Starship Concept Art

Posted on April 20, 2008 by matt

Picked up this link to amazing starship concept art over on theRPGSite forums.

Posted in Art, Cool | 1 Comment

Archaeology

Posted on April 19, 2008 by matt

I spent a couple of hours in the attic of my parent’s house excavating some old books. I have a notion to sell some of them considering that I’ve not looked at them in a decade but as I continued to browse I don’t think I could find one that I would seriously get rid of. Games like “Chivalry and Sorcery” and “Bushido”. I know the last time I looked at this pile was around 1995 because the most recent game in the attic was Nightspawn by Palladium which was published in 1995. I moved out in 1996 and the books were put into storage (and to this day I’ve still not read Nightspawn).

More importantly were the other things I found. Games and stories I wrote nearly a decade before I put pen to paper for The 23rd Letter. Pictures I drew of “SuperTeams” from my superhero games. Maybe a photo or two of the notebooks I would bring with me to school (we’re talking about the 80s here) and spend my lunchtimes and free study classes writing game materials and stories in. All personal to me.

I’m going to bore the shit out of some of you by reproducing some of them here in a new category called “Archaeology” so you can avoid them if you like.

Posted in Archaeology, Commentary | Leave a comment

Quality of Play theory

Posted on April 19, 2008 by matt

Levi Kornelson came up with this theory and posted it on TheRPGSite:
 

  1. The text inspires “solo play”.
  2. Personal play creates group play.
  3. Group play feeds back into personal play and pushes more group play.

The punch-line is:

The quality of solo play often matters more
to actually getting a game
than the quality of group play.


Effectively your enthusiasm for a game when reading it, or when generating characters or when making plots is directly proportional to the pleasure you will have when playing it with others and has a much greater effect than the interactive play.

I’d have to agree. The games I have run for others I enjoyed thoroughly.

Is your enjoyment of the game influenced by the ‘solo play’ of others within the game? Of course it is. Other who do not enjoy the game will make their negative feelings plain and, correspondingly, the actions of the solo individual within the group dynamic have a much greater effect.

They weren’t kidding when they said that gaming was a social hobby (and not an anti-social one). It absolutely depends on the collaboration of individuals to make the best benefit for everyone.

Posted in Commentary | 1 Comment

WotW: Earth – Art

Posted on April 18, 2008 by matt

Last night I commissioned two art pieces from Storn Cook for the upcoming War of the Worlds book. I really like Storn’s art (massive thread on RPG.net here) and he was very nice when I enquired about the commission and explained what I wanted, even going so far as to suggest additional things.

The ‘look’ of the Martian fighting machine is very important. We’ve seen the interpretations from the 1953 Paramount film and the 2005 Spielberg film as well as the very recognisable version from the front cover of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds ‘opera’. We need to take a different direction to all of these and start from first principles. We need something that looks in place in the start of the 20th Century but also Storn suggested we do an updated model which I find encouraging. I am now beside myself with impatience at what the result will be.

Some of the interior art from editions of the novel are striking. The theme of it being like a round hut on legs is peculiar as my impressions from reading is that the machines appear ‘cowled’. More on this later.

Things are moving along and we have a great vision for the book.

(Minor edit – fixed the link)
(Minor edit 2 – added in the RPG.net link)

Posted in Art, WotW: Earth | Leave a comment

One for the millennialists…

Posted on April 17, 2008 by matt

Mike Cane 2008 reports that NASA got it wrong and an asteroid that they reported to have a 1 in 45000 chance of hitting Earth actually has a 1 in 450 chance of hitting Earth. It took a 13 year old German schoolboy to validate the figures after NASA experts forgot to take into account the cloud of satellites which could cause the asteroid, called Apophis, to veer into Earth.

The date this is meant to happen is 2029. Now…here’s the math. In school, we had a class called Religious Education and one of the nuns who taught, Sister Mary-Jo, was one of the most progressive ‘persons of Religion’ I have ever met. She explained that the Bible was literal and also interpreted. That it was a historical document but not perhaps in the way it should be interpreted.

She believed that Jesus was real and God was real, that Jesus was born in some time around 3-6 BC and that he died on a cross, aged 33 and ascended to heaven.

