Sky Coyote by Kage Baker

Another Company novel (the second, in fact). From the perspective of someone who has read the later books, this feels like setup and character building, but of course it is a good story in itself. It's about Joseph, who has the job of posing as the god Sky Coyote in order to convince a village of doomed Chumash to come along with him and be preserved in a Company facility. This leads to various hijinks (this book is lighter than most of them).

Resident Evil 4 (Wii edition)

I just finished this last night. It's a great game, and the Wii edition doesn't really show it's age (I guess the graphics seem a little unpolished, but not enough to matter).

The story is pretty good (i.e. for a computer game), with some bosses who are really annoying and thus very satisfying when you get to kill them. Overall the atmosphere is creepy with bursts of action, as you clear out the village full of people possessed by Lovecraftian parasitic monsters. It is goddamn gory, though - sprays of blood all over, heads explode when you shoot them and some of the 'You died' animations... ick.

The Wii control scheme works really well. The implementation of aim and shoot is very natural and a lot of fun (and includes the often terrifying feature that you cannot move and shoot at the same time). There's a bunch of the puzzles that I associate with console games, but not too many, and none of them are really hard or perversely obscure. Oh, yeah, save points. That's another annoying console thing, but they're frequent and generally well placed.

Biggest recommendation for the game. After finishing it at 11.30pm I almost started a new game at the next difficultly level straight away (mainly because you unlock another outfit for the main dude, and I wanted to see it).

The Execution Channel by Ken Macleod

A really good novel from MacLeod, this one harks back to The Star Fraction in style. In this case, the story is an alternate near future (rather than a less near future that is consistent with our history). In this world, the war on terror has gone further and is on the verge of triggering a third world war, and the story follows a few characters as they react to this.

The Machine's Child by Kage Baker

This Company story carries on from The Life of the World to Come and pretty much is the final chapter that I wanted in that book. I guess it makes sense to split it if it took a whole extra novel to do this, but the previous one still felt truncated.

In any case, generally good stuff in the vein of the other novels. Some parts seem a bit bogged down in left over plot threads from the previous books (this effect is accentuated by the time travel). And the endgame isn't quite ready yet, although it feels like Baker's getting pretty close to giving us the story of the Company's fate after 2355 (the year after which they have no information).

Reign by Greg Stolze

Stolze's new game is a fantasy take on the One Roll Engine (ORE) that he developed for Godlike (and has seen further work in Wild Talents and Nemesis). The version in Reign is a little cleaner, with a few tweaks, but essentially the same as the previous versions.

The biggest addition - and the focus of the game - are the rules for companies. These are groups that the player characters are members (or leaders) of. The rules allow companies to be given stats, and contain rules for how companies can do things. These include how character actions can affect the company (e.g. you might do some individual mission that gives your company an advantage) and vice versa. These rules all fit in well to the existing ORE, and seem like a natural extension of it. Companies can be any organisation - a small street gang or merchant cooperative through mercenary band or spy network right up to an entire kingdom or empire.

The second biggest addition is the one-roll character generation system. There's a plain point buy option, but the random method is much more fun. You roll 11d10, and each set ends up being a job the character has done at some point in their life. Unmatched dice add random events to the character's history. Each job or event adds a few skills, special abilities, or a stat increase. Then you think about what you have and come up with the story behind it all.

These stories can be quite cool ones too. Here's one: disinherited as a child, he grew up as a beggar before becoming an infantryman. Then he got picked by a noble officer as a personal servant (complete with some education) before giving that up as a bad lot and running away to sea.

The setting Stolze provides is pretty cool, too. The game is clearly intended to be easily adaptable to settings of your choice, but the packaged one is strongly tied to all the esoteric techniques, martial arts and magical schools. The world is one in which the continents are the bodies of the gods - so that one country actually goes completely around an arm, for example (this is really neat but it makes imagining the geography really hard). There are four cultures detailed, giving a variety of places to start and plenty of ideas for characters and companies. The material is all evocative and seems well thought out, but I wasn't immediately grabbed by it. There is plenty of room to make it your own by filling in details and gaps left in the text, which suits me fine. The world is also very determinedly different to our own (far beyond the weird landscape), in a way that is kind of compelling.

The advice on running the game seems good, aimed at a traditional style game with a strong character focus. The expected mode is that the players create a company between them, then a character each who is part of it. Then the story will be about the company and what happens to it. Individual characters might die or retire, but the player can simply create a new one and carry on with the company's story.

