What the fuck is GIWTR? I hear the world call out as the entirety of the internet voraciously consumes my latest blog post. Worry not gentle reader, the mysteries behind the acronym will be revealed in the very next sentence. It stands for “Games I want to run”. I’ve mentioned in the past how for some odd reason spending time playing/running rpg’s makes me feel weirdly guilty these days (still cant really decide what makes it stand out, its no more time consuming than my other pastimes) so thats one barrier to getting games off the ground. Though its largely a theoretical one as the main barrier is the geographic dispersal of my usual gaming group and our seeming inability to schedule a game. But I’m sick of thinking “Oh I’d like to run this game, oh but I wont get the chance or I should be thinking about something more productive”, fuck it, from now on I’m just going to throw up whatever ideas I have whenever I have them. I’m going to think about them as much as I want and spend as much time on them as I want. You hear me brain? Anyhow the idea I’m kicking around at the moment is a post-historical reskinning of the King Arthur mythos where plate armour and warhorse’s have been replaced with anachronistic pieces of super hi-technology, specifically big fucking robots. And not “Real robots”, no sir, “Super robots” all the way. Well perhaps not. Somewhere inbetween really. Functionally equivalent to real robots but treated in terms of technology as super robots would probably be the best (if slightly unweildy way) to put it. Continue reading…
Category: life
This covers the general events of my life and my thoughts upon it. Its probably going to be the most generally downbeat category (feel that angst).
Ave Imperator – Design Journal – 04 – Money Matters
I’ve been focusing quite a bit on the mechanical nuts and bolts around the nitty gritty of gladiatorial combat. Which is clearly an important part of the game. However another important part of the game is running the ludus, i.e. playing as the lanista. This play is split into three main sections, the first is managing your gladiators, training them, keeping them sweet, buying new ones and so on. The second major part is the political or social end of things, making contacts, settings up bouts, trying to earn a bit more here and undercut a competing lanistae there (actually, as I’ll mention again, undercutting is more or less what you dont want to do). The third part is the day to day running of the ludus, insuring you have enough supplies and money to pay wages, make meals etc. Its this last part I’m going to talk about for a bit. Continue reading…
Dragons Crown – The end of Dwarfgate
Spent far too long this week arguing on internet forums, which is like fighting sand, no ones really interested in discussion and will never be convinced to change their opinion. Its just arguing for arguing’s sake.For a niche game Dragon’s Crown has been quite prominent in the games media over the last week or two, the reactions have been mixed, even from the same website (e.g. compare the varying response on Penny Arcade between the comic, the positive comments from Mr Holkins and Krahulik and the negative article from Mr Kuchera). Though a lot of the commentary has been questioning the design of the sorceress characer (and to a certain extent the amazon). Continue reading…
Ave Imperator – Design Journal – 03 – System Matters
As I mentioned in the last post after fiddling with the core mechanic for The City I ended up re-assessing the system I was using for Ave Imperator. My original goal for the system was to have to be as “realistic” as possible. Which is somewhat of a silly goal, when people talk about realistic systems they generally mean a system with a decent level of verisimilitude. People want the system to “feel” real. Not necessarily fully simulate reality (because that would be both extremely complex and demanding and also runs the risk of being rather boring). To boil it down even further, all I really wanted was a combat system that felt fairly lethal, as when talking about rpg systems most people equate highly lethal or “gritty” combat with realism. The system I had was decent enough, as far as it went. It was a dice pool system that worked for the most part but had some odd probablity issues (mostly the weird scaling on the probability of success). It was also open to abuse in that attributes were much more useful than skills. Which wasnt really an issue per se as the player would never be manually generating any characters (more on that later). But after playing BRP for the first time in ages last week, and working on dice probability stuff for The City, I just couldnt leave the Ave Imperator system as it was. So I’ve come up with something new, and, I think anyway, better. At least in terms of combat its a bit more involved but also hopefully more fun. Continue reading…
The Woeful 108 – Quarterly Update 1
So back here I outlined my plan to curtail my spending on games and deal with my ever growing backlog. The list of games wasnt a goal, it was a leash. It’s been three months since then so how has it worked out so far? Continue reading…
Top 25 (recent) Anime for people who dont watch anime
