Anyway...

Off to the fair

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:19:51 GMT

deli & I will be selling our comic at Edition Book Arts in Temple Bar in Dublin. If you're around Dublin, pop in (entry is free) and support us!

Once again, I hunt the laptop

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:06:52 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

Apparently, my Toshiba A200 is suffering from water damage, causing the keyboard to glitch. Replacing the keyboard hasn’t helped, so it looks like I’ll be investing in a new laptop at some point.

Certain people are urging me to jump ship to the MacSide. Anyone else changed operating systems and lived to tell the tale?

Slammers on Sale

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:34:30 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

The Hammer’s Slammers rpg I wrote for Mongoose is apparently out on the shelves. Early reports appear positive, on the whole. The game’s based on the novels of David Drake, and I’m both amused and honoured by his comments that “the fellow who did the writing really understood the military and (I think) got the feel of the Hammer series“.

Edition Book Arts

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:40:02 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

This weekend (Sat. 4th July), deli and I will be at Edition Book Arts in Dublin. It’s a book, comic and zine fair, and entry is free. It’s on in Temple Bar.

We will - assuming the postal service co-operates - be selling print copies of Fish for Fish. Support would be very, very welcome, as this is our first real step into self-publishing.

4e thoughts so far, part 2 - upsides

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:55:22 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

My quibbles aside, 4e is a significant reinvention of D&D. It’s vastly easier to prepare material for than 3.5 was, and easier to run. Back in 3.5, the real tactical game was in spell stacking and preparation, and the DM had to outthink all the players. There were far, far too many options, especially in high-level play.

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4e thoughts so far - the downsides

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:45:03 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

The PCs in my ongoing Company of Heroes D&D4e game just hit third level, and I’m growing more comfortable with the system. As expected, the tactical side of play works very well, and encounters do usually hit the sweet spot where the players are nearly-but-not-quite overwhelmed. The little I’ve written for it was also great fun, but anything’s better than calculating skill points for 16th level 3rd edition NPCs.

I do have a few concerns, though.

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How to Write Con Scenarios, Addendum

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:48:47 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

Since writing thelast post on this topic, I attended the Scenario Writing Workshop in Cork, which was entertaining and moderately productive, although I’m not sure if entrenched opinions (mine or anyone else’s) changed.

The most useful part of the whole workshop was where people discussed their favourite scenario ever to write and to play. In almost every case, the ‘favourite piece of scenario writing’ was some over-complex and experimental game, like my Serene and Primal. By contrast, the ‘favourite game to play’ category was more varied, but there were a few interesting common elements:

The first time the person played a particular game
Simple, effective scenarios with plenty of scope for the players to drive events.
Games set in unusual locations or time periods. Even something as simple as running a Cthulhu scenario in, say, Mexico instead of Arkham made the game much more memorable.

A few other tips:

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A Very Busy Month

Sun, 24 May 2009 23:24:30 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

My blogging has been rather non-existant of late; it has been an absurdly busy month. Among the highlights:

deli & I got engaged. This should surprise no-one, as sharing webspace like this is just as much of a committment as marriage. Really, it is. Anyway, we’re both very happy, and will be even happier when the ring finally arrives.
We’ve done several new chapters of Fish for Fish, and even put a PDF version up on Drivethrucomics
I’ve written 90% of the Scoundrel supplement for Traveller, and am about to plunge back into Alpha Complex for more PARANOIA
I’ve also helped put together lots of material for the PARANOIA 25th anniversary DVD, and gotten involved with 1d4 new freelance projects.

I’m also running two ongoing campaigns. One is the Z-Space Traveller game I blogged about earlier, the other is a D&D 4e game.

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I have just written the following sentence.

Fri, 22 May 2009 16:08:51 GMT

"Barbarians do not qualify for medical care and so never incur medical bills."

It makes sense in context, really it does.

I was on the internet in minutes, registering my disgust (Star Trek spoilers)

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:37:47 GMT

That was, unfortunately, thoroughly underwhelming.