As it's a traditional style game, there's a lot of crunch for combat there, but this is largely optional addons to the ORE (e.g. special combat maneuvers). Some of these are fantastic - like the 'Display kill', in which you gruesomely finish off a foe in an attempt to scare their comrades.

Stolze is supporting the game via supplements for ransom - after he writes each supplement, he requests a certain value in donations. When this amount is reached, the supplement is made freely available from his website. So far there are two available, both with some good extra bits (new magic schools, martial arts and the one-roll company generator stand out). The rulebook also inexplicably is missing a character sheet, but this too can be downloaded off Stolze's website.

Good presentation (it would count as fantastic if the print-on-demand process did full justice to the art, but it seems to lack some definition internally). The red, Daniel Solis, cover is beautiful and the hardcover seems very well constructed.

Overall: reads like a solid, dependable fantasy system with some good new ideas. Still basically traditional gaming style.

New Doctor Who, series two.

Another good series, basically the same as the first one in style (80% jokes, 15% horror, 5% drama). I liked Tennant more as the Doctor than Eccleston, but they bring a similar attitude to the role. Evil aliens continue to be blown up at the end of each episode.

One thing that did bother me a little - so many of the plots are Frankenstein plots. I feel like the show's writers have an unhealthy attitude to progress. In the show, any attempt to improve things using science ends up (1) perverted by aliens so that it threatens to destroy the world, (2) gets out of control and threatens to destroy the world, (3) leads to the people trying it turning into inhuman monsters who threaten to destroy the world. I realise that it is not a deep show, but as a bit of a transhumanist, I do find this all rather distastefully Romantic. And I have heard far too many speeches from the Doctor about how wonderful humans are as they are now (i.e. pure noble nature) and how any attempt to change this (e.g. cure disease, extend lifespan, place the brain into a robot warrior body) will inevitably destroy everything good about us. Bah!

One For The Morning Glory by John Barnes

A fantastic light-hearted fantasy novel. The humour is strange - shades of Jack Vance - but very funny indeed. A particularly nice touch is a constant replacing of words... the people talk of hunting gazebo, shooting with their omnibuses, riding on a horse-drawn tumulus, and suchlike.

The story is a heroic fairy tale, and the Prince and his companions are quite aware of this and often decide what to do based on whether it would fit into the narrative or not. These moments are not too often, and are not overdone.

More Agon: Isle of Gold 3

We worked through another quest and a half. Still a lot of fun, and our increasing knowledge of how the rules work made this game a bit more tactically satisfying (I even managed to defeat one of the heroes, using a 'everyone gang up on this one guy' strategy).

The Life of the World to Come by Kage Baker

Another Company novel, this one is the most traditionally novel-like of the ones I've read so far (as most are made of connected short stories, rather than a single plot). It clears up a bunch of the questions about the world that she's set up in previous books. I was, however, disappointed that it seemed to be missing the final chapter (in that something big and exciting is just about to happen when the book ends). I suspect that this might be because the final chapter bloomed into a whole book or something? In any case, literally anticlimactic.

She also throws in some odd laser-sharking near the end. Things are pretty weird to start with, but then a whole other weird event occurs which pretty much made me go "wtf?" I can see why she might have put it in thematically (in order to show certain aspects of the story), but I think things would have been better without it. Of course, Baker has had psychic stuff here and there throughout the series, so I guess more weird bits like this are to be expected. I'm still a strong believer in the rule "No magic in science fiction stories!" If people want psychic powers and so on, they should either explain them in a plausible manner or write a fantasy story instead. And just giving the psychic powers a pseudoscientific name doesn't count as explaining it.

All that ranting aside, it's a good book. Exciting, and a lot of exploration of her fun ultra-safe, ultra-puritanical future.

ConFusion Report

Well, report on 2/3 of it anyhow. I didn't feel up to a third session, and skipped out after playing one game and running another.

First was Machine Tractor Station [some Russian word]-37, a Call of Cthulhu scenario. This was great fun, mainly because the characters and mystery are so well constructed. We ran over time and had to have the part at the end where we all died happen fairly abstractly. Still, good stuff. Anyone going to Fright Night will have a chance to play it, which I recommend.

Then I ran my FATE 3/Traveller scenario again. This went well with lots of use of Aspects for increased fun, plus the changes I had made increased the danger of combat to about the level that Traveller demands. The caper played out somewhat differently to the first run through, although key betrayals and revelations all came up.

New Doctor Who, series one.

After only two years, finally got around to watching this. It's good stuff - jokey stories with a dark edge to them, and some good acting from the leads. The actual stories vary a lot in tone, some being purely for laughs and others being genuinely creepy.

