In The Shadow Of The Moon

A documentary about the moon landings, based on interviews with the surviving astronauts who went there. It's comprised of cuts between them talking and archival footage related to what they're telling.

Fantastic.

If A Pirate I Must Be... by Richard Sanders

This is a biography of the infamous pirate Bartholomew Roberts. In fact, it's a bit more general than that, as Sanders goes off on various tangents regarding pirate culture, the slave trade, and so on. Roberts' career as a pirate is a pretty good framework for this. Interesting, but mainly for anecdotal stuff (Sanders goes to many primary sources).

Trail of Cthulhu by Ken Hite

Essentially, this game takes everything good from Call of Cthulhu and substitutes a coherent system in place of the (to me) utterly terrible old Basic Role Play one. Hite's the perfect author to extract the best of Lovecraft's gameable ideas, too. His take on things is surprisingly fresh (especially his take on the great old ones - each described by a variety of possible explanations, not all of which are consistent).

The system, Robin Laws' GUMSHOE, is all about resource management instead of skill ratings. Investigative abilities will automatically provide characters with the crucial clues to a case (if you have a relevant ability). However, to get extra information you need to spend points. So if you just want to haul ass after the monster, that's free, but if you want to, say, find out how to best kill it, or how it was summoned, those might cost you. I didn't really have very high hopes of this part of the game, but it is actually done rather well. Combined with the advice on mystery construction, it makes a solid basis for playing adventures through.

The other side of the system is a task resolution bit to cover fighting, chases, and other hazards that you will find. You roll a plain old six sided die, aiming to beat a target number of 2-8. In order to boost your chances, you spend points from your ability pool before you roll. It looks like it will play quick and the combat is appropriately dangerous when fighting people and (given their abilities and special powers) absolutely lethal when fighting monsters.

Character generation is pretty good. Like Call of Cthulhu, you pick an occupation that gives you several abilities that are easier to develop. You also get one or two special features based on it, e.g. Doctors can get access to hospital records and so on. You also pick a drive - something that is behind your desire to investigate weirdness. These are a good selection. They have a mechanical affect too - they can be compelled like FATE Aspects, with the reward being increased Stability (more on this below). Finally, you drop a bunch of points on Investigative abilities and another bunch on your general abilities, giving you your point pools to spend on clues and roll bonuses.

The sanity system (perhaps insanity system is more appropriate) is slightly more nuanced than Call of Cthulhu as well. I gather this is because GUMSHOE includes rules for Stability - how well a character bears up in the face of traumatic events - but not for a descent into madness. Hite has essentially mashed them together. Characters are scored for their Stability and Sanity. Stability is used to cope with shocks, and can go up and down rapidly. Sanity goes only down, either when Stability is reduced to 0 by a Mythos encounter, or directly when encountering the most horrifying of creatures. It reads like it will work fine.

The bulk of the book is given over to the descriptions of mythos creatures, general background and advice for play. This is all really good stuff - the creature descriptions stand out, with an effort made to have them not just a list of monsters, but with suggestions to make them more interesting all the way through. The advice on building a campaign is likewise solid, with a lot of good ideas, and suggestions for running the game in many different ways (including totally improvised mysteries). There's also markers throughout the book of rules, concepts and so forth that suit either 'Purist' or 'Pulp' style games. These seem to be well selected, and allow for a continuum of styles from one end to the other, depending on your choices of which to use.

Overall, a very nice Lovecraft game. I look forward to running it - which will happen soon, as I was about to run such a game using Nemesis, but Trail of Cthulhu just beat it for that position.

Four Days In June by Iain Gale

A novel about the battle of Waterloo, from the points of view of several people in various armies. Good, although every now and again it feels more like a history lecture than a nove.

Escapement by Jay Lake

This follows on from Mainspring, with further adventures in an alternate universe that is clockwork. It's a much more fun novel. I think that's partly because - the world established - there is less concern with describing how things are there. Also the stories (it follows three different characters this time) are more interesting than Hethor's quest was.

Generation Kill by Evan Wright

An interesting look at (some of) the people on the front lines in the American military. Wright was an embedded journalist with the Marine First Recon Battalion, and the book recounts what he saw and heard in the invasion of Iraq. It's fairly hostile to the higher ranked officers (perhaps unfairly - via wikipedia I found a rebuttal to the book, with differing accounts on many of the events in the book). This seems likely to be because Wright was with the same small group of mainly enlisted men. In any case, it's still a great read, especially for the portraits he paints of some of the soldiers.

The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod

A near future police thriller, dealing with a world that has moved into profound rejection of religion after the current 'War on Terror' just got worse and worse, and religion got blamed. The novel is all about themes around robot consciousness and religion versus rationalism, with the investigation into a murder as the plot. Good stuff, as you can expect from MacLeod, although it feels strangely more relaxed than usual (strange because the events in the story are anything but relaxing).

Also slightly jarring is the fact that some of the action takes place in New Zealand, and MacLeod has got a few things just slightly wrong - nothing that really matters, just a few things that aren't quite right (the bird is a 'tui' not a 'tui-tui'; fantails don't really hang out in flocks; etc).

