysis of what the roll means in this game and how to think about each stage of what is normally just someone saying "I kill him!" [dice roll] "Yeah, eight bazillion damage!"
Rolls can be modified by bonus and penalty dice. If you have bonus dice you roll this many extra dice and pick the best two for your result. If you have penalty dice you do the same but pick the worst ones. These can come from terrible context to your action, secrets, magic and similar. A nice touch, however, is the gift of dice. Each session, all players (including the GM) get a pool of dice - one for each player - which can be given to anyone else as bonus dice whenever you want. So if you want to help another player's character in a tight spot, or just think they're cool, you can help them succeed. Nice.
For focusing on really important conflicts, there is a rule called Bringing Down the Pain. This allows a player character to refuse to accept any result of a contested ability check and instead moves into a more detailed, brutal resolution system. This reads like combat in most roleplaying games but applies to absolutely any conflict in this one. It looks like it works well but I'll reserve further comment until I have played it out a few times.
Tangentially, allow me to say that Nixon's examples of play are really great. They are both fun to read and also illustrate the concepts very well.
Your three basic pools get spent to use special abilities and give yourself bonus dice. These get refreshed by certain actions, as are abilities in The Dying Earth. I liked that idea there and I still like it here.
Another aspect of the game I particularly like is the idea of character transcendence. If anyone builds up an ability to level 10 (that's the highest possible) and rolls a 12 on an ability check (that's also the highest possible) then they transcend. The player can narrate the godlike results of the action however they want, the sun or moon is eclipsed and the character's story is ended within the next day... they might retire, die, whatever. But they have achieved the most awesome thing they will ever do and that's going to be it for them. This might seem a little harsh for a character you love, but you control whether you go to level 10 in any abilities. Personally, the idea of the character who has done the ultimate and thus no longer needs to be going on adventures is really appealing.
Last is the section on the world. This is intentionally left pretty open. Nixon says that he removed everything he had written that wasn't an essential part of the background, so that the cool ideas would be there but the details could be determined by each group. That seems a fine plan and I salute him for it. The species and cultures of the world of Near are indeed interesting and open to interpretation, and I think most gamers will find something to build a character on and plenty to spark their imaginations there. I won't repeat any details as you can just go read the source yourself.
Overall, a great little fantasy game that may just tempt me to throw out HeroQuest. Maybe I could just substitute these rules and keep playing in Glorantha, but I'm tempted to go the whole hog and play this as described. My gaming group are all keen to keep playing HeroQuest, but I think that everything they like about that game is doubly (or more) present in The Shadow of Yesterday.
Expect reviews of Conspiracy of Shadows and maybe some more in-depth comments on Capes in the next short period of time.
Oh, and in case anybody is interested, here's that character I made up:
Maynard
A wandering Ammeni swordsman looking for excitement, plunder and also true love.
Vigor 5, Instinct 6, Reason 3, Advances 5
Innate A
Athletics 3
Reaction 3
Resist 1
Stay up 1
Fighting A
Swordfighting 4
Wrestling 2
First aid 1
Social B
Savoir-faire 4
Outdoor B
Herb lore 2
Woodscraft 1
Illicit B
Stealth 1
Craft C
Bladework 2
Distill herbs 1
Secrets & Keys
Secret of the Signature Weapon (his sword).
Secret of the Serpent Blade (that's the ability to make blade-poisons).
Key of the Romantic.
The Shadow of Yesterday is by Clinton R Nixon, one of the two guys who runs The Forge. The game is his attempt to write what he wanted D&D to have been. Our lives in the alternate worlds where The Shadow of Yesterday was the first roleplaying game are much richer than this one. Lucky alternate selves.
I should note that although I bought a copy from Indie Press Revolution, you can get the whole thing free online. I don't regret my USD$20, as the art is good and I don't like to read online. I guess I could have reformatted the html version, printed it and had it bound but that would have taken more of my time than the actual cost of the printed version is worth. But it can be free if you want it, which is friendly of Mr Nixon.
My first comment is that I have to love any game in which, as I make up a character on my first proper read through, he turns out as a sword-slinging adventurer - so far so normal - who is also a decadent poisoner searching the world for true love. I mean, this guy has some serious cool, and I was just picking up on the first thing I liked for each step.
That's moves nicely on to my first comment. Character generation is both simple and very evocative. He encourages making up your own abilities, secrets and keys (more on these below). I like games where you can define your own skills and suchlike, it just allows the player to give that much more personal detail to the character. In fact, my first guy I mentioned has a couple of things of my own invention.
Characters are defined by three pools (basic stats) and a bunch of abilities (skills). These are grouped into A, B and C types which govern how good you are in those areas. You also have secrets and keys. Secrets are much like feats in D&D 3rd edition and so on - they give you a special ability of some kind. The secrets provided are almost all either useful or extremely nifty (and sometimes both).
Keys are something new, I think. A few games (e.g. The Riddle of Steel) have similar ideas but this takes it to another level. Keys define how the character gains experience. You can have up to five. Each defines how much XP you get for doing different things. Here's the one I made up for my first character, which shows the basic structure:
Key of the Romantic: Your character is searching for his true love, who is waiting for them... somewhere. Gain 1XP every time you flirt with a possible lover. Gain 2XP whenever you endanger yourself or neglect your duties to court someone. Gain 5XP if a woman accepts his courtship for life. Buyoff: Decide that true love is a myth.
The main features are that you choose how your character advances, and you also choose how fast they do it (by determining how many keys you have). Note that fast advancement isn't necessarily what you will want, see below about character transcendence. Also, there is that 'Buyoff' note. Every key has one. Anytime you want (and that circumstance is met) you can just throw away that key and get 10XP (that's exactly the number to buy a new Key, by the way). This allows you to make sudden changes of personality for the character pretty much when you decide you want to change how they go. This, I think, will make for some good roleplaying. I can already imagine how much fun I might have with buying off that particular Key.
That covers the character generation chapter. Next is the resolution mechanics. Nothing too revolutionary at first, a simple roll 2d6 + ability to get a result which gives you a level of success. Nixon has a good section on the stages involved in an ability check, stripping it down to the theoretical bone of what's going on. This is probably not strictly necessary but it's a good analysis of what the roll means in this game and how to think about each stage of what is normally just someone saying "I kill him!" [dice roll] "Yeah, eight bazillion damage!"
