Review: 300

OK, how on Earth do you pick the bones out of this one? Well, lets preface it by saying that the night before I saw this, I finally, after many years, got to watch the Shawshank Redemption. This was a film that I had studiously avoided as something that is renowned as being so absolutely wonderful was bound to be crap. It wasn't - it was a mighty fine film which locked me to the screen for it's full length.

So I come to 300 and I have to say that on approaching the film I was more than a little trepedatious. I have, in the past, been quite outspoken about people who deride something just because it is popular or indeed who feel the need to pick minute holes in something like they are plucking the threads from the Kings New Clothes. 300 is made to be one of those films that will be derided and plucked. Essentially a suicide war flick it suffers from most of the audience knowing what will happen at the end and the trailer, rather than showing all of the good bits, being a rather neat condensed version of the film, like a 60 second Shakespeare. Add onto this the growing tide of 9/11-linkage bullshit that is rumbling towards the film and it is heading for a fall.

What I got was one of the most well realised visual spectacles I have seen on the big screen. Someone, somewhere, has really hammered home that there is a method to make comic adaptations look like comics and that it works. Sin City did it, Spiderman 2 did it, Superman Returns and Batman Begins did it and now 300 is all about it. The side-on representation of many of the scenes renders them in virtual 2-d, not wholly unlike the traditional greek art we see on cliched urns etc. It works really well.

The story itself is simple - and in some ways too simple - with the God King coming to crush the plucky Greeks and Leonidas going to standing in his way, against all odds. There are some side stories - the Captain and his son, the Hunchback, the reluctant Survivor, the pitiful Arcadians and the machinations of the Senate against the Kings (well fit) wife. Essentially it is, however, a case of 'next wave of soldiers/monsters please!'. At one point I had to physically restrain myself from shouting in my best Sean Bean voice 'They've got a Cave Troll!'

Looking at the criticism that the film gets, I wondering whether I'm simply being a little dim? Homophobic? In what way? Because they omitted the rampant man love in favour of some rather graphic woman love? Racist? Sorry critics but the Greeks are greek and the Persians were just about everyone else - you can't multicultural history to make it fit your holier-than-thou leftist sensibilities. Facist? Maybe...if you want to reclassify history to say that all warrior cultures who discarded the disabled were inherrently evil, then yes. However, you maybe missed out all of the other bits about fighting to defend liberty and freedom etc. as you were flagelating yourself with your well worn copy of Das Kapital?

There are some parts of the film that simply don't work - the witty 'winking at the 21st century audience' one-liners act to jolt you from your seat like a slap to any immersion that might have happened. You also need to be in the absolute correct frame of mind to let yourself drift into accepting the more fantastical elements of Xerxes entourage - but reminding yourself that this is the story of the battle as told by the Survivor as a rallying cry to his troops gives you the mental space to allow for some gilding of the storytelling lily.

There is, however, a great deal to love about this film. From a gaming point of view it adds another film to the growing lexicon of mass combat reference. Now in Pendragon when I reference a 'shield wall' everyone will know exactly what I mean! Some of the set pieces and little details within the combat were excellent. Got to love fight scenes where the shield kills as many people as the spear! I found the character of Leonidas likeable although I felt there was so much more to be done with him (and it's highly unlikely there will be a sequal...hehehe). Personally I loved the scenes back in Sparta because it undercut the classic view of Sparta being a warrior culture and illustrated that, when it counted, they were just like any other classical greek 'democracy'.

And finally, the film had what I absolutely require of a good picture - denouement. That was the payoff that mays the sacrifice of the 300 more than just the arrogant conceit of a ego-blown king. Thermopylae is one of the great 'battles against the odds' in human history, like Rourkes Drift and the Battle of Britain (and probably some non-British ones as well...) and the film paints it as such. I've had a quick scoot around Wikipedia (normal disclaimers about that as a source of accurate knowledge apply) and the film gets a great deal of the historical detail dead right.

So whats my final verdict?

As I was watching the film, I was thinking to myself - 'I should be getting more excited than this?'. I suspect that my expectations may have been a little too high for something which was a pretty simple proposition. However, in the cold light of day, I find myself endeared to what I saw more as a cinematic event rather than a rollocking good film.

300, it's good, but it's not the Shawshank Redemption! 7/10

A Tingling on the Palette

I had all but given up on Game Chef. Something about the ingredients and the way that the contest works just didn't sit right with me. I couldn't fire anything that was 'good enough' - every idea that I came up with was derivate of something else, or I would rather run using another system. I was generating ideas for games rather than games themselves.

It was this morning, on the toilet at work (prime thinking territory btw) that I had the smallest spark of inspiration. It ran something like this:

I was trying to work out how some of these more high concept indie games could exist alongside simple games like A Faery's Tale. One of the puzzles in the world of indie games for me has always been that the games themselves are not usually designed for extended campaign play, which in my eyes is one of the best bits of RPGing. Whilst thinking about this, it suddenly hit me that what I was trying to write was a 'proper' RPG rather than one of these head-up-the-arse indie thinking ones. EUREKA!!

Newly aligned, I could now see where my game could go. It could be something that was played over one sitting. It could have very simple mechanics. I could really have one central situation. It wasn't something that needed to be complex.

So I have my idea - using Sacred, Rose and Threads. It's a game of monastic suicide and hidden passions, guilt and betrayal. And it is played in one session.

Now I just need to write it.

Ha!

Game on!

Neil

Hell's Kitchen Opens

Game Chef has begun and well, I'm a little disappointed.

The ingredients are as follows

Group A: MEMORY, DRUG, PALACE, CURRENCY
Group B: SACRED, ROSE, THREAD, INCONSISTENCY

You select THREE from EITHER Group A or Group B.

Additionally there are no other set themes or restrictions.

You see, it's the last bit thats disappointing. In an open competition how can having an open competition be a parameter?

ANYWAY, that slight gripe aside, I now have until April 1st to realise a fully playable RPG based on this little lot. I'm leaning towards Grp A rather than Grp B but I really haven't given it that much deep pondering yet.

More later..

Neil

Cooking Up A Storm

I think I have finally got in over my head.

Browsing some of the gaming fora, I came across mention of something called Game Chef. Vaguely, in that reptilian part of my brain that remembers crap like this, I recall it being some sort of game design competition - a bit like 24 Hour RPG. I investigated a little, looked at the format and then in a fit of confidence and upward mobility, slapped by name on the 'tag in' list on the site.

I am now going to be part of Game Chef 2007!

So whats the deal. Well, on Friday the 'ingredients' will be announced. I have no idea what these could be, but it looks like it is 'choose one from list A, one from list B and two from list C' style affair. I then have until April 1st to design a game based on the ingredients. It has to be written up and everything. The games are then peer scrutinised and some will pass on to a finals and for the winner, fame and glory awaits.

In all honesty, I don't expect to get past the first stage. I highly suspect that there are a lot of people who know people within the set-up but I'm looking forward to being proved wrong. It will however be a very interesting little challenge and I'll keep everyone up-to-date on my progress.

Neil

Brraaaaaiiiinnns!!!

As a young man, I was a bit different.

No, really! See, I wasn't one of those kids that simply had to see the allegedly 'illegal' copy of Evil Dead II that Paul had. Nor was I the sort of kid who used to try to get one of the older kids to get a copy of Bad Taste from the video shop. Gruesome horror was never really my thing. Indeed 'horror' - in it's current teens-in-peril style is about the bottom of my cinematic radar.

However, I have began to develop a rather curious interest in zombies and the classic zombie flicks. I'll be very specific here - what fascinates me about them is not the zombies, but rather the portrayal of the degeneration of humanity when faced with the living dead. So in the remake of Dawn of the Dead comes on, I'm there to see the man refuse to accept that his pregnant girlfriend is a zombie. To me that denial and inability to handle the terrible facts before you is true horror because it is something that can have resonance in real life. You can easily put yourself in that situation and wonder how you would react. I simply cannot do that when 'generic skinny blonde#3' decides she just HAS to go into the cellar without a torch at the dead of night....

So, when Ian recommended 'World War Z' on fandomlife.net it was naturally going to be high on my reading list. It is, apparently, high on a number of other peoples reading lists too because getting my hands on a copy of the bloody thing has been a nightmare. The wait, however, has been more than worth it.

The premise of the book is that it is an oral history of a world wide conflict between humanity and zombies, written as a series of interviews with the survivors. It is an amazingly gripping read for a fictional non-fiction book. I've read about half of it and some of it has chilled me to the bone. One of the passages that had particular resonance was the flight of the refugees from the west coast of the US and the subsequent traffic gridlock. It told of people literally trapped in their cars, only able to sit and watch as the zombies ate their way up the traffic jam. Horrible - especially as I was in a traffic jam at the time!!!

The book has been rammed with those moments when you can, almost involuntarily, put yourself into the place of the people and wonder - what would I do? how would I react? would I be one of the people that would be saved? would I be zombie fodder? The answers are NEVER pleasant.

This I consider to be true horror and this book is truly horrific. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Neil

All Good Things (Part Two)...

...do indeed come to an end.

However, this time it isn't hobby related. Discovery Kids is no more. Now for those of you without a horde of your own, this is pretty dull news, however for me it is a disaster.

DK is the science-for-kids branch of the Discovery Channel and in our house it was the kids favourite channel. The programming - a mixture of UK and US kids science, history dressed as mystery and a few cartoons (including the awesome Kenny The Shark) - really fired my girls and their interest in science and history. They absorbed the content every morning, loving every minute of it.

The downside was that the channel only had a very small set of programs to choose from. Thus we had probably seen every episode of every series maybe a dozen times. The kids were seemingly immune to this monotony, but us adults were grinding our teeth. Indeed, we were cheering when we heard that the channel was going 'online'

Until tonight, when it closed it's doors for good. It was like the kids had to sit and watch a friend leave. They were in tears. Christine was nearly in tears. Even I had a lump in my throat at the thought.

So goodbye to Crash Test Danny, Mystery Hunters, Timeblazers, The Big Bang, Science Please, Scientrific, Gross, Star Munchies and of course Kenny the Shark. If only you hadn't been so bloody repetitive!!

Neil

All Good Things...