I'm trying desperately not to be the anorak who criticises the movie because BLACKHOLESDONOTWORKTHATWAY, (so I'll save all nitpicking that until the end of the post), but... it was Galaxy Quest. I liked Galaxy Quest; I thought it was funny, and clever, and fun to watch, but that's about it. It's not like I want to see Galaxy Quest again. I might watch it on tv if I was bored, but I wouldn't even bother to rent the DVD. It's not that it's bad, it's just that there's much, much better stuff out there.

Yes, the special effects were good. Everything's got good effects now.
Yes, the script was ok. A few good lines.
Yes, the cast ranged from excellent (Urban's take on Bones was great, Simon Pegg's inherently wonderful, and Quinto did a good Spock) to ok (Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, Kirk), with a few surprises (screw Kirk, I want to see the adventures of Captain Pike; Nimoy had a much bigger role than I expected, and was about the only thing that sold the movie to me as Star Trek.

It's not enough for me. I know I'm nitpicking the movie based on the script and the 'science', and I got shouted at in the lobby and on the drive home for being a cold-hearted nerd who can't appreciate fun, but if I'm constantly thrown out of the moment by monumentally _wrong_ elements of the movie, then I'm not going to call it a good movie.

Imagine a World War II movie where the characters leave London in a tank, and arrive in Berlin in the same tank five minutes later. The movie can be well scripted, have fun characters, and be exciting, but I'm going to be thrown out of my enjoyment of the movie by the glaring error. The Trek movie had far too many such moments for me to really get into it; I was very, very aware that I was just sitting in a cinema watching average CGI.

* * *

I will freely acknowledge that most of the points below are absolute nerdbait, and I may be roundly mocked for them. Nonetheless...

* If Romulus' sun is exploding, why are the Romulans relying on the Vulcans to save them? If the future Romulans can build mining ships that powerful, why do they need the Vulcans to bring them a portable black hole generator? For that matter, why is the black hole generator crammed into the back of the 24th-century equivalent of a small van?

* Nero travels back in time, blows up the Kelvin...and then hangs around for twenty-five years in deep space until Spock shows up, just so he can grab Spock and then blow up Vulcan? He never thought of, say, popping over the Romulan Empire and mentioning that they should, maybe, do something about that star before it explodes?

* Maybe he spent the twenty-five years removing all the safety railings on his mining ship.

* Apparently, if you're the Vulcan council, the most logical act when a giant alien ship arrives in orbit and drills a hole in your planet's core is to go and stand in a big circle and hope it goes away. Make sure you're somewhere that it's especially hard to evacuate from.

* We'll ignore the plot contrivance of Kirk happening to run into FutureSpock.

* Delta Vega is an isolated, icy moon, so remote that Scotty has been stuck there for six months without any fresh food. Despite this, Vulcan is clearly visible from the surface, implying that Delta Vega's in orbit of Vulcan. Did Scotty never think of, say, beaming down to the nearest Vulcan shop and picking up some supplies?

* Spock maroons Kirk on Delta Vega and warps off to rendezvous with the fleet. Kirk wanders around, gets attacked by an owlbear and an ankheg, meets FutureSpock, has a chat and a mindmeld, walks fourteen kilometres to the outpost, chats with Scotty, and then gets beamed to the Enterprise - which, we've been told, has been travelling faster than light all this time. That's one long-range transporter.

* Nero, apparently, doesn't believe in shields, as they're able to beam Kirk and Spock right onto the bridge. Given Nero wiped out more than fifty ships earlier in the movie, this does seem like a careless oversight on his part.

* I'm prepared to accept that you can make black holes with 'red matter'. I'm prepared to accept that you can blow up planets with them, and even time travel by falling through them. I'm going to draw the line, though, well before the point marked 'you can have a conversation when there's a black hole down the corridor from you.'

* And even that point is well short of 'you can escape a black hole by dropping your engine into it.'

* FutureSpock hangs around the new Vulcan? Okaaay. I can go with that. It did rather undermine the ending though. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise...to boldly go where no one has gone before - except me. I was there first. Here, I'll draw you a map when I'm done repopulating the Vulcan race.

How to write con scenarios, part V: the Finale

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:24:24 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

The final scene is, obviously, the climax of the scenario, the denouement of the plot, the big epic fight with the villian. It’s also the hardest scene to plan. You’ll find that unless you keep a very tight grip on the possible actions of the player characters, the final scene ends up being an awful lot of if… thens and maybes.