Rolls can be modified by bonus and penalty dice. If you have bonus dice you roll this many extra dice and pick the best two for your result. If you have penalty dice you do the same but pick the worst ones. These can come from terrible context to your action, secrets, magic and similar. A nice touch, however, is the gift of dice. Each session, all players (including the GM) get a pool of dice - one for each player - which can be given to anyone else as bonus dice whenever you want. So if you want to help another player's character in a tight spot, or just think they're cool, you can help them succeed. Nice.
For focusing on really important conflicts, there is a rule called Bringing Down the Pain. This allows a player character to refuse to accept any result of a contested ability check and instead moves into a more detailed, brutal resolution system. This reads like combat in most roleplaying games but applies to absolutely any conflict in this one. It looks like it works well but I'll reserve further comment until I have played it out a few times.
Tangentially, allow me to say that Nixon's examples of play are really great. They are both fun to read and also illustrate the concepts very well.
Your three basic pools get spent to use special abilities and give yourself bonus dice. These get refreshed by certain actions, as are abilities in The Dying Earth. I liked that idea there and I still like it here.
Another aspect of the game I particularly like is the idea of character transcendence. If anyone builds up an ability to level 10 (that's the highest possible) and rolls a 12 on an ability check (that's also the highest possible) then they transcend. The player can narrate the godlike results of the action however they want, the sun or moon is eclipsed and the character's story is ended within the next day... they might retire, die, whatever. But they have achieved the most awesome thing they will ever do and that's going to be it for them. This might seem a little harsh for a character you love, but you control whether you go to level 10 in any abilities. Personally, the idea of the character who has done the ultimate and thus no longer needs to be going on adventures is really appealing.
Last is the section on the world. This is intentionally left pretty open. Nixon says that he removed everything he had written that wasn't an essential part of the background, so that the cool ideas would be there but the details could be determined by each group. That seems a fine plan and I salute him for it. The species and cultures of the world of Near are indeed interesting and open to interpretation, and I think most gamers will find something to build a character on and plenty to spark their imaginations there. I won't repeat any details as you can just go read the source yourself.
Overall, a great little fantasy game that may just tempt me to throw out HeroQuest. Maybe I could just substitute these rules and keep playing in Glorantha, but I'm tempted to go the whole hog and play this as described. My gaming group are all keen to keep playing HeroQuest, but I think that everything they like about that game is doubly (or more) present in The Shadow of Yesterday.
Expect reviews of Conspiracy of Shadows and maybe some more in-depth comments on Capes in the next short period of time.
Oh, and in case anybody is interested, here's that character I made up:
Maynard
A wandering Ammeni swordsman looking for excitement, plunder and also true love.
Vigor 5, Instinct 6, Reason 3, Advances 5
Innate A
Athletics 3
Reaction 3
Resist 1
Stay up 1
Fighting A
Swordfighting 4
Wrestling 2
First aid 1
Social B
Savoir-faire 4
Outdoor B
Herb lore 2
Woodscraft 1
Illicit B
Stealth 1
Craft C
Bladework 2
Distill herbs 1
Secrets & Keys
Secret of the Signature Weapon (his sword).
Secret of the Serpent Blade (that's the ability to make blade-poisons).
Key of the Romantic.
21 February 2005
New Project... Nautical Matters
Well, I have decided to write and publish a game. When I say that, I mean to self-publish, almost definitely distributed via the Internet.
I have had a couple of ideas hanging around. One is a game of professional wrestlers fighting evil in a world full of magic, monsters and other weirdness and the other is a game of naval adventure based mainly on the Aubrey & Maturin and Hornblower novels. A few days of uncertainty about which to pursue was ended when a whole bunch of vague ideas clicked into place for the naval game, so that's the one I'm going to go with.
Currently the plan is to focus entirely on how the player characters react to crises or problems that occur during their expeditions. I'm currently planning on a mechanic where the player will describe how their character reacts to a crisis including describing what they are risking, and that a bad roll to resolve the plan will mean that whatever was put at risk will be lost.
There'll also be a big focus on social issues and detailing the members of the crew so that the players get to know and value them. The possibility for fish-out-of-water adventures when our heroes are ashore will also be there (some of my favorite Aubrey stories are of this sort, so I shall not be neglecting them).
The game will also be somewhat generic in setting, as any ship with a rigid hierarchy and in a hostile situation will be able to use these rules. I'm planning to write up settings for a British Royal Navy frigate in the Napoleonic wars, an early Spanish or Portuguese explorer and a science fiction setting reminiscent of the Honor Harrington books. I may also add pirate and submariner settings.
Currently the working title is The Ship, which is crap. Any readers with a better suggestion, please put it in a comment!
I have had a couple of ideas hanging around. One is a game of professional wrestlers fighting evil in a world full of magic, monsters and other weirdness and the other is a game of naval adventure based mainly on the Aubrey & Maturin and Hornblower novels. A few days of uncertainty about which to pursue was ended when a whole bunch of vague ideas clicked into place for the naval game, so that's the one I'm going to go with.
Currently the plan is to focus entirely on how the player characters react to crises or problems that occur during their expeditions. I'm currently planning on a mechanic where the player will describe how their character reacts to a crisis including describing what they are risking, and that a bad roll to resolve the plan will mean that whatever was put at risk will be lost.
There'll also be a big focus on social issues and detailing the members of the crew so that the players get to know and value them. The possibility for fish-out-of-water adventures when our heroes are ashore will also be there (some of my favorite Aubrey stories are of this sort, so I shall not be neglecting them).
The game will also be somewhat generic in setting, as any ship with a rigid hierarchy and in a hostile situation will be able to use these rules. I'm planning to write up settings for a British Royal Navy frigate in the Napoleonic wars, an early Spanish or Portuguese explorer and a science fiction setting reminiscent of the Honor Harrington books. I may also add pirate and submariner settings.
Currently the working title is The Ship, which is crap. Any readers with a better suggestion, please put it in a comment!
15 February 2005
Capes Play Thoughts, Sooner Than Expected
My regular HeroQuest game was down two players so we decided to give Capes a try, with just the demo version plus all the free download click & lock character bits.