...do indeed come to an end, and it would appear that my time with World of Warcraft is hurtling in that direction. Life (well, work mainly, which I refuse to identify as life) is making it impossible for me to consider the time and energy needed to commit to endgame raiding in The Burning Crusade. My time is too precious to grind reputation and spend hours at a keyboard in pursuit of 'teh phat lootz'. I have better things to do, it would appear.

I would have quite happily toddled along with the game, if I had been able to stay attached to my current guild, 'If In Doubt, AFK Out'. However, Iain, the guildmaster, has just announced that the minimum requirements for membership is the ability to commit one night a week to raiding. One night? That can't be hard, can it? Well, at the moment, with me crawling in from work at 7.00pm after logging 9 hour days without a break, yes, yes it is. There was a possibility that there would be some sort of 'friends' status extended, but it appears that was just a rumour. It's a serious business, endgame raiding, and you don't need people clogging up your guild list with their part-time avatars.

I could seek another guild. I could return to the Dungeoneers - I'm sure Matt/Grimvok would have me if I paid him with enough red wine. I could seek membership of some other random faction of freaks and misfits. I could try to start my own guild. OK, that last one was a joke. However, in the end, I don't think it would be a good idea. I'm very jaded with the entire guild experience, especially the 'guilds within a guild' nonsense and the absolutely dire levels of communication that these things seem to engender in everyone. It really isn't worth the hassle.

So, I have to decide what to do with Gorthaal, Gortessa and Kylea - oh and the pre-pubescent Gorthadin of course. Will they become dormant? Will they go to the great ebay auction in the sky? Will they be passed onto a friend? Will they just tootle around Azeroth wondering whats happening?

Who knows...

Neil

Mid Life Crisis of Finally Discovered Self Confidence

Today is a good day. Let me explain...

A while back, I was stood outside my kids school watching the mothers going about the same dull morning routine and I wondered - is this it? The likelihood of humanity existing is so randomly minute that it is hard to believe that it is not for some possible greater purpose - and I find it hard to believe that this greater purpose is discussing Jade Goodie or the number of bonus points you have at Tesco. It then struck me that we allow the mundane nature of life and the pressures of modern living really crush our ability to strive to be better than we are - we are, essentially, trained to be risk averse.

This anti-risk nature permeates everything that we do - including things that simple shouldn't be risks at all. It also makes us underestimate what we are and what we can achieve. What struck me after that was that with a degree in marketing, 20 years gaming experience, really quite decent design skills, web design and management skills and a cohort of some of the most educated, versatile and friendly gamers at my disposal there is no reason on this Earth why I couldn't live the dream and write a roleplaying game. So I have and it is going rather well.

However, the mundanity of life has slipped in again. When people have asked me - 'Are you going to sell this?' my answers have always been very negative. They have always been indirect, evasive and generally no. After all, I couldn't, could I?

Well I had a long chat with a couple of associates last night who work in the student media industry and we were talking about my current quest for new employment. Frankly, they were bemused that I couldn't find a new position and went on to tell me, in no uncertain (and very flattering) terms about my position within the market and reputation and such. Apparently, I deliver. Apparently my ideas are ahead of the curve. Apparently I am quite good at my job.

Which got me thinking.... sometimes the situations that we are in can specifically be a downer on our own potential as much as the world that we live in. I've been seconded to run our Print Shop recently and it has really dumbed down my self-belief by doing very menial work. Looking beyond that 9-5 grind and remembering who you are and what you are capable of is so important.

And the point of this meaningless voyage around my mid-30s career crisis? Well, I'm going to go for it. Yes, I am going to develop Omniverse and maybe some other ideas with an eye to releasing them into the wider market. Yes I am going to do it 'properly'. Yes I am going to bring my full broadside of skills, resources and experiences on it.

Why? Because I bloody well can and the only thing that seperates me from the people that have done it in the past is the belief that it is possible.

wish me luck...

Neil

Dice!

Last night during Omniverse playtest, I realised that I needed to get some new dice... or rather I needed to supplement my horrendously depleted dice collection. Part of me is thrilled at the prospect, part of me is horrified that my old faithfuls have been lost. Well, most of them. My Yahtzee d6s (the best rolling dice in all of Christendom) are still around, as is my 'lucky' d20. However, many of the less used dice seem to have found their way into the hoover, the cat or the diet of a small child*

So, as I have readers now I'll throw a question out to them - what are your criteria for quality dice?

Only on a roleplaying blog....

Neil

* Note to social services... I don't feed my kids dice. That might count as nutrition..../grin

Forging a New (Virtual) Reality

Things have been pretty frantic over the last few days and it has been pretty damned good. Lets start off with World of Warcraft. I had a potter for a few hours on Saturday morning but other than that I haven't touched it for about a week now. And guess what? I've hardly missed it. OK, thats a little shy of the truth - I'm not missing the game, nor am I missing the people, but I have got those odd feelings of compulsion and a little guilt regarding the guild. However the actual gameplay is just not needed. Thats very strange, especially considering the amount I have played the game. I don't know how long my WoW holiday will last, but at the moment it's going fine.

So, if I am not playing WoW, what the hell am I doing with my time?

Roleplaying has taken to the ascendency in a major way as of late. A couple of weeks ago we played a session of Pendragon that, I believe, most people around the table would rather forget about. I haven't mentioned it specifically in 'The Bottom of the Glass' because so much was mentioned about it elsewhere. I would rather dwell upon the way that, I believe, it acted as a little wake-up call for many of the people around the table.

Maybe we had become a little complacent? Maybe we were a little too full of our own cleverness? Maybe we just forgot that we were there to ROLEPLAY? I have no idea. However our last session was nothing short of magical. Nigel excelled himself in the GMs chair by taking things a little slower, slipping in some tried and tested GMing tools and making the game focussed wholly on the characters. Around the table the banter and near constant WoW side references stopped dead. We played. We played in-character, we expanded the story, we energised the setting. It was just brilliant. Moreover, we also established 'Steak and Cinema Sunday' - a Sunday once-a-month where we have something to eat and then see a suitable gamer-esque movie. Our first one will be '300'.

Subsequent to that session we have been abuzz with relationship mappings, ideas for storylines and other hints and help. Really, it is 'Ask not what your GM can do for you, but what you can do for your GM' at the moment.

Omniverse continues apace and we had our first real face-to-face playtest session. It was amazing. I cannot really describe the buzz of seeing people you respect taking your little game very seriously indeed. Questions were asked, debates were had and you know what - they 'got it'! That was the best bit, they seemed to understand and buy into the ideas I had put down. Oh, I know it was only character generation but it made me feel magnificent.

A smorgasbord of gaming and related pursuits seems to be my fate at the moment. And that, readers of my sometimes rather pessimistic blog, is a VERY GOOD THING INDEED!!

Neil

DING!

Last night, amidst the wonderful vista that is Netherstorm in Outland, Gorth finally 'dinged' 70. It was late, so I received a light smattering of 'grats' and then settled into the knowledge that my month long journey of discovery had come to an end ... and the new endgame was looming before me.

However, the question that was preying on my mind was not where to start with this new challenge, but whether I want take part in it at all!?

As I have been questing my little head off, I have been watching in the background as my guildmates take part in a neverending series of instance runs and reputation grinds to get 'keys' - and these keys allow access to other instances which are harder and then more keys and more instances. You get the idea?

I have had no desire to instance during The Burning Crusade at all. The ridiculous dichotomy of the druid has hit home hard. I have levelled as a pure feral form and I am death on four paws. Its fantastic. However, when I have to shift over the healing I really am a stand-in medic at best. To become an effective group healer again, I would have to return to Restoration spec and that makes all of the wonderful fun I have had disappear. I'll readily accept that I am a far better healer than I am a tank or a dps player but still... returning to the tree and losing my wonderful damage potential makes me sad.

The schedule is another thing that I simple cannot find myself getting enthused about. The idea that I would put whole evenings aside to run dungeon-after-dungeon to get eventually incremental increases in the equipment my avatar wears seems .... well, ridiculous! I've been there and done that. I've dedicated countless evenings to the pursual of items like the Staff of Dominance or the Cauterising Band. Even then, the acquisition of the items was always less important than the fun and frolics that was being had with the people I was playing with.

Sadly, my increasing feeling is that 'AFK' is not really a fun and frolics guild. The people in it are great folk, and really good players but therein lies the problem. There's a certain degree of focus, a certain tenacity and a certain level of expectation within the guild that increasingly doesn't seem to match the way I feel about playing the game. I certainly don't want to be holding a spot in a guild with such high endgame aspirations if I cannot dedicate myself to matching those aspirations. Thats not fair on the people in the guild or those that wish to join it.

In the end however, it also comes down to time and how I spend it. I have a lot of things on my mind at the moment, namely work-related nonsense. I need to look closely at how I use that time and how I make it work for me. Is spending four evenings challenging to get one upgraded piece of equipment in a computer game really what I want or need at the moment?

hmmmm....

Neil

How do the Swedes do it?

Survive that is?

Yes, it's that time of year again when the dread words are echoed by the Met Office.

SEVERE WEATHER WARNING

Now you would expect such grave tones to be taken for howling gales tearing trees from their roots, torrential rain causing flash floods or surging tides washing away low lying villages near the coast.

Nope, it's a light dusting of snow. In North Shields this morning there was - I'll be generous - a centimetre of snow. You know the sort that kind of clings to the middle of a paving stone so that it might constitute 'lying' is you blurred your eyes. Not enough to make a decent snowball. It now constitutes the total and utter breakdown of civilisation as we know it. Metro services are put on restricted timetables, peoples abilities to drive on perfectly clear roads stop dead and children are mummified in their cold weather clothes like it was a dry-run for 'The Day After Tomorrow'. The newspapers don't help with one of them claiming that the entire country would close down if there was 6 inches of snow.

How do the Swedes do it? Indeed, throw in the Russians and Norwegians and Canadians and even the good people of New York? In fact anywhere that has a reasonably snowy winter? Surely they must just hibernate for the winter, never venturing from their boltholes in case some meteorlogical catastrophe should befall them?

Well no, they just get on with it don't they. I remember a friend from Prince Edward Isle in Canada saying that until the snow drifts were six feet deep it didn't constitute a proper winter. We would simply all die if that happened here. What we have now is not 'severe weather' - it is something slightly different from the normal grey, moist, overcast tripe that we have for 95% of our year.