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How to write con scenarios, part IV: Core scenes

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:25:05 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

Back in part 1, I said that as a rule of thumb, you can assume you’ll have three to five scenes between opening and finale. Each of these scenes should last around half an hour each. That’s actually quite a lot of play time. Depending on your game system, that’s one or two fights (or a lot more, in some lighter systems); it’s two or three conversations with an NPC; it’s exploring a few rooms in a dungeon; it’s a lot of planning and the quick execution of a plan.

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Day 46: still not a cylon

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:20:22 GMT

* Wrote lots of PARANOIA: The book is currently on track, although I need to make a serious push this week to get all the old material integrated and write more new stuff.
* Had a long chat with my cousins: They're the smart ones in the family. Lots of gossip and discussions of couches.
* Played board games: There were two players missing from the Traveller group, so we just played board games. In Battlestar Galactica, we got swarmed by more cylons than I've ever seen before. In the first twelve crises, I think we had six cylon attack cards. Our population dropped like a rock, we jumped (losing another three population) to Ragnar Anchorage, and then the toasters showed up again to finish the job. We also played the wild west Munchkin, which always makes me want to run that Western Cthulhu game that been in my head for years.
* Got a copy of Third Person.: Review forthcoming.

Chapter 5 of Fish for Fish is up, by the way. New readers start here, and the newly uploaded chapter starts here.

Daylog

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:00:25 GMT

It's been a while since I've had time to blog. Apologies.
* Went swimming: We've been good about going to the gym regularly, which translates as 'pain'.
* Went to the dentist: My teeth are fine; my gums are not. Huzzah. I've another appointment in two weeks, where my flossing will be assessed. The dentist is the secular version of confession.
* Bought a couch: and two chairs, for that matter. The couch here has lasted thirty-two years, but gave up the ghost a few months ago. It's time for a replacement.
* Wrote: PARANOIA continues apace, assuming 'apace' means 'throwing yourself off a cliff and learning to fly.'
* Ate all the chicken: There's no more chicken for you. I ate it all.

Strange Days

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:04:11 GMT

Went swimming: I used to be a good swimmer, but I've lost the knack. Now I swim much like a brick with arms.
Went sofa hunting: Final decision is made, now I need to get rid of the old sofa.
Work: I finally got usable guidance on the new PARANOIA edition, as well as my review for the year. (In short: good writing, but deadlines went to hell last year. In my defence, last year was unusual.)
Gamed: Traveller. The PCs rescued Dr. Stegner from the cruise liner (don't ask) and actually have a plan for next week. Huzzah. A good session all round.

I'll also add my voice to those mourning the loss of Dave Arneson.

Very quick update

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:57:21 GMT

Went to gym (painful), went to doctor (check-up), lunch with Aidan (eggs benedict yum), sent lots of emails (work), very tired now (but watching House in bed before sleep). I may be the only person in Ireland pleased with the emergency budget (I didn't lose the Artist's Exemption, which some doomsayers had suggested was a likely candidate for the chop.)

Catch-up Post

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:49:33 GMT

* Went down to Kerry: to spend the weekend with delichan's family. All very nice, and I introduced her nieces to Settlers and Snorta
* Wrote some of my con scenario essay: I actually started that essay two laptops ago, but recent debate gave me the impetus to actually write it. It'll be at least six parts long, probably more. I can ramble on this topic a lot.
* Went to see Fred the Band: In the Pavilion. It was the first time I'd been there in years, and I was struck by immense nostalgia for Lee's dodgy indie club there. Good times.
* Went sofa hunting: Complicated by the fact that my mother is still housebound, so we have to bring sofa samples back to her for approval. Nearly there.
* Learned that there are balloon modeling cons: Apparently, the Belgians are well into their balloon modeling. I'm increasingly suspicious of Belgium. It may be a front for an alien invasion or something.
* Called up to 503: I haven't seen any of my Cork friends in a while outside of gaming, so I called up to the old flat...
* Played Roborally:...and gamed. We played what amounted to two games of RoboRally. In one game, Rob played solo, zooming across the board and winning without taking any damage or even seeing another robot. In the other, coterminous game, four other robots shot, bashed, pulled and crushed each other in an orgy of oily mayhem. I came second, which meant I hit the first flag several turns after Rob hit his second.

