“The books are Lovecraftian spy thrillers. The best elements from both genres are thrown together with a sprinkling of long lost Nazis, terrorist cultists, other foreign governments wanting a piece of the action, as well as Her Majesty’s Civil Service.” added Cubicle 7’s Angus Abranson.

The Laundry is a branch of the British secret service, tasked to prevent hideous alien gods from wiping out all life on Earth. Players take the part of Laundry agents, cleaning up the mess after things go wrong or, sometimes, even managing to prevent the manifestation of ultimate evil. Agents have access to the best equipment they can get their superiors to approve, from Basilisk Guns to portable containment grids to a PDA loaded up with Category A countermeasure invocations.

I've only read "The Atrocity Archives" so far in the Laundry series (I've also read Glasshouse and Accelerando by Stross - they're more straight sci-fi - the former very similar to Culture novels, the latter very cyberpunk. Both great.)
so I've added "The Jennifer Morgue" and "The Fuller Memorandum" to my Amazon wishlist. I'll be taking The Atrocity Archives with me on my trip to Paris - Lord knows there's going to be a lot of downtime.

If you're not sure if you'll like them, then you can get a taster with some of the Laundry short stories.

• Overtime - a Christmas-themed novella.
• Down on the Farm - where do occult secret agents go to die?
• The Concrete Jungle - who just weaponised mythology?
• and for an apocalyptic American view, A Colder War.

Overall, it seems enchantingly similar to Delta Green but without the feeling of hopelessness that comes from being mostly alone in a universe that is cold, dark and hostile. It's gotten me interested again.

I got the Serenity book a few months ago from Sub City in Dublin and the Smallville book arrived today from Amazon.

Both use derivatives of the Cortex system from Margaret Weiss Productions. While Serenity uses the Cortex systems in a "traditional" way, Smallville uses it in an interesting way. To perform an action, it's not really how talented or skilled you are, it's about how much the action matters to you, how it aligns with your values and who will benefit from the action. That's interesting because it aligns partly with what I had in mind for Qabal - even though I may not have realised what I had in mind. I'd still likely use a card-based system rather than a dice-based system but the mechanic is interesting.

Smallville is a TV based on the early years of Superman/Clark Kent, concentrating on the period before he put on the red cape and blue tights. It's mostly a teen drama similar to Roswell, 90210 or Gossip Girl. The series plays loose with the Superman mythology, altering timelines and characters to provide a episodic story (which has been denounced as "Freak'o'the Week". They are also, for the most part, blaming the rise of superheroes on the kryptonite meteor rocks which accompanied Clarks escape pod. As plot devices go, that's quite clever. The story arc is detailed enough and they've even resurrected the JSA to provide older mentor roles.

What turned me onto Smallville was an Actual Play on RPG.net. in this AP, the GM (Watchtower) is running a game entitled "Gotham" which is chronicling the teen angst of the various personalities involved in the Batman legend; obviously Bruce Wayne but also Vic Sage (the Question), Talia Al Ghul, Helena Bertinelli (Huntress), Harvey Dent (Two-Face), Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) and others. He's chewing his way through some of the old DC villains (Black Spider, Terrible Trio etc) and working up to a series end which will have some of the bigger foes. It's an extremely compelling read.

Of course, to be able to play these kinds of games, you need players who are not only able to put themselves in the mindset but also those who are interested in the mythology of the series, whether that's Smallville, Gotham, Roswell or Gossip Girl. I've met players who couldn't get past their own biases when playing characters. Such as an atheist who couldn't play a religious character and a caucasion who couldn't play a black character. Most fellas seem comfortable enough playing women though (with hilarious and creepy consequences). This sort of game is a relationship drama - it's about the interactions of people - and you can recognise them on TV as the protagonists are wound up in secrets and never seem to be able to tell the whole truth. Because that would sort stuff out. Duh

The community is developing other homebrews such as Blakes 7, The Matrix, Bugsy Malone, Teen Titans. I'm tempted to find some folk to run a Misfits game. Misfits is a E4 TV series about four young offenders who gain superhuman abilities by being exposed to a strange storm while performing their community service. The first series was extremely enjoyable, the second series starts at 9 pm tonight. It has the advantage of being "new" so you don't have to have extensive background knowledge to enjoy the story but the disadvantage that you don't have a lot of pre-made stuff from 50 years+ of writers and artists.