If Apophis does hit Earth and cause the “End of Days”, in 2029, then it proves one thing. Chris De Burgh may have been right.

“And just before dawn at the paling of the sky,
The stranger returned and said “Now I must fly,
When two thousand years of your time has gone by,
This song will begin once again, to a baby’s cry…””

4 BC + 33 years + 2000 years = 2029 (or so, I’m not really clear on how to handle year 0)

I don’t know what’s more upsetting. That the world might end or that the Lord chose Chris de Burgh to be his prophet?

Of course, as a result I’ll have to tie this into my Prospero mini-setting…

[This is a hoax BTW. See NASA statement. But of course, to avoid world panic, they would say that…]

Posted in Commentary, Prospero | 1 Comment

Good read

Posted on April 16, 2008 by matt

Odd quote.

“Now as a Person of Size and a Person of Color…””

Me too. I’m a slightly (Ha!) overweight white guy.

The NaamenBlog is a good read especially for interpreting the motives of oppression. It uses a lot of big words.

Posted in Cool | Leave a comment

23rd Letter: Projects Campaigns

Posted on April 16, 2008 by matt

A Project-based campaign is as flexible as the players want. The G.M. may choose themes as he or she wants. PCs working for a Project are relieved of many of the worries of Network members or other independent espers. Usually they are not on the run, living out of safehouses or mobile homes, lack of money should be less of a problem and equipment will be provided. Of course a devious G.M. may run a campaign where the PCs are on the streets and don’t know that they are really working for a Project…

A Project employee will draw a salary, probably live in a home of some comfort and work alongside a regular team of professionals from a government building. With the G.M’s discretion they may have access to additional resources as needed. Why they do this is up to the player and G.M. to decide. A PC may be a patriot proudly serving his nation as best as he can or a virtual prisoner, coerced into the dirty business by the regime and looking for the chance to escape. Most PCs will probably fall between these extremes. PCs which are outspokenly rebellious or disloyal may be subject to sanction or surveillance by their Project superiors.

Adventures for Project PCs may be gung-ho romps with lots of guns, action and clear villains. In this case the PCs are heroes and will probably believe themselves to be in the right. On the other hand the adventures may involve simply surviving in a grim bureaucratic nightmare where every decision will hurt someone. Yet another option is for the PC’s team to be investigators of paranormal events. There is no correct style of campaign, but it is recommended that G.Ms occasionally surprise the players by running a different type of adventure from usual. This should both stretch the players (including the G.M.) and reduce the possibility of boredom setting in. Project adventures have based on movies as different as Predator and The Witches of Eastwick so GMs ought to be able to please any kind of player.