It was fun. That's the basic review. We managed to create what was really a pretty terrible comic, one of those late 80s/early 90s stupid crossover universe destroying stories. But we all had a good laugh.
As is usual in a first game, we got a bunch of the rules wrong which might have made play a bit smoother if we had them right. The demo leaves a lot of stuff unclear, which is fair enough, and a read through the full rules this morning cleared up most of them. I'm still not sure when a scene should end, though. A scene is basically a bunch of action taking place at one time and/or place but there doesn't seem to be a particular place to stop one. We did it by mutual agreement. Whenever all the conflicts were resolved or if there were only one or two less interesting ones left we moved on.
A lot of the rules about power use, the debt you gain for it, and stakes were complicated the first time but I suspect they'll quickly become second nature and allow you to focus on the tactics to get the story told the way you want. In fact, one guy in our group was already doing this by the end of the session (he's always good at picking that sort of thing up).
The main thing was that the way conflicts and scene setup kept changing the story in unpredictable ways was great. We had some really funny subplot conflicts and neat action scenes coming out of who did what using what abilities.
The characters were great fun too. We all enjoyed putting them together with the click & lock parts, even though they weren't cut out and we had to copy it all down on paper.
My favourite part had to be when I had two characters, one a superhero and one a supervillain, who were fighting each other to the death... that was pretty funny, as I looked at the conflicts in play and realised the only one that either character could contribute usefully two was the 'Event: Cold Steel dies', so Quantum Boy attacked Cold Steel and Cold Steel attacked him right back. Quantum Boy won by teleporting the robot's brain out and then Ferocia knocked it into a lava pit. A good end for an evil robot villain, I think.
I'm really looking forward to my next play of the game. But maybe not looking forward to issue #2 of that particular story arc.
It was fun. That's the basic review. We managed to create what was really a pretty terrible comic, one of those late 80s/early 90s stupid crossover universe destroying stories. But we all had a good laugh.
As is usual in a first game, we got a bunch of the rules wrong which might have made play a bit smoother if we had them right. The demo leaves a lot of stuff unclear, which is fair enough, and a read through the full rules this morning cleared up most of them. I'm still not sure when a scene should end, though. A scene is basically a bunch of action taking place at one time and/or place but there doesn't seem to be a particular place to stop one. We did it by mutual agreement. Whenever all the conflicts were resolved or if there were only one or two less interesting ones left we moved on.
A lot of the rules about power use, the debt you gain for it, and stakes were complicated the first time but I suspect they'll quickly become second nature and allow you to focus on the tactics to get the story told the way you want. In fact, one guy in our group was already doing this by the end of the session (he's always good at picking that sort of thing up).
The main thing was that the way conflicts and scene setup kept changing the story in unpredictable ways was great. We had some really funny subplot conflicts and neat action scenes coming out of who did what using what abilities.
The characters were great fun too. We all enjoyed putting them together with the click & lock parts, even though they weren't cut out and we had to copy it all down on paper.
My favourite part had to be when I had two characters, one a superhero and one a supervillain, who were fighting each other to the death... that was pretty funny, as I looked at the conflicts in play and realised the only one that either character could contribute usefully two was the 'Event: Cold Steel dies', so Quantum Boy attacked Cold Steel and Cold Steel attacked him right back. Quantum Boy won by teleporting the robot's brain out and then Ferocia knocked it into a lava pit. A good end for an evil robot villain, I think.
I'm really looking forward to my next play of the game. But maybe not looking forward to issue #2 of that particular story arc.
11 February 2005
Capes: Initial Look
Okay, so I caved and ordered Capes (and Conspiracy of Shadows and The Shadow of Yesterday). The author kindly allows you to download a pdf of the game once you've ordered, so I got to skim it already even though I expect it will take a fair while for the physical book to arrive.
It looks really good, capturing a lot of the bits of comics that don't quite make it into a more traditional rpg.
It's a very uncoventional type of game, and I can't envision how it will play. Like Scarlet Wake, there's no gamemaster and everyone takes turns controlling narration. However, Capes goes a bit further away from a normal game format. Similarly to Scarlet Wake, there's a fairly complex set of things you can do to attempt to control the narration, and I think you'd need to play it for a while before it clicks into place. Capes also has by default no ownership of characters. So the fact you play a hero or villain on one 'page' (pretty much a game round) doesn't mean you'll keep doing so on the next. This sounds to me like it will be fun, in a crazy way, but I suspect that most groups will end up making a house rule that you can claim certain favorite characters as your and yours alone. Then again, who can resist the fact that you will be able to play (and, indeed, invent) the villains as the story plays out?
There are a lot of good ideas to keep the feel right. One example is the group's 'Comics Code' - a list of rules for the game. So you might have that superheroes never die. This leads into a rule that if you try to do these (say a villain wants to kill Captain Zap) then they just can't succeed... instead there's a rule for 'gloating' which means that they don't succeed but the player gets to stock up on some of the game resource tokens.
So, the quick read through review is: it looks really good but you need to play it, not just read it. Specifically, I need to play it. It will probably be at least a few weeks before I can arrange it, too bad. On the other hand, that gives the main time to cross the Pacific.
Also, there's a character generation method where you basically pick two little cards that fit together - one is powers/skills and the other is personality. They're awesomely well done and I suspect that one of the fun parts of any game would be fitting those together to get new 'Neurotic High-tech Mooks' and so forth. Also fun to look for which pair would make favorite superheros. It is just cool.
It looks really good, capturing a lot of the bits of comics that don't quite make it into a more traditional rpg.
It's a very uncoventional type of game, and I can't envision how it will play. Like Scarlet Wake, there's no gamemaster and everyone takes turns controlling narration. However, Capes goes a bit further away from a normal game format. Similarly to Scarlet Wake, there's a fairly complex set of things you can do to attempt to control the narration, and I think you'd need to play it for a while before it clicks into place. Capes also has by default no ownership of characters. So the fact you play a hero or villain on one 'page' (pretty much a game round) doesn't mean you'll keep doing so on the next. This sounds to me like it will be fun, in a crazy way, but I suspect that most groups will end up making a house rule that you can claim certain favorite characters as your and yours alone. Then again, who can resist the fact that you will be able to play (and, indeed, invent) the villains as the story plays out?
