Everfree by Nick Sagan

I really enjoyed the first two of Sagan's books in this series (Idlewild and Edenborn) but the conclusion is even better.

The series is about (spoilers for Idlewild follow) a world in which a terrible plague killed all humans. The first book begins as the protagonists find this out - they're a group of engineered posthumans who were created to find a cure to the disease and cure those 'survivors' who got into cryonic suspension before they died.

This book has the posthumans beginning to waken and cure these people, and deals with the problems of getting society working again with only a few thousand people (almost all from the extremely rich or politically powerful classes).

It's a fairly cynical book, but there are victories as well as defeats. Sagan also does a good job of exploring his posthumans' reactions to the situations. He also differs from almost every other similar story I have read in not pushing any overt political message here. It seems to be more of a pessimistic humanism pervading the story - definitely a particular philosophy, but not a suggestion that one political arrangement will sort everything out (especially as it seems like the suggested system is usually some kind of libertarian arrangement).

It also seems like it would read well as a stand-alone novel - I certainly had forgotten most of the details of the first two books, and that didn't really matter. The previous novels inform the motivations and relationships between the posthumans, but as this story is about their relationships with the survivors, that's not really so important.

Overall, great novel.

Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder

Technically this is science fiction. Really it's just a great adventure novel that happens to be set in the future. It even includes some naval stuff, as it's set in a giant life-supporting bubble. So the various countries have navies of ships/aircraft that fly through the zer0-gravity air.

Good stuff, I look forward to the rest of the series.

Openland by Michael Liddy

Another book I abandoned. It was actually kind of promising, until the author hit me with something totally unbelievable.

In this case, about half way through, he has his protagonists discover that humans are not native to Earth but are extraterrestrials who have only been here about 40,000 years. With no other explanation at all. And the characters, an archaeologist and a geologist, just accept this with a "Oh so that is it." He even mentions that this makes us totally unrelated to all other life on Earth, but makes no attempt to justify it at all.

I mean, really. You might as well claim that everyone is made of plastic and nobody happened to notice. It's not even that you couldn't tell a story in which humans didn't evolve on Earth - but you need to at least address the fact!

Agon Play: The Isle of Gold

We played a game of Agon today, and it went very well. I'd spent my lunchtime hunting down some miniatures, which added significantly to the feel (good work cheap plastic Greek spearmen).

Character generation went fairly fast and gave a solid, brief idea of each character. There's not much to differentiate the starting heroes, but what there is seems important. The achievements section at the end really helped here, as well as giving a quick intro to the conflict system.

Then I dropped them on the beaches of the Isle of Gold, and Hera informed them that they needed to go slay the Obsidian Scorpion for her. I had a couple of other quests sketched, but figured one would be enough for our first session. This one had three objectives - find out where it lairs and travel there being the first two, and the ones that we managed to play through this session.

In any case, our heroes initially split up, one looking for scorpion trails and the others off to talk to local farmers. The hunter turned up some tracks heading towards the mountainous interior of the island. The others found out that the local king had died and a funeral was being arranged. They convinced the town bard to tell them where the scorpion lairs in return for a promise of it's head as a funeral sacrifice for Hera.

The next morning they headed off to cross the mountains to the other side of the island to find the Scorpion. They met a couple of bandits who tried to charge them a toll. We played this as our first combat - they were pretty crappy minions of one of the island's bandit kings, and were rapidly dispatched. Dorothea the Amazon made a point of paying their toll afterwards - putting four copper coins over their dead eyes.

We had an interlude next, mainly so people could see how it worked. Some impairment was removed, and sacrifices were made.

Then we had a challenge to cross the bandit territory - I made this a basic obstacle challenge with a chance of harm. The bandits did some damage to our heroes on the way.

Then they reached the mountains, where a nasty ghost lived. She attempted to ambush them but was defeated - the heroes ambushed her instead. This fight was a lot tougher, and a lot of fun. Two of the heroes took some nasty damage before she was slain with a round of good results and a bunch of divine favour spent to imbue a spear with power to destroy her.

We were getting close to our session end time, so we had a final interlude and finished up. This interlude stood out for the first real use of oaths - one hero compelled another to heal him, and then the victim compelled him right back to be healed.

The combat was a really good level of tactics. There is plenty to do - much we didn't bother with due to it being the first game (like armour, which was totally forgotten for both penalties and resisting damage... so, retroactively, you were all in just chitons and sandals, guys). Everyone got quite into the positioning part of combat (I'm really looking forward to the next fight with loads of scorpions, for more of that action).

As a GM, it's fun to stat out and play the bad guys exactly as the heroes get run.

Lastly, at the end we totaled up legend and deeds for the session and immediately I saw that the competition between players will work well.

Good stuff - Agon absolutely delivered on the promises in the text. We're looking forward to the next one, and once they kill or are defeated by the Scorpion, I'll be interested to see how they deal with the more complex quests that follow it up.

The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes

Bad. I didn't finish it - maybe I would have pushed ahead if we weren't visiting the library today, but I'd rather return it than keep at it.

To all fantasy authors: adding more descriptive text does not make your novel better.

Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

A new Powers novel is always a treat. This one is a little unusual, in that it seems a little less punchy than usual. That's not to say it's bad - in fact, this style may be better than usual. Partly this is due to being told from the point of view of fewer characters (and none who are evil, as in some of his novels). In fact, even the bad guys aren't as horrible as some of his other villains.

The plot itself involves psychic powers and a time machine, and various plots and conspiracies to get hold of the machine. The main characters are the people who are inadvertently in possession of the device as the story begins. I'm generally pretty skeptical of time travel as a story element (especially now, after watching Heroes) but this is an interesting take on it.

The story also feels compatible with the world of Last Call, Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather. There aren't any actual crossovers (at least, none I noticed) but I wouldn't be surprised to see some in the future.

Fade progress report at the Omega Kitchen

Short update here.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story

Watched this video the other night. This is one of the funniest films I've seen for a while. It's hard to know exactly what made it work - the humour is in several areas that I regarded as basically played out (e.g. jokes about making the movie itself).

Between the actual story of Tristram Shandy and the freshness and fun of the cast, it really worked.

I guess I need to go and read the novel now, to see how it fits in. I suspect that it has almost no relation to the film, except maybe in an absurdist attitude to itself and everything else in the world.

The Diamond Warriors by David Zindell

This fourth volume concludes the story of Valashu Elahad. The final battles that he must fight are not so harrowing as some he has been through, although some grim events still occur. When Morjin is finally defeated, the ending is moving and thrilling - partially just because of all that the heroes have suffered through in order to get there.

A fantastic end to the series, I am strongly motivated to immediately read them all again. Zindell is, in my opinion, one of our top science fiction/fantasy authors. He's also strangely obscure - I've met few who have read his books, and it's hard to find them amongst the hundreds of inferior novels that abound.

I've also thought that in some ways the Neverness stories are an updating of Dune. In the same way, the Ea books can be seen as a modernized Lord of the Rings (or Arthur cycle). In both cases, the themes in Zindell's books are different to Herbert or Tolkien's, but the concern with things that actually matter is there.

I also love that Zindell is an almost terrifyingly humane writer, and his characters all have a great love of life, and peace, that I respect. He does, in the course of his stories, pressure them to breaking point but this just makes their victories that much more poignant. The finale of The Diamond Warrior is one of his most glorious of these, a much more positive end than poor Danlo the Wild had at the conclusion of War In Heaven (the final of the Neverness books).

Conan: The God in the Bowl by Kurt Busiek & Cary Nord

This is the second of Busiek's adaptations of Conan as a graphic novel. It didn't have the pacing of the first volume, but the second half was a damn good story. The first half sets it up, but isn't so punchy.

B. P. R. D. - The Universal Machine by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davs

Probably my favorite of the BPRD books so far, this one is light on the occult action and heavy on studying what makes the characters tick.

Dictionary of Mu by Judd Karlman

This is a supplement for Ron Edwards' Sorceror.

It's a blood-soaked, post-apocalyptic fantasy setting in which the demons can be anything that has died or been forgotten. The bulk of the supplement is a dictionary of words that are important in the world, with a short rules section at the end. The rules cover what humanity is in the setting, some special rules for certain situations (e.g. falling in love, vendettas) which seem like they would add a little extra structure to the character interactions in the game, a bit more zing too.

Another element that I like is that if a player spends experience points or summons a demon, they must write up a new definition about it and add this to the dictionary. The supplement is really just a framework to build your game from.

The book is really evocative, with strange fonts, scrawled marginalia and strange doodles on the edges of the pages.

One of the problems I have with Sorceror is that it leaves pretty much all the setting creation to you. These days, I don't really have the time to prepare a setting from scratch, so I've only played it once, for a short run game. After reading Dictionary of Mu I am once again inspired - this seems to give me enough to build off, without being very restrictive.

A Game of Bones by David Donachie

Another episode in the Ludlow privateersmen mysteries.

This novel is less concerned with the mystery side of the series, and more on the naval action. Returning to England after some time in the Americas, they are just in time for the Spithead and Nore mutinies. Harry gets involved with these and ends up investigating the possibility of Jacobin provocateurs amongst the sailors.