Projects Adventure Hooks

  • The government wants a powerful foreigner dead. He may be a drug baron, a terrorist leader or religious/political figure, but he is charismatic and has a large and devoted army of followers who are very anti-Western. If he dies an obviously unnatural death, he will be seen as a martyr by his enraged supporters, so the Project personnel assigned to this task must not simply shoot or blow him up. To discredit his memory, it is suggested that they made it seem he died accidentally while performing a sordid act. The mission may be carried out while the target is on a visit to the West or, better still, on his own territory, either way he will have many armed bodyguards.
  • It has been discovered that the Iraqi dictator is sponsoring his own Project (for games pre-2002, this works well). It is located in a heavily guarded complex outside Basra. The research centre is among flat farmland and has a company of 120 Republican Guards (with armoured vehicles and helicopters) assigned to protect it. A Project team must enter Iraq, travel to this place and covertly observe it to determine the Iraqis’ progress. They may discover that there are Nevada Project survivors from the 1991 helicopter held there. These people are helping the Iraqis, either willingly or under duress. What are the PCs going to do?
  • Satellite photos of a military factory in a foreign dictatorship suggest that a military aircraft of radical design is being built and tested there. Remote viewing by Project espers confirm this. The location is close to friendly territory so the PCs’ team are sent in to observe or sabotage the aircraft. But it is a trap. The aircraft is a non-flying mock-up, and a powerful esper (maybe a terata?) has planted illusions in the remote viewers’ minds to lure in subjects for experimentation. The PCs will be inserted by aircraft or submarine which will return to collect them some days later. A force of elite, but non-esper, troops (10 soldiers for every PC) will be waiting for them.
  • Reliable sources say that the Green Flag Commando terrorist group has obtained a 100 kilotonne nuclear device and is going to smuggle it into the US. The PCs will be assigned to a taskforce trying to prevent this. Other personnel on this task force will be from the FBI, CIA and another Project (the Western or Nevada). The CIA and FBI officers will either not take the PCs’ contributions seriously or resent their presence while the other Project’s people will be condescending. The bomb will be brought into New York harbour in the hold of an innocent looking Swedish freighter (most of the crew don’t know it’s there) on 30th June and detonated (by a fanatic terrorist on the ship) on 4th July. Can the PCs stop this? If they fail it may mean the death of millions of people, and the end of their own Project.
  • Police forces in California are seeking a serial killer who has murdered a young woman every month for nearly a year. The PCs’ Project has a precog who claims that the killer will be caught and found to be an esper with an interesting wild talent. Although it is outside the Project’s jurisdiction, their superiors send the PCs out to catch the killer and bring him back to their base for study (“After all, nobody will miss a creep like this”) . The Police and FBI are not informed about the PCs’ operation. The killer is Mario Xylander (see p51 and p57 of The 23rd Letter Rulebook) and is being protected by the Western Project. Xylander has had cosmetic surgery and no longer looks the same as when originally captured. Should a PC notice similarities between the present cases and Xylander’s original crimes, all records will indicate that Xylander is still incarcerated. Enquiries to the prison will alert the Western Project (but the PCs will not know this). Can the PCs capture Xylander without alerting the police or Western Project.? The GM might want to detail two of the FBI agents assigned to the case, the female is a hard nosed sceptic about the paranormal, however her spooky male partner whole-heartedly believes in psychic powers and secret government conspiracies.
  • An high-ranking official from a hostile nation has vital information, urgently needed by the government. He is completely loyal to his homeland, so will not willingly defect and kidnapping him is out of the question. In desperation, their country’s intelligence service turns to the players’ Project for help. The information is too extensive to be read by a psychic, but in their briefing the PCs will find their target has a weak spot, ripe for them to exploit. He may have a religious faith or other supernatural belief and be open to a psychically generated ‘miracle’, a beloved family member may be ill and could be cured by psychic healing or maybe just a threat of overwhelming power will work. The PCs must either bring about his (apparently) genuine defection or at least get him to give them the information. The PCs may have to travel undercover to the target’s country or he may be visiting the their own or an allied country.
  • The PCs’ team is to participate in a security exercise. They must either penetrate a high-security government installation and physically steal a particular file or guard the same file from a rival team, inside a seven day time limit. The building belongs to a ‘neutral’ agency (such as NASA or a police force). The PCs will be in competition with a team from another covert agency (for example the CIA, Delta Force or even the Nevada Project) who are to guard the file if the PCs are the thieves or take it if the PCs are looking after it. Either way there is to be no violence directed against the rival squad (or the workers in the installation), but the teams are free to use any dirty tricks they want. The winners will be heroes to their own organisation, and will be rewarded with improved status. If the PCs lose their superiors will make their lives very miserable.
