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mickbradley

11:27 pm - Progress: Vegas After Midnight

Originally published at TGTMB. Please leave any comments there.

Busybusybusy!

I’m putting it together, though, piece by piece, getting ready for the playtest release and the GenCon sessions.

Most of the progress I’ve been making can be seen on the Vegas After Midnight site, where earlier today I posted several things, including a mini-progress report, some new and updated maps, and a table matching the twelve main factions to their suits of influence.

The big focus, though, has been with fleshing out the factions (much of which is updated on the site) and re-working the pre-gen characters for the GenCon sessions (which are not yet on the site, but will be).

At this point, I want to shout a big thank-you to Mr. Vincent Baker. His blog anyway has long given me scads of thought fodder and inspiration overall, and recently in particular some of his older formative articles on things like conflict resolution and dynamic situation development have been invaluable in giving me a compass for moving through the development of situations for the con sessions. So, thanks, Vincent!

Hey, stop reading TGTMB and go  look at the VAM site!

gillan

11:05 pm

My girlfriend is cute. Also she has a tattoo of the element carbon on her wrist. Also she went with me to see Type O Negative and is going to see the Melvins and Magnetic Fields with me.

Okay that's all. I just wanted to brag.

kleenestar

10:01 pm - Maybe It Was Just A Lesson

I didn't post about this, because I was too damn upset. But now you get the retroactive de-upsetted version.

See, I've been working on this research project for the past two years. I'm right on the verge of publishing, with some very cool results. (Yes, yes, you can have details, but that's another post.) Then, last week, I caught an error on my data analysis which voided all the results I'd discovered. The paper, it seemed, was junk. Two years of effort went out the window, along with a research direction I really believed in.

First, I panicked. Then, I panicked some more. After that I was able to move on to some more productive approaches. I asked for help, both academically from my mentors and personally from my family and friends. I tried to remember that I have other research projects on the burner, and that not having all my eggs in one basket is actually the upside of my sometimes-scattered research agenda. I took a lot of deep breaths.

Which is not to say it was fun. Despite all the relatively good coping on my part, it was still pretty awful. I know that I'm supposed to be learning to do research, and that means I'm likely to make mistakes as I learn, but really, two years? That's an awful lot of time to waste.

Then today I discovered that the error I found? Was itself an error. I had transposed two columns in the data while revising the analysis for publication. Everything was okay; my results were actually stronger than I'd originally realized; the paper is absolutely still publishable, if not even more so.

I'm hugely relieved and totally thrilled, of course. But part of me is also saying, "Hey, check that out! Something really important fell apart, and you survived. Even if the error had been for real, you totally would have made it, and that's good to know."

Still, universe, could you make the next lesson a little less panic-worthy? I'm really capable of learning from less drastic measures. I swear.

gillan

10:34 pm

If I were a movie, I'd want Ki-Duk Kim to make me. I just watched Samaritan Girl and it was insane in a good way. Oh, and this is my favorite Netflix movie criticism of his movies that I keep seeing.

"This movie was in Chinese or Japanese or something!!!"

Oh no!

gamera_spinning

09:10 pm - Rush plays Tom Sawyer on Rock Band

[Courtesy of wickedthought]:
"When they showed up for The Colbert Report, the show producers asked Rush to play their signature song, Tom Sawyer, on Rock Band."

( Hilarity ensued. )

dadiceguy

09:05 pm - Steampunk

( steampunk test results )

Current Mood: sleepy

benlehman

05:59 pm - A Fandom Fallacy

A work of fantasy should only be evaluated and criticized based on its own internal world, not on the external real world that it was written and published in.

charlesatan

06:37 am - Podcast Focus: The Bat Segundo Show

Every Friday, I'll talk about a podcast or two that catches my fancy.