What’s this all about then? Well this is some suggested viewing for people who are only passingly familiar with anime in general or with anime thats come out in the last few years. If the last time you watched some anime it was prefaced by this:
or the words “Studio Ghibli” then this list is for you. If you think all anime is shallow super powered adventures aimed at teenage boys or heaving tits and demon penises, then this list is for you. I’ve tried to cover as many of the major genre’s as I could (so now you have no fucking excuse for referring to anime as if its a genre rather than a medium ;)) without a) sacrificng quality or b) sacrificing accessibility. So the majority of shows listed here require no prior knowledge of or familiarity with anime or japanese culture in general to fully enjoy. If you do end up checking any of them out let me know what you think. Continue reading…
Best of 2011 – Anime – Unfinished
Note: This isnt done (well theres a full top 10, just not a full entry for each), but I’m not going to finish it and I’m sick of seeing it floating around in Drafts
I thought I’d watched a lot of anime this year. But looking back I only watched around fifty shows, actually, I suppose that’s nearly one a week. Is that a lot? Who can say. Not I anyhow. Well, whether I watched a lot or not is really secondary to the main issue, which is quality and based on that metric it was an excellent year for anime. It’s been a while since its been a meaningful chore to decide what to include. But this year it really was a struggle and some great stuff didnt make it, like C – The Money of Soul and Possibility, Highschool of the Dead, Code Geass, One Out’s, etc. To be honest there was so much good stuff out there that I would suggest taking a look at my complete anime list over on Myanimelist if you need some viewing suggestions. Of course, I only watch an anime when its complete, which means that some great looking stuff wasnt even eligible for inclusion (I’m looking at you Persona 4 Animation and Fate/Stay Zero, among others). Continue reading…
Ave Imperator – Design Journal – 01.5 – Floundering
Floundering is a weird word and a flounder is a weird fish. Anyhow this isnt really about Ave Imperator, hence the 1.5. It’s more about the process leading up to Ave Imperator. Which is fraught with distraction at the moment. Continue reading…
Rutger Hauer, Foreigner and all the girls I’ve loved before
No real insight here, just something that I’ve thought for a while that got shook lose earlier in the week. Someone asked me was I still in love with someone. I answered in the affirmative but thinking about it afterwards I think they misunderstood my answer or at least interpreted it in a way I didnt intend. I suppose its semantics or possibly just me being contrary. But I think theres an important difference between the question “Are you love with X?” and “Are you still in love with X?” The first question is explicitly asking how you feel about someone at the present and in the present. The latter question however is less clear. I think most people, fairly enough I suppose, interpret the answers as being the same. Actually I’m going to change my mind a little here. I think the answers are the same, its just the latter question gives me a little wiggle room to be a cunt. I shouldnt have answered yes, I should have said “It’s complicated” and explained myself. Which is what I’m doing now. This is probably going to be a deliciously adolescent mixture of wanky and whiny. You have been warned. Continue reading…
The Letter of the Law
As I said in my last post I want to try and make sure I get at least one blog post up a week. So to adhere to at least the letter if not the spirit of that goal I set up a small blog entry to autopost each Sunday. And I clearly set it up correctly which is why this is going up just over a day late. Yay, technology!
This week was marred by a fairly vile bout of flu which I still havent recovered from. Though around Friday I could at least think straight. I really need to do something about my general health. It’s annoying losing a week to that. I also ended up getting guilted into putting flatpack furniture together and fucked up my back again. Yes, yes, whinge, whinge, I know. I did get a bit of gaming done at the beginning and ending of the week. I finished off Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (amazing game, one of the best action games I’ve played in years and possibly the only game where it actually feels like you’re wielding a razor sharp lump of death) last Sunday and this Sunday I continued my initial experience with the new SimCity (really great game and I seemed to bypass the infamous server issues entirely).
So not productive, but at least it was unproductive in a tangentially productive way. This week has been going better. Still feeling wiped out from the flu but I got back to finishing off the initial draft of my novel. As I was reading through it to re-familiarise myself with I could see quite a bit wrong with it. Not sure if its entirely salvageable but I still want to get a complete first draft done and at least give it a once over. At that point I might abandon it and move on but at least then it’ll be properly “complete”.