  • At short notice the PCs are attached to the HooDoo Squad. The Project has received advance notice that a hitherto unknown, but powerful esper (abilities up to the G.M.) is to appear the following night on a live, prime time chat show. If the esper successfully demonstrates his or her powers on air it will be a disaster. The PCs are to sabotage the show or if that fails limit the damage. They may take any equipment they think they need, including doses of Psilence, and any of the HooDoo Squad. They will meet with several complications, the esper is somewhat paranoid and has several habits which make it difficult to dose him with Psilence (only eats or drinks foods he/she has prepared and brought with him/her, will not willingly take pills or injections no matter what the reason). Also if they do not want to take an NPC with them, the G.M. may want them to have to take Marcus Venture, and he will be obnoxious, lecherous and a pain in the neck.
  • The PCs are returning from a foreign mission and are tired and off-guard when the crowded commercial airliner they are travelling on is hijacked! The PCs do not have any weapons and the hijackers are armed and ruthless terrorists with impossible financial or political demands. The PCs will realise that the terrorists do not intend to let the hostages survive even if their demands are met. Can the PCs with their limited resources turn the tables on their captors? There are complications too, the airliner may land in a country where the PCs have enemies, or if it lands in a friendly country the authorities may launch a bungled rescue attempt, one of the hijackers may be an old enemy or even another esper. In the early stages of the adventure, the G.M. should confuse the players, is this something to do with the last mission or an unfortunate coincidence?
  • A country friendly to the PCs’ homeland is threatening to go to war with a neighbouring state. The allied nation’s President (or Prime Minister) is a charismatic fanatic, too macho to reduce the rising tension, and believes destiny is on his side. The war will be an international disaster, which the PCs’ government wants to avoid. The PCs’ team will be sent to this country under the cover of advisors to the President (who will trust them initially) and are tasked to avert conflict. They cannot assassinate the President as this is liable to trigger a war. The G.M. can throw in border skirmishes and assassination attempts as he sees fit.
  • An important Esper from the PC’s Project has successfully defected to a foreign rival Project. The PCs’ are sent abroad to recover her. This may not require drastic moves like kidnapping her, perhaps she regrets her flight and can be persuaded to come home.
  • The son of the President (Prime Minister/monarch/dictator) is lost in bad weather in a wilderness. A Project Esper has determined that he is alive but little more, and cannot pinpoint his location. The players must lead the search through difficult terrain, which will be arduous. Perhaps the young man’s disappearance was not an accident, in which case the PCs will find themselves in combat with armed kidnappers.
  • A vengeful father is searching for his lost child, an Esper forced to work for the PCs’ Project. The father is a former covert operative and is very clever and dangerous. The players must stop him somehow, the fact that their opponent is both sympathetic and in the right makes this difficult. Just to make things worse, the child may escape…
  • To draw media and public attention from a black operation by another agency, the PCs are to fake a series of non-psychic paranormal events on members of the public. For example they make set up mock UFO abductions, poltergeist activities or other Fortean events. The players are free to pick their victims, and should be encouraged to have fun. If the GM wants there may be a dark side, they may be so successful a victim may die of a heart attack during their manifestation or a really persistent media investigation may discover too much about their activities. The FBI operatives mentioned in Hook 5 may also become involved.
  • This is the reverse of Hook 14. The PCs are sent to investigate a sinister paranormal event which is sufficiently alarming to have attracted their Project’s attention. After a lengthy investigation they will discover that the phenomena is an elaborate hoax. The motive may be a prank, a stunt perpetrated by a local tourist commission to attract visitors, or by criminals to disguise their activities. It might be Old Mr Peterson the Janitor trying to hide his counterfeiting scheme by scaring away the yokels. He may get away with it too, if it isn’t for those meddling espers…
  • The PCs’ team is investigating a series of murders of agents from their national intelligence service or Project. When they make progress attempts will made on their lives by professional assassins. Should the PCs survive, they will discover a world-wide conspiracy by a secret organisation fronted by a wealthy and charismatic megalomaniac who enjoys caressing fluffy white cats. This person is near completion of a plan to undermine the international banking system, gain control of the world’s energy resources, provoke a major war or other drastic event. He operates from an elaborate hi-tech base with scores of armed guards, booby traps and technicians, and is also protected by a fanatically loyal bodyguard/chief henchman with a colourful physical or psychological abnormality. Depending on the PCs’ morality they may try to prevent their enemy achieving his goal or else offer to throw in their lot with him if this seems more promising.
  • On the PCs’ last mission they were careless and left enough evidence to incriminate themselves. As a result, a respected team of journalists is about to present a TV special which will embarrass the PCs and their Project. The PCs must stop this. Threats and actual violence may be counter productive, as the reporters are clever and have access to all manner of surveillance gear so the PCs may find themselves on tape. Possibly the best ideas are to undermine the programme’s credibility or buy them off by revealing a story of greater public interest. A juicy sex’n’drugs’n’politics scandal (real or fabricated) may do the trick.
    • Posted in 23rd Letter, LateGaming | Leave a comment