It's reminiscent of the Doctor Who I recall watching as a kid and teenager, but not exactly the same. For one thing, this one has some decent special effects. The stories seem to hold together a little more than I remember the Tom Baker/Peter Davison ones doing, although they still generally rely on the Doctor saving everyone via an unlikely trick at the end.

I guess it's the characters (and thus actors) who make it enjoyable... they certainly do seem to be having fun making the show. Now for season two!

First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

This new Thursday Next novel is fun, and filled with as many puns and literature in-jokes as you should expect. The story isn't quite as compelling as the previous ones, and suffers a little from too much focus on the details of Next's world.

The Story Games Names Project

This was put together by a bunch of people on the Story Games forum. It's a huge collection of lists of twenty names (and some other random stuff) to use in your gaming. I can't speak for actual play yet, but it looks like it will be a fantastic resource to spur ideas and fill in names in play.

It's divided into particular cultures/settings, so you should be able to keep it open on a relevant page and roll names as required. It's 278 pages, with 2-4 name lists per page. There's a good selection of modern cultures and historical real names. There's also a section for fantasy setting names, and humorous ones too.

Some highlights to illustrate the range:

• Ridiculous Hobos
• Space Cowboys
• Forensic Techniques
• Catalan
• Inuit
• Roman (with two pages of instructions on how they named each other).

It can be bought, at cost price, from lulu.com: Names. For any GM who struggles to think up good names as much as I do, it's a must-buy.

How To Cook Your Life

A documentary about a (presumably well known) Zen chef from California. It turned out to mainly be about him and his take on Buddhism, relating mostly to food. But not much about actually cooking things, in the sense of recipes.

He was a humane guy and had a good take on Buddhism. I'm basically sympathetic to Buddhism as long as you leave out the supernatural/superstitious bits, and that is how it was presented in this documentary.

Thought-provoking, and left me with a firm desire to just care a little more about cooking (and, by extension, doing all the everyday things).

The Children of the Company by Kage Baker

Another interesting Company novel.

This one raises some issues of causality that really made the series stand out. The rules of the world are set up for this, which is that time travel is possible but only backwards. So the Company's operatives know the history of the world up to 2350 or so, when they were sent back. The Company, to preserve causality, has set in stone the rule that nothing can be done that contradicts the historical record. In this novel, we see the operatives begin making things happen (often terrible things, e.g. engineered viruses) just to fit the observed facts. This provokes some thought about historical determinism (or not) which I found pretty good.

Helvetica

Another documentary, this one about the Helvetica typeface and it's role in design and society. Comprised mainly of interviews with designers (especially type designers), interspersed with constant shots of things set in Helvetica.

The opinions on why it is ubiquitous and the good and bad points of the font were really interesting. The basic idea seems to be that it was seen in the sixties as the quintessential modern(ist) typeface, and it's rejection in more recent times being due to a rejection of many of the modernist ideas of those times (and a preference for messier, more emotionally charged styles).

All the people they interviewed were really fascinating too. All smart, with good reasons for their like, dislike, or indifference to Helvetica. And a lot of interesting speculation about why and how it became such a success.

All In This Tea

A Les Blank (and collaborators) documentary about tea, telling its story by following around a Californian boutique tea importer (mainly as he searches the Chinese hinterlands for the best teas).

The history and facts about tea were interesting, although that wasn't really a focus of the documentary.

The guy they were following was an absolutely fascinating character, and the film ended up being about him as much as tea.

The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross

The second novel in Stross' Lovecraft/spy/computer hacking series. Where The Atrocity Archives was his take on Len Deighton, this one goes after Ian Fleming and James Bond.

It's a better novel than the first one, too. Really funny and fairly exciting stuff. It also has a high amount of geek-stuff, references to this or that bit of pop culture, Lovecraftian lore, and so forth.

It comes with an extra short story at the end (about the dangers of online gaming and also HR departments) and a fun little essay about Fleming and Bond.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J K Rowling

Probably the best book in the series, and a good end to it all.

Down and Out in the Far Future (preview/playtest run)

I played a test run of my FATE 3.0 old school Traveller adventure tonight. I went perfectly. The system ran very smoothly, although I had set the lethality very low (this will be adjusted for the ConFusion version next week).

The lack of stunts made the characters easier to get a handle on for the players, and we went crazy with compels for some awesome moments in play (including an intra-party gunfight at a very bad moment). In fact, the bulk of the game was spent in combat, but it never got to be boring. The use of compels and aspects kept things fresh all the time - one fight had three separate compels cause three characters to flee, leaving their comrade to the six bad guys left in there.