URL: http://www.edrants.com/segundo/
RSS Feed: http://www.edrants.com/segundo/feed/
Description: A show that I should be plugging before it goes away, Edward Champion interviews a wide variety of authors and while I enjoy his focus on speculative fiction authors, he goes beyond the genre (and even the medium as he tackles film makers, comic artists, etc.). I find his interviews to be critical and smart and Champion is not afraid to throw difficult questions.

charlesatan

06:37 am - Podcast Focus: Wandering Geek Podcast

Every Friday, I'll talk about a podcast or two that catches my fancy.


URL: http://wanderinggeek.podbean.com/
RSS Feed: http://wanderinggeek.podbean.com/feed/
Description: This podcast is currently nominated for an ENnie but aside from that fact, this is one of the gaming podcasts that caught my attention. Suffice to say, the show is very unique as we get gaming perspectives from a truck driver and in line with that theme, the host tackles his subject matter with comments and reviews based on portability and travel. The show has a rotating show segment, including an interviews show, an all-music show (featuring music that geeks everywhere can appreciate), a review show and the general episode. You don't have to listen to each of those shows but they each offer something different.

dresdenfilesrpg

staceyinastoria

06:11 pm - Burning alpha is here!

Word has been sent out to people today that the next group of playtesting is about to start.  This time it is called Burning Alpha.  I know this because I was one of the ones lucky enough to be chosen for this.  I am so very excited by this for a lot of reasons.  The love of the Dresden File books is where this all started and the excitement of the game just makes it that much better.

Here is the banner for the playtest!



I am hoping that those of you (if any) in this community that are playtesting will either post your thoughts and such for the game, or at least post a link to your own personal blog/podcast/forum that you use. 

The goal of this is to make sure everyone in this group gets as much info about the testing as they can.  I will also try to get as many links that I can find posted here as well.  Hopefully, between the two we can get just about everyone that is testing involved in this community in some way or another.  I remember when I was looking everywhere I could to find any info about the previous play test. 

So, sit back and enjoy the information that will eventually come your way.  I say eventually, because I am not completely sure when everything will actually start.  Which is fine.  I am giddy enough for just being chosen.

Stacey

Current Mood: giddy

charlesatan

06:20 am - Top 10 Best-Sellers as of 2008/7/20

From USA Today's best-seller list (you can find out their basis here):

1. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
   
2. The Shack by William P. Young
   
3. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
4. Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer
   
5. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
6. Tribute by Nora Roberts
7. Someday Soon by Debbie Macomber
8. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow
9. Fast Track by Fern Michael
10. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin

ross_winn

06:00 pm - A sign of the end times?

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

kleenestar

04:58 pm - On The Road to 100

For the last two weeks, I've been following the One Hundred Pushups program. It's basically a six-week training course that takes A NINETY NINE POUND WEAKLING AND TURNS YOU INTO ... oh, wait. Mostly the program just gets you to the point where you can do a hundred pushups in a row.

While I'm not in terrible shape, this is not exactly something I felt that I could realistically do. That's why, even though I've been following the program, it's been with half-held breath, just waiting to fail. (Let's just say that I am not known for my upper-body strength!)

Then, last night (week two, day two), I did twenty-five pushups. Twenty-five! As my last set! Okay, admittedly I wasn't exactly touching my chest to the ground, but I was getting a good ninety-degree angle on my arms. I never thought I'd be able to do twenty-five, so even if the program doesn't get me to the full hundred, I'm pretty damn pleased.

I'll post again if and when I hit fifty. According to the program, it should be just a couple of weeks!

adamdray

05:41 pm - Gaming update

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

rob_donoghue

05:39 pm - Somethign for the Aunts (and Uncles)

So, I have a great many friends who are the aunt or uncle of the next generation of their family. It's a fun role to be in, but it's also probably a decent market, as the folks at Savvy Auntie have determined. It is apparently an entire site dedicated to parenting tips for people who aren't parents. Now, I'm entirely skeptical of whether this will actually be useful in the long run or if it's just going to be an initial burst of curiosity followed by an ivillage-like slide into mediocrity and noise, but I'll definitely be watching to find out.

bar_sinister

04:59 pm - Mist-Robed Gate: An Open Blade Focuses the Attention

If I hadn't played Annalise, the other game I got a chance to try would have ranked as my favorite of the DexCon weekend. This one was Shreyas Sampat's Mist-Robed Gate, a game that calls to mind the opulent costume kung fu dramas like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Curse of the Golden Flower. Shreyas described it as a game about emotional violence. I really like this genre of movie, and when we played Mist-Robed Gate, it really delivered.