There are a lot of good ideas to keep the feel right. One example is the group's 'Comics Code' - a list of rules for the game. So you might have that superheroes never die. This leads into a rule that if you try to do these (say a villain wants to kill Captain Zap) then they just can't succeed... instead there's a rule for 'gloating' which means that they don't succeed but the player gets to stock up on some of the game resource tokens.
So, the quick read through review is: it looks really good but you need to play it, not just read it. Specifically, I need to play it. It will probably be at least a few weeks before I can arrange it, too bad. On the other hand, that gives the main time to cross the Pacific.
Also, there's a character generation method where you basically pick two little cards that fit together - one is powers/skills and the other is personality. They're awesomely well done and I suspect that one of the fun parts of any game would be fitting those together to get new 'Neurotic High-tech Mooks' and so forth. Also fun to look for which pair would make favorite superheros. It is just cool.
06 February 2005
Not Much Activity
Well, I managed to run the live game at Kapcon okay, despite rather a lot of attempts by the world to prevent it at the last moment. In any case the work we all put in did the trick and the game ran close to smoothly. Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, and lots of neat stuff happened. More discussion of it lives here, in case anybody is interested.
I was planning on writing a bit of a post about running such things but I decided I didn't have much to say. Here is my essential wisdom (based on running dozens of one-off live games for 10-20 people, playing in a couple of ongoing World of Darkness ones, helping run a 3-day 55-player one and now being in charge of a one-off 70-player one):
I hope to soon put up some reviews of Capes and The Shadow of Yesterday but so far I can neither afford to buy them nor do I have time to play them.
I've had a read through the demo version of Capes that you can get off the website and it looks neat. However, I really have no idea how it will play - reading the demo just doesn't give you a good feel for how it will be. So I'm not saying anything about that until I give it a go.
The Shadow of Yesterday is a fantasy game that takes most of the stuff I love about HeroQuest a bit further, in a more Conan style. A free version is available at the website there, which I have read, but I'm planning to buy the whole thing, so it doesn't seem worth reviewing the cut down web edition. I will say that it looks really good, especially for my developing policy of running games with no preparation at all.
I was planning on writing a bit of a post about running such things but I decided I didn't have much to say. Here is my essential wisdom (based on running dozens of one-off live games for 10-20 people, playing in a couple of ongoing World of Darkness ones, helping run a 3-day 55-player one and now being in charge of a one-off 70-player one):
- If you have the urge to organise a big live game, don't. Really. It's hard. I guess somebody has to do it, but be very wary about taking it on. Note that it took me six years to forget enough about the experience of Aliens: Apocalypse (that's the 3-day one) before I was foolish enough to volunteer to run the Kapcon one.
- The rules should be as simple as possible. The only changes you ever make to the rule system should be to simplify them. Never, ever use dice or compare stats on character sheets or anything like that. That's already to complex.
- Pick reliable helpers. I had a lot of people volunteer to help and then drop out. I don't actually have a problem with that - they were all pretty up front about it - but it would have been better to have people who stuck at it (obviously).
- When you put little explanatory notes on the gadgets for people to read in game, double check that each note is with the correct gadget.
I hope to soon put up some reviews of Capes and The Shadow of Yesterday but so far I can neither afford to buy them nor do I have time to play them.
I've had a read through the demo version of Capes that you can get off the website and it looks neat. However, I really have no idea how it will play - reading the demo just doesn't give you a good feel for how it will be. So I'm not saying anything about that until I give it a go.
The Shadow of Yesterday is a fantasy game that takes most of the stuff I love about HeroQuest a bit further, in a more Conan style. A free version is available at the website there, which I have read, but I'm planning to buy the whole thing, so it doesn't seem worth reviewing the cut down web edition. I will say that it looks really good, especially for my developing policy of running games with no preparation at all.
30 January 2005
January's Book Report
The Reed Book of Maori Mythology by A W Reed, revised by R Calman. Interesting material but a bit dry as the book is more about the structure and variations in the stories than the telling of them.
Innocents Aboard by Gene Wolfe. Short stories, mainly about ghosts and horrific things. A few really good ones, mostly just pretty good.
The Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Probably his worst (maybe I should say least good?) novel. Not because it's bad but because it's not that interesting. A study of drug dealers just isn't anywhere like as much fun as a study of, for example, book collectors and conspiracy (The Club Dumas), fencing and Spanish nationalism (The Fencing Master), odd Catholic plots (The Seville Communion) or treasure hunting (The Nautical Chart). Still well written, but very brutal in parts. The first few chapters are harrowing and I don't say that lightly.
How To Read A French Fry by Russ Parsons. Explanations of how some aspects of cooking work, at the level of the chemistry behind it all. Fascinating. Also, several small tips that are probably good to know, like 'never refridgerate tomatoes' and also why you should or should not do them. I think it might be worth actually buying this, as I am bound to forget all the important tips. Also has a bunch of recipes (illustrating the aspects of cooking he just explained), some of which look pretty tempting.
Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey. Travel book about a guy and his son visiting Japan to try and understand anime and other Japanese pop culture. Fun.
Underground London by Stephen Smith. A travel book about the odd stuff buried under London. Not really in depth, but a lot of neat stories. And he has managed to find some really weird things down there. Still, there are a lot of tangents in here and often the chapters promise more than is delivered. For example, his chapter on secret government tunnels under London ends up mainly being a lot of rumours because he couldn't actually get into any of them.
Rescuing The Spectacled Bear by Stephen Fry. Fun, coffee-table travel book to accompany a documentary he presented about helping out distressed Chilean bears. I particularly liked his thoughts roughing it, i.e. that he doesn't but instead likes to stay in five star hotels and drink cocktails. Unusually sensible attitude from a travel writer.
In The Earth Abides The Flame by Russell Kirkpatrick. Second volume of the "Fires of Heaven" trilogy and better than the first. He seems to be building up a bit of a Christian theological argument in there (characters discussing the argument from evil, treacherous secular characters, and so forth). A bit disturbing if he is, like C S Lewis, trying to be evangelical. Bleah. Still, treating it as pure fantasy, damn good. There's also some discussion of belief without evidence (faith) and why you should... which is a bit odd given that the Most High in that world is beginning to make his actual existence pretty obvious, if you ask me.