Personally I blame Micheal Fish. Ever since he assured the populace with:

"Earlier on today apparently a lady rang the BBC and said she heard that there was a hurricane on the way. Well don't worry if you're watching, there isn't."

Ever since then the Met Office have been so shit scared that someone, somewhere might be possibly offended or inconvenienced by them underestimating the 'severity' of the weather, that EVERY change in weather is labelled as a possible nightmare writ large upon the Earth.

A guildmate on WoW asked me last week whether the Brits held the Scandanavian races with any contempt based on how the Vikings raped and pillaged them. I answered no, but I'm going to revise that to yes. Why? Because you damned well didn't teach us how to deal with SNOW!!!!

Bah!

Neil

PODcast Fever

I have recently been coverted to the power of podcasts and indeed spoken work radio. I have always been a music radio person, but Christine has been a Radio 4/6/7 listener for some time. Slowly by osmosis and the horrendous Scott Mills effect (that uncontrollable urge to smash any radio that Scott Mills is broadcasting from...) I have been listening more and more to R4. And what a load of reactionary rightwing trash it is too, but thats by-the-by.

However, this introduced me to the wonderous possibilities of Listen Again and thus to the presence of podcasting and finally, as with many things, to the concept of RPG podcasts. Initially I was aghast at the possibilities for these self published pieces of opinion. After all, I have read a number of fanfics that seem to have been written by pseudo-psychotic pre-pubescent loons who use them as a way to channel their burgeoning hormones towards the female characters in some way. The possibilities of one nerd, one mic and a whole of opinion makes Mr Mills looks pleasant.

However, I have been stunning proved wrong - especially as I have been following a very tight 'word of mouth' recommendation regime. So thats what I am going to do! Here are my four current podcasts of choice.

The Sons of Kryos (http://www.sonsofkryos.com/)

Jeff and Judd (and a seemingly never ending cast of guest-stars) crank out a show of around 30-45 minutes every two weeks which is pure gaming gold. This is your hints and tips workshop to listen to and dip into and generally steal from. It's like a great independent RP magazine with three or four features like 'Good Sentences' (where they explore a sentence that might be said at the table) or GM Tools (where they talk about a material thing that can be used in a game). They have a fair smattering of 'industry' interviews as well, which are very interesting. It's just a very cool, laid back show and probably the most technically useful of the four.

Have Games Will Travel (http://havegameswilltravel.libsyn.com/)

Paul Tevis' show started for me as a review show but thats moved on now to a more generic gaming show. I'm not sure the show has really found it's feet since that change, but there are still a load of actual play reports and comments on games and insights into gaming and the industry. Ploughing the archives for old reviews of games which might have only just made it into the UK (and only into Forbidden Planet if you badger like mad) is great stuff.

The Durham Three (http://rpgtalk.net/durham3/weblog/)

First off, these guys have the most American names EVER - 'Clint R Nixon','Remi Treuer' and 'Jason Morningstar' - Secondly, they also have a sidekick that seems to have jumped into the show for the long term, Andy Kitkowski, making it really the Durham Four. Aside from that, the shows are great because they are normal guys talking about normal gaming. The premise of their show is that they play three sessions of a game, talking about each session before and after it is played. Yes, the play session takes place in the interlude in the middle of the podcast. The shows are quite short but they are fun to listen to. Good stuff.

Fear The Boot (http://feartheboot.libsyn.com/)

The newest addition to my list, FTB is four guys in midwest America talking about gaming and developing their own game on air. The shows are split into sections like 'banter', 'advice' and 'Skies of Glass (their game) Q&A' but the divisions aren't particularly marked and there is a lot of banter! I particularly recommend #34 and the description of the 'Death of the Moth God's Over God' diversion as a 'laugh out loud' moment. What makes these podcasts great is that the banter and diversions make it have that slightly amateurish edge that reminds you these are real friends doing real gaming.

Apart from the remarkably high quality of the podcasts, there are two things that sets these people apart from the other stalwart of online broadcasting I once listened to - WoWRadio.

The first is that the broadcasters heads are not rammed firmly up their arses when it comes to the subject matter. These blokes don't go on twenty minute rants about how they have been screwed out of money and happiness. They don't think they are the be-all and end-all of opinion on a topic. They are open and honest and generally pleasant to listen to. Unlike many of the broadcasters on WoW Radio. Which leads nicely onto the second difference - they actually LIKE their hobby. They do. Really. They don't live in a denial-riddled scheme of self-loathing hatred.

And that makes them a good thing. So podcasts - yey!

Neil

Starting Young!

FINALLY Forbidden Planet managed to get a copy of A Faery's Tale in stock and my plan to expose my daughters to roleplaying can be hatched. OK, that sounds a lot more malign than it actually is. The two girls in question (Lara (9) and Emma (6 and so nearly 7)) aren't exactly having their arms twisted in the matter. The two of them have always been more than a little interested in what Daddy does on Sunday nights. Indeed, by osmosis almost, they are turning into little geek girls. They lap up cartoons like Teen Titans Go! and Justice League Unlimited, read comics and watch fantasy films. Emma managed to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and only has 101 questions every hour...

So this is a chance to share a little bit of Daddy stuff with them - a sort of gamer 'going out to kick a ball around the park.'

They asked last night exactly what they would be doing and I explained that it would be like a play where they imagined what was happening and I helped them do things. We even did a little faux-RP where Emma pretended to be Funshine Bear (she's just been watching the Care Bears) who was King of the Care Bears. I told her that a wizard had said that boggins had invaded the magical forest...what was King Funshine going to do? She thought for a second and then with a big grin on her face said 'Get my care bear friends, raise an army (!) and chase them out!!' She was even more impressed that she might be able to roll dice as well!

Realistically, bearing in mind the attention span of the dynamic duo, I suspect it will be short and sweet. However, it might well hold a little charm for them. We can only wait and see!

Neil

The Burning Crusade: One Week Later

Well, nearly a week - lets not quibble.

I spent most of the weekend pounding into the content of The Burning Crusade and I have to say that in the most part I am mightily impressed. Theres obviously been some lessons learned regarding the way the game is played and the good and bad points of the previous content.

Presentation and graphics have really been improved. The game simply looks better and that feeds into the weird feeling of Outland. There are some simple tricks being used - like not making all of the terrain flat - that add to the weirdness factor. The re-skinned mobs look great, especially the voidwalkers and ogres. There's also quite a lot of good lore within the massive (and I mean MASSIVE) number of quests that can be had, which makes the progression that little bit more immersive. I'm still not quite sure why we are throwing our bodies against Hellfire Citadel, but it's fun anyway. As I travelled from Hellfire Peninsula to Zangermarsh, the scene changed again and we enter more story-quest based stuff. I am actually intrigued to find out why the lakes are being drained by the naga of all people and what it has to do with the Sprogshroomthingy people.

There are some subtle changes within the quests. There are still the standard four types of quest: kill X mobs, goto X NPC, collect X items and explore X areas. However, in Zangermarsh you have a guided 'Explore X areas' quest where you are turned into the druid stormcrow form. AWESOME stuff. There are some 'hidden' rep collection things going on as well, which make some of those random pieces of chaff that you gather more useful. Oh, and an escort quest that runs. Yeah, just read that one again! Brilliant.

There are some downsides. The decision not to put any class trainers in Outland was a clever one - if only to make a reason for the mains to travel back to Azeroth. However it is a pain in the arse, making a well-stocked bank alt almost essential to act as an agent for the main character. The auction house has gone mental, as predicted. However this is partially fuelled by the vendor inflation in Outland. When leather scraps can sell for over 1g a stack, the normal price is going to well exceed that expected of such menial crap.

The worst downside is camping. Oh boy, the boss mobs are camped to fuck. There are a load of boss kill quests in Zangermarsh and you have to queue to kill these guys. However, not everyone has the same morals regarding this. There are queue jumpers. There are AOE spammers - including the infurirating paladin consecrate tagging method. It's just maddening. The respawn times really need to change on these mobs.

So, how's Gorthaal doing? He dinged 63 last night with maxed out First Aid and Skinning. Leatherworking is at 326 and he has a whole new set of feral gear with an AP of just under 1300. He still has a shedload of quests to do in Zangermarsh and one of two bits and bobs to do in Hellfire Citadel. I think when he finished Zangermarsh, I'll bring Kylea in and run her through as well. Hell, I'm even tempted to give Gortessa a run out!

All in all, I approve wholeheartedly of The Burning Crusade. It's revitalised the game for me in the short term at least. Whether the new endgame has any longevity is another matter altogether.

Neil

God Bless Playtesters!

Dave once said to me that in any business creative thingy, maybe one great idea might come from ten given. I guess the brave part is being able to discard the other nine with some objective clarity. This is the state I am at with the progression of my roleplaying game, which is now called 'Omniverse' by the way.

My initial playtesters have looked it over and one of the central concepts seems to be flawed. They've explained their dislike for it and I have listened. Now, there are three things I can do.

1. Succumb to the whims of my playtesters on every aspect.
2. Hold the creators high ground and ignore them because they simply don't understand
3. Balance what they say with what I think and make a reasoned judgement.

'3' seems obvious, but you don't know how close I came to '2' - and then I remembered what Dave said. The willingness to morph and change a proposition around so that it becomes a more polished whole - even if that means changing some of the central propostions - is a good thing. The balancing question is always, even if the product is good now, how can it be made better?

So hurrah to playtesters and their ability to feedback constructive comments and make great suggestions. Any designer should be thankful for his testers!

Neil

Changes

Welcome to a slightly updated version of 'The Bottom of the Glass'!

It appears that Blogspot has updated quite a few features (or I have just found them!) Anyway, the upshot is that I have made a few necessary changes.

1. So that you don't have to be a Blogspot member to comment on my ramblings, I've changed the setting to 'Anyone can comment!'. I now expect Spambots a plenty. Such is the way of the internet.

2. I've started to add labels to my posts, so that those with more discerning tastes (you know who you are...) can avoid the posts on topics that they find boring.

3. I will be experimenting with merging this blog with my new website in the future. I've just realised that I have never had a home on the net for *me* in all the time I have been providing homes for other people. Daft really. So I'll be whipping the Omnihedron domain into order presently.

On with the relabelling!