Set up and play for this game is a breeze, and we all discussed setting and made characters in about half an hour. I was interested in a historical setting, and we ended up agreeing on setting the game during the Boxer Rebellion. We had two missionaries, two Chinese Christians, a Chinese opium lord, and a Buddhist monk. Each of the characters had a cross-purpose, and links to at least one other character. During play, lots of interesting tensions and conflicts arose between the characters.

When you create a character for the game, his attributes include a color, feature, and type of weather that represent him. Each of these indicate to the hypothetical audience that the character is an important one. You also make loyalties for the character. These are three or more things your character would sacrifice himself for. All of these loyalties cannot be served at the same time, they contradict one another and you must choose during play which loyalties the character will serve. Lastly, everyone receives one each of the two in-game resources: sets and props.

The most interesting thing about this game is the knife. When you begin play, a knife is placed on the game table and covered with a cloth. As a scene begins, if tensions rise, the knife is uncovered. Your character will want other characters to do things for him, and the only way to get them to do so is to use this knife. After it is uncovered, the knife is still sheathed. While the knife is sheathed, characters cannot openly ask other characters for what they want. You can only hint at your desires and indicate through metaphor what your intentions are. This creates a great cycle of oblique discussion as you make vague statements and hand another player the sheathed knife. The other player must guess what you want. If their character tries to do what you ask, they describe their actions and hand the knife back to you. If they did not do what you wanted, you make another hint and hand the knife back. This part of the game proved really interesting and fun.

The next phase of the knife is the unsheathed knife. When a player is tired of making roundabout requests, she can unsheath the knife and hand it to another player. The first player is now allowed to make direct, open demands. The unsheathed knife is dangerous, however. If a player now wishes, he can answer a direct demand by taking the knife and stabbing the other player's character sheet. The stabbing action is accompanied by a demand, but that demand must always include the death of the character who's sheet has been stabbed.

How can you avoid these various fates? When another player hands you the knife, you must comply with the character's demands. If you don't want to, however, you can choose to go to wirework. That's right. The way to deny a demand is to get in a kung fu fight with the other character. This led to some awesome confrontations in our game. There were several fights in a remote mountain pass and another in an opium den. The fights are flashy and narrative, and everyone around the table gets to secretly vote on the winner. After you get in a fight, one of the things you can do is soothe the knife, and move it back to the previous state (stabbed to unstabbed, unsheathed to sheathed, uncovered to covered). In our game, no one did this.

I managed to get in a big kung fu fight with a missionary over British military plans, and then I stabbed the sheet of a Christian rebel and made him face the English guns with his men and be cut down. If you accept the stabbing, you can narrate anything to happen so long as another player character doesn't have to do it, so the player whose sheet I stabbed narrated his men winning the day against the British, even though he himself was killed in battle.

I really loved this game. It's melodramatic and epic and delivers the grand stories I expect from the genre. It's also pointed firmly at tragedy, which is another trope of these movies. The knife is one of the coolest game artifacts I've ever experienced. It's so visceral and demands attention, especially once it is unsheathed. This is definitely a game I would play again.

highmoonmedia

04:31 pm - Witch Hunter Threads

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

One of my favorite games, and one I am running now, Witch Hunter got 3 nominations for the ENnies. Yet, it seemed like a lot of people had not really heard about it. So I decided to start a thread at both EN World and RPG.net to get some talk about the game going and hopefully build some awareness. Even cooler, new threads have emerged on their own, with more people talking about the game, what they’re doing and/or what they plan to do. Check these out and either learn about Witch Hunter, or join in and share your experiences.