However, the main part of the story is a duel with a French privateer that he came across on the way home. There's a lot of good action in the engagements.

There's some good character stuff too, mainly focused on Harry recovering from the events of the previous novel. As always, Donachie's dialog is good and often hilarious (especially when James Ludlow, a rather sarcastic fellow, decides to deflate someone he dislikes).

The Infected Playtest: Death in Lesser Dorking

All details in thread at Story Games.

Rocket Science by Jay Lake

A fun, odd story set in post-World War 2 Kansas. The narrator's friend brings home a stolen flying saucer as a war souvenir, and chaos erupts due to an unlikely number of spies in the town.

Visionary In Residence by Bruce Sterling

Although I'm not much of a fan of short stories, I am a fan of Mr Sterling's, so I gave this collection a read. Some good ones, some not so good, all of them were interesting.

The ones that I enjoyed most were those that were science fiction (or closely related to it, like his 'architectural fiction' and 'design fiction' pieces). There's also some good historical stories in there.

The Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher

After enjoying the Dresden Files books so much, I was expecting more from Butcher's more traditional fantasy series. This first one didn't deliver.

The characters are pretty shallow and cliched, and the story wasn't too good. It also suffered from a lot of plot driven by people not mentioning important things to each other and/or just happening to turn up in the right place.

The world is interesting, with some nifty magic powers and cultures. It feels like this is where the work went in, and I'd rather have seen this effort go into the characterization, which is the main strength of the Dresden Files books.

The Infected (ashcan edition) by Eric Provost

Another new purchase, this is a beta test version of the game. It's designed to replicate films about zombies (and things kind of like zombies). Essentially, any horror film in which people turn into monsters.

It's an easy sell for me as it's designed for zero-prep, one-shot play. It's a short read, with no excess. Just the rules and play advice, with a few pictures in there. Some are evocative although a few (apparently from an older, different version) seem a little out of place.

Play is pretty simple. Players get given a card which randomly sets your character's motivation - they're pretty broad things, like "family" and "justice." Characters are then generated, by picking a goal related to your motivation and coming up with a name and background. Player characters don't really have any stats - just some tokens that count how far you are off achieving your goal.

The GM gets to design the monsters at this stage - their origin, purpose, how they infect people, what the transformation is like, etc.

There are also six NPC cards that go in the center of the table. They start blank, and get names as they appear in play. The NPCs start giving players a big bonus and the GM a terrible one, but as they help people this reverses. They also can become infected or monsters, as play goes on.

The GM gets a cup with some infected dice in it, which are used to have monsters attack people.

Then everyone takes turns setting up scenes. It looks like players will generally want to set scenes to allow them to reach their own goal, while the GM will want to generally cause chaos and infect the NPCs that people care most about.

Play occurs in three reels (or acts), subsequent ones starting when the GM runs out of dice. Each reel, they get a refresh of more dice. This will put a strong incentive to work hard to get your goal quickly, as it seems like it will be easy to run out of time.

The NPCs also have a nasty sting... you can get them to help you do stuff, for a big bonus. However, if you screw up then the NPCs can get closer to being a monster and thus turning on you. Plus the GM can spend infected dice to have infected or monstrous NPCs hinder you.

And you can get infected too. If a PC gets infected dice, they can use them any roll they want... but this involves letting the infection bring out some inhumanity in you. And you might end up infecting the others too.

Together, this all looks like it will lead to a tense, fun, zombie (or zombie equivalent) game with some nice inter-group conflict over the goals and NPCs.

I cannot wait to play this one, it looks great.

Young Bloods by Simon Scarrow

I really enjoyed Scarrow's centurion novels, but I'd been a little chary of this one - a fictionalised biography of Napoleon and Wellington. I ended up getting it due to being in somewhat of a book drought, and it turns out my fears of it being a little dry were unfounded.

As far as I know, he sticks pretty close to their actual lives. He does admit to making up a few scenes just to make his story better (including an amusing meeting between them when Wellington spent a year at a French military college). There's also a number of scenes that could only have played out as described with the knowledge of what is still to come in both their lives.

Still, it has it's exciting moments and I was disappointed when I got to the end. Hopefully volume two will not be far off (and the next one about the centurions too).

Dr Quantum and the Illuminati

We played a game of Spirit of the Century last night. It went well, and I can see why the game has such a reputation.

My preparation comprised basically just noting down a few random ideas for a plot inspired by some of the character aspects, and this was plenty. In fact, I had to cut the final scenes short as we were in danger of running over time.

No more detailed issues came up - it's clear that the first few sessions will be slower, as people get a handle on how aspects work and what their stunts do. I expect that each following one will go notably smoother.

Black Jade by David Zindell

So I finished reading the third of these books, also enjoyed this one a lot. Now I just have to wait for number four to come out.

My Tank Is Fight! by Zack Parsons

This is a book about the craziest inventions that didn't quite happen in the Second World War. It's based on a series of columns Parsons' wrote at Something Awful a year or three ago.

It's a fun read, with a good selection of crazy ideas. For each one, there are a few pictures (including some nice colour plates), a description of the actual history, a discussion of the technical aspects and how well it might have worked, and finally a hypothetical history if the invention had gone ahead and fictional vignette about that.

Parsons' writing is good, although he often drops into an over the top style that will be familiar to Something Awful readers. In some places, this seems inappropriate to the material. The fictional vignettes are also somewhat redundant - I feel like more attention to the analysis of the inventions and hypothetical histories would have been more rewarding to read.

All that said, overall it's great fun - covering everything from Nazi nukes to personal backpack helicopters and 2000 ton tanks.

Actual Play - Beast Hunters

So, I sat down to play Beast Hunters last night. Overall, not a successful game, unfortunately. This was largely a matter of preferences, rather than the game failing to deliver.

We both made up hunters, and had a good time with that. The allocation of traits and resources as you make up your life story worked well and made interesting characters. We also elected to be from the same tribe, and that led to some nice touches (one hunter was the chief's granddaughter, the other from a line who were once tribal chiefs but now impoverished).

Once play began, however, it didn't go so well. Our challenges quickly got bogged down in less than stellar narration and rather too much dice rolling. The dice rolling in particular was a problem for the other player (who doesn't like things to be too complex or involve much arithmetic). The lack of interesting narration was because of two things - on the one hand, we'd had a long tiring day. On the other, the setting didn't really spark the interest of my partner.

Contributing to this was the fact that you have to go through quite a few conflict turns to win. Our first conflicts revolved around a family argument and a vision quest, with the hunter beset by spirits. Both of these were fine at first, but we began running out of ideas long before the conflict was over. I don't think this was just our lack of inspiration either - my preference would be for conflicts to be significantly accelerated. If I were to play again, I might halve the advantage cost of strikes, just to move things along faster.

We found that each conflict began with a fairly boring turn or two of both sides activating traits, then a few maneuvers, then a low level strike, a few more maneuvers, another strike, etc. Actually finishing the conflict off turned out to take a lot longer than I expected, and felt rather drawn out to me. This was particularly the case with the conflict that was rather further from the combat metaphor - the vision quest.

The idea here was that the hunter needed to get guidance to track down the beast they were to hunt, while hostile spirits and the environment tried to confuse her. However, after a few rounds, both of us found that we had no more material to keep the conflict interesting.

As challenger, it also broke me out of the swing of things a bit to have to make a numerical offer in response to each maneuver. My natural inclination was to just roll the dice and see if it worked, instead.

There's also a lot to keep track of, so the first go was quite difficult in that sense. Particularly in a conflict, you need to make sure you know several different numbers that can change each action.

In the end, we decided to stop before completing the adventure, as it just wasn't working out.

So. Overall? None of that should be taken as criticism of the game, itself. This was mainly a case of 'not the right game for us, then'. I'd been keen to try it, even though my partner had expressed some reservations about the game, and it was for my benefit we played it. And, it turned out to not be her sort of thing. I also didn't enjoy it as much as expected, mainly due to the issue of conflict length mentioned above.

Lord of Lies by David Zindell

Re-read the second in Zindell's fantasy series. Also improved this time around.

I also had a look for the fourth book the other day, but no sign yet. I was hoping that I'd get to read it as soon as I finish #3.

Fade Power 19

Posted at the Omega Kitchen.

The Lightstone by David Zindell

Re-reading this novel, I was reminded how good fantasy can be. Despite being an 850 page monolith, Zindell's wordiness never annoys me. He spends his time pondering interesting, deep stuff. Not just description for its own sake.

And, boy howdy, he puts his protagonists through some bad stuff on the way. I always find myself cheering them on mentally when things get really rough.

Actual Play - Wild Talents & Spirit of the Century

This week was an odd session.

Wild Talents Cold War

First we finished the Wild Talents Cold War mission. This went pretty rapidly as they managed to move quick enough to stay ahead of the pursuers (plus some nice use of their Talents to bluff their way through a couple of checkpoints). I then had a bit of fallout in the debriefing, as they'd gone for the big guns (as it were) very quickly, and created somewhat of an incident. The reactions of the various characters to the debriefing and subsequent training and enforced leave was interesting to play out.