Gallows Thief by Bernard Cornwell. Very good. A bit odd, for him, as it is really a murder mystery. Of course, it's an adventure story as well. The one down side is a rather detailed (and thus gruesome) description of some hangings at Newgate in the very first chapter. But, once past that, a damn good story.
The Snow by Adam Roberts. Interesting, weird apocalypse novel. I can't say much about it without spoilage, unfortunately. Civilisation dies when it just starts snowing and doesn't stop for years. Told as a collection of documents mainly focussing on a particular character and the people she meets over the years during and following the snow. Fascinating.
The Roof of Voyaging by Garry Kilworth. Fantasy novel based on Polynesian mythology. A much easier read than the academic work on Maori mythology at the top of this list. Very good - it's nice to read a fantasy novel that draws so heavily on a less familiar set of stories. Good.
Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra & Jr. Jose Marzan (Graphic novel, first book). Absolutely stunningly good comic, this one. Follows the story of the one man (and his monkey) who survive the sudden death of all male mammals in the world. This is my second time reading it through and it's at least as good as the first. It's a deeply layered comic with a lot of little things that are significant the second time. Vaughan's craftsmanship in this story is almost annoying, it's so good. But it never seems to get too pretentious or too implausible. Of course, the starting point is pretty implausible but the main characters are very believeable in their reactions to what happens. Some of the people they come up against are less so, but these are clearly there for the main people to react to. Read these comics.
Equal Rites and Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. Rereading comic novels when ill is something I do. These two, I don't rate so high but all the ones I like more I have read too recently.
Raymond Chandler by Tom Hiney. A good biography. Chandler had a shitty life, it's no surprise that his books are so cynical. It was an interesting life, though, and Hiney does a good job of making plausible connections between Chandler's life and writing.
The Lightstone by David Zindell. Another re-read. This one due to running out of books, and also because the final one in the trilogy is due out in a few months. It's a complex book, and I can never remember what happened in it, so I expect not to understand number three at all if I haven't read them recently. Good enough to be worth that work.
Innocents Aboard by Gene Wolfe. Short stories, mainly about ghosts and horrific things. A few really good ones, mostly just pretty good.
The Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Probably his worst (maybe I should say least good?) novel. Not because it's bad but because it's not that interesting. A study of drug dealers just isn't anywhere like as much fun as a study of, for example, book collectors and conspiracy (The Club Dumas), fencing and Spanish nationalism (The Fencing Master), odd Catholic plots (The Seville Communion) or treasure hunting (The Nautical Chart). Still well written, but very brutal in parts. The first few chapters are harrowing and I don't say that lightly.
How To Read A French Fry by Russ Parsons. Explanations of how some aspects of cooking work, at the level of the chemistry behind it all. Fascinating. Also, several small tips that are probably good to know, like 'never refridgerate tomatoes' and also why you should or should not do them. I think it might be worth actually buying this, as I am bound to forget all the important tips. Also has a bunch of recipes (illustrating the aspects of cooking he just explained), some of which look pretty tempting.
Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey. Travel book about a guy and his son visiting Japan to try and understand anime and other Japanese pop culture. Fun.
Underground London by Stephen Smith. A travel book about the odd stuff buried under London. Not really in depth, but a lot of neat stories. And he has managed to find some really weird things down there. Still, there are a lot of tangents in here and often the chapters promise more than is delivered. For example, his chapter on secret government tunnels under London ends up mainly being a lot of rumours because he couldn't actually get into any of them.
Rescuing The Spectacled Bear by Stephen Fry. Fun, coffee-table travel book to accompany a documentary he presented about helping out distressed Chilean bears. I particularly liked his thoughts roughing it, i.e. that he doesn't but instead likes to stay in five star hotels and drink cocktails. Unusually sensible attitude from a travel writer.
In The Earth Abides The Flame by Russell Kirkpatrick. Second volume of the "Fires of Heaven" trilogy and better than the first. He seems to be building up a bit of a Christian theological argument in there (characters discussing the argument from evil, treacherous secular characters, and so forth). A bit disturbing if he is, like C S Lewis, trying to be evangelical. Bleah. Still, treating it as pure fantasy, damn good. There's also some discussion of belief without evidence (faith) and why you should... which is a bit odd given that the Most High in that world is beginning to make his actual existence pretty obvious, if you ask me.
Gallows Thief by Bernard Cornwell. Very good. A bit odd, for him, as it is really a murder mystery. Of course, it's an adventure story as well. The one down side is a rather detailed (and thus gruesome) description of some hangings at Newgate in the very first chapter. But, once past that, a damn good story.
The Snow by Adam Roberts. Interesting, weird apocalypse novel. I can't say much about it without spoilage, unfortunately. Civilisation dies when it just starts snowing and doesn't stop for years. Told as a collection of documents mainly focussing on a particular character and the people she meets over the years during and following the snow. Fascinating.
The Roof of Voyaging by Garry Kilworth. Fantasy novel based on Polynesian mythology. A much easier read than the academic work on Maori mythology at the top of this list. Very good - it's nice to read a fantasy novel that draws so heavily on a less familiar set of stories. Good.
Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra & Jr. Jose Marzan (Graphic novel, first book). Absolutely stunningly good comic, this one. Follows the story of the one man (and his monkey) who survive the sudden death of all male mammals in the world. This is my second time reading it through and it's at least as good as the first. It's a deeply layered comic with a lot of little things that are significant the second time. Vaughan's craftsmanship in this story is almost annoying, it's so good. But it never seems to get too pretentious or too implausible. Of course, the starting point is pretty implausible but the main characters are very believeable in their reactions to what happens. Some of the people they come up against are less so, but these are clearly there for the main people to react to. Read these comics.
Equal Rites and Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. Rereading comic novels when ill is something I do. These two, I don't rate so high but all the ones I like more I have read too recently.
Raymond Chandler by Tom Hiney. A good biography. Chandler had a shitty life, it's no surprise that his books are so cynical. It was an interesting life, though, and Hiney does a good job of making plausible connections between Chandler's life and writing.
The Lightstone by David Zindell. Another re-read. This one due to running out of books, and also because the final one in the trilogy is due out in a few months. It's a complex book, and I can never remember what happened in it, so I expect not to understand number three at all if I haven't read them recently. Good enough to be worth that work.
14 January 2005
Dead Inside/Cold Hard World Review
This has been sitting on the back-burner for a while, so I thought I should finally write it.