EN World

• Witch Hunter: Are you playing? Yes? No? Why?
• Witch Hunter: Invisible World - my impressions

RPG.net

• Witch Hunter: Are you playing? Yes? No? Why?
• Witch Hunter: Invisible World - my impressions
• Witch Hunter: What character are you playing
• Savage World of Salomon Kane vs. Witch Hunter … which one?

Paizo

• Witch Hunter: the Invisible World

And of course, check out the Witch Hunter forums at Paradigm Concepts’ website as well.

highmoonmedia

04:14 pm - Off for Repairs

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

I finally cried uncle and called Dell to have my laptop shipped over for repairs. I’ve been 2 months without a monitor since the inverter burned out, and with the stupid virus I got on Sunday having wrought chaos in my system I’m at my wit’s end. Worst thing is, I lost access to my CD drive (like, the system does not even know there is a D:\ drive at all) so I can’t even do a system reinstall! Argh.

I’ll be able to be online and use Photoshop to finish the website I’m working on now until the box from Dell arrives and then I’ll endure being without my laptop for however long just so they can fix it for good.

I’m so not a happy camper right now…

merb101

03:21 pm - A few notes on Yeld

I still haven't had time to do a good writeup of our last Magical Land of Yeld session, but I wanted to get down a few points before I forgot them entirely. Part of the reason I haven't done a writeup yet (or actually finished the one I started) is because this last session was very combat oriented. Because the game moved so quickly, and because we had fewer players at the table, I didn't keep as close a track of the actual dice rolls, how challenges were resolved, etc. I mean, I remember the gist of the game and some of the subjects/questions/cool moments that came up, but not in as much detail as I would have liked for a playtest.

Regardless, here are a couple of quick points:

* The more "8-bit video game" the session became, the more the players had fun. When we didn't have to stop and explain where the giant Whirr-Click was hiding the treasure chest that suddenly dropped when the robot was defeated and vanished, the more the players got into the idea. 

* Miniatures helped tremendously, not for tactics, but purely for visuals. The players liked knowing what was happening where, but didn't want to be bogged down by ranges and movement. As long as we played it fast and loose, all of the players stayed engaged.

* Quests. We found certain themes emerging as we played. Likely this has more to do with the group than the game, but there are certain elements that really lend themselves to Yeld. One was the idea of completing tasks in a certain order to get to the next task. The players really responded well to this, and there was no feeling of being railroaded. An example: The players defeated a Cog (a human guard) they called SteelToe, because when they first fell through the door into Yeld, all they could see was his boots. When they defeated SteelToe, he became a ghost, floating beside the fountain in the center of town. The players had noticed SteelToe had tried to help them before he attacked them. His ghost explained he was required to serve the ClockWerk King (the villain of this part of Yeld) and told the players he would aid them if they could free him from the King's service. He told them to bring him the fist of the ClockWerk King and he would join their group. The players loved this and jumped at the idea, knowing now as they headed toward the King's Tower of Gears this ghost was waiting for them by the village fountain. This leads me to the second part:

* Allies. For my group, this game has become a matter of recruiting forces to go take on the Vampire Prince. All of the players came to the conclusion early on they were not powerful enough (nor would be) to defeat the Prince on their own. They see taking his Hunters and servants as a way of freeing oppressed people and leading them as an army against the Vampire Kingdom. Rock on! This is something I hadn't anticipated, but now love. However, there are no rules as yet for the use of allies. Could this be a way for GMs to buy more adventure dice during a game? Is an ally treated the same as a monster? etc.

* The players love the weapons and equipment they have. A big part of Yeld is trading in weapons and armor for better weapons and armor as you advance in power. However, my players don't like that idea. They want to make existing weapons and armor better. They like the idea of a Mop eventually becoming a devastating tool against undead, or a sledge hammer once used to build railroads for the ClockWerk King eventually shattering his robotic creations. Again, this might just be a tweak based on my group and doesnt really affect the game as is, but it was something I wasn't expecting when we started.

Anyway, those are just a few things I've been thinking about. I will post more as I am able.

ME

juleakab

03:02 pm - Blog Update

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