The game left me a little cold, though. Partly this is the traditional nature of the thing. I'd spent an hour or so the day before preparing some stuff, including statting out a couple of Talent bad guys for them to fight, but that never got used due to them outwitting the soldiers they actually met. Although the stats can be used in another game later, it's still kind of annoying.

It's also hard to come up with things when the characters are essentially a pile of combat abilities with a little background attached. In particular, I find that improvising situations is very difficult. This wouldn't be the case after the characters have built up a bit of history, but after only one character generation session and one and a half of play, there isn't much to work with. I may need to finish my spy mission generator tables for Fade, just so that I can use them here too.

I'm considering that it may be time to just throw in the towel on traditional games, and stick with the ones that give me more tools to play in the manner that we do. That is, the group in general doesn't have time to prep or mess around. Games that set us up for instant play seem to work much better. Which leads me into...

Spirit of the Century

As we had a lot of time left, I pulled out Spirit of the Century, which I had cunningly brought along for just this contingency. We made up a bunch of characters, and we'll play a game of that before returning to Wild Talents for another mission.

Character generation in Spirit of the Century is just fantastic. We really got into it, and the way that it builds up works great.

First you work out a concept and think up a good, pulpy name. Coming up with the names was the first part where people started to get into it.

• Doctor Quantum, scientist.
• Sarge Splatter, werewolf.
• Ella House, cabaret singer.
• Rory Flashheart, adventurer.

Then you work out their early life and details about their family, and pick two aspects relating to that. Then what the character did in The Great War (all the characters are born on 1 January 1901, as part of the setting). These led to some neat images and aspects, and everyone was clearly building up a good idea of their character at this point.

Then we got to the first novel section, where you invent the title and back cover blurb of the first pulp novel starring your character. This is followed by guest appearances from two of the other characters, who add to the blurb.

We ended up with:

She Sang For Your Supperstarring Ella House
Ella had a voice to die for! Larger than life, she needed yours - but has she met her match in Lothario Lounge? Sarge Splatter adds a meaty aperitif, and Rory Flashheart discovers a whole new side to himself when he sings on stage!

Rory Flashheart vs the Diabolical Belgian Rosicrucians
With his love, Ada Jones, kidnapped by evil Lord Lashley for bloody sacrifice, Rory must fight his way into the Rosicrucian castle! Little does he know the terrible traps he will have to avoid! And how will he deal with Ella, mistress of iniquity? How will his true love cope with her forbidden charms? Doctor Quantum arrives in the nick of time to test his Detectotron - but will that be enough to save them?

Doctor Quantum and the Earthquake Machine
Doctor Quantum investigates a cluster of earthquakes on the west coast - his studies lead him to the den of the Jaguar Cult and their Earthquake Machine! Doctor Quantum enlists Rory Flashheart to fight his way to the Earthquake machine! With the Doctor surrounded by Jaguars, Sarge Splatter evens the score!

Sarge Splatter vs The Dessicator!
The most gore-soaked book ever printed! These two juggernauts go head to head! Who will walk away victorious? Doctor Quantum arrives just in time to hydrate Sarge with his Osmosis Device! Ella's allure melts Sarge Splatter's bloody heart!

As you may guess from those, we were really having fun. I personally liked that we had a couple of science hero/adventure pulps, plus a sordid and exploitative one, and the gory horror. Should make an... interesting... combination. To be honest, a few sessions of making up characters would be fun in and of itself.

However, the thing that I (as a GM) really liked is that these characters are built almost completely of things to hang stories off. Every character ends up with ten Aspects, which are strong flags (as well as (dis)advantages) and five Stunts (pulp powers, also flagging what sort of challenges to set up). Even the skill choices strongly point you at certain scenes. Taken with the immense amount of GM advice in the book, it seems almost the opposite of what I was finding annoying about Wild Talents.

So, next session we'll hit the sample adventure in the book and see how that plays out.

Espionage by Ernest Volkman

Subtitled "The Greatest Spy Operations of the 20th Century," which pretty much sums up the book.

Volkman has selected 22 cases, and devotes a good chapter to each. He covers how the operations began, their objectives and their effects on history. His writing is good, making even a few of the more dry cases interesting. Most of them don't need this, as they're pretty exciting. There's also a large number that I knew nothing or very little about.

He rounds it off with perhaps the most ludicrous operation ever, an attempt in 1945 to reduce German morale using forged postage stamps with subversive messages on them. Yes, really. (Spoiler: it had absolutely no effect on German morale).

Game Chef Fallout.

So, the feedback group I was in got all organized and Jonathon Walton started a design/workshop blog for us to keep working on our games. Most of my Fade comments will go there.

This is a pretty cool result from the Game Chef contest this year.

Monkey by Wu Cheng-en (trans. Arthur Waley)

Previously I had only known these stories from the old Japanese TV show. This translation is basically the same in style, although perhaps a little more coherent. Enormous fun.

Bones of the Moon by Jonathan Carroll

This is a fantasy about a woman's dream world encroaching gradually on the real world.

Although there are some nice elements to it, overall I found the story pretty unsatisfying. The main character doesn't get to do very much, instead just being there as things happen around her. On top of that, the logic between the real and fantasy worlds is unclear, which means that things seem to happen at random (including the climax).

Britain AD by Francis Pryor

This is another of Pryor's companions to his documentaries on the history of Britain.

It focuses chiefly on two areas in which he argues the received view is mistaken (and I get the impression his position is becoming more widely held). These are:

1. That the end of Roman rule in Britain did not lead to any sort of widespread collapse, but rather just changes in the way that society was run

2. There were no large scale Anglo-Saxon invasions rebuilding England after any anarchic Dark Age.

Instead, he present evidence that the end of Roman rule was just a part of a general change in the patterns of life and that the Anglo-Saxon artifacts and traditions of these times were more likely imported by an existing population rather than imposed by conquerors.

That all seems fair enough to me, but I found that the book's focus on this argument detracted from it a little. The other two books contained more interesting stories (either directly, about archaeological digs and research, or speculative ones about how people could have lived).

The Wire (series one)

This show has been around for a while, and I had basically written it off as just another forensic crime drama (a genre that doesn't appeal to me). But I kept hearing people recommend it, so finally rented it at the video store and watched it.

It is absolutely great.

The story covers a big drug investigation in Baltimore, following various characters (on both sides) with greater or lesser connection to the police team and drug syndicate. It feels incredibly realistic, and the production team are all people who ought to know (e.g. one of them was a homicide detective there). Every character is a plausible human - even those who seem one-sided at first all get a chance to show what else is going on in their lives later on. Most of the characters are not only plausible but interesting and sympathetic.

The caliber of acting, writing and direction is also very high indeed - maybe even flawless. I certainly never felt that something happening in the show made me think "What the hell? Why did they put that in?"

From a little internet research, it seems that the production team are very focused about what they want the show to do - essentially, to illustrate various sides of a city and show the good and bad stuff going on.

Actual Play - Shock: It Makes Stuff Matter

So, the other night me, Make Tea Not War, Hix and talula played a game of Shock: Social Science Fiction.

We hadn't planned what we were going to play before we started, so the evening began with a discussion of various options before we settled on Shock:. We began the world-building process, discarding quite a few options until we settled on this world:

• Issue: Technological Unemployment
• Issue: Personal Relationships
• Issue: Authentic Emotion
• Shock: Immortality
• Shock: Drive Repression (that is, government controlled and drug enabled repression of 'unsafe' emotional drives in the population).
• Praxis: Spontaneity/Routine
• Praxis: Sincerity/Artifice

The characters were:

1. Robert Thoms, a drive control officer recently made redundant due to the introduction of nano-cloud monitoring. Antag was Naomi Michaels, his ex-boss. Unemployment/Drive control.
   
2. Campbell Soup, an 80 year old spinster with a controlling nuclear family. Antag was her sister, Tomato. Personal relationships/Immortality.
   
3. Victor, a rock star looking for any kind of meaningful relationship at all. Antag was Vaughan, a music journalist. Personal relationships/Drive repression.
4. Lamar, one of "the first hundred" immortals, craving novelty. Antag was the first hundred. Authentic emotion/Immortality.

As you can see, the initial setup was no without some lighthearted touches. In fact, there were notably more jokes involved in the character creation than my summary suggests.

The evening was getting on, so we opted for a very short set of stories (10 Antag credits). This allowed us three scenes for most of the Protags (Campbell's story goal was so crucial in the second scene that all the credits got spent then).

And then we got started.

Immediately, play started getting interesting. Thoms began as he came home to announce his unemployment to his wife and son, with Naomi there to monitor his emotional responses and ensure he stayed under control. Melissa, the wife, was accepting of the change as she was a happy citizen with drives under control. His son took everything - including the news they must move to hive 7 - just as you might expect a five year old to so. This quickly became quite intense, as Thoms tried to hold it together.

Next we went to the Soups, and discovered a tightly bound, dysfunctional nuclear family set to remain as a unit forever (given that they were immortal). The joke names of the sisters give you some idea of the kinds of manipulation the parents indulged in. Campbell was breaking the news that she wished to go on a date with a man, and this led to all kinds of unpleasantness.