Dead Inside and Cold Hard World are a roleplaying game and supplement from Atomic Sock Monkey, also known as Chad Underkoffler.
He says that he wanted to write a game in which people were nice to each other, rather than the theiving lawbreakers common in roleplaying generally. There is definitely a sad tendency for even the most well-intentioned characters in games to do a lot of questionable things along the way.
In any case, he has managed that much. The game's setting is a world much like the real one but with actual magic in the form of spirits and souls. The characters are expected to be 'dead inside'. That means they are people who have somehow lost their soul. This loss cuts them off from the normal people and also allows them to access various magic powers, particularly entering the spirit world.
The spirit world is centered around a city where most of the people (and things) live and this is the expected setting of most adventures. The characters are expected to be working to somehow restore their souls. The setting is good, but I found it a little to, well, nice for my liking. This kind of goes with Underkoffler's objective but I prefer my games to have a little more obvious evil to get into conflict with. Which is not to say that this doesn't exist in Dead Inside, but it is certainly de-emphasized. Also, the characters can learn lots of kewl powerz in the spirit world, which is fun. They can also be used in the real world, but not so easily or effectively.
The best part of the game is the mechanics for soul cultivation. Basically this is the measure of whether the character's soul is growing or shrivelling. This goes up or down based on what they do and why they do it. So people who do bad things eventually lose any trace of their soul and turn into all-devouring qlippoths (the biggest horror-creature in the game) and people who are good eventually grow a new soul. This all works just as intended but does lead to a kind of psychoanalysis occurring in game, as the GM needs to check on character intentions quite often.
Cold Hard World alters things a bit. It's supposed to be a real world sourcebook for the game for those who want to have less of the spirit world. Which includes me. I think the stuff here is mixed. There's a lot about how the kewl powerz work in the real world, and a few new ones. The general rule is they just don't work very well. There's some places, people and organisations to use in your game. These were, I thought, less inspired than those in Dead Inside. The groups, in particular, didn't really seem like groups that would exist to me. But that might just be my taste in things. The best of the supplement is the section on reworking the game, with several suggestions as to how to rebuild the same basic cosmology for different styles of game. I rather wish I had waited to play it until reading this, because they're much more my sort of thing than the default setting. Oh well, when I run or play a second game I can use one of those.
Overall? A really interesting experiment and a good game. Not quite a great game, due to choices about the setting. Then again, the setting was pretty much designed to be that way so my reservations are in line with 'But it's what it says on the label! I don't want that!'. Well, not quite. But at least implied by the label.
I guess I should say a little about the system. It's a simple little mechanic which Underkoffler calls PDQ and uses in some other games. It's also available for free download from the website. It works well and is simple. That appears to be what it was designed to do, so 100% success there.
And checking on that link, I am reminded that there are free demos of Dead Inside and Cold Hard World there too. You might as well try them out, then.
Also, Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot (bottom of that freebies page) is the best fighting to the death for sweet, sweet uranium game in the world. Better than many in wider categories, too.
Dead Inside and Cold Hard World are a roleplaying game and supplement from Atomic Sock Monkey, also known as Chad Underkoffler.
He says that he wanted to write a game in which people were nice to each other, rather than the theiving lawbreakers common in roleplaying generally. There is definitely a sad tendency for even the most well-intentioned characters in games to do a lot of questionable things along the way.
In any case, he has managed that much. The game's setting is a world much like the real one but with actual magic in the form of spirits and souls. The characters are expected to be 'dead inside'. That means they are people who have somehow lost their soul. This loss cuts them off from the normal people and also allows them to access various magic powers, particularly entering the spirit world.
The spirit world is centered around a city where most of the people (and things) live and this is the expected setting of most adventures. The characters are expected to be working to somehow restore their souls. The setting is good, but I found it a little to, well, nice for my liking. This kind of goes with Underkoffler's objective but I prefer my games to have a little more obvious evil to get into conflict with. Which is not to say that this doesn't exist in Dead Inside, but it is certainly de-emphasized. Also, the characters can learn lots of kewl powerz in the spirit world, which is fun. They can also be used in the real world, but not so easily or effectively.
The best part of the game is the mechanics for soul cultivation. Basically this is the measure of whether the character's soul is growing or shrivelling. This goes up or down based on what they do and why they do it. So people who do bad things eventually lose any trace of their soul and turn into all-devouring qlippoths (the biggest horror-creature in the game) and people who are good eventually grow a new soul. This all works just as intended but does lead to a kind of psychoanalysis occurring in game, as the GM needs to check on character intentions quite often.
Cold Hard World alters things a bit. It's supposed to be a real world sourcebook for the game for those who want to have less of the spirit world. Which includes me. I think the stuff here is mixed. There's a lot about how the kewl powerz work in the real world, and a few new ones. The general rule is they just don't work very well. There's some places, people and organisations to use in your game. These were, I thought, less inspired than those in Dead Inside. The groups, in particular, didn't really seem like groups that would exist to me. But that might just be my taste in things. The best of the supplement is the section on reworking the game, with several suggestions as to how to rebuild the same basic cosmology for different styles of game. I rather wish I had waited to play it until reading this, because they're much more my sort of thing than the default setting. Oh well, when I run or play a second game I can use one of those.
Overall? A really interesting experiment and a good game. Not quite a great game, due to choices about the setting. Then again, the setting was pretty much designed to be that way so my reservations are in line with 'But it's what it says on the label! I don't want that!'. Well, not quite. But at least implied by the label.
I guess I should say a little about the system. It's a simple little mechanic which Underkoffler calls PDQ and uses in some other games. It's also available for free download from the website. It works well and is simple. That appears to be what it was designed to do, so 100% success there.
And checking on that link, I am reminded that there are free demos of Dead Inside and Cold Hard World there too. You might as well try them out, then.
Also, Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot (bottom of that freebies page) is the best fighting to the death for sweet, sweet uranium game in the world. Better than many in wider categories, too.
04 January 2005
Half-life 2
The other thing I got for christmas that is taking up time is this one.
Absolutely brilliant. Definitely the best first-person shooter of the last few years - single player anyhow. Haven't had a chance to play the deathmatch yet. Basically does everything the first one does, but better. That includes making me think every few minutes "wow, this is awesome".