Afterwards we settled down to watch •REC. And there are spoilers ahead.

SPOILER WARNING

•REC is a 2007 Spanish horror film. There's a sequel in post-production set hours after the first movie and there's also an American remake called Quarantine.

The movie starts very much like most of the new Fast Zombie movies. There's biting, blood, running and not very much other information - lots of confusion - lots of shouting - lots of odd camera angles due to the 'handshakycamera' process pioneered by 84C MoPic and The Blair Witch Project. There's nothing special here - with the possible exception of the authorities sealing off the building - which was a nice twist.

But the end. Wow.

The Boss Monster. The remnant of a Portuguese girl who was possessed and imprisoned while a Vatican 'scientist' researched a cure. He failed - and sealed the girl in the building for two years. Frankly, I think this pissed her off.

It's in this video from 1:15. It's spooky. The whole sequence before it postulates the possibility that possession may be a form of disease and therefore it could be contagious.

It adds something to the genre for sure.

What is it about?

There are people who think so strongly and individually, that they can literally change reality, teasing out the fabric of the consensus and changing it. They are called Solipsists.

In this game you and your friends play a group of balanced Solipsists, struggling to fulfill your grandiose dreams, retain your desperate grip on reality, and fight the un-making of the Shadows before they can end the world for good.

A role-playing game about bending reality

The comparisons to MAGE: The Ascension will be obvious though as the author says elsewhere, the game is less weighed down by the paradigms of the common man and Solipsists spend more time fighting with their own Obsessions and Limitations than they do combatting the collective beliefs of the rank and file of the world. And that's something to like.

It also smacks a little of the Shadow worlds of AMBER, noting that I never read the novels and base all of my AMBER knowledge on the great Diceless RPG.

The march of a reality-changing protagonist, barred only by their own minds and the conscious minds of other Solipsists (and the mysterious Shadow) is pure gaming gold. While it seems to add some structure and sense to the Amberite shadow wanderings, it also strips away the tiresome paradox mechanic from Mage leaving only a story-driven conflict mechanic that allows the players to control the story and, crucially, lose control of the story.

The writing is clear, the art sparse and the concepts clear. Thoroughly recommended.

There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader which gives access to a lot of content produced for 2000AD.

The Murderdrome iPhone comic demoed to me that day had a few very startling and fresh ideas.
The content was perfectly sized for the high res (160 dpi) screen of the iPod touch and iPhone. The side-side swipe of the finger moved from page to page but the UP-DOWN swipe of a finger took you through the content on that page. It removed colour, then inking, then brought the images down to the base wireframe. You could see the process on how it was made. You can, at a touch, remove or re-add speech bubbles and there are other settings (greyscale etc) which I didn't have time to play with.

Paul (art, letters, colour) and Al (writer) have collaborated to make Murderdrome specially for the iPhone/iPod touch screen. The code was written by Philip Orr who you'll also recognise as one of the names behind infurious. Watch Phil's Blue Pilot for some very interesting developments soon.

See the Youtube video for more

The business model is simple. Aiming for a $1.99 price for a standard comic (equivalent to 22 pages in a standard American size comic), Apple take 30% of the money as their commission. InfuriousComics take 10% and the remaining 60% goes to the creators. Seem harsh? Not so much when you hear tales of how much comic creators get when their comics are sold - sometimes they have to sell in excess of 9000 copies just to break even - even if carried by a major publisher. This new model would mean creators get paid for every book they produce. If you sell 200 copes, you get 60% of cover. If you sell 3000 copies you get 60% of cover. That's a lot better than the rates offered in print.

BUT....

MURDERDROME has been banned from the App Store for breaking rules about content. Please view the video and show some support for content being made available on the App Store by commenting on the article here.

You'll also find links to other coverage of this cool new application.

Why is this relevant to LateGaming?

Apart from my association with Paul and Philip and subsequent involvement in InfuriousComics, there has been discussion about using their cool reader technology to build 'decision tree books' or as we used to call them 'Choose your path' style books. That has interest to me!

Scroll forward on the time machine to 2008 and I've decided to have another look at M&M, this time in the second edition. Everyone keeps going on about how it's not like d20 any more and how it's a great a and flexible system.