Victor's story began with a publicity interview with Vaughan that resulted in a clip from the new album being broadcast live and immediately getting trashed by critics and fans. This was the start of Vaughan's campaign against the rock star that sie obviously hated.

Lamar began pacing his house in ennui, forced to take part in a weekly poker game that may have been going on for centuries.

The next scenes built strongly and emotionally for Thoms, Campbell and Victor as they dealt with these issues and the consequences of that first scene. This culminated in the third scene with an angry outburst that had him sent for 'reconditioning' to deal with his 'unsafe emotional drives'.

Thoms was next dealing with life in the hive after their expensive apartment and his son's rebellion and unhappiness. Campbell's boyfriend came to visit and this triggered an explosive conclusion to her story as she ended up rejecting both her family and the boyfriend to find a life that actually suited her.

Lamar's story turned into a mystery as several other old immortals had disappeared. Excited to be investigating it, he broke out of the normal ways of doing things and eventually found a secret club of super extreme sportspeople (his introduction into the group was to bungy-jump 3km down into the crust of the Earth).

Victor turned things around, using Vaughan's hostile actions and publicity to ultimately craft an album that contained some real emotions and became the anthem of people in the hives. In a nice touch, the album referenced the other three stories as part of the 'real emotional' stuff that built it (universal surveillance was one of the minutia).

The thing that struck me, playing this game, was the way that Shock makes these stories matter. Even with the comical elements in character generation, the moment play gets going you care about these people. The collaborative world-building, and the way that conflicts get defined by the issues and themes that you built in, really comes home. You basically can't get away without making a statement about what you want (or want for your character).

And it gets to you, too. I had my Antag throw a huge pile of dice on to end Campbell's story, just because the conflict summed it all up. And I felt bad, rolling that pile of dice, because I wanted Campbell to escape this toxic little family unit, but Tomato was fighting that all the way.

Hix had to make a similar call for Thoms - his final conflict was him trying to make his son happy while Naomi wanted him to break down so she could have him reconditioned. And he threw all his dice on Thoms' side, just letting the character be emotionally brainwashed in order to preserve the family. That was powerful stuff.

Victor's album, that included these stories, was a great way to top it off (although maybe a little cheesy), but it really did seem to sum up a feeling of hope for this stagnant society of people living without any 'dangerous' emotions.

It was a great game, fun and moving (I felt kind of emotionally drained afterwards, even).

The Hell Screen by I J Parker

The second Sugawara Akitada novel, but set later in his career than the fourth.

This was not as compelling as the other two I have read, with one of the mysteries telegraphed so much that the only surprise was 'when will the characters work it out?'

On the other hand, the characters and historical detail are just as good as the other novels. Although not quite as good, it's still very good.

Chronicles (one) by Bob Dylan

Dylan's autobiography is an odd kind of book. I wasn't initially grabbed by it, but he sucks you in with his lyrical musings on his history, where his songs come from and his thoughts on this or that musical tradition.

Agon by John Harper

Another new game, this one is set in the mythic Greece of the Iliad and Odyssey. It's also a competitive game, with all the player heroes gaining Glory for every successful roll made (and even for just rolling highest on your side of a conflict).

Character generation is fun, and seems perfect to capture the kind of character that you see in Homer. You get an epithet (with associated bonuses), for example. There's also a section in which you challenge each of the other heroes in a contest of some kind, the winner being owed an Oath from the loser (more on this later).

The basic system is very tight. It seems like it's moderately complex on the surface and has some deeper stuff once you learn it. There's some nicely balanced rules that highlight tensions between succeeding yourself and ensuring the group overall does well (e.g. any time you help another hero, you get a temporary impairment in the ability you used. And they owe you an Oath too, whether they like it or not).

Oaths are a nice touch. If someone owes you an Oath, you can call it in any time to make them help you in a contest, heal you in an interlude or follow your orders in the positioning phase of a battle.

The air of mythic Greece is evoked well, with the stories being essentially parallel to the Odyssey, as your hero band journeys from island to island after the war at Ilium. The gods are present, and they give the heroes quests that must be completed. Monsters and strange peoples inhabit the islands, so there will be plenty to fight.

Your hero will gradually gain fate points, too. These will lead to greater ability in general but eventually you hit the end of them and the hero is retired. What happens to them depends on the amount of glory they earned. They are finalized on the score sheet and you create a new hero. Yes, I did say a score sheet. It's explicit purpose is to record which hero was the best. There's also a sheet for great deeds, so you can keep track of things like the highest roll made, most damage done, etc.

The GM (here, Antagonist) has a big pool of Strife points to build opposition from. There's also a big section on building islands and quests, that looks like it will make Agon a good low-prep option.

Overall, looks fantastic. I spent a lot of time many years ago reading the Iron Crown Enterprises Mythic Greece supplement, and never played it. Well, never very successfully. Agon looks like it should deliver all the things that old game promised by failed to.

Wild Talents Actual Play

We played the first session of our Wild Talents Cold War game last night.

The rules worked pretty much as expected - solid, traditional mechanics.

Play went not so well, with our heroes going kill-crazy when the defection they were arranging began to go off the rails. Next session, escorting a family of three through 100km of wilderness while being pursued by the Czechoslovakian secret police and maybe the army too.

Another experiment of mine seems to have worked well - I determined power level randomly, so we have characters with vastly different levels of superpowers. Despite this, everyone got plenty to do throughout the mission. So that's all good. This was helped by the player who got the maximum possible picking a fairly basic damage dealing plus hard to kill package, rather than going for "I can do everything" which would probably have overshadowed the others. The players with less points opted for more generally useful or oddball powers, that seemed to provide plenty of opportunities to do stuff nobody else could.

I'm looking forward to Control debriefing them, too. I'll probably kick off with "What the hell do you think you were doing? This isn't the damn war anymore!" and build up from there.

Spirit of the Century

This game has been generally regarded pretty highly, in particular as a low-prep pickup game, so I finally decided I should get a copy. Getting it out of the package was a little intimidating - it's a big book for a pickup game!

Getting into it, it becomes clear that the size of the rules is not going to detract from the ease of play. The core conflict mechanics are very simple. There's a number of special systems for certain situations (groups of mooks, car or plane chases, etc) but these are nicely self-contained and not inordinately complicated.

Character generation is absolutely inspired. You basically build up a character by answering some questions about each stage of their life and then picking aspects (more on these later) that go along with that. Then you get to the bit that makes it - you name novel your character first appeared in and write the back cover blurb. Then pick some aspects. Then you get to guest star in two other novels (and likewise, you get some people appearing in yours), adding a bit about your character to the blurb and gaining another aspect. Very cool stuff! (Aside: this one guy posted on Story Games about his group going one further... look and be awed)

So your character gets defined by skills, aspects and stunts. Skills are your basic things that anyone can learn. Stunts are the super pulp abilities you have, and there's a nice big list of them that looks to cover almost anything you might want (the stunts list is just under 100 pages long).

Aspects are player defined phrases that work as an advantage or a disadvantage in play. Basically, you can spend a Fate point (basic 'I do cool stuff' currency of the game) to get a bonus from an aspect. The cool new thing here is compelling an aspect. This normally occurs when the GM does it - basically saying 'your aspect X means you now do Y'. You then get to decide whether you do Y or not. If you do, you gain a Fate point. If you don't, you have to spend one. This seems like it's going to be pretty cool in play, given the big temptation to do the thing that will complicate your character's life in order to get the points. Nifty.

Then the book goes on to the advice section. A whopping 100+ pages of advice on how to run the game, how to run it without preparation, pulp story structure to use, some rules stuff and setting details and a sample adventure.

That advice on running the game is some of the best and most thorough that I've come across. It's packed deep with cool ideas, how to cope with this or that situation in play, how to remain focused on the characters and plenty of other stuff that you'll need in the game. Although it's focused on the pulp action that Spirit of the Century is all about, a lot of it is more widely applicable.

Overall, very cool stuff. I look forward to playing it.

Rashomon Gate by I J Parker

This is the first (I think) of the Sugawara Akitada mystery novels (I read and reviewed Black Arrow a couple of weeks back).

This one is also fantastic. Great characters, a good mystery and loads of fascinating historical (or plausibly fictional) detail.

Microcosm

Levi Kornelson has written this introductory roleplaying game Microcosm to be distributed by blog meme. There is a quiz at What roleplaying genre would you be great at? which suggests how to play it for maximum enjoyment, too.

From a quick read through, it looks like a nice system for creating solid situations that the whole group wants to play. The mechanics come down to 'pay for what you want to happen' using a store of tokens, and giving tokens from the store to people when they do cool stuff to replenish the store. I am considering using it for a one-shot game night I have coming up, with a couple of people who are fairly new to roleplaying games.

Here is my quiz result:

You scored as Comedy. You know funny, and you know how a joke unfolds while it’s being told. Put that along with a willingness to crack wise, and the ability to stay on course even while you’re doing it, and you’ve got a few of the central skills that a player needs to excel at comedy-based roleplaying. If you’d like to put these skills to use right away, you can click and download Microcosm. It’s a free, introductory roleplaying game. If you decide to go for it, remember the awards on the left; those are ones your group may want to use. Action 75% Comedy 75% Tragedy 50% Horror 33% Romance 33% What roleplaying genre would you be great at? created with QuizFarm.com

Beast Hunters Update

I got the physical book version of Beast Hunters in the mail today, and thought I would mention that it is a beautiful book. The art and layout - which looked good in pdf - look fantastic in print.