Neil

Bittersweet Expansion Thoughts

After a little technical difficulty (amazing what the slightest smudge on a CD can do to an install...) Gorthaal and the rest of my cabal of characters entered the age of The Burning Crusade. It's been a moment myself and millions of other World of Warcraft players have been waiting on for over a year. Was it worth it? Yes and sadly no.

My first half hour of play was spent re-speccing Gorth from full Resto to full Feral. I will fully admit that I seem to have made a terrible mistake over the last few weeks, putting the end-game adventures of the guild before the preperation for the expansion. Having +768 healing does -nothing- for you if you are questing. You cannot heal the mobs to death! That left me feeling rather gimped in my new feral form. Where I had managed to assert myself as consistently one of the top three raid healers in the Guild, now I'm back to 'token feral guy with good equipment'. Of course, this isn't wholly a bad thing - I can pitch-hit pretty well as a healer still, but it feels a little sad.

Anyway, that sadness was mitigated wholly when myself and Dave teamed up for levelling once again as a gallant duo of feral druids. Oh boy! Being able to happily deal with two or three mobs at the same time is a very nice feeling to have. Seeing us take down a level 60 elite, in cat form, in seconds, was even more satisfying. It's nice to have the power back.

The expansion areas themselves are pretty damned good. The graphics are sweet, the mobs look fantastic and there seems to have been a change in the way that the quests have been structured thats a little less linear and has a bit more storyline. One thing which struck me is that very early on you get the chance to do a 'bombing run' which is immense fun and shows off the flying graphics really well AND you can repeat the quest for fun. Thats a nice little sideshow. I slipped through Hellfire Penisula and Zangermarsh and wandered around Shattrath City for a while and did a load of quests. I ended the night about 75% of the way to 61st level, which I was very pleased with.

However, the competitive soul in me is CRYING about the people who are levelling faster. Goddamit, I used to be the levelling machine. I was the one that was first to do everything. Not you guys. Me! Oh what a seriously flawed little munchkin I am!! However, on the other hand, I really want to experience the quests and the content a little more. It's worth it - which I will come onto later - and it's what I have been waiting for. But still, every DING! I see in guildchat makes me tug inside. Faster Faster Levelling Master!

Similarly, I felt really left out last night knowing that guildmates and RL mates were plumbing the depths of new instanced content together. I guess after months of doing everything as one massive group and sharing the highs and lows together, I'd forgotten the nature of 5-mans.
Maybe it's just a case of so much to do and so little time before it becomes passe?

Anyway, whats good? Well the drops and rewards are pretty spankingly awesome! FINALLY Blizzard seem to have some understanding that quests should have decent rewards - and these are DECENT, obscenely so. There has been much documentation about it, but I will say it again. Greens that are better than Epics. Thats all that needs to be said. I got my fair share of decent drops last night too, which was kind of cool. Don't know quite what I will do with them though.
Of course, this nirvana is balanced by other factors. Everyone is there. I logged onto my bank alt in Orgrimmar and there was nobody there. OK, thats a slight understatement. There were about eight characters there - mostly bank alts. The place was dead. The Alliance could have come in and had a party in Thralls knickers and no-one would have cared. That seems a shame.
Similarly, I realised that the expansion has rendered a load of the old content dead-in-the-water. Loot powers the game and the quest rewards in Outland outstrip almost everything you can get in Stratholme, Scholomance, Dire Maul, BRD, LBRS and URBS. They are simply distractions now - stuff for people who like quests to do once or twice before they hit the real content in Outland. It's like if there were a dozen instances you could have chosen from at 50th level instead of Sunken Temple and Mauradon. Blizzard might as well close the Molten Core server down. Who will want to grind their rep in Zul Gurub for a chest piece that gets replaced by a quest reward in two days time at level 61?

Now, I can see the reasoning and the hard decision that has had to be made. I can understand that Ragnaros has been defeated, Nefarian thwarted, Ossirian spanked, Cthun blinded and Kelthuzad burned. The old threats are gone and new ones have come around. Thats great, but the instances are still there. Hakkar is still stood on the top of his bloody pyramid for anyone stupid enough to get him.

I feel sorry for those people buying the game for the first time. I doubt they will experience the highs and the lows of the level 60 endgame like we did. They will not leap around the room like a silly prick when they first see Onyxia killed. They will not have that moment of sheer achievement when we downed Ossirian. They will not see what we have seen and do what we have done.

And that seems quite sad.

So hurrah for the Burning Crusade. Its brilliant in it's own way. But sorrow for World of Warcraft because I think it might have lost a little bit of it's soul...

Neil

Taking the Plunge...

Well, after a degree of sweating and much thought, the second draft of 'the roleplaying game' is nearing completion. That said, it needs a good rewrite and edit and then a few more worked examples and maybe a little bit of purloined spot art (to break the text of nothing else) but it is ready for the next step.

Giving it to 'The Guys'

Now, you might think the FIRST people I would go to in my quest to design a game would be my regular gamer buddies but no. I've trawled my casual gamer friends first. Why? Because my gaming group know me FAR too well and know the way I think FAR too well. They are also some of the cleverest, most complicated critics I know.

You'll understand that I wanted to have it pretty much done before I unleashed the Alpha at them!

Not only that, but I'm going to float 'Omniverse' (as it now will be known) and it's first setting book 'MI:666' to some of them as our alternate week game. It's quite exciting and more than a little dangerous really. Bruised egos ahoy!

Neil

Walls Come Tumbling Down

Anyone who has had a passing interest in the state of Horde PvE on Silvermoon over the last few months will have witnessed some quite apocalyptic times. Virtually every major end-game guild has splintered, broken, sundered and split. Sometimes it has been quite amicable and sometimes it has been very very painful indeed. New guilds have come and gone, mixing and matching members of the other guilds. It has been a very turbulent time.

However, it has thrown up one marvelous achievement. A metaphoric shoot of hope growing through the ashes of the pre-Burning Crusade destruction.

The High End 'Elite' PUG!

See, the new smaller guilds so not quite have enough people to run a full MC run. Some don't have enough people to do Zul Gurub. However, they do have burgeoning friends lists and more than enough people scattered around guilds who can vouch for people to join their raids.

So what does this mean? It means that the horrid guild snobbishness that prevailed has been forced to disappear. I was lucky enough to be on a Molten Core run with players from half a dozen guilds - including some that had previously been plundering Naxx and AQ40. I was thrilled that there was no 'looking down the nose' and no patronisation. These players who have gone far beyond where I have simply seemed to assume that I - well, tbh, we - knew what we were doing and could get on with our job. And we did.

Now there are plans for PUB Blackwing Lair runs (!), regular MCs, a frantic schedule of ZGs and some AQ20s. I even saw a PUG AQ40 yesterday!!

So what makes this era of inter-guild cooperation so bizarre? Well, two things really. Prior to the Great Sundering, a lot of guilds (including my own) were very stand-offish about being included with other guilds. We were superior to many and inferior to most and we knew our place in the hierarchy. Now thats all gone to pot and the 'strata' of player that you place yourself next to in comparison is less guild based and more activity based. Hell, it's like which team you get picked for at school.

The second thing is the loot rules: ironic in that this was the silliness that caused the downfall of the Dungeoneers. The accepted rules are simply stated at the start of the raid (usually 1 epic per person unless all pass, and T2 priority to mains) and everyone unquestioningly agrees. No mess, no fuss, no points, no lists - just need and greed.

*shakes head*

Who would have thought eh?

Neil

When the Doctor meets the Captain meets the Assistant...

Torchwood season finale - 90 minutes of pretty decent sci-fi subtitled 'My Big Fat Gay Apocalypse'. I thoroughly enjoyed it, more for the tantalising nature of the writing rather than the drama of it all.

Torchwood has been in the most part a flawed success in my eyes. It has definitely delivered on it's basic premise - an adult orientated Earth bound Dr Who franchise - but it's lack of an apparent metaplot has hampered any real feeling of growth or pace. In some ways it has taken the Buffy 'monster of the week' model and used it well, just not well enough.

The finale finally did expand on some of the issues that have been touched upon - Captain Jack's purpose for living, the thing coming from the darkness and in a brief nod, the connection with Dr Who. In all of that, it delivered just enough to satisfy but not enough to quell interest.

The acting was also, in the most part, really quite good. The lass that plays Gwen was excellent and the baddie was a thoroughly bad man. In fact everyone had their moments. Good stuff.

However, the real revelations in the last two episodes were the final markings on the sexuality scorecard that has been Torchwood. Oh Russell, you have to be so blunt about this things!

Captain Jack - Gay and a gay thing from gay land.
Gwen - Loyal to her man, despite a little jiggery pokery with Owen
Tash - Straight via bi with aliens
Owen - Straight with delightful bi overtones
Juanto - Oh so gay, like we hadn't guessed.

If only the starship Enterprise had been so liberal with it's loving!

So, thumbs up to the Torchwood finale - although they missed a trick at the end. I was convinced that when Gwen was faffing over the dead Jack there would have been the trademark swirling and then a little voice popping out saying 'Oh, looks like you need .... a Doctor!' - to be continued in Dr Who. Hell, with the ending that was given it looks like we might see Captain Jack alongside the Doctor one more time.

Of course, Torchwood is no longer the only spin-off from Dr Who - now we have The Sarah Jane Adventures. The premise seems simple enough - SJ and her kid sidekicks (young geek girl and all-knowing vat grown psuedoalien boy, alongside sort of sentient computer and cameos from K9 (woot!)) deal with alien threats in a non-violent, no guns, definitely not Torchwood stylee.

The pilot for the new series had all the things you would expect - SJ as the weird woman down the street, a fizzy drink that takes over peoples minds and a marketing strategy that is an amalgam of Willy Wonka and the Childcatcher. Slithering aliens and Big Eye aliens and evil henchwomen abound and in the end an aversion of mobile phones saves the day. Sounds quite twee and indeed it was BUT it had my two girls on the edge of their seats in a way that traditional Who just doesn't achieve.

And thus the franchise is fulfilled. You start with Sarah Jane, progress to Dr Who and then graduate to the XXX-R18 of Torchwood.

To the creative within me, it screams for a TV special where the threat is so huge it needs all three to come together to see it off. Ah, the drama! Ah, the story! Ah, the likelihood of Owen jumping Sarah Jane for the little bit of Granny Sex!