I was pleased to find that I had written more scene ideas than I required, and that all the enemies from characters' pasts could be fit into the time given.

Overall, my respect for the FATE 3.0 system (and, of course, its authors) has been increased... it really works very well indeed, especially for people too busy (or lazy) to do exhaustive preparation (which definitely includes me).

Black Projects, White Knights by Kage Baker

Another volume of Baker's stories about the immortal agents of The Company. Some very good ones in here.

Pan's Labyrinth

This modern, brutal fairy tale from Guillermo del Toro is really good. The magical parts are have captured something normally missing from fantasy films - a sense of meaning that you can't fathom, a reluctance to just use the same old tropes. The story mixes real-world and fantasy elements - the protagonist is a girl with a cruel (fascist officer) stepfather, who is given tasks to do that will reunite her with her true father, the king of the underworld. She carries these out against the background of a fascist camp hunting down a troop of rebels in a forest.

The special effects are good, too. There are some wonderful transformation effects, and the fairies are pretty cool (although they in particular have that 'obvious cg' look).

Great film, although not for the faint-hearted... there are some nasty scenes when the fascists are hunting down rebels, and the rebels are much the same in return.

A Watery Grave by Joan Druett

A good naval-themed mystery novel. The protagonist is Wiki Coffin, a half-Maori, half-American taking part in the big 1838 US Navy scientific expedition. This first novel has him investigating a murder that happens just as the ships set off, and some events that occur on the ships in the aftermath of that crime.

The book starts a little slow, with a bunch of exposition about where Wiki came from and so forth, but once the story gets going it's compelling.

Life On Mars (series one)

Just watched this over the weekend. Good show.

It's about a Manchester cop who gets hit by a car, and wakes up to find himself in 1973. He has a detective's job there too (apparently he just transferred there). Basically we have a cop show about the guy who doesn't fit in, as he tries to cope with the sexist, violent, corrupt cops he has to work with there. There's also the question of what is going on, told via moments when he seems to hear things going on around him (if he's in a coma or something).

There's great acting all round, good scripts, and generally a good cop-show feel. The cases aren't always very convincing - they seem tailored to be more about our hero's issues than anything else.

The Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian

This continues directly on from Desolation Island, and covers further misfortunes on that mission - a ship fire, capture by enemies and a time in Boston as prisoners of war for Aubrey and Maturin. Although the story overall feels like a epilogue to the previous novel, there are some very strong individual scenes in there.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film)

This was one of the better films in the series so far, and notably more focused than I remember the book being. The actors are very good all round, and the magic was significantly more magical than the other films.

Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian

Enjoyable for plenty of good moments, although the overall story is not so great.

Attn: Wellington Gamers - Fright Night Horror Convention

If you will be in Wellington in late October, Dale Elvy is running a small, one evening horror convention the Saturday before Halloween. Link.

I'll be running a game of The Infected there, and the others all look good. All round great GMs running these games, so if you are at all into horror gaming, you should go.

The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian

Another good re-read. I had regarded this as one of the weaker novels in the series, but appreciated it more this time around. Perhaps the focus on Aubrey dealing with other captains and Maturin's activities as a provocateur are more interesting after knowing their characters better?

The Anvil of the World by Kage Baker

A good comic fantasy novel. Fairly subtle in general, but some extremely funny elements. My favorite is probably that the traditional fantasy dark evil lord has married the avatar of goodness, and she has been steadily influencing him to be a better person. This comes into the novel when some of their children get involved in the main story. Their family has some issues.

HMS Surprise by Patrick O'Brian

Excellent.

Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian

Still very good indeed.

Transformers

This film delivered exactly what I hoped and expected: lots of really cool scenes of giant robots fighting (sometimes each other, sometimes people). The effects were fantastic and the fights awesome.

The plot and human bits of the story mostly served as a pacing mechanism, and could be largely ignored (except for another attempt at the dumbest movie treatment of hacking and computer security). A lot of the jokes were unexpectedly good too.

Gods and Pawns by Kage Baker

A collection of stories from Baker's "Company" series. I haven't read any of these books before but the basic gist seems to be that the Company has a kind of time travel that allows them to send agents into the past, but not much else. The stories concern agents engineered to be immortal super guys, who are expected to help arrange things so that the Company can make profits in the future.

This is an interesting idea, but the characterization of the agents is what brings the stories to life. The stories feel like they're exploring aspects of favorite characters. Good stuff.

White Night by Jim Butcher

The latest Dresden Files book may be the best yet. The action starts pretty much right away and keeps going. A few new bits of Dresden's world are introduced, and several loose ends from previous novels return (mainly to get further loosened, although a few are resolved instead).