The facial animations and the realism of the buildings and terrain are really what makes this game work. It's really astonishing - I have long wondered when we're going to get to the point where computer games are like the holodeck on Star Trek, and this one makes me think that it is now on the horizon, rather than 'in a few decades'.
Also, the puzzles that use the physics engine are cool.
Absolutely brilliant. Definitely the best first-person shooter of the last few years - single player anyhow. Haven't had a chance to play the deathmatch yet. Basically does everything the first one does, but better. That includes making me think every few minutes "wow, this is awesome".
The facial animations and the realism of the buildings and terrain are really what makes this game work. It's really astonishing - I have long wondered when we're going to get to the point where computer games are like the holodeck on Star Trek, and this one makes me think that it is now on the horizon, rather than 'in a few decades'.
Also, the puzzles that use the physics engine are cool.
It's like I don't do anything but read books...
Okay, so there's not really too much about games being posted here at the moment. So it goes. Anyhow, it was suggested to me that maybe keeping track of every book read would be an interesting thing to do in a blog. Which seems so to me, even if just so that I can remember them all. So I'll do that. Every book I read will be noted and commented on, some extensively. I suspect in many cases I'll return and do a more detailed review later.
So, the books I got for Christmas and a couple from the library to start it all off.
The Penguin History Of New Zealand by Michael King. Okay, so as a New Zealander I ought to have read this already. Anyhow, a very good history. Not too much detail but not missing anything either.
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe. An extremely silly book but quite good. The Pirate Captain and his crew rescue Darwin and FitzRoy from the Beagle and end up fighting Bishop Wilberforce in London. Doesn't actually deal with issues of religion and science, just pirates and Blackadder-style historical parody.
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell. First book in a new series in which we observe the reign of Alfred the Great. Like most of his books, the hero is set up to see things from both sides and be involved just enough to see everything important. Really good but mainly setting up the characters, so I'm eagerly looking forward to the second one.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Astoundingly good. English gentleman magicians during the Napoleonic Wars attempting to return magic to England. The England of the book is the one found in novels rather than history books, with the addition of the kingdom of the Raven King in the north in the middle ages.
Crucible by Nancy Kress. Second in a series of colonisation of another planet (after Crossfire). Better than the first, which was good. I especially like that, unlike most other authors writing such stories, the whole planet's ecosystem does not turn out to be the lifecycle of one organism or similarly interconnected.
The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams. First, a good fantasy novel. Second, what is it with Australian sf/fantasy authors called Sean?
So, the books I got for Christmas and a couple from the library to start it all off.
The Penguin History Of New Zealand by Michael King. Okay, so as a New Zealander I ought to have read this already. Anyhow, a very good history. Not too much detail but not missing anything either.
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe. An extremely silly book but quite good. The Pirate Captain and his crew rescue Darwin and FitzRoy from the Beagle and end up fighting Bishop Wilberforce in London. Doesn't actually deal with issues of religion and science, just pirates and Blackadder-style historical parody.
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell. First book in a new series in which we observe the reign of Alfred the Great. Like most of his books, the hero is set up to see things from both sides and be involved just enough to see everything important. Really good but mainly setting up the characters, so I'm eagerly looking forward to the second one.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Astoundingly good. English gentleman magicians during the Napoleonic Wars attempting to return magic to England. The England of the book is the one found in novels rather than history books, with the addition of the kingdom of the Raven King in the north in the middle ages.
Crucible by Nancy Kress. Second in a series of colonisation of another planet (after Crossfire). Better than the first, which was good. I especially like that, unlike most other authors writing such stories, the whole planet's ecosystem does not turn out to be the lifecycle of one organism or similarly interconnected.
The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams. First, a good fantasy novel. Second, what is it with Australian sf/fantasy authors called Sean?
14 December 2004
Yes, I Know There Hasn't Been Anything About Gaming Recently
Several reasons for it, which I will summarise here.
Firstly, I got an awesome new pimped out PC for gaming, so I've been spending a fair bit of time playing Rome: Total War, Evil Genius, Doom 3, Call of Duty: United Offensive, the new Pirates! and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. And some others too, but those are the ones worth mentioning.
Also, I'm organising the live game for my local gaming convention, Kapcon. If you are in Wellington, New Zealand towards the end of next month, you should come along. There's always a lot of good roleplaying there, usually a lot of homebrew systems and unusual games and the players and GMs are all good. And we should have a lot of fun in the live game.
In other news, I'll be doing a quick review of the free on the internet version of The Shadow of Yesterday as soon as I've finished reading it. So far it looks good, a pulpy style fantasy RPG which is heavily influenced by a lot of games I like.
Firstly, I got an awesome new pimped out PC for gaming, so I've been spending a fair bit of time playing Rome: Total War, Evil Genius, Doom 3, Call of Duty: United Offensive, the new Pirates! and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. And some others too, but those are the ones worth mentioning.
Also, I'm organising the live game for my local gaming convention, Kapcon. If you are in Wellington, New Zealand towards the end of next month, you should come along. There's always a lot of good roleplaying there, usually a lot of homebrew systems and unusual games and the players and GMs are all good. And we should have a lot of fun in the live game.
In other news, I'll be doing a quick review of the free on the internet version of The Shadow of Yesterday as soon as I've finished reading it. So far it looks good, a pulpy style fantasy RPG which is heavily influenced by a lot of games I like.
More Books
First one, Glass Dragons by Sean McMullen. I liked this more than any of his others, including the one recommended earlier. This one is a sequel to The Voyage of the Shadowmoon and they're fantasy novels. Several of the most fun characters from the first book return, and a few new ones are introduced as the world is threatened by an entirely new magical weapon of mass destruction. A lot of laugh-out-loud funny passages, which is pretty rare for me. Read the first one, then read this.
The other is Across The Face Of The World by Russell Kirkpatrick. Basically a good first novel in a fantasy trilogy. Recommended, but be warned that the bad guys are really very bad indeed. Also notable in that he (as a geographer and mapmaker) makes the huge amount of geography in The Lord of the Rings pale by comparison. As our heroes and villains quest across the world, we get a hell of a lot of natural history and so on. This could be bad, but Kirkpatrick keeps everything interesting. Worth a look. He also wrote all three novels before they were published so I should be able to read the second very soon indeed and the third in February. Huzzah! I wish more authors did this, and also that publishers didn't hold onto subsequent volumes. If there's a series, I want them all now.