Houses of the Blooded by John Wick

I grabbed the pdf of this due to Wick temporarily dropping the price to USD$5. I'd thought it looked a bit too similar to Greg Stolze's Reign to look at in much detail before. I was wrong... well, kind of. It is similar in many ways, but the emphasis and mechanics are very different.

Everyone in Houses is member of the aristocracy of a passionate race of created beings called ven. They're basically humans with certain drives turned up to 11. They live in the ruins of the people who created them, and they're slowly re-taming their lands. The game is about the lives of these nobles, in epic tragedies. There's rules for vendettas, romantic affairs (kind of like the tradition of courtly love) and for building up your domains (or taking over those of others).

The domain rules are a basic framework that everything else fits into. Each season, the nobles will arrange the production of their lands and order their vassals to do this and that. It is also expected that each player character will play out 1-3 stories or adventures in more detail. This side of the game also brings in a huge number of non player characters - rival nobles, vassals, spouses - who will increasingly entangle the lives of the player characters.

Some details of the mechanics that are interesting:

• Rolls are made to win control of narration, not to determine success or failure. 
• Players can elect to hold back dice they are entitled to roll to allow them a greater degree of success, with a lower chance.
• Uses a more limited version of Aspects (from FATE 3.0 as seen in Spirit of the Century). Instead of being able to be used whenever they are appropriate, each one has specific triggers to allow it to be invoked for yourself, tagged by someone else, or compelled by the gamemaster.
• Detailed rules for duels (when a Revenge or vendetta has been called), with some neat stuff in the different maneuvers available.
• Detailed rules for Romance, covering everything from the initial flirtation to when it all ends in tears, heartbreak and possibly bloodshed.
• Lots of cool stuff you can do in your domain. E.g. raise a secret army; explore a ruin of the old sorcerer kings; throw a party; write an opera; build a city; fight off monsters in untamed lands.

Overall, a very cool system that I hope to play with my group soon. I think we'd have great fun with it in the epic mode (tragedy with buckets of blood, like Hamlet or Macbeth). 

How to Host a Dungeon by Tony Dowler

This is a strange kind of thing... it's a solo game kind of thing, designed to create interesting dungeons for use in dunegeon-crawl rpgs. Basically, you work your way through various different ages, and the game tells you how things get organised.

It's really fun! That's the key bit. I've run through three dungeons now, one with the free version and two with the non-free. In each, there's certainly been a bunch of cool stuff that would make for a fun campaign. There's a lot of randomness that determines what happens in the dungeon, i.e. which monsters colonise which part and so on. There's also a series of events that each of the monsters will try each turn... dwarves will mine, dragons will hunt for food, etc. As time goes on, the humans living on the surface might even send expeditions or adventurers into the dungeon.

Dowler has come up with some great, evocative stuff in how the different groups behave, and the result dungeons have all been interesting - the results of all the events in the previous ages certainly give a lot of character to things! For example, one of mine ended up with a rich ettin lairing in the now-abandoned remains of an ancient demonic soul mill... nice food for describing in play!

Currently all my dungeons were on A4 paper (due to a lack of anything bigger) but yesterday I got myself an A3 pad, and I'm looking forward to playing again with a less cramped space (I think that may have led to my other dungeons 'finishing' quicker than they otherwise might have).

There's a nice example of how it works going on in a group dungeon making thread on story games, too.

Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb

A very nice conclusion to the Soldier's Son trilogy. Unfortunately it is extremely long, as Hobb indulges in a great deal of descriptive prose and her protagonist engages in rather a lot of introspection. However, those aren't enough to detract from an interesting story, and a surprisingly nuanced fantasy exploration of the clash of cultures. Neither the colonialist invaders, the conquered nomads, or the state-of-nature forest people are, in the end, any better or worse than each other. This acceptance that people are just people and that every group makes mistakes, does terrible things, and does good things is somewhat rare in fiction (especially fantasy).

Saturn's Children by Charles Stross

This novel is up to Stross' usual standard. It follows the adventures of a bored sexbot, lost in a world in which all the humans died out (leaving her, and all the other robots, with no particular purpose). As the story goes on, it goes deeper into the reasons that the post-human society is like it is.

Man of Honour by Iain Gale

The first Jack Steel novel, read out of order. It was not quite as good as Rules of War, but still a solid adventure story.

Solving Stonehenge by Anthony Johnson

The first half of this is a history of the study of Stonehenge, which is fairly interesting.

The second half is really interesting. Johnson decided to work out how the builders designed Stonehenge, and this book describes his attempts to work out how the various parts were positioned, using only techniques that would have been available at the time (i.e. pegs and ropes). Pretty cool stuff.

On top of that, it's a coffee table book with lots of nice pictures.

The King's Gold by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Next of the Alatriste novels. It is a very good one! Plenty of action and intrigue, and in this one Inigo is coming of age, and thus playing a bigger part in the adventures he's chronicling.

The Ordinary by Jim Grimsley

Kinda interesting science fiction with some fantasy elements that seem like they are really sufficiently advanced technology. The story is about what happens when a future human society decides to try and push into the 'fantasy' type world that appears to be a pocket universe or something. Lots of neat stuff, but the end didn't really resolve enough to be satisfying for me. I understand there's a sequel, maybe that will have the resolution in it.