How to Write Con Scenarios, part II - Characters

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:38:06 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

First, check with the con; some conventions will specify how many players they want at a table. Normally, this number is five or six. If they have such a requirement, stick to it – it’s there for a reason. (Seating arrangements, mainly, plus it’s a lot easier for the rpg co-ordinator to look at a room full of tables and go ‘right, I need to rustle up two more players for that table, one for that one, and three for the poor guy in the corner’ instead of ‘agh, are there four or seven spaces in the GURPS: Combat Gardening game?’) Let’s assume six player characters.

What goes into them?

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How to write con scenarios the Gar Hanrahan way

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:17:13 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

Disclaimer: All this is my opinion, but it’s based on what’s worked for me over the past eight years of writing con scenarios – and since writing said con scenarios has led directly to a job in the gaming industry, I’ll admit to a smidgin of ego on this topic. Contrary comments and arguments welcome.

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Getting Stuff Done

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:03:01 GMT

Got Stuff Done: I knocked about half-a-dozen things off my to-do list, which is great.
Got paid: A good day all round
Ran Traveller: Wherein we learned the player characters have sympathy for neither refugees nor corrupt politicians, and that one angry man with a stunstick is a match for five gunmen if conditions are right.
Debated submitting something for Gaelcon: I probably will, although the infantile April Fool's today left a sour taste in my mouth.

Back from Conpulsion

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:12:47 GMT

A full con report is up at Figures of Text, so I'll skip the actual con bit of the extended weekend. So, other highlights:
(thurs) Flew to Edinburgh: And survived, despite the best effort of the winds. After a lot of flying around on big planes, it's nice to be reminded that ohgodohgodi'minalittlemetalboxandit'salongwaydown.
(thurs) Argued with work: Don't ask.
(thurs) Swapped lives with coffee_lifeform: I flew to Edinburgh and crashed in her flat; she flew to Cork and crashed in my place.
(thurs) Met up with blearyboy and lilaanne: Always a good thing, and nice to see their charming offspring (who remains charming even when she's trying to do backflips off one's stomach).
(fri) Outlined the next six months of writing: I was still stalled on actual productive writing, so I outlined all three of the upcoming PARANOIA books, Scoundrel and three other books I want to do.
(fri) Met up with boxninja and James for dinner: Lovely company; dodgy food.

Then there was the con, which was good.

(mon) Faffed a lot: Wrote a bit, but not enough. Read most of We as I continue to work through the list of PARANOIA inspirational books.
(mon) Free food: Courtesy of coffee_lifeform, a nice green curry and enough mushroom soup to conquer the world, if one could conquer the world with mushroom soup.
(mon) Watched The Gamers II: Which was meh. I remember the first one as being hilarious; this was merely ok, and I now worry that I'm misremembering the first one.
(mon) Set up a twitter account for The Computer: Because twittering is mandatory.
(tue) Nearly missed the plane back home: I somehow transitioned from 'why am I up so early, it's ages before I need to check-in' to 'agh, there's not a prayer of making the plane' without any intervening state.
(tue) Made it home: delichan appears pleased by this. It's good to be back.

Conpulsion

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:54:53 GMT

Originally published at Figures of Text. Please leave any comments there.

By the middle of March, the seasoned con-goer acquires the thousand-yard stare of the shellshocked veteran. Every weekend in the month brings another gaming con, another weekend of sign-up sheets, pub quizzes and cheap accommodation. I don’t do the full con circuit as much as I used to, but March was still a death march of relentless fun, capped off by flying to Edinburgh for Conpulsion.