Anyway, nice to see Dr Who blossomming so well

Neil

2006: A Year In Review

What did the Queen call it? Anus Horriblus? Yeah, that just about sums it up. 2006 is a year that, if I was bothered with that sort of thing, I couldn't be eager enough to see the back of. In just about every aspect of my life, it has, to be brutally honest, been shit.

Personally I've lost not one or two but THREE members of my family, including my mother, all in relatively quick succession. I'm not a very sentimental person but thats taken quite a toll on me. Work has been Hell - the students union has no money to invest and therefore cannot compete with the local bars and the University is effectively holding our jobs to ransom. This is the third year where we have had to undergo 'restruturing' - ie. voluntary and involuntary redundancy - as well as a pay freeze. Job security is paramount for me and it simply isn't there anymore. Health wise, things haven't been too great either, with my increasing workload causing me a degree of exhaustion and stress I have never had to face before.

This malaise has seen the deterioration of my hobby life to a far more manageable level. Some of the things that have happened have been really quite heartbreaking, others have been more of a relief.

I've relinquished my chair as the Iron DM and haven't refereed an RPG for many months. Thankfully Nigel has stepped in with a magnificent game of Pendragon which seems to have captivated most of us and seems set to run and run. Do I miss being in the DMs chair? No, not really. I enjoy playing and it is something that I have really missed.

I've also wrapped up my small website management empire - no more developmental ventures, no more involvement with Comic Images, no more little sidelines for friends. This manifested itself twofold - in the first instance by quest for perfection meant that I was spending a lot of time pottering around doing websites when I could have been doing other things. In the second instance I did not have the time, understanding or inclination to learn, to do the special coding things that could make my sites look even passingly professional - and in the gaming market that meant running a constant risk of being upstaged by the audience, bright young things that they are. So, it stopped.

The disassociation with Comic Images and Raw Deal was something that was coming for a while, but in the end the impact is only really starting to tell now. As the WWE buzz about Wrestlemania beings to build I've suddenly realised that I won't be going this year. In a pretty mundane life, having a trip to the US every year was a highlight. No more highlights. I haven't played Raw Deal for months now and I have really lost close contact with a huge number of my friends. I'm in the process of selling off my old RD stuff.

World of Warcraft has been a constant companion this year, but even that has not been smooth sailing, not by any way, shape or form. Whether it is the constant postponement of the Burning Crusade expansion or the time pressures of playing 'seriously' on my life, it has always been a niggle. And then there was the great sundering of the Dungeoneers and the feelings of betrayal and anger that went along with that. My new guild, If In Doubt AFK Out, is great but it will never been the great masterpiece that the Dungs could have been.

Creatively I have started writing again, but what started as a torrent of fanfic involvement has turned into a trickle as it always seems to be the last priority on the list. I have even tried to get involved in an online modern fantasy RPG but I am still to make my first contribution - time, as always being the factor that is key.

So generally, 2006 has been a year that has stripped everything back to the bare minimum. What does 2007 hold for me? What good things have come from 2006 that I can carry forward?

Well, the aforementioned The Burning Crusade expansion for WoW should give that hobby a new spark of life (or, in the glass half empty world, kill it dead). Already the Silvermoon server is undergoing a palpable change in attitude and action in preperation for the new aspects of the game. I'm sure the AFKrs will be front and centre when the Dark Portal opens on the 16th January!

Raw Deal Revolution is a new, stripped down version of Raw Deal that I have bought into a little bit. It seems like a canny little game and Chris Henderson, the manager in Middlesborough will be running Revo only tournaments so I will probably be attending. Hell, the next national PPV might well be called Homecoming because me and Steve Hassall are apparently coming out of retirement. It's not really about the game, it's about having a close circle of friends. I just hope I have the time to satisfy this particular aspect of my gaming life.

I sincerely hope that we carry on Pendragon to it's natural conclusion. The game so far has been a slow, atmospheric build-up with some very effective moments delivered with great subtlety. The one thing it does allow, in the most part, is one player to be missing - a change which has allowed us to game far more frequently.

Within the world of RPGs I want to experiment more with some of the smaller 'indie' systems to see other aspects of gaming. I also want to carry on the development of my own RPG. The first draft has been made but the initial playtesting has floundered rather disappointingly. You would have thought that with nine groups onboard someone would have at least made one comment? Ah well - I'll get it sorted eventually.

However, the real challenges for this year will be away from the computer or the gaming table. Dealing with my new, radically reduced family and the different interactions that this will bring. Managing my workload and eventually finding a new job because I cannot continue working where I am now. Dealing with my erratic energy levels and the health of the other members of my family. Being a good father and helping my two girls develop further.

All of this and remaining true to myself and not letting the mundane overwhelm the interesting and the inspirational.

Goodbye 2006, you were a steaming bag of shite. Hello 2007, you can't get mush worse!

Neil

Awesome

Sometimes things fall together in a game perfectly. Today's Pendragon was just that. There was a lot different about it - all five people present, an extended session covering two years and enterting into 'Excalibur' territory - but in the end, it boiled down to this.

In one scene we rode as knights serving our King, we battled through ranks of warriors, took grave wounds and captured an enemy King.

In another scene we fought as knights serving our King, battled through ranks of warriors, took few wounds and killed a King.

The first was Octa and we were JUBILANT. It was our first real battle as effective knights rather than pieces on the board. My character took charge of the line of battle (I don't care if you have a Battle 15, noob, I have a Proud of 16!) and did some Battle stuff like reforming lines for charges etc. Our tactic for engaging Octa worked (just) as we realised that we were not the uber warriors we appear to be - but we won and were feted with Glory.

A scant two hours later, our jubilation had turned to a palpable sense of unease as we made war with King Gorlois for daring to not let King Uther boff his wife. He had broken the rules of hospitality and therefore .... must die? Wasn't he the King that broken the saxon flank at Lindsey? Not only did we make war upon him, but in defence of the dead Prince Madoc, we five hacked that King to pieces as he struggled to release his sword. And some of our knights then turned Terrabil into a carnal house.

You can say a lot about this game - the emerging personalities of the knights, the growing mass of children and the complications they create, the holdings that we develop, the relationships - but this is a game of Arthurian myth and in the end it is these extremes of emotion, caused by the vagries of the customs of the time that really stand out. We, the Heroes of Lindsey, sided with the King in a case of Super Horny Regicide, because we is our Liege. We, the players in the 21st century, fully appreciate the ludicrous nature of that action.

Powerful stuff!

Neil

One Year Later

As I was standing in the middle of the Academy last night, listening to the Wonder Stuff, I realised that it was roughly a year since I started my blogging exploits and my exploration of my various gaming hobbies. With that in mind, I thought it would be cute to examine where each of them is ... one year later!

Collectible Card Games?
DEAD as a dead thing from dead land. The WoW CCG passed me by with barely a whimper. The new iteration of Raw Deal looks interesting but without a group to play with and with limited time the likelihood of me rekindling the glory days seems to have passed. If there was a major casualty of the last year, it was CCGs.

Roleplaying?
Growing from strength to strength really. Have one game that has been played steadily for a while now (Pendragon). Have the embers of a 'fill in week' group that could well be doing Burning Wheel. I'm also starting a little rp project with my girls which could be fun or a disaster. Hey, and then there is my fledgling RP game which is currently in the very first stages of playtest. Loads of RP stuff going on.

Comics?
Still reading them, still enjoying them. No real change. Actually there has been an associated change in that I have started reading novels again, which waned a little for a while. Lots of input into the old grey matter.

Fanfiction?
Oh, big changes there! Rather than being the hobby that I aspire to, it's one that I am not actively involved in again. So I'm writing for the DCInfinity site with Green Lantern and Zatanna and it's a whole lot of fun. There seems to be the old inversely proportional relationship between my RP exploits and my fanfic exploits going on at the minute - some things never change really.

World of Warcraft?
Well, I'm still playing it but a lot of the enthusiasm has waned since the schism that shattered the quiet fun house that was the Dungeoneers. I'm once again at an impasse with it. I like playing it, but I'm going to have to pay it a little more attention if I am going to get the most from The Burning Crusade and I'm not sure I want to pay it more attention. Strange.

Anyway, thats about it really. Certainly things have stabalised a little with the removal of the CCG side of things and the retirement of my website empire. However, I'm always a builder so who knows what might be around the corner?

Neil

Baby Steps

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I wanted to write a roleplaying game and since then, I have been reading and listening to quite a bit about the subject. Well, finally this weekend the ideas and concepts came together into something that resembled a system. It's nowhere near the outside world seeing it yet and has to get a large swathe of testing under it's belt BUT at least we have a start.

One thing that has become readily apparent is that whilst, in some of the current models of indie games, this could be a future money spinner - thats not what I want to achieve. I've set myself (initially) a little challenge.

1. The main rules shall be no longer than 12 pages of A5
2. I have to say everything I want to say about the system for the players in those 12 pages
3. There will be a 12 page 'GM' book as well - more of a discussion document than rules really.
4. Setting books will be 8 pages long.

Settings books? Well, what struck me was that the system I have created mirrors the gaming practices of my group pretty well, and thats a penchant for world building within game. Indeed, much of character creation revolves around the creation of the world as well as the character. However, it's very very difficult to create a world in a vacuum and even harder to create characters therein. So why not have tiny little seeder books which give the barest bones of a campaign for people to use/discard/adapt and moreover grow their characters from, changing the world as they go in character generation.

This is in no way, shape or form a handy dumping ground for ideas that I have had that never got past the conceptual stage...honest! However, the first one I have in mind is MI:666 - modern horror in a world where the Powers That Be *know* that Hell exists....

Anyway, progress is a good thing!

Neil

When Wheel meets Dragon...

It could be a long one this...

I have been voraciously reading Burning Empires and wallowing in the wonderful structure of the game. One very interesting bit is the splitting and allocation of screen time into Conflicts, Building, Intersital and Colour phases. In the text, Luke Crane actually says that some experienced roleplayers may be rolling their eyes at the constructed nature of it, but it is what we do naturally anyway - just writ large. I was indeed, one of those eye-rollers.

Cut forwards to our session of Pendragon. It's 489 and nothing much was happening. Next year, 490, is a HUGE year with battles and stuff apparently. This is the lull before the storm. Bearing this in mind, I was quite interested in seeing what Nigel would come up with, especially as we are a player down. The game started as usual with the post Winter Phase, pre Winter Court activity and the perennial question 'Is there anything you want to do?'