    Mario Kart for the Wii

    Posted on April 15, 2008 by matt

    Last weekend we picked up Mario Kart for the Wii for a fiver after trading in two games that we neither liked nor played (Wabbit Wampage? Cars?) and I must say it was the best fun I’ve had since I bought the device (over a year ago) and discovered Wii Sports.

    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.

    Posted in Commentary, Review | 4 Comments

    Sexuality (part 1)

    Posted on April 13, 2008 by matt

    A recent thread on TheRPGSite talks about sexuality and sexual and/or gender bias.

    Art

    Cheesecake art in fantasy is a real issue. I thought it was mostly gone but there’s heaps of the damn stuff out there. You know – the male characters are ripped with muscles, the female characters are showing cleavage. It’s because the target audience for the games are adolescent males.
    e.g.

    That cover made quite an impression on my adolescent psyche.

    Evolution

    Men evolved to hunt and kill things. Women evolved to raise the children. For whatever reasons in the past, its bot a recent thing. And arguably its unnatural – look at lion prides, the women do all the hard work and the men lie around and yawn impressively.

    I don’t want this to get into an argument about capability: males and females should not be in competition in certain areas. Strength for example, some women will be stronger than some men but men can achieve a higher extreme of strength than women. On the flip side, men cannot give birth or sustain another life from their bodily secretions.

    Content

    RPG games tend to have a lot of combat. They tend not to have a lot of romance. The thread discussed homosexual relationships but it became apparent that for a lot of people, role-playing games are not where sexual elements are discussed. It’s just not a part of many games.

    Her Indoors told me she likes the ‘girly’ novels she likes because they cover themes which she says fulfill a level of escapism and cover life events that she will never again experience. Falling in love for the first time, having an affair, having to choose between two suitors. These are the stories she enjoys. They’re certainly more believable or perhaps ‘down to earth’ than the stories I enjoy (interstellar wars fought by galaxy spanning empires? secret agents working to stop the encroach of extra-dimensional aliens?). Are there many games which cover this area? Only one that I can think of. A game of “Romantic Fantasy”. It still involves a lot of swords and struggles so I don’t know how it fits in with the whole ‘romance’ thing.

    Is this the central reason why the hobby is dominated by young males? Because we like the fights, the power and the glory? It becomes our escapism – so should we not cater for their escapism?

    Wouldn’t there be room for a game where we take our relationship maps and our GM-less story-driven games with conflict escalation and use them to model something other than fights in the playground?

    The model of relationships. The first kiss. The first time you realised you liked someone. The first time you were jealous for the affections of another. The first time your heart was broken.

    Fights in the Playground. Maybe that’s exactly what we should be modeling?

    Posted in Commentary, Game Design | Leave a comment

    The 23rd Letter

    Posted on April 10, 2008 by matt

    Balbinus on RPG.net responds to someone asking for sourcebooks about running a campaign about the whole concept of PSI powers:

    “IMO the best is a game called 23rd Letter, it’s basically Firestarter (the Stephen King book/movie) the rpg. Probably OOP but available I would have thought on ebay.”

    Thanks, Balbinus!

    It’s not out of print! You can buy The 23rd Letter from Key20!

    http://key20.com/product.php?productid=403

    Posted in 23rd Letter, LateGaming | Leave a comment

    Priest Chaser

    Posted on April 10, 2008 by matt

    …that the citizens of Perugia compelled the surrender of the citadel of Gerard du Puy, the cardinal-nephew of Pope Gregory XI, during the War of the Eight Saints with a trebuchet nicknamed the cacciaprete (“priest chaser”)?

    I think that the modern day Catholic Church has dire need of this.

    Posted in Cool | Leave a comment

    What’s that in the background?

    Posted on April 10, 2008 by matt

    Today I had lunch with Mike and Jim in Kainan Cafe.

    We then went round to Forbidden Planet where I refrained from buying a lot of stuff.

    This is self-control, I tellya.

    Posted in WildTalents/Godlike | 1 Comment

    Return of the Great Old Ones.

    Posted on April 9, 2008 by matt

    Found this gem when I added Pooka’s blog to my blogroll.