I played my little heart out over the con. The Friday night pub quiz fell before the ’semi-pro’ team, especially as members of the team wrote about half the products referenced in the roleplaying round, and spent a lot of time chatting to the Avenger crowd and to James (Wallis) and Gregor (Hutton), both of whom I know well enough to not merely namedrop, but also mock merciless if I could think of anything to mock them about right now. (I suppose I could mock Gregor’s Dodgy Facial Hair, but I’m on thin and extremely hypocritical ground there). As for the games:

Hollow Earth Expedition: was fun in the standard convention pulp game way, which means it was intensely formulaic but still enjoyable (up until the end, when two of the players fell into killing NPCs for no good reason other than they looked slightly threatening, and the game descended into inter-party conflict). I wasn’t really sold on HEX, as it doesn’t seem to offer anything Spirit of the Century doesn’t. (Of course, a con game isn’t really the place to show off a detailed setting, so maybe HEX could score points there.)

Traveller: Yeah, I got to play Traveller. It was a light-hearted (and again, rather pulpy) game run competently by the Avenger crew. We were on an airship that got highjacked and then blown up (ahead of schedule, thanks to one of the PCs). Good fun, but it did reinforce my desire to write up a set of corrections and patches to the main rules to take into account actual play over the last year. Mongoose have ruled out a second edition of the book for at least a few years (which is a good thing), so any such notes would have to take the form of a third-party supplement or free web article. Or both.

3:16: I’ve too many books at home anyway, so I promised I wouldn’t buy anything physical in the charity auction. I did end up buying places in the two guest-run games. Gregor’s 3:16 game was a lot of fun, and came closer to Paranoia than I expected. (You could very easily use 3:16 as an Armed Forces In Spaaaace game, replacing Terra with Alpha Complex). The game’s still a little too light for my tastes, although the addition of some Objective rules would be easy.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen: was played in costume (of a sort) and with brandy (of an expensive sort) and my memories are perforce rather sketchy. All the players were excellent, but one tale about repelling the Prussian army with a pink cake was clearly the favorite of the assembled company. Afterwards, we tried the variant My Uncle The Baron, which also worked well (especially as my mental powers were rapidly diminishing).

Conpulsion’s always a good con, although there was a lack of buzz this year. The venue has a wealth of small side rooms which are great for running games, but it means there’s no real centre to the con, and it’s hard to find people. There were a few faces missing this year, too, but it’s still a fixture on my convention calendar, even in these latter days when I don’t even try to make it to half the cons I used to go to.

Running to bed

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:47:33 GMT

Worked: Some issues resolved, but things are far from sorted.
Worked2: My Pelgrane material for Trail of Cthulhu is almost finished, months later than planned, but sometimes life gets in the way.
Gamed: Ran Traveller, badly. My brain was not with it.
Packed: Off to Edinburgh at ungodlyoclock tomorrow.

Some days are good

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:11:52 GMT

Read Memoirs Found In A Bathtub: Allen Varney said it was the quintessential PARANOIA novel, and he's right. Fantastic fun (warning: this book may only be fun if you're the sort of person who enjoys absurd bureaucracy and quintuple-think). I must press a copy on cujovaltone.
Didn't get much other work done: I need to start getting traction on the new PARANOIA edition, but we're stalled on how to integrate changes with the existing files. It should all get sorted out tomorrow, I hope.
Played more Fallout: I didn't finish it on my first playthrough, back in November. I've started again with a new character who's turned into Durham Red. Currently wandering around looking for Vault-Tec's head office.
Revised Leaving Cert Physics: delichan is off to teach and give grinds this week, so she's laden down with old exam papers. I took a look; it's less scary than I remember.
Went to bed early: 'night

edited to add: I didn't update yesterday because I stayed up until 4am finishing some work when the muse finally deigned to show up. Stupid muse.

Fail Day

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:58:03 GMT

Yesterday evening was sprattica's 30th. This may have some impact on my ability to get anything done today.
Dropped coffee_lifeform to the bus station: I'm quite happy that someone finally braved the family home and was willing to stay. Moving back in with my mother has impacted my social life (I'm not complaining, just observing).
Watched the finale of BSG: It was ok. Ok really isn't what you want from the finale of a five-year television series that was occasionally excellent, and there are massive questions left unanswered (well, they did answer them; it's just that the answer is either absurdly perfunctory or opens up even more questions).
Wrote a bit: Which was a mistake. One of those days when you spend six hours staring at a screen, and at the end you've got 2,000 words and only half of them are even usable. Blah.
Finished Gears of War 2: Which was also ok, and the plot continues to be about two steps below 'go here, shoot thing'.