And yes, my eyebrow raised as I thought 'Hmm...it's a potential building phase, isn't it?'. So I thought, what could I do? And then I made a decision - I would not do anything trivial. If I did something it would have to serve the story and generate some sort of conflict. So I stayed at home and looked after the babies.

At Winter Court it become apparent that Sir Jarradan has been blown off by Rhiannon and she has turned her attentions to Sir Merrick. This was quite a revelation and hammered home one of the parts of the game that sometimes gets missed. It's been over two YEARS since the scheming harridan started whispering in the ear of the aspiring household knight, and he is still an aspiring household knight. So she has cut her losses and gone elsewhere. In 'normal' games radical change like that takes months of play but in Pendragon it can be realistically done in two weeks. Thats interesting...

And then a saxon trundles up to Sarum and the game changes for me totally. The Black Bear clan have been so pissed off by my overt twatting of the Saxons that they have declared 'blood feud' on me and my family. Now THATS interesting. Naturally I accepted it with vigour but now I have reason to start really *playing*.

- I start taking a greater interest in the disposition of the Saxons with Sir Madoc and Sir Brastias (that'll be an intersital moment, I believe)
- I send a message back to my clan in the Long Isles warning them of the impending clash with the Saxons. (building and bringing my family in Ireland into play for the first time)
- I look to extend my communication with the band of mercenary Kerns that fight for Uther (more building)

And then, I authored a scene where Brion (in preperation for his imminent rise to Pagan Knight) goes to Glastonbury to receive the blessing of Morrigan. He sacrifices the sword given to him by Sir Madoc for his actions at Bayeux and accepts, voluntarily, a Geas. Now, I have no idea whether this will benefit me in the future but it HAMMERED home more about my character than anything else I have done before, in my eyes. It was a colour scene that could be used later for something greater.

Onwards and a possible moment with Rhiannon as Merrick invites me to dine with them. Epona (bless her) declines on my behalf. Now, lets look at that. I've been constantly bleating on about how proud I am about having the kids and my great wife. We appear to act as one when it comes to matters of her sister. Thats very cool whether intentional or not and acts as a sure sign that if something nasty is going to happen to my family, for dramas sake, it should happen to Epona... but after what happens next, will anyone be silly enough?

We go to war with Cornwall and after their surrender we march to reinforce Lindsey. There the three of us intercept a Saxon raiding party - six foot soldiers and a chieftain. We take their shield wall head on with a charge and smash it and I engage the Chieftain. Sir Merrick tries to intervene and I snarl him off - *my* fight. We kill them, but the Chieftain is unconscious. I wake him up and then despatch him with this rather chilling message.

"This is a message, to your Gods from mine. Kill me if you can... Survive if I let you!" and off comes his head. ECWs Taz never delievered that line in a more appropriate setting! Later we stumble on 15 saxon raiders from the Black Bear tribe. Rather than battle them (which would have been very foolish) I confront them and hurl the Chieftains head at their feet, proclaiming that this was just the first of many that would fall until they called off their feud.

And then the game ended before the Winter phase.

Maybe the catalyst for this was during the last session when Sir Brion was described as 'likeable' and 'sociable' etc. by the court. Maybe it was to ensure that Brion=Hardass Warrior archetype is not forgotten or missed again? I dunno, but a definite darker turn for the character has ensued - all fuelled by the need to protect his family (thats Love:Family 18 folks...) and suddenly he is SO MUCH MORE entertaining to play!

Great great game. Can't wait till the next session. It struck us, on the way home, that the two games in question - Pendragon and Burning Wheel - aren't actually that different in their outlook. You have to force the drama or as Ian has pointed out on fandomlife.net, it is like being in the middle of your own medieval documentary!

Later, I plan to burn Brion as a Burning Wheel character, to see whether my idea is right.

N.

What can RPGs learn from MMOs?

Another little thread on rpg.net, another musing thought rumbling in my head that has been answered.

I finally realised why I like parts of WoW and why some of my roleplaying habits may have changed.

WoW delivers the 'explore places, kill things, take their stuff and get tougher in the process' needs that 'traditional' rpgs - like D&D3e - deliver normally and do it 100% better. The gameplay has the social interaction (via voicecomms) and the fantastical scenery but without worrying about modifiers and AoO and other such nonsense. Basically, WoW does D&D better than D&D does.

(and as an aside, when we have played D&D post-WoW, it has been very difficult to take the game seriously when combat happens and not degenerate into a reference-fest.)

However, with that itch well and truly scratched, my other requirements from roleplaying - social advancement, character development, storylines and such - have to be dealt with within the games I am choosing to play.

Is that one of the contributing factors to my current chomping away at new and relatively obscure RPG material? Maybe it is. Who knows?

Neil

Talkin' bout a Revolution (Part Two)

What thing revolve? Wheels. What things make my brain revolve? Burning Wheels!

I picked up Burning Empires last night and oh, is it a thing of beauty. £26 of pure gaming BLING! It's like a roleplaying version of the Gideon bible. Hard backed, novel sized and arted (so no worries about reading this bad boy in public!) 650+ pages of crisp, glossy, colour game with copious, relevant artwork. And with all these embelishments, it's still a fully functional and very well produced game.

What it does is take the Burning Wheel mechanic and graft.... no, graft is the wrong work - merge it with a very distinct setting. The human galaxy is being invaded by these little worm things called the Vaylen (very Mr Mind for the comics literate of you) who control bodies and subvert wills. Your characters for the central protaganists in the resistance against the almost unstoppable march of the Worm. Oh theres a whole lot more to it than that, but thats the central plot.

However, it is the realisation of the plot that makes this so sweet. As a group you 'burn' the world that the invasion takes place on - developing the exact physical, social and governmental structure that will fire your play. Your characters are all very experienced, central figures - 7-8 lifepaths (normal BW uses 4-5). The campaign structure is built around the progression of the Invasion - moving from infiltration of the populace to the usurption of the decision makers and then the military invasion. As a campaign it looks awesome. Reading the first couple of chapters just fills you with ideas and when you're done with the Worm-thing, I reckon the system and what it creates could well be used to model any number of plucky rebellions against the evil Empire of Doom campaigns.

It is a beautiful thing indeed. The sad thing is that with our teeth firmly into the Great Pendragon Campaign (Battle of Lindsey coming soon!) the chances of me ever getting to run this monster under our current structure is low. I'd either have to set up a second RP night (not likely considering the time constraints of this one) or find a new group of players to try it out on (and thats a hit and miss affair at best.)

One for the future maybe?

Neil

Talkin' bout a Revolution (Part One)

Two posts, two subjects - one applicable title! Thats Value!

Regardless of my fervour in avoiding them, I keep getting dragged back to CCGs. Whether it is an underlying need to participate in some form of collective competition, an addiction to collecting or simply a desire to be closer to a massive group of friends around the world, they always pop up now and again.

The WoW CCG has been released and it is very simple, very smooth and looks very nice. This, essentially, is the local game if it is anything and my participation would be reliant on the guys down the pub buying into it as well. I'm not sure they will, because a lot of them have dumped out of the CCG game in favour of the MMORPG world totally. It's still a tantalising prospect - getting in one the ground floor of something new and exciting. Possibly meeting new players as well. The one deciding factor could well be the expense - £2.99 a booster is too much in my beer-economics view of the world.

And then there is Revolution.

The new incarnation of Raw Deal is coming for Christmas and it is wonderful. Through my previous associations with Comic Images, I have been privy to a full set of the final spoilers and I have to say that the reimagining of the game is spectacular. It's like a reset to Premier with five years of experience and design heaped into the mix. The game promises to be MUCH faster, have far fewer dull negative play experiences (the new mechanics make mono-decks and pure control decks almost impossible to achieve), smaller quicker tournaments, better prizes and some engaging new deck construction techniques.

And the reason why this game doesn't fall foul of the 'local players needed' problem? Well, there are some nearby players in Middlesborough and Scarborough and York. Thats relatively near obviously, but I'm a big lad, I can travel. And this morning I received the great news that the Middlesborough manager has decided to run Revolution-only tournaments. That buys me in, in all probability.

The overriding stipulation for my participation however will be fun over involvement. Controlling my urge to help out, get involved or any other sort of organisation has to be kept under control. A year ago, I was pretty much at the centre of all things Raw Deal and it consumed my life and spare time. I can't afford to let that happen again. Of course, that means I may have to actually BUY cards - a new and scary prospect if ever there was one....

We shall see what comes around (see the revolution motif? hehehe)

Neil

Understanding what makes my gaming 'click'

So, as my exploration of other sorts of rpgs continues slowly but surely, I've began to question what I want from a roleplaying game. Moreover, it's a challenge to myself based around three core concepts:

1. The ascertion that if you ignore the rules of a game that you are playing, you might not be using the correct game for the campaign you want to run/play.
2. That when I am GMing I am all about the intricacies of character generation and then almost AWOL when it comes to other rules.
3. That in certain systems there are things which really get under my skin that can, I believe, be answered within rules design.

1. Is abandoning rules a reason for jettisoning a system? Or do you play the rules where they lie?

Or in other words, if you are playing D&D3e and not using AoO, are you really playing D&D3e? After all, that one change to the rules permeates virtually every aspect of the game. Not just combat, but also spellcasting and feat selection (and therefore character customisation). Attacks of Opportunity are as central to 3e as well.... feats and skills!

However, I have never used them nor can I envisage a time when I would. I abhore that 'minatures without minatures' style of combat and much prefer the more descriptive cinematic style which plays fast and loose with movement and positioning to make things more exciting. So, is D&D3e the system for my games then?

Well I would suggest that yes it is, for a number of reasons. The first is that by jettisoning a game you can lose the baby with the metaphoric bathwater. You can lose a lot of good stuff if you cannot handle one mechanic. Secondly, I think that this attitude is driven by a massive knowledge and availability of roleplaying games. I simply cannot just reference a dozen replacement rules options and then go and sample them to get the perfect system. It's wholly impractical. Needs must etc. Lastly, if the GM is going to be able to work the rules to the benefit of the story then he needs to be able to change things a little. Being a captive of the ruleset simply isn't appropriate.