    “In 1901, New Year’s Eve, the Stars Were Right. The Great Old Ones Returned, bringing with them all manner of being from their starry prisons. Fortunately for humanity, while the Old Ones were certainly horrible to look upon, they were not nearly as great as they would have had us believe. Intergalactic layabouts, Cosmic conmen, and Trans-temporal thieves, the Great Old Ones may be functionally immortal, but they also happen to have little work ethic.”

    It’s a setting into from Spirit of the Century. Read more here.

    Made me laugh. In a crowded office. Terribly embarrassing.

    Posted in Cool | 2 Comments

    Raising the bar

    Posted on April 9, 2008 by matt

    I’m arrogant to believe that I can write and, to be honest, most of the time the feedback has been pretty good. I like writing, it’d be nice to do it for a living (and not the stressful but boring job at $BIG_COMPANY) but them’s the breaks. In my spare time I write a lot and only a small fraction of it makes it to the blog here.

    I have noticed, however, that my layout and design skills need some exercise and possibly even some help. I can appreciate good design, I just have issues doing it myself. Part of this is inspiration and part of it is time (which I have less and less of) and skill (my photoshop skills are not legendary).

    Looking at the character sheets I left for download earlier this week, they belie their age. They were done in 2000 or so and were definitely more ‘tell’ than ‘show’. That’s the first thing. They look like Civil Service Sickness Benefit forms. I was sent a character sheet recently that was 7 pages long and full colour. I’ve seen the pre-gen character sheets for Everway. I think I need to raise the bar considerably.

    I also need an artist in general as PJ is now going to be too busy and I don’t know anyone else who knows how to hold a pen.

    Posted in Art, Commentary, Layout | 4 Comments

    Shit one.

    Posted on April 8, 2008 by matt

    A real shame.

    Posted in Commentary, Industry, Ireland | 3 Comments

    Spiralling Down

    Posted on April 8, 2008 by matt

    I don’t blame anyone really. Sometimes I get angry or depressed and curse my friends, my family, the company, the system, the church and anyone else I can name. But it’s a short madness and like all things, it will pass.

    I haven’t slept very well in the last few days. Bouts of lethargy and a resolute stubbornness seem to possess me on these cold mornings. The coffee is too bitter and the crispy flakes of golden corn taste like ashes and feel like razorblades. It has been the same with every meal in the last week. The meat is dry and powdery, the vegetables hollow and watery. I leave most of my food untouched, I clean the plates and I plan my next repast.

    I read my mail in the morning but today I let it wait until after lunch. Such is my decadence and freedom. There were some offers of cut-price firmware, live-feed porn and a flyer advertising pressurised space on a new station about five million miles from me. We wouldn’t be alone in the dark any more.

    Of course, none of it does me any fucking good.

    This station won’t go online for about two years and I’ll be long gone. I logged onto ChatNet and scrolled through the thousands of messages. One read, “Space Age Boy seeks Earthy Girl for Zero-G Hijinks”. That made me smile. Ten million years of evolution and still men were firing out crap chat up lines to lonely women. Was this more or less effective than a wooden club?

    There was a long thread about some poor shithead stuck out in the dark, spinning around Jupiter in a damaged pod and a quickly decaying orbit. Some pitied him, some laughed and I really wanted to say something smart, something cutting that would make them blush, make them shut up, make them think. Someone had even managed to get a picture. It was a poor likeness, stupid office party from six years ago. One another thread they were running a numbers game on how long it would take for the pod to burst, how long it would be until Jupiter was seeded with my blood, sweat, piss and tears. I took a few moments and used a few tears. Nothing dramatic.

    The problem with this situation is that there’ll be nothing left. I hadn’t been to the Clinic, hadn’t left my legacy in a little cup so there wouldn’t be another me. There wouldn’t be enough left of the pod to scratch an obituary and so the ChatNet onlookers would be my only witnesses. I tapped out a quick message to anyone who could read. Something simple, something regal. It would take a week to hit the Net but by then I’d be spread into a fine mist by hurricane winds in the upper atmosphere of a star that nearly was.

    I can’t be saved.