At First Glance.
I tend to flick about a RPG book rather than starting from the beginning. I found myself in the NPC section and then moved backwards to the character generation section. M&M2e is certainly colourful and they have a raft of superhero archetypes to choose from. As I'm looking to model one of my favourite characters 'Lionheart', I have a flick through them and find that none of them seem to model the 'superhuman soldier' that I hold dear to my heart. The closest seems to be the Paragon (Superman clone) so I keep his power levels in mind. Lionheart was never a 'lifter' and 90 tons is an awful lot so some things will need dialed down a peg.

Starting Off.

There are a lot of rules.

We're treated to a checklist of what to work through and the first stumbling block I find is Power Level (which is the first game-related jargon I've hit so far). This seems to be some sort of measure to allow you to compare superheroes. It would be wick to start as a "First Level Brick" but Power Level usually starts at 10 (in other words, you're a 10th level character) but you can dial it down to 1 and up to 20 in these rules. Power Level has multiple effects. It tells you how may points you get in character generation (which is sadly not just a multiple of the Power Level) but also defines the maximum levels of "attack bonus", "defense bonus", "save difficulty", "toughness save", "fortitude, reflex and will saves", "skill rank" and "ability scores". Character generation is therefore quite table heavy (which I dislike) but I think that once this cumbersome process is over, you probably have a very complete character.

Power Level 10 allows you to have 150 power points (max attk/def 10, max save DC +10, max toughness +10, max save/ability +15, max ability score 40, max skill rank 15). M&M2e recommends that a Paragon have 20 ranks in Attributes and Skills, 0 Feats, 86 points in Powers, 32 points in Combat and 12 points in Saves. Right.

Creating the Character
I'm going to go with that division, but swap the points about. Figuring I can buy a "Power" to increase Strength and Constitution to desired superhuman levels, I just add points to the others as desired. Lionheart was never a brainy guy but he was athletic - just not superhumanly so.

From here we have to get out basic abilities, skills, feats, powers, complications and drawbacks. I buy up my DEX only to find out that Strength and Dexterity don't directly influence your ability in combat. Okay. Now I have to read a bit to see where to go from here. Character generation skips around a little.

Attack, Defense and Save, 5, 5 and 10, giving a 10 for each of these modifiers.

Skipping to Feats. Ones that look interesting are:

• Assessment,
• Blindfight,
• Improved Critical,
• Improved Initiative

They're only 1 point each so it seems foolish not to. I nab four points from Powers and put them into these feats.

So, now, Powers. Lionheart is super-strong, super-fit, super-tough, highly resistant to disease and poisons and is almost impossible to kill due to a fast regeneration power. Powers in the big list on pages 72-73 I should look at include...

• Enhanced Ability adding 30 points to Strength, 20 points to Constitution
• Immunity: 2 points (poison, disease)
• Regeneration: Recovery Rate: heals every action without rest from any damage condition: 17 points
  So far we've spent 69 points on Powers out of an allocated 82 points, leaving 11 points left over.

I figure I'll jigger some points about, add a few more points in feats, maybe make him more charismatic or something.

Looking at the powers and abilities, it seems more sensible to put those Enhanced Ability points straight into base Strength and Constitution. Sure, I lose the ability to push them but they also can't be nullified (a thoroughly annoying effect of many superhero campaigns). That really means the only power he has is Regeneration. That's a little depressing but not dissimilar to Marvel in this respect. The temptation, if your only power is Regeneration, is for you to put your character in harms way and worse, for the GM to send the first attack of every battle in your direction. In the 'character assassination' game Lionheart was always the first to get a bullet in the head - the argument being that his enemies knew it would put him out of action for a few minutes. It was a bullshit argument, of course, a bullet to the head of any other character would have put them down for good. Wouldn't that have been a much more sensible tactic?

So now what?
I have to start reading the system? And the combat system. And I dread it. This game is one of modifiers. There are modifiers for everything and more meta-stats than you can shake a stick at. And abbreviations as well. I'm slightly confused at what I bought earlier. I'm looking for the definitions of MAx Save DC modifier, Max Toughness, Max Save/Ability Bonus (from the table on page 25). I bought three values in the combat section: Attack Bonus, Defense Bonus, Save Bonus. But I see from page 24, I have to consider an entire checklist of saves (see above) which need to be bought separately. Argh. There's something to be said for an integrated character generation workflow. At least I know what to do with those extra points!