However, I do agree that sometimes you have to look at the metagame you are playing within and the accepted styles of play of your group and see whether something different might be more appropriate. For example, the intricate group play we have had before was coming undone at the seams by player absenteeism (for very good reasons). Pendragon solves that through the mechanics it promotes and the year-on-year pace of the game. That was a positive change.

2. Absentee Gamesmastering - When is a game not a game? When it's a storytelling session!

I'm not a great one for rules outside character generation. I love them in character generation. Char Gen can be as complicated and intricate as it likes as far as I am concerned. Bring it on! I want to know every single aspect of my character. I want it down there on a piece of paper as the best aide memoire I can get. I don't care whether it is a very mechanistic method with stats and skills for everything and then some, or something a little more fluffy with contacts and feelings and agendas and whatnot. I just love seeing this new person come into being, there, on the page and in my mind. I use the rules as a tool to help build the character in my mind - rather than, as some do, create the character in my mind and then make the shape fit within the rules, or even the rules fit around the shape. I find that the process of Char Gen fires for me, and makes me think about new and different avenues for the character.

And then the rules stop. In my games I couldn't really care less about movement grids, movement rates, attacks of bloody opportunity, encumberance and other such nonsense. Money usually sees the door early too. Unnecessary for many of the genres that I play within. NPC interaction rules are another early victim of my sweeping scythe - if you want to fast talk the NPC then you'll roleplay it and I'll decide whether it passes muster or not. Yes, I know - what about people that don't have good verbose skills - couldn't care less. Roleplaying games require you to develop your oral presentation skills and now is as good a time as any!

Now this might seem a little strange, but I kind of like rules when I am a player. I like those little nuances of the rules that allow your character to do cool stuff like Fighting Defensively. I absolutely adore the Winter Phase business in Pendragon and all the blue booking potential that delivers. Essentially, my expectations appear to be different as a player and a GM. What a freak?!

Freak I may be, but it's something that I want to get my head around because there has to be a middle ground.

3. Rules that grind my gears.

Or rather an explanation of a passage of play that really doesn't make sense to me as a player. We are playing Pendragon and during a battle our forces are trying to breach a gate. We have made a small opening but the enemy are trying to close the gate again. Myself and another player decide to put our not inconsiderable bulk into the effort. Now, the knight that was doing it with me is, in a one sentence build, the repentent Christian seeking to cast off the shadow of his fathers dodgy past. I am, literally, the massive reckless Irish giant warrior always ready to fight.

So we roll the dice. And I fail. And the little Christian succeeds. Now, with my SIZ 17 and STR 16 and Giant distinguishing feature and general demeanour as a combat beast I felt slightly aggrieved that my knight could not bust that door open. It felt somewhat like gimmick infringement, in wrestling parlance. All because of a dice roll. Thats one of the things that I'm growing to dislike about straight dice roll games. I may have all the benefits of size and strength and character concept but a Knight with STR 11 is going to (quick number crunch) beat me in a feat of Strength around 22% of the time... on the whim of the dice. Note: I don't have a problem with the game, nor the players or the GM (*waves* Hi guys!) but the system doesn't quite convey that sense of character identity in that mechanic.

So what now?

Well I guess I feed all of that quietly into my expanding mental portfolio of games design. With one question to be answered - who do you design a game for? The Players, The GM or both... and whilst the answer may be easy, the solution to the problems that brings may not be as simple.

Neil

Interesting Roleplaying Stuff

First: I have discovered the joy of rpg podcasts. I already enjoyed WoWRadio but it is always very negative and snarky about the game. Sometimes humourous, but usually so 'I'm cooler than the devs' that it's not entertaining. However, I stumbled over a thread on rpg.net regarding rpg podcasts and discovered a treasure trove of stuff. The thread is :

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=292152

And I can recommend the Sons of Kryos and Have Games Will Travel. I'm listening to them at the moment and then I'll venture elsewhere. The difference about this stuff when compared to WoWRadio is that these people are so positive about gaming and the games they choose to play - it's very refreshing.

And I pick my words there very carefully - the games they CHOOSE to play. Sometimes too much of the negativity around WoW seems to stem from the massive buy-in that people have made to it and thus the disproportionate negative impact when something minor changes or doesn't happen.

These podcasts are great - full of ideas, polite and considered discussion and general entertainment. A great find.

Secondly, I wanted to muse on one of the things that I heard on these podcasts. It was from the mouth of Ed Greenwood, who is the bloke responsible for Forgotten Realms. Why add that? Well, I think that sometimes the mainstream gaming 'personalities' get a little maligned and I was a little taken aback that something so profound came from one. Silly me

Anyway, the idea was thus:

Roleplaying games are about creating great memories.

Now isn't that just the crux of it? A great game should be one where you can remember, many months past the end of the game, great moments and not so great moments. It should stand out as a different and exciting episode in your life - akin to a great football victory or a particularly *ahem* memorable sexual liaison.

The reason this gelled with me so well, was that we were talking about a campaign on Sunday that must have been nearly 10 years old - Earthdawn - and some of the scenes and the climax were still fresh in my mind and that of Nigel, the surviving player.

I wonder what memories we will take from our current Pendragon campaign and what we, as players, can do to make the game more memorable for ourselves and the GM?

Neil

Feedback plx - the plight of the fanfic writer

http://www.dcinfinity.ca/

Pimped.

My fanfic output has taken an upturn (fuelled admittedly by me being ill with dread manflu). Green Lantern has hit #5 and Zatanna will get her second issue next week. My problem, as is normal, is an almost total lack of feedback.

I've tried the normal route - you give someone else feedback and they reciprocate. That doesn't seem to be happening. There are other methods - working the lists with your titles in sig or just downright feedback whoring. I'm loathe to be doing them for a number of reasons, mostly that I have had some rather painful experiences with bad feedback in the past.

Note please - the quality of the feedback was bad, not the feedback in relation to my work. I hate feedback in the 'OHMIGOD I LOVE YOU!!' shit as much as I hate the 'This makes me want to poke my eyes out' rubbish. Something moderated so that I can use it to improve my work would be nice.

Ho hum - maybe this just means that no-one is reading it. Wouldn't be the first time.

Neil

More Itching and a possible salve; and Pendragon musing

Gah!

The Itch to write a roleplaying game is still there, annoyingly so. What didn't help was me stumbling across a massive rpg-related podcast archive and stumbling across a 30-diatribe by the guy that designed Sorceror on the print-on-demand style of publishing. Everything he said fits in perfectly to my imagined 'business plan' on this type of stuff. Furthermore, I already know my artist and his rates. I know my layout man and his rates (nowt, it's me!). I know at least a couple of alpha and beta tester groups with very different styles. And I have a large wodge of inheritance cash coming my way soon. Even a small introduction of capital could make something like this come off and well.... well, theres a bit of an ancient pact between me and my wife to fulfil. If it isn't publishing something, it's running a comic shop and the former is waaay cheaper!!

It seems rather fanciful doesn't it? A 'normal person' writing and shockingly publishing an rpg? But surely everyone that starts off in any sort of small press endeavour is just an ordinary person with a bit of self belief? Someone who is willing to go beyond the gaming table and step up, make the gut check and do something bigger? Designers aren't some race of demigods - they're just gamers. My time working with Comic Images has proved to me that given enough confidence, hard work bloody mindedness, your gaming hobby can take you anywhere you want to - even Wrestlemania!

Nothing is impossible.

Of course, there is one small fly in the ointment. Actually, it's more of a large rotten grey whale in the ointment.

Inspiration.

Where do you start?

What do you want to do - a new game? a new mechanic? something that meets a need that isn't being reached at our gaming table? A genre product? A pastiche of a licenced product? What about? What area of the world do I feel confident enough about to be able to write confidently about it - an area that isn't smothered already....

And then the doubts start - does the world need another rpg?

Then again, if that was the case, surely everyone would be playing GURPS.

Even as an intellectual exercise - IGNORE the stuff about publishing - this feels like something I should work through. Something that allows me to take everything that has changed in my gaming over the last six years and focus it. Coming up with a gaming mechanic that matches my love for character crunch and my predeliction towards minimal rules interference when the game actually starts. Something I would be happy playing -and- refereeing.

I think this one is going to rumble on here for a while

---

And now, more on Pendragon!

Sunday should be a full group game again, which is awesome. I'm really pleased that Nigel has managed to bring a game to the table that appears to have solved our one Achilles heel in gaming - inconsistency of group appearance. The year-by-year nature of the campaign and the vast array of alternate activities that characters can be undertaking make accommodating a player no-show very easy. The campaign really doesn't stand a chance of being derailed unless there is a major - and that means more than 2 of 4 players - no-show.

After the mini-session that introduced Andrews new character, I feel that I am finally finding a true 'voice' for Sir Brion. I envisaged him initially as a bit of an oaf, but once again I find it extremely difficult playing 'slow' or 'socially inept' characters. I like to make speeches and engage in verbal sparring etc. Brion has settled into his role as 'enforcer knight' quite well and I'm looking forward to Sunday as I want to present my squire in a very positive light, I want to run an Imbolc festival and I want to give Sir Fancy Pants Swordsman a piece of my (hopefully Proud) mind.

Good gaming makes for a happy gamer. I can tell I am a happy gamer because I am beginning to think around the character rather than just through the adventures. Very happy indeed.

N.

The Eternal Itch has returned

No, I don't mean returning to the GM position.

This is worse.

It happens about every two years. It is fruitless and pointless but it hits me really bad.

I want to write a roleplaying game.

Ever since I first got my hands on the red box D&D I have been writing roleplaying stuff. Within two years of first feeling a d20 smothered in wax crayon I had hand-written a 200 page fantasy world. A really really bad fantasy world, admittedly, but a fully fledged one nonetheless.

Years later, before Uni, I did write my own system and we played it, altered it and tested it to death. It was .... well, before it's time. High fantasy and then some. It was Exalted but in 1988. I have no idea where my Big Red Book of notes went but the tables and charts and general notes are a great loss to me. The modern day irony of a Dreamweaver class would be funny too.

When I was deeply immersed in the CCG hobby, I wanted to make a CCG. A Red Dwarf CCG. My theory was solid, my gameplay (in my eyes) decent and fun. However, being a perfectionist that I was, my inability to actually produce cards was my downfall. Thankfully my photoshop-fu has increased substantially. Thats no longer a problem!