The other is Across The Face Of The World by Russell Kirkpatrick. Basically a good first novel in a fantasy trilogy. Recommended, but be warned that the bad guys are really very bad indeed. Also notable in that he (as a geographer and mapmaker) makes the huge amount of geography in The Lord of the Rings pale by comparison. As our heroes and villains quest across the world, we get a hell of a lot of natural history and so on. This could be bad, but Kirkpatrick keeps everything interesting. Worth a look. He also wrote all three novels before they were published so I should be able to read the second very soon indeed and the third in February. Huzzah! I wish more authors did this, and also that publishers didn't hold onto subsequent volumes. If there's a series, I want them all now.
01 December 2004
Some More Book Reviews.
I recently read two second parts that made me want to recommend both full sets.
The first is The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe. Part one is The Knight and part two is The Wizard. In this story, Wolfe takes a cliched starting point - a boy is taken into a fantasy world and becomes a hero - and makes something amazing out of it. The story captures a lot of the magic that fantasy stories had when I was young but also deals with adult issues. It's also a very good adventure story in it's own right. As people who've read other books of his might expect, there is also a huge amount of detail and complexity that I suspect I'll have to read both books two or three more times to unravel, not to mention odd plotlines and hints of other stuff that is never explicitly dealt with.
The second is a pair of books by Nick Sagan (I'm hoping and expecting that there will be more). The first is called Idlewild and the second Edenborn. They have a very odd setup and I don't want to say too much because the discovery of the real situation in the first book drives a lot of the plot. However, suffice it to say that a small group of very smart but otherwise basically normal teenagers are required to save the world. The second novel is set some time after the first and revisits them in a quite different situation. Both novels are really psychological thrillers, in which the interactions of the variously screwed up characters are the meat of the stories. Good.
The first is The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe. Part one is The Knight and part two is The Wizard. In this story, Wolfe takes a cliched starting point - a boy is taken into a fantasy world and becomes a hero - and makes something amazing out of it. The story captures a lot of the magic that fantasy stories had when I was young but also deals with adult issues. It's also a very good adventure story in it's own right. As people who've read other books of his might expect, there is also a huge amount of detail and complexity that I suspect I'll have to read both books two or three more times to unravel, not to mention odd plotlines and hints of other stuff that is never explicitly dealt with.
The second is a pair of books by Nick Sagan (I'm hoping and expecting that there will be more). The first is called Idlewild and the second Edenborn. They have a very odd setup and I don't want to say too much because the discovery of the real situation in the first book drives a lot of the plot. However, suffice it to say that a small group of very smart but otherwise basically normal teenagers are required to save the world. The second novel is set some time after the first and revisits them in a quite different situation. Both novels are really psychological thrillers, in which the interactions of the variously screwed up characters are the meat of the stories. Good.
29 October 2004
Some Books I Have Read Recently
Just a few books that I have read recently and want to say something about
The Miocene Arrow by Sean McMullen. This is in fact the second book in his "Greatwinter" trilogy but stands alone fine - I read the other two some time ago. I've liked all his books but this one stood out. The bizarre social arrangements in this version of post-apocalypse North America are gloriously detailed - a society of feuding nobles who duel in their fighter planes. There's a lot of lovely deadpan humour (reminding me of Jack Vance) and a good story. The only gripe I have with it is that when he explains some of the crucial reasons the world is like it is (including what caused the apocalypse) it just seemed silly to me. Still, despite the shaky foundation, a great read.
Darwin's Ghost by Steve Jones. This is an updated Origin of Species. Jones has set out to basically write the same book that Darwin did, with all the discoveries since then as well as what there was to work with in the nineteenth century. It's a very lucid read, a good description of what natural selection is and how it works and it has a huge number of interesting little snippets of natural history. I got the copy I read out of the library but I think I need to buy one for the bookshelf. It also made me realise that I really ought to get around to reading the original, something I have been intending to do for about a decade now.
The System of the World by Neal Stephenson. Finally I have finished his Baroque Cycle - it's quite a relief. It's a good story (all three, that is) but I really think Stephenson needs to resist his urge to write huge amounts of tangential detail. Usually these tangents in his books are interesting and/or amusing, but they're getting to be more and more of each novel. And also to outweigh the actual story.
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. His best book for quite a while. Really funny and he seems to be back to reflecting bits of the real world that are more interesting than other recent books. Or maybe just more interesting to me. The main character is one of the better protagonists too. And Lord Vetinari does a lot of stuff in this one, which is always enjoyable.
The Miocene Arrow by Sean McMullen. This is in fact the second book in his "Greatwinter" trilogy but stands alone fine - I read the other two some time ago. I've liked all his books but this one stood out. The bizarre social arrangements in this version of post-apocalypse North America are gloriously detailed - a society of feuding nobles who duel in their fighter planes. There's a lot of lovely deadpan humour (reminding me of Jack Vance) and a good story. The only gripe I have with it is that when he explains some of the crucial reasons the world is like it is (including what caused the apocalypse) it just seemed silly to me. Still, despite the shaky foundation, a great read.
Darwin's Ghost by Steve Jones. This is an updated Origin of Species. Jones has set out to basically write the same book that Darwin did, with all the discoveries since then as well as what there was to work with in the nineteenth century. It's a very lucid read, a good description of what natural selection is and how it works and it has a huge number of interesting little snippets of natural history. I got the copy I read out of the library but I think I need to buy one for the bookshelf. It also made me realise that I really ought to get around to reading the original, something I have been intending to do for about a decade now.
The System of the World by Neal Stephenson. Finally I have finished his Baroque Cycle - it's quite a relief. It's a good story (all three, that is) but I really think Stephenson needs to resist his urge to write huge amounts of tangential detail. Usually these tangents in his books are interesting and/or amusing, but they're getting to be more and more of each novel. And also to outweigh the actual story.
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. His best book for quite a while. Really funny and he seems to be back to reflecting bits of the real world that are more interesting than other recent books. Or maybe just more interesting to me. The main character is one of the better protagonists too. And Lord Vetinari does a lot of stuff in this one, which is always enjoyable.
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