    Earth and Mars are months away. The closest transport could get here in time but then wouldn’t have the fuel or the facilities to effect a rescue. And if they tried, they’d join me in this slow doom. At least they are close enough to actually talk to me. I hate the heavily punctuated conversations with my family on Earth. My family haven’t called in two days. I was the black sheep of the family when I took the job and staying i touch seemed nothing more than a formality. The Company was good enough to provide me with a Counselor. She’s in her mid-forties and very good at her job, telling me to express myself, that it’s alright to cry and that it’s wrong to bottle up my anguish. After the third session even she stopped calling.

    There’s a girl on that transport. She’s lovely. I know she’s just trying to comfort me but we have long talks in the evenings, we play chess and I dream of her when fatigue finally overtakes me, Her signal is getting weaker as Jupiter creates too much radio noise. I’ll see her tonight, tell her I love her and say goodbye. I’ve never said that to anyone before. Never wanted to. Never needed to. But if I don’t say it tonight then I never ever will.

    Through the three-inch reinforced plastic windows I can see Jupiter with it’s great glaring red eye. I’ve never seen it so large, stretching to create an everlasting dusky plain beneath me. I’m not within the orbit of Callisto on the way down. Spiralling down.

    Posted in Game Design, Writing | Leave a comment

    There is a hole in my memory

    Posted on April 8, 2008 by matt

    I don’t remember a game I allegedly ran over a decade ago. Nothing at all memorable.

    I think it was a superhero game/

    That worries me.

    Posted in Commentary | Leave a comment

    “Do people still go to cons?”

    Posted on April 7, 2008 by matt

    This year, Q-CON celebrates it’s 15th year.

    It was sixteen years ago that I finished the ‘market research’ of conventions in Ireland (via Gaelcon and Warpcon – and getting illicit copies of their after-con reports from by Bothan spies). This was while I was the President of the RPG society, Dragonslayers.

    It was a year later that I proposed the convention to the then-committee and we modify the constitution to create the “Convention Director” post and run a convention Q-CON 1 on a wing and a prayer. I organised the Megagame and ran games in 5 game slots that weekend. I got real tired.

    For Q-CON 2 and 3, I took the mantle of Convention Director and in the face of promisers (who never deliver) and naysayers (who you should ignore) and no-confidence supporters (who stab you in the back) it was moderately successful. I burned through any good will I had built up and alienated people who didn’t even know me.

    So why would I consider running a convention again?

    Because someone asked me to?

    Yeah.

    Posted in Conventions | 4 Comments

    WotW: Earth – The Second Launch

    Posted on April 7, 2008 by AJ

    “Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on Earth as little grey, fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet’s atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.”

    Chapter One “The Eve of the War” – The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells

    Roughly two years after the arrival of Martians on Earth, a second series of ten “shots” are fired from the surface of the red planet.  Is this another invasion?  Was the first invasion actually that, or was it just a scouting mission?  Now that we have had two years in which to come to terms with such technology has been left behind, will that make it any easier for us to communicate with inter-planetary cousins?

    The Second Launch is a set of ideas, guidelines and scenarios for GMs to allow them to generate that same sense of wonder, awe and terror that the original landings created.  Here are some questions that will be answered:

    • Where do the capsules land?  Was England an accidental or deliberate target?  If they landed somewhere remote, would they have had more time to adapt and be ready?
    • What weaponry will they bring to bear?
    • Will they have some kind of protection against our microbiology?
    • Will they be able to multiply when they get here?
    • Do they have Earth-bound help?
    • Can we talk to them?
    • Can we kill them?
    In running a WotW: Earth campaign, the GM has the opportunity to create a rich and dark atmosphere, based on the late 19th century society, and its science, in which the game is set.  To let the characters create their backgrounds, encounter some of the strangeness created by the Aftermath, and come to understand the world as it is now.  Then to put that world back into danger by giving them an enemy that is known but yet unknown, and terrifying in either capacity.
    The Second Launch forms part of the War of the Worlds: Earth game book.
    Posted in WotW: Earth | Leave a comment

    Gates of Hell

    Posted on April 7, 2008 by matt

    A couple of pics of a really accessible volcano.

    Easily re-used for something gaming…

    Posted in Commentary | Leave a comment