(I have to say that I did scratch the itch a little by playtesting Raw Deal for many years....)

Since then, the urge has come and gone. The slew of more generic systems available to the market have made custom gaming much easier. My understanding of the theory of gaming and how I prefer to play has grown immensely. However, so has my ability to write, desktop publish, internet publish and project manage. Now I am more than aware that I have the practical tools to produce a professional looking roleplaying project to share with others. And I have the resources to do it rather cheaply as well.

The return of The Itch isn't a shock. I'm writing again, reading again and very happily playing our Pendragon campaign. World of Warcraft appears to be the casualty of this latest change of focus - I'll comment on that one some day when I can get my thoughts together about it. A happy Neil I may be, but that usually means I need some project to work on and fanfic writing simply isn't enough.

Of course the downside of the entire affair is that I'm a flighty little thing and really, I doubt anything I do will get finished. Also, I don't really think the world needs a new system or game. Maybe a setting booking for Unisystem Lite? Who knows.

Anyway, the Itch is back. Now I just need to know what to do with it

Neil

A Different Sort of Roleplay: Pendragon

One of my hidden RPG passions is Pendragon, an Arthurian roleplaying system. I have been fascinated with the Arthurian legends from quite a young age and during my early 20s did quite a lot of reading around the subject. So when Nigel offered to not only run the game, but also to run the Great Pendragon Campaign - the campaign of Mallory's Le Morte de Arthur.

We're onto the second session now and I'm loving every minute of it. However, it does present a different view of roleplaying than the scenarios we are used to. The campaigns I have ran have been heavily character-driven, story-based affairs with a lot of player driven ideas for metaplot and not a lot of system at all. We've been playing in that style for the best part of five years. It's bound to become engrained.

Pendragon is, at first glance, a totally different beast. Firstly, it has a lot of 'crunch' about it, but the crunch is essential to deliver the punch of the game. I'll take a few examples:

Passions: Each character has opposed traits (like Valourous/Cowardly) which define the personality of the character. The players control these traits in a modelling sense at char gen but afterwards, they must act within them or pay the consequences. So, say a knight with Valourous 17 (highly renowned for his bravery) decides to run away from battle against a weaker foe. He would not be acting valourously at all and would probably get a check on his Cowardly. At the end of the year, if he rolled over 3 (his cowardly) he would move to Valourous 16/Cowardly 4 - less brave. The passions, in the right amounts and combinations also give bonuses towards being knightly or religious. The genius of this system is that it links the characters actions directly to their aspirations and you live with the consequences of your actions, sometimes painfully. A Religious knight that falls from the tenets of his chosen path will become a fallen knight and must do deeds to make amends. Far better than any silly alignment system.

Glory: Glory is the ranking system for knights - a knight with 1500 Glory 'outranks' a knight with 1450 by popular acclaim. You get glory by a number of means - mostly battle, deeds and presence at great events. You also get glory by just surviving and being a knight. This really underlines that you are playing an ARTHURIAN game rather than a fantasy game. You meld the actions of the adventurous knight and the medieval lord together as one.

Year-to-Session Play: Each session encompasses one whole year of play. It starts with a Spring Court, then knightly adventuring, then whatever service your Lord requires and then the Winter Court and the bluebooked Winter Phase. This seems wholly at odds to the previous games we have played where one session might encompass three hours and an entire campaign might have lasted one summer of bloody conflict. Again, it is the modelling of the ARTHURIAN aspect of the game that we see here. The swathe of the Arthurian mythos is played against a historical backdrop and you can only really appreciate that if you are moving through that backdrop at a reasonable rate of knots. The actions of medieval knights were maintained around short bursts of indentured warfare and then lots of mundane rogering, healing and harvesting. It models the genre beautifully.

So how do we, very story-based players, handle this strange system?

The first thing I would suggest is to embrace the basic heart of the game and that is that it still revolves around the characters. We have already seen Excalibur and aided Merlin, in a very small and dismissive manner. However, we are essentially 'First Level Knights' interacting amidst 20th Level Druids! I'm pretty sure that our actions will catapult us to knightly stardom and we will soon be the movers and shakers in the Court of Earl Roderick.

Secondly, we have to grab our chances to roleplay when we can and create the tensions and conflicts that we are used to dealing with. So if Sir Guillame challenges me to lead a charge and I do, he damned well owes me a challenge - even if it is at a feast. If Sir Guillame fathers a bastard child by a lady in waiting, he will have to pay the consequences. Alongside that I also feel that we have a responsibility as players to badger the referee senseless for details, especially of the meta-history in the background. Whats happening with the Saxons? Are they near Sarum? Why were we left on garrison duty when we could have been fighting? etc.

Finally, I think we have to realise that this is a very different style of roleplaying. And thats not in a bad way either. This is ARTHURIAN roleplaying and as such mirrors the genre tropes of the source material - be that dark ages poetry, Mallory, T.H.White, Cornwell, Zimmer-Bradley or even Geoffrey of Monmouth! The mechanics of the game mirror and model these genre tropes brilliantly and if you use them as a tool that acts in the background to reinforce the game, it allows this new style of roleplay to come fully to fruition.

It has indeed, picqued my interest on whether the same type of system could be adapted to mirror other historical roleplay scenarios? I've never seen a game that centres around say, the heroes of Ancient Greece, but I can see a derivative Pendragon system working there too.

Double Decker Buses

As in two come at once.

The demise of P&P has meant that another referee, Nigel, has stepped into the breach and like buffoons we have started The Great Pendragon Campaign. Hot off the press, this is a massive expansion and revamp of the classic 'Boy King' supplement. It will take YEARS to complete. It is ludicrous to even consider that we would do it. It's bloody great!

I love Pendragon. I love every bit of the system because it drips flavour. My character is Brion O'Hara, the son of an irish squire from Skye. He's a big lad with red hair, strong, good with the spear and the horse and a master of the hounds. I am ignoring his Orate 10 because frankly, anything sniffing of Bard would drive me insane with my self-stereotyping.

As with all textbook Pendragon games, we are vassals of Sir Roderick (and yes, we did the joke) in Sarum, Logres. We were knighted (and the big lug made his horse vault as well!), we have our demenses. We met some etheral woman, met challenges, found pledged wives and fought saxons to a stand-off in our first massed battle. Brion even distinguished himself by leading the charge on his new uber-fast horse after being challenged by one of our gallic brothers.

Great stuff. I loved it. I was buzzing at the game (which may have been the wine) and buzzing after the game. If we can keep the atmosphere and the general tone of the game, I think the characters are going to shine.

Now thats a lot more positive, isn't it?

Warcraft is plodding along. I have been turning attention to Gortessa in the end game a little and levelling Kylea (to 47 now) before she returns to the pvp arena. I have a feeling that the guild may be coming to an impasse as Burning Crusade approaches. A little more hardcore, a little less forgiving - a cull may be coming, the numpties should watch themselves!

I got Green Lantern#4 sent off to the editor at DC Infinity last week, which was a relief, and he gave the green light (ha! no pun intended) to a new title, Zatanna. That should be fun. Oh, and I was namechecked on Other People's Toys, a podcast about fanfic. It titilated me!

So, in general, whilst I am still knackered, things seem to have calmed down a little bit.

I do have a yearning though. I haven't been on a road trip for months. I'm getting itchy feet and that cannot be good.

Neil

Arse! (will contain profanity)

Well, I have to say that I am totally and utterly arsed off with life at the moment. For the last few years I have been waging a silent and not-so-silent war against real life and advancing 'age' and the battle ground has been my plethora of hobbies.

Yesterday I realised that I may have met a rather metaphoric Waterloo.

Over the years, I have had to rationalise a number of the things that I do in order to compensate for the responsibilities of married life and fatherhood. No longer can I travel the length and breadth of the country playing cards. No longer can I watch the Wrestling Channel at the drop of a hat. No longer can I roleplay every weekend and alternating week nights etc. No longer can I be a slave to a far away company and their website.

However, changes in my workplace have meant that I am now, at my traditionally busiest time of the year doing not one (Marketing Manager), not two (Marketing Manager and Marketing Sales Assistant) but THREE (Marketing Manager, Marketing Sales Assistant and Print Shop Administrator) jobs. Thats a lot of work and a lot of mental fatigue. I thought I could handle it. I suppose I can, but the side effects are hellish. In short, I am mentally (and increasingly physically) knackered.

So whats the effect been?

- I have, after much thought and soul searching, had to cancel Pulsars and Privateers. This was not an easy decision because it may have further implications for my play group than simply the end of a game. I don't feel easy doing it, but in the end I had to face up to the fact that I was simply unable to raise my enthusiasm and creativity out of the gutter when I returned from work to do ANY preparatory work for the project. Normally, I can feed off the enthusiasm of others as well, but a number of the players have been on holiday or had life stresses of their own and you cannot rely on that. Hopefully, a Pendragon game is going to spring from the ashes, but for the next seven months I think I can safely say that my tenure as the Iron GM has concluded.

- I now grab maybe half an hours wrestling TV a week because I have simply lost the ability to stay up late and watch it and the kids holidays have allowed them to encamp the teatime telly. It really really exposes the child in you when you have to exert Daddy Power Privilege to get to see the week old repeat of RAW!

- I've been passing on raids in Warcraft a little more than usual because I am simply too tired to go through the repeated tasks over and over again. Sure I'm still playing but that's more because it is almost an effortless pursuit.

- Did I mention that I'm writing fanfic again? In a week 'off work' - where I did little else but think about work - I wrote four paragraphs of one issue. Not through the want of trying, more through the want of sleeping!

- I have an RPG group on the horizon playing in a superhero game but everytime I sit down to write out some details on the character, my mind is a blank. It may happen - the GM is churning out some quality background guff for it - but in the end I'm sceptical. Our first character generation session was cancelled due to a last minute withdrawal by one of the players for no specific reason. Deja vu?

So here I am - drained - absolutely fucking drained. I'm so absorbed with the pressures of work that I cannot even muster the energy to have a self-brainstorming session on the Metro like I used to do, because every time I do, it just resets back to thinking about the next piece of work that needs to be done and how little time I have to do it.

Pretty much hobbywise at my lowest ebb. Which is shite.

Hey, if this is the bottom of the glass, maybe it's time for a refill?

Neil