Britain BC by Francis Pryor

Very good, easy to read book on all human prehistory in Britain. I learned a lot of things that I didn't know previously, and his speculative takes on why people built things like henges are interesting too.

A Perfect Spy by John Le Carre

Another Le Carre classic down. This provides an interesting portrait of the life of the "perfect spy." It's an cynical look at what might drive someone to live a life of total deceit.

Medicus and the Disappearing Dancing Girls by R S Downie

A murder mystery set in a Roman port in second century Britain. Intended as the first of a series, there are two main characters, although one - the legion doctor implied in the title - seems to be the main detective.

In this story, he inadvertently gets involved in the mystery due to his bad luck to be on duty when the corpse is brought to the army hospital. He then ends up buying a native slave (who, it turns out, ends up being his crime-solving partner).

Both the doctor, Ruso, and the slave Tilla are interesting characters. Ruso is appealingly cynical about most things. The author also seems to be trying to get revenge on petty bureaucracy with her description of the way the tyrannical hospital administrator runs the place (to Ruso's great disadvantage).

Well worth a read.

Fade is complete

Game Chef 2007 ends in a couple of hours, and I have finished my entry:

---

FADE
As the Palace fleet approaches the new star, something that hasn't happened in hundreds of years, the fragile alliances and agreements between the Palaces are increasingly coming under strain.

You are a citizen of one of the Palaces, one that's currently at war.

And you're not just any citizen.

Your friends and neighbors don't know it, but you are a spook.

You are an elite agent trained to use drugs to destroy and create memories. This is how wars are fought in the Palace fleet.

The front lines of the war are memories, and enemy spooks will remodel yours if you let your guard down.

In a society without violence, power is the ability to change your enemy's mind.

---

You can grab a copy to read or even playtest here.

As a contestant, I will be peer-reviewing several of the other contestants games over the next few weeks. I'll post about them here.

The Mission Song by John Le Carre

A good story, with a well-meaning but somewhat naive protagonist trying his best in a very bad situation in the East Congo.

The Black Arrow by I J Parker

A samurai solves mysteries! Well, not quite. Sugawara Akitada is a nobleman and courtier in eleventh century Japan, and he solves mysteries. He's trained as a lawyer, but also knows all the other skills of the upper classes.

In this novel (midway in the series) he gets sent with his retainers and family as governor of a frontier northern province (the war with the Ainu people is ongoing at the time). A murder on the day he arrives leads to various sinister plots.

It's a really good read, with lots of interesting historical detail (in this case, about a part of Japanese history I wasn't familiar with) and well-drawn characters.

Thoroughly recommended.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John Le Carre

I'm going to be reading a bunch of Le Carre novels as research for my Cold War espionage superheroes game. This is the first.

Good. Bleak. Terrifyingly bleak. I guess this was what the height of the Cold War felt like.

Beast Hunters by Christian and Lisa Griffen

I just pre-ordered this game, and got a pdf download to read while waiting for the printed version to be finished and mailed out.

It's got a few really interesting things going on, mainly that it's a two-player roleplaying game. The intention is that you take turns playing your hunter characters while the other player creates challenges for you. There are rules in there for play with more people, too, but it reads like it wouldn't work so well as with two.

The setting is a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. The big crash left a lot of dangerous magical creatures around, and the player characters are Beast Hunters for a tribal nation - responsible for defending their people from these nasties. The setting details are evocative without being restrictive, throwing you a bunch of peoples and describing various areas. All are given some cool stuff but left open to each game filling in the rest.

Character generation is well done. You build up the character as you invent different stages/areas of their lives - parents, tribe, enemies and finally your beast hunter training. At each stage you give yourself some traits and resources related to that part of your life. You give each a description and category (physical, mental or social) as you go, then allocate numbers to each at the end.

When you begin a session, you set up an adventure. The hunter player (in discussion with the challenger) determines: the goal of the adventure ("slay such and such a beast" or "make peace with an enemy tribe", etc). Then pick the adversity pool and limit. The challenger spends this pool in challenges to make things tough for the hunter, and the limit is how much they can spend at one time. So the hunter decides how long and hard an adventure they want, basically.

Play begins and ends with a salute, and this is explained as a nigh-mandatory feature, likened to a salute or bow at the beginning of a martial arts bout. The idea is that in-game the players should be working hard to challenge each other, just like sparring.

Then you begin roleplaying freely. This continues until the challenger decides that you have reached a point where the obstacle ahead is interesting enough to go into a full challenge, rather than be played through by negotiation. Their limited budget also affects this decision, of course. Hunters can also ask for a challenge if they want one.

Going into a challenge, there is an initial negotiation phase after the stakes are worked out but before the dice come out.

1. Solution: The challenger describes the situation, and specifies the domain (mental, physical or social). The hunter then describes their plan to deal with the situation. The challenger can then give in (if the plan was really cool), elaborate the situation, or go directly to dice-based conflict resolution.
2. Elaboration: The challenger asks questions about the plans, points out flaws and asks how the hunter will deal with them. The hunter explains and specifies a trait they are using (this is an advantage later in conflict resolution). The challenger again can give, move to the next stage, or go direct to conflict resolution.
3. Complication: The challenger throws unexpected complication(s) into the mix, messing up the hunter's plan. The hunter reacts and explains how they will deal with the new situation. The challenger then decides whether to give or move to conflict resolution.
   

The challenger's decisions are also complicated by the fact that it's more costly in adversity to move to conflict resolution early. On the other hand, the hunter gets more the further you move through the phases. It seems like the intention is that almost all conflicts should move through all three, and moving to conflict resolution is really for when the challenger is stumped for ways to break the hunter's plan. Giving up, in contrast, is a recognition that the hunter has covered everything so well that you think they deserve to beat the challenge.

The dice based conflict resolution system is pretty cool. To start with, the challenger buys stats for the challenge (traits, resources, and damage boxes/hit points). The conflict system involves taking turns, each side picking a maneuver every round. The maneuvers look to offer some interesting tactical options - taking a turn to activate a trait for advantage later versus denying use of a resource to the opponent versus causing damage versus maneuver for advantage versus cause a special side effect to the main stakes. Plenty to do, and it should all give a lot of stuff to make cool narration from - especially taking into account the different fields of conflict. It also looks like it will give a cool build-up of maneuvers and activating traits leading into a climactic flurry of action as the conflict goes on. Awesome.

Character development occurs in two ways.

Firstly, you get reward points for beating challenges that can be spent to build up your normal stats.

Secondly, and more cool, is the reward for beating beasts when you go hunting them. When you first beat a particular type of beast, the Beast Hunter elders give the hunter a magical tattoo using the beast's blood. This gives the beast hunter a special ability or extra always-on bonus, setting them apart from normal people and more as a Buffy-like superhero/defender. The tougher the beast, the more powerful the tattoo.

There's a section for how to be a good hunter player, how to be a good challenger and how to set up adventures. The advice here all looks solid. There's also some special rules for beast hunts and a big section on the various nasty beasts that are out there. They're all interesting - not quite traditional monsters, and they have various tricky special powers for hunters to deal with.

How the game plays is a little difficult for me to imagine from just reading the text, so I'm not exactly sure how my impressions from reading it will map to actual play. Quite possibly the things that are most striking in the text will not be the same as the most striking parts of play. I have a feeling the conflict resolution stuff will be really awesome once you internalize all the options, for example. It just feels like there's more there than you can pick up from a single reading. There's a long example of play at the end, which covers three different challenges and shows a few different ways to play them out.

Lastly, the art, layout and general feel of the book is great. The text is sprinkled with the tribal-style beast tattoos and primitivist style pictures of the world of the beast hunters. The titles are in a matching style font, but the text is clean, bold and very readable in the pdf.

Supernatural (series one)

I just finished working my way through this series on dvd.

Boy howdy, it's good!

The show follows a couple of brothers who are monster hunters. Their dad has gone missing chasing some creature and the wayward brother who left home to get away from that life is pulled back in.

The show starts as a monster of the week style, but as the series goes on a fairly compelling plot is built up. It's fairly uncompromising horror, too. The stuff they fight is creepy, nasty and often gory. The writers don't go as crazy as usual when working with existing stories and traditions, which is nice.

What makes it work is the very, very good actors playing the brothers and excellent scriptwriting. The direction is generally good, hand-held camera/horror movie style. There's plenty of nods to horror classics all through the series, as well.

The relationship between the brothers (and their absent father's influence) is convincing and interesting. A lot of the dynamic is built around the fact that the younger one, Sam, left to go to college instead of continuing the family tradition of hunting monsters, while Dean stayed on helping their father. They do a lot with this, not all of it obvious.

At the end, they have perhaps the most intense series-end cliffhanger ever. Lucky I didn't watch it when it first played, as the wait to see what happened next would have been very painful.

A Rare Political Post

No Right Turn pointed out this online petition to urge some serious action on climate change. Check it out, preferably sign it too.

The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross

Number 3 in the 'Hidden Family' series, this one is good but unsatisfying. It feels like the first half of the next novel in the series, rather than a standalone story.

Game Chef Time!

This weekend is the beginning of Game Chef 2007.

This year the contest is longer (two weeks and an extra weekend rather than one and an extra), but otherwise looks like it will be the same madness as usual.

Well worth trying if you have any interest in designing a game at all.

Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher

This brings me up to date with all the Dresden Files novels that have been published so far.

I really enjoyed this one, although it changes the formula a bit. Dresden ends up spending more time dealing with the fallout of the last few books than solving new mysteries. However, I found the building up of the varies crises and repercussions of what has gone before were dealt with in a really interesting way.

The Android's Dream by John Scalzi

Somewhat different to Scalzi's other novels that I've read (Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades), this one has more humour and less action. It's also a little more coherent and paced better, a pretty natural result of his writing improving, I guess.

It's your typical science fiction diplomatic/espionage thriller about averting an interstellar war using a sheep. The hero is a guy who has the job of giving bad news to aliens for Earth's State Department.

I can't say any more without spoiling the story, so instead I'll just advise everyone to go read it.

Light Dragoons by Allan Mallinson

This is not a further Matthew Hervey novel but a history of the British Light Dragoons Regiment (really more about it's antecedents, as it was formed in 1992).

It's an entertaining read, following the various postings and actions of the units concerned from the earliest forerunners in the 17th century. Anecdotes, regimental legends and the letters and journals of soldiers are scattered through as well.

The Final Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries Session

We finished off our expedition in this week's session.

High points included:

• The discovery that the schwimwagen was in fact a flugschwimwagen (it had a deployable hot air balloon).
• Dinosaurs.
• Zombie dinosaurs.
• Ancient engravings of a sordid nature being set aside for detailed study, later, alone.
• People falling into traps with long slides leading to (variously) a tyrannosaurus pit, the death-cult's prison and the temple's ritual chamber.
• Disguising ourselves as death cultists to infiltrate the big ritual.
• Upon being challenged by a Nazi (they were working with the death cult), the response "You're damn right I'm not supposed to be here!*" followed by a punch in the face.
• A huge fight in the temple as the crystal skull manifested a body as the avatar of their god (or something).
  
• The triumphant ripping the skull off the body to stop the ritual, and success!
• "Fluffy", the dilettante, achieved his heart's desire - a perfect cup of tea. I don't recall the details of how the crystal skull enabled that. Stef, can you fill us in?
  

Once again, we had a great time.

There are still some flaws with the game, which I expect will be ironed out as playtesting and revision continues. The thing that struck us most strongly this time is that it is really too easy. Even the toughest hazards were able to be beaten if you make an effort to use all the resources at your disposal (and this will be even more true playing the game a second time, and knowing what sort of descriptors you can choose for maximum effectiveness). This also meant that our final scene, although epic and funny, did seem a little anticlimactic - I don't think anyone had used more than half their rolled dice before we beat the hazard.

* Or words to that effect, anyhow.

Blood Rites by Jim Butcher

I've now caught up to the point of Dead Beat, the first of these I read. Just like the last couple in the series, this one builds more into Dresden's world. You also learn a lot more about his past, in the course of his solving this mystery. More good stuff.

Flow

This game is beautiful and compelling. There's no point in me reviewing it - go to the site and try the flash version.

Death Masks by Jim Butcher

The next Dresden novel rocks along with a good plot, great action and some cool new characters. He's definitely hit his stride in this series, they seem to get better and better.

The Scent of Betrayal by David Donachie

Next in the Privateersmen mysteries, they find themselves imprisoned in New Orleans (then under Spanish rule) for a piratical attack that they chanced upon the remnants of and told the authorities about.

The plot deals with their working out what the story behind the attack was while being (gently but firmly) kept under surveillance.

It's a good story, although perhaps a little wilder than some of the others. According to the author, one of the more outlandish aspects is true, however. So maybe this kind of thing did happen.

Summer Knight by Jim Butcher

Book number five in the Dresden Files sees Dresden caught up in an incipient war between the fay courts of summer and winter.

This is the book in the series I enjoyed most so far. It doesn't have as much setup as most of them do, getting to the action pretty quickly.

The story also rocks along without pause and has some neat stuff about the (wizard's) High Council on Harry's case (due to the fact he pretty much started a war between the wizards and vampires in the last book). The politics and mythology of the fairy courts is really well built up, too.

Actual Play Report: The Committee For The Exploration Of Mysteries #2

After a couple of game cancellations we finally got to play the second session of The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries.

We had one player swap (one person who missed the first session, coupled with another who can't attend for a while), but that didn't seem to be an issue in any way.

We also had a new revision of the rules, which notably streamlined a few of the rules and led to a more fast-paced game. There are still a few areas to be addressed, but nothing as notable as in the previous version.

As is typical for us, things were still pretty silly, but the group found a good vibe very quickly and the game seemed to help keep everyone's jokes and crazy hazards in the same place.

The group escaped from Berlin by pitting the death cultists against the German army and making a run for it in the confusion (or something like that). We then took the prototype schwimwagen across the Atlantic and began our trek up the Amazon. Hazards along the river included:

• Piranhas and anacondas
• Nazi spies and death cultists found to be working together while we rested in a city.
• A Nazi attack on a cup of tea (and, of course, the rest of the expedition).
• A lost temple in the jungle, filled with death cultists, snakes and ancient traps.
  
• A village of friendly natives, who were inadvertently insulted.
• For the cliffhanger, the slalom of death - a dangerous gorge we had to drive the schwimwagen down while being assailed by death cultists and other difficulties.

This session we made more of an effort to add a reflective narration after each hazard. This was a good idea, and added a lot to the game. I can't recall if these are mandatory, but if not they should be. Even a quick witticism before the transition to the next hazard adds a nice closing element to the scene.

We still messed up a few rules (pointed out to me by the author via email afterwards), but none of them were serious.

We thought that hazards seemed a little easy. Even when you end up facing a moderate hazard with a weaker attribute, it's usually possible to work in some descriptors and give yourself a good chance of beating the opposition's roll. I'm not sure if this is just luck - we did have some failures and people running out of time this session - but it might be a problem.

Overall: Once Boyd has finished polishing this game, it's going to be a keeper.

Grave Peril by Jim Butcher

Number four in the Dresden Files series deals with lots of ghosts and vampires. It's a decent novel, and begins to build up some of the bigger plots that come up in the next novel and are still going on in Dead Beat.

This one is decent, but the influence of the old World of Darkness games seemed especially pronounced here. This is not entirely bad, but it's not good either.

An Element of Chance by David Donachie

And here's number four in the Privateersmen mysteries. In this volume, the Ludlows find themselves in the Caribbean, dealing with some strange goings on (murder, piracy, spying).

They also make an enemy of a Royal Navy captain who illegally impresses many of their crew, and spend the book trying to get them back. Pender, Harry Ludlow's servant and the third protagonist in the series, is one of them. His story while he's away from the Ludlows is also a good one (mutiny, murder).

Medieval Lives by Terry Jones & Alan Ereira

A nice, quirky history book. It looks at people in medieval times and attempts to show how they were basically just like us in most ways. The authors also want to show us that the received view of the middle ages is not really representative of any time or place in history, and that things kept changing all through those centuries.

Each chapter picks a type of person and goes over their lives, illustrated with interesting individuals and events. The discussion generally also roams over various other topics related to monks, peasants (or whoever the chapter is about).

The book is companion to a TV series, which I may also have to look out for.

A Hanging Matter by David Donachie

Number 3 in the Ludlow naval adventure/mystery series, this one deals with various dodgy dealings involving smugglers in the English Channel.

They get caught up in some murderous events and then have to work out what the hell is going on as well as defend themselves from evil smuggling gangs.

Another good one.

RL lessons from WoW

So this guy wrote a list of things that World of Warcraft teaches you about how to run the rest of your life. It is funny and kind of true.

Read-through Review of Wild Talents by Dennis Detwiller et al.

I got my special preorder edition of this in the mail a couple of weeks back. It's a gorgeous full-colour book, great layout and fantastic art by Christopher Shy and Sam Araya.

The system is solid. It's the same One Roll Engine as Godlike and Nemesis, probably here in it's fullest and most polished form to date. It's basically a general superhero game, with an emphasis on fairly gritty superheroes in worlds with a lot of super powered people around.

The introduction states up front that they aren't providing any 'how to roleplay' advice, as they expect only experienced gamers to buy a copy.

After that, it dives right into the resolution system, character generation and power selection. All good stuff.

Next is a chapter by Ken Hite on building cool alternate super worlds. The discussion focuses on different aspects of superhero stories and how to design the game world to fit the ones you want to be important.

There's then a sample timeline for the default setting, one that builds on the world of Godlike and takes it through to 1992. It's a good setting, with cool stuff in history all the way and a interstellar threat and brand new world government forming in response. The Talents of World War Two have been superceded by 'Wild Talents': also humans with powers, but without the same limitations that the Talents had.

Finally, there's a sample adventure. It's set in the 1970's and has a cool street-level super-vigilante feel.

Overall, it's a good supers system for what it is. There's little beyond the effects of superpowers, combat and basic task resolution system in the book. The willpower rules give a little bit of psychological mechanics, but it's even simpler than the Call of Cthulhu sanity rules.

I'm looking forward to playing this, for the mayhem and danger of it. Nice.

Read-through Review of Nemesis

I'm thinking of running a Lovecraftian horror game soon, so I grabbed the free Nemesis rules that Dennis Detwiller, Greg Stolze and Shane Ivey.

Essentially, the rules take the ORE mechanic from Godlike and Wild Talents, add the Madness Meters from Unknown Armies, and adjust them for roleplaying in a Lovecraftian mode.

The game is presented pretty much as a rules set alone. There's no 'how to play' section, no 'GM advice'. There's a brief introduction setting out the overall game, then you get dropped straight into the conflict resolution system, take detailed looks at stats, skills, madness, combat, guns and armor and some ways for stuff to kill characters.

Then the game details building characters, which is on a fairly simple point buy system. This chapter includes a few sample spells and supernatural abilities, suggesting that adversaries can also be built using the same system.

Finally there's a chapter that has stats for some critters out of Lovecraft. They're some old favorites: deep ones, ghouls, serpent men, shoggoths.

So there's not a whole lot to review. I've played enough Godlike to know that the system is solid, especially as this version takes account of the Wild Talents playtests and development, which I know smoothed out a few bumps.

The addition of the Madness Meters is great, I've thought from the moment I first read Unknown Armies that these are the way Call of Cthulhu's sanity loss rules ought to be. In Nemesis, the isolation gauge is omitted - a fair choice, as it is less relevant to this sort of story than it is to Unknown Armies (it's also the one that I remember being least obvious in play, even in that game).

How will it play? We're into the realms of speculation here, although I do have plans to run something soon. From my experience of Godlike, I can be assured that the action parts of the game will be fast paced and brutally dangerous. The madness meters really give a good roleplaying handle on mental breakdown, too. The more detailed view of what is happening to the psyche makes playing out these changes more organic than sanity loss in Call of Cthulhu ever seemed to be. The rules are lean, focused, and mean. They should create some good game.

Fugitives of Chaos by John C Wright

A very strange book. Part two in a series about a group of teenaged godlings who have been imprisoned in an English boarding school staffed with other mythological beings and gods. Apparently the first book was about them discovering their powers, and this one deals with them attempting to escape from the school/prison and discovering part of the role they were destined for (that the imprisonment was designed to prevent).

It's exciting and the world is interesting. It comes across as a lighter Gene Wolfe or more whimsical Tim Powers novel.

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

This is the second Dresden Files novel. As you might guess from the title, this one involves Harry dealing with werewolves (although I was surprised how many he managed to fit in).

All the novels have suffered from a slow start and some excessive explanation of Dresden's world at the beginning, and this one is perhaps worse than the other two I've read. This one is a bit more action-oriented and less character focused than the others, as well.

The Pirates! In An Adventure With Whaling by Gideon Defoe

As those of you who have read the first of Defoe's pirate books might guess, this is very silly. This time the Pirate Captain and his crew accidentally buy a very expensive new ship and are forced to hunt down Moby Dick for the bounty that Ahab has placed on the whale's head.

But really, it's all just an excuse to make lots of jokes about the school-boyish pirates, pop culture, Melville's great novel and so on.

Lots of fun.

While checking on the spelling of his name, I discovered that a third Pirates book is now out, The Pirates! In An Adventure With Communists. Golly!

Playtest Report: The Committee for Exploration of Mysteries by Eric J Boyd

The regular group ran this last week. We're planning three sessions, so number one was brainstorming, character generation and the first part of the journey.

We placed the Committee in London, and pretty quickly decided that we wanted to fight a lot of Nazis and find the source of the Amazon. There should also be dinosaurs.

Our list of hazard ideas went smoothly. I was going to type it up but apparently it got left at the game venue - Stef, try and rescue it for next session!

We then decided that the main points on the journey would be Nazi Germany, the Amazon, and a lost city at the source of the Amazon. The secret is 'a crystal skull of doom'.

Next we made up characters. Our cast were (with the attributes given by other players):

• Sinister Poe, gentleman thief. Daring high, good all-rounder. People refuse to gamble with him, he's good with a knife, he has a gammy knee and a trained cat called Twinkles. His desire is to gain eternal youth.
  
• Donald "Fluffy" Dermont, socialite. Charisma high. He is chased by creditors, has demanding aunts, is a crack shot with his father's Webley and is an amateur pilot. His desire is for a good cup of tea.
  
• Reginald Sutcliffe, county cricketer. Charisma high. He is stalked by a sports reporter, secretly chases the dragon, has poodle boots (game group in-"joke") and is reputed to have bribed umpires. His desire is to open for England at Lords.
  
• Washington Smythe, ex-Marine, smuggler, trapper. Daring high. Once worked as a bearded lady, never harms a woman, was an artillery spotter and has torn enemie's throats out with his teeth (we don't know how many). His desire is to retire and never be called on again.
  
• Dr Matthew Abernathy, Professor of Archaeology. Genius high. He carries a jar of beetles, smokes disgusting cigars, is quite the ladies' man and his tenure is under threat. His desire is to gain a peerage and thus his sweetheart's hand in marriage.

We then set off for Germany, to discover clues as to the whereabouts of the crystal skull and steal a prototype schwimwagen in order to drive to the Amazon. The first hazards where minor - passport troubles, Twinkles going missing, an aunt inviting Fluffy to dinner with Goebbels. Then things got going with an assassination attempt, Smythe stealing the schwimwagen, a bomb, Abernathy dealing with a suspicious Nazi librarian and a ludicrous chase scene as we attempted to escape Berlin with apparently the entire army in pursuit.

Our cliffhanger happened as a Nazi superhuman, almost defeated, transformed into multiple copies of herself as we fought on the schwimwagen, driving hell-for-leather towards the sea.

As that short summary implies, the action was great and often ludicrous.

I'll go into some details of the rules now, and how they worked.

Character generation was great fun, especially adding traits to the other characters. However our group - never the most serious - did add a few that were silly or disadvantageous. Perhaps an instruction to aim for things that are good or bad situationally would be useful? Or maybe it is just us. The fact that the mission is brainstormed first also adds something - you know the sorts of things you are to face and can bear that in mind.

The way scenes work is that the person whose turn it is explains how the group got from the last scene to where they are now, and what that is. They state what they want to do next and then their opposition player (picked randomly at the session start) thinks up some opposition for them. Play goes on until it comes to a conflict. Then dice are rolled, so that the opposition total is known. A three-minute timer is started (in theory a sand-type eggtimer, but we only had an electronic one). The protagonist pushes forward a die, adding it to their total and narrating what they did. Then the opposition player narrates a complication. This is repeated until the total is reached or the timer runs out.

This use of the time limit adds an urgency to the narration that worked really well. All the narration came out fast and snappy, and when your mind blanks briefly it makes it all the more exciting. The tension added is perfect for this pulpy Indiana Jones style game.

There's some more complex rules for group resolution, unexpected hazards and end of session cliffhangers, but the essence is the same and they work just as well.

The other major piece of the rules that I have not yet mentioned is the acclaim economy. Acclaim points are your score and also allow you to be better in play (or hinder the others). This is fine, but I found there were too many things to keep track of about Acclaim. For example, you invest points in ideas on the log sheets (our Berlin sheet has 'Death cult', 'Schwimwagen', 'superhuman', 'Nazis', and 'Parking warden'). If people reuse these concepts in their narration, both of you get Acclaim (but there's a choice of how to gain it each time this happens). You gain or lose Acclaim from meeting or failing challenges. You gain Acclaim when two other players laugh at your narration or raise a glass to you.

I found that this often got left out or slowed the pace of the game. I can see why the rules are all there, but I feel like a streamlined version would help the game move faster. Personally, my preference would be to remove the Acclaim related to ideas on the log. Maybe players could reroll one of their dice if they narrate in one of the listed ideas? That's a little less significant, but probably easier to do (and do fast) in play. The log then becomes an ideas sheet that gives you some advantage when ideas are reused (which seems to be the objective) rather than something to use tactically (yes, Daniel, I mean you and your 'Nazis' there).

Despite those small issues, this is a great game. Look out for the published version (I'm not sure what the timescale is going to be, of course).

Kapcon 16

My experiences at Kapcon this year was a little truncated - I only got to the first two sessions each day, and skipped the live game. I found that the lack of tiredness made up for the missed gaming - this was the first con that I came out of feeling fine (as opposed to having my voice gone and so tired I need Monday to recover).

Session one - Full Light, Full Steam. This game went well, but not fantastic. I tried to use a few of the rules that probably should have been dropped for a convention one-off. A couple of players didn't like the way I set up the first scene, as it seemed to block certain options (a fair point, in retrospect). However, once the action kicked off, we got into it and everything went well. The dice system is fantastic (although everyone seems to take a while to get their head around it). There was little use of thematic batteries in checks, but I think this was mainly because the group was moving so fast. Nobody stopped to try and pull more advantage out, they just kept going (to their disadvantage, a couple of times).

Session two - The Gilman House. Zak was running a lot of old scenario contest entries, and this was a Call of Cthulhu one. It was nice to be in one of Zak's games (it seems like years since last time I played one). The scenario was good, although a couple of things bothered me. Firstly, my character had basically zero interest in or connection to the mystery (and I think a couple of the others were similar), which meant that I spent a lot of time goofing around until the monsters actually started appearing. Secondly, the scenario seemed to rely on the player characters doing one or another magic ritual. The only two characters who had mythos/occult background also had extremely low POW score. When it came to the crunch, then, they kept failing their rolls and things went very badly. The group had fun, though, and Zak kept things moving all through. It was, however, needlessly mean to have the two of us who survived arrested for the murder of the others.


Session four - Prime Time Adventures "Ward X." Hix hosted this PTA session, with me and two other players. We had time to develop a show, play one episode, and plan the series that would have been. Hix did a great job guiding the brainstorming, especially as it seemed like the group had quite divergent TV tastes. Narrowing down to something we all liked took some work, but we ended up with a supernatural forensic medical drama. We played through an episode in which a woman was suddenly struck blind. It turned out, after all the investigation, to have been ghostly brain parasites combined with a miscast magical spell. The patient survived with only some recurring invisibility(!). I loved this one section where, after successful brain surgery to remove the parasites, we decided that we needed to reintroduce them before lifting the spell on the patient to save her. The scene between the new doctor on the team and her friend the neurosurgeon was fantastic. He was completely sceptical and was only won over grudgingly. Great stuff from Helen and Hix that scene. I am sad we can't play the rest of that series (or watch the show).

Session five - InSpectres: Helsinki. I ran a game of InSpectres next. It was a great group and we rocked. We picked Helsinki as a place mainly because of someone's story about how students there dress for pub crawls. The franchise dealt with a family home demonic infestation (old graveyard, demonic transmission via phone line); a dimensional rift (mad scientist, inter-dimensional war prevented by homoerotic wrestling); and finally a mysterious smell in a restaurant (the Dark Lord, Satan, was turning people into demonic chickens via haircare products).

A good Kapcon. Huzzah for the organisers and all the people who played games with me. You were great.

The Diamond Frontier by John Wilcox

Another Simon Fonthill novel, sending him and Jenkins back to South Africa to help a woman they befriended in the Zulu War. This one deals with a British war against another African nation and tensions with the Afrikaaners.

Still good adventure stuff, with a nicely cynical thread in the way the main characters think of Britain's military and general imperial project.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

First of the Dresden Files novels, of which I read Dead Beat a little while ago.

A bit more raw, as you might expect from an earlier novel. Still fun and exciting.

Also better in that it does not include the baggage of six other novels I hadn't read yet.

Curry by Lizzie Collingham

A history of Indian cuisine, focusing on the way that the rest of the world influenced its development at some points, and how it influenced the rest of the world at others. The book is surprisingly deep, covering a lot more history than the concept suggests.

Very interesting. She also includes some recipes, all of which are interesting and many of which look really good as well.

The Road To Kandahar by John Wilcox

Second novel in the Fonthill series, and it sees him blackmailed into remaining in the army (by the one senior officer who likes him, no less) and sent to Afghanistan to gather intelligence on the forces arrayed against the British there.

It is good. Nice to be reading this while preparing to run Full Light, Full Steam, too, as the issues that both works address are similar.

Actual Play Report: Full Light, Full Steam - A Cruise To Mars

This weeks' game was a run through of a Full Light, Full Steam situation that I had built to run at Kapcon in two weeks. This meant the objective was mainly to confirm that I knew the system well enough to run it and to check how it played with people new to the system.

I didn't end up giving much time for situation engineering. The game saved me here, as the instructions gave plenty of ways to build up from your inspirations (in this case, just the thematic batteries of the characters) to an engaging situation. I was helped by the author's description of doing the same thing himself which he posted on the website, too. I was also somewhat restricted by the short game description that I had already submitted to the convention organisers. This had been intentionally brief, of course, but did tie me to Mars and set up expectations for natives, pirates, anarchists and foreign agents to be involved. Including all these elements was very easy.

I'm very pleased with the situation engineering system. In particular, the 'complicating cogs' and 'elaborating cogs' parts. To start with, you list inspirations - things that you believe the players are interested in having the game include. Then you come up with three key conflicts based on these inspirations. For each conflict you then list simple cogs - an antagonist, a victim, a setting and two more of any sort.

You then complicate the cogs by picking pairs from different conflicts and combining them, e.g. the victim in conflict 1 might live in the town that is the setting of conflict 2, or be the antagonist of conflict 3. This process of complication really helped the half-formed ideas for the situation come alive. In particular, when you complicate simple character ideas, the two sides that the character has subsequently can be a lot of fun to think about and play.

The next step is to engage the player characters. Here you allocate one complicated cog to each of them and link them directly. The links might be thematic, historical or social relationships. This helps tie the player characters more firmly into the situation and appeared to work well in play (although I did drop the ball on at least one character finding out about their link, mainly due to running out of time).

The last piece is elaborating the cogs. Basically this involves putting some abilities and thematic batteries down for the non-player characters and elaborating the effects of settings and props. Settings and props can give certain kinds of bonuses and penalties, decided at this time, and possible complications that may occur are listed. This is quite fun and the effort expended in little things (like deciding a Martian canyon had ancient native monuments, for example) added a lot to play.

That gave me a good setting, so I'll move on to our play. Explaining the rules was quick and easy, although the spoils scrips caused some confusion (who passes the scrip, who signs it, etc). I'll have to explain this more carefully in a convention setting, but once people got the hang of it things went fine. The setting has lots of neat grabby elements, and everyone quickly got into that side of things. I'll run through the play here, but it's intentionally vague as some of my readers may end up playing this quite soon.

The first scene, mainly at the governor's mansion, had the crew trying to gather information about their mission and being rebuffed by the governor who claimed nothing unusual was going on. The discovered that others in town didn't agree and that the problems they had been sent to fix were real. This scene went on longer than it should have, I think, and I should have pushed more information at the players. We pretty much missed one of the three conflicts entirely, and this scene was where it should have been played out. This might be a game, like Dogs In The Vineyard, in which it's a better idea to instantly reveal the mysteries and let the player characters sort them out, rather than focus on investigation.

Action was spurred on when the Commander sent the landing skiff back to his ship to get a detachment of marines. The skiff spotted something suspicious in the desert, investigated, and the survivors made it to the colony. Our heroes set out and, in an epic battle, defeated the bad guys. Huzzah!

The conflict resolution system works very well - nice and elegant. The system of taking voluntary demotions to charge your thematic batteries for later is fantastic in play. The non-player character equivalent is even more fun (and not, I think, mentioned in my review after reading the game the first time). The gamemaster can give a non-player character promotions by declaring what their thematic battery is. The other players can then force demotions on that character later, when appropriate. This also was fun in play.

Overall, a fun session. As mentioned above, we went over time and didn't actually resolve all three conflicts. I regard that as a success - I always prefer to have too much situation to risking not enough. I'll probably drop a few things for a convention setting. One of my players suggested that spoils scrips be used just for scene control, and ignore marking spoils gained (your experience points, basically). Aside from that, most of the issues were associated with it being the first time.

As a last comment, I may take my own game Devil & the Deep off the backburner now. I think that Full Light, Full Steam pretty much gives me the game I was trying to build there.

Britain in the Middle Ages by Francis Pryor

A nice, somewhat idiosyncratic, history book. The author focuses on the things that he personally is most interested in, which gives a different take than a typical book about the middle ages. He talks a lot about daily life and the things we know about that, in particular. On top of that, his style is very good.

His general theme, to the extent that the book has one, is mainly that the middle ages weren't quite as barbaric as they are generally made out to be, and I think he argues that case pretty well.

He also has a fair bit to say, in asides, about the conduct of archaeology in Britain today. This is not something I really care much about, but had some interesting tidbits in there.

Dead Beat by Jim Butcher

I have heard a few good things about this series, The Dresden Files, especially with a scifi channel series based on them coming up. So I picked up this one the other day.

The books deal with Harry Dresden, a wizard and sort of private investigator in Chicago. It's a lot of fun, with a good action packed story and some interesting characters. At first I was a little sceptical, as some of the introductory chapters are a little cutesy and filled to the brim with people and baggage from the previous books in the series (this is number seven or so). All this becomes pretty much irrelevant once the action starts, as it's a good mystery and lots of exciting magical fight scenes.

Recommended. And I shall be seeking out the rest of the series, too.

The Horns of the Buffalo by John Wilcox

Another series of good historical military adventures! Huzzah!

This series is about one Simon Fonthill, an infantry officer . It's set in the 1870s and this first novel has him drawn into the Zulu war, specifically the battle of Rorke's Drift.

It's a good story, and the fact that the period is mid/late Victorian rather than Napoleonic is a nice change.

An Act of Courage by Allan Mallinson

The next, and currently last of, the Hervey books. Very good.