Opinion?
I do not like this game. Let's get that out of the way. I also don't hate it but it's not a book I'll likely keep on the shelves when shelf space is so precious.

There are a lot of positive points. Concepts core to d20/D&D will be familiar (no matter what anyone says) to D&D players so it's an easy jump. It may be missing core D&Disms like levels and hit points but it's more qualitative than that - it's written for the core audience and I think it does it very well.
It's flexible and modern. It's got a shedload of supplements as well which is often an important factor for a GM (not for me though).

There are a few negatives. I haven't changed my opinion of the system and the main book is very dry (though the art pieces are lovely). I think it's really poorly explained and I am willing to bet that there are some min-maxed exploitations of the system out there. The system is flexible but in a market which contains other 'flexible' systems such as Wild Talents, PowerGame, Marvel Classic and even Champions, this flexibility is a mere bullet point.

To me it's mid-complexity (marred by poor explanation and layout but it's not Champions!), mid-flexibility (it's no Golden Heroes yet not also Wild Talents) and just not what I'm looking for. I do want to pick up one of the supplements and see how good the setting details are.

The game isn't as 'fast' or 'frenetic' as playing the game in the Arcades (which was also a lot blurrier and more confusing) but it's hard to beat for playability especially when the other racers are friends of yours (or friends of friends).

In addition to the single player 'Win the Cups, unlock the racers' game, you can have up to 4 players on one Wii (as long as you have enough controllers) and you can also play on the WFC network getting up to 8 human racers either from your friends list (requiring the sharing of a Kart friend code) or playing against the multitudes of people out there in the real world.

Races, battles and coin collecting games were all good fun. I'd played half a dozen games at the weekend which meant I wasn't totally unprepared for the game and Paul showed me some tricks (like the jump boosts, firing backwards etc) while we waited for Lee to plug his Wii into his projector at home. Once in, selection of games was very easy and there was little or no latency in the service.

Last night I hooked up with Paul, Lee and Tanya to play Wii Karting. Lee and Tanya were at home in London on Lee's Wii showing that two people can play online from one Wii. Two people or more playing on one 32" TV is not the best experience and can be somewhat confusing so I applaud Lee's idea of hooking up to a projector. It would make a difference. Paul and I were online from home - him in Mallusk, me in Bangor.

The 'signpost' communication method isn't the best however with only a limited number of phrases available so it's not taking advantage of the social vibe that the 'Mii' avatars could provide. Maybe at some point in the future they'll provide voice chat but that's in the future and not right now. I'm told tales that some enterprising folk are using their XBox systems as voice chat relays so they can play Mario Kart and laugh at each other. We were all Mac people so we fired up iChat (voice) and regaled each other with insults and guffaws as we dumped turtle shells, bombs and banana skins on the other racers. I reckon Skype voice would work just as well.

As for racing itself - it seems slow when watching someone playing but it gets very quick when in the race and you know you're half a lap behind and every corner counts. The game balance is helped by the use of "weapons" like the banana skins I mentioned and homing turtle shells and other methods of wiping out other people. Every time you get hit, or stunned, or squashed or shrunken it slows you down and the sound effects are excellent.

The tracks also, range from odd to excellent and in fact none of them are bad in any way. There's a lot of colour and some people may feel seasick with it (luckily I don't suffer from that), there's enough variety and obstacles to keep it from being a dry race and it seems to push the Wii in terms of what it is capable of.

Is it worth getting the wheel? I don't know. I've played it with the wheel and with a third party half wheel and I think that it might be worthwhile not getting the wheel unless you want the whole experience.

All in all, it's an excellent game and my interest in it is magnified by the potential for playing online against friends.

Ironically, it restores the meaning of I Am Legend though Neville's ending is different.

It would have made a better movie ending for sure.

Both deviate from the novel wildly but the later adaptation actually annoys me more. In the epilogue narration, the words "and this is his legend" are used which implies that "I Am Legend" refers to Will Smith's last minute finding of the cure.

Wikipedia sets the story straight.

as he dies he reflects on how the new society regards him as a monster. Just as vampires were regarded as legendary monsters that preyed on the vulnerable humans in their beds, Neville has become a mythical figure that kills both vampires and the still-living while they are sleeping. He becomes a legend as the vampires once were, hence the title.

See? That's about a million times more poignant than Will Smith clutching a grenade and the hit and miss massacre that can cause.

Good movie? I'd have to say yes.