It's also got me more excited for the upcoming Dresden Files game, as this novel suggests a few things about the wider world. This isn't so much that this is explicitly mentioned, more that there is some stuff implied that sparked game-style ideas.

The Sun Over Breda by Arturo Perez-Reverte

This is the third of the Adventures of Captain Alatriste.

This novel concerns Alatriste and Inigo's experiences in the war in Flanders in 1625. It doesn't really have the swashbuckling style of the first two, instead focusing on the brutality of that era's warfare and how this effects Inigo. His own experiences, and Alatriste's example, are clearly forming the man he is to be. The novel feels like it's an interlude in the overall story of Alatriste, which will continue when they return to Spain.

The action is exciting, and works despite the lack of a villain to blame it all on (although the evil Italian assassin gets mentioned in a letter from Madrid). It's interesting to read a purely military adventure novel, without the romanticized escapades that I'm used to in Cornwell's Sharpe books, for example.

More Agon: Isle of Gold 2

We played another game of Agon. With a better handle on the rules (in fact, we have pretty much got them sorted now), it was a lot quicker paced. A few little things contributed to this, like a realization that divine favor is really useful and easy to recover. Use of armor this session made a big difference too!

Perhaps too quick - I skipped quickly through roleplaying in a lot of scenes, where maybe we should have played them out a bit longer before going to dice/battle.

On the other hand, the battles were fantastic. They fought ten scorpion minions and then the Obsidian Scorpion in a fairly epic end to the first quest. One of the heroes took a 5 wound in one of these fights, which was a nice warning to the players - everyone was a little more wary after that.

Then they finished that up, sacrificed the scorpion head to Hera as promised, and got the other two quests for this island. They have to keep the Diamond Spear until one of the bandit kings becomes king of all the bandits, and track down a statue stolen from Hera's shrine in the farming village.

The heroes set off to find some bandits and soon did so. The bandits (a number of minions) demanded the Spear and resisted an attempt at reasoning. They were then slaughtered, except for a final three who surrendered.

That took us to the end of the evening's play, so we'll finish those two up next time.

Again, everyone had a good time. Playing a more tactical game seems to be a good change for us.
I think we'll need to focus some more on ujst playing things out next time, though.

The Dragon Scroll by I J Parker

This is another volume in the Sugawara Akitada detective stories. This is set early in his career - prior to all the episodes I have read so far. He has been sent to a remote province to check the accounts of the outgoing governor. This job is complicated by the fact that the last three annual tax caravans to the capital have all gone missing.

Needless to say, Akitada makes an effort to work out what happened to them, as well as solving some other murders that occur while he's in town.

This story also tells of his initial meeting with his retainer Tora, which is a good story in itself.

The characters are good, and the mystery is interesting. There's also plenty of action at the end, as is usual in this series.

Master & Commander by Patrick O'Brian

This was a pleasure to re-read. Even in this, first of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, the characterization and dialog are fantastic.

O'Brian really nailed the exact balance of a naval adventure novel, too. The action is still there, and exciting, but the novels are always about how the people deal with it. The focus on his characters' reactions, personalities and relationships usually ends up being more tense than the threats to life and limb.

Kurosawa

Watched this documentary about Akira Kurosawa's life and films. Not the greatest documentary, but extremely interesting nevertheless. I didn't know anything beyond his films, really.

The perspective of his whole life was interesting, I hadn't realised either how full his life was or quite how central he was to Japanese cinema. It also illustrated the development of his ideas through the films.

Well worth seeing if you are a fan.

Dogs in the Vineyard Play Report

I just played a first game of Dogs with my wife. It worked well, even though I (and her too I think) were a little unsure how well it would go.

She made up a fierce, repressed Dog who had an unhealthy obsession with sinful sex.

Her first job was the town of Canaan, where her cousin happened to have got into some trouble over being courted by an unbeliever. The situation was pretty messy, but she managed to find a solution to the situation that suited everyone (the man converted, the cousin agreed to obey her parents in future, they are to be married). This was despite the fact that her character, Sister Hester, had been prepared to shoot her cousin in cold blood for fornication when she first heard what was going on. And she managed to get this done the day before the man and his friends were going to 'rescue' the woman from her family, which would have been sure to end badly.

Reflecting on the situation was interesting too. Sister Hester is already beginning to soften already, taking an increase in Heart (i.e. compassion, sociability) from the minimum of 2 and improving her (crappy) coat with a gift from her cousins.

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.