A History of Japan by Kenneth Henshall

A fairly shallow, yet still very interesting, history of Japan. Recommended if, like me, you have only the broadest ideas of Japanese history.

A Company of Spears by Allan Mallinson

Another of the Hervey series, one that I missed, having read the one immediately after it already. It's good. This series really stands out just for Hervey's inner life - the way he tries to deal with the various irrationalities of his life and situation.

3:16 Actual Play & Review

I played another game, with a much more satisfying pace, and plenty of time for the characters to interact with each other and the extras.

On the strength of that, here's a real review rather than just a mention of play.

3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars has you playing a group of space troopers. They've volunteered to join the force, with a mission of killing everything that might potentially threaten Terra at some point (i.e. all alien life).

The game is pretty simple, but hugely evocative. There's a little bit of tactical positioning in combat, with a nifty list of weapons to choose from. Character generation takes about five minutes (if you take time to explain everything as you go).

Play is mission based, with each mission requiring the troopers to cleanse a planet of hostile lifeforms. The GM gets a pool of tokens to allocate to the combat encounters (and sometimes spend on alien special abilities), which gives you some tactical play there too.

The real core of play, however, is the troopers' attitude to their job. This also gets fleshed out by the flashback mechanics - each trooper has a limited number of strength and weakness flashbacks. These can be used to get yourself out of difficulty in combat, but when you use one you have to explain your memory and thus illustrate how it helps you in the present situation. This is the real character generation, where your trooper's personality gets fleshed out.

Combat is also fairly lethal - I'd expect most campaigns to lose a few troopers along the way. This 'life is cheap' vibe runs through a lot of the game too (e.g. weapons don't have a damage rating, they have a 'kills per round' rating - and it goes up to d100).

The between mission character development allows people to improve, but aspects of this are arbitrary. The big one is levelling up - two troopers get to level up each time: the one who made the most kills goes first, then everyone rolls off to be the second.

For the GM, there's almost no prep - roll or pick from a few tables to generate the next planet and alien abilities, and off you go. Taking more time helps, but if necessary you can play with no time spent.

All that stuff ends up being a very tightly focused game, simple to play but (I expect, over campaign play) also the potential for some really good play about dealing with being in a stupid, terrible and endless war.

Regarding my second game, there's not too much to say. I spent a lot more time describing details of the setting, so the Force had more of a character to it, and the planets (we managed one long and one quick mission) were somewhat more thought out and consistent. I only had two players, as well, which added focus. Their adversity was tougher than my first games too - both missions I picked a high ability rating for the aliens, and this made a big difference to the sense of danger in combat. I'm also looking forward to running a game with my full group there, as the rest of them will have to play green replacements for the squad, which now has a pair of fairly battle hardened NCOs.

Speaking of which, I thoroughly recommend the technique of creating a squad to back the player characters, and brutally killing the extras off as you go. Even knowing that I was doing this arbitrarily for narrative effect, I got the sense that they really wanted to keep their guys alive.

Actual Play: 3:16

So, I inflicted my first run of 3:16 on a group of four at the ConFusion one-day convention yesterday.

We played with fairly minimal roleplaying and reflection, and a breakneck pace, which was not ideal. However, that was the mood of the group, and everyone had a great time. We got through four missions in the session, which seems pretty insane*. I'll definitely try and keep things moving more slowly in future games, giving some moments of reflection rather than just things that moved the mission forward.

In terms of the rules, they delivered on all the fun in play that reading suggested would be there. We had some great positioning debates, people raging as they got placed at the ideal range for someone else's weapon, and so on. There was jubilation when someone scored 93 kills with their heavy MG, scorn when the crazy corporal blew up teammates with a grenade a second - and third - time.

Despite the pace of the game, we managed to touch all the parts of the rules. Playing multiple missions gave us a chance to develop the characters, and we had some promotions too. There was also good use of flashbacks. A few were of the obvious, but not so interesting sort: "I spent extra time practising X because of an early failure." However, some were golden. My favorites were a related strength and weakness flashbacks from the same character on the same mission - both dealing with his childhood adventures with his brothers in the woods back home.

In tone, ours was fairly light. However, they got hit pretty hard early on so everyone was aware how close trooper death could be, giving that edge to the proceedings. I'd like to try a game that's more on the grim end of the spectrum, too.

In any case, great game. If the idea of space troopers killing aliens has any kind of appeal to you at all, get this game.


* It helped that I rolled so badly for the aliens on this final world that they never scored a kill on anyone. Worst poisonous killer newts ever.

Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams

A very good, but hard to describe novel. Starting in a fantasy world - one that will be hilariously familiar to players of MMORPGs - we follow a chap who implies there is a lot more going on. He helps to defeat some dark priests and that leads on to crazier and crazier stuff as we get to find out what is going on.

It's not quite a post-singularity novel, but the things that have led to the world that Williams describe certainly changed things for humanity a great deal. For